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I signed up for the Walt Disney World Marathon in 2006, trained for three weeks—and bailed. Two years later, I did the same thing. This year I'm scheduled to run the New York City Marathon on November 7. I have trained—diligently—for nearly 12 months. Barring disaster, I will finish my first 26.2. So what finally sparked me to stick with the program?
My mind-set changed, says Edward Deci, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of Rochester. "For your first attempts, running was probably something you thought you should do—to be well thought of by others," Deci says. "Over time, it became something you want to do, rather than thinking it's something you should do."
Bingo. My Disney debacles were born of "should." I wanted to lose weight, and desperately hoped the act of signing up would push my XXL frame to the starting line. This time, I want to make it to the finish line, and so I made my mission public on a blog. If I lose weight, that's a bonus.
More From Runner's World
According to Deci, our dedication to running won't last if it's fueled primarily by outside or superficial influences, or what researchers call extrinsic motivation. On the flip side, if you run because it's fun or stimulating in some way—like I get a kick out of the reader responses to my blog—you're much more likely to stick with it. Experts call that intrinsic motivation.
Runners who possess this inner drive, experts say, have successfully tapped into three powerful human desires. "We all have innate needs to feel competent, to relate to others, and have a sense of freedom about how we do something," says Jay Kimiecik, Ph.D., a professor of exercise psychology at Miami University in Ohio and author of The Intrinsic Exerciser. For runners, competence is the feeling that you're getting better over time. With relatedness, running makes you feel like you're part of a community. And autonomy is about having control over whether you run—your spouse or doctor isn't forcing you into it.
The following six runners overcame their motivation hurdles because they found a way to make running resonate with at least one of these basic needs. In the end, they made running stick—and so can you.
Occupation: Obstetrician/Gynecologist
Residence: Mill Valley, California
WHAT MOTIVATES HER: Positive Thinking
Before she had kids, Jennifer Gunter ran to stay in shape. Her boyfriend (now husband) ran marathons, so she trained with him and "trotted" a few half and full marathons. While she liked how running kept her fit, she never felt like an accomplished runner. A driven doctor, she felt out of her element in sports. When she ran, she often thought, This hurts, and I'll never be very good.
Then Gunter got pregnant and delivered triplets 14 weeks premature in 2003. One died at birth, and her two surviving boys spent months in the hospital. Oliver required two surgeries for heart defects, and Victor had cerebral palsy. Gunter had little time left to run, and it faded into the background.
After years of physical and occupational therapy, Oliver and Victor—now age 7—have accomplished more than any specialist predicted. Gunter encourages her boys with household mottos, such as "Just one more" and "You can do it." Recently, Victor had to punch through a wooden board to earn his yellow-stripe belt in tae kwon do. As his anxious mother watched, he smashed the board on the first try. "At first I was scared," Victor told her, "but then I told myself, If I believe I can do it, then I can do it."
Inspired by her son's positive attitude, Gunter bought a pair of running shoes. "Unlike my sons', my lungs, heart, and muscles work just fine; it was my head that didn't," she says. "Whenever I feel self-doubt, I whisper the affirmations I use for my boys."
She began to run regularly again, without paying attention to her watch. "I don't care anymore if I am fast or slow, I just get out there," says Gunter. Ironically, once she stopped focusing on her times, she ran faster. These days, Gunter is even thinking of running another marathon. "Shame on me for thinking I couldn't do something," she says. "It's my choice whether I think positively or negatively. I've finally realized that 'the win' is in the trying."
Why Affirmations Work
Gunter is off to a good start, says Professor Kimiecik. She emphasizes autonomy—using phrases like "my choice"—over outcome or results. She has realized that it doesn't matter how "well" she runs, what matters is that she can run. And by shedding her concerns over performance, she's actually become a stronger, more competent runner.
Make It Work for You
When even Olympians like Kara Goucher admit to struggling with self-doubt, it's easy for the rest of us to fall into the trap of thinking I'll never be good enough. And once you start to feel like you're lagging behind, it's tempting to give up and quit. If you're putting too much pressure on yourself to run faster, run longer, or shed more weight, consider dropping specific time or weight goals for a while. "Run how and when you want," says Kimiecik. "This brings more perceived choice into your running (autonomy) and leads to improvement and a sense of competence."
Gunter's Motivation Meter (Scale: 0-5)
Occupation: Creator and CEO, Invisible Shoes
Residence: Boulder, Colorado
WHAT MOTIVATES HIM: Competition
Growing up and through early adulthood, Steven Sashen had always been athletic. If it was fun, competitive, and social, he was interested. He competed in gymnastics and experimented with circus arts. After several injuries, he gave up his high-flying pursuits and started looking for another sport to fill the void. A friend told him about masters' racing, and at age 45, he started running.
It took Sashen close to two years to figure out the sport: He tried different training routines and learned the value of recovery and listening to his body. Today, he's half a second away from being an All-American master's sprinter in his age group in the 100-meter dash. In August, he ran a 12.4 in the Rocky Mountain Masters Games in Fort Collins, Colorado. He needs to hit 11.9 to earn a coveted top-25 ranking in his age group. "That carrot is really tasty-looking," he says.
A former stand-up comic, software developer, and now entrepreneur in the running-sandal business, Sashen is a determined individualist, and running suits his personality perfectly. Training and racing satisfy his competitive drive, and he enjoys the camaraderie of other sprinters and the opportunity to meet people from all over the world. "There are a lot of interesting people who are smart and fun," he says. "But let's not leave out that I love being on the track and beating some high school kid and then saying to him, 'Dude, I'm older than your dad.'"
Why Racing Works
Racing fulfills Sashen's need for competence—there's always a time goal to chase or a higher ranking to achieve, says motivational expert Philip M. Wilson, Ph.D., associate professor of physical education and kinesiology at Brock University in Ontario. He has control over his running because he devises his own training plan and executes his own racing strategy, but the group dynamic of the track allows him to feel part of a bigger community.
Make It Work for You
Find a foe. Healthy competition can make you a stronger, more competent runner, says Edwin Locke, Ph.D., emeritus professor of leadership and motivation at the University of Maryland. Make bets, set up weekly races with friends, or participate in training races sponsored by local running clubs. Or if you run alone, set mini-goals like picking off the runner ahead of you. Engaging in friendly rivalries puts you in charge of your performance (autonomy) while fostering a sense of community (relatedness).
Sashen's Motivation Meter
Occupation: Owner, Rockin' Running Tours
Residence: Memphis, Tennessee
WHAT MOTIVATES HIM: Taking Charge
John Lintner was working 12-hour shifts as a nurse when he developed an addiction to painkillers. It eventually cost him his job and his first marriage and led to six car accidents. After his last wreck—one in which he walked away after hitting a small tree and light pole going 100 miles per hour—he went to jail. He was fitted with an ankle bracelet and sentenced to house arrest.
After that, Lintner says he was ready to change his ways. "I was on the phone with a friend who said he felt the best he had ever felt in his life," says Lintner. "From running." The friend was preparing for a marathon. "He said training was a big adventure and a test of will and that there was no feeling like crossing the finish line. I knew at that point I wanted to run a marathon."
Unable to run outside, Lintner bought a treadmill for his house and set goals for himself: Run five miles. Run 10. "Running helped me deal with the enormous amount of anger I had built up inside over my downfall," he says. "It allowed me to channel my anger into something awesome. I always felt good about myself after running."
Lintner ran his first 26.2, the Mississippi Blues Marathon in Jackson, Mississippi, in January 2008—with an ankle bracelet and approval from his corrections officer
Lintner completed his house arrest in September 2008. He's since finished a total of four marathons and started his own business—Rockin' Running Tours, a guide service in Memphis. "Running has been therapeutic for me," he says. "Whenever I'm feeling toxic, frustrated, angry, or down, my wife will tell me, 'Look, John, you need to go for a run.' I don't take pills anymore. Running is my valium."
Why Seizing Control Works
"The whole idea of being on house arrest is the antithesis of autonomy," Wilson says. For Lintner, running became something over which he had control. He also used running to fulfill his strong need for competence, which was obviously limited by his confinement, says Wilson. "He met incremental challenges and moved on from them—run five miles, then 10, then a marathon, then build a company."
Make It Work for You
We're all constrained by something—demanding jobs, busy kids, endless home repairs. It's common to get caught up and feel like you're not making progress. In order to feel like you're improving (becoming more competent), you need to set clear goals—ones that are specific and challenging rather than vague and openended, says Locke. For example, "Run five miles by December 31" is a more effective goal than, "Lose weight next year."
Lintner's Motivation Meter
Karena Dawn 29
Occupation: Personal Trainers
Residence: Manhattan Beach, California
WHAT MOTIVATES THEM: Camaraderie
You'd think a pair of personal trainers would be supermotivated, but Katrina Hodgson and Karena Dawn often struggled to stay on track with their own fitness. "It's hard to work out after working on other people's goals all day," Hodgson says. "You start to think about your client's health more than your own. A gym for most trainers is their office, and when work is over, you want to go home. Motivation is tough for everyone."
To escape the office, they started running; to stay committed to it, they turned to each other. They exchange morning phone calls and text messages to rouse each other out of bed, and work together to overcome everyday obstacles that tend to derail workouts. When a six-mile run coincided with laundry day, the two went to the Laundromat, threw a load in, ran three miles, returned to swap the clothes out, then went out for three more.
"One of us always wants to train, so we're more consistent," says Hodgson. She and Dawn now regularly run races together. "Most runners run alone, compete alone, and finish alone, and the feeling of accomplishment goes away until the next race," says Hodgson. "The feeling of crossing a finish line with someone you love and care for is more rewarding than I ever thought."
Why Friends Help
These two have nailed it. They each fulfilled their need for autonomy, and took charge of their personal situation—they wanted to get fitter, and running was the way to do it. Running together enhanced the experience. And as a result of that relatedness, they run more frequently and have gotten better at it, which improves their feelings of competence. "Intrinsic running geniuses!" Kimiecik says.
Make It Work for You
The collective wisdom of your local running group not only provides a physical but a psychological boost as well. "For some people who don't have confidence naturally, another person expressing confidence can be a big help," Locke says. "It motivates them to try and build on success." You can also go viral. Tweet, blog, or join The Loop, RW's online forum for runners (runnersworld.com/comm/home).
Hodgson & Dawn's Motivation Meter
Occupation: Human Resources Trainer
Residence: Huntsville, Alabama
WHAT MOTIVATES HER: Feeling Good
For 10 years, Lisa Hall could barely walk. She was plagued by fatigue, incessant ear ringing, and shortterm memory loss. She constantly felt faint. Her poor health stumped dozens of doctors until she met a cardiologist in 2002 who diagnosed her condition as an autonomic disorder in which her brain improperly processed stimuli. The medication he prescribed increased the blood flow to Hall's brain and, over time, alleviated 90 percent of her symptoms. Today, Hall can work, drive—and run. "The endorphin rush is addictive," says Hall, who started running to lose weight (and has since lost 20 pounds). "But I also love the feeling of my body in motion. I think this stems from years of physical limitations."
Hall ran her first half-marathon, the Oak Barrel Half-Marathon in Lynchburg, Tennessee, in April. She sent her father the photo of her crossing the finish line—the culmination of a long medical journey and a potent symbol of the freedom and independence she's gained. "He just cried, and I did, too," she says.
Hall is now using her experiences to help others. She has written a book—Taking Charge of Your Own Health—that helps patients navigate the complexities of health care. In her position as a human resources trainer, she's drawing from her running experience to provide tips and advice on healthy living in her company's newsletter.
In December, Hall will run her first marathon, the Rocket City Marathon in Huntsville, Alabama. "I prefer distance over speed because I enjoy running so much that I want to do it for as long as possible," she says. "I lost an entire decade. I'm scrambling to make up for lost time."


