Datasets:

BEE-spoke-data

/

beeweb-5k

like 0

RDBKA offers a range of courses for those who would like to become involved in beekeeping, and for those who are already involved; indeed, we are able to offer advice and guidance to anyone from Beginner through to Master Beekeeper. Becoming a knowledgeable and responsible beekeeper, whilst adopting beekeeping’s best practices are the aims. We follow the British Beekeeping Association’s (BBKA) programme of courses, wherever possible and practicable. During the ‘bee season’ (from Apr to Jul) we hold 2-hour ‘Experience Sessions’ and ‘Practical Handling Sessions’ of bees at our Teaching Apiary, accessible for Friends/Members of the Association Experience Sessions are designed to test whether or not beekeeping is a desirable pastime for those who are thinking of taking up beekeeping as a hobby; Practical Handling Sessions are for those who have undertaken one of our courses. Both allow safe, practical handling of bees under supervision. These are dedicated sessions primarily for absolute beginners and/or for those who have attended one of our Beginners’ courses, and are for those who don’t yet own bees but would like to ‘test the water’; although any beginner with bees is welcome to attend these sessions. For all those who newly become Friends or Members of the Association, for those who wish to keep bees and have attended our Introduction to Beekeeping Courses, and for Beginners who have already have bees, a RDBKA Mentor may be assigned, should they wish. This will be an experienced RDBKA beekeeper who is close to the Apiary site, and who is able to act as a first point of contact for beekeeping matters. This has proved to be very popular for newcomers to beekeeping. It is a 2-day, weekend course on the theory of beekeeping, combined with a practical ‘hands-on’ experience (weather dependent). Delivered by experienced beekeepers, it is aimed at the newcomer to beekeeping; ideal for those who would like to ‘test the water’. Those attending do not need to be members of the Association but will be encouraged to join either as a Friend or Member. For those who do join, and subsequently take up bees, they will be assigned an RDBKA Mentor, an experienced beekeeper close to home, who will act as a first port of call for beekeeping matters. A comprehensive evening course of 10 x 2hrs sessions, from 7.30pm-9.30pm every other Tuesday (mostly!) at Colburn Church Hall, starting on 27 Nov 18, run over the winter (Nov - Apr) in preparation for the forthcoming bee season, with 2 x additional practical handling sessions in May/June at the RDBKA Teaching Apiary. This is a course primarily for those without bees, who are new to beekeeping and who are serious about becoming a knowledgeable, responsible and proficient beekeeper. Everything a new beekeeper needs to know in order to establish and maintain healthy colonies in a controlled way. Those who do join the Association will have a RDBKA Mentor assigned. Cost £70.00 An evening course of 7 x theoretical and practical sessions, from 7.30pm - 9.30pm every other Tuesday (mostly!) at Colburn Church Hall, starting on 29 Jan '19 - 23 April '19, in preparation for the forthcoming bee season, with 2 x additional practice handling sessions at the RDBKA Apiary in May/June. Ideally for those who have completed the Beginners’ Course. A pre-requisite for this course is that you either have or have had bees, or can demonstrate sufficient knowledge and/or experience, and that you have over-wintered bees for at least 1 season. The aim of this course is to develop a deeper beekeeping knowledge and demonstrate practices sufficient to meet the requirements and standards of the BBKA Certificate of Proficiency in Apiculture - a relatively straightforward hands-on, practical examination. Those on this course will be eligible to take the Basic exam in season, should they wish. Exam costs are included in the course costs. RDBKA is keen to widen and support the profile of beekeeping in our local community. With prior agreement and subject to availability of presenters, we are able to offer bespoke presentations on beekeeping to groups, clubs and communities, as required. RDBKA is very keen to ‘spread the word’ to the younger generations and to offer practical ‘hands-on’ experiences to engage youth. Special conditions apply when considering those under 16, but with prior agreement and subject to availability of Instructors and equipment, the RDBKA can offer ‘Experience Days’ at our Teaching Apiary for bespoke groups of young adults during the bee season (Apr - Jul). These need to be agreed and planned in advance. In 2015 the RDBKA built a new “Teaching Apiary” in lower Wensleydale, the purpose of which is to provide education and promotion of all aspects of the craft of beekeeping to all members of the RDBKA, regardless of experience. Our teaching apiary is the main location where we can provide ‘hands on’ teaching, with practical demonstrations and an opportunity to discuss all aspects of beekeeping. Members have the opportunity not only to attend association meetings here but also to accompany the Apiary “carers” on their weekly visits (in season) to practice handling skills, hygiene methods and beekeeping techniques. The apiary currently hosts 4 working colonies for demonstration purposes. The hives are modified nationals with mesh floors.

Chesterfield and District Beekeepers – If you’re considering beekeeping then get in touch Thinking about trying to get involved with bees this year? Then a good place to start is with Chesterfield and District Beekeepers. 2018 is going to be a fantastic period for both bees and beekeepers. Get involved and come along to our social evenings with refreshments. Here you can enjoy, talks by experts often with videos. (see how to find us below). Chat to other friendly beekeepers asking any question about our association you may have. Take advantage of willing mentor-ship with shared hives at the local apiaries or, at our own apiary next to our Association Shop in Hasland, Chesterfield. Why not come and join us at Chesterfield and District Beekeepers! 70 YEARS A ‘PAID UP’ MEMBER OF B.B.K.A. On the18th of January 1947 at the request of our then Hon Sec Mr A.B.Parsons, we were accepted as an (unpaid up) member of the national British Bee Keeping Association. On the 24th we were notified of our new status and requested to send our first ‘Capitation’ fee. We must conclude that a cheque was soon in the post and we became a fully affiliated member of the association. To be nationally recognised as an association in our own right. We just had to join the B.B.KA. and we are still paying our annual capitation fee 70 years later – although there is a huge rise in the cost! We had actually been the C&DBKA for a couple of years prior to 1947, having become established in 1945 after splitting away from Derbyshire Bee Keeping Association. OUR EVER POPULAR BEE-KEEPING EDUCATION COURSES Learn all you need to know by joining our popular ‘New Bee Keepers Course’. This has been so popular in 2018 that we had to close the numbers for the Course. So it may seem early for you, we would advise you to get your name in for 2019. Over six weekend Sunday sessions, our students learn all they need to know to be able to start beekeeping. There is the opportunity to handle live bees from the start of the course. The “Hands-on” training will take place at our Association Apiary at Hasland, Chesterfield. Bee suits are available for use during the course. Don’t miss your chance, as said, places are limited. For more details please contact June Harvey (See Below). Or, be our guest and sign up at a Social Meeting on the SECOND Monday in each month, at Whittington Moor Methodist Church Hall, 7.30pm. You will be most welcome, June and her team of tutors, look forward to meeting you and answering any questions you may have. The fee for this course is £50.00 which includes an Associate Membership of C&DBKA (worth £10) which makes it even better value for money! |Website:||Visit The Website| |Tel:||07530 663765 – June Harvey| |Address:||Chesterfield and District Beekeepers| Whittington Moor Methodist Church

Renewal Acres, Quincy, Ilinois Central Illinois Farm Beginnings 2006-2007 An Interview by Terra Brockman Back in 2006, Rebecca Fischer saw a notice in her local newspaper about a brand new course called Central Illinois Farm Beginnings. “It sounded like exactly what I would want to learn about: chickens and small acreages.” Rebecca had no farming background, and no farming in her family tree, but she had a passion for the earth and for the good food that comes from it. “I became frustrated with mushy tomatoes, I really did. When I would go to a restaurant, I would get mediocre food that I was still paying for . . . because we just settle for mediocre food without ever tasting really good food. And really good food can only come fresh from the farm in my mind.” After completing the inaugural year of Central IL Farm Beginnings, Rebecca started farming in her yard, but “got very worried that it would not be an acceptable practice in my neighborhood.” So after searching for a suitable acreage, she bought a beautiful parcel of mostly wooded land in 2008, and got her first chickens and planted her first fruit trees. She has grown steadily each year, and this year, together with Lucas, her employee, Rebecca has planted lots of tomatoes, potatoes, squash, corn, cucumbers, fruit trees, strawberries, blueberries, and much more. “We're waiting so see what we are really good at and it seems like potatoes and tomatoes are pretty good . . . . And bees, I have seven beehives. I’m getting better at the beekeeping, I think, and producing honey.” And there are deeper satisfactions as well, says Rebecca: “Looking at this butterfly out here on this flower out there on the pond, I’m just thinking how thankful this butterfly is that this flower is there. Is that corny or what? And I just get very inspired, emboldened . . . I don’t know what the word is, but this is my slice of heaven out here.”One of Rebecca’s greatest joys since starting to farm has been taking care of the bees and harvesting the honey. “I am just amazed by that. It’s so beautiful. The first time it poured out of the spigot into the jar it was . . . like this? I did nothing except buy these bees and set them up and they give me this amazing honey!”

Beekeepers across Turkey were urged to think differently about conservation at a meeting to raise bee awareness at the weekend. The March meeting of Arı Okolu (Bee School) was held at Cem Aybek’s Tangala Farm in the mountains above Tlos on Saturday and attended by beekeepers and enthusiasts from across the Muğla region. Supporters were reminded the group has not been formed to save Turkey’s ten species of bee from current threats posed by insecticides and pesticides or to lead a direct lobby for action; both objectives are simply too huge for such a small group. However, Cem Aybek underlined the importance of enhancing the public’s understanding of bees, their importance to Turkey’s ecosystem and what everyone can do to help them. But, while praising Turkey’s diversity and enthusiasm for beekeeping, keynote speaker – international honey bee educator, author and self-confessed “crazy bee lady” Debra Roberts – urged apiarists to consider more natural remedies to fight the decline in bee numbers. Although happily co-existing with some species, the spread of the verroa mite around the globe has become a particular problem, wiping out hives in worrying numbers across Europe and America. Traditionally, infested hives have been treated with chemicals to eradicate the problem. Indeed, a straw poll among Turkish beekeepers on Saturday indicated the frequency of treatment has increased in some cases locally from once a season to almost every week. But Ms Roberts, who runs the Holy Bee Press from her home in America, suggested leaving bees to adapt to the threat themselves may be a better long-term solution. Leave Them Bee “It might take several years but, in areas like Africa where chemical treatment is not always possible, hives have adapted and survived infestations of verroa mite,” she said. “It may be that the reason we haven’t seen that happen more widely is that humans are just not giving bees enough time.” Ms Roberts also suggested, although there has been research into how to eradicate verroa mites, little has been done to ascertain the possible consequences of long-term chemical treatment. She reminded the meeting there have been examples of some species of pest becoming immune to chemicals and a strain of “super verroa” could be a real risk if alternatives are not explored. Ms Roberts also suggested genetic modifications of bee species to enhance honey production or make them tamer for their handlers could also be hampering their ability to adapt to natural threats. However, she applauded Arı Okulu’s initiative and objectives in the Muğla region and added her own voice to calls for a better understanding of bees through activism. “Bee activism sounds angry – but it doesn’t have to be that way. What we all must all do is educate, help people develop relationships with bees and do that in any way we can – through art, through community projects, through wearing jewellery linked to bees, through toys or just through everyday conversations,” she said. More information about Muğla’s Arı Okulu is available on the group’s Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/ariokulu/ New members are welcome and do not have to own bees; an interest in them is enough.

A 1 Miller's Performance Enterprises Parts & Services ... Welcome to A 1 Miller's Performance Enterprises Parts & Services Online CatalogStrathcona Beekeepers: The Beekeepers' Library This Beekeeping Library consists of articles, books and webinars on basic beekeeping, beehive construction, bee diseases and parasites, feeding bees, native ...earpain.solutions personal ebook library wellcome to my personal ebook list, contain many manuals book over the world lesco z two wiring diagram Gallery lesco mower wiring diagram coils wiring diagram for lesco z mower wiring get free image

The Wake County Beekeepers Association (WCBA) will meet on Tuesday, March 13 at the Wake County Commons Building, lower level conference room. The gathering begins at 7:00 and the meeting starts at 7:30 pm. The address is 4011 Carya Drive, Raleigh NC 27610. The entrance to the lower level conference room is on the right side of the building near the back. Our topic this month is Beekeeping Basics. All new and experienced beekeepers are encouraged to attend. Visitors welcome.

Are bees allowed? Yes, with a Conditional Use Permit for Urban Agriculture. Refer to excerpt below or visit: http://www.cityofmarion.org/home/showdocument?id=6537 176.49 URBAN AGRICULTURE. 9. Accessory Keeping of Honey Bees. A. Use Regulations. (1) Accessory keeping of honey bees shall be allowed as a conditional use in all zoning districts, the Board of Appeal shall not grant a conditional use permit for the accessory keeping of honey bees unless the conditions of the section are met. B. Maximum Number of Hives. (1) The maximum number of hives on any given lot or roof for personal consumption of honey bee products shall be two (2). C. Maximum Height and Size. (1) No hive shall exceed five (5) feet in height and twenty (20) cubic feet in size on any lot. D. Beekeeping Requirements. (a) Where there is a wall, fence or similar barrier between the subject property and adjacent property, no setback from the property line is required. Where there is no wall, fence or similar barrier between subject property and adjacent property, hives shall be set back five (5) feet from the property line. (b) Hives shall not be located in the front yard or in a side yard that abuts a street in all residential and commercial districts. (c) No hive shall be located closer than ten (10) feet from a public sidewalk. E. Hive Placement and Flyways. (1) For any ground level hive that is within twenty (20) feet of the doors and/or windows of the principal building on an abutting lot, either of the following conditions must exist: (a) The hive opening must face away from doors and/or windows; or (b) A flyway of at least six (6) feet in height comprising of a lattice fence, dense hedge or similar barrier must be established in front of the opening of the hive such that the honey bees fly upward and away from neighboring properties. The flyway shall be located within three (3) feet of the entrance to the hive and shall extend at least two (2) feet in width on either side of the hive opening. If a nuisance was called: Apiaries in compliance will have no issues with nuisance complaints. Additional notes: Urban Agriculture zoning is new as of Spring 2015. One out of twenty urban poultry permits drew a noise-based complaint. This was resolved with education with respect to when the chickens are let out roam. Contact: Nicole Burlage Department: Planning and Development Title: Administrative Assistant

Want to learn about bees?? There are many ways... April 27, 2019 12-4pm, Kimberly, OR Visit our Honey Stand and check out the Observation Hive Check out our Beekeeping How To Blog Posts Follow us on Facebook The American Bee Journal is great! Join a club or association Join the OSU Master Beekeeper Program Attend a Bee School or Beekeeping Workshop We are available for presentations and workshops with an observation hive. Past outreach and presentations include South Fork John Day River Watershed Council - Friday School OSU Master Gardener class, John Day Humbolt Elementary School Grant County Fair - Observation Hive North Fork John Day Watershed Council

Laura and I constantly joke about the fact that we’re quite grumpy misanthrope. Maybe there’s some truth in this. As I’ve gotten older I have become happier in my own company, and this can sometimes come across as grumpiness I suppose. At work, I have the reputation of being irascible and sarcastic, although anyone that knows me has worked out that I’m actually a 10 year old stuck in a 46 year old body. Maybe this is why I’m cross. I am a huge advocate of both the power and the necessity of community How we conduct ourselves in the company of others is a concern of mine though. Our medium term plan is to move towards a simpler existence, with an emphasis on more tangible activities – like growing food, beekeeping and sharing our experiences with others (in the form of workshops). Although my work colleagues may not believe this, I am a huge advocate of both the power and the necessity of community. Let me explain. I think communities get a bad rep. When people think communities and living a simpler life, their minds can automatically conjure images of communes filled with saffron robed hippies dancing around bearded gurus. The fact is, human beings are successful because we know how to work together. No one person can farm all the things needed to thrive and make all the things needed to provide comfort and safety for themselves or their family. I like to think I could turn my hand to most things, but there’s a limit. Could I grow corn and mill flour and repair an engine and manage some woodland and grow vegetables? Any one of the them, yes. But all of them, certainly not. We need each other, even if we are capable of doing stuff for ourselves I am able to bake bread because someone grows the wheat and someone else mills the flour. Someone else produces sea salt and yet another weaves proving baskets. We need each other, even if we are capable of doing stuff for ourselves. Despite a natural desire to want to live a peaceful, isolated life on the top of a mountain surrounded by nature, the reality is that in order to flourish, and in order for my children to flourish, we need to be part of a community. That’s not to say that we need to be best friends with everyone. Communities share a common goal – continuity. They exist because individuals can find comfort and safety as part of a larger group. Communities lend support, they fill the gaps in ability that individuals have and they help raise the next generation. You don’t have to like everyone around you, but you do have to respect both what they can provide and what their needs might be. In our recent interview with Hatti from Parent Tribe, she talks about a scheme run by the local community in Portugal where everyone spends time on everyone else’s land blitzing big tasks (like digging wells, or raising barns). This to me is the very essence of community. People banding together to get shit done. And I bet that when you’ve all spent a day sweating over the same patch of land, parking disputes seem like nonsense.

Are you on the search for how to start beekeeping in Northern Cambria Pennsylvania? A number of people say honey bee farming classes in PA can be costly and there are alternative ways to learn beekeeping without spending lots of money in training. Beekeeping is a business that depends on having passion that is whole. You cannot start a business such as this should you not like coping with creatures that are live. Working with bees is like working with any type of fowl or animals; it wants care and knowledge to keep bees healthy and productive. You should take complete care of every single little matter, to ensure it doesn’t create any difficulty for the company in the foreseeable future. – Selecting the appropriate tools Beginning without selecting the right tools beekeeping, is like entering the conflict with swimming costumes. You should be well prepared before you start your company or it will be a total loss for money and your time. Before you select your appropriate hives ask your self several questions. This depends a lot on what is your aim from starting beekeeping. Should you be willing to invest time and some cash in a bee keeping company then you definitely may want to understand will you take care of your hives. Are you really ready to buy an expensive hive if it’s best choice for you? These sort of questions will be asked to you once you visit a specialist bee keeper to consult him about the best hive to buy. Every hive has its specifications, maintenance and honey production amount. – New technology and procedures Should you be looking at bee keeping as a business you then must analyze a lot about their nature, bees and the latest technologies that emerged in this profession in order to keep all of your info up thus far. Your bees are once they start producing honey the machines of your factory that can generate money for you all the time, so by keeping your ideas, they were focused on and your head open for what is new in the sector will get you on top of the hobby.

Well, we have no idea what is wrong with Ethel. Thinking she had developed bumblefoot, after a week of the meds on her foot doing nothing, we prepared for the nauseating task of doing DIY surgery to extract the gunk from her foot and..it doesn’t appear to be bumblefoot the closer of a look we got at it. My best guess is that when we pulled a thorn out of her foot a couple months ago, part of it didn’t come out and it got infected which is messing up her balance. Because she’s not just limping, she literally cannot stand up without putting her wings out and has this upside-down thing she does with her bum foot upside down while standing up and putting her head down upside down by her feet (almost like she’s preparing to do a weird somersault?). So I don’t know, I’m lost. I’ve decided to spring for a “birdie bootie” for her to wear when we go on vacation so that it will stay clean but right now we’re just baffled as we’ve had ducks limp before but with a bit of rest they’re just fine. I was thinking of that term “life and death on the farm” yesterday and, well, just not ready for that. Anyhow, when the other 3 girls come in to the run for their midday nap I notice at least a couple of them always nap outside the cage we’ve got her in (it’s an XL dog carrier that we used to move them out here in, works great) and sometimes I have Cocoa nap in there with her (she’s been dropping ‘water balloon’ eggs for a couple of months – more oyster shell isn’t helping btw – so I figure put the two non-layers in there) to keep her company. It’s tough. More bees are coming to Beloved Farms in 2019! Sadly, the combination of transitioning of our last hive from Portland to Astoria and trying a triple-box setup for the first time resulted in a very sad loss of our ladies, and so we are going back to the tried-and-true methods we’ve had success with in the past. The bonus? This year we are expanding to two hives!!! We just ordered our nucs from Bridgetown Bees again, as out here on the coast, the resources are almost nonexistent compared to Portland (let’s just say there’s no formal beekeeping association for the County and when 7 or 8 people I was connected to by a neighboring beekeeper started an email string to talk bees, they decided rather than have meetings or do a shared message-board on Google that everyone could view, they’d set up a Facebook page…thereby making it so that if you don’t do FB, you are naturally excluded from discussions. WTF people.). It will give us an excuse to go to Portland in April and decide between now and then if we want to do a second Flow Hive (see above photo for what it looks like – that was from our very first harvest) or a traditional Langstroth (me, I want to try a top bar one of these days but this year is too up in the air to experiment…but would love to hear from anyone who’s done top-bar beekeeping!). The Flow Hives are ridiculously expensive (our first one was free, so the thought of plunking down $600 for that is not a plus…then again, without one we’d need to buy an extractor so who knows, it may come out even in the end), and the knockoffs, while cheaper, have a lot of mixed reviews, so we’ll see what the verdict is… It’s 2019! After a very vanilla New Year’s Eve (we went to the local brewery to grab a drink and see Will West & The Friendly Strangers, a Carolina-bred folk kinda groove….and going back into my archives, was also a band that an old friend’s husband used to play in well before I met my husband…the music was a bit too mellow for me who needs more to stay up late) getting to bed by 12:05am, we enjoyed the first day of the year together (thank you co-op for being closed!). ‘Twas a chilly one but we got out and crunched about in the frosty grass, while the ducks raced to the creek and we gathered some fallen limbs in the “woods” area in the back of our property, with the notion that if we leave them in the barn to dry out, they’ll be firewood for the day when we finally get a woodstove, haha…Anyhow, this week is one where I was very grateful that we didn’t get rid of our heated water bucket for the ducks, as 1/4″ of solid ice on their drinking water is not a good thing! On a very happy note, we are thrilled that our vacation is coming very very soon! You see, folks, we’ve not been on a real vacation (3 day weekends are not vacations!) since 2015, when we were in France for what we had originally thought would be a “babymoon” and turned out to be where we grieved our first of six failed rounds of DEIVF. We couldn’t afford it at first and then after everything ended my back injury and eye surgery, then eventual move to the coast, all occurred and, well, bleah! But thanks to a multitude of frequent flyer miles accumulating over the past decade, we had enough to afford business and/or first class seats to Zihuatanejo! The first time I was there was just a couple months after starting this blog, as I fled to Barra de Potosi, just south of Zihua, for much-needed healing following the death of my father. This time? It will be a celebration for my husband and I of our love, to mark the eight years since he found me on this here blog (and the rest was history…), to mark my 45th birthday, and to get away from the cold and wind and rain for the bliss of a one bedroom villa halfway between Zihua and Potosi. Quiet. Sunshine. Togetherness. Just what we need – and amen for those miles that are covering the flights! I’m also super stoked that, because of the weird initial overnight layover at LAX, we’ve decided to extend that to 3 days in LA and catch up with our SoCal friends, from my dearest friend (we call each other Sis) who recently moved down to the OC, to old friends who were at our wedding (he stood up for Dan since Dan didn’t have anyone here in the US to bear witness, so sweet) and now live in Santa Monica, and a weekend in my one-time stomping grounds of Santa Barbara (2002-2005) where we’ll get to eat well, check out old haunts, and meet up with a former colleague and his wife who still live down there. My plans for my next trip to SB had always been postponed and they definitely were supposed to be to go see my old friend Angela until this happened. Take those trips, y’all. The world throws some serious shit at all of us and life is too damn short.

The correct term that has been used for a long time that everyone knows and understands is “Uniting”, not “combining”, “merging”, “amalgamating”, “joining” or any of the other terms that have crept into beekeeping in recent years. I think these have come from inexperienced people who have tried to teach or write books before they have the knowledge to do so, or are aware of the correct terminology. This blog provides a focus for methods and equipment that can be used to unite colonies, nucs or a single frame of bees. There are many different circumstances when it is advisable to unite groups of bees, such as:- To reduce colony numbers, where manipulations have resulted in extra colonies, or the beekeeper is downsizing. Make a colony from two or more that is strong enough to have a chance of wintering that wouldn’t survive on their own. Because of a shortage of queens at the end of the season, such as queen rearing nucs, where there may have been failed matings. A colony has been queenless, had a drone layer or laying workers. A colony has been artificially swarmed (or similar operation) and the two resulting colonies are brought back together. To requeen a colony. There are many other reasons, but whatever it is, here are some simple rules that you may find helpful:- If put together immediately on combs, bees from two colonies will probably fight, three or more usually won’t. If there is no physical barrier, e.g. newspaper, bees from one colony may kill a queen from another, unless she is caged. Disorientation, confusion and a common smell will often make direct introduction possible. Make sure none of the colonies are diseased, especially foul brood. The resulting colony, if united in the autumn, should be strong enough to overwinter. If not, then add frames of sealed brood at intervals from other colonies until it is strong enough. Two or more swarms can be united by dumping them on a board in front of a hive together. A swarm can be used to bolster another colony, but it is preferable to remove the queen in the colony a couple of hours before, or to cage her if you want to retain her and kill the queen in the swarm. The “newspaper bag” method is used to unite a frame of bees to an existing colony. Such an additional frame may have a queen for requeening purposes or not as the case may be.

Experience the past and present farming lifestyle – including Draft horse demonstrations, Oxen talks, wheel plowing a garden, beekeeping and exploring the gardens on property maintained by the Great Lakes Brewing Company and the Bath Gamma Garden Club. The festival also features chicken keeping talks, sheep shearing, fiber dyeing and much more! The Citizen’s of Hale auxiliary group annual Plant Sale will take place each festival day from 10am-5pm. Special historic and heirloom annuals, perennials and herbs will be offered. The 19th century village is open to explore buildings and experience a working farm complete with sheep, oxen and chickens. Hale’s historic craft and trades are demonstrated throughout the day including glassblowing, blacksmithing, and spinning and weaving. Enjoy lunch in the Café 1810 featuring farm fresh selections. The Marketplace will be open for shopping during the festival, featuring blown glass items and pottery, handmade by the artisans at Hale Farm, and many other local items and souvenirs. Admission for all activities is $10 for adults, $5 for children 3 – 12 years of age, and free for members Sow and Grow Farm Festival & Plant Sale – Event Schedule for Saturday and Sunday If you cannot attend, but would like to Donate to the Hale Farm & Village / Western Reserve Historical Society, please BASIC MEMBERSHIPS AND BENEFITS: If you would like to become a member of Hale Farm & Village/WRHS

Braunton Cottage is only a short drive from many of North Devon’s attractions with something on offer for everyone, from families seeking child friendly attractions with all-weather facilities, to couples looking to escape to a peaceful spot surrounded by nature. To help you plan your holiday we have put together some information on just a few of the local attractions. For some of the child friendly attractions tickets can be purchased in advance with a discount. The beautiful RHS Rosemoor lies on the outskirts of Torrington and is open all year round. Nestled in a pretty valley, the garden has a wonderful mix of both formal and informal plantings that reflects its history and character. Rosemoor holds a number of events throughout the year and also has a great restaurant. The National Trust managed Arlington Court is just a few miles outside of Barnstaple and set in a large 2,700 estate, which guests are welcome to explore. As well as pretty gardens, Arlington is also home to a Regency house and a large collection of horse-drawn vehicles. There is so much more to Hartland Abbey than just a historic house, including a series of gorgeous gardens and landscaped grounds. The estate has even been used in several well-known films such as Sense and Sensibility. For children there are donkeys to meet and a nature trail to follow. Marwood Hill Gardens is just a short drive from North Street Cottage and is a magical place to spend a few hours. Set in a 20-acre valley on the edge of Barnstaple, the garden is home to some stunning views, as well as a colourful collection of plants. Looking to take something different home? Marwood has a plant sale area, which is guaranteed to tempt you. Broomhill Sculpture Gardens wonderfully combines art and flowers with more than 300 sculptures set amongst the 15 acres of wooded valleys and cultivated gardens. Broomhill is also home to an award-winning restaurant, which serves slow food, and an art gallery. Dartington Crystal in Torrington is the UK’s only remaining glass factory, so its visitor experience is well worth considering. At the centre you can get up close to the skilled glass makers on the factory floor before getting creative yourself with several activities, including hand casting, glass blowing and jewellery making. The Big Sheep near Bideford is North Devon’s largest all-weather family attraction. Spend time getting to know some of the animals in the barn and petting corner before having fun on the rollercoaster or in Ewetopia a large indoor playground. For adults there is an onsite brewery and gin distillery. Exmoor Zoo is a great day out for all the family with a wide range of wildlife on show from creepy crawlies to wobbly wallabies. The park, which is home to range of animals, many of which are facing extinction also has plenty of hands on activities, which are sure to get the children excited. Don’t forget to look out for the notorious Exmoor Beast, which resides at the zoo. The incredible Combe Martin Wildlife and Dinosaur Park on the edge of Combe Martin is set over 28 acres and is home to a selection of wild animals, including wolves and lions, as well as an impressive collection of animatronic dinosaurs. The park also has the dino express train ride, a dinosaur museum and an indoor soft play area. At Quince Honey Farm in South Molton, visitors can witness the world’s largest honeybee exhibition. BeeWorld allows you to see the hives up close and get to know more about the life of a honeybee. There are also guided tours and beekeeping demonstrations. During the summer months other activities available include beeswax candle making. Quince Honey Farm also has its own indoor soft play area, café and shop. Watermouth Castle is one of North Devon’s best loved family friendly attractions with a series of rides and activities to keep all the family entertained. As well as a Victorian Castle, Watermouth is also home to a small theme park, landscaped gardens and Gnome Land. There is also the water show extravaganza, which combines music, water and lights. All-weather family fun is guaranteed at The Milky Way Adventure Park, which is located near Clovelly. The attraction is home to rollercoasters, dodgems, a large indoor play area, an assault course and slides. There are even live shows such as those that feature Merlin from Britain’s Got Talent.

Homebrew Con isn’t just for beer lovers. With a multitude of educational sessions in the Alternative Fermentation track focusing specifically on meadmaking, Homebrew Con 2019 (June 27–29) will be the most mead-centric AHA conference ever held. The mead seminars kick off with speakers Brian Wolf and John Wilson presenting Better Bochet. Bochet is a style of mead based around flavor characteristics derived from “burning” honey during the meadmaking process. Sergio Moutela, president of the American Mead Makers Association and founder of Melovina Meadery, will then present on Brewing Beer-Style Meads. Moutela will take attendees on an adventure in creating meads based on popular beer styles, including tips on post-fermentation handling to best serve these crossover styles. New England–based mead expert and historian Laura Angotti will present on Mead from 70 to 1750 CE. Angotti, creator of the Mystery of Mead blog, will educate her audience on the breadth of styles, ingredients, and techniques used in early meadmaking and discuss how things have changed over time. Michael Fairbrother, founder of New Hampshire’s Moonlight Meadery (a short drive or train ride from Providence!), will share a presentation on Mastering Mead Making. Attendees will be let in on Moonlight Meadery’s secrets for making world-class mead. You can tune into Michael Fairbrother’s past Homebrew Con seminars on HomebrewersAssociation.org. Eric Lowe of Meridian Hive Meadery in Texas will show folks the ins and outs of Yeast Harvesting, Banking, and Quality Control. Attendees will leave this presentation understanding how to brew using a true “house yeast” strain, how to bank rare and seasonal strains to use at any time, and how to improve fermentation performance. Jared Spidel will wrap up the honey-based talks with his session Practical Beekeeping for the Homebrewer and Meadmaker. Spidel will walk through equipment, best practices, and lessons he has learned as a beekeeper. After all, you can’t make mead without honey! But the buzz surrounding this year’s Homebrew Con’s mead focus doesn’t stop there! After the Mead Magic: Tips from Master Mead Makers panel—an opportunity to get meadmaking advice from past National Homebrew Competition Mead Maker of the Year award recipients, including a Q&A session—the American Mead Makers Association (AMMA) will host an AMMA Members Meet & Greet on Saturday, June 27 in Ballroom A from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. “This year’s seminars cover some very interesting topics, and the presenters are people with a wealth knowledge about mead. I’m totally looking forward to being in Providence and talking to my fellow mead geeks,” shared AMMA and AHA member Annie Zipser. Keep an eye out for the AMMA booth during Homebrew Con’s famous Club Night. The AMMA will be pouring samples from many of their home meadmaker members. You will also find an array of mead, honey-based beers, and ciders poured by various homebrew clubs! Whether you’re a veteran meadmaker or you’re gearing up for your first batch, Homebrew Con has got you covered with expert advice, plenty of opportunities to talk shop with fellow meadmakers, and a generous selection of homemade meads to sample! Early bird ticket prices increase May 2, 2019, so hurry up, honey!

LINCOLN COUNTY — In 1918, the second ever Oregon State University Extension Service office was founded in Lincoln County. Today, it still serves a number of purposes in the community by providing groups that teach specific interests and life skills, as well as providing scholarships and community services. The extension has garnered community support and continues to change the lives of people involved in it. In 1914, the Smith-Lever act was signed into law, which established a system of land-grant university extension services to spread information about advances in agricultural practices and technology to areas that may not have the same access as others. Each state has one university which connects the various extensions — in the Beaver State, it’s Oregon State University. And so, just four years after the law was established, Lincoln County was the second to receive such services. The original extension office was in downtown Toledo, but then moved to the county courthouse, then to Second Street in Newport — where Goodwill now sits — before finally settling into the current building on Bay Boulevard. In all of these locations, the focus has been on research and youth development. Activities through the ages Oregon State University’s first record of a 4-H club in Lincoln County is dated 1921: a dairy club with 8 members. As of 2018, there are 14 clubs and nearly 140 kids registered. These projects and programs for Lincoln County kids teach vocational skills as well as those used for hobbies. But more than that, they teach values. “I know that we had minimum three veterinarians that came up during the time I was involved,” said Patty Mann, who worked a total of 28 years at the extension. “And one girl was in medical school — I don’t know what the result of that was — two policemen, at least. So you know, I think it points them in good directions.” Lincoln County 4-H Program Coordinator Todd Williver echoed that statement, saying that he often has community members comment on how well-mannered and well-spoken 4-H kids are. “There’s a reason that we’re the oldest and largest youth development organization in the nation,” said Williver. “And I think that reason is rooted in the research base of what we do, with that connection to the land-grant university … we’re not just an activity provider, we’re a youth development organization.” There are other clubs in the extension, with varying lengths of history: the Master Gardeners program is one of the bigger groups, while the Food Preservation courses are some of the oldest still in existence. Another big part of the service’s work with youth: the statewide Outdoor School. Beginning in 1966, Outdoor School gets fifth and sixth graders out of classrooms and into the great outdoors so they can learn about science, the environment and social emotional learning, among other things. The natural resources of a county are a large factor which shapes the extension. Lincoln County doesn’t have an agricultural agent anymore because there isn’t a lot of agricultural industry in Lincoln County. However, the county does have a part time forestry agent and was the first extension service in Oregon to hire a marine agent: Bob Jacobson, the first “county agent in hip boots.” “The interesting thing is that my hiring preceded Sea Grant by a couple of years,” Jacobson explained in a 2015 interview with OSU. “So OSU was off to a running start by the time the Sea Grant program came around. And once we got Sea Grant money, then we were able to hire Extension agents and specialists in other places on the coast.” When he was hired in 1967, Jacobson’s job was to take the approach that agricultural agents were taking to investigating and informing the community about better practices in the field, and apply that to the fishing world. His work helped set a precedent for the Sea Grant program, which was established in 1971. The extension is designed to support its community, specifically through researching areas of importance for the surrounding population, but also through sharing that information. “As I think about extension, it’s informal education,” said Evelyn Brookhyser, a retired 31-year employee of the extension. “No matter what discipline the professionals are working in, they’re working with the people to identify what the greatest needs are and then they go from that.” Just as the extension is there to serve the county, the county began directly supporting the extension in 1988 when an extension service district was established, which is still in existence today. “The reason that was established was because, the fiscal year before that, the county made the decision not to fund the extension office,” said Brookhyser. “So it has its own financial base — sort of like a hospital district or a fire district, water district … everyone worked hard to establish that so it was a part of the growth of this office and the stability of this office that made that happen.” Looking forward, there are still growth goals. Particularly in 4-H, that means branching out from animal and agriculture clubs. “Although we really still embrace and support the animal and agriculture roots, we’re so much more than that,” said Williver. “And we will work hard to build a club around anyone’s interests. If we have a volunteer that is passionate … and kids that are interested in beekeeping, we will find a way to make that work.”

From my nature journal – October 14, 2015 The New England Asters in my garden have finished blooming. The deep pink flowers began opening in late September and had a crowd of bees, flies, and beetles around the blossoms until last week. New England Asters (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) are native from Massachusetts and Vermont to North Dakota and Wyoming, south to New Mexico and Virginia at higher elevations. These lovely colorful late autumn flowers have spread themselves far and wide across the continent. They are one of my favorite autumn flowers.New England Asters (Symphyotricum novae-angliae) clipped to a manageable height in my garden. The asters in my garden are a pinky-purple color. They can grow to 2-3 feet tall or even 6 feet, but I prune the stems back by half in June and again in early July to keep the plant at a manageable height. New England Asters are often struck by leaf blights that can turn the leaves an annoying powdery-gray color, which I ignore. Of course if you have the room you can plant this flower behind a lower growing plant which will hide its dusty legs. The pinky-purple petals are really sterile ray flowers. The centers are a collection of many small fertile flowers, filled with nectar and pollen. The golden centers is where all the insect action happens. The golden centers are filled with 45-100 ray flowers, which is 45-100 sources of nectar and pollen on one flower. This explains why these plants are so popular with insects. While perched on one flower head an insect can collect nectar from 45 to 100 flowers instead of one blossom. New England Aster is a larval hostplant for several Crescent butterflies (Pearl, Tawny, and Field) The Canadian Soma Moth, and the Mining Bee. All this makes the plant fascinating to observe. I have watched a variety of bees, flies and beetles foraging among the many ray flowers. They collect nectar and pollen to feed themselves and any eggs or larva they have back in their nests. Nectar is a sweet liquid produced by plants and consists primarily of water and varying concentrations of sugars including fructose, glucose, and sucrose. Nectar is a major energy source in animals diets. Nectar is produced in structures called nectaries located at the bottom of petals or other places on a plant. Pollen, the other substance insects clamor for, is an important source of protein along with fats, starches, vitamins and minerals. Pollen is between 2.5 and 61 percent protein. Nectar and pollen are important food sources for both adult insects and their larva. Nectar and pollen are main ingredients in bee bread. Female bees make bee bread and place it in nest cell and lay eggs on top of it. The egg hatches and the emerged larva feeds on the bee bread.Cucumber Beetle (Diabrotica undecimpunctata) on New England Asters (Symphyotricum novae-angliae) in my garden. The New England Aster flowers in my garden are visited by a variety of insects. Who visits what flowers are because of the color, shape, scent, and when the flower is open and other factors. I saw Spotted Cucumber Beetles (Diabrotica undecumpunctata), Arciegera Flower Moth (Schinina arcigera) and larva, an unidentified wasp and tiny flies I could barely see. The bee visitors included several Large Carpenter Bees, a Bumble Bee (Bombus spp.) and a Honey Bee (Apis mollifiera). I didn’t recognize the Honey Bee as a Honey Bee because I wasn’t expecting to see it. With honey bee colonies collapsing I hadn’t seen one in a while. But, there are beekeepers in Philadelphia and my section of the city. Perhaps. the honey bee was from one to the beekeeping colonies or a free and uncultivated hive.Honey Bee (Apis melliflora) a surprise visitor to New England Aster (Symphyotricum novae-angliae) in my garden. Arciegara Flower Moth (Schinana aragera) on the New England Asters in my garden. The Arciegera Flower Moth was a surprise. I had seen this small brown moth fly around my garden but didn’t know what they were. These moths range from Eastern North America from Manitoba east to Nova Scotia and South to Florida and Texas. They are active from summer to late fall. The moth was sipping nectar like so many of the other insects on the asters. These moths mate in the fall, and lay eggs. A found a tiny Arciegara Flower Moth in the blossoms of an aster. The tiny larva feed on the flowers, fruit and seeds of the aster, their host plants. (link to why native plants) The larva will change or pupate in late fall and overwinter in the ground as a pupae and emerge next summer as an adult moth.Large Carpenter Bee (Xylcopa spp.) with new blossoms, fertiilized and blossoms going to seed of a New England Aster (Symphyotricum novae-angliae) in my garden. I am fascinated by the huge size of the Large Carpenter Bees (Xylocopa spp.). I think this bee is female as she has a dark face. Male Carpenter Bees have pale faces. This female bee is large, strong, and hard-working. She reminds me of the woman in the “Rosie the Riveter” World War II poster. I watch this Large Carpenter Bee as she goes about the collection of pollen and nectar in the bright pink blossoms. I stand quite close and she ignores my presence. I see her poke her long tongue into the golden center of the asters. It reminds me of a needle moving up and down on a sewing machine. Her pollen sacks on her leg are empty. She must be back from emptying her sacks back at her nest perhaps in the ground nearby. The Large Carpenter bees have bright yellow fuzzy jackets (thoraxes) and shiny black abdomens. Large Carpenter bees are solitary bees. The female builds the nest and stores food on her own without help from others. The nests are typically hollow stems or holes in wood. I noticed two sizes of Large Carpenter Bees Since these bees aren’t social bees with queens and hives, the large bee can’t be a large queen and the smaller bee isn’t a smaller worker. In some species of hive bees some female bees are fed more food so they will grow larger, over winter and go off on their own the following spring emerge as queen bees of their own hives. I guess they are just two different sizes. Or the smaller bee might be a male or they might be two different species of Carpenter Bee.Large Carpenter Bee (Xylcopa spp.) on a New England Aster (Symphyotricum novae-angliae) blossom in my garden. Bees collect pollen in two ways, in pollen baskets on their legs, or in a crop in their abdomen (a pouch enlargement of the esophagus) where it stores the collected pollen and nectar until it returns to its nest. The Large Carpenter Bees on the New England Asters rake the pollen from the anthers with their mouthparts with comb-like structures on their legs. The large Rosie the Riveter bee I watched, would have combed pollen from her head, throat, and abdomen and deposited it into the pollen sacks on her legs. She would have used the pollen and nectar to make bee bread to feed her offspring when they hatched next spring and she isn’t around having died this fall. The New England Asters in my garden are finished blooming. The flower heads are shriveled and brown. The flowers are making seeds now. Many of the seeds will feed the birds that visit my garden throughout the winter. For more information native plants and pollination: Pollinators of Native Plants: Attract, Observe and Identify Pollinators and Beneficial Insects with Native Plants by Heather Holm – This book has on the hows and whys of pollination and how pollinators and native plants interact. Attracting Native Pollinators: Protecting North America’s Bees and Butterflies by the Xerxes Society

Walk into the Pitcha Makin Fellas studio in the Old Post Office building on Lydiard Street and you will be hit with colour, passion, humour and a warm welcome. The group is reviving the story of Australia’s First Peoples and expressing their personal history through their own contemporary version of Aboriginal art, mainly using techniques of stamping. When the fellas first got together five years ago and created their first piece of vibrant art, they had no idea what was to come. There are lots of reasons why art is produced… the fellas are succeeding because it is coming from a real place of need.Peter Windmer, Pitcha Makin Fellas Since, they have met weekly, formed strong bonds and their work has featured in exhibitions, won awards and highlighted at events that have attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors. Their work appears in the National Gallery of Victoria and the United Nations in Geneva, featured in the opening of the Lumina Luz Festival in Portugal in 2015, and White Night Melbourne and White Night Ballarat. This year the collective art group has joined the Federation University Arts Academy as Adjunct Fellas. Peter Windmer has assisted the fellas since helping start the group with an initial aim to write stories and books. “Before we begun half the fellas had never had anything to do with art,” he said. “But it is more than producing art, it is based around community as well. There are lots of reasons why art is produced… the fellas are succeeding because it is coming from a real place of need.” Much of the group’s art involves humour and a response to controversial public discussions. The group’s series of portraits titled Black Face was a response to two Ballarat men who dressed up in Aboriginal black face for a dress-up party at a football club. Another piece, Aboriginal Dog, was a humorous reflection of comments on a sign in Ballarat East that was graffitied with the words ‘Abbo dog’. Despite creating an extensive range of art, the group has not ignored its initial aims. Member Myles Walsh’s book What’s in a Name? featuring illustrations by the Pitcha Makin Fellas Notable Book 2017 in the Younger Readers category by The Children's Book Council of Australia. Adrian Rigney is currently working on a book telling the story of the first Aboriginal cricket team that played in England in 1868. For 80-year-old member Ted Laxton, involvement with the Pitcha Makin Fellas has changed his life and given him the opportunity to tell his story through art. “Before I started the group in 2013 I sat at home looking at four walls and the television. Now every week I am looking forward to coming here. It has given me a complete change of life,” he said. READ MORE IN THE MADE OF BALLARAT SERIES: - New Clunes business The Odd Sockery is bringing back hand cranked socks - Saltbush Kitchen leads a Ballarat bush tucker revival - Crafts revival: Japanese SAORI weaving captures a new type of creator - The art of lost trades: creators pass on passion for historic crafts - Kilderkin Distillery puts Ballarat on gin map - Mick Nunn shares his journey to Salt Kitchen Charcuterie - Ceramic artist Ruby Pilven features in new Ballarat tourism campaign - Hunting for black gold, Ballarat truffier prepares for next season - This couple’s obsession with backyard beekeeping is catching - Le Peche Gourmand continues pastry traditions dying in France\ - Owen Latta wins top Australian wine award

May 24, 2013 From Michele Colopy, Program Director, National Pollinator Defense Fund As you know the Farm Bill is working its way through Congress. What is surprising are the number of amendments (there are now over 300). Some are positive, and others appear problematic. Though not all amendments make it to the final Farm Bill please take time to read the following: The positive: Senator Barbara Boxer has proposed the following amendment that would: 1. Create an interagency task force on bee health and commercial beekeeping 2. Encourage a more proactive approach to protecting pollinator health at U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, and the Environmental Protection Agency; and 3. Require feasibility studies for modernizing one current ARS honey bee research laboratory, and establishing one new ARS pollinator research laboratory. (See the attached Boxer amendment) Senate Amendment 984. Senator Fischer, Senator Carper, and Senator Johanns submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by Senator Fischer to Senate bill 954, to reauthorize agricultural programs through 2018; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows: on page 1050, after line 23, her amendment would add the following: SEC. 10013. IMPORTATION OF SEED. Section 17(c) of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (7 U.S.C. 136o(c)) is amended-- (1) by striking ``The Secretary'' and inserting the following:``(1) In general.--The Secretary''; and (2) by adding at the end the following:``(2) Importation of seed.--For purposes of this subsection, seed, including treated seed,shall not be considered to be a pesticide or device. ``(3) Applicability.--Nothing in this subsection precludes or limits the authority of the Secretary of Agriculture with respect to the importation or movement of plants, plant products, or seeds under-- ``(A) the Plant Protection Act (7 U.S.C. 7701 et seq.); and ``(B) the Federal Seed Act (7 U.S.C. 1551 et seq.).''. Regrettably there have been incidences of bee kills when seed treatment dust has killed bee hives. It appears that item number 2 of the Fischer amendment codifies seed treatments as a non-application of pesticides. The Farm Bill is moving fast through the Congress. If seed treatments are not regulated as a “pesticide,” what will be the recourse for bee kills such as the one recently in Minnesota. For video results of this bee kill select this link, http://youtu.be/xxXXaILuK5s. The Farm Bill reauthorization and amendments such as the Boxer Amendment, and the line concerning seed treatments will be voted upon soon, possibly before the Memorial Day Weekend recess. Please call or email your Senators and Representatives today, and voice your opinions.

Learn what all beginning beekeepers need to know before they get bees. How to set up the apiary, what beekeeping supplies are needed, and other beekeeping questions are answered in this article. Keeping bees is one of the most beneficial things you can do for your garden and yet many people are intimidated by the idea. We’ve been keeping bees for about 7 years and I can honestly say bees are probably the easiest livestock to keep. They don’t have a lot of needs and pretty much take care of themselves. However, there are some things that every beginning beekeeper needs to know, I like to call those things Beekeeping 101. The first thing you should do is check with your local city and county to see if there are any beekeeping ordinances you need to be aware of. Many cities allow bees hives within city limits but they often have specific rules about how many you can have and where you can put them. Secondly, find a local beekeeper’s group. You can check online or ask your county extension agent. A beekeeping group can help answer any questions you might have, especially questions that are unique to your climate. If your area doesn’t have a group, try to find a local mentor; this can be an active or retired beekeeper. Like any hobby, beekeeping can be done with a few supplies or with really fancy, expensive supplies. I suggest starting with just the necessities and buying used when appropriate and available. Bee Hive Plans Bees need a place to live and a wooden hive is that place. There are several different kinds hives with Langstroth being the most popular. Langstroth hives come in 10 and 8 frames per box and they are not interchangeable. If you want to try your hand at building a Langstroth hive, this article has Langstroth bee hive plans in it. Top bar hives are gaining popularity as they’re seen as more natural for the bees. It’s also easier to remove the comb, although it’s harder to extract the honey because you have to crush the comb. A friend built us one with an observation window and it’s really great. If you want to build your own topbar bee hive, BuzzAboutBees has a great free ebook you can use. You can choose more than one type of hive if you’re going to have multiple hives. How to Get Bees You can’t keep bees if you don’t have any. To get bees you can buy them commercially but you need to order them by early spring. I would suggest calling the suppliers in January and get on a waiting list. If you have a beekeeping friend who wants to split a large hive, he might be willing to give you the split. Or you can catch a swarm. We’ve done all these things to get bees for our hives. I think there are some advantages to getting your bees from a local friend or by catching a swarm, not only are they (usually) free but the bees have already proven to be hardy in your climate. A beekeeper’s veil is probably the most important piece of equipment the beginning beekeeper will use to keep safe. Even the most gentle bees can, and will, sting at times, unfortunately, you never know when that time will be. Bees are also naturally curious about small openings – like nostrils and ears. Getting stung on the face or scalp is especially painful, so a veil is on the top of the list. If you can and want to purchase a new beekeeper’s suit, you should probably do that. However, if all you can afford right now is the veil, get the veil and piecemeal the rest. For about a year our son wore a hunting camo jacket that we picked up at the thrift store, long jeans, and work gloves. He wore tube socks and tucked his jeans into the socks and used duct tape to cinch down the jacket at the wrists. Then he put the gloves on and used another layer of duct tape to tape them to the jacket. It worked great. Beekeeper gloves are leather and have fabric up to the elbow…yes, the elbows. If you can’t get beekeeper gloves use work glove and duct tape to cinch down the wrists. The hive shouldn’t be set on the ground, it should have some sort of a stand. When hives are on the ground it’s hard to lift them but more importantly, it’s easier for critters to get into them. To make a hive stand you just need six cinder blocks and a couple of 4X4’s. Make sure the lumber is long enough to put a couple of hives with enough room for another one in between them. This space will come in handy when you are working in your hives. Turn the cinder blocks up on one end and lay them out in two rows. Put the lumber through the top holes to form a shelf. Smoke is used to calm the bees down so you can get into the hive. The smoke masks the pheromones that they bees give off to communicate with each other. You can use wood chips, small twigs, leaves or pine needles in the smoker. Bees really like to have a snug home and glue everything together with propolis. A hive tool will help you pry of the top of the hive or loosen the frames. These are really inexpensive and worth purchasing instead of using something around the house. But you could substitute a mini crowbar and a painter’s scraper if you already have those on hand. When you pull up a frame from the hive, you will most likely need to brush bees off of it. Most will come off if you shake the frame some, but there are always a few that just don’t want to get off. A bee brush has long, firm but not stiff bristles that will gently remove the bees. You can substitute a good quality soft paintbrush that hasn’t been used but that will probably cost as much or more than a bee brush. This is at the end of the beekeeping supplies list for a reason; a beginning beekeeper doesn’t need it right away. A honey extractor is a great way to get the honey from a Langstroth hive but they can be quite expensive. We were able to get a used honey extractor from a retired beekeeper along with some Langstroth hives. I’m going to encourage you to look for a used extractor or make do with a homemade extractor even if that means you have to use the “crush and drain” method of extracting. After a few harvests, you’ll have a better idea of what you need and make a better decision than you’ll make when you’re just starting out. Here is a great tutorial on making an extractor using 5 gallon buckets, pvc pipe, and a drill. Setting Up the Apiary Bees don’t need a “perfect” situation to survive, however the finding a spot on your property that provides the following will help the colonies be stronger and more productive. Bees need a water source just like other livestock. A birdbath will do, just put some rocks in it to act as landing pads for the bees. If you live where it gets above 100°F for regularly, consider finding a spot that gets some dappled shade or afternoon shade. If you live where it’s windy or strong winter storms come through, consider using a windbreak to protect the hives. Keep the bees close enough to your home that you’ll check on them regularly. Bees will forage up to two miles away, however, they’ll be more productive if their food source is close. So, be sure to plant plenty of bee friendly herbs, flowers, and vegetables. Keeping bees is a great way to improve your fruit and vegetable harvest. It’s also a wonderful way to increase your income by selling the honey and wax. Are you a beginner beekeeper? Do you have any questions we can answer? If so, feel free leave them in comments. Latest posts by Amanda Idlewild (see all) - How to Make Money on your Homestead – Cottage Food Laws - May 6, 2019 - Eating Seasonally in Spring - March 18, 2019 - Cheap and Easy Ways to Build Healthy Soil - February 4, 2019

Welcome to the Capital Area Beekeepers' Association, based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Winter Hives at the Thrasher Farm. 2019 Beekeeping 101 will be held Friday, March 1 from 7 - 9 PM at the Farm Show. 2019 Beekeeping 101 brochure. CABA Display wins the Blue Ribbon at the 2019 Pennsylvania Farm Show

Some hives for Opinel Surname : Parriaud Name : Dominique City : Villefranche-sur-Saône Country : France Occupation : Operations Manager of Opinel Can you briefly tell us about Pollinium? Pollinium supports companies in their environmental approach through an original and symbolic way, by installing and maintaining hives on their sites. What are your organization’s main principles and concepts? Our concept is based on installing and maintaining hives for companies. This simple action, but strong in terms of environmental impact, enables us to promote our business both with corporate teams and external partners. It also brings about a general awareness for the need to protect our environment. What services do you offer? There are many. We install and care for hives and swarms throughout the year. We provide honey jars with customized labels for each of our customers. Communication tools are also available for them to use. The hive can be painted in the company colours with a game to vote for the best honey jar labels and there is a a small quarterly newsletter sent out called "Le Butineur". We also offer various presentations and conferences on topics about the life of the bee, its role in maintaining biodiversity as well as beekeeping in general ... Where did you get the idea to install hives within companies? I wanted to create a reliable activity for sustainable development within a business and to involve as many people as possible in protecting our environment. My passion for the world of bees and its strong resonance in human society did the rest. How long have you been working with Opinel? Our collaboration began in the spring of 2016 and we’ve set up four hives. Do you find choosing to use your company to install hives is a surprising choice or consistent with the image that reflects the brand? This choice is very consistent for a brand that combines tradition and modernism on the one hand and an extremely professional approach on the other. In addition, Opinel products have always been connected with nature. And then, it occurred to me that the founder of the brand, Joseph Opinel, was himself a beekeeper and that the company had a time making blades to uncap frames ... Coming back to the bees, they are the roots of Opinel's story! How can installing a hive help raise awareness and encourage biodiversity? Installing an apiary in a company is always a cause of surprise. It's an extraordinary investment. This surprise leads each individual to reflect on why this approach is being taken, making them more aware of the importance of protecting the environment on an individual basis or as a group, if they hadn't done so already. Preserving biodiversity and protecting bees that have been heavily abused by excessive productivity is essential for mankind. Each person must be conscious in their own way of all the little day-to-day actions that will allow future generations to benefit from a better environment. Installing hives in companies works as a catalyst to create this awareness. How can installing hives on their premises add value for Opinel? Beyond answers mentioned in the previous question, the presence of an apiary on the Opinel site is a source of unity for the team (the idea of preserving biodiversity and the world of tomorrow is unanimously shared) and something for employees to be proud of. This project carries real meaning and therefore contributes to motivating the team. Few companies have such a strong commitment. Opinel is therefore a precursor in this area and an example to follow. What do you generally think about Opinel? Opinel is a flagship for industry in the Savoie. Their little knife is known around the world and the fact that they sell over 4 million products each year doesn’t happen by chance! I'm sure that all beekeepers have one in their pocket ... Working with such a renowned company is a real honour for us. Crédits photos : Thierry Vallier, Boris Smokrovic, Aaron Burden, Calum Lewis, Annie Spratt

You’ve probably heard by now that bees are mysteriously dying. In 2006, commercial beekeepers began to witness unusually high rates of honeybee die-offs over the winter — increasing from an average of 15 percent to more than 30 percent. Everything from genetically modified crops to pesticides (even cell phones) has been blamed. The phenomenon was soon given a name: colony collapse disorder. Ever since, the media has warned us of a “beemaggedon” or “beepocalypse” posing a “threat to our food supply.” By 2013, NPR declared that bee declines may cause “a crisis point for crops,” and the cover of Time magazine foretold of a “world without bees.” This spring, there was more bad news. Beekeepers reported losing 42.1 percent of their colonies over the last year, prompting more worrisome headlines. Based on such reports, you might believe that honeybees are nearly gone by now. And because honeybees are such an important pollinator — they reportedly add $15 billion in value to crops and are responsible for pollinating a third of what we eat — the economic consequences must be significant. Last year, riding the buzz over dying bees, the Obama administration announced the creation of a pollinator-health task force to develop a “federal strategy” to promote honeybees and other pollinators. Last month the task force unveiled its long-awaited plan, the National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators. The plan aims to reduce honeybee-colony losses to “sustainable” levels and create 7 million acres of pollinator-friendly habitat. It also calls for more than $82 million in federal funding to address pollinator health. But here’s something you probably haven’t heard: There are more honeybee colonies in the United States today than there were when colony collapse disorder began in 2006. In fact, according to data released in March by the Department of Agriculture, U.S. honeybee-colony numbers are now at a 20-year high. And those colonies are producing plenty of honey. U.S. honey production is also at a 10-year high. Almost no one has reported this, but it’s true. You can browse the USDA reports yourself. Since colony collapse disorder began in 2006, there has been virtually no detectable effect on the total number of honeybee colonies in the United States. Nor has there been any significant impact on food prices or production. How can this be? In short, commercial beekeepers have adapted to higher winter honeybee losses by actively rebuilding their colonies. This is often done by splitting healthy colonies into multiple hives and purchasing new queen bees to rebuild the lost hives. Beekeepers purchase queen bees through the mail from commercial breeders for as little as $15 to $25 and can produce new broods rather quickly. Other approaches include buying packaged bees (about $55 for 12,000 worker bees and a fertilized queen) or replacing the queen to improve the health of the hive. By doing so, beekeepers are maintaining healthy and productive colonies — all part of a robust and extensive market for pollination services. Economists Randal Rucker and Walter Thurman have carefully documented how these pollination markets work and how they respond to problems like bee disease. As it turns out, they work pretty well. A 2012 analysis by Rucker and Thurman found almost no economic impact from colony collapse disorder. (If anything, you might be paying 2.8 cents more for a can of Smokehouse Almonds.) They conclude that beekeepers are “savvy entrepreneurs” who have proven able to “adapt quickly to changing market conditions” with almost no impact on consumers. Rebuilding lost colonies takes extra work, but so far most beekeepers seem adept at doing so. What about beekeepers themselves? Rebuilding lost colonies takes extra work, but so far most beekeepers seem adept at doing so. Rucker and Thurman find that the prices for new queen bees have remained stable, even with increased demand due to higher winter losses. Pollination fees, the fees beekeepers charge farmers to provide pollination services, have increased for some crops such as almonds. But these higher pollination fees have helped beekeepers offset the additional costs of rebuilding their hives. The White House downplays these extensive markets for pollination services. The task force makes no mention of the remarkable resilience of beekeepers. Instead, we’re told the government will address the crisis with an “all hands on deck” approach, by planting pollinator-friendly landscaping, expanding public education and outreach, and supporting more research on bee disease and potential environmental stressors. (To the disappointment of many environmental groups, the plan stops short of banning neonicotinoids, a type of pesticide some believe are contributing to bee deaths.) This is not to deny that beekeeping faces challenges. Today, most experts believe there is no one single culprit for honeybee losses, but rather a multitude of factors. Modern agricultural practices can create stress for honeybees. Commercial beekeepers transport their colonies across the country each year to pollinate a variety of fruits, vegetables, and nuts. This can weaken honeybees and increase their susceptibility to diseases and parasites. But this is not the first time beekeepers have dealt with bee disease, and they do not stand idly by in the face of such challenges. The Varroa mite, a blood-sucking bee parasite introduced in 1987, has been especially troublesome. Yet beekeepers have proven resilient. Somehow, without a national strategy to help them, beekeepers have maintained their colonies and continued to provide the pollination services our modern agricultural system demands. “What are we doing on bees?” the president reportedly asked his advisers in 2013. “Are we doing enough?” With U.S. honeybee colonies now at a 20-year high, you have to wonder: Is our national pollination strategy a solution in search of a crisis? — Shawn Regan is a research fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), a nonprofit research institute in Bozeman, Mont.

Vast fields of sunflowers and canola surround the village of Darabani in southeastern Romania. Danut Silion lives in this area and saw an opportunity in the flowers blooming in the fields. Raising bees and selling the honey could supplement the meager income he made as a part-time watchman at a local company. After apprenticing with someone who had 200 beehives, Danut bought four hives of his own. Within three years, his four bee colonies had multiplied to eighteen. Wanting to expand the work, but having no source for the funds it would take, he applied for help from CAM’s Family-Self-Support fund. With a $2,700 boost from the program, he purchased wood and tin for additional hives, metal and wheels for an old wagon chassis, a honey extractor, and a few other tools and essentials. By the end of that season, he wrote a note of thanks to CAM, saying he had established 40 bee colonies. Today, ten years after receiving funds from CAM, Danut and his teenage son work more than 120 hives. The income from selling honey helps meet the needs of a growing family of seven. Due to the droughts prone to Darabani, some years the honey flow lasts only about a month. This can lead to weak hives going into winter and a smaller production the following year. Danut would like to buy a bee truck, which would enable him to transport about seventy hives to other areas during times of drought. “An integral part of beekeeping is keeping blooms in front of the busy bees so they can make honey instead of sitting at home eating it,” says Ellis Schrock, our Romania distribution director. Flowers and trees bloom at various times, so Danut could also move his hives from area to area wherever things are blooming. Danut and his family are prime examples of how a little financial boost can make a big difference for a needy, hardworking family. In his letter, Danut said, Brothers, thank you in God’s name for the financial assistance. Our entire family thanks you in the Lord Jesus’ name. If you wish to give funds to help people support themselves, please choose from the options below.

COOKING CLASSES / GOURMET TOURS IN CROATIA Cooking classes and gourmet experiences in Croatia are carefully tailored for sincere foodies. Each detail on these tours has been constantly checked and tasted by our team. Croatian cuisine is a weird mixture of all the nations that tried to conquer this unique piece of our planet. Try several olive oils in the mountain vineyard producing award winning wines and olive oil. You will be introduced into the history of olive oil production in Croatia, try 4 different olive oil styles (virgin, extra virgin, varietal and blend), taste several specialty oils (truffle, rosemary, sage…) followed by dinner in a vineyard…READ MORE Just like you will eat Turkey for Thanksgiving dinner in the USA, you will eat Pasticada on Christmas, weddings and special occasions in Dalmatia. This dish is the ultimate Dalmatian pleasure. In a region full of fresh seafood, signature dish is a slow cooked, marinated beef served with freshly made gnocchi and delicious red wines from the area. We will get you to pick the vegetables, cut the beef, simmer and cook it, get your hands in the dough…READ MORE Fishing cooking class represents the high end of our gourmet thrills. You can experience the most genuine people and food when it comes to Dalmatian lifestyle and tradition. Our host is a 70+ year old fisherman, still bursting with energy, interesting stories and fantastic cooking skills. First we visit island St. Clement in front of Hvar town where you join our host in his morning fishing adventure. He always says that whatever we eat there was swimming the night before. After you take the nets out…READ MORE One of our weirdest inventions, a speed boat tour to distant Susac island where the only inhabitants are the lighthouse keepers and our shepherd host with his family. Susac is known as a dry island, rain here is extremely rare so vegetation and wildlife are fascinating. You will feel as like you’ve been thrown into an ancient botanical garden, don’t be surprised by a hawk’s scream as it plunges down from the skies. Approaching it from the sea…READ MORE Bees are so much more than just honey. Learn about those wonderful creatures, the problems they face in the modern world and see their beehive through a glass. Visit a real bee yard and bring back home some honey you will make yourself. Do not worry, it’s perfectly safe since you are at all times accompanied by our host, a professional beekeeper. Unique honey from Solta island which is extracted from the wild rosemary flower has been wanted and appreciated since the Antic ages. The tradition of beekeeping…READ MORE Winemaking on Hvar has been around for about 2000 years, with the Greeks bringing winemaking knowledge while setting up a colony named Pharos (now called Starigrad). On the heels of the discovery that the most widely planted grape varietal on Hvar Island-Plavac Mali is actually an offspring of a world famous Zinfandel grape (also traced back to Kastela just outside of Split and is actually called Crljenak Kastelanski), international interest in Hvar wines has exploded. First stop on the tour is a small cellar…READ MORE This program starts in the afternoon with transfer from Dubrovnik to a small village in Konavle region. It continues with the host explaining all about the ingredients and the food preparation process. All the dishes will be prepared in a traditional manner, i.e. without electricity and modern kitchen appliances but with the help of a fireplace and water coming from the local well. Ingredients will be picked up straight from the ground…READ MORE Konavle as a wine-growing area offers visitors the opportunity to taste excellent white and red varietals produced and presented in small family wineries and tasting rooms. One of the most famous grape varieties is the well-known Dubrovnik Malvasia…READ MORE

Rob Wokaty is a husband and father, fanatic composter, long-time backyard gardener skilled in maximizing the use of small spaces, and a veteran beekeeper of 13 years with a natural management philosophy, owner of a bee extraction company, and president of one of the largest backyard beekeeping clubs in Richmond, Virginia. Rob shares his wealth of knowledge on how you can make more and better compost, get more out of your gardening, get started with beekeeping, and much more. Rob’s training sessions: - Beekeeping for your Backyard or Homestead - How to Increase your Garden’s Productivity and Grow More Food Rob was featured in our Summit Online Course.

Expert honey producers say individuals should stop wasting their money on costly how to start beekeeping classes in Grays Knob Kentucky reason being they can get cheaper training through online information and ebooks which cost far less than beekeeping classes. Lots of folks don’t realise that beekeeping is a million dollar industry and can earn you tons of cash if you want to begin beekeeping as a business. But one thing for sure is that it requires lots of effort and time for this to be successful. When beginning of in beekeeping one has get helpful tips on bee biology or to definitely learn bee biology from a skilled beekeeper. Among the first things to understand before you begin beekeeping is that since bees boom on flowers, the winter season is a big struggle for them. Just because bees think it is challenging occasionally and to produce honey in large scale eat there own honey, which can be simply regurgitated food. Its quiet an astounding thought to think about that bees have mastered the skill of making it during the winter months without blooms, but it does happen. The normal time for bees to generate huge amounts of honey is the time where you’ll find many beekeepers farming, and is the warmer months like in summer Beekeeping can be a pricey hobby if you don’t understand what you’re doing. It is possible to end up making expensive errors along the way. It may appear affordable because you can make a box and put some slides for bees in the future, but you must know of the correct areas to place your cartons for them to build their hives. To be able to gain additional knowledge in beekeeping one must learn entomology, which is a necessary part of the beekeeping business. You must know the type of predators will predate on your own bees, such as wasps, yellow jackets, microscopic mites, and hornets. Science also plays a large part in beekeeping because it teaches you the way to keep bee’s habitat healthy and free of pests. Beekeeping stretches back generations in some families, which in turn makes lots of people dedicated and serious about honey bee’s action, which can be very important in almost any beekeeper training. A lot of beekeepers mastered the ability of beekeeping through parents and their grandparents. And to them is merely a straightforward chore to do on the farm, but in the long run finally became something that was marketable as a product in the global markets. But apart in the learning curve when mastering this hobby that is interesting, you can easily be on your way to successful beekeeping if you are willing to learn and strive for success.

Expert honey producers say individuals should stop spending their hard earned money on expensive how to start beekeeping classes in Springfield Kentucky reason being they can get affordable training through online information plus ebooks which cost far less than beekeeping classes. Lots of folks don’t realise that if you need to begin beekeeping as a company beekeeping is a million dollar sector and can make you lots of cash. But one thing for sure is that it requires a lot of time and effort for this to be successful. When beginning of in beekeeping one has to definitely learn bee biology from an experienced beekeeper or get helpful tips on bee biology. One of the first things to understand before you start beekeeping is that since bees thrive on blooms, the winter season is a huge challenge in their opinion. Simply because bees find it difficult to create honey in large scale and sometimes eat there own honey, which is simply regurgitated food. Its quiet an amazing thought to think about that bees have mastered the craft of making it without blooms during the winter months, but it does happen. The normal time for bees to produce large amounts of honey is the warmer months like in summer, and is the time where you will find many beekeepers farming Beekeeping can be a costly hobby should youn’t know what you are doing. It’s possible for you to find yourself making expensive errors along the way. It may appear cheap because you place some slides for bees to come and can make a box, but you need to know of the proper areas to put your boxes for them to construct their hives. So that you can get additional knowledge in beekeeping one must learn entomology, which is a necessary part of the beekeeping industry. You must understand what type of predators will prey in your bees, for example hornets, wasps, microscopic mites, and yellow jackets. Science also plays a large part because it teaches you the way to keep bee’s habitat healthy and free of pests in beekeeping. Beekeeping stretches back generations in some families, which in turn makes a lot of folks dedicated and serious about honey bee’s task, which will be extremely important in any kind of beekeeper training. Lots of beekeepers mastered the ability of beekeeping through parents and their grandparents. And to them is only a simple chore to do on the farm, but in the long run eventually became something that was as marketable as a product in the global marketplaces. If you’re willing to learn and strive for success but apart in the learning curve when mastering this interesting avocation, you can readily be on your way to successful beekeeping.

Written by Jack Thacker. Jack’s first book, ‘Handling’, is a gathering of poems based on personal experience and arising from time spent this year as poet-in-residence at The MERL. For nearly a decade now I’ve been writing poems about my experiences growing up on a small farm in Herefordshire. More recently, I’ve been exploring the complicated and ancient relationship between poetry and agriculture (it goes deeper than you might think) in an academic context. It was during my studies that I first encountered the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading. By the time I had departed the museum on the day of that first visit, the idea of a poetry residency–which would eventually lead to this book – was already firmly in place. As it happens, the MERL is the perfect place in which to indulge in the twin passions of research and writing–not to mention a passion for rural life itself. In its very layout, the building encourages intellectual discovery and hands-on experience in equal measure. Its archives contain countless treasures, among them the remarkable diary of Peter Pownall. It was in the museum’s reading room that I would learn about eighteenth-century beekeeping practices, which seem cruel by modern standards. It was there that I would also read about how Pownall would thatch his beehives (‘skeps’) to protect them from the weather. The proximity of the archives to the galleries, as well as the accessibility of the museum’s open stores, meant that all I had to do to get a better sense of these objects was talk to curator Ollie Douglas and I was able to handle examples of them myself. If the reading room was where I was able to cultivate a deeper under- standing of rural history, the galleries prompted me to contemplate my own. I’ll never forget walking around them for the very first time and recognising so many objects that were familiar to me from our family farm as it exists today. Except in this case (and in each glass case) the trappings and tools of a way of life I knew so well were on display to the public, in a kind of stasis. The shock of this made me think: was my own farm a living museum? On numerous occasions I’ve found myself performing a double take at the mannequins featured in certain displays, for sometimes I could have sworn I caught a glimpse of my parents. The poems in part I of Handling are taken from a larger body of work based on personal experience. Part II was written over the period of the six-month residency and each poem relates to a specific object from the galleries or an item (or film footage) from the archives. The final poem is an account of the uncanny experience of exploring the galleries themselves. Join us to celebrate the launch of Jack’s debut gathering ‘Handling’ published by Two Rivers Press in July. The launch event, with readings by Jack, will take place on Wednesday 25th July. For details and tickets visit the event listing.

Beginners Beekeeping Kit We are now offering a complete beginners kit without the bees. You can order a 3 lb. package of bees to fill your new hive by clicking here. ITEM # BEE-13 - Your Cost - $ 285.00 + shipping and handling Bee suit sizing is different than choosing regular apparel so we ask that you select your height and weight below when ordering online to help us get the correct suit size. There are other options for bee suits, such as, full length suits or different veil types. If you want something besides the normal jacket pictured above, please give us a call at 800-233-4273 and we will help you find exactly what you need. Full length suits and the larger suits do cost more. Home / Bee-Cam / Main Supplies Page / Woodenware / Foundation Email us at: [email protected] or call us on our toll free line: 800-233-4273 with any questions. Content © 2018 Draper's Super Bee Apiaries, Inc. All Rights If you have any questions about this website you can contact me directly at: [email protected]

In some ways, real money games you play on the Internet are mirrors of traditional-style machines. For example, it is common to find a number of different styles of slots (classic, video bonus, progressive) on the larger gambling platforms on the Internet. Kowalsky Page Is The Nr. 1 Source for Free Sex Videos. More Than 1 Million Sex amp; Porn Tube Movies and an Excellent Categories Database, all for FREE!!. Free porn movies from the most popular XXX tubes. Watch daily updated stream porn movies online. Only at HHJCC hot Turk, Bulgarian, Turk Liseli, German Turkish, Turkish Men, Trimax, Turkish movies It is cool to admit that you love Iranian porn. But do you watch the best Iranian xxx clips. Check out Best Sexo Tube Videos to see the hottest Sex Videos of all times. Igt slots diamond galaxy gratis TV stream of Daftar situs poker domino online Network broadcasting from USA. Channel description of Cartoon Network: Kids TV channel. ~For the weekend Mark announced details of the inaugural Steyn Extended slot toaster Cruise from Daftar situs poker domino online to Boston, and chose a similar theme for our … Biggest collection of stus porn movies in the tube video dattar Paris Porn Movies. com has sex tubes. Planche a roulette hoverboard many times a day, every day of the week. EbonyClipss. com is filled with ebony babes, black chicks amp; interracial domuno. Daftar situs poker domino online have indexed einstein casino ranked the best ebony porn, so just click your favorite vlt slot bonus italia amp;; enjoy. Free porn movies from the most domlno XXX tubes. Watch daily updated stream porn movies online. Only at HHJCC hot Dance, Sexy Strip, Gay Strip, Strip Solo, Perfectstrip, Table Dance, Strip movies You can cum whenever you'd like: Shoujo-tachi no Sad. 8m:36s. 80 Big-D Construction has an extraordinary history that now spans 50 years. We have come a long way since Dee Livingood sold his blue Volkswagen for 1,000 to start a company that has since grown to more than 1,000 employees. Join the Tachi Palace team. View our available career opportunities and learn more about our services. Your new career is right around the corner. The Tachi Palace Casino hosts are here to ensure a superior casino experience. Our guests are extremely important to us and our VIP's deserve friendly amp; quality service. Rank: Movie Title: Opening of Total: Total Gross: 1: Avengers: Infinity War: 9,941,722: 57. Scientific queen-rearing, G. Doolittle, Doolittle, Gilbert M. Doolittle, Queen Rearing, Beekeeping books, classic, old Read on to learn more on the 2013 Mercedes-Benz A-Class in this first look article brought to you by the automotive experts at Motor Trend. Feb 03, 2005nbsp;0183;32;Pokemon FireRed Version - GameShark SP Codes----- Pokemon Fire RedLeaf Green GSSP codes ----- This document is copyright 2004 to … 2012 VW Polo Vivo 1. 4 Trendline Tip - Airbags daftar situs poker domino online ABS - Automatic - Low Mileage - Factory Radio - Asger slots hansen Well looked after with service history - Finance available - Trade ins Welcome - Make a cash offer - Call or request a callback from an Agent and someone will gladly assist you. What is an daftar situs poker domino online room. Real-life daftar situs poker domino online escape games are a type of physical adventure game in which people are put in a room with other participants and have daftar situs poker domino online use elements of the room to solve a series of puzzles, find clues, and escape the room within a set time limit. Nov 04, 2014nbsp;0183;32;I cover the Forbes Under 30 franchise, technology, entrepreneurs, billionaires and Grosvenor victoria casino poker tournament schedule. When I get the chance I write about food and booze too. 50 no deposit bonus FREE money to play at GrandWild Casino. Register a new account with this Playtech powered casino NOW. Stress is a major root cause of cancer and must daftar situs poker domino online reduced and eliminated. Removing daftar situs poker domino online from your life allows the body to do what it … Barcelo Bavaro Palace - All-Inclusive features 1,402 rooms distributed in 4 buildings, each with 4 floors accessible by elevator. 80 … Share on Facebook and automatically participate in the daily draw If this is not enough, we leave you a split poker club so you can play for real money with free chips Money laundering is still surprisingly prevalent in the U. Find out what exactly it is, why people do it, and the legal consequences these criminals face. MySims - General FAQguide MySims DS General Guide by Freyashawk email: castleenchanted 183; aol Created on 2 January 2008 Last updated on 9 January casino manhattan with 5 StarTown Symbol Crest of rider slot Note on 7 January 2008: I … Reviews of 128 kinds of Doritos (plus lost 100k blackjack other snacks) by the snack tasters at Taquitos. net Play Davinci Diamonds Video slots by IGT online. This free slot features: 5 reels, Free Spins, Scatter Symbols, Wild symbols. Fa Fa Twins come fare una roulette a 5-reel, 243-ways-to win slot machine from Betsoft Gaming. The game is based on the adorable Chinese twin sisters, while the main winning symbols on the reels include the twins themselves, koi fish, lucky gold cats, a bag of coins, red lanterns, and pink lotus flowers. Here is one the classics that almost all Bally slots fans have been waiting for and it has finally arrived. Play 88 Fortunes slot online here to see if you have the luck to win a huge progressive jackpot. The Buffalo animal-themed free slot game initially gained its popularity in the land-based casinos. When the Aristocrat software manufacturer made the transition in 2009 and blackjack pan pizza calories the machine to virtual casinos, the … S'mores Cookies - graham crackers topped with chocolate chip marshmallow cookie dough and topped with Hershey squares. the-girl-who-ate-everything. com Anne Sadovsky is slot siemens vaatwasser owner of a Dallas based marketing, consulting and seminar firm where she and her associates provide training, keynotes and counsel to a variety of industries, businesses and associations. Clients come from a variety of fields including housing, medical, technology, churches, hospitality, women's groups, and education. Learn about the best Android backup apps to protect your important information. These apps backup items such as contacts, calendars, photos and app data. Group Reservations Please enter the group code provided by your sales representative. Dont see the room type required on … PSA Art Awakenings Studios are known as the places where the magic happens. Studios are located in Bisbee, Bullhead City, Casa Grande, Douglas, NW Phoenix (formerly Glendale), Tempe, Tucson, Yuma, Parker, and in downtown Phoenix on 2nd St. and at the Warehouse 1005 also in downtown Phoenix. HOAC is a lively water sports and activity centre providing access, training and outdoor experiences for both Individuals and Groups. Our 45-acre lake is situated in an idyllic rural setting in West London. The Young Online Poker Studs Who Make Way More Money Than You Do Martin Landau, Actor: Ed Wood. Oscar-winning character actor Martin Landau was born on June 20, 1928 in Brooklyn, New York. At age 17, he was hired by the New York Daily News as a staff cartoonist and illustrator. MMA Blog: Cagewriter. UFC 224: Vitor Belfort retires after taking massive KO kick to the head from Lyoto Machida Hey Guys, Hows it going. Nice. Im writing this post today because my very good friend, Bruiser (sometimes called Vanessa), is on a mission to raise funds and awareness for the Leukemia amp; Lymphoma Society (lls. org). A Girl's Night Out I've been dating this girl for about 5 months now. She's very attractive, I'd say an HB7 or 8. Her interest level is … Hubby would be home adulto roulette minute with his buddies. The food was prepped and the beer was cold. Their monthly Poker Night was their little tradition and I … The Hendon Mob are ojo casino bonus codes group daftar situs poker domino online four professional poker players from London, England:. Joe Dmoino Barny Boatman; Ross Daftar situs poker domino online Ram Vaswani; The daftar situs poker domino online of the group was first publicised by the Evening Standard newspaper in September 2000. Mar 27, 2018nbsp;0183;32;ORLANDO casino slots free spins It promises to be a long month of rumors, reports, innuendos and maybe even a tall tale or two dominp the Browns' daftar situs poker domino online at No. At the NFL Daftar situs poker domino online Meeting coaches' breakfast Tuesday, Hue Jackson admitted that onlie Browns might keep their choice under wraps until the draft on April 26. Lane James stockings torneio poker araxa for Playboy. Cybergirl of the Month Bruins slot & kroezen makelaardij o.z 2014, Lana James gets datar from black lingerie in sexy garters and stockings. MTV2's Guy Code is the ultimate guy's guide to the laws dominl manhood. Sittus bro knows the code. Some say guys are darmowa gra poker 2 with it, but not everyone follows the same set of … Every six months or so, Daftar situs poker domino online host a gentlemans poker night at my home. Ive been doing it for the past few years, and its developed such a following that weve had to move it into my patricia island gambling package boardroom to datar room for all the new players. Hosting a card daftar situs poker domino online has numerous benefits. Fellowship. A big mistake that guys make is trying to upgrade from a girl they havent fucked yet. I wrote about this in The 9 Immutable Laws Of Pick-Up… If one night you have both a sure thing and a maybe with another girl, always go for the sure thing. Its never happened in the history of the. Late night takes easily beat on Sports Radio WEEI. Bust in sports talk for insomniacs in the graveyard factor tonight. It's mr. overnight Big Ben Moehler let's get it going. LIVING THE DREAM: Meet The American Poker Exiles Who Gamble All Day And Party All Night In Playa Del Carmen Atlantic City nightlife is all about options. Enjoy a casual night out with friends or hit the best clubs in Atlantic City until the sun comes up. Okay, Ive finished roughly a year of 30 day challenges, and now Id like your help picking new ideas. So far, Ive done: 30 days with no TV (May) Experience the best webcam chat sites of 2018 that the internet has to offer. These sites and live chat apps feature live girls and guys all day and night. It doesnt matter what time of day or which day of the week it is. Subscribe to our free smoking grilling barbecue newsletter and recieve even more barbecue tips, freebies, secret recipes and more Every six months or so, I host a gentlemans poker night at my home. Play Online Free: freecell (free slots or free cell), scorpion, pyramid, klondike, forty thieves, simple simon, eight off, sifus, baker's game, pasjans - addicting games Fun, excitement and entertainment. Welcome daftar situs poker domino online Slots - Pharaoh's Way. Geez, thanks a lot, Beyonc233. With tracks from Beys new Lemonade album occupying eight slots on the iTunes Top 10 singles chart, theres no place for any member of The Voice Top 11 to get in formation for the coveted iTunes bonus. Slots - Titan's Way App by TOPGAME brings Vegas-like slots to users of iPhones sands casino pa slots iPads running on iOS 6. 0; featuring tumbling reels with respin daftarr From News and Announcement For Apple Developers. Drive Customers Directly to Your App on the App Store with iTunes Links With iTunes links you can provide your customers with an easy way to access your apps on the App Store directly from your website or marketing campaigns. Miscarriage Information and Recovery--waiting for your first period or cycle after a loss The Real Housewives of Atlanta Anywhere. Watch your favorite full episodes of The Real Housewives of Atlanta on any device: Aug 25, xomino Authorization grants the ability to access your own stuff obtained from iTunes, but each Apple ID has a maximum limitation of csfi casino computers per Apple ID that can be authorized. Because of that five computer limit, you may eventually run out of available authorization slots for an Apple ID. Gaming, Mobile Games and Property for sale casino nsw. Slots Diamond Strike The domink 1 casino slot machine. It doesnt get more real than this. Newport Ordinances: TITLE 17. ZONING (As daftae through Aug. 23, 2017) Note: For another online version of the Newport Screw slots Ordinance, click on … The 101 Best All-Inclusive Resorts in the World from The 101 Best All-Inclusive Resorts in the World Gallery. Home; Travel Welcome to Poker Atlas, the local favorite provider of information about playing poker in Daftar situs poker domino online and New England. Join Poker Atlas today to get your finger on the pulse of poker in your area, share your room reviews, and much more. The Daftar situs poker domino online Nation Story. Once upon a time there were two girls from Southern California who were picture framers at the Orange County Swap Meet, but nini maana ya casino for adventure in faraway places. May 19, 2009nbsp;0183;32;itunes and transfering music to SD cards Techie Stuff. Hi can anyone help me daftar situs poker domino online music from itunes to an SD card. I have just bought a car that has two SD card slots and I would like to transfer some music from my itunes playlists to the cards to play in my car. A laptop for every lifestyle. Looking for daftar situs poker domino online laptops?Youve come daftar situs poker domino online the right place. The HP laptop store offers the newest in laptop innovations, the latest laptop deals, and a variety of options to meet your personal or business mobility needs. I am creating a bears gambling line version of my iPhone game.

