text:
Someday You'll Think Back And…
I recently came across a donation campaign for a husband and wife who want to re-do their fifth anniversary that wasn't so special the first time. Reading their story reminded me of a recent occurrence between my husband and I that in the moment was frustrating, but thinking back, it was truly hilarious.
It started off as a normal morning where I had just finished drinking my lemon water and was cutting up my vegetables for that night's smoothie. My husband had just finished his shake and placed his bagel in our cheap, unreliable toaster. As he stood waiting for it to toast, his body decided that he had to use the bathroom at that very moment. Now instead of releasing the toaster until his return, he asked me to watch his bagel to make sure it didn't burn. I of course agreed and proceeded to continue cutting my vegetables.
Now since he had just placed the bagel in the toaster, I took my time in checking it. And right before I did so, I smelled smoke and turned to see no smoke coming from the toaster, but when I popped the bagel out, it was in fact very burned. As soon as I turned to retrieve another bagel, the fire alarm went off. It wasn't just an alarm that sounded off, but this thing was actually shouting "Fire!, Fire!" So, although there was just the smell of smoke in the air and no fire, I was still panicking, especially since it was 5:45am, and I didn't want to wake the neighbors or make them think there was an actual fire in our apartment. I grabbed a dishrag, ran over to the smoke sensor and began whipping it helicopter style. Simultaneously, I was shouting for my husband to help me, and even though his response was "I'm using the bathroom!", I continued, for whatever reason, to demand that he assist me with preventing this imaginary fire. Suddenly the bathroom door was thrown open and he waddles out, holding his pants around his hips. And instead of helping me (as if I needed it), he simply snapped at me and went back in the bathroom. I eventually did get the alarm to stop, and even though I was frustrated at my husband for his comments, I couldn't get the image of his emergence from the bathroom out of my head. And each time I felt the irritation rise, I couldn't help but laugh. My husband soon apologized and later asked if I had ever experienced a talking fire alarm going off unexpectedly as I was using the bathroom. No, I have not.
When we go through challenges or unexpected happenings in our lives, I truly believe that God has placed something in every single one of these moments to make us grateful and/or laugh. I hope that you, this couple, and myself can do that always.
Peace and Love,
If you're interested in this couple's story or donating, here is the link to their campaign site:
Love, Loss, Kindness, and Peace
Today I would like to share with you a story from my past that I hope speaks to many of you. It's about loss, love, and kindness. They are memories that will stay with me forever.
For seven years of my life I lived in Bronx, NY until I left at the age of 10. In my last year of being in the City, I was in the 5th grade at an elementary school that was literally one block from my home. That was where I met Philippe Gaton. Philippe was a Puerto Rican boy with the kindest heart of anyone that I had known. Never had I met someone so pure and so mature. I was a bit of a troublemaker in that I loved wrestling on the playground and playing jokes on my classmates. And when someone took a joke too seriously or if I got myself into trouble with my classmates, Philippe would stand up for me and at times would actually stand between me and the aggressor. There was a time when I had bumped into this grown man, causing him to become verbally hostile. Being a terrified 10 year-old, all I could do was apologize over and over, but it was to no avail. Philippe came out of nowhere and stood between me and this adult man and proceeded to deescalate the situation by talking to the man as if he were an adult himself. He then gently took my arm and steered me out of danger.
Naturally, of course, I developed strong feelings for Philippe. And naturally, I picked on him the most and made fun of him more than anyone. I often chuckle when I think back to our dreams at that point in our lives. I wanted to be a scientist and Philippe wanted to be a professional wrestler (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was big at the time). Being the person that I am and was, I never gathered the courage to tell Philippe how I really felt, but there was an unspoken understanding that we both felt the same way about each other. The word that I can best use to describe him was "good." His soul, his character, his looks, and his heart were all good.
I passed the 5th grade with the expectation and assurance that Philippe and I would be together the next school year. As classmates and perhaps, even as a couple. That summer my brother and I went away for camp for a two week period. On the day of our return, my mother left her job to pick us up and drop us off to our father who was home as he always was. The cab was late and in a rush, my mother dropped us off at the door and hurriedly got in the cab and back off to work. To this day, I do not understand the rage and fury that my father had when I told him that my mother was not with us because she had to hurry back to work. He destroyed the apartment and nearly broke everything in sight. He was so anxious for my mother to get home that he waited on the corner block before hauling her off. That night they had the worst fight I ever remember them having. I think it was then that my heart severed ties with the man that was my father. And when he exhausted himself and left to the streets, I went up to mother and declared "I don't want to live here anymore."
A week later, my mother sent my brother and I to stay with my aunt in South Carolina for the summer. In that time, my mother took what she could and left the Bronx. My brother and I returned to New York but it was to Binghamton where I would be for seven years. And my father knew nothing of it. Moving to Binghamton was a relief because of what I was leaving behind and because of the promise of the better life I was looking forward to. Though we looked over our shoulders often, I didn't care about what my father thought and how he felt. I only cared that we were free and safe. At the same time, I was sad because I was not able to say goodbye to Philippe. I knew that he would understand what I was going through, and it broke my heart that I disappeared without warning.
Two whole years passed before I saw him again. Although we had left the Bronx, we would visit on a regular basis to see my other Aunt and go school shopping. On this one particular summer day in the City, my mother was craving beef patties. We decided to go to a Caribbean bakery that I had visited all too often when we lived there. For some reason, I decided to wait for my mother in the car. And as I sat listening to my Aunt and cousin talk, I saw Philippe. With a small plastic bag in his hand, he looked like he had just stopped at the corner store and was heading home. Like a dream, I saw him walking slowly towards the car, asking myself if it really was him. And when he came close enough, I threw the car door open and shouted his name.
Philippe stopped abruptly and looked at me. He then said something that astounds me to this day. He had simply said my name. After all those years of wanting to see him, after all the praying and wishing that he would not forget me, that I still meant something to him, he said my name.
Philippe approached the car slowly, respectfully acknowledging my cousin and aunt and turning his attention back to me. The look of shock on his face reflected my own. I don't remember who reached out first, but I remember grasping his hand. Despite everything I felt and was feeling, all I could say was "I moved." He asked me where. I told him. He asked me when. I told him. He confirmed that I just finished the 7th grade. And then we didn't know what to say because all that was needed and wanted to be said couldn't have possibly been done in the short amount of time we had. So we said goodbye. I slowly closed the car door, and out of the back window I watched Philippe sulk slowly through the crowd and up the hill that I had walked up and down so many times. Just like a dream once again, the world seemed to have been fast-forwarded as he alone moved in slow motion. I watched him walk away from me until I could see him no longer, and still I looked.
"Who was that?" my cousin asked.
All I could choke out was "someone I knew" before I turned around cried with all the strength that was in me. It had seemed that all the pain I had been through, the love, the loss, the unspoken words, and the unrecognizable feelings I had since knowing Philippe came out at that very moment. I had never cried that hard before then.
One night after that I had a dream. Philippe and I were in the 5th grade again and we were on the swings at our school playground just talking while the stars above us shone brightly. We laughed about the old times we had on the playground and in the classroom, and I told him why I moved away. I told him I was sorry that he never knew. I told him that I liked him a whole lot. And then I told him goodbye.
These days, I dream about Philippe once in a blue moon, but we have not reconnected. Like the young 7th grader, I don't believe he will remember me. But perhaps, as it was before, I may be surprised at hearing him say my name once more. Philippe is not a professional wrestler, but from I gather, he is an aspiring actor. He goes by Philip Gaston now. He has and will always have a special place in my heart.
Peace and Love,
Lifetime Resolutions
Hello My Dear Readers,
I'm not really one for New Years Resolutions, but recently, God has been reminding me of my goals and dreams in this life. When I seem to be down or discouraged, something happens or someone says something that reminds me that His plans for me are still unfolding…perfectly. With that being said, I have created a list of goals and hopes that I want to aspire to not this year, but for the rest of my life. These are my prayers and dreams that I want to never stop striving for, no matter where I am in life.
Dear Lord,
For this year and for ever more:
- Keep me humble
- Help me to continue laughing at myself
- Please don't let me lose my dorkiness and nerdiness, and may I continue to never be ashamed of it
- Don't ever let me lose my compassion and empathy for others
- Help me to grow in patience and forgiveness
- Strengthen my love and respect of others
- Help to me to be better a wife and best friend to my one and only
- Don't ever let me stop dreaming
- Strengthen my hope and trust in myself and most of all, in You
- Until You say it's time for me to have children, help me to devote myself and my life entirely to my husband and those around me for You
- Help me, Lord, to always see You in those who are suffering and in pain, especially those who show otherwise
- And please, may Your Light continue to shine through me
Peace and Love,
"Everything Happens for a Reason"
Many of us believe that everything happens for reason; good or bad, there is a purpose for every event that God allows to happen or not happen. This is definitely something I strongly believe in as well. But I also believe in the fact that just because everything happens for a reason, doesn't mean we are meant to know what that reason is. It is impossible to get into the mind of God and many of us (including myself) have stressed ourselves out trying to figure out the "why" and "how" and "when." As Joyce Meyer said, if we were able to get into the mind of God and understand why He does the things He does, he wouldn't be as great and mysterious. Yes, everything does happen for a reason, but with that belief comes acceptance and trust that everything will be okay and the possession of courage to keep moving forward in the direction we are being led.
Peace and Love,
The Light and Happiness Inside
My husband and I are kids at heart, and last weekend we went to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. My favorite scene (no spoilers) is during the climax of the film where the brothers are on their way to take down the enemy. They decided to take a detour via an elevator, and as you can imagine there's heightened tension and stress as they wait to arrive at their destination. But during this ride, Michelangelo decides to beat box, inspiring the other brothers to jump in for a good 10 seconds until the elevator comes to a stop and the seriousness then resumes. I love this scene because not only was it hilarious considering its timing but mostly because it was a reminder of how God would want us to act in times of trials and difficulties.
I'd like to think that we all have something that makes us smile or laugh. I know I do. In fact, I often get asked "what are you smiling at?" because when I'm feeling stressed or sad, I retreat inside myself and dig out these memories.
Many of us are going through tough situations, and there is so much negativity in the world that sometimes it's so hard to escape it. I don't watch the news for the simple fact that it focuses so much on negativity— whether it's potential war, finding a scapegoat, the environment, or whatever or whomever they choose to talk about or demonize. Though I try to avoid negativity, there are many who choose to carry it with them, allowing it to deeply affect themselves and those around them. Joyce Meyer describes these people as "dead," and although we sometimes wonder if they're trying to bring us down with them, we must never let negativity affect us (and this most certainly does not mean that we shouldn't be compassionate and caring). Instead of letting negativity in, we must unleash the light and happiness within us because ultimately, that is what this world needs and what people who are hurting need.
Picture all those wonderful and happy memories that you have as being placed in a bottle inside you. Open it in troubling times. Open it to share its contents with someone else. Let the contents build up so much that the bottle bursts and that light and happiness shines through your eyes and radiates in your smile and on your face, showering on all whom you meet.
Peace and Love,
The Small Things
Dear Readers,
We all have a lot going on in our lives that tend to occupy our minds and worry us more than we should allow. There are times when I am so focused on a project that I find it very hard to sit still or focus on something else without feeling guilt or anxiety. The little or big things that go on in our worlds tend to make us oblivious to the larger world that we live in. Your neighbor, a store clerk, a customer, a teacher, a co-worker, or whomever may not know what you're going through, but even so, they are still in this world with you and may be going through the same problems that are probably even greater than yours. I believe that everyone could use a blessing, a good cheer, or something to make their day and perhaps, lives, a little brighter.
When I was senior in high school, my dance teacher took some of my classmates and me to a very expensive restaurant to celebrate our graduation. Little did we know that the gentleman who was dining alone across from us overheard our conversations and generously decided to pay for all six or seven of our meals. This was of course a wonderful surprise, but I'm talking about making a difference in someone's day by doing the seemingly small and insignificant things that really matter:
- Looking someone in the eye and giving them a genuine greeting and genuinely wishing them a good day.
- Putting back unwanted store merchandise in the correct location.
- Stopping your car to allow a waiting driver to pull in front of you.
- Greeting people who you normally don't notice or speak to.
I know these may seem meaningless or senseless to some, but from being on both sides of each scenario, I can tell you they make a difference. From the sudden gleam in a janitor's eyes to the feeling of relief that someone cares, I can tell you that it's worth it. So please, stop and see someone today and try to do so everyday.
Peace and Love,


