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|GIL .. BIOSCI/Bionet News .. Biosequences .. Software .. FTP
Have you ever gotten catalogs in the mail? Why would they do this? Because it works! A certain percentage of people buy from them. They do it because it works each and everytime they send. This is a great method BUT the cost can add up. When you mail 1000 or more, you have to consider postage, brochures, envelopes, and etc... Did you know that there is a method of that cost less, WITHOUT postage, envelopes and brochures but have the same effect? You can now compete with the big boys, with exposure in MASSIVE NUMBERS, without expensive investments such as those associated with television commercials, radio advertising or direct postal mail. THE SOLUTION - Direct E-mail Marketing We maintain a database of E-MAIL LEADS in MILLIONS covering the internet. We gather the leads from "hits" at certain targeted web sites, the internet and numerous reliable sources. Do you want to reach 12+ million E-mail leads? Now you can for pennies compared to other expensive mediums ! Targeted AND General leads available ! Fax your details to 786 549 5787 INCLUDE your: name tel email The internet at your fingertips..... The internet at your fingertips..... The internet at your fing


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Well, then I had DD and I became a stay at home mom. We did not have a lot of spare money since I was not working. I wanted to buy a nice car seat for our first child, but it was not within our budget to do so at the time. We ended up buying another brand of car seat and we were not very happy with it. Even though the car seat we had was a common brand and their car seat was much cheaper, a few months after we made the purchase, the shade broke :(. It just was not a good quality product and the price we paid clearly reflected it. I was really upset with myself for not buying a Britax car seat to begin with. You see, after the shade of DD's first car seat broke (I called the company's customer service and they did not have a replacement part for it), I did a lot of research and learned that Britax not only offers cute car seats, many online users also commented that they thought it was just better all around.
I blame it on being first time parents. We are never going to make that mistake again. Well, car seats have come a long way since DD was an infant so I was eager to check out the Britax car seat (because I am sure it is different from the one Ruohmei brought 9 years ago).
I received the Britax Chaperone Infant Car Seat in the cow print to review. Seriously cute! How can a baby not look totally chic in it?! After trying out the car seat, I discovered several features I absolutely love.
First of all, I love, love, love the premium, push-button lower latch connectors used to install the car seat base in my mini van. I have a Toyota minivan and installing this car seat is a breeze. It is so easy to install and remove (to relocate to DH's car) that I never have to battle with it -- which is a wonderful thing!
The car seat cover is ultra soft and so comfort. After a messy spill, I took the car seat off and toss it into the wash for a clean up. Then I allowed the car seat cover to air dry. I noticed that the car seat cover stayed really soft.
This car seat features a no re-thread harness adjustment which allows you to adjust the harness height without having to re-thread the harness straps. On DD's first infant car seat, I noticed that I had to re-thread the harness strap when I wanted to adjust the harness height (which was often because she grew so quickly). If you have done it before, you know what a pain it is to do that. Frankly, I was not a fan of re-threading the harness strap so I really like this new feature on the Chaperone Infant Car Seat.
Not too long ago we reviewed the Blink stroller. One of the things I really love about the stroller was the large canopy that works so well. With this infant car seat, you also get the extra-large canopy. With other car seats, I sometimes have to drape a blanket over the car seat to block the sun from shining onto the baby's face and eyes when the sunlight hits at a certain angle. With the extra-large canopy on the Britax infant car seat, I don't have that problem at all.
If you travel at all, this car seat might just be what you need. The car seat is certified for air travel. My friend recently took a trip to to Maine. When she asked me about my car seat, I happily loaned it to her so that she could use it with her baby on their short trip (she was visiting her sister who was in the hospital due to a car accident). I was told that the car seat (much to her surprised) actually fit in the seat she brought for her baby so that her daughter was able to sleep comfortably on the plane. Once they arrived at their destination, she was able to use the car seat for the taxi ride back to her parents' house. After listening to her story, I decided that I will also be using this car seat for our trips in the future.
The car seat itself has a handle bar on the top so that you can easily transport your sleepy baby from the car back into the house or to a restaurant. It also features an anti rebound bar on the base of the car seat (instead of on the car seat itself). The anti rebound bar stabilizes child seat by minimizing rotational forces associated with front and rear collisions. In addition to the anti- rebound bar, this car seat also features true side impact protection which distributes crash forces, shields from vehicle intrusion, contains the head and body, and keeps the head, neck and spine "in true" or aligned, to limit injury
All in all, we think that the Britax Chaperone Infant Car Seat is fantastic. We love it and we would recommend it.
To buy your own Britax Chaperone Infant Car Seat, please visit the company's website or check out amazon.com.
Many thanks to Britax. The company has generously offered 1 Chaperone Infant Car Seat as a giveaway prize to one of my lucky readers (US residents only please). The retail price of this carseat is $229.99.
How to enter:
In order to enter my giveaway, you MUST be a public follower of my blog through Google Friend Connect. To follow me, click on the "Follow" button on the right hand side of my blog. If you are not a follower and you enter my giveaway, ALL of your comments will be automatically forfeited.
1). Please go to Britax and then come back to tell me about another product you would like to try and which print you would like to win (you MUST be a public follower of my blog to enter this giveaway, and your profile can not be set at private).
How to earn additional entries (please leave a separate comment for each additional entry):
2.) Blog about my giveaway- with a link back to here, when you leave the comment make sure you include the URL of where your post of my giveaway is. Please do not copy and paste my review over to your blog, please write about why you would like to win this giveaway and provide a link back to this post. The Contest ends July 30th, 2010 at 11:59pm PST. Blogging about my giveaway earns 2 additional entries.
3.) Add me as a friend on Facebook for 2 additional entries.
4.) Follow me on Twitter for 2 additional entries.
5.) Grab my button and display my button on your blog or website. Then come back to tell me what your website or blog address is, make sure to leave an url address so I can check it. Grabbing my button is worth 5 additional entries. If my button is not displayed on your homepage but it is posted elsewhere, you will not be eligible to win with your additional entries.
6.) Grab my "Summer Haven" button and display my button on your blog or website. Then come back to tell me what your website or blog address is, make sure to leave an url address so I can check it. Grabbing my button is worth 5 additional entries. Please note that my html code is different from the one posted on familylicious, if the button on your site is not my html code, you will not be eligible to win with your additional entry. If my button is not displayed on your homepage but it is posted elsewhere, you will not be eligible to win with your additional entries.
7.) Retweet this review and giveaway by clicking on the "retweet" button on the bottom of this post. (Right next to where you click to leave me comments). After you retweet, please leave me the url of your tweet so I can check. If you do not know how to check your tweet url, please read this post for step by step instructions. You can retweet once a day for 1 entry each time. NOTE: You can only use the "retweet" button once. If you want to retweet everyday, please tweet the following: " I want to win a Britax Chaperone Infant Car Seat @ http://www.sugarpopribbons.blogspot.com/ " for 1 additional entry per day (please leave me the url so I can verify your tweet).
8.) Comment on one of my non giveaway posts for 1 additional entry (leave me a comment here to let me know which post it is).
9.) Enter in any of my active giveaways for additional entries. You get one extra entry per other giveaway you enter. So enter 1 of my other giveaways for 1 additional entry or 10 other giveaways to 10 extra entries. When you leave me a comment for your additional entry, be sure to let me know which giveaway it is so I can check.
Read the fine print:
* Lucky winner or winners will be selected through True Random Number Generator.
* If your profile page does not show your email address, please include your email address in your comment. For example: sugarpopribbons at yahoo dot com -- so that I may get in touch with you if you are selected as the giveaway winner.
* Each giveaway winner has 48 hours to respond to my email about getting the awesome giveaway prize to him/her. If the winner does not reply to my email within 48 hours, I will choose another winner using the True Random Number Generator.
* I do contact each winner via email. If anyone is curious about who the giveaway winner is for any of my giveaways, please go back to the original post of that giveaway. Once a winner is selected through random.org, I will post a screen shot of the the number random.org picked. You will be able to see which number has been selected and if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you can cross check who the giveaway winner is.
*I received a free product (or products) for review purposes. I did not receive any form of compensation from the company. All opinions are my own and not influenced in anyway. My reviews are not always positive, but they are my personal and honest opinions. Other people's views and experiences with the product or products might be different from mine.

