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From Summer Blockbusters to Orphan Films
Three recent gatherings celebrate movies big and small
As I wrote earlier, the Tribeca Film Festival ends this weekend with a screening of The Avengers, the latest Marvel Comics big-screen adaptation and a linchpin in a marketing plan that now extends to 2016, when The Avengers 2 will be released. The Festival has already handed out its awards, including Best Documentary Feature going to The World Before Her, and a special jury mention for The Revisionaries.
The most intriguing awards went to Una Noche, Lucy Mulloy's feature drama about three young Cubans. The film won for Best New Narrative Director (Mulloy), Best Cinematography in a Narrative Feature Film (Trevor Forrest and Shlomo Godder), and Best Actor in a Narrative Feature Film (Dariel Arrechada and Javier Núñez Florián). Arrechada picked up his award at the Festival, but Florián and a third costar, Anailín de la Rúa de la Torre, dropped from sight at the Miami airport and may have defected in real life.
CinemaCon, billed as "the largest and most important gathering of movie theatre owners from around the world," ended its four-day run at Caesars Palace on August 26. The annual trade show of the National Association of Theatre Owners, CinemaCon featured panels on marketing, employee relations, demonstrations of equipment (e.g., "Light Levels: Optimizing Screens and Lamps"); awards to stars like Jeremy Renner, Charlize Theron, and Taylor Kitsch; and corporate suites, cocktail parties, and dinners emceed by the likes of Jack Black.
More important, CinemaCon is a chance for studios to preview their summer blockbusters. Attendees saw excerpts from Pixar's Brave, Warner Bros.' Dark Shadows and The Dark Knight Rises, and Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Jackson stirred up some controversy by asking theater owners to project The Hobbit in a version that runs at 48 frames per second, a speed he said would produce greater clarity and be "more gentle on the eyes." (24 fps has been the standard since the industry switched to sound at the end of the 1920s.)
CinemaCon is targeted toward theater owners and only incidentally to moviegoers. The Orphan Film Symposium, on the other hand, covers films that have no audience, and in many cases no clear owners either. Made to Persuade, the eighth edition of the symposium, ran from April 11–14 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, NY, offering almost 100 films and as many speakers. (I also wrote about the 7th symposium for Smithsonian.)
The symposium lets archivists and historians meet and share work, and also screen restoration work before it becomes available to the public. Funding for archives and for preservation work in general is a bigger problem than ever, and several of the over 300 attendees had stories of lost jobs, curtailed projects, and rejected grants. A greater surprise for me was the sharp rise in digital as opposed to film presentations, which I hope to explore in more detail in a future posting.
Some of the highlights of the symposium included a screening introduced by Jay Schwartz of a newly restored version of The Jungle, a 1967 film about gang violence made by actual members of a North Philadelphia gang. A stark, haunting combination of documentary and staged footage, The Jungle is an uncompromising portrait of an urban nightmare.
Walter Forsberg screened a series of computer animation films from AT&T/Bell Labs, highlighting the difficulty in preserving art that began as software code.
Jon Gartenberg showed excerpts from films shot by Tassilo Adam in the Dutch East Indies in the 1920s. Although preserved digitally, the material had the lustrous sheen of the nitrate on which it was originally filmed. Adam filmed with the cooperation of authorities, who staged processions and gatherings for his camera. Nevertheless, his footage shows a considerably more sophisticated vision of Bali than other films of the period.
A session devoted to Sheldon and Lee Dick included School: A Film about Progressive Education, a 1939 documentary that predates cinema verite techniques by some twenty years, and Men and Dust (1940), about the effects of silicosis on mine workers. A publisher and photographer as well as a filmmaker, Sheldon Dick was also an heir to the A.B. Dick mimeograph machine fortune. He is perhaps more famous today for murdering his third wife and then committing suicide.
More lighthearted fare included a series of advertising films I will discuss in a future posting, Presidential campaign ads from 1948, a film produced by several Hollywood studios promoting 1938 as "Motion Pictures' Greatest Year," and Past and Present in the Cradle of Dixie, a silent short from the Paragon Feature Film Company that used romance and the threat of a house fire to promote Montgomery, Alabama as a great place to live.
Sergei Kapterev of the Moscow Research Institute of Film showed the beguiling educational film The Flight to Thousands of Suns, made by Aleksei Yerin at Popular Science Films, a Leningrad studio founded in 1933 as Techfilm Factory #1. The studio released some 4,000 titles. Equally as fascinating was Studies of Apparent Behavior (1943), an animated short by Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel used in psychological studies.
Jodie Mack and Danielle Ash, previous winners of the Helen Hill Awards for animation, hand-drew directly onto a reel of 70mm clear leader to take advantage of the Museum of the Moving Image's 70mm projectors. The 2012 Helen Hill Awards went to Jeanne Liotta and Jo Dery. In films like Loretta (2003), Liotta builds menacing worlds from strips of film, exposed rayograms, and abstract sound. Dery's films use cutouts, animation, and a mordant sense of humor to make accessible if unsettling cartoons. Woodpecker in Snow Shoes (2008) was particularly strong.
Dan Streible, director of the Orphan Film Project, announced that the next symposium will be held in 2014 at the EYE Film Instituut in Amsterdam. Streible just co-edited, with Devin and Marsha Orgeron, Learning with the Lights Off: Educational Film in the United States for Oxford University Press. He also received a 2012 Academy Film Scholar grant for his book proposal Orphan Films: Saving, Screening, and Studying Neglected Cinema.
Read new Reel Culture postings every Wednesday and Friday. And you can follow me on Twitter @Film_Legacy.


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Trump's immigration plan a step forward
Back in the middle of his campaign for president, Donald Trump outlined an immigration plan that would base more legal entries on merit, but it still came as a surprise to illiberal liberals when he recently said he was going to act on it.
What's more, they were horrified, because, if we start searching for job skills, educated minds, entrepreneurial energy and that sort of thing that improves life for all, we will not be focused on saving the down and out. Isn't that racist, nativist and jingoistic?
Well, no, because, the better-skilled may also be fleeing desperate circumstances and should hardly be denied our sympathy because, for instance, they're better at English. And it's also worth noting the current system of selection has been a disaster. Although a mix of many ideas, its main feature has been referred to as nepotism writ large: It extends special invitations to those who are relatives of citizens.
While all sorts of marvelous people have arrived under this plan (and the Trump plan will continue to give preferences to spouses and minor children), it has also become a means of importing poverty to the benefit of no one.
That phrase, "importing poverty," has been used by particularly alert students of the subject who were pointing out some years ago how vast numbers of the new, mostly Hispanic arrivals were virtually the sole cause of increases in American poverty rates. It should be no surprise since we know the vast majority lack the education and skills our ever more complicated society increasingly demands, to the detriment of many natives, too, of course.
No less a poverty expert than Ron Haskins of Brookings Institution has pointed to the problems, and the astute Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute has noted how assimilation has been more and more to the underclass. A devotion to family has given way increasingly to single-parent homes with children as victims less likely to do well in school and move up, as one result.
For a variety of reasons, the flow from Mexico has decreased as the flow from Central America and Asia — a fount of needed skills — has increased. Something like a million Mexican families headed back home during the recession, and some industries that depend on unskilled labor and understandably like it to be cheap detest the Trump plan.
Here are some things to understand.
First, as a study by George Borjas of Harvard shows, legal and illegal unskilled immigrants drive down the wages of native unskilled workers by something like a whopping half trillion dollars a year. It's also the case, he says, that immigrants get significant amounts of government assistance while paying very low taxes, meaning taxpayers must come up with about $50 billion annually to make up the difference.
It is still the case, as Borjas notes, that immigrants are a net economic gain, but that is in large part because there are educated, highly skilled immigrants who mightily boost businesses with their know-how. This nation has a deficit of sorely needed skills, as illustrated by the fact of 5.6 million unfilled jobs requiring special competence. Trump has a plan to help fix that through more vocational training, but also through his growth-spurring merit plan.
That plan calls for cutting legal entries of about a million a year to about half a million a year, and that big a drop is debatable because we need all the highly skilled workers we can get and still some unskilled, if tens of thousands fewer. At the same time, however, there are accommodation problems throughout the country, especially at our schools, and lowering the numbers will make it more reasonable on fiscal and other fronts to move toward legalization of the 11 million illegal aliens in the country now.
That's something Trump said he would consider when the illegal flow was stopped (we're making headway) and legal immigration was reformed.
Jay Ambrose is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service. Readers may email him at firstname.lastname@example.com.