text:
Log::Handler::Levels - All levels for Log::Handler.
Base class for Log::Handler.
Just for internal usage and documentation.
Alternative for the levels critical - emergency.
Check if one of the levels critical - emergency is active.
This method is very useful if you want to add a full backtrace to your message. Maybe you want to intercept unexpected errors and want to know who called die().
$SIG{__DIE__} = sub { $log->trace(emergency => @_) };
By default the backtrace is logged as level debug.
# would log with the level debug
$log->trace('who called who');
If you want to log with another level then you can pass the level as first argument:
$log->trace(info => $message);
If you want to dump something then you can use dump(). The default level is debug.
my %hash = (foo => 1, bar => 2);
$log->dump($level => \%hash);
This method logs the message to the output and then call Carp::croak() with the level emergency by default.
$log->die('an emergency error here');
If you want to log with another level, then you can pass the level as first argument:
$log->die(fatal => 'an emergency error here');
With this method it's possible to log messages with the log level as first argument:
$log->log(info => 'an info message');
Is the same like
$log->info('an info message');
$log->log('an info message');
If you log without a level then the default level is info.
No exports.
Please report all bugs to <jschulz.cpan(at)bloonix.de>.
If you send me a mail then add Log::Handler into the subject.
Jonny Schulz <jschulz.cpan(at)bloonix.de>.
Copyright (C) 2007-2009 by Jonny Schulz. All rights reserved.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
To install Log::Handler, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm Log::Handler
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Log::Handler
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.

subset: commoncrawl


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We can deliver this product Same day anywhere in USA.
(We can not deliver to some remote pincodes. In that case we shall refund your order fully and let you know.)
** Note:Wine / Champagne may only be purchased and delivered to persons who are at least 21 years of age.By placing an order, you validate that you and the person who accepts delivery will be 21 years of age or older.
When your wine / champagne is delivered, the person accepting delivery may be required to show identification.


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Expected crowd moves caucus
The upcoming Pontiac Township Republican Party caucus is expected to draw between 200 to 300 voters, which has forced a change in location, party officials said Friday.
Set for Tuesday at 6 p.m., the caucus was to be held at Pontiac City Hall Chambers, but a contest for one township position has created a lot of interest and the caucus has been moved to St. Mary's Community Room. Registered Republicans who reside in Pontiac Township and plan to attend should use the entrance at 501 N. Chicago St.
John McGlasson, chairman of the Livingston County Republican Central Committee, said most caucuses, held every four years, draw about 10 people and conclude very rapidly. However, he doesn't believe this will be the case Tuesday, as two candidates have come forward for the position of road commissioner.
Chuck Raube, who has held the post for 20 years, is retiring. Candidates who have announced their interest in the position are Robin Bohm and Bill Frazier.
Unlike a primary or general election, candidates for the township positions do not have to file candidacy papers. They simply need a nomination at the caucus, a second to the nomination and a vote.
"These are the two candidates we know about. However, any registered Republican could come in and receive a nomination or make a nomination. There could be more. I just want to make clear the Republican Party is not endorsing either candidate," McGlasson said emphatically. "Our role is to hold the caucus, not endorse any candidate."
McGlasson said he and Township Supervisor Louis Lyons have also adopted rules of procedure for the event, as required by the Illinois Board of Elections.
The IBE also required a 10-day notice first announcing the caucus be published, with the state setting the deadline for Nov. 24. Pontiac Township did not publish a notice in the Daily Leader, but Lyons and McGlasson both stated it should have been and was the responsibility of the township clerk. They did not know whether it had been in another publication. Notices for Avoca, Nebraska, Owego and Saunemin townships were published by the required date.
"I don't know what happened, but I do know we are publishing the change in place, giving as much notice as we can," McGlasson said.
"The road commissioner is the only position I know that has a challenge. If the other positions do not present challenges, we will dispense with them first. Then we'll wait for each of the two road commissioner candidates to be nominated and give them each a chance to speak before voting."
Attendees will be asked to write a name on a ballot and submit it for an official count.
Lyons said other positions up for vote include his own, as well as township clerk, township assessor and four township trustees. Lyons, Clerk Dan Gschwendtner, Assessor Gary Vilsoet and Trustees William Cole, Karen Cochran, Troy Harms and Jack Vietti are all seeking to retain their positions. In addition to being nominated, a candidate for assessor must file a statement of economic interest, while a candidate for clerk must file a notice of obligation to comply with the Illinois Campaign Financing Act.
All township positions are considered part-time, with holders allowed to have other employment. Some of the positions require more time spent on the job than others.
The positions pay $19,700 for supervisor; $2,500 for clerk; $30,000 for road commissioner, $25,000 for assessor; and $900 for trustee.
Lyons said he is at the township office, located at 320 W. Madison St., most days, while the assessor and road commissioner positions are also more demanding.
"We have to assess property in Pontiac and maintain township roads, but our biggest area is general assistance to those in need. That might be help with rent, help with a bill, groceries or whatever. There is so much need, people just don't realize," Lyons said.
"A man came in whose wife had just died. He needed help with cremation costs, Social Security and family court matters. Every day it's something different."


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It's the quiet type but lives only for you. The new 'Kissenger' (kiss messenger) robot from the Lovotics company in Singapore will be the most romantic machine yet invented. "We are making progress with hugging functionality, so the robot can transmit kisses and hugs together," CEO Hooman Samani told Metro.
The new Kissenger represents an advance on Lovotics designs that would allow users to transmit a kiss to a partner or a digital character online, using ultra-sensitive material for the lips. Samani will make an official announcement on the new bot on february 27, but cannot disclose a release date until "ethical tests" are passed to safeguard the user.
Lovotics have also pioneered imitation hormones in robots, so that it can share feelings of anger, passion and even jealousy with its human friend. The device is trained by observing love behavior in humans through a powerful network of cameras and sensors.
"You can deconstruct love into an abstract concept, and once you have that you can programme it," said Professor Maarten Lamers of the LIACS computer science institute in Holland. "The momentum toward robot-human relationships is extremely high."
Researchers believe there is a vast market for the love-bot should it pass tests. "The biggest application will be for people who find relationships difficult and will realize they can fill that void," David Levy, artificial intelligence expert and author of 'Love and Sex with Robots', told Metro. "It's only a matter of time before entrepreneurs produce a machine sophisticated enough to fall in love with – I predict this will happen in the next 30 years." If Samani is right, it could be much quicker.
[videoembed id=111805]


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Cab in deadly Zakim bridge crash had flat tire
Driver, Debra Sarno, killed in crash with tractor-trailer
The cab driver from Chelsea killed Monday in a fiery crash on the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge had pulled over with a flat tire, her employer said.
The cab and a tractor-trailer were involved in a crash at about 5:30 a.m. in a northbound lane, and the vehicles caught fire. Massachusetts State Police said the cab driver, Debra Sarno, 54, of Chelsea, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Sarno had a flat tire, said Ed Barry of Malden Taxi. She had pulled over and put the flashers in her 2006 Ford Crown Victoria on and called her dispatcher, Barry said.
There is no breakdown lane on the bridge, state officials said.
As Sarno was waiting for a tow truck, her cab was involved in the crash with a tractor-trailer belonging to M&M Produce driven by Joseph Maldonado, 47, of Manchester, Conn. Maldonado suffered minor injuries and was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital.
The crash is under investigation. No charges have been filed.
Sarno had "numerous periods of suspension and motor vehicle violations, including operating on a suspended license and surchargeable accidents," a spokesman for the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles said. Sarno had taken four required National Safety Council courses based upon the accumulation of violations.
"She'll be greatly missed. She was a very kind person, very nice person. We're deeply saddened by the tragic loss, and our thoughts go out to the family," said David Morovitz, the owner of Malden Taxi.