subset: commoncrawl


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Our environment is important to me – that's one of the reasons I shop at thrift stores and recycle. Now that I live in Boulder, Colorado I'm trying to be even more environmentally conscious, especially since Boulder instituted a shopping bag fee. This small fee (10 cents per bag) has really helped me remember to bring my own bags when I grocery shop. (See – being thrifty helps the environment – hurrah!)
The bag fee made me think about how I could be even "greener" in the pursuit of being "green". Umm, did that make sense? What I mean is: Maybe I shouldn't buy new reusable grocery bags (probably manufactured in an overseas sweatshop) in order to create less landfill. Maybe I should be even "greener" and make bags from recycled materials – thus keeping even more material out of landfills. I decided to challenge myself to combine my love of thrift store "rescues", my passion for sewing, and my desire to be "greener".
In my thrift store forays I often find hand stitched art in the form of framed needlepoints and crewel embroideries. Knowing how many hours of effort go into stitching these, I feel sad to see them abandoned and selling for just a few dollars. So I often "rescue" the ones I can't turn my back on. But these sweet pictures don't match my decor and my husband would freak if I hung them up in our home. So my hidden
hoarding collecting closet is now overflowing with my art "rescues". My idea: Use my thrift store artworks to make unique shopping bags and simultaneously create a little room in my stash. This combines my love of sewing and thrift store shopping in a creative, practical way. And it's more fun to shop when you have cool and unique grocery bags!
Pictured above are three of my "conservation effort" bag creations. I use the two larger bags for groceries and shopping at the farmer's market. I use the smaller bag to hold books when I walk to and from the library. I've detailed the process to make these bags below. Give it a try – it's super simple and fun to do!
1. Find a framed needlepoint or crewel embroidery in the art section of your local thrift store. (The bigger the better if you want to make reusable grocery bags, but smaller pieces can be used for purses or totes).
2. Remove the frame and the backing (careful, there will be staples holding it together).
3. Chose a bag that's smaller than the stitched canvas. If you don't already have the right size bag, there are plenty to choose from at thrift stores (I thrifted the 2 smaller bags for 25 cents each; the large canvas bag was a giveaway with purchase). I prefer bags with the sides and bottom cut as one continuous piece since they are the easiest to sew back together.
4. Remove the sides and bottom piece from the bag by unpicking the stitching.
5. Lay the front and back pieces of the bag on the needlework and cut the needlework to fit, leaving an extra 1/2″ at the top edge of the art to turn under. (If your artwork isn't big enough to cover both the front and back of your bag, get creative with the back side and use leftover fabric that coordinates with the artwork).
6. With the right side of the art (or fabric) facing up, cover the right sides of the bag, turning under 1/2″ of the art (or fabric) at the top so you have a nice finished edge. Match all the art edges with the bag edges and machine sew the art (or fabric) to the front and back bag pieces along the 3 unfolded sides.
7. Machine topstitch or hand stitch across the top edges of the bag front and back pieces, turning under 1/2″ of the raw edge of the artwork (or fabric) at the top. This stitching will show, so match your thread to your artwork or do a decorative stitch for this step.
8. Machine or hand sew the sides and bottom piece back onto the front and back of the bag now that the artwork has been attached. This is a great place to show off some cute embroidery stitches and use up extra embroidery floss, yarn or topstitching thread.
That's it, you're done! Good for you, you environmentally sensitive, creative genius you – you did your part and helped save our environment today, bravo!


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Last Sunday, May 22, mom fell again. This time, despite my attempts to avoid it, she was hospitalized. They ran the usual battery of tests. Not surprisingly, mom had another urinary tract infection. What was surprising is that it occurred less than a week after she finished the antibiotic for the last UTI. And then we got the big news: mom had fractured her hip and jaw. It's quite possible this happened in the last fall, but they missed it. In fact, the x-ray report said as much.
When she fell last time and the nurse thought she may have fractured her hip, I pondered then what we would do if mom was faced with having surgery. Given the progression of her dementia, I didn't think she'd do well with surgery, anesthesia, or rehab. Given her co-morbidities (dementia, diabetes, and deep vein thrombosis), I wondered whether she'd be a candidate for surgery. The last time she fell, we didn't have to make that decision. As it turns out, we wouldn't have to make that decision this time, either.
Mom's hip fracture was non-displaced so the orthopedic doctor said surgery was not indicated at this time. He said he'd put her on partial toe-touch weight-bearing (TTWB) for six weeks and then see her in his office for repeat x-rays and examination. I explained to the ortho doctor's physicians' assistant (PA) that we could not explain to mom what TTWB meant or how to do it. They switched her to non-weight-bearing for six weeks. I then asked if we could do a mobile x-ray rather than having her come in. The PA insisted he needed to see her. As for the fractured mandible, it was only minimally displaced and did not seem to be bothering mom. So no surgery or treatment was indicated for it, either.
The first couple of days after mom was admitted, she spoke little. I stayed in Austin, but kept in close contact by phone. The nurses would hold the phone up to mom's ear, and I would talk to her. Once or twice she would answer "yes" or "no." By day three or four, the nurses and my sister were reporting that mom wasn't talking at all. But she was eating, always a hopeful sign.
On Tuesday, my sister informed me that she would be leaving Friday to go to Galveston for the Memorial Weekend.
After discussions with the nursing staff at her assisted living (AL), as well as the PA for mom's geriatric physician, we decided it was time for mom to be evaluated by hospice. With the hip fracture and mom becoming increasingly non-verbal, the consensus was mom would almost certainly be accepted. I finally had the opening I'd been waiting for to have the hospice discussion with my sister. After much texting and a few calls, my sister agreed with the hospice evaluation.
Mom's AL worked with several different hospice facilities. The nurse they liked the best said she didn't have the time to give my mom the attention she needed with her current case load. I then selected a hospice provider that had been doing mom's home health, thinking the transition would be easier that way. The evaluating nurse went to the hospital, looked at mom's chart, talked to mom, and called me after the visit.
"Your mom is ineligible for hospice. She is not terminal."
Despite the fact that the hospital nurses and my sister said mom was non-verbal, this nurse insisted she'd had a conversation with my mother. Rather than talking with her primary doctor who'd been seeing her for the past two years and talking with the nursing staff at AL, where she'd been living for the past three years, she made the decision based only on mom's hospital chart. So, mom was deemed not a candidate for hospice at this time. A decision that surprised her primary doctor, who'd written the orders for the evaluation, as well as the nurses at her AL and the nurses at the hospital where she currently was admitted.
The hospital wanted her out as there was nothing more that needed doing. The AL couldn't take her back due to the fractures and her inability to transfer. The hospital, I am certain in an attempt to buy us some time, said she needed five more days of IV antibiotics, and so would write orders to send her to skilled nursing. If mom did not improve within those five days, they suggested we get a second hospice evaluation. That was the plan as of Thursday. Meanwhile, I'd made several calls to the AL nursing staff, as well as mom's primary care PA. The PA said she was going to re-review mom's chart with hospice-care criteria in mind. The AL nurse said she was going to call a different hospice with whom they have worked, and discuss mom with them.
Friday morning I got a call from another hospice service. They talked with me about mom and her history, and said they'd like to meet with us. I had planned to drive to Houston Friday afternoon, but another round of severe storms was rolling through, so I delayed my trip until Saturday morning. I planned to meet with the hospice representative at noon in mom's hospital room.
Since mom's house was now empty in the wake of the estate sale, I packed my car with things I'd need to stay the weekend. I bought an air mattress, a coffee maker, and a soft furry bunny at Target. I packed towels and sheets and coffee. I filled a cooler with Greek yogurt and blueberries. I arranged for the pet sitter to take care of the kitties (now, four) and give Sadie her subcutaneous fluids. Saturday morning, I headed to Houston, unsure of what lie ahead.
I arrived at the hospital thirty minutes before the scheduled meeting. Mom was asleep. She didn't awaken when I greeted her, or when I kissed her, or when I stroked her cheek. The nurse told me mom had eaten about twenty percent of her breakfast, and they'd bring lunch soon and I could try again. I gave mom her bunny, "a bunny for my honey bunny," I told her. She didn't awaken until the caregivers came in to change her. She seemed to register my presence, but the bunny made no impression. Now that she was awake, when I gave her kisses and stroked her cheek, she smiled. Her skin was so soft. Her smile beautific.
The hospice representative arrived on schedule and we sat in the window seat of mom's hospital room and talked about their services and whether mom qualified. The representative thought she did but she would call her nurse to be certain, and if there was any question, the nurse would come and meet with mom before making the decision. She too seemed perplexed that mom was deemed to not qualify by the prior hospice provider. The hospice representative left the room to make calls and review mom's chart. They brought mom lunch and I fed her. She had a few bites of mashed potatoes, and a few bites of turkey. I mashed up the turkey with a fork to make it easier to chew, imagining I was the mama bird and she was the baby bird. I opted not to go full-on mama bird, using a fork to mash it rather than pre-chewing it for her. Mom also ate some fruit, the grapes being the easiest to chew.
Mid-fruit-cup, the hospice representative returned and told me mom qualified and they'd accepted her. I filled out the paperwork. I filled out the out-of-hospital DNR (do not resuscitate). Because hospice had accepted mom, her AL would take her back. She wouldn't have to go to skilled nursing and undergo yet another disorienting move. I updated my sister by text. I got a one-word response: "OK." Within thirty minutes of the hospice representative leaving, the EMTs showed up with their gurney to transport mom back to her AL apartment and her cat. By early Saturday afternoon she was settled back into familiar surroundings, with familiar caregivers, the cat standing guard.
Mom seemed pleased to be back. She smiled more. She followed me around the room with her eyes. She stared at me and smiled. I brought the cat to her bed and helped her stroke him. She seemed more interested in looking at me than the cat. I took that as a sign that I am indeed her favorite child, even over the cat. The highlight of the afternoon was giving mom kisses and stroking her cheek, and watching her smile and her eyes light up as I did so.
Late in the afternoon, the hospice nurse came by and we went through the initial plan of care. More papers to sign. More information to absorb. The nurse would come by one to two times a week to check her vitals and give her a full examination. An aide would come by three times a week to bathe mom, wash her hair, take care of her nails, put lotion on her, change her sheets (once a week minimum), and massage her. We were assigned a social worker and a chaplain. Hospice ordered a better bed for mom with an air mattress, a bedside table, and an oxygen machine, should that become necessary. All of those items arrived within hours. The EMTs came back to move her from her old bed to her new bed.
Despite all hospice does, and despite the excellent care mom gets at AL, she needed more care than they would be giving. While Medicare pays 100 percent of hospice, the benefit does not include continuous care. Nor does the AL. I would need to hire an aide at mom's cost to watch over her and assist in her care. The hospice social worker provided referrals and I managed to get care in place, despite it being Memorial Weekend. I made sure they knew about the cat, and that the aide would be expected to take over cat care.
Everything was done. Mom was sleeping. I'd decided to stay in mom's AL apartment that night, rather than going to her empty house. I went out to the car and got my bags and the coffee maker. I set up the new coffee maker and made a pot. I ate some yogurt and blueberries. I brushed the cat, who was starved for attention having been alone for a week. We settled in on the love seat to watch a Harry Potter marathon on television.
Mom slept well and snored like a lumberjack for most of the night. The caregivers came in every two hours to check on her and change her if she was wet. I slept minutes at a time. Mostly I was awake, watching Harry and his friends defeat He Who Must Not Be Named.
In the morning, my sister began accosting me with text messages, second-guessing everything I'd done.
"Wouldn't mom be better off at a nursing home where she can get twenty-four hour care?"
"I am not sending mom to a nursing home," I wrote back. "She will do better in familiar surroundings with her cat."
Then she called me. She put me on speaker. Her daughter and her husband were in the room. Suddenly I was being ganged up on by my sister's family. And I was a force of one; no daughter or husband to meet them in numbers.
"Why didn't grandma go to the nursing home for antibiotics?" my niece demanded. "The plan was one thing, and then suddenly we're being told it's entirely different. We all have a stake in this. We all care about grandma."
"Stop yelling at me."
Which is as far as I let my temper go. What I wanted to say was, "Fuck every one of you. And if you were so fucking concerned, you'd be here helping me make these plans, instead of at the beach for Memorial Weekend." Instead, I patiently explained that mom was getting the care she needs, hospice had a plan of care in place, and that, coupled with the private aide and AL caregivers, would be a much higher level of care than she would get at the nursing home. I reminded them of the care my father got in the nursing home, and how heartbreaking that whole experience was. I told them mom would be better off in familiar surroundings with her cat.
"I don't care about the damn cat," my sister said. "I want her to get the level of care she needs."
"She is getting the level of care she needs," I said. "I was here all night. She slept. They checked on her every two hours. They changed her. The private aide will be here this afternoon. I'll meet with her and give her instructions. She will stay until 7:00. Starting tomorrow, we will have a private aide from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m."
My niece jumped in: "How can she be left alone? What if she decides to try to walk again and she falls again? That would be a disaster."
"If you saw her you would not be worried about that. She's bedridden. She's not going to try to walk. She's too weak. She can't even feed herself. She's not talking. She's sleeping all day and all night except when we wake her to feed her or change her. I approved bed rails so she can't fall out of bed. If she starts moving, they'll lower the bed and put mats on the floor beside the bed."
My sister's turn: "If she was at the nursing home, we wouldn't have to pay for her apartment or the private caregiver. This is expensive."
"Mom has money," I told her. "She can afford to do this for quite a while. She needs familiar surroundings and faces. She needs familiar caregivers. When the night aides came in last night, she smiled at them. They talked to her. You could tell she knew them. And you could tell they care about her."
"This is a lot of money."
Finally, I heard my brother-in-law say, "It's not about money."
"Well, what if she runs out of money?" my sister said.
"She can afford this for a while," I said. "I'll run some projections next week when I'm back at the office."
"Well, you should go out and look at nursing homes while you're there and find one to move her to when the time comes."
"No, I'm not going to do that. I have enough to do right now. Not to mention, I want to sit with mom. I want to spend time with her."
I didn't bother to tell her Medicare would pay for only 100 days of skilled nursing, and after that we would be on self-pay and nursing home costs are more expensive than AL costs. And with the shitty care at nursing homes, we'd likely want to pay for a private aide, just like I'd set up at AL. My sister continued to bombard me with orders, including making arrangements to move mom into a smaller, less expensive AL apartment since we now had a hospital bed in the television room. She insisted we no longer need "all that space." I told her I'd consider that at a later time. Right now, I was focused on getting mom settled in and comfortable in the home she's lived in for the past three years.
Meanwhile, my mother was sleeping in the next room, blissfully unaware of what an asshole my sister is. It has become more evident with each passing day why my mom made me her decision-maker. And by God, I am going to make the decisions no matter how many members of her family gang up on me. Luckily, my niece and brother-in-law both seemed to come around by the end of the call. They seemed to understand that familiarity of surroundings and comfort are key, and that even though my sister doesn't give a damn about the cat, my mother does. Mom made herself clear on Mother's Day that she wants to be with her cat and she wants to eat pie. I had now reunited mom with her cat. After the private aide arrived, I went to the bakery and got mom a big slice of chocolate cream pie.
And now, having made it through the transition to this new phase, we settle in and wait for what's next. The hospice certification means they believe mom will not be with us for more than six months. My sense is, they are correct. Especially if mom continues to be non-verbal and if she is unable to begin ambulating after her six weeks of healing of the hip fracture. I don't think she will walk again. I don't think she'll be with us long enough to run out of money. If she does, I'll pay for her care. I'll pay to keep her home at assisted living with her damn cat.