subset: commoncrawl


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DMC's Top This! collection gives you all the cuteness of a pet without all the responsibility. Every skein in this series features a patented invention that ensures the included plush character will sit adorably on top of whatever you knit. The yarn itself is both bright and silky and made up of three continuous textures so you never need to switch it out. And since you won't need to change yarn mid-project, Top This! is perfect for beginners. In fact, you can knit up a hat in under three hours.
a free hat pattern.
Yarn: 78% Acrylic/22 NylonCharacter: 100% Polyester80 g ±98 yd ballGauge: 4" x 4" = 15 stitches x 24 rows stockinette stitch


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[Sorry for the less than stellar pictures – overhead lighting and cell phone camera.]
Today I finally finished warping my loom. It was a journey in weaving vocabulary.
First you sley the reed (this phrase always makes me think of killing something).
Then I threaded the heddles and beamed the warp (this phrase always makes me think of the Starship Enterprise).
I think I didn't do too badly for the first time ever – I ended up with (only) three crossed warps in the shed (this sounds like some weird farm thing).
I marked the whole thing down as a learning exercise and plan to re-warp it with the following changes:
- Finer warp – the blue yarn is too thick.
- Longer warp chains – the two feet recommended by the book is way to short to work with easily.
- More warp chains of fewer wraps, making it easier to keep the threads from crossing and to beam the warp more evenly.
I figure it should take me half as long the second time around. Onward.


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In 1990, Gainesville resident Peggy Vardeman began having heart problems. Each time she has had a scare, she has noted back pain, nausea and sweating, not the stereotypical crushing chest pain portrayed in the movies. "It's always in my back. I've never had a chest pain," she says. "I'm a perfect example of women experiencing different symptoms than men." Her first heart scare came in 1990 when she noticed a pain in her right shoulder and some nausea while walking up her driveway. "I went to my doctor, and she said she thought I had pulled a muscle," Peggy says. However, a follow-up thallium stress test showed potential problems. Peggy had a diagnostic heart catheterization, which found two coronary artery blockages. The blockages were repaired by balloon angioplasty In balloon angioplasty, the doctor threads a tiny balloon through the patient's artery along a very thin guide wire. The balloon is inflated and deflated a few times to open the artery. Peggy says she quit smoking right then and there. "I was scared to death. I thought my life was over," she recalls. Over the years, Peggy has had more heart events, including quadruple bypass surgery in 1995 and angioplasties in 1998, 2001, 2002 and 2004. In 1998 following a heart attack, she had her first of three stent placements. A stent is a tiny coil that acts like scaffolding and holds the artery open after angioplasty. Stents often contain medicine to improve blood flow in the artery. "I'm almost embarrassed to say I think something's wrong, but I've only been wrong twice," she says. Her experiences are surprisingly common for women with cardiovascular disease, according to Dr. Jeffrey Marshall, interventional cardiologist with the Northeast Georgia Heart Group. Women are more likely to complain of nausea, general fatigue and shortness of breath. While men typically have heart events earlier in life than women, women catch up after menopause, showing signs of heart trouble an average 10 years later than men. Peggy, a retired kindergarten teacher, lives in Gainesville with her husband, Johnny. She is an active volunteer with the Northeast Georgia Mended Hearts, a local chapter of a national volunteer organization made up of heart patients and their family members. Through Mended Hearts, she visits open heart surgery patients and their families at Northeast Georgia Medical Center. She is also an avid reader and animal lover, and she recently traveled to Maine to attend her daughter's wedding, despite the discovery of another coronary blockage in August 2007. This time, the blockage is being treated with medication. "I have to take things a little slower. If I walk too fast, I get angina," she says. "But I danced at our daughter's wedding."One in three women over the age of 20 has some form of cardiovascular disease. It strikes women at younger ages than most people think, and the risk rises in middle age. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, heart disease is the third most common cause of death among women ages 25 to 44 years old and two-thirds of women who have heart attacks never fully recover.
Learn how SCAI is advancing patient care »


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Let's face it: there's no such thing as healthy eggnog. This recipe kicks ass but is also a heart attack in a glass.
My buddy, Rick Sammarco, a former bartender at Mill's Tavern in Providence, RI, credits his father, Al, for this eggnog. The original recipe calls for a lot more of everything. I've cut it down to a "more reasonable" size. It's been so long since I bought ice cream, that I didn't even know that the standard half-gallon size was replaced by a 1.5 quart size!
A word about salmonella: most cases are caused by raw chicken, not raw eggs. Eggs you get in the supermarket are washed so the chance of salmonella, found on the exterior, is minimal. (The inside of the egg is sterile.) Plus, you're dumping a lot of booze into this drink and that will kill bacteria. In fact, some recipes say to make your eggnog weeks in advance to "sterilize" the drink.
1.5 quarts vanilla ice cream (I use Breyer's)
1 pint half and half
15 whole eggs (raw)
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
At least 3/8 cup of each:
spiced rum (I use Capt. Morgan)
whiskey (I use Crown Royal)
brandy (I use E&J)
Let the ice cream soften 1 day in the fridge. Mix ice cream, eggs, vanilla, half and half in a blender.
Add spices and liquor. Blend until it's frothy.
Taste, and add more cinnamon and nutmeg if you like.
After fully blended, let sit in fridge 12-24 hours for flavors to blend. Even longer is better.