text:
Published in theJune/July 2012 issue
He's wearing his running uniform, we can reveal that much about the runner.
Shorts, tank top.
A pair of Asics track spikes.
We can tell you that just before he lowers himself into a half crouch at the starting line, he does an odd little skip, shaking out his legs one more time before he calls them into action.
We can tell you that he crouches down noticeably lower than his competitors, the three other young men at the line.
We can't tell you the color of his hair, but we can tell you that it is not its original color, and that he dyes it often, unpredictably, whimsically.
We can tell you that he doesn't even glance at the race official in the fluorescent-orange shirt who's just lifted the starter pistol skyward.
We can tell you that instead he just stares straight down the track, waiting for the report.
I suppose we can tell you that his eyes are green.
And that his skin is pale and that his face, like the faces of so many eighteen-year-olds, is flecked with acne.
We can tell you, in these coiled moments before the gun goes off, that five years ago, when he was just entering adolescence, he had smooth, unblemished skin.
Jay Paterno is in the basement bar of an Italian restaurant owned by a friend of his, pretending he's taking a shower. He's standing purposefully, uncomfortably close to the guy he's talking to, and one of his arms is raised, and he's pretending to soap his armpit, and he's saying that the showers in the football building aren't so cramped, that you wouldn't be forced so close together there. You can take a shower with somebody there and it wouldn't be like you were necessarily invading their personal space. It wouldn't be like that.
And don't misunderstand him, he's not saying that terrible things didn't happen. That kids weren't probably hurt. And that that's not a tragedy.
He's just saying that sometimes taking a shower is just taking a shower.
That sometimes it's not a criminal act.
Guys who play football take showers together. And sometimes older guys take showers with younger guys. And sometimes... but his heart's not really in the argument.
And besides, arguments are just words.
Even a winning one can't bring back what he's already lost.
The doctor hasn't read any of it.
Some of it he's heard on the radio driving to work. Some of it he's overheard in conversation. You can't help hearing a few details here and there. We don't have earlids.
But we can look away. We don't need to see what we don't want to see.
Dr. Wayne Sebastianelli is the head team physician for the Penn State football team.
He's known, or knew, Coach for twenty-four years. He remembers the first time he met him, out on a practice field, sometime in 1988, during Coach's first losing season. Dr. Sebastianelli had played football himself in college, was a nose tackle at the University of Rochester. They had shaken hands, and then Coach had squinted up at him through those famous sea-glass spectacles of his and let loose with his equally famous Brooklyn honk.
"I remember you! Too small, too slow, and too weak to play at Penn State!"
And Dr. Sebastianelli remembers what he told Coach.
"I know I wasn't good enough to play for you, but I'm good enough to take care of you and your team."
And that's what he's done, for decades now.
He's taken care of Coach. He's taken care of Coach's teams.
He provides treatment.
Sometimes he provides prevention.
There's a great picture someone took a few years ago, during a game against Temple.
The picture shows Dr. Sebastianelli tackling a Temple running back who was careening off the field, about to bulldoze Coach.
Dr. Sebastianelli had been on the sidelines, as he always was, waiting for the injuries to happen.
"It's third and six, and so I figured if the play comes this way, they're going right for the stick, so I'm maybe about eight yards from the stick, to the right of it downfield. And so I just turn as the ball's being snapped, and I see Coach standing right by the stick. And all of a sudden, it was a screen play, it broke right to the sidelines, and so I started walking faster. And literally, just as that kid goes for the stick, I just caught him."
He protected Coach when he could, treated him when he couldn't, like when a couple of players ran into him during a game a few years ago, breaking one of his brittle legs.
When this whole thing started, last November, he made the conscious decision not to read about it. He absorbed the general outline, of course: Jerry Sandusky, Penn State's longtime defensive coordinator, arrested on multiple counts of child sexual abuse. Coach drawn into the mess when it came out that a decade ago an assistant had told him that he'd seen Sandusky doing something of a sexual nature to a preadolescent boy in the showers of the football building.
More than that, though, Dr. Sebastianelli chooses not to know. He might be the only person in this town who's never even glanced at the twenty-three-page-long grand jury report, that relentless collection of short stories.
Victim 1. Victim 2. Victim 3. Victim 4. Victim 5. Victim 6. Victim 7. Victim 8.
"Everybody felt challenged, everybody felt confused," he says. "Everything's obviously still unclear, what's true, what's untrue, what's fact, what's fiction."
So he didn't try to figure it out, didn't try to make sense of it. He didn't ask exactly what Coach had been told. He didn't ask why Coach didn't do more. He decided, instead, to block it out, to deflect it, to keep it out of his brain so that it couldn't infect his memories, his certainties.
So that he could keep doing what he's always done.
"I think we were all concerned about Coach," he says. "That was the main focus for me."
"Worrying about taking care of the team."
"Taking care of Coach and his family."
"I sort of made that my focus."
"I was so intensely concentrating on what I needed to that the surrounding stuff really was ..."
He trails off.
The pace of it was so fast, so unreal. The Penn State Board of Trustees fired Coach four days after the release of the grand jury report. A few days after that, Coach was diagnosed with lung cancer.
Eight weeks later, Dr. Sebastianelli was in the room when he drew his last breath.
And yes, of course, his eyes get red and wet when he talks about that day.
Then he shakes it off.
"You know," he says, "the root of his name means 'father.' "
Five syllables.
The first two: Joseph.
The father of the son of God.
The next three: Paterno.
Father, no?
Or just two syllables.
JoePa's second son, Joseph "Jay" Paterno Jr., stands at a lectern on a stage in a stadium in front of twelve thousand mourners and asks for everyone to stand and to hold hands.
It's the end of his eulogy, a good speech, one he stayed up late the last few nights composing on his laptop at his dining-room table. He tried to tune out everything that was going on around him, all the well-wishers and the condolences. The White House called at one point, and Jay gave the phone to his mother, and President Barack Obama told her that everyone knew all the good things she and her husband had done.
Now everyone rises.
They rise and they bow their heads and they listen as Jay recites the Lord's Prayer, the Paternoster.
"Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name ..."
We can't tell you the runner's name, of course.
We can tell you only the name that the Thirty-third Statewide Investigating Grand Jury of Pennsylvania anointed him with in its presentment.
Victim 1.
They didn't call him Victim 1 because he was the first victim.
They called him Victim 1 because his story led to the unearthing of all the other stories.
Victim 2. Victim 3. Victim 4. Victim 5. Victim 6. Victim 7. Victim 8.
The gun fires with a feeble clap and a thin belch of white smoke momentarily shrouds the race official's hand, drawing your eye. By the time the smoke dissipates and your attention turns back to the race, a matter of a second or two, the runner is already a stride ahead of the pack.
It's a good stride. Fast turnover, not much head bobbling, shoulders loose, up on his toes.
He's had to work at it, at his form. There are other runners, even here at this meet, who are more naturally gifted than he is. More fluid, more biomechanically sound. But nature isn't destiny, and what you're given isn't all you've got.
Part of it is his training program, that daily mixture of biology and statistics and sweat.
Monday: Three times 500 anaerobic, rest three minutes between each. Two times 1,000 anaerobic, rest five minutes between each. Core.
Tuesday: Alternate 800 for four miles from 75 percent to 80 percent, then back to resting. Warm-up mile and cool-down mile. Plyos.
And so on.
He takes it all seriously, takes satisfaction in it, in how his body responds to the tailored abuse, in how he grows measurably stronger, measurably faster.
But there are other young men here who train just as hard, who have better natural form, who should, you would imagine, be equally strong, equally fast.
The runner enters the oval's first turn, maybe twenty yards from the starting line, and the gap between him and the others continues to widen.
This is the first meet of the season, and there are maybe a hundred spectators, and they're all either lined up along the fence at the northern edge of the track or sitting in one of the two little sets of metal bleachers set back a little ways from the fence. It's a beautiful and sunny day, the beginning of spring, and the sky is light blue with just a few clouds. In the distance there are some of the unintimidating little mountains that dot this part of central Pennsylvania, covered with the thick-trunked trees that used to be part of the economic backbone of this area before the timber industry faded. Now, well, the area doesn't really have an economic backbone.
The runner's never had much. Single mom. Housing-project home. Very little money.
Father? No.
His deficits, the holes in his life, his vulnerabilities, would have stood out stark and clear to any man tuned to notice things like that.
By the time the runner rounds the bend, his competitors look like they're in a different race, racing against one another, not him, and he's out there all alone.
Jerry Sandusky doesn't say a word.
He's sitting next to his lawyer, facing the judge, his back to his audience. It's April, and his trial isn't scheduled to begin until June, but this pretrial hearing has been called to settle a few routine evidentiary matters, such as whether the prosecution can use the secretly recorded audio of a telephone conversation Sandusky once had with Victim 1.
A big, neckless head covered in white hair rises like a mushroom from the collar of Sandusky's swollen blue blazer. You might be wondering what's going on inside that head, what thoughts rattle behind that anthropologically interesting brow.
He won't tell you.
His lawyer hasn't allowed any interviews since the pair of disastrous ones Sandusky gave early on, when he said things like "I didn't go around seeking out every young person for sexual needs that I have helped."
You can read what other people have written about him, although that might only make you more confused, since there's such a disconnect between how he is perceived today and how he was perceived before his arrest.
For example, in an old file on the Penn State campus, you'll find an old letter, written by Sandusky's old boss, supporting his nomination for a state insurance-industry association's "Humanitarian Award":
"Jerry Sandusky," Joe Paterno wrote in 1986, "is a tireless, determined, and loyal individual that has pledged a large part of his life to many neglected youngsters in need of assistance... . Jerry is a humble man of great integrity and is only interested in what he can do for others, not what others can do for him."
Or perhaps the closest you can come to some sort of truth is in reading what Sandusky has written about himself.
He wrote a memoir in 2000, and since his arrest a lot of people have mentioned it, since its title — Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story — is basically a punchline in itself. But when you actually read it, you'll wonder whether anyone made it far past the title, and not just because the writing is so bad. The bulk of it is so saccharine and platitudinous that it reads like a novelization of The Family Circus, but it is also clearly, despite the treacly gloss, the work of a strange and disturbed individual.
In between poems about his mother — "She's prepared me for life by the Golden Rule; / My mom, for sure, is nobody's fool. / She cleans the house both day and night; / Everything around her is shiny and bright" — and a meditation on watching one of his best friends bully a disabled child, Sandusky inserts passages of such startling, not-just-in-retrospect oddness that they demand to be quoted in full. For example, here's Jerry Sandusky describing what happened after he picked up two boys who had run away from the group home that his organization for disadvantaged youth, the Second Mile, managed:
"The houseparents were mean," Bobby said as he sulked with his big blue eyes. "They made us eat all the food on our plate, and they made us clean our room."
"Boy, that's pretty terrible," I said with my best mock sympathy. "You guys are really having it rough out there."
"The guy [Elliott] grabbed me around the back of my shoulders," Bobby continued. "And he made me do something when I didn't want to do it. Do you ever grab your kids like that?"
I didn't want this running away to become a habit, so I thought of a possible solution — at least an experiment to make them think twice about doing it again. "No, Bobby, I don't grab my kids like that. I grab them like this."
With that, I put my hands gently around his throat. By now, I could tell they were totally confused. Both boys had a scared look in their eyes. Bobby didn't want to go back to the Second Mile home, and Steve didn't want to go to my house, so I sat at a red light at 4:30 in the morning debating with myself on where to go. Finally, I told them we would compromise. We would go to the Second Mile home that night, and another night they could come to my house. That was just an example of the organizational structure we had in the early days of the Second Mile.
But maybe trying to understand Jerry Sandusky is a loser's game. Maybe there's no easy way to reconcile the distance between a hero and a monster, or to grasp how one man can have been both simultaneously. Maybe you're better off just trying to understand the aftermath, the consequences, the effects rather than the causes.
Today's hearing is brief and inconclusive — the judge adjourns after seventeen minutes and forty-three seconds, announcing that he'll be mulling things over for a few days before making any decisions — and when it's over, a thick scrum of reporters coalesces into a horseshoe shape around a podium that somebody's placed at the bottom of the courthouse steps. Soon, the lawyers for both sides will emerge and take their turns at the podium, answering shouted questions.
There are eight TV-news trucks parked around this picturesque old town square. The one with the letters WTAJ on the side had to make an hour-long trip from the station's Altoona bureau last night, because the station still hasn't replaced the local truck, the one that was lost in the riot that took place the night the Penn State Board of Trustees fired Joe Paterno. One of the reporters here today remembers watching it go. He remembers running after a knot of police officers as they ran toward College Avenue, a video camera jostling on his shoulder, and getting there just in time to see the truck take its last breaths, balanced for a long moment up on two wheels, right before its center of gravity shifted and it toppled over. On the radio, during an emergency broadcast of a program called Radio Free Penn State, a former member of the Board of Trustees who had flown in that day from his home in Florida lamented the firing of Joe Paterno, his voice thick with anger and grief: "It is such an incredible tragedy... . They wanted to wipe the slate clean, but they wiped our honor off the slate, too! They wiped our pride off the slate, too! They wiped our hero and our idol and our epitome off the slate, too!" One of the rioters threw a lit cigarette in the direction of gas spilling from the gas tank.
The reporter remembers how the chants came from everywhere and nowhere at once.
"Hell, no, Joe won't go! Hell, no, Joe won't go! Hell, no, Joe won't go!"
Rocks and bottles started showering down all around him then, and he remembers thinking that this is what it must be like to be on the losing side of a battle in wartime.
We can tell you that the runner is wearing his racing uniform, but we won't tell you the name of the high school printed in white letters across the front of his shirt.
We'll tell you, though, that the high school on his shirt is not the high school where he currently attends classes, where he's currently finishing up his senior year.
The high school on his shirt is his old high school, the one he transferred out of when too many people in this small town told too many other people what they'd heard about the runner. He still runs for his old high school, but he never again wants to walk its halls.
It's your fault JoePa's gone.
The adults, the school administrators, well, they weren't as rough as the kids. Not quite. They didn't drop epithets or invoke gods, at least. But they didn't bend over backward to help him, to support him. It was a small-town school, with a small-town football team, but for several years it had been basking in the voluntary coaching assistance of Jerry Sandusky, a hero descended from the Penn State pantheon, a man so great people had once even thought he would eventually take over for Joe. It's hard to lose the attentions of a great man, and perhaps that's why, when the runner came forward four years ago to tell his story, to put an end to it, according to his mom, one of the top administrators at his high school had a quick and devastating retort.
"Jerry has a heart of gold."
As the scandal exploded, as its impact expanded, the news that the runner was Victim 1 spread on the unstoppable breeze of rumor.
Let's spread another rumor here.
Let's say that it's rumored that before the runner left his old high school behind, he visited a different administrator's office on a matter unrelated to the scandal.
He visited to complain about the dismissal of an assistant track coach, an assistant coach who had clashed with the head coach, but whom the runner and all the other members of the team admired.
"What," the school official replied, "are you sleeping with him, too?"
Is the rumor true?
The runner doesn't want to talk about it.
He doesn't want to talk about any of it, really.
Some things don't need to be said.
He left his old school behind.
Some battles aren't worth fighting.
Jay Paterno remembers the blur of well-wishers, coming and going for hours after he got home from his father's memorial service. He remembers people complimenting him on his eulogy and he remembers having to stifle the instinct that kept on welling up inside him, the instinct to call his dad and ask him what he thought of the speech. As he remembers it, he may have even spoken the question out loud, a couple of times, in the snatches of privacy he found during that long evening.
Hey, Joe, what did you think?
Some people find it strange when he calls his dad Joe, but it makes sense. It was a habit he picked up after he started working for him, seventeen years ago, when he hired on at Penn State as an assistant football coach. He'd be in these meetings, eight or nine guys sitting around a table, and he could hear what it sounded like when he'd pipe in. "But Dad, what about ..." "But Dad, why can't we ..." It sounded like he was twelve years old. So in public, he began calling his dad what the other men called him. Coach. Or just Joe. Soon that habit began creeping into their private conversations, too.
Those last years, working under Joe, were a blessing. Growing up, he didn't always have the time with his dad he would have liked. Unlike some of his friends' dads, his didn't fish, didn't hunt, didn't coach Little League. And he was busy, always. But football brought them together. Some of Jay's earliest memories are of sitting on the floor of his dad's study while his dad studied tapes of games on the projector. And soon, while he was still really young, Jay began to absorb some of what he saw there, began to understand some of the delicate and intricate strategies at play underneath the brutal surface of the game. Eventually, Jay chose to make coaching football his career, and whether or not this decision was itself part of some delicate and intricate strategy of his own, it did succeed in bringing him closer to his father than he ever was as a child.
The day after the memorial service, Jay found an e-mail in his in-box. A Web site called American Rhetoric was writing to let him know that they planned to include his eulogy in its list of important speeches of the twenty-first century.
Jay remembered the question he'd asked the night before.
Joe, what did you think?
Okay, he thought to himself, I got your answer.
A lot of people believe that when you're dead, you're gone, and that there's no way for the departed to influence the world they've left behind. Jay doesn't believe that. He believes in signals, in signs, and he believes his father has been sending lots of them.
Like at a basketball game Jay's twelve-year-old son played in a few weeks ago.
His son had written his grandfather's initials, JVP, on one hand and the word ALWAYS on the other.
He was a good basketball player, his son, solid, but not necessarily a superstar. In these games, the final point tally wasn't usually much more than twenty points, and his son would usually score maybe five or six. Halfway through this particular game, though, Jay called his wife.
"There's something going on here," Jay told her.
His son ended up scoring thirteen points.
The next game, once the ink had worn off, he went back to scoring his usual five or six.
Jay received another sign in Brooklyn.
It was two weeks after his father's death, and he'd been in Manhattan for a Penn State fundraising event. On Sunday morning, he decided to get up early so he could attend the 8:30 mass at his dad's childhood church, St. Edmund Parish in Sheepshead Bay.
The priest stood up and began his sermon, and Jay almost couldn't believe his ears.
"Today," the priest said, "we're going to read from the Book of Job."
Okay, Dad, Jay thought, sitting up straight-backed in his pew, I hear you.
He'd already been thinking about Job a lot, and about the parallels between Job and Joe.
God broke Job down piece by piece, stripped Job of everything, to test his faith.
And Joe, despite everything that happened, despite all he'd lost, never got bitter, never got angry.
During some of the worst, early days of the scandal, when Jay looked out at the satellite trucks squatting in front of his father's house, he sometimes felt like just rushing out there and raging into the lights and the lenses. He knew what they'd be asking, that same trinity of questions cycling endlessly on television — what did Joe know? when did he know it? why didn't he go to the police? — and he knew that nothing he could say, or scream, would be enough. But the impulse to confront them was almost uncontrollable.
His dad would calm him down.
"They're just doing their jobs," he'd say.
Another thing Jay's been reading and thinking about a lot recently is The Crucible, that old play about the Salem witch trials. It makes him think about something his father always used to say, which is that human nature never really changes. It makes him think about the reactions people have when confronted with hysteria. It makes him think about the McCarthy hearings, about the immediate aftermath of 9/11, about the Duke lacrosse scandal. About what happens when the mass of public opinion gallops in one direction and how tough it is to counter that.
Jay's a history buff, just like his dad, and one of the last movies they planned to watch together was Robert Redford's The Conspirator, about a woman who got swept up in the hysteria following Abraham Lincoln's assassination. Her name was Mary Surratt, and she owned the boardinghouse where John Wilkes Booth planned his crime. A wounded nation, shocked by the tragedy and hungry for vengeance, assumed Surratt must have shared in her tenant's guilt.
But just because something happens on your property, in your domain, doesn't make you responsible for it, does it?
Evil, like virtue, can be all around you, and you might not see it at all.
The runner admires Usain Bolt, though of course he's not that kind of runner.
Usain Bolt is a stick of dynamite, a mutant, this massive Jamaican sprinting machine who just obliterates every sprinter who's come before. Usain Bolt is also, to be honest, not all that tough. He runs the 100 and the 200, and people who know about runners and running are pretty sure that if he chose to run the 400, he could dominate it as well. But the 400 requires something that either Usain Bolt can't take or just doesn't want to: pain. Real pain. The pain that happens when your body exhausts its initial anaerobic reserves and has to start actually producing and burning new fuel, sucking in massive amounts of oxygen, converting it on the fly, pushing through that suffocating sense of swimming up for air and finding ice above your head.
The runner, that's where he lives.
He runs the 800, the 1600, the 3200. He runs those races in which, in order to excel, you've got to find your limits and feel the pain that finds you there and keep on going.
Eventually, the rumors that he was Victim 1 spread outside of his high school, outside of his town, and reached some members of the national media. He lived with his mom and some siblings and some dogs, and at first they tried to use the dogs to keep them at bay. They'd let them out one at a time, from smallest to biggest, and eventually that would do the trick. But the press can be relentless. Here's another rumor: A reporter for one of the nation's biggest daily newspapers provided the runner's neighbors with free cell phones in exchange for their stories. After a while, the runner couldn't stand it, this feeling of being trapped inside his mother's home. So he moved out, found another place to live, and gave his address only to the people he trusted the most.
He's just a little stick figure now, way down at the opposite end of the track, about 300 meters into this 800-meter race, and though there's no visible change in his form, though he's still cycling his stride smooth and sharp, lifting his feet off the ground almost as soon as they strike it, you know it's found him now, that it's caught up with him, that his tank is empty, that the pain's begun.
The grand jury presentment reads like fragments from a destroyed adolescence.
Sandusky and the runner met on the Penn State campus. They met when he was eleven or twelve years old at a camp that Sandusky's group, the Second Mile, organized. They met there, with all the other kids and all the other counselors around, but eventually they started meeting elsewhere. Sandusky started taking the runner places, just the two of them. Penn State preseason practices. Eagles games in Philadelphia. Swimming excursions at hotel pools.
Sandusky's house. The basement of Sandusky's house.
You can't imagine what it's like for a fatherless boy to have a man, a hero no less, suddenly come into his life and lavish him with paternal attention.
And you can't imagine what it's like when the boy realizes that the man is not really a hero at all.
There are things that happened, and those things will come out in court.
"With Victim 1 lying on top of him, face to face, Sandusky would run his arms up and down the boy's back and 'crack' it... ."
"Sandusky then began to blow on Victim 1's bare stomach... ."
"Victim 1 testified that ultimately Sandusky performed oral sex on him more than 20 times through 2007 and early 2008... ."
There are things that happened, and so one day the runner went home and he was on his computer — Sandusky had given him all sorts of gifts, including a computer, golf clubs, clothes, cash — and he called out to his mom and asked if she knew the name of a Web site he'd heard about, some sort of online registry where he could go to look up the names of "sex weirdos."
"Who are you looking for?" she asked.
"Jerry," he said.
An 800-meter race constitutes exactly two laps of the track, and as the runner approaches the halfway mark, the beginning of his second lap, he's not crouched down at all, as he was at the start, but is running so straight and so upright that he looks taller and bigger and stronger than he actually is, and even though you know he must be in some sort of agony, it doesn't show.
Let's agree that Joe Paterno was a good man.
Let's agree that he was decent and generous and loyal.
He began coaching football at Penn State in 1950 and stayed until he was fired sixty-one years later, even though he had frequently been offered much more money to leave and coach in the NFL. During his tenure, he built up one of the most successful college football programs in history, and personally oversaw 409 victories, more than any other major college football coach. He tried to mold his players not only into superior athletes but also into respectable human beings, insisting that they maintain high GPAs, that they keep their facial hair shorn short, that they dress conservatively even when off the field. He was an English major in college and believed deeply that the life of the mind was as important as the life of the body. He flexed his fame to raise massive amounts of funds for the university and personally poured millions of dollars of his own money into various university endowments and building projects.
He was a good man.
And there's no greater monument to his goodness, nothing he was more proud of, than the Paterno Library. It's right in the middle of campus, and he raised millions of dollars to bring it into being. It's beautiful, austere and solid without ostentation, like the simple blue-and-white uniforms he insisted his football players wear. Among other things, the library houses the Special Collections Library, where archives covering Pennsylvania's labor and literary history share space with millions of documents related to the university's own history, including the history of its football program. The Paterno Library manages the personal archives of Joe Paterno himself. You can pore through boxes full of primary-source materials related to his extraordinary career, and get a small sense of his devotion to the university and to the football team, his single-minded passion and drive. Even in the off-season, his appointment book was full, and he racked up thousands of miles visiting potential donors and recruits.
But yes, even here, in Paterno's archives in Paterno's library, there are some things that raise questions.
According to the grand-jury indictment, the first time Jerry Sandusky was investigated on suspicions of sexual abuse was back in 1998. On May 13 and 19 of that year, detectives from the Penn State and municipal police departments hid in the home of the mother of an alleged victim and listened in on conversations she had with Sandusky, conversations in which Sandusky admitted that his genitals might have touched her son, and that he felt terrible about it, saying "I wish I were dead." Then, on June 1, they interviewed Sandusky in person. Shortly afterward, for unclear reasons, the case was dropped.
Would Joe Paterno have been told about that investigation? Would any Penn State police officers or administrators have informed Joe Paterno that they were investigating his heir apparent on suspicion of heinous crimes?
We don't know.
Paterno himself said he never knew about the 1998 investigation, and nobody has produced evidence contradicting him.
You won't find any such evidence in Paterno's archives.
You will, though, find something curious, and perhaps, depending on how you interpret it, troubling.
You will find, if you dig into his archives from 1998, that he was a very busy man — he wrote in one letter that he had "committed all my free time to" and was "really stretched" by the ongoing fundraising campaign. You will find that he was a very reliable man as well. When he planned to do something, he would do it. In fact, if you look at his agenda from 1998, you'll see that he almost always kept to his schedule, and that his only cancellations fall within a very narrow window of time.
The first cancellation is on May 15, two days after police listen in on Sandusky's half-confession to the mother of a young boy. That evening, Paterno cuts short a fundraising trip to Valley Forge, then cancels a four-day-long personal vacation he had been planning to take from May 16 to 19, to his summer home in Avalon, New Jersey. He resumes his scheduled fundraising trips in June, about a week after the investigation against Sandusky is dropped. He doesn't miss any more events for the remainder of the year.
The following season, Sandusky abruptly and unexpectedly announces his retirement.
Did Joe know?
Who knows. The files raise questions but provide no answers.
And regardless, it doesn't change the basic fact, testified to by almost everyone who's ever met him or worshiped him: Joe Paterno was a good man. But let's just agree on one more thing.
Joe Paterno did precisely what school regulations required him to do in 2002, when a graduate assistant came to his home to tell him he had just witnessed Jerry Sandusky molesting a preadolescent boy in a shower stall at the football building.
Joe Paterno notified another Penn State administrator.
Joe Paterno did not do anything more than that.
There are lots of words you could use to describe Joe Paterno's behavior.
Managerial. Bureaucratic. Lawful.
Let's agree that if you are going to look for any real heroes in this story, you're going to have to look elsewhere.
Jay has a deep rumbling burr of a voice, but he does a good impression of his father's famous high-pitched squawk.
And he still hears it in his head, all the time.
"Don't stop. Keep moving."
That's what it's been saying lately, the voice. Almost a physical thing, that bray, that spur. Don't slow down. Not now.
When they fired Joe Paterno, Jay wasn't sure whether he should keep going to work himself. Should he keep working for the university that had just fired his father?
He talked with his dad about it, and his dad told him, Look, you've got responsibilities. You've got responsibilities to the other coaches, to the players.
Of course you go.
So he went. He kept going to the practices, and he coached from the sidelines of the first Penn State game in sixty-one years that his dad had no part of.
And even since then, after the season ended and his dad passed away, after the university didn't renew his own contract and he found himself suddenly unemployed for the first time since college, he hasn't really stopped. It's been one thing after another.
The eulogy got him lots of attention. You wouldn't believe the amount of mail he's received, requests for interviews, speaking engagements. He's earned forty thousand new Twitter followers since this thing started. And people have started talking with him about the same thing they used to talk with his dad about. Politics. He likes politics. He likes campaigns, the energy and excitement of them. The clear goals.
And this thing with his dad, the aftermath, it's sort of like a political campaign, too. You've got dueling narratives, different messages, and you want to make sure your side is the strongest. The family has hired a crisis counselor named Dan McGinn, whose clients are usually major corporations like General Motors and Texaco. In the first days of the crisis, McGinn advised the family to be very circumspect and cautious, to maintain a dignified silence during the initial volleys levied against them. Now the reins are loosening. The family has begun to respond with sharply worded statements to what it views as the most egregious insults against them. In March, when the Penn State Board of Trustees publicly rehashed its reasons for firing Paterno, the Paterno family, with McGinn's help, drafted a quick and blunt rebuttal. When, in April, a pair of journalists from Pittsburgh put out a hastily written book full of anonymously sourced knocks against Joe Paterno's reputation, the Paternos issued another statement within a day.
And the truth is, the Paterno family doesn't really have to defend itself much, not around here. The community's abiding certainties and loyalties have never much been in doubt. Although the university has severed its licensing deal with the Paternos, the family continues to market its own products independently, and those products continue to sell very well. Jay can't walk down College Avenue without seeing his father's face on dozens of T-shirts, under slogans like WE ARE ... BECAUSE HE WAS and MORE THAN A MAN. There's a large movement under way to rename one of the major streets in town Paterno Way, and some particularly fervent believers, like Travis Reitnauer, the ringleader of the group that flipped the news van during the riots, suggest that the renaming shouldn't stop there, and that the university should be rechristened Paterno State University. At one of the busiest intersections in town there's a local landmark, a huge, decade-old mural that depicts dozens of Penn State luminaries. A few days after the scandal broke, the mural artist returned and painted over Jerry Sandusky, who used to sit in a big easy chair near Joe Paterno. After Joe Paterno died, the artist returned again and painted a golden halo over his head.
Not long ago, Jay adopted a dog. They named her Penelope, after the wife of Odysseus, who stayed eternally loyal to her absent husband. Jay takes Penelope on long walks and tries not to let his mind wander too far. Keeping busy has been essential, Jay thinks, to his own peace of mind. He worries about what might happen if he stops and rests for too long. He worries that all his emotions would catch up, hit him like a nose tackle.
When things are quiet, when he doesn't have fundraising events or speeches, when he's not walking Penelope or playing tennis or basketball with his friends or cooking for his family or teaching his kids the rudiments of football, like his dad taught him, he escapes into books. Reading and writing them. He's working on a novel. He's got the outline all mapped out. It's a mystery set at a fictional university. Something terrible happens within the football program there. A coach is murdered. It becomes a national scandal. Dozens of satellite news vans sprout overnight.
Jay's protagonist, his hero, is a football player.
A long time ago, the runner wrote a brief essay about heroes.
Heroes, according to him, save people's lives. "I'm glad I'm a hero. I save myself all the time."
He saved himself.
He came forward, he told his story.
He saved himself, and in saving himself, he saved others as well.
And yes, in saving himself, this fatherless boy unwittingly brought down JoePa.
He put an end to something.
And he's suffered the consequences.
Soon, though, it will be over. He's going to testify at the trial, and then, perhaps, he'll never have to tell his story again. He's planning to leave this whole state behind once he graduates from high school, plans to start over somewhere new, won't look back at the reckoning and the wreckage, at the people trying to salvage what honor they can from the rubble.
But that's the future.
Today, let's watch him race.
Let's watch him run circles around this lined green football field.
High-school football games around here routinely draw a thousand people, watching and screaming, instead of the barely one hundred who've come out for this track meet.
But he's not looking at the crowd.
He's coming out of the final bend, and his competitors haven't even entered it yet, and he's looking straight down the track, toward the finish line.
He's letting the pain show now, during this finishing kick, his face stiffening and contorting.
This last bit, it's hard and it's painful, but the worst is behind him, and there's something particularly sweet about a victory you achieve all by yourself.