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Lawmakers voted 102-6 in favor of a measure that would allow a judge to impose a tougher punishment on anyone convicted of using social media to plan or incite a mob attack. The bill, which the Senate approved 52-0 last month, now goes to Gov. Pat Quinn.
The legislation was in direct response to incidents downtown Chicago and was supported by retailers there, though bill sponsor Rep. Christian Mitchell, D-Chicago, said it would make neighborhoods safer statewide.
Police say groups of young people used Facebook and Twitter, as well as text messaging, to organize and publicize a mob action along Michigan Avenue in March. They say several hundred people - mostly teenagers - ran up and down the upscale shopping area, yelling and bumping in to people. In a separate incident, police said a woman was attacked and her purse stolen after a group used social media to promote a flash mob on a downtown Chicago commuter rail line.
Business owners and lawmakers feared it would deter tourists and other visitors from coming to the area.
"These are new times where people are using electronic mechanisms to communicate to commit crimes in our neighborhoods," Rep. Ken Dunkin, D-Chicago. "When criminals change with the times we have to adjust ourselves accordingly."
Opponents of the bill worried innocent kids could get caught up in a flash mob and then be hit with a harsh penalty. They also said it would be difficult for authorities to prove.
Brooke Anderson, a spokeswoman for Gov. Quinn, said he would review the legislation.
"Public safety is the governor's top priority and we are always interested in good public policy that cracks down on crime," Anderson added.


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It's time to… #BeBoldGoGold!
Get your glitter on! We're kicking off Childhood Cancer Awareness Month with a bang & a sparkle! Throughout September, we're turning ourselves into spicy, gold human billboards for childhood cancer awareness and want YOU to join us! Welcome to the #BeBoldGoGold Challenge!
-You deck yourself out in your gold bling or glitter—jewelry, clothes, facepaint, you name it, you rock it. You head out into a public place. Talk to at least one person about childhood cancer—tell them a fact, like that 46 are diagnosed with cancer every day. The goal is to raise awareness, so talk to as many people as you can & encourage them to take the #BeBoldGoGold Challenge
-Film/photograph your adventure, and tag us in it! We're reposting submissions to our new #BeBoldGoGold Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. When you post your video/photo, nominate 3 people to carry out the challenge by tagging them. They have 48 hours after being tagged to get their gold on! Make sure to hashtag #BeBoldGoGold and #RTF.
-At the end of September, we're giving a prize to whoever goes all out and makes the biggest impact (aka raises the most awareness)! We'll also have #BeBoldGoGold shirts available to purchase (link coming soon). If you would prefer to donate instead of (or in addition to) the challenge, visit: http://www.theronanthompsonfoundation.com/ & share the link.
The Challenge kicks off August 29th… stay gold!


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The biographies of jazz musicians often follow a predictable path, from Mother at the organ or Dad's 78s, precocious talent, hours of rigorous training, encounters with older professionals, early gigs, and then success. If the musician is stable and fortunate, the narrative quiets down to a series of gigs and concerts; if the subject is tragic, the pages darken: alcohol, drugs, abusive relationships, auto accident, major illness, premature death.
The jazz eminences who have written autobiographies (excepting Billie Holiday and Anita O'Day, although I am sure some readers will add to that list) have been the more fortunate ones, and their books depict elders looking back on friendships and triumphs. Often the narrator is justly proud, and his / her singular personality is a strong consistent presence.
Trombonist and bandleader Chris Barber, born in 1930, continues to have a wonderful career — one that began with "traditional jazz" and stretched the definition to include different music incorporated into his own. He's played and recorded for more than sixty years with British jazz legends Ben Cohen, Ottilie Patterson, Ken Colyer, Acker Bilk, Pat Halcox, Lonnie Donegan, Monty Sunshine, Bruce Turner, Ian Wheeler, Beryl Bryden; with American stars Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Louis Jordan, Ed Hall, Ray Nance, Albert Nicholas, Joe Darensbourg, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Cecil Scott, Don Frye, Floyd Casey, Ed Allen, Sidney deParis, Hank Duncan, Wild Bill Davis, Russell Procope, Dr. John, Big Bill Broonzy, John Lewis and George Lewis, Clarence Williams, Aretha Franklin, Count Basie, Sam Theard, Jack Teagarden, Ornette Coleman, Scott LaFaro, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band . . .so the reader who opens a Barber autobiography hopes for good stories.
But this long list of names isn't all there is to JAZZ ME BLUES (written with the very capable help of Alyn Shipton . . . Barber says in his acknowledgments that they first talked about this book in 1982) — published this year by Equinox in their Popular Music History series.
Barber follows the usual chronological path from his early encounter with jazz to becoming an international eminence. However, it took me about thirty-five pages (the book is 172 long) to settle in to JAZZ ME BLUES because of his distinctive personality.
He isn't forceful or self-absorbed, telling us of the wonderful thing he did next. Barber comes across as a quietly modest man who has no need for us to admire him. Chronicling his life, he is so placidly matter-of-fact that it might take readers by surprise. But once we do, the absence of self-congratulation is refreshing, as if we were introduced to a very talented person who had been brought up to think self-praise was vulgar.
An interval for music. First, STEAMBOAT BILL and HIGH SOCIETY from the Fifties:
GOIN' HOME BLUES from 2013:
Aside from its subject's remarkably modest approach to his own life, JAZZ ME BLUES has two great pleasures. One is Barber's unwillingness to stay neatly in the style that had brought him success. Beginning in the Sixties, his band takes on different shadings while not abandoning the music he loves: he brings in electric guitarist John Slaughter, altoist Joe Harriott, organist Brian Auger; he works and records with blues and gospel legends; he plays extended compositions. Again, since Barber speaks about these events with polite restraint, one must estimate the emotional effect of being booed by British traditionalist fans who wanted "their" music to stay the same. Barber is not making changes to woo a larger audience or to stay in the public eye, but because he is genuinely interested in adding other flavorings to a familiar dish. He is a determined seeker, and he grows more intriguing in his quests.
The other pleasure I alluded to at the start, delightful first-hand anecdotes. Readers deprived of their own contact with their heroes always want to know what the great men and women were like, and JAZZ ME BLUES — although never mean-spirited in its quick sketches — is a banquet here. Not only do we hear about Sonny Boy Williamson and Zutty Singleton (the latter saying he is most happy in a band without a piano because pianists all "lose time") but about Van Morrison, George Harrison (who likes the 1930 BARNACLE BILL THE SAILOR) and colleagues Lennon and McCartney; we read of Howlin' Wolf saying grace quietly and sweetly before a meal. Trumpeter Ed Allen tells Barber that he always used to learn the songs for Clarence Williams record dates in the taxi on the way to the studio.
And Barber has been in the right place at the right time. When he comes to America, he sits in at Condon's. After an uneventful beginning, ". . . suddenly the rhythm section started to swing. I looked round and Eddie had picked up his guitar and joined in. From then on, with him there, every tempo was just right, and everything swung. His presence was subtle, but it made the world of difference. I knew what a fine player he could be, as, when the band had appeared at the Royal Festival Hall in 1957. I'd gone along to their late night concert. The thing that sticks in my memory from that night was Eddie taking a half-chorus solo on a tune in the ballad medley. It was just perfect, and with the tuning of his four-string tenor guitar it had a very distinctive sound. It reminded me of Carmen Mastren, who was a true virtuoso."
JAZZ ME BLUES is an engaging portrait of a continuing life in jazz (with rare photographs, a selective discography, and an index). It is available in North America exclusively through ISD ($34.95 hardcover): ISD, 70 Enterprise Drive, Suite 2, Bristol, CT 00610: firstname.lastname@example.com.
May your happiness increase!