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Helton looks to contribute in final leg of career
The face of the Rockies franchise, Helton seeks to cap his stellar resume
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Colorado Rockies first baseman Todd Helton knows the end of his playing career is near.
He just isn't saying it.
Helton is not into pomp and circumstance. He never has sought attention, and he is not going to start now.
There will be no farewell tour. Any celebration will be for the Rockies.
"I just want to finish the season healthy, and with a feeling I am able to help this team be better in whatever way I can," Helton said. "To have a chance to go out with a trip to the playoffs, that would be the ultimate."
Helton, however, isn't about to just hang on to be around. If he doesn't feel he is a positive, he will know it's time to move on.
Helton is the face of the franchise. Eventually, his No. 17 will be the first number retired by the Rockies.
A first-round Draft choice in 1995, the team's third year of competition, Helton was in the big leagues by '97. And since then, he has basically established every offensive high-water mark in franchise history. Five years after his retirement, Helton will become the first real test of how much Coors Field will be held against offensive players by voters for the Hall of Fame.
Helton's resume puts him among the game's elite. He has compiled a .964 OPS (which ranks 17th all-time), a .419 on-base percentage (which ranks 20th) and a .545 slugging percentage (which ranks 33rd). Helton goes into 2013 with a .320 average (53rd all-time) and with a chance to climb into the top 70 in home runs and RBIs.
His personality, however, puts him in the background. He's not shy. He's not standoffish. He is quiet.
As a young player, given his background as a quarterback at Tennessee (handling the snaps in between Heath Shuler and Payton Manning), Helton carried the leadership role in the Rockies' clubhouse. It was a silent leadership. It was from observation of a man possessed with being the best and not settling for less.
He was so demanding on himself he never could come to grips with the idea he could challenge a teammate, when Helton, himself, didn't feel he was carrying his share of the tangible load.
Helton, however, has been the sign of stability in a clubhouse where turnover is common, and he has always stepped forward to make new faces feel at home, whether they be the young kids out of Colorado's Minor League system or veterans acquired in some type of a transaction.
There have been 467 players, including Helton, to wear a Rockies uniform since the team's inception in 1993. Helton has been a teammate of 427 of the others. He'll add a few more names to that roster this year.
He's looking forward to it, although he knows that he isn't today what he once was.
The National League batting champion in 2000, Helton has a career 58.4 WAR, which ranks 161st all-time, 109th among position players. A five-time All-Star, four-time Silver Slugger winner and three-time Gold Glove selection, he holds virtually every Colorado franchise record.
And he's not done, yet.
Helton is, after all, 39, and coming off hip surgery. He feels strong, but he knows at this stage of his career it's more about preventing injuries than playing through them.
"Obviously I have to be more realistic about what my body can do and how I bounce back," he said. "Take, for example, diving for balls. I'm sore the next day. No way around it. I've got to pay attention to that."
And Helton is going to listen closely. He wants to go out with a flourish, but he's not going to force the issue. He's not going to become a burden to the Rockies.
"I'm taking it on a daily basis," said Helton. "It depends on my body. It's not what it used to be. The grind of the season has worn it down."
It's that grind that Helton will battle. It's why the man who once felt taking a game off was a crime will accept his idle time.
"I have to understand that there are days I have to take off to allow me to bounce back and make a positive contribution the next game," he said. "I have to be more honest with myself."
Helton has adjusted his approach to extend his career. Coming off the hip surgery, he was quickly given the green light to get in shape, and he approached it with more focus on cardiovascular work.
"I ran a lot more than I ever ran," he said. "I realize if I have my legs strong there's less chance of having problems with my back or hips. It's about playing smart."
It's about Helton's desire to make a positive contribution in what figures to be his final year. He wants to earn his keep, even in the final days.


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SEATTLE — The young interns, some of the nation's best and brightest in technology, business and design, had plenty of enthusiastic words to describe their summer employer.
Fun. Cool. Special. A giant start-up. Revolutionizing the world. Facebook, perhaps? Or Twitter? Or Google?
Try Microsoft Corp: the company once derided as the "death star" of the technology business and lately thought of not so much as dangerous, but merely irrelevant, bureaucratic and dull.
"Microsoft feels cool again," said 22-year-old Gbenga Badipe, an electrical engineering student at Rice University, one of 1,500 interns spending 12 weeks at the company's leafy campus this summer. "Microsoft products touch almost every area of technology, and everything they do is starting to work together."
Microsoft's keen new interns already think their competitors' days are numbered, branding Google and Facebook as "creepy" because of their aggressive stance on privacy and heavy reliance on advertising.
More: Microsoft files emotion monitoring patent, will match ads with user's moods
"What kind of business model is that, shoving ads in peoples' faces?" said one Microsoft intern, who asked not to be named.
A recent poll by careers site Glassdoor put Google as the most desirable place to intern, followed closely by Microsoft. They are also the best paid, averaging over $6,000 a month.
Microsoft is "revolutionizing the world," said Juan Llanes, 25, a computer science and finance major at Georgia Tech, who is also interning in Redmond, Washington this summer. Llanes grew up revering Microsoft during his childhood in Cuba, where computers were effectively banned.
Microsoft executives say the youthful enthusiasm evokes the company's heyday in the 1990s, when Bill Gates took his revolutionary startup from being International Business Machines Corp's junior partner to the United States' most valuable company.
"I went to work at Microsoft because I believed," said John Ludwig, a senior executive behind the creation of Internet Explorer and Windows 95. "It wasn't about money. I believed in the idea of getting computers in the hands of everybody."
"Young students want inspiration, they want to follow something," said Ludwig, who left Microsoft in 1999 to found Seattle venture capital firm Ignition Partners. "That underdog thing is a powerful motivator — for a lot of great talent, that's an appealing place to be, that feeling of us against the world."
Of course, back then the sense of mission was boosted by the fact that Microsoft stock increased 90-fold in the 1990s, creating a host of stock option millionaires. Those days are long over, and Microsoft shares are still well below their 1999 peak.
The idea that the company can embody a start-up spirit at this stage of its development might also be a stretch. A recent book published anonymously by two former Microsoft employees, called 'Stack Rank This!', portrays a company beset by abusive managers and dysfunctional teams where the appraisal process — the notorious stack rank system — actually works against the company's progress.
Indeed, the impression of the company as a Byzantine bureaucracy still turns off some tech-minded students, who are more attracted to younger, faster-moving firms like Facebook.
"There's a definite sense of excitement going on here. There's always revolutions in the making in terms of product development," said Johan Ugander, 27, a PhD student in Applied Math at Cornell University, who is interning for the third consecutive summer at Facebook.
"A lot of the interns I know, a year ago they were working on Timeline," said Ugander. "It's really fun for them to be able to come back to school and as the Facebook product rolls out, to say 'I worked on that all summer.'"
But Ludwig insists that Microsoft's old "scrappy" spirit is starting to resurface. The company may be getting crushed in areas like smartphones and Internet search, but Windows still runs 90 per cent of the world's computers, and Microsoft's research and product development efforts are broad and deep.
"To me, Microsoft is a giant start-up battling to innovate while maintaining compatibility," said Llanes from Georgia Tech. "We are underdogs in some areas, and we are strong in other areas with lots of people trying to knock us off. The stakes are incredibly high at Microsoft, and that's the kind of place I want to work."
Microsoft rolls out the red carpet for interns. Last year more than 1,000 of them were treated to a surprise show by the Dave Matthews Band at a Seattle zoo. State troopers paid by Microsoft have in the past cleared the usually clogged State Route 520 floating bridge to downtown Seattle to make way for buses full of interns. They no longer get a barbecue at Bill Gates' lakeside house like they used to, but there is a palpable sense of excitement.
"Everyone says you have the most fun at Microsoft," said one intern, who asked older students at her college about where to apply. "And Microsoft was definitely the best at selling it."
Of last year's computer science graduates from Carnegie Mellon University, both bachelors and masters, Microsoft and Google were top of the list of employers with 18 each, while seven went to Facebook.
"Microsoft is still up there," said Connie Chan, associate director of Stanford Computer Forum, which links up the university's tech students with employers. "It's still one of the companies that are doing really well on campus. Whenever Microsoft comes on campus they always have a large crowd interested in what they are doing."
Some are skeptical that the company is still getting the best talent out of the top schools, however.
"Microsoft's standing is still strong enough such that they can choose to get the (recruiting) numbers they want — if they dig far enough down their list," said one former program manager at the company.
Beyond the ranks of interns, Microsoft still struggles to compete for talent, especially as Facebook and Google recruit aggressively for their Seattle offices.
Microsoft has had recent victories, snagging cutting-edge social scientist Duncan Watts from Yahoo, and welcoming back James Whittaker, a well-known software engineer who left Microsoft for Google three years ago but was turned off by Google's increasing focus on ad revenue.
"There's been a fundamental cultural shift — this really is in many ways a different company," said Whittaker of Microsoft. "At the high levels of the company they are far more willing to consider grassroots innovative ideas bubbling up than they used to be."
There have also been defeats, such as the departure of veteran Windows Phone manager Charlie Kindel, who left last year to found a start up. His successor also recently left for Amazon.
But the maturing process that Microsoft has been through will ultimately catch up with younger rivals too.
"As Google and Facebook get larger, they will inevitably bog down in politics and bureaucracy," said Ben Slivka, a software engineer who led the creation of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser in the 1990s. "You'll be asking some Google or Facebook veteran the same questions you're asking me now."