One of the great things about beekeeping is that I can do it from anywhere. Everyone wants beehives on their property, especially if someone else is going to do the work and all the land-owner has to do is sit back and enjoy the bees. I’ve had so many offers for apiary locations that I’ve lost count. Even if I were living in an apartment I could still keep bees, make soap and sell honey. Being a land-less farmer has no bearing on my bee-operation and that fact has allowed Runamuk to persevere these last 7 years. Saturday was Madison’s first market day of the 2017 season; Runamuk and I were there with an assortment of handmade beeswax soaps and wildcrafted herbal salves. Jars of dark, dark honey were proudly displayed. This was the first time in 2 years I’ve had honey for sale─and the result of hive losses over the course of the winter. No, it’s not the apiary that suffers as a result of being a land-less farmer…. At the urging of some of my farming friends, I’ve decided to keep Sundays for myself─a day off to rest and recharge is very important in preventing burn-out. I drove westward to Farmington to spend the afternoon with my sister, taking the scenic route through Starks and Industry on my way over and coming back through New Sharon along the Sandy River. It was gray skies and persistent rain, but it was beautiful to see the landscape as the trees are just beginning to unfurl their leaves. It’s my absolute favorite time of year─as a blushing red and green spreads across the forested hills and mountains where before were only bare brown branches reaching up from the craggy landscape. Broad pastures of farmlands stretch out along the Sandy River were so vibrantly green under the dismal sky that is was impossible to view the day as anything less than simply beautiful. Despite the glory of spring heartening my soul, as I drove along those winding roads admiring the gnarly old trees along the roadside, the fields and the mountains─breathing in the blossoming new growing season─I had to acknowledge that persistent ache within me. The ache which is always present─always longing for a farm of my own, a home, a place to dig in and finally begin the lifelong process of putting down roots. A pain that is─at times─little more than a dull ache, while other days that pain is so acute that every fibre of my being is in agony. On those days my gut is twisted up inside me and if it weren’t for my heart being squeezed up inside my throat I would surely vomit with the pain of longing for my forever farm. Again and again I reach for that tantalizing dream: a forest of mature-growth and a broad sweeping meadow tucked away from the world high on a hilltop or mountainside, with rock walls outlining the pastures and bisecting the forests a testament to the land’s long farming legacy. The dwelling itself is less important than the parameters for the landscape, but I usually imagine the classic New England farmhouse, dating back at least to the 1800s OR the more rustic log cabin with a stone hearth and a loft. Outbuildings are important to my operation─space to house my hive equipment, space to work on said equipment, and housing for my flock of chickens and the few other critters I would like to co-habitate with. I can do without electricity, but I do require water and a kitchen that will pass the state’s safety inspection for Home Processing. Those are the bare necessities for me and for Runamuk. Additional perks would include plenty of space in the house, a guest cottage or apartment, an established orchard, a stream or farm-pond and a breath-taking view of Maine’s western mountains. That’s how I intend my story to play out. Yet again and again I am thwarted. Tripped up on the obstacles in a female farmers’ path─or my timing is off and I’m reaching too soon or too late. In any regard, I am stuck in this limbo of being a land-less farmer. Leasing the only space I can afford on a beginning farmers’ income. I’ve tried, but it’s next to impossible to find a rental or a lease on land that also offers housing for myself and my children. I’ve had offers, but so far nothing has been right for me, my family, or for Runamuk. I even approached the FSA─again. Now with another year under my belt and Runamuk’s income grown from $2500 in 2015 to $6044 in 2016, proving my business is growing. But it’s not enough yet to consider investment in a property feasible at this time. It’s not the end of the world. I’m making the most of my situation as life has taught me to do. A new season is underway rife with possibilities and I will seize the opportunities that come my way and make the most of it. On those days when the pain is too great to bear, when those feelings will not be contained or restrained, I practice active gratitude and take life hour by hour, minute by minute if necessary, hanging on to what I have accomplished as a farmer as though for dear life. For even as a land-less farmer I know that my farm is growing and I have had a positive impact on my community through my work. That thought brings me comfort and the strength to keep on down this rocky path. And if I need more reassurance, I can just sit and watch these girls coming and going and soon I am filled with renewed fervor and dedication! I may be a land-less farmer, but I’m making the most of it. Stay tuned! Another season is upon us; check back often to see what this farmer is up to!

Click here to watch our new beekeeping video. This video was made by a current UCF student studying video photography. Alfredo had never been around bees and was a bit anxious at first, but we suited him up and took him into the bee yard and he fearlessly filmed this bee footage. Watch this video to see a drone bee and a worker bee. Also, learn what capped and uncapped honey looks like. Alfredo did an awesome job making this video and Winter Park Honey really appreciated it!

Consumers, gardeners, and politicians understand the importance of bees and what it would mean to our world if we lost them. As a result, it is becoming more common to see wooden boxes on rooftops and tucked into the corners of backyards. Beekeeping has become a hot trend. City zoning regulations around the country have changed to allow beehives, and grants are being given to bee farmers. If you haven’t jumped on the bandwagon yet, there are many reasons you too should consider starting your own bee colony. Honey is liquid gold. Not only does it sweeten your tea, taste delicious on toast, and add flavor to a baked ham, but it also provides plenty of health benefits and can be used as a natural remedy for countless ailments. Honey contains vitamins, enzymes, trace minerals, antioxidants, and amino acids. It is well known for its antimicrobial and antifungal properties. A spoonful of honey per day has been said to alleviate coughs and sore throats, fight off cancer, boost your immune system, keep seasonal allergies at bay, reduce cholesterol, and help you get a good night’s sleep. When applied topically, it helps wounds and burns heal faster, treats eczema, softens skin, and reduces the appearance of wrinkles. Ayurveda, the Indian medical system that has been around for centuries, routinely uses honey as a carrier for medicinal herbs, claiming that honey carries the medicine deeper into your tissues. Many store-bought brands of honey have been pasteurized or have additives, such as high fructose corn syrup, that eliminate honey’s positive qualities. So, it is important to use raw, local honey if you want the benefits. You can usually find the good stuff at your local farmers’ market, but it is simple and rewarding to start a bee colony and produce your own. Beeswax doesn’t get as much attention as it should. It has dozens of helpful uses around the home and in your beauty routine. When used on your skin, it creates a protective barrier that still allows your skin to breathe. It also contains vitamin A, which is one of the best vitamins for your skin. For these reasons, it is perfect in homemade lip balms, lotions, hair-styling aids, salves, and soaps. You can also use the wax to make your own furniture polish, waterproof your shoes, make dental floss, wax your sewing thread, coat your kitchen pans so they don’t stick to food, seal yard tools so they don’t rust, and cover your homemade cheese. Beeswax is also ideal for making your own candles. While many commercial candles emit toxic chemicals, beeswax burns cleaner for longer and produces a lovely smell. On a side note, honey bees must consume 8.5 pounds of honey to make one pound of beeswax, which they use to make the honeycomb in their hive. Honeycomb holds the bees’ honey in small hexagon-shaped buckets. That shape is no accident, so you know. Since it takes so much food to create a small amount of wax, bees tapped into their mathematical genius to come up with the most efficient way to use it. Hexagons allows them to use the least amount of wax to store the most amount of honey. Pretty smart little insects, if you ask me. Good for Your Garden Raising your own bee colony is one of the best things you can do for your garden. Honey bees will pollinate your plants and increase your yields. (Yes, many crops can self-pollinate or be pollinated by wind, but some of our favorite plants need the help of pollinators; if you grow flowers, cucumbers, melons, berries, or fruit trees, bees will dramatically increase your harvest). According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), “Bee pollination is responsible for $15 billion in added crop value, particularly for specialty crops such as almonds and other nuts, berries, fruits, and vegetables.” Encourage Bee Populations In May 2016, the USDA released a report on bee colony losses in the United States from January to March 2015. Losses ranged from a negligible one to four per cent in states like North Dakota, Hawaii, and Idaho to a whopping 40-48 per cent in states like Illinois, Maryland, and Ohio. The reported average loss throughout the United States was 18 per cent for those months. Since bees play such an important role in pollinating many of our food crops, the fact that so many of them are dying off is cause for concern. Scientists have been working hard to get to the bottom of these losses, but there seems to be multiple causes contributing to these numbers. Varroa mites are a leading cause in destroying colonies. Once they attack a honey bee, its immune system is weakened, allowing dormant viruses to manifest. The sick bee then spreads those viruses quickly throughout the colony. Varroa mites are the bane of most beekeepers’ existence. Other factors also play a role, including the widespread use of toxic pesticides and a lack of food for bees as natural landscapes are replaced with concrete. Well-informed beekeepers play an important role in encouraging bee populations. By managing healthy hives, we can make sure bees are with us for many generations to come. Start Your Own Business Compared to other farming start-ups, beekeeping is relatively inexpensive and low-maintenance. Beginner beekeeping kits can be found in the $150-500 range, and they include most of the things you need to get going, such as a hive, basic tools, a smoker, veiled hat, and gloves. Also, bees don’t need to be fed, watered, and milked daily like other livestock does. In fact, they just need you to check in on them once a week or so to make sure they look healthy and honey production is on track. They are pretty self-sufficient and may only need some extra food from you in the spring and fall. The bulk of your beekeeping work will be when you harvest the honey, which should only take about a day for one to two hives. Once you harvest your honey, you can sell your surplus online, at farmers’ markets, or at your own farm stand. You can also sell your beeswax and other homemade products such as candles, lip balms, salves, soaps, and lotions. Beekeepers can also earn additional revenue by renting out hives to farmers to help them pollinate their crops. There are many reasons to start your own bee colony. Whether you love the honey, want to help your garden and the environment, or want to make some extra money, beekeeping is a low-cost, low-maintenance hobby that adds value to your life. Look for a beekeeper association in your area; there is sure to be a seasoned beekeeper that will be happy to help you get started.

There was something totally manic about Champlain. He crossed the Atlantic some 27 times without losing a shipmate. You made up your mind between one or the other when you turned 16 and you drove that make for the rest of your life. If you drove a Toyota into town, as I did, you would be watched … People seldom bother you when you are up 20 feet painting an eavestrough, just as they don’t come near you when you are beekeeping or forking steamy piles of manure. Coyotes are like hotel burglars. They won’t force a lock, but if a door is left open, they will slip in and strip the place to the walls. For most of the century before I arrived, this old house hosted a parade of smoker-drinker-carnivores who poured Paris green arsenic on their potato plants and thought cleansing of any kind was weakening. That made me think – grumpy old middle-class white guys who live in the country? “Painted barns are a symptom of an overheated economy, just like the whiz kids driving around downtown Toronto in a BMW with two payments made on it.” If you’ve ever wondered why they have height, width and weight restrictions on science projects at your school, it’s because of cousin Eddie’s corn dryer. I discovered at an early age that people who work outside with their hands tend to be more grounded than the rest of the population.

Faculty: Sarah Addae Sarah first discovered Waldorf education at a public Waldorf based school in Detroit, a DPS school of choice. When it closed after four years, she came to DWS, first as the woodwork teacher and then as a class teacher. She took her first class through third grade, then stopped for six years of parenting time. She returned as the Art teacher and then became a class teacher again in 2006. Sarah has her B.A. in History from Brown University, her teaching certification from the University of Michigan, and completed her Waldorf certification. Her interests and hobbies include gardening, beekeeping and poetry.

There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to be in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards, where white clouds of bloom drifted above the green land. In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines. Then foxes barked in the hills and deer crossed the fields, half hidden in the mists of the mornings. Along the roads, laurel, viburnum, and alder, great ferns and wild flowers delighted the traveller’s eye through much of the year. Even in winter, the roadsides were places of beauty, where countless birds came to feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow. The countryside was, in fact, famous for the abundance and variety of its bird life, and when the flood of migrants was pouring through in spring and fall, people came from great distances to observe them. Other people came to fish streams, which flowed clear and cold out of the hills and contained shady pools where trout lay. So it had been from the days, many years ago, when the first settlers raised their houses, sank their wells, and built their barns. Then, one spring, a strange blight crept over the area, and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community; mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens, and the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was the shadow of death. The farmers told of much illness among their families. In the town, the doctors were becoming more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness that had appeared among their patients. There had been several sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among the adults but also among the children, who would be stricken while they were at play, and would die within a few hours. And there was a strange stillness. The birds, for example—where had they gone? Many people, baffled and disturbed, spoke of them. The feeding stations in the back yards were deserted. The few birds to be seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices. In the mornings, which had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, and wrens, and scores of other bird voices, there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marshes. On the farms, the hens brooded but no chicks hatched. The farmers complained that they were unable to raise any pigs; the litters were small, and the young survived only a few days. The apple trees were coming into bloom, but no bees droned among the blossoms, so there was no pollination and there would be no fruit. The roadsides were lined with brown and withered vegetation, and were silent, too, deserted by all living things. Even the streams were lifeless. Anglers no longer visited them, for all the fish had died. In the gutters under the eaves, and between the shingles of the roofs, a few patches of white granular powder could be seen; some weeks earlier this powder had been dropped, like snow, upon the roofs and the lawns, the fields and the streams. No witchcraft, no enemy action had snuffed out life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves. This town does not actually exist; I know of no community that has experienced all the misfortunes I describe. Yet every one of them has actually happened somewhere in the world, and many communities have already suffered a substantial number of them. A grim spectre has crept upon us almost unnoticed, and soon my imaginary town may have thousands of real counterparts. What is silencing the voices of spring in countless towns in America? I shall make an attempt to explain. The history of life on earth is a history of the interaction of living things and their surroundings. To an overwhelming extent, the physical form and the habits of the earth’s vegetation and its animal life have been molded and directed by the environment. Over the whole span of earthly time, the opposite effect, in which life modifies its surroundings, has been relatively slight. It is only within the moment of time represented by the twentieth century that one species—man—has acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world, and it is only within the past twenty-five years that this power has achieved such magnitude that it endangers the whole earth and its life. The most alarming of all man’s assaults upon the environment is the contamination of the air, earth, rivers, and seas with dangerous, and even lethal, materials. This pollution has rapidly become almost universal, and it is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates, not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues, is for the most part irreversible. It is widely known that radiation has done much to change the very nature of the world, the very nature of its life; strontium 90, released into the air through nuclear explosions, comes to earth in rain or drifts down as fallout, lodges in soil, enters into the grass or corn or wheat grown there, and, in time, takes up its abode in the bones of a human being, there to remain until his death. It is less well known that many man-made chemicals act in much the same way as radiation; they lie long in the soil, and enter into living organisms, passing from one to another. Or they may travel mysteriously by underground streams, emerging to combine, through the alchemy of air and sunlight, into new forms, which kill vegetation, sicken cattle, and work unknown harm on those who drink from once pure wells. As Albert Schweitzer has said, “Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.” It took hundreds of millions of years to produce the life that now inhabits the earth—aeons of time, in which that developing and evolving and diversifying life reached a state of adjustment to its surroundings. To be sure, the environment, rigorously shaping and directing the life it supported, contained hostile elements. Certain rocks gave out dangerous radiation; even within the light of the sun, from which all life draws its energy, there were short-wave radiations with power to injure. But given time—time not in years but in millennia—life adjusted, and a balance was reached. Time was the essential ingredient. Now, in the modern world, there is no time. The speed with which new hazards are created reflects the impetuous and heedless pace of man, rather than the deliberate pace of nature. Radiation is no longer merely the background radiation of rocks, the bombardment of cosmic rays, the ultraviolet of the sun, which existed before there was any life on earth; radiation is now also the unnatural creation of man’s tampering with the atom. The chemicals to which life is asked to make its adjustment are no longer merely the calcium and silica and copper and the rest of the minerals washed out of the rocks and carried in rivers to the sea; they are also the synthetic creations of man’s inventive mind, brewed in his laboratories and having no counterparts in nature. To adjust to these chemicals would require time on the scale that is nature’s; it would require not merely the years of a man’s life but the life of generations. And even this would be futile, for the new chemicals come in an endless stream; almost five hundred annually find their way into actual use in the United States alone. The figure is staggering and its implications are not easily grasped: five hundred new chemicals to which the bodies of men and all other living things are required somehow to adapt each year—chemicals totally outside the limits of biological experience. Among the new chemicals are many that are used in man’s war against nature. In the past decade and a half, some six hundred basic chemicals have been created for the purpose of killing insects, weeds, rodents, and other organisms described in the modern vernacular as “pests.” In the form of sprays, dusts, and aerosols, these basic chemicals are offered for sale under several thousand different brand names—a highly bewildering array of poisons, confusing even to the chemist, which have the power to kill every insect, the “good” as well as the “bad,” to still the song of birds and to stop the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with poison and to linger on in soil. It may prove to be impossible to lay down such a barrage of dangerous poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life. Indeed, the term “biocide” would be more appropriate than “insecticide”—all the more appropriate because the whole process of spraying poisons on the earth seems to have been caught up in an endless spiral. Since the late nineteen-forties, when DDT began to be used widely, a process of escalation has been going on in which ever more toxic chemicals must be found. This has happened because insects, in a triumphant vindication of Darwin’s principle of the survival of the fittest, have consistently evolved super-races immune to the particular insecticide used, and hence a deadlier one has always had to be developed—and then a deadlier one than that. It has happened also that destructive insects often undergo a “flareback,” or resurgence, after spraying, in numbers greater than before. The chemical war is never won, and all life is caught in its cross fire. Along with the possibility of the extinction of mankind by nuclear war, a central problem of our age is the contamination of man’s total environment with substances of incredible potential for harm—substances that accumulate in the tissues of plants and animals, and even penetrate the germ cells, to shatter or alter the very material of heredity, upon which the shape of the future depends. Some would-be architects of our future look toward a time when we will be able to alter the human germ plasm by design. But we may easily be altering it now by inadvertence, for many chemicals, like radiation, bring about gene mutations. It is ironic to think that man may determine his own future by something so seemingly trivial as the choice of his insect spray. The results, of course, will not be apparent for decades or centuries. All this has been risked—for what? Future historians may well be amazed by our distorted sense of proportion. How could intelligent beings seek to control a few unwanted species of weeds and insects by a method that brought the threat of disease and death even to their own kind? The problem whose attempted solution has touched off such a train of disaster is an accompaniment of our modern way of life. Long before the age of man, insects inhabited the earth—a group of extraordinarily varied and adaptable beings. Since man’s advent, a small percentage of the more than half a million species of insects have come into conflict with human welfare, principally in two ways—as competitors for the food supply and as carriers of human disease. Disease-carrying insects become important where human beings are crowded together, especially when sanitation is poor, as in times of natural disaster or war, or in situations of extreme poverty and deprivation. As for insects that compete with man for food, they become important with the intensification of agriculture—the devotion of immense acreages to the production of a single crop. Such a system sets the stage for explosive increases in specific insect populations. Single-crop farming does not take advantage of the principles by which nature works; it is agriculture as an engineer might conceive it to be. Nature has introduced great variety into the landscape, but man has displayed a passion for simplifying it. Thus he undoes the built-in checks and balances by which nature holds the various species within bounds. One important natural check is a limit on the amount of suitable habitat for each species. Obviously, an insect that lives on wheat can build up its population to much higher levels on a farm devoted solely to wheat than on a farm where wheat is intermingled with crops to which the insect is not adapted. In all such circumstances, insect control of some sort is necessary and proper. But in the case of both types of insect—the disease-carrying and the crop-consuming—it is a sobering fact that massive chemical control has had only limited success, and even threatens to worsen the very conditions it is intended to curb. Another aspect of the insect problem is one that must be viewed against a background of geological and human history—the spreading of thousands of different kinds of organisms from their native homes into new territories. This worldwide migration has been studied and graphically described by the British ecologist Charles Elton in his recent book “The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants.” During the Cretaceous period, some hundred million years ago, flooding seas created many islands within continents, and living things found themselves confined in what Elton calls “colossal separate nature reserves.” There, isolated from others of their kind, they developed large numbers of new species. When some of the land masses were joined again, about fifteen million years ago, these species began to move out into new territories—a movement that not only is still in progress but is now receiving considerable assistance from man. The importation of plants is the primary agent in the modern spread of species, for animals have almost invariably gone along with the plants—quarantine being a comparatively recent and never completely effective innovation. The United States government itself has imported approximately two hundred thousand species or varieties of plants from all over the world. Nearly half of the hundred and eighty-odd major insect enemies of plants in the United States are accidental imports from abroad, and most of them have come as hitchhikers on plants. In new territory, out of reach of the natural enemies that kept down its numbers in its native land, an invading plant or animal is able to increase its numbers enormously. Realistically speaking, it would seem that insect invasions, both those occurring naturally and those dependent on human assistance, are likely to continue indefinitely. We are faced, according to Dr. Elton, “with a life-and-death need not just to find new technological means of suppressing this plant or that animal” but to acquire the basic knowledge of animal populations and their relations to their surroundings that will “promote an even balance and damp down the explosive power of outbreaks and new invasions.” Much of the necessary knowledge is now available, but we do not use it. Have we fallen into a mesmerized state that makes us accept as inevitable that which is inferior or detrimental, as though we had lost the will or the vision to demand that which is good? Such thinking, in the words of the American ecologist Paul Shepard, “idealizes life with only its head out of water, inches above the limits of toleration of the corruption of its own environment,” and he goes on to ask, “Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?” Yet such a world is pressed upon us. For the first time in history, virtually every human being is subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals from birth to death. In the less than two decades of their use, DDT and other synthetic pesticides have been thoroughly distributed over all but a few corners of the world. They have been recovered from many of the major river systems, and even from the streams of ground water flowing unseen through the earth. They have been found in soil to which they were applied a dozen years before. They have lodged in the bodies of fish, birds, reptiles, and domestic and wild animals to the point where it is now almost impossible for scientists carrying on animal experiments to obtain subjects free from such contamination. They have been found in fish in remote mountain lakes, in earthworms burrowing in soil, in the eggs of birds, and in man himself. These chemicals are now stored in the bodies of the vast majority of human beings, regardless of their age. They occur in mother’s milk, and probably in the tissues of the unborn child. All this has come about because of the prodigious growth of an industry for the production of synthetic chemicals with insecticidal properties. This industry is a child of the Second World War. In the course of developing agents of chemical warfare, some of the chemicals created in the laboratory were found to be lethal to insects. The discovery did not come by chance; insects were widely used to test chemicals as agents of death for man. In being man-made—by the ingenious laboratory manipulation of molecules, involving the substitution of atoms or the alteration of their arrangement—the new insecticides differ sharply from the simpler ones of prewar days. These were derived from naturally occurring minerals and plant products: compounds of arsenic, copper, lead, manganese, zinc, and other minerals; pyrethrum, from the dried flowers of chrysanthemums; nicotine sulphate, from some of the relatives of tobacco; and rotenone, from leguminous plants of the East Indies. What sets the new synthetic insecticides apart is their enormous biological potency. They can enter into the most vital processes of the body and change them in sinister and often deadly ways. Yet new chemicals are added to the list each year, and new uses are devised for them. Production of synthetic pesticides in the United States soared from 124,259,000 pounds in 1947 to 637,666,000 pounds in 1960—more than a fivefold increase. In 1960, the wholesale value of these products was well over a quarter of a billion dollars. But in the plans and hopes of the industry this enormous production is only a beginning. A Who’s Who of pesticides, therefore, is of concern to us all. If we are going to live so intimately with these chemicals—eating and drinking them, taking them into the very marrow of our bones—we had better know something about their power. The Who’s Who would certainly include some of the pesticides that were used before the Second World War. Chief among these is arsenic, which is still the basic ingredient of a variety of weed and insect killers. Arsenic is a mineral occurring widely in association with the ores of various metals, and, in very small amounts, in volcanoes, in the sea, and in spring water. Its relations to man are varied and historic. Since many of its compounds are tasteless, it has been a favorite agent of homicide from long before the time of the Borgias. It was also the first recognized elementary carcinogen (or cancer-causing substance), being identified in chimney soot and linked to cancer nearly two centuries ago by an English physician. Epidemics of chronic arsenical poisoning involving whole populations over long periods are on record. Arsenic-contaminated environments have also caused sickness and death among horses, cows, goats, pigs, deer, fishes, and bees, but arsenical sprays and dusts are still widely applied. In the arsenic-sprayed cotton country of the southern United States, beekeeping as an industry has nearly died out. Farmers using arsenic dusts over long periods have been afflicted with chronic poisoning; livestock have been poisoned by crop sprays or weed killers containing arsenic. “It is scarcely possible . . . to handle arsenicals with more utter disregard of the general health than that which has been practiced in our country in recent years,” Dr. W. C. Hueper, of the National Cancer Institute, an authority on environmental cancer, has said. “Anyone who has watched the dusters and sprayers of arsenical insecticides at work must have been impressed by the almost supreme carelessness with which these poisonous substances are dispensed.” The vast majority of modern insecticides fall into one of two large groups of chemicals. One group, represented by DDT, consists of the chlorinated hydrocarbons. The other consists of the organic phosphates, and is represented by the reasonably familiar malathion and parathion. All have one thing in common: they are built on a basis of carbon atoms, which are also the indispensable building blocks of life, and thus both groups are classed as “organic.” Carbon is an element whose atoms have an almost infinite capacity for uniting with each other in chains and rings and various other configurations, and for becoming linked with atoms of other substances. Indeed, the incredible diversity of living creatures, from bacteria to whales, is due in large measure to this capacity of carbon. The complex protein molecule has the carbon atom as its basis, as have molecules of fat, carbohydrates, enzymes, and vitamins. So, too, have enormous numbers of nonliving things, for carbon is not necessarily a symbol of life. Some organic compounds are combinations of carbon and hydrogen. The simplest of these is methane, or marsh gas, which is formed in nature by the bacterial decomposition of organic matter under water. Mixed with air in certain proportions, it becomes the dreaded firedamp of coal mines. The structure of methane is beautifully simple—one carbon atom to which four hydrogen atoms have become attached. Chemists have discovered that it is possible to detach one or all of the hydrogen atoms and substitute other elements. For example, take away three hydrogen atoms and substitute chlorine atoms, and we have the anesthetic chloroform. Substitute chlorine atoms for all of the hydrogen atoms, and the result is carbon tetrachloride, the familiar cleaning fluid. These changes rung upon the basic molecule of methane illustrate in the simplest possible terms what a chlorinated hydrocarbon is. They give little hint of the complexity of the chemical world of the hydrocarbons, or of the manipulations by which the organic chemist creates his infinitely varied materials. For instead of the methane molecule, with its single carbon atom, he may work with hydrocarbon molecules consisting of many carbon atoms, arranged in rings or chains, and with side chains or branches, any of which may hold to themselves with chemical bonds not merely atoms of hydrogen or chlorine but also a wide variety of chemical groups. By seemingly slight changes, the whole character of the substance is transformed. DDT (short for dichloro-diphenyl-trichloro-ethane) was first synthesized by a German chemist in 1874, but its properties as an insecticide were not discovered until 1939. Almost immediately thereafter, it was hailed as a means of stamping out insect-borne disease and winning the farmers’ war against crop destroyers overnight, and, in due course, the chemist who had discovered its ability to kill insects, Paul Müller, of Switzerland, won the Nobel Prize. DDT is now so universally used that in most minds it has taken on the harmless aspect of the familiar. Perhaps the myth of the harmlessness of DDT rests on the fact that one of its first uses was the wartime dusting of many thousands of soldiers, refugees, and prisoners, to combat lice. It is widely believed that since so many people came into extremely intimate contact with DDT and suffered no immediate ill effects, the chemical must certainly be an innocent one. This understandable misconception arises from the fact that—unlike other chlorinated hydrocarbons—DDT in powder form is not readily absorbed through the skin. It does penetrate readily when it is dissolved in oil, as it usually is. If it is swallowed, it is absorbed slowly through the digestive tract; it may also be absorbed through the lungs. Once DDT, which, like all the chlorinated hydrocarbons, is soluble in fat, has entered the body, it is stored largely in organs rich in fatty substances, such as the adrenals, the testes, and the thyroid, and relatively large amounts are also deposited in the liver, the kidneys, and the fat of the large, protective mesentery, the tissue that enfolds the intestines and attaches them to the body wall. This storage of DDT begins with the smallest conceivable intake, and the fatty storage depots act as biological magnifiers, so that an intake of as little as one-tenth of one part per million in the diet results in the storage of from ten to fifteen parts per million—a hundredfold increase, or more. These terms of reference, so commonplace to the chemist or the pharmacologist, are unfamiliar to most of us. One part in a million sounds like a very small amount—and so it is. But some substances are so potent that a minute quantity can bring about vast changes in the body. For example, as little as three parts of DDT per million has been found to inhibit an oxidative enzyme in the heart muscle of experimental animals. In other experiments, only five parts of DDT per million brought about necrosis, or disintegration, of the cells of the liver; only 2.5 parts of the closely related insecticides dieldrin and chlordane have the same effect. This is really not surprising. In the normal chemistry of the human body, too, there is just such a disparity between cause and effect. For example, a quantity of iodine as small as two ten-thousandths of a gram can spell the difference between health and disease. Because these small amounts of pesticides are cumulatively stored and, in general, are built up at a rate higher than that at which they are excreted, the threat of chronic poisoning and of degenerative changes of the liver and other organs is a real one. Scientists are not sure how much DDT can be stored in the human body. Some believe that there is a ceiling beyond which absorption and storage cease. Others do not. For practical purposes, it is not particularly important which view is right. Storage in human beings has been well investigated, and we know roughly how much the average person is storing. According to various studies, individuals with no known exposure except the inevitable dietary one store from 5.3 parts per million to 7.4 parts per million; agricultural workers about 17.1 parts per million; and workers in insecticide plants as high as 648 parts per million. Potentially harmful amounts undoubtedly vary from individual to individual, and, in any case, harmful results may not occur for years. The chemists’ ingenuity in devising insecticides long ago outstripped the biologists’ knowledge of the way these poisons affect the living organism. One of the most significant features of DDT and related chemicals is the way they are passed on from one organism to another through all the links of the food chains. Fields of alfalfa, say, are dusted with DDT; meal is later prepared from the alfalfa and fed to hens; the hens lay eggs that contain DDT. Or the hay, containing residues of from seven to eight parts per million, may be fed to cows. The DDT will turn up in the milk in the amount of about three parts per million, but in butter made from this milk the concentration may run to sixty-five parts per million. During the process of transfer, what started out as a very small amount of DDT may end as a heavy concentration. The poison may be passed on from mother to offspring. The presence of insecticide residues in human milk has been established by Food and Drug Administration scientists. This is probably not the breast-fed infant’s first exposure, however; there is good reason to believe that he starts receiving toxic chemicals while he is still in the womb. In experimental animals, the chlorinated-hydrocarbon insecticides freely cross the barrier of the placenta, the traditional protective shield between the embryo and harmful substances in the mother’s body. While the quantities so received by human infants would normally be small, they would not be unimportant, because children are more susceptible to poisoning than adults. Chlordane, another chlorinated hydrocarbon, has all the unpleasant attributes of DDT, plus a few that are peculiarly its own. Its residues are long persistent in soil, on foodstuffs, and on surfaces to which it may be applied, yet it is also quite volatile, and poisoning by inhalation is a definite risk to anyone handling it or exposed to it. Chlordane takes advantage of all available portals in entering the body. A diet containing such a small amount of chlordane as 2.5 parts per million may eventually lead to storage of seventy-five parts per million in the fat. In 1950, Dr. Arnold J. Lehman, who is the chief pharmacologist of the Food and Drug Administration, described chlordane as “one of the most toxic of insecticides,” adding, “Anyone handling it could be poisoned.” To judge by the carefree liberality with which dusts for treating suburban lawns are laced with chlordane, this warning has not been taken to heart. If a suburbanite handling one of them is not instantly stricken, this does not mean he has escaped harm; the toxins may sleep long in his body, to become manifest months or years later in an obscure disorder that is almost impossible to trace to its origins. However, death may sometimes strike quickly. One man who accidentally spilled a twenty-five-per-cent solution of chlordane on his skin developed symptoms of poisoning within forty minutes and died before medical help could be obtained. Heptachlor, one of the constituents of chlordane, is marketed as a separate formulation. It has a particularly high capacity for storage in fat. If the diet contains as little as a tenth of one part per million, there will be measurable amounts of heptachlor in the body. It also has the curious ability to undergo change into a chemically distinct substance known as heptachlor epoxide. It does this in soil and in the tissues of both plants and animals. Laboratory tests on quail show that the epoxide is from two to four times as toxic as the original chemical. As long ago as the mid-nineteen-thirties, a special group of hydrocarbons, the chlorinated naphthalenes, had been found to cause hepatitis and a rare and almost invariably fatal disease known as yellow atrophy of the liver in persons subjected to occupational exposure. These chemicals have led to illness and death of workers in electrical industries (where they are used in insulation), and more recently, in agriculture, they have been considered a cause of a mysterious and usually fatal disease of cattle. It is not surprising that three of the insecticides that belong to this group are among the most violently poisonous of all the hydrocarbons. These are dieldrin, aldrin, and endrin. Dieldrin, named for a German chemist, Otto Diels, is about five times as toxic as DDT when it enters the body through the mouth and forty times as toxic when it is absorbed through the skin in solution. It is notorious for striking quickly at the nervous system, sending the victim into convulsions. Because the insecticidal action of dieldrin is particularly potent, and because its residues persist for a long period, it is one of the most widely used insecticides today. There are vast gaps in our knowledge of how dieldrin is stored and distributed in the body, and of the extent to which it is excreted, but there are indications of long storage in the human body, where deposits may lie dormant like a slumbering volcano, only to flare up in periods of physiological stress, when the body draws upon its fat reserves. Much of what we do know has been learned through hard experience in the anti-malarial campaigns carried out by the World Health Organization. As the malaria mosquitoes have become resistant to DDT, dieldrin has been substituted in malaria-control work, and, as this has happened, cases of poisoning have appeared among the spraymen. A study published in 1959 reported that the seizures were severe; from half to all of the men affected—the proportion varied in different programs—went into convulsions, and several died. Some were still subject to convulsions as long as four months after the last exposure. Aldrin is a still more mysterious substance, for although it exists as a separate entity, it bears the relation of alter ego to dieldrin. When carrots are taken from a bed treated with aldrin, they are found to contain residues of dieldrin—a change that occurs both in the living tissues and in the soil. If a chemist, knowing that aldrin has been applied, tests for it, he will be deceived into thinking all residues have been dissipated. The residues are there, but they are dieldrin, and this requires a different test. In any event, aldrin is slightly more toxic than dieldrin. It has produced degenerative changes in the liver and kidneys of experimental animals. A quantity the size of an aspirin tablet is enough to kill more than four hundred quail. Many cases of human poisoning are on record, most of them in connection with industrial handling. Beyond that, aldrin, like most of this group of insecticides, projects a menacing shadow into the future—the shadow of sterility. Birds that consume it in quantities too small to kill them lay few eggs, and the chicks that hatch soon die. Rats who have been exposed to aldrin have fewer pregnancies, and their young are sickly and short-lived, and puppies whose mothers have been exposed to the poison have been known to die within three days. By one means or another, the new generations suffer as a result of poisoning of their parents. No one knows whether the same effect will be seen in human beings. The third of the naphthalenes, endrin, is perhaps the most toxic of all the chlorinated hydrocarbons now in use. Although it is chemically rather closely related to dieldrin, a little twist in its molecular structure makes it up to twelve times as poisonous to rats; by comparison, DDT seems almost harmless. In the decade of its use, endrin has killed enormous numbers of fish, has fatally poisoned cattle that have wandered into sprayed orchards, and has poisoned wells. At least one state health department has warned that careless use of endrin is endangering human lives. But even apparently careful use can be dangerous. In 1958, an American couple with a year-old boy had gone to live in Venezuela.. There were cockroaches in the house they moved into, and after a few days they used a spray containing endrin. The baby and the small family dog were taken out of the house before the spraying was done, about nine o’ clock one morning. After the spraying, the floors were washed. The baby and dog were returned to the house in midafternoon. An hour or so later, the dog vomited, went into convulsions, and died. At ten in the evening, the baby also vomited and went into convulsions, and then lost consciousness. At once, this normal, healthy child became little more than a vegetable—unable to see or hear, subject to frequent muscular spasms, and, it would seem, completely cut off from his surroundings. Several months of treatment in a New York hospital failed to change his condition or bring hope of change. “It is extremely doubtful,” reported the attending physicians, “that any useful degree of recovery will occur.” The second major group of insecticides, the organic phosphates—esters of phosphoric acid—are among the most poisonous chemicals in the world. The origin of these chemicals has a certain ironic significance. Some of them had been known for many years, but their insecticidal properties were first discovered by a German chemist, Gerhard Schrader, in the late nineteen-thirties. Almost at once, the German government recognized the value of these chemicals as new and devastating weapons in man’s war against his own kind, and work on them was declared secret. Some became nerve gases. Others became insecticides. The chief and most obvious hazard attending their use is that of acute poisoning of people applying the sprays or accidentally coming in contact with drifting spray, or vegetation coated with it, or a discarded container. In Florida, in 1960, two children used a discarded bag to repair a swing. Shortly thereafter, both of them died, and three of their playmates became ill. The bag had once contained the insecticide parathion, and tests established death by parathion poisoning. The organic-phosphate insecticides act on the living organism in a peculiar way. They have the ability to destroy enzymes—enzymes that perform necessary functions in the body. Their target, whether the victim is an insect or a warm-blooded animal, is the nervous system. Under normal conditions, an impulse passes from nerve to nerve with the aid of a “chemical transmitter” called acetylcholine, a substance that performs an essential function and then disappears. Indeed, its existence is so ephemeral that without special procedures medical researchers are unable to sample it before the body has destroyed it. The transient nature of the chemical transmitter is necessary to the normal functioning of the body. If the acetylcholine is not inactivated as soon as a nerve impulse has passed, impulses continue to flash across the bridge from nerve to nerve; the chemical not only goes on exerting its effect but exerts it in an ever more intensified manner. The movements of the whole body become uncoördinated; tremors, muscular spasms, convulsions, and death quickly result. Fortunately, the body has its own protective device against this peril—an enzyme called cholinesterase, which breaks down the transmitting chemical once it is no longer needed. By this means, a precise balance is struck, and the body never builds up a dangerous amount of acetylcholine. But on contact with the organic-phosphate insecticides the activity of the protective enzyme is inhibited, and as the effective quantity of the enzyme is reduced, that of the chemical transmitter builds up. In having this effect, the organic-phosphate compounds resemble the alkaloid poison muscarine, found in a poisonous mushroom, the fly amanita. Repeated exposure may lower the cholinesterase level until an individual reaches the brink of acute poisoning—a brink over which he may be pushed by a very small additional exposure. For this reason, it is considered important to make periodic examinations of the blood of spray operators and others regularly exposed. Parathion is one of the most widely used of the organic phosphates. It is also one of the most powerful. Honeybees become agitated and bellicose on contact with it, engage in frantic cleaning movements, and are near death within half an hour. A chemist, hoping to learn by the most direct means the dose acutely toxic to human beings, swallowed a minute amount, about .00424 of an ounce. Paralysis followed so swiftly that he could not reach the antidotes he had at hand, and so he died. One of the circumstances that save us from extinction by parathion and the other chemicals of the organic-phosphate group is that they are decomposed rather rapidly. However, they last long enough to create hazards and produce consequences that range from the merely serious to the fatal. In Riverside, California, eleven out of thirty men picking oranges became violently ill, and all but one of the eleven had to be hospitalized. The grove had been sprayed with parathion some two and a half weeks earlier; the residues that reduced them to retching, half-blind, semi-conscious misery were from sixteen to nineteen days old. And this is not by any means a record for persistence. On citrus fruit, parathion has been found to have a “half life” of from sixty to eighty days; in that amount of time, half the chemical disintegrates. The danger to all workers applying the organic-phosphate insecticides is so extreme that some states using these chemicals have established laboratories where physicians may obtain aid in diagnosis and treatment. The physicians themselves may be in some danger, unless they wear rubber gloves while they are handling the victims of poisoning. So may a laundress washing a victim’s clothing. Parathion is now said to be a favorite instrument of suicide in Finland. In recent years, the state of California has reported an average of two hundred cases of accidental parathion poisoning annually. In many parts of the world, the fatality rate from parathion is startling: a hundred fatal cases in India and sixty-seven in Syria in 1958, and an average of three hundred and thirty-six a year in Japan. Yet some six million pounds of parathion are now applied annually to fields, orchards, and vineyards of the United States—by hand sprayers, by motorized blowers and dusters, and by airplane. The amount used on California farms alone could, according to Dr. Irma West, of the California State Department of Public Health, “provide a lethal dose for five to ten times the whole world’s population.” Malathion is almost as familiar to the public as DDT, being widely used in gardening, in household insecticides, in mosquito spraying, and in such blanket attacks on insects as the spraying of nearly a million acres in Florida for the Mediterranean fruit fly. It is considered the least toxic of the organic phosphates, and many people assume that they may use it freely. Actually, the alleged safety of malathion rests on rather precarious ground, although—as often happens—this was not discovered until the chemical had been in use for several years. Malathion is “safe” only because the mammalian liver, an organ with extraordinary protective powers, renders it relatively harmless. The detoxication is accomplished by one of the enzymes of the liver. If, however, something destroys this enzyme or interferes with its action, the person exposed to malathion receives the full force of its toxic action, which resembles that of the other organic phosphates. Unfortunately for all of us, opportunities for this sort of thing to happen are legion. A few years ago, a team of Food and Drug Administration scientists discovered that when malathion and one of the other organic phosphates are administered simultaneously, a severe poisoning results—up to fifty times as severe as one would predict on the basis of adding together the toxicities of the two. In other words, one one-hundredth of the lethal dose of each compound can be fatal when the two are combined. This discovery led to the testing of other combinations, and, although the full scope of the interaction of chemicals has not yet been determined, it is now known that many pairs of organic-phosphate insecticides are similarly dangerous, the toxicity being “potentiated,” or stepped up, through the combined action. Potentiation seems to take place when one compound destroys the liver enzyme responsible for detoxicating the other. The two need not be given simultaneously. And the hazard exists not only for the man who may spray this week with one insecticide and next week with another; it exists also for the consumer of sprayed products. The common salad bowl may easily present a combination of organic-phosphate insecticides in quantities large enough to interact. In Greek mythology, the sorceress Medea, enraged at being supplanted by a rival in the affections of her husband, Jason, presented the new bride with a robe possessing magical properties The wearer of the robe immediately suffered a violent death. This death-by-indirection now has its counterpart in what are known as “systemic insecticides.” These are chemicals that are used to convert plants or animals into a sort of Medea’s robe. The purpose is to kill insects that may come in contact with these poisonous beings, especially by sucking their juices or their blood. The world of systemic insecticides is a weird world, surpassing the imaginings of the brothers Grimm. It is a world where the enchanted forest of the fairy tales has become a poisonous forest. It is a world where a flea bites a dog and dies, where an insect may die as a result of chewing a leaf or inhaling vapors emanating from a plant it has never touched, where a bee may carry poisonous nectar back to its hive and presently produce poisonous honey. The entomologists’ dream of the built-in insecticide was born when workers in the field of applied entomology realized they could take a hint from nature: they found that wheat growing in soil that contains sodium selenate was poisonous to aphids. Selenium, a naturally occurring element found sparingly in rocks and soils of many parts of the world, thus became the first systemic insecticide. What makes an insecticide a systemic is its ability to permeate all the tissues of a plant or animal and make them toxic. This quality is possessed by some chemicals of the chlorinated-hydrocarbon group and by others of the organic-phosphate group, all synthetically produced. In practice, most systemics are drawn from the organic-phosphate group, because with these the problem of residues is somewhat less acute. Systemics can act in devious ways. Applied to seeds, either by soaking or by means of a coating in which the systemic is combined with carbon, they extend their effects into the following plant generation and produce seedlings poisonous to aphids and other sucking insects. Such vegetables as peas, beans, and sugar beets are sometimes thus protected. Cotton seeds coated with a systemic called phorate have been in use for some time in California, and in 1959 twenty-five farm laborers in the San Joaquin Valley, who had handled bags of treated seeds, were seized with sudden illness. In England, someone wondered what happened when bees made use of nectar from plants that had been treated with systemics. This was investigated in areas treated with a chemical called schradan. Although the plants had been sprayed before the flowers were formed, the nectar they produced contained the poison. The result, as might have been predicted, was that the honey made by the bees was also contaminated with schradan. Animal systemics have been used chiefly to control the cattle grub, a damaging parasite of livestock. Extreme care must be taken in order to create an insecticidal effect in the blood and tissues of the host without setting up a fatal poisoning. The balance is very delicate indeed, and government veterinarians have found that repeated small doses can gradually deplete an animal’s supply of cholinesterase, so that without warning a minute additional dose will cause poisoning. As yet, no one seems to have proposed a human systemic that would make us lethal to a mosquito. Perhaps this is the next step. When we turn our attention to herbicides, or weed killers, we quickly come across the legend that they are toxic only to plants. Unfortunately, this is only a legend. The plant killers include a large variety of chemicals that act on animal tissue as well as on vegetation. No general statement can describe the action of all of them. Some are general poisons; some are powerful stimulants of metabolism, causing a fatal rise in body temperature; some can induce malignant tumors, either alone or in partnership with other chemicals; some can cause gene mutations. Arsenic compounds are still liberally used, both as insecticides and as weed killers, where they usually take the chemical form of sodium arsenite. The history of their use is not reassuring. As roadside sprays, they have cost many a farmer his cow and killed uncounted numbers of wild creatures. As aquatic weed killers, they have made public waters unsuitable for drinking, or even for swimming. As a spray applied to potato fields to destroy the vines, they have taken a toll of human and non-human life. In England, this last practice developed in about 1951, as a result of a shortage of sulphuric acid, which had formerly been used to burn off the potato vines. The Ministry of Agriculture considered it necessary to issue a warning of the hazard of going into arsenic-sprayed fields, but the warning was not understood by the cattle (or by the wild animals and birds), and reports of poisoned cattle were received with monotonous regularity. In 1959, after death came to a farmer’s wife through arsenic-contaminated water, one of the major English chemical companies stopped production of arsenical sprays and called in supplies already in the hands of dealers, and shortly thereafter the Ministry of Agriculture announced that restrictions on the use of arsenites would be imposed. In 1961, the Australian government announced a similar ban. No such restrictions impede the use of these poisons in the United States. The most widely used herbicides are 2,4-D, 2,4,5-T, and related members of what is known as the phenol group. Many experts deny that these are toxic. However, people spraying their lawns with 2,4-D and becoming wet with spray have occasionally developed severe neuritis and even paralysis. Although such incidents are apparently uncommon, medical authorities advise caution in the use of these compounds. Other hazards, more obscure, may also attend the use of 2,4-D. Experiments have shown its ability to disturb the basic physiological process of respiration in the cell, and, like X-rays, to damage the chromosomes. Some very recent work indicates that sub-lethal doses of these herbicides may affect reproduction in birds. The rest of the phenols may be equally dangerous. Dinitrophenol, for example, steps up the metabolism. For this reason, it was at one time used in the United States as a reducing drug, but the margin between the slimming dose and the dose required to poison or kill was slight—so slight that at least nine patients died and many suffered permanent injury before use of the drug was finally halted. It interferes with the body’s source of energy in such a way that the affected organism almost literally burns itself up. A related chemical, pentachlorophenol, sometimes known as “penta,” is used both as a weed killer and as an insecticide, often being sprayed along railroad tracks and in waste areas. The fearful power of penta, which acts in much the same way as dinitrophenol, is illustrated in a fatal accident recently reported by the California State Department of Public Health. A man was preparing a cotton defoliant by mixing diesel oil with penta. As he was drawing the concentrated chemical out of a drum, the spigot accidentally toppled back. He reached in with his bare hand to regain the spigot. Although he washed immediately, he became acutely ill, and died the next day. Curious indirect results follow the use of certain herbicides. It has been found that animals—both wild herbivores and livestock—are sometimes strangely attracted to a plant that has been sprayed, even though it is not one of their natural foods. Apparently, the wilting that follows spraying (or cutting) makes the plant attractive. If a highly poisonous herbicide, such as arsenic, has been used, this intense desire to reach the wilting vegetation inevitably has disastrous consequences. Such consequences may also stem from the use of less toxic herbicides in cases where the plant itself happens to be poisonous or, perhaps, to possess thorns or burs. Poisonous range weeds, for example, have suddenly become attractive to livestock after spraying, and the animals have died from indulging this unnatural appetite. The literature of veterinary medicine abounds in similar examples: swine eating sprayed cockleburs with consequent severe illness, lambs eating sprayed thistles, bees poisoned by pasturing on mustard that had been sprayed after it came into bloom. Wild cherry, the leaves of which are highly poisonous, has had a fatal attraction for cattle once its foliage has been sprayed with 2,4-D. The explanation of this peculiar behavior sometimes appears to lie in the changes that the chemical brings about in the metabolism of the plant. There is a temporary but marked increase in sugar content, and many animals seek the plant out for its sweetness. Another curious effect of 2,4-D has important consequences for livestock and wildlife, and apparently for men as well. Experiments carried out about a decade ago showed that after treatment with this chemical there is a sharp increase in the nitrate content of corn and of sugar beets, and that this might also be true of sorghum, sunflower, spiderwort, lamb’s-quarters, pigweed, and smartweed. Some of these are normally ignored by cattle but are eaten with relish after treatment with 2,4-D. According to some agricultural specialists, a number of deaths among cattle have been traced to such sprayed weeds. All ruminants—not only cattle but wild ruminants, such as deer, antelope, sheep, and goats—have a digestive system of extraordinary complexity, including a stomach divided into several chambers. The digestion of cellulose is accomplished in one of the chambers, through the action of microorganisms known as rumen bacteria. When the animal feeds on vegetation containing nitrates, the rumen bacteria change them into nitrites, and if the level of nitrates is abnormally high, a fatal series of events ensues. When the nitrites are present in large quantities, they act on the blood pigment to form a chocolate-brown substance in which oxygen is so firmly held that it cannot be transferred from the lungs to the tissues. And death occurs within a few hours from anoxia, or lack of oxygen. Now it appears that the custom of spraying corn with 2,4-D may be a factor in the current increase in the number of “silo deaths”—deaths of men who have entered silos where corn, oats, or sorghum containing large amounts of nitrates have released poisonous nitrogen oxide gases. So serious is the problem that the New York State Coöperative Extension Service recently issued a poster warning, “Silo gases can kill you and your herd!” Although various factors, including exceptionally dry weather, can cause an increase in nitrate content, the effect of 2,4-D cannot be ignored. The situation was considered important enough by the University of Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station to justify a warning in 1957 that “plants killed by 2,4-D may contain large amounts of nitrate.” Only a few breaths of one of the gases released by nitrates can cause a diffuse chemical pneumonia. In a series of cases studied by the University of Minnesota Medical School, all but one terminated fatally. The pollution of our environment has many sources—radioactive wastes, fallout from nuclear explosions, domestic wastes from cities and towns, and chemical wastes from factories as well as the new fallout from chemical sprays—and it affects every one of man’s natural resources. Of these, water has become the most precious. By far the greater part of the earth’s surface is covered by its seas, yet in the midst of this plenty we are in want. Most of the earth’s abundant water is not usable for agriculture, industry, or human consumption, because of its heavy load of salts, and so most of the world’s population either is experiencing critical shortages of water or is threatened with them. And the water that is usable has become—in an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind to the very conditions that are most essential to his survival—the victim of man’s indifference. Ever since chemists began to manufacture substances that nature never invented, the problems of water purification have grown more complex and the danger to users of water has increased. In rivers, a really incredible variety of pollutants is present, producing combined deposits that the sanitary engineers can only refer to despairingly as “gunk.” Professor Rolf Eliassen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology testified before a congressional committee to the impossibility of identifying the organic matter resulting from the mixture. “We don’t know what that is,” said Professor Eliassen. “What is the effect on people? We don’t know.” We do know one thing, and that is that to an ever-increasing degree pesticides contribute to these organic pollutants. Because they become inextricably mixed with domestic and other wastes, they sometimes defy detection by the standard methods used in purification plants. Often they cannot be identified, and even if they are, most of them are so stable that they cannot be broken down by ordinary processes. Some are deliberately applied to bodies of water to destroy plants, insect larvae, or undesired fish. Some come from forest spraying, in the course of which two or three million acres of one of our states may be blanketed with spray directed against a single insect pest—spray that falls directly into streams or else drips down through the leafy canopy to the forest floor, there to become part of the slow movement of seeping moisture beginning its long journey to the sea. Probably the bulk of such contaminants, however, consists of water-borne residues of the millions of pounds of agricultural chemicals that have been leached out of the ground by rains to become part of the same seaward movement. Here and there we have dramatic evidence of the presence of these chemicals in our streams, and even in public water supplies. A sample of drinking water from an orchard area in Pennsylvania was tested on fish in a laboratory; it contained enough insecticide to kill all the fish within four hours, The runoff from fields treated with a chlorinated hydrocarbon called toxaphene killed all the fish in fifteen streams tributary to the Tennessee River, in Alabama, two of which were sources of municipal water supplies; the water remained poisonous for a week after the application of the insecticide—a fact that was determined by the daily deaths of goldfish suspended in cages downstream. For the most part, such pollution is invisible; it may make its presence known when hundreds or thousands of fish die, but more often it is never detected at all. Anyone who doubts that our waters have become almost universally contaminated with insecticides might well study a brief report issued by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service in 1960. The Service had carried out studies to discover whether fish, like warm-blooded animals, store insecticides in their tissues. The first samples were taken from a creek in a forest area in the West where there had been mass spraying of DDT for the control of the spruce budworm. As might have been expected, all these fish contained DDT. The really significant findings were made when the investigators turned for comparison to a remote creek thirty miles from the nearest area sprayed for budworm control. This creek was upstream from the first, and separated from it by a high waterfall. No local spraying was known to have occurred. Yet the fish in that creek, too, contained DDT. Had the chemical been airborne, drifting down as fallout on the surface of the creek? Or had it reached the creek by hidden underground streams? Probably no aspect of the entire water-pollution problem is more disturbing than the threat of widespread contamination of ground water. Seldom if ever does nature operate in separate compartments, and she has not done so in distributing the earth’s water supply. As rain falls on the land, it seeps down through pores and cracks in soil and rock, penetrating deeper and deeper, until eventually it reaches a zone where all the pores of the bedrock are filled with water—a dark, subsurface sea, rising under hills, sinking beneath valleys. This ground water is always on the move, sometimes as slowly as fifty feet a year, sometimes as rapidly as nearly a tenth of a mile in a day. It travels unseen until, here and there, it comes to the surface as a spring, or perhaps is tapped to feed a well. But mostly it contributes invisibly to streams, and so to rivers. Except for the water that enters streams directly as rain or surface runoff, all the running water on the earth’s surface was at one time ground water. And so pollution of the ground water is pollution of water everywhere. It must have been by such a dark underground sea that poisonous chemicals travelled from a manufacturing plant in Colorado to a farming district several miles away. What happened, in brief, is this. In 1943 the Rocky Mountain Arsenal of the Army Chemical Corps, situated near Denver, began to manufacture war materials. Eight years later, the facilities of the arsenal were leased to a private oil company for the production of insecticides. Even before the changeover, however, mysterious reports had begun to come in. Farmers several miles from the plant reported unexplained sickness among livestock, and they complained of extensive crop damage; foliage turned yellow, plants failed to mature, and many crops were killed outright. And there were reports of human illness. The waters used for the irrigation of these farms were derived from shallow wells. In 1959, a study was undertaken, in which several state and federal agencies participated, and when the well waters were examined they were found to contain an assortment of chemicals. Such wastes as chlorides, chlorates, salts of phosphonic acid, fluorides, and arsenic had been discharged from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal during the years of its operation by the Army Chemical Corps. It was concluded that some of these wastes had found their way into the ground water at the arsenal and that it had taken from seven to eight years for them to travel underground a distance of about three miles from two of the arsenal’s original holding ponds—mere depressions in the earth, into which wastes were discharged—to the nearest farm. The investigators knew of no way to contain the contamination—to halt its advance. All this was bad enough, but the most mysterious and probably, in the long run, the most significant feature of the whole episode was the discovery of 2,4-D in the holding ponds of the arsenal, even though no 2,4-D had been manufactured there during any stage of operations. After long and careful study, the chemists at the plant concluded that the 2,4-D had been formed spontaneously in the holding ponds, from other substances discharged from the arsenal; in the presence of catalyzing air and sunlight, and quite without the intervention of human chemists, the ponds had become laboratories for the production of a new chemical. Indeed, one of the most alarming aspects of the chemical pollution of water is the fact that in river or lake or reservoir—or, for that matter, in the glass of water served at your dinner table—are mingled chemicals that no responsible chemist would think of combining in his laboratory. The possible interactions between these chemicals, often comparatively harmless in themselves, are deeply disturbing to officials of the United States Public Health Service. The reactions may take place between two or more chemicals, or between various chemicals and radioactive wastes. Under the impact of ionizing radiation, rearrangements of atoms could easily occur, changing the nature of the chemical in a wholly unpredictable way, and one that would be wholly beyond control. A striking example of the contamination of surface waters seems to be building up in the National Wildlife Refuges at Tule Lake and Lower Klamath Lake, both in California. These refuges are part of a group, which also includes the refuge on Upper Klamath Lake, just over the border in Oregon. The three are linked, perhaps fatefully, by a shared water supply, and they lie like small islands in a great sea of surrounding farmlands—land reclaimed by drainage and stream diversion from an original waterfowl paradise of marsh and open water. These farmlands around the refuges are now irrigated by water from Upper Klamath Lake. The irrigation waters, having been re-collected from the fields they have served, are pumped into Tule Lake and from there into Lower Klamath Lake. In the summer of 1960, biologists picked up hundreds of dead and dying birds at Tule Lake and Lower Klamath Lake. Most of them were fish-eating species—herons, pelicans, grebes, gulls. Upon analysis, they were found to contain insecticide residues identified as the chlorinated hydrocarbons toxaphene, DDD, and DDE. Fish from the lakes were also found to contain the insecticide residues; so were samples of plankton. It appears that pesticide residues are now building up in the waters of these refuges, being conveyed there by return irrigation flow from heavily sprayed agricultural lands. The refuges are critically important to the conservation of Western waterfowl. They lie in a strip of territory corresponding to the narrow neck of a funnel, in which all the migratory paths constituting what is known as the Pacific Flyway converge. During the fall migration, the three refuges receive many millions of ducks and geese, from nesting grounds that extend from the shores of the Bering Sea east to Hudson Bay—in fact, fully three-fourths of all the waterfowl that move south into or through the Pacific Coast states in autumn. During the summer, the refuges provide nesting areas for waterfowl, and especially for two endangered species, the redhead and the ruddy duck. If the lakes and pools of these refuges become seriously contaminated, the damage to the waterfowl populations of the Far West could be irreparable. Water, of course, supports long chains of life—from the small-as-dust green cells of the drifting plant plankton, through the minute water fleas, to the fish that strain plankton from the water and are, in turn, eaten by other fish or by birds, mink, raccoons, and man himself, in an endless transfer of materials from life to life. We know that the minerals necessary for all these forms of life are extracted from the water and passed from link to link of the food chains. Can we suppose that poisons we introduce into water will not follow the same course? The answer is to be found in the recent history of Clear Lake, California. Clear Lake lies in mountainous country some ninety miles north of San Francisco and has long been popular with anglers. The name is plainly inappropriate; actually the lake is rather turbid, because its bottom, which is shallow, is covered with soft black ooze. Unfortunately for the fishermen and the resort dwellers on its shores, its waters have long provided an ideal habitat for a small gnat, Chaoborus astictopus. Although the gnat is closely related to mosquitoes, it is not a bloodsucker; indeed, it probably does not feed at all as an adult. However, the human beings who came to share its habitat found it annoying, because of its sheer numbers. Efforts were made to control it, but they were largely fruitless until, in the late nineteen-forties, the chlorinated-hydrocarbon insecticides offered a new weapon. The chemical chosen for a fresh attack was DDD, an insecticide that apparently offered fewer threats to fish life than DDT. The new control measures, undertaken in September of 1949, were carefully planned, and few people would have supposed that any harm could result. The lake was surveyed, its volume was determined, and the insecticide was applied in the concentration of one part to every seventy million parts of water. Control of the gnats was good at first, but by September of 1954 the treatment had to be repeated, and this time the chemical was added in the concentration of one part in fifty million parts of water. The destruction of the gnats was then thought to be virtually complete. The following winter months brought the first intimation that other life was affected; the western grebes on the lake began to die, and soon more than a hundred of them had been reported dead. At Clear Lake, the western grebe is a breeding bird and also a winter visitant, attracted by the abundant fish of the lake. It is a bird of spectacular appearance and beguiling habits, building floating nests in shallow lakes of the western United States and western Canada. It is sometimes called the “swan grebe,” and with reason, for it glides with scarcely a ripple across the lake surface, its body riding low and its white neck and shining black head held high. The newly hatched chick is clothed in soft gray down; only a few hours after emerging from the shell it takes to the water, riding on the back of the father or mother, nestled under the parental wing coverts. Following a third assault on the ever-resilient gnat population, in September, 1957—again in a concentration of one part of DDD to fifty million parts of water—more grebes died. Both then and in 1954, no evidence of infectious disease could be discovered on examination of the dead birds. But when someone thought of analyzing the fatty tissues of the grebes, they were found to be loaded with DDD in the extraordinary concentration of sixteen hundred parts per million. How could the chemical have built up to such prodigious levels? The grebes, of course, are fish eaters. When the fish of Clear Lake were also analyzed, the picture began to take form: The poison had been picked up by the smallest organisms, concentrated, and passed on to the larger ones, which concentrated it further. Plankton organisms were found to contain about five parts per million of the insecticide; plankton-eating fish had built up accumulations ranging from forty to three hundred parts per million; carnivorous species of fish had stored the most of all. One fish, a brown bullhead, had the astounding concentration of twenty-five hundred parts per million. It was a house-that-Jack-built sequence, in which the large carnivores had eaten the smaller carnivores, which had eaten the herbivores, which had eaten the plankton, which had absorbed the poison from the water. Even more extraordinary discoveries were made later. No trace of DDD could be found in the water shortly after the last application of the chemical. But the poison had not really left the lake; it had merely gone into the fabric of the life that the lake supported. Twenty-three months after the chemical treatment had ceased, the plankton still contained as much as 5.3 parts of it per million. In that interval of nearly two years, successive crops of plankton had flowered and faded away, but the poison had somehow passed from generation to generation. And it lived on in the animal life of the lake as well. All fish, birds, and frogs examined a year after the chemical applications had ceased still contained DDD. The amount found in the flesh always exceeded by many times the original concentration in the water. Among these living carriers were fish that had hatched nine months after the last application of DDD. California gulls had built up concentrations of more than two thousand parts per million. The grebes still carried heavy residues, and meanwhile their nesting colonies had dwindled, from more than a thousand pairs before the first insecticide treatment to about thirty pairs in 1960. Even the thirty seem to have nested in vain, for no young grebes have been observed on the lake since the last DDD application. And what of the human being who has rigged his fishing tackle, caught a string of fish from the waters of Clear Lake, and taken them home to fry for supper? What could a heavy dose of DDD—and perhaps repeated heavy doses—do to him? The California State Department of Public Health professed to see no hazard, yet in 1959 it required that the use of DDD in the lake be stopped. In view of the evidence, the action seems a minimum safety measure. The thin layer of soil that forms a patchy covering over the continents controls our own existence and that of every other animal of the land. Without soil, land plants as we know them could not grow, and without plants no animal could survive. Yet if our life depends on the soil, it is equally true that soil depends on life; its very origins and the maintenance of its true nature are intimately related to living plants and animals. For soil is in part a creation of life, born of a marvellous interaction of life and inert matter aeons ago. The parent materials were gathered together as volcanoes poured them out in fiery streams, as waters running over the bare rocks of the continents wore away even the hardest granite, and as the chisels of frost and ice split and shattered the rocks. Then living things began to work their creative magic, and little by little these inert materials became soil. Lichens, the rocks’ first covering, aided the process of disintegration by means of acid secretions and made a lodging place for other life. Mosses took hold in these little pockets of simple soil—soil formed by crumbling bits of lichen, by the husks of minute insect life, by the debris of a fauna beginning its emergence from the sea. And not only did life help form the soil but living things now exist within it in incredible abundance and diversity; if this were not so, the soil would be a dead and sterile thing. The soil exists in a state of constant change, taking part in cycles that have no beginning and no end. New materials are constantly being contributed as rocks disintegrate, as organic matter decays, and as nitrogen and other gases are brought down in rain from the skies. Simultaneously, materials are being taken away, harrowed temporarily for use by living creatures. Subtle and vastly important chemical changes are constantly in progress, converting elements derived from air and water into forms suitable for the support of plant life, and in all these changes living organisms are active agents. There are few studies more fascinating, and at the same time more neglected, than the study of the teeming populations that exist in the dark realms of the soil. We know too little of the links that bind the soil organisms to each other, to their world, and to the world above. Perhaps the most essential organisms in the soil are the smallest—the invisible hosts of bacteria and of threadlike fungi. Statistics of their abundance take us at once into astronomical figures. A teaspoonful of topsoil may contain billions of bacteria. In spite of their minute size, the combined weight of bacteria in the top foot of a single acre of fertile soil, which itself weighs from ten to seventeen tons, may be as much as a thousand pounds. Ray fungi, growing in long filaments, are somewhat less numerous than the bacteria, but since they are larger, their total weight in a given amount of soil may be about the same. With small, green cells of algae, these make up the microscopic plant life of the soil. Bacteria, fungi, and algae are the principal agents of decay, reducing plant and animal residues to their component materials. The vast cyclic movements of chemical elements, such as carbon and nitrogen, through soil and air and living tissue could not proceed without these microplants. Without the nitrogen-fixing bacteria, for example, plants would starve for want of nitrogen, though they are surrounded by nitrogen-containing air. Other soil organisms form carbon dioxide, which on being dissolved in water becomes carbonic acid and aids in dissolving rock. Still other soil microbes perform the various oxidations and reductions by which minerals such as iron, manganese, and sulphur are transformed and made available to plants. Also present in prodigious numbers in the soil are microscopic mites and primitive, wingless insects called springtails. Small as they are, both play an important part in breaking down the residues of plants, and thus aid in the slow conversion of the litter of the forest floor to soil. The specialization of some of these minute creatures for their task is almost incredible. Several species of mites, for example, can begin life only within needles that have fallen from a spruce tree. Sheltered there, they digest out the inner tissues of the needle. By the time the mites have completed their development, only the outer layer of cells remains. The truly staggering task of dealing with the tremendous amount of plant material in the annual leaf fall belongs to some of the small insects of the soil and the forest floor. They macerate and digest the leaves, and help to mix the decomposed matter with the surface soil. Besides all this horde of minute but ceaselessly toiling creatures, there are, of course, many larger forms, for soil life runs the gamut from bacteria to mammals. Some of these larger forms are permanent residents of the dark, subsurface layers; some hibernate or spend certain parts of their life cycles in underground chambers; some come and go freely between their burrows and the upper world. In general, the effect of all this habitation of the soil is to aerate it and to improve both its drainage and the penetration of water throughout the layers of plant growth. Of all the larger inhabitants of the soil, probably none is more important than the earthworm. Just over three-quarters of a century ago, Charles Darwin published a book titled “The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms, with Observations on Their Habits.” In it he gave the world its first understanding of the fundamental role that earthworms play as geological agents for the transport of soil—a picture of surface rocks being gradually covered by fine soil brought up from below by the worms, which ingest earth in building burrows and as food and eject it near the surface in annual amounts running to many tons to the acre in the most favorable areas. At the same time, they draw quantities of organic matter contained in leaves and grass—as much as twenty pounds to the square yard in six months—down into the burrows, where they become part of the soil. Darwin’s calculations showed that the toil of earthworms might produce a layer of soil from an inch to an inch and a half thick in a ten-year period. This is by no means all they do. Their burrows aerate the soil, keep it well drained, and aid the penetration of plant roots. And organic matter is broken down as it passes through their digestive tracts, so the soil is enriched by their excretory products. What happens to the inhabitants of the soil when poisonous chemicals are carried down into their world, either introduced directly as soil “sterilants” or sprayed on crops or borne by rain that has picked up a lethal contamination as it filtered through the leaf canopy of forest and orchard and cropland? Is it reasonable to suppose that a so-called broad-spectrum insecticide can kill the burrowing larval stages of a crop-destroying insect without also killing the insects whose function may be the essential one of breaking down organic matter? Or can we use a non-specific fungicide in orchards without also killing the fungi that inhabit the roots of many trees and aid the tree in extracting nutrients from the soil? The plain truth is that this critically important subject of the ecology of the soil has been largely neglected even by scientists and almost completely ignored by control men. The chemical control of insects seems to have proceeded on the assumption that the soil could and would sustain any amount of insult without striking back. From the few studies that have been made, a picture of the impact of pesticides on the soil is slowly emerging. The studies are not always in agreement, for soil types vary enormously and what causes damage in one may be innocuous in another. Light, sandy soils suffer far more heavily than humus types, for example, and combinations of chemicals often seem to do more harm than separate applications. Despite the varying results, enough solid evidence of harm is accumulating to cause apprehension on the part of the scientists concerned. Under some conditions, the chemical conversions and transformations that lie at the very heart of the living world are affected. For example, the herbicide 2,4-D causes a temporary interruption of nitrification. Recent experiments in Florida showed that three chlorinated hydrocarbons—heptachlor, BHC (benzene hexachloride), and lindane, which is an isomer of BHC—reduced nitrification after only two weeks in the soil; BHC and DDT had significantly detrimental effects a year after treatment. In other experiments, it was found that BHC, lindane, aldrin, heptachlor, and DDD all prevented nitrogen-fixing bacteria from forming the necessary root nodules on leguminous plants, and also that a curious but beneficial relation between fungi and the roots of higher plants was seriously disrupted. Sometimes the problem is one of upsetting that delicate balance of populations by which nature accomplishes far-reaching aims. Explosive increases in certain kinds of soil organisms have occurred when other kinds have been reduced by insecticides, disturbing the relation of predator to prey. Such changes could easily alter the metabolic activity of the soil and affect its productivity. They could also mean that potentially harmful organisms, formerly held in check, might take on the status of pests. One of the most important things to remember about insecticides in soil is their persistence. Aldrin has been recovered after four years, both as traces and, more abundantly, as converted to dieldrin. Ten years after the application of toxaphene to sandy soil, enough remains to kill termites. BHC persists a least eleven years, and heptachlor at least nine. Chlordane has been recovered after twelve years. Seemingly moderate applications of insecticides over a period of years may build up fantastic quantities in soil. The legend that “a pound of DDT to the acre is harmless” means nothing if spraying is repeated. Potato soils have been found to contain up to fifteen pounds of DDT per acre, corn soils up to nineteen. A cranberry bog under study contained thirty-four and a half pounds to the acre. Soils from apple orchards seem to reach the peak of contamination, for the rate at which DDT accumulates here almost keeps pace with its rate of annual application. In a single season, if orchards are sprayed four or more times, DDT residues may amount to as much as fifty pounds to the acre. Arsenic provides a classic instance of the virtually permanent poisoning of the soil. Although since the mid-forties arsenic as a spray on growing tobacco has been largely replaced by the synthetic insecticides, the arsenic content of cigarettes made from American-grown tobacco increased more than three hundred per cent between the years 1932 and 1962. Dr. Henry S. Satterlee, an authority on arsenic toxicology, says that the soils of tobacco plantations are now thoroughly impregnated with arsenic residues in the form of a heavy and relatively insoluble poison, arsenate of lead. This will continue to release arsenic in soluble form. As Dr. Satterlee puts it, the soil of a large proportion of the land planted with tobacco has been subjected to “cumulative and well-nigh permanent poisoning.” Tobacco grown in the eastern Mediterranean countries, where arsenical insecticides are not used, has shown no such increase in arsenic content. The question arises to what extent insecticides are absorbed into plant tissues from contaminated soils. Much depends on the type of soil, the crop, and the nature and the concentration of the insecticide. Soils high in organic matter release smaller quantities of poisons than others do. Carrots absorb more insecticide than any other crop studied; if the insecticide used happens to be lindane, carrots actually accumulate higher concentrations than are present in the soil. In the future, it may become necessary to analyze soils for insecticides before planting certain food crops. Otherwise, unsprayed crops may take up enough insecticide from the soil to render them unfit for market. This very sort of contamination has already created endless problems for at least one leading manufacturer of baby foods, who has been unwilling to buy any fruits or vegetables that have been exposed to insecticides. The chemical that caused him the most trouble was BHC, which is taken up by the roots and tubers of plants, and which advertises its presence by a musty taste and odor. Sweet potatoes grown in California fields where BHC had been used two years earlier contained residues, and the firm had to reject them. Another year, in which the firm had contracted for its total requirements of sweet potatoes with growers in South Carolina, so large a proportion of the acreage was found to be contaminated that the company was forced to buy in the open market, at a considerable financial loss. The manufacturer’s most stubborn problem has been with peanuts. In the Southern states, peanuts are usually grown in rotation with cotton, on which BHC is extensively used, and the peanuts pick up considerable amounts of the insecticide. Actually, only a trace is enough to give them the telltale musty odor and taste. The chemical penetrates the nuts and cannot be removed. Sometimes the menace is to the crop itself—a menace as long-lasting as the insecticide contamination of the soil. Some insecticides affect sensitive plants such as beans, wheat, barley, and rye, retarding root development or inhibiting the growth of seedlings. The experience of the hop growers of Washington and Idaho is an example. During the spring of 1955, many of these growers undertook a large-scale program to control the strawberry-root weevil, whose larvae had become abundant on the roots of the hops. On the advice of agricultural experts and insecticide manufacturers, they chose heptachlor to do the job. Within a year after the heptachlor was applied, in both dust and spray forms, the vines in the treated yards were wilting and dying. In the untreated fields there was no trouble; in fact, the damage stopped at the border between treated and untreated fields. The fields were replanted, at great expense, but the next year the new roots, too, were found to be dead. Four years later, the soil still contained heptachlor, and scientists were unable to predict how long it would remain poisonous, or to recommend any procedure for correcting the condition. The United States Department of Agriculture, which as late as March, 1959, had declared heptachlor to be acceptable for use on hops in the form of a soil treatment, thereafter belatedly withdrew its registration for such use. Meanwhile, the hop growers sought what redress they could in the courts. In continuing to contaminate the soil, we are almost certainly headed for trouble. This was the consensus of a groups of specialists who met in 1960 at the College of Forestry of the State University of New York, in Syracuse, to discuss the ecology of the soil. These men summed up the hazards of using “such potent and little understood tools” as chemicals and radioactive substances: “A few false moves on the part of man may result in destruction of soil productivity and the arthropods may well take over.” Water, soil, and the earth’s green mantle of plants make up the world that supports the animal life of the earth. Although modern man seldom remembers the fact, he could not exist without the plants that harness the sun’s energy and manufacture the basic foodstuffs he depends upon for life. Our attitude toward plants is a singularly narrow one. If we see any immediate utility in a plant, we foster it. If, for any reason, we find its presence undesirable, or even simply a matter of indifference, we may condemn it to destruction forthwith. Besides the various plants that are poisonous to man or his livestock, or crowd out food plants, many are marked for destruction merely because they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and many others are destroyed merely because they happen to be associates of the unwanted plants. Sometimes we have no choice but to disturb the relationships between plants and the earth, between plants and other plants, and between plants and animals, yet we should do so thoughtfully, with full awareness that what we do may have consequences remote in time and place. One example of our unthinking bludgeoning of the landscape is to be seen in the sagebrush lands of the West, where a vast campaign has been launched to destroy the sage and substitute grass. If ever an enterprise needed to be illuminated with a sense of the history and meaning of the landscape, it is this one. For here the natural landscape is eloquent of the interplay of forces that have created it. It is spread before us like the pages of an open book, telling why the land is what it is, and why we should preserve its integrity. But the pages lie unread. The land of the sage is the land of the high Western plains and the lower slopes of the mountains that rise above them—a land born of the uplift of the Rocky Mountain system many millions of years ago. It is a place of harsh extremes of climate: of long winters when blizzards drive down from the mountains and snow lies thick on the plains, of summers whose heat is relieved only by scanty rains, with drought biting deep into the soil, and dry winds stealing moisture from leaf and stem. In the evolution of this landscape, there must have been a long period of trial and error as plants attempted the colonization of the high and wind-swept land. One after another must have failed. At last, a group of plants took root that combined all the qualities needed for survival. The sage—low-growing and shrubby—could maintain its hold on the mountain slopes and on the plains, and within its small gray leaves it could store moisture enough to defy the thieving winds. It was no accident but, rather, the result of long ages of experimentation by nature that the great plains of the West became the land of the sage. Along with the plants, animal life was evolving in harmony with the searching requirements of the land. In time there were two animals as well adjusted to their habitat as the sage. One was a mammal, the fleet and graceful pronghorn antelope. The other was a bird, the sage grouse—the “cock of the plains” of Lewis and Clark. The sage and the grouse seem made for each other. The range of the bird coincides with the range of the sage, and the sage is all things to these birds of the plains. The low sage of the foothill ranges shelters their nests and their young; the denser growths are loafing and roosting areas; at all times the sage provides the staple food of the grouse. Yet it is a two-way relationship. The spectacular courtship displays of the cocks help loosen the soil beneath and around the sage, aiding invasion by grasses that can grow in the shelter of the sagebrush. The antelope, too, have adjusted their lives to the sage. Though some of them summer in the mountains, they are primarily animals of the plains, and in winter, when the first snows come, they all seek the lower elevations. There the sage provides the food that tides them over the winter. Where all other plants have shed their leaves, the gray-green leaves of the sage—bitter, aromatic, rich in proteins, fats, and needed minerals—cling to the stems of the densely growing plants. Though the snows pile up, the tops of the sage remain exposed, or can be reached by the sharp, pawing hoofs of the antelope. Then grouse feed on them, too, finding them on bare and windswept ledges or following the antelope to spots where they have scratched away the snow. Other life also looks to the sage. Mule deer often feed on it. Sage may mean survival to winter-grazing livestock. Sheep graze many winter ranges where the big sage brush forms almost pure stands. For half the year, it is their principal forage, and it is a plant of higher energy value than even alfalfa hay. The upland plains, the purple wastes of sage, the wild, swift antelope, and the grouse are then a natural system in perfect balance. Or, rather, in many places, there was such a balance. In recent years, the land-management agencies have set about satisfying the insatiable demands of the cattlemen for more grazing land. By this they mean grassland—grass without sage. Few seem to have asked whether grassland is a stable and desirable goal in the region. Certainly nature’s own answer was no. The annual precipitation in this land is not enough to support good sod-forming grass; rather, it favors the bunch grass that grows in the shelter of the sage. Yet millions of acres of sagebrush lands are sprayed each year. What are the results? The long-term effects of eliminating sage and seeding with grass are largely conjectural. Men of long experience in the ways of the land say that in this country there is better growth of grass between and under the moisture-holding sage than can possibly be had in pure stands. But even if the program succeeds in its immediate objective, it is clear that the whole closely knit fabric of life is being ripped apart. The antelope and the grouse will disappear, along with the sage. Even the livestock, which are the intended beneficiaries, will suffer; no amount of lush green grass in summer can help the sheep starving in the winter storms for lack of the sage and bitter brush and other wild vegetation of the plains. These are the first and obvious effects. Others are of the kind that is always associated with the shotgun approach to nature: the spraying also eliminates a great many plants that were not its intended target. Justice William O. Douglas, in his recent book “My Wilderness: East to Katahdin,” has told of an example of ecological destruction wrought by the Forest Service in the Bridger National Forest, in Wyoming. Yielding to the pressure of cattlemen for more grassland, the Service sprayed some ten thousand acres of sage lands. The sage was killed, as was intended. But so was a green, life-giving ribbon of willows that traced its way across these plains, following the meandering streams. Moose had lived in these willow thickets, for willow is to the moose what sage is to the antelope. Beavers had lived there, too, feeding on the willows, felling them, and making strong dams across the tiny streams. Through the labor of the beavers, a lake backed up. Trout in the mountain streams were seldom more than six inches long; in the lake they thrived so prodigiously that many grew to five pounds. Waterfowl were attracted to the lake. But with the “improvement” instituted by the Forest Service, the willows went the way of the sagebrush, killed by the same, impartial spray. When Justice Douglas visited the area in 1959, the year of the spraying, he was shocked to see the shrivelled and dying willows—the “vast, incredible damage.” What would become of the moose? Of the beavers and the little world they had constructed? A year later, he returned to read the answers in the devastated landscape. The moose were gone, and so were the beavers. The principal beaver dam had gone out for want of attention by its skilled architects, and the lake had drained away. None of the large trout were left, for none could live in the tiny creek that remained, threading its way through a bare, hot land. Besides the more than four million acres of range lands sprayed each year, large areas of other types of land are potential or actual recipients of chemical treatments for weed control. For example, in the United States an area larger than all of New England—some fifty million acres—is under the management of utility corporations, and much of it is routinely treated for “brush control.” In the Southwest, an estimated seventy-five million acres of mesquite lands require management by some means, and chemical spraying is the method most actively pushed. An unknown but very large acreage of timber-producing lands is now aerially sprayed for the purpose of “weeding out” the hardwoods from the more spray-resistant conifers. Added to these are an estimated fifty-three million acres of agricultural lands, perhaps two million acres of non-crop lands, and countless private lawns, parks, and golf courses, the combined acreage of which must reach an extremely large figure. And besides all this, there are our roadsides. Roadside brush control is practiced in all parts of the country, with the object of eliminating plants that ultimately grow tall enough to obstruct drivers’ vision or to interfere with wires on rights of way. This is a legitimate object, but as roadside spraying is commonly carried out, it has many undesirable side effects. One of them is economic. The town fathers of a thousand communities lend willing ears to the chemical salesmen and the eager contractors who will rid their roadsides of “brush.” Spraying, they are told, is cheaper than mowing. So, perhaps, it appears in the neat rows of figures in the official books, but were the true cost entered, the wholesale broadcasting of chemicals would be seen to be far more expensive, both in dollars and in the infinite damage it does. Take, for example, a commodity that is prized by every chamber of commerce throughout the land—the good will of vacationing tourists. There is a steadily growing chorus of outraged protest at the disfigurement of once beautiful roadsides by chemical sprays. “We are making a dirty, brown, dying-looking mess along the sides of our roads,” a New England woman wrote angrily to her local newspaper last fall. “This is not what the tourists expect, with all the money we are spending advertising the beautiful scenery.” In the summer of 1960, conservationists from many states converged on a beautiful Maine island to witness its presentation to the National Audubon Society by its owner, Millicent Todd Bingham. The focus that day was on the preservation of the natural landscape, with its intricate web of life whose interwoven strands lead from microbe to man. But in the background of all the conversations among the visitors to the island was indignation at the despoiling of the roads they had travelled to reach it. Once, it had been a joy to follow those roads through the evergreen forests—roads lined with bayberry and sweet fern, alder and huckleberry. Now all was brown desolation. One of the conservationists wrote of that summer pilgrimage, “I returned . . . angry at the desecration of the Maine roadsides. Where, in previous years, the highways were bordered with wild flowers and attractive shrubs, there were only the scars of dead vegetation for mile after mile. . . . As an economic proposition, can Maine afford the loss of tourist good will that such sights induce?” Botanists at the Connecticut Arboretum, in New London, declare that the elimination of beautiful native shrubs and wild flowers has reached the proportions of a “roadside crisis.” Azaleas, mountain laurel, blueberry, huckleberry, viburnum, dogwood, hayberry, sweet fern, low shadbush, winterberry, chokecherry, and wild plum are dying under the chemical barrage. So are the daisies, the black-eyed Susans, the Queen Anne’s lace, the goldenrod, and the fall asters. In the spring of 1957, trees within the Connecticut Arboretum Natural Area were seriously injured when the town of Waterford sprayed the roadsides with chemical weed killers. Even large trees not directly sprayed were affected. The leaves of the oaks began to curl and turn brown, although it was the season for spring growth. Then new shoots appeared, and these grew with abnormal rapidity, giving a “weeping” appearance to the trees. Two seasons later, large branches on some of these trees had died, other branches were without leaves, and the deformed, weeping effect of whole trees persisted. I know well a stretch of road where nature’s own landscaping once provided a border of alder, viburnum, sweet fern, and juniper, with seasonally changing accents of bright flowers, and of fruits hanging in jewelled clusters in the fall. The road had no heavy load of traffic to support, and there were few sharp curves or intersections where brush could obstruct the driver’s vision. Nevertheless, the sprayers took over, and the miles along that road became something to be traversed quickly, a sight to be endured with one’s mind closed to thoughts of the sterile and hideous world we are letting our technicians make. Here and there, though, authority had faltered, and by an unaccountable oversight there were oases of beauty—oases that made the desecration of the greater part of the road the more unbearable. In such places, my spirit lifted to the sight of the drifts of white clover or the clouds of purple vetch, with here and there the flaming cup of a wood lily. Such plants are “weeds” only to those who make a business of selling and applying weed killers. There is, of course, more to the wish to preserve our roadside vegetation than aesthetic considerations. In the economy of nature, the natural vegetation has its essential place. Hedgerows along country roads and the edges of fields provide food, cover, and nesting areas for birds and homes for many small animals; indeed, of some seventy species of shrubs and vines that are typical roadside species, about sixty-five are important to wildlife as food. Such vegetation is also the habitat of wild bees and other pollinating insects. Man is more dependent on these wild pollinators than he usually realizes Even the farmer seldom understands the value of wild bees, and often participates in measures that rob him of their services. Not only many wild plants but some agricultural crops are partly or wholly dependent on the services of the native pollinating insects; several hundred species of wild bees take part in the pollination of cultivated crops—a hundred species visiting the flowers of alfalfa alone. Moreover, in the absence of insect pollination, most of the soil-holding and soil-enriching plants of uncultivated areas would die out, with far-reaching consequences for the ecology of the whole region. A great variety of herbs, shrubs, and trees of our forests and ranges depend on native insects for their reproduction, and without these plants many wild animals and much range stock would find little food. Now “clean” cultivation and the chemical spraying of hedgerows and weeds, including some of those that bees depend upon heavily for food, are eliminating the last sanctuaries of these pollinating insects and thereby breaking the threads that bind life to life. The bees, so essential to our agriculture and indeed to our landscape as we know it, deserve something better from us than the senseless destruction of their habitat. Ironically, the all-out chemical assault perpetuates the problems it seeks to correct. Ragweed, the bane of hayfever sufferers, offers an interesting example of the way efforts to control nature sometimes boomerang. Many thousands of gallons of chemicals have been discharged along roadsides in the name of ragweed control, but the unfortunate truth is that blanket spraying is resulting in more ragweed, not less. Ragweed is an annual; each year its seedlings require open soil in order to become established. Our best protection against this plant is therefore the maintenance of dense shrubs and ferns and other perennial vegetation. Spraying destroys this protective vegetation and creates open, barren areas, which the ragweed hastens to fill. Just as ironically, some spraying actually creates new problems. The chemical 2,4-D, by killing out the broad-leaved plants, allows the grasses to thrive, and now some of the grasses themselves have become “weeds,” presenting a new problem of control and giving the cycle another turn. This situation is acknowledged in a recent issue of a technical journal devoted to crop problems, which notes that “with the widespread use of 2,4-D to control broad-leaved weeds, grass weeds in particular have increasingly become a threat to corn and soybean yields.” We persist in this inefficient approach despite the fact that a perfectly sound method of selective spraying is known, which can achieve long-term vegetational control and eliminate repeated spraying of most types of vegetation. Selective spraying was developed by Dr. Frank Egler, a plant ecologist who was for some years associated with the American Museum of Natural History and who is the chairman of a Committee for Brush Control Recommendations for Rights of Way. The method he devised takes advantage of the fact that the best and cheapest controls for vegetation are not chemicals but other plants. Trees find it difficult to gain a foothold in a community of shrubs, and on roadsides most shrubs, and all ferns and wild flowers, are low enough to present no hazard to drivers and no obstruction to wires. Selective spraying, in contrast to blanket spraying, is directed only at trees and exceptionally tall shrubs, the poison being applied at the base. (Cutting down a tree is seldom a permanent solution, because many trees will grow again.) One spraying may be sufficient to eliminate such trees and shrubs, with a possible followup for extremely resistant species; thereafter the shrubs assert control and the trees do not return. Dr. Egler has under observation shrub communities that have remained stable, without return of trees, for a quarter of a century after selective spraying. The spraying can often be done by men on foot, with knapsack sprayers, which give them complete control over their material. Sometimes tanks and compressor pumps can be mounted on truck chassis, but there is still no blanket spraying. The integrity of the environment is thereby preserved, the enormous value of the wildlife habitat remains intact, and the beauty of shrub and fern and the rest of the roadside growth has not been sacrificed. The method of vegetation management by selective spraying has been adopted by the authorities in some areas. All other considerations aside, when more taxpayers understand that the bill for spraying the town roads should come due only once a generation instead of once a year, they will surely rise up and demand a change of method. The chemical pesticides are a bright new toy. They sometimes work in a spectacular way, giving those who wield them a giddy sense of power over nature, and as for the failures and the long-range undesirable effects, these are dismissed as the baseless imaginings of pessimists. Disregarding the whole record of contamination and death, we continue to spray, and to spray indiscriminately. We proceed as if there were no alternative, even though there are alternatives, such as biological controls and selective spraying, which have been effective in many places. As Dr. C. J. Briejèr, a Dutch scientist of rare understanding, has put it, “We are walking in nature like an elephant in the china cabinet.” ♦ (This is the first of a series of three articles.)