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Another View: Vets know what government-run health care is like
If Iowans want to know what government-run health care looks like in practice, they need only ask myself or one of the state's 238,000 veterans. These men and women have put their lives on the line for their country — and yet the Department of Veterans Affairs thanks us with a health care system that can deliver sub-standard care and a bureaucratic nightmare.
It's a lesson that the country should learn from. Riven with problems, the VA has a history of underserving — and sometimes harming — the very veterans it is supposed to help. This fundamentally calls into question whether the titanic Obamacare can succeed where its smaller predecessor has not.
The prognosis isn't good. The most obvious problem is VA's disability claims backlog. The department says it has just under 700,000 claims in its system. Half of that number — a staggering 400,000 — have been in the queue for over a third of a year.
These claims aren't just numbers—they're veterans who need medical attention. Politicians from the president on down have promised to help us get the medical help we need in a timely manner, and yet the backlog remains as stubbornly high as ever. VA still missed out on its FY2013 goals by a full 100,000 claims.
Like Obamacare, many of VA's problems are technological. For instance, the department still handles 97 percent of its claim process via paper. The result? Inefficiency that smacks of Healthcare.gov.
Other problems get to the heart of health care itself. Many veterans morbidly describe their interactions with VA as "Delay, deny, wait till I die." For instance, every day, 22 veterans commit suicide, and yet at least a third of us have to wait at least two weeks before getting a routine mental health check-up.
The wait times can be even longer for more serious conditions. In a preview of what awaits average patients at standard hospitals, a CNN investigation last month described veterans' plight best: "Military veterans are dying needlessly because of long waits and delayed care at U.S. veterans hospitals."
Charles Skipper's story is case in point. A retired member of the U.S. Army, he served in Vietnam in the late 1960s. He earned two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, and a lifelong battle with post traumatic stress disorder.
Charles Skipper is an American hero — and yet he has been routinely mistreated by VA. He submitted a disability claim more than six years ago. Today, he is still waiting for an update. All he could say to me was, "If you really want to know what Obamacare is going to be like, just look at the VA system."
It's a travesty that Mr. Skipper's situation exists at all. But instead of rectifying it, Washington has poured billions of dollars into a nationalized health care system that may well bring his pain to millions of others' lives.
Those politicians should instead devote their efforts to fulfilling the promises they've made veterans. If they won't do that, then the politicians who passed the Affordable Care Act should at least answer one simple question: If they can't fix VA, what right do they have to "fix" it for the rest of the nation? My brothers and sisters across the country and in Iowa have the answer, if those politicians don't.
PETE HEGSETH is the president of Concerned Veterans for America, an advocacy organization in Arlington, Va. He is an Army veteran of Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. Contact: firstname.lastname@example.com.


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Tame, smooth, and exploding with flavor.
If you've ever been to a Torano rolling event, surely you've burned one or two of the fresh-rolled cigars they're handing out. Every rolling event, they roll the same cigar. An unbanded, unnamed, mellow to medium-bodied Honduran dream that could not be purchased…until now. You see, that cigar you enjoyed is a private 'house blend', originally created for the sole purpose of being handed out at events. But, due to consistently high accolades mixed with a steadily growing demand, the Torano family felt it was time to release this blend to the public.Enter Casa Torano – the Torano family's house blend. Comprised of choice Dominican and Nicaraguan long-fillers wrapped in a golden-brown Ecuadorian-grown Connecticut shade wrapper, this Honduran treat is sure to get your taste buds going. The extremely complex blend features a variety of flavors: subtle spice, creamy sweetness, a peppery earthiness – in a nutshell, it takes your palate for a ride. Full of flavors that satisfy the boldest of palates, yet 'soft' enough to be enjoyed for breakfast. There's no need to wait for Carlos to come back to town – just pick up a box today!
This Cigar is pleasant in taste and has a pleasant fragrance, but I think that I like the maduro much better. Why, because it has a more robust flavor and I love the aroma.
I smoke a Cu-Avana natural most of the time as an everyday smoke, but I keep at least 10 Torano Casa Torano's in my humidor for special occasions. It's a very nice, mild, and solid premium smoke. In fact, you like a Fonseca 5-50 as I do, you will love the Torano Casa Torano Robusto even more. Consistent from start to finish, all the way down to the nub.
What a great "morning" cigar. Along with a cup of coffee to start your day, this cigar, a mild-medium, is perfect to start your day. Loose draw for an effortless smoke, and full of easy going flavor.
I would not characterize this as a mild-medium. More of a medium to full. Very nice, earthy taste and aroma. Very similar, to my pallet, to a Ramon Bueso Genesis.
Every bit as good as advertised. Lots of flavor for a milder stick-- These will have a regular place in my humidor as long as they continue to be available!
My favorite cigar - period. The flavor is ample, the spice is perfect, and I have not had a better cigar that didn't cost me my first born child!
This is hands down my favorite Torano cigar. Very easy, but full of flavor with a lingering sweet aftertaste.
Picked this up in a sampler in robusto. Looked online and saw that it was a mild-medium and figured I would smoke this as I was waiting for my hygrometer to calibrate. Felt very heavy, but was the perfect draw. I lit it very poorly, but the cigar quickly corrected itself to a razor sharp burn. First few puffs had little flavor, but all of the sudden BAM! Spice, nuts, and earthyness that quickly took over my mouth. I was amazed by the fact that this cigar was so flavorful for a mild-medium. This is a must try for anyone who usually smokes medium or medium-full. Might even stock my new humidor with a few of these.
This is a nice medium/mild smoke with satisfaction from first draw to the last. I'm not much of a word-smith when it comes to describing flavors so I'll let others attempt that. But I would recommend this brand and especially this stick to just about anyone. I'd compare it to the Graycliff G2 or perhaps Gurkha Champagne series but this one has a much more grown up personality. I'd give it a solid 7 out of 10 rating.
These smokes are awesome! Tried these as I first started out and i'm hooked. These are a must for any humidor and any occasion!!
I like this cigar. Mild, nutty, no pepper or spice and great cigar for a newbie. Reminds me of a Don Diego in flavor and very mild. No harsh, grassy hay aftertaste. Suggest this one to the new cigar smoker or lady friend who loves a mild blend. Its a keeper.
Great flavor in a mild cigar. Very relaxing, consistent and well made. Burns great, nice draw and smells nice. Not just a morning cigar, but nice to smoke anytime. This cigar will not knock you out, but gives pleasure in smoking.
Picked one up at a local B&M shop. One of the most flavorful cigars I've ever smoked. Was surprised to see this is rated mild. It was very smooth, hint of spice, very good construction, nice burn. I will def order some from CI. Must have more.
Good burn, flavor its ok for mild cigar nice ash well made vitola draw smoth and cool to the nub, burn one after three days in the humi. Not the best but have 9 more to go will let set in the humi for some time hope they get better as much been said about this cigars. Will say average since other mild cigars with fuller flavor out there. Got them on a Joe's Jam so gave a try.
Casa Toraño Connecticut Churchill is a great mild smoke. Macanudo Crystal Cafe is my standard, but this was a great, flavorful smoke to give Macanudo a run for their money. I tend to buy samplers for variety, but I'd consider a box of these.
Great cigar, just cracked open a new box. mild and smooth, used to smoke macanudo but a friend suggested Carlos Tarano and now I am hooked. Thanks CI
THIS CIGAR HAS A MILD TASTE, SMOOTH AND i WOULD NOT TRADE A SINGLE STICK FOR 5 OF GRAYCLIFF CIGARS. IF YOU ASK ME THIS IS A NEW WINNER...AND IF YOU ASK ME THE PRICES SHOULD BE REVERSED. THIS STAYS ROUND, WELL CONSTRUCTED, DRAWS WELL AND IS JUST AN ALL AROUND EXCELLENT CIGARS..WELL WORTH $7-8 A STICK BUT AT $3.50 A STICK..I AM IMPRESSED AND WILL HAVE A BOX ON HAND AT ALL TIMES.
This wasnt my favorite (Carlos Torano Casa Torano), id give it maybe a 80 , 81 maybe , very young tasting. More spice than i thought. 5 Vegas gold kills this smoke at a better price. I mainly smoke full body cigars, Camacho, Patel-edge etc... but i do like a mild one now and then. ive smoked 4 of these from a 5 pack, 6 months humi time did not round this out. still too green tasting with hay and leaves. not much cream to speak of. i have to be honest, after halfway in, i said to myself ,"why am i still smokin this" lit up an Oliveros Bold to get the taste out of my mouth. now that was a cigar.
This is a great mild cigar with tons of flavor and spice. (Carlos Torano Casa Torano) It is well made with an easy draw. I'm half way through a box and haven't had a bad one yet. This is definitely my favorite cigar!
A nice, mild cigar; too mild for me, however. Even burn, firm ash, excellent draw. Very little to complain about and very reasonably priced. (Casa Torano) Just a wee bit too mild...
I need to purchase another large capacity humidor or maybe a bunch of smaller ones because I just keep making great discoveries with CI and I'm running out of space. This Casa Torano is the latest discovery to really 'grab me'. I purchased the toro 10 pack on a recent Joe's Daily Deal offering and now wish I would have grabbed several more at the time. Some cigars grow on you slowly and tend to be subtle........NOT the Casa Torano. It explodes onto the palate with a delicious combination of spice, nuts, anise, and cream. Definitely not a 'mild' cigar. All I can say is ...........awesome!!! Great construction and a real beauty to look at!! I'll be back for more!! Well done Carlos!!
i am smoking a Carlos Torano Casa Torano while i load cd's into my ipod.
robusto size that came with the deal of the week Torano sampler. this is a mild cigar? i was afraid to smoke this thinking i would be wasting my time. wow!! what a surprise!!lots of flavor, lots of smooth spice, and i mean LOTS of spice. this is great. nice smooth draw. started to burn a bit crooked but has since evened out. i like to try lots of different cigars and this is a winner. enjoy one for yourself!!
CASA TORANO.....WOW! On my recent 60th birthday I got loads of cigars...Happy Birthday to me. This GEM was given to me with a 12 year bottle of single malt scotch. The birthday just got better. Wonderful cigar with and elegant presentation, great construction, smooth draw, mellow medium/mild strength never harsh clear down to the nub. I really enjoyed the exceptional rich flavor....LONG ASHES BOOYAH FOR THIS ONE.
The Casa Torano's were quite a surprise to me when I first tried them. They are very flavorful with a hint of creamy goodness which builds slowly until you have no choice but to surrender to this cigar which has just become your newest best friend! Great cigar from a great Company!
I couldn't get over how good the Casa Toranos were! Yes, they were mild in body, but they had a great flavor that evolved throughout the cigar, tasted fresh and clean, and smell great. One of My favorite cigars. (Toro and Churchill)
easily one of the top 5 cigars ive had, its awesome (Carlos Torano Casa Torano)
Bought a Casa Torano torpedo at the Bethlehem store on a recommendation from Kevin. OUTSTANDING!
Smooth, creamy and mild. No bitter aftertaste.
This is without a doubt one of the best cigars I have ever smoked !
One of my top 5 (Carlos Torano Casa Torano) . This is my go to mild/med cigar. It is smooth, creamy and most of all consistent. This cigar provides maximum value. Toro is my favorite.
I am not a big fan of mild cigars, but let me tell you this is one of the best cigars (Carlos Torano Casa Torano) I have had in some time. Very smooth and flavorable from start to finish.