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Sandra Day O'Connor, 2005 News
associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, stunned the nation in July when she announced her retirement. O'Connor, who was the Court's first woman justice, was appointed by President Reagan in 1981 and served 24 terms. She was often a swing vote on such controversial issues as abortion, affirmative action, and the separation of church and state. O'Connor was widely considered the most powerful member of the Court, and her announcement sparked an intense partisan battle over the Court's future.
Here are the facts and trivia that people are buzzing about.


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NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Treasury prices sank Tuesday, sending yields soaring, as investors shifted away from safe assets alongside cooling tensions in Ukraine.
Russia recalled members of its military that had been participating in war games near the Ukraine border on Tuesday, which eased investor fears that Russia would step up its movement into Ukraine following its entrance into the Crimean region. Nonetheless, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he reserves the right to use force in Ukraine.
On that news, Treasury prices slid alongside the U.S. dollar, gold, and oil. Stocks surged back to record highs.
"Things are cooling off," said Chris Keith, senior vice president and fixed-income manager at Adviser Investments. "The Treasury market has given back all that it has gained yesterday and then a lot more than that."
The 10-year Treasury note US:10_YEAR yield, which rises as prices fall, jumped 9 basis points on the day to 2.699%, more than reversing Monday's drop. The 30-year bond US:30_YEAR yield rose 9 basis points to 3.649%, and the 5-year note US:5_YEAR yield rose 7.5 basis points to 1.536%.
"Some of the comments that came from Putin's press conference this morning suggested that tensions had eased," said Ian Lyngen, senior rates strategist at CRT Capital Group. "While it's not entirely clear the situation is resolved entirely, the market has discounted any potential escalation."
But given the geopolitical uncertainty, Treasury buyers took more neutral positioning, with investors "playing it from the sidelines," Lyngen said. The J.P. Morgan weekly survey of Treasury clients showed flat net positioning Tuesday.
The market also is looking ahead to the February jobs report, due Friday. Economists polled by MarketWatch expect nonfarm payrolls to have risen by 143,000. Reports for January and December have come in substantially below expectations, cutting into optimism about the pace of economic growth, and raising questions about the extent to which frigid winter weather is cooling the economy.
Nonetheless, Torsten Slok, chief international economist at Deutsche Bank Securities, provided a reminder in a Tuesday note that each report has a number of revisions.
"If you think this recovery has felt slow, then maybe the reason is that nonfarm payrolls have been revised up with 40,000 on average for every single month over the past four years," wrote Slok, adding that monthly jobs growth has been closer to 200,000 than 160,000. "This upward bias in revisions is actually quite important because many investors I talk to about the Fed outlook think of 200,000 as a threshold for 'good' or 'not good enough.'"
Pimco founder Bill Gross said in his latest letter to investors Tuesday that so-called risk assets like credit and stocks are set to outperform cash this year, given his assertion that markets will believe the Federal Reserve's promise to keep its key policy rates low for a substantial amount of time. Returns on risk assets depend on the Fed's credibility, which he believes is currently intact, but may crack down the road, he said. He also noted that liquidity in the corporate bond market may be challenged as the Fed winds down its bond-buying program.
In other bond news, Puerto Rico's governor signed a bill authorizing a municipal bond sale of up to $3.5 billion in an issuance that would help bolster the struggling island's liquidity situation.
A number of corporate issuers were in the market, including Pitney Bowes Inc.
More from MarketWatch:
Mile wide, inch deep: Bond market liquidity dries up
Mutual funds far outperform mutual fund investors
Matthew Lynn: Russia is corrupt, but its markets are bargains