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The Catalina SBX carries on the Coachmen tradition of being a leader to the great outdoors. The new Catalina SBX Show Buster Extreme is the ideal RV for those looking for a high quality camper with just the right amount of amenities often found in more expensive models. Catalina SBX makes camping affordable for every family.The Catalina Legacy Edition appeals to a broad breadth of RV lifestyles ranging from weekend use all the way to extended use and just about every use in between. With choices designed to fit almost any budget, the new Coachmen Catalina Legacy Edition provides an abundance of value at one of the most aggressively priced travel trailers on the market.
360 Videos featured on this website are not of actual unit, options, colors, etc. may vary. Due to the extremely high volume of sales, and the sheer happiness that our customers experience coupled with the tremendous amounts of referrals that we receive we have trouble keeping up with our inventory even though we update it every two hours during business days. Please call to verify that we still have the unit available for viewing before coming to the lot. You are always welcome, just wanted to throw that out there. For your browsing, we have made every effort to ensure accuracy in the information provided. Specification, equipment, technical data, photographs and illustrations are based on information available at time of posting and are subject to change without notice. To receive or verify current product information, please contact the dealership. Any prices listed on this site do not include tax, title, documentary, and registration fees. All Prices on NEW units includes prep, freight, PDI, DEMO, FULL LP. Keystone RV Center is not responsible for typographical errors. All information subject to change without notice.
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subset: commoncrawl


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According to several tipsters, Teleflora is sending apologies and coupons to people who complained about the company's sexist Super Bowl ad, but it isn't the first time the online florist has delivered a misogynistic message.
During the Super Bowl, Teleflora ran this commercial, which shows talking rotten flowers insulting a woman, snapping, "no one wants to see you naked." The comments on Teleflora's Flower Blog sum up how offended people were by the ad, but don't think that only ten people bothered to complain to the company. According to a tip, the company has been rotating the ten different complaints, and the angry comment the tipster submitted still hasn't shown up.
Several readers emailed the company directly with their complaints, and forwarded us the following response from Teleflora:
We are very sorry that we offended you in any way by our commercial.
Despite the fact that we have been around for 75 years, we are a small
company and it was our sincere desire to break through the clutter with
our advertising. Teleflora is proud to support our network of 20,000
local florists around the country. These are small businesses who make
up the backbone of our country.
May we send you a $15 gift certificate along with our sincerest apology?
Our hope is that you can see for yourself the Teleflora difference of a
hand-designed and hand-arranged bouquet, delivered by your local
$15 off per order valid through 2/10/09
Promo Code: SBOWL
Thank you for being in touch.
Though Teleflora claims it was innocently trying to create memorable ads, it's not the first time that the company has used insensitive language in its promotions. Last Mother's Day, the Wall Street Journal reported that Teleflora had to apologize after sponsoring an "America's Favorite Mom" contest on NBC. Among the various categories in which moms could be nominated — including "military mom," "single mom," and "working mom," — was the "non-mom mom," which the now-closed website described as the "grandparent, stepmom, or mom to adopted children, each one raising and loving a child," according to This Woman's Work. After complaints, Teleflora changed the name of the category to "Adoptive Moms" and issued a statement saying, "After closer examination, we can see how this may have been offensive to moms who have adopted children — moms who are indeed real moms to their children in every sense of the word."
But apparently the company didn't examine itself closely enough, judging from the fact that their Super Bowl ad is still posted on the front page of their website — sans apology — along with their "guy's guide," which aims to help men pick out Valentine's Day flowers by matching the blooms to a woman's personality. The only hard part is deciding whether your loved one is an "it girl," "the girl next door," a "girly girl," an "uptown girl," or the "free spirit" who "has her own ideas about the world." (Yes, some women can think for themselves!)
The website also displays two of the other commercials in the "creepy degrading flowers" campaign, which are arguably even worse than the Super Bowl ad.
In this spot, a woman's coworkers send her flowers to congratulate her on her new baby, but the talking flowers say, "hello baby, goodbye promotion."
And in this ad, a woman's siblings send her flowers which insult her for being a philosophy major and make a crack about her inability to keep a boyfriend.
Related: Non-Mom Mishap at 'America's Favorite Mom' Contest [Wall Street Journal]
So Awesome [This Woman's Work]
Earlier:Personal Foul: Super Bowl Ads Delivery Old-Fashioned Sexism


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Published: 24.06.2011
The idea is simple, says Kevin Moeller, PhD, and yet it has huge implications. All we are recommending is using photovoltaic cells (clean energy) to power electrochemical reactions (clean chemistry). Moeller is the first to admit this isn't new science.
"But we hope to change the way people do this kind of chemistry by making a connection for them between two existing technologies," he says.
To underscore the simplicity of the idea, Moeller and his co-authors used a $6 solar cell sold on the Internet and intended to power toy cars to run reactions described in an article published in Green Chemistry.
If their suggestion were widely adopted by the chemical industry, it would eliminate the toxic byproducts currently produced by a class of reactions commonly used in chemical synthesis — and with them the environmental and economic damage they cause.
"Electrochemistry can oxidize molecules with any oxidation potential, because the electrode voltage can be tuned or adjusted, or I can run the reaction in such a way that it adjusts itself. So I have tremendous versatility for doing things," says Kevin Moeller, professor of chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis. Moreover, the byproduct of electrochemical oxidation is hydrogen gas, so this too is a clean process. Bit electrochemistry can be only as green as the source of the electricity. The answer is to use the cleanest possible energy, solar energy captured by photovoltaic cells, to run electrochemical reactions.
[Credit: David Kilper/WUSTL]
The trouble with oxidation reactions
Moeller, a professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, is an organic chemist, who makes and manipulates molecules made mainly of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. One important tool for synthesizing organic molecules — an enormous category that includes everything from anesthetics to yarn — is the oxidation reaction.
"They are the one tool we have that allows us to increase the functionality of a molecule, to add more "handles" to it by which it can be manipulated," says Moeller.
"Molecules interact with each other through combinations of atoms known as functional groups," he explains. "Ketones, alcohols or amines are all functional groups. The more functional groups you have on a molecule, the more you can control how the molecule interacts with others."
"Oxidation reactions attach functional groups to a molecule," he continues. "If I have a hydrocarbon that consists of nothing but carbon and hydrogen atoms bonded together, and I want to convert it to an alcohol, a ketone or an amine, I have to oxidize it."
In an oxidation reaction, an electron is removed from a molecule. But that electron has to go somewhere, so every oxidation reaction is paired with a reduction reaction, where an electron is added to a second molecule.
The problem, says Moeller, is that "that second molecule is a waste product; it's not something you want."
One example, he says, is an industrial alcohol oxidation that uses the oxidant chromium to convert an alcohol into a ketone. In the process the chromium, originally chromium VI, picks up electrons and becomes chromium IV. Chromium IV is the waste product of the oxidation reaction.
In this case, there is a partial solution. Sodium periodate is used to recycle the highly toxic chromium IV. A salt, the sodium periodate dissociates in solution and the periodate ion (an iodine atom with attached oxygens) interacts with the chromium, restoring it to its original oxidation state.
The catch is that restoring the chromium destroys the periodate. In addition, the process is inefficient; three equivalents of periodate is consumed for every equivalent of desired product produced.
Seeking cleaner byproducts
"All chemical oxidations have a byproduct, says Moeller, so the question is not whether there will be a byproduct but what that byproduct will be. People have starting thinking about how they might run oxidations where the reduced byproduct is something benign."
"If you use oxygen to do the oxidation, the byproduct is water, and that is a gentle process," he says.
But there is a catch. Like all other molecules, oxygen has a set oxidation potential, or willingness to accept electrons. "So whatever I want to oxidize in solution has to have an oxidation potential that matches oxygen's. If it doesn't, I might have to change my whole reaction around to make sure I can use oxygen. And when I change the whole reaction around, maybe it doesn't run as well as it used to. So I'm limited in what I can do," Moeller says.
There's another way to do it. "Electrochemistry can oxidize molecules with any oxidation potential, because the electrode voltage can be tuned or adjusted, or I can run the reaction in such a way that it adjusts itself. So I have tremendous versatility for doing things," says Moeller.
Moreover, the byproduct of electrochemical oxidation is hydrogen gas, so this too is a clean process.
But again there is a catch. Electrochemistry can be only as green as the source of the electricity. If the oxidation reaction is running clean, but the electricity comes from a coal-fired plant, the problem has not been avoided, just displaced.
The answer is to use the cleanest possible energy, solar energy captured by photovoltaic cells, to run electrochemical reactions.
"That's what the Green Chemistry article is about," says Moeller. "It's a proof-of-principle paper that says it's easy to make this work, and it works just like reactions that don't use photovoltaics, so the chemical reaction doesn't have to be changed around."
The next step
The Green Chemistry article demonstrated the method by directly oxidizing molecules at the electrode. No chemical reagent was used. Since writing the article, Moeller's group has been studying how solar-powered electrochemistry might be used to recycle chemical oxidants in a clean way.
Why would manufacturers choose to use a chemical oxidant, if the voltage of the electrode can be matched to the oxidation potential of the molecule that must be oxidized?
"An electrode selects purely on oxidation potential," Moeller explains. "A chemical reagent does not. The binding properties of the chemical reagent might differ from one part of the molecule to another. And there's also something called steric hindrance, which means that one part of the molecule might physically block access to an oxidation site, forcing substrates to other sites on the reagent."
"The chemistry community has learned how to use chemical reagents to make reactions selective," he says. "The reagents are usually expensive and toxic, so they are recycled," he says. "We are working on cleaning up reagent recycling."
In the chromium oxidation described above, for example, chromium IV could be recycled electrochemically instead of through a reaction with periodate. Instead of periodate waste[consistent with description above where periodate consumed?], the reaction would produce hydrogen gas as the byproduct.
"Another example is an industrial process for carrying out alcohol oxidations that convert the alcohol group to a carbonyl group," says Moeller. This process uses TEMPO, a complex chemical reagent discovered in 1960. TEMPO is expensive so it is recycled by the addition of bleach. This regenerates the TEMPO but produces sodium chloride as a byproduct."
In small quantities sodium chloride is table salt, but in industrial quantities it is a waste product whose disposal is costly. Once again, the TEMPO can be recycled using electrochemistry, a process that produces hydrogen as the only byproduct.
"We can't make all of chemical synthesis cleaner by hitching solar power to electrochemistry," Moeller says, "but we can fix the oxidation reactions that people use. And maybe that will inspire someone else to come up with simple and innovative solutions to other types of reactions they're interested in."