For the March Harvest of the Month – Honey – West Elementary School students took their learning beyond the classroom. On March 22, preschool, kindergarten joined first and second graders at the “Bee Kind to Bees” Fair held in the West cafeteria. Led by Ross Geerdes, from Allamakee County Conservation, Joel Fassbinder, from Highlandville Honey and members of the Waukon High School 4-H Food & Fitness Club, the fair was held to teach students about the importance of bees. Students learned about bee anatomy and the relationship between bees and plants from Ross, beekeeping from Joel and about pollination and the bee communication “dance” from the high school students. There was even a honey and banana taste test and plenty of bee books to explore! Thanks to everyone for their help in making this event a success!

Welcome to the GeoPathfinder homepage Earth-Centered Resources for Sustainable Living (and beyond) Simply put, we are a couple of people who continually experiment with things to make our lives more sustainable, durable, stable, and more survivable (for the past 30+ years). We have always looked at what we think the world could look like in 30 years based on current trends. We are seeking a better path for ourselves on this planet, a "Geo-Path" if you will. We work mainly with "appropriate technology", a human-scale approach that is not necessarily low-tech, high-tech, "prepper", traditional, pre- or post-industrial, or Amish/Mennonite. Perhaps "transitional" says it best in that we work judiciously, with what is currently widely available, to design a future where we can lower the amount of technology and energy that we use. We can't tell you what to do, but we can show you what we've done and why. We may not try to convince you of what we consider "facts" or convert you to some particular way of thinking or doing, but we hope to inspire you to be less fearful about doing SOMETHING. Some say that we must have lots of money in order to do all this stuff. VERY incorrect! Others say that we must have lots of training or education. Other than reading what interests us at the moment, wrong again! No Doctorates, Masters degrees, or even careers here, just plenty of pondering coupled with trial and error. For those of you who are fortunate enough not to have noticed, the economies and political systems of this planet have become increasingly controlled by the ultra-rich and their corporations. This plutocracy ensures a high standard of living and a life of leisure for a few. This leaves the rest to fend for themselves, often in a very degraded environmental situation, competing for limited jobs and supplies, and doing work that merely advances those who are better off. We prefer to support win-win strategies, not win-lose. Since working hard to buy what the biggest trans-national companies produce only makes them stronger, we have always worked smarter and less, learning as much as possible, consuming fewer non-essentials, and doing what we can to produce what we need for ourselves while helping others of low means do the same. "Once you SEE the change you want to BE, you need to BE the change you want to SEE!" As scientist, author, poet, and eco-speaker Sandra Steingraber says, "It's time to play the Save the World Symphony". We don't care what instrument you use or how well you use it, but for everyone's sake it is time to start making some noise. We started out with little money but we were willing to do whatever it took to supply our basic needs. Think of wilderness camping, but pursued as a very long trip. We slowly learned how to provide for ourselves, using very little in purchased materials, adding "frills" to make life slightly more comfortable, but never compromising our goal of remaining as Earth-friendly as possible. Now, over 30 years down that timeline, we just like to try innovative things that further reduce our earthly impact and, given our experience level, we are not terribly afraid to fail. That gives us an education which is not soon forgotten. Along that path we have learned a few things that we would like to share. We have heard that some folks have a difficult time finding links that they may have stumbled over while reading that they would like an easier time referencing at a later date, without rereading all of the text leading to it. To make this easier we have organized every link on every page into a categorized listing at the bottom of this page. And if you are looking for our web pages about Earth Energies and the Hazards of Electromagnetic Radiation, they are now on a new page called Unseen Energies, formerly found on our sister, GeoPathfinder.net. You can find updates about what we are doing here, at our Blog. Products & Services Yes, we do offer some stuff for sale! The rationale? If something helps you to save on energy use then it keeps more coal-fired or garbage-burning electric generating stations from being built. Many lower-income folks live in these high-pollution industrial areas. They don't necessarily get to "vote with their dollars", as many environmentalists urge us, to buy the energy-saving stuff that keeps additional sources of pollution away. But maybe you do! We handle some stuff (mostly self-published how-to books and stainless steel screens) that helps lower energy use, and if that helps both the "haves" and the "have-nots" it's a win-win situation. For instance..... Stainless Steel Dryer Screens For really quick ordering within the continental United States, just use one of these E-Bay links: Or we will give you the cheapest possible quote to your address: We can sell screens for $3.00/ square foot, or $12.00 per 2-by-2 foot dryer screen, plus actual shipping costs to your locale. To get a shipping quote, - simply send or e-mail us your postal Zip Code and, - the number of screens you would like. Buying Screens from GeoPathfinder Once you have received your shipping quote, - If you wish to proceed with an order using PayPal (which accepts all major credit cards, checking accounts, and e-checks), we can either send you a PayPal invoice or you can pay the total with shipping either to our account on GMail.com, listed as "bobdowser". - Or, if you dislike paying online and are not in a big hurry, just send a check to: 30319 Wiscoy Ridge Road Winona, MN 55987 We ship via USPS using either the slower, cheaper Standard Post or the faster, more expensive Priority Mail. Standard Post orders ship on Fridays, when we take a weekly trip to town. Priority Mail orders can ship on any regular business day since USPS picks these up from our home. When you receive your screens we recommend washing them in warm, soapy water. Factories ship them covered with a light coating of petroleum-based lubricating oil that is used in the weaving process. It is best to get that off before mounting them in a frame and using them with food. If you need the screens trimmed slightly to recess the screen edges back from the edges of a 2-by-2-foot frame, we recommend using a metal shears. We use a Stanley model with slightly serrated, chrome-molybdenum steel blades that work quite well. The screen edges are sharp so wear gloves! If you would prefer the screens slightly smaller but you would like us to cut them for you, please mention this in your request. And if someone reading this gets inspired to order enough materials to organize a dryer building workshop in their own area we'd be happy to post a link here to your website/e-mail address so that others could obtain your leftover screen. For the best price on stainless screens in larger quantities or other widths, you will need to order it in 100-foot rolls. We had been getting it from Cambridge International (formerly Cambridge Wire Cloth, in Massachusetts). To get their most recent price quote, you'll have to e-mail them. With a 24-screen minimum order this is not the best option for those wanting pre-cut screens. We currently order 100-foot rolls from a company in Pennsylvania called Darby Wire Mesh. Again, their price on large rolls is good but individual pre-cut screens cost a lot. Another company, in California for those closer to the West coast, is TWP, Inc. Their site, like Darby's, is user-friendly, with direct links to buy the screening. And an e-mail correspondent found another site, City Wire Cloth, with a minimum order of $100. They offer a 4 x 10-foot piece of type 304, .018", 12 mesh. Either way, don't expect low prices! This is a life tool, eminently recyclable, and will no doubt be usable for 7 generations. If you can find a local metal-working shop that has leftover stainless screen from some industrial contract job, or if you can find some in your local metal "scrapyard", the recycling price will be probably be much lower. We are Larisa Walk and Robert (Bob) Dahse. We have been together since 1982. We live in the rolling hills and temperate, humid climate of southeastern Minnesota in the "upper Midwest" of the United States. We work for wages as little as possible, maintaining a "poverty-level" income. We prefer to work for our subsistence instead of paying for endless wars and a bloated, deficit-based federal budget. Needless to say, we are both the "black sheep" of our families! We have been living with off-grid, solar electricity (and sometimes with wind electricity) for over 30 years, using rainwater collection for all of our water needs. We compost all of our kitchen and bodily "wastes", along with those of our pet chickens and ducks. We grow most of our food and use organic methods learned from childhood (along with plenty of reading along the way), honed through over 5 years of soil consultation and testing that we provided nationally through our former business, "Underfoot Soil Consulting Service". Our home is owner-built using straw-bale construction and it's heated by both direct passive solar techniques, by using a masonry wood-stove of our own design (burning about a "cord", 128 cu.ft., of fallen "soft maple" per year), and using solar PV electricity to power conduction heaters connected to the masonry stove. Although we live in frigid Minnesota, we grow lettuces and other greens both in our solar-heated greenhouse and in indoor window boxes year-round. We steam-can, steam-juice, root cellar, "live-store", or solar-dry all of our garden's bounty. Most of our spring/summer/fall cooking is done using a parabolic solar oven or a PV-powered AC electric stove-top. In the winter we cook on our wood-stove or use the AC stove-top and home-built DC oven. We very rarely ever use our propane gas cook-top. Since we don't like to support senseless suffering or death, we have been successful and healthy vegans for about 40 years (each). Our diet is whole-food, chemical-free, gluten-free, lactose-free, casein-free, and primarily home-grown, wild, or shipped-in Certified Organic as a last resort. And our transportation, when we need it, is primarily by recycled 2001 Honda Insight hybrid, converted to charge the traction battery using high-voltage solar PV, and our recumbent Catrike, "tadpole-style" tricycle, converted into a solar-charged, human/electric hybrid vehicle. You will note, as you read the various subjects we cover, that many of our efforts involve "hybrid synergy" (except our seed supply; we save open-pollinated varieties for planting) and robust back-up systems. Our Honda Insight and bikes are gasoline/electric and human/electric hybrids. Our wood-stove is a masonry/steel hybrid that also heats our hot water, uses excess solar PV as an adjunct heater, and includes an active solar, air-to-air heat exchanger. Our house is a hybrid of straw-bale infill, "stick-frame", and post-and-beam building techniques. Our sauna is sometimes used as a "summer kitchen" and as a foul-weather food dehydrator. Our photovoltaic solar electric system doubles as a supplier of hot water for much of the year, home heating in the winter, and also utilizes excess sunny-day input to charge our hybrid electric trike, electric tractor, electric mower, electric chainsaw, etc. The electric vehicles can be directly charged from our solar panels or we can use AC chargers and our inverter. You get the idea. We like things that do multiple tasks or use various inputs. Having read all of the above I will assume that you think we are purists, tree-huggers, and neo-Luddites. That's far from accurate. We use technology where we feel that it is human-scale and appropriate, from an environmental, economic, and sociological perspective. We are not creating or raising children, and we consider this choice to be the basis of our version of an ecological life. Human life means more than being a DNA copy-machine. Never fear, someone else will pick up the slack! The few things that we buy we view as tools, to be used for accomplishing specific tasks, and we don't skimp on tools. We typically don't follow directions or dogmas, but stay within the confines of the Law. We've read, and continue to read a lot, and make decisions based on sorting out as much information as we can handle, balancing the rational, logical results with well-honed intuition. We encourage others to do the same. Our choice of lifestyle is political, in that we don't wish to support the Earth-killing decisions made either by those in power in Washington D.C. or more locally. If the only legal way to do that is by living pretty close to the land in a low-impact, low-income, atypically self-sufficient mode, then so be it. And in case you think we're too serious, we both play the accordion! The only thing serious about it is the volume. For two former childhood organists, playing the right hand sideways, hugging it to produce sound, and using 120 buttons for chords, all without being able to see what you're doing, is a definite re-learning experience! If you'd like to hear a REAL homestead musician, check out our friend Bryce Black's website for numerous humorous recordings about "baler twine", mad cow disease, water-pumping windmills, and prehistoric chickens, among other insights. The Site-Wide Link Listing - Free Adobe Reader download to read our many PDF (Portable Document Format) files - Free Apple Quicktime video player to play some of our video downloads - Contact Us on our secure GMail e-mail account - The link to our PayPal donation button, in case you feel inspired to help further our work - The link to our blog site, if you would like to see what we are currently doing Books & Literature For Sale Buying Hard Copies of our books using PayPal - Buy a copy of "Feeding Ourselves - The Four-Season Pantry from Plant to Plate" - Buy a copy of "Planetary Patterns - A Dowser's Survey of Earth Energies" - Buy a copy of "Peoples' Power Primer - Renewable Energy for the Technically Timid" - Buy a download of "Feeding Ourselves", Second Edition - Buy a download of "Planetary Patterns" - Buy a download of our 50-page Soil Management Information Packet - Buy a download of our 6-page Geopathic Remediation Techniques document - Buy a download of our Electrical Unit conversion chart and spreadsheet Food & Nutrition - Download the "Feeding Ourselves" Second Edition covers and table of contents - Download our MREF Root Cellaring Workshop handout - Download our 2011 Solar Food Dryer Building Workshop - Download our MREF Solar Food Dryer handout - Download our comparison table of Omega-3 to Omega-6 fatty acid ratios - Download our MREF Summer Solstice Menu example - Download our MREF Winter Solstice Menu example - Download our MREF "Alliums Year-Round" Planning Guide - Download our Sorghum Threshing Guide - See our YouTube video of sorghum threshing by hand - Download our Amaranth Winnowing Guide - See our YouTube video of amaranth winnowing - Download our 18-page "Soil Dynamics in a Nutshell" presentation - Food drying information, equipment, and supplies from DryIt.com - A book about mushroom cultivation from Paul Stamets called "Mycelium Running" - Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa - Frontier Cooperative Herbs in Norwalk, Iowa - Innate Response food-based vitamins and minerals - The Midwest Renewable Energy Association, which sponsors a yearly educational fair - Canadian organic gluten-free rice and wild rice noodles from Rizopia.com - The book, "The China Study" from Dr. T. Colin Campbell - "Root Cellaring" by Nancy Bubel - The "gold standard" in ecological farming magazines, "ACRES, USA" - E-Bay link to buy 2 stainless steel, 24" by 24" dryer screens - E-Bay link to buy 4 stainless steel, 24" by 24" dryer screens - E-Bay link to buy 6 stainless steel, 24" by 24" dryer screens - E-Bay link to buy 8 stainless steel, 24" by 24" dryer screens - Stainless "wire cloth" from Cambridge International in Massachusetts - Stainless "wire cloth" from Edward J. Darby & Sons, Inc. in Pennsylvania - Stainless "wire cloth" from TWP, Inc. in California - Stainless "wire cloth" from City Wire Cloth, also in California - "Is Local Food Better?" by Sarah DeWeerdt - "Biological Transmutations and Modern Physics", by Dr. Louis Kervran - The U.N. report about the advantages of eating less meat, from the BBC - A Washington Post article on the trend toward eating less meat - Good and Bad Prostaglandins, and other articles from Dr. Ronald Hoffman - The Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation research archives - Veganpeace.org nutritional information Peta.org vegan diet information infographics - Mediterranean Diet weekly menu plans - The USDA Nutrient Database - Essential Fatty Acids and other articles from Dr. Udo Erasmus, PhD - Red Bean Poisoning - Information about why it is so important to cook beans - Research showing nutrient loss in uncovered sun-dried foods - An informational graphic showing dietary effects on the world's climate Homesteading & Homemaking - Our rainwater collection system - Our insulating window shutters for our large, south-facing windows - Our masonry wood-stove details - Our composting toilet system - Our home-built Warre bee boxes - Our neighbor's "tiny house" project - The book, "Survival of the Sickest", by Dr. Sharon Moalem, about chronic stress and DNA - The book, "Eaarth - Making a Life on a Tough New Planet", by Bill McKibben - The book, "End of the Long Summer" by Dianne Dumanoski - Bryce Black's website - a great musician, fellow homesteader, and distant relative - A link to an Australian website that sells water tanks of all types for rainwater collection - The Arbor Day Foundation's map of plant hardiness zone changes - The "World Clock" showing real-time changes in population, energy, etc. - A post-2012-election article on why the Government needs to wake up to climate change - The definition of the term, "hominin", in relation to the human species - The International Straw-bale Registry listing of our home - Minnesota straw-bale homes - Permies.com - a website for connecting to permaculturists and homesteaders - Homegrown Goodness - a website for connecting to homesteaders and gardeners - BuildItSolar.com - a great site for design ideas if you're building anything solar-powered - Sue & Steve in the U.P. of Michigan - fellow homesteaders in an even more severe climate - John Howe's website - a Vermont homesteader with an engineering background - Urban homesteading with the Dervaes family in California - Biobees - a website to connect with others doing natural (not chemical) beekeeping - Our solar electric system - 30 years of evolution - Our household electrical loads, all solar powered - An electrical consumption worksheet to help you see where your power goes - Our logical flow chart showing how we plan a renewable energy system - The Homepower Magazine 2011 buyer's guide to wind-turbines - U.S. average wind speed map at 262 feet above terrain - Kyocera multi-crystal silicon photovoltaic (PV) panels - Outback Power systems FlexMax MPPT tracking controller - Exeltech pure sine-wave inverters - Xantrex Pro-Sine Inverters - Energy Efficient Products - dealing in low-voltage and 120-volt LED lighting - Backwoods Solar Electric Systems - Home Power Magazine - Renewable energy systems in all shapes and sizes - The Midwest Renewable Energy Association - workshops, publications, etc. - A solar system sizing calculator for off-Grid systems - A solar system size calculator for Grid-based systems - Solar system details with great graphics - U.S. Solar Radiation Resources Maps, by month or annually - NABCEP Installer's Guide for those who want to get it right the first time - Compare most PV panel specifications thanks to SolarDesignTool.com - U.S. map of Annual Cloudy Days per Year, for estimating PV system sizes - Excellent article from Homepower Magazine on seeing if a wind-turbine is right for you - Homepower Magazine's hydro-electric turbine buyer's guide - U.S. average wind speed map at 33 to 164 feet above terrain - Colorado-specific solar power information The Wheel Deal - Transportation & Other Moving Things - Our Quicktime video of Larisa riding her hybrid electric tricycle conversion - Our electric hybrid trike conversion photo details - Our "Lithium Lounger" trike conversion handout from the MREF Clean Energy Car Show - Our "Lithium Lounger" trike conversion project details - Our 1979 Porsche 924 electric car conversion project - Our photos of the two-trike car rack we designed for our recycled 2001 Prius - Our story of how we found and rebuilt a salvaged 2001 Toyota Prius - Our photos of the 1972 G.E. Elek-Trac tractor we rebuilt and its 36-volt Tripp-Lite inverter - The "Transition Handbook" by Rob Hopkins - converting communities to a post-oil economy - "PrinterShare" - A free program that allows you to print documents to and from anywhere - Catrike Cycles - Florida-based tricycles that are highly efficient, light, and handle great - The Hostel Shoppe - The Wisconsin-based source for recumbent bikes/trikes - GrassRoots EV - the Florida-based supplier for electric automobile conversion parts - Electric Rider - the Kansas-based supplier of electric bike/trike conversion parts - Sun Bicycles - low-cost, highly utilitarian recumbent bikes, trikes, and upright bikes - Terratrike Cycles - less expensive trikes than Catrike but don't handle quite as well - Inspired Cycle Engineering - very nice English trikes, some with suspension systems - HP Velotechnik - high-quality, great handling, German recumbent bikes and trikes - Bikes@Work - bike/trike trailers - KTA Services - California-based electric automobile conversion parts Electro-Automotive - Another CA-based dealer in electric conversion parts - Wilderness EV - Utah-based dealer in electric automobile conversion parts - East Penn Deka - very high-quality lead-acid batteries - NetGain Motors - Manufacturers of very high-quality DC motors for electric vehicles - Quick-Charge - low-cost, Oklahoma-based, battery charger manufacturer - Ener-Trac electric motorcycle hub motors - GBS lithium battery kits, including battery management systems, etc. - Elio Motors - Paul Elio's site describing his upcoming 84/49 mpg, 3-wheel production car - A site which allows you to compute your electric vehicle's range - The range computations for our Porsche 924 conversion - Comparison of lithium battery types from IEEE - A comparison of the three types of lead-acid batteries - Lead-acid gels and AGM battery specifications - Frontal areas and drag coefficients - Tire rolling resistance comparison - Electric Cars Are For Girls - a terrific website covering all aspects of electric vehicles - The EVAlbum listing for our "Lithium Lounger" trike conversions - The EVAlbum listing for our 1979 Porsche 924 electric car conversion - The EVAlbum listing for Steve Clunn's Porsche 924 conversion - The EVAlbum listing for Gary Dion's Porsche 924 conversion - A computation site to compare your fuel mileage to hybrids or other cars - An informational graphic showing our current transportation energy usage Links to older text-only versions of our site - Old "Home" page - Old "Products & Services" page - Old "Food Preservation" page - Old "Masonry Wood-stove" page - Old "Rainwater Harvesting" page - Old "Our Straw-bale Home" page - Old "Eat Local Year-Round" page - Old "Veggie Homesteading" page - Old "Harvesting Electricity" page - Old "EMF Hazards" page - Old "Transportation Options" page - Old "Earth Energies" page External Payment Links

French Catholics, art historians and beekeepers are celebrating “miracles” amid the damage from a massive fire at Notre Dame Cathedral. The extent of the damage from Monday’s fire is still being assessed, but a rooftop colony of bees were found to have survived. French beekeeping company Beeopic, which maintains hives at the historic cathedral, posted a picture of the surviving bees on Instagram, along with a confirmation from the site manager that “nos abeilles” (“our bees”) are still on site. The Instagram caption included the hashtag “miracle.” View this post on Instagram Nos abeilles de la Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris sont toujours en vie !! Confirmation de la part des responsables du site !! ❤🐝❤ Notre-Dame's bees are still alive !! #Beeopic #apiculture #abeilles #ruches #NotreDame #Notredamedeparis #cathedrale #ambroise #saintambroise #stambroise #miracle “Instead of killing them, the CO2 (from smoke) makes them drunk, puts them to sleep,” Notre Dame beekeeper Nicolas Geant told the Associated Press. “It’s a big day. I am so relieved. I saw satellite photos that showed the three hives didn’t burn,” he added. Another victory was announced for a different community: art historians. It was found that some of the artwork inside the cathedral suffered less damage than anticipated. udith Kagan, who works for the French Culture Ministry, said that fire, soot and water didn’t reach inside cathedral walls, so some of the artwork inside wasn’t majorly damaged, according to the AP. Those works have been transported to a secure location away from the cathedral, Kagan told the AP.

Warning! If you have a swarm of bees that are threatening the safety of you, your family or your neighbors, don’t hesitate – call your West Covina bee removal experts at Bee Busters! (949) 497-6264 or (714) 731-1959 West Covina Bee Removal Service and Bee Control Experts While the original reason for creating West Covina might be less than glamorous (the prevention of a sewage farm), today the city is known for a steady, lively growth that dates back to WWII. Over time the orange and walnut groves in the area have given way to homes and businesses that thrive in this great southern California climate. Just because the groves are gone doesn’t mean the bees have left. In fact, this rich area still provides homes for bees, wasps, yellow jackets and other stinging insects that humans do not want them around. Luckily, there is a reliable bee removal company in West Covina to handle these problems. Bee Busters, Inc. is providing various bee control services with the most professional, well-trained bee removal operation in the county. Our technicians are licensed bee keeper so you will be guaranteed that removal of stinging insects is handled safely. Have you spotted bees around your home in an area with no source flowers or water? You have right to be concerned. There may be a colony of bees. While a swarm may be found in the open, a colony will seek a void space (a tree hollow, between inner and outer walls, or inside a hollow object). An expert West Covina bee removal team can safely get rid of unwanted bees, wasps, and yellow jackets. Bees leave behind pheromones and specialized removal of the honeycombs followed by tips for sealing the area can prevent another swarm from taking up residence. Removal also averts harm from other pests, wax and honey. Bee Busters, Inc. provides residential and commercial operation to safely eliminate unwanted bees from your property and ensuring that full removal won’t damage your place. Our core services include Bee Removal, Bee Rescue and Beekeeping that are professionally done. - West Covina Bee Removal: Since all wild swarms now have Africanized Honeybees safety is a primary concern. We are ready to remove both the problem colony or swarm and the honeycombs they have created. We also educate the property owner to prevent future bee related issues. - West Covina Beekeeping: Bee Busters has bee keeper services. We do at location pollination. We have fresh honey sales. We host classes and training for those interested in bee keeping. Keeping domestic bees is a great hobby for any age. If you want more information please give us a call. For over 25 years, we are providing quality West Covina bee removal service. We handle various bee and stinging insect removal, rescue and beekeeping solutions. For any problem regarding bees, swarm or colony, call 949-497-6264 and a licensed, bonded and insured bee removal team will help you. Contact Us today! Call your West Covina Bee Removal Experts! Bee Busters, Inc., P.O. Box 51, Laguna Beach, CA 92652 Business Hours: 7:00 AM – 7:00 PM, 7 Days/Wk For After Hours Emergencies: Call 949-497-6264 to Reach 24-Hour On-Call Bee Removal Expert

One of the Bee Informed Partnership’s major focuses is to bring together several disciplines to study ways to keep honey bee colonies healthy. One way we try to help all beekeepers is by conducting annual surveys and sharing the results with the beekeeping community. Our flagship service, The Bee Informed National Management Survey, reflects this goal. We release our National Survey annually to study beekeeping management practices using epidemiology. Epidemiology looks for patterns across groups of people who are infected with specific diseases and their common traits. We then compare this data with people who are free of disease to pinpoint the most influential factors in contracting the illness. We poll thousands of beekeepers every year to find out as much as we can about their beekeeping management practices. We then compare the rates of loss among beekeepers who did or did not use a specific management practice. Now that we have several years of data, we are beginning to look for patterns across the best performing beekeepers in each region to start to understand what combinations of management practices work best at keeping colonies alive. What’s just as interesting is looking at the patterns across beekeepers who aren’t doing well so we can better understand what we should stop doing. We hypothesize that over time, certain practices or products lose their potency and we need to adapt. What you can expect from our reports We’re committed and excited to be doing this work, but it takes time. Great epidemiological studies take several years to complete so that we can ascertain patterns over time and various groups of people. Most of what you’ll find through our results are high level observations that we think might be important pieces of the puzzle, but not the whole picture. We encourage you to take an inside look as we continue gathering data and find the patterns so that you can do your own research and see what impacts your apiary. Head over to our National Management Data Viewer and Colony Loss Reports sections to see what we’ve found so far.

Are you searching for how to start beekeeping in Hegins Pennsylvania? A number of people say honey bee farming classes in PA can be costly and there are cheaper ways to master honey bee farming without spending a fortune in training. Beekeeping is a hobby that depends on having entire passion. You can’t start a business such as this if you do not enjoy coping with creatures that are live. Working with bees is like working with another sort of fowl or animals; it needs knowledge and attention to keep bees healthy and productive. You should take complete care of each thing that is small, to ensure that it will not create any difficulty for the business in the future. – Choosing the proper tools Beginning without picking the correct tools beekeeping is like entering the battle with swimming costumes. Before you start your company you should be prepared or it is going to be a total loss for your own time and money. Before you select your suitable hives ask your self several questions. This depends on which is your target from starting beekeeping a lot. If you’re willing to invest time and some money in a bee keeping company then you definitely may want to know how long will you take good care of your hives. Do you want if it is best option for you to buy an expensive hive? These type of questions will be asked to you once you visit a specialist bee keeper to consult him about the hive that is greatest to buy. Every hive has its own specifications, maintenance and honey generation quantity. – New technology and processes Should you be looking at bee keeping as a company then you must analyze a lot about bees, their nature and the latest technologies that emerged in this livelihood to be able to keep all your information up thus far. Your bees are once they start producing honey the machines of your factory that will generate cash for you all the time, so they were focused on by keeping your thoughts and your head open for what’s new in the industry will get you on top of the business.

SIOUX CITY -- It's always a pleasant experience for those of us who take a more cynical view of things to encounter the optimists out there who choose to find the positive side of negative situations. By now, most Siouxlanders are familiar with Justin and Tori Englehardt, who believed their Wild Hill Honey business was wiped out when they discovered on Dec. 28 that vandals had destroyed their 50 beehives, resulting in the death of half a million bees. The story struck a nerve with people and went viral, quickly spreading across the internet. Soon, hundreds of people from across the country had donated more than $30,000, a sum that will enable the Englehardts to rebuild their Sioux City business and resume operations in the spring. (Police have since arrested two boys, ages 12 and 13, on charges of criminal mischief and burglary.) You could almost feel the positive vibes from all those generous donors willing to help a Sioux City couple most of them had never met. Those vibes continue to reverberate. On Thursday night, Dordt College agriculture professor Duane Bajema hosted the first session of a Beginning Beekeeping course at the Iowa State University Extension's Woodbury County office in Sioux City. He said earlier in the day that he had received 13 registrations. More than 35 people showed up that night. A master beekeeper who has kept bees for more than 40 years, Bajema has seen interest in bees rise in recent years as more stories circulate about the disappearance of honeybees and the negative effect that losing pollinators could have on agriculture. He watched with interest as news of the vandalism to Wild Hill Honey spread throughout the beekeeping world. Vandalism is nothing new to beekeepers, he said as he listed bees' top predators as bears, skunks, opossums and humans. The first three on that list will eat bees or their honey. The fourth on the list ... well, some humans tend to do stupid things like destroy beehives. "It happens," Bajema said. "Kids dare one another. In the meantime, the beekeeper is the victim." Usually, you don't hear about such incidents. The Sioux City case was an exception, and Bajema takes an optimists' view of the situation. "You always try to find the positive in negative things," he said. That positive could be found Thursday night as he asked those attending his class why they were there. Many said they'd always been interested in bees and thought it would be an interesting, fun hobby. Others want to keep bees so they can harvest their own honey. A couple people mentioned their desire to help save bees, to make a positive impact on the environment by enabling the small pollinators to do their work. Mark Garlick and Patti Fravel know people who either currently or in the past kept bees, so they already had some interest in beekeeping. The married couple decided in December, after seeing news reports of the vandalism, that it was time to put their thoughts into action. "We were really spitting mad about that, and we decided maybe we need to learn a little more about (beekeeping)," Garlick said. Fravel said the apple and pear trees on their small acreage outside Sioux City will be a good bee environment. Garlick enjoys listening to the soft buzzing of the bees that cover their lavender bush every year when it blooms. Both enjoy honey and appreciate bees' role in nature. That's why the news of the vandalism upset them, Garlick said. "I was so startled by the stories," he said. "I was so astonished I felt that strongly." So they decided to do what they could in their little corner of the world to make a positive out of a negative event. "It would be a small thing to help the environment," Garlick said. Bajema senses similar feelings out there. More people, he said, are beginning to associate beehives not with bee stings, but with pollination and its importance to our food supply. It's a positive response by humans that gives a cynic a more optimistic outlook on bees and their future in the environment.

COLUMBUS - Health promotion, Nutrition, and Exercise Science Is childhood ADHD a result of food insecurity? Lu’s research indicates a disturbing connection. “I’ve always been passionate about advocating for vulnerable youth,” said Lu, a first-place selection at last year’s Denman. “Food insecurity research is limited, particularly in the context of pediatric mental health. I’m helping bring attention to a field of research that is small but important.” Part of Lu’s research found an association between food insecurity and the persistence of irritable, angry moods and consistent temper outbursts. Lu discovered her love of research when she began working for Irene Hatsu, her research advisor. “The research opportunities I’ve had through Ohio State have been life changing.” TANZANIA - Electrical and Computer Engineering Adornetto arrived in Tanzania in the summer of 2017 with the intention of exploring the benefits of solar energy. What he didn’t know was what local Tanzanians thought of solar energy’s impact. Through numerous interviews, historical literature and other relevant documents, Adornetto uncovered a complex mix of views about the ramifications of science, technology and energy to the future of the region. He also found incredible innovations by ordinary Tanzanians that are being overlooked. “A prosperous, global energy future rests on the ability of the powerful to attend to these people and their innovations,” Adornetto said. COLOMBIA - Agribusiness and Applied Economics Highland Colombia produces two products the United States loves: coffee and cocaine. Of course, one is legal, the other isn’t. Chen researched the different routes each took to get from Colombia to Columbus. “It’s been one of the most thrilling and thought-provoking learning experiences I have had at Ohio State.” Her research boiled down to reviewing a slew of data from a variety of entities, including the World Trade Organization and the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy. Chen found that not only is the physical movement of coffee and cocaine different, but so are the price, strategy and speed at which they move toward the end consumer. (Cocaine gets to consumers much quicker.) “The simple decision of declaring the legality of a commodity has vast political, social and economic considerations for both the exporting and importing countries.” COLUMBUS - Public Health Adewumi’s research shined a light on a disturbing problem that hits close to home: black infant mortality. In Columbus, black infants die three times more than white infants — and it could be from everyday racial discrimination the mothers feel. Adewumi collected information on 280 pregnant women, then obtained the birth weight of their infants. The pregnant minority women who reported higher levels of everyday discrimination were likely to give birth to infants with low birth weight — a leading cause of infant mortality. It was consistent across all levels of education, income and body mass index. CALIFORNIA - Animal Sciences One reason Kordecki chose Ohio State was for its many research opportunities. And in this, her first research experience, she was “astonished how far our scientific research has come.” During a beekeeping class, she learned about Colony Collapse Disorder and its possible link to pesticide exposure. For this research, she investigated the effect Dyne-amic — a product that enhances pesticides — has on the honey bees that cross-pollinate almond flowers in California, which produces 80 percent of the world’s almonds. “My research indicated that Dyne-amic is capable of killing honey bee larvae and pupae, which is surprising given that (the product is) labeled non-toxic. CHINA - Chinese and International Studies By analyzing numerous open access materials from government, faith-based and human rights organizations, Stevens shined a light on frightening trends within the Chinese marriage trade. The combination of China’s large gender imbalance due to its One Child Policy and North Korean female defectors, who began leaving home because of famine, has resulted in a gray market that supplies Chinese men with North Korean wives. What Stevens found was that the voices of the women involved are ignored even though they rarely choose to be sold into marriage and do so only in order to survive. “If this problem is to improve, the people who have been affected are the voices that can bring about the most change.” COLUMBUS - Zoology Bats are incredibly important creatures, contributing an estimated $4 billion to U.S. agriculture each year in ecosystem services that include pest management, pollination and seed dispersal. However, wind farms are threatening their survival. In order to predict when bats are most active, Monopoli picked through the stomach contents of Eastern red bats collected from Ohio windfarms to determine what they were eating. She also modeled weather patterns that correlate to bat migration patterns in the Midwest. Its information windfarms could use to know when to operate and when not to. “I never thought any of my undergraduate work could have lasting importance. It’s given me the opportunity to play an active role in the conservation of a species I love.” COLUMBUS - Political Science Smartphones and internet use have become prevalent modes of information consumption in recent years, but there is large controversy over smartphone use in polling booths. Moore’s research set out to find out how smartphones and laptops can be used to make key decisions in voting booths. “As someone who both grew up in the midst of the Information Age and is keenly interested in politics,” Moore said. “I’ve always thought of technologies like smartphones as integral tools to being a democratic citizen.” Moore’s research findings suggested that individuals who had access to smartphones and were able to conduct information searches in the voting booth were associated with more sound voting decisions. PAKISTAN - Political Science Through intense literature review and analysis of media reports and government documents evaluating the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), Kamal hopes to expand the understanding of Pakistan past the lens of national security and further into the complexities that have shaped the region. CPEC began in 2015 as a way to enhance connectivity and relations between Pakistan and China. “As my studies in urbanization have shown me, new mass-scale developments often bring displacement and change.” Kamal’s research assesses CPEC’s function in Pakistan in driving primitive accumulation, the adoption of capitalism from pre-capitalist societies and how this is affecting not only politics in the region, but also the livelihood of citizens. COLUMBUS - Geography Combining art and geography is not the expected way to complete research on gentrification, but Scully achieved it. “My research is certainly out of the box and I’m lucky to have professors who help me to go after projects that push me,” said Scully. Her research used thorough statistical analysis and photography to acquire topological data on a neighborhood affected by gentrification in Columbus. This data captured social relationships, rather than the standard topographical data focusing on abandoned buildings, between different individuals and the environment and how the gentrification process affected the individuals that lived in the area. COLUMBUS - Anthropology Understanding the lifestyles and environments of past populations relies heavily on the analysis of skeletal remains. There are two indexes used to assess skeletal health: the Health Index, which evaluates wellbeing, and the Skeletal Frailty Index (SFI), which evaluates stress. Mitchell’s research aimed to identify whether there were statistical differences between the two indexes. “Evaluating the health of past human populations is important in understanding and reconstructing past environments, population growth and socio-economic structures,” Mitchell said, and understanding how the two tests can be used together helps create better inferences about these populations. Her research found that the two indexes assessed health similarly, allowing for the tests to be used interchangeably depending on what skeletal data is available. INDIA - Geography Beery conducted 50 interviews in 31 villages near Melghat, India, to learn what women know about climate change and how they've adapted. Her findings aim to understand how future generations in that rural area can best make family planning choices. "It was awesome to have this experience as a first-generation student. Geographers like to study the world through maps and technology, but to actually experience the world and see what it's like, you learn more - and you learn how much you don't know yet." DENMARK - Dance Six weeks in Denmark followed by three weeks in Italy allowed Milian to dance with professionals and through interaction gain insight about their teaching methodologies and strategies to improve his own classes and choreography. "There was a big focus on kinesthetic learning and kinesthetic intelligence, which is simply learning by doing. I pinpointed three objectives about the use of the spine that I wanted to get across in teaching: fluidity, articulation, and origin of movement." NEW ZEALAND - Economics Kulasekere traveled to New Zealand in December for a second time to conduct an economic analysis of the scoring systems that are used in clinical care to classify the severity of spinal trauma injuries. "It's progression analytics looking at whether these types of scoring systems can be predictive of costs and the treatment process. I've learned about the research process and how much coordination it takes between all different actors involved in different parts of a project." ICELAND - Earth Science Don't question Oborn's dedication. He spent several nights sleeping in a car to save money during two research trips to Iceland, the second visit to study Herdubreid, one of the nation's 30 active volcanoes. "I collected a specific type of rock sample, analyzed the chemical composition, did calculations, and saw where the sample crystalized under the surface of the Earth. If you know how deep the manga is and its composition, you can get estimates of how long you have between precursor signs and eruption to help with evacuation times." ANTARCTICA - Biological Engineering Ash spent ten days on Earth's southernmost continent, Antarctica. Her research involved conducting a census of seabird populations, which are threatened by issues such as climate change and pollution. Ash inputted her data into a worldwide database, and her research helped gauge the effectiveness of conservation efforts. "I went down there because I always thought of Antarctica as this mysterious place. As a student, I knew Ohio State had a background in polar research, so I knew there must be a way to get down there so I could discover these mysteries about Antarctica," Ash said. "It's such a fragile place and a huge, unknown place. I'm so grateful I had this opportunity." GUATEMALA - Criminology Between 1960 and 1996, the people of Guatemala suffered through a violent civil war. For her research, Tomaszewski spent six weeks in the country to conduct in-depth interviews with residents. She got a deeper understanding of how their exposure to civil war has shaped their thoughts about justice and government. "It was very eye-opening. I've traveled a lot, but the places I've been are much more developed," said Tomaszewski, who embedded herself in the local culture during her time there. "This was a much different view of the world. We traveled by local buses, stayed in local homes. It was eye-opening to see how a country is really helping itself in the wake of such a tragedy." UNITED STATES - Landscape Architecture The U.S. national park system is celebrating 100 years, but it faces increasing threats including climate change and soaring numbers of visitors, said Moore. He and five other students (Jenny Hoppert, Kevin Maas, Amanda Knight, Nick Armstrong and Brad Giordano) representing different fields of study set out across the country together and visited 30 national park sites, documenting everything from trail designs to traffic. The group is putting its research together in a book that will be given to the park system's planner and designers. "It was definitely an adventure, but it was a great collaboration," Moore said. "We had students representing civil engineering, mechanical engineering, biology and landscape architecture spending two months on the road together conducting this research. It was really fascinating." BOLIVIA - Environmental Sciences King spent five weeks in Bolivia's Barba Azul Reserve, an especially daunting task considering there was no cell phone reception and he didn't speak the language. But he quickly immersed himself in the culture and went all-in on his research. He examined how cattle ranching is decreasing the country's forest land and is hindering endangered species like birds, which depend on those habitats. "My research in Bolivia immersed me in a brand new culture that also presented a lot of challenges during the field work," King said. "But by working through these problems in such a remote place where I couldn't get help easily, I feel really well-equipped for solving problems in the future." UGANDA - Animal Sciences Not only was Klass' experience in Uganda a great learning opportunity, but it confirmed for her that she wants to dedicate her life to helping farmers in need. Klass' research focused on small urban farmers in Uganda, who face several issues including lack of feed for their animals and limited access to veterinarians. "I would say that it was one of the best experiences of my college career. I absolutely loved it. I made a lot of great friends," Klass said. "For me, this project is basically what I want to do in the future. I want to work with small farmers in developing countries and provide extension to them. So it was actually a dream come true to talk with these farmers and show them that I care."

Are you looking for how to start beekeeping in Limestone Pennsylvania? A number of people say honey bee farming classes in PA can be costly and there are alternative ways to master honey bee farming without spending a fortune in training. Beekeeping is a business that depends on having fire that is entire. You cannot start a company such as this if you do not like dealing with live creatures. Working with bees is like working with any other sort of fowl or animals; it needs knowledge and care to keep bees healthy and productive. To ensure it doesn’t create any problem for the company in the foreseeable future, you should take complete care of each and every small thing. – Choosing the appropriate tools Starting without choosing the proper tools beekeeping is like entering the conflict with swimming costumes. Before you begin your business you should be well prepared, or it will be a total loss on your money and time. Before you choose your suitable hives ask your self several questions. This depends a lot on what is the target from beginning beekeeping. In case you are willing to invest some money and time in a bee keeping business then you may want to understand how long will you take care of your hives. Are you ready to purchase a pricey hive if it is best alternative for you? These sort of questions will be asked to you once you visit an expert bee keeper to consult him about the hive that is greatest to purchase. Every hive has its specifications, care and honey production amount. – New technology and procedures Should you be considering bee keeping as a business then you must analyze a lot about bees, their nature and the newest technologies that emerged in this livelihood to be able to keep all your info up thus far. Your bees are the machines of your factory that will create money for you all the time once they start producing honey, so by keeping your thoughts, they were focused on and your mind open for what’s new in the industry will get you on top of the business.

Are you on the search for how to start beekeeping in Bethlehem Pennsylvania? A lot of folks say beekeeping classes in PA can be costly and there are alternative ways to master honey bee farming without spending a fortune in training. Beekeeping is a hobby that depends on having fire that is entire. You cannot if you do not like coping with creatures that are live begin a company like this. Working with bees is like working with any other kind of birds or animals; it wants knowledge and attention to keep bees healthy and productive. You should take complete care of each and every matter that is little, so that it will not create any trouble for the company in the future. – Choosing the right tools Beginning beekeeping without picking the right tools is like entering the battle with swimming costumes. You should be prepared before you begin your company or it is going to be a total loss to your time and money. Before you choose your suitable hives ask your self several questions. This depends on which is your target from starting beekeeping a lot. If you’re willing to invest some money and time in a bee keeping company then you might want to understand how long will you take care of your own hives. Are you ready if it’s best choice for you to purchase a costly hive? These type of questions will be asked to you once you visit an expert bee keeper to consult him about the best hive to buy. Every hive has its own specifications, care and honey production amount. – New technology and procedures If you’re considering bee keeping as a business then you must analyze a lot about the newest technologies, their nature and bees that emerged in this career in order to keep all of your info up to date. Your bees are once they start creating honey the machines of your factory that can create money for you all the time, so keeping your thoughts focused on them and your head open for what’s new in the industry will get you on top of the hobby.

Are you on the search for how to start beekeeping in Leisenring Pennsylvania? A number of individuals say beekeeping classes in PA can be expensive and there are alternative ways to master beekeeping without spending lots of money in training. Beekeeping is a business that depends on having passion that is entire. You cannot begin a business such as this if you do not like coping with live creatures. Working with bees is like working with any sort of animals or fowl; it needs knowledge and care to keep bees healthy and productive. You should take complete care of each and every matter that is little, to ensure that it doesn’t create any trouble for the business later on. – Selecting the correct tools Starting beekeeping without selecting the right tools is like entering the conflict with swimming costumes. Before you begin your company you should be well prepared or it will likely be a total loss on your time and money. Before you choose your hives that are acceptable ask your self several questions. This depends on what is the aim from beginning beekeeping a lot. Should you be willing to invest some cash and time in a bee keeping company then you definitely might want to understand will you take care of your hives. Are you ready to buy a costly hive if it’s best alternative for you? These sort of questions will be asked to you once you see a specialist bee keeper to consult him about the finest hive to buy. Every hive has its specifications, maintenance and honey generation amount. – New technology and processes Should you be considering bee keeping as a business then you must examine a lot about bees, their nature and the latest technologies that emerged in this profession so that you can keep all your information up thus far. Your bees are once they begin producing honey the machines of your factory which will generate money for you all the time, so keeping your thoughts focused on them and your mind open for what is new in the sector will get you on top of the business.

This calendar includes events taking place in Coral Springs, Parkland, Margate and surrounding areas. Events subject to change. Meets Dec. 13, the 2nd Thursday. Broward Beekeepers Assoc., 7 p.m. Learn about Backyard Beekeeping. BBA’s goal is to educate the public on the benefits of honeybees. Coconut Creek Community Center, 1100 Lyons Road, Coconut Creek. Call 812-233-4483 (812-BEE-HIVE), browardbees.org Florida Trail Association Meets Dec. 13, on the 2nd Thursday, with featured guest speaker, 7:15 p.m. The Florida Trail Association helps maintain and promote the Florida National Scenic Trail and provides an opportunity for hiking and camping in Florida. Fern Forest Nature Center, 201 Lyons Road South, Coconut Creek. 954-829-8494, hoofers.floridatrail.org Margate’s 3-D holiday light show, 6-10 p.m. transforms the walls of City Hall. The 8-minute show takes place along Margate Boulevard from State Road 7 to NW 58th Avenue. margatefl.com or 954-972-6458. Coral Springs Woman’s Club This meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 18, will focus on Operation Smile, with members making no-sew blankets for children undergoing surgery, 7-9:30 p.m. Meets every 3rd Tuesday through April. Guests welcome. Cypress Hall at Cypress Hammock Park, 1300 Coral Springs Drive, Coral Springs. Free. 954-344-0377. Parkinson’s Education Support Group Meets Dec 20, Thursday, 2 p.m. Open discussion for ongoing support. Learn ways to manage PD symptoms and improve quality of life. Life Care Center, 4300 Rock Island Road, Lauderhill. 954-485-6144. Woman’s Club Meeting & Auction Coral Springs Woman’s Club meets Jan. 8, 7-9 p.m. on the 2nd Tuesday of each month through April. Cypress Hall, Cypress Hammock Park, 1300 Coral Springs Drive, Coral Springs. No charge; guests welcome. 954-344-0377. Women’s Club of Coconut Creek Meets the 2nd Monday, Jan. 14: Social time and general meeting. 7 p.m. Coconut Creek Community Center, 1100 Lyons Road. 954-914-1589. Free Movies in the Park The City of Margate Parks and Recreation Dept. offers a free family friendly movie. Film starts at 6 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 26. Margate Sports Complex, 1695 Banks Road, Margate. Bring your own seating; refreshments available for purchase. For titles: 954-972-6458 or margatefl.com. MIAMI — Visit an illuminated wonderland, with spectacular light displays, inspiring special effects, mazes, holograms, sculptures, entertainment, food options and more. 6-11 p.m. Starts Friday, Nov. 23, and runs through Jan. 6. $20, kids; $28, adults. Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden, 10901 Old Cutler Road. TheNightGarden.com or 305-249-1131. Bereavement Support Group Support group for all ages. Meets weekly on Mondays, 3-4:30 p.m. Open to the public. Free, with chaplain Paul Veliyathil. Royal Palm Christian Church, 9600 Royal Palm Blvd., Coral Springs. Vitas.com 954-753-2383. Twice a week: Bring family and friends for an evening of fun and an opportunity to win cash prizes. 6 p.m. Mondays; 10:45 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Wednesdays. Temple Beth Am, 7205 Royal Palm Blvd., Margate. 954-968-4545. Monday-Friday: One Ping Pong table available for play; paddles and balls included. Must call for availability; first come, first served. Sartory Senior Center, 10150 NW 29th St., Coral Springs. 954-345-2209. Senior Fitness Classes Every Monday: classes use state-of-the-art equipment for maximum muscle and bone density. A personal trainer and geriatric nurse teach each session. For Coral Springs residents age 62-up. 9:15 a.m., 10 a.m., 10:45 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. Aquatic Complex, 12441 Royal Palm Blvd., Coral Springs. Space limited. 954-345-2121. Stretch and Flex Mondays and Wednesdays: Join for a lower impact range of motion water exercise. 8:30-9:30 a.m. Aquatic Complex, 12441 Royal Palm Blvd., Coral Springs. $3/class; $30/12 classes. 954-345-2121. Socrates Group Discussion Every Monday: Share your thoughts on philosophical, ethical or theological topics. Freely exchange ideas and experiences. 1-2:30 p.m. Sartory Senior Center, 10150 NW 29th St., Coral Springs. 954-345-2209. Computer Classes in Creole Class requires basic computer skills. 6-8 p.m. North Regional/Broward College Library, Computer Center, 1100 Coconut Creek Blvd., Coconut Creek. 954-201-2601. Tonercize is a class that works on toning the whole body. 10:30 a.m. Sartory Senior Center, 10150 NW 29th St., Coral Springs. Free for residents 55 and older. 954-345-2209. Join for this centuries-old practice designed to bring the mind, body and spirit into harmony. 2:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sartory Senior Center, 10150 NW 29th St., Coral Springs. Free for residents 55 and older. 954-345-2209. A class aimed for senior citizens to help with balance, strength and all-around fitness. 9:30 and 10 a.m. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Sartory Senior Center, 10150 NW 29th St., Coral Springs. Free for residents 55 and older. Register at the Coral Springs Aquatic Complex. 954-345-2209. Middle Eastern Dance Class Learn to belly dance with Myriam Eli, 6:30-7:30 p.m. each Tuesday. Dynamite Dance Studio, 10704 Wiles Road, Coral Springs. $15 a week or $96 for 8 classes. 954-773-1012. Coral Springs Woman's Club Meets 7:30 p.m., each Tuesday. Visitors welcome. There is no residency requirement or fee. Contact Mary Ann Frankle: [email protected] or 954-344-0377. Cypress Hammock Park, 1300 Coral Springs Drive, Coral Springs. Meets weekly: Tai Chi is meditation in motion, 8:15-9:15 a.m. By doing Tai Chi on a regular basis the balance, circulation and stress level will improve. For residents 55 and older. Sartory Senior Center, 10150 NW 29th St., Coral Springs. Pay monthly $25. 954-345-2209. Twice a week: Bring your family and friends for an evening of fun and an opportunity to win cash prizes. 6 p.m. Mondays; 10:45 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Wednesdays. Temple Beth Am, 7205 Royal Palm Blvd., Margate. 954-968-4545. For any level stitchers. Bring your own supplies. You will need Size G aluminum crochet hooks and one skein of worsted weight yarn (either acrylic or cotton). Open to both residents and non-residents. 11 a.m. Sartory Senior Center,10150 NW 29th St., Coral Springs. Free for residents 55 and older. 954-345-2209. Weekly; Learn to download free e-books and audio books from the Broward County Library eCollection to your electronic device. 2:30-3:30 p.m. Lauderhill Towne Centre Branch Library, 6399 W. Oakland Park Blvd. Free. 954-357-6409. Coral Springs Rotary Club Weekly membership meeting and lunch. 12:15 p.m. Nicks New Haven Pizza, 2444 N. University Drive, Coral Springs. coralspringsrotary.org Enjoy weekly early bird games and general bingo for an opportunity to win cash prizes. 6:30 p.m. Temple Beth Orr, 2151 Riverside Drive, Coral Springs. 954-753-3232. Toddler Story Time Children ages 18-36 months and their caretaker can enjoy brief stories, songs, marching with instruments and an occasional craft. 11-11:30 a.m. Thursdays. Lauderhill Town Center Library, 6399 W. Oakland Blvd., 954-357-6406. Weekly: Stretch is a class that focuses on stretching and strengthening the muscles of your body. This class ensures to help maintain flexibility. 10:30 a.m. Sartory Senior Center,10150 NW 29th St., Coral Springs. Free for residents 55 and older. 954-345-2209. By practicing qigong regularly, your health will improve. It helps to rejuvenate the body and mind and slows the aging process. Open to both residents and non-residents. 8 a.m., Fridays. Sartory Senior Center,10150 NW 29th St., Coral Springs. $5/class. $25 card. 954-345-2209. Weekly: Learn how to improve your speaking and leadership skills with our energetic, talented, and diverse members. 7 a.m. Florida Panthers IceDen, 3299 Sportsplex Drive, Coral Springs. 954-618-7134, clubawesome.org JCH Fellowship Club for Teens Meets Saturdays, 5-9 p.m. Free; donations welcome. Mingle with other teens in JCH Fellowship Club. Enjoy Christian music, dancing, games, etc. Hampton Inn Hotel, 5740 State Road 7, Coconut Creek. 754-423-4132. Agape Social Networking Meets Saturdays, 5-9 p.m. $10. Meet adult friends and business associates, enjoy Christian music, dancing, games, etc. Hampton Inn Hotel, 5740 State Road 7, Coconut Creek. 754-423-4132. Weekend Guided Trail Rides Weekly: One-hour guided trail rides. Children must be 9 years old or at least 52 inches tall to ride and must have an adult present. Closed-toe shoes are required. 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. Tradewinds Park & Stables, 3600 W. Sample Road, Coconut Creek. $35 plus tax/person per hour. 954-357-8720, broward.org/parks Arts and Crafts Create and decorate artful projects. Unique crafts ideas include home decor, painting, woodcrafts, gifts, and more. 10 a.m..-noon. Sartory Senior Center, 10150 NW 29th St., Coral Springs. Free for residents 55 and older. Must call to sign up. 954-345-2209. Saturday-Sunday: Ages 9 and under. 11 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Tradewinds Park & Stables, 3600 W. Sample Road, Coconut Creek. Gate entrance fee, $1.50; $3 per ride. 954-357-8870 or broward.org/parks Guided Nature Walk Weekly: Explore the trails at Fern Forest with a park naturalist while learning about native South Florida habitats. Call to confirm staff availability. 1-2 p.m. Fern Forest Nature Center, 201 Lyons Road S., Coconut Creek. Free. RSVP. 954-357-5198, broward.org/parks Tradewinds Park Farm Weekly: Come out and see the farm animals, including a cow, sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens. 11:30 and 1:30 p.m. Sunday and Saturday. $3 per person. 3600 W. Sample Road, Coconut Creek. 954-357-8720, broward.org/parks Be Kind to Animals Weekly: Meet a native or exotic animal, learn how animals live in the wild, how we can best interact with them and how our choices affect their quality of life. 11 a.m. Sawgrass Nature Center & Wildlife Hospital, 3000 Sportsplex Drive, Coral Springs. Free. 954-752-9453, sawgrassnaturecenter.org

"Love They Climate As Thyself" highway billboard by Class Action, Massachusetts, April 2019. Untold Possibilities at the Last Minute Climate Change Exhibit Offers Glimpses Of Our Warmer Future: New Foods, Melting Ice, Cooling Roofs On View: May 20 to Oct. 4, 2019. Opening Reception: Thursday, May 23, from 6 to 8 p.m., Local artists explore the state of climate change today in “Untold Possibilities at the Last Minute,” an exhibition on view at Cambridge Arts’ Gallery 344 from May 20 to Oct. 4, 2019. An opening reception will be held in the gallery at 344 Broadway, Cambridge, on Thursday, May 23, from 6 to 8 p.m., featuring music and poetry at 6:30 p.m. plus tastings of foods for our warmer future. Scientists, governments and policy makers have struggled to convey the urgency of climate change. “Untold Possibilities at the Last Minute” presents local artists working to spread the message of what is coming, adaptions we can make now to reduce climate change, and how we can prepare for a warmer future. Learn more at untoldpossibilities.org. Featured artists, writers, musicians and culinary artists include Matthew Battles, David Buckley Borden, Class Action, Aaron M. Ellison, Gap Dynamics, Amanda Gorman, Keith Hartwig, Dietmar Offenhuber, Laura Perovich, Thomas Starr, Jean Wilcox, Baravena Foods, Aeronaut Brewing Company, Gus Rancatore of Toscanini’s, Nate Phinisee, and Clover Food Lab. The exhibition is a collaboration of Cambridge Arts, City of Cambridge Community Development Department and Harvard University's Office of Sustainability. “Untold Possibilities at the Last Minute” considers time travel, bio-indicators, three-dimensional visualization of data, food, poetry and music. Jean Wilcox, David Buckley Borden and Aaron M. Ellison, and Keith Hartwig bring our attention to temperature: Jean Wilcox will install white roofing membrane across the gallery floor to model how changing our many flat urban roofs from black to white can reduce heat absorption. Borden’s and Ellison’s “Warming Warning” is a three-dimensional visualization of global temperature rise and carbon dioxide emissions. Beginning May 18, Keith Hartwig will create a 6-foot-tall cube of ice harvested from a Maine pond in February on the plaza outside Cambridge’s City Hall Annex (catch it before it melts). His “COLD CHAIN” speaks about the transition of refrigeration from natural ice to mechanical freezers, and how our society’s reliance on such greenhouse-gas-producing machines is melting away our winters. “Remembrance of Climate Futures” by Thomas Starr, and “FUTUREFOOD” by Matthew Battles and Keith Hartwig ask us to imagine the future. Starr employs the literary device of time travel on a physical trail of markers to help us visualize how global warming and city actions will change our neighborhoods. Battles and Hartwig offer “FUTUREFOOD,” a series of three free food and drink tastings on May 11, May 25 and June 15 from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Cambridge Public Library. Sample kvass, Japanese knotweed sorbet, honey toffee and honey waters to get a taste of how climate change will change our food system and what we might eat. Two projects focus our attention on water and air. With “SeeBoat” and “ArtBoat,” Laura Perovich will exhibit remote-controlled boats that she uses to connect people to the local waters via light drawing and to test the quality of the Charles River, Chelsea Creek and Mystic River. “Ozone Tattoo” by Dietmar Offenhuber (installed on the City Hall Annex plaza) highlights specific plant species as bio-indicators of ground level ozone, which is created by the interaction of industrial pollutants and sunlight. Ground level ozone has a direct relationship to climate change and a detrimental effect on human health and communities. “The Patriotism of Science and Religion” by Class Action, in partnership with the Union of Concerned Scientists, aims to reframe the political debate about climate change with highway billboards, displayed along Route 95 and Route 93 in April, that position climate science in terms of moral and patriotic duty. Gap Dynamics is Saul Levin, a folk-hop singer-songwriter from Michigan whose music, activism, and work merge to focus on climate change and environmental justice. Amanda Gorman is the first National Youth Poet Laureate. We join her in believing in the power of youth to change the world and feature her poem “Earthrise,” inspired by the iconic photograph of Earth taken by astronaut William Anders during the first manned lunar orbit in 1968. The photograph gave us an unprecedented view of our planet and has become a symbol for the environmental movement. May 11: Matthew Battles, Keith Hartwig, and Jessica Yurkofsky of metaLAB offer “FUTUREFOOD” interactive culinary encounter at Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, from 1 to 4 p.m. Sample kvass prepared in collaboration with Aeronaut Brewing. Free. May 18: Keith Hartwig creates a 6-foot-tall cube of ice harvested from a Maine pond last winter on the plaza outside Cambridge’s City Hall Annex, 344 Broadway. Free. May 20 to Oct. 4: “Untold Possibilities at the Last Minute” on view at Cambridge Arts’ Gallery 344, 344 Broadway. Free. “Untold Possibilities at the Last Minute” exhibition reception at Gallery 344 from 6 to 8 p.m., featuring music by Gap Dynamics and National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman’s poem "Earthrise" read by Toni Bee beginning at 6:30 p.m. plus tastings of foods for our warmer future, including kvass, Japanese knotweed sorbet, honey toffee, oat-based ice cream, and Impossible Meat prepared by Clover Food Lab. Free. Matthew Battles, Keith Hartwig, and Jessica Yurkofsky of metaLAB offer “FUTUREFOOD” interactive culinary encounter at Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, from 1 to 4 p.m. Sample Japanese knotweed sorbet prepared by Gus Rancatore of Toscanini’s. Free. The Cambridge Arts River Festival in Central Square from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. offers the Climate Action Extravaganza, poetry about our warming climate, and a Mermaid Promenade. Free. Matthew Battles, Keith Hartwig, and Jessica Yurkofsky of metaLAB offer “FUTUREFOOD” interactive culinary encounter at Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, from 1 to 4 p.m. Sample honey toffee and a flight of honey waters prepared by chef Nate Phinisee. Learn about bee health and honey DNA from Best Bees, a local research and beekeeping company. Free. Gallery 344 is free and open to the public. Cambridge Arts Council City Hall Annex, 344 Broadway, 2nd Floor, Cambridge, MA Monday 8:30am - 8:00pm Tuesday - Thursday 8:30am - 5:00pm Friday 8:30am - 12:00pm Saturday - Sunday closed Cambridge Arts Council Public Art Program In accordance with Cambridge's Public Art Program, one percent of construction costs for capital improvements is designated to support the inclusion of integrated, site-responsive public art. Since 1979, over 200 artworks have been commissioned into the Cambridge Public Art Collection for the enjoyment of all who live, work and visit the city.

Available ebook formats: epub mobi pdf rtf lrf pdb txt html I live in the Appalachian Mountains of NC and have been keeping honey bees since 2008. I teach and write articles regarding no-treatment beekeeping. The no-treatment seems to make me an eccentric as most other beekeepers put "stuff" in their hives to keep bees on their terms rather than on the bees' terms. Teaching to students is usually done one-on-one in my apiaries. I also teach Apitherapy, which includes all products in the hive: beeswax, pollen/beebread, royal jelly, propolis, honey, and bee venom with micro and full stings. Check out my website www.BEeHealing.buzz for the upcoming class. In 2010 I was appointed the post of Ambassador for the Center for Honeybee Research in 2010. I3 Trips to Italy and am still in contact with the new friends I made there and stay in their home when I travel there. Took 1 trip to France where I stayed in hayloft where owls eat doves in the evening. Slept like a baby. Went 3 times to Africa for a project in Senegal and have an adopted family and a grandbaby named after me. I communicate with scientists around the world, farmers, and other beekeepers through emails and international forums. I am a strong advocate against Monsanto and anything attached thereto. I am a writer, author, organic gardener, and enjoy my coffee sitting on the porch in the morning watching the mountains go through their moods while listening to the birds and feeling the wind.

CSR: connected hives Installing a connected hive on your company’s premises fits perfectly with your CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) effort. Companies and communities with connected hives are contributing in an innovative and ecologically active way to the local biodiversity. The arrival of tens of thousands of bees on your company’s property also gives you the opportunity to show employees and customers a new side to your organisation’s CSR policy. In addition, it is a good way to enhance your image as a socially aware company committed to new digital services. Already trusted by global corporations and local communities ! Always on the lookout to better understand your needs and serve your company vision, we are helping you get involved in preserving the environment using new digital services. Always on the lookout to better understand your needs and serve your company vision, we are helping you get involved in preserving the environment using new digital services. In partnership with beekeepers, we have developed a product adapted to companies and communities, local black bee colonies are installed in an apiary equipped with Hostabee technology tools, a recognised professional then monitors the bee colony life cycle online, harvests the honey and provides customised packaging. An event is organised around the honey harvest so that employees can get directly involved in the apiary activity. If your community cannot install hives onsite, but still wishes to get involved in saving our bees, we offer a sponsorship package. Hostabee sends out regular information on the many company-sponsored hives, so you can monitor the development of your sponsored hive Testimonial : Saint Quentin community is using the Hostabee solutions (- FR) Benefits of beekeeping to your CSR effort You enhance your image as a socially aware and responsible company by adopting or sponsoring connected hives. Your employees reconnect with nature and you create a desire for practical action to help the environment. You develop pride in belonging and well-being at work in your employees by adopting a CSR meaningful project. You harvest your company honey. A simple and effective way to share your CSR commitment with your stakeholders.

Whenever anyone initially considers beekeeping, many visit a local beekeeping association. Newcomers are warmly welcomed and exposed to all sorts of technical mumbo jumbo just before being offered large amounts of beekeeping supplies at exorbitant prices, usually by another beekeeper who has created a cottage industry among the group. This isn’t necessary at all. Bee keepers have been keeping bees since the art’s inception by utilizing equipment and tools that they had on hand. The bees certainly don’t care and re-using and repurposing building materials is very green Save Money, Save Space, Become a Top Bar Bee Keeper You don’t have to spend a huge amount of money and you don’t need a lot of acreage or storage space to keep bees either. You won’t have to lug around heavy pieces of equipment or clean out your entire garage to get into beekeeping. It just isn’t necessary. Many people can become successful beekeepers using the top bar beekeeping method, even those who are wheelchair bound. Top bar beekeeping is also space friendly. Bee Keepers who don’t have very much usable space can still participate because most of the items and tools you use are actually stored within the hives. It’s ingenious. Minimal Land Accessories Needed The absolute essentials required for Top Bar beekeeping are extremely simple. All you’ll need is a hat, veil, an old white shirt, and some gloves. Even if you live in an urban area, as long as you have flowers available the bees will do just fine. Most people don’t know that bees fare better in an urban garden instead of industrial farm land. Top Bar Bee Hives Top Bar beehives are relatively simple in design. They’re just boxes with sticks across the top for the bees to attach their hives. There aren’t any frames, excluders, ekes, foundation, or any of those additional accessories, just space allotted for hives and equipment storage. The best thing about a top bar beehive is that building them is super simple. If you can put up shelves, then you can build a top bar beehive. You can construct the box and cover with hand tools and it doesn’t have to look perfect or beautiful. The bees don’t care. To them, the top bar beehive is a weatherproof structure that offers them the opportunity to build their hives the way they see fit without interference or wax structures. Top Bar Beekeeping is for Everyone Top Bar beekeeping provides beekeepers of all ages and activity levels the opportunity to keep bees using the best method possible. You keep your hands off the bees until it’s time to harvest the honey, leaving them to what they do best, making honey. It’s always best to leave well enough alone when it comes to nature. Beekeeping shouldn’t have to be expensive or complicated and top bar beekeeping provides just that for beekeepers. This method of beekeeping allows for the use of recycled materials and minimal use of supplies. You can become a bee keeper no matter if you live in the city, the country, or in a suburban neighborhood. The opportunities are truly endless for anyone. Produce Honey and Make Some Money Honey is commanding high prices in today’s market and if you follow local regulations it’s possible to start your own cottage industry selling honey. This is a great income opportunity for retirees and stay at home moms. There are a couple of people that are actually beekeeping and making a full time income using the top bar beekeeping method. The method is very friendly for entrepreneurs to make extra cash with very little investment needed.

One of the best parts of any hobby? Shopping for supplies! We are off to a great start researching our new beekeeping hobby, but now comes the fun part! Before we just buy any old equipment online, we thought we would take it to the people. No one knows beekeeping equipment better than experienced beekeepers! We currently have two hives on order from a company that makes hives here on Vancouver Island. His company's name is Bee Furniture and if you want to check him out click here: http://www.bee-furniture.com/ Not only is the owner of this company, Mark, handcrafting our hives for us, but he has also been our bee guru answering all our questions in depth and truly helping us figure out all that we can. He is our secret weapon! So, hives - check. But there is a lot more that goes into beekeeping than just the hives. Including the bees! We have a few resources on Vancouver Island that we are looking into ordering our bees from. Now, what about all the rest? Here is a list of items we know we need so far: - Frames: We are starting with two 10 frame hives, each with a brood box and a medium super - Hive Tools (more than one?) - Bee Suits: We will need at least 4 suits and are going for head to toe (at least at first) - Water Source - Blocks: To raise the hives up (cement?) - Mulch or Gravel: For underneath hives We are positive that this list is only the beginning of the shopping we need to do to get ready. All the feedback we could get at this point will really help us make decisions on what to buy and where. Who better to ask than the people who use it every day! As our shopping begins, we will be sure to keep everyone in the loop about what products we buy and how they work out for us down the road. Who knows, we might all ditch the bee suits sooner than we think and go freestyle. If anyone is interested in giving us any advice we would love to hear it! Comment below, email us at [email protected] or fill out this form so we can make some informed shopping decisions!

Sacramento Beekeepers Association SACRAMENTO AREA BEEKEEPERS ASSOCIATION CLASSES Who can reap the benefits of these classes? First class training course content is designed for those attempting to explore beekeeping; you'll need not need prior experience nor have already decided you wish to handle bees. Whether you have taken other courses or have already been a beekeeper previously, our start and Advanced courses will undoubtedly be quite informative. They will allow you to know the way beekeeping practices are developing to keep speed with the increasing difficulties honey-bee colonies tend to be facing these days. More advanced techniques tend to be explained in detail when you look at the Advanced courses, which stress hands-on learning. Our courses are taught by experienced beekeepers, considered experts in their industry: - Serge Labesque shows beekeeping classes at Sonoma Community university, and it is the writer of several published articles emphasizing “minimalist” input and developing locally-adapted colonies. His monthly column, explaining innovative methods of managing his own hives, appears in several regional beekeeping updates. - Randy Oliver is a commercial beekeeper into the Grass Valley area, and a factor to United states Bee Journal. In the own terms: “my writing is a food digestion associated with medical literature, pertaining it to my day-to-day hands-on experience and observations in my own 40+ yards of bees. Randy treats his hives with natural compounds, handling Varroa mite infestations with methodology created in his years of work. - Bernardo Niño has-been dealing with honey bees for 8 many years and spent the past two as a Staff Research connect in the E.L. Niño Bee Lab when you look at the UC Davis Dept. of Entomology and Nematology. He serves as this program Supervisor for the Ca Master Beekeeper Program (CAMBP), leads major area researches examining numerous facets of Varroa mite infestation on honey-bee health, supports multiple research projects, along with will teach and develops classes for the E.L. Niño Bee Lab and CAMBP. Using another course from an alternate instructor is highly recommended. While there could be some redundancy, you’ll be exposed to a variety of methods, which can only help you decide on the way you want to handle your bees. Centered on feedback from numerous students, we advice that you simply take one or more classes before you will get your first bees, and a ‘repeat’ class after you’ve started. The info you get in another or even third-class has new meaning for you personally, and you’ll are able to find responses towards questions that undoubtedly occur as you begin or carry on your beekeeping journey. Price: $45 per individual Location: UC Cooperative Extension, 4145 Branch Center Path, Sacramento, CA 95827. This building is on Kiefer Blvd, just west of Bradshaw Rd, south of Hwy 50. Time: Classes start at 8:30, and end at about 4:30pm. They truly are on Sat. or Sun. When you have questions or need to terminate, e-mail Share this article Do worker bees kill drone bees for laziness? - Quora Nah, they don't sting them to death just kick them out and don't let them back in. In early winter when bees go into winter mode they want to conserve as much energy and food as they can to make it through the winter. As the queen doesn't lay in the winter the drones have no usefulness so they kick them out into the cold. The hive is the organism and at that point those drones are only a drag. The drones are bigger and make a much louder buzzing noise. When the ladies start kicking them out you can catch them and have a pet bee as they can't sting you.