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The Study Abroad Guide To Italy
THINKING OF STUDYING abroad in Italy but not sure where? Whether choosing a university-based program or an independent experience, here is a roundup of the best programs plus several important considertions before immersing yourself in the Bel Paese.
Set your study abroad objectives
First ask yourself why you're going to study abroad in Italy. Is it to spend some time with a fellow classmate or boyfriend? To learn the language? To study a specialized subject or a specific region? To see as much of Italy as possible and/or travel to other countries?
Pick a location in Italy that fits your needs. A fashion designer might find it more advantageous to study in Milan even though the Tuscan hills are breathtaking. An architectural student may benefit more from being in Rome than a small town.
Shelley Ruelle, former Director of the Accent International Rome Study Center, believes the students who enjoy their time best in Italy "keep their expectations fairly neutral, meaning that rather than trying to adapt the experience to what they might have expected, they accept the experience."
Italy is unashamedly itself and changes for no one. The little quirks and traditions that might have been amusing to you as a tourist in Italy can be frustrating to a resident. It is best to pick a place where you'll benefit the most and adapt yourself rather than ask Italy to change while you are studying there.
Immerse yourself in the country and the language
Once you're there, you will have to seek out opportunities to learn and enjoy your new country. You may not have had a choice where to study, but wherever you are in Italy, you can really immerse yourself in the la dolce vita.
Have Italian at Hand.
Bring a small dictionary with you and keep it in your pocket wherever you go. Try to speak the language and you will see that people will respond to you. Be patient when someone doesn't understand you the first or second time you say something. Keep trying and speak Italian. YOU are the guest in their country.
Go Solo.
Don't always rely on fellow classmates to explore the city or where you're studying. Strike out on your own sometimes. Not only will you discover new things, you'll rely only on yourself to comprehend and be understood. Gather knowledge and experiences by yourself and then seek to share with others what you learn during your stay.
Live like a local.
Italians like seeing a familiar face. If you enjoy a morning cappuccino, take an extra few minutes to ask a question or two to the barista. Buy your bus ticket from the same Tabaccheria or fruit from the same fruttivendolo so you can start a relationship with some of the locals. Every phrase you offer, even if incorrect, will open up a new conversation and opportunity to speak the language and learn. Click here for more tips on living like a local.
Get Involved.
Ask your professors or check English language publications and websites for opportunities to volunteer, meet people or join a sports group. Even watching the game every Wednesday or Sunday may open you up to a new group of people. Taking part in local celebrations and holidays is also a great way to show you're interested and meet locals.
Make an Exchange.
Find a language exchange with an Italian. Many schools will have Italian teachers that they recommend, or you can put up some flyers at the local high school or university for a language exchange, or answer an ad yourself. English language publications are again a great source of exchange requests for finding someone in your area.
Ask Away.
A sure way to get a lot of conversation and opinions is to ask questions about the town itself – favorite places to eat, information about historical landmarks. Italians love to talk and complaining is sometimes considered a national pastime.
Where to Study
Home to one of Europe's oldest universities, Bologna is considered THE Italian university town by Italians. A constant flow of Italian and international students keeps the city young and vibrant, while its size remains small enough so that you're not fighting for sidewalk space with the tourists. English will be useful for you to interact with international students, but you'll need to use Italian when off the main streets of the city. You'll find plenty of language exchange partners as students in Italy are really interested in learning and speaking English.
Food is wonderful in the Emilia-Romagna region, home of tortellini, prosciutto di Parma and many other delicious Italian essentials. Bologna's position in Italy is central and you're only a direct train ride away from most of Italy as well as Europe.
University programs:
Romans are notoriously proud of their city. Living there, you too will become proud of the vast amount of architectural history and beauty that surrounds you. Ancient ruins are tucked back in alleyways and the very cobblestones the Vespas bounce over have a story of their own. English is spoken widely enough that you'll be able to get by with basic Italian and a mix of English, but there are many areas of the city where only Italian is spoken and they should be discovered!
If you're not used to big city life, you may feel a bit lost in Rome, which has several million people moving in and around it daily. There is a lot of traffic and getting around the city can sometimes be unpredictable and time-consuming. If you go out in the center, you may find more tourists and students than Italians. Rome is closer to very interesting parts of the country like Puglia, Campania, and Sicily.
Universities / Programs in Rome:
La Sapienza (Italian only)
Torre Vergata (appears Italian only)
Florence is the most popular destination for students and it's obvious why. It has the right combination of natural beauty, rich history and a small-town feeling that remains quintessentially Italy. You'll meet a lot of fellow students as potential partners for exploring the city and you can share that cappuccino after 11am without any reproving glances.
Other Study Abroad Options in Italy
Milan is best known as being the fashion capital of Italy, and according to some, the world. While it's not renown for lush green hills or sunny coasts, it has its own appeal, especially for fashion or design students and is well-connected to explore the rest of Europe.
University Programs:
University of Bocconi
La Cattolica
Siena and Perugia are both small yet charming little towns in central Italy that have international student populations and many specializing in language. Pavia is located just outside of Milan and students make up almost 1/3 of the population. Arezzo is a small town close enough to Florence to return often, and far enough away that you feel you're deep in Tuscany. Genova is along the beautiful Italian Riviera and you can make weekend trips to Cinque Terre or Nice. Naples, a large coastal town is a favorite for students but chronic bureaucracy and mafia problems make it a choice for the not faint-of-heart.
Final Preparation Tips
Wherever you stay you'll have Italy's train system available to you, which means that you're never without a means to see the country. Explore and map out potential trips online before leaving since train schedules in Italy are set for an entire calendar year.
Get a head start on your study abroad and familiarize yourself with basic Italian phrases and start making lists of what to do and see before you leave. Browse as many guide books in bookstores and websites as you can for ideas and make a master list to consult when you need inspiration.
Community Connection
Before you go, connect with these matador community members. Katiebas is in Rome, along with Fillipo, who can help you organize tours. Julianne is in Venice. And you can find many more matador travelers in other places around Italy by visiting here


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Photoshop Touch is one of six new Touch Apps that Adobe has released for Android tablets running Honeycomb. It is designed to bring many of Photoshop's most popular features to Android tablets, allowing creative professionals to integrate these tablets into their mobile workflow.
The Photoshop Touch app is no replacement for the desktop version of Photoshop, but it does bring many popular Photoshop tools, filters, and effects to Honeycomb tablets with a finger-friendly touch interface. Photoshop Touch connects to Adobe's Creative Cloud so you can move your work back and forth between the tablet and the desktop. You can also share images via email and Facebook, though sadly there was no Twitter option.
The interface stays out of the way, with tools around both the edges and top of the screen occupied by the selection tools, adjustments, effects, and other miscellaneous items. Icons and menus are large and finger-friendly, and double tapping a layer will take you into a 3D view of all the layers in the current project.
The selection tools are limited only by the accuracy of the tip of your finger, unless you opt for a capacitive stylus or have a tablet with an active digitizer such as the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet. Photoshop Touch will take advantage of the pressure sensitivity of active digitizers, although it is the only one of the Touch Apps currently able to do so. Working with the selection tools does take some getting used to, but I was able to successfully replace a coworker's head in a photo taken from the tablet with a cow's head downloaded from Google Images in just a few minutes.
Several great interactive tutorials are included to help you get used to the interface and familiarize yourself with all of the tools available. Most of them are also finger friendly, but drawing or painting with a finger can get awkward quickly. When painting the background of one of the tutorials, the tip of my finger got sore just from rubbing back and forth over the glass. I recommend getting a stylus if you plan on using the app for extensive periods of drawing or painting.
Manipulating images is easy: You use two fingers to pinch and zoom or pan around. Zooming and panning came in handy when trying to make small and accurate selections. There was just a hint of lag in the process though, with the zooming starting just after I would have expected.
One of the main restrictions you'll run into when using Photoshop Touch vs. the desktop version of Photoshop is the difference in the way the projects are stored. Photoshop Touch uses a new file type called PSDX, which can be imported into CS5 with a plug in. PSDX files are limited to 1600 by 1600 pixels and 16 layers. Text is rasterized once you finish adding it, so it can be deleted, but not edited afterwards. Effects also don't remain live, and while they can be undone, they can't be changed.
These limitations are to keep the performance in line with what current tablets are capable of. Even so, many of the effects and adjustments can take several seconds to process, and zooming or panning on images felt the slightest bit laggy to me.
All in all, Photoshop Touch provides a wide array of useful and easy-to-use tools for manipulating images on the go.