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Loy Betty (Painter) Boling, 100, died Saturday May 26, 2012 in Dewey.
Graveside services will be held at 2:00 PM Friday June 1, 2012 at the Mountain Vale Memorial Park Cemetery in Canon City, Colorado, directed by the Stumpff Funeral Home & Crematory of Bartlesville, Oklahoma. The family will receive friends Wednesday from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM in the Stumpff Funeral Home.
Loy spent her childhood years in the Cookson Hills, Weber's Falls and Black Gum Mountain area. As an adult she lived in the Springfield and Canon City, Colorado areas and in the Antlers and Dewey, Oklahoma areas.
Loy was a woman who loved deeply. She loved her God; her siblings, her husbands, her son and daughter, her grandchildren, great grandchildren, great great grandchildren, and her extended family and friends. She also had a passion for the simple beauty of nature: the forests, mountains, high plains, and rivers and streams of cool clear water. Loy also enjoyed the simple pleasures of daily life, especially sharing a cup of coffee and a good piece of pie with whoever was available at the time.
Loy was a real cowgirl who also loved the bling of her rhinestones. At 97 years of age she was still wearing her cowboy boots, Wranglers and rhinestone shirts every day. She was also a nurse, a carpenter, a gardener, a seamstress, a dancer, and an explorer. One of her favorite activities was traveling and visiting new locations in her camper. She appreciated all of God's creatures but she was especially drawn to the beauty of horses, cardinals, and mockingbirds. Loy was a woman of great faith, busy hands, and a satisfied mind.
Survivors include; her son Lee Painter of Antlers, Oklahoma; 5 grandchildren Patti Barnes of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, Linda Banks of Dewey, Jerry Dowell of Oklahoma City, Steven Painter of Antlers, Oklahoma and Kimberly Cooper of Springfield, Colorado; 13 great grandchildren and 10 great great grandchildren. Loy was preceded in death by her parents Thomas J. and Minny (Hamilton) Brown, five husbands; one daughter Rozell Dowell; two grandsons Steven Kent Dowell and Mike Painter; one great granddaughter, Heather Dowell; one great great grandson Ryan Barnes and eight brothers and sisters.


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Hello writers!Forgive me if this has been discussed already or elsewhere, but are there particular publishing companies or literary agents that are known to have a penchant for unsolicited rhyming picture books? I have completed my second rhyming picture book (first one has been accepted for publication and will be out in March 2021 but the publisher only deals with certain subject matter and this second manuscript does not fit the bill) and am having trouble finding where/who to send it to. Any leads would be appreciated! Thanks in advance.
Leonie, I just sent you a private message with a first page from a rhyming book called "Surfer Chick." I wasn't sure if I could post it here since I used three stanzas straight from the book, but you'll see where one line has one less syllable but it works because the stresses are the same in the repeating pattern. Let me know if you didn't get the message!
Thank you, Debbie! These rhyming resources are terrific!
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With your purchase of 1 quantity you will receive the following:
-Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Poster #2 (18x12 in)
These posters are printed on VERY HIGH QUALITY photo paper! They are very durable and do not tear unless you intentionally try to (LOL). The poster will not be folded or creased when we ship it to you, it will be rolled up in a cylinder! :)


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Their once comfortable lead has dwindled to next to nothing. Their goaltending situation is unsettled. Their top defenseman is injured after taking a hit to the head. Their mood turned dark and angry after failing to eliminate a suddenly resurgent opponent.
The San Jose Sharks pushed the Kings to the brink of elimination with three consecutive victories to start their first-round playoff series. The Kings then pushed back with back-to-back wins to set up a pivotal Game 6 Monday night at Staples Center.
Only three teams in Stanley Cup playoff history have rallied from a 3-0 deficit to win a best-of-7 series. The Kings took two confident steps toward becoming the fourth with wins in Games 4 and 5, prompting serious questions about the Sharks' recent play.
For starters, San Jose coach Todd McLellan couldn't say Sunday whether Antti Niemi or Alex Stalock would play in goal Monday night. Niemi started the first five games of the series but failed to finish for the second consecutive contest Saturday when he was pulled from Game 5 early in the second period.
Then there was the question of the availability of Sharks defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic, who left Saturday's game after Kings center Jarret Stoll hit him along the boards and was penalized for roughing at 14:09 of the first period.
Vlasic didn't practice with his teammates Sunday and McClellan told Bay Area reporters the veteran might make the trip to Los Angeles for Game 6. Matt Irwin could replace Vlasic in the Sharks' lineup tonight and make his first appearance in the series.
Dan Boyle, another top Sharks defenseman, sought to put San Jose's loss in Game 5 in its proper perspective. Boyle, surrounded by reporters, then reacted angrily when several asked if the Sharks went into Saturday's game with the wrong mentality.
"We didn't win the game," Boyle said after the Kings shut out the Sharks 3-0 and outshot them 41-30. "Listen, man, you guys do want to dissect it. We didn't win the game. You can blame a lot of different things, but we've got to turn the page and move on."
Another reporter asked if the Sharks believed they could take "a mulligan" if Game 5 didn't pan out.
"Did we go out there and think we had three cracks at this?" Boyle asked a reporter, his voice rising noticeably as his session unfolded and same questions continued to be framed in new and different ways. "I can't believe that's your question. But no, we did not."
Meanwhile, Kings goaltender Jonathan Quick and coach Darryl Sutter made it seem they would rather be seated in a dentist's chair getting a root canal rather than analyze the team's best showing in the series to date. Their question-and-answer sessions weren't as terse as Boyle's.
"It's not easy to win against this team," Quick said of the Sharks after recording his eighth career playoff shutout. "They're a great team for a reason, too. We're fortunate to get a second win. We've got Game 6 (Monday night), so we have to focus on winning another one."
Sutter's postgame press conference lasted less than one minute and his longest response was only nine words. He seemed put off by having to participate in a formal setting and having to stand at a lectern with seated reporters asking questions with the aid of a microphone.