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So. Baptist Leader Henry Blackaby, Author of 'Experiencing God,' Is Missing [UPDATE: FOUND SAFE]
LATEST UPDATE (As posted on Blackaby Ministries International website): The Blackaby family would like everyone to know that Henry has been found and is safe. His health concerns are being addressed and we will keep everyone posted with the news. We wish to express to everyone our appreciation and gratitude for the prayers and concern over the last 29 hours. Henry has taught us that we can experience God in the good and the bad times. We thank God that we have experienced his grace, peace, and faithfulness in these times.
Urgent prayer requests are being asked for pastor and internationally known author Henry Blackaby, who has been missing since late yesterday afternoon, last seen in the South Atlanta area.
A posting on the Blackaby Ministries website reads:
"URGENT!! The Blackaby family requests your prayers for Dr. Henry Blackaby in the midst of difficult circumstances at this moment. Henry has been missing since 4:00pm yesterday (Thursday) in the South Atlanta area. He was driving a black Lincoln sedan. Please pray for him to be found and if you are in the Atlanta area, please be on the lookout for Henry or his car along the roadside. Please check the BMI Home page for updates. Thank you for your partnership in prayer!"
UPDATE (6:30 PM ET): Blackaby grandson, Daniel, posted at 6:15 pm ET on Twitter: "I've just heard that Henry Blackaby has been seen! Police on his trail right now. Pray hard!"
UPDATE: Additional information provided by Blackaby Ministries International on its website includes the fact that Blackaby is "a Type 2 diabetic and may be disoriented and unable to find his way home." Also, the year and model of car, license plate number, and phone number to contact with any information.
Blackaby was driving a 2010 Lincoln MK2 Black Sedan, Georgia License Plate: ATP 6956
If anyone in the Atlanta area would like to help search, please contact Melody at (205) 612-4023.
Blackaby, perhaps best known as the author of Experiencing God, lives in the Atlanta area. Thom S. Rainer, president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources, also posted a prayer request on his blog about the emergency situation.
"This morning we learned of an urgent prayer request for noted author and pastor Henry Blackaby," Rainer states. "Dr. Blackaby lives in the Atlanta area and has been missing since yesterday. His son Richard tweeted this morning: 'Please pray. Henry Blackaby has been missing since 4 p.m. Thursday. He is in black Lincoln without his diabetic medicine in Atlanta area.'"
In addition to asking for prayer for his safe return, Rainer asked that readers pray for strength for his wife, Marilyn, and their children and other family members, according to Charisma News.
Christian leaders from around the nation have been making prayer requests as new spread Friday morning about Blackaby, who is the founder and president emeritus of Blackaby Ministries International. Blackaby, 78, was scheduled to attend a conference in Hawaii next week for a speaking engagement.
"We really have no idea where he is," said Glenn Howe, an associate pastor at First Baptist Church in Jonesboro, Ga., as reported by Fox News Radio. "He left the house yesterday afternoon at 4 p.m. and there's been no other contact with him."
Howe told Fox News, "There are lot of eyes looking and lots of folks praying." Members of his church were gathering for a prayer vigil while others are assisting police in the search.
Blackaby's book, Experiencing God: Knowing and Doing the Will of God, sold 7 million copies and was translated into more than 45 languages.
On the web: http://www.blackaby.net/
Here is an interview of Henry Blackaby which was taken in 2009:


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Tom Wolfe writes Big and Tall Prose—big subjects, big people, and yards of flapping exaggeration. No one of average size emerges from his shop; in fact, no real human variety can be found in his fiction, because everyone has the same enormous excitability. So his new novel, "Back to Blood" (Little, Brown), is supposedly about Miami. But it is about Miami not as, say, "Dead Souls" is about Russia or "Seize the Day" is about New York but more as heavy metal is about noise: not a description of the property but a condition of its excess. If it is about Miami, then "The Bonfire of the Vanities" and "A Man in Full" were also about Miami, not about New York and Atlanta, respectively. The content and the style haven't changed much since "The Bonfire of the Vanities" was published, in 1987: select your city; presume it to be a site of simmering racial and ethnic civil war, always a headline away from a riot; throw a sensational news story into the fire; and watch the various interest groups immolate themselves.
The phrase "back to blood" is not new in Wolfe's work, either. It is characteristic shorthand for his conservative paranoia, and occurs early in "The Bonfire of the Vanities." The white mayor of New York is heckled by an angry crowd in Harlem. "Hymie!" and "Goldberg!" are tossed at him. He catches the eye of a sympathetic African-American woman, whose look seems to say, "What can I do?" The mayor tells himself, "They'll go after black people like her next. They'll be happy to do it! She knows that. But the good people are intimidated! They don't dare do a thing! Back to blood! Them and us!" Surveying the mayhem, the mayor imagines a soliloquy, a Wolfean trumpet blast: "Come down from your swell co-ops, you general partners and merger lawyers! It's the Third World down there! Puerto Ricans, West Indians, Haitians, Dominicans, Cubans, Colombians, Hondurans, Koreans, Chinese, Thais, Vietnamese, Ecuadorians, Panamanians, Filipinos, Albanians, Senegalese, and Afro-Americans! Go visit the frontier, you gutless wonders!" The passage masquerades as good literary incitement, and was touted as such by Wolfe in his manifesto in defense of reportorial realism, "Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast" (1989). The real writer, it is understood, must leave the enervating study and the filtered formalisms of postmodern prose, go out and hit the sidewalks (where the exclamation marks cluster in giant, swaying crowds!), and register the teeming ideological and racial realities. It is the only way to "know what truly presses upon the heart of the individual, white or nonwhite, living in the metropolis in the last decade of the twentieth century."
But what if the writer is incapable of intelligently analyzing these complex realities, and merely exploits them for sensation; if the writer replicates the same explosive "Third World" combustibility in book after book; if the writer cannot possibly press upon "the heart of the individual" because he takes the same raging pulse in all his characters? In that case, this martial cry may look less like a call to arms than like a call to alarm, an unconscious peal of fear. Sure enough, Miami is identically "back to blood" in "Back to Blood."
The book opens with a small racial "incident"—not big enough to constitute the Big Crisis Story that Wolfe needs to get things going, but revealing nonetheless. The editor of the Miami Herald, Edward T. Topping IV, is being driven by his wife to a fancy restaurant. Topping is as Wasp as they come: "On paper, Ed was an ideal-typical member of the breed himself. Hotchkiss, Yale . . . tall, six-three, slender in a gangly way." En route, Topping, a transplant from Chicago, conveniently reprises what he knows about Miami's bewildering tensions:
After some difficulty, Edward Topping and his wife find a parking spot, only to have it nicked by a rich Latin woman in a Ferrari. Topping's Anglo wife and the Ferrari driver get into a shouting match, one cursing in English, the other in Spanish: back to blood!
The important word in Wolfe's familiar list of warring ethnicities and nationalisms is that recurring "resent"/ "resenting." Without this preëxisting condition, Wolfe cannot play doctor. The character who inflames resentment in "Back to Blood" is Nestor Camacho, a Cuban-American police officer currently working on Marine Patrol. (Nestor was one of the Argonauts, and Camacho is . . . macho.) We first encounter Nestor while he's on patrol with two other officers, McCorkle ("sandy-colored hair and blue eyes") and Kite ("blondish-brown hair and blue eyes"). They are smacking along the Miami waters, in irritatingly bouncy onomatopoeic prose:
What seems unalloyed triumph quickly turns to disaster. A reporter for the Miami Herald named John Smith ("He was a classic americano, tall, thin, pale, wearing a navy blazer, a light-blue button-down shirt, khaki pants with freshly pressed creases down the front") writes an adulatory story, complete with a photograph of a shirtless Nestor ("a veritable male nude in chiaroscuro, school of Michelangelo"; "an entire mountainscape of muscles, huge boulders, sharp cliffs, deep cuts, and iron gorges . . . an entire muscle terrain"). But Nestor's own community turns against him. By arresting the man on the mast before he could set foot on American soil, Nestor has deprived a proud anti-Castro of his right to immigrate; the dissident will probably be deported. Even Nestor's father shuns him. Magdalena, his hot girlfriend, dumps him (though for her own, non-political reasons). Nestor is an outcast. Only the americanos have any time for him. (The blood has boiled!)
Wolfe uses Nestor and John Smith, the Yale-educated Herald reporter, to finger every racial sore point in the city. First, Nestor sets off the Cubans, as we've seen. The Cuban-American mayor gets involved, and leans on the African-American police chief to get Camacho moved off Marine Patrol and parked somewhere obscure. Nestor gets transferred to the Crime Suppression Unit, where a drug bust swiftly becomes a second racial "incident." He wrestles a huge African-American drug dealer to the ground. More steroidal prose:
Nestor and a colleague yell obscenities at the drug dealer, and are filmed doing so. The clip goes viral on YouTube, and, once again, the mayor calls in the police chief. Another day, another incident: after the Cubans and the African-Americans come the Haitians and the Russians. Nestor gets involved with Ghislaine Lantier, a beautiful Haitian-American of French origin, whose teen-age brother is hanging out with a Haitian school gang. Ghislaine asks Nestor for his help in solving a crisis at the school, in which a member of the gang knocked down a teacher, Mr. Estevez. Although he has now been suspended from the force, Nestor sorts things out. Later in the book, he and Smith expose a Russian oligarch, Sergei Korolyov, who has given the Miami Art Museum seventy million dollars' worth of paintings by the likes of Malevich and Kandinsky. The paintings, it turns out, were forgeries. Nestor's reputation is thereby restored.
I have no idea what Nestor Camacho is actually like, no sense of his true desires and anxieties, and my ignorance is entirely unaffected by exposure to the seven hundred or so pages of Wolfe's novel, because Nestor, like everyone else in the book, is simply a blaring Klaxon for Wolfe's excitability. In the regime of the enforced exclamation mark, everyone is equal. (There are seventy-seven exclamation marks in the novel's twenty-page prologue.) Wolfe has written much of the novel in free-indirect style (or close third person), traditionally a method that opens up the interiority of the character it ventriloquizes. But the characters in "Back to Blood" have identically voiced interiors, so that all one hears, again and again, is Wolfe's big-circus broadcast. Here is Nestor, thinking about his muscles:
Of course, these characters have functionally or strategically distinct "thoughts," as befits their roles. Magdalena thinks of her new lover, the police chief of his medals. But their voices have the same spoiled music (the leaning italics, the serried exclamation points, the bug-eyed rhetorical questions). They are extrovert histrionics posing as singular reckonings. They bespeak no particularity, and thus hold no interest. The reader gets skillful at speed-reading these identical scrolls of bombast, accelerating through their falsities and imprecisions, keen for the noisy lies to end so that the slightly quieter dubieties of the plot might surface.
Over the years, Tom Wolfe has campaigned strenuously on behalf of the journalistic role in fiction. In "Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast" and elsewhere, he has argued that American fiction since the nineteen-sixties has fallen into sterility and irrelevance, because American novelists aren't looking at the world. According to him, they've retreated from the traditional calling of writers like Balzac, Zola, and Sinclair Lewis, because they've exchanged the labor of reporting for easy fictional games (postmodern self-referentiality) or for a few dull inches of ivory (minimalism, dirty realism). The American novel will be reborn, Wolfe claims, when the novelist gets out onto the street and starts copying. Not only will such reporting produce the little details, "the petits faits vrais that create verisimilitude"; it is essential for literature's greatest effects. American fiction, grounded in "a highly detailed realism," will properly emulate the Zola who went down into the mines in Anzin, in 1884, to do research. While underground, Wolfe says, Zola discovered that the pit horses lived and died in situ; when he transfers this found detail to the pages of his novel "Germinal," the reader is moved and aghast.
Wolfe's claims about American fiction since 1960 seem manifestly untrue, and more untrue by the day. American fiction is dominated by realism; there is, if anything, too much of it, and not enough careful artifice, not enough pressure at the level of form and sentence. The billion-footed beast is not "reality," as Wolfe would have it, but the thick-backed social-realist novel, which lurks in its Brooklyn or Berkeley cave, ready to lumber forth at any moment and chew up acres of reviewers' real estate. Yet Wolfe's premises matter more than the accuracy of his prognosis. His argument presumes that reality is always more significant than anything the novelist can invent; he credits the finality of the real above the debatability of the real. Of course, many novelists have done research, or have simply slipped chunks of witnessed or remembered reality into their books. But often their swerves away from research are more interesting than their fidelities (as is the case in the gap between Thomas Mann's extraordinary allegory of the sanatorium, in "The Magic Mountain," and the stolid research he did, which involved visiting the sanatorium where his wife was staying).
Wolfe is not wrong about those horses in Zola, and his hunger for reality honors the central, and richest, emphasis of the novel form. But he fails the demands of his own manifesto in at least two respects. His fiction reproduces not the real but "realism"—narrative as a set of contrivances and conventions, a style that, in fact, gets in the way of the real. Second, his almost religious belief that the novelist's imagination can never rival reality's force results in weak fiction and forceful facts. His books suffer from what he defines, in "Back to Blood," as "information compulsion—the compulsion to impress people with information you have and they would love to have but don't." What is disclosed about Edward Topping IV by "Hotchkiss, Yale . . . six-three," or about John Smith by "a classic americano, tall, thin, pale, wearing a navy blazer"? It's admirable that Wolfe wants to get as much of contemporary Miami into his book as possible, but the quality of the conduit is of greater concern than the quantity of the supply: it is useless to feature Russians in your novel, just because they exist in Miami, if this is how you render their speech: "You vant to share zees studio?—eet's yours, my fren! . . . Ze graphic art ees now not good, and I haf to share thees studio."
The important details, the ones that make fiction's intimate palpability, cannot simply be scooped up off the sidewalk. Tolstoy, praised as a realist by Tom Wolfe, took the germ of "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" from an actual story about a judge in a nearby town who had died of cancer; but one of the most beautiful moments in the novella surely came from Tolstoy's imagination—or, rather, from his patient loyalty to Ivan's invented reality. I mean the moment when Ivan Ilyich, lying on his couch, in great distress and loneliness, remembers "the raw and wrinkly French prunes of his childhood, their special taste, and how his mouth watered when he got down to the stone."
Very occasionally in this novel, Wolfe gives evidence that he knows the difference between those French prunes and "Hotchkiss, Yale . . . six-three." At one point, Nestor, fleeing the opprobrium of his community, ends up at a favorite Cuban bakery, where he enjoys "a whiff of Ricky's pastelitos, 'little pies' of filo dough wrapped around ground beef, spiced ham, guava, or you name it. . . . He had loved pastelitos since he was a little boy." It's a rare passage without exclamation marks, and superficially it resembles Ivan and the prunes. But the detail about the pastelitos has the whiff not of pastry but of research. Like everything else in this book, it is imparted information, and is thus the expected detail, the properly stamped sociological receipt. Ivan's French prunes come out of nowhere, and surprise us with their singular surplus: Why prunes? Why French prunes?
A world in which no one is ever quiet is a false one; it is a stage, not a world. Miami is a big, noisy, crazy, spectatorial space, for sure; but "Back to Blood" merely confirms what we already thought we knew about that city, and fails to dramatize ordinary people within that space. So it founders both as fiction and as reportage, as the reader can test, by comparing this brassy yeller with quieter but far better novels that have drawn on intelligent research (like "Netherland" and "Lush Life," both set in New York), or with formidable works of courageous reportage (like "Maximum City" and "Behind the Beautiful Forevers," both about life in Mumbai). Wolfe isn't interested in ordinary life. Ordinary life is complex, contradictory, prismatic. Wolfe's characters are never contradictory, because they have only one big emotion, and it is lust—for sex, money, power, status. His own prose is monotonous in the same way. It confuses the depiction of strength with the energy of verisimilitude. This is perhaps why he is obsessively drawn to describing enormous male physiques, which are analogues for his own exaggeration. In "Back to Blood," we have not only the massive musclescapes of Nestor and the police chief but also those of Mr. Estevez, the teacher ("His chest bulged out against a white shirt"), and the gigantic black drug dealer, and various outsized Russians, including Sergei Korolyov ("His big powerful blood-gorged neck was shrinking . . . likewise his marvelous sculpted chest").
These giant physiques are seen by Wolfe with a combination of revulsion and admiration, a combination that characterizes his prose in general. Too often, one senses that what Wolfe imagines to be an irreverent critique of strength is actually a reverent reproduction of the same. His own writing lusts for the power he so noisily depicts. The novelist issues his status reports—on the latest cool restaurant, or the state of the gym-toned body, or the enormous mansions on Fisher Island, or the spending habits of the new Russians—in a register that is at once breathlessly mocking and breathlessly awed. Here is Ghislaine's father, the refined Professor Lantier, who is obsessed with his Frenchness (as a way of distinguishing himself from his Haitian origins), reflecting on the quality of his Art Deco house:
Here we are again with the beseeching italics, the sickly repetitions, the glaring capitals, the blurting, Tourette's-like exclamations. In passages like this, Wolfe seems almost to hide his own respect for status behind the obviously exaggerated respect of his characters. Or, rather, since no one actually thinks in this loudly obvious way, since the words on the page fail to disclose an actual human being, they point back, uneasily, to the failed ventriloquist: Who thinks like this? Professor Lantier, or Tom Wolfe? All one can say for sure is that Wolfe writes like this. It's not that the reader imagines that the novelist wants exactly the same things as his characters, ("power, money, fame, and beautiful lovers," as Edward Topping defines the prizes of the strong); it's that Wolfe's prose performs like the people it depicts, and is thus inseparable from them. Revelling in its own grossly muscular power, its own cheap riches, it is a ceaseless display of Unstreamlined Strength. ♦