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West Point Sunset
Crashing waves on the shoreline of Western Prince Edward Island, Canada
Low angle rainbow
A rainbow arches across the entrance to Charlottetown harbour after a brief summer shower.
Canada Day Fireworks at Victoria By The Sea
Canada Day Fireworks at Victoria By The Sea, Prince Edward Island
Point Prim Lighthouse & star trails
West Point Lighthouse
Stormy night skies over West Point Lighthouse late spring 2016.
West Point Lighthouse late spring 2016
Cavendish Beach Sunset, PE
Cavendish Beach Sunset, PE
Red Cliffs
The Point Prim Lighthouse is the first and oldest lighthouse on Prince Edward Island.
Point Prim Lighthouse
Canola Field
Canola Field, Prince Edward Isalnd
Confederation Bridge
Confederation Bridge IMG_1611
untitled #IMG_1563
Smooth Sailing
The sun drops below the horizon across the North Humberland Stright on the East coast of Canada, IMG_1560
On the edge of the world
A fishing boat sails in front of a rising sun, Gulf of St. Lawrence, near Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, Canada
Covehead Lighthouse
A canvas of light surrounds the Covehead Lighthouse in Prince Edward Island's National Park during a vibrant Aurora Borealis display in early August. IMG_6584
A canvas of light surrounds the Covehead Lighthouse in Prince Edward Island's National Park during a vibrant Aurora Borealis display in early August. IMG_6581
Covehead Northern Lights
An early summer display of the Nothern Lights reflects off the surface of a pond in Covehead, Prince Edward Island IMG_6577
Angry Sky
Extreme weather rolls over Charlottetown on July 23rd, 2011
Foggy Pond
Foggy Pond, Winsloe, PEI IMG_7790


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Whether you are remodelling your home, making a purchase for your business or place of worship Bonds: Chandelier Company has the perfect chandelier for you. We offer a complete professional fitting service and can supply and install a remote control electric hoist while fitting your chandelier to make cleaning and bulb changing easy.
See our ranges of light bulbs , replacement chandelier crystal, lampshades and chandelier hoists to complement our lighting range.
All our products are manufactured to the highest possible standards and with proper care will last a lifetime. We hope you like what you see.


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|Rothschild and Freshfields founders had links to slavery, papers reveal
Financial Times | June 26, 2009
Two of the biggest names in the City of London had previously undisclosed links to slavery in the British colonies, documents seen by the Financial Times have revealed.
Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the banking family's 19th-century patriarch, and James William Freshfield, founder of Freshfields, the top City law firm, benefited financially from slavery, records from the National Archives show, even though both have often been portrayed as opponents of slavery.
Far from being a matter of distant history, slavery remains a highly contentious issue in the US, where Rothschild and Freshfields are both active.
Companies alleged to have links to past slave injustices have come under pressure to make restitution.
JPMorgan, the investment bank, set up a $5m scholarship fund for black students studying in Louisiana after apologising in 2005 for the company's historic links to slavery.
The archival documents have already prompted one of the banks named in the records to take action in the US.
When the FT approached Royal Bank of Scotland with information about its predecessor's links with slavery, the bank researched the claim, updated its own archives and amended the disclosures of past slave connections that it had previously lodged with the Chicago authorities.
But it is the disclosures about Mr Rothschild and Mr Freshfield that are likely to prompt the biggest stir.
In the case of Mr Rothschild, the documents reveal for the first time that he made personal gains by using slaves as collateral in banking dealings with a slave owner.
This will surprise those familiar with his role in organising the loan that funded the UK government's bail-out of British slave owners when colonial slavery was abolished in the 1830s. It was the biggest bail-out of an industry as a percentage of annual government expenditure – dwarfing last year's rescue of the banking sector.
The chief archivist of the Rothschild family papers, Melanie Aspey, reacted with disbelief when first told of the contents of the records, saying she had never seen such links before.
Niall Ferguson, Laurence A.Tisch professor of history at Harvard and author ofThe World's Banker: A History of the House of Rothschild, said the documents showed "how pervasive slavery was in the structure of British wealth in 1830".
In Mr Freshfield's case, the records reveal that he and his sons had several slave-owner clients, mostly based in the Caribbean. The lawyers acted as trustees of the owners' estates and in one case tried to claim unpaid legal fees for the firm through the government scheme set up to compensate owners after abolition.
Nick Draper, a University College London academic who examined the documents, which will now form the basis of a comprehensive British slavery database at UCL, said the records would hopefully promote a better understanding of of the significance of slavery in Britain.
"We need to fill the gaps between those who deny slavery's role and those who believe Britain was built entirely on the blood of slaves," he said.
Both Rothschild, the bank, and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer were quick to point to their predecessors' anti-slavery credentials.
Rothschild said Nathan Mayer Rothschild had been a prominent civil liberties campaigner with many like-minded associates and "against this background, these allegations appear inconsistent and misrepresent the ethos of the man and his business".
Freshfields said James William Freshfield was an active member of the Church Missionary Society, "which was committed to ... the abolition of the slave trade".
Apologies and acknowledgements
Several institutions have apologised for, or acknowledged, their links to slavery including:
Wachovia Bank, since acquired by Wells Fargo, also apologised for its predecessors having owned and profited from slaves. It set up a programme offering $1bn in loans for black car dealerships.
Brown University has set up a commission to look into links with slavery and how it should make amends.


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Tag Hosting Environment Upgrades
Maintaining a Joomla website is like maintaining a store front. It has to look clean and easy for customers (Users) to shop around and find what they want. You need to have something interesting every time so that people will come back to check out your new stuff. You might want to change your banners


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Water Chemistry. Discussions on anything related to GH, KH, Co2 Scale, Tank Cycling, Etc. Anything you forgot from your days in HS.
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Allows you to choose the data by which the thread list will be sorted.
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Free Shipping
This is a large end 5/16″ x 4″ S-hook. This works with all of our chains. Our commercial quality large end S-hooks are designed to fasten chain to swing hangers and swing seats to help prevent binding. They are plated to help resist rust. S-hooks that are not bought from a playground manufacturer do not have the quality control and have been known to break with the first "swinger". This product should last 2 years in harsh conditions and up to 5 years in optimal conditions. Some conditions may require replacement sooner. Tensile strength 745 lbs.
**Installation, Safe Use and Maintenance Instructions**
IMPORTANT: Please read for important information. In this material we have tried to provide some requirements stated in the CPSC Handbooks, ASTM F2373-11, F1487-11 and F1148-09. However, we in no way intend for this to be a complete list of requirements. Also these publications are updated frequently with changes therefore, you should read these publications yourself to determine if any part or installation could prove a danger to a child.
To help keep children safe from harm, review installation and maintenance instructions before installing equipment. These are located in the description of every product on our website. www.americanswing.com Download and print these instructions and keep in a safe place. Our website also has a "Product Testing Information" page. All products are tested for lead, phthalates and tensile strength. You can also call us at 1-800-433-2573 for more information or see http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/pubs/325.pdf.
Installation: Our parts are sold as either replacement parts or components of a set, unless you are buying our Metal Frame Set, therefore these parts need to be installed according to the sets installation instructions. If the installation instructions differ from ours please contact us at 800-433-2573.
Make sure you are using correct size of S-hook. Closing S-hook should not crimp material producing a wear spot on whatever material you are attaching to S-hook. If this occurs, use a larger S-hook to extend life of product. Because S-hooks are often constructed of heavy-duty materials that can withstand significant weight, they are not easy to close. A pair of pliers designed for closing and opening S-hooks, such as our A8000 is necessary. To close S-hooks: Put the S-hook in the front part of the large jaws and close the pliers' legs and the S-hook will close. Make sure all S-hooks are closed to within .04 to meet ASTM safety standards. To open S-hooks: Use the little jaws at the other end of the pliers' head. Put the top or outer jaw inside of the closed S-hook. Close the pliers' legs and the S-hook should open. WARNING: Once the S-hooks have been opened they will have to be replaced to avoid injuries from coming open and/or breaking.
Safe Use: This is for children 0 – 12 years old only. Adults should supervise children at all times. Do not allow children to use unsafely. Do not allow it to be used if damaged.
Maintenance: At beginning and end of each play season and once a month during play season, check for sharp edges and/or cracks in metal. Check for excessive wear. Replace parts as necessary for safety. Make sure S-hooks are closed to within .04 to meet ASTM safety standards. Check for vandalism. Maintain detailed inspection and maintenance records for public-use playground equipment.
Any damage from vandalism, abuse or misuse VOIDS all warranties.