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A Sorry Spectacle
The uninspiring saga of the United States' World Expo pavilion in Shanghai.
On May 1, Expo 2010, the largest and most expensive world's fair in history, will open on 2.5 square miles of prime Shanghai riverbank for a six-month run that its hosts hope will help bolster the city's global reputation. Although largely overlooked by the American public, Expo 2010 has not been overlooked by the U.S. secretary of state's office: For more than a year, Hillary Clinton has spent considerable time and effort raising private money to pay for the construction of a U.S. pavilion to showcase American technology, culture, and achievement to the event's expected 90 million international attendees. Unfortunately, this particular effort at public diplomacy has faltered repeatedly; the behind-the-scenes saga may best be remembered for allegations of nepotism, frictions with the Chinese government and Expo organizers, and a mediocre, uninspiring pavilion design.
On May 1, Expo 2010, the largest and most expensive world's fair in history, will open on 2.5 square miles of prime Shanghai riverbank for a six-month run that its hosts hope will help bolster the city's global reputation. Although largely overlooked by the American public, Expo 2010 has not been overlooked by the U.S. secretary of state's office: For more than a year, Hillary Clinton has spent considerable time and effort raising private money to pay for the construction of a U.S. pavilion to showcase American technology, culture, and achievement to the event's expected 90 million international attendees. Unfortunately, this particular effort at public diplomacy has faltered repeatedly; the behind-the-scenes saga may best be remembered for allegations of nepotism, frictions with the Chinese government and Expo organizers, and a mediocre, uninspiring pavilion design.
World Expos, despite the quaint and archaic image they evoke for many Americans, remain for much of the world major events, considered third only to the Olympics and World Cups for viewer interest and as marketing opportunities. They are highly sought-after events, viewed — like the Olympics — as nation-branding exercises for both hosts and guests. And from their origins, pavilion architecture has been the favored means of presenting a country's technology, wealth, and ingenuity. During the Cold War in particular, U.S. pavilions received elaborate public funding and support and employed some of the country's best architects and engineers. But in 1994, in the wake of diplomatic spats, congressional loss of interest in public diplomacy, and American loss of interest in Expos, Congress passed a law preventing the (now defunct) United States Information Agency (USIA) from spending any money on Expos without an express authorization and appropriation by Congress. Henceforth, funding for U.S. pavilions had to come from the private sector — an expenditure that few American companies were interested in making (thus, Toyota sponsored the U.S. pavilion at Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan). Meanwhile, most other countries continued providing public funding — in some cases, supplemented with private sponsorships.
Despite nearly two decades of U.S. government inattention to Expos, some in the State Department and the U.S. Expo community had hopes that the United States might put on a better show in Shanghai. In November 2006, the State Department, which had taken over the role of managing U.S. participation at Expos from the USIA, published an official "request for proposal" (RFP) to design, build, and fund a U.S. pavilion in Shanghai. Among other provisions, it required a detailed plan for raising a hefty $75 million to $100 million even though most of the national pavilions at Expo 2010 cost less than $30 million and the eventual U.S. pavilion is budgeted at $61 million. Despite this high bar, several groups of designers, architects, and producers submitted detailed proposals, including a proposal that had Frank Gehry as an architect. But the State Department rejected them all, and according to correspondence shared between the department and the last rejected proposal group, the RFP ended in late 2007 without a team in place.
The State Department has refused repeated requests to discuss the RFP and the reasons that the submissions failed. However, at least one of the groups that submitted an unsuccessful bid has raised concerns about the sincerity and fairness of the process and the State Department officials who oversaw it. Moreover, the State Department has a controversial history in administering U.S. Expo involvement since the mid-1990s, including an inspector general's 1999 finding that well-intentioned State Department employees might have violated the law in their single-minded effort to ensure U.S. participation in a 1998 expo.
In this case, what happened after the unsuccessful RFP process is shrouded in secrecy, which the State Department has refused repeated requests to clear up. Here's what we do know: In March 2008, months after the close of the competitive bid process, the State Department abruptly announced that it had awarded authorization to design, build, and fundraise a U.S. pavilion to two former Warner Bros. executives. One of those leaders — Ellen Eliasoph, a current partner at Covington & Burling in Beijing — is the wife of a top Commerce Department official, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Asia Ira Kasoff. Kasoff is a senior U.S. official working on trade access issues between the United States and China; he is also a former Foreign Service officer based in China. Eliasoph and her partner in Expo 2010, Nick Winslow, were, at the time of the authorization, just two private citizens; only after the authorization, and at the official, written, urging of the State Department, did they form a nonprofit, subsequently named Shanghai Expo 2010, Inc.
In the spring of 2009, I asked Eliasoph how her group was chosen, and she claimed that the selection process was competitive between "two or three teams," despite the fact that the RFP process had ended months earlier and her group hadn't been part of it. Meanwhile Winslow, a theme-park consultant perhaps best known for assisting on the special effects for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, gave me a different answer, telling me he had arranged the authorization by meeting with consular officials, State Department officials, and members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.
A year after those interviews, Jose Villarreal, appointed in 2009 by Clinton to be the pavilion's commissioner general — the U.S. government's diplomatic official who serves as the pavilion's final decision maker, official liaison, and public face — told me that the pavilion process, prior to his role in it, included "the good, the bad, and the ugly, and there's been a little bit of all of that." However, on the question of just how Shanghai Expo 2010, Inc. was selected, he was less specific, telling me that "a lot of people aren't there [at the State Department] anymore" and "a lot of what happened is kind of a blur." The State Department's Office of Inspector General has forwarded a private citizen's complaint that touches on this selection process directly to the secretary of state's executive office.
The absence of clarity on just how Shanghai Expo 2010, Inc. was chosen has likely had consequences for the U.S. image among Shanghai Expo officials, most of whom are senior Chinese government and Communist Party officials. A senior editor at one state-owned publication in Shanghai, for example, recently told me that "everyone knows Ellen got it because of her family connections." True or not, this isn't the image that the U.S. pavilion was supposed to embody. Shanghai Expo 2010, Inc. has repeatedly declined to answer my questions about the role of Commerce Department officials in the pavilion authorization process. In a recent, unpublished interview with another reporter, Eliasoph has denied any conflict between her husband's job and her role with the pavilion.
It wouldn't matter nearly so much if Shanghai Expo 2010, Inc. had performed to the level expected of it by the State Department. But the sad fact is that Eliasoph and Winslow raised almost no money from the time they were awarded the pavilion authorization, missed multiple construction deadlines, and, in the process, alienated large segments of the U.S. business community in Shanghai, as well as numerous Expo officials, according to several individuals in close contact with the Expo authorities and the expat business community. Finally, in the spring of 2009, Chinese Foreign Ministry officials, concerned and frustrated by the faltering U.S. effort, were forced to make personal appeals to Clinton to fix the situation. Shortly afterward, she appointed Villarreal, a friend and fundraiser from San Antonio, to take control of the situation as the commisioner general — a position that had been previously unfulfilled.
Meanwhile, the State Department's apparently noncompetitive authorization of Shanghai Expo 2010, Inc. means that the group's architect and design weren't subject to a competitive review, a highly unusual procedure in selecting any $61 million building, much less one meant to represent the United States abroad (most of the other major Expo 2010 pavilions were selected in competition). The result is a dull, metal-clad, two-wing complex that's supposed to resemble an eagle. Inside, visitors will be subjected to "4-D" screenings of a film depicting the world of 2030 through the eyes of a Chinese-American woman who visited Expo 2010. This film, no surprise, is produced by longtime acquaintances of Shanghai Expo 2010, Inc.'s Warner Bros. founders.
William Bostwick, an architecture and design writer for Fast Company, commenting to me on the pavilion in light of the long-past era of great U.S. pavilions, such as the iconic, Buckminster Fuller-designed geodesic dome for Expo '67 in Montreal, notes: "The building is basically a giant movie theater — the architecture is totally secondary to the so-called '4-D multimedia' display inside." Bostwick's withering opinion is not an outlier; the U.S. architectural community has begun to take notice and their assessments are even harsher. It didn't have to be this way, and in fact, it's likely that — had Shanghai Expo 2010, Inc. been subjected to an architectural competition — the unimaginative design favored by the ex-Warner Bros. executives would not have been the choice of a review panel of even middling U.S. architects. Already, it has been eclipsed by better buildings and concepts located throughout the Expo grounds.
In addition, considerable suspicion revolves around how the $61 million — 92 percent of which has already been raised, largely due to the efforts of Clinton and Villarreal — is being spent. Alas, when I asked Villarreal if he would be willing to release the pavilion's budget, he demurred, telling me that the question would be more properly addressed to the pavilion's board of directors. In any case, the pavilion seems to have encountered financial problems, requiring, some say, a loan from the Chinese government to stay afloat.
The budget documents, if they exist, would likely go far to illuminate how, precisely, Shanghai Expo 2010 resurrected itself after informing the State Department in October 2008 that it was "shutting down" due to a shortage of "time and money." In two spring 2009 interviews, Nick Winslow informed me that he'd arranged a Chinese government loan for the purpose. Subsequently, the U.S. consul general in Shanghai informed me that Winslow had been misquoted. Villarreal, when I asked him about the loan last week, said that it may have been a misunderstanding based upon "semantics." "I had heard that the Chinese had done some preparatory foundational work [at the U.S. pavilion site]," he said. "Some might have characterized that as a loan."
Other fundraising questions persist, including a perceived conflict between Eliasoph's ongoing solicitation of funding from U.S. and Chinese companies while her husband, Kasoff, continues to oversee trade access issues for many of these same companies from the Commerce Department. When I asked the department about Kasoff's role, the chairman of Shanghai Expo 2010, Frank Lavin, explicitly declined to answer queries. (Villarreal told me he'd seen "no shred" of evidence of Kasoff's involvement in the pavilion.)
With less than two months until the opening of Expo 2010 and the nearly completed U.S. pavilion, there's little that anyone can do to rectify the mistakes already made. Hopefully, though, somebody at the State Department will exercise some leadership so that the same kind of debacle doesn't happen if the United States decides to participate at Expo 2015 in Milan. Villarreal, for one, concedes, "We have to find a better way to do World Expos."
More from Foreign Policy
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The peace plan is a big deal—and it's no accident that China brokered it.
The U.S.-Israel Relationship No Longer Makes Sense
If Israel and its supporters want the country to continue receiving U.S. largesse, they will need to come up with a new narrative.
Putin Is Trapped in the Sunk-Cost Fallacy of War
Moscow is grasping for meaning in a meaningless invasion.
How China's Saudi-Iran Deal Can Serve U.S. Interests
And why there's less to Beijing's diplomatic breakthrough than meets the eye.