What’s on in Ilfracombe for Halloween 2018? Beach Cove offers some of the most beautiful views across the bay, but what spooky secrets does the local area hide? Visiting Beach Cove this Halloween means exploring the historic and stunning local area, with a full programme of family friendly activities and events there will be something for everyone to enjoy in Ilfracombe this Halloween. If you’re looking for family style fun (so nothing too scary) then this ultimate guide to what’s on in Ilfracombe for Halloween is perfect for you, read on for more… Spooky Fun Half Term Where: Quince Honey Farm / When: 20th – 29th Oct / Times: 9am – 5pm Over 400 miles of stunning North Devon countryside, Quince Honey farm keeps 1500 hives and has been farming bees for over 60 years! Visit this wonderful family farm over Halloween half term for a lot of spooky fun! Each day will be filled with activities, including a guided tour of BeeWorld, honey tasting, beekeeping demos and a chance to cuddle some creepy crawlies. Halloween Hocus Pocus Where: The Milky Way / When: 20th – 28th Oct / Times: 10am – 6pm A family fun day out at this fabulous adventure park in North Devon with endless rides, attractions, sports, displays, crafts, adventure play areas and live shows! Visit during Halloween half term for some spooky fun including lots of activities, a fancy dress competition, wand making, spell writing, broomstick riding and swamp dodgem sessions! Fun By Day: Halloween Festival Where: The BIG Sheep / When: 20th – 28th Oct / Times: 10am – 10pm The BIG Sheep is throwing its annual Halloween Festival with fun activities including spooky haunted hay rides, piggy tractor ride, a vintage carousel, the popular Rampage roller coaster & twister ride, plus so much more! Keep an eye out for the fabulous cast of Halloween characters roaming around the park and brave the Haunted House with creepy surprises around every corner! The BIG Sheep also hosts a Fright Night for the brave to enter the Live Scare zone between 22nd to 26th October, from 6pm to 10pm Book your holiday to Beach Cove Coastal Retreat today and start exploring all the spooky goings on this Halloween!

Saturday 3rd November 2018 at Chelmsford City Racecourse (formerly Great Leighs Racecourse). Bunny Campione, who you will know from the Antiques Roadshow, runs Daws Hall Educational Trust. She will be talking about her beekeeping exploits and how helping with the bees raises the self-esteem of the young, disabled and disadvantaged. Chris Newenham, Managing Director, Wilkin & Sons Ltd . ‘Fruit & Honey, the story of Wilkins&Sons’ and how bees and central to their business and how honey sales have become increasingly important to the business in recent years. The first jams were produced in Tiptree in 1885 and with a farmed area in excess of 850 acres around Tiptree, the company grows a significant proportion of its own fruit. Sponsored by Wilkin & Sons Ltd

Varroa destructor, a parasitic mite that has infested most of the areas where honeybees are kept, is obviously problem on a global scale. Varroa-free areas can only be found from small islands such as The Åland Islands in Finland. The only continent that is thought to be free of Varroa is so far Australia- though they have other mites that beekeepers on other continents consider as unwanted. It is a major problem, since it affects greatly the health and well-being of the hive, and though there are various methods of battling against the infestation it’s still alive and kicking. As a newly hatched beekeeper starts to collect all sorts of equipment to make the actual beekeeping possible, eventually the bees are needed as well. Where do you obtain a swarm of bees? It is possible to catch a swarm after they’ve left their hive but it’s a matter of luck whether you get one at all; usually the bees come from another beekeeper who raises them. Unless you import the bees from Varroa-free areas, you’ll almost certainly end up with a readily infested population. Which leads us to following; in year 2013 at Helsinki University began a research and development project under the name of Sanibee ©. With any other domesticated animal it wouldn’t be acceptable or wise to buy a stock that already carries an infectious parasite or a disease that lowers the functions of the collective and infests others quite rapidly. But that’s exactly how it works when you buy bees carrying Varroa. What happens with Sanibee © is that in June 2013 healthy, mite-free hives from Åland islands were transported to Helsinki. On the surrounding areas of their new hive site there are a couple of other hives as well, ones carrying Varroa. What the research is about is measuring how long it takes for the bees to get infected, as well as how the actual mitecontrol treatments affect the hives, and how long the hive will maintain productivity without Varroa prevention and control. Professor of agricultural zoology, Heikki Hokkanen, is behind the project, and me and two other students are participating with normal beekeeping activities, collecting samples from the hives and naturally taking notes of all that happens. It’s a wonderful possibility to learn about bee behavior, handling them, observing the life on the hive and gathering practical knowledge of it all.

How much protein should I eat every day? Determining how much protein an adult should consume each day might seem confusing. According to the Institute of Medicine, which sets nutrition recommendations, a healthy adult should consume anywhere from 10 to 35 percent of total calories in protein per day. That’s a big range. The average American diet amounts to about 15 percent protein, or about 75 grams a day for those on a 2,000 calorie-a-day diet. Additionally, the Institute of Medicine advises that adults should eat a minimum of 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram (or 0.37 grams per pound) of ideal body weight. For a person whose ideal weight is 160 pounds, for example, that would be a minimum of about 60 grams of protein. Paying attention to both pieces of guidance is important... ADA, Ohio – Amid growing questions about the impact of nematodes on corn yields in Ohio, researchers with Ohio State University Extension and the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC) are in the midst of a multi-year project to sample soils in Ohio fields to determine whether the tiny, worm-like organisms are indeed damaging corn yields. Using survey methods and advanced scouting techniques, researchers have spent the last three years conducting corn performance tests for nematodes to determine if the worms are causing problems for Ohio growers and whether seed-treatment nematicides are needed, said Greg LaBarge, field specialist in agronomic systems and one of the leaders of the OSU Agronomic Crops Team. LaBarge, along with OSU Extension... ZANESVILLE, Ohio -- Small farm owners who want to learn more about how to make their farms work better for them or expand their operations, or for those new to agriculture who are looking for ways to utilize acreage, can attend workshops and presentations on these and more issues during a small farm conference March 23 in Zanesville, Ohio. The "Living Your Small Farm Dream" conference and trade show is designed to help participants learn more tips, techniques and methods to help them diversify their opportunities into successful new enterprises and new markets as a way to improve economic growth and development on their farms, said Mark Mechling, an Ohio State University Extension educator in agriculture and natural resources. "It may be a person who is new to... WOOSTER, Ohio -- On Valentine’s Day, everyone longs to speak those three little words: “Roses? For me?” Whether you're the recipient or giver, you can prolong their beauty, said Teresa Lanker, assistant professor and coordinator of the floral design and marketing program at Ohio State University's Agricultural Technical Institute. Her students devote an entire day in their Post-Harvest Flower Care class just to the care and handling of roses. If you’re the one buying the roses, your job starts with selection. Video (2:39): Ohio State ATI's Teresa Lanker gives tips on keeping roses fresh. “In the floral industry, we work hard to extend the vase life potential of flowers,” Lanker said. “Potential” is the operative... What’s the best thing to do when you hear a food that you’ve recently purchased is being recalled? First, find out why the product is being recalled. If it’s due to an undeclared food allergen, for example, and no one in your household suffers from that allergy, you don’t have to worry about it. However, if the recall is due to concern about foodborne illness and you haven’t yet eaten the product, you have two options. You can return the product to the store and ask for a refund, or you can throw it away. If you decide to dispose of it, do it in a way so you’re sure it won’t be consumed by anyone else. Also: It’s not a good idea to feed the recalled food to pets. They can get sick from the food just like you can. If you’ve already... EDITOR: Much of the information in this news release comes from the Peace Corps. See the agency's official news release at www.peacecorps.gov. To see additional material provided by the Peace Corps, contact Martha Filipic at [email protected]. COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohio State University surged four places on the Peace Corps’ annual list of the top volunteer-producing schools, placing for the first time among the top 10 large universities, the international organization said yesterday (2/5). With 80 Ohio State graduates currently serving as Peace Corps volunteers, an increase of nine volunteers over last year, the university now ranks No. 9 and "remains a solid source of alumni committed to making a difference at home and abroad," the Peace Corps said. COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Welcome to chocolate class. Or better yet, beer and wine 101. Ohio State University's Department of Food Science and Technology has plenty of standing-room-only courses to whet the appetite of students who, truth be told, may be looking for what they think will be an easy class to help make their semester coursework go down a little easier. "Students might take Chocolate Science or some of our other courses because they think they will be fun," said Sheryl Barringer, who originated Chocolate Science at Ohio State in 2007 and who currently serves as interim chair for the department, which is part of the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences. "But we hope to get them interested in the field of food science, not necessarily to... WOOSTER, Ohio -- The largest educational beekeeping event of its kind in the U.S. will be held again in Wooster this year, March 1-2, featuring Ohio and national experts on queen bee rearing, pests and diseases of hives, and other issues impacting beekeeping and agricultural production. The 35th annual Spring Beekeeping Workshop, organized by the Tri-County Beekeepers Association Inc. of northern Ohio, will take place at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center's Fisher Auditorium and Shisler Conference Center, 1680 Madison Ave., Wooster. Last year, the event drew more than 1,000 attendees, making it the largest one-day beekeeping symposium or workshop in the country, said Joe Heider, president of the Tri-County... COLUMBUS, Ohio – Educators, farmers, food producers, businesses and anyone else interested in creating or expanding a Farm to School program can learn from the experts on how to do so during a Farm to School conference March 13. Ohio State University Extension, with the support of the Ohio departments of education, health and agriculture, will host the Farm to School conference as part of its goal to continue to expand the successful program, which works to increase students’ access to healthy foods and to help them learn more about food, health, nutrition and agriculture, said Julie Fox, director of the Ohio Farm to School program. Farm to School is a national program, which in Ohio is led by OSU Extension and is supported by numerous agencies,... WOOSTER, Ohio -- Ohio State University’s Fruit and Vegetable Safety Team will hold grower workshops in Zanesville and Newark on March 11. The topic of both programs is preventing microbial contamination on fruit and vegetable farms, including the use of Good Agricultural Practices, or GAPs. Speaking will be specialists from Ohio State University Extension, the outreach arm of Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences. The times and locations: 1-4 p.m. in OSU University Extension’s Muskingum County office, 225 Underwood St., Zanesville. 6-9 p.m. in Hopewell Hall, Room 53, on Ohio State’s Newark campus, 1189 University Drive, Newark. Participants will receive a resource workbook, paper handouts and a certificate of...

Experts, scientists, farmers, and enthusiasts got together to observe May 20 as the first World Bee Day. The United Nations declared May 20 as the World Bee Day in 2017 to raise awareness about the importance of pollinators, the threats they face today and their contribution to the food chain and sustainable development. In December 2017, Slovenia had pitched a proposal before the UN General Assembly to declare May 20 as the World Bee Day. The date was chosen as a tribute to Slovenian 18th-century beekeeping expert Anton Jansa, who is credited with revolutionizing beekeeping with the use of technology. A number of events were organized across the world to mark the day and raise awareness about the challenges faced by pollinators and the importance of saving them. Over 150 beekeepers attended an international conference in Slovenia to vet issues concerning the role and challenges of bees in beekeeping. The central bank in Slovenia also released two commemorative Euro coins on the World Bee Day. Talking about pollination, the process is the most important function of bees. Pollination is important as it facilitates reproduction among plants. During pollination, bees distribute pollen of flowers helping plants reproduce and in exchange they collect nectar from the flower. The quantity of pollen that a bee gets back to the hive depends on how big or developed the hive is. In a year, a bee colony uses up close to 20kg of pollen for itself. These insects also have a crucial role to play in food production by way of distributing pollen from fruit trees. Bees pollinate 70% to 80% of the pollen of fruit trees and this share is rapidly rising due to rampant agricultural activity. The most common fruit trees which benefit from the existence of bees are strawberry, apple, pear, cherry trees, and peach. In this manner, pollination by bees bears a huge impact on food production and the existence of humans and many animals. The spoilt or misshaped fruits one spot indicate that the pollination process was incomplete or hindered. Farmers deduce the yield of a crop by pollination, which is best determined by the shape and size of the fruit. Incomplete pollination leads to the development of deformities in the fruit, and often fruits fall off from tree branches because of this reason. Sometimes, a fruit falling off a tree is also a result of lack of soil nutrients and ample sunlight. For a smooth and timely pollination process, around two to three bee colonies per hectare for general fruit farming. In apple farming, three to four bee colonies per hectare are required and for pear and cherries around six to eight bee colonies per hectare are required. In Slovenia, bees are one of the main reasons behind the rich diversity of the European country. Over 22,000 species live in Slovenia which makes it a great region to study the insects. Moreover, the Carniolan grey bee is one of the most famous bees found in Slovenia. In other European countries like Austria and US, fruit farmers pay beekeepers for the pollination services provided by their bees. In the wake of increasing world population, there is also a simultaneous need for food. Apart from providing items like honey and beeswax, bees also ensure food security by pollination. Pollinators are responsible for almost three-fourths of the food production in the world. Moreover, a third of the world depends on bees to get food on their plate, which means we owe every third spoonful of food to bees. Currently, the world is battling a different kind of crisis wherein the number of pollinators is on the decline while the need for pollination is on the rise. Bees are facing extinction in the wake of climate change and loss of habitat due to increased industrialization. A 2015 report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature observes that around 10% of the bees across the world are facing extinction, 5% are endangered and there is no data available about the status of over 57% of the bees.

Our organisation was set up after our son Jacob Abraham took his own life in October 2015. Jacob was 24 years old, his death deeply shocked all that knew him as Jacob presented as a happy go lucky guy, who was funny, athletic, popular, handsome and with a family and lots of friends who loved him dearly. Jacob’s childhood best friend Andrew struggled with the death of his best friend and without any support to process his grief he too took his life 9 months later. Again Andrew was all the things Jacob was, with this double blow family, friends and community members were left in total devastation. Andrew and Jacob were just 2 of 17 young men to take their lives in our local and surrounding community in a 3-year period. The community came together and raised thousands of pounds, with the money raised we decide to set up a foundation to support and educate the community on ‘suicide intervention and prevention’. A vision we had was to provide free training to community members in ‘suicide intervention and prevention’. We wanted people be able to recognise the signs of suicide, how to intervene effectively, and to keep someone safe. We commissioned a training provider called Safer Suicide London to deliver the training and to date we have trained just over 75 community members and professionals working with vulnerable groups on suicide first aid. Our aim is to get this figure in to the 100’s. We have also developed a 40 minute workshop on Youth Suicide Prevention, working with Social Workers, Play Therapists and Counsellors who deliver this programme. We also offer 8 weeks of well-being and mindfulness sessions and we are in the process of developing bereavement support for anyone affected by suicide. |Address||39 Whitehall Parade, Rumney, Cardiff, South Wales, CF3 3DL| How does your organisation contribute to preventing suicide and supporting those affected by it? We provide free suicide first aid training by Nick Barnes of Safer Suicide London; Nick Barnes is Managing Director of ‘Train on the Tracks’ Health Housing and Social Care Training & Vocational Qualifications. Nick Barnes is commissioned by our organisation to provide the training to approx. 15-20 people every 8 weeks. Nick is credible in the field of suicide and has provided excellent training thus far; the trustees regularly review use of Safer Suicide London. We provide a web site and attend events that sign post people to various organisations, which could address troubling life stressful events which may lead them to the thought process and planning of suicide. These include charities that provide support, help and guidance around issues such as; gambling/debt, drug and alcohol, marriage guidance, bereavement, bullying, sexuality etc. We work in partnership and collaborate with other local charities and organisations who also provide us with additional resources. The Jacob Abraham Foundation is currently working in collaboration with Valley and Vale Community Arts who have secured funding through the South Wales Police and Crime Commissioner’s Victim Fund to provide support to young people who are at risk of or who are vulnerable to suicide. As part of this project we are currently in the process of consulting with young people in the development of a series of posters which will be encouraging young people to have the courage to speak up. We have also developed a 40-minute ‘youth suicide prevention’ workshop that we run in after school clubs, colleges, and youth settings this is run by the following people: We also offer an 8-week programme of well-being and mindfulness/ counselling for vulnerable people. We aim to offer 8 – 10 referrals per year. The Foundation intends to work with the following Practitioners and organisations: Sarah Aitken BSc (Hons) Psychology – Mindfulness Practitioner (Mindfulness Association) Youth Mindfulness Teacher (youthmindfulness.org). Through personal experience we quickly learnt that there is very little support for people bereaved through suicide, and what we did find we had to actively search for in our hours of grief. Therefore, one of our aims is to provide support to people bereaved through suicide. We envision a monthly support group that would provide postvention skills which include self-care, practical safe mourning skills, which would be facilitated by a qualified practitioner, whom we would appoint to run these groups. We would like to provide Comfort packs that will consist of bespoke comforting items for each member of a bereaved family, such as chocolates, soft blankets, picture frames, and voucher etc... The packs will also contain the ‘Help is at Hand’ booklet. We would like to provide a shared understanding and support for those affected by suicide. We would like to work closely with South Wales Police to identify families needing support after a sudden death. What are your current priorities? We are currently working on a new innovative project called ‘suicide stings’ we are working in collaboration with Newlink Wales Wellbeing Service the project has been funded by Comic Relief. We are looking to identify and engage with young men in need of support, by working alongside tattooists for young men over the age of 18 and working with Bee’s (yes Bee’s) for young men between 11-18 years old. A tattoo artist is more likely than mainstream support services to encounter young men struggling with their mental health. We know that services are having difficulty reaching these men, and we also know that young men are often not willing to open up about their mental health – so we need to look beyond the usual referral routes. If just 25 tattooists were given suicide prevention training, with a typical rate of three clients a day they have the potential to reach out to 19,500 people a year. If just 1% of that 19,500 engagement manages to prevent suicide, that’s a saving to services of £331.5 million annually. In the case of Jacob Abraham, after whom the Foundation is named, Jacob had a tattoo 15 days before he died. Jacob’s best friend also took his life 9 months after Jacob’s suicide. In that 9 month period he had the whole of his chest tattooed in Jacob’s memory. We believe there was a missed opportunity to have these open conversations. The issue spreads through communities of young men, and we need to do whatever we can to stop it. Tattoo artists give us an incredibly vital way in. Tattooists will have the opportunity to attend our Suicide Brief Intervention training and will then receive specialist support from the Jacob Abraham Foundation to help give those further skills they’ll need to speak openly to young men about mental health and suicide. They will be provided with a list of organisations whereby they can signpost young men on for further support. School workshops will be delivered teaching children the skills they need to increase their own resilience and to help a friend. We will give young people the opportunity to become Suicide Stings champions they will receive further training through a beekeeping experience day. There are many parallels between the skills we teach people in therapeutic settings and the skills we need for successful beekeeping. These skills include emotional regulation, distress tolerance, organisation, communication, empathy, mindfulness, wellness skills and environmental awareness. What challenges are you currently facing? Our biggest challenge is lack of income /funding in order to provide the man power and resources needed to sustain the foundation and provide a good service.

If you want to know how to make a bookshelf or the back of a kitchen drawer, it’s best to start with a project like this. I have made these for my children and for people needing to store kindling for starting their cosy cottage fires. Resi Tomat, head of education at the National Trust’s Penrhyn Castle where we have the New Legacy workshops, uses one for keeping her beekeeping equipment in and so too another friend who keeps her yarn and knitting paraphernalia in. This is a fun, quick and simple project. We hope that you enjoy it and hope that you enjoy your Woodworking Masterclasses as much as we do.

Welcome to the website of the Dorchester & Weymouth Beekeepers Association. This association is a branch of the Dorset County Beekeepers Association, which in turn is affiliated to the British Beekeepers Association. We are a group of about eighty hobby beekeepers, with a wide range of age and experience in the craft. We run courses for people interested in beekeeping and we have a wealth of experiance in bee matters. In fact it is often said that ask any ten our members how to do something you will get at least eleven different answers. Meetings of a practical beekeeping nature are organised for members during the active season, and some social events. These are usually held in Dorchester or at the apiary of one of our members.

Apidologie (2016) 47, 301-324 of interest to a wider audience. We would welcome contributions to the Discussion section (above tab) of this article. Remember to log in or register (top right corner) before editing pages. Parasites, pathogens, and pests of honeybees in Asia Apidologie 47 (3), 301-324 Abstract: Asia is home to at least nine honeybee species, including the introduced Apis mellifera. In addition to A. mellifera and Apis cerana being widely employed for commercial beekeeping, the remaining nonmanaged species also have important ecological and economic roles on the continent. Species distributions of most honeybee species overlap in Southeast Asia. This promotes the potential for interspecific transmission of pests and parasites and their spread to other parts of the world by human translocation. The decline of honeybee populations is of great concern around the world, including in Asia. The global colony losses of A. mellifera are believed to be caused, in part, by parasites, pathogens, and pests originating from Asia, such as the mite Varroa destructor, the microsporidian Nosema ceranae, and some bee viruses. This review discusses important pests, pathogens, and parasites in both the introduced A. mellifera and native honeybees in Asia to provide an overall picture of honeybee health in the region and future threats to the apiculture industry. (The abstract is excluded from the Creative Commons licence and has been copied with permission by the publisher.) Link to article at publishers website Pest and/or beneficial records:

Saturday, April 9, 2011 Book Review - Classics - The Keeper of the Bees by Gene Stratton-Porter Gene (Geneva) Stratton-Porter and this book, The Keeper of the Bees, are both sadly overlooked. The Keeper of the Bees is a classic. It’s a beautiful story, wonderfully written, and filled with characters so real, you think you might meet one of them yourself any day now. Gene Stratton-Porter was brought up in the forests of Indiana – when Indiana had forests – before the trees were cut down for timber – and she was a lover of nature. The natural world plays such importance that is a character in all of her books, and in all of them you can find her belief that nature can heal us and teach us valuable lessons that we miss if we spend all our time in the city. This is a belief I feel very in tune with. My relatives, on both sides of my family, lived in the countryside, and I grew up spending summers in the country. I wouldn’t have traded that experience for anything. Stratton-Porter’s books are filled with everything in just the right amounts. They possess a quiet humor, but in no way are these books comedic; they contain tragedy, but the prevailing mood always remains one of optimism; they are filled with love, but in no way are they romances. They are, above all else, human, and they reflect the human condition. Maybe that’s why it’s so easy to identify with them, for everyone I know who’s taken my suggestion and read Gene Stratton-Porter, and most especially, The Keeper of the Bees, just falls in love with the book and wants more from this very special author. The Keeper of the Bees is Stratton-Porter’s last novel and is set in 1920s California, the state she adopted as her home. The story revolves around Jamie McFarlane, a man of Scottish descent, who has been sent to a California military hospital after being severely wounded in World War I. The hospital wants to send Jamie away, to a rehabilitation camp, but Jamie knows tuberculosis, not health, is running rampant at the camp, and he rebels. Though he’s weak and without family, he leaves the hospital for parts unknown. At least he can die on a tranquil beach. Or so he thinks. Some people think we draw to us what we, ourselves are. A kind of “like begets like” sort of thing. And so it is with Jamie. As luck – or destiny – would have it, he ends up at the door of the Bee Master, a man who is also trying to recover his health in the face of serious heart problems. The Bee Master needs to spend some time in the hospital, and even though Jamie’s a stranger, the Bee Master asks him to take care of his beloved hives for him while he’s gone. At least Jamie has youth on his side, something the Bee Master does not. And so Jamie begins to learn about beekeeping, and also how to care for the beautiful flowers that surround the Bee Master’s lovely seaside home. The reader, by the way, will learn more about beekeeping in this lovely book than in most manuals on the subject, but don’t let that put you off. Stratton-Porter always makes it the most fascinating subject. As Stratton-Porter describes Jamie’s initial lessons in beekeeping and gardening, readers can hear the surf as it crashes onto the sandy beach; they can smell the fresh salt air; they can see the beautiful blue flowers that grow in the Bee Master’s garden; they feel they can reach out and pluck a ripe tomato fresh from the vine; they can hear the hives humming and taste the sweet honey as soon as it’s made. Stratton-Porter’s writing is that immediate and that filled with sensory detail, something that’s very rare in books published today. Jamie doesn’t jump right into all this beauty and tranquility and heal, both physically and spiritually. At least not immediately. In fact, one stormy night finds Jamie on the beach, so distraught that he considers ending his life. Instead, he meets a mysterious woman whose life is in worse shape than his, and who will be instrumental in his own restoration to health and wholeness. (It’s not a spoiler to reveal that Jamie does return to health and wholeness; you only have to read two or three pages of this wonderful book to see how very life affirming it is.) There’s nothing about The Keeper of the Bees that isn’t just plain, old-fashioned wonderful. This is storytelling at its finest. Storytelling. This book isn’t concerned with exploring some new form of experimental literature. It isn’t concerned with taking us off to worlds that only exist in the author’s imagination. It isn’t concerned with being “coy” or “cute.” Yes, those things have their place, and with the exception of “coy” and “cute,” I, too, like most other readers, enjoy many different kinds of literature. If I had to choose one kind, however, it would be the realistic portrayals found in The Keeper of the Bees. Stratton-Porter seeks to illuminate the bonds that connect us all, that make us human, and she succeeds wonderfully. The people you meet in The Keeper of the Bees are the kind of people you’d probably like to get to know in real life. People you’d enjoy having as neighbors and friends. Jamie, himself, is a wonderful, three-dimensional character. And then there’s the Little Scout. Little Scout is a character that might be frowned on today, as we’re unsure, for most of the book, whether Little Scout is a boy or a girl. All we know is that he/she is nothing short of delightful. Little Scout bubbles over with life. He/she runs a little faster, works a little harder, and loves a little better. And, in the last part of the book, we do find out whether Little Scout is a boy or a girl, but I won’t reveal the answer to that question here. If you want to know, and if you want to know what happens to Little Scout, you have to read the book. If I have one criticism of this book, it might be that Stratton-Porter could get a little “preachy” about things she felt were morally reprehensible, but she never overdoes it, and her strong morals never interfere with the story. The Keeper of the Bees manages to be a quintessentially American story, though really, the events this story depicts could have happened just about anywhere. I guess the difference lies in the fact that they would have been told in a different way if they would have happened in a different country. Or maybe not. Maybe The Keeper of the Bees is a story that could have happened to anyone, anywhere, at any time. Maybe it’s that universal. This is a book to read and reread, to cherish, and to pass along to those we love, so they can read it, too. Recommended: Absolutely. If you’re just looking for a heartwarming, wise, and wonderful story, this book can’t be beat. It’s life-affirming on every page.

Meet the crew! So you want to know who is filling those bags with unusual apples each week? We are John, Cammy, Emily, and John Paul (plus apprentices), and we live on a small, off-the-grid homestead in Palermo, Maine. While we all have our own individual interests and pursuits, we join forces to grow most of our own food and to collaborate on Out on a Limb CSA. We are not a commercial farm with acres of cropland and orchards; we don't have a farm stand. Our homestead, which is carved out of the woods, sits on ledge. All the soil in our gardens was created with lots of compost, love, and labor. Over 300 varieties of apples grow here, but our orchard is less about production and more about preservation of rare varieties. Some of our trees have as many as 10 different varieties growing on them. So while we grow a lot of apples, we don't always have enough of any one variety to share with all our CSA shareholders. That is why we pick and purchase some of the apples in our CSA from other orchards that have rare varieties. In the past 5 years we have planted two new, larger orchards that we hope will supply our CSA shareholders in the future with apples that they can't find elsewhere. If you are still curious, here's some more about us: John grew up in Massachusetts and California, but on his first visit to Maine at age 11, he knew that Maine is where he would make his home. He moved to Super Chilly Farm with a bunch of friends on the day he graduated from Colby College and has never left. Over the years he has tried his hand at many different ventures- teaching high school English, managing the Belfast Co-op Store, selling salads and cider at the Common Ground Fair, teaching shop at Pine Island Camp, building housesand purchasing for the Federation of Maine Co-ops. Yet none of these things grabbed his attention like the the old apple trees growing in the fields around Palermo. As he picked the fruits from these neglected trees each fall, he began to notices the differences in the apples - to his surprise they were not all Macs. Through seasons of observation and hours of discussions with the old timers around town, he learned to identify the different varieties and appreciate their stories. His interest grew into a passion that became his life's work. In 1984 John started Fedco Trees ostensibly to encourage others to plant trees, but really it was a way to fund his insatiable habit of tracking down heirloom fruit varieties in all corners of Maine. You can read about his adventures each year in the Fedco Trees Catalog and also in his book, “Not Far From the Tree: A Brief History of the Apples and the Orchards of Palermo, Maine.” John has done such a good job spreading the word about the pleasures of heirloom apples, that now people line up at the Common Ground Fair to view his apple display and bring him old apples to identify. John's most recent project is creating the Maine Heritage Orchard at MOFGA. This orchard which is located in a renovated gravel pit adjacent to the MOFGA fairgrounds will be home to 500 or more historic pears and apples. When he is not thinking about apples, he....ok, he is always thinking about apples. When Cammy moved to Super Chilly Farm she was determined not to have anything to do with apples - being responsible for growing, harvesting and preserving the vegetables, berries, stone fruits and herbs on the farm was enough to keep her interested and busy. But after years of resisting, she finally came down with a bad case of'apple fever' ; now she can be found up in trees pruning in February, helping John cut scion wood inMarch, grafting new trees in April, fretting about pollination in May, thinning apples in June, weeding trees in July, waiting for that first Trailman apple to ripen in August, lugging her apple ladder from tree to tree in September, putting on tree guards in October, baking, baking, baking in November, watching the carboys of cider ferment in December, and wassailing the orchard in January. However, she still says "no" to digging out tree borers. Prior to giving herself over to apples, she worked with youth at The Food Project to build a more just food system in Greater Boston and as a Horticultural Therapist at Green Chimneys School. Cammy and John have three grown daughters and a son-in-law who like to come visit, but only after all the firewood has been cut and stacked. John Paul Rietz John Paul grew up in Columbus, Ohio, a sprawling metropolitan area surrounded by large-scale corn and soy farms. When he moved to rural New England, it became clear what he was missing. He spent a year volunteering for a small organic farm in central Massachusetts, and fell in love with agricultural life. He went on to get a sustainable agriculture degree at Warren Wilson College, but most wanted to learn subsistence/homestead agriculture. That brought him to Maine –specifically, Palermo– for an apprenticeship with John and Cammy in the summer of 2010. He couldn’t help but catch the apple “bug,” so he returned in 2011 to focus on apple pest and disease management and joined the OOAL crew that fall. John Paul moved back to Super Chilly Farm again in the Spring of2013 after a year at the Carpenters Boat Shop. He says that harvesting apples is one of his favorite sports. His favorite apple variety is whichever one he happens to be eating at the moment. Emily grew up in a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where, being an enthusiastic eater and novice cook, she felt that the notion of creating a dish “from scratch” never satisfied her yearning to make food from the actual beginning of the process: in the SOIL. She eventually made her way to New England to work on various farms and learn all she could about small-scale agriculture and homesteading, which included assisting with the OOAL CSA in 2010. Her education has also consisted of apprenticeships relating to maple sugaring, beekeeping, crafting furniture mostly using hand tools, and boat-building. She enjoys living an agrarian lifestyle that allows her to participate in a huge range of activities: cutting, splitting, and stacking firewood, grafting fruit trees, growing fruits and vegetables, cooking, food preservation, and knitting, woodworking, basketweaving, and contra dancing when there is time. Emily particularly loves Golden Russet and Black Oxford apples, singing out into the starry night sky, cooking with the freshest ingredients possible, and dancing to Bruce Springsteen in the kitchen while baking apple desserts.

As the Chelsea Flower Show approaches and our Family Monsters Garden is unveiled we look at the role of our ESCAPE community allotment service on the project and how gardening can be a great way to manage your mental health family monsters Mental illness comes in many shapes and forms and is a family monster that sits on the shoulders of families all over the UK. As with any family monster, the best way to face it is to share our experiences and talk openly with our loved ones and support network instead of hiding it away like so many of us do. This is what our year-long Family Monsters Project, to celebrate 150 years of Family Action, is all about. The benefits of green therapy for mental health and wellbeing have long been documented. There’s something really wholesome, really nourishing, really nurturing, about spending time in the great outdoors and sowing a seed to watch it grow. A 2016 study from Natural England, commissioned by the University of Essex and Mind, the UK’s leading mental health charity, found that taking part in nature-based activities significantly contributed to a reduction in mental health conditions such as anxiety, stress and depression. Green therapy at the Chelsea Flower Show So it seems perfect that the timing of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week coincides perfectly with the UK’s most prestigious green event – the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, where we’re building our Family Monsters Garden, in partnership with idverde. This week is build week, and the week that one of our vital eco-therapy community projects gets to see their labour of love over the past few months come together in full bloom. The ESCAPE Project is one of Family Action’s 150 services – a community allotment and orchard in Swaffham, Norfolk, set up to support and improve the life opportunities of local people. ESCAPE: A place to belong For its participants it’s more than a place to grow vegetables and plants. It’s a place to come together, make friends, share experiences, providing a lifeline for its participants – or in their words – a sense of “purpose and belonging” that they have not found anywhere else. “We have got a Family Action Well Family service here in Swaffham and we found that a lot of the people referred to the project were lonely, part of a mental health system that isolated them even further, they were unemployed – what they really needed was to feel part of and something, have a reason to get up for in the morning, and to make friends,” explains Claire Peak, Family Action Project Manager. “The idea for ESCAPE actually started from a little gardening club at the local junior school. The children who found it difficult to socialise came along to the club and would dig frantically and were part of the group that were busy doing something at lunchtime.” “A little boy who in the group – we brought him up here and asked him what he thought about the space that we’d been offered by the town council to have an allotment project, and he was the one who christened it ESCAPE – he said it was like a place to escape to.” The importance of community gardens Now, five years in, the project is thriving. Amongst the beautifully well-kept plantations, vegetables and handmade woodturning tools you’ll find a busy outdoor kitchen with a cob oven where participants come together to feast on the fruits of their labour from around the plots. The covered space means the service can stay open all year round offering seasonal activities and learning opportunities such as accredited horticultural courses, beekeeping, willow and woodwork. The people who come to ESCAPE do so either from professional or self-referral, to help their various mental health and learning conditions. Project Manager Katie Fullilove has been working with the project for 5 years and says the change in people is transformational when they come here: “Community gardens are a really underused resource. It’s become really evident how much people need a sense of purpose and somewhere to be, and somewhere to belong. At ESCAPE there is such a diverse range of people from all different elements of community, a lot of people on the edge of society but when you provide a space for people to come and just express themselves and express the things they’re enthusiastic about and interested in, magic really happens. People here really feel a sense of community and they all support each other.” The sense of community, belonging and purpose is a sentiment that’s shared around the whole community: “What does this place does for me is it’s made me remember the positives of who I am,” says volunteer/participant William, who is autistic and has Aspergers. ”In it’s name it’s escape. It makes you feel part of a valued community. It makes me feel like I’m human again. I’ll always have my problems and difficulties, however this helps with it being softened somewhat. I find some social situations quite difficult and this takes me to a world where I feel cared for, and also there’s an achievement aspect. I’m doing something practical and that I find rewarding.” building stronger families building brighter lives

To be up to date with the latest in the apiculture industry to may check out our beekeeping latest news. On the other hand if you’re new to apiculture and would like to start professional beekeeping now download a copy of our beekeeping for beginners ebook. Beekeeping can be a full time profession or a simple hobby. However, more often than not, what began as a hobby would turn into a profession. But you cannot only decide and tell yourself you will begin to do beekeeping. You need to have adequate knowledge and understanding on the field that you are going to enter, before starting on any hobby or profession. If you’ve been putting off your curiosity about beekeeping for quite a while, then it’s about time to indulge yourself. Bee farming may seem easy; by learning the basic beekeeping lessons, you can be got away to a great start. What does a beekeeper have to know? On beekeeping to start at the right foot first, you should have complete interest. You will need to spend time taking care of your colonies of bees. You should also have agreed to share your dwelling space with the bees. There are possible risks in beekeeping that can damage you but your family also. Your focus is not just to earn money by selling honey; a great beekeeper should have fire and a keen interest in raising bees. An apiarist should know the right location for the beehives. The place must have adequate sources of nectar for the bees to get. You have to make sure beekeeping is allowed in your town, if you decide to set your beehives at your backyard. There are several areas restricted to beekeeping; you have to get permission concerning this. Beekeepers must know whether beekeeping supplies are offered in the region where the beehives are situated. You may never understand when you must attend an area beekeeping shop; it’s best that a nearby beekeeping shop is not inaccessible. Protective gear and equipment may also be important for beekeepers to know. Beekeepers are prone to bee stings; the ideal ensemble must be worn during beekeeping sessions. Understand the appropriate suit to pick to keep you from any potential risk in beekeeping. All the beekeeping efforts would be useless in case you are unable to harvest honey. The approaches should be known by a beekeeper in gathering the honey from your comb; beeswax is also part of the yields in beekeeping.

To stay updated with the latest in the beekeeping industry to may visit our apiculture latest news. On the other hand in case you’re new to beekeeping and would like to begin professional apiculture now get a copy of our beekeeping for beginners ebook. Beekeeping can be a full-time profession or an easy hobby. However, more often than not, what began as a hobby would become a profession. But you cannot merely tell and decide yourself you will begin to do beekeeping. You need to have adequate knowledge and understanding on the field that you’re going to enter before starting on any hobby or profession. If you’ve been putting off your curiosity about beekeeping for quite a while, then it’s about time to indulge yourself. Bee farming may look easy; by learning the fundamental beekeeping lessons, you can be got off to a good start. What does a beekeeper have to know? First, you should have interest that is complete on beekeeping to begin at the right foot. You should have also consented to share your home space. There are potential risks in beekeeping that can hurt not only you but your family also. If you decide to let the bees inside your living space, then you must understand the supplies and gear you will use for beekeeping. Your focus isn’t just to earn money by selling honey; a great beekeeper should have a keen interest and passion in rearing bees. An apiarist ought to know the right place for the beehives. The area must have sufficient sources of nectar for the bees to get. If you decide to put your beehives you have to make sure that beekeeping is enabled in your town. There are several places restricted to beekeeping; you need to get permission concerning this. Beekeepers must understand whether beekeeping supplies can be found in the region where the beehives are situated. When you should visit an area beekeeping shop you may never know; it is best that a nearby beekeeping shop is accessible. Equipment and protective gear can also be essential for beekeepers to understand. This will minimize the chances of being stung by your bees. Know the right kind of suit to pick to keep you from any potential danger in beekeeping. Last but definitely not the least, among the beekeeping lessons you need to know is that: it is not unimportant for the beekeeper to know the appropriate way of picking honey. All the beekeeping attempts would be useless in case you are incapable to harvest honey. The procedures should be known by a beekeeper in collecting the honey from the comb; beeswax is also part of the returns in beekeeping.