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Gaddafi Is Definitely Dead, Judging from These Pictures
Libyan officials have confirmed that Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi is dead, shot in the head during fighting in his hometown of Sirte. The first images of his body have emerged. Graphic images ahead.
The first picture on your right was broadcast on Al Jazeera. The second is from Al Arabya.
Abubaker Saad, a former Gaddafi associate, told CNN he was 90% sure it was Gaddafi in a similar photo posted by that news organization.
Al Jazeera also has some gruesome video of Gaddafi being dragged around by rebels.
Update: Libya's prime minister gave a press conference and confirmed that Gaddafi was killed. "We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Muammar Qaddafi has been killed," said Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril.
[Image of rebels, top, via AP]


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This upcoming Saturday, the 6th Annual Kinfolks Soul Food Festival makes yet another stop in Louisville, KY. The Waterfront Park will be engulfed with delicious smelling aromas of some of the tastiest soul food you ever enjoyed! If that isn't enough, grammy award winning artists will take to the stage and perform some of their classic hits. Musical artists scheduled to perform are the legendary Angela Winbush, R&B superstar Ginuwine, old school R&B crooner Jeffrey Osborne, Tevin Campbell, the very soulful Chrisette Michele, Sugarfoot's Ohio Players and contemporary jazz artist Eldredge Jackson.
Bit to Do
Posted On: 1 Jun 2012 - 9:08am


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Lisa Whelchel Sounds Off on Exercise and Dating at 50
Lisa Whelchel has tried every exercise in the book and she's suffered the injuries to prove it. "I hurt my shoulder playing racquetball, I have a lower back injury from an aerobics class and I messed up my feet while training to climb Mount Whitney," she tells PEOPLE. "Even on Survivor, when I did the mud challenge, I developed sciatica that has continued to give me trouble." So what's an active gal to do? "I decided to make my own exercise video," says Whelchel, who turned 50 in May. "It's a doable full-body workout that you can do in 20 minutes. It has stretching, resistance, cardio and a cool down. Exercise is different once you get a little older. It doesn't always have to be high impact." The video, called Lisa Whelchel's Everyday Workout for the Everyday Woman, is geared towards the women who grew up watching her on The Facts of Life. "If you're 20 and want to get into that tiny black dress, this may not be the workout for you," she says with a laugh. "But there are a lot of women who are like I was: I was low energy. Gravity was showing up in the wrong places. I wanted to be healthy and not re-injure myself. Also, it would be nice if I could fit into the smaller jeans in the back of the closet!" "The biggest step is getting off your couch to work out," she adds. "You have to find ways that you can exercise. Once you start, you'll be motivated to eat a little bit healthier, maybe find some other forms of exercise. When I do it, I definitely see results. I don't end up looking like Jillian Michaels, but I feel and look better." Professionally, Whelchel is looking forward to the Dec. 13 release of her first film in decades, A Madea Christmas. "My heart is in comedy," she says. The broader the comedy, the better! I was out of showbiz for so long, so it was perfect to re-enter it with a Tyler Perry movie. It's like 90 minutes of an '80s sitcom!" Another thing that changes as you get older? Dating. Whelchel, who is divorced, says she's ready for a new relationship, but, "no one has even asked me out." When reminded that men may be nervous to ask out Blair Warner, she says with a laugh. "Oh, please. I'm not that intimidating. Here's my public service announcement to the men out there: Any woman wants a man who has enough confidence to ask them out. It's worth the risk, even if she says no. But you never know she might say yes!"
Story from peacefmonline.com News:
Published: 2013-11-25 11:53:01
© peacefmonline.com


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You've thrilled to Windows Internals, now thrill to Mark Russinovich's latest masterpiece, the novel Zero Day. It looks somewhat like Daniel Suarez's Daemon, I think:
An airliner's controls abruptly fail mid-flight over the Atlantic. An oil tanker runs aground in Japan when its navigational system suddenly stops dead. Hospitals everywhere have to abandon their computer databases when patients die after being administered incorrect dosages of their medicine. In the Midwest, a nuclear power plant nearly becomes the next Chernobyl when its cooling systems malfunction.
At first, these random computer failures seem like unrelated events. But Jeff Aiken, a former government analyst who quit in disgust after witnessing the gross errors that led up to 9/11, thinks otherwise. Jeff fears a more serious attack targeting the United States computer infrastructure is already under way. And as other menacing computer malfunctions pop up around the world, some with deadly results, he realizes that there isn't much time if he hopes to prevent an international catastrophe.
Written by a global authority on cyber security, Zero Day presents a chilling "what if" scenario that, in a world completely reliant on technology, is more than possible today—it's a cataclysmic disaster just waiting to happen.
You can pre-order it today, and I did, for the Kindle. Congrats, Mark!
Thanks to Leon Z. for the link.


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Congrats Baby Boy Blue Leopard
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All Cards Are "4x5" In Standard Size. We are happy to upsize your card to "5x6" and/or include a photo. It is also our pleasure to customize your card customize your card with a unique design or color. Once you have placed your order we will contact you within 24-48 hours to verify your design.