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Thursday, November 13, 2014
The 2015 Blogging from A to Z April Challenge Team!
And the 2015 A to Z Team is...
...okay, well, technically the team is already up and running right now in 2014, so telling you it's the 2015 team is kinda/sorta misleading.
So, it's actually the 2014/2015 A to Z Team.
Maybe I should explain...take too long...let me sum up. :)
As the A to Z Challenge grows by leaps and bounds each year so does the list of A to Z Team Members.
There's a lot of behind the scenes work, that I won't bore you with, but just know that we need lots of great bloggers to organize such an amazing Challenge.
So, without further ado, here is your new A to Z Team line-up...
The Founder
Arlee Bird
The Veterans
Alex J. Cavanaugh
Jeremy Hawkins
Stephen Tremp
Nicole Ayers
Matthew MacNish (Returning)
The Staff Members
AJ Lauer
Pam Margolis
Heather M. Gardner
The Brave New Members
C. Lee McKenzie
S. L. Hennessy
Zalka Csenge
Susan Gourley
Lisa Buie-Collard
J.L. Campbell
John Holton
What a fantastic group of people!
Make sure to visit the A to Z Main Challenge Blog frequently to keep up with all the latest and greatest updates about our next Challenge and to meet some of these new members as they post on the blog!
Also, don't forget, all of these awesome people are going to need ambassadors/minions/helpers/assistants/teams/whooligans/alliances and/or sidekicks.
If you're interested in helping out the greatest Blog Challenge on the internet, stay tuned.
33 comments:
Good to see existing members we all know and love, equally good luck to the new members who I know will be successful in their new position.
- November 13, 2014 at 10:21 AM
- Alex J. Cavanaugh said...
Welcome newest members! We'll try not to kill you off...
- November 13, 2014 at 10:48 AM
- Hilary Melton-Butcher said...
Hi Heather - Founder, Ambassadors, Staff Members, Members et al and all of us lot who blog ...
Congratulations to one and all .. please count me out next year ... I shall be blogging but will be hampered and thus need to hold back - it may be fine - but I won't know til March/April time ...
I always enjoy the A-Z - one of the best things that's happened in the blogging world and has created a great community here ...
Cheers to one and all - Hilary
- November 13, 2014 at 10:48 AM
- Matthew MacNish said...
So glad to be involved with you all again!
- November 13, 2014 at 11:28 AM
- Weaver said...
What a great team of people. *sigh* I just wish my life wasn't so nuts ...
- November 13, 2014 at 11:52 AM
- Michelle Stanley said...
Reading these A to Z posts get me pepped up and excited about the 2015 challenge, which I'm looking forward to. Welcome to all new members!
- November 13, 2014 at 1:33 PM
- AJ Lauer said...
Go Team! It is going to be a great year! :D
- November 13, 2014 at 1:45 PM
- Jeremy [Retro] said...
We have had a great team over the years, I am still proud to be part of the expansion team... It's welcome new members, Hello again to returning, thank you Arlee and goodbye to those who are gone, not forgotten...
There's no earthly way of knowing.
Which direction we are going!
- November 13, 2014 at 2:25 PM
- Michelle Wallace said...
A new 2015 AtoZ Team!
Congrats to all the new team members!
- November 13, 2014 at 2:59 PM
- Karen Jones Gowen said...
Wonderful! Thanks for all you do to create a great challenge each year!
- November 13, 2014 at 3:00 PM
- Stephen Tremp said...
Now I feel organized. Thanks Heather. I'll stop by each team member and be sure I'm following their blog and any other social media sites they have.
- November 13, 2014 at 3:01 PM
- Susan Gourley/Kelley said...
Thanks for the warm welcome. Should I call it an honor or a privilege to be part of this incredible team? April will be even more exciting than usual.
- November 13, 2014 at 3:27 PM
Looks like a great group indeed! Wishing you every success with the 2015 Challenge!
- November 13, 2014 at 4:15 PM
- Chrys Fey said...
I am giving a round of applause to the team. What a great group! And I am looking forward to April. :D
- November 13, 2014 at 4:21 PM
- Sheena-kay Graham said...
I would love to help anyway that I can. Congrats to the 2015 team!
- November 13, 2014 at 5:03 PM
I love being on this team; more people to share cake with. 2015 will ROCK!
- November 13, 2014 at 5:09 PM
- A Tarkabarka Hölgy said...
Yay! I am very excited about being on the team. Being a minion was a great experience :)
- November 13, 2014 at 5:18 PM
- J.L. Campbell said...
Happy to be part of the team and looking forward to participating in the challenge. Found my theme today!!!
- November 13, 2014 at 5:31 PM
- Birgit said...
Salutations to all and enjoy every moment
- November 13, 2014 at 5:38 PM
- Arlee Bird said...
What a Team we have for 2015! Thank to the Team members for everything you've been doing so far and will be doing in the months to come. And the biggest thank you of all to all of the great bloggers who support A to Z and participate in the April event.
Arlee Bird
A Faraway View
- November 13, 2014 at 7:36 PM
- Heather M. Gardner said...
We are going to ROCK!
- November 13, 2014 at 8:11 PM
Woohoo! Welcome new team members. And welcome back old team members.
- November 13, 2014 at 9:15 PM
- Nicole said...
Was that sixteen team members I just counted? Wowza! 2015 here we come!
- November 14, 2014 at 3:41 AM
- Rhonda Albom said...
Congratulations to the new team.
- November 14, 2014 at 11:28 AM
- TheCyborgMom said...
Congrats to everyone! And thank you all for taking the time to work on the A to Z Challenge...it's a big undertaking and I would imagine it really takes a village to keep it all running smoothly :)
- November 14, 2014 at 3:01 PM
Congratulations to all new and returning team members. I appreciate all you do to make this a successful 2015 Challenge and already look forward to April's event.\
It is bittersweet not to see Tina Downey's name on the list of intrepid veterans and to know I won't have her wonderful sense of humor and 'heavy hammer' exhorting me on during the Challenge. I have no doubt her spirit will carry on through the many who were privileged to know and love her, and that we will see many new team members take up Tina's torch.
God Bless all of you.
- November 14, 2014 at 4:18 PM
PS Has captcha been turned back on for a reason?? Will keep many from participating in comments if so.
- November 14, 2014 at 4:19 PM
- J Lenni Dorner said...
Congrats to all!
- November 15, 2014 at 4:43 AM
- Heather M. Gardner said...
Thanks for all the great comments.
We also miss Tina and we talk about her and her wonderful spirit all the time. She won't ever be forgotten by this team.
Thank you.
- November 15, 2014 at 4:09 PM
- Sonnia J. Kemmer said...
I'm definitely participating in 2015. I sort of skipped for 2014, but I won't miss it next time.
- November 15, 2014 at 5:21 PM
- Jessica Marcarelli said...
Good luck, new members (and yay oldies but goodies!)! Definitely going to participate this coming year and am looking forward to more updates as we get closer.
- November 16, 2014 at 6:25 AM
- Barbara In Caneyhead said...
I am already looking forward to the 2015 challenge. Very thankful for and to everyone who works behind the scenes to make it such an awesome experience.
Barbara at Life & Faith in Caneyhead
- November 16, 2014 at 4:13 PM
- Unknown said...
Yay, team! I'll cheer you all on from the background...I think this team will rock the challenge. Not seeing Tina's name on there was a reminder that she's gone, but I'm sure she'll never be forgotten.
It is bittersweet not to be on there-- bitter because I'm still struggling with my personal challenges, and sweet, because I see lots of cool names there-- most I'm familiar with, and others I haven't known much but have every faith in. I love AZ, and I'll champion this AZ team, that's for sure.
Here's hoping I can make it back in 2016!
- November 18, 2014 at 6:51 AM