text:
Karen Wainberg and I went to Portland today to join the Occupy Wall Street event. It's been going on for a week. When we arrived there were just a few folks in Monument Square but more were gathered at their camp site about one block away. We stood on the side of the road facing traffic and held our signs and handed out flyers to passing motorists.
After a few hours more began to arrive. It was a hot day for October, 89 degrees, but seeing the buses go by with rubber necking tourists inside made it bearable. Very few people were negative as they passed us by during the 4 1/2 hours we were there. By the time we left about 75 people were protesting in the square. We heard that last night about 200-300 people had come to be a part of the Occupy Wall Street action.
Many young people either came to the square to hold a sign or to see what is going on. I handed many of them a flyer. It was good that today we had several of us there from the peace movement holding signs that connected the dots between endless war and economic crisis here at home. Many of the younger activists have been working on environmental or corporate power issues, and while they are against the war, they've not had many chances to make these important connections. So it is vital that peace movement people go into these spaces and help make these links. Everyone is totally receptive.
When I got home I saw an email from friend David Swanson, one of the leaders of the Occupy DC effort that began this week in Washington. He posted several videos like the one below on his web site and wrote this:
We intended to hold signs and sing inside the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, protesting its promotion of unmanned drones, missiles, and bombs, including its sponsorship by and promotion of weapons corporations. We don't have any museums promoting health coverage or education or retirement security.
We had marched from the Freedom Plaza and McPherson Square occupations, taking over the streets of DC. The museum knew we were coming. Some of our group got in and dropped a banner. Hundreds of us did not. Instead, we were greeted at the door with cans of pepper spray.
There were three sets of entrance doors. I was among the first to open the third set of doors. A guard shook a can of pepper spray in front of me and demanded that we back out. But a dozen feet away at the second set of doors, people were staggering out and collapsing in pain, having been pepper sprayed in the face. I started to go toward them, but began coughing and vomiting. A lot of people were effected, directly or -- like me -- indirectly by the pepper spray.