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Kathy Welter-Nichols, CHT, HBCE, is a Master Hypnotist, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Master Practitioner, & Licensed Trainer of NLP. Design Human Engineering (DHE) Specialist, Certified HypnoBirthing Educator, and Certified Doula and IEMT practitioner. Profoundly focused on taking women back into their personal place of power, Kathy is the co-owner of Thought Models, Ways of the Wise Woman & Just Be Well Canada. Her recent programs include "Bulimia Breakthrough" a three day intervention for women suffering from Eating Disorders. She is the co-creator of Shaman Inside, and Mastery of Deep Trance States ® programs for individuals seeking to know themselves at the deepest levels. These programs are available in the UK, Italy, Peru as well as in Canada. She has received the Volunteer of the Year Award – Spirit of Community for her contributions to her community in selfless giving to those experiencing life threatening illness.
Kathy's writings include: Bulimia Breakthrough; Soul Maps the Overlay of Consciousness; Shaman Inside; Mastery of Deep Trance States® ; My Birth, My Way; Meditation, the Way of Effortless. In addition, Kathy has an extensive number of CD's & MP3's for personal improvement, birth preparation, increasing self esteem, reducing stress, and targeting specific issues like smoking, habits and OCD.
Kathy's attends her births as labour support and uses NLP and Hypnosis to assist mothers in preparation for birth and during birth – advancing mothers into states that enable them to go beyond their belief maps; their own internal fears are set aside and they experience birth and themselves in an entirely new way. Doctors and midwives alike have remarked on Kathy's skill and calming presence in the birthing room assisting mothers and fathers to create remarkable birth experiences.
In addition to training couples in hypnobirthing, Kathy offers programs for VBAC moms and for those experiencing postpartum depression. She sees clients one on one in Vancouver, and has an active practice providing treatment for a variety of issues that are easily resolved in 3-4 sessions. She lives and works with her husband Harry Nichols in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. They have two children and three granddaughters!
All training dates are available on : www.thoughtmodels.com, www.bulimiabreakthrough.ca www.waysofthewisewoman.com www.shamaninside.com www.deeptrancestates.com
To contact Kathy: email@example.com, 1.604.421.1722; SKYPE, or on the websites
Kathy's Presentations:
NLP: A Birth Model for Change
The current model of birth is as deep a belief structure as the structure of our very nature. Trusting your body, trusting your mind and trusting your baby are entirely new concepts in the birthing world today. Making changes at this very core level takes skill and dedication.
In this two-part workshop series, Kathy Welter-Nichols introduces participants to a number of new technologies and science models that support gentle birthing practices, and explain why fear is so deeply enhanced through suggestion during birth.
In these two experiential online workshops, Kathy:
- Reviews the effects of adrenaline and stress hormones and how these triggered responses are the foundation for the setting and seeding of misdirection during birth through the simple use of language; she also explains the use of language as a positive influence on a mother's sense of well- being and the resultant effect on the brain's chemistry.
- Demonstrates how fear and the suggestion of something going wrong interrupt the limbic brain function; and when the limbic brain function is clouded or in retreat, how the fight or flight responses in the reptilian brain take over and slow and delay labor.
- Presents the latest evidence from leading scientists and biologists that support a change in the brain chemistry, and how this will change the person's belief about that experience.
- Explains why women fall captive to the idea of pain and suffering and loss through mere suggestion during the intense experience of pregnancy and labor.
- Examines the affect of positive suggestion, and how helping a woman remain calm, focused, relaxed and in touch with her body and her baby, encourages the natural responses in the woman's body to release her infant in shorter times with less intense discomfort.
- Shows how by utilizing the concepts of "mirror neurons" to connect with the infant, the mother both participates and guides her infant through the birthing process.
- Teaches care providers, mothers and fathers to release whatever might be blocking them from achieving their birth experience, their way.
Listen to Kathy Welter-Nichols' NLP Beach Induction in mp3!
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) refers to language (words, as well as other symbol systems, such as physical posture, gestures and related non-verbal forms of communication) as a function of the nervous system and its transformation into 'subjective experience'. Put more simply, it focuses on the way we use our five senses to create an internal map of our reality, which we then use to navigate our way through the world. It is a basic premise of NLP that the quality of our 'maps' dictates the quality of our lives.
The findings of this workshop series are based in the training Kathy has provided for women and in her own in depth study of the triune brain system, archetypal studies, and the myths of our feminine and masculine that are playing out today in the birthing dramas we see on television and in the labor rooms in hospitals and birthing centers.
Midwives, nurses, obstetricians and parents that Kathy has birthed with have seen the difference and remarked at the presence of the mother, the control she has during the birth experience and ultimately the incredible bonds that occur with both mother and infant un-medicated through relatively short labors. Science as the partner in birth takes on a whole new relevance in support of this model for change.
Time after time, mothers under this kind of guidance give birth with success and empowerment. If these techniques are that effective, why aren't more women choosing this path to birth?
This is a 3-hour prerecorded program.
Cost: $15.00
Certificate of Completion: $7.50 (completion of post-session questionnaire required).
Continuing Education Units are available for some professional groups. To view a listing of CEU opportunities, click here.


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Welcome! B&B is now Blades and Bushlore!
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Good idea, OP. And some nice pictures so far. I'll see if I can find some of my favorites in my photobucket account...
Zammer, I love the way that serpent looks like it's going to eat the guy's head! AWESOME photo.
PW, can you explain a little more about these bracketed pictures, I got no clue what you're talking about.
Great shots, guys! Thanks for playing!I would give my left family jewel for a DSLR! I have my 35mm gear packed away, and only use it occasionally when I get serious. With the post-processing treatment, I went to an open-source program called Gimp. What I do, PW, is create multiple layers, and then stack them to get the vibrant colors and contrast I used to get with Kodachrome.
....Taking pictures of my daughter is pretty frustrating with a pocket camera because of the lag between pressing the shutter button and the actual picture. With the "big" camera it takes the shot immediately before those fleeting expressions are gone. ...
Canon 5DmkII, 100-400LRTH eats snake...snake tries to eat RTH.
Quote from: dsmjon on June 10, 2012, 02:43:52 PMCanon 5DmkII, 100-400LRTH eats snake...snake tries to eat RTH.Really enjoyed this photo. Nature in Action!
reckon thats getting yer moneys worth!!!very cool OP...woods
Quote from: woodsrunner on June 13, 2012, 09:45:24 PMreckon thats getting yer moneys worth!!!very cool OP...woodsI reckon that saw is older than you and me put together!
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Cheick Hamala Diabate: Tiny Desk Concert
There was an awful lot of dancing going on the first time I stumbled upon the music of Cheick Hamala Diabate. On the dance floor at U Street's Tropicalia that night was a rich cross-section of D.C. life, all entranced by the music of Mali.
Malian tradition lies at the heart and foot-stomping soul of Cheick Hamala Diabate and his band, but their melodies and undeniable rhythms cut across age and ethnicity. Diabate primarily plays the ngoni and the banjo; think of the ngoni as a great-grandfather to the banjo and it all makes sense, because both instruments share the ability to convey melody and plucked percussive rhythm.
Diabate is from Kita in Mali and born into a family of griots, or storytellers; his first cousin is the legendary kora player Toumani Diabate. Cheick Hamala Diabate makes his home these days in a Maryland suburb a few miles over the D.C. line, and his musicians are American-born and inspired by this lively lyrical music, which often tells a tale about Mali and its people as part of the sway and shake. It's an honor to witness such a cross-section of cultures finding a common bond in music.
Set List
Producer: Bob Boilen; Editor: Parker Miles Blohm; Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait; Videographers: Denise DeBelius, Gabriella Garcia-Pardo
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.