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Victory for HECM Non-borrowing Spouses at LastJune 19th, 2015
Marked for DisplacementMarch 23rd, 2015
Foreclosure and displacement are lapping at the doors of more than 12,000 older Americans (a National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association estimate in court filings) at a most vulnerable time of their lives.
And Obama's HUD is directing reluctant HECM lenders to carry out these illegal and unconscionable foreclosures and displacements.
Even the federal district court judge, who has been presiding over the AARP-led litigation since 2011, knew that most surviving HECM non-borrowing spouses would not survive the PLF condition. In part, this is how the judge sees the PLF condition:
"…the … condition [PLF] is difficult, if not impossible, for the named plaintiffs and other surviving spouses to meet …." August 28, 2014 Decision in the Plunkett case
Besides the obvious prompts to foreclosure (the word foreclosure appeared more than 12 times in the "relief" policy letter), the PLF condition and the many costly compliance hoops HECM lenders must jump through mean lenders would see foreclosure and displacement as the way to get HUD to pay their insurance claims. But it would not be that easy.
The foreclosure-and-displacement process could tie up lenders (and HUD) in endless multiple litigation for years. HUD's recent regulatory maneuvers to redefine its "foreclosure time-frames" notwithstanding, the law is clear: foreclosures triggered by the death of a borrowing HECM spouse are illegal under federal law.
Families of surviving HECM non-borrowing spouses, advocates for older Americans, and public-interest lawyers are going to contest these illegal foreclosures in courts across the country.
Litigation in multiple jurisdictions across the country could impose profit-crushing costs on thinly-capitalized lenders. Most reverse-mortgage lenders today are small businesses which fund loans with precarious lines of credit from the big banks. They lack the deep pockets or the access to Fed window of a Wells Fargo or a Bank of America. So foreclosure litigation costs could damage their balance sheets and run many of them out of business.
By bullying lenders into cleaning up its own policy and business mess, HUD is unfairly imposing unacceptable costs on small businesses. The human and community costs could be even higher.
HUD can (and should) solve this foreclosure-and-displacement crisis without displacing more than 12,000 non-borrowing HECM spouses or hurting the HECM lenders it is required to protect.
Our next post suggests a solution.
Copyright (c) 2015, ThinkReverse LLC. All Rights Reserved.
HECM protects non-borrowing spouses XIFebruary 11th, 2015
The principal limit factor (PLF) condition in the Mortgagee Optional Election (MOE) Assignment is a relief-killer condition.
That is why calling the MOE Assignment "a relief" for existing surviving HECM non-borrowing spouses, caught in HUD-created foreclosures-and-displacements crisis, is disingenuous. That was why, in our last post, we called it a "cruel bureaucratic farce." And that is why it should be scrapped so that an HUD-identified automatic relief process for the injured parties (existing surviving HECM non-borrowing spouses and their borrowing spouses' lenders) can take hold.
From the original five MOE eligibility conditions in court papers to the eight conditions in Mortgagee Letter 2015-03, the PLF condition stands out as a solution-wrecker. Let's look at what it says and what it means in light of HECM's structure.
The current unpaid principal balance is less than, or equal to, the Maximum Claim Amount and either:
a. The Eligible Surviving Non-Borrowing Spouse would have had a Principal Limit Factor ("PLF") greater than or equal to the PLF of the HECM borrower spouse (Factor Test), or
b. The Eligible Surviving Non-Borrowing Spouse's PLF would have resulted in a current principal limit that is greater than or equal to the current unpaid principal balance (Principal Limit Test).
And let's translate from HECM-speak to English:
Maximum Claim Amount (MCA) is the highest amount HUD will insure a loan for or a home's appraised value or an amount lower than the appraised value. For HECM lending nationally, the MCA is 625,500, even if a home appraises for $900,000 or more.
Current unpaid principal balance is the loan balance at the time of MOE assignment.
Principal limit factor (PLF) is a number that is used to multiply the MCA to get the principal limit or credit limit or the most a lender will lend. By design, younger borrowers get lower factors and older borrowers higher ones.
So, in part A, HUD is saying that to qualify for relief, a surviving spouse in 2015 (the younger one at loan agreement) must have a PLF that is "greater than or equal to" the PLF of their older now dead spouse. But the origin of the surviving non-borrowing spouses' crisis is that younger spouses were removed from the deeds to their homes to create higher loan draws. Yet HUD's "relief" is engineered to deny relief to younger spouses. If you are scratching your head in disbelief, I am with you.
The twisted logic is repeated in part B: the surviving spouse's PLF (again, the younger spouse) "would have resulted" in a credit limit that is "greater than or equal to" the HECM loan balance in 2015. HUD calls this the "principal limit" test and part A the "factor" test. But for our purpose in these posts, we are calling MOE Assignment eligibility condition number two "the PLF condition."
As a seeming concession to reason, as a sweetener to the two bitter pills in parts A and B of the PLF condition, on page ten of ML 2015-03, HUD says "a payment may be made to reduce the unpaid principal balance in order to meet the requirements under the Principal Limit Test." What is wrong with that? A lot.
Grandma recently buried grandpa, and she is still grieving when the foreclosure letters started stuffing her mailbox. She's anxious about being kicked out of the home she and grandpa shared for more than 40 years.
The pay-down "concession" assumes grandma stashed away money somewhere that she can turn over to a lender to reduce a loan balance that includes an upfront insurance premium (paid to HUD and charged to grandpa at loan origination) and monthly ongoing insurance premiums (paid to HUD and charged to grandpa every month).
But the kind of pay-down HUD is asking for can be very high. For example, if grandma's loan limit "would have been", say, $167,000 seven years ago and the loan balance today is $258,000, the pay-down would be $91,000. Where is grandma going to find that kind of money in order to get HUD's "relief"? So the MOE Assignment that HUD is forcing on lenders is no relief but a back-door prompt to illegal foreclosures.
But there is something unusual about the pay-down requirement. HUD is forcing widowed spouses to pay to get "relief" yet it has been collecting insurance premiums (to cover the assignment risks it takes on as an insurer) from lenders (paid by borrowers) for years. If HUD mis-priced its HECM assignment risks in loans with surviving non-borrowing spouses (as it seems in this crisis), it must bear the cost. Or, it can go to Congress honestly and ask for more capital. After all, Congress mandated protection for non-borrowing spouses, and it would not want to see thousands of widowed spouses kicked out of their homes across the country.
So why is HUD aggressively pushing the MOE Assignment with a relief-killer condition as "relief"?
It says it is to protect the MMI Fund, the bedrock of HECM lending. It argues that it has a legal duty to shield the Fund from underwriting losses its own policies and management created. And that is correct and proper.
Reading the 18-page ML 2015-03, you would think HUD's sole legal duty in the HECM program is to the MMI Fund. Nowhere did it mention that it has an equal legal duty to protect HECM borrowers and their surviving non-borrowing spouses from unlawful foreclosures and displacements. Nowhere did it say or did it admit that it has been collecting premiums to cover its assignment-business risks. And nowhere did it let on that the PLF condition is all about using its awesome federal powers to strong-arm grandmas (and grandpas and lenders) into paying for policy and business errors of its own making.
Our next post looks at the implications of the PLF condition.
HECM protects non-borrowing spouses XFebruary 3rd, 2015
A Cruel Bureaucratic Farce
Mortgagee letter 2015-03 is a cruel bureaucratic farce.
Sold by HUD as displacement relief for existing and future widowed spouses of reverse mortgage borrowers, it will actually do the opposite by design. Few if any widowed spouses will be able to meet its conditions, and their dead spouses' lenders will be forced to pursue illegal foreclosures to recover their investments. The result will be foreclosures and displacements of spouses who are protected under federal law against such action.
Take Dianne Barnes Riddick of Woodbridge, Virginia. Her husband, the Rev. Lewis Melvin Riddick, died in February 2014. Relying on an illegal regulation, a reverse-mortgage lender foreclosed on her home in October 2014. Since then alleged agents of Fannie Mae have been harassing her. Any day now, a county sherif will pull up in front of her house and order her to leave. According to reports, Mrs. Riddick is in deep mental and physical anguish.
There are no accurate numbers because HUD is hiding the true extent of the existing HECM non-borrowing spouses' foreclosure and displacement crisis from the court and from the public. But simply take Mrs. Riddick and multiply her plight by 12,000 (that is one estimate attributed to National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association in federal court papers) and you will begin to appreciate the scale of the problem some bureaucrats at HUD are trying to hide from the public.
A 1988 federal law says HECM borrowers' spouses, whether or not they signed loan papers as borrowers, should be protected from displacement. Until August 4, 2014, HUD regulations denied the non-borrowing spouses that protection. Over the years, perhaps hundreds have been kicked out of their homes illegally.
In 2013, a federal judge ruled that HUD regulations violated federal law and asked HUD to come up with a solution (relief) to the plaintiffs' displacement problems.
Initially HUD claimed in court papers that it has "no authority" to solve the displacement problems. To repeat, the author of the problems says it has "no authority" to clean up its own mess. When in response plaintiffs filed another lawsuit demanding a jury trial, suddenly HUD said it had "some discretion" in an agency decision paper. It is in that paper, called Plunkett Determination on Remand in June 2014, that HUD first introduced the so-called Mortgagee Optional Election (MOE) Assignment formula that has now morphed into ML 2015-03.
In our next post we look at the MOE Assignment conditions and their implications.
Copyright (c) 2015, ThinkReverse LLC. All Rights Reserved.
HECM protects non-borrowing spouses IXOctober 13th, 2014
Fourteen words
It all came down to the meaning of fourteen words.
The merits hearing in the non-borrowing spouses' case against HUD – the hearing HUD tried and failed to kill from the start by challenging the spouses' standing – boiled down to the meaning of a fourteen-word sentence Congress dropped into a ninety-nine-word subsection of HECM law.
There was no doubt Congress wanted HECM homeowners protected from displacement; the heading of the subsection made that clear. That Congress also wanted homeowners' spouses shielded from the streets came through from the fourteen-word sentence. What was in dispute was which spouses Congress meant: Were they spouses who signed the loan papers as co-borrowers or spouses who did not sign and were removed from title thus becoming non-borrowing spouses?
From the fourteen words, the spouses claimed HUD failed to protect them by issuing regulations which covered only spouses who signed the reverse-mortgage contract. From the fourteen words, HUD argued it "properly applied" the subsection in its regulations. From the fourteen words, armies of lawyers on both sides of the case concocted opposing arguments and meanings and, in the process, produced thousands of words in legal briefs, motions, and memoranda.
Fourteen words. Fourteen ordinary English words which assumed extraordinary importance in a court battle destined to change HECM and strengthen protections for older consumers who use the government-insured retirement mortgage across the U S.
Let's review Subsection J of HECM law with special attention to the fourteen-word sentence at the heart of the merits-hearing:
(j) Safeguard to prevent displacement of homeowner
The Secretary may not insure a home equity conversion mortgage under this section unless such mortgage provides that the homeowner's obligation to satisfy the loan obligation is deferred until the homeowner's death, the sale of the home, or the occurrence of other events specified in regulations of the Secretary. For purposes of this subsection, the term "homeowner" includes the spouse of a homeowner. … .
The spouses argued that those fourteen words covered them whether or not they signed the mortgage contracts as borrowers. HUD countered that the fourteen words include only spouses who signed the loan papers. It claimed that to accept the spouses' generous interpretation of the fourteen words would bring financial trouble to the HECM insurance program.
Earlier at the DC Circuit during the standing appeal, the judges had expressed surprise at HUD's take on those fourteen words: "The issue on appeal is limited to appellants' standing. But we admit to being somewhat puzzled as to how HUD can justify a regulation that seems contrary to the governing statute."
Now at the merits-hearing, U S District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, the same judge who had dismissed the case for "lack of standing" in July and in September 2011, took HUD's argument apart one by one and came to a decision: HUD's regulation violated Subsection J of HECM law. The judge ordered HUD to come up with a solution (or relief) for the spouses.
On the merits of their case, the non-borrowing spouses, Robert Bennett of Maryland and Leila Joseph of New York, won. It was a victory that seemed improbable only two years before when they were denied standing to sue HUD by the same court and by the same judge. Because of their struggle, HECM now protects non-borrowing spouses for the first time in twenty-five years.
Our next post looks at solutions HUD has come up with since the merits decision.
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HECM protects non-borrowing spouses VIIIOctober 6th, 2014
Why widowed spouses won standing fight
Throwing out the decision of a lower federal court (or any lower court) is a serious matter in our judicial system and, if it must be done at all, a reason or reasons must be given by the higher court.
In July 2011, the DC federal district court dismissed the failure-to-protect lawsuit three widowed spouses of HECM borrowers brought against HUD. In September that year when the spouses begged the court to reexamine their case, the court refused.
The court's refusal came from its thinking that the spouses' problems (foreclosure and displacement) resulted from the terms of reverse-mortgage contracts their dead spouses signed with third-party lenders. Even if they were to win their case against HUD, the court said, the lenders would still have the right to foreclose and displace them, and they would have no solution or redress to their problems.
As we saw in part seven, redressability (or the likelihood that a favorable decision will solve the spouses' problems) is one of three tests anyone suing a federal agency such as HUD must meet to have standing under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Although the spouses insisted that they met all three tests, the district court disagreed on redressability. So redressability was the specific standing issue the DC Circuit had to address in its decision.