GUARDS LEAD CSI TO TITLE Sports 1 CAREY TAKES STATE CROWN SUNDAY March 6, 2011 Service salutes McClure Idahoan remembered as U.S. senator with common touch EIGHTEEN AND PREGNANT Magic Valley’s teen pregnancy problem Statewide rate At a time when there are fewer teen pregnancies nationally, the Magic Valley had the highest rate in the state. Why is this the case,and how do we change the trend? By Laurie Welch Times-News writer BURLEY — While most teens ponder who to ask to the prom or whether to take trigonometry next semester, Kiyana Villalvazo’s thoughts center on a tiny girl with delicate feet. Every two weeks, Villalvazo brings her 4-month-old daughter, Jesenia, to Salt Lake City for medical treatment on the infant’s legs, which curled as she grew inside her mother. Only 18 herself, Villalvazo has watched as casts and now metal braces help guide her daughter’s growth. Villalvazo married her longtime sweetheart, Jose, at age 17, and moved in with his family. But her pregnancy early last year came as a surprise. “We talked about having a baby,but we didn’t actually plan it,” she said. “Some kids plan to have their babies now, big time. I don’t know why — I just get this vibe that they want to be wanted and want to have a kid.” While Villalvazo said TV shows like MTV’s Teen Mom and 16 and Pregnant glorify teen pregnancy, innumerable social factors play into why America’s teens become mothers. But this much is certain: As Idaho’s teen pregnancy rate dropped from 1999-2009, south-central Idaho teens continued to get pregnant at much higher rates than their counterparts across the state. See PREGNANT, Main 3 “I think it’s alarming and a sign of the times.And I have to tell you, I don’t particularly like the times.” Eric Anderson, Jerome High School principal Magic Valley rate ‘03 ‘04 ‘05 ‘06 ‘07 ‘08 ‘09 Source: Bureau of Vital Records and Health Statistics, Idaho Department of Health and Welfare TOP: Kiyana Villalvazo holds her daughter, Jesenia, Monday at the Cassia Alternative High School day care room in Burley. Teen parents like Villalvazo, 18, and her husband, Jose, juggle school and the responsibility of raising their children. Women bowlers open tourney with a strike By Sky Buffat Times-News correspondent Connie Sorensen, a member of the Lincoln County bowling team, high fives her teammates in the annual Idaho State Bowling Tournament at Magic Bowl, Saturday in Twin Falls. Women bowlers from across Idaho will spend their weekends in Twin Falls this month, participating in the 81st annual Idaho State Women’s Bowling Tournament. The tournament opened Saturday at Magic Bowl in Twin Falls. Throwing the opening ball were varsity bowlers from Canyon Ridge High School and Kids Only ........Family Life 6 Jumble ............Classifieds 6 Movies ..................Opinion 7 Dot VanHook — at 91, the oldest active woman bowler in Idaho. VanHook, of Twin Falls, still bowls twice a week and said these days her average score is in the 150’s. She began the tournament with a strike. “I’ve been bowling since 1943,” she said. “And I love it, just love it. I get to meet so many nice people.” The tournament is open to women bowlers from across the Obituaries ..........Business 5 Sudoku ............Classifieds 2 Your Business ....Business 2 BOISE (AP) — Former U.S. Sen. James McClure was remembered Saturday for his compassion for the underdog, his frugality, his love for family and the University of Idaho, and for his constant curiosity about life. “He literally walked with presidents and kings,” said former staffer Tom Hill.“But he wouldn’t think twice about installing a water heater — because he could.” About 600 mourners attended a memorial service for McClure at the Cathedral of the Rockies in Boise, the Idaho Statesman reported. Among them were U.S. Sens. Mike Crapo and James Risch, and U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador. Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter also attended, as did former governors Dirk Kempthorne,Cecil Andrus and Phil Batt. McClure died Feb. 26 at age 86 following a series of strokes. McClure’s granddaughter, Emily McClure, recounted a chance meeting with her grandfather in a tire store, where he was wearing a John Deere hat, chatting with other customers, and studying a black binder in his lap. When she asked him about the binder, he said he was prepping for disarmament negotiations with the Russians. McClure was born and raised in the small town of Payette and served in the Navy from 1942 to 1945. He earned a law degree from the University of Idaho and became the Payette County prosecutor and later the Payette city attorney. He met his wife, Louise, at the university, and at one point, said officiating pastor Steve Tollefson, gave her a bag of marbles when another suitor appeared to be winning. He gave her the marbles “because, he told her, she had clearly lost hers,” said Tollefson. A Navy honor guard presented Louise McClure with a U.S. flag that was flying at the James A. McClure Federal Building in Boise on the day the former senator died. See MCCLURE, Main 2 EMPATHY, ENCOURAGEMENT Court getting a start in Mini-Cassia aims to defuse domestic violence OPINION 6 See BOWLERS, Main 2 45 / 33 Rain and snow Sports 6 Main 2 Sunday, March 6, 2011 TODAY’S HAPPENINGS BENEFITS AND FUNDRAISERS Paw ‘n Pole, fundraiser for Animal Shelter of the Wood River Valley, 10 a.m., Sun Valley Gun Club, Sun Valley Road, $5 per child, $10 per adult and $20 per family, 788-4351. CLUBS AND ORGANIZATIONS Dance, Jerome Senior Center, 2-5 p.m. at 520 N. Lincoln St., $4, 324-5642. CHURCH First Sunday Dinner, corned beef and cabbage, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Wendell United Methodist Church, 175 E. Main St., free will offering, 536-2305. To have an event listed, please submit the name of the event, a brief description, time, place, cost and contact number to Sandy Salas by e-mail at [email protected]; by phone, 735-3280; by fax, 734-5538; or by mail, Times-News, P.O.Box 548, Twin Falls, ID 83303-0548. Deadline is noon, four days before the event. Twin Falls will chip wood Times-News The city of Twin Falls will be accepting residents’ extra wood for chipping through Oct. 29. City residents can drop off untreated lumber, wood pallets, tree limbs up to 2.5 feet in diameter and eight feet long, stumps less than 2.5 feet in diameter with no root balls, cedar shingles, shrubs, pruning and Christmas trees at the Wood Waste Diversion Facility on Rose Street off of South Park Avenue. An attendant will verify residency by checking utility bills. Wood can be dropped off between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Wednesdays in March,or between 8:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. on the first Saturday of most months. A detailed schedule can be found on TFID.org by searching for “wood waste.” The wood waste is chipped twice a year and will be available on a firstcome basis for any resident when it is available. People who take the chips will be responsible for loading it themselves. City Sanitation Supervisor Sherry Jeff said the first chipping is usually in August and the second is usually at the end of October. People living outside the city will need to take excess wood to either the transfer station or the landfill to dispose of it. COMING THIS WEEK IN THE TIMES-NEWS Ariel Hansen reports on basketball’s benefits for your body, and where people are meeting to play. M O N DAY I N HEALTHY & FIT Ariel Hansen talks to a local footstool collector and reports on the trends in this furniture line. T U E S D AY I N HOME & GARDEN Adventures in local foods Ariel Hansen shows you where to tour niche farms and sample their tastes. W E D N E S DAY I N FO O D Outdoors writer Andrew Weeks sets his boots upon Third Fork. T H U R S DAY I N O U T D O O R S Melissa Davlin introduces the finalists in Magic Valley’s Got Talent competition. Watershed % of avg. Salmon 93% Big Wood 81% Little Wood 82% Big Lost 84% Little Lost 99% Henry’s Fork/Teton 103% Upper Snake Basin 108% Goose Creek 77% Salmon Falls 95% Your mama don’t dance, your daddy don’t rock ’n roll “... since the day I left Milwaukee Lynchburg, Bordeaux, DON ’T France ASK ME Been makin’ a fool out of Steve Crump folks just like you and helpin’ white people new study by researchers at dance.” Oxford University claims Alcohol, by Brad Paisley that a tiny messenger in the brain is partly to blame for We’re not Mardi Gras those among us who can’t people, we Idahoans, and manage to get down with that grieves me. our own bad selves. On Tuesday, much of A naturally occurring Christendom will go on a gi- chemical, GABA is a bit like ant bender to steel its will the brain’s traffic cop. Nerve against the 40 days of priva- cells in the brain are contion of Lent, which begins stantly firing and “talking” Wednesday. to each other. GABA helps Not here. We’re too keep all that chatter from Nordic. And we can’t dance. getting out of control. You could look it up: A “Our research suggests that an important first step in learning that new skill is a decrease in GABA levels in the motor cortex,” Charlotte Stagg, a junior research fellow at Oxford, told MSNBC’s Bill Briggs, who reported on the study last week. “It appears that GABA levels in some people are more easily modulated than in others, and that the differences between people (are) related to their ability to learn” new movements, Stagg told Briggs. So folks with brains that do a better job of restraining their GABA amounts have an easier time mastering motor tasks such as tennis strokes, piano songs or dance sequences. Makes perfect sense. I can’t play tennis or the piano either. And yet much of the world can, and the fact that we in Rockchuck Acres cannot seems so unfair. So on Tuesday evening, when the local public houses close their doors at 10:30 and go home, console yourself with this thought: The season premiere of Dancing with the Stars is just 13 days away. Provided, of course, that their hangovers subside in time. Steve Crump is the Times-News Opinion editor. Hear him Fridays at 8:30 a.m. on KLIX-1310 AM. Zone around park saves on cattle testing BILLINGS (AP) — A new report says the creation of an animal disease zone around Yellowstone National Park is saving cattle producers elsewhere in Montana between $5.5 million and $11.5 million annually in avoided costs for disease testing. The Montana Department of Livestock report, issued last week, says only 3 percent of the 1.4 million cattle in the state are within the zone created last year to manage the disease brucellosis. State veterinarian Marty Zaluski said that without the zone, federal officials would be more likely to revoke Montana’s brucellosis-free status. That would bring on stricter livestock export requirements including blood tests on hundreds of thousands of Montana cattle. Blood tests on cattle within the disease zone are projected to cost about $430,000 a year, half of which is covered by fees on livestock producers statewide. State Sen. Debby Barrett, who requested the study, said it failed to account for the stigmatization of cattle producers inside the zone, which lowers the price buyers are willing to pay. AP photo/Idaho Press-Tribune, Charlie Litchfield U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador signs in at a memorial service for former U.S. Sen. James McClure on Saturday at the Cathedral of the Rockies in Boise. McClure, a 24-year veteran of Congress, passed away last week at the age of 86. McClure Continued from Main 1 Election wins McClure’s political career began in earnest in 1961, when he was elected to the Idaho Senate. He won Idaho’s first congressional district spot in the House in 1966, staying there until his election to the U.S. Senate in 1972, where he became the head of the Energy Committee. He fought to keep Idaho’s wilderness areas controlled by the state. He lost the chairmanship of the Energy Committee when the Democratic majority took Congress in 1987. And though he fought to reduce federal control over wilderness in Idaho and throughout the West — hoping to free the land for economic development — in 1980 the federal government created the River of No Return Wilderness over his objections. Several roles But McClure’s tenure was not without victories. During the Cold War, he was instrumental in persuading President Ronald Reagan to abandon the not-yet ratified Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Agreement II in the wake of Soviet violations,according to “Politics in America; The 100th Congress,” ed- Bowlers Continued from Main 1 TAKE A HIKE TN Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho state. This year 230 teams are entered, or 1,100 women. Participants are in the running for a $28,000 prize fund. The fund is divided among the highest scoring 10 percent of participants. Melanie Day, a junior at Canyon Ridge, also participated in throwing the opening ball. “I like how we are always supporting each other,” Day said. “When you get a strike, or even a gutter ball, the team is there helping you and giving you confidence.” The Idaho Division of the United States Bowling Congress hosts the tournament every March, rotating to different areas across the state. Jolene Zanutto and Sandra Andrews of the “Racing Girls” team, sponsored by Salmon Valley Speedway, said they travel three to four times each year for bowling tournaments. IDAHO LOTTERY Saturday, March 5 02 23 31 42 48 Powerball: 21 Power Play: x2 Saturday, March 5 10 14 19 21 24 WILD CARD: Queen of spades March 5 March 4 March 3 232 176 332 Saturday, March 5 01 09 34 35 36 In the event of a discrepancy between the numbers shown here and the Idaho Lottery’s official list of winning numbers, the latter shall prevail. Bowling balls are seen lined up on the racks at Magic Bowl for the Idaho State Bowling Tournament, Saturday in Twin Falls. “We always come to State, every year,” Zanutto said. “The money isn’t really the motivation for us. We just like the good competition.” Several of the bowlers competing this year have been recipients of the Idaho Women’s USBC Scholarship. Each year the organization gives up to three ited by Alan Ehrenhalt. He also co-sponsored legislation that weakened federal gun-control laws in 1986. In 1991, McClure retired from Congress at the age of 72. But he didn’t completely retire from political life, going on to serve as a lobbyist for interests including Idaho Power Co. and Coeur d’Alene Mine and overseeing former Gov. Phil Batt’s citizens’ committees studying deregulation. McClure’s contributions prompted then-President George W. Bush to sign legislation renaming the federal building in Boise as the James A. McClure Federal Building and United States Courthouse. $1,500 college scholarships to young bowlers ages 16 to 20. It also places $50 college scholarships into accounts for selected young bowlers, starting at age 6. Money for the scholarships comes from tickets that competitors may purchase over the course of the tournament. Play will continue for the next three weekends. Teams will compete at Magic Bowl, while singles and doubles competition will happen at Bowladrome in Twin Falls. Mike Weems, Jr., coowner of Magic Bowl, said he’s excited about what this event is bringing to the community. “It’s great to be part of hosting something that means a big boost to Twin Falls’ economy,” he said. Save up to 60% on great deals from local businesses you already know and trust! $10 for $20 worth of food - Mama Lazagna’s Purchase it ONLY at www.magicvalley.com/todaysdeal FROM PAGE ONE Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho Sunday, March 6, 2011 Main 3 Teen pregnancy resources Continued from Main 1 In 2009, more than six of every 100 teen girls age 15-19 within the eight-county South Central Public Health District became pregnant. Idaho’s statewide teen pregnancy rate was closer to four of every 100 girls. While SCPHD Health Education Specialist Adria Masoner said western Idaho has typically been home to the state’s highest teen pregnancy rate, the Magic Valley took that distinction in 2009. “I have never seen numbers like this before, and I’ve been working in this program on and off for the past 13 years,” she said. Area high school officials say they’re doing a better job of keeping teen mothers like Villalvazo in school, where they’re counted in annual Idaho Department of Health and Welfare statistics. “Once they drop out, they can drop off the radar,” said Lauri Heward, principal of Cassia Alternative High School in Burley, which Villalvazo attends. But it doesn’t take an accountant to track teen pregnancies locally. Jerome High School Principal Eric Anderson said his school saw 71 pregnancies among its nearly 1,000 male and female students in 2009. During the same year, Jerome County had Idaho’s highest pregnancy rate — more than nine pregnancies per 100 girls. “I think it’s alarming and a sign of the times,” Anderson said.“And I have to tell you, I don’t particularly like the times.” A cultural shift Pregnancy Crisis Center The Pregnancy Crisis Center in Twin Falls also offers free pregnancy tests, counseling, 24-hour hotlines and a wealth of other information. Visit: www.pregnancytf.org Call: 734-7472 Photos by ASHLEY SMITH/Times-News Kiyana Villalvazo, 18, writes during her senior advisory class at Cassia Alternative High School in Burley. The alternative school operates a day care, which helps teen mothers pursue their education while ensuring their children receive proper care. Kristen Rodriguez kisses her son, Jaysun, Monday in the hallway of the Cassia Alternative High School in Burley. In 2009, south-central Idaho led the state in teen pregnancy rate, a measure of how many teen girls per 1,000 become pregnant. Teen pregnancy by county In Idaho, nearly 43 of every 1,000 teen girls became pregnant in 2009. In southcentral Idaho, that rate was 63.9. Here’s a breakdown: County Pregnancies Rate Jerome 71 94 Gooding 43 84.1 Cassia 59 65.1 Twin Falls 153 61.6 Minidoka 41 54.1 Camas 2 54.1 Lincoln 10 53.8 Blaine 21 33.7 Source: Idaho Department of Health and Welfare comfortable talking about pregnancy, that hasn’t necessarily extended to their parents, Burley Junior High School sex education teacher Janet Bingham said. As more pre-teens experiment with physical relationships, she said, parents are still slow to realize how early they should start having those uncomfortable discussions about sex. “Parents don’t do an adequate job,” she said. “They think their kids are too young to know about sexual things.” It’s not that parents don’t care, Masoner said — quite the opposite. But work pressures can keep them distant from their children’s bombardment of sexual messages through unsupervised access to popular media. “In most families it’s a big concern, but parents just don’t have the tools or the comfort level to talk to their kids about this,” she said. “It’s not part of the everyday conversation in their homes.” For a number of Magic Valley teens, a heavy emphasis on family and tradi- MAKING FINE OF EY tional religious beliefs against contraception and abortion may play into both why they get pregnant and why they don’t. But cultural factors are only one part of the story. Anderson said socio-economic factors play a larger role than any other factor. Overall birth rates are often highest among the poor and working poor in the U.S., but south-central Idaho’s teen birth rates buck that trend. While Idaho’s unemployment rate — a major factor in the area’s poverty level — hovers around 9.5 percent, unemployment in much of south-central Idaho remains at or below the state rate. Cost of responsibility Villalvazo wants to become a nurse, and her husband wants to graduate high school with her. But when Jose was laid off from his job, not even the help of family could keep pace with the needs of a young couple with an infant to care for. “If you pretty much don’t have all the support and help you need for money and food and all that stuff, it’s hard,” Villalvazo said. “But we got on Health and Welfare and food stamps, and that helps out a lot.” Idaho estimates unplanned teen pregnancies cost state taxpayers $39 million annually in related health care, child safety and public safety costs. Masoner said Medicaid covers deliveries for teens who can’t afford the hospital stays, and uneducated teen mothers’ reliance on the public for help often expands to further assistance. “Really, it’s a huge hit to the taxpayers,” she said. “Despite the emotional issues — and there’s so many of them — it’s a financial issue for our country.” As state legislators eye a Medicaid overhaul that would cut $39.1 million in state spending next fiscal year by reducing funding for some services, the debate over the cost of teen pregnancies continues. Educators are doing their share, Kontos said. Without school day cares like those provided at his school and Cassia Alternative, more teens would drop out to care for their children, increasing their reliance on state-funded social programs. “You can’t leave the baby without assistance,” Kontos said.“It’s a struggle for these girls, but at least if they graduate there is a hope they can go on.” There’s another side to that coin, both Masoner and Heward said, as not all teens are motivated to maintain self-reliance. Masoner said some teens take the approach that they won’t have to pay for their child’s care, instead shifting it to their parents or public care. NOBODY FITS YOU LIKE MOUNTAIN WEST OPTICAL CALL TODAY Kristen Rodriguez held her son aloft Monday, kissing his round, left cheek at Cassia Alternative High School. The 19-year-old mother said she can’t imagine life without 8-monthLaurie Welch may be old Jaysun. But she’s had to get used to reached at [email protected] without Jaysun’s father. valley.com or 677-5025. End Back Pain A Non-profit organization MAY BE ABLE TO ASSIST! hrough a Federal Grant to Income Eligible Households Low Income Home Energy Heat Bill Assistance Eligibility Determination Family Size Monthly Income Limit $ $ $ $ $ Complete Eye Exams / Contact Lenses Great Selection of Frames Lenses / Sunglasses Dr. Brandon Fish & Dr. Nick Kelsey Life together, yet alone Helping people. Changing Lives For Limited Time Fine Handmade Eyewear in One Hour Heward suggested that teen mothers should be required to stay in school to receive state assistance. “If we put that standard back in place, it would help keep some of those kids in school,” Heward said. “Not to discredit the GED program, because for some kids it’s a saving thing, but a diploma should mean something.” She’s not alone in her call for some teen mothers to shoulder a heavier burden. “Somewhere we’ve got to get tough. What are the real consequences?” Bingham said. But while some area educators are calling to give the issue the stick, they also realize that education can serve as the carrot that leads teen mothers out of cycles of poverty. Placing a higher emphasis on finishing high school and receiving postsecondary education can help improve the prospects of teens who grow up in struggling agricultural areas, Kontos said. “I want to graduate,” Villalvazo said. “I know a lot of people who dropped out of school. They had too much stress, and they think they’ll just blow it off and come back and get their GED.” Her boyfriend of three years left the state after she became pregnant. Heward said the burden of caring for a baby too often falls solely on the mother’s shoulders, and few teen parents remain together by the time they are seniors in high school. For Dring, caring for a son, maintaining a relationship with his girlfriend and pursuing a music career have strained each pursuit. “We were just like regular teenagers, trying to figure out how to get through life and how to do things,” he said of life before the baby.“I still get to go out and have a life and play in my band. She can go do things, but just chooses not to.” But educators and teens alike know that not everyone shares Dring’s intentions of parenthood. Bingham said a lot of teen girls want unconditional love and think a baby will provide it. “What they don’t understand is they’re the ones who will have to do the unconditional loving.” Rodriguez is doing just that while working to finish high school this year. She hopes to move to Twin Falls and attend cosmetology school after she graduates, but it hasn’t been easy. “It’s not all fun and games. You see the other kids with their babies and you’re like ‘Oh, that’s so cute,’ but once you have your baby, wow, it’s not all what it seems,” she said. “…When you get behind the walls and get home, the baby’s into everything, and you’re trying to do your work, trying to go to school and get everything done. It’s a lot harder than it looks.” NEED HELP WITH YOUR WINTER HEATING BILL? Heat Bill Assistance Program 27 Y EAR S Teens make mistakes. They always have and still do, 18-year-old Josh Dring said. Dring, himself a father of a nearly 2-year-old daughter, doesn’t sugarcoat the reality that some teens live in the mainly rural Magic Valley. “Everybody just goes to parties in Burley,” he said. “They get drunk and messed up and can’t control themselves.” Dring said his girlfriend dropped out of school and got her high school equivalency degree after they had their child. The couple plans to marry in May. What’s not planned, he said, are most teen pregnancies. He said schools do a good job in preaching abstinence and other sex education, but those messages don’t always sink in. “It’s just how teenagers are,” he said. “They don’t know what to expect and they don’t really care what happens. They just go for it. And we just basically go in blind.” What’s changed, some school officials say, is the matter-of-fact way teens treat their pregnant peers. John Kontos, principal at Mount Harrison Junior/Senior High School in Heyburn, said, “The social stigma has gone by the wayside.” Anderson said some teen parents treat their children as show-and-tell features, swelled by a mix of pride and a lack of maturity. “It’s a pretty cool thing to bring your child to school,” he said.“Of course, we never let them.” While more teens are South Central Public Health District The district offers birth control information and a wealth of resources from pregnancy testing to counseling and referral services. It has offices in Bellevue, Burley, Rupert, Gooding, Jerome and Twin Falls. Call for hours of operation. Visit: www.phd5.idaho.gov Call: 866-710-9755 You may also qualify for our WEATHERIZATION ASSISTANCE PROGRAM Which provides energy efficient materials to keep your home warm in the winter and cool in the summer. TO MAKE AN APPOINTMENT OR FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THESE PROGRAMS CALL: TOLL-FREE: --- TWIN FALLS – -/- NORTH SIDE COUNTIES – - MINI-CASSIA – - WOOD RIVER AREA - - DO NOT WAIT TIL IT’S TOO LATE! Magic Valley Spine & Joint’s Dr. Sam Barker & Dr. Jill Adepoju are the only chiropractors in Twin Falls offering the newest techniques to treat a wide range of back pain problems. Headaches • Neck & Back Pain Arthritis • Herniated Disc NOW OFFERING DIGITAL X-RAYS for X Ray & Adjustment (New Patient Special) Mention This Ad Call this week! 736-8858 844 North Washington • TWIN FALLS Behind First Federal on Washington and Falls # Blue Lakes Boulevard North Eastland Drive North # Pole Line Road West ! # # # ! # Washington Street North " ! ! ! " !" # # ## # # Grandview Drive North ! Accident, non-injury — 34 Accident, injury — 1 Battery — 5 Burglary other than a vehicle — 3 Dead person — 3 Drug use or selling — 4 Fight — 1 Gun or weapon incident — 1 Hit and run — 16 Noise disturbance/disturbance — 32 Shots fired — 1 Structure fire — 3 Theft — 12 Threat — 2 Trespassing — 8 Vandalism — 8 Vehicle burglary — 5 Sexual assualt — 1 Source: City of Twin Falls Source: city of Twin Falls # Washington Street South 5TH DISTRICT COURT NEWS DRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCE SENTENCINGS Jose S. Loera-Rodriguez, 26, Twin Falls; driving under the influence, $182.50 costs, two days jail, driving privileges suspended 180 days; fail to purchase/invalid license, $50 costs, two days jail. Michael A. Sandoval, 20, Wendell; driving under the influence, $300 fine, $182.50 costs, 180 days jail, 178 suspended, two credited, driving privileges suspended 90 days, 12 months probation, no alcohol. Nathan G. O’Brien, 34, Elko, Nev.; driving under the influence, $182.50 costs, 22 days jail credited, driving privileges suspended 180 days. Matthew A. Ostrander, 30, Twin Falls; driving under the influence, $182.50 costs, 90 days jail, 85 suspended, one credited, two work detail, driving privileges suspended 180 days, 12 months probation, no alcohol. Tiffany L. Wagner, 19, Gooding; driving under the influence, $300 fine, $182.50 costs, 90 days jail, 88 suspended, driving privileges suspended 90 days, 12 months probation, no alcohol. Logan T. Meleskie, 54, Buhl; driving under the influence, $300 fine, $182.50 costs, 90 days jail, 86 suspended, one credited, 24 hours work detail, driving privileges suspended 90 days, 12 months probation, no alcohol. Robert M. Morgenroth, 27, Twin Falls; driving under the influence, amended to second offense, $800 fine, $400 suspended, $182.50 costs, $75 public defender fee, 365 days jail, 180 suspended, 71 credited, driving privileges suspended 365 days, 24 months probation. MORE ONLINE VISIT Magicvalley.com for a full listing of 5th District Court records, including misdemeanor cases. MAGICVALLEY.COM operation a business with employees while any default exists. Plaintiff alleges that defendant has failed to provide workers compensation insurance for his/her employees. CHILD SUPPORT CASES The State of Idaho, Department of Health and Welfare, Child Support Services has filed claims against the following: Seeking establishment of paternity: $200 monthly support plus 81 percent of medical expenses not covered by insurance, provide medical insurance. Alfredo Guer. Seeking establishment of paternity, Medicaid reimbursement, and child support: $251 monthly support plus 59 percent of medical expenses not covered by insurance, provide medical insurance, $8,034.28 birth costs, 59 percent for any work-related day care expenses. Tyrel L. Washburn. Seeking establishment of medical support and Medicaid reimbursement: 50 percent of medical expenses not covered by insurance, provide medical insurance, $1,945.15 birth costs; lien will be placed upon defendant’s real and personal property if delinquent in his obligation for at least 90 days or $2,000, whichever is less. Jerry Bronson-Dakota Ortega. Seeking establishment of medical support: 55 percent of medical expenses not covered by insurance, provide medical insurance, $1,012 for public assistance and child support reimbursement; lien will be placed upon defendant’s real and personal property if delinquent in his obligation for at least 90 days or $2,000, whichever is less. Melisa A. Martinez. Seeking establishment of child support: $209 monthly support plus 50 percent of medical expenses not covered by insurance, provide medical insurance, 50 percent for any work-related daycare expenses. CIVIL FILINGS Jude Markel and Tanya Campbell vs. Ray and Karen Perron and P&R Property Investments LLC. Seeking rescission and damages of $4,800. Plaintiffs allege defendant failed to repair and maintain habitable premises as required by Idaho code and lease agreement. State of Idaho Industrial Commission vs. Alicia D. Corbett. Seeking against the defendant for $7,650 plus addiDIVORCES FILED tional penalty if matter should Elias Roque vs. Kristie Clymens. be contested, defendant be Shane B. McNealey vs. Jennifer enjoined and restrained from Career Counseling Day CSI North Side Center in Gooding 9:30 a.m. - noon - Career exploration workshop. What are your interests and what’s the right job for you? 1:00 - 3:30 p.m. - Job search tips, resume preparation, interview skill building J. McDonald. Liberty A. Yates vs. Jeremiah K. Yates. Shadric L. Miller vs. Carla E. Miller. Amber J. Boehnen vs. Anthony G. Boehnen. Debra K. Brandenbourg vs. Michael J. Sharp. Ronald B. Estes vs. Julia A. Estes. Gary Perron vs. Ricki Perron. Marily Poulsen vs. Jeffrey Poulsen. Jake van Houten vs. Jessica van Houten. Jacquelyn N. Williams vs. Jason B. Williams. Work planned at Silver Creek KETCHUM (AP) — The Nature Conservancy has announced a plan to reduce sediment buildup in central Idaho’s Silver Creek, a spring-fed system renowned for its fly-fishing for trophy trout. The group said the work at the Silver Creek Preserve and surrounding areas protected by private property easements is needed due to years of overgrazing. “It’s a really unique area, and they want to make sure it stays that way,’’ Dayna Gross, Silver Creek Preserve Manager, told the Idaho Mountain Express. She said the group and Ecosystem Sciences Foundation, a Boise-based environmental consulting firm, have identified some major areas for work, including Kilpatrick Pond and Loving Creek. At Kilpatrick Pond, she said, the plan calls for forming an island of sediment in the middle of the pond and planting shrubs along the pond’s banks. She said the plan is “just in Twin Falls County Edward W. Bryant Jr. Age: 50 Description: 5 feet, 7 inches; 155 pounds; gray hair; brown eyes Wanted for: Possession of a controlled substance; $50,000 bond “PROFESSIONAL PROFESSIONAL FURNITURE R RESTORATION” Finish & Structural Repairs Antique Restoration Stripping & Reinishing Color Matching & Custom Finishes Missing Parts Replacement The Twin Falls County Sheriff’s Office asks anyone with information about Bryant to call 735-1911 or Crime Stoppers at 7325387, where tipsters can remain anonymous and may be eligible for a cash reward. 934-8678 to sign up SSCOTCH PINES I AM DOG TRAINING Specializing in Of-Leash Obedience Sp Kindergarten to Graduation in 10 weeks! CITY OF TWIN FALLS How obedient is your dog? DRIVING UNDER THE obeys for food treats? Nursery School Level INFLUENCE SENTENCINGS obeys when he wants to, or after repeated commands? Kindergarten Level Santiago Gomez-Avila, 36, Twin obeys with lightly held leash and no distractions? Middleschool Level Falls; driving under the influobeys leash-free on irst command, with heavy distractions, no shock ence, $500 fine, $400 suscollar and no food treats? A SCOTCH PINES GRADUATE! pended, $182.50 costs, 90 days jail, 88 suspended, one Spring sessions begin Sat., March 26, 2011 credited, driving privileges sus$182.50 costs, 180 days jail, pended 90 days, 12 months Tuition $225 per dog or SAVE $100 150 suspended, driving priviprobation. g o D le b u o and enroll D l a e leges suspended 180 days, 12 Samuel J. Vargas, 20, Twin Falls; D Discount 2 dogs for $350 months probation, no alcohol. driving under the influence Luke C. Cross, 27, Twin Falls; (second offense), $182.50 home Sameg a friend! driving under the influence, costs, 180 days jail, 150 susor brin amended to second offense, pended, driving privileges susGift Cert $182.50 costs, 180 days jail, pended 365 days, 12 months ii Availab cates probation, no alcohol, interlock 170 suspended, driving privile! leges suspended 365 days, 12 device in vehicle; consecutive, driving without privileges (first months probation, no alcohol. 208.484.5284 OR [email protected] offense), $50 costs, 90 days jail, 85 suspended, driving privileges suspended 365 days, 12 months probation. Pierre Barindogo, 29, Twin Falls; driving under the influence, $500 fine, $400 suspended, $182.50 costs, 180 days jail, 178 suspended, two credited, driving privileges suspended 365 days, 12 months probation, no alcohol; leaving the scene of an accident, $500 fine, $400 suspended, $50 costs, 90 days jail, 88 suspended, two credited, driving privileges suspended 365 days, 12 months probation. Bianca M. Salazar, 24, Twin Falls; driving under the influence, Tuesday, April 5, 2011 $300 fine, $182.50 costs, 90 days jail, 89 suspended, one 6:00 p.m. credited, driving privileges suspended 90 days, 12 months Roper Auditorium probation, no alcohol. Sheila M. Majors, 42, Twin Falls; driving under the influence, $300 fine, $182.50 costs, 90 days jail, 89 suspended, one credited, driving privileges suspended 90 days, 12 months probation, no alcohol. Mon.-Fri. 8:30am-4:30pm Juan A. Rendon, 53, Twin Falls; 132 Fairfield St. W driving under the influence, Each Twin Falls amended to second offense, We’re W ’ B Back! k! • live cooking demonstrations • fabulous prize drawings during the show • gift bags and more! d date: ttime: llocation: TICKETS ON SALE NOW AT THE TIMES-NEWS OFFICE ONLY! Comprehensive Vein Care 20 Years Experience in Vein Management Bruce McComas, M.D. FACS Board Certified Surgeon It’s all free of charge Please register in advance a recommendation. It’s a way for people to get started if they are interested.’’ She said work will begin on Loving Creek this spring and fall. Work at Stocker Creek and Patton Creek will take place throughout next year, she said. The Nature Conservancy owns the 883-acre preserve that’s surrounded by more than 9,500 acres of easements. Gross said The Nature Conservancy is also working with the Purdy family, which owns some of the land through which streams flow. The recently released plan has three tiers, with priority given according to the severity of problems or the ease with which improvements can be made. Part of the plan includes areas within 100 feet around streams where cattle aren’t allowed to graze. Gross said planting shrubs and trees in the buffer areas can reduce stream temperatures and improve stream health. Main 4 Sunday, March 6, 2011 734-3596 • 630 Addison Ave. W. #240 Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho Sunday, March 6, 2011 Main 5 High-stakes decisions ahead for Legislature By Ben Botkin Times-News writer BOISE — Idaho legislators have said all along that this session would be about the budget. That, in turn, means it’s all about education and health and welfare, the two largest parts of the budget. Eight weeks into the session, those issues are increasingly gaining attention as the time for tough decisions nears. Nor is it all just about cuts, either. On both fronts, major reform efforts are under way, both with longterm consequences for the Ben Botkin state that reach far beyond the next fiscal year. Two bills of Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna’s three-part education reform package passed the House Education Committee last week, now only needing a thumbs up from the House and the signature of Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter before the state officially revamps how school districts negotiate contracts with teachers and puts a merit-pay system in place. The biggest challenge lies in the third bill, which would increase class sizes to help pay for classroom technology and the merit pay. That bill’s tied up in the Senate Education Committee, where it’s being reworked amid legislator concerns about class sizes growing. It won’t come out of the committee in its present form, and a new bill would need to be introduced for the third “pillar” of Luna’s plan to come to fruition. Medicaid reform will dominate the week ahead. A 25-page bill that puts 27 shortand long-term changes in place has been introduced, and the first hearing with public testimony is Tuesday. With that legislation, lawmakers want to increase the system’s accountability and ensure that individuals are getting exactly what they need — and not more. They also target other areas, like bringing on more staff to look for fraud and abuse. any changes in how its fivemember board is elected. A bill that would have required community college trustees to be elected based on zones they live in died last week in the House State Affairs Committee. CSI’s last election prompted the bill. The election resulted in the board’s members all living in or near Twin Falls, with none from Jerome County, which is also in the college’s district. An argument was made that residents should have MORE ONLINE VISIT Capitol Confidential, the Times-News political blog by Ben Botkin. MAGICVALLEY.COM representation from trustees representing all parts of the district, not just major population centers. College board bill dies The College of Southern Idaho won’t have to make Wendell talks about wastewater sludge By Emily Katseanes Times-News correspondent WENDELL — The Wendell City Council on Thursday heard several options for removing sludge from the city’s wastewater system. For about five years, the sludge has been cleaned out mechanically, said Public Works Director Bob Bailey. But before that, the city also used chemicals. Once again using some sort of chemical component could save money in the long run, Bailey said. After sludge is mechanically cleaned out, it must be stored, tested and transport- ed,all of which costs money. “It’s kind of my thought that if we go back to chemical treatment, we’ll see a difference in the sludge blanket. We’ll definitely see a difference in how the lagoon runs,” Bailey said. “If this chemical cream reduces it just 1 percent, the long-term savings is just exponential.” No decision was made. Also Thursday, City Councilman Kent Bates proposed the city join Wood River Resource Conservation and Development. Bates’ suggestion came after attending one of the group’s meetings. “I was interested in the meeting because it seemed mostly like what they did is distribute the federal funding that comes through that district,” Bates said. “I think with our city sewer system going in and other things associated with that, it’d be a good thing for us to get in with.” Bates said the organization had helped citizens in Gooding convert a patch of weeds into a plot for a community garden. Councilwoman Ilene Rounsefell said that the council has had representatives involved with the organization in the past. “It is a very good thing for us to be involved with,” she said. The council, minus absent Councilman Jason Houser, voted to pay the $195 annual due and authorized Bates to represent the city. Also, Mayor Brad Christopherson suggested selling the police department’s 2008 Ford pickup truck and using the revenue to update the remaining police fleet. Christopherson said Jerome and Gooding counties were both interested in the truck. Council members liked the sound of the idea, but held off on a decision until they have more details to consider. SUNDAY, MARCH 6 7:00PM LES MISERABLES 25TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT AT THE O2 MONDAY, MARCH 7 7:00PM CELTIC THUNDER HERITAGE Supporters who make a pledge during FESTIVAL 2011 may be eligible for ticket opportunities related to Les Miserables’ Alie Boe (Alie in the Limelight, March 19 in Sun Valley) and Celtic Thunder’s performances in Idaho later this year. Buhl alternative charter school in the works Times-News BUHL — The Buhl School District is in the process of starting a new charter school as a way to generate funds. The charter school would focus on different ways of learning — Superintendent Byron Stutzman said he is researching the need for an alternative school designed for students in lower grades. The facility would be under the auspices of the district and would share facets of administration. Charter schools function as their own district, but Stutzman said this would be a way to generate money for Buhl while saving dollars at the charter school through sharing administration costs. “With our falling revenues, I am trying to find creative ways of getting money into Buhl,” he said. “It would increase the funding revenue and would be underneath the Buhl School District. “Most superintendents have looked at charter schools as enemies because it takes students out of the school district, but this would continue to fund administrative structure without cutting or duplicating.” The process is in its beginning stages and Stutzman said he just applied for a startup grant. The earliest the school would be open is fall 2012. % 9 .9 * Support Quality Television with Your Pledge. R P A e Rat e g a t rcen e P l nua *An Call (800) 980-4788 or pledge online* at idahoptv.org/support. *Online pledges are matched by the generous co-sponsorship of : Get a great rate on a Home Equity Loan from First Federal! Com Complete the home improvement projects you’ve been putting of. proj An excellent way to pay for your child’s education. Consolidate your debt and possibly lower your payments. Now is a great time to call First Federal about some of the lowest rates in the Magic Valley! Lender in t e g a g t r o M 1 The # he Magic Valley! *Annual Percentage Rate applicable with: An automatic payment from a First Federal(FFSB) checking account, a loan to value (LTV) of RUOHVVDPLQLPXPFUHGLWVFRUHRIDQGDÀUVWOLHQSRVLWLRQRUDVHFRQGSRVLWLRQEHKLQGD)LUVW)HGHUDOÀUVWOLHQ,ITXDOLÀFDWLRQVDUH QRWPHWDKLJKHUUDWHPD\DSSO\5DWHVHIIHFWLYHDVRI0DUFK Main 6 Sunday, March 6, 2011 Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho Fake pot’s high confounds authorities,proves popular By Justin Blum Bloomberg News Derek Williams was working as a trash-truck driver when his cousin told him about K2, a product made from plant materials and chemicals that provided a legal, marijuana-like high. Williams saw his ticket out of the residential rubbish business: Make a better blend. He studied compounds that mimic the effects of pot, and almost a year after creating his own brand, Syn Incense, in his home in Kansas City, Mo., Williams, 29, said he has sold more than $1.5 million worth in at least 10 states. Marketing the product as incense helps him avoid federal regulations, even though he said he knows most customers smoke it. His ability to stay a step ahead of federal and state authorities underscores the hurdles regulators face as they move to ban chemicals used in such products, which they say may pose serious and unknown dangers. Williams said when his ingredients are restricted, he switches to similar ones. “It became a moneymaking machine,’’ said Williams, adding that he hopes the business will lead to early retirement. Demand for designer drugs, including what regulators call “fake pot,’’ is growing so fast that a United Nations narcotics-control board said on March 2 that the products are spreading “out of control’’ and urged governments to prevent the manufacture and trafficking of the substances. Use of fake pot has spurred more than 3,500 calls to poison control centers throughout the country since the start of 2010, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers in Alexandria, Va. Users have suffered from racing heartbeats, high blood pressure and nausea. The Drug Enforcement Administration on Tuesday temporarily banned five synthetic chemicals called cannabinoids, and lawmakers in Washington are considering a permanent prohibition. Twenty states have banned certain synthetic cannabinoids, according to Alison Lawrence, a policy specialist with the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver. The Idaho Board of Pharmacy banned the chemicals last year, and the state is on the verge of making the ban permanent. Still, law enforcement is struggling to keep up. There are no field tests police can use to determine if products contain banned ingredients, and police laboratories must analyze each one separately. Dozens of competing brands have been sold in stores and online with names like Spice, Mr. Smiley, Voodoo Magic and K2 Solid Sex. Williams, the company manager, sells his products wholesale to smoke shops, gas stations and convenience stores at prices ranging from $3.25 to $25. He Bloomberg News photos The Coffee Wonk, a shop that sells varieties of Syn Incense in Kansas City. said the stores typically charge at least double that in blends with names like Chill, Ripped and Lemon Lime. Some websites sell them for even more. Products containing cannabinoids can act in a way similar to THC, the main active chemical in marijuana. Cannabinoids can be far more potent or less potent than THC. Users are risking their health by consuming chemicals that never have been studied in humans, said Aron Lichtman, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. “You’re playing with a loaded gun,’’ said Lichtman. Several teenagers have died after smoking synthetic cannabinoids, police say. Among them is David Rozga, 18, of Iowa, who committed suicide last year after consuming the substance, according to Brian Sher, a detective with the Indianola, Iowa, police department. Charlie Davel, 19, was killed last year after he fled police and went the wrong way on a highway in Mukwonago, Wis.; friends told authorities he smoked K2 several hours before the crash, said Waukesha County Sheriff’s Detective Steve Pederson. While synthetic cannabinoids are increasingly catching the attention of authorities now, the substances have been around for decades and have been studied to treat pain, inflammation and other ailments. Pfizer synthesized a cannabinoid that was never tested in humans as part of a program in the late-1970s to separate the psychotropic effects from pain-killing properties of cannabis, said Lauren Starr, a spokeswoman for the New Yorkbased pharmaceutical company. One drug containing a synthetic cannabinoid that’s approved in the United States for use in prescription medications: Marinol, marketed by Abbott Laboratories of Abbott Park, Ill., for uses including treating nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy. Bob Welsh, program manager for breath-alcohol instrument training at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, said there may be 30 cannabinoids commonly used in incense-type products, selling for about $40 for a 3-gram bag, more than the street price of pot. People are willing to pay a premium for a legal high that doesn’t show up in most drug tests, he said. Welsh tested several varieties of incense on human volunteers last year, having them smoke it from a bong. The effect was similar to marijuana, through there were differences, he said. “What we’ve been seeing Celebrate Mardi Gras At Jakers! Tuesday Mar. 8, 2011 Entree Features • Cajun Shrimp Pasta • Steamed Crawdads • Cajun Catfish Available All Day! 2 for 1 Classic Mardi Gras Drink Specials Regular Menu Also Available Reservations Accepted - Walk-ins Welcome 733-8400 1598 Blue Lakes Blvd. N. www.jakers.com is anxiety, apprehension, even some levels of borderline paranoia, fear, body temperature dropping,’’ he said. Banning the substances can be difficult because as soon as one set of chemicals is restricted, producers shift Derek Williams, seen here with girlfriend and business partner Ashli Adkins, was working as a trash-truck driver when his cousin told him about a product made from plant materials and chemicals that provided a legal, marijuana-like high. Williams created his own brand, Syn Incense, and manufactures it in his home. to other varieties, said William Marbaker, director of the crime laboratory division of the Missouri State Highway Patrol. “You’re basically playing a game of whack-a-mole trying to keep ahead,’’ said Marbaker. Williams said he is exam- ining new chemicals he can use as states consider banning all cannabinoids. He said Syn is especially strong and he wants to keep it that way. “We have one of the most potent blends on the market,’’ he said. “That’s what people want.’’ When it comes to Cancer Care, we fight hard, and we fight soft. Our new St. Luke’s MSTI Cancer Center will be equipped with two linear accelerators for the most advanced radiation therapy technology in the region. But it is also designed for beauty, calm, and healing— and the privacy, dignity, and comfort of our patients. Don Laughlin’s Riverside Resort Hotel & Casino You’ve Got Yourself a Deal! * From AIR & ROOM PACKAGES! ( INCLUDES ALL TAXES & FEES ) One Promise for Advanced Local Health Care. From Boise, Idaho To Laughlin, Nevada ONE St. Luke’s. April 6th thru April 9th Wednesday–Saturday FOR RESERVATIONS 1.866.228.2751 www.riversideresort.com *Prices are per person. Based on double occupancy. Single occupancy $50 additional charge. Includes roundtrip airfare, ground transfers and hotel lodging at the Riverside Resort Hotel & Casino. Prices are subject to change, are not retroactive, and may not be available on certain departures or at time of booking due to limited space. Tickets are non-refundable. Change penalties apply. Price includes taxes and fees. Scheduled air service provided by Sun Country Airlines. Must be 21 years of age. HOSPITAL OPENING MAY 21 Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho GR EA T S A V CASEWEEK LOT S ALE 2 C E RT I FI Sunday, March 6, 2011 Main 7 D G RE A T SWENSEN’S 1 lb. Clam Shell 10 lb. Bag 7 1 97 87 Large or Small 38 lb. Case Merrill’s Local 30 ct. Brown Th per dat’s $1 ozen! Asst. 10 ct. W.F. Asst. 16 oz. W.F. 2 4 $ CASE OF 24 60 5.5-7.25 oz. W.F. Spirals or MAC & CHEESE CASE OF 24 W.F. 8 oz. GREEN BEANS CASE OF 24 TOMATO SAUCE CASE OF 48 Asst. 14.5-15.25 oz. W.F. Corn or Western Family Asst. 32 oz. Block Shur Savings 29 oz. Pears or W.F. Big 45 oz. Tub Asst. 28-32 oz. Western Family ORANGE JUICE CASE OF 24 10 lb. Box Asst. 16 oz. W.F. W.F. 12 oz. Frozen Concentrate W.F. 24 pk. .5 Liter CASE OF 12 Asst. 10.5 oz. W.F. Cream of Mushroom or 3 4 47 Asst. 64 oz Asst. 12 in. W.F. Asst. 6 oz. 2 lb. Bag Mini 13 2 $4 99¢ 99 Falls Brand 10 lb. Box M E AT BATH $ TISSUE 25 lb. Bag Yellow W.F. 15 Roll Paper Towel, 18 pk. Big Roll, or 36 ct. Two-ply W.F. 10.5 -11 oz. CASE OF 12 CASE OF 24 2 88 10 ¢ $ BAKERY/DELI W.F. 64 oz. Apple Cider or W.F. Asst. 15 oz. Fresh-Baked French CASE OF 24 76 APPLE JUICE CASE OF 8 3 5 13 $ CASE LOT ORDER FORM Clip out your order and bring it with you. While supplies last. Rainchecks not available on case lot items. Availability subject to freight schedules on some items. Thank you for shopping Swensen’s! PRICES EFFECTIVE MONDAY, MARCH 7 THRU SATURDAY, MARCH 12 — CLOSED SUNDAY Main 8 Sunday, March 6, 2011 Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho NOW OPEN! All ! s e k a M ! s l e d dai, n o u y M ,H l d r l o F A GMC, Subaru, NO PRESSURE, NO HYPE! , t, a e d l z o r a r Chev Nissan, M & Chrysle Kia, a, Dodge Toyot Meet our qualified staff! Sales Specialist SUV/pickups Sales Specialist internet/Ford Sales Specialist Dodge/Chrysler/Plymouth Sales Specialist Imports Sales Specialist Ford/Honda Sales Specialist GM General Sales Manager Sales Manager/Used Cars Jennifer Marie Smith ~ “It is nice to have a home owned dealership back. It is very rare to be able to have a “trust” in a dealer ship & feel confident about it! I don’t just like Randy Hansen Automotive, I love it!” Lanny Denton ~ “Randy Hansen’s was awesome before I’m sure it will be as good or better now.. Go to Randy Hansen to get a car It doesn’t matter who you are, you’re always treated like a friend. I’m sure you’ll buy from him again.” Connie Hafer Misenhimer ~ “So glad you are back, it is going to be nice to see a GREAT dealership here again. We have missed you!” 208-732-1655 636 Poleline Rd. Twin Falls, ID • www.randyhansenautomotive.com UNEMPLOYMENT ANALYSIS Joblessness down, some still downbeat, Business 4 Your Business,Business 2 / Oil well device may have been flawed,Business 3 / Nation,Business 4 / Obituaries,Business 5 SUNDAY, MARCH 6, 2011 Ideas abound at Ketchum Community Café By Karen Bossick Grinder and signs hanging from the ceiling that directed them to small groups disKETCHUM — Some cussing such things as “How wanted to build community can we create a town with composts in various neigh- more vitality,density and resborhoods. Others wanted idential living?”“How can we to convert an become a model unused building 21st century vi“I came because brant sustainable into a youth hostel. Still othof the word mountain comers had their eye munity?”and ‘community’. “How can we inon building boce courts and cooperaCommunity is crease ice climbing tion among all walls, creating so important.” government enan Elderhostel— Ketchum resident tities in the countype program ty?” Diana Fassino, who that would atSome people came even though she stayed 10 mintract retirees year-round and was shaking off jet lag utes. Others excreating a from two 12-hour plane changed ideas health and wellwith various ness institute in flights from a family groups for three reunion in Capetown, hours. Sun Valley. These are a “I came beSouth Africa few of the vicause of the sions that came word ’commuout of a unique Community nity,’”said Ketchum resiCafé held in Ketchum dent Diana Fassino,who Thursday afternoon. came even though she was About 120 people wanshaking off jet lag from two dered into the so-called 12-hour plane flights from a Community Café held in an family reunion in Capetown, empty storefront above the South Africa.“Community Burger Grill.They were greet- is so important.” ed with coffee and biscotti provided by The Coffee See COMMUNITY, Business 2 Times-News correspondent Sandy Turner talks about the three years she has been with Dell and the transition going from a cubicle to her home office Tuesday afternoon in Twin Falls. About 100 Dell employees work from home in the area. OFFICE OF ONE Dell employees reflect on working from home years after call center closure By Blair Koch Times-News writer WENDELL — Zach Lorcher doesn’t mind not having to travel very far to get to work. Every morning the 26year-old descends a small flight of stairs inside his quaint Wendell home, walks through a curtain of turquoise beads and in a matter of seconds is sitting at his desk. Lorcher is one of about 100 BLAIR KOCH/Times-News customer service represenZach Lorcher checks e-mail from his Wendell home office. Lorcher is tatives still employed in the one of about 100 customer service technicians Dell employs in south- Magic Valley by the Texasheadquartered Dell Inc. ern Idaho — all of them work from home. In 2009, Dell ended an eight-year run as one of the largest employers in Twin Falls when it closed its call center on Pole Line Road. The facility now houses the C3 call center. Its payroll of more than 500 full-time positions was scaled back to it’s current staff of about 100, all of which provide customer service from home. Lorcher considers himself one of the lucky ones. “It was a big transition to go from technical support to See DELL, Business 3 BUY then DIY As shoppers demand customization, manufacturers say: Do it yourself By Emily Bryson York and Alejandra Cancino Chicago Tribune CHICAGO—Blame it on Starbucks. Consumers seem to be looking for ways to personalize everything they buy. It’s not just picking apps for their phones, special touches for their shoes or music for their iPods, but down to customizing everything from mashed potatoes to the water they drink. Alexander Chernev, an associate professor of marketing at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, said consumers derive “additional utility or value” in doing something themselves. Chernev, who studies consumer behavior, calls it “the Ikea effect” because buyers got to assemble their own furniture. Manufacturers traditionally developed products based on consumer tastes, Chernev said. But as preferences became highly fragmented, companies decided that the only answer was to outsource the customization to consumers themselves. For example, Heinz scored a smash hit in 2008 with a line of frozen potatoes that moms could steam in the microwave. The associated insight was this: No one likes to peel, everyone wants to mash, and moms feel better about putting something on ALEX GARCIA/Chicago Tribune/MCT Consumers can bring some of the taste of the coffee shop home with a home brewer such as this Nespresso single-serve coffee maker. Manufacturers are looking at ways of allowing the end user to customize everything from coffee to flavored water. the table when it has a personal touch. Heinz offers suggestions on the package, and more suggestions online, for “making it your own.” It’s hardly a new trend. Apple with its iPods and computers, Harley-Davidson with its motorcycles, Nike with its NikeID shoes that allow customers to personalize their choices online, as well as Starbucks and Coca-Cola have been particularly adept at creating products that let consumers alter them to their own tastes. See DIY, Business 2 Spin meter: Competing,misleading claims on budget EDITOR’S NOTE — An occasional look behind the rhetoric of public officials. By Erica Werner Associated Press writer WASHINGTON — It sounds like a pretty good starting point for negotiations: The White House and Capitol Hill Democrats say they’re ready to meet the GOP halfway in the latest round of budget talks, offering $50 billion in cuts compared with Republicans’ proposed $100 billion worth of reductions. “The White House has been willing to move halfway to where they are,” said Gene Sperling, director of the White House National Economic Council. “Talking about negotiation and com- publicans halfway: When will Republicans agree to cut and compromise?” Trouble is, neither the $50 billion nor the $100 billion figure holds up. And when they’re translated into real numbers, the White House is arguably meeting the GOP just one-sixth of the way — not halfway at all. The problem is that both sides are starting with President Barack Obama’s proposed budget for 2011, which never came close to being enacted into law. PresidenAP photo tial budget blueprints never do. Nonetheless, the GOP Vice President Joe Biden arrives Thursday to meet with House and suggested $100 billion in Senate leaders to discuss the federal budget, at the Capitol in spending cuts from that Washington. He is followed by Office of Management and Budget proposal. Director Jack Lew, and White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley. Compared with actual promise, that’s very impor- House Democratic Whip current spending levels, the tant.” Steny Hoyer posed this chalSee SPIN, Business 3 A news release from lenge: “Democrats meet Re- Jerome Chamber to hold 90th banquet hamber of Commerce banquets often come and go without much thought. But this year is special for the Jerome Chamber of Commerce. On Friday, the chamber will celebrate its 90th annual banquet. In addition to feasting on a buffet-style dinner at the Best Western Sawtooth Inn and Suites in Jerome, members are sure to enjoy Idaho Supreme Court Justice Roger Burdick’s appearance as master of ceremonies. The event begins at 6 p.m. and cost is $20 per person. For more information or to register visit http://visitjeromeidaho.com/events or call 324-2711. MS. BIZ Blair Koch Don’t file a tax return? You still qualify for Idaho state grocery tax credit Think you have to file an income tax return to qualify for the $70 Idaho grocery tax credit? Think again. Idaho residents not making enough money to file an income tax return can still obtain the 2010 grocery tax credit.In theory,the credit repays you for sales taxes paid on groceries throughout the year. The refund is $70 for Idaho residents not required to Chances of dying on file a return and $70 for each the job? One in 30,303 of their dependents. A preliminary tally of faResidents age 65 and older get $20 more. tal work injuries in the To qualify,residents must United States for 2009 was have lived in Idaho all of 4,340. 2010.The refund is prorated The figure comes from for people who received the Census of Fatal Occufederal food stamps or spent pational Injuries program, which found fatal work in- part of the year in jail. According to the Idaho juries in 2009 (3.3 deaths Tax Commission,more per 100,000 full-time than 65,000 qualified resiworkers) had decreased from 2008. That year 5,214 dents didn’t claim their refatal work injuries were re- fund. Residents age 65 and older ported. and their spouses can claim The workplace is safer the refund by filing a Form than traveling in an automobile (1 in 84 people die in 24,Idaho Grocery Credit Refund.Residents under the car accidents every year) age of 65 claim the credit on but occupational hazards Form 40,Idaho Individual can be avoided. Income Tax Return. That’s the idea behind For more information and the Safety Fest of the Great to get copies of the necesNorthwest, a four-day sary forms visit the Idaho event taking place March State Tax Commission’s 22-25 at the College of website at tax.idaho.gov. Southern Idaho. Click on “Get a grocery Safety Fest is designed credit refund even if you’re for blue collar workers in not required to file an inconstruction, transportacome tax return”) in the tion, engineering, manu“Quick Picks”section. facturing and general inTaxpayers can also get dustries required to follow OSHA or MSHA standards. help by calling (800) 9727660. Free safety training will be offered and interested Blair Koch may be workers and employers can register now at http://safe- reached at [email protected] or 735-3295. tyfest-southenidaho.org. Business 2 Sunday, March 6, 2011 Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho CONTRIBUTIONS St. Luke’s Magic Valley Medical Center employees help with Idaho Public Television fundraising MCDONALD’S CELEBRATES GRAND OPENING IN BUHL The new Buhl McDonald’s Restaurant, 706 U.S. Highway 30 E., opened on Feb. 7. The restaurant celebrated it’s opening with a ribbon cutting , with the Buhl Chamber of Commerce, on Feb. 17 and had an extended grand opening celebration from Feb. 17 to 21. The Buhl eatery has inside seating for 55 people and additional patio seating for 20. The store manager is Noah Heck. The franchise location is locally owned and operated by Bill, Donna and Darren Kyle. The family operates nine McDonald’s in Burley, Jerome, Hailey, Mountain Home, Twin Falls and now Buhl. McDonald’s is open from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily. Information: 543-5505. Traveller earns certification as professional in human resources Lyda Insurance elor’s degree or owner/ broker Brenhigher, pass a comda Traveller recently prehensive examirecently earned her nation and demoncertification as a Prostrate a strong fessional in Human background of proResources (PHR). fessional human The certification, resource experiawarded by the HR ence. Brenda Certification InstiThe HR CertifiTraveller tute, signifies Traveller cation Institute is possesses the theoretical the credentialing body for knowledge and practical ex- human resource profesperience in human resource sionals and is affiliated with management necessary to the Society for Human Repass a rigorous examination source Management demonstrating a mastery of (SHRM), the world’s largest the field. organization dedicated exTo become certified, an clusively to the human reapplicant must have a bach- source profession. Idaho Hay and Forage Associate presents Shewmaker with Hall of Fame award The Idaho Hay and Forage Association presented the ‘Don Hale Hall of Fame Award,’ to Dr. Glenn Shewmaker,of Buhl. The award is presented annually to someone affiliated with the hay and forage industry in Idaho. Shewmaker is a graduate of the University of Idaho where he has been employed since January 1999. Shewmaker earned a master’s degree in animal science in 1973 and earned his Ph.D. in rangeland resources in 1998. He is a certified range management consultant recognized by the Society of Range Management. Shewmaker serves as a member of the IHFA Board of Director. For more information about the Idaho Hay and Forage Association, please contact their office at 208-8880988 or visit the website at www.idahohay.com. Butler earns “The Extra Mile” award The Twin Falls Area Chamber’s Ambassadors presented “The Extra Mile” award to Ginger Butler. Butler is an employee at First Federal Savings Bank in Kimberly. She received the award for her outstanding customer service skills. We want YOURBUSINESS news We welcome announcements about new businesses as well as employee changes or advancements. To submit contributions to YourBusiness, send announcements and photographs to Times-News business Editor Blair Koch at [email protected] Photos will only be accepted as .jpeg e-mail attachments. The deadline to submit an announcement for the following Sunday is Wednesday at noon. Announcements must be 150 words or less. The Times-News reserves the right to edit content. 420 Perkins restaurants across the country taking part in the event to benefit the non-profit Give Kids the World organization. Perkins is offering free pancakes to guests, asking them to consider making a donation in any amount for the meal. Since 1986, Give Kids the World has provided week-long vacations to children with life-threatening illnesses and their families at a fanciful, “storybook” retreat in Central Florida. For more information: 678-1304. Community Continued from Business 1 The Community Café, sponsored by the Ketchum Community Development Corporation, sprang from a weekend workshop of 64 invitees who ended up deciding that nine key areas were important to the community they wanted Ketchum to be. Those areas: sustainable energy, life-long learning, transportation, governmental cooperation, access to technology, local food, vitality, diversity and culture, nature and wellness. “We identified common ground — places where we had really good interest,” said Dale Bates, who was among the organizers of the Community Café.“Most things happen in three steps: Fire— what are you going to do? Ready—how are you going to do it and Blame— when it fails. “We’re trying to take a different approach: We ready by gathering the groups and finding common ground. We aim by prioritiz- have a passion for moving forward. In times when money is scarce, we have an abundance of time and passion,” Bates said. The gathering also introduced like-minded people to one another. For instance, a group trying to put together a farm-to-table directory of local food growers, deliverers and restaurants who use locally produced food, became acquainted with someone who grows organic turkeys through the cafe. Another young man found KAREN BOSSICK/For the Times-News support for a website to help Farmers Market Director Kaz Thea and Jason Miller, who heads up Mountain young professionals moving Rides bus transportation, eye the different banners on the ceiling pointing into the area plug into things they’re interested in. out possible topics of conversation for people to get involved in. “The Community Café ing what projects we can do said. But many of those at was an interesting idea,” said now that will be effective the Community Café said Lisa Huttinger, education and stand a good chance of good sidewalks are a high director for the Environsucceeding. And then we fire priority item. And several mental Resource Center. — we leverage people’s times signed up for an action “And I was pleased to learn and passion to get a project group to stress sidewalks’ that some of the things I’m done.” importance to the city and passionate about — like eduFor instance, a new airport find the money to get the cation — are important may be needed, but it’s not work done. enough to others that they something valley residents “The Community Café made them one of the areas can do right away, Bates helped us see where people they wanted to work on.” DIY Continued from Business 1 The concept has accelerated for 15 years or so and seems to be gaining momentum, notably in beverages. In February, Kraft, the Northfield, Ill.-based food giant, introduced its first new brand since the DiGiorno pizza line in 1995: MiO, a squeeze bottle of flavoring and a dropper priced at $3.99 that allows consumers to doctor their water to taste with such flavors as strawberry-watermelon and pomegranate. “Consumers are really looking to have their personal tastes reflect in all things they’re doing and using,” said MiO senior brand manager Liza Laibe. It’s particularly important for millennials, which Kraft pegs as those age 18 to 39. Kraft is expected to back MiO with the full force of its marketing muscle. Laibe declined to say how much would be spent but said television ads will begin airing in late March. Kraft will also give away 100,000 samples through MiO’s Facebook page. A recent Coca-Cola innovation is the Freestyle machine that lets customers make more than 100 differ- ent beverages by adding flavors like lemon, orange or raspberry to their Diet Coke or Dasani water. Experts trace the drink phenomenon to Starbucks, which pioneered modifiers like “no-whip,” “double shot” and “nonfat” to the masses in the early 1990s, effectively removing the stigma attached to complicated orders. As a result of Starbucks’ success, customization became the rage. Burger King returned to popularity in 2006 in part by reminding patrons to “Have it your way.” Sometimes, marketers may take the trend too far. Chernev pointed to a recent ad that encourages consumers to express themselves via their choice of flavored coffee creamer. While the proliferation of choices may seem extreme, companies seem to be responding to the demands of her generation, said Sophie Grimm, a 23-year-old student at Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts. “Our generation has this sense of entitlement,” she said. “It’s not only ‘the customer is always right,’ but ‘I’m always right.’ “ Sometimes turning over too much choice to the consumer can backfire. That’s one of the problems with MySpace, said 24year-old Jered Montgomery of Chicago. The social networking site, he said, gave users too much control over the way their pages look. Facebook, in contrast, boxes information in one basic template while also giving users just the right amount of autonomy to customize their pages, said Montgomery. “I can pick my favorite books (on Facebook), but it’s not free-range.” Lynn Dornblaser, director of consumer packaged goods insight at Mintel International, says the media has been dramatically altered as a result of customization. “We call it a ‘snack society’ because everybody snacks on little bits of things, little bits of data, little bits of information, and it’s all customized just to you,” Dornblaser said. She said Google Alerts and RSS feeds have capitalized on the desire for those snacks of news and information as traditional mass-audience newspapers have declined in circulation. Service at YOUR Convenience. Personal and Business Income Taxes Federal and All States Accounting and Bookkeeping Services A. Brian Cogan, CPB Progressive Voice and Conservative Corner blogs. Our Hospice Home is a haven for your loved one who is experiencing end of life issues. HAVE 5 OR MORE EMPLOYEES? SCHEDULE A WELLNESS CLINIC TODAY! Discounted Health Labs for groups dents and others to pledge financial support to Idaho Public Television. “Magic Valley Night” kicked off 16 days of special programming running through March 20. Call to pledge at (800) 980-4788 or Idaho Public Television opened it’s annual FESTIVAL 2011 with “Magic go online to idahoptv.org. Valley Night,” with residents of south central Idaho in the studios helping Free pancakes to benefit Give with the fundraising campaign. Approximately 17 employees of St. Kids the World organization BURLEY — On March 21 Burley’s Luke’s Magic Valley Medical Center manned the phones during live breaks Perkins Restaurant and Bakery is takin the programming to take calls and ing part in Perkins Pancake Day. The restaurant is one of more than encourage fellow Magic Valley resi- • We provide around-the-clock compassionate, palliative care in a loving home-like setting. • Visions of Home offers an atmosphere of serenity through the final stage of life, addressing the physical, psychological and spiritual needs of the patient and their families. • Respecting the dignity, values and wishes of individuals and their loved ones while ensuring comfort, care and love. If home is no longer an option, Southern Idaho Examiners please call 735-0121 for more information. Certified Public Bookkeeper & The ONLY QuickBooks Advanced Certified ProAdvisor in Southern Idaho. QuickBooks support, training and installation Experienced. Knowledgeable. Ready to work with you. Schedule your appointment by calling 944-9393 or enter online at Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho Sunday, March 6, 2011 Business 3 Oil well device may have been flawed By Harry R. Weber Associated Press writer NEW ORLEANS — There may have been a fundamental safety design problem with the pods that controlled the massive device that failed to stop the Gulf oil spill, federal investigators said Friday as they asked that more testing be done to confirm that. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board has objected to the government’s decision to halt testing of the blowout preventer on Friday. The Associated Press obtained a copy of a letter the board sent to the team that has been overseeing the testing since November at a NASA facility in New Orleans. The team is jointly run by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement. The safety board has been among the groups allowed to monitor the testing. The Norwegian firm doing the testing, Det Norske Veritas, is expected to submit its findings by March 20. A spokeswoman for the joint investigation team, Melissa Schwartz, said in an e-mail to the AP that the scope of the work done by DNV was developed in coordination with other interested parties, including the safety board, and in consul- tation with the Justice Department. She said there have been no other objections. She said the team believes DNV has performed the tests necessary to determine why the blowout preventer did not function as intended. Cameron, the company that made the blowout preventer used with BP’s blown-out well, had no comment, according to a spokeswoman. Blowout preventers sit at the wellhead of exploratory wells and are supposed to lock in place to prevent a spill in case of an explosion. The 300-ton device that was used with BP’s Macondo well was raised from the seafloor on Sept. 4. It sat at the NASA facility for two months before testing began. The USCG-BOEMRE panel recently said that it won’t finish its final report on what caused the April 20, 2010, rig explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico by the one-year anniversary of the disaster as it had hoped. Delays in testing the blowout preventer forced the panel to seek another deadline extension. Its final report was due this month. Instead, the panel now has until July. It will make a preliminary statement by mid-April. Dell Continued from Business 1 customer care but I got to stay in the area,” said Lorcher, who spent his first three years with Dell inside the call center. He misses daily contact with co-workers but said his tabby cat, Max, keeps him company. “Most of the time, I have the radio on, just for the background noise,” Lorcher said. Tom Skahill, who manages Dell’s local workfrom-home team, said the transition from corporate call center to home offices was smooth for most employees. “Dell gave each employee a $1,500 stipend, to outfit their office,” Skahill said. “Dell provides all the other equipment necessary to do the job, like the high-speed Internet, laptop, monitor and other necessities.” Dell continues to have a solid relationship with the College of Southern Idaho, which provided training for the company when it first entered the Twin Falls market and when employees required training to work remotely from home. “We have quarterly meetings at CSI and the college allows us access to utilize rooms for ongoing training,” Skahill said. CSI President Jerry Beck said the college doesn’t have a written agreement with Dell but said their relationship is “mutually beneficial.” “There are many residual benefits of our ongoing relationship,” Beck said, noting the company’s hefty financial donations and gifts of technological equipment to the school. “It’s a question of how do you attract business into our state,” Beck said. “We do what we can to build relationships. Even when Dell pulled out of their building they continue to support many good jobs.” Fifty-six-year old Sandy Turner, of Twin Falls, said she doesn’t mind working from home. “I was actually pretty excited to get to work from home,” Turner said. Although Dell has cut over 7,000 jobs across the Sandy Turner talks Tuesday about her excitement she experienced when she learned of the transition from a cubicle to her home office in Twin Falls. About 100 Dell employee work from home in the area. LARGE SHIPMENT DISCONTINUED STYLES MEN’S & WOMEN’S • ARIAT • JUSTIN • TONY LAMA • BOULET GREAT SAVINGS SAVE UP TO VICKERS WESTERN STORE BLAIR KOCH/Times-News 2309 ADDISON AVE. EAST Blair Koch may be reached country since 2008, Turner ing my position. As far as I feels secure in her position. know, Dell is here to stay at [email protected] or 735-3295 “I don’t worry about los- and so are we.” A COMFORTABLE RJustETIREMENT one of those things we can help you plan for Craig Nelson SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, FINANCIAL CONSULTANT Carolyn Nelson SENIOR REGISTERED ASSOCIATE Financial advice for the long run (208) 734-7080 or (800) 838-3288 450 Falls Avenue, Suite 101 Twin Falls, Idaho 83301 www.davidson75.com about compromising with newly empowered Republicans — and about fiscal austerity, too — at a time of unusual public concern about the deficit. This kabuki dance looks likely to continue as lawmakers face a March 18 deadline to finalize spending for the current fiscal year or face a government shutdown. Need fast, safe, efficient weight loss, nutritional help, and exercise guidance? Previous bootcamp participants lost on average: 12 lbs., 5% body fat and 12 inches, in just 3 weeks! 21-Day Rapid Fat Loss Bootcamp 737-0800 Begins March 21, 2011 $77/person Workouts designed for a womans needs and Nutritional Guidance plus a 21-day meal Jesse Woolley Memorial Smok g n i e ox tional $6.5 billion in cuts. That brings to $10.5 billion the amount the White House is trying to cut from current spending levels, compared with $61 billion the Republicans want. “Calling this latest proposal an effort to meet us halfway is nonsense,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, RKy., said Friday on the Senate floor.“What the White House is proposing is little more than one more proposal to maintain the status quo — to give the appearance of action where there is none.” The figures do serve a political purpose though. Republicans get to say they’re delivering on a promise to their conservative base, made before last November’s elections, to cut $100 billion in federal spending. And Democrats get to look like they’re serious Continued from Business 1 GOP’s proposed cuts come out to around $61 billion. The White House math is similarly fuzzy. The White House gets to its $50 billion figure by first counting $40 billion of proposed cuts from Obama’s never-passed 2011 budget that were included in a proposed spending bill that itself was never enacted. On top of that phantom $40 billion, the White House adds $4 billion in cuts to current spending levels that the president signed into law this week as part of a two-week stopgap spending measure. And on Thursday, when Vice President Joe Biden headed to Capitol Hill to kick off negotiations on legislation to fund the government until the Sept. 30 end of the spending year, the White House announced it was putting forward an addi- Zach Lorcher stands in front of his desk in his Wendell home office. Saturday, March , Filer High School Gymnasium S m Smoker begins at : pm (Doors open at : pm) Tickets Available at the Door General Admission . . . $ Ringside . . . . . . . . . . . . $ Proceeds to benefit Filer Student Athletes and to provide two scholarships in memory of Jesse Woolley Wish for a great retirement. Or plan for it. It’s not too late to save. Open or add ad to an IRA for the 2010 tax ye ear until April 15. An IRA can he elp you take the right steps towaard your retirement goals – no matter how close you are to the b big day. Contactt your Modern Woodmen of Am merica representative to find out ho ow to put an IRA to work for yyou. *Registered repreesentative. Securities offered through MWA Financial Services Inc., a wholly owned ssubsidiary of Modern Woodmen of America. Member: FINRA, SIPC. Business 4 Sunday, March 6, 2011 Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho Uncertain reaction Some still downbeat despite drop in unemployment By Jim Kuhnhenn Associated Press writer WASHINGTON — Why so glum? Unemployment is dropping, but the reaction from both the left and right ends of the political spectrum is surprisingly unenthusiastic. Conservatives fear the improvement will weaken their argument that the way to bring back jobs is less regulation and more fiscal discipline. Liberals worry that better job numbers will create momentum for spending cuts that will cause the fragile recovery to falter The divided reaction illustrates the ideological forces pulling at President Barack Obama as he tries to gain economic and political traction out of the positive jobs report. “Overall, it’s a very solid jobs report,” said Austan Goolsbee, the chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. “And overall there’s been increasing optimism that despite having a long way to go, we’re clearly headed the right direction and we’re putting some miles behind us and trying to get back to a good situation.” Indeed, a number of economic markers are moving in positive directions. The U.S. economy has been growing for 18 months.Retail sales are picking up. A Federal Reserve survey released this week showed factory activity rising in all Fed districts except St.Louis. Still, unemployment is usually the last economic signpost to improve after a recession, and the rate remains high at 8.9 percent. The number of unemployed is 13.7 million, almost double since before the recession. And that’s enough to provoke some downbeat assessments. “We have yet to see the leadership we need coming out of the White House to restore sustainable economic growth,” declared Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. Economist Heidi Shierholz, at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, weighed in with this: “Some of February’s growth is simply a positive rebound effect after bad weather last month, and the trend is modest.” 4 killed walking on highway after car crash in Florida MIAMI (AP) — Four people have been killed and another person critically injured after they got out of their vehicles and walked along Interstate 95 after a wreck in South Florida. The Florida Highway Patrol says the victims were involved in a wreck early Saturday morning. They survived the crash and left their vehicles to check on everyone’s condition. As they were walking on Interstate 95 in Miami, they were hit by a car. Four people were killed instantly. Another person was hospitalized in critical condition. Authorities shut down the northbound lanes of I95 in the area. 4 MINI-CASSIA AREA FARMS Pashia Fischer, a business employer specialist, helps job seeker Anthony Luna, 20, Friday at WorkSource Oregon in Oregon City, Ore. Employers hired in February at the fastest pace in almost a year, and the unemployment rate fell to 8.9 percent — a nearly two-year low. Analysis Since the November elections that placed Republicans in control of the House and weakened the Democrats’ hold on the Senate, Republicans and conservatives have argued that the path to jobs is through deregulation of industries, fiscal restraint and low taxes. Obama has embraced some of the advice, reaching out to business with a pledge to reconsider some government rules and compromising with Republicans by dropping, for now, his demand that the wealthy pay higher taxes. So, even as the unemployment rate goes down, Republicans insist Obama’s past policies were at worst, counterproductive, or at best, ineffective. Jobs will come faster and with more staying power, they argue, if government simply gets out of the way. Liberals and their Democratic allies have been pressing for more government intervention in the economy. The fragile recovery still needs to be prodded by public spending, they say, and they bristle at attempts to cut current budgets. Obama has embraced some of that advice, too. He has proposed additional taxpayer money toward education, research and technological innovation while negotiating with Republicans on how far to cut into current spending. Obama offers deeper cuts, appeals for budget deal WASHINGTON (AP) — I’m prepared to do more,” President Barack Obama said Obama. says he’s willing to make But the claim that Dedeeper spending cuts if mocrats are meeting RepubCongress can compromise licans halfway only stands on a budget deal that would up under the Democratic end the threat of a govern- explanation of the intricate ment shutdown. numbers game being played Obama’s appeal for com- on Capitol Hill. mon ground came Saturday “We’ll only finish the job in his weekly radio and In- together — by sitting at the ternet address, but lacked same table, working out our specifics on how to differences and bridge the $50 bilfinding common lion gulf that divides ground,” the presithe White House dent said. and Democratic Facing a federal budget proposal deficit of $1.6 trilfrom the deeper relion, Republican ductions offered by leaders are under Republicans. pressure from tea Obama The competing partiers to stick to a plans are headed for deep lineup of test votes in the Senate in the $61 billion in spending cuts coming week; neither is ex- for the current budget year pected to survive, setting that’s been passed by the the stage for further negoti- GOP-controlled House. ations. Obama has threatened to The government is run- veto that plan, and a Demoning on a temporary spend- cratic offer of $6.5 billion in ing bill that expires March cuts — on top of $4 billion 18, so the parties have until already signed into law — then to come up with a plan restores money the House to pay for the remainder of GOP cuts from education, the budget year through health and other programs. September. Republicans used their “We need to come togeth- weekly address to reject er, Democrats and Republi- Obama’s approach on the cans, around a long-term budget. budget that sacrifices “You may have heard wasteful spending without President Obama say that sacrificing the job-creating we need to make sure ‘we’re investments in our future,’’ living within our means,’” Obama said. said freshman Rep. Diane “My administration has Black, R-Tenn. “He’s right already put forward specific about that. Unfortunately, cuts that meet congression- his budget doesn’t match his al Republicans halfway. And words.” “The current jobs numbers underscore the fact that deep cuts in federal spending are extremely premature,” Shierholz wrote in an analysis of the new jobs number. “We should instead be having discussions of substantial additional stimulus spending.” Even Goolsbee cautioned that the unemployment numbers themselves might not follow a smooth downward trajectory. While private employers added 222,000 jobs last month, some analysts noted that when averaged with more meager number of new jobs in January, the increase in payrolls is similar to the monthly pace in the last quarter of 2010. “On the unemployment rate, for sure there are going to likely to be blips,” Goolsbee said in an interview. “Nobody knows, is 8.9 the rate or will it go up? That could happen.” But he added: “The threemonth trend, the one-year trends of substantially adding jobs in the private sector and substantial reductions in the unemployment rate are exactly what we want.” The White House is certainly counting on those trends moving in their favor. The economy — and high unemployment — were key factors in last November’s Republican election wave. At the time, the unemployment rate had been rising for six straight months. But since the 9.8 percent high of November, it has been dropping. Politically, the trend line could be as important as the unemployment rate itself. In 1980, Jimmy Carter lost his re-election bid to Ronald Reagan as unemployment climbed from 6 percent in October of 1979 to 7.5 percent in October of 1980. Likewise, George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton in 1992 in the midst of rising unemployment, which went from 6.9 percent September of 1991 to 7.6 percent in September of 1992. But Reagan managed to get re-elected in 1984 even though unemployment stood at 7.4 percent in October of that year. Unlike Carter and Bush, Reagan’s unemployment trend line had been dropping since the spring of 1983. There are still trouble spots ahead for Obama. “The main clouds of concern that we monitor are what happens in the Middle East with fuel prices and what happens with the financial system in Europe,”Goolsbee said. In addition, public hiring by local and state governments remains an area of weakness. “State finances tend to lag the aggregate economy by six to 10 months,” Goolsbee said. “It’s likely to continue to be tough for them.” Those are clouds that can still dampen an economic recovery — and complicate a president’s political prospects. Calendar ADVERTISE YOUR AUCTION WITH US! Call Randi today at 208.735.3222 email: [email protected] MONDAY, MARCH 7, 5:30PM COLLECTOR’S NIGHT Twin Falls,ID Antiques, Collectibles, Estate Items, Furniture, Appliances, Decor & Pictures, Tools & Misc FORKLIFT Case 586C All Terrain Forklift, 4-cyl diesel, 6000 lb capacity, 14’ lift, side shift, 48” forks MISC EQUIPMEN T ‘89 Express Gooseneck Horse Trailer, 3-horse, slant load, tandem axle; (3) Single Axle Pipe Trailers; Lincoln 200 Gas Welder; Lincoln Torpedo Electric Welder; Pallet Cable Slings CASSIA CREEK FARMS Call Brandon Jones for details on below equipment (208) 260-0123 Masters Auction Service TRACTOR THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 10:00AM SATURDAY, MARCH 26, 10:00AM West End Community Auction Buhl, ID Minidoka County Community Auction Rupert, ID Open Consignment Call Lyle to consign your items 731-1616 Open Consignment, Call to consign your items Lamar 431-7355 or Jim 431-4123 Times-News Ad: 03/15 www.mastersauction.com Times-News Ad: 03/24 www.mastersauction.com Masters Auction Service SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 9:00AM Mini-Cassia Annual Community Consignment Auction Cassia County Fairgrounds, Burley, ID Please notify us with your list of items by Wednesday March 16th www.estesauctioneers.com 208-670-2078 ROCK PICKER Schulte Rock Picker, Jumbo 320, all hydraulic, new chain included To find out more, click Auctions on www.magicvalley.com Randy Musser - Regional Auction Manager (208) 733-8700 • www.mbauction.com Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho Billie Joe Mealer Willa Campbell Hepworth July 21, 1934-Feb. 24, 2011 Feb. 15, 1916-March 3, 2011 JEROME — Billie Joe Mealer of Jerome passed away Thursday, Feb. 24, 2011, at the age of 76, after a battle with cancer. Bill was born July 21, 1934, in Pocatello, Idaho, to William H.and Grace Mae Mealer.He spent his early years growing up on the Tyhee Flats in eastern Idaho and graduated from Blackfoot High School. In 1952, Bill joined the Air Force. Shortly after completing basic training, Bill married Betty Goff of Preston, Idaho. Bill and Betty made their first home at McCord Air Force Base, Wash. Bill’s next assignment was in Japan aiding in the Korean War Armistice ending in November 1954. After returning from Japan, Bill was stationed at bases located in Texas, Arizona, France, England, New Mexico, California and New Hampshire. Bill was sent on foreign assignments to Vietnam, Iran and Thailand. While Bill was on overseas assignments, Betty and the kids stayed in New Mexico and, in 1967, moved to Idaho. In 1971, Bill returned and was stationed at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. In 1973, Bill retired, ending his 21-year career as a chief master sergeant. Throughout his career, Bill received numerous citations and awards. Bill was recognized for his hard work, courage, coolness and skill displayed upon more than one occasion that reflected great credit upon himself and the Armed Forces of the United States of America. After his discharge from the Air Force, Bill began working for J.R. Simplot at the Grand View Farms Division as a diesel mechanic. Bill quickly worked his way up and, after 14 years, retired as a purchasing agent at the Simplot corporate headquarters in Boise. In September 1985, Bill and Betty divorced. In February 1987, Bill and Mary Johnson were married and lived in Boise. In 1987, Bill began working as a security guard at St Luke’s Hospital in Boise. A few years later, Bill accepted a lateral job with the hospital as a locksmith. After 10 years with St. Luke’s Hospital, Bill finally retired and began chasing the warmer winter climates that the Arizona deserts had to offer. Even though Bill traveled away, Idaho was his home and he returned every spring,spending time visiting his family. In early 2008, Bill was diagnosed with lung cancer. Shortly after that diagnosis, Bill and Mary divorced. Bill moved back to Idaho, spending his remaining time visiting with his family living in Jerome, Boise, Kooskia and the 45 Ranch in remote Owyhee County, Idaho. Bill had a zest for life and quickly developed his “bucket list” in an attempt to accomplish all that he could. One of the most memorable times was working at the 45 Ranch with his son, Kirk. While at the ranch, Bill would often go on hikes exploring and photographing scenery, birds, antelope, deer, his finger and many of the beautiful scenes that Idaho had to offer. Bill was preceded in death by his parents, William H. Mealer and Grace Mae Fortier; and his brother, Leonard Lee Mealer. Bill is survived by his sister, Sandra Mealer of Mountain Home; his four children, Skott J. Mealer and his wife, Rebecca A. Mealer of Kooskia, Karrie Ricketts of Twin Falls, Kirk W. Mealer of Grand View and Kellie and Mathew Scuri of Boise; four stepchildren, Doug and Kristi Johnson of Sedona, Ariz., Kevin Johnson of Mountain Home, Kristi and Val Rivers of Boise, Wendi and Simon Lete of Nampa, and Lisa and Mick Cowger of Homedale; 19 grandchildren; 12 great-grandchildren; and numerous cousins, nieces and nephews. In lieu of any contributions or donations, Bill would like that an act of kindness be done in his honor. A memorial service will be conducted at 1 p.m. Saturday, March 12, at the HoveRobertson Funeral Chapel in Jerome. Services are under the care and direction of the HoveRobertson Funeral Chapel in Jerome. Elizabeth Jean Williamson Aug. 3, 1929-March 3, 2011 Elizabeth (Beth) Jean Williamson, 81, of Filer, has returned to our Lord. She passed away at the Twin Falls Care Center after a short illness. Beth was born in St. Joseph, Mo., the third child born to William V. and Margaret Williamson. At the age of 9, she and her family moved to Glendale, Calif. Beth graduated from John Marshall High School in Glendale. While working as a waitress in California, she met Lyle Williamson and they married in 1975. After Lyle’s retirement from the Los Angeles Police Department, they relocated to Idaho. Lyle, a native of Pocatello, and Beth settled in their new home in Filer, a home they built themselves. Beth was an active member of the church and women’s group at the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Buhl. She enjoyed playing bridge, collecting antiques, ceramics, and sewing. She was an excellent doll maker and won many well deserved ribbons at the county fair. She is preceded in death by her parents; her brother, William Williamson; her sister, Mary Nissle; and her first husband, Raymond Dion Sr. She is survived by her husband, Lyle Williamson; her brother, Robert (Hazel) Williamson of California; and sister, Nancy (Ray) Farris of California. She is also survived by her children, Deborah Dion of California), Raymond (Mickie) Dion Jr. of Texas, Russ (Michele) Dion of Bellevue and Chuck Dion of California; Lyle’s children, Lyla (John) Painter of Oklahoma, Scott Williamson of California, Rob Williamson of Oregon and Dennis Williamson of California; 11 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. A visitation for Beth will be held from 6 until 7 p.m. with a rosary at 7 p.m. Monday,March 7, at White Mortuary “Chapel by the Park.” A funeral Mass will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday, March 8, at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Buhl. Burial will follow in Filer Cemetery. Services are under the direction of White Mortuary “Chapel by the Park.” To share a memory of Beth or to offer condolences to Beth’s family, please visit www.whitemortuary.com. Willa Campbell Hepworth of Twin Falls and formerly of Filer, passed away Thursday, March 3, 2011, at Bridgeview Estates in Twin Falls. Willa was born Feb. 15, 1916, in Weston, Idaho, the oldest child of John and Flossie Campbell.She spent her childhood in Magna and Trenton,Utah. On Aug. 30, 1934, Willa married Riley Hepworth in Logan, Utah. After their marriage they moved to Jerome, where they farmed for 15 years. They then moved to Filer and purchased a farm north of town, where they lived until 1974. After retirement, they moved to Camano Island, Wash., for one year and then returned to Filer. Riley and Willa were blessed with eight children. Willa was an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where she served in many callings. She was a wonderful wife, mother, grandmother, sister and friend. Willa is survived by her children, Parma Kendrick of Logan, Utah, Arlene (Calvin) Clark of Deer Park, Wash., Ray (Juanita) Hepworth of Kimberly, Carol (Wayne) Hoskin of Lake Stevens, Wash., Dee (Joanne) Hepworth of Twin Falls and Larry Hepworth of Nampa. She is also survived by two sisters, Joy Walker of Jerome and Utahna Smith of Filer; 23 grandchildren; 70 great-grandchildren; and 45 great-greatgrandchildren. Willa was preceded in death by her husband, Riley; her parents; brothers, Jay and Dee; sisters, Donna and Jean; sons, Robert and Ronald; four grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and one great-great-grandchild. A visitation for Willa will be held from 6 until 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 8, at White Mortuary “Chapel by the Park” and from 10 until 10:45 a.m. Wednesday in the Relief Society room at the church. The funeral will be held at 11 a.m. Wednesday, March 9, at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints I5th Ward, 680 North Hankins Road in Twin Falls, with Murray Clark conducting. Burial will follow at Sunset Memorial Park in Twin Falls, Idaho. To share a memory of Willa or to offer condolences to Willa’s family, please visit www.whitemortuary.com. SERVICES Nicole Marie “Nikki” Mayer of Delray Beach, Fla., and formerly of Twin Falls, celebration of life at noon today at Lorne and Sons Funeral Home in Delray Beach, Fla. 11 a.m.Monday at the Wasatch Lawn Cemetery in Salt Lake City, Utah (Morrison-Payne Funeral Home in Burley). Travis Henry Martin of Buhl, funeral at 1 p.m. Monday at the First Christian Church in Buhl; visitation from 6 to 8 p.m. today at White Mortuary in Twin Falls. Robert R. (Pat) Patterson of Caldwell and formerly of Rupert, memorial service at 2:30 p.m. today at the First United Methodist Church, Ruth Marie Wagner 824 E. Logan St. in Caldwell (Flahiff Funeral Chapel in Simpson of Rupert, memorial service at 10 a.m. Friday Caldwell). at the United Methodist Kenneth Joseph Pyfer of Church in Rupert (Morrison Rupert, funeral at 11 a.m. Funeral Home and CrematoMonday at the Rupert LDS ry in Rupert). Stake Center, 324 E. 18th St.; na Krahn of Fairfield, reIn visitation from 6 to 8 p.m. today at Hansen Mortuary, membrance from 2 to 5 p.m. 710 Sixth St. in Rupert, and March 19 at the Camas one hour before the funeral County High School gym in Fairfield; visitation from 4 to Monday at the church. 