text:
It has been a dreadful weekend for Nick Griffin, the BNP, the English Defence League and the collected scrotes of the Scottish Defence League and Infidels factions. Braw! To start with Nick 'that's not a saveloy' Griffin has been accused of being a 'sex pest' by the fragrant Claudia Dalgleish who has revealed that he sent saucy messages and exposed himself whilst eating a take-oot in the car. Ms Dalgleish was recently the partner of BNP chap Steve Squire and she had been trying to scale the dizzying heights of far right politics. However, she subsequently fell out with Mr Squire and the Griffclops for varied reasons too scandalous (and, to be honest, too tedious) to detail and in the time-honoured cliché of 'the woman scorned' has expressed her dissatisfaction by selling her story to the Daily Star. Crivvens! Like Mr Tommy of the EDL, Griffclops has now been condemned to sleeping in the spare room by the Mrs along with a couple of mouldy Nazi uniforms and large quantities of unused BNP membership cards. Far be it for anti-fascists to have any sympathy whatsoever with the ridiculous Griffclops but Ms Dalgleish, who appears to have been somewhat surgically inflated, seems to be a bit of an attention seeker. As the phrase goes, 'lie down with dogs …' etc, then this pic doesn't do here many favours.
However, that is not going to stop us indulging in a wee bit of schadenfreude at the Griffclops's expense!
In case you have been dead for the last week there has been much ado about the far right demonstrating in Hyde over the recent attack on Daniel Stringer. The EDL decided to have a demo there despite being asked not to by Stringer's family. The BNP, desperately sensing a publicity stunt, decided to piggyback it and claim it as their own despite having stated that BNP members were not allowed to play with the EDL. Recriminations subsequently flew. On the day a piss poor turnout of about 50 BNP was slightly outnumbered by the EDL. The BNPers were furious with other members for not showing up for a 'national demo' and the EDL were furious with the BNP for hijacking their brazen publicity stunt. Griffin was told off by plod about 'going too far' in his speech and they had had been worried all week but on the day the fascists were all force marched to 'defend' the Asda carpark and stand about wondering why on earth they all bothered. The much awaited 'race war' failed to ignite and after an hour or two everyone went home again feeling very disappointed indeed.
After Griffin had left the podium and was out of earshot, Mr Tommy of the EDL ordered BNP flags and placards to be removed and then nicked off to Rochdale, desperately trying to capitalise on recent disturbances there. Earlier this week a bunch of pissed hooligans attacked a takeaway because they were selling encyclopedos or something and the windows got done. Mr Tommy arrived to whip up a frenzy but no-one noticed. Later in Manchester a bunch of EDL got very mouthy with some Wrexham supporters who took umbrage and told them off in no uncertain terms! Speaking of Association Soccer, the EDL had promised vengeance for their humiliation by Ajax fans a while back in Holland and had attempted to rally the troops on Facebook. Then realising that it is illegal to organise football violence on the internet quickly removed the statement. Luckily, our chums over on EDL News got a copy of it and posted it for all to see. And it's here:
Whoops! Needless to say nothing happened and the EDL who are not exactly well established at either of the Manchester soccer teams were once again embarrassed.
Meanwhile, up here in Scotland the SDL had a 'mass rally' in Glesgae (that's Glasgow to you, Jimmy!) and got together with the 'chav scrotes' of the North East and North West Infidels and together further proclaimed their support for the National Front. The very few of them gathered up in St Enoch's Square (how appropriate) to unfurl St. George flags and sing Rule Britannia. Good one! Everyone was really impressed. Eejits. They were vastly outnumbered by anti-fascists and most passers-by just appeared confused as to who the SDL etc., were. Here's an on-the-spot report from Glasgow anarchists:
A few more arrived hopelessly late on a coach after having got lost although the rumours were flying that they were late because of playing 'Soggy Biscuit.' Apparently Liam 'Dairylea' Pinkham won!
Following last week in Liverpool when associated fascists attacked a Republican march this weekend has been a welcome boost for antifascists and a dismal one for the far-right. And finally, we are pleased to announce the arrest of the British People's Party candidate for Todmorden this week. He seems like a reasonable chap!
And as for this handsome charmer! Crivvens! Jings! And Help Ma Boab!
Be seeing you!
PS: from an anti-fascist in the know: 'An SDL steward pissed himself after a copper refused to let him go out the cordon to the toilet. He then went back to the copper showing said copper he'd pissed himself.'