The DC Circuit agreed with the district court that if redressability depended on the actions of lenders, the spouses would have no standing to sue HUD; they would be toast. Nevertheless, it threw out the district court's decision, gave the spouses standing, and sent the case back to be heard on its merits at the district court.
Why did the DC Circuit overrule the district court in this case? It found a part of HECM law which empowered HUD to solve the foreclosure-displacement problems of the spouses and the investment-low headaches of the lenders.
In Subsection (i) of HECM law, Congress says HUD can take "any action necessary" to further the purposes of the HECM mortgage insurance program. Needless to say, protecting homeowners (including their non-borrowing spouses) from displacement and lenders from losses are stated purposes of the HECM program.
But the DC Circuit did something else besides granting standing to the spouses, it suggested how HUD could solve the problems.
The how is called assignment. Under HECM rules, lenders can assign a loan to HUD when the loan balance reaches 98 percent of a limit set by HUD called the Maximum Claim Amount. When this happens, HUD holds the loan until the loan's life ends.
In a Solomonic fashion, the court suggested that HUD could take assignment of the troubled mortgages, pay off the lenders, and decide whether to foreclose on the spouses.
I outlined the court's assignment suggestion and other ideas for resolution of the non-borrowing spouses' problem in an article in National Mortgage News on January 15, 2013. While we will return to those resolution ideas in other posts, our next post looks at a direct result of the DC Circuit decision on standing: the merits-hearing and decision at the federal district court.
Copyright (c) 2014, ThinkReverse LLC. All Rights Reserved.
HECM protects non-borrowing spouses VIISeptember 29th, 2014
A Lifeline from the D C Circuit
The stakes were nothing if not high for the non-borrowing spouses (NBS) and for HUD as the parties awaited the decision of the second most important federal court in the United States in the winter of 2012.
At the federal district court for D C a year before, HUD had argued successfully that a widower and two widows lacked "standing" to drag it to court. The victory had affirmed the brilliance of its contain-and-dismiss NBS litigation strategy. A ruling granting standing to plaintiffs would wreck that hasty plan. It would mean that plaintiffs' allegations would have to be heard on their merits.
And who knew how the merit-hearing would turn out given the uncertainties of litigation? Would HUD's soiled HECM-rulemaking laundry be once again exposed to the sunshine of judicial scrutiny? With the HECM portion of the Mutual Mortgage Insurance (MMI) Fund still bleeding red ink then from the HECM fixed-rate fiasco, who knew what financial pain a ruling for non-borrowing spouses would bring to HUD?
For plaintiffs, a ruling upholding HUD's no-standing victory would have probably meant the end of litigation road as a path to saving their marital homes from foreclosures and themselves from displacements.
For HECM origination, it would have meant business as usual where the prospect of large loan amounts (and fat commission-income checks) encouraged some originators (and some borrowers) to continue the deadly practice of removing non-borrowing spouses from title and exposing them to foreclosures and displacements when their borrowing spouses die.
And for the HECM reverse mortgage program itself, it would have meant the continuing negative association of HECMs with spousal displacement in the mind of an aging market, hardly a recipe for promoting an otherwise beneficial product. Such were the stakes in the decision that would come down from the D C Circuit Court.
Before the three-judge panel was a simple question: Did HECM non-borrowing spouses have standing to sue HUD under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA)?
To haul HUD to court under the APA, plaintiffs must show that they meet three requirements for standing:
1) Injury-in-fact — Was there a breach of a legally protected interest or right? Plaintiffs claimed their impending foreclosures (temporarily suspended during the lawsuit) and displacement met the first test;
2) Causality — Was there a connection between the action of defendant and plaintiffs' injuries? Plaintiffs alleged HUD's flawed regulations and non-recourse policy missteps did them in;
3) Redressability — Was it "likely" that a favorable decision will redress the injury? Plaintiffs said it was.
Relying on HUD's argument more than a year earlier at the D C federal district court, plaintiffs had been denied standing on the ground that they failed test three (redressability). The D C Circuit must now decide whether that decision was correct.
In what amounts to a lifeline to (and a present for) plaintiffs four days into the new year in 2013, it did. In a unanimous 13-page decision, the D C Circuit reversed the lower federal court, granted standing to the non-borrowing spouses, and sent the case back to be heard on its merits.
Our next post looks deeper into the D C Circuit decision on standing and the ideas for resolution of the NBS problem it spawned.
Copyright (c) 2014, ThinkReverse LLC. All Rights Reserved.
HECM protects non-borrowing spouses VISeptember 22nd, 2014
The Bennett 1.0 Appeal
HUD's contain-and-dismiss counterattack plan in the first non-borrowing spouses' (NBS) lawsuit (we'll call it Bennett 1.0) worked like a charm, for a while.
The D C Federal District Court bought HUD's argument that plaintiffs lacked "standing" to sue HUD. In its ruling against a widower and two widows, the court agreed that the plaintiffs had been hurt (they were in the jaws of foreclosures and displacements from their marital homes in state courts); however, it said their problems or injuries (foreclosures and displacements) were caused not by HUD but by the terms of mortgage contracts their dead spouses signed with third-party lenders.
Even when the plaintiffs asked the court to reconsider their case, pointing out that HUD is a party to every HECM loan and that it is the 900-pound gorilla in the HECM business, the court said, "no."
The court's decision was a low moment for the plaintiffs. It could have ended the NBS litigation saga. One of the three plaintiffs dropped out to take the hurriedly restored original HECM non-recourse option (see part four); a second one looked into that option. As we saw in part four, original non-recourse allowed heirs and estates of dead HECM borrowers to buy the mortgaged property for 95 percent of appraised market value. The no-standing ruling seemed like the end of the road for the non-borrowing spouses' lawsuit but for the skill and doggedness of the litigators behind the remaining plaintiffs.
AARP Foundation Litigation and the DC law firm of Mehri & Skalet lawyers (who argued the plaintiffs' case) proved a match for HUD's army of Justice Department lawyers. Believing in the strength of their case, they moved the fight up the next level in the federal judicial food chain: the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, informally called the D C Circuit.
Established by Congress in 1893, the D C Circuit is generally considered the second most important federal court after the U.S. Supreme Court. It is often a prep court for the big court itself. Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are former members of the DC Circuit.
According to Wikipedia, the DC Circuit is "… given the responsibility of directly reviewing the decisions and rulemaking of many federal independent agencies of the United States government based in the national capital, often without prior hearing by a district court." It also hears appeals involving the Administrative Procedure Act, a section of which plaintiffs claimed HUD violated.
The litigation strategists at HUD and the Justice Department who crafted contain and dismiss probably never calculated that HUD's disputed HECM rulemaking would be exposed to the judges of the DC Circuit. They figured their brilliant plan would so undercut plaintiffs' case that it would die at the federal district court level, and it almost did. As events would turn out, it was a wrong calculation.
The DC Circuit Court decision in Bennett 1.0 is the subject of our next post.
Copyright (c) 2014, ThinkReverse LLC. All Rights Reserved
HECM protects non-borrowing spouses VSeptember 8th, 2014
Contain and Dismiss
If there was a plan behind HUD's initial response to the non-borrowing spouses' (NBS) lawsuit in March 2011, it could be described as contain and dismiss. In other words, contain aspects of the case that can be contained and move to dismiss uncontainable parts.
The non-recourse part, which exposed the subsection-j problem, was containable so HUD moved to revoke Mortgagee Letter 2008-38 within a month of the lawsuit (see part 4). For the volatile subsection-j (or failure-to-protect) part, HUD pushed for dismissal.
Revocation of ML-08-38 neutralized the first three counts of a four-count plaintiffs' complaint, making them "moot" as lawyers would say.
Among other points in court papers, HUD said plaintiffs were not in danger of foreclosure because it had asked for (and had received) assurances from lenders (or mortgagees) that they would not foreclose on plaintiffs during the life of the lawsuit. So there was no immediate risk of harm to plaintiffs as they had claimed.
Although the recall of the mortgagee letter was an admission by HUD that its non-recourse policy "clarification" was a disaster for borrowers and lenders, it did not address count four, the failure-to-protect aspect of the case.
To dispatch count four, HUD argued that plaintiffs lacked "standing" (or the right to bring a lawsuit against HUD) and asked the court to dismiss the case. It said its interpretation of subsection-j was proper and necessary to save the HECM program from actuarial (and financial) damage. It conjured the prospect of what we would call Hugh-Hefner scenario: a 75-year-old marrying a 25-year-old spouse. A very young spouse in a reverse mortgage means the loan will have a very long loan life and the loan balance could exceed the home's value at loan payoff, leading to financial losses for lenders and for HUD.
Contain and dismiss was a clever litigation plan, and it worked. The court bought HUD's story, and dismissed the lawsuit for "lack of standing." Even when the non-borrowing spouses went to the court again and asked the judge to reconsider their case, insisting that they had standing, the court said "no."
HUD won the first round of the court fight. Next, we look at the non-borrowing spouses' fight on appeal to the US Circuit Court.
Copyright (c) 2014, ThinkReverse LLC. All Rights Reserved
HECM protects non-borrowing spouses IVAugust 25th, 2014
The HECM Non-recourse Connection
It was one of the puzzles of the non-borrowing spouses' (NBS) litigation saga which began in March 2011.
Within a month of Bennett v. Donovan, in which non-borrowing spouses sued HUD alleging failure to protect them from displacement when their borrowing spouses died (as required by HECM law), HUD took a seemingly unrelated action.
It revoked the infamous Mortgagee Letter 2008-38 (ML-08-38), a supposed "clarification" of HECM non-recourse policy. So what is the connection between the NBS problem and HECM non-recourse policy? More importantly, how did HECM non-recourse policy both masked and exposed the NBS trouble?
To our first question, the connection is consumer protection: the section of HECM law the non-borrowing spouses claimed HUD failed to implement protects non-borrowing spouses against displacement while original non-recourse (not ML-08-38) shields HECM borrowers, their heirs, and estates from unlimited financial loss at loan's payoff.
As we saw in part three, the central risk in reverse-mortgage lending is that the loan balance can grow larger than the home's value (crossover risk). Without non-recourse protection, lenders can go after borrowers' other assets to satisfy the loan balance. Original non-recourse limits this risk to the loan's balance or to 95 percent of the home's market value at payoff, whichever is less. Original non-recourse further decrees that no other assets of the borrower but the home can be used to satisfy the reverse-mortgage loan.
It is a bedrock feature of the HECM reverse mortgage. It gives borrowers peace of mind, knowing that their other assets are safe from recourse risk and that their heirs and estates are protected from similar danger. Original non-recourse made it easier to market reverse mortgages to scam-weary elders and their families. It did something else.
Original non-recourse unintentionally masked the core NBS problem (HUD's failure to extend displacement protection to non-borrowing spouses) because for years borrowers, their heirs, and their estates could satisfy the HECM loan by simply paying the loan balance or 95 percent of the home's market value, whichever is less. That was before the travesty of ML -08-38.
Then came ML-08-38, which itself was an attempt to justify or "clarify" a needless breach of original non-recourse policy that began around 2006 at HUD's servicing unit in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
For the first seventeen years in the US market, original HECM non-recourse was the governing rule. Customers, counselors, lenders, HUD, investors, regulators, and the public relied on it.
Around 2006, unknown to HECM customers, industry, and the public, officials at HUD's Tulsa servicing unit began forcing dead HECM borrowers' heirs to repay the full loan balance if they want to keep their homes, even if loan balances exceed homes' values. This practice, which made original non-recourse policy conditional, was mentioned to HECM counselors during a February-2006 training session in Tulsa.
Stunned counselors who attended the Tulsa training sought clarification from HUD. In July 2007, a lawyer at HUD opined that original non-recourse was "not quite accurate," giving legal blessing to a practice that was clearly at odd with HUD's stated original non-recourse policy.
Equally alarmed by the abrupt policy change, senior-lobby colossus AARP asked HUD to harmonize its practice with its stated original non-recourse policy. ML-08-38 was HUD's response.
And it exposed the NBS problem because spouses who wanted to pay 95 percent of their marital homes' market values to keep their homes following their spouses' deaths were, for the first time, rebuffed by perplexed lenders, citing ML-08-38 as the legal basis for their refusal to accept anything but the full loan balance. One of the original Bennett plaintiffs in Indiana sent payment (95 percent of her home's then market value) to a lender and her payment was rejected and the lender began foreclosure proceedings.
Caught between HUD's modified non-recourse policy and hapless lenders who had to use it to effect foreclosures and displacements, non-borrowing spouses turned to AARP Foundation Litigation (AFL) for help.
As AFL lawyers and their partners at the Washington DC Law Firm of Mehri & Skalet looked into HECM law to find help for their clients, they found a problem: regulations HUD issued to implement Section 255 (J) of HECM law denied displacement protection to non-borrowing spouses for more than two decades.
If HUD's denial of displacement protection to non-borrowing spouses was a wound (it was and still is for existing non-borrowing spouses at this writing), original non-recourse was a band-aid which masked the injury until HUD's ML-08-38 or "clarified" non-recourse exposed the festering sore that led to the lawsuits.
And that, among other reasons, was why HUD had to revoke it, but it was too late, the damage was done, the NBS genie was out of the bottle. HUD's initial responses to the NBS lawsuit is the gist of our next post.
Copyright (c) 2014, ThinkReverse LLC. All Rights Reserved