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Friends of Padre Steve's World,
I worked most of the day with Judy to straighten out her art room after the contractors stuffed a Buch of stuff in it in order to paint. This caused us to downsize a huge amount of linens. I also built a printer table for her printer and cleaned got all office, art, and photo paper stored in it.
I am posting the third article of a series on the Battle of Leyte Gulf. This article discusses the Battle of Surigao Strait which ended in the near annihilation of most of the of the Japanese Southern Force. The battle was the last ever where battleships engaged each other in a surface action. This is the edited version of that article.
Padre Steve+
Vice Admiral Jesse Oldendorf
Vice Admiral Kiyohide Shima
The two task groups of the Japanese Southern Force passed the daylight hours of 24 October relatively unscathed despite an air attack that caused minor damage. The group commanded by Vice Admiral Shoji Nishimura comprised of the elderly Battleships Yamashiro and Fuso the Heavy Cruiser Mogami and four destroyers led the charge. They were followed by a second force commanded by Vice Admiral Kiyohide Shima with the Heavy Cruisers Nachi and Ashigara, Light Cruiser Abukuma and four destroyers. Because of strict radio silence neither Nishimura or Shima could coordinate their attack which resulted in Shima arriving late and taking losses before he could retire.
All three commanders had served with distinction, but the two Japanese Admirals were on a desperate mission with little chance of success. Their mission was to fight their way through the Surigao Strait to assist the Central Force in destroying the US invasion force in Leyte Gulf. The mission was for all practical purposes a suicide mission, a naval "Charge of the Light Brigade" as they sailed into the Valley of Death against the Battle Line of the US 7th Fleet.
USS West Virginia at Surigao
The Japanese Battleships had spent the majority of the war in home waters and had seen little action. They had not been part of any of the great Japanese victories in 1941 and 1942 and they had not been blooded in the Solomons. Instead the two elderly battlewagons passed the war conducting training in the inland sea. They were no longer first line ships but the Japanese were desperate. During the afternoon Admiral Nishimura received an accurate report from one of Mogami's scout planes telling him exactly what he was up against yet he pushed on in the manner of a Samurai.
Yamashiro and Fuso
The Fully Modernized USS West Virginia in 1944 (above)
USS Tennessee 1944
USS California
USS Mississippi
USS Pennsylvania
Facing him was a force built around the 6 old Battleships of Vice Admiral Jesse Oldendorf's 7th Fleet Battle Line. The Americans heavily outnumbered the Japanese, the Battleships West Virginia, California and Tennessee were the heart of the force. Fully modernized after Pearl Harbor they no longer resembled the ships that they were before the war. Equipped with the latest Mark 8 Fire Control radar they had the ability to put their 16" and 14" shells on target at ranges farther than anything that the Japanese could counter. Joined by the less fully modernized Maryland, Mississippi and Pennsylvania, 4 Heavy Cruisers, 4 Light Cruisers, 28 Destroyers and 39 PT Boats.
Oldendorf described his plan in Naval Institute Proceedings a decade later:
"… Admiral Kinkaid's order to prepare for night action came as no surprise. … It was obvious that the objective of the Japanese Forces was the destruction of our transports and that my mission was to protect them at all costs. In order to accomplish my mission, the force under my command must be interposed to between the enemy and the transports. I realized that I must not lose sight of my mission no matter how much I might be tempted to engage in a gunnery duel with him.
I selected the position of the battle line off Hingatungan Point because it gave me the maximum sea room available and restricted the enemy's movements. This position also permitted me to cover the eastern entrance to the Gulf should the Central Force under Admiral Kurita arrive ahead of the Southern Force. I selected the battle plan from the General Tactical Instructions and modified it to meet the conditions existing, i.e., lack of sea room to maneuver and possible enemy action. … I thought that quite possibly he planned to slip some of his light forces into the Gulf by passing them to the eastward of Hibuson Island after the battle line was engaged. For that reason I stationed the preponderance of my light forces on the left flank. One duty which was never delegated to my staff was the drafting of battle plans."
Oldendorf's Task Force outnumbered the combined Japanese forces with sixteen 16" and forty eight 14" guns to twenty 14" guns on the antiquated Yamashiro and Fuso. The disparity in lesser guns was just as stark, thirty five against twenty six 8" guns, and fifty one 6" guns against six 5.5 inch guns. This massive imbalance didn't count the nearly one hundred fifty 5" guns on the US destroyers and as well as nearly 200 torpedo tubes.
Nishimura's force entered the southern entrance to Surigao Strait and was discovered by the American PT Boats at about 2236. Though the PTs scored no hits they provided critical updates on the Japanese to Oldendorff. At 0300 the American destroyers began a devastating series of attacks on the Japanese flanks. They sank two destroyers and damaged another which had to turn back, but the real damage occurred when both Fuso and Yamashiro were hit. Fuso took two torpedoes fired by the destroyer USS Melvin. She slowed and then blew up and broke in two sinking with all hands. This account has been contested in recent years but many find the new version less believable than the first. Key in the evidence was the rescue and capture of Yamashiro's Executive Officer in the north end of the strait and the surviving logs of the other Japanese ships which reported the sinking.
Yamashiro continued north with Mogami and the last destroyer Shigure. At 0353 West Virginia opened fire and scored hits on her first salvo. She was joined by California and Tennessee at 0355, the other battleships with their Mark 3 fire direction radars were slow to open up. Maryland got off six full salvos by ranging in on the splashes of West Virginia, California and Tennessee. Mississippi logged the final salvo of the battle and Pennsylvania got no shots off. West Virginia fired 16 salvos, 96 round of 16"armor piercing shells, Tennessee got off 69 rounds and California 63 each of 14" armor piercing shells, while Maryland added another forty eight 16" rounds.
The Yamashiro and Mogami sailed into the maelstrom absorbing hit after hit and gamely fought back. Yamashiro hit the destroyer Albert W Grant which was also hit by friendly fire badly damaging her. Finally both ships ablaze they turned back down the strait with Yamashiro sinking with few survivors at 0420. Shima's force entered the fray and the Light Cruiser Abukuma was damaged by a torpedo fired by PT-137 and fell out of the formation. She was sunk on 26 October by Army Air Force B-24s.
As Shima came up the strait his force entered the battered remnants of Nishimura's force, the burning halves of Fuso and the retreating Mogami and Shigure. Assuming the halves of Fuso to be the wreckage of both battleships Shima beat a hasty retreat but in the process his flagship Nachi collided with Mogami flooding Mogami's steering engine room and leaving her crippled.
Mogami, a ship that almost miraculously escaped being sunk at the Battle of Midway was attacked again by American cruisers and aircraft. She was abandoned at 1047 and scuttled a torpedo from the destroyer Akebono, finally sinking at 1307 on 25 October.
A PT Boat Rescuing Japanese Survivors
The battle was one of the most lopsided surface engagements of the war. When it was over only one of Nishimura's ships had survived the "lucky" Shigure, ran out of luck when she was sunk by the submarine USS Blackfin on 24 January 1945.
Shima's force survived the night but most of his ships were sunk in the following by war's end. Nachi was sunk in Manila Bay on 5 November by aircraft from the USS Lexington with a loss of over 800 sailors while Shima was in a conference ashore. Ashigara was sunk by the British submarine HMS Trenchant on 8 June 1945.
With the exception of the destroyer USS Albert W Grant and a PT Boat the American force was unscathed. The old Battlewagons dredged from the mud of Peal Harbor under command of Admiral Oldendorf led the fleet to a decisive victory in the last duel between Dreadnaughts ever fought. All of the battleships present were either in commission or designed during the First World War. The Japanese died as Samurai warriors trying to complete a hopeless mission against a far superior force. The Americans executed a perfectly designed plan to perfection. It wasn't a battle but the slaughter of an inferior force attempting to do the impossible. But when all was said and done the West Virginia, Tennessee, California, and Pennsylvania executed the judgement that only victims of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.