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Over the weekend, Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer labeled his 2008 Florida Gators team as the best to ever play college football.
Not only is it a bold statement, it's also unprovable, incomparable and pretty much beyond the scope of examination. After all, we're guessing former Gators head coach Steve Spurrier's not even sure they were the best Florida team ever. After all, Spurrier's 1996 national champs suffered a far more respectable loss (to No. 2-ranked Florida State in Tallahassee) than did Meyer's '08 squad (to unranked Ole Miss in Gainesville). Had Meyer called the Tim Tebow-led Gators of '08 the best national champion of his 13-year career as a head coach, that would at least carry the credibility of perspective.
Spurrier's best Gators team aside, we offer five teams from years past -- none of which lost a game -- who put up a strong argument against Meyer's assertion. No, we don't think all these teams would line up and beat the 2008 UF team head-to-head. That's another list. Here, we're simply highlighting teams that thoroughly dominated relative to their period in history and ranking them in order from least to most dominant.
The Seminoles became the first team in NCAA history to go wire-to-wire as the nation's No. 1 ranked team in the polls. In going 12-0, FSU faced five ranked teams and scored 30 points or more against all of them. A road win at rival Florida, ranked No. 4 at the time, put Florida State in the Sugar Bowl, where it beat a Michael Vick-led Virginia Tech team, 46-29. Wide receiver Peter Warrick, though his pro career wasn't great, was one of college football's most electrifying talents.
4. 1961 Alabama
Regarded as one of Alabama's most dominant national-title teams, the defense of the '61 squad was without peer. It posted six shutouts and gave up just 25 points the entire season. A 26-7 win over North Carolina State represented the highest point total by an Alabama opponent that season. A Sugar Bowl win over No. 9-ranked Arkansas, 10-3, capped the season for the national title. Linebacker Lee Roy Jordan would later become a first-round draft pick of the Dallas Cowboys.
3. 2001 Miami
As far as pure talent, this club is the gold standard for college football. The roster is something to behold, highlighted by the likes of future NFL stars Willis McGahee, Andre Johnson, Jeremy Shockey, Ed Reed, Sean Taylor, Clinton Portis and Jonathan Vilma. And that just scratches the surface. This UM team went 12-0 and blasted Nebraska, 37-14, for the national title.
With Lynn Swann on offense and Richard "Batman" Wood on defense, the Trojans rolled to a 12-0 record capped by a dominating Rose Bowl win over Ohio State, 42-17. In seven of 12 games, the USC defense held opponents to 10 points or fewer. A season-opening road win over fourth-ranked Arkansas vaulted USC to the No. 1 spot in the polls, and the Trojans never looked back. And as long as one man's opinion matters, legendary broadcaster Keith Jackson called them the best team he ever saw.
1. 1995 Nebraska
In this context, why not start with the team best remembered for shredding Florida to win it all? Tommie Frazier's dismantling of the Gators' defense couldn't have been more thorough in a 62-24 thrashing of UF in the Fiesta Bowl for the national title. The Cornhuskers went 12-0 and weren't held to less than 35 points the entire season, destroying every opponent on the schedule with an unbeatable triple-option offense.