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A closer view of the sculpture and one of the side blocks.
Photo credit: Kristin Parker © 1997-2013.
May be reproduced for educational use within a single classroom.
A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust
Produced by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology,
College of Education, University of South Florida © 1997-2013.


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Water conservation is a multi-faceted concept. As such, it is difficult to define it as a single, all-encompassing definition. Traditionally, many water resource managers saw their reservoirs as a way to conserve water by storing and protecting it. This notion of conservation is supported by the dictionary definition of "conservation": 1. act of preserving or protecting, as from loss, harm, or waste. 2. public protection and care of natural resources such as forests, rivers, and wildlife.
Although this definition is still applicable, water conservation is now more commonly portrayed as "the beneficial reduction in water use, waste, and loss to satisfy a particular purpose", or, more broadly put, as "optimizing the use of current water supplies." This may be the most practical definition of all. However water conservation is defined, it is much more extensive than just household practices like taking shorter showers or xeriscaping your landscape. While important, these characterize only a small portion of water conservation efforts.
Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District (District) is proud of its ongoing water conservation program. As a regional water provider, it is the District's responsibility to show stewardship in water conservation and promote efficient use of this valuable resource. The District has continually expanded these efforts by adding both programs and staff to carry-out the programs.
The District has increased its public education program considerably through better distribution of water conservation information. Public education and outreach are pillars of its water conservation program. The core of the program consists of informational brochures, educational displays, and online resources. These materials are distributed at meetings, on tours, at display booths or by public request. The District discusses and emphasizes the importance of water conservation at every opportunity.
The District hosts water festivals, workshops, tours, and trainings that provide numerous educational opportunities for children, homeowners, and professionals. The District's Board of Directors also encourages and promotes water conservation and efficient water resource management through its policies and programs. The District is involved with many organizations that actively promote water conservation and education. The District is a member of and supports the Colorado Water Wise Council, the Irrigation Association, the Tamarisk Coalition, the Colorado Foundation for Water Education, and the Ditch and Reservoir Company Alliance.
Water conservation in Colorado is no longer seen as something to do only during times of drought. Drought responses such as watering restrictions and field fallowing are put into practice to manage short-term water shortages. However, water conservation has become and will continue to be instrumental in long-term water resource management.
Economic and demographic growth in southeastern Colorado is putting pressure on regional water providers because the development of new water supplies has not kept pace with the growth. Currently, the District provides supplemental water to approximately 620,000 water users in the Arkansas River Basin. This number is expected to increase to over 1.3 million by the year 2040. According to the Statewide Water Supply Initiative, an increase in municipal water demand of 98,000 acre-feet (AF) by 2030 is expected in the Arkansas River Basin. The District believes that water conservation, through an assortment of best management practices, policies, and educational efforts, will play an instrumental role in meeting the projected shortfall.


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Ex-Playboy model settles media lawsuit related to alleged Trump relationship
A former Playboy model who said she had an affair with President Donald Trump has settled her lawsuit with a supermarket tabloid over an agreement that prohibited her from discussing the alleged relationship.
Karen McDougal says the settlement Wednesday with the National Enquirer's parent company "restores to me the rights to my life story."
In August 2016, American Media Inc. paid McDougal $150,000 for the rights to her story about the alleged relationship. But the story never ran.
The suit alleged Trump's attorney, Michael Cohen, was secretly involved in her discussions with AMI.
Officials at the White House said Trump denies the affair.
Under the agreement, McDougal can keep the $150,000 she was paid. AMI has the rights to up to $75,000 of any future profits from her story about the relationship.


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It's Double Hop Sunday!!
(My Teddy Welcome Hop AND my Sunday Selfie Hop with The Cat On My Head!)
Hi! I'm Teddy! Who are you?
You all know by now that I'm the new kid on the block here at Angel Sammy's house – I've been here a week as of yesterday and I am truly LOVING LIFE! My new friends Mr. Raz and Miss Madi had this idea to give me a WELCOME BLOG HOP and they asked Arty and the gang of Dory's Backyard to host the Hop on their HOPPITY HOP PAGE – I am just so excited and thrilled that I'm making new friends!
I am so energetic that it's tough for my Mom to get any really GOOD photos of me – her camera isn't fast enough to catch me before I run off and have another new adventure around here but in the days to come, I will get a chance to blog here on my Big Angel Brother Sammy's "blogosphere home" and that will be tons of fun I bet!
My brother is going to keep me company here today as I meet all of you – – – – I hope you don't mind – – – – but he is my VERY BEST FOREVER FRIEND AND BROTHER and my Guardian Angel!
I will visit all of you and I hope you all are enjoying visiting me too……………please come by ANY TIME…………Angel Sammy and I will always be here. You can watch me grow! I'll be one whole year old on March 4th – isn't that fabulous? I had no idea I'd be living in such a wonderful FOREVER home like this but I sure do love it. The shelter was nice but THIS is where I belong!
Will You Be My New Friend??
Love and Baby Hugs, Teddy
Now for my Sunday Selfie Hop
With The Cat On My Head
We always pawtipcipate in the Selfie Hop with The Cat On My Head and even though we also had a WELCOME HOP for me today, I'm also in the Sunday Selfie Hop! WOW – it's a double hopper!!!
If you click their badge below, you can be transported to their blog page AND you can use the linky and join in their hop today OR just visit all the other hoppers!
Here's my VERY FIRST EVER Selfie!!!! Thanks for helping me Angel Brother Sammy!!
HAPPY SUNDAY EVERYBODY!!!!! Love, Baby Teddy


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Light Flashing iPhone Case
Dance With This Light-Up Case at Your Next Concert
Hold your hands high and get ready for a light show like never before. iCella's VanD cases for iPhone 5C ($20) and iPhone 5S ($20) dazzle when they ring. Take this case to your next techno/EDM/trance show — you'll get the crowd pumped just by busting out your phone!
Source: YouTube user iCellaWireless
To light up, the polycarbonate case uses a little-known accessibility setting in iOS that forces an LED flash alert for calls and notifications in addition to a vibration or ring. In iOS 7, head to Settings > General > Accessibility, then enable LED Flash for alerts. Now, every time you get a call, your phone will start an instant dance party. There are six different patterns and colors for the iPhone 5S, including the paper planes one below. There are five different groovy options for the iPhone 5C, like this star-patterned case.
Will you fist pump in style this music festival season?


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Enjoy this fresh twist of citrus and vanilla.
These hand-dipped incense sticks burn for around 45 minutes to fill any space with your favorite scent.
*WeIncense is not affiliated with the brand(s) or companies listed above and is simply a proud vendor of the products listed, unless specifically stated otherwise. All trademarks and other intellectual property mentioned is for descriptive purposes only, and is the property of its respective owner(s).


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Bruce Lee Quotes
Bruce Lee – The Life of an Icon
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