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South Dakota Department of Health
Office of Disease Prevention Services - 605-773-3737 — (1-800-592-1861 in South Dakota only)
This material is provided for informational purposes only and is not a substitute
for medical care. We are not able to answer personal medical questions. Please see your
health care provider concerning appropriate care, treatment or other medical advice.
What is rabies?
Rabies is a viral disease affecting the central nervous system. It is transmitted from infected mammals to man and is invariably fatal once symptoms appear. Fortunately, only a few cases are reported each year in the United States.
Who gets rabies?
All warm blooded mammals including man are susceptible to rabies.
How is rabies spread?
Rabies is almost always contracted by exposure to a rabid animal. The exposure is usually through a bite, but scratches and saliva contact with broken skin or mucus membranes are also possible routes.
What are the symptoms of rabies?
Early symptoms include irritability, headache, fever and sometimes itching or pain at the site of exposure. The disease progresses to paralysis, spasms of the throat muscles, convulsions, delirium and death.
How soon after exposure do symptoms appear?
The incubation period is variable but is normally two to eight weeks. Incubation periods of over one year have been reported.
When and for how long is a person able to spread rabies?
Person to person transmission is extremely rare, however, precautions should be taken to prevent exposure to the saliva of the diseased person.
What is the treatment for rabies?
Treatment requires prompt scrubbing of the bite site, followed by the administration of rabies immune globulin (dosage dependent on weight) and four doses of human rabies vaccine administered in the arm on days 0, 3, 7 and 14 after the first vaccination.
What happens if rabies exposure goes untreated?
Exposure of man to a rabid animal does not always result in rabies. If preventive treatment is obtained promptly following a rabies exposure, most cases of rabies will be prevented. Untreated cases will invariably result in death.
What can be done to prevent the spread of rabies?
Exposure to rabies may be minimized by removing all stray dogs and cats, having all pets vaccinated and staying away from all wild animals especially those acting abnormally.
South Dakota information
Rabies Surveillance in South Dakota - 2020-2021 | 2019 | 2017-2018 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011
How to Submit a Rabies Specimen to the South Dakota Public Health Laboratory for Testing
South Dakota statute
Rabies control — SDCL 40-12
Taking & holding animal suspected of being dangerous — SDCL 7-12-29


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Cauliflower is quickly becoming this year's Brussels sprouts . . . and here we are with another great use for them: Buffalo Cauliflower from Marcia Selden Catering! Serve 'em up as an app, at your next party, or switch it out with classic chicken wings. Happy noming!
Ingredients for Buffalo Cauliflower Bites
- 1 C Whole Wheat Flour
- 1 C Water
- 1 t Garlic Powder
- 1 t Kosher Salt
- 1 head Cauliflower, cut into florets
- 1 C Franks Red Hot Sauce
- 1 stick Salted Butter, melted
- Handful Chopped Parsley


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You must send us a request for cancellation through email at firstname.lastname@example.com and we have a 10% cancellation fee for Paypal Payment, once the payment has been made. Our process for cancellation/refund will take 7 working days. Orders cannot be cancelled once they have been designed and are on delivery, or if delivery has been attempted and cannot be completed if the recipient is unavailable. Orders that are placed with incorrect information (i.e. Wrong Address) that prevents direct delivery cannot be cancelled or refunded.
You can contact us during our working hours: Mon-Fri: 9am-6pm, except public holidays


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Gurukripa Automobile
Gurukripa Automobile is the top two-wheeler auto parts dealer in Thane East, Thane.
Thane East, Thane
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Inspares.in is India's first and only internet portal dedicated to auto parts dealers. We will assist you in locating motorcycle auto parts anyplace in India. We work with everyone from small-scale auto shops to large-scale suppliers and manufacturers. You can contact the dealers directly or submit a request for us to locate the required replacement parts for your motorcycle or business.
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Following payment methods are accepted by Gurukripa Automobile. Cash, debit cards credit card, UPI payments etc.
Gurukripa Automobile Opens at 10 AM in the morning and closes at closes by 7 PM in the evening.


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Dare Me
Available from Amazon
Caught up in a game of Truth or Dare, Laura finds herself in a nightclub, dressed in next to nothing clothes, and nervously awaiting her turn to perform in a pole dancing contest, when her old boyfriend, handsome Mark Cantrell appears on the stage with his new bride. Upset by long buried emotions, Laura wants to run for home, however, jealously roots her in place.
When a twist is thrown into the competition and she has to have a man to perform with her, she feels relieved she'll not go on, until Mark volunteers to be her partner. Unable to decline, and spellbound by his sexy moves, Laura puts her all into the sexy routine. Then it ends, and embarrassment overwhelms her.
Attempting to flee the nightclub and rush to the sanctity of home, she is surprised by Mark's offer to drive her, abandoning his wife into his brother's care. Desperate to feel loved, she accepts, and then struggles with the right and wrong of her plan to seduce a married man.
In the end, Laura loses the battle with her conscience, hoping she can live with the guilt come morning as she welcomes Mark into her bed for a passionate night of sex.
Bev handed me a bottle of beer. "You better drink this, Laura."
Were her instincts just as wired to what was about to happen as mine were? She had glasses on, maybe her eyesight was better. Could she see the faces in the darkness at the back of the stage.
"Mark has been living way out west for several years—" Paul continued, nailing down my suspicions.
"Six," I muttered, rounding to the nearest year, even though I knew how many months and days as well.
"He went to college out there and liked it so much, he stayed," Paul added.
"Did you know he was going to be here?" I asked Bev, never looking away from the stage.
"I swear, Laura, I had no idea." She grabbed my arm. "Is that his wife?"
I leaned back against the bar for support. In silence, I stared at the couple emerging from the shadows. My gaze locked onto the girl first. Five-foot tall, if even that. She wasn't what I expected. Her petite frame had the slender lines of a dancer. Trim legs, narrow torso, somewhat flat-chested. Mark always said he liked my curves and my full breasts. Now I wondered what to trust of our past together.
Avoiding Mark, I tried to continue concentrating on the female leaching onto his arm. It didn't work. I had to look, to find out if he had changed. Slowly, from head to toe, I devoured the sight of him. Under the sultry lighting, he looked good—too sexy for the girl with the pixie haircut.
His dark brown hair was shorter, his moustache gone, but he had a scruffy shadow of whiskers that showed he hadn't shaved for several days. In black slacks and a gray striped dress shirt, he had the look of a successful executive of…something. I wished I knew what profession had attracted him after college. He had majored in business management and finance, but he didn't know where that would take him. I had stuck to my goal and worked in real estate development.
My attention, drawn back to the girl who should have been me with Mark, I watched Meg. Her simple routine consisted of some twirls and prancing and Mark's movements flowed naturally with hers. He was always a terrific dancer. His different grips on her became more sexually explicit. The motion of him humping her ass and his air caresses gliding a mere inch from her body was hard to watch. Then he put his hands on Meg's hips and playfully pretended to tug her from the pole. Their act was good, but her laughter was too high-pitched. It made me cringe. It made men in the crowd hoot with pleasure.
Twinges of jealousy inside me worsened. Mark always said he hated girls who giggled too loud. When had that changed? Were we never right for each other?
The playful performance between Mark and his wife became too much to bear. I spun around to rip up the entry form. No way was I going on that stage and humiliate myself in front of his diminutive doll-like bride.
I slapped my hand down on the wood surface as if I were blind to seeing a sheet of paper. "Where is it?" I cried weakly, looking up and down the bar, spotting nothing except beer bottles and drinking glasses on small white napkins.
"What are you looking for?" Bev asked.
"That entry sheet. I've change my mind."
"You can't change your mind. They've already taken that paper away and given it to Paul to make the announcements."
A round of loud howling and hollering forced me to glance at the stage. Meg's beaming smile showed how well she felt she had performed. In my mind, she was already a winner.
"Here, drink this." Bev shoved a small glass into my hand.
I gulped down the whiskey shot while looking at Mark. He had that "aw shucks, anyone could have done it" expression he had always had after an amazing catch during a high school football game.
Then his gaze landed on me. His expression changed.
Turn away. Turn away. Turn away. I couldn't.
Trapped by the happy twinkle in his blues eyes and a smile that seemed meant for only me, I stood helpless. That old feeling of love had me in its clutches. Was Mark experiencing the same sort of déjà vu? He stared at me with a similar spellbound stillness like an animal trapped by the lights of oncoming traffic. Then he went further with his intense look. He stripped me naked, not literally, but thoroughly. His gaze rolled downward as he traced the rim of his lips with his tongue. He paused at my breasts. Did he see my nipples harden, denting out the fabric of my bikini top? I put a hand to my chest as I took a deep breath. The feel of my denim jacket reminded me he couldn't see what I was wearing underneath. It didn't mean I hadn't imagined the feel of his tongue pressed against my breast, massaging the ache in the stiffened tips.
Trembling, I squeezed my knees together to fend off the sharp twitches releasing moisture and damping my panties. It was awful the way he had the capability to stir an orgasm from me with his lustful perusal of my body.
"Do you see the way he's eyeing you?" Bev whispered. "That's not the kind of look a married man gives another woman if he's in love with his wife."
I had noticed. My heart rate had elevated several notches. I struggled to breathe evenly. More importantly, I tried to remember how to act normal. "Who?" I asked, pretending ignorance might get a grip on my sanity.
The cheering of the crowd died down to idle chatter, yet Mark and Meg remained on the stage. Meg finally took the initiative and grabbed Mark's arm, attempting to pull him away. He didn't go quite so willingly. He stumbled back, keeping eye contact with me. Meg didn't seem to notice. I could see how she probably though his reluctance was a form of stage fright or something.
"I can't do it, Bev."
"Yes, you can. You have to. You have to show up that mousy wife of his and make him regret he didn't come back to town for you."
Bev rubbed my arm reassuringly. Here I had thought she had believed I didn't think of Mark anymore. Her words broke that illusion. I wanted to thank her for playing along with my need to bury my head in the sand about my feelings for him. However, I had to face my current dilemma.
Running from the place seemed a good idea right then. But a part of me agreed with Bev. It was because Mark had showed interest that I didn't bolt. I needed to get up on that stage and flaunt my assets—show him what he was missing. Make him hurt, as I was hurting.