text: As I pulled into the driveway of the new Sandy Hook Elementary School at the former Chalk Hill middle school Wednesday, a Monroe policeman flagged me to stop and asked to see my license. A few yards ahead, I had to show it again. Handing it over for the second time, I wiped the stray tears from my cheeks. Though my children couldn't see from the back seat, I cried silently driving the distance from our Sandy Hook home to their new school. While I have moved ahead in many ways, going back to school remains a serious emotional hurdle for us to overcome. The officer handed it back and asked my kids what grades they're in. Talking to them for a brief moment, he made them smile. Then he reached a hand over and squeezed my shoulder, saying, "We're going to take good care of them." It was just what I needed, just when I needed it. Today, my kids and all their classmates return to school for the first time in nearly three weeks. With any luck, they will have circle time, read, color, play and find comfort in each other and the familiar routine. Though parents have been invited to spend time at the school — either in the classrooms or in a designated parents' room — I don't plan on going. For my son, a Sandy Hook survivor, and his little sister who wasn't in school yet that day, I think normalcy might just be the best thing right now. The children of Sandy Hook and their teachers have a shared experience that binds them. But Thursday won't be about that. It will be about learning and routine. The parents of the school also have a shared experience and are bound by the collective tears and emotions borne from that day. As I looked around at the adults' smiles Wednesday, I saw the hints of recent tears on many other faces, too. But we smile on, talking about the big new gym, giant library and exciting new playground. We're doing our best to put on our brave faces as our school community marches ahead. This is important to everyone — and perhaps when the students are back in their routines we'll feel a little sense of peace. Of course, things are changing. Inside a new building, there are new routes to learn. There is a new face at the helm of the school — the lovely Donna Page. And there will be other new faces dotting the crowd as students find their way to their new classrooms and back into learning. Sandy Hook was a safe school before, and now that feeling is magnified with the presence of law enforcement and enhanced security measures designed to ensure that our children will be OK. As for the emotional security of our school, a team is in place who will be available in the coming days and weeks to help teachers, students and parents through our difficult transition. For the students of Sandy Hook, things will never be the same. That terrible, horrible thing that happened (yes, that's actually what we call it in my house) will never be completely erased from our memories. And it will always color our thoughts and decisions. But today's return to school marks another first in our forward movement. We are going on as a community, finding our new normal and looking forward to every smile, giggle and celebration it will bring. Sarah W. Caron, a former Register reporter, is a food writer and recipe developer. Reach her at


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On December 9, 2015 Congress voted in favor of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). It is the seventh reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), originally passed in 1965, which is the national education law that commits to equal opportunities for all students. In the new law, music is mentioned as a separate, stand alone subject for the first time in ESEA's history. This is a major win for music education as ESSA provides opportunities to expand access to music education nationwide. Continue reading 'Every Student Succeeds Act: What It Means for Music Educators'
Posts Tagged 'Every Student Succeeds Act'
Every Student Succeeds Act: What It Means for Music EducatorsPublished March 31, 2016 General , Teacher Resources Leave a Comment
Tags: classroom resources, Common Core, education law, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESEA, ESSA, Every Student Succeeds Act, music education, music educators, Music Express, music teachers, NAfME, National Association for Music Education, NCLB, No Child Left Behind, well-rounded education


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Bret Michaels leaves Manchester show due to medical emergency
Reports: Singer's blood sugar was extremely low
Singer Bret Michaels abruptly ended a concert in New Hampshire after suffering a medical emergency.
Guitarist Pete Evick says on Michaels' Facebook page that Michaels was three songs into his set in Manchester on Thursday when he rushed from the stage. A crew member reported that the former Poison lead singer's blood sugar was extremely low. Michaels was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes as a child.
Evick says Michaels returned to the stage, telling fans he couldn't continue. Evick says when he went to the band's bus to check on Michaels, "he could barely speak, but begged me to apologize to the fans."
Michaels thanked the paramedics on Twitter and Facebook who provided assistance.
Michaels won the 2010 "Celebrity Apprentice," raising money for the American Diabetes Association.


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This girl is happy. Oh wow, she just went skiing in Colorado. Who is she making out with on the slopes? Oh, it's her boyfriend. Wow, it looks serious. I remember lurking her last boyfriend on Facebook.
He seemed cute and nice. But he was also clearly "The Boyfriend You Have In College", you know? When Facebook notified me about their break up, I wasn't surprised. I bet she'll get married to this one and then I'll see their wedding pictures and baby pictures. I haven't seen this girl since high school but this is the life I always imagined she would have. It makes me sad for some reason and I'm not sure why.
This person is in a dark place. They're drunk in all of their photos and their friends look super sketch. I actually ran into this guy six months ago at a bar and he was so fucked up. I hadn't seen him in awhile and his skin looked terrible. He was skinny. Maybe too skinny. I'm not surprised that there's "I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH DRUGS AND/OR ALCOHOL" stapled across his Facebook. This makes me sad too. I'm disconnected from this person but here I am getting a glimpse into his problems on his profile. I feel like I don't have the right to look. I'm going to stop now.
Whoa, this person has changed. They've really cleaned themselves up. God, our friendship was so weird. We hung out every day for a few months and then she just went away back to California. She looks more chill now. There are all of these photos of her with her family and dogs. Oh wow, she has a new boyfriend too and he's hideous! They're writing on each other's walls saying things like, "I luv u so much baby!" Sick. Oh well. The last time I saw her, she was drunk and peeing in the kitty litter box at her apartment so I guess this is an upgrade. Good for her.
Ugh, why does my uncle have a Facebook? He posts these annoying status updates that are essentially inspirational quotes. His default picture is of him hiking shirtless. Ew, put that away! You're, like, 50. I don't like my uncle. It feels bad saying that because he's blood but I don't care. He sucks. Looking at his Facebook just makes me angry so I'm going to defriend him. Yay. Feels good.
Oh look, it's my ex-boyfriend. Next.
Oh okay, this is my best friend from middle school. It's weird to see him kissing some girl and being all grown up. because I know him best with dirt on his face and skinned knees. Looking at his Facebook makes me feel old or distant or both.
Ugh, this bitch. How did she end up being so successful?
This person never moved out of my hometown. I want to feel bad for her but she looks happier than most on her Facebook. Maybe she's the only one who figured it out.
Remember when this person was my best friend and I saw her cry on the street? I fed her sandwiches at my house afterwards and we laid on my bed for what seemed like forever? Facebook won't let me forget.
These people shouldn't be in my present. They deserve to be in the past. But in 2011, there is no past. You're not allowed to grieve anything because nothing actually dies. It just sits there slowly decaying, staring at you with a sinister grin. Sometimes Facebook feels like a museum of my life. I guess I'm just finally getting tired of looking at artifacts. I guess I'm just too sensitive for fucking Facebook.
This article by Ryan O'Connell originally appeared at Thought Catalog. You should follow Thought Catalog on Twitter here.


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My readers do more than read. They draw, they create, and they share their creations on line. Join us!
- EDM on Facebook: I visit our FB page every day. So do thousands of other people and they share drawings every few minutes. See you there!
- EDM Yahoo Group: This was our first online community, started almost ten years ago. It includes members of all degrees of ability and experience — from total novices to professional illustrators, artists, and teachers.
- EDM Flickr Group: Nearly 100,000 images from members sketchbooks, many done in response to the EDM weekly drawing challenges.
- Me on Facebook: I like you. Like me back.