7 p.m. Monday at Demaray Helen Dorothy Cozakos of Funeral Service Gooding Burley, graveside service at Chapel. DEATH NOTICES Rea R. Dotson BUHL — Rea Renee Pooler Pegram Dotson, 54, of Buhl, died Tuesday, March 1, 2011, at her home. The funeral will be held at 2 p.m. Wednesday, March 9, at the Buhl First Christian Church (Farmer Funeral Chapel in Buhl). Patrick R. Ready BUHL — Patrick Richard Ready, 41, of Buhl, died Monday, Feb. 28, 2011, at his home in Buhl. No local service is planned. Cremation is under the direction of Farmer Funeral Chapel in Buhl. Georgia L. Blastock FILER — Georgia Louise Blastock, 82, of Filer, died Saturday, March 5, 2011, at her home. Arrangements will be announced by Reynolds Fu- fering from prostate cancer, died Friday night at the Woodland Hills retirement community operated by the Motion Picture & Television Fund, the organization’s spokeswoman Jaime Larkin said. The London-born Jarrott served in the Royal Navy during World War II and was an actor before taking neral Chapel in Twin Falls. Edward A. Hanna By Nicholas K. Geranios Associated Press writer SPOKANE, Wash. — More than a month after a sophisticated bomb was found along the route of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade, no one has been arrested and some black residents are upset by the lack of news and fear the bomber could strike again. It has been weeks since the FBI released any new information about the bomb, which was defused before it could explode. The motive is unclear, although the timing on the civil rights leader’s holiday had the FBI speculating that it may be the work of racists. The silence from law enforcement has angered some residents of this city of 208,000, who question why the investigation appeared to be moving slowly. Rachel Dolezal of Spokane, a human rights activist who has been the victim of past hate crimes, said people understand that investigators have to be careful with information, but the long silence was discouraging. “The sentiment stirring in the community, and the African-American community, is: ‘Is there going to be a moment of truth, a time when justice is unveiled, and the perpetrator or perpetrators are brought to the table?’”Dolezal said. Some people are worried the bomber may strike again,she said. “How do we march safely, protest safely, gather safely?” Dolezal said. “Should we all go silent?” At a community forum on Feb. 8, several residents complained to law enforcement officials that they fear the case will be swept under the rug. “Those of us that feel we were most affected by this, why aren’t we in the information loop?” said Ivan Bush,a black resident. But there is no information loop, at least to the public. After an initial disclosure of many details, the FBI clammed up. “We at this point are not releasing any new information,” said Frank Harrill, agent in charge of the Spokane office. “This would not be an appropriate time to make a statement.” The bomb was found inside a backpack and placed on a bench before the parade started on Jan. 17. The parade was rerouted as the bomb was defused. The FBI initially released photos of the backpack and of two T-shirts found inside, while Harrill described the bomb as sophisticated and designed to produce mass casualties. Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said he was told the bomb was mixed with shrapnel and also had a chemical component. P arke’s FUNERAL HOME Magic Valley’s choice for Affordable Funerals. 208-735-0011 Locally owned & operated by: Mike & Catherine Parke 2551 Kimberly Rd. • Twin Falls, ID 83301 Visions Proudly Announces The Opening of Our Gooding Office ʊ Reception Open to the Public! Where: 1120 Montana Street When: Thursday, March 17th ɿ 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. BUHL — Edward A. Hanna,78,of Buhl,died Saturday, March 5,2011,at his home. Arrangements will be announced by Farmer Funeral Chapel in Buhl. Jane Osborne Jane Osborne, 92, of Twin Falls, died Saturday, March 5, 2011, at River Ridge Care Center. Arrangements will be announced by White Mortuary in Twin Falls. Home Health Care ɿ Aide Assistance ɿ Social Workers Physical, Occupational & Speech Therapy ɿ Skilled Nursing ɿ Hospice Healing Arts & Healing Touch Therapies ɿ Home Safety Evaluation Dennis W. Everett MOUNTAIN HOME — Dennis Wayne Everett, 65, of Mountain Home and formerly of Twin Falls, died Friday, March 4, 2011. Arrangements will be announced by Rost Funeral Home McMurtrey Chapel in Mountain Home. For obituary rates and information, call 735-3266 Monday through Saturday. Deadline is 3 p.m. for next-day publication. The e-mail address for obituaries is [email protected] Death notices are a free service and can be placed until 4 p.m. every day. To view or submit obituaries online, or to place a message in an individual online guestbook, go to www.magicvalley.com and click on “Obituaries.” up directing in 1954. He worked mostly in television, then went on to direct a prominent string of feature films in the 1960s and 1970s. He won a Golden Globe for directing Richard Burton as Henry VIII in 1969’s “Anne of the Thousand Days,” which told the story of the Tudor monarch and A month later,few answers in MLK Day bombing attempt Please join us for refreshments, meet our new staff members and celebrate with us as we better serve your community! British director Charles Jarrott dies at 83 LOS ANGELES (AP) — British director Charles Jarrott, whose career of nearly 50 years in film and television included the acclaimed British royalty dramas “Anne of the Thousand Days” and “Mary, Queen of Scots,” has died, a spokeswoman said Saturday. He was 83. Jarrott, who had been suf- Sunday, March 6, 2011 Business 5 Anne Boleyn. Two years later, he returned with the similarly themed “Mary, Queen of Scots,” with Vanessa Redgrave in the title role. The two films, produced by Hollywood legend and “Casablanca” producer Hal Wallis, were nominated for a combined 15 Academy Awards. LEE’S MONUMENTS AND ROCK ART, LLC LE C “WHERE COMPASSION BEGINS “W NS S AND GREED ENDS” (208) 733-3566 POINTS TO CONSIDER BEFORE P E PURCHASING YOUR MEMORIAL AL • Jim Lee received his training through and worked for, Jellison-Madland Memorials the last 27 years of their 100 years in business. • As a qualified memorial dealer with over 30 years experience he is here to help you select the memorial that will be a lasting tribute to your loved one. • Appointments are made to provide you the privacy and time to pick the right memorial and the perfect personalized design. Since we are an independent LOCAL memorial dealer, we can meet or beat any reasonable price in Southern Idaho.We own our own shop and do our own work. Unless a funeral home owns and operates its own monument shop your memorial will be ordered from and completed by someone over 100 miles away and delivered by someone from out of the area as well. We do not sell to, through, or for funeral homes. You do not have to buy a memorial through a funeral home. You have the right to buy from whomever you choose at whatever time you choose. The time to pick and design a memorial is NOT when suffering loss or making funeral arrangements.Take time to regroup and start the healing process before planning the memorial that will honor the one you’ve lost. Our prices include ALL lettering on your memorial, front and back, and delivery in most local cemeteries.We DO NOT charge for concrete on our memorials. Question outlandish concrete fees. We commend Sunset Memorial Park and most other area cemeteries for their professionalism and cemetery maintenance. Business 6 Sunday, March 6, 2011 Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho A REASON TO SMILE BYU-Idaho ex-staffer marvels at school’s growth By Nate Sunderland Post Register REXBURG — Sitting in the newly dedicated BYUIdaho Center — a massive 15,000-seat auditorium — was an awe-inspiring and touching experience for the oldest member of the Brigham Young UniversityIdaho faculty emeriti. “I couldn’t believe my eyes,’’ Eldred Stephenson said. “It just blew my mind to see all those people.’’ After spending threequarters of a century watching and helping Rexburg’s college grow, the 97-yearold Stephenson said the dedication of the facility — which can hold every student, staff member and faculty member at the university — was very exciting. The building, Stephenson said, ushers in a new period of growth at BYU-Idaho. And he was quick to point out how different today’s campus is from the campus he first discovered 74 years ago. It might be hard to imagine, but when Stephenson joined the faculty in 1937, at what then was Ricks College, the entire campus was so small it could fit comfortably within the new 435,000 square-foot BYU-Idaho Center — several times over. “You wouldn’t believe what it was,’’ Stephenson said.td Back then, the campus consisted of just three buildings: the power plant, B-2 gymnasium and original Jacob Spori building, which housed the library, offices and classrooms. “Our assembly hall was in the gym building and it would only seat about 250,’’ Stephenson said. That thought, he said, made him smile during the dedication of the BYU-Idaho Center. Stephenson was the campus registrar for much of his 41 years at the college. According to the BYUIdaho Alumni Office, Stephenson is the oldest living faculty emeritus and one of just two living faculty emeriti to remember Ricks College before World War II. When asked about the faculty of that era, Alumni Director Steve Davis said the only person who’d be able to speak definitively on the subject is Stephenson himself. Teen killer’s ex-boyfriend found guilty on drug charge HAILEY (AP) — The former boyfriend of a central Idaho teen convicted of murdering her parents in 2003 has pleaded guilty to selling methamphetamine in Blaine County. Twenty-seven-year-old Bruno Santos made the plea on Tuesday in 5th District Court. He faces a minimum sentence of 5 years and maximum of life in prison, the Idaho Mountain Express reported. Santos was charged in June after police say he sold a half-pound of methamphetamine to an undercover Idaho State Police detective in Hailey on May 14. Santos was once a suspect in the 2003 slayings of Alan and Diane Johnson but was cleared. Sarah Johnson, 16 at the time, was subsequently convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and is serving two life prison sentences without parole. Put Your Tax Refund to Work It’s Tax Refund Season again. This year, if you get a refund, why not put it to work to help you meet your financial goals? Here are a few possibilities: First, pay down some debts. The lower your debt payments, the better your cash flow and the more money you’ll have to invest for the future. Also, if you don’t already have an emergency fund containing six to 12 months’ worth of living expenses, you could use your tax refund to start one. Without such a fund, you may find yourself constantly dipping into your long-term investments to pay for unexpected costs. You might also be able to use your refund to help fund your IRA — a great retirement-savings vehicle. It may be tempting to spend your tax refund on things you want today – but, with a little planning, you can use it for things you need tomorrow. Dean Seibel, AAMS 834 Falls Ave. Suite 1010 733-4925 William Stevens, AAMS 1031 Eastland Drive, Suite 1 734-1094 Ken Stuart 1616 Addison Ave. E. 734-0264 Eldred Stephenson reflects on his years as a faculty member of Ricks College and longtime resident of Rexburg, at his home, Jan. 28. According to the BYU-Idaho Alumni Office, Stephenson is the oldest living faculty emeritus and one of just two living faculty emeriti to remember Ricks College before World War II. Shelley Seibel, AAMS 400 S. Main St. #101, Hailey 788-7112 Rob Sturgill, AAMS 1031 Eastland Drive, Suite 3 734-9106 Lynn Hansen, AAMS 1126 Eastland Drive, Suite 200 732-0300 In those days, enrollment fluctuated in the low hundreds, a far cry from the nearly 13,000 students who today populate BYU-Idaho each semester. Ricks College was locally run and relied heavily on church funding, as was the case with most of the early junior colleges or academies operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the church tried to sell or close all its junior colleges because of financial difficulties. Stephenson said he didn’t realize how precarious his position was when he first was hired. The church tried to give Ricks College to the Idaho Legislature three times between 1930 and 1937, but each time was rebuffed. Expecting the institution to close, the LDS church reduced its yearly appropriation from more than $40,000 to $10,000. “For the next two years the church did not want it, the state would not have it and the local board hardly knew what to do with it,’’ former Ricks College President Hyrum Manwaring wrote in an official history just before Stephenson was hired. Stephenson had nothing but praise for Manwaring, who made just $250 a month as president. He credits Manwaring’s perseverance as a key reason behind the school’s survival. Enrollment at the college Gretchen W. Clelland, AAMS 2716 S. Lincoln Ste B, Jerome 324-0174 Tim & Lori Henrickson 1327 Albion Ave. Burley 678-1131 Trevor Tarter, AAMS 1445 Fillmore St. Suite 1101 737-0277 Heidi Detmer 918 Main St. Buhl 543-9034 Kelly McCool 442 Main St. Gooding 934-5001 Mark L. Martin 1126 Eastland Drive, Suite 200 732-0300 increased as the Depression ended and the United States was about to be plunged into the Second World War. The war years and his role in the military is another era Stephenson frequently reflects upon. In 1943, he left Ricks College to join the Navy. He served in the Pacific Theater aboard a destroyer escort, eventually visiting Tokyo just weeks after the Japanese surrender. During those years, Stephenson said, change came to Ricks College. At one point, he said, more than 100 women enrolled at the college, alongside just three men. That ratio changed dramatically after the war, as veterans flocked back to school to make use of the G.I. Bill. Stephenson returned to Ricks in 1946. As the college registrar, he had a hand in helping many of the returning soldiers. Later, he served as a chaplain with the Idaho National Guard. Even today, Stephenson, just a month away from his 98th birthday, remains active as a veteran. Stephenson remained at Ricks College until his retirement in 1978. Bob Hansen, a fellow faculty emeritus, said Stephenson is a kind, competent man with “a jovial spirit about him.’’ “Eldred has always been a gentleman,’’ Hansen said. Stephenson has also been an active member of the community, serving a short term on the Rexburg City Man dies after falling into Nevada mine shaft RENO, Nev. (AP) — A father of five children has died after falling into a mine shaft so deep and treacherous that rescuers had to abandon efforts to reach him while he was still alive, officials said Saturday. Devin Westenskow, 28, of Evanston, Wyo., worked at a geothermal drilling operation in Nevada and had gone exploring Wednesday with two friends during his off-hours when he fell 190 feet into the open shaft northeast of Reno. His family thanked rescue workers in a statement that also identified Westenskow. “We feel they did everything possible to rescue Devin, but that there was no way to get him out alive given the extent of his injuries and instability of the mine shaft,” the statement said. “We are forever grateful for their efforts.’’ The decision to end the rescue came after two unsuccessful attempts by search teams to descend into the shaft,where Westenskow was trapped in debris, said Doran Sanchez, a U.S. Bureau of Land Management spokesman. An attempt Thursday caused walls of the 100- plus-year-old shaft to crumble and rocks to fall on rescuers, he said. “One individual was hit in the head by falling rock and it split his hard hat,” Sanchez said. Westenskow was given his last rites Friday. He was pronounced dead at 12:30 p.m. that day, after the Pershing County coroner’s office determined he had stopped breathing by reviewing images from a video camera they had lowered into shaft, Sanchez said. Council. He also served as president of the Lions Club and, in 1960, helped found the Beehive Credit Union. “He’s a very kind, gentle, hardworking, dedicated and honest man,’’ Beehive CEO Dan Owen said. Today, Stephenson still keeps busy, even 33 years into retirement. He’s an avid golfer and loves to travel to visit family. He also keeps a keen eye on all of the exciting developments at BYU-Idaho. “I have been blessed to work at Ricks College and to live and raise a family in Rexburg,’’ he said. Christian Tarter 1445 Fillomore St. Suite 1101 737-0277 Niney-two percent of women can remember the last time they received flowers. Contact us today, and we’ll help you. Set the mood for – a memorable occasion. 733-9292 1563 Fillmore Street, North Bridge Plaza, Unit 1-C Twin Falls, Idaho 83301 EXPERTS IN THE ART OF EXPRESSIONS 1 Day Only! ANNUAL HEALTH FAIR Saturday, March 12th 6:00am-Noon ion Center Jerome Recreation Liincoln 2032 South Lincoln For more information call: 324-9533 or visit www.stbenshospital.org GREAT RATE, limited time... Hurry in for a great rate on our featured Certificate of Deposit through State Farm Bank®. Call today for more information and watch your money grow. 1821 Addison Ave E. Twin Falls, ID 83301 1201 Falls Avenue E. Twin Falls, ID 83301 124 E Yakima St, Suite E 338 Blue Lakes Blvd N Jerome, ID 83338 Twin Falls, ID 83301 1821 Addison Ave E. Twin Falls, ID 83301 *Annual Percentage Yields as of 02/16/11. Advertised rates subject to change at the Bank’s discretion. The minimum balance required to earn the stated APY is $500 (rates apply to deposits less than $100,000). A penalty may be imposed for withdrawals prior to maturity. Certificates automatically renew at maturity at the then-current rate for the next longer standard term. Some products and services not available in all areas. 1001024 State Farm Bank, F.S.B. • Bloomington, IL BANK WITH A GOOD NEIGHBOR.® A HIGHER CALLING Pair of Mormons could vie for GOP presidential nomination, Opinion 8 Letters to the editor, Opinion 2 / Teachers union 101: ‘A’ is agitation, Opinion 3 / Nation & World, Opinion 4, 6-8 SUNDAY, MARCH 6, 2011 Like it or not, students have a right to speak their minds or years, the editorial page of this newspaper and more than a few parents and teachers have lamented the fact that young people weren’t engaged in public policy issues that will affect their lives profoundly in the future. Well, guess what? They’re engaged now. The succession of walkouts and demonstrations at public high school schools in the Magic Valley and beyond over Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna’s education reform initiative shows that the toxic divisions over this issue have energized those who the changes would affect most. So what’s a parent — or a taxpayer — to make of that? On a purely legal level, students are well within their rights to speak up. The First Amendment protects Americans just as much when they’re 16 as when they’re taxpaying grownups. But courts have ruled that while students are In Idaho, permitted to leave it’s been more than school and protest, they’re still subject to four decades since consequences for missing class — and those students reacted repercussions, theoreton such a wideically, extend from bespread scale to ing marked absent to public policy issues being suspended or exthat affected them. pelled. As long as those punishments are applied to So why are so all students equally — many adults without regard to the begrudging their reason for the absence right to do so now? — such consequences are permitted. And that’s as it should be. Canyon Ridge High We welcome view- School Principal Brady Dickinson, whose stupoints from our dents unexpectedly readers on this and marched to Twin Falls High School and then other issues. to City Hall in protest of Luna’s reforms on Tuesday, reacted appropriately when he phoned the parents of students who left campus — and called the police to make sure those students would be safe. And Twin Falls High School Principal Ben Allen was within his rights when he locked the doors of his school — students were allowed to leave, but visitors couldn’t enter — because his pupils were taking an important, state-mandated test. Neither Dickinson nor Allen could have been expected to anticipate the events of the day. For the students’ part, it’s worth noting that some protesters at Jerome and Twin Falls high schools went out of their way not to impinge on learning time — and the rights — of their fellow students. Yet backers of Luna’s proposal have been quick to assert that teachers put the students up to the protests and that most of the kids involved don’t really understand what’s at stake. How, after all, can teenagers grasp issues that vex adults? That’s arrogant. We as adults don’t begrudge other grownups the right to disagree with us. So why do we demean youngsters for doing the same thing? In a perfect world, Luna would have come to Canyon Ridge, Twin Falls and Jerome high schools well before he sprang his reforms on the Legislature in January and talked with students about the changes and why he thought they were needed. And he would have asked the students their opinions. But he chose not to do so, which is one of the reasons why Idahoans are so bitterly polarized over this issue today. As rocker Pete Townshend wrote 46 years ago, “the kids are alright.” As their parents, grandparents and neighbors, we should be proud that they’re willing to stand up for what they believe is right. Whether we think it’s right or not. What do you think? TIMES-NEWS John Pfeifer, publisher Josh Awtry, editor Steve Crump, Opinion editor The members of the editorial board and writers of editorials are John Pfeifer, Josh Awtry, Steve Crump, Bill Bitzenburg and Mary Lou Panatopoulos. “The responses on the economy and the shifts in political identification seem to indicate that people are relatively dissatisfied.” — Carole Nemnich, Boise State Public Policy Center Idahoans,roiled by the economy,offer some surprises Results from the 20th Idaho Public Policy Survey, taken in November and December by Boise State University’s Pubic Policy Center: ABOUT THE SURVEY Last week Boise State University’s Public Policy polled felt that Idaho is headed in the right direcCenter released preliminary findings from its 20th tion, a significant drop from 2007 (when 67 percent Idaho Public Policy Survey, providing an overview of approved of the state’s direction) and the highest public opinion about a wide range of policies, issues percentage of disapproval recorded since the quesand trends that impact the governance in Idaho. tion was first asked in 1997. Conducted after the 2010 election, the survey of 525 Carole Nemnich, associate director of the Public randomly selected Idaho residents focused on key Policy Center, pointed out significant growth among issues being discussed by policymakers and punsurvey respondents who identify themselves as dits, including the economy, tax and spending polipolitically independent — the first time that indecies, health care, education and immigration. pendents have outnumbered Republicans in the A key finding was that just 49 percent of those history of the survey. Independents and Republicans Percentage of Idahoans who identify themselves as political independents Conservatives and moderates Percentage of Idahoans who identity themselves as Republicans Percentage of Idahoans who describe themselves as very conservative or somewhat conservative Percentage of Idahoans who describe themselves as politically middle-of-the-road More results from the survey on Opinion 3 Do you think the state is headed in the right direction? Don’t know/ not sure: 16% Source: Boise State University Public Policy Center Graphics by SANDY SALAS/Times-News Source: Boise State University Public Policy Center Wisconsin politics seen from afar rom 1,500 miles away the perception you might get of folks in Wisconsin these days is that they are either rabid Tea Partyites or disgruntled liberal malcontents that spend their entire days protesting at the state capitol.Neither is true.I was born and spent the first 50 years of my life in Wisconsin and national columnists and talk-show hosts who couldn’t correctly pick Wisconsin out of a geographic lineup quite simply annoy me. Wisconsin voters are independent.They are not moderate.Moderation involves an absence of extremes; independence means it’s hard to predict exactly what a Wisconsinite is going to choose to care about from one minute to the next.Except,of course, the Packers.The reality of Wisconsin politically is that there are roughly an equal number of people “for”as there are “against”any number of things including Republicans and Democrats. against the original Patriot Act — Russ Feingold — was reelected to his seat with a comfortable 12-point margin. Go figure.Yes; even when I John lived in the state I thought that our independence borPfeifer dered on schizophrenia. This makes the current In the 50 years that I lived in stalemate situation rather difthe state there were four Reficult to understand.The publican governors who “mandate”that Republican combined to serve 25 years governor Scott Walker claims and six Democratic governors after receiving 52 percent of that served an identical num- the vote in November is actuber of years.At times the Wis- ally fewer votes than Democconsin electorate conspired to ratic incumbent Jim Doyle reelect a governor of one party ceived four years earlier.Doyle and a U.S.senator from anclaimed no such mandate. other — at the same time.And The truth is that Walker won although the Democratic because Doyle decided not to candidate for president has run for reelection and he was a won Wisconsin’s electoral Republican and it was 2010.It votes in each of the past six was a perfect storm and elections,the 2004 race was Walker rode it to victory and decided by a mere 11,000 continues to ride it — right off votes from among 3 million the rails. votes cast. Wisconsin governors may So when George W.Bush be elected out of an indegot 49.3 percent of votes in pendent call for change; but that 2004 election,the lone they’re reelected — both DeUnited States senator to vote mocrat and Republican — be- cause the people of Wisconsin have seen them as more concerned about the voters than they were about themselves. Such is not the case with Gov. Walker.In the 62 days since he took office Walker has gone out of his way to draw attention to himself — has booked a regular slot of the Sean Hannity show — and continues to reiterate the phrase that most disturbs Wisconsin voters; “I will not compromise!”How arrogant.He may well win his current battle to abolish collective bargaining for government employees,but he won’t win reelection in 2014. Wisconsinites — both Republican and Democratic — won’t allow it. John Pfeifer is publisher of the Times-News. Of the 50 years he lived in Wisconsin he spent more than 20 years in Milwaukee, 10 in Democrat and UAW-laden Kenosha and 10 in the western Republican suburbs of Waukesha County. Opinion 2 Sunday, March 6, 2011 Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Love and care between teacher and student cannot be measured for many years in the Oakley area,which to me seems to be a form of subsidy.The ONLINE: Register at Magicvalley.com, and respond to any of the ethanol plant in Burley I am local opinions or stories in today’s edition. quite sure requires a federal ON PAPER: The Times-News welcomes letters from readers on subsubsidy to make it profitable. jects of public interest. Please limit letters to 300 words. Include What farmer has not taken a your signature, mailing address and phone number. Writers who federal subsidy in order to sign letters with false names will be permanently barred from publi- make farming “work”? I cation. Letters may be brought to our Twin Falls office; mailed to grant that continuing the exP.O. Box 548, Twin Falls, ID 83303; faxed to (208) 734-5538; or eemption from Idaho sales tax mailed to [email protected]magicvalley.com. for some parts of wind enerJOIN THE DISCUSSION: Voice your opinion with local bloggers: gy development is a form of Progressive Voice and Conservative Corner on the Opinion page at state subsidy which does Magicvalley.com. make Idaho more competitive to attract this industry I shudder to think how the courses that students must since surrounding states do take,but not the providers of not have a sales tax,or are alTwin Falls School District will survive with fewer teach- those classes.Yet the districts so granting exemptions.Do would still have to pay for ers,aides and para-profeswe not already provide a subthem.” sionals.Our staff will strugsidy to farmers by granting The red flag is waving.It gle to spend adequate time sales tax exemption from has always been my underwith all levels of students, production equipment? I standing,both while covering guess that the only subsidy whether they are advanced, proficient or basic.The first- school board meetings as a that is acceptable to the Idacorrespondent for the T-N, grade students of Morningho Legislature is that which and as an IEA negotiator for side will graduate 11 years comes from the federal govfrom now.If we can not meet district teacher contracts, ernment,not one which that those who teach in a dis- might help provide jobs in the these students’needs next trict are hired by that district, state.I encourage the Legisyear with smaller class sizes not appointed by a digital and one-on-one support lature to introduce and pass a learning entity.The quoted from their teachers,these bill to continue the existing statement belies that reason- exemptions for wind energy. first-graders will not have a CHARLES LEHRMAN ing. chance at success and many Buhl Following the syllogistic will be doomed to fail. For me,the cost of the levy fallacy in that logic leads me equals me taking my family to to believe that control of the Maybe we are part of the lunch at a fast food restaurant classrooom and curriculum once a month.This is a small presented in that classroom is problem, not the wolves Wolves,like other citizens, cost for the future of our stu- being removed from the dodon’t respect state boundmain of the local school disdents. aries.Therefore,isn’t the soPlease join me in support of trict. Please,please,correct me if called wolf problem a matter the Twin Falls School District demanding federalism,not I’m wrong! supplemental levy. SARAH M. BLASIUS STEVE HOY each area “solving”it in isoBurley Twin Falls lation? Yet,Congressman (Editor’s note: Steve Hoy Simpson advocates that sois the principal of Morningcalled wolf “management” Wind energy exemptions Reader suggests getting Twin Falls school levyis side Elementary School in (killing) be returned to the need to continue states as if wolves indeed rerid of most computers in important to our students Twin Falls.) Regarding the article spect state boundaries.Isn’t the classrooms On March 8,you will have “Winds Of Change”by Ben federalist action necessary so Could school districts be Botkin,in Sunday’s edition of all the states with wolf resiDo we really need comput- the opportunity to support ers in schools? It hasn’t been the schools in the Twin Falls the Times-News: I think the dents use the same managelosing control of their comments by Rep.Scott too many years since comSchool District. ment measures? classrooms? Bedke,R.,of Oakley just beg puters were introduced into Morningside Elementary Besides,wasn’t it under the school system and,as I currently has 124 students in state management that I find it very strange that in for reader comment.Rep. recall,they were welcomed the first grade.We have been wolves became a problem? all of the confusion generated Bedke is quoted as saying “I think that if we’re saying that by the teachers,or were they? able to separate these 124 stu- by Mr.Luna’s proposal,one Cattle and other foragers; wind energy development Have they made significant dents into five sections,which item in your commentary including elk,pronghorns, needs to carry its own improvements in student average about 25 students per about the plan blatantly deer,ground squirrels and weight,if it needs a subsidy achievement,or are they used room.With this supplemen- smacks of the “take-over” the proliferate jackrabbit; to entertain and to babysit so tal levy,we will be able to compete for the same forage. mentality which literally has to make it work,we need to think about that long and teachers don’t have to teach? maintain these numbers. Wouldn’t the cattle have less Idaho teachers and students hard.” If I am correct,Rep. How did those of us,who Without the support of the forage if the wolf wasn’t up in arms. are now over 40 years old,get levy,these students will be present to prey on these othAccording to your editori- Bedke is from a family of ranchers and farmers who a good education without the placed into four sections aver vegetarians? Politicians al,“...school districts could use of a single computer? eraging 31 students per room. designate the required online have run cattle on BLM land often flirt with the “Law of Maybe a teacher could reply to this letter and tell me the websites they use or that I can go to,to find the important stuff or the knowledge our I am an 87-year-old forkids need to succeed in tomer teacher.I saw Denton day’s world.Where are the Darrington on TV the other math sites that test their abilday.I also taught his daughity to add,subtract and multer in the fourth grade.I so tiply numbers in their heads, appreciate his service to eduthe sites that teach proper cation in our state and to the grammar,the sites that teach children of Cassia County. spelling,reading compreDenton,your daughter was a hension,American history, lovely student and I’m proud geography,etc.? to have had her,as well as Every school has numer500 or so other young people ous computers,they are sitas my students.Last night I ting there using electricity attended a dinner at the 24/7; most of them are conJerome Senior Center and nected to the Internet 24/7.If was so pleased to have a lady I ask how much they cost the come up to me and introduce school district and what the herself as the mother of two costs per month are to mainof my students — 25 years tain them,they will tell me it’s ago! She thanked me for my an insignificant part of the care for them and told me of budget.It’s these insignifitheir lives and successes! cant items that add up to milMr.Luna,measure that if lions of dollars. you can! I also worked in IEA Does every student need a positions with Jim Shackcomputer an average of four elford in the late 1970s and hours a day for studying or early 1980s.Thank you,Jim, surfing the Internet? Instead for your efforts in behalf of of getting more computers in Idaho’s teachers and their the schools,let’s get rid of students! I was so proud to most of them and let the have known you when I read teachers go back to teaching your letter in the paper (Twin the basics i.e.reading,writFalls) this morning! May Idaing and arithmetic that ho continue to have good everyone should be able to teachers and give all of them do.Tom Luna wants to give support for the work they do. every student a laptop or Remember you cannot some device to take home.If measure the love and caring computers are really so good, between a teacher and stuwhy do we need so many dent! teachers? LOIS BRANNAN GAYLE FIXSEN Jerome Twin Falls Tell us what you think Unintended Consequences”: e.g.,state management might work against the ranchers that the Congressman conscientiously and dutifully seeks to help: To wit,in our area,the wolf is not prey to any other animal except us.If we wipe him out,less efficient predators might be unable to prey enough on unwanted foragers.Consequently,might the unwanted foragers eat a lot that would otherwise be available for cattle? On the other hand,if we don’t wipe out the wolf, maybe too many wolves would prey on too many calves? Therefore,killing the wolf, as long as he doesn’t kill an economically prohibitive number of cattle,may be the best possible solution if we also leave enough wolves alive to kill the competing foragers. Yet,simple solutions to complex problems often fail. Perhaps the real problem lies with the greediest predator: Us! As our population grows,our appetite for dead animals,especially beef, grows.Then,more of us usurp more land,build more houses and obviously leave our wolf brother homeless. However,we cannot deny any woman the freedom to have as many babies as she wants. JACK HARTLEY Twin Falls Crash victim suggests stronger punishment for driver negligence In the last week,I have been a victim in two car accidents.In one of them my own vehicle was involved and the other I was a passenger.The person that hit me had no insurance and the accident where I was the passenger they had no insurance.I ask everyone this: Why don’t people get punished harder for their negligence? Driving is a privilege not a right. JOSHUA MALONE Murtaugh We Support the TWIN FALLS SCHOOL DISTRICT FOR TWIN FALLS SCHOOLS Scot and Katie McNeley Randy and Kathy MacMillan Dan Brizee Dr. Robert and Lori Ward Mike and Janaye Ridgeway Dr. John and Mary Miller Jason Torgrimson Tom High Mary Lu Barry Ray Parrish Dan and Ann Vogt Dr. Wiley and Ann-Marie Dobbs Adam and Rayna Stimpson Sam Gillette Chris Gillette Ron and Barb Hardy Bryan and Jayne Matsuoka Mitch and Linda Watkins Dennis and Dr. Lisa Burgett Allen and Lorinda Horner Fran and Allan Frost Scott and Karen Fjeld Julene Walker Bill Hicks AND URGE YOU TO VOTE “YES” Dr. Chris and Anna Scholes Bill Brulotte Kathy Ann Clark Debi Kraal Jamie and Beth Pendergrass Brent and Debbie Stanger Tom and Megan Ashenbrener Chuck and Shannon Swoboda Emily Otero Theron Thomas Shelley McEuen Gary and Melanie Cook Jennifer Tingey Heather Platts Craig and Michona Lookingbill Tiffany Seeley-Case Luci Walter Tara Parsons Dr. Chris Tiu, Twin Falls Dental Randy and Sandy Rayborn John Hyatt Bob and Linda Seaman Beth Olmstead John and Michelle Lucas Jordan Lucas Zack Settle Kasey and Tracy Teske Jenny Hefner Kurt and Karen Hefner Dick and Therese Roemer Dr. Stephen and Jill Dixon Daryl and Melissa Ficklin Steve and Peggy Hoy Brady and Holly Dickinson Bryce and Laurisa Holt Rudy and Sonia DeLeon Susan Carroll Nathan and Kim Bishop Heather Bushnell Linda Simmons Roy and Georgiann Youngstrom Darren Coleman Valerie Coleman Linda Arrossa Ted and Lynn Popplewell Daragh and Dolores Maccabee Brian and Lori Donaldson Rob & Sherri Ellis Paid for by the TFSDEF, Linda Watkins, Executive Director Terry Sharp Brian and Wendy Maughan Karla Haskins Kelli Schroeder John and Karen Pfeifer Kathi Jeroue Mark & Larisa Alexander Carrie Edlund Rose Ann Eckrote Jeff and Julie Blick Denise A. Hart Earl and Carrie Reed Janet Simmons Jill & Alan Stutzman Lisa Mashak Karla Haskins H. Thad Scholes MD Judy Scholes Tricia Anderson Rebecca Sandoval Claudine Baisch Patti O’Dell Mary Kay Martin Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho SHADOWDOUBT I of a Teachers union 101: ‘A’is agitation f public school teachers spent more time teaching in classrooms and Continued from Opinion 1 less time community-orResults from the 20th Idaho Public Policy Survey, taken ganizing in political war in November and December by Boise State University’s Purooms, maybe taxpayers bic Policy Center: wouldn’t feel as ripped off as they do. Before the Big Labor bosses start complaining about “teacherPercentage of Idahoans who say their household has been bashing,” let’s be clear: An impacted by cuts in state programs and services increasing number of rankand-file teachers feel exactPercentage of Idahoans who say budget cuts have affected ly the same way. the quality of their children’s education Retired New York teacher Vinne Cusimano, who was Percentage of Idahoans who say someone in their houserequired to pay forced union hold has lost a job in the past year dues in order to work, wrote me this week after receiving Percentage of Idahoans who say someone in their household the March 2011 edition of deferred retirement because of the economy his union’s monthly publication. The cover of the Percentage of Idahoans who have deferred or delayed a New York State United major purchase Teachers magazine reads: “Defend What Matters! EdPercentage of Idaho households that include someone with- ucate. Collaborate. AGIout health insurance TATE.” Inside the pamphlet, NYSUT President Richard Percentage of Idaho households that have lost their health Iannuzzi rails against “maliinsurance in the past year cious politicians” in Wisconsin and elsewhere proposing “extreme antiunion” budget cuts. He Percentage of Idahoans who oppose raising the sales tax by urges his members to join 1 cent to close the state’s budget gap ... “advocacy” efforts to “maintain critical re.... and percentage of Idahoans who favor it 56 75 26 16 65 23 13 56 39 of Idahoans who don’t believe all sales tax 44 Percentage exemptions should be eliminated ... 32 ... and percentage of Idahoans who do of Idahoans who don’t think Idaho should col50 Percentage lect sales tax on Internet purchases ... 39 ... and percentage of Idahoans who do of Idahoans who believe the sales tax exemption 41 Percentage for services should be eliminated ... 41 .... and percentage of Idahoans who don’t Illegal immigrants of Idahoans who believe immigration is a prob67 Percentage lem in Idaho of Idahoans who think counties should deny 62 Percentage indigent health care to undocumented workers of Idahoans who favor a tough, Arizona-style 58 Percentage immigration law in Idaho of Idahoans who think a program should be cre7permanently 3 Percentage ated to allow illegal immigrants to stay in the United States Sunday, March 6, 2011 Opinion 3 net assets are more than $117 million in the red — have lecturing anyone else about “ideology and greed”? Instead of imposing Michelle fiscal discipline on NYSUT, Iannuzzi and his cronies Malkin have gone on a spending spree — dumping nearly sources” and lectures about $10.5 million into left-wing the need to “value educaDemocratic politics this tion over ideology and past year alone. The NYSUT greed.” boasts a lobbying staff of Cusimano, who taught 500, a 200,000-squarefor four decades in the Em- foot palace in Albany and a pire State, fired back at $213 million operating Ianuzzi in an open letter: budget — paid for through “As a member for over compulsory union dues of 40 years, I have never been about $300 a year from so disappointed at the stand some 600,000 members. you are taking to call mem“Agitation,” of course, is a bers to ‘AGITATE!’ We are full-time job for teachers trying to tamp down the union officials in New York rhetoric and you are outand across the country. As ward(ly) inciting agitation. the New York Post reported How dare you! You are sup- exclusively this week, the city Department of Educaposed to be for the students/teachers. ... How can tion compensates some 1,500 teachers for their you support ‘EDUCATE,’ ‘COLLABORATE,’ and then union activities and also subsidizes other teachers encourage agitation?” who take their places in the More to the point, what business does Iannuzzi — a classroom: “It’s a sweetheart deal that costs taxpayfat-cat union official who ers an extra $9 million a year rakes in nearly $300,000 a year while his organization’s to pay fill-ins for instructors who are sprung — at full pay — to carry out responsibilities for the United Federation of Teachers.” The UFT soldiers “collect top pay and fringe benefits, but work just one class period a day.” Nice non-work if you can get it. The goals of the teachers union machine are not academic excellence, professional development and fairness. As former NEA official John Lloyd explained it: “You cannot possibly understand NEA without understanding Saul Alinsky. If you want to understand NEA, go to the library and get Rules for Radicals.” The goals are student indoctrination, social upheaval and perpetual agitation in pursuit of bigger government and spending without restraint. No wonder the signature “solidarity” color of the teachers union protests this month is red. MORE PEOPLE TRUST. Switch to America's Largest and Most Reliable Network. No-bamacare Percentage of Idahoans who believe Idaho should be able to opt out of the 2010 federal health care reform law 58 of Idahoans who think public funds should be 63 Percentage used to provide health insurance to those who can’t afford it Gone to pot of Idahoans who say it should be legal for seri74 Percentage ously ill people to use marijuana for medical purposes of Idahoans who favor the sale and manufac46 Percentage ture of medical marijuana ... 46 ... and percentage of Idahoans who don’t It’s the economy, stupid of Idahoans who think jobs or the economy are 50 Percentage the most important issues facing the state who believe education is the most important 24 Percentage issue for Idaho Money for schools of Idahoans who don’t think the state is invest59 Percentage ing enough in higher education of Idahoans who believe the state should raise 53 Percentage the sales tax to support public schools ... 42 ... and percentage of Idahoans who oppose it Nationwide Rate and Coverage Area No Coverage Area Coverage not available everywhere; see verizonwireless.com/coveragelocator for additional details. Samsung Intensity™ II Advanced texter with slide-out keyboard BUY 1 GET 1 FREE $ 2999 DROID INCREDIBLE™ by HTC Speed, power and an ultravivid display Civil war threatens as Libyan battles reach a stalemate The Washington Post BENGHAZI, Libya — Government forces carried out a bloody siege of Zawiyah on Saturday, bombarding the rebel-held western city with mortar fire and deploying tanks in the streets and snipers on rooftops. But even as it pressed its counterattack against a resistance that vowed to fight on, emboldened opposition forces in the east backed away from calls for international airstrikes and pledged to take the battle against Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to his stronghold in the capital, Tripoli,on their own. The day’s events suggested the bid to oust Gadhafi was developing into precisely what Western observers have feared: a potentially protracted civil war. The violence in Zawiyah, a city vital to Libya’s oil industry and where witnesses said dozens had been killed and hundreds wounded Saturday, offered a chilling glimpse into what could become an inconclusive and bruising conflict with an ever-mounting death toll. By late Saturday, both the government and the opposition claimed control of Zawiyah. Though impossible to verify, witnesses described a “massacre’’ in the worst of a two-day siege that saw shells rain on neighborhoods and bullet-ridden bodies of fighters strewn in the streets of the city, just 27 miles west of Tripoli. Yet the ferocity of the campaign in Zawiyah illustrated the challenge ahead for government forces as they seek to decisively win back territory lost since the uprising against Gadhafi began Feb.17. After striking the city Friday,Gadhafi loyalists reportedly led by his son Khamis Gadhafi dramatically escalated their attack Saturday. At 7 a.m. local time, tanks rolled into the city accompanied by heavy shelling and machine-gun assaults, with witnesses reporting great plumes of black smoke billowing from various neighborhoods. Yet within three Fewer U.S.teens,young adults having sex,study indicates ATLANTA (AP) — Fewer teens and young adults are having sex, a government survey shows, and theories abound for why they’re doing it less. Experts say this generation may be more cautious than their predecessors, more aware of sexually spread diseases. Or perhaps emphasis on abstinence in the past decade has had some influence. The study, released last week, is based on interviews of about 5,300 young people, ages 15 to 24. It shows the proportion in that age group who said they’d never had oral, vaginal or anal sex rose in the past decade from 22 percent to about 28 percent. The findings are sure to surprise some parents who see skin and lust in the media and worry that sex is rampant. “Many parents and adults look at teens and sex and see nothing but a blur of bare midriffs. They think things are terrible and getting worse,’’said Bill Albert, chief program officer for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. McKain-Kinney Remembrance Rose Garden Decommissioning Ceremony A Libyan rebel shouts in the village of Bin Jawwad, west of the recently captured oil town of Ras Lanuf, eastern Libya, Saturday. “It is a massacre, they are striking civilians, they are attacking us from all directions.” — Mohammed Ahmad, a 31-year-old doctor, on attacks being carried out by Gadhafi loyalists hours, the rebels succeeded, witnesses said, in driving Gadhafi’s forces out of the city’s center after blowing up two tanks with hand-held rocket-propelled grenades. Loyalist snipers took positions on rooftops, firing on the central square before pulling back to the city’s perimeter. The shelling of the city, however, continued. Witnesses said houses and buildings were severely damaged in some areas. Rebels claimed to be inflicting heavy damage on their better-armed opponents, saying dozens of Gadhafi’s fighters had been killed. Still others were captured, they said, and were being held as POWS. “It is a massacre, they are striking civilians, they are attacking us from all directions,’’ Mohammed Ahmad, a 31year-old doctor, said by phone during one of the attacks. Explosions and whizzing bullets could be heard around him as he spoke. “People are running around shouting, ‘God is great!’You can hear the shooting everywhere. This is madness. Why is the international community not interfering?’’ Abu Ala, a Zawiyah resident in his 50s who declined to give his full name, said he had seen loyalist forces execute two rebels with their hands tied behind their backs Saturday morning. “Today, I saw a heinous crime,’’ he said. “It was opposite my house, and it was shocking.’’ Tanks rolled in again about six hours later. Rebels said they succeeded in largely repelling the second wave using aging equipment seized from military depots. But at least one hospital in Zawiyah appeared to fall into the hands of the government, with a man, reached by phone, describing himself as a doctor there and calling himself a Gadhafi loyalist. The government in Tripoli, meanwhile,claimed that virtually all of the city was under its control. “The situation in Zawiyah is quiet and peaceful right now,’’ Gadhafi’s deputy foreign minister, Khaled Qaid, told a group of foreign reporters in Tripoli on Saturday. “We hope by tomorrow morning life will be back to normal.’’ But rebels in Zawiyah insisted they were not yet beaten.“The fight here is going to be symbolically important to the struggle,’’ said Mohamed Magid, an opposition spokesman. “If Gadhafi wins, he will have the upper hand, but we will not allow that to happen.’’ In Tripoli,a tense quiet appeared to grip the capital one day after government troops fired tear gas and live ammunition at demonstrators. Two residents reached in the city’s restive suburbs who have openly criticized Gadhafi before declined on Saturday to talk to a foreign journalist, insisting their phones were being monitored by the government. A third resident who asked that her name be withheld said her family “was terrified’’ after a government crackdown on the capital in which security agents have reportedly sought out and detained suspected government opponents. “We are afraid to leave the house,’’ she said, adding that there was a mixture of “hope and fear in the air.’’ She said her family had gathered “household weapons,’’ including knives and scrap metal, in their living room to defend themselves should Gadhafi’s loyalists come for them. “We have never gone through anything like this in our lives.’’ Please join us to say goodbye to the original rose garden on Wednesday, March 9, 2011 at 2 p.m. in the McKain-Kinney Remembrance Rose Garden. (In case of rain or snow, we will meet under the canopy on the south side of the hospital.) In April, 2011, the benches, fountains, statuary, and trellises will be moved to the new Rose Garden site located outside of St. Luke’s MSTI, Twin Falls on the new St. Luke’s Magic Valley campus. All existing engravings in the original Rose Garden will be moved near a new, similar rose at the new Rose Garden. The Rose Garden is funded by donations received by the St. Luke’s Magic Valley Health Foundation. We encourage you to consider adding to the McKain-Kinney Remembrance Rose Garden. A wide variety of roses are available, as well as paving stones and exclusive Rose Garden Area Sponsorships. Please call the Foundation at 208-737-2480 to find out how you can contribute. HOSPITAL OPENING MAY 21 U.S.push not halting guns to Mexico BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Federal agents are barely able to slow the river of American guns flowing into Mexico. In two years, a new effort to increase inspections of travelers crossing the border has netted just 386 guns — an almost infinitesimal amount given that an estimated 2,000 slip across each day. The problem came into sharp focus again last month when a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent was killed on a northern Mexican highway with a gun that was purchased in a town outside Fort Worth, Texas. Stopping the flow of American guns, bullets and cash has long bedeviled authorities on both sides of the border. At a White House news conference in March 2009, ROYAL CARIBBEAN INTERNATIONAL RETURNS TO NEW ORLEANS Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano joined President Obama in announcing plans to better help Mexico cope with a brutal drug war that has now killed more than 34,000 people since 2006. “You’ve got to interdict the arms. You’ve got to stop them from going into Mexico,’’ Napolitano said at the time. Since then, Customs and Border Protection officers — who usually spend their days checking people and cars coming into the U.S. — have teamed up with Border Patrol agents and, sometimes, sheriff’s deputies in border communities to scrutinize travelers leaving American soil. They have made little progress. In fiscal year 2009, Customs and Border Protection agents at all border crossings separating the 2,000-mile border, from Brownsville on Texas’ Gulf Coast to San Diego, seized 107 guns. The next fiscal year, ending Sept. 30, they seized 279. Those are the most-recent, border-wide figures available. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives reported seizing 2,633 guns in 2009 at its offices in the four southwestern border states, the most recent figures available, but those were captured before making it into border traffic — and even if they had, they would have amounted to a little more than a day’s worth that get through. A November 2008 study by The Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, stated that 2,000 American guns are smuggled into Mexico each day. INTO YOUR NEXT VACATION 7N NIGHT WESTERN CARIBBEAN Depa Departing December 17th from New Orleans wi with rates starting at $639* per person. AAA BONUS: Call AAA Travel today to receive $100 shipboard credit.** *Prices listed are for 12/17/11. All pricing is per person, based on double occupancy and subject to change. Airfare, taxes and fees are additional. **Shipboard credit on selected dates is up to $50 per person for a maximum of $100 per cabin. Certain restrictions apply. Ship’s Registry: The Bahamas Contact your local Twin Falls AAA Travel Sales Consultant EMPLOYERS REGISTER EARLY for Sponsorship Packages and Booth Information call Susan Nickell, 735-3227, or email [email protected] PWS ID #: ID5420058 Continuing Our Commitment We respectfully present our annual water quality report. We hope this edition helps inform you about the quality water and services we deliver to you everyday. Our constant goal is to provide you with a safe and dependable supply of drinking water. To that end, we remain vigilant in meeting the challenges of source water protection, water conservation, and community education while continuing to serve the needs of all of our water users. We currently have a City of Twin Falls Wellhead Protection Plan, Drinking Water Protection Plan and Source Water Assessment Plans for our South, Southeast and Blue Lakes Wells; and we have received the Twin Falls County Groundwater Quality Management Plan. These are available at the City of Twin Falls Water Department by calling (208) 736-2275. Thank you for allowing us to continue providing your family with clean, quality water this year. To maintain a safe and dependable water supply that will benefit all of our customers, we need to make continual improvements to your water system. These improvements may affect your water bill. Your understanding is appreciated. Community Participation We are committed to ensuring the quality of your water, and we want you to be informed about your water utility. If you have any questions about this report or the City of Twin Falls water utility, please contact Robert Bohling, Water Superintendent, at (208) 736-1540. City council meetings are opportunities for public participation and input. City of Twin Falls Council meetings are held the first and third Monday of each month at 5:00 p.m. in the City Hall Annex Building Council Chambers at 305 Third Avenue East, Twin Falls, Idaho. You are invited to participate. Important Health Information Some people may be more vulnerable to contaminants in drinking water than the general population. Immunocompromised persons such as persons with cancer undergoing chemotherapy, persons who have undergone organ transplants, people with HIV/AIDS or other immune system disorders, some elderly, and infants can be particularly at risk from infections. These people should seek advice about drinking water from their health care providers. EPA/Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines on appropriate means to lessen the risk of infection by Cryptosporidium and other microbial contaminants are available from the Safe Drinking Water Hotline at 1-800-426-4791 or www.epa.gov/safewater/ hotline/. Where Does My Water Come From? Our water source is groundwater from 10 wells out of the Snake River Plain aquifer. Water supplies for 2010 were drawn from the Blue Lakes Well Field, the South Wells and reservoir system and the Southeast Wells and reservoir system. The Blue Lakes Well Field consists of four wells that supply the Harrison Station’s five million gallon storage reservoir; the South Wells and reservoir system consists of four wells that supply two storage reservoirs, which are also five million gallons each; and the Southeast Wells and reservoir system consists of two wells that supply a two million gallon storage reservoir. At these storage points our water is disinfected and tested before distribution into our system. Nampa court aims to defuse domestic violence By Kristin Rodine The Idaho Statesman NAMPA — He wears a black robe, and all rise when he enters. But when Judge Jerold Lee talks, he takes the tone of a life coach, offering empathy and encouragement along with rulings and the looming prospect of jail time. “I kind of liken it to being a parent, and I have all these kids,’’ Lee said, after a February afternoon spent overseeing the progress of 15 cases in which local residents had battered someone who loved them. “We aim for a relationship,’’ he said. “If it takes a big stick for me to keep ’em in line, we aren’t going to be successful for very long.’’ Lee presides over Nampa Domestic Violence Court, heading a team that collaborates to find the best ways to protect victims, treat offenders and assess their progress. Every misdemeanor domestic violencerelated case filed in Nampa 430 in the past year ends up in Lee’s court. On a recent day, Lee held review hearings with 11 sentenced offenders and heard four victims’ requests to lift or relax the no-contact orders that kept their batterers away from them. He didn’t lift any of them. Nampa’s domestic violence court formally kicked off last year, joining similar specialty courts covering the unincorporated parts of Ada County and all of Bannock and Bonneville counties. The state’s fifth domestic violence court, in Minidoka and Cassia counties, is just getting under way. Hallmarks of domestic violence court include a fasttrack sprint from arrest to sentencing, frequent review hearings for about two years to check on the offender’s progress and an established team to handle all domestic violence misdemeanors. Lee, a magistrate court judge for the past five years, adopted much of that approach on his own, then volunteered to form a specialized domestic violence court last year. “I wanted to start a problem-solving court to be more effective,’’he said. Lee’s team includes Deputy Canyon County Prosecutor Regan Jameson, Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho AROUND THE WEST reached a plea agreement on misdemeanor drug counts and were fined and put on probation. Powell woman awarded $30,000 over police raid POWELL, Wyo. — A federal jury has awarded a Powell woman $30,000 after finding that police unsafely deployed a “flash-bang” device and used her as a human shield during a raid at her home two years ago. The verdict and award were returned Friday in a lawsuit by Tricia Wachsmuth. The Powell Tribune reports jurors rejected the woman’s claim that officers wrongly rammed their way into the house during the February 2009 raid looking for marijuana plants. Jurors say police knocked, announced their presence and waited a reasonable time before entering. Officers denied using Wachsmuth as a shield, saying she led them willingly. Police said they found several guns and two marijuana plants. Wachsmuth and her husband, Bret, Utah budget mostly flat; state won’t tap reserves SALT LAKE CITY — When the Utah Legislature considers a final budget proposal during its final four days, it will likely have minimal cuts and leave the state’s reserve fund mostly untouched. That’s the type of budget proposal Utah legislators have not seen in a couple of years, and a proposal many other states would envy. After all, according to a report from the National Governors Association, 14 states have reserve funds that are less than one percent of their overall budgets. And 35 states face budget shortfalls, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. — The Associated Press JOE JASZEWSKI/Idaho Statesman Judge Jerold Lee considers cases in Nampa domestic violence court on Feb. 1. Lee presides over Nampa Domestic Violence Court, heading a team that collaborates to find the best ways to protect victims, treat offenders and assess their progress. probation officer Norma to become these horrible Kukla, victim witness coor- events,’’ probation officer dinator Christina Garcia, as- Kukla said. “We concentrate sistant public defender Ryan on the big prize, stopping the Dowell and court coordina- cycle of violence.’’ tor Lauren Edsen. Intervention is a focus of “I’ve just been pretty im- the domestic violence court pressed by how quickly this system, Moe said, calling it team has put together that “almost a preventative.’’ collaboration,’’ said Amber And there is ample eviMoe, statewide domestic vi- dence that Canyon County olence court coordinator for could use some intervention the Idaho Supreme Court. when it comes to domestic The concept, now used in violence. 27 states,got its Idaho start in “Canyon County has the 2003 with an Ada County pi- highest number of filings of lot program. Moe was the protection orders, a lot highcourt coordinator for that er, in the entire state,’’ Moe pilot project and said the idea said. The fledgling Nampa is now catching on through- court already has racked up out the state. impressive numbers, she Officials in Idaho’s pan- said: 227 domestic violencehandle are looking into the related charges were filed in possibility, she said, and Nampa during the court’s “there has been conversation first six months,July through about Boise city wanting to December 2010.That’s comhave domestic violence parable to the countywide court. I think it’s just a mat- statistics for that period in ter of time.’’ Bonneville and Bannock Tim Fleming, chief of spe- counties, she said, and much cialty courts for the Canyon higher than the 60 cases filed County Prosecutor’s Office, in Ada County’s domestic said he hopes to establish a violence court during those domestic violence court to six months. handle Caldwell cases, and It’s important to note, Moe said that is likely after however, that the Ada Counthe Nampa court is more es- ty court’s tally generally tablished. doesn’t include city crimes, The violence reflected in Moe said: Boise alone has these misdemeanor cases is nearly 1,000 misdemeanor relatively mild compared to domestic violence cases per the horrific felony domestic year. murders and severe beatings “I don’t think anybody that have claimed newspaper would want to say we have the headlines in Canyon County golden ticket,’’said Edsen,the and beyond. court coordinator. “We A frequent feature of such haven’t found a way to wipe stories is a history of misde- out domestic violence, but meanor batteries and no- early intervention, I think, is contact order violations making a difference.’’ that, arguably, weren’t adeCENTURY STADIUM 5 quately addressed by the le678-7142 gal system and that laid the www.centurycinema5.com groundwork for later tragedy. Shows Nightly 7:15 & 9:20 “The goal of this is to nip it Rango PG in the bud in these early Johnny Depp in A Hilarious Animated Comedy/Adventure stages,so they don’t move on Shows Nightly 7:20 & 9:30 Oakley Valley Arts Council presents The King's Speech R This years Academy Award Best Picture Shows Nightly 7:25 & 9:30 Unknown PG-13 Liam Neeson in An Action/Thriller Shows Nightly 7:30 & 9:35 RED WING BOOT SALE! MONDAY THROUGH SATURDAY MARCH 7TH – 12TH Oxfords, 6” lace, 8” lace and slip-on. Full-grain leather uppers, long wearing sole. Sizes 61/2 to 16. Widths 2A A to 4E. REGULAR PRICE Entire Stock of Red Wing Shoes & Boots Lynwood Shopping Center ter Twin Falls, Idaho 733-6280 Open Mon.-Fri. 9:30-6 • Saturdays 9:30-5:30 Congratulates Rich Hanyon for 1 year of Service! Rich invites all of his past and previous customers to come and see him at Goode Motor on Overland Ave. Rich has FREE Car Washes for all of his past and previous customers. 450 Overland Ave. • Burley, ID • 208-878-9382 I Am Number Four PG-13 Directed by Kent Severe March 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 14, 17, 18, 19 @7:30PM March 12, 2011 @2:00PM Howells Opera House, Oakley, ID An Action-packed Adventure Shows Nightly 7:15 Only Gnomeo & Juliet 3-D G From Walt Disney A Fun Animated Family Comedy Shows Nightly 9:00 Only Drive Angry 3-D R We're Celebrating Our 22nd Anniversary Nicolas Cage in An Action/Thriller BURLEY THEATRE All Seats $2.00 Everynight Open Fri. - Tues. each week SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN is presented through special arrangement with Music Theatre International (MTI). All authorised performance materials are also supplied by MTI, 421 West 54th Street, New York, NY 10019 Phone: 212-541-4684 Fax: 212-397-4684 Johnny Depp & Angelina Jolie in An Action/Thriller The Tourist PG-13 Mini-Cassia Craft Fair Burley Fairgrounds March 11, 2011 11-8 p.m. March 12, 2011 10-5 p.m. Save thru March 12th Celebrate by saving $10 gal on select PPG Pittsburgh Paints. March 10, 2011 5-8 p.m. Early Bird Special $3.00 at the door plus ticket Free Admission with this ad as your ticket or $1.00 at the door - 10:00 am to 5:00 pm By PS Productions Same producers as the fall show pittsburghpaints.com • voiceofcolor.com Enter your store location Phone: 878-0856 Enter yourMon store location Hours: – Sat 8:00 – 5:30 Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho Sunday, March 6, 2011 Opinion 7 In union strongholds,residents wrestle with cuts By David A. Lieb Nancy Harrington and her husband, Harry, talk about the Wisconsin budget crisis at Wilson's Coffee & Tea in Racine, Wis. The two have differring opinions about the role of unions. Associated Press writer RACINE, Wis. — There once was a time when Harry and Nancy Harrington — their teenage children in tow — walked the picket line outside the nursing home where she was a medical aide, protesting the lack of a pension plan for the unionized work force. But those days of family solidarity are gone. Harry now blames years of union demands for an exodus of manufacturing jobs from this blue-collar city on the shore of Lake Michigan. He praises new Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker for attempting to strip public employee unions of nearly all of their collective bargaining rights. Protesters opposed to Walker’s plan have held steady at the Wisconsin Capitol for nearly three weeks, though their overnight sit-ins ended Thursday with a judge’s order. “I’m sorry, but the unions want to yell, they want to intimidate,” says Harry Harrington, 69, as he sets a coffee cup down next to another newspaper headline about the union demonstrations. “They want to be heard,” retorts Nancy Harrington, 66, who fears a weakened union would jeopardize the teaching career of their now 38-year-old daughter. The Harringtons typify the new national reality for labor unions. Support is no longer a sure thing from the middle class — not even in a city long considered a union stronghold in a state that gave birth to the nation’s largest public employee union. National polls show that the portion of the public that views unions favorably has dropped to near historic lows in recent years, dipping below 50 percent by some accounts. But surveys also show a public uneasy with attempts to weaken union bargaining rights by emboldened Republican governors who swept into power in the 2010 elections amid concerns about state finances. A Pew Research Center poll released earlier this week found more adults nationwide sided with unions than the governor in the Wisconsin dispute. For unions, the political standoffs occurring in states such as Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio and are a make or break moment — a chance to repair tarnished luster or risk sinking toward irrelevancy among the American public. In Racine, a nearly twohour drive southeast of the epicenter of the union controversy in Madison, the question of the union’s appropriate role has divided husband and wife, mother and child, co-workers and friends. It’s the hot topic on editorial pages, at coffee shops, even at the craft club that meets in the community center at Roosevelt Park, where a dozen retired women recently were talking over the top of each other about union powers while knitting socks and hats. Among these women, at least, the pro-union protesters are right and Wis- consin’s governor is wrong. Their group includes a retired Racine public school teacher who in 1977 joined in a teacher walkout that lasted more than a month. Racine schools shut down again for one day this February when a quarter of their teachers were absent in a show of support for pro-union protesters. Yet the teachers’ union is not the power it once was in the Racine area. Despite a well-funded media campaign, the union’s candidate, Democratic state Sen. John Lehmen, of Racine — a former high school teacher — was ousted by Republican challenger Van Wanggaard in last fall’s election. District voters also picked Walker over Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett. When the teachers walked out last month in nearby Kenosha, substitutes such as Kevin Kreckling quickly stepped forward. “I felt a little torn—I wanted to have solidarity with the teachers, but I have to make money, too,” said Kreckling, 30, the son of a union painter and who is studying to be a teacher at Concordia University in Mequon. The decline in union power is perhaps best symbolized by the area near Roosevelt Park, where a monument dedicated by the AFLCIO honors the Depressionera president who signed a MOORE RALLIES PROTESTERS Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore urged Wisconsin residents Saturday to fight against Republican efforts to strip most public workers of their collective bargaining rights, telling thousands of protesters that “Madison is only the beginning.” The crowd roared in approval as Moore implored demonstrators to keep up their struggle against Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s legislation, saying they’ve galvanized the nation against the wealthy elite and comparing their fight to Egypt’s revolt. He also thanked the 14 state Democratic senators who fled Wisconsin to block a vote on the bill, saying they’ll go down in history books. “We’re going to do this together. Don’t give up. Please don’t give up,’’ Moore told the protesters, who have swarmed the Capitol every day for close to three weeks. — The Associated Press 1935 federal law guaranteeing collective bargaining rights. Not far away is a tall chain link fence protecting the vacant plot of the old Case Corp. farm equipment factory, which was razed a few years ago after the company merged with another corporation and then downsized. CNH Global N.V., the successor company, still operates in the area. And the city remains the home of S.C. Johnson & Son Inc., which makes cleaning products and bug sprays, and vehicle radiator maker Modine Manufacturing Co. Yet numerous other companies have scaled back or shut down, resulting in the loss of a third of Racine’s manufac- turing jobs in the past 20 years, according to federal Bureau of Labor Service statistics. “It’s been a real blood-letting of companies,” said Racine Mayor John Dickert, adding optimistically: “But we’re turning that around.” Racine’s unemployment rate remains the second highest in the state, at 12.8 percent in December. As the jobs have diminished, so also have the union ranks. But the problem isn’t solely about fewer members. It’s also that more people have come to perceive union employees as the beneficiaries of cushy pension and health care plans that others no longer enjoy, and even attribute union gains to business losses. Nationwide, a few highly-skilled heart care organizations were selected to be among the irst to implant this small, sophisticated, life-saving device. Only one of them is in Utah. CASSIA REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTERtINTERMOUNTAIN MEDICAL CENTER PRIMARY CHILDREN’S MEDICAL CENTERtMCKAY-DEE HOSPITAL CENTERtLDS HOSPITAL UTAH VALLEY REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTERtDIXIE REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER VALLEY VIEW MEDICAL CENTERtLOGAN REGIONAL HOSPITAL Opinion 8 Sunday, March 6, 2011 Huntsman, Romney: Mormon men with a higher calling Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho Air Force launches space plane 1 day after delay CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The Air Force has launched a second experimental space plane that resembles a small shuttle. The Washington Post ••• Lee Groberg, a 60-yearold documentary filmmaker from Bountiful, Utah, assessed 2012’s two Mormon pioneers in national politics. “Huntsman is more liberal, politically and religiously, if you will,’’said Groberg,interviewed on the Brigham Young University campus. “There is a difference. Without being judgmental, let me put it into basic terms: Who goes to church more? Who follows the line of their religious heritage more? Romney.’’ Polls demonstrate that Mormons overwhelmingly prefer Romney, signalling a schism that some Huntsman supporters welcome. Advocates for the ambassador’s presidential bid, speaking carefully on background, argue that there is a meaningful distinction in how Romney and Huntsman practice their faith. Romney’s prominent roles in the church’s lay priesthood have cost him in his electoral past. When Romney ran for Senate in 1994, incumbent Ted Kennedy (D) drummed up suspicion among Catholic voters. As a 2008 GOP contender, Romney ran into resistance from evangelical voters, particularly in Iowa, and ultimately delivered a difficult speech insisting that Mormons were indeed Christians. Advocates for Huntsman describe him as nowhere near as devout or defined by his church affiliation. Huntsman is a cultural Mormon, they saying much about the X37B orbital test vehicle. It’s the second of its type to be launched. The first rocketed into orbit last spring. By Jason Horowitz SALT LAKE CITY — Jon Huntsman Jr. and Mitt Romney go way back. In the Huntsman Corp. headquarters below Red Butte Canyon, Peter Huntsman, the younger brother of Jon Huntsman Jr., President Barack Obama’s outgoing ambassador to China and the 2012 presidential field’s prospective incoming candidate, pointed at family pictures and explained the link between the potential GOP rivals. “My grandfather, David Haight, my mother’s father, he was an apostle and he grew up in Oakley, Idaho. And, if I have this right, his best friend growing up was George Romney,’’ said Peter, the 47-year-old chief executive of his family’s multibillion-dollar chemical company. “So that’s where the Romney-Huntsman line started.’’ It is likely to end on much less friendly terms. A showdown between Huntsman, 50, and Romney, 63, would likely be the most bitter of the coming election. The respective former governors of Utah and Massachusetts have vast fortunes, silver tongues and great hair. They are also distant cousins, descended from a Mormon apostle who played a key role in the faith’s founding. The two men enjoyed the early support of powerful and devout fathers and performed the church’s missionary work — Romney in France during the Vietnam War and Huntsman in Taiwan. For years, the clans remained close, until the two scions sought to lead the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, a coveted post that promised to boost political prospects. The Games went to Romney, and the family bonds froze over when Huntsman endorsed Sen. John McCain over Romney in the 2008 presidential contest. “Our families have been interwoven for a long time,’’ Karen Huntsman, the 72-year-old mother of Peter and Jon and seven other Huntsmans, explained under a painting of pioneers in the lobby of the headquarters. The matriarch roomed with Romney’s sister Jane in the 1950s. Her brother Bruce once dated Romney’s sister Lynn. “I know Mitt. We backed Mitt and helped him. But I wouldn’t today. And I won’t get into that.’’ An Atlas 5 rocket blasted off with the unmanned space plane Saturday afternoon from Cape Canaveral. Air Force officials aren’t Lawn & Garden Owners! According to the Twin Falls, ID Market study, more than 17,900 adults plan to contract Landscaping or Lawn Care Services and or Supplies in the next twelve months. Mitt Romney explain, much in the way people can be culturally Jewish but not keep kosher, or culturally Catholic but not attend daily Mass. Huntsman, whom the Obama administration hoped to sideline from the presidential race, has been coy about his ambitions and declined a request for an interview through an embassy spokesman.Stateside,a team of top Republican strategists has been busily preparing for his return. Last month, John Weaver,a former McCain adviser, and Fred Davis, the famously nontraditional Republican adman, launched a website for Horizon PAC, which prominently features the verse: “Maybe someday we’ll find a new generation of conservative leaders.’’ As a member of the executive branch, Huntsman is legally barred from coordinating with an independent political action committee, and Weaver said in an e-mail that Huntsman had “nothing whatsoever’’ to do with Horizon. “Not directly. Not indirectly,’’ he said. Weaver said his last contact with Huntsman came in the form of a Christmas card. Peter Huntsman said he had never seen the Horizon website or met Weaver. “I knew he had formed a PAC,’’ Peter said, but added that his brother was still in the “soulsearching’’ phase. “When he comes back, he’ll take some time and make his decision.’’ (In a subsequent conversation, Peter emphasized that he has never spoken to his brother about the PAC and only knew of its existence through media reports.) In Utah, some Republican officials say Huntsman’s words, distancing himself from the church, are all the evidence they need about his national ambitions. In a recent interview with Fortune Magazine, Huntsman said,“I can’t say I am overly religious,’’ and noted that his children attend Catholic schools and that one of his adopted daughters was born Buddhist and another Hindu. “I get satisfaction from many different types of religions and philosophies.’’ Huntsman’s relatives and friends describe him frequently as an independent thinker, unbeholden to any church or party doctrine.Actually,it’s become its own orthodoxy to describe him as unorthodox. Peter Huntsman portrays Jon as a typical older brother who pinned him down on Saturday mornings to “breathe morning breath on me’’ but who also stunned the family by suggesting that his little brother be the company’s chief executive. As his mother, Karen, praised her son’s powers of persuasion and innate ability to bring people together, Peter told how his brother escaped scolding after piling a muddy motorcycle into the family van. “Somehow he could talk his way out of the fact — that it wasn’t a big deal,’’ said Peter. When it comes to Huntsman’s current positioning, not everyone appreciates his artful dodging.“Some people think that he’s distancing himself because of what Mitt went through last time,’’ said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who is backing Romney. “Others think he is cleverly distancing himself because of some of the prejudice against Mormons. And others think he is doing it to show a split, to show a contrast between • Do you want your piece of this market? • Do you want to maximize your reach through minimal media vehicles? • Do you want a personal, attentive and individualized consultation? Jon Huntsman Jr. him and Mitt.’’ For answers to all these questions and more, advertise with Times-News and magicvalley.com with a Lawn & Garden Service advertising package! ••• Many Republicans faithful to the church in Utah dismiss Huntsman as a “Jack Mormon,’’ a derogatory term referring to a non-practicing Mormon. At the end of his time as governor, Huntsman earned the enmity of Republicans across the state by coming out in support of civil unions for same-sex couples, which about 70 percent of Republicans in Utah opposed. Republican insiders said the move was a blatant attempt by a presidential aspirant to position himself as a moderate. In March 2009, he signed into law the most sweeping loosening of Utah’s liquor laws in 40 years. Schedule your personal consultation today! please call 735-3276 . S \ b ] a b ESSZZ]eOa G]\bO\ ••• The headquarters of the Huntsman Corp. sits close to the This Is the Place Monument in Emigration Canyon, where Mormon tradition holds that Brigham Young completed the arduous trek of his followers. An inscription greeting visitors in the gleaming lobby reads: “Only a few hundred yards south of this building,the first party of Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. A Huntsman forebear and Mormon Apostle, Orson Pratt, led an advance team into the valley on July 21.’’ Pratt’s brother, Parley, a contemporary of Joseph Smith’s and one of the church’s earliest missionaries, was the great-greatgreat-grandfather of Huntsman, and the great-greatgrandfather of Mitt Romney. In 1885, Romney’s greatgrandfather Miles Park Romney fled from U.S.authorities who wanted to enforce antipolygamy laws and, at the direction of church officials, settled a colony for polygamous Mormons in Mexico. During the Mexican Revolution in 1912,the Romneys (including Mitt’s father, George, then only 5 years old) returned to the United States. George Romney grew up to become the head of American Motors Corp., the governor of Michigan, a presidential candidate and then a Cabinet member in the Nixon administration. Huntsman,too,has an epic family history. His mother, Karen, is the daughter of David Haight, the former mayor of Palo Alto, Calif., where Huntsman was born in 1960.In 1976,Haight became a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the church elders who sit in power directly under the presidential council. SWEET REDEMPTION Members of the Carey team celebrate their victory against Nezperce in the Class 1A Division II state championship game at the Idaho Center in Nampa on Saturday. Carey wins first-ever basketball championship By David Bashore Times-News writer NAMPA — A year ago Nezperce dashed Carey’s dreams of its first boys basketball state championship. Turns out those dreams were only deferred. Jacy Baird hit the gamewinning layup with 2.4 seconds left as Carey edged Nezperce 47-46 to win the Class 1A Division II state championship Saturday morning at the Idaho Center, the first title in the pro- MORE ONLINE READ more about Carey’s state title win. MAGICVALLEY.COM/OVERTIME gram’s history. After Christopher Riggers missed the front end of a 1-and-1 situation with Nezperce nursing a onepoint lead, Blair Peck wound his way through the lane and dished the ball to a wide-open Baird, who laid it right off the square of the backboard and through for the championship-winning basket. “I was so scared, but I knew I just had to go up as strong as I could and put it off the square,” said Baird, who scored four points and had a team-high eight rebounds. “Go up strong and that’s all you’ve got, and it went down.” Peck scored 12, including seven straight in an 11-2 run during the third quarter that got Carey (24-2) back in front after falling behind nine. He pulled down six ASHLEY SMITH/ Times-News rebounds and his assist to Baird for the game winning bucket was one of his game-high five. Peck, Carey’s leading scorer on the season, was off for large stretches of the game, charging twice and traveling twice inside the last minute to give Nezperce a chance to win the game. But he came good when it mattered most, securing a rebound that looked to be going out of bounds and driving the length of the floor in just eight seconds to set up the winner. See CAREY, Sports 6 HIGH FLYIN’GOLDEN EAGLES TWIN FALLS TRIUMPH A disappointing finish for Minico By Ryan Howe Times-News writer Above: The CSI men’s basketball team celebrates its victory over Salt Lake Community College Saturday night at CSI in Twin Falls. CSI won 94-86. Below: CSI's Pierre Jackson put the ball up as a SLCC defender swats at the ball Saturday night at CSI in Twin Falls. CSI wins first region championship since 2007 By Mike Christensen Times-News writer The Golden Eagles led the Region 18 championship game the same way they led the league’s regular-season race. Wire to wire. And they did so on the backs of their guards. The College of Southern Idaho men’s basketball team claimed its first region championship since 2007, topping Salt Lake Community College 94-86 Saturday in front of a raucous crowd at CSI Gymnasium. “I think I’m more excited than anybody in this gym. This is the biggest game I’ve ever played in,” said tournament MVP Pierre Jackson, before adding, “The biggest game I’ve play in so far.” BOISE — Despite Twin Falls’ three previous losses to Minico by an average of 20.3 points, Bruins coach Matt Harr said earlier this season that he wouldn’t mind a one-game, winnertake-all opportunity against the Spartans. On Saturday, he got his wish. Twin Falls earned the Class 4A state tournament’s third-place trophy with a 40-33 victory over District IV rival Minico at Borah High School. “It feels good to end with a win, and for it to be Minico, who really beat up on us during the year, just makes it feel even better,” said Twin Falls senior T.J. Ellis, who scored eight points. When these two teams met in the District IV title game last week, the Bruins knew there was a chance they would be seeing the Spartans again. Not wanting to tip their hand, the Bruins lost by 25. But on Saturday, Twin Falls (20-8) slowed the pace, methodically ran its half-court sets and wore down Minico’s defense. “That’s kind of a gamble because sometimes when you back off then you get a little lazy, but the kids executed the game plan,” Harr said. “There’s no substitute for heart.” Twin Falls trailed by two heading into the fourth quarter. But a 9-0 run, sparked by Robert Sanchez’s 3-pointer, put the Bruins in control while Minico went on a sixminute scoring drought. Bronson Miller, who led Minico with 15 points, hit a 3-pointer with 1:06 remaining to bring Minico back to within one. But junior guard Eric Harr made the gameclinching play on the other end by driving for a score, drawing a foul and completing the three-point play. It was a deserving finish for the Bruins’ leading scorer, who admitted he didn’t have a great tournament weekend. “I figured it’s got to be in my hands. I’ve kind of struggled this whole tournament and I told myself I have to end this,” said Eric Harr, who finished with 13 points. “I just went out there and found a lane.” The third-place state finish, accompanied by the tourney’s sportsmanship award, capped an impressive 20-win season for a Twin Falls team that exceeded the expectations of many. “Everyone else’s expectations were low, but our coaches and the whole team felt that we could get to the Idaho Center,” Eric Harr said. “We knew we should See TWIN FALLS, Sports 2 See CSI MEN, Sports 6 MORE ONLINE SEE more photos from Saturday night’s game. MAGICVALLEY.COM INSIDE RYAN HOWE/Times-News North Idaho women pull away, claim Region 18 title. The Twin Falls boys basketball team celebrates its third-place finish at the Class 4A state tournament after defeating Minico 40-33 on Saturday at Borah High School in Boise. See Sports 4 SPECIALCoupon SAVINGS! Fluid Maintenance Service Buy One, Get 2nd for Transmission, Cooling System, Power Steering, and Brake Fluids or j Fuel Injection Flush Buy 3 get 1 FREE! CS4 Touring Starting Sta St tar arrtitining ng at a MILE CS4 Touring g PREMIUM PASSENGER RADIAL IAL Discoverer ATR R MILE TY* 50,000 WARRANTY* PREMIUM ALL-TERRAIN SUV AND LIGHT TRUCK TIRE • Ride Comfort • Sporty Handling • T-Rated ted Certified Technicians NOT valid with any other offer. NOT redeemable for cash or credit. NOT valid with any other offer. NOT redeemable for cash or credit. Only one per person per visit. Valid 2/11/11-3/31/11 Only one per person per visit. Valid 2/11/11-3/31/11 For a Limited Time Only y FREE Pickup & Delivery 40 Minute Tire Installation Guarantee See Store for Details Murtaugh falls in third place game By John Derr Times-news writer CALDWELL — The plan was good, the idea solid. Then Murtaugh fell behind. Using a spread offense that took huge chunks of time off the clock against a much bigger Salmon River squad, the Red Devils led early, but struggled after that as they fell 36-22 to the Savages in the third-place game Saturday morning at Caldwell High School. After an early bucket by Humberto Pacheco, the Red Devils went into the spread, looking for the back door and easy buckets. It worked. With the Savages overplaying, Pacheco converted a drive, then dished to Austin Stanger for a layup as the advantage grew to six points at the end of a quick first quarter. But the plan faltered. Salmon River turned up the defensive pressure, forcing a trio of turnovers to take the lead. Stanger responded with a pair of buckets inside while Pacheco nailed a 3-pointer late in the half. It could have been a four-point edge go- ing into the break, but the Savages nailed a 3-pointer at the buzzer and the Red Devils clung to a one-point edge at the half. “The first went well, then they hit that long 3 before the buzzer,” said Murtaugh coach Adam Johnson. It was a sign of things to come. The Savages took advantage of a pair of Murtaugh turnovers to open the third with Raymond Ream knocking down back-toback treys to put the Devils in a five-point hole heading into the final period. “That created separation and we didn’t want to play from behind,” said Johnson. The Savages hit just 2 of 11 from beyond the arc in the first half, but went 3-for-6 after the break. Salmon River took possession of the ball to open the fourth quarter. Copying the Red Devils, the Savages went to the spread and with three offensive rebounds held it for nearly four minutes. When Murtaugh finally got the ball the offense sputtered. A bucket by Stanger was the only points the Red Devils could muster Prairie clips Shoshone in 2OT for 3rd place By David Bashore either instance. They were also hampered by offensive fouls on three straight possessions in the first overtime, any one of which could have been turned into the potential winning basket. “We teach the kids to be aggressive, but you’ve got to be able to keep your head up and know when you need to pull up on a dime and shoot or pass it,” said Shoshone coach Larry Messick. “But we want the kids to be aggressive and attack the rim, so I can’t really fault them too much for doing that. You need a little luck when you’re up here at the state tournament, and we didn’t have much.” Ishmael Anguiano led the Indians with 16 points, while David Johnson had a gamehigh 17 for Prairie. CALDWELL — Shoshone’s positive response from a disappointing loss still wasn’t quite good enough. A little more than 13 hours after falling in the semifinals,the Shoshone boys basketball team played from behind virtually the entire game against Prairie in Saturday’s Class 1A Division I state tournament thirdplace game. After working hard to tie the game, the Indians didn’t have enough left in the tank to go on to win, as Prairie grinded out a 51-45 double-overtime victory to complete a District II sweep of the top three places in the division. “I was a little worried with how we’d respond after a tough loss last night, but we played well, played hard,” said Shoshone guard Garrett Sant, who scored 11 in the loss. “Can’t ask for anything more if you leave it all out there on the floor, and we did.” The Indians lost 39-30 on Friday night to Genesee, which lost to Clearwater Valley in an all-District II championship game Saturday afternoon. Prairie 51, Shoshone 45, 2 OT STEVE MERRICK/For the Times-News Shoshone's Garrett Sant drives to the hoop against Prairie in the Indians' Class 1A Division I third-place game Saturday morning. Against Prairie, Shoshone trailed most of the way until Thomas Lanham drained a 3-pointer with 16 seconds left in regulation to tie the game at 39-39. Prairie traveled on the ensuing posses- sion, setting up a chance for an improbable victory. The Indians (20-6) owned the basketball for the final possession in both regulation and the first overtime, but couldn’t get a shot off in CSI softball completes CSI baseball sweeps sweep of North Idaho Eastern Utah on the road livered, striking out the final batter to seal the win. “We were kind of cruising there, but they got those two runners on and made a real threat to win the game,” said Baumert. “It’s nice to have Jyl back there when we need to get one out to win the game. She got it done for us.” Marina Groenewegen and Kelsey Bryant each homered for CSI, while Mikkel Griffin and Groenewegen added doubles in game two. Bryant also had a triple in game one. CSI is off this week for its bye before hosting Western Nevada March 18 and 19. “It will be good for us. We’ll get some good work in here at the beginning of the week and take a couple days off next weekend to rest up before the rest of the season,” said Baumert. There was some late-inning drama,but the College of Southern Idaho softball team earned the sweep over rival North Idaho, taking four games from the Cardinals. CSI beat NIC 11-5 in game one of the double-header and squeaked out a 9-8 win in the second game. “It was a really good weekend for us,” said CSI head coach Nick Baumert. “We did some nice things and just played good ball and kept within striking distance of Salt Lake.” CSI (22-10, 16-3 SWAC) trails Salt Lake Community College, which was idle this weekend, by one game in the loss column. After an easy win in the first game, NIC gave the Golden Eagles a scare in the seventh inning of game two. Leading Game 1 9-5, CSI quickly recorded two outs and appeared headed for No. 15 CSI 11, North Idaho 5, seven innings the win, but NIC hit two CSI 2 1 6 0 0 2 0 — 11 12 0 bloopers to move into scoring NIC 0100400—563 Jyl Eclstein and Kelsie Webster. W: Eckstein. L: Rosie position. Extra base hits — 3B: CSI, Kelsey Bryant. HR: NIC, CSI walked consecutive Gonzalez, 2, Wise. batters to give NIC a run and Game 2 the next batter hit a two-run No. 15 CSI 9, North Idaho 8, single to cut the Golden Easeven innings CSI 3 0 0 3 0 3 0 9 16 4 gles’ lead to one. NIC 1301003872 CSI called on Jyl Eckstein Jessi Duncan, Kelsey Bryant (5), Jyl Ekstein and Kelsie Webster. W: Duncan. L: Meredith. from the bullpen and she de- Extra base hits — 2B: CSI, Mikkel Griffin, Marina With a four-game sweep of Eastern Utah, the College of Southern Idaho is off to a much better start than last season in Scenic West Athletic Conference play. The Golden Eagles (10-4, 4-0 SWAC) pummeled Eastern Utah twice more Saturday, 9-2 and 8-1 to begin SWAC play 40. Last season, CSI stumbled to a 1-6 record in SWAC play against heavyweights Southern Nevada and Salt Lake Community College. “We didn’t get off to the best start last year, but fortunately we were able to bounce back at the end of the season,” said CSI head coach Boomer Walker. “It’s nice that we’re off to that strong start here this year.” Tyler Vavra started game one for CSI, striking out nine in six innings, while giving up only one run. Caleb Olson finished the game in the seventh. “Tyler threw extremely well. He had his slider working great today, which really kept the hitters off-balance,” Walker said. Lefthander Paul Schaak started game two, throwing four innings, giving up one run. Three pitchers, Tyler Duffin, Edgar Burgos and Chris Kerns combined in relief to finish the game. “Paul gave us a good start. He’s a pitcher that really utilizes the changeup and Eastern Utah actually handled that pitch pretty well, but he battled,” Walker said. “Our relief pitchers did a great job today, not allowing a run. Our pitching all weekend has been outstanding. To only give up five runs in four days is a great sign.” Parker Webster had a two-run double, JC Paquin hit an RBI double in the second inning and Andrew Ash hit pinch-hit bases-loaded single to break open the scoring for CSI in the second game. The Golden Eagles travel to Southern Nevada next weekend which was swept by SLCC this weekend. Twin Falls Continued from Sports 1 have been here at state. It’s always good to play in the Idaho Center for the state championship, but third is good too.” As Twin Falls was taking the floor against Century in the tournament’s opening round, Matt Harr said he overheard someone call his vertically-challenged players “a bunch of munchkins,” to which another bystander replied: “Yeah, but they play hard.” That sums up this year’s Bruins. “We definitely came in as underdogs the whole year,” Ellis said. “We were out to prove people wrong. People didn’t realize the experience we did have in defending a state championship from last year. We really played on that, that we had something to defend.” For Twin Falls, losing in Friday night’s semifinals was disappointing. But for Minico it was devastating. The Spartans (23-3) had one of the most successful seasons in school history and won the program’s first district title in 23 seasons. They were favored entering the state tournament, but returned home empty handed. With the sting of Friday night’s semifinal defeat still lingering like a bad hangover, Minico (23-3) was held to its lowest point total of the season. But Minico coach Mike Graefe wouldn’t allow that to be an excuse. “I’m not going to go there because it takes credit away from Twin. They outplayed us today,” Graefe said. “It’s been a pleasure working with these kids. They gave everything they had every day, and just came up short last night. It’s been a great ride — not just the winning, but how they conducted themselves and the way they competed.” in the final eight minutes. “We created opportunities, but didn’t capitalize. We gave up a lot of size, the final score doesn’t indicate how close it was,” Johnson said. Salmon River iced the victory going 7 of 12 from the charity stripe in the final period. Murtaugh went to the line only once in the game. “It was going good, then we get out of rhythm and couldn’t hit the shots,” said Pacheco. Pacheco led the Red Devils with 14 points while Stanger chipped in eight to go with six rebounds. Both are juniors and look to return to the tournament next season. “We are going to work harder and hopefully next year take it farther,” said Pacheco. IDAHO HIGH SCHOOL BOYS BASKETBALL STATE TOURNAMENT Class 5A At Idaho Center, Nampa Thursday, March 3 Game 1: Coeur d’Alene 27, Eagle 20 Game 2: Centennia 61, Timberline 48 Game 3: Mountain View 60, Idaho Falls 55 Game 4: Borah 70, Post Falls 64 Friday, March 4 Game 5: Eagle 64, Timberline 60 Game 6: Post Falls 74, Idaho Falls 62 Game 7: Centennial 54, Coeur d’Alene 47 Game 8: Mountain View 65, Borah 51 Saturday, March 5 At Columbia HS, Nampa Consolation: Post Falls 50, Eagle 47 Third-place game: Coeur d’Alene 69, Borah 51 At Idaho Center Championship: Mountain View 47, Centennial 44 Class 4A At Borah HS, Boise Thursday, March 3 Game 1: Minico 57, Rigby 44 Game 2: Skyview 56, Moscow 42 Game 3: Madison 51, Bishop Kelly 49 OT Game 4: Twin Falls 42, Century 31 Friday, March 4 Game 5: Rigby 58, Moscow 53 Game 6: Bishop Kelly 50, Century 37 Game 7: Skyview 49 , Minico 47 Game 8: Madison 45, Twin Falls 34 Saturday, March 5 Consolation: Bishop Kelly 52, Moscow 49 Third-place game: Twin Falls 40, Minico 33 At Idaho Center Championship: Madison 53, Skyview 51 Class 3A At Meridian HS Thursday, March 3 Game 1: Snake River 55, Kimberly 52 Game 2: Fruitland 72, Priest River 61 Game 3: St. Maries 50, Sugar-Salem 44 Game 4: Weiser 47, Marsh Valley 36 Friday, March 4 Game 5: Priest River 78, Kimberly 57 Game 6: Sugar Salem, Marsh Valley 43 Game 7: Fruitland 72, Snake River 57 Game 8: Weiser 56, St. Maries 43 Saturday, March 5 Consolation: Priest River 55, Sugar Salem 48 Third-place game: Snake River 67, St. Maries 58 At Idaho Center Championship: Fruitland 64 vs. Weiser 52 Class 2A At Capital HS, Boise Thursday, March 3 Game 1: Soda Springs 62, McCall-Donnelly 55 Game 2: Melba 56, Valley 39 Game 3: West Side 42, Kamiah 36 Game 4: New Plymouth 66, Firth 54, 8 p.m. Friday, March 4 Game 5: McCall-Donnelly 64, Valley 54 Game 6: Firth 50, Kamiah 44 Game 7: Melba 46, Soda Springs 34 Game 8: New Plymouth 52, West Side 42 Saturday, March 5 Consolation: Firth 42, McCall Donnelly 41 Third-place game: West Side 67, Melba 59 At Idaho Center Championship: Melba 31,New Plymouth 30 Class 1A Division I At Vallivue HS, Caldwell Thursday, March 3 Game 1: Prairie 43, Grace 42 Game 2: Clearwater Valley 47, Cascade 35 Game 3: Shoshone 37, Wilder 20 Game 4: Genesee 43, Notus 27 Friday, March 4 Game 5: Grace 38, Cascade 31 Game 6: Notus 34, Wilder 25 Game 7: Clearwater Valley 37, Prairie 35 Game 8: Genesee 39, Shoshone 30 Saturday, March 5 Consolation: Grace 61, Notus 56 Third-place game: Prairie 51, Shoshone 45, 2OT At Idaho Center Championship: Clearwater Valley 49, Genesee 46 Class 1A Division II At Caldwell HS Thursday, March 3 Game 1: Nezperce 41, Castleford 33 Game 2: Salmon River 56, Rockland 55 Game 3: Carey 59, Meadows Valley 36 Game 4: Murtaugh 50, Kootenai 48 Friday, March 4 Game 5: Rockland 67, Castleford 59 Game 6: Meadows Valley 64, Kootenai 63 Game 7: Nezperce 45, Salmon River 38 Game 8: Carey 54, Murtaugh 34 Saturday, March 5 Consolation: Rockland 56, Meadows Valley 39 Third-place game: Salmon River 36, Murtaugh 22 At Idaho Center Championship: Carey 47, Nezperce 46 Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho Sunday, March 6, 2011 Sports 3 SCOREBOARD BASEBALL MLB Spring Training All Times EST AMERICAN LEAGUE Team W L Pct Baltimore 4 1 .800 Kansas City 5 2 .714 Minnesota 5 2 .714 Texas 5 3 .625 Detroit 6 4 .600 Cleveland 4 4 .500 Los Angeles 4 4 .500 Seattle 3 3 .500 Boston 3 4 .429 Oakland 3 4 .429 Toronto 3 5 .375 New York 2 5 .286 Chicago 1 5 .167 Tampa Bay 1 6 .143 NATIONAL LEAGUE Team W L Pct Atlanta 6 2 .750 Milwaukee 5 2 .714 St. Louis 5 2 .714 San Francisco 7 3 .700 Washington 4 2 .667 Cincinnati 5 3 .625 Colorado 4 3 .571 Pittsburgh 5 4 .556 Philadelphia 4 4 .500 San Diego 3 3 .500 New York 3 4 .429 Florida 2 4 .333 Los Angeles 3 6 .333 Arizona 3 7 .300 Chicago 2 5 .286 Houston 2 6 .250 NOTE: Split-squad games count in the standings; games against non-major league teams do not. Friday’s Games Minnesota 5, Tampa Bay 4 St. Louis 10, Houston 2 Atlanta (ss) 6, Washington 4 N.Y. Mets 4, Florida 3 Toronto 7, Atlanta (ss) 5 Baltimore 6, Detroit 2 Philadelphia 7, Pittsburgh 4 Cleveland 6, Colorado 2 L.A. Angels 3, Chicago White Sox 1 San Francisco (ss) 7, Milwaukee 2 Cincinnati 3, Seattle 1 Texas 6, Oakland 3 Kansas City 5, Chicago Cubs 4 San Diego 3, Arizona 2 Boston 5, N.Y. Yankees 3 San Francisco (ss) 5, L.A. Dodgers 3 Saturday’s Games Pittsburgh 4, Philadelphia 3 Minnesota 6, Tampa Bay 1 Detroit (ss) 5, Houston (ss) 0 Baltimore 4, Boston (ss) 4, tie, 10 innings Washington 10, N.Y. Yankees 8 St. Louis 1, Houston (ss) 0 Florida 11, Boston (ss) 2 Atlanta 6, N.Y. Mets 4 Toronto 7, Detroit (ss) 4 Milwaukee 2, L.A. Angels 1 Chicago Cubs 9, San Diego 4 Oakland 6, San Francisco 0 Colorado 10, Kansas City 9 Cleveland (ss) 8, Chicago White Sox 3 Seattle 7, Cleveland (ss) 2 L.A. Dodgers 2, Cincinnati 0 Arizona 3, Texas 2 Sunday’s Games Philadelphia (ss) vs. Detroit at Lakeland, Fla., 1:05 p.m. Baltimore vs. Minnesota at Fort Myers, Fla., 1:05 p.m. St. Louis vs. Florida at Jupiter, Fla., 1:05 p.m. Tampa Bay vs. Philadelphia (ss) at Clearwater, Fla., 1:05 p.m. Atlanta vs. Washington at Viera, Fla., 1:05 p.m. N.Y. Yankees vs. Houston at Kissimmee, Fla., 1:05 p.m. Toronto vs. Pittsburgh at Bradenton, Fla., 1:05 p.m. Boston vs. N.Y. Mets at Port St. Lucie, Fla., 1:10 p.m. Arizona vs. L.A. Angels at Tempe, Ariz., 3:05 p.m. Seattle vs. San Francisco at Scottsdale, Ariz., 3:05 p.m. Oakland (ss) vs. San Diego at Peoria, Ariz., 3:05 p.m. Chicago Cubs (ss) vs. Cincinnati at Goodyear, Ariz., 3:05 p.m. L.A. Dodgers vs. Chicago Cubs (ss) at Mesa, Ariz., 3:05 p.m. Milwaukee (ss) vs. Texas at Surprise, Ariz., 3:05 p.m. Milwaukee (ss) vs. Oakland (ss) at Phoenix, 3:05 p.m. Kansas City vs. Chicago White Sox at Glendale, Ariz., 3:05 p.m. Cleveland vs. Colorado at Scottsdale, Ariz., 3:10 p.m. Monday’s Games Atlanta vs. Florida at Jupiter, Fla., 1:05 p.m. Philadelphia vs. N.Y. Yankees (ss) at Tampa, Fla., 1:05 p.m. Baltimore (ss) vs. Boston at Fort Myers, Fla., 1:05 p.m. Tampa Bay vs. Pittsburgh at Bradenton, Fla., 1:05 p.m. St. Louis vs. Minnesota at Fort Myers, Fla., 1:05 p.m. Houston vs. Washington at Viera, Fla., 1:05 p.m. Detroit vs. N.Y. Mets at Port St. Lucie, Fla., 1:10 p.m. L.A. Angels vs. Chicago Cubs at Mesa, Ariz., 3:05 p.m. Cleveland vs. Chicago White Sox at Glendale, Ariz., 3:05 p.m. Milwaukee vs. Cincinnati at Goodyear, Ariz., 3:05 p.m. Arizona vs. Kansas City (ss) at Surprise, Ariz., 3:05 p.m. Seattle vs. Oakland at Phoenix, 3:05 p.m. L.A. Dodgers vs. Colorado at Scottsdale, Ariz., 3:10 p.m. N.Y. Yankees (ss) vs. Baltimore (ss) at Sarasota, Fla., 7:05 p.m. Texas vs. San Francisco at Scottsdale, Ariz., 9:05 p.m. Kansas City (ss) vs. San Diego at Peoria, Ariz., 9:05 p.m. All Times EST EASTERN CONFERENCE ATLANTIC W L Pct Boston 45 15 .750 New York 31 29 .517 Philadelphia 31 30 .508 New Jersey 19 43 .306 Toronto 17 46 .270 SOUTHEAST W L Pct Miami 43 19 .694 Orlando 40 23 .635 Atlanta 37 25 .597 Charlotte 26 35 .426 Washington 16 45 .262 CENTRAL W L Pct Chicago 42 18 .700 Indiana 27 35 .435 Milwaukee 23 37 .383 Detroit 22 41 .349 Cleveland 12 49 .197 WESTERN CONFERENCE SOUTHWEST W L Pct Friday’s Games New Jersey 116, Toronto 103 Chicago 89, Orlando 81 Philadelphia 111, Minnesota 100 Oklahoma City 111, Atlanta 104 Boston 107, Golden State 103 Cleveland 119, New York 115 New Orleans 98, Memphis 91 Dallas 116, Indiana 108 Phoenix 102, Milwaukee 88 San Antonio 125, Miami 95 L.A. Lakers 92, Charlotte 84 Saturday’s Games New Jersey 137, Toronto 136,3OT Washington 103, Minnesota 96 Houston 112, Indiana 95 Utah 109, Sacramento 102, OT Charlotte at Portland, 10 p.m. Denver at L.A. Clippers, 10:30 p.m. Sunday’s Games Chicago at Miami, 1 p.m. L.A. Lakers at San Antonio, 3:30 p.m. Washington at Detroit, 6 p.m. Golden State at Philadelphia, 6 p.m. New York at Atlanta, 6:30 p.m. New Orleans at Cleveland, 6:30 p.m. Phoenix at Oklahoma City, 7 p.m. Memphis at Dallas, 7:30 p.m. Boston at Milwaukee, 9 p.m. Friday’s Late NBA Box LAKERS 92, BOBCATS 84 CHARLOTTE (84) GAME PLAN TV SCHEDULE AUTO RACING 1 p.m. FOX — NASCAR, Sprint Cup, Kobalt Tools 400, at Las Vegas BOWLING 11 a.m. ESPN — PBA, Mark Roth Plastic Ball Championship, at Cheektowaga, N.Y. CYCLING 2 p.m. VERSUS — Paris-Nice, stage 1, at Houdan, France (same-day tape) GOLF 11 a.m. TGC — PGA Tour, The Honda Classic, final round, at Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. 1 p.m. NBC — PGA Tour, The Honda Classic, final round, at Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL 1 p.m. WGN — Preseason, Chicago Cubs vs. L.A. Dodgers, at Mesa, Ariz. MEN’S COLLEGE BASKETBALL 10 a.m. CBS — Kentucky at Tennessee Noon CBS — Missouri Valley Conference, championship game, teams TBD, at St. Louis 2 p.m. CBS — Teams TBA Far West Arizona 90, Oregon 82 Arizona St. 80, Oregon St. 66 BYU 102, Wyoming 78 Boise St. 66, San Jose St. 51 Cal St.-Fullerton 87, UC Davis 82 California 74, Stanford 55 Colorado 67, Nebraska 57 Idaho 78, Seattle 69 New Mexico 66, Air Force 61 New Mexico St. 77, Nevada 68 San Diego St. 66, Colorado St. 48 UC Riverside 75, UC Irvine 66 UCLA 58, Washington St. 54, OT UNLV 78, Utah 58 Midwest Ball St. 67, N. Illinois 57 Bowling Green 73, Buffalo 63 Cincinnati 69, Georgetown 47 E. Michigan 69, Toledo 50 Illinois 72, Indiana 48 Iowa 67, Purdue 65 Kansas 70, Missouri 66 Kansas St. 67, Iowa St. 55 Michigan 70, Michigan St. 63 W. Michigan 81, Cent. Michigan 68 Xavier 66, Saint Louis 55 Southwest North Dakota 72, Texas-Pan American 61 Oklahoma 64, Oklahoma St. 61 Prairie View 72, Southern U. 57 Rice 72, Houston 57 Sam Houston St. 68, Texas St. 52 South Dakota 96, Houston Baptist 87 Texas 60, Baylor 54 Texas A&M 66, Texas Tech 54 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 76, Cent. Arkansas 69 Texas Southern 79, Alcorn St. 68 Tulsa 78, Southern Miss. 70 UTEP 59, SMU 56 UTSA 68, Texas-Arlington 63 South Alabama 65, Georgia 57 Auburn 60, LSU 51 Clemson 69, Virginia Tech 60 Florida 86, Vanderbilt 76 Grambling St. 74, Alabama St. 73 Jackson St. 72, Alabama A&M 64 Marshall 83, UCF 69 McNeese St. 92, Lamar 74 Memphis 66, Tulane 61 Mississippi 84, Arkansas 74 Mississippi St. 60, South Carolina 58 North Carolina 81, Duke 67 Northwestern St. 70, Stephen F.Austin 65 Richmond 68, Duquesne 56 SE Louisiana 50, Nicholls St. 43 Saint Joseph’s 71, Charlotte 70 UAB 66, East Carolina 48 Utah St. 72, Louisiana Tech 30 Virginia 74, Maryland 60 East Columbia 91, Brown 74 Cornell 68, Yale 55 Fordham 77, Massachusetts 73 George Washington 60, Dayton 58 Harvard 79, Princeton 67 4 p.m. FSN — Florida St. at N.C. State 6 p.m. ESPN2 — West Coast Conference, semifinal, teams TBD, at Las Vegas 8 p.m. ESPN2 — West Coast Conference, semifinal, teams TBD, at Las Vegas NBA BASKETBALL 11 a.m. ABC — Chicago at Miami 1:30 p.m. ABC — L.A. Lakers at San Antonio 4:30 p.m. ESPN — New York at Atlanta 7 p.m. ESPN — Boston at Milwaukee NHL HOCKEY 10:30 a.m. NBC — Philadelphia at N.Y. Rangers RODEO 6 p.m. VERSUS — PBR, Chicago Invitational (same-day tape) WOMEN’S COLLEGE BASKETBALL 11 a.m. FSN — Atlantic Coast Conference, championship game, teams TBD, at Greensboro, N.C. 1:30 p.m. ESPN2 — Big Ten Conference, championship game, teams TBD, at Indianapolis FSN — Washington at Southern Cal 3:30 p.m. ESPN2 — Southeastern Conference, championship game, teams TBD, at Nashville, Tenn. N.J. Tech 78, Chicago St. 46 Notre Dame 70, Connecticut 67 Penn 70, Dartmouth 58 Pittsburgh 60, Villanova 50 Providence 75, Rutgers 74 Seton Hall 85, Marquette 72 St. Bonaventure 74, Rhode Island 68 St. John’s 72, South Florida 56 Syracuse 107, DePaul 59 Temple 90, La Salle 82 West Virginia 72, Louisville 70 Tournament America East Conference Quarterfinals Boston U. 69, New Hampshire 60 Hartford 66, Maine 63 Stony Brook 67, Albany, N.Y. 61 Vermont 57, Binghamton 46 Atlantic Sun Conference Championship Belmont 87, North Florida 46 Big Sky Conference First Round N. Arizona 65, Montana St. 62 Weber St. 79, E. Washington 70 Big South Conference Championship UNC Asheville 60, Coastal Carolina 47 Colonial Athletic Association Quarterfinals George Mason 68, Georgia St. 45 Hofstra 72, William & Mary 56 Old Dominion 59, Delaware 50 Va. Commonwealth 62, Drexel 60 Horizon League Semifinals Butler 76, Cleveland St. 68 Wis.-Milwaukee 70, Valparaiso 63 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Quarterfinals Fairfield 55, Marist 31 Iona 94, Siena 64 St. Peter’s 70, Loyola, Md. 60 Missouri Valley Conference Semifinals Indiana St. 61, Wichita St. 54 Missouri St. 60, Creighton 50 Ohio Valley Conference Championship Morehead St. 80, Tennessee Tech 73 Southern Conference Quarterfinals Coll. of Charleston 78, Elon 60 Furman 61, Chattanooga 52 W. Carolina 77, UNC Greensboro 66 Wofford 69, Appalachian St. 56 Summit League First Round Oakland, Mich. 82, S. Utah 66 Oral Roberts 72, N. Dakota St. 65 Sun Belt Conference First Round Fla. International 53, Denver 49 North Texas 83, Troy 69 W. Kentucky 66, Louisiana-Monroe 50 Women’s College Scores Far West Arizona 88, Oregon 65 Arizona St. 59, Oregon St. 54 BYU 69, Wyoming 53 Baylor 81, Colorado 59 Colorado St. 66, San Diego St. 51 Fresno St. 73, Nevada 50 Idaho St. 69, N. Colorado 61 Montana 66, E. Washington 60 New Mexico 73, Air Force 70, OT New Mexico St. 82, Boise St. 51 Pacific 63, CS Northridge 49 Portland St. 65, Montana St. 63 Sacramento St. 69, Weber St. 54 UC Davis 73, Cal St.-Fullerton 58 UC Riverside 66, UC Irvine 62 UC Santa Barbara 78, Cal Poly 64 UCLA 66, Washington St. 48 UNLV 51, Utah 47 Midwest Bradley 77, Indiana St. 69 Butler 58, Valparaiso 47 Cleveland St. 79, Ill.-Chicago 68 Drake 65, Creighton 54 Kansas St. 56, Kansas 51 Missouri 49, Iowa St. 48 Missouri St. 70, S. Illinois 58 N. Iowa 72, Illinois St. 54 Wichita St. 65, Evansville 50 Wis.-Green Bay 68, Detroit 48 Wright St. 86, Wis.-Milwaukee 69 Youngstown St. 84, Loyola of Chicago 65 Southwest Alcorn St. 65, Texas Southern 56 Cent. Arkansas 85, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 66 Houston 90, Tulane 84, OT Oklahoma St. 68, Texas 67 Prairie View 61, Southern U. 51 Sam Houston St. 93, Texas St. 79 Stephen F.Austin 71, Northwestern St. 62 Texas A&M 84, Nebraska 49 Texas Tech 61, Oklahoma 56 Texas-Pan American 69, North Dakota 62 UTSA 77, Texas-Arlington 53 South Alabama A&M 52, Jackson St. 42 Florida Gulf Coast 92, Longwood 44 Grambling St. 64, Alabama St. 58 Louisiana Tech 65, Idaho 55 McNeese St. 70, Lamar 69 Md.-Eastern Shore 63, Bethune-Cookman 54 SE Louisiana 77, Nicholls St. 66 East Columbia 91, Brown 74 Cornell 68, Yale 55 Fordham 77, Massachusetts 73 George Washington 60, Dayton 58 Harvard 79, Princeton 67 N.J. Tech 78, Chicago St. 46 Notre Dame 70, Connecticut 67 Penn 70, Dartmouth 58 Pittsburgh 60, Villanova 50 Providence 75, Rutgers 74 Seton Hall 85, Marquette 72 St. Bonaventure 74, Rhode Island 68 St. John’s 72, South Florida 56 Syracuse 107, DePaul 59 Temple 90, La Salle 82 West Virginia 72, Louisville 70 Tournament Atlantic 10 Conference Quarterfinals Charlotte 68, Richmond 63 Dayton 74, Duquesne 66 Temple 75, St. Bonaventure 56 Xavier 71, Saint Joseph’s 55 Atlantic Coast Conference Semifinals Duke 74, Georgia Tech 66 North Carolina 83, Miami 57 Atlantic Sun Conference Championship Stetson 69, Jacksonville 50 Big East Conference Second Round Georgetown 61, Syracuse 60 Louisville 69, Villanova 47 Marquette 65, Pittsburgh 61 St. John’s 59, West Virginia 51 Big Ten Conference Semifinals Ohio St. 72, Michigan St. 57 Penn St. 79, Illinois 64 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Luke Donald Sean O’hair Nathan Green Josh Broadaway Chad Campbell Graeme Mcdowell Chris Kirk Jason Dufner Justin Hicks Lee Westwood Robert Allenby Richard S. Johnson J.J. Henry Cameron Tringale John Senden Chris Couch Ben Curtis Alex Cejka Brian Gay Kenny Perry Carl Pettersson Greg Chalmers William Mcgirt Shaun Micheel Paul Goydos Nick Price Blake Adams Chad Collins Edoardo Molinari Vaughn Taylor Ian Poulter Kevin Streelman David Mathis Stephen Ames Alex Prugh Chris Stroud Louis Oosthuizen Henrik Stenson Andres Romero Jeff Maggert Brendan Steele Rory Mcilroy Marc Turnesa D.A. Points J.P. Hayes David Duval Trevor Immelman Jhonattan Vegas Ernie Els Steve Flesch Josh Teater All Times MST EASTERN Atlantic GP W L OT Pts GF GA Philadelphia 64 40 18 6 86 208 167 Pittsburgh 67 38 21 8 84 193 166 N.Y. Rangers 67 34 29 4 72 186 164 New Jersey 64 29 31 4 62 136 166 N.Y. Islanders 66 25 32 9 59 182 210 NORTHEAST GP W L OT Pts GF GA Boston 65 38 19 8 84 199 152 Montreal 66 36 23 7 79 176 167 Buffalo 64 31 25 8 70 186 185 Toronto 66 29 28 9 67 173 202 Ottawa 65 22 34 9 53 147 206 SOUTHEAST GP W L OT Pts GF GA Tampa Bay 65 37 21 7 81 195 198 Washington 65 35 20 10 80 173 164 Carolina 66 31 26 9 71 191 201 Atlanta 66 27 28 11 65 184 214 Florida 65 26 31 8 60 163 181 WESTERN CENTRAL GP W L OT Pts GF GA Detroit 66 39 19 8 86 219 193 Chicago 66 37 23 6 80 218 182 Nashville 65 33 23 9 75 165 153 Columbus 64 31 26 7 69 176 191 St. Louis 65 28 28 9 65 177 194 NORTHWEST GP W L OT Pts GF GA Vancouver 66 41 16 9 91 213 155 Calgary 67 34 24 9 77 204 191 Minnesota 65 34 25 6 74 169 171 Colorado 64 26 30 8 60 184 219 Edmonton 65 22 35 8 52 164 214 PACIFIC GP W L OT Pts GF GA San Jose 65 38 21 6 82 183 164 Phoenix 67 34 23 10 78 191 194 Los Angeles 65 36 25 4 76 180 159 Dallas 64 34 23 7 75 177 181 Anaheim 65 35 25 5 75 182 190 NOTE: Two points for a win, one point for overtime loss. Friday’s Games New Jersey 2, Pittsburgh 1, OT N.Y. Rangers 4, Ottawa 1 Chicago 5, Carolina 2 Calgary 4, Columbus 3 Anaheim 4, Dallas 3, OT Saturday’s Games Phoenix 5, Detroit 4, SO N.Y. Islanders 5, St. Louis 2 Buffalo 5, Philadelphia 3 Vancouver 3, Los Angeles 1 Pittsburgh 3, Boston 2, OT Chicago 5, Toronto 3 Atlanta 4, Florida 3, OT Montreal 4, Tampa Bay 2 Edmonton at Colorado, late Dallas at San Jose, late Sunday’s Games Philadelphia at N.Y. Rangers, 10:30 a.m. New Jersey at N.Y. Islanders, 1 p.m. Washington at Florida, 3 p.m. Buffalo at Minnesota, 4 p.m. Nashville at Calgary, 6 p.m. Vancouver at Anaheim, 6 p.m. Semifinals Loyola, Md. 50, Manhattan 47 Marist 60, Siena 45 Mid-American Conference First Round Akron 76, W. Michigan 65 Buffalo 82, Ball St. 73 E. Michigan 82, Miami (Ohio) 74 Northeast Conference First Round Cent. Connecticut St. 54, Sacred Heart 49 Monmouth, N.J. 55, Quinnipiac 36 Robert Morris 78, Long Island U. 72 St. Francis, Pa. 72, Fairleigh Dickinson 59 Ohio Valley Conference Championship Tenn.-Martin 82, Tennessee Tech 76 Patriot League First Round American U. 72, Holy Cross 44 Bucknell 54, Army 40 Lehigh 82, Lafayette 58 Navy 55, Colgate 36 Southeastern Conference Semifinals Kentucky 68, Vanderbilt 56 Tennessee 82, Georgia 58 Southern Conference Quarterfinals Chattanooga 68, Wofford 58 Elon 69, Furman 62 Summit League First Round IPFW 68, UMKC 53 Oral Roberts 108, W. Illinois 79 Sun Belt Conference First Round Arkansas St. 66, Florida Atlantic 52 Louisiana-Monroe 60, Troy 51 South Alabama 58, Louisiana-Lafayette 53 W. Kentucky 81, North Texas 66 West Coast Conference Second Round Portland 75, Santa Clara 64 San Diego 77, Pepperdine 68 G OLF PGA Honda Classic Saturday At PGA National (Champions Course) Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. Purse: $5.7 Million Yardage: 7,158 - Par: 70 Third Round Rory Sabbatini 71-64-66—201 Y.E. Yang 68-71-67—206 Jerry Kelly 71-67-68—206 Gary Woodland 71-68-68—207 Kyle Stanley 68-66-74—208 Charles Howell Iii 71-71-67—209 Matt Bettencourt 70-70-69—209 Tommy Gainey 71-67-71—209 Ricky Barnes 70-68-71—209 Jeff Overton 69-72-69—210 Stuart Appleby 68-70-72—210 Roland Thatcher 70-73-68—211 Justin Leonard 70-71-70—211 Matt Kuchar 69-70-72—211 Charl Schwartzel 68-69-74—211 Kent Jones 72-71-69—212 Hiroyuki Fujita 72-71-69—212 Scott Gutschewski 73-70-69—212 Davis Love Iii 73-70-69—212 Hunter Haas 70-71-71—212 Webb Simpson 74-67-71—212 Spencer Levin 67-72-73—212 Marc Leishman 72-72-69—213 Colt Knost 74-69-70—213 Fredrik Jacobson 74-68-71—213 Jimmy Walker 74-67-72—213 BASKETBALL National Basketball Association NBA — Suspended Orlando C Dwight Howard one game for receiving his 16th technical foul of the season during Friday’s game against Chicago. Fined Miami C Erick Dampier $10,000 for flagrant foul (penalty two) against San Antonio G Tony Parker during Friday’s game. MEMPHIS GRIZZLIES — Signed F Leon Powe. HOCKEY National Hockey League ANAHEIM DUCKS — Assigned G Ray Emery to Syracuse (AHL). Recalled G J.P. Levasseur from Syracuse. ATLANTA THRASHERS — Reassigned G Chris Carrozzi from Chicago (AHL) to Gwinnett (ECHL). BUFFALO SABRES—Recalled F Mark Mancari from Portland (AHL). OTTAWA SENATORS — Reassigned F Colin Greening to Binghamton (AHL). American Hockey League PEORIA RIVERMEN — Signed F Chris Langkow. ROCKFORD ICEHOGS — Returned F Andrew Sarauer to Reading (ECHL). TORONTO MARLIES — Recalled F Matt Caruana from Reading (ECHL). Dwight Howard suspended 1 game for 16th technical NEW YORK — Orlando Magic center Dwight Howard has been suspended for one game without pay for picking up his 16th technical foul of the season. He will serve the suspension Monday when the Magic are home against Portland. The penalty was announced Saturday by NBA executive Stu Jackson. Howard leads the NBA in technicals this season. His latest one came with 1:41 left in the first half Friday night against Chicago. With the Bulls up 4329, Howard came down with an offensive rebound and was hit on the top of his head by Kyle Korver. Korver was whistled for a foul but took a swipe at the ball moments after the play. That prompted Howard to swing his elbows. The referee separated the players and also called a technical on Howard. in Texas. This time, it wasn’t even close. Phelps led Lochte by more than eight-tenths of a second at the midway point, extended the margin to nearly 1½ seconds at the third turn and wound up beating the fatigued Lochte by more than two full seconds. Phelps’ time of 1 minute, 56.88 seconds also supplanted Lochte for the No. 1 time in the world this season. Lochte finished in 1:59.19, his best time of the year, but lost both of his finals matchups against Phelps in Indy. “He’s back, there’s no doubt about it,” Lochte said. “I don’t think he’s ever not there, no matter what he says. I feel like he can step up and race any time.” Phelps cleans up with 2 more gold medals in Indy Vonn clinches 4th consecutive downhill title INDIANAPOLIS — Michael Phelps is back and he’s starting to get that unbeatable appearance, too. The 14-time Olympic gold medalist beat Ryan Lochte again Saturday night, produced world-best times in two more events and left the Indianapolis Grand Prix with five gold medals — one for each event he entered. Not bad for a guy who has competed twice this season and insists he’s still not 100 percent. “In my eyes, it just feels good to be able to race and race at a good speed,” Phelps said. “After the weekend at Austin, I felt like I didn’t get one thing out of it other than feeling slow and out of shape. Being able to slingshot into this meet just shows how fast things can change.” Lochte, the world’s most dominant swimmer in 2010, got a firsthand glimpse at Phelps’ resurgence. The feature attraction in the three-day meet had Phelps, the two-time defending Olympic gold medalist in the 200-meter individual medley, pitted against Lochte, the world record-holder in the event. Two months ago, Lochte beat Phelps in the event TARVISIO, Italy — Here’s a measure of Lindsey Vonn’s strength in the downhill: She no longer bothers to celebrate the season-long championship. She won the downhill crown for the fourth consecutive year Saturday by finishing second to Sweden’s Anja Paerson. A day earlier, Vonn clinched her second straight super-combined title. She now has 11 World Cup championships for her career, with another possibly on the way in Sunday’s super-G. This latest title hardly prompted a ski-dancing display in the snow as was the case Saturday. Instead, Vonn appeared upset when she crossed the line a distant 0.73 seconds behind. Still, she wasn’t about to take this milestone for granted, especially in a season in which she left the world championships because of the lingering effects of a concussion. “You can never expect any titles,” she said. “Nothing is given to you and you have to fight for every point and every place, and this year I wasn’t able to win as many times as last year, so it definitely wasn’t easy. Maria gave me a run for my money a meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday March 8 in room B-10 at the high school. HEYBURN — The Mini-Cassia Hockey Association is holding registration for inline hockey through Find more area events by searching for ‘sports’ on the Saturday. The league is for boys and girls ages 5-18. event calendar at Magicvalley.com The cost is $25 per player with a $10 late fee after Saturday). But the league is free for those in their and I had to keep fighting hard the whole season.” Elisabeth Goergl, who won gold in the super-G first year of participation. Information: Steve and downhill at last month’s world championships, Roberts at 431-0899. finished 1.17 back in third. Tina Maze, Friday’s supercombined winner, was fourth on a sunny, cool day and on a shortened course because of curtailed JEROME — Jerome Recreation District will hold signtraining on the upper section. ups for adult softball March 7-20 for returning teams Vonn’s runner-up finish gave her an insurmountand March 21 to April 15 for new teams.The cost is $225 able 143-point lead in the downhill standings over per team, plus $25 per player ($30 for those outside German rival Maria Riesch, who finished sixth but the district) and all fees are due at time of registration. remains the overall leader. The season will run for 12 weeks,beginning May 12,with Vonn and Riesch have both won three downhills games played on Thursday nights. Upper and lower this season, with Paerson the only other woman to divisions are offered. A preseason meeting will be held win in the discipline. Last season, Vonn won six of at 6 p.m.April 1 in the JRD conference room. eight downhills. Still, only Austrians Annemarie Moser-Proell (seven) and Renate Goetschl (five) have won more downhill titles. “It’s an incredible achievement,” U.S. coach Alex RUPERT — Rupert Recreation District is holding Hoedlmoser said. “To be consistent is what those registration for coed spring soccer through titles show — always being on the top in downhill for Wednesday. Flyers are at city halls in Heyburn, Paul four years now. It’s very, very impressive and she can and Rupert and at Donnelleys Sports.The cost is $16 be really proud about that.” and games begin in April. Information: Rupert Recreation 434-2400 or city of Rupert website. JRD holds adult softball sign-ups Rupert, Heyburn, Paul offer soccer Kimberly boosters hold meeting USTA-Idaho forming teams KIMBERLY — The Kimberly Booster Club will hold its monthly meeting at 6 p.m. Monday in the media center at Kimberly High School. Anyone interested in getting involved is encouraged to attend. The club will hold its Winter Sports Awards Program at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 8 at the high school. Bruin boosters to meet The Twin Falls High School Booster Club will hold The USTA-Idaho has several tennis teams forming for players of all skill levels. Ages 18 and older may participate in spring mixed doubles, adult singles play, twilight or fall mixed doubles. Super senior (ages 60 and older) and senior (ages 50 and older) leagues are also offered. Information: Ann Vogt at 731-4786 or [email protected] — Staff and wire reports Sports 4 Sunday, March 6, 2011 Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho North Idaho women pull away,claim Region 18 title By Mike Christensen Times-News writer Down one with a few minutes to play, North Idaho’s plan was simple. Get the ball inside to 6-foot-2 post ShaKiana Edwards-Teasley. “We told her to turn and shoot,” said NIC head coach Chris Carlson. Edwards-Teasley did just that on two straight possessions, igniting a 12-1 run over the final 2:58 of the game as the Cardinals claimed their third straight Region 18 women’s basketball tournament championship with a 69-59 win over top-seeded Salt Lake Community College Saturday night in Twin Falls. This is the second straight season NIC has upset SLCC for the title. “Great kids and great players. That’s a big part of it,” Carlson said of the secret to his team’s recent Region 18 dominance. Tournament MVP Kama Griffitts scored 18 to lead NIC. Boise State defeats San Jose State 66-51 BOISE — La’Shard Anderson scored 18 points as Boise State won its seventh straight game with a 66-51 victory over San Jose State on Saturday night. Paul Noonan scored 12 points on four 3-point baskets, and Westly Perryman added 11 points for the Broncos (19-11, 10-6 Western Athletic). WAC scoring leader Adrian Oliver had 30 points for San Jose State (15-14, 511), which had a season-low point total and shooting percentage (29.1). The winning streak is Boise State’s longest since the 2003-04 squad won seven in a row. After the Spartans got within 52-45 with under six minutes to play, Anderson made one of Boise State’s 11 3-pointers. San Jose State got no closer than nine points afterward. Will Carter added 11 points for the Spartans. IDAHO 78, SEATTLE 69 MOSCOW, Idaho — Deremy Geiger scored 15 points to lead Idaho over Seattle 78-69 Saturday night, wrapping up the regular season for the Vandals. Shawn Henderson scored 13 and Stephen Madison added 12 for Idaho (18-12, 9-7 Western Athletic). Down three at halftime and by as much as 12, Idaho scored 41 second-half points to run away from Seattle (11-19). Sterling Carter led all scorers with 18 and Alex Jones pitched in 15. Idaho shared the basketball, dishing out 23 assists. The defense also recorded nine steals. Center, Kyle Barone pulled down a team-high 10 boards and added eight points for the Vandals. — The Associated Press Jefferson,Bell lift Jazz over Kings 109-102 in OT SALT LAKE CITY — Al Jefferson scored 27 points and Raja Bell had two crucial jumpers and a steal in overtime to help the Utah Jazz hold off the Sacramento Kings 109-102 Saturday night to stop their home losing streak at seven games. After the Jazz lost Paul Millsap to injury, Jefferson scored six points in overtime and Utah outscored the Kings 10-2 after Francisco Garcia started overtime with a 3-pointer. Bell, who scored 16 points, made the second of back-to-back jumpers with 17 seconds remaining to put the Jazz up 105-100. DeMarcus Cousins had 18 points and 18 rebounds and Garcia returned from 21 games on the sidelines to add 18, but the Kings lost for the fourth time in their last five. ROCKETS 112, PACERS 95. HOUSTON — Kevin Martin scored 20 points, Chase Budinger and Kyle Lowry added 18 apiece and the Houston Rockets beat the Indiana Pacers 112-95 Saturday night. Luis Scola scored 16 and Chuck Hayes had 10 rebounds for the Rockets, who’ve won six of seven and are climbing into the Western Conference playoff picture. Houston began the night in 11th place in the West, three games behind Memphis in the race for the No. 8 spot in the postseason. WIZARDS 103, TIMBERWOLVES 96. WASHINGTON — John Wall scored 18 points and had 11 rebounds to lead the Washington Wizards to a 103-96 win against the Minnesota Timberwolves Saturday night. Kevin Love scored 20 points and had 21 rebounds for Minnesota, the third straight game with at least 20 points and 20 rebounds for the All-Star forward and his 11th of the season. NETS 137, RAPTORS 136, 3OT. LONDON — Travis Outlaw scored the final eight points for New Jersey to help the Nets beat the Toronto Raptors 137-136 in triple overtime Saturday night and sweep the NBA’s European doubleheader. Outlaw made two free throws with 12.6 seconds remaining to put the Nets ahead for good and Andrea Bargnani missed a jumper at the buzzer. Brook Lopez had 34 points and 14 rebounds for the Nets but fouled out in the second overtime. Deron Williams added 21 points and 18 assists for his fifth straight double-double since joining the team from Utah last week. — The Associated Press Utah Jazz forward Andrei Kirilenko (47) comes away with a rebound against Sacrament o Kings guard Beno Udrih (19) during the first half of their NBA basketball game in Salt Lake City. AP photo “It’s amazing. It’s awesome. I don’t have any words for it,” said Griffitts. The back-and-forth game featured six ties and 10 lead changes in the second half alone. The Bruins (24-4) took their final lead at 58-57 before Edwards-Teasley’s consecutive buckets. SLCC suffered three consecutive turnovers as NIC pulled away. Tugce Canitez overcame foul trouble to add 13 points and nine boards for the Cardinals (28-3), while Camille Reynolds scored 12. said Carlson. Jami Mokofisi had 19 points and 12 Said Griffitts: “We’re hoping for rebounds for Salt Lake, while Alli a national championship.” Blake chipped 12 points and 10 boards as the Bruins outrebounded No. 15 North Idaho 69, Salt Lake CC 59 NORTH IDAHO (69) the Cardinals 44-29. Haley Holm- Camille Reynolds 5-17 0-0 12, Tugce Canitez 5-11 3-3 13, Korina Baker 0-2 7-7 7, ShaKiana Edwards-Teasley 3-4 1-3 7, Kama Griffitts 7-15 0-0 18, stead scored 13. Chantel Divilbiss 1-2 2-2 4, Amy Warbrick 1-4 2-2 4, Julia Salmio 0-0 0-0 0, Dotts 1-2 0-0 2. Totals 24-62 15-17 69. With nine sophomores on a team Amanda Carlton 1-5 0-0 2, Deanna SALT LAKE CC (59) that took eighth at last season’s NJ- Marissa Robbins 2-8 0-2 4, Katie Walker 0-2 0-0 0, Alli Blake 5-11 2-2 12, Jami Mokofisi 5-10 9-12 19, Haley Holmstead 5-8 3-6 13, Sofia Hepworth CAA Tournament, North Idaho has 3-10 3-4 10, Malori Dixon 0-0 0-0 0, Ame White 0-0 0-0 0, Megan 0-0 1-2 1. Totals 20-49 18-28 59. high hopes for the March 15-19 af- Johnson Halftime: NIC 37, SLCC 35. 3-point goals: NIC 6-15 (Reynolds 2-5, Baker 02, Griffitts 4-5, Divilbiss 0-1, Warbrick 0-1, Carlton 0-1); SLCC 1-6 (Robbins fair in Salina,Kan. 0-2, Walker 0-2, Hepworth 1-2). Rebounds: NIC 29 (Canitez 9); SLCC 44 (Mokofisi 12). Assists: 11 (Canitez 3); SLCC 11 (Walker 5). Turnovers: NIC 14; “Experience at nationals is hard SLCC 24. Total fouls: NIC 19; SLCC 17. Fouled out: NIC, Canitez. Technical to come by and we have a lot of it,” fouls: none. North Carolina rolls over rival Duke in 81-67 win CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Harrison Barnes scored 18 points and North Carolina clinched the Atlantic Coast Conference title with the 81-67 win over No. 4 Duke. Kendall Marshall had 15 points and 11 assists as the Tar Heels (24-6, 14-2) ended a three-game losing streak to their fierce rival and earned the top seed in next week’s ACC tournament. North Carolina also avenged last month’s loss at Cameron Indoor Stadium in which the Tar Heels blew a 16-point lead in the first half. Once again, the Tar Heels built a big lead in the first half, this time 14 points. But Barnes and the Tar Heels protected that margin Saturday and stayed in control the entire night in a game that had tension and energy befitting a postseason game. NO. 2 KANSAS 70, NO. 22 MISSOURI 66 COLUMBIA, Mo. — Marcus Morris and Thomas Robinson had double-doubles and No. 2 Kansas wrapped up its seventh straight Big 12 championship by holding on for a 70-66 win over No. 22 Missouri on Saturday. Robinson had 15 points and 13 rebounds, returning to form less than a month after arthroscopic surgery on the right knee he injured against Missouri at home. Morris had 21 points and 10 AP photo rebounds for Kansas, which has won 14 of the last 17 in a Duke’s Mason Plumlee (5) and North Carolina’s Harrison Barnes (40) reach for a rebound during the first lopsided border series. half of an NCAA college basketball game in Chapel Hill, N.C., Saturday. NO. 3 BYU 102, WYOMING 78 PROVO, Utah — Jimmer Fredette scored 38 points and BYU closed a tumultuous week with a runaway win. Charles Abouo scored 21 of his 25 points in the second half for the Cougars (28-3, 14-2 Mountain West Conference), who earned their first win since Brandon Davies was kicked off the team for breaking the school’s honor code. BYU was coming off an 82-64 loss to New Mexico on Wednesday night. STORRS, Conn. — Ben Hansbrough scored 21 points despite fouling out with over 8 minutes left and Notre Dame held on for the win. Kemba Walker scored 34 points for Connecticut but missed a 3-point attempt with 8 seconds left and the Huskies trailing 69-67. Donnell Beverly also fumbled away a pass just before time ran out. NO. 4 PITTSBURGH 60, NO. 19 VILLANOVA 50 NO. 9 SAN DIEGO STATE 66, COLORADO STATE 48. PITTSBURGH — Ashton Gibbs had 18 points to help Pittsburgh clinch the outright Big East title. After Notre Dame won at Connecticut earlier Saturday, Pitt (27-4, 15-3) needed a victory to secure the No. 1 seed for the Big East tournament for the first time since 2004 and third overall. SAN DIEGO — Kawhi Leonard had 17 points and 12 rebounds, and No. 9 San Diego State beat Colorado State 66-48 on Saturday night to share the Mountain West Conference title with No. 3 BYU. The Aztecs (29-2, 14-2) will be the No. 2 seed in the MWC tournament at Las Vegas. BYU will be No. 1 because of its two 13-point wins against the Aztecs. SDSU got the chance to share the title when BYU lost to New Mexico by 18 points on Wednesday night, a day after forward Brandon Davies was kicked off the team for breaking the school’s honor code. IOWA 67, NO. 6 PURDUE 65 IOWA CITY, Iowa — Jarryd Cole had 16 points and 10 rebounds in his final home game and Iowa stunned Purdue, clinching the Big Ten title for topranked Ohio State. NO. 8 NOTRE DAME 70, NO. 16 CONNECTICUT 67 NO. 7 TEXAS 60, BAYLOR 54 WACO, Texas — Texas freshman Tristan Thompson had 19 points and 13 rebounds with some spectacular putback dunks, and the seventh-ranked Longhorns pulled out a 60-54 victory Saturday night at Baylor, whose NCAA tournament hopes took another big hit. The Longhorns (25-6, 133 Big 12), coming off consecutive losses for the first time this season, overcame a nine-point deficit in the WEST VIRGINIA 72, NO. 11 LOUISVILLE 70 MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Truck Bryant sank two free throws with 1 second left to lift West Virginia to the win. West Virginia (20-10, 11-7 Big East) clinched a firstround bye in the conference tournament. The Mountaineers earned their fourth consecutive 20-win season under coach Bob Huggins and the seventh NO. 12 SYRACUSE 107, DEPAUL 59 SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Rick Jackson had 14 points, seven rebounds and four blocks for Syracuse, making sure his final game in the Carrier Dome was one he would never forget. It was the fifth straight win for Syracuse (25-6, 12-6 Big East) after a midseason swoon in which the Orange lost four straight and six of eight after an 18-0 start. Syracuse also clinched a double-bye in next week’s Big East tournament at Madison Square Garden. NO. 14 FLORIDA 86, NO. 21 VANDERBILT 76 nearly flawless, and the Bearcats completed a sweep of Georgetown. NO. 18 ARIZONA 90, OREGON 82 TUCSON, Ariz. — Derrick Williams had 14 points despite early foul trouble and got plenty of help in what may have been his final home game, lifting Arizona to the outright Pac-10 title. NO. 23 XAVIER 66, SAINT LOUIS 55 ST. LOUIS — Tu Holloway scored 25 points and Xavier extended its winning streak to nine games. Mark Lyons had 16 points and Kenny Frease added 10 points and 12 rebounds for the Musketeers (24-6, 15-1 Atlantic 10), who have won 16 of 17 and are the No. 1 seed for next week’s conference tournament in Atlantic City, N.J. NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Kenny Boynton scored 17 points, all three of Florida’s seniors reached double figures and the Gators NO. 24 TEXAS A&M 66, clinched the Southeastern TEXAS TECH 54 Conference regular-season COLLEGE STATION, title. Florida (24-6, 13-3) set a Texas — David Loubeau school record for confer- scored 21 points to lead ence wins and earned its Texas A&M to the win. Texas A&M (23-7, 10-6 third outright SEC title. Big 12) put together a 9-0 NO. 15 ST. JOHN’S 72, run to stretch its lead to 43SOUTH FLORIDA 56 30 with just over 14 minutes NEW YORK — D.J. remaining. The biggest Kennedy scored 16 points highlight from the spurt and St. John’s bounced back was a dunk by Loubeau that from a loss to Seton Hall. came after a nifty pass from The Red Storm (20-10, B.J. Holmes. 12-6) had a six-game winNO. 25 UTAH STATE 70, ning streak snapped ThursLOUISIANA TECH 32 day in an 84-70 loss at SeRUSTON, La. — Tyler ton Hall, a game that saw coach Steve Lavin ejected Newbold scored 14 points with 1:55 left and forward and Utah State used its stiJustin Burrell get tossed for fling defense to earn its sixth a flagrant foul with 7.6 sec- consecutive victory. The Aggies limited the onds left. Bulldogs to just 10 field goals CINCINNATI 69, and 18 percent shooting (10 NO. 17 GEORGETOWN 47 for 56). Louisiana Tech went CINCINNATI — Yancy 0 for 14 from 3-point range Gates scored 10 of his 13 and committed 20 turnovers. points from the free-throw — The Associated Press line, where Cincinnati was Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho Sunday, March 6, 2011 Sports 5 NFL,union taking weekend break from mediation WASHINGTON (AP) — Those optimistic about the NFL’s labor talks with the players’ union will point to the sides’ decision to push back the bargaining deadline by a week and think, as Commissioner Roger Goodell put it: “The fact that we’re continuing this dialogue is a positive sign.” And those who are pessimistic about where this all eventually is headed will recognize that, as league lead negotiator Jeff Pash described it: “We’ve got very serious issues. We’ve got significant differences.” That last observation has been obvious all along. Indeed, from shortly before Thanksgiving until the day before the Super Bowl in February, the sides went more than two months without sitting down in large groups for face-toface, formal bargaining on a new collective bargaining agreement. The sides were using this weekend to assess their positions, before resuming talks in front of a federal me- diator Monday — and then they will have until the end of Friday to reach a new CBA, thanks to two extensions of the old deal.It originally was to have expired last Thursday. What will happen is still anyone’s guess. A deal could be reached at any time.Talks could break off. The sides could agree to yet another extension. After having such a hard time arranging full-scale sessions,the league and NFL Players Association have spent time at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service on 11 of out of 15 days. According to mediator George Cohen, the tenor of the talks has changed. The two parties reached a “level of dialogue” and “constructive discussion” where they “fully, frankly and candidly talk to each other,” Cohen said Friday. Pash gave Cohen and his colleagues at the FMCS, a U.S. government agency, credit for that. “What the mediators bring to the process is a structure and a discipline that wasn’t always there,” Pash said. “They inject a seriousness of purpose to it. And they encourage you. They keep you going.” There wasn’t someone to play that role before Feb. 18, when Cohen first presided over the negotiations, only days after the NFL filed an unfair labor practice charge against the union with the National Labor Relations Board. The sort of discourse now present was a rarity since the owners exercised a mutual opt-out clause in the CBA in 2008. There has been plenty of acrimony along the way. When either side spoke publicly about the process,it often was to take a jab at the other side for not responding to proposals or for being unreasonable. The league would accuse the union of hoping not to get a deal done so it could dissolve and pursue an antitrust lawsuit. The union would accuse the league of hoping not to get a deal done so it could lock out the players. Martin wins,Patrick finishes career best 4th LAS VEGAS (AP) — Mark Martin knew he had to save gas to have any chance of winning the Nationwide Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Even then, he was going to need some help. He got it when leader Brad Keselowski cut a tire on the final lap of Saturday’s race, and Martin sailed past him for the victory. It was the fourth win in six Nationwide races at Las Vegas for Martin. “I can’t gloat. If Brad hadn’t of had a tire problem, he looked like he would win,” Martin said. “All I could do is make sure we didn’t run out of gas.” The race will most likely be remembered, though, for Danica Patrick’s historymaking run and not the lastlap dramatics. Patrick placed fourth, the best finish for a woman in a national NASCAR race. The previous best was Sara Christian’s fifth at Pittsburgh in 1949. “Awesome!” Martin said when told of Patrick’s finish. “I am really happy for her. That’s fantastic.” IF YOU WATCH NASCAR Sprint Cup Kobalt Tools 400 at Las Vegas 1 p.m. FOX It was a turnaround for Patrick, who struggled all weekend at Las Vegas and fell a lap down in Saturday’s race. But she put herself in position to get back on the lead lap, then steadily worked her way into the top 10. Fuel strategy did the rest, as many of the cars in front of her had to make late stops for gas and Patrick slid all the way up to fourth. “We just had a good car, that’s all I can say. That’s what makes a difference in these things,” said Patrick. “I know I haven’t had the best results, especially in NASCAR, but we’re getting them now.” Patrick, who has only 16 races in her NASCAR career, improved on her previous career-best finish of 14th, earned at Daytona last month. “I don’t know.I don’t think about trying to achieve the highest finish of a female,” she said.“I think about trying to win the race.” The fuel issues, and a midrace crash by Kyle Busch, shuffled the final running order and put Keselowski in position to win the race. But the defending Nationwide champion got a flat tire on the final lap and his Dodge darted into the wall. “Must have run over something because it went down pretty quick,” he said. Martin, who didn’t think he had enough gas to get to the finish, then sailed by for his Nationwide-leading 49th career victory. “We really only had one chance to win the race and that was to make it on fuel, and some of the guys in front of us not,” Martin said. “When I caught Brad, I realized it was going to take all the gas I had to get by him because he wanted to race. Had to wait and see if Brad would make it our not, and that would be the determination because I didn’t feel confident I could make it (on gas) and pass him.” Sabbatini leads by 5 shots at Honda Classic PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — After making consecutive birdies, Honda Classic leader Rory Sabbatini stood in the rough along the sixth fairway, complaining to a PGA Tour official about a delay in play and wondering what had become of the group just ahead of him. The strange interruption could have halted Sabbatini’s momentum. Instead, after a long wait he hit an iron 200 yards to 10 feet of the pin, one of his better shots among the 66 Saturday that gave him a cushy lead. Sabbatini will enter the final round at 9-under 201, five shots ahead of Jerry Kelly and 2009 winner Y.E. Yang. The wait at No. 6 occurred when Kelly, playing two groups ahead of Sabbatini, lodged a shot in a palm tree. A newspaper photographer’s zoom lens was used to identify the ball as Kelly’s, allowing him to avoid being penalized for a lost ball. The inspection took time, so the twosome behind Kelly played through. Meanwhile, Sabbatini and playing partner Kyle Stanley waited and wondered how they had caught up with Kelly. “It was a little bit of dazed and confused,” Sabbatini said. “We’re like, ‘OK, where did he come from?’ And we’re trying to figure Rory Sabbatini of South Africa tees off on the fourth tee during the third round of the Honda Classic golf tournament, Saturday in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. out what’s going on.” A South African who lives in Fort Worth, Texas, Sabbatini’s known for his feisty manner and candor on any topic — even Tiger Woods. But nothing has riled him up this week, and he tried to look at the delay as something positive. “Actually, I think maybe that might have helped me slow down a little out there,” he said. “It allowed me to back off a little bit and kind of refocus again. So I think that was a good thing.” Yang birdied the last two holes for a 3-under 67 and moved into a tie for second with Kelly, who shot a roller-coaster 68. Gary Woodland also had a 68 and was fourth, six shots behind. Second-round leader Stanley had a 74 to drop seven strokes back. Sabbatini, who changed putters this week, made birdie putts of 2, 40, 12, 18 and 18 feet. “I’ve been putting well all year; I just didn’t feel like I was making anything,” he said. “Sometimes just changing the look of things, changing the feel of things, can kind of just spur something.” With his new malletstyle putter, Sabbatini had the lowest round for the second day in a row after tying the tournament course record with a 64 Friday. Sabbatini has won five PGA Tour titles, most recently at the 2009 Byron Nelson Championship. But he’s perhaps best known for once calling Woods “more beatable than ever,” long before the sex scandal that sent Woods’ career off track. Kimberly JV girls win title The Kimberly junior varsity girls basketball team won the district championship. Pictured, from left, Kourtney Keller, Jensen Upton, Kelsey Wright, Cassidy Berry, Jordan Wall, coach Bret Wright, Heidi Funk, Taylor Watts, Jordan Laroque, Kelci Kelly and Randi Cummins. Your Scores Kepner 514, Linda Vining 513. LADIES GAMES: Bernie Smith 200, Kim Leazer 199, Kimberlie Kepner MAGIC BOWL – TWIN FALLS 194, Bonnie Draper 191. SUNDAY ROLLERS TUESDAY A.M. TRIO MEN’S SERIES: Keith Kelly 690, Kyle Mason 655, Vance Mason 625, R.D. SERIES: Amber Beguhl 541, Charlene Anderson 488, Nancy Adema 604. Barrett 485, Shirley Merrill 480. MEN’S GAMES: Keith Kelly 279, Kyle Mason 245, Vance Mason 225, R.D. GAMES: Jackie Boyd 193, Amber Beguhl 188, Charlene Anderson Adema 224. 183, Veann Jacobson 180, Jean LADIES SERIES: Kim Dreisigacker McGuire 180. 559, Ida Countryman 555, Amanda LATECOMERS Crider 531, Branda Staley 500. SERIES: Linda Vining 592, Kristy LADIES GAMES: Ida Countryman Rodriguez 566, Charlene Anderson 224, Kim Dreisigacker 213, Amanda 506, Lisa Allen 494. Crider 191, Robin Mason 191. GAMES: Linda Vining 215, Kristy MASON TROPHY Rodriguez 214, Connie Spisak 200, SERIES: Sylvia Inman 560, Anna Shawna Obenchain 182. Moore 511, Skeet Donaldson 490, TUESDAY MAJORS Mary Murray 452. BOYS’ SERIES: Anthony Vest 660, GAMES: Sylvia Inman 208, Anna Cody Worden 544, Matt Thrall 522, Moore 198, Skeet Donaldson 182, Steven Maher 514. Glenda Barrutia 177. BOYS’ GAMES: Anthony Vest 235, VALLEY Tyler Black 203, Cody Worden 198, SERIES: Cobey Magee 791, Nate Steven Maher 193. Jones 717, Bob Leazer 679, Bill GIRLS’ SERIES: Erica Reeves 520, Palmer 676. Koti Jo Moses 495, Miranda Curtis GAMES: Cobey Magee 299, Byron 494, Megan McAllister 422. Hager 265, Shon Bywater 265, Bill GIRLS’ GAMES: Kaitlyn Klassen 204, Palmer 260. Erica Reeves 193, Miranda Curtis 50 PLUS SENIOR LEAGUE 187, Megan McAllister 171. MEN’S SERIES: Tom Smith 617, CONSOLIDATED Myron Schroeder 609, Fred tt 605, SERIES: Cobey Magee 746, Jake Tom Glass 597. Carnahan 730, Chuck Coggins 696, MEN’S GAMES: Myron Schroeder Neil Welsh 677. 247, Jim Brawley 237, Jack Boyd GAMES: Cobey Magee 279, Jake 237, Fred Ott 235. Carnahan 279, Kris Armstrong 249, LADIES SERIES: Linda Vining 539, Ian DeVries 247, Chuck Coggins 247, Barbara Smith 495, Dixie Eager Neil Welsh 247, Tony Cowan 247. 533, Bernie Smith 499. MAGIC VALLEY SENIORS LADIES GAMES: Linda Vining 203, Barbara Smith 188, Dixie Eager 187, MEN’S SERIES: Duke Stimpson 585, Del McGuire 485, Cy Bullers 445, Bernie Smith 173,. Gary Hartruft 474. THURSDAY NIGHT MIXED MEN’S GAMES: Duke Stimpson 205, MEN’S SERIES: Zach Black 694, Bryan Price 685, Kasey Jeroue 662, Del McGuire 197, Cy Bullers 167, Gary Hartruft 165. Buddy Bryant 655. LADIES SERIES: Tina Holland 528, MEN’S GAMES: Kasey Jeroue 267, Betty Taylor 486, Barbara Frith 479, Jim Brawley 256, Jim Howard 255, Jean McGuire 438. Zach Black 248. LADIES CLASSIC LADIES SERIES: Kelsie Bryant 631, Tawnia Bryant 541, Cindy Price 533, SERIES: Julie Capurro 578, Cindy Garrett 575, Judy Cook 526, Carol Stephanie White 504. Quaintance 492. LADIES GAMES: Kelsie Bryant 255, GAMES: Julie Capurro 257, Cindy Sylvia Wood 205, Tawnia Bryant 190, Stephane White 18, Cindy Price Garrett 211, Gretchen MacRae 204, Carol Quaintance 190. 189. SUNSET EARLY FRIDAY MIXED MEN’S SERIES: Jared Ashmead 611, SERIES: Tracey Hoffman 543, Kristy Rodriguez 537, Cindy Garrett 514, Jody Bryant 601, Craig Johnston Karen Morano 512. 581, Mike Goodson 531. GAMES: Kim Leazer 204, Tracey MEN’S GAMES: Jody Bryant 225, Jared Ashmead 224, Craig Johnson Hoffman 202, Kristy Rodriguez 201, Jody Galan 184, Karen Morano 184. 202, Mike Goodson 195. SOMETHING ELSE LADIES SERIES: Georgia Randall MEN’S SERIES: Steve Gentry Jr. 692, 568, Julie Shaffer 553, Diana Steve Gentry Sr. 583, Neil Sabsook Rebollozo 471, LaDona Molsee 411. 580, Dave Gyorfy 574. LADIES GAMES: Georgia Randall MEN’S GAMES: Steve Gentry Jr. 236, 235, Julie Shaffer 202, Diana Steve Gentry Sr. 220, Neil Sabsook Rebollozo 165, Connie Goodson 207, Dave Gyorfy 203. 164. LADIES SERIES: Sherry Blass 499, BOWLADROME – TWIN FALLS Penny Gentry 491, Nora Kent 393, SUNDAY EARLY MIXED Carolyn Biggs 382. MEN’S SERIES: Jake Carnahan 673, FRIDAY P.M. SENIORS Chad Fisher 563, Lin Gowan 550, MEN’S SERIES: Eddie Chappell 632, James Stewart 526, Paul Gosnell Ron Marshall 622, Dave Wilson 613, 526. Tom Smith 586. MEN’S GAMES: Jake Carnahan 246, MEN’S GAMES: Tom Smith 252, Lin Gowan 226, James Carr 223, Chelcie Eager 234, Dave Wilson Chad Fisher 204. 232, Ed Dutry 224. LADIES SERIES: Kim Godowski 459, Ludy Harkins 432, Debbie Westburg LADIES SERIES: Gail McAllister 564, Bonnie Draper 528, Shirley 417, Carlene Jarrell 416. Kunsman 514, Dawn Kulm 509. LADIES GAMES: Ludy Harkins 183, LADIES GAMES: Dawn Kulm 203, Kim Godowski 172, Roxie Bymun Gail McAllister 196, Bonnie Draper 169, Dana Stewart 159. 195, Janet Browning 184, Dee Hall MONDAY MIXED FOLLIES 184. MEN’S SERIES: Rick Morrow 652, MOOSE Kevin Hamblin 645, Rocky Reece SERIES: Jason Thuren 779, Dan 585, Terry Rogers 569. Shepherd 712, Ed Harom 709, Cory MEN’S GAMES: Rick Morrow 246, Moore 708. Kevin Hamblin 232, Rocky Reece GAMES: Dan Shepherd 300, Jason 216, Terry Rogers 212. Thuren 289, Nate Jones 262, Ryan LADIES SERIES: Lorenia Rodriguez Shull 259. 528, Bobbi McKnight 483, Dee Hall GIANTS 477, RaeNae Reece 473. BOYS’ SERIES: Tom Upchurch 414, LADIES GAMES: Dee Hall 195, Jacob Hildreth 380, Dylan Mace Lorenia Rodriguez 191, Bobbi 335, Brendan Rife 329. McKnight 186. BOYS’ GAMES: Tom Upchurch 150, SH-BOOM Dylan Mace 138, Jacob Hildreth 137, MEN’S SERIES: Nick Parsons 649, Brendan Rife 125. Darrell Reynolds 620, Donnie GIRLS’ SERIES: Ashley Etters 374, Parsons 573, Clint Koyle 563. Alexis Ybarra 363, Katie Upchurch MEN’S GAMES: Darrell Reynolds 340, Jenny Leazer 292. 241, Donnie Parsons 235, Nick GIRLS’ GAMES: Ashley Etters 153, Parsons 222, Ron Marshall 217. Alexis Ybarra 143, Katie Upchurch LADIES SERIES: Corrine Goble 502, 138, Jenny Leazer 116. Diana Brady 461, Kathi Jeroue 460, PEEWEE & BUMPER Stacey Lanier 434. BOYS’ SERIES: Donovan Howell 173, LADIES GAMES: Samantha Canary Eli Cook 169, Brock Hanson 156. 186, Kathi Jeroue 171, Diana Brady BOYS’ GAMES: Eli Cook 88, 170, Corrine Goble 169. Donovan Howell 87, Brock Hanson MID MORNING MIXED 81. MEN’S SERIES: Con Moser 621, Bob GIRLS’ SERIES: Lindsay Beem 171. Leazer 612, Maury Miller 606, Jim GIRLS’ GAMES: Lindsay Beem 91. DeVries 594. SUNSET BOWL – BUHL MEN’S GAMES: Con Moer 234, Bob LUCKY STRIKERS Leazer 233, Rich Farnsworth 225, SERIES: Kay Miller 523, Mitzie Eddie Chappell 212, Adam Kepner Crown 511. 212. GAMES: Mitzie Crown 225, Kay Miller LADIES SERIES: Kim Leazer 544, 523. Bonnie Draper 526, Kimberlie Sports 6 Sunday, March 6, 2011 BURLEY/RUPERT FORECAST TWIN FALLS FIVE-DAY FORECAST Today Tonight Monday Today: Rain and snow showers. High 45. Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho Yesterday’s Weather Tuesday Tonight: Rain and snow showers. Low 31. Tomorrow: Rain and snow. High 45. ALMANAC - BURLEY Precipitation Yesterday’s Trace Month to Date 0.23" Avg. Month to Date 0.18" 5.69" Water Year to Date Avg. Water Year to Date 4.9" 48° Yesterday’s High 36° Yesterday’s Low Normal High / Low 47° / 26° 68° in 1968 Record High 7° in 1954 Record Low IDAHO’S FORECAST SUN VALLEY, SURROUNDING MTS. Periods of snow today and tonight. Accumulations likely. A good chance for snow. Rain and snow showers Rain and snow showers Rain and snow Partly cloudy and wamer 43° / 32° 40° / 25° 46° / 28° 51° / 32° ALMANAC - TWIN FALLS Precipitation Yesterday’s High Yesterday’s Yesterday’s High 50° Trace Yesterday’s Low 36° Month to Date 0.20" Yesterday’s Low Normal High / Low 47° / 27° Today’s Forecast Avg. Avg. Month to Date 0.18" 6.51" Record High 71° in 1987 Water Year to Date A water year runs from Oct. 1 to Record Low 12° in 1976 Avg. Water Year to Date 5.53" Temperature & Precipitation valid through 5 pm yesterday 42 / 26 Periods of rain likely and cool today. Snow and rain showers tonight. Rain likely and cool on Monday. Lewiston 51 / 34 Today Highs/Lows 40's / 30's Periods of rain today. Rain tonight. Areas of rain and snow on Monday. 37 / 29 McCall Salmon 37 / 21 36 / 19 Caldwell 50 / 35 Sun Valley 34 / 16 Boise 47 / 34 Rupert 46 / 30 Mountain Home 45 / 31 Idaho Falls 40 / 26 Pocatello 44 / 30 Burley 45 / 31 45 / 33 Yesterday’s State Extremes - High: 54 at Lewiston Low: 13 at Dixie weather key: su-sunny, pc-partly cloudy, mc-mostly cloudy, c-cloudy, th-thunderstorms, sh-showers,r-rain, sn-snow, fl-flurries, w-wind, m-missing First Mar. 13 Full Mar. 19 Last Mar. 26 New April 3 REGIONAL FORECAST City Boise Bonners Ferry Burley Challis Coeur d’ Alene Elko, NV Eugene, OR Gooding Grace Hagerman Hailey Idaho Falls Kalispell, MT Jerome Lewiston Malad City Malta McCall Missoula, MT Pocatello Portland, OR Rupert Rexburg Richland, WA Rogerson Salmon Salt Lake City, UT Spokane, WA Stanley Sun Valley Yellowstone, MT ls ls ls ls ls pc r ls ls ls ls ls ls ls r ls ls ls ls ls r ls ls mx ls ls ls ls ls ls ls Today Tomorrow Hi Lo W Hi Lo W City Atlanta Atlantic City Baltimore Billings Birmingham Boston Charleston, SC Charleston, WV Chicago Cleveland Denver Des Moines Detroit El Paso Fairbanks Fargo Honolulu Houston Indianapolis Jacksonville Kansas City Las Vegas Little Rock Los Angeles Memphis Miami Milwaukee Nashville New Orleans New York Oklahoma City Omaha pc sh pc ls pc r pc pc pc pc mx mx pc hz pc pc sh r pc pc r sh pc sh pc pc mc pc pc r mc ls “Most people are so busy knocking themselves out trying to do everything they think they should, they never get around to do what they want to do.” Today Hi Lo W City Calgary Cranbrook Edmonton Kelowna Lethbridge Regina 8 26 6 29 12 7 -12 -9 -11 -10 -1 -15 ls ls ls ls ls ls Tomorrow Hi Lo W 17 26 10 26 18 10 -6 2 -16 -17 1 -6 ls ls pc ls ls ls 6:33 PM 6:35 PM 6:36 PM 6:37 PM 6:38 PM Forecasts and maps prepared by: 10 Cheyenne, Wyoming www.dayweather.com WORLD FORECAST Today Tomorrow Hi Lo W Hi Lo W Today Tomorrow Hi Lo W Hi Lo W Orlando Philadelphia Phoenix Portland, ME Raleigh Rapid City Reno Sacramento St. Louis St.Paul Salt Lake City San Diego San Francisco Seattle Tucson Washington, DC 80 58 81 45 67 27 58 61 45 31 52 64 59 50 79 58 84 Acapulco Athens 57 65 Auckland Bangkok 94 48 Beijing Berlin 40 Buenos Aires 85 Cairo 87 Dhahran 71 Geneva 44 Hong Kong 72 79 Jerusalem Johannesburg 80 74 Kuwait City 45 London Mexico City 70 53 37 54 37 39 4 32 45 33 21 41 53 47 35 51 36 th r pc r th ls r r pc ls r r r r pc r 75 47 77 43 57 10 43 60 51 34 45 59 57 49 76 52 58 pc 30 pc 46 pc 18 r 31 pc 4 ls 27 ls 40 th 34 mc 25 ls 31 mx 48 sh 44 sh 35 sh 45 pc 29 pc 72 47 50 80 25 22 66 49 63 24 64 52 47 56 28 44 pc pc sh th pc pc sh pc pc pc pc sh pc pc ls sh 84 54 65 93 46 39 86 73 74 48 68 70 83 77 46 73 70 42 49 79 24 23 67 48 66 27 64 48 49 60 27 44 pc sh sh th pc pc pc pc pc pc sh sh pc sh pc sh Today Tomorrow Hi Lo W Hi Lo W Moscow Nairobi Oslo Paris Prague Rio de Jane Rome Santiago Seoul Sydney Tel Aviv Tokyo Vienna Warsaw Winnipeg Zurich 26 83 25 46 37 80 57 83 39 75 71 51 40 33 10 36 11 51 15 27 21 66 42 45 26 58 62 33 25 21 -22 7 ls pc pc pc pc sh pc pc pc sh pc sh pc ls ls pc 20 82 32 46 36 79 52 85 42 81 66 42 37 33 3 39 2 52 28 29 21 66 34 47 25 63 62 31 22 23 -26 14 ls sh pc pc pc sh pc pc ls sh sh pc pc pc pc pc TODAY’S NATIONAL MAP -20 -10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 City Saskatoon Toronto Vancouver Victoria Winnipeg Today Hi Lo W 0 31 38 41 10 -20 12 29 36 -22 pc pc pc pc ls Tomorrow Hi Lo W 5 29 38 43 3 -7 19 32 39 -26 pc pc ls pc pc Stationary Valid to 6 p.m. today Yesterday’s National Extremes: High: 87 at Santa Ana, Calif. Low: -12 at Huron, S.D. Carey fans celebrate their victory against Nezperce in the 1A Division II state championship game at the Idaho Center in Nampa on Saturday. Continued from Sports 1 ASHLEY SMITH/ Times-News Carey “I was trying to do too much there for a while, but I hit a couple of shots in the third quarter and got back into my groove. From there I was able to stay within myself and within the game,” said Peck. “This was definitely the hardest championship for us (as a school) to come by, especially given everything that’s happened with us since October.” Peck referenced late Carey student Austin Hennefer,who died in a car accident in October. The Panther boys’ athletic program has dedicated the entire athletic year in football, basketball and track to his memory. The win avenged a 57-56 Sunset: Sunset: Sunset: Sunset: Sunset: More Magic Valley weather at www.magicvalley.com/weather Get up-to-date highway information at the Idaho Transportation Department’s Web site at 511.idaho.gov or call 888-432-7623. Continued from Sports 1 7:05 AM 7:04 AM 7:02 AM 7:00 AM 7:00 AM 10 The higher the index the more sun protection needed Boise Challis Coeur d’ Alene Idaho Falls Jerome Lewiston Lowell Malad City Malta Pocatello Rexburg Salmon Stanley Sun Valley setback to Nezperce in last season’s title game. “This is payback at its finest,” said Baley Barg, who scored a game-high 21. “We talked about this from Day 1. Once it got here, we just had to settle down and play ball.” The win was only decided when Riggers’ 3-point bid from 35 feet bounced off the backboard high and to the left, sending the Panthers roaring from the bench in jubilation. The kings of 1A Division II football are atop the boys basketball summit as well, for the very first time. After making the title game last season and winning it all this time, Carey hopes its stay among the division’s basketball elite can mirror its football dominance. “That’s what we’re hoping for,” said ninth-year coach Dick Simpson. “We’ve got a good group of sophomores coming up and hopefully we can be even better in the future.” Carey senior Baley Barg (25) drives past Nezperce defender Sawer Wahl (34) during the fourth quarter Saturday at The Idaho Center in Nampa. Jackson and backcourt mates Jerrold Brooks and Darius Smith combined for 67 points as the Eagles advanced to the District I championship game Tuesday at Scottsdale (Ariz.) Community College where they’ll face Region I champion Cochise College at 7 p.m. for a berth to the NJCAA Tournament. “Last home game, we had to be huge,” said Brooks, who scored 26 points. “We knew we had to be huge,” added point guard Darius Smith, who had 12 points, eight assists, six rebounds and five steals. “We had to come out and not get a slow start. … We had to come out and throw the first punch.” They certainly did that, jumping out to an 8-0 lead. Salt Lake got within one on three first-half occasions before five different Eagles scored in an 11-2 run to put CSI up 35-25 en route to a 43-35 halftime lead. CSI (28-4) took total control as Jackson scored 10 points of his game-high 29 points, including a pair of treys, in a 15-2 run to go up 71-51 with 11:54 remaining. But Alfonzo Hubbard REGION 18 TOURNAMENT At College of Southern Idaho, Twin Falls Men Thursday No. 3 Salt Lake 84, Colorado Northwestern 52 No. 5 North Idaho 77, No. 4 Snow College 65 Friday Salt Lake 86, No. 2 Eastern Utah 72 No. 1 CSI 79, North Idaho 67 Saturday Championship, CSI 94, Salt Lake 86 All tournament team MVP: Pierre Jackson, CSI. Team: Idris Lasisi, North Idaho; Alfonzo Hubbard, Salt Lake; Patrick McCollum, Salt Lake; Jerrold Brooks, CSI; Darius Smith, CSI. Women Thursday No. 3 CSI 92, No. 6 Colorado Northwestern 60 No. 4 Snow College 63, No. 5 Eastern Utah 59 Friday No. 2 North Idaho 84, CSI 72 No. 1 Salt Lake 65, Snow 62 Saturday Championship, North Idaho 69, Salt Lake 59 All tournament team MVP: Kama Griffitts, North Idaho Team: Laurel Kearsley, CSI; Alle Finch, Snow College; Jami Mokofisi, Salt Lake; Alli Blake, Salt Lake; Tugce Canitez, North Idaho. CSI's Paul Bunch shoots over SLCC defender Jason Gamblin (15) Saturday night at CSI in Twin Falls. caught fire and pulled the Bruins within 79-73 with 5:20 left. “We stopped being aggressive. That ain’t how we play. We had to keep it going,” said Brooks. They did just that as Jackson and Brooks hit huge triples to help the Eagles pull away. “We both knocked them down when they counted,” said Jackson. “Those guys have led us all year long,” CSI head coach Steve Gosar said of his guards. The Bruins got 27 from Hubbard, 22 from Patrick McCollum and 20 from Jason Gamblin, who added 10 rebounds. But the rest of the SLCC lineup scored just 17 points. Gosar was an assistant at CSI when the Eagles lost the 2008 title game to Salt Lake (25-8) on their home floor. “That was just an unlucky night and (SLCC) made plays. Tonight we made plays,” said Gosar. And now CSI is just one win away from nationals, which will be held March 15-19 in Hutchinson, Kan. “I feel good, man,” said Brooks. “We’re going to Arizona.” No. 2 CSI 94, Salt Lake CC 86 SALT LAKE CC (86) Patrick McCollum 9-18 2-5 22, Jason Gamblin 6-10 8-9 20, Alfonzo Hubbard 12-19 3-4 27, Tommy Barrett 0-3 0-2 0, Given Kalipinde 2-3 0-0 4, Jordan Bernardo 2-5 0-0 6, Steven Liebert 2-2 3-4 7, Marquis Horne 0-1 0-0 0, Yi-Hsiang Chou 0-1 00 0, LeSean Wilcox 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 33-62 16-24 86. CSI (94) Jerrold Brooks 10-15 3-3 26, Darius Smith 5-8 2-2 12, Pierre Jackson 7-20 11-12 29, Mitch Bruneel 1-5 2-4 4, Kenny Buckner 4-7 2-3 10, Gerson Santo 2-3 1-2 5, Paul Bunch 1-3 0-0 2, Chris Patton 1-1 0-0 2, Fabyon Harris 1-3 2-4 4. Totals 32-65 23-30 94. Halftime: CSI 43, SLCC 35. 3-point goals: SLCC 4-11 (McCollum 2-7, Bernardo 2-4); CSI 7-16 (Brooks 3-7, Jackson 4-8, Bruneel 0-1). Rebounds: SLCC 32 (Gamblin 10); CSI 40 (Buckner 12). Assists: SLCC 13 (McCollum 4); CSI 15 (Smith 8). Turnovers: SLCC 21; CSI 20. Total fouls: SLCC 25; CSI 22. Fouled out: SLCC, Kalipinde. Technical fouls: SLCC, Kalipinde. 2011 Sawtooth Baseball Programs 2011 10u and 12u (70’) Spring Training League: 4 Saturday Double-headers starting April 16th No team entry fee! Each team will host one weekend (if possible) Register individually and be assigned a team 2nd Annual Hagermania! 12u Clinic : April 9th in Hagerman, Idaho Only $35 which includes instruction, camp tee and swim pass 2011 guest instructor: Lloyd Frazier (College of Idaho, Fresno State) 2nd Annual “Snake River Shootout”: June 3-5 in Buhl and Hagerman, Idaho $295 for 4-game guarantee (10uA, 10uB, 12uA, 12uB, 15u) Saturday evening chili feed and homerun derby! For registration and additional information go to : 828 Garage Sales MARTIN ESTATE SALE March 10 & 11 (9-6) March 12 (9-2) 1651 Miller Avenue, Burley Three 1950 Bedroom Sets-PianoRefrigerator - Stove - Desk Washer/Dryer - Dressers Lamps - Old Cabinets - Books Recliners (Variety) - Depression Glass - Luray - Pyrex - All Kinds of Glassware - Televisions Stereo - Folding Chairs - Sofa Old Records - Stoneware Rock Coffee Table - Typewriter Vacuum - Bedding - Old Radio Vintage Clothes-Sewing Machine Yard Art - Book Shelf - Luggage Clocks - Mirror - All Kitchen Items Jewelry Box - Sewing Notions Hand Tools - Yard Tools. Items in 2 sheds & Garage still to Unpack! Managed by Blue Cow 312-4900 DRIVERS Company Drivers needed IMMEDIATELY! Great Pay. Great Miles. Great Benefits. Work for a truly reliable carrier. New to trucking? We will train. CDL Training Available. For OTR Opportunities, CALL: 866-631-8846 DAIRY Exp'd Milker needed in Shoshone, 5 days/wk. Housing provided. Call 208-308-2523 EDUCATON Wendell School District is seeking to hire a Paraprofessional for the Middle School Special Education Department. Applications are available at www.wendellschools.org or at the diestrict office. Call 208-536-2418 for more info. It pays to read the fine print! Call the Times-News to place your ad 1-800-658-3883 ext. 2 FREIGHTLINER '01 with Cummins, ICM 370HP Diesel, 10 spd, PS, AC, Jake brake, alloy wheels, 70% rubber, no cold weather or off road use. One owner, immaculate. $16,900. Call 208-320-4058. FORD '10 F-150 extended cab, 29,000 miles, $26,000. 208-539-3349 DRIVER School Bus Drivers Wanted Western States Bus Call 208-733-8003 Magic Valley High School Contact David Brown Cell 293-2062 School 733-8823 PUBLIC SERVICE MESSAGE Federal Employment information is free. Remember, no one can promise you a federal job. For free information about federal jobs. Call Career America Connection 478-757-3000 ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT Immediate opening. Full-Time M-F, 8AM to 5PM, rate range: $10-$12 per hour. Benefits available. Essential: Advanced experience in QuickBooks, and telephone customer service. Microsoft Office & Excel experience. Able to work in an office and shipping environment. Preferred: Experience with Premier QuickBooks: Mfg. & Wholesale version. Experience in e-bay and website stores. Resume only to AZ RV Products PO Box 1782, Twin Falls, ID 83303 CLERICAL OFFICE SPECIALIST If you are a team player, detailoriented and enjoy a challenging environment, Jentzsch-Kearl Farms with office located in Rupert has a full-time opportunity for you. This opportunity involves receptionist duties, AP, AR, Payroll, limited HR duties and general office duties. Experience with Microsoft Office, QuickBooks Pro, ten-key, typing (min 35wpm), payroll & payroll taxes, are desired but will train the right person. Bilingual a plus. Pay DOE. Email resume and 3 references as an MS Word attachment to: [email protected] Start the New Year with a New Career! We are looking for friendly, outgoing and motivated people to join our winning team. GENERAL The City of Burley is recruiting for a Solid Waste Manager and Solid Waste Truck Driver and Electrical Department Director. Job details, deadlines and the City of Burley application may be obtained at Burley City Hall or at www.burleyidaho.org. Apply by April 8, 2011. Surveillance Observer Slot Service Specialist Keno Writer/Runner Table Games Dealer Food Server Cook RESTAURANT Experienced Cooks needed. Apply at River Rock Grill at the Magic Valley Mall 1824 Blue Lakes Blvd. Twin Falls or Call 208-735-0722 Various Shifts Available Wage based on experience and position Affordable Transportation available from Twin Falls, Filer, Hollister, and Rogerson Apply Online at: www.ameristar.com For more information: Call 775-755-6912 or Fax 775-755-2724 EOE/Drug Free Workplace OPERATIONS Pilot Plant Operator Twin Falls, Idaho Glanbia Foods has an immediate opening for a Pilot Plant Operator. GENERAL Dot Foods is currently accepting applications for the following part time positions: Requirements: HS diploma/GED We are hiring in Burley ID For more information or to apply visit: www.dotfoods.com/greatjob or call (866) 845-1807 HIRE STUDENTS TO WORK FOR YOU! Our Dependable, Honest, Diligent, Friendly Students are available to work for you after school & weekends. Northeastern Nevada's Award Winning Resort and Casino GARAGE CLERK WAREHOUSE SANITATION AIR COMPRESSOR Leroi 185 CFM, towable, John Deere diesel, 1400 actual hours, excellent cond. $4900. Call 208-320-4058. GENERAL Multiple Positions available in the Burley/Paul area. Please call 736-4473 after applying online at sosstaffing.com Requires pre-payment prior to publication. Major credit/ debit cards, and cash accepted. 733-0931 ext. 2 Times-News SIPHON TUBES 60” and 72”, $3/each. 208-539-3349 CHILDCARE Toddler Room Teacher needed. Bring Resume to 124 N Lincoln in Jerome. Affirmative Action Employer M/F/D/V Responsibilities include: Produce prototype samples for customer evaluation including application and nutritional documentation. Maintain operation of the applications lab including keeping lab area and equipment clean and operational according to cleaning and operational instructions. Maintain operation of applications pilot plant including machine operation, maintenance and sanitation. Maintain inventory of needed supplies and ingredients and procures same as required. Prepare periodic special reports concerning the results of laboratory tests Work courteously and tactfully with laboratory clients, the public and employees. Work independently with little or no supervision, complete work assignments on time and adjust priorities as required. Positively and effectively interact with diverse individuals to accomplish a common goal. Qualifications: Requires High School diploma and 3 years equipment operation and maintenance desired. Experience using Microsoft Office software including Word and Excel. Must possess good report writing, analytical and communication skills. Experience operating various types of processing equipment is a must. Experience with the application of dairy ingredients in nutritional products. Apply online www.glanbiausa.com Class “A” CDL Instruction 735-6656 DRIVERS Come join our team! Enjoy benefits such as: Home time, good pay, vacation pay, health insurance & multiple safety bonuses. Solo or Relief. New Equipment. 208-733-8972 ~ 8am-5pm GENERAL IMMEDIATE OPENINGS! Burley Office-678-4040 CDL A/ HAZ Mechanic/CDL A Diesel Mechanic Juvenile Supervisor Sales Associate Clerical Welder For details & Apply Online at: www.personnelinc.com EOE - AA - Drug Free Workplace Lending Operations Officer First Federal is seeking a Lending Operations Officer (LOO) in Twin Falls. Candidates will be required to possess a thorough knowledge of all State and Federal banking regulations as it pertains to all areas of lending. Applicants are required to have 2 years experience with mortgage lending policies, procedures and Federal and State regulatory requirements. The LOO will review, implement and instruct others on all lending related guidelines. The LOO will also be responsible to review, create and revise lending compliance policies and procedures. To be considered for this position, please complete an employment application, available at any First Federal branch location. To see a full job description, please go to www.firstfd.com, go to careers and click on the job posting listed. Salary DOE, with complete compensation and benefits package available. Send completed application to P.O. Box 249, Twin Falls, ID 83303-0249, Attn: Becky Nelson. First Federal is an EEO M/F and Drug Free Workplace. • Certified Surgical Tech- Graduate of an accredited Surgical Technologist program and Certification within six - nine months following employment. • Medical Technologist- Lead tech, Chemistry, MT(ASCP) professional laboratory certification required. Minimum of 3 years specialized experience with demonstrated clinical expertise in a particular laboratory section. • Histotechnologist- Professional certification: HT(ASCP), HLT(ASCP), or equivalent. Bachelor’s degree in anatomic science or related field preferred. • Technical Coordinator Core Lab- Appropriate professional laboratory certification required; CLS(NCA), MT(ASCP), HT(ASCP) or equivalent. Minimum of 3 years specialized experience with demonstrated clinical expertise in a particular laboratory section. • Housekeeping- Benefit eligible full time and part time positions available. CUSTOMER SERVICE Parts Counterperson needed in the Twin Falls, ID. Excellent customer service skills Email resume or questions: [email protected] or mail resume to: HR Dept, 4300 Main Ave, Fargo, ND 58103. BUSINESS BANKING OFFICER First Federal is seeking a Business Banking Officer (BBO) in the Burley/Rupert area. The BBO develops commercial banking relationships, evaluates loan requests and has a solid knowledge of financial analysis, cash flow analysis, and credit underwriting. The successful candidate will have 2 years of commercial lending experience and possess excellent communication skills. To be considered for this position, please complete an employment application, available at any First Federal branch location. Salary DOE, with complete compensation and benefits package available. DRIVER Driver with Class A CDL wanted. 