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Monthly Parking:
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has a limited number of spaces available to faculty and staff convenient to the main campus. Parking is also available at the Landmark Center for faculty and staff based at Landmark. Please contact the Operations office, firstname.lastname@example.com, for current availability and pricing.
Daily Parking Rates:
A one-time temporary daily pass may be issued to authorized visitors. Reservations for these passes must be made in advance by visiting the HMS Commuter Services and Parking website. The cost of this daily parking pass will be charged to individual departments, so the appropriate departmental billing code is required when making the on-line parking reservation. Reservations for oversized parking vehicles should be made for the NRB Garage located at 77 Ave. Louis Pasteur; those driving sedan size vehicles may park at the Quad Garage located at 200 Longwood Avenue. Daily parking passes are issued by attendants at the entrance of the assigned garage.
After Hours Parking:
After-hour parking permits are granted for a fee to faculty and staff that are based in a Harvard Longwood Campus building. Those eligible may register for either the Quad or NRB parking garage. Those driving oversized vehicles are only eligible to register at the NRB Garage. After-hour parker's Harvard IDs are valid at an assigned garage between 5:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. Monday through Friday, all day on weekends and Harvard holidays.
Faculty or staff that wish to register for after hour parking should fill out the parking application. Please visit the Harvard Longwood Campus Commuter Services and Parking Office website for more information.


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Fair food keeps getting worse for you
I am not a big eater of fair food, which you can probably tell, because I am not dead.
I am also not a very big rider of fair rides, which you can also tell, for the same reason. There was an annual fair that came through my Indiana hometown every year - it had to, because it was an annual fair, and if carnies are known for anything it's their strict adherence to contractual obligations - and I would go every year, because it was either that or play fantasy baseball with my friends. And here is this only time this sentence will ever be written anywhere on Earth: The county fair was the much stronger option for possibly meeting girls. (It was also a much better option for eating funnel cakes, which was the far more likely outcome.)
This happened when I was in my teens, in the mid-1930s, according to my hair and posture, back when my unformed adolescent body could do things like consume three consecutive funnel cakes without collapsing into a heap of convulsive stomach-clutching. (By contrast, if I eat one whole glazed doughnut now I must run four miles to destroy the attendant calories, which is hard, as I don't really have the two hours to spare.)
And it is a DARNED or possible GOLDANGED good thing, too, because if I were a teen hitting up the Lake County Fair now I would have all manner of newfangled (and newdanged!) fair foods to consume while not meeting any girls. (Can I tell you that I have never understood the idea of fair foods anyway, and not just because of my aversion to throwing up into a Crazy Ball game, but because I cannot fathom why, when you're going to be hitting 8 Gs in a rattletrap spinny contraption that was built in 1956 and contains most of its original rivets, you definitely want your waist parts jammed full of unregulated dough prepared by undocumented gypsies. God the kids are going to LOVE going to the fair with Fun Dad in a few years.
Anyway, I first direct your attention first to Sacramento, Calif., where it is generally best to avoid directing your attention unless you are a debt collator, where the California State Fair is being held in a state that is shutting down its school year in mid-February due to lack of funds but has plenty of coin to boil up vats of burbling frying oiliness and deposit into them a treasury of things that God never intended to have Fried, such as cheeseburgers! And macaroni and cheese! And cinnamon rolls! OK, you know what before Idiot Write Person is going to hang out on this last one before going all Moral High Ground on deep-fried cinnamon rolls.
Yet the California State Fair is basically a three-hour bikram yoga seminar put on by actual monks when compared to the San Diego County Fair, where fairgoers can enjoy such treats as fried cereal balls made with Trix and Cinnamon Toast Crunch, assuming, of course, they can order them without collapsing into fits of hysterical 14-year-old boy laughter, which, I confess, I am totally doing right here on the couch.
"These deep-fried Trix aren't for kids, unless you want to contribute to the obesity problem," wrote Shauntel Lowe in the local Patch website, according to an MSNBC article. "The doughy ball of greasy cereal wasn't bad, but it definitely isn't something I'd go out of my way to buy."
See, now here with all due respect to Lowe and the field of Internet-based doughy ball evaluation, here's where I take issue with this: Under no circumstances in 2012 should the phrase "the doughy ball of greasy cereal wasn't bad" be allowed to pass through the zeitgeist without attention, without scorn. DOUGHY BALLS OF GREASY CEREAL ARE ALWAYS BAD. BAD BAD BAD. BAD DIDDITY BADDILY BADDY BADDY BING BONG. We are never going to do anything about this obesity-problem business if we're like "Oh, you're sucking horns of spherical grease out of a tube over by the Zero Gravity? Meh." This food should be addressed like a spider that's gotten into your house - AAAAA KILL IT KILL IT KILL KIT - and do not pretend like spiders don't need to be crushed when they get in your house, people, those things have babies.
Things are culinarily better over in Texas, which is another sentence that I don't has ever been written before, where this year's State Fair of Texas will take place in September and features, I can only imagine, a highly anticipated keynote by President Barack Obama. The Texas fair will be debuting deep-fried Samoa Girl Scout cookies, which are Samoas that have been wrapped in wonton skies, fried and then adorned with caramel, chocolate and coconut. Wait, that sounds good, kinda. KUDOS, TEXAS.
Contact Jeff Vrabel at email@example.com, jeffvrabel.com or twitter.com/jeffvrabel.


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Volunteers, projects needed for Compassion Weekend
DOVER — For the third year running, Dover Baptist Church is working to put together their annual "Compassion Weekend" community service outreach effort, set to take place on June 1st and 2nd of this year.
Event organizers are looking for your input and hoping to bring together volunteers from throughout the Seacoast area to help tackle a variety of community service projects. In years past, the effort has included activities like City Park and neighborhood cleanup, graffiti removal, remodeling and yard work for a residential recovery house, a public service appreciation breakfast, painting and cleanup for a local shelter, rest home visitation, and much more.
This year, they are appealing to the community at large for both project ideas and potential volunteers. Are you a local non-profit or public organization that has a project that you've been putting off for want of funds or volunteers? Are you a community member who is in a place of hardship, or could simply use a helping hand around the house for a couple of days? They would like to hear from you.
Says Pastor Chris Bannon: "Whether it's remodeling for a local homeless shelter, cleaning up a school playground, or helping someone get an air conditioner set in place before summer arrives, we're just looking for ways to bless the community around us in tangible, practical ways. For us, it's a hands-on expression of the kind of people that Jesus calls us to be, and we're excited for this year's effort."
An application for project proposals is available through the church website: www.DoverBaptistChurch.org . Just look for the "Compassion Weekend 2013" link. Additionally, if you are a community member interested in volunteering, you may contact the church office 603-742-5452 for further information and project updates.


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Strengthening cooperation with Switzerland, Norway and Iceland: the Lugano Convention
Outline of the Community (European Union) legislation about Strengthening cooperation with Switzerland, Norway and Iceland: the Lugano Convention
These categories group together and put in context the legislative and non-legislative initiatives which deal with the same topic.
Justice freedom and security > Judicial cooperation in civil matters
Strengthening cooperation with Switzerland, Norway and Iceland: the Lugano Convention (2007)
Document or Iniciative
Council Decision 2007/712/EC of 15 October 2007 on the signing, on behalf of the Community, of the Convention on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters.
The "new Lugano Convention" will apply to jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters. It will not apply to tax, customs and administrative matters or to the status and legal capacity of natural persons, rights in property arising from matrimonial relationships, wills and succession, bankruptcy or composition, social security or arbitration.
With this decision, the Council of the European Union (EU) authorises the President of the Council to designate the persons empowered to sign the convention on behalf of the Community. The text of the convention is attached to the decision.
Achieving a high level of circulation of judgments
The convention, signed on 30 October 2007 by the European Community, along with Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland, will come into force as soon as it is ratified by the signatories. It will replace the Lugano Convention of 16 September 1988. The contracting parties must deposit their instruments of ratification with the Swiss Federal Council, which will serve as depositary of the convention. Once it has come into force, the convention will be open to:
- future members of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA);
- Member States of the European Community acting on behalf of certain non-European territories that are part of their territory or for whose external relations they are responsible;
- any other state, subject to the unanimous agreement of all the contracting parties.
Based on the rules applicable between EU Member States
The convention follows the present legal framework of the Community, namely the "Brussels I" regulation on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters between Member States. The rules will therefore be similar in the EU and in Switzerland, Norway and Iceland. The convention will also facilitate the mutual recognition and enforcement of judgments handed down by the national courts of these countries.
The convention provides that, in general, persons domiciled in a state bound by the convention are sued in that state, whatever their nationality. However, it also provides for special rules of jurisdiction in certain matters, such as with regard to:
- contracts: jurisdiction resides with the courts of the place of performance of the obligation;
- maintenance: jurisdiction resides with the courts of the place where the maintenance creditor is domiciled or habitually resident;
- tort, delict or quasi-delict: jurisdiction resides with the courts of the place where the harmful event occurred or may occur.
The convention also provides for specific jurisdictions in matters relating to insurance, consumer contracts and individual contracts of employment. Jurisdiction in matters relating to tenancies and real property rights resides exclusively with the courts of the contracting state in which the property is situated.
A number of protocols are annexed to the convention, among other things to ensure that it is interpreted as uniformly as possible.
Signing of the convention marks a major institutional development
The European Court of Justice confirms in its Opinion 1/03 that the European Community is exclusively competent to conclude the new Lugano Convention.
Signed on behalf of the Community on 30 October 2007, the convention is a key part of Community law. It runs for an unlimited period.
Council Decision 2009/430/EC of 27 November 2008 approved the conclusion of the convention on behalf of the Community. It also established the declarations to be made at the time of depositing the Community instrument of ratification (annexed to the decision).
|Entry into force
|Deadline for transposition in the Member States
|Official Journal
|Decision 2007/712/EC
OJ L 339 of 21.12.2007