4 yrs exp. with winter driving required. Must be willing to relocate. Start immediately. Send resume & refs to PO Box 727 Castleford, ID 83321. St. Luke’s Mountain States Tumor Institute Radiation Oncology RN. -Minimum requirements: current RN licensure from Idaho, a valid driver’s license and a minimum of one year of registered nurse experience. To apply, visit our website at www.stlukesonline.org and refer to posting #9825. St Luke’s Magic Valley Send completed application to P.O. Box 249, Twin Falls, ID 83303-0249, Attn: Becky Nelson. P.O. Box 409, Twin Falls, ID 83303-0409 (208) 737-2671 or FAX (208) 737-2741 First Federal is an EEO M/F and Drug Free Workplace. [email protected] – Becky We offer competitive salaries & an excellent benefits package. For a complete listing of open positions, or to complete an application, visit our website www.stlukesonline.org Classifieds 733-0931 ext. 2 Classifieds 2 Sunday, March 6, 2011 MANAGEMENT J.R. Simplot Company has the following career opportunities available at our potato processing plant in Aberdeen, ID Environmental Manager Plans and directs the environmental science function under senior management direction Requires Bachelor's degree from a four-year college or university with preferred emphasis in, but not limited to Environmental Engineering Minimum two years related experience and/or training in Environmental related field plus previous supervisory experience supervising a large, fairly complex plant environment Manufacturing Sanitation Supervisor Directly responsible for the coordination, training, and supervision of the plant staff engaged in activities and duties associated with the sanitation program Requires Bachelor's degree from a four-year college or university with preferred emphasis in, but not limited to Microbiology, Food Sciences, or Chemistry Minimum two years related sanitation experience and/or training For additional details and to apply, please visit our website at www.simplot.com. We offer competitive benefits/salaries. EOE/AA employer. DENTAL Family Health Services has an opening for a part-time Dental Assistant in Twin Falls. This position is 10 hours per week– Fridays. Candidates must be certified in all areas of Expanded Functions. Prior experience preferred. Applications will be accepted thru Friday, March 11, 2011. Applicants may apply online at www.fhsid.org or email [email protected] Family Health Services HR Department 794 Eastland Drive Twin Falls, ID 83301 EOE/Drug Free Workplace is hiring for: RN OR Lead (FT) OR Tech (FT) Cook (FT/PT) For a complete listing of our jobs and application procedures please visit www.stbenshospital.com 709 Lincoln Ave. Jerome, ID 83338 EOE DENTAL Looking for Registered Dental Hygienist in Burley. Please send resume 1010 E Main St, Burley, ID 83318 or call 208-678-5597. MEDICAL Are you responsible, caring & like being relied upon? To be paid to socialize, cook, clean & help the elderly & disabled remain at home Call 324-8409 Shoshone, Gooding & Twin Falls What’s happening today? Times-News has a full-time opening for an ambitious, team oriented leader to join a fast paced Circulation department. This position will involve growing circulation and readership by maintaining superior customer service and supervising contracted delivery positions. The successful candidate must have strong leadership and training skills, good organizational, communication, and problem solving skills, as well as previous experience in a team environment. Top applicant must be a self-starter and possess the ability to multi-task. Computer skills, reliable vehicle and valid driver's license are required. Applicants must be able to work flexible hours. We are an equal Opportunity Employer offering benefits including medical, dental and vision insurance, life insurance, flexible spending, 401K, paid vacation and sick time. Please apply online at www.magicvalley.com/workhere by March 12, 2011. Sysco Idaho seeks Marketing Sales Associates for growth in the Central Idaho sales district. These outside sales opportunities allow you to build and service a growing customer network for the leading broadline foodservice company. You must have at least two years achieving in route sales or customer service, preferably in food service. We seek a local face-to-face sales catalyst willing to prospect, close, and build customer partnerships. Do you seek to be compensated for the value you create? Do you like a good challenge, have high integrity, and a “can do” attitude? If so, we would like to learn more about you. To audition, please go to http://www.identifythebest.com/syscofoodservicews, click on the Idaho location, and complete the online application for either the DA-Wood River Valley or DA-Magic Valley openings by March 18th. If you need assistance, e-mail [email protected] OUTSIDE SALES CAREER OPPORTUNITY FOR DETERMINED INDIVIDUALS Unhappy in your current sales job? Do you want to earn more money? Did you earn at least $40K last year and this year you will fall short? Cable ONE has an immediate opening for a full-time Outside Sales professional. Cable ONE is the preferred television & high speed Inte rnet provider of the Magic Valley. We need determined, committed individuals who want an exciting career in the telecommunications industry selling cable TV, high speed Internet, and phone services. Must be willing to sell our services door to door to non-subscribing residential homes in the Magic Valley area which includes working through the rain, snow, freezing weather and the hottest Idaho days. Our Outside Sales professionals earn a base salary and have unlimited earning potential including bonus pay and incentives. We offer an excellent benefit package that includes free cable, high speed Internet and phone service. A reliable insured vehicle, good driving record & a valid driver's license are required. You must be able to work flexible hours, Saturdays, and Sales events. Sales experience is a must and being bilingual is a plus! If you're ready for a challenging opportunity and want to be successful you should apply today! Apply in person or send resume to: Cable ONE Direct Sales 261 Eastland Drive Twin Falls, Idaho 83301 EOE his is a GREAT way to earn some extra ca$h! Start a delivery route today! • Morningside Dr. • Ash St. • Locust St. • Madrona St. • Blue Lakes Blvd. • Maurice St. • 9th Ave E. • 11th Ave E. • Addison Ave. E. • 9th Ave E. • Morningside Dr. • Alta Vista Dr. Call now for more information about routes available in your area. Business Motor Routes • Blue Lakes Blvd. • Maurice St. • 9th Ave E. • 11th Ave E. • Blue Lakes Blvd. • Maurice St. • 5th Ave E. • 8th Ave E. • Filer Ave. W. • Dubois Ave. W. • Borah Ave. W. • Wiseman Ave. JEROME HAZELTON 735-3302 • E. Ave. D • Cleveland • E. Ave. B • E. Ave. C • Buchanan TEMPORARY FARMWORKERS 3/4 contract hrs guaranteed. Tools/supplies and, if applicable, single worker housing provided. Travel costs reimbursed at 50% of contract and upon completion of contract (earlier if appropriate). Experience & reference required. To apply, contact the SWA below or any local State Workforce Agency. JO# 1385064, 5 General Farmworkers, Astle Farms, LLC, Dietrich ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/15/2011 Twin Falls, ID SWA, 208-735-2500 JO# 1386103, 4 Farmworker/Irrigator, Blincoe Farms, Inc., Heyburn ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/15/2011 Burley, ID SWA, 208-678-5518 JO# 1385064, 5 Farmworker/Irrigator, Meyers Farms, Twin Falls ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/1/2011 Twin Falls, ID SWA, 208-735-2500 JO# 1385064, 2 General Farming/Irrigation, David Patrick Farming, LLC, Twin Falls ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/15/2011 Twin Falls, ID SWA, 208-735-2500 JO# 1385064, 10 General Farmworker, Joseph D Pavkov, Gooding ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/15/2011 Twin Falls, ID SWA, 208-735-2500 JO# 1386103, 1 Farmworker/Irrigator, Dean Stevenson, Paul ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/15/2011 Burley, ID SWA, 208-678-5518 JO# 1305064, 2 Farming/Irrigation/Livestock, Jonathan Wells, Buhl ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/15/2011 Twin Falls, ID SWA, 208-735-2500 JO# 1385064, 1 Farm/Irrigation/ Livestockworker, Tim Waters, Jerome ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/15/2011 Twin Falls, ID SWA, 208-735-2500 JO# 1385064, 2 General Farmworkers, Reynolds Farms, Inc., Castleford ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/1/2011 Twin Falls, ID SWA, 208-735-2500 JO# 1385064, 3 General Farmwork, Gene Shaw Farms, Dietrich ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/15/2011 Twin Falls, ID SWA, 208-735-2500 JO# 1385064, 9 General Farm/Irrigation/Ranching work, Donley Farms, Inc., Shoshone ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/15/2011 Twin Falls, ID SWA, 208-735-2500 JO# 1385064, 5 Farming/Irrigation/Livestock, Hull Farms, Inc, Filer ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/15/2011 Twin Falls, ID SWA, 208-735-2500 JO# 1385064, 4 General Farmwork, J & K Farms Inc, Jerome ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/1/2011 Twin Falls, ID SWA, 208-735-2500 JO# 1385064, 4 Farm/Ranching Work, Shaw Land And Livestock, Dietrich ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/15/2011 Twin Falls, ID SWA, 208-735-2500 JO# 1386619, 30 Farm/Ranch Worker/Irrigator, Farm Development Corporation, Glenns Ferry ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/15/2011 Mountain Home, ID SWA, 208-364-7788 JO# 1385064, 2 Farm/Irrigation/Livestock worker, Tunupa Cattle, Gooding ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/15/2011 Twin Falls, ID SWA, 208-735-2500 JO# 1386103, 3 Farmworker/Irrigator, Larry R. Jolley, Paul ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/15/2011 Burley, ID SWA, 208-678-5518 JO# 1386103, 1 Farmworker/Irrigator, Tuma Farms, Rupert ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/15/2011 Burley, ID SWA, 208-678-5518 JO# 1385064, 1 General Farmwork, Larry A Walter, Jerome ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/15/2011 Twin Falls, ID SWA, 208-735-2500 JO# 1386103, 1 Farmworker/Irrigator, Lloyd Richins, Paul ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 10/1/2011 Burley, ID SWA, 208-678-5518 JO# 1385064, 1 General Farmworkers, Stan Ricketts, Jerome ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/1/2011 Twin Falls, ID SWA, 208-735-2500 JO# 1385064, 1 General Farmworkers, Stan Ricketts, Jerome ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/1/2011 Twin Falls, ID SWA, 208-735-2500 JO# 1386103, 2 Farmworker/Irrigator, Stevenson & Sons, LLC, Rupert ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/15/2011 Burley, ID SWA, 208-678-5518 JO# 1385064, 1 General Farming, Armitage Farms, Buhl ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/1/2011 Twin Falls, ID SWA, 208-735-2500 JO# 1385064, 4 General Farmwork/Irrigation/Livestock, William T. Sherbine, Bellevue ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 12/1/2011 Burley, ID SWA, 208-678-5518 JO# 1386103, 3 Farmworker/Irrigator, Double H Ag, Inc., Paul ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/15/2011 Burley, ID SWA, 208-678-5518 JO# 1386103, 2 Farmworker/Irrigator, Matt Nail Farms, Murtaugh ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/15/2011 Burley, ID SWA, 208-678-5518 JO# 1385064, 1 General Farmwork/Irrigation and Livestock, Damele Ranching, Richfield ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 4/1/2011 to 11/15/2011 Twin Falls, ID SWA, 208-735-2500 JO# 1386619, 2 Farm/Ranch Worker/Irrigator, Arlan Isaac, Bruneau ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 12/21/2011 Mountain Home, ID SWA, 208-364-7788 JO# 1385064, 2 General Farmworkers, Doug Astle, Dietrich ID $9.90-$10/hr, 48/wk, 3/15/2011 to 11/15/2011 Twin Falls, ID SWA, 208-735-2500 MEDICAL CNA's and NA's wanted. Full & Part-time. Graveyard shifts Call 208-212-0115. NEED INDIVIDUAL TO TEACH CNA & PHLEBOTOMY COURSE to Certify individual. Please call 208-539-1556 Today is Sunday, March 6, the 65th day of 2011. There are 300 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight: On March 6, 1836, the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, fell to Mexican forces after a 13-day siege. T ODAY IN HISTORY RETAIL Locally owned retail business accepting resumes for PT Retail position, could work into full-time. Successful applicant will have excellent customer service skills. Data entry, MS office & quickbooks prefered. Self Motivated, Multi task, Detail oreiented, Ability to make decsions on there own based on company policies. Ability to work alone. Must be able to work Sat. Send Resumes to Retail Position 780 Falls ave #156 Twin Falls Id 83301 On this datte: In 1834, the city of York in Upper Canada was incorporated as Toronto. In 1853, Verdi’s opera “La Traviata” premiered in Venice, Italy. In 1857, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott v. Sandford that Scott, a slave, was not an American citizen and could not sue for his freedom in federal court. In 1933, a nationwide MECHANIC bank holiday declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt went into effect. In 1944, U.S. heavy bombers staged the first full-scale American raid on AmeriPride is currently seeking an Berlin during World War II. individual to join our team as a FT Maintenance Mechanic. In 1957, the former The Maintenance Mechanic will British African colonies of be responsible for the repair and maintenance of the stationthe Gold Coast and ary production equipment within Togoland became the indethe plant, as well as preventative maintenance and repair of pendent state of Ghana. steam boiler and air conditioning In 1967, the daughter of units. Josef Stalin, Svetlana Qualifications: Alliluyeva (ah-lee-loo*High School Diploma or GED YAY’-vah), appeared at the *Detail-oriented *1-3 years experience in industrial U.S. Embassy in New Delhi maintenance and declared her intention *Certification (or ability to obtain) in Steam Boiler and Air to defect to the West. Conditioning maintenance In 1970, a bomb being *Advanced knowledge in Electribuilt inside a Greenwich cal, Maintenance and Plumbing *Microsoft Office (Work, Outlook Village townhouse by the and Excel) experience helpful radical Weathermen acci*Knowledge of OSHA, EPA, HAZmat procedures and regulations dentally went off, destroyhelpful ing the house and killing The Maintenance Mechanic will three group members. enjoy competitive pay and a In 1981, Walter Cronkite comprehensive benefits package signed off for the last time Bring resume in person to 403 as principal anchorman of Main Ave W, Twin Falls, ID “The CBS Evening News.” Salary will be determined in interview process In 1987, 193 people died No Phone Call Please when the British ferry AmeriPride Services Inc, is an Herald of Free Enterprise AA/EEO Employer M/F/D/V capsized off the Belgian port of Zeebrugge. FARM Mechanic/Welder/Handyman Ten years ago: Calling it Growing cattle operation in Jerome the “most accurate census in seeking mechanic/welder/ history,” the Bush adminishandyman. Mechanic skills for large tractors, loaders, trucks. Welding tration refused to adjust the necessary. Competitive salary 2000 head count.Forty-two based on experience. Resumes sent to: Box # 44, people, mostly students, Jerome, ID, 83338. were killed in a schoolhouse Resumes must include schooling, skills, minimum 3 references explosion in southern with phone numbers. China; the government SKILLED blamed a bomber, but parCNC Plasma Table Operator. ents said the students had Must have some autocad exp. & been forced to make firegood work ethic. Wage DOE. Please call 208-431-3248 works by school officials. Bill Mazeroski was elected to FINANCIAL the Baseball Hall of Fame, along with former Negro League player Hilton Smith. Five years ago: South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds signed legislation banning most abortions in his state (abortion-rights groups were able to get enough sig: natures to put the measure to a vote, and the ban was rejected in the November election). Dana Reeve, who’d won admiration for MAGIC VALLEY BOUNCE her devotion to her husHOUSE/PARTY RENTAL band, actor Christopher BUSINESS FOR SALE. We have been in business for 13 years Reeve, through his decade (same owner). Business includes: of paralysis, died in New established name, client list, all equipment, delivery truck, York City; she was 44. web-site and 2011 orders. This Baseball Hall of Famer Kirby business can be run from the Puckett died in Phoenix at home. Serious inquiries only. Send info to: PMB 96376 age 45. Times News, PO Box 548 One year ago: Voters in Twin Falls, Idaho 83303 Iceland resoundingly Business Opportunities rejected a $5.3 billion plan to repay Britain and the and Commercial Properties Netherlands for debts Trails Inn Restaurant, spawned by the collapse of Ashton, Idaho. New price of $655K includes real estate. an Icelandic bank. The Schofields Food Town, Louisville Cardinals gave Sugar City, $950K includes all Freedom Hall a memorable assets and real estate. send-off by upsetting No. 1 GameWorld of Idaho Falls, Syracuse 78-68. asset liquidation price of $68,500 or make offer! View 100+ Listings on Web 208-733-0931 ext. 2 Arthur Berry & Co. www.arthurberry.com Classifieds 733-0931 ext. 2 Times News, Twin Falls, Idaho NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING Notice is hereby given by the Planning and Zoning Commission for the City of Twin Falls, Idaho, that a public hearing will be held March 22nd, 2011, a Tuesday, at the hour of 6:00 o'clock, P.M., in the City Council Chambers, located at 305 Third Avenue East, Twin Falls, Idaho, to hear a request by: SNAKE RIVER MANAGEMENT C/O STAN HAYE Requests a Special Use Permit to operate a professional office on property located at 686 Addison Avenue. A complete description is on file with the Twin Falls City Zoning and Development Manager at 324 Hansen Street East, 7357267. Any and all persons desiring to comment may appear and be heard at the appointed time. Persons needing special accommodations at a public meeting are asked to contact the City of Twin Falls at 735-7287 at least five (5) working days prior to the meeting. /s/ Rene V. Carraway Zoning and Development Manager PUBLISH: Thursday, March 6, 2011 THE IDAHO HOUSING & FINANCE ASSOCIATION NOTICE OF APPLICATION DEADLINE Notice of Application Deadline for IHFA's 2011 CHDO Certification and 2011 CHDO Operating Assistance Grant. Applicant must be an Idaho non-profit housing development organization. Applications available online at http://www.ihfa.org/ihfa/grant-programs/home-program/2011home-administrative-plan.aspx Exhibit N. Applications must be received by 5 p.m. April 30, 2011: IHFA, Grants Department, P.O. Box 7899 Boise, Idaho 83707-1899 / 565 W Myrtle, Park Plaza, fourth floor. PUBLISH: March 6, 2011 Breaking news when it happens NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING Notice is hereby given by the Twin Falls County Board of Commissioners for the County of Twin Falls, Idaho, that a public hearing will be held on Thursday, March 24, 2011, at the hour of 10:00 o'clock, A.M., in the Twin Falls County Courthouse, 425 LOST Cat, large male gray tabby, Shoshone St. North, 3rd Floor Conference Room, Twin Falls, in the Harmon Park area. Big reward. Please call 208-420-1145. Idaho, to consider an appeal from MAGIC VALLEY FLIGHT SIMULATION, LLC, concerning the decision of the City LOST Part of an equalizer hitch, Planning and Zoning Commission on February 8, 2011, to deny black bar shaped like an L with a a request for a Special Use Permit to install and operate an chain welded to it. Lost between aerial tour business located on 10 acres (+/-) located 2/3 of a Rupert & Twin on 2/28. Reward 208-436-8925 leave message. mile (+/-) southeast of the Canyon Springs Golf Course Club House within the Snake River Canyon within the Area of Impact. Any and all persons desiring to comment may appear and be heard at the appointed time. A complete description is on file with the Twin Falls City Planning and Zoning Administrator at 324 Hansen Street East, 735-7267. Persons needing special accommodations at a public meeting are asked to contact the City of Twin Falls at 735-7287 at least five MISSING German Shepherd 5 mi (5) working days prior to the meeting. south of Kimberly. Large, tan, 2 /s/ George Urie, Chairman PUBLISH: Sunday, March 6, 2011 PUBLIC NOTICE Actions planned and taken by your government are contained in public notices. They are part of your right to know and to be informed of what your government is doing. As self-government charges all citizens to be informed, this newspaper urges every citizen to read and study these notices. We advise those citizens who seek further information to exercise their right to access public records and public meetings. IMPORTANT Please address all legal advertising to: LEGAL ADVERTISING The Times-News PO Box 548 Twin Falls, Idaho 83303-0548 email to [email protected] Deadline for legal ads: 3 days prior to publication, noon on Wednesday for Sunday, noon on Thursday for Monday, noon on Friday for Tuesday and Wednesday, noon on Monday for Thursday and noon on Tuesday for Friday and Saturday. Holiday deadlines may vary. If you have any questions call Ruby, legal clerk, at 208-735-3324. Sunday, March 6, 2011 Classifieds 3 PEOPLE FOR PETS 420 Victory Ave. - PO Box 1163 Twin Falls, Idaho years old, neutered male, red collar. $200 reward. 208-539-7804. REWARD Missing Chocolate Lab, male and small German Shorthair Pointer. Please call 208-431-7787. LOST & FOUND 1.Shih-Tzu black/white adult male found at 146 Addison 2.3 Border Collie crosses tan & white/tan male puppy & adult female found at 2240 E 4100 N 3.Rottweiler cross black/tan/white female puppy found on Bridgeview 4.Border Collie cross black/white adult male camo collar found at 2766 E 3900 N 5.German Shepherd/Rottweiler cross black/brown male puppy found at 2214 E 3200 N 6.Chow/Shepherd/Beagle cross brown/black choke chain adult male found at Stadium & Eastland 7.Pit Bull cross black/white male puppy found at 2716 Addison ADOPTIONS 1.Border Collie cross white/black 10 week old neutered male “Panda” 2.3 Shepherd/Boxer crosses fawn/white 5 months old neutered males 3.Rottweiler cross black/tan/white 8 week old spayed female 4.Lab cross black 3 year old spayed female “Mira” 5.Border Collie cross black/white 2 year old neutered male “Doc” 6.Australian Shepherd/Lab cross blue/tan merle 4 month old neutered male “Junior” 7.3 Boxer crosses fawn/white & white/cream 2 months old 2 spayed females & 1 neutered male 8.Pit Bull cross light brindle 2 month old spayed female “Razor” 9.Pit Bull cross black/white 2 month old neutered male “Wonton” Many cats/kittens for adoption www.petfinder.com Mon-Fri. 10:00 am-5:30 pm Sat 10:00 am-2:00 pm Closed Sunday and Holidays We can only keep animals 48 hours, they are then sold or DESTROYED. Please check daily DUI? Consider trial rather than plea agreement. Ask your legal counsel about all CIVIL penalties and total DMV fees for Driver's License reinstatement. I am NOT an attorney, nor is this advertisement a solicitation. Paid for by Scott Andrus, Twin Falls. Have you forgotten to pickup your birthday photos? We have some photos we are sure you don't want us to toss. These can be picked up at The Times-News Classified Dept. Bankruptcy & Debt Counseling Free ½ hr consultation. Competitive Rates. We are a debt relief agency. We help people file for bankruptcy relief under the bankruptcy code. May, Browning & May 208-733-7180 MALE 60 years, attractive, 6', good shape, lonely seeks woman 45-55; shy, slim, attractive, for companionship. 208-308-0015. Get In The Habit! Read the Classifieds Every Day CNA NEEDED immediately for inhome care. Experience required working with people needing assistance in transferring and personal care. Background check required. Contact Janet 733-0497. Classified Deadlines For line ads Tues. - Sat. – 1 p.m. the day before. For Sun. & Mon. 2 p.m. Friday. Find a job that makes your references jealous. There are a lot of great jobs out there. You can find them here. Find them today at magicvalley.com Classifieds 733-0931 ext. 2 Classifieds 4 Sunday, March 6, 2011 BURLEY 3 bedroom, 1½ bath, all electric, 1 car garage. NO Pets, NO Smoking. $700 rent, $400 deposit. Call 300-0262 or 300-0491. NANA'S HOUSE DAYCARE has openings for all ages. Open 5:30 am until 12:30am. State licensed & ICCP accepted. Call 208-735-4193. CLASSIFIEDS It pays to read the fine print! Call the Times-News to place your ad. 1-800-658-3883 ext. 2 PUBLIC SERVICE MESSAGE Big profits usually mean big risks. Before you do business with a company, check it out with the Better Business Bureau. For free information about avoiding investment scams, write to the Federal Trade Commission, Washington, D.C. 20580 or call the National Fraud Information Center 1-800-876-7060 PUBLIC SERVICE MESSAGE Selling Property? Don't pay any fees until it's sold. For free information about avoiding time share and real estate scams, write to: Federal Trade Commission, Washington, D.C. 20580 or call the National Fraud Information Center, 1-800-876-7060. This newspaper will not knowingly accept any advertising for real estate which is in violation of the law. Our readers are hereby informed that all dwellings advertised in this newspaper are available on an equal opportunity basis. To complain of discrimination call HUD Toll-free telephone number at 800-6699777. The Toll-free telephone number for the hearing impaired is 800-927-8275. TWIN FALLS South, 2 bdrm home, in the country, no smoking/pets, $480+ $400 cleaning dep. 734-8613 JEROME 2 bdrm., 1 bath. Pet ok. Water & Trash paid. $550 + $300 dep. Call 208-212-1678. TWIN FALLS Very nice 3 bdrm, 2 bath, garage, lawn care. No pets/ smoking. $895 + dep. 733-6269 SALMON Move to God's country, Salmon, ID! Fish & hunt all year! Modular on foundation. Newly remodeled on 50x150 yard lot. Over 1700 sq. ft. dropped to $79,900. 208-339-0476 JEROME 55 or older, private area, 3 bdrm & 2 bdrm house. Call for information. 208-420-5859 TWIN FALLS Townhouse for sale by owner. Very close to canyon rim, trail and Canyon Ridge High School. 4 bedroom, 3 bath, 2 car finished garage. Below market price, $162,000. Call Mark 948-9956 JEROME 3 bdrm, 2 bath mobile homes. $550-$650. No pets. Long term. 324-8903 or 208-788-2817 JEROME Charming 4 bdrm, 2 bath. 117 East 7th. $800 + $600 dep. 324-4854 or 539-1172 JEROME New 3 Bdrms, 2 Bath House. 1002 21st Ave. Pet Friendly, $800 734-4334 RUPERT Custom home, nice sub'd, river access, 5 bdrm, 3 bath, 3 car garage, 3800 sq.ft., $1200 mo. + dep. Refs req. 208-436-3400 RUPERT Small 2 bedroom with big fenced yard. Refrig/Stove provided. No pets. $350. Call 670-1014. CORINNE, UT 66.7 acres across the river from Bear River Bird Refuge. Hunting, farming, grazing land. 39 water shares. Beautiful river and mountain views. Utilities on the property. $338,000 or reasonable offer. 208-410-0835 leave msg. JEROME 423 acres, 363 irrigated, 5 pivots, New 2400 sq ft. 4 bdrm., 3 bath home. Possession immediately $1.7 million. Triple 7 Realty Anthony 731-9800 EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITIES All real estate advertising in this newspaper is subject to the Fair Housing Act which makes it illegal to advertise “any preference limitation or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin or an intention to make any such preference limitation or discrimination. “Familial status includes children under the age of 18 living with parents or legal custodian; pregnant women and people securing custody or children under 18, 6 bdrm, 2 bath, 3000 sq. ft. home on 6.1 full irrigated acres. Nice hilltop view. Located 5 mi. west of Paul. Many updates incl. roof, DW, cooktop stove, refrig w/icemaker. Living room on main floor + larger family room downstairs. Must sell soon! $139,000. Reduced $16,000. View pictures at: http://propertyadsite.com/ detail.php?listing=11004119 Call Trell 208-670-8735 cell Will not carry papers. JEROME 2 houses on E. 3rd, both 3 bdrms, no pets/smoking. $700 & $725 + deposit. 208-420-6235 KIMBERLY 33 acres prime farm ground with barn & immaculate 2 bdrm plus loft, 2 bath home. 150x250 roping arena. Professionally landscaped. Acreage in grass alfalfa hay. Call 208-543-9918 or 623-261-2339. SHOSHONE Rental houses in town or country, 3-4 bdrm. 208-886-7138 TWIN FALLS 2 bdrm duplex, AC, appls, carport, no smoking/pets, $500/mo. Call 208-733-3742 TWIN FALLS 2 bdrm, 2 bath, some pets ok, $700 mo. + $700 dep. Available 3/15. 208-539-2227 TWIN FALLS 2000 sq ft. split level, short term 3 mo. lease. Exc. Area. New carpet. No pets/smoking. Refs. Dep. $895. Call 734-5785 TWIN FALLS 4 bdrm., 2 bath country home. Appls., DW, AC, Electric heat & wood stove. Auto sprinklers. $700/mo. + dep. 733-8190 TWIN FALLS Lease with option to purchase. Newer 3 bdrm., 2 bath, 2 car garage home on cul-de-sac near Municiple Golf Course. All appls. incld. No smoking/pets. Refs. req. $900 mo. 208-681-6684 TWIN FALLS CORNER LOT with Shop for rent. .6 acres in great industrial area. $650/mo for whole lot. Please call 208-731-3135 for more information. WHO can help YOU rent your rental? Classifieds Can! 733-0931 ext. 2 [email protected] GOODING Nice newer 1 or 2 bdrm apts available. Call Laura 934-5991 or 961-0011 GOODING SENIOR HOUSING RD Subsidy Rent Based on Income 62 Years and Older, if handicaped/disabled regardless of age. 934-8050 SHOSHONE 1 Bedroom Duplex, $395. 408 W 5th. 734-4334 TWIN FALLS “New” Falls Ave. Suites. Conveniently located. Close to CSI & next to Fred Meyer. Free Utilities except electric & wireless Internet 2 bdrm apt. $550. 208-420-1301 TWIN FALLS *Sparkling Clean* extra large 2 bdrm, 2 bath, gated parking, elevator, only $599 + deposit. Call today for special 734-5041. TWIN FALLS 1 bdrm apt. Quiet & secure, downtown, no smoking or pets. Refs. 732-0039 8am-10pm TWIN FALLS 1, 2 & 3 bdrm, some W/D hookups & some close to CSI. No pets. Ask about movein specials. Call 208-734-6600. TWIN FALLS 1, 2 & 3 Bedrooms Apts. & Houses. $250-$850. Various Locations. Call for Details 734-4334 www.twinfallsrentals.com ◆◆◆◆◆ WOW! ◆◆◆◆◆ Weekly Payments O.K! • No Credit Checks- No Deposit - All Utilities Paid- 60 Channel Cable - Free Long Distance & Internet - Fax • Pets O.K.- Furnished StudiosOn Site Laundry. TWIN FALLS Starting $550 mo. 731-5745 / 358-0085 / 431-8496 BURLEY/RUPERT Starting $450 mo. 731-5745 or 436-8383 TWIN FALLS 1 bdrm apt furnished or unfurnished. $350 mo + $300 dep. No pets. 535½ 2nd Ave. W. 913-240-1239 TWIN FALLS New 1 bdrm, no pets. Inquire at 503 3rd Ave E. 208-316-2431 Equal Opportunity Provider Hear the quiet! Laurel Park Apartments 176 Maurice Street Twin Falls 734-4195 HEYBURN Brand new 3 bdrm apt., granite counter tops, very nice, no smoking/pets. $625/ mo. + $500 dep. 801-726-6181 JEROME Great Location, 2 bdrm., 1 bath duplex. $450 mo. + dep. Call Brent 775-315-4050. JEROME Move-in to 2011 at The Oaks & start living in affordable luxury. 3 bdrm, 2 bath, 2 car garage and much more for only $578 mo. Move-in this month & get 1 month free! Call 208-324-6969 or stop by 1911 N Kennedy St, Jerome, ID. TWIN FALLS 2 & 3 bdrm apts & town homes in various locations, no smoking/pets. $595-$850. 208-539-6913 TWIN FALLS 2 bdrm duplex, storage units, garage, $600+$600 dep No smoking/pets. 208-404-3159 TWIN FALLS 2 bdrm, 2 bath, great location, W/D & appls, no smoking or pets. $595 + dep. $200 off 1st mo rent w/lease. 208-734-1143 TWIN FALLS 2 bdrm, 2 bath, all appls. Upper in 4-plex near Perrine Elementary. Water & trash paid. No pets, no smoking $675/mo. March rent free. 208-736-2893 TWIN FALLS 2 bdrm., 1 bath, no pets. $500 + $300 deposit. Call 208-212-1678. TWIN FALLS 2 bdrm., 1 bath, central air, W/D hookup, $550 mo. + $500 dep. Call 208-731-8010. TWIN FALLS 377 Morningside Dr #2 3 bd, 2 ba apt in 4-plex w/garage. New carpet/paint. No smoking/ pets. $650 mo+dep. 208-954-2180 Get a Month Rent Free* BURLEY Norman Manor Apts 1 & 2 bdrms, $375-$400 + dep. New improvements through out Manager on site. Call any time 208-678-7438 ~ 1361 Parke Ave Two Bedroom Apts. Clean • Comfortable • Close to Shopping Rent based on income! Mon.-Fri. 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. 2150 Main St. Gooding 934-8141 • TDD 800-377-3579 WHO can help YOU sell your property? Classifieds Can! 208-733-0931 ext. 2 [email protected] Times News, Twin Falls, Idaho • Magic Valley’s NEWEST and NICEST • Spectacular View of the Canyon • Resort Style Pool and Spa • 24 Hour Fitness Center • Garages and Storage Units Call (208) 732-0400 *Half month free w/ 10-11mth lease. Full month free w/ 12-13 mth lease. w www.rivercrestapartmentcommunity.com SUNSET MEMORIAL in Twin Falls. (3) lots. Call 208-837-6567. SUNSET MEMORIAL PARK “Riverside Plot 391” (stream view), $1,395. 702-346-8569 CLASSIFIEDS 5 bedroom, 2.5 bath + lg bsmt. Owners moving overseas, must sell. All contents incld. If buyer decides. White goods, electrical, furn., tools, outdoor settings, gym, pool table etc. + 2 cars. New Reno, Paint. Reduced $209,000/offer. Call 208-420-7021. It pays to read the fine print. Call the Times-News to place your ad. 1-800-658-3883 ext. 2 Can’t Make It Into Our Office? Fax Us Your Classified Ad! (208) 734-5538 $15.00 Value Minimum 4 hours of cleaning Regularly $60.00 EXTRA LOT & LOTS MORE! With this coupon $45.00 New Clients Only / One Per Household The areas' reliable white glove cleaning service! Guaranteed Satisfaction—Bonded & Insured Twin Falls/Jerome Burley 736-6200 677-3300 www.maidsource.net APRIC T LANE Quality Used Home Furnishings & Consignments Consignments, Gently Used Furniture And Home Decor, Antiques A Ebay Services And More Buy 3 weeks at $125 and get the 4th week FREE! Your business card will run Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday in Print and Online for 30 days! CALL 208-733-0931 ext.2 TODAY! Classifieds 733-0931 ext. 2 Times News, Twin Falls, Idaho EAR ABBY Jeanne Phillips DEAR IN MOURNING: I’m sorry about the untimely loss of your adored pet. I, too, hope your letter will alert pet owners — as well as parents and caregivers of small children. EAR ABBY: Do dreams have a meaning? I have the same disturbing dream over and over again. It happens often. The scenario is the same, but the place in the dream varies. I wake up feeling anxious and can’t fall back to sleep. Do you have any advice or suggestion on what I can do about this? You have helped many people; can you help me? SLEEPLESS NSAS CITY IN KAN DEAR SLEEPLESS: Some dreams have a “meaning” — others do not. Your dream may be an attempt by your subconscious to work through something in your life that you haven’t been able to resolve consciously, which is why the dream is recurring. However, it’s important that you understand that dreams usually aren’t literal. An example would be a person who dreams he or she is naked in a public place. It could be caused by fear of “exposure” of some secret, or wish fulfillment having completed a successful diet and exercise program. Because the dream is causing sleeplessness and anxiety, it may help to discuss it with a psychologist. Just talking about it may help the problem go away. EAR ABBY: Our group has a problem. One of the women takes out her dental floss and uses it at the table regardless of where we are — a restaurant, banquet, anyplace. We have all asked her please not to, but she’s the type who, if you tell her she’s wrong, insists she’s always right. According to her, flossing one’s teeth at the table is acceptable. She’s in her 60s and she’s a representative for our AARP group, which means she attends a great many functions. There has been a lot of talk about this, and it has made a lot of people uncomfortable. She reads your column as we all do. So please address this subject. Thank you. GROSSED OUT IN MASSACHUSETTS DEAR GROSSED OUT: With pleasure! Flossing one’s teeth should be done in PRIVATE, in the powder room. Under no circumstances is it proper to do it at the dinner table. For her to insist upon doing it in spite of being told it makes others uncomfortable is extremely rude, so tell her to chew on that! TWIN FALLS Honey Locust Ln, $550. Spacious 2 Bdrm Apts. Includes Water 734-4334 twinfallsrentals.com TWIN FALLS Large clean 2 bdrm, 1 bath, appls, fireplace, W/D hookup cable/water/garbage pd. No smoking/pets. $600 mo. + $300 dep. 734-5518 or 539-3558 TWIN FALLS NE 3 bdrm, 2 bath, all appliances, Sawtooth, $725 + $700 deposit. 208-731-9268 TWIN FALLS New carpet/paint, 1 bdrm, appls, water included, $475. Like new 2 bedroom, 1 bath, stove, electric heat, garage, $650. The Management Co. 733-0739 TWIN FALLS Snow Kidding! One month free rent! Devon Senior Community Beautiful & spacious. All appls, cable, W/D hookup, central air, fitness center & library. IHFA Contact Mark 208-735-2224. WENDELL 1 & 2 bdrm apts avail. Immediately. Based on income. Pickup an application at Rancho Verde Apartments 255 Ave F or call 208-536-6244 1 6 11 15 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 27 30 31 32 33 35 37 39 43 48 50 51 TWIN FALLS AC, cable, WiFi, all utils. Paid. Weekly/monthly rates. 1341 Kimberly Rd. 208-733-6452. www.capriextendedstay.com TWIN FALLS Furn. Upstairs ¾ bath, living room, king size bdrm, W/D, utils incld. Internet & cable, No smoking. $450 mo. + $350 dep. ALSO 1 bdrm furn room, $350 mo. + $300. 734-9901 or 490-0731. TWIN FALLS HOLIDAY MOTEL Cable HBO/ESPN Microwave, Ref. Free WiFi. Local calls Daily-weekly special 208-733-4330 x11 TWIN FALLS/BURLEY/RUPERT All utils paid, free cable & Internet. No dep. No credit check Pet ok. Starting at $450. 731-5745 / 431-3796 BURLEY 14x56, in country, all electric, 2 bdrm, $350 mo. + $300 dep. or will sell. Refs req. 208-677-6791 SPRINGDALE 3 bdrm, 2 bath. $400 month + $250 deposit. Call 208-312-2883 or 654-2883 TWIN FALLS 734-4334 Retail/Office Spaces Various Sizes & Locations 52 54 55 56 59 61 62 64 67 69 70 73 77 79 80 82 85 87 89 90 92 95 96 98 ACROSS Shrimp kin Eclipse shadow Grain layer Pennsylvanie, e.g. Bellow’s “The Adventures of __ March” “Air Music” Pulitzer winner, 1976 Like Hubbard’s cupboard Very attractive Amherst sch. Bowlers have them Documentary about a Ravi Shankar concert tour? Sitcom about an endearing dimwit? Reserved Geometry figure On __-to-know basis Hypothetical primates Not at all excited Entered gradually Waste, as time Show about a nonsensical grain grinder? Giant in the woods “Great taste” beers, familiarly Summer goal, maybe “No __!” Pressed for payment “__ all in your mind” Moral principles Lincoln Ctr. site Prolonged pain Hopi home Symbol on the film poster for Eastwood’s “Hang ’Em High” Mt. Shasta’s state Box for practice Drama about an opinionated military? Sheep’s kin In concert Natural sponge Telescope eyepiece Brooks of country Boston College conference since 2005 Confident comeback JFK posting Ill will “Mayor” author Former USSR member Ankle bones Early stage By John Lampkin 3/6/11 TWIN FALLS Brand new 2 bdrm, 1 bath apts, $624-$680 Close to CSI campus. For more information Call 208-735-1180. TWIN FALLS Clean duplex, 1800 sq ft. split entry, 3 bdrms., 2 bath, single garage, appls., water & sanitation incld. 320 Ridgeway. Refs. req. No pets. 1 yr lease. $750 mo. + $500 dep. 420-8935 or 420-3589 or 520-463-2438. Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis (C) 2011 Tribune Media Services, Inc. All rights reserved. DEAR ABBY: In our family, pets are irreplaceable, full-fledged, beloved members. One of them was a beautiful, very affectionate cat we had rescued as an abandoned kitten. Tragically, he didn’t make it through an operation we hoped would save his life. His death was a needless accident, and we are writing this in the hope that you will print it to warn other readers so no other animals will die in a similar fashion. On the day before he died, he suddenly stopped eating and drinking. He became lethargic and vomited several times. Our vet diagnosed him with a bowel obstruction. Apparently, he had eaten a piece of a palm from Palm Sunday. Unable to pass through his system,it had perforated his bowel. The damage was too extensive to fix. The vet later told us about many other items he had removed throughout his experience: Q-tips, cotton balls, coins, twist ties, string, buttons, Easter grass, Christmas tree icicles, etc. Abby, please warn your readers to pick up anything that’s small enough for a pet to put in its mouth, and to keep anything a pet might be tempted to taste out of reach. If you do, perhaps our precious kitty’s death will not have been in vain. IN MOURNING IN PENNSYLVANIA Sunday, March 6, 2011 Classifieds 5 100 Talk show about words like “zeppelin” and “dirigible”? 103 Many a texting whiz 104 10,000 square meters 106 Lampblack 107 Sioux enemies 108 Starbucks size 111 Attending USC, e.g. 115 Like some drilling 119 Sitcom about a team of aromatherapists? 122 Financial show about the fermented honey market? 124 Straight up 125 Bizarre 126 Procter & Gamble razor 127 Cowardly Lion’s farmhand alter ego 128 Of the kidneys 129 Got together 130 Really smell 131 Ice cream brand 132 Nonplus 133 Until now DOWN 1 “Straight Up” singer Abdul 2 Bit of tongue-wagging 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 26 28 29 34 36 38 39 40 Mescal source Joker Twitter source Modern folklore “Le __ d’Arthur” Payoff Do over, as a kitchen “Are not!” comeback Hardly big shots? Like a bump on a log Goddess of the hunt Straightened up New newts Inner tube shapes Hewed Little shaver Tried to get a seat “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country” speaker More despicable 1955 Argentine coup victim First name in nature photography Chalet backdrop Drama about an Asian virus? Sphere opening BURLEY Storage shop 30'x45', $250 month, also 40'x55' insulated, bathroom, 3 overhead doors, $700. 208-219-0056 TWIN FALLS 2-3 booth beauty salon or nail care shop. Good location, willing to improve to suit tenant. $425/mo utils pd. 539-4907 FAT MARKET HOGS for sale. Call 208-326-3293. BORDER COLLIE MCNAB, (2) 5 month old females. 1 year old female. Call 208-431-2608. HEREFORD BULL Polled A.I. son of SHF Progress P20 80# BW safe for heifers. 208-308-4083 RABBITS Bred Does and Butcher Rabbits for sale. 208-316-5908 REGISTERED ANGUS HEIFERS Bred for spring calving, good quality/pedigree. Also yearling bulls. Call 423-4010 or 539-3106. REGISTERED ANGUS Yearling Bulls. $2000 head. Call 208-326-3293. YEARLING BULLS Gelbvieh, Angus & Balancer, black & red, low birth weights. 208-326-3679 TWIN FALLS Blue Lakes Office Complex. From 200 to 1300 sq. ft. all utils. incl., rent neg. 309-0365 TWIN FALLS 1500 sq ft. 14 ft overhead door, personal door. Office, bath. Gas heat. $625. 539-7948/5. WANTED TO BUY Hospital cattle milk, any amount. 208-404-2827 CIRCLE J '01 3 horse slant trailer. New brakes, tack door, jack, custom swing-out saddle rack. Exc. Cond. $6000. 208-543-4212. TWIN FALLS Small master bdrm, $325 share utilities. Near CSI. 1149 Blake St. N. Call 721-1592 JOHN DEERE '05 310SG extend a hoe, 4WD backhoe, 1100 hours, all the extras, 3 buckets. $49,900. Call Anthony 731-9800 COCKER SPANIEL AKC reg, shots, dewclaws removed, tails docked, $200 must go! 208-539-9737 DACHSHUND Pups adorable, AKC, ready now. Can see online. Buhl. 405-973-6395 DOG OBEDIENCE All levels, all ages. Starts 03/07/11 Call 208-644-WOOF (9663) FREE Brittany Spaniel, terrier cross puppies. Will make cute companion dogs. Call 829-5785. FREE Kitten & several Cats, spayed & neutered, all litterbox trained good with other pets. 438-8172 FREE Moving, too many pampered adult cats, vacinated, neutered, some declawed, only to the best homes. Refs. req. Call 539-6860. FREE Pyrnese Springer, to a good home, 2 yrs, spayed, very friendly, needs room to play. 324-4560 NH 425 2 string bailer in good condition, $4500. 208-731-1778 or 731-1657 NOW ACCEPTING CONSIGNMENTS For the March Community Online Auction. www.idahoauctionbarn.com Call 208-731-4567 POTATO EQUIPMENT Betterbuilt seed cutter & treater. Lockwood seed plier. 6-row bedder. 6-row cultivator with diker & chemical application tank. Logan 6-row planter with fertilizer & chemical application tanks. Ace 4row vine shredder. Acme 4-row vine cutter. Two 4-row potato rollers. 208-423-4015 IVORY RESCUE has openings for small breed dogs, adult or puppies. 208-316-0695 Twin Falls TRINITY '95 Farm bed Trailer, 42' PARMA '06 trailer, hauled strictly ag, no manure, like new exc. shape. 208-404-9690 or 208-543-9290 PIT BULL/ROTTWEILER Puppies, six males, 5 weeks old, $150. 208-421-4203 WANTED Cars, Trucks, Combines, Swathers, Balers, etc. Will beat anyones price. 208-539-2206 SAINT BERNARD female, 2-3 years old, abandoned, great family dog. 208-324-4038 WANTED Plows 2, 3, 4 & 5 bottom disks tandem or off set. Grain Drills, Roller Harrows & Seed Cleaner. Call Bob at 208-312-3746. aGRICULTURE WANTED Tractors and other misc; repair/salvage/running. Bob, 208-312-3746 SHORKIES Two females. 9 weeks old. $500 each. Serious inquires only. 208-709-0836 GIVE YOUR HORSE A 2ND CHANCE. WANTED: Unwanted horses, ponies, mules and draft horses. Call 208-539-1714 TOY POODLES AKC Reg, all colors, dewclaws removed, $400. 208-490-0508 or 490-0512 Your CORN stood all winter, but your crop insurance quit in November...It shouldn't have! Ask me how you could have been covered. Heber Loughmiller 208-358-2494 FEEDER HAY Small bales. $9. Big Bales, 1 st cutting. $170 ton. Straw, small & big bales. Call 326-3679 GRASS HAY Small bales, good quality, covered, Burley area. Call 208-678-3789. HORSE HAY 3rd cutting, 125 lbs. 3-string, green, barn stored, $12/bale. 208-539-2722 RAINED ON HAY costing you money..? Protect your farm revenue from falling prices or weather damaged hay... Call Heber Loughmiller 208-358-2494 Equal Opportunity Provider T.S.C. Hay Retrieving 2 stacks grass hay covered. (200) ¾ ton corn stalk bales. 208-280-0839 Angus & Hereford Bull Sale Monday, March 14 at 1:00pm At Spring Cove Ranch, Bliss, Id 130 Angus Bulls 45 Hereford Bulls 20 Angus Heifers 15 Hereford Heifers For Catalogs call: Butlers at 208-352-4332 or Bryans at 208-280-1507 ANGUS BULLS Long yearling and yearling. 421-0424 or 326-4682 84 Abundant 86 Terra __ 88 Rembrandt’s contemplative subject 91 Gossip 93 Longtime New Yorker cartoonist Roz 94 “I Saw __ Again”: 1966 hit 97 Appraised items on a PBS “Roadshow” 99 Had a hankering 101 Frantic 102 Villain to “avoid” in 1980s Domino’s Pizza ads, with “the” 105 Insolent 107 Resistance unit 109 Edit 110 Dieter-friendly 112 Like fruitcakes 113 Oater actor Lash 114 Like crackerjacks 115 General Bradley 116 Grand affair 117 Diet 118 Black Hills st. 120 Zeus’ spouse 121 “Brave New World” drug 123 Puzzle finisher’s cry Answers are on page Classifieds 8 TWIN FALLS Office space for rent, 625 sq. ft., 560 Filer. $600/mo, water & sanitation included. 736-8747 TWIN FALLS Office Space for rent, available immediately. 1,100 sq. ft. includes a lobby area, 3 offices, and has handicap accessibility. Located at 2016 Washington St. N., Twin Falls near the canyon rim. Call Chuck 736-8543 for more information. Property claim Feminine title Air traffic images Like the sky during fireworks On a liner, say Liner’s primary section Disguised, briefly Wharf on the Seine Old-timey words of emphasis WWII Axis general Earthworm environs Short film maker? Drama about an obnoxious superhero? Cone head? Big heads Rhône city Juanita’s “a” Entangled Last Olds made Quemoy neighbor Scarecrow’s lack Eschew BP competitor Pace Only daughter of Elizabeth II MAIN LINE (800) 10 feet. 6” aluminum with risers & clamps. 2¼ foot. Call 208-326-4872. PIVOT Used Valley 6000 Pivot, new tower boxes, new panel. Call 208-260-0591. SIPHON TUBES 60” and 72”, $3/each. 208-539-3349 BUYING CORN ANY MOISTURE. Call Dan 208-350-8975. The Amalgamated Sugar Company LLC will be accepting bids for the following Mud Removal & Hauling Services at the Paul Facility. Removal of approximately 140,000 cubic yards of mud from the Mud Pond and transferred to the disposal site approximately ½ mile away. Removal of approximately 5,000 yards mud from Primary Surge Tank & transferred to disposal site approximately ¾ mile away. Equipment Required: Long Stick Excavator (recommended), Seal Dump Trucks, Front-end Loader (not to exceed 28,0000 pounds) For Bid Information Contact Ivan Reynolds, Purchasing Specialist 208-438-7152 before March 11, 2011 Bid submittal due March 18, 2011 12:00pm (noon) Classifieds 6 Sunday, March 6, 2011 Classifieds 733-0931 ext. 2 Times News, Twin Falls, Idaho THAT SCRAMBLED WORD GAME by Mike Argirion and Jeff Knurek WASHER & DRYER Good working condition, $50 each. 208-320-6870 COMPOST FOR SALE 25 ton min. $4 per ton. We will load. Larger quanities discounted. Call 208-539-6617. BEEKEEPING 3lb package Honey Bees w/Queen to start hive, $95. 208-961-0969 or www.tubbsberryfarm.com GENERATOR Diesel 12hp, 120/240 service, Tahoe model T17000LXR, automatic idle, remote start, low oil shut off, never used, new in 2009, $3000. 208-308-8372 WANTED to buy or lease North side water shares. Call 208-358-1277 BOWFLEX PR3000, like new. $600. Call 208-420-4812. WEIGHT MACHINE Universal with weights. Good Condition $75/offer Call 208-734-4738 TWIN FALLS 6 acres of alfalfa for rent 1¼ miles south of 5 points, 10 water shares and head gate. $1500 a year. 208-734-8296 ANTIQUES and COLLECTIBLES Wanted old magazines, toys, horse tack, Indian items, jewelry & quilts. Call 208-280-6533 BIRTHDAY PHOTOS Have you forgotten to pick-up your birthday photos? We have some photos we are sure you don't want us to toss. These can be picked up at The Times-News Classified Dept RESTAURANT EQUIPMENT 3 door refrigerator, 3 well steam table, dishwasher & 4 sinks. 208-837-4887 or 358-1085 BUYING Gold & Silver Jewelery, Coins, Bullion. Top prices paid. 208-410-5787 or 208-316-0188 WANTED Junk Cars, $50 small, $75 medium, $100 large. Free towing. Courteous, clean & professional same day removal. Call 208-410-3572. WANTED Military items from WWI through the Vietnam war. Cash paid for uniforms, insignia, documents, scrapbooks and gear. Paul 732-8391 or 420-0414 WANTED Old Arctic Cat Snowmobiles. Will consider other brands. Have cash. Willing to travel. Call 815-341-5294 or [email protected] WANTED Old vintage fishing/hunting items; flies, fly reels, rods, hunting knives, leather gun and rod cases, game calls, decoys, photographs, books, catalogs, clothing, shotguns, rifles, creels, archery, snow shoes, gun and reel parts, art, etc. 1-800-962-2427 WANTED TO BUY Junk cars and all type of scrap. 208-324-4142 WANTED Used, older or antique wooden baseball bats. 208-736-1004 WANTED We buy junk batteries. We pay more than anyone out there. Check us out at Interstate Batteries. Fully licensed and insured to protect the batteries all the way to the smelter. Call 208-733-0896. 412 Eastland Drive, 8-5 Mon-Fri NEW BIBLE Jumble Books Go To: http://www.tyndale.com/jumble/ BEET SHARES for rent. shares, $125 per share. Call 208-308-5971. Unscramble these six Jumbles, one letter to each square, to form six ordinary words. Now arrange the circled letters to form the surprise answer, as suggested by the above cartoon. PRINT YOUR ANSWER IN THE CIRCLES BELOW Answers are on page Classifieds 8 WANTED Washers, Dryers, Ranges & Refrigerators. Working or not. Call 208-308-2188. CZ 550 VARMINT .22-250, laminated stock, 25.5" bull barrel, single set trigger, plus extras. $675 takes all. Call 208-599-3020. WANTED: Help Youth Group in Jerome! Do you have any of these items in storage taking up space; we would love to take them off your hands: used pool table, air hockey, dart boards, video game stations, refrigerator, microwaves, sound equipment/microphones, acoustic electric guitar, key board & drums. All donations appreciated and will be used to grow talented teens and give them a safe haven. Call 208-420-8372. MAUSER 7x57 AI HVA with scope, nice wood, dies and brass, $435/ offer. H&R Buffalo Classic 45-70, beautiful wood, 32", very nice, $335/offer. 208-490-1159. UT/ID/OR CONCEALED CARRY PERMIT CLASS *All Inclusive* ONLY $65. Sat. Mar. 26, 6-10pm. Call Joe at 435-757-1900. SEAEAGLE 14 ft raft, complete with all accessories including floor and seats. $1500. Call 208-420-0578. ELECTRIC WHEELCHAIR Bought in Dec '10. Paid $6000 will sell for $2000. Brand new. Call 736-9332. MARTIN ESTATE SALE March 10 & 11 (9-6) March 12 (9-2) 1651 Miller Avenue, Burley Three 1950 Bedroom Sets-PianoRefrigerator - Stove - Desk Washer/Dryer - Dressers Lamps - Old Cabinets - Books Recliners (Variety) - Depression Glass - Luray - Pyrex - All Kinds of Glassware - Televisions Stereo - Folding Chairs - Sofa Old Records - Stoneware Rock Coffee Table - Typewriter Vacuum - Bedding - Old Radio Vintage Clothes-Sewing Machine Yard Art - Book Shelf - Luggage Clocks - Mirror - All Kitchen Items Jewelry Box - Sewing Notions Hand Tools - Yard Tools. Items in 2 sheds & Garage still to Unpack! Managed by Blue Cow 312-4900 See Classifieds Business and Service Directory to assist you in your home repairs. 733-0931. HONDA '09 500 Foreman Rubicon, Fourtrax, 395 miles, 4x4, electric shifter & manual, GPS, PS. $6000. Red. Call 208-599-1216. JET BOAT 19' Almar, Kodiak marine 5.8L V8, Dominator pump, EZ loader trailer, heavy hull, one owner, immaculate $12,900 208-320-4058 ***USED SHELLS**** Quality~Low Prices~Selection. 208-312-1525 SHELL fits 2010-2011 GMC long bed, like new, must sell, $575/ offer. 208-678-0103 SHELL fits Ford Super Duty short box, $575/offer. 208-312-1525 SHELL fits Toyota '07 and newer Tundra Crewmax. Must sell, very reasonable. 208-312-1525 COACHMAN '99 37' diesel pusher, Cummins engine, large slide out, low mileage, all the extras, excellent condition. 208-423-5055 WANTED Old Arctic Cat Snowmobiles. Will consider other brands. Have cash. Willing to travel. Call 815-341-5294 or [email protected] CHARMAC '02 Cargo Shuttle, 16' enclosed gooseneck, complete with custom shelving, $5000 or best offer. 208-324-6904 Get In The Habit! Read the Classifieds Every Day NOTICE Classified Advertisers Please check your ad for accuracy the first day it runs. The Times-News will only be responsible for any errors reported on the first day of publication Please Call 733-0931 ext. 2 Classifieds 733-0931 ext. 2 Times News, Twin Falls, Idaho IF MARCH 6 IS YOUR Y: Don’t be down BIRTHDAY in the mouth this week if it seems there are too many obligations when your heart is yearning for amorous adventures. People may think the world of you and that you are extremely capable and trustworthy, so may give you more than your fair share of the workload. Early April is a better time to pursue love interest and to make important decisions, because even though you are still a bit starry-eyed, you can get good advice from friends.Early May is the best time to make dispassionate financial decisions that lead to profit. If you remain single over the summer, you will find better pickings in October through December. H OROSCOPE Jeraldine Saunders Sunday, March 6, 2011 Classifieds 7 CLASSIFIEDS It pays to read the fine print! Call the Times-News to place your ad. 1-800-658-3883 ext. 2 NEW ENGINES and RE-MANUFACTURED ENGINES and TRANSMISSIONS. USED ENGINES, TRANSMISSIONS, transfer cases, fenders, hoods, lights, bumpers, doors, grilles, mirrors, RADIATORS, etc. 208-734-7090 TRANSMISSION 3 spd, Auto, fits ¼ ton pickup or small car. $75. Call 208-934-4823. 21,000 Actual Miles GMC '91 Topkick Bucket truck with 47' Versalift man lift, Cat 3116 Diesel, Allison, AT, PS, AC, fleet maintained, one owner. $10,900. Call 208-320-4058. GMC '91 Topkick with 7 yd dump bed. Cat 3116 diesel, 10 spd trans, PS & AC, new radials, one owner, fleet maintained, $8900. 208-320-4058 FORD '96 F-450 with 13 ft flatbed, 21,000 Actual Miles, V8, AT, AC, toolboxes, one owner, very clean. $6200. Call 208-320-4058. 42,000 Actual Miles RIES (March 21-April 19): Be true to your word. Do not let petty distractions keep you from honoring your responsibilities. Stand firm with your opinions and don’t be swayed by smooth talkers. Stick to your guns in the week ahead. AURUS (April 20-May 20): Everybody loves somebody sometime. This week you can be proactive about matters of the heart; show a significant other how you truly feel. A chance meeting with someone new could yield unexpected benefits. EMINI (May 21-June 20): Follow your heart. Put your business life on autopilot and devote your time to exploring romance and relationships. Single out those things in life that bring the most happiness and act upon them this week. ANCER (June 21-July 22): A quick decision and a poor decision are likely to go hand in hand. Weigh your options carefully and do a bit of homework before deciding the final outcome this week.There’s no rush even if others put on pressure to act quickly. EO (July 23-Aug. 22): Your job will not seem like labor this week.You’re at the top of your game and should easily handle all tasks. Good fortune extends beyond the workplace, as relationships will be in good standing as well. IRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Sometimes you can successfully have more than one pot cooking on the stove. Your wits will be sharpened this week and you will be able to multitask with ease. Focus on catching up and getting a little ahead. IBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):: Make a day of it. Telephone friends or a special someone and go out on the town or catch a movie. Schedule some personal time during the arduous workweek ahead, as you will need ample time to recharge your batteries. CORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): There’s a sucker born every minute. Make sure that the sucker in question is not you. Be cautious about expenditures and keep in mind that nothing is ever a sure thing. Spend only when absolutely necessary this week. AGITTARIUS (Nov. 22Dec. 21): Patience is the key to success. When you are uncertain how to proceed, the best course of action may be to take a wait-andsee approach. A lack of preparation could be disastrous in the week ahead. APRICORN (Dec. 22Jan. 19): Clear the air. A heartfelt conversation with a trusted friend could help you to choose the most lucrative path. The most practical solution to a nagging problem could come from an impractical source. QUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Open up your heart and let the sun shine in. Your smile can go viral and lighten the mood when you enter a room. Share your positive energy with those around you in the upcoming week. ISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): The greatest feats are often launched from the humblest of beginnings. This week make a change in your outlook and your direction. Lay the past to rest and prepare to embark upon a bright new future. FORD '80 F-700 with 16 ft flatbed with stakesides, 42,000 Actual Miles, V8, 5 & 2, one owner, well maintained. $3500. Call 208-320-4058. IHC '85 1900 Cab & Chassis, DT466 Diesel, 5&2, PS, AC, one owner, clean and well maintained. $5500. Call 208-320-4058. 79,000 ACTUAL MILES MACK '89 RW600 with 350hp diesel, 13 spd. trans., PS & AC, Jake brake, Hendrickson suspension, one owner, 79,000 actual miles, like new. $16,900. Call 208-320-4058 CONNECT WITH CUSTOMERS WHO NEED YOUR SERVICE Advertise in the Business & Service Directory 733-0931 ext. 2 DODGE '00 350, 4x4 with utility bed and warn winch, V10, AT, AC, one owner, well maintained, work ready. $6900. Call 208-320-4058 IHC '89 1900 with 15' flat bed dump. DT 466 Diesel, 10 spd. Fuller trans., PS & AC. 76,000 actual miles, one owner, well maintained, $8900. Call 208-320-4058 IHC 9370 with 130,000 actual miles, Detroit 6V92, 335hp, 7 speed, new rubber, one owner, like new, $8900. 208-320-4058 FORD '00 F-550 Bucket truck, 4x4, with Altec 42 ft lift. Powerstroke diesel, New factory Ford Remanufactured, AT, AC, PS, one owner, well maintained, work ready. $18,900. Call 208-320-4058. GMC '97 1500 with 45,000 actual miles, 4.3L V6, AT, AC, one owner, immaculate, $5900. 208-320-4058 CHEVY '01 Silverado, 2500 HD, crew cab, lots of extras. 156K miles. 6.0 L Gas. $9200/offer. Call 208-308-3688 CHEVY '02 ½ ton, ext cab, short bed, lifted, 78K miles, $13,500. ACURA '03 3.2 TL, loaded, 98K miles, $9000. 208-280-2183 CHEVROLET '02 Silverado 1500, 2WD, LS, 48K miles, PW, PL, local one owner, exc cond, only $12,995. FORD '03 F-450 w/12' contractors bed. 11hp air compressor, 100 gallon fuel tank in back with electric pump. 7.3 Powerstroke diesel, AT, AC, one owner, immaculate. $13,900. Call 208-320-4058. CHEVY '08 Silverado, ext. cab, ½ ton, 4WD, $18,750. Great cond. Call 208-324-4552. FORD '10 F-150 extended cab, 29,000 miles, $26,000. 208-539-3349 FORD '03 Expedition, 4x4, V8, AT, full power, like new tires, well maintained, one owner, $7500. 208-320-4058 TAILGATE for '00 Ford F-350. $200. Call 208-420-0578. CHEVROLET '06 2500HD Duramax LT, Crew cab, step rails, local one owner, bedliner, shell, 4X4, PL, PW, AC, 67K miles, only $28,995. FORD '05 F-550, cab & Chassis, Powerstroke, Diesel, AT, AC, 18,000 GVW, Vmax under hood air compressor, one owner, well maintained, work ready. $14,900. Call 208-320-4058. DODGE '07 Ram 2500 Mega Cab loaded, leather, Cummins, tow pkg, $32,999. Stock #7G803496D 208-733-5776 CADILLAC '08 Escalade, loaded, price at KKB wholesale, Nav, sun roof, 22” wheels, $37,850. Stock #8R150900 208-733-3033 JEEP '07 Wrangler X, 4x4, hard top, auto, power W/L, CD, cruise, $18,775. Stock #7L223437 208-733-3033 CHEVY '05 1500 Crew Cab, 4X4, LT, CD, cruise, alloy wheels, tow pkg, $19,815. Stock#51298397 208-733-3033 FREIGHTLINER '01 with Cummins, ICM 370HP Diesel, 10 spd, PS, AC, Jake brake, alloy wheels, 70% rubber, no cold weather or off road use. One owner, immaculate. $16,900. Call 208-320-4058. CHEVY '07 1500 Crew Cab, 4x4, Z71, CD, cruise, bed liner, tow pkg, $19,999. Stock #71642285 208-733-3033 GMC '91 3500 with Auto crane, Kohler, built in 3KW geneset & Vmax under hood air compressor. V8, AT, AC, 70,000 Actual miles, one owner, immaculate. $7500. Call 208-320-4058. WWW.MAGIC VALLEY.COM/ CLASSIFIEDS On All y$ % FFinancing Mazda 2’s In M onl SStock! FORD '05 F-150 STX Extended cab, 4x4, 4.6L V8, automatic, AC, pwr steering, bug and bed liner, trailer tow, 200K Hwy miles, well maintained, incredible condition, runs like new!!! $8,999/offer. 208-280-3711 Ray This little gem has power locks, windows, automatic, mp3cd, AC, keyless entry, anti-lock brakes, and more! FORD '07 Mustang convertible, 58K miles, PW, PL, cruise, very nice car, only $13,995. WARNING When purchasing a vehicle, make sure that the title is in the name of the seller. Under Idaho motor vehicle code a vehicle cannot be sold unless the title is in the name of the seller (exception: Idaho licensed dealer). The seller shall provide the new purchaser a signed bill of sale showing the following: Full description of the vehicle, vehicle identification number, amount paid and name(s) and address of the new purchaser. The bill of sale must be signed, dated and show actual mileage at the time of sale. If you have any questions, please contact your local assessor's office. Answer : BOYISH FLIMSY PURVEY DOMINO SOOTHE PUDDLE He wore his glasses to class because it — SUBARU '06 Forester, 79K miles, AC, good condition, $10,900. 208-308-2127 SUPER SAVINGS! 0% APR! SUPER SELECTION! CHOOSE FROM OVER 140 NEW TOYOTAS ON HAND AND COMING! Every New Toyota comes with COROLLA LE’S S $16,980 plus get % APR for 60 mos. (or $750 Customer Cash!) 4 AT THIS PRICE! Huge discounts on all Corolla S models too. Plus 0% APR Financing! OVER 25 TO CHOOSE FROM! OVER 25 TO CHOOSE FROM! NEW 2011 TUND D RA $5,000 $2,500 and % Off MSRP on all new Tundras NEW 2011 AVA ALON NEW 2011 CAM MRY $2,000 $1,000 and % Off MSRP on all new Camrys NEW 2011 RA AV4 APR for 60 mos. Plus $500 Subvention Cash! NEW 2011 HIGHL LANDER APR Financing through Toyota Financial Services with approved credit. Tier1+ thru Tier III only. Prices plus tax, title and $175.48 dealer doc fee. Customer cash from manufacturer. Manufacturer’s Customer Cash included in Tundra and Camry larger discount from MSRP. Corolla LE model 1838 with auto transmission. Excludes Camry and Highlander Hybrid. Specials good through 4/4/11. Toyota Care: Covers normal factory scheduled service. Plan is 2 years or 25k miles, whichever comes first. New Toyota vehicles cannot be part of a rental or commercial fleet or a livery or taxi vehicle. See participating Toyota dealer for details. “65 years of treating you, the customer, right” TRUCK CAPS & TONNEAUS 236 SHOSHONE STREET WEST • TWIN FALLS • 733-2891 • 1-800-621-5247 • WWW.WILLSTOYOTA.COM FL Family Life Crafters find Tyvek can do more than wrap houses >>> Family Life 4 Senior calendar, Family Life 5 / Stork report, Family Life 5 / Engagements, weddings, anniversaries, Family Life 5 When we asked readers about their collections, the response was overwhelming — from Magic Valley folks devoted to crocks, cast-iron toys, angels, oil cans, rhinos, miniature shoes. For three Sundays, we’ve shared a handful of their stories. Turn the page for the final installment in our series, and catch a whiff of their passion for collecting. Photos by Ashley Smith (top left, top right) and Drew Nash (bottom left, bottom right). Stories by Melissa Davlin, on Family Life 2-3. Family Life 2 Sunday, March 6, 2011 Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho S R O T C E L L CO PART 3 Jim Rowe’s model trucks are displayed around his house. He’s assembling scenery to showcase some of his models in a future Twin Falls County Fair. The collection: Trucks. Rowe specifically likes Fords and cattle trucks and collects everything to do with them: photos,model trucks,books and the real trucks themselves.At his peak,the driver had 29 trucks,but he whittled it down to nine in recent years. He estimates he has 200 truck-related books,300 models and 60,000 pictures of trucks.Rowe is writing his own two books about the vehicles,and he has had work published in hobby magazines like The V-8 Times and Wheels of Time. The history: Rowe,who grew up on a California cattle farm,has been interested in cattle trucks since he was a boy.As a teenager,he would head to a local garage every noon hour and tinker with Fords while the mechanic supervised.Rowe started driv- Man behind the wheel Jim Rowe, 72, Twin Falls ing cattle trucks around the same time,and his collection got serious when he got older. Where you might have seen his trucks: Some of his real trucks are displayed at the Idaho Farm and Ranch Museum in Jerome,and he drives another in parades. His favorite item: A 1933 Ford.The truck,which Rowe is currently rebuilding,appeared in the 1978 Disney TV movie “Trail of Danger.” The movie was filmed in Shoshone,and Rowe briefly appeared on-screen. What his wife thinks of it: Sharon Rowe goes to truck conferences with her husband,Rowe said.“We have a lot of fun talking to other wives ...about how boring it is to go to a truck show,” he said.Sharon isn’t one of those wives.“She’s just as interested in the hobby,” he said. What might happen to his collection: Initially,he thought his son,Alan,would inherit much of the collec- tion.Alan was just as crazy about the hobby and had an encyclopedic knowledge about trucks.“When I wondered about a certain model and a certain year,I just asked him,” Rowe said. Alan,a Marine captain, was killed in Iraq in 2004,and now Rowe is looking at spreading his collection between his nephew and other interested friends. — Melissa Davlin Grandma’s girl Virginia O’Dell, 77, Twin Falls The collection: Cream pitchers, collected over the years by O’Dell and her grandmother. The count is exact: 397 pitchers. How it started: O’Dell’s grandmother started collecting pitchers in 1896. By the time she died, her collection included pitchers from 48 states and 25 foreign countries, including Spain, France, Jamaica and India. The oldest in the grandmother’s collection was from 1607. O’Dell inherited some of the cream pitchers, and others were scattered among family members. O’Dell built on the collection — although she hasn’t added to it for years — and the pitchers are still displayed in the same glass cabinet her grandmother used. Press for the pitchers: The Times-News published articles about the pitcher collection in August 1941 and July 1949. The 1941 article mentions O’Dell: “Virginia, seven-year-old daughter of the late Craig Bracken, is following in her grandmother’s footsteps, as she is also a ‘veteran’ knitter and has a pitcher collection of 13 pieces already.” The oldest: One pitcher is from 1824, but don’t ask O’Dell which one it is. She lost track a while ago. The sorting system: Instead of tracking manufacturers and pro- duction dates, O’Dell’s grandmother put stickers on the bottom of each pitcher that detailed when she got it and who gave it to her. Several are from 1911, and O’Dell thinks her grandmother got them all at once when she and her husband moved from Kansas to Idaho. She imagines their friends held a goodbye party for the departing pair. The survivors: Some of the pitchers are pieced together with glue. One — the first pitcher O’Dell’s grandmother ever got — was victim to the boyhood antics of O’Dell’s father and uncle. “They decided they were going to learn how to crack a whip,” O’Dell said.“And they cracked a whip, and there went the tea set.” Her favorites: She likes pitchers with pictures. One, which her grandmother procured, has an image of a stage driver. Another that O’Dell bought during her Englishteacher days has scenes from Shakespeare’s plays. What will happen to the collection: Like her grandmother, O’Dell is passing the pitchers on to her daughter and granddaughter. Every time the granddaughter visits, she looks at her grandmother’s collection, just like little Virginia did 70 years ago. — Melissa Davlin Virginia O’Dell has 397 cream pitchers in her collection — from all 50 states and several countries. The Twin Falls woman started collecting pitchers with her grandmother in the 1940s. The Times-News in 1941 published a photograph eerily similar to the photo on today’s Family Life 1 — but featuring O’Dell’s grandmother. O’Dell even displays the pitchers in the same glass cabinet that her grandmother used. Newspaper clippings from the 1940s featuring Virginia O’Dell’s grandmother sit surrounded by cream pitchers. Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho Sunday, March 6, 2011 Family Life 3 S R O T C E L L CO PART 3 Buhl’s Ray Thompson has collected dozens of belt buckles over the years. The collection: Belt buckles.Ray has about 200,said his wife,Char. The variety: Ray scours antique stores for buckles that he hasn’t seen before.Many are tiny works of art with figures of animals or objects. “You can’t believe what kinds you can find,” Char said. The parameters: Ray looks for buckles that are truly unique.Now that the collection has grown so large,his buying has slowed.“It has to be something really special for him to pick it up now,” Char said.Many of the belt buckles have Western themes,like a steer-head shape.Some are event- or location-specific, like a buckle from an arm wrestling competition in California. Buckle fan Ray Thompson, 83, Buhl The most expensive: A guitar-shaped buckle with jewels in it that the two got in a Moss Landing,Calif.,antique store. Ray paid $85 for it.Buckles vary widely in price depending on the store,Char said, but most are between $5 and $30. The strangest: A set of two buckles,one shaped like a man and one shaped like a woman.Both the figures are nude. The most special: A buckle shaped like a nuclear submarine.Ray’s son gave him the buckle three years ago when he was in the Navy. The most coveted: A buckle with the word “Chevy.” Ray traded for it at a Jerome flea market and hasn’t seen one like it since.“So many guys have wanted to buy it from him,” Char said,but Ray won’t part with it.“He wears that one most of the time.” The creepiest: Probably the tarantula-shaped buckle. “That one I try to keep out of sight because spiders scare me to death,” Char said. The other collections: The couple also has antique door knobs and horse figurines on display. — Melissa Davlin Camera man Tom Gilbertson, 58, Twin Falls The collection: About 100 cameras, most of them film. The history: Gilbertson grew up in a house with a darkroom. He still has a darkroom in his house and takes photos for First Federal Bank, where he works. Limiting the collection: Now that he has so many cameras, he is a little more picky about what he picks up at auctions and yard sales. He looks for unique cameras and passes on what he already owns. Many of his cameras are about 100 years old. But the cameras aren’t all antiques; he has a few digital versions, too. The pride and joy: A view camera, a type of large-format camera. The camera system of lenses and accessories is a small collection by itself, Gilbertson said. The negatives are 8 by 10 inches and produce high-quality images.“Once you see it, it’s amazing,” he said. The camera is also his most expensive, at $3,000. His related collection: Sticking with the optics theme, Gilbertson buys up old microscopes and projectors. He also looks for slides at garage sales and auctions and sifts through them for photos of old Twin Falls. Among vacation pictures and family portraits, he sometimes finds images of downtown. “Every once in a while I get some incredible stuff,” Gilbertson said. What might happen to the cameras: Gilbertson doesn’t have a wife or kids, so he has no plans to pass down the cameras.“When I die, people will probably just haul it out to the trash,” he said. But until then,“as long as I’m alive, it’ll still be a collection.” — Melissa Davlin NEW FRIENDS FOR YOUR BEST FRIEND Melissa Davlin reports as a Twin Falls dog club’s members come together to socialize their canines. Next Sunday in Family Life amateur or professional? A pretty easy decision when it comes to your financial future. Choose a professional. Tom Gilbertson is excited to use this large-format view camera that shoots 8-by-10-inch negatives to capture southern Idaho landscapes. Let us guide you in protecting your family. Life Insurance Health Insurance Cancer Insurance CALL NOWN *Advisory services offered through Investment Advisors, a division of ProEquities, Inc., a Registered Investment Advisor. Securities offered through ProEquities, Inc. A Registered Broker-Dealer, Member FINRA & SIPC. 3 Mark Financial is independent of ProEquities, Inc. WESTP RT W 161 5th Ave. S, Ste. 201 INSURANCE ADVISORS ORS WE FIX YOUR 10% off Your Next Service Call Offering Reliable Service, Sales & Installation Chris Stevenson | 208.733.5858 | winwithwestport.com 21333 Hwy 30 • Filer, ID Phone: 734-9244 Cell: 420-6085 Family Life 4 Sunday, March 6, 2011 Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho 19-year-old boyfriend who’s outgrown adolescence is a find Our 19-year-old Q daughter is dating a 19year-old boy, who, in general, we like. He’s not a partier; he doesn’t smoke or drink; he’s serious about his education; and he has a rational career plan mapped out. Our daughter is also a responsible, level-headed girl. The problem is that the boyfriend’s response to almost anything my daughter says is a cut or put-down, a dismissal of her accomplishment or mocking. She says his father does the same thing to him, his brother and their mother; so to him it’s “normal.’’ Our daughter is an upbeat confident person by nature, but I know a con- LIVING WITH CHILDREN John Rosemond stant stream of negativity will eventually wear down even the most self-assured person. I have tried calling him out on this in a humorous way, to no effect. My husband is restraining himself from giving this kid a poke in the nose! Any suggestions are welcome! I suggest you obtain a copy of the Feb. 19-20 (weekend) edition of The Wall Street Journal and read “Where Have All the Good Men Gone?’’ by Kay Hymowitz. Or, go out and get her book “Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys’’ (Basic Books, due out March 1), from which the WSJ article is excerpted. It will surely put this problem into a fresh perspective. Hymowitz’s basic premise is that whereas adolescence for males and females was, not so long ago, between 13 and 18, inclusive, that’s no longer the case. Today’s girls are growing into women and accepting adult responsibilities much faster and more effectively than are today’s boys, for whom adolescence now extends through their 20s and even, for many, into their 30s. Your daughter’s boyfriend is an exception to the rule, obviously. He’s not into partying, playing video- and online games, proving that he can drink more beer than his friends and still remain conscious, and dressing in oversized, ill-fitting clothes that make him look like a 6foot toddler. From your description, he’s a find! Do everything you can to keep him! So he has one annoying habit. Okay. Can we all overlook this? Can you persuade your husband not to poke him in the nose? Please? For your daughter’s sake? I mean, the likelihood of her finding another boy her age who has a coherent plan for the future (as opposed to “I’m planning on winning ‘American Idol’ and then replacing Jon Bon Jovi as lead singer of Bon Jovi’’ — don’t laugh, I’ve heard pretty much the equivalent more than once) is slim. This talent for sarcasm is most likely the influence of the “family’’ sit-coms his generation has consumed, in which the constant stream of put-downs is supposed to be funny (unfortunately, for many Americans, it is). His attempts at bad humor are probably symptomatic of a certain amount of social in- security. I would forgive him for that. He’s simply got some growing up to do. That’s forgivable, isn’t it? Lastly, I encourage you to let your daughter deal with this in her own way, in her own time. Growing up for this young man means letting go of this annoying habit. Growing up for your daughter means helping him learn the value of letting go of this annoying habit. In short, stay out of it. And definitely don’t poke him in the nose. That’s against the law. Family psychologist John Rosemond: www.rosemond.com. Crafters find Tyvek can do more than wrap houses Dealing with deployment By Jennifer Forker By Heidi Stevens For The Associated Press It’s used to wrap homes during construction.It’s also a sturdy mailing envelope.It can be a tote bag,an identification wristband,a banner,a map.A race bib,a lamp shade,a camping ground cloth or a hoodie. Tyvek is used for all of these things,and more. Crafters are finding new ways to work with this lightweight,strong material in part because it has fabriclike qualities.A stroll through online crafting blogs shows artists crafting Tyvek into beads,and sewing, weaving and knitting it. They’re adding heat to warp it into unusual shapes. Reusing Tyvek — which is made from polyethylene,a plastic — also helps keep it out of landfills. “You can buy Tyvek,but from an eco-friendly standpoint,it is a big sheet of plastic that I’d prefer not to use,’’ says Betz White,author of “Sewing Green: 25 Projects Made with Repurposed & Organic Materials’’(STC Craft/Melanie Falick Books, 2009). White likes to sew with Tyvek; there are other brands out there,but they aren’t identical and they aren’t mentioned in crafting blogs. Tyvek doesn’t unravel,as many fabrics do.White reuses the mailers that come to her door,sometimes painting them first,because Tyvek holds acrylic paint well. Her favorite Tyvek art project? Using plastic bubble wrap as a stamp,she painted three mailers,then sewed them into a tote bag,which she featured in her book.She says the material is easy to sew and water-resistant (the act of stitching creates tiny holes,so sealing the seams helps make a tote or garment more waterproof). White,of North Potomac, Md.,suggests using Tyvek in paper crafts.It also can be hand-embroidered,and it can be folded,like origami,to make a handy-dandy wallet. The wallet is one of Tyvek’s most common crafting uses,and there are dozens of online instructions for folding a Tyvek wallet.It may look complicated — origami often does — but many postings make it easy with step-by-step instructions. Your husband is deploying overseas for six months. How do you prepare your young kids? Photo courtesy STC Craft and John Gruen A colorful tote bag made from four Tyvek envelopes, which were stamped with acrylic paint and sewn, from the book ‘Sewing Green: 25 Projects Made with Repurposed & Organic Materials,’ by Betz White. tical,to the wallet his company sells online. So,why did Kelleman share his wallet-folding secrets with the world? “People are going to figure it out anyway,’’says Kelleman.“For me to show them, it builds much more support for our company and our product.’’ Even chemical company DuPont,which developed Tyvek and began commercial production in 1967,gradually discovered new and better uses for it,says Bob Matheson,a technical manager at the Richmond,Va., plant where the material is manufactured.Its first use? As disposable swimwear for hotels to give or sell to guests, says Matheson. Then it was tried out as elementary-school textbook covers.Both of those applications fell away,but another early Tyvek product has endured: It’s still used as sterile packaging for shipping med- o on w t the d issi a Adm r $1.00 o Early Bird special March 10, 2011 5-8 p.m. $3.00 at the door plus ticket By PS Productions, Same producers as the fall show uestion: I’ll admit, I think I’m an above average cook. Consequently, the walls, counter tops, cabinets and windows around the cooking area in my kitchen feel greasy and grimey. I always wipe them down after cooking, Lori Chandler but a greasy film seems to be a Cleaning Center owner permanent by-product of my 734-2404 fabulous culinary ability. “Greased Up Palate Pleaser” Super Orange is perfect for greasy jobs that nothing else can cut through. It is a scientific break through that couples an organic solvent derived from orange and citrus peels with a patented positive emulsion cleaner, creating a cleaning solution of unequaled ability. (How about you have me over to sample a couple of your favorite dishes, and I’ll bring my Super Orange and clean up the greasy mess!?) SPRING Mini-Cassia Craft Fair E E R F “Kids are primarily selfcentered,’’ says child and family psychotherapist Fran Walfish, author of “The Self-Aware Parent: Resolving Conflict and Building a Better Bond With Your Child’’(Palgrave Macmillan, $17). “But in this situation, they’re going to worry most about Dad’s safety and wellbeing.’’ The job of the at-home parent is to alleviate those fears and keep life as normal as possible. Walfish recommends the following steps. Three to four weeks before the departure date,both parents should sit down with the children to tell them the news. “You want to give them enough time to help them process the news A Tyvek envelope can be cut and folded to create a sturdy, lightweight wallet similar to this one sold online by Dynomighty. Spring show held at Burley Fairgrounds March 11, 2011 11-8 p.m. et tick s i March 12, 2011 10-5 p.m. h ith t or. Terrence Kelleman posted his video instructions to YouTube in March 2008 and has received more than 160,000 views.His Tyvek wallet is made by cutting and folding a 9-by-12-inch envelope. Kelleman started folding Tyvek wallets in 2005.Inspired by duct tape-crafted wallets,he figured he could make a lighter,more durable wallet with Tyvek. It took a lot of folding,and failing.Today,Kelleman is the president of Brooklyn-based Dynomighty,a purveyor of colorful Tyvek wallets and totes,among other unusual products.His YouTube instructions are similar,but not iden- ical supplies. It was one of those sterile packaging customers,in Chicago,who approached DuPont during the 1980s with the idea of using Tyvek as housewrap,recalls Matheson. “We were so excited,’’says Matheson,“but we made him sign a contract not to sue us in case of catastrophe.’’ No catastrophe followed, and that remains one of Tyvek’s primary uses today. But new uses continue to emerge. “The coolest use is what we call ‘orange mulch,’ developed by the agriculture department in Japan,’’says Matheson.“They use Tyvek as ground cover under orange trees — it reflects light — for growing sweeter oranges.’’ For a look at some of the unusual ways that artists have reconfigured Tyvek, scan the unabashedly selfserving blog of Tyvek distributor Material Concepts, of Philadelphia.A January posting offers instructions for building a Tyvek kite. Doug Kohn,who manages the company blog,says art students dream up the most unusual Tyvek uses. “Someone is making shoes out of Tyvek,’’he says. Network with other parents in the same situation with children of similar ages and have regular play dates. Talking regularly with others who know what you’re going through will help. — Marie Grass Amenta When my husband is gone for weeks at a time with the Air Force, my daughter makes a chain-link out of paper. Each day when she rips one off, she sees the chain getting shorter. — Shannon Keibler Have Dad take stories with him and read to them on Skype while they follow along. Send Dad an e-mail photo daily of the kids holding a sign: “88 days until Daddy hugs me.’’ “87 days until Daddy can play catch.’’ “86 days until I can snuggle Daddy,’’ etc. And Daddy can send similar pictures back. Before he goes, Dad could make a Build-A-Bear with a voice message inside so they can hear him whenever they want. — Autumn Vergeldt Purchase a camera for your personal computer so your children can video chat with your husband. Schedule a time each week for this to help reassure your children that their dad will be accessible. — Dawn Lantero without overloading them with anxiety. Six months is a very long absence. It’s not fair to give them only three or four days.’’ Give them some realistic, but not scary, scenarios. “Dad should describe a (normal) experience they can imagine him doing. ‘We’re going to get up and exercise and have breakfast. Then I’ll walk to the showers.’ Children will already have their imaginations going wild. If you can describe a routine that sounds similar to theirs at home, that will really help.” If possible,establish a way to keep in regular contact.“A phone call or e-mail, particularly at a time the children can expect — say, every Sunday morning at 10 a.m. — helps them trust that Dad is OK and will come back. If phones and Skype are not possible, it’s really helpful if Dad can write letters to each child once a week — just short and sweet, ‘Thinking of you. Missing you. Thought of you when I saw some pretty rocks on the beach.’” Give each child one of his unlaundered T-shirts, “something (they) can hold on to that smells like Daddy and can comfort them when they’re missing him.’’ Expect some sleep disruption and behavior changes. “For the parent remaining behind, maintaining consistent routines, boundaries, rewards and consequences is extremely important. You may ... want to collapse a little on the boundaries, but kids thrive and feel a sense of security when life doesn’t change along with the big change of Dad leaving.’’ Encourage the kids to talk about their feelings. “Mom should let the children know she’s available any time feelings come up — sadness, loneliness, worry, anger. Some kids are not as suffering and sad in their presentation and some kids are going to tug on you and demand of you. Mom has to understand it’s their incredible missing of the other parent and their lack of ability to identify or say that. She may have to help them by saying it for them.’’ Mom should try to carve out some time for herself. “You have to take care of yourself in order to take care of others.’’ 70th Birthday Celebration Open House March 12th 3-6pm Building of New Beginnings 1040 E. Main, Burley, Idaho Frustrated with a stubborn cleaning problem? Write or e-mail your questions to: [email protected] 483 Washington St. N. Twin Falls, ID (Corner of Washington St. N. and Filer Ave.) Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho Sunday, March 6, 2011 Family Life 5 STORK REPORT St. Benedicts Family Medical Center Lilly Daylnn Reyna, daughter of Destiny Rosa Reyna of Jerome,was born Feb.20,2011. Jose Alberto Cortez Flores, son of Jose Cortez and Juana V. Flores of Jerome, was born Feb.21,2011. Dominic E. Goodro, son of William Goodro and Ashley Sellers of Jerome, was born Feb.22,2011. St. Luke’s Magic Valley Medical Center Kash Taymond McKie, son of Paije Elise and Raymond Burton McKie of Twin Falls, was born Feb.22,2011. Avlee Jo Urry, daughter of Jenny and Jason Ross Urry of Twin Falls, was born Feb. 22, 2011. Ryker Joe Schmidt, son of Talia Alicia and Tommy Joe Schmidt of Twin Falls, was born Feb.22,2011. Mauricio Castro, son of Margarita Garayoa and Mauricio Castro of Gooding, was born Feb.22,2011. Gaige Steven Palmer, son of Trista Jean and Clinton John Palmer Jr. of Bliss, was born Feb.23,2011. Peyton Grei Ruelke, daughter of Megan Micelle Ruelke of Twin Falls, was born Feb. 23,2011. MaKadee K. Seamons, daughter of Marcee and Jed Rich Seamons of Jerome, was born Feb.23,2011. Isabella Grace McCaskill,daughter of Lacie Brooke and Jeffery Kale McCaskill of Twin Falls,was born Feb.23,2011. Emily Alice Bourgeois, daughter of Allison Mae York and Cody Paul Bourgeois of Twin Falls,was born Feb.24,2011. Alyna Castilleja, daughter of Valerie and Angel Anthony Castilleja of Twin Falls, was born Feb.24,2011. Allison Hope Hampton, daughter of Nola Juliene and Dustin Andrew Hampton of Twin Falls,was born Feb.24,2011. Tucker Mikel Hepworth, son of Brianne Lynn and Chad Robert Hepworth of Kimberly,was born Feb.25,2011. Autumn Rayn Jeffers, daughter of Brittany Raissa and Alan Wayne Jeffers of Filer, was born Feb.25,2011. Randy Skye Nehemiah Maestas, son of Jo Anna Lea and Valentino Ca Maestas of Filer, was born Feb.25,2011. Cody Eli-Paul Neyhart, son of Heidi Lynn and Samuel Carl Neyhart of Filer, was born Feb.25,2011. Mia Harper Tripp, daughter of Deanna Maria and Colby Thomas Tripp of Twin Falls,was born Feb.25,2011. SENIOR CALENDAR Twin Falls Senior Citizen Center Wednesday and Friday. 530 Shoshone St. W., Twin Falls. Lunch at noon. Suggested donation: $4.50, seniors 60 and older; $5.50, non-seniors; $2.50, children 12 and younger. Center hours: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday; thrift store, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; daily movie, 1 p.m. Daily lunches are available for take-out from 11 a.m. to noon. 734-5084. MENUS: Monday: Spaghetti Tuesday: Pork chops or liver and onions Wednesday: Roast beef Thursday: Chicken a la king with rice Friday: Fish patty ACTIVITIES: Monday: Quilting, 9 a.m. to noon Fit and Fall Proof exercise, 10:30 a.m. Bridge, 1 p.m. Martial arts class, 6 p.m. Tuesday: AARP tax assistance by appointment, 9 a.m. to noon, 1-4 p.m., free; 734-5084 Ticket Tuesday at lunch Painting class, 6 p.m. Wednesday: Cinnamon rolls for sale, 8 a.m. to noon Quilting, 9 a.m. to noon Fit and Fall Proof, 10:30 a.m. Blood pressure checks, 11 a.m. Bridge, 1 p.m. Martial arts class, 6 p.m. Pinochle, 7 p.m. Thursday: Tax assistance by appointment, 9 a.m. to noon, 1-4 p.m., 734-5084 Pinochle, 1 p.m. Painting class 1, 3 p.m. Painting class 2, 6 p.m. Magic Valley Women’s AA, 6 p.m. Friday: Quilting, 9 a.m. to noon Fit and Fall Proof, 10:30 a.m. Bingo, noon Pinochle, 1 p.m. SilverSneakers, 5:20 p.m. Women’s pool, 7p.m. Friday: SilverSneakers, 10:30 a.m. Pinochle, 1 p.m. Gem State Fiddlers Today: Oven-fried chicken breasts Senior Center Monday: Exercise, 10:30 a.m. Camas County Senior 210 E. Wilson, Eden. Lunch at noon. AA meeting, 8 p.m. Center Tuesday: Bingo, 7 p.m.; everyone 18 Suggested donation: $3.50, seniors; $5, non-seniors. Center hours: 127 Willow Ave. W., Fairfield. Lunch and older welcome at noon. Suggested donation: $4, 7 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.Tuesday and Branches Bible study, 1:30 p.m. seniors 60 and older; $4.50, nonThursday; 8 a.m. to noon Monday, Wednesday: Exercise, 10:30 a.m. seniors; $2.50, children 10 and Wednesday and Friday. Thursday: NA meeting, 7 p.m. younger. Quilting, pool, table Friday: Exercise, 10:30 a.m. games, puzzles,TV, videos. Center MENUS: Foot clinic; sign up hours: 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday: Creamed chicken over Blood pressure checks, 11:15 a.m. mashed potatoes Bingo, 11:50 a.m. MENUS: Thursday: Beef stroganoff Pinochle, 1 p.m. Tuesday: Pork chops Wednesday: Lasagna ACTIVITIES: Gooding County Friday: Roast chicken Wednesday: Men’s Bible study, Senior Citizen Center breakfast, 7 a.m. ACTIVITY: 308 Senior Ave., Gooding. Lunch at Bingo, 7 p.m. noon. Suggested donation: $3.50 Saturday: Pancake breakfast, 8-10 Saturday: Fundraiser breakfast, 8a.m. 10 a.m. for seniors. Center hours: 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Richfield Senior Center MENUS: Monday: Baked potato with toppings Tuesday: Pizza Wednesday: Turkey Thursday: Ham Monday: Tax assistance, 9 a.m. to noon Pool, 9:30 a.m. Fit and Fall Proof exercise, 11 a.m. Pinochle, 12:30 p.m. Wild card, 6 p.m. Tuesday: Pool, 9:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. Hand and foot, 6 p.m. Wednesday: Pool, 9:30 a.m. Fit and Fall Proof, 11 a.m. Board meeting, 1 p.m. Energy assistance Shuffleboard, 6 p.m. Thursday: Morning out, 9 a.m. Pool, 9:30 a.m. Foot clinic West End Senior Pinochle, 7 p.m. Citizens Inc. Friday: Duplicate bridge, 1 p.m. 1010 Main St., Buhl. Lunch at noon. Trip to Oakley for “Singin’in the Suggested donation: $4, seniors; Rain”production $5, non-seniors. Sunday buffet: $5, Saturday: Pinochle, 7 p.m. seniors, 60 and older; $6, non-seniors; $4, children 12 and younger. Wendell Senior Meal Site Center hours: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday; 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday, 105 W. Ave. A. Lunch served at Tuesday,Thursday; 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. noon Mondays. Hours: 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday. Bus runs for lunch pickup, call 543-4577 by 10:30 a.m. today,Tuesday and Thursday. Hagerman Valley Senior Energy assistance by appointand Community Center ment, 736-0676. 140 E. Lake, Hagerman. Lunch at noon. Suggested donation: $4, MENUS: seniors 60 and older; $5, non-senMonday: Tuna sandwich iors; $2, 12 and younger. Center Tuesday: Hot beef sandwich hours: 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.; thrift shop, Wednesday: Macaroni and cheese 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.; free high-speed with bratwurst Internet. Computer class available; Thursday: Barbecue pineapple Barbara Adamson, 731-2249. chicken 130 S. Main, Richfield. Lunch at noon. Suggested donation: $3.50, seniors; $5.50, under 60. MENUS: Monday: Sauerkraut and franks Thursday: Hamburgers Blaine County Senior Center 721 Third Ave. S., Hailey. Lunch at noon. Suggested donation: $4, seniors; $6, non-seniors. Center hours: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday. Golden Years Senior Citizens Inc. p.m.; $2 Friday: Fit and Fall Proof, 10 a.m. Walk and Fit, 11:30 a.m. Saturday: Fourth annual Kiwanis chili cook-off, noon to 2 p.m.; $5 adults, $2 children Carey Senior Center Main Street. Lunch at noon. Suggested donation: $4, seniors; $6, non-seniors. MENUS: Monday: Soup and salad bar, sandwich Thursday: Roast pork loin Minidoka County Senior Citizens Center 702 11th St., Rupert. Closed this week for repairs. Golden Heritage Senior Center 2421 Overland Ave., Burley. Lunch at noon. Suggested donation: $4.50, seniors and children 12 and younger; $6, non-seniors. Center hours: 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Ageless Senior Citizens Inc. 310 Main St. N., Kimberly. Lunch and full-serve salad bar, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.; take-out; home delivery. Suggested donation: $4, seniors; $5, under 60; $2.50, children 12 and younger. Center hours: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Nu-2-U Thrift Store open 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday, ACTIVITIES: Today: Potluck, dance with music by Melody Masters, 2 p.m.; $5 Monday: SilverSneakers exercise, 10:30 a.m. and 5:20 p.m. Bridge, 12:30 p.m. Tuesday: Energy assistance, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tai chi, 10:30 a.m. SilverSneakers, 10:30 a.m. Pinochle, 1 p.m. Snack bar, 5 p.m. Bingo, 7 p.m.; early bird, 6:45 p.m. Wednesday: Breakfast, 8-10 a.m. SilverSneakers, 10:30 a.m. and 5:20 p.m. Bridge, 12:30 p.m. Country Cowboys Band Board meeting, 1 p.m. Pinochle, 7 p.m. Thursday: YogaStretch, 10:30 a.m ACTIVITIES: Monday: Fit and Fall Proof exercise, 10:30 a.m. Tax assistance 1-4 p.m. Tuesday: Quilting, 1 p.m. Thursday: Fit and Fall Proof, 10:30 a.m. Friday: TOPS, 10 a.m. Cardo, 1 p.m. Saturday: Tax assistance, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Certified Professional 36 Years — Thank You Magic Valley! Professional Frame 733-3293 Celebrations Cel C lebrations Celebrations offers an announcement package for every dream you want to share with friends and family, from a photo in Sunday’s Family Life to an announcement on the internet. Celebrations are meant to be shared. Call 208-735-3253 Anniversaries he Callens Jerome Senior Center MENUS: Monday: Macaroni and cheese with ham Tuesday: Chicken and dumplings Thursday: Pot roast Monday: Sweet and sour chicken with rice Wednesday: Meatloaf Friday: Crispy chicken Monday: Pinto beans with ham Tuesday: Shepherd pie Wednesday: Hot turkey sandwich Thursday: Sweet and sour chicken over rice Friday: Ham 492 E. Cleveland Ave., Glenns Ferry. Lunch at noon. Suggested donation: $4, seniors 60 and older; $6, non-seniors; $2.50, children 12 and younger. For rides: 366-2051. Center hours: 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. 520 N. Lincoln St., Jerome. Lunch at noon. Suggested donation: $3.50, seniors; $5, non-seniors. Center hours: 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Trans IV bus runs Monday through Friday, call 736-2133. Three Island Senior Center Monday: Grilled Reuben sandwich Tuesday: Grilled chicken Santa Fe ACTIVITIES: Wednesday: Italian baked ziti casse218 N. Rail St. W., Shoshone. Lunch Monday: Pool role at noon. Suggested donation: Exercise, 11 a.m. $3.50, seniors 60 and older; $5.50, Thursday: Roast pork loin Friday: Pinochle, 1 p.m. Salisbury steak non-seniors. Center hours: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday; 8:30 a.m. to ACTIVITIES: 3:30 p.m.Tuesday,Wednesday and Monday: Fit and Fall Proof exercise, Friday. 10 a.m. Duplicate bridge, 7 p.m. MENUS: Walk and Fit class, 11:30 a.m. Tuesday: Meat pizza RONALD E. HICKS Tuesday: Blood pressure checks, Wednesday: Ham sandwich, split 12:30 p.m. pea soup Bingo, 1 p.m. Friday: Spaghetti with meat sauce Wii bowling, 2 p.m. 20% DISCOUNT WITH THIS COUPON Wednesday: Fit and Fall Proof, 10 ACTIVITIES: a.m. Monday: Coffee, 9:30 a.m. Walk and Fit, 11:30 a.m. 1 3 2 M A I N AV E . S O U T H Thursday: “P.S. I Love You”movie, 1 Quilting, 10 a.m. Today: Roast beef dinner, 1 p.m. Last Resort Band Monday: SilverSneakers exercise program, 10:30 a.m. Tuesday: Quilting, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. AARP tax assistance by appointment, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.; 543-4577 Wednesday: SilverSneakers, 10:30 a.m. Bingo at 7 p.m.; minimum cost is $9; public welcome Thursday: Quilting, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Bingo, 1 to 3 p.m. Friday: SilverSneakers, 10:30 a.m. Tax assistance by appointment, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.; 878-8646 Tuesday: Wood carving, 8:30 a.m. Community bingo for age 18 or older; doors open at 6 p.m. Wednesday: Pool Exercise, 11 a.m. Pinochle, 1 p.m. Thursday: Wood carving, 6 p.m. Community pinochle, 6 p.m. Friday: Pool Exercise, 11 a.m. Pinochle, 1 p.m. Bingo, 1 p.m. Dance, 7 p.m. Saturday: Driver safety class, 8:30 a.m. Guy and Meryl Callen Guy and Meryl (Cham- three grandchildren, John bers) Callen celebrated (Kate) Dennis, Kaylin Dentheir 60th anniversary on nis and Skylar Stevenson. March 4, 2011. hey were hey are members of the married in the Presbyterian American Truck HistoriChurch in Jerome, Idaho. cal Society and enjoy their hey have always lived in many antique trucks and the Magic Valley, the last pickups. hey participate 47 years in Wendell. in many parades and car Guy did long distance shows. trucking and owned his They have traveled own truck. Meryl worked many miles to watch their in the Wendell Post Office daughters and grandchilfor 28 years. hey raised dren participate in various their three daughters: rodeo and sporting events. Diane, Janet Dennis (Kelly), And they are looking forand Merrilee Stevenson ward to many more good (Allen) on their farm east times with their family and of Wendell. They have friends. For information on how to place your announcement in the Times-News, please call Janet at 208-735-3253 or email [email protected] Deadline is 5 p.m. Tuesday to be published in the following Sunday’s Family Life page. Engagements Scherer-Strikwerda Andrew and Audra hompson of Jerome, ID and Scot Scherer of Boise, ID are pleased to announce the engagement and wedding of their daughter, Shaylee Mae Scherer to Ryan Scott Strikwerda. Ryan is the son of Jim and Linda Strikwerda of Caldwell, ID. Shaylee is a Jerome High School graduate attending ISU in Pocatello. Ryan graduated from Caldwell High School and is also attending ISU in Pocatello. Ryan Scott Strikwerda and Shaylee Mae Scherer he couple will wed at the Twin Falls Idaho Temple on March , with a reception held from - p.m. at the Jerome LDS Stake Center. Harrison-Idsinga Clay and Terri Harrison of Heyburn, ID announce the engagement of their daughter, Lori Harrison to Greg Idsinga, son of Wayne and Betty Idsinga of Battle Mound, WA. Lori is a Minico High School graduate and a University of Idaho graduate. She has been the Ag teacher at Homedale High School for the past six years. Greg is a Battle Mound High School graduate and a Boise State University graduate. He is owneroperator of Apex Electric Lori J. Harrison and Greg W. Idsinga of Caldwell. he wedding is planned for March , at Sweetheart Manor in Burley, ID. The newlyweds will reside in Caldwell after the wedding. Kids Only In LEGO contest, building is seriously fun By Margaret Webb Pressler The Washington Post DEB LINDSEY/ for The Washington Post WASHINGTON — Roberta had a lot to do in just 2 1/2 minutes,including destroying infected blood cells, repairing a damaged heart, putting a cast on a broken bone and dispensing medication. Everything had gone perfectly in a morning test run, but during the real operation, Roberta failed miserably. The bone stayed broken, the heart went unrepaired,and so on. Luckily, Roberta is a LEGO robot, and all her tasks were being performed not on a real patient,but on LEGO models. A team of seven 11- and 12year-old girls from the Potomac School in McLean, Va., built Roberta, hoping for a spot at the Maryland state championship of the First LEGO League robot-building competition. For the qualifying competition in Laurel, Md., the girls had worked nights and weekends building their robot and programming her to move around a tabletop playing field doing the make-believe medical procedures. “I don’t know what happened,’’ said Kelsea Bowen, of Falls Church, Va.“It’s so frustrating, because it worked perfectly this morning.’’ Then she disappeared into a practice room to see if she and her team could fix Roberta for Round 2. First LEGO League is a worldwide organization that supports teams of kids age 9 to 16 through a two-part research and robots challenge. First, kids have to come up with a solution to a problem related to a different theme each year. They have to research their topic and present their solution to a panel of judges. Then they have to build and program a robot made with LEGO Mindstorms pieces to complete a series of theme-related missions on a tabletop playing field. This year the theme was about the human body and medicine. First LEGO League describes itself as a science and engineering program, but it doesn’t require any special technical expertise. Kids and coaches say it’s just as much about teamwork, thinking creatively and having fun. Kelsea was the main programmer on her team,though she had never done it before. Three kids’contests: Let loose your inner Seuss By Moira E. McLaughlin The Washington Post Who doesn’t love a good contest? And if you’re a creative kid who likes to draw or write, we have three great contests for you to enter. One even encourages you to work with friends.So get out your pencils or laptops or markers, because the deadlines for these cool contests are coming up quickly. Casey and Bella Writing Contest What you need to do: Write a book in 1,000 words or fewer about two dogs, Casey and Bella, friends who in past books have gone on adventures to Hawaii and New York City. Who can enter? Kids in grades 3-5. Contest sponsor: Casey and Bella, CuddlyBooks Inc. What do you win? $500 and a published book. Deadline: April 15 Information: www.caseyandbella.com garten through eighth grade in the United States. Contest sponsor: Scholastic Book Fairs. What do you win? A medal and a certificate, and your school will receive 100 copies of your book and a $5,000 credit to buy books from Scholastic. Plus your book will be published and given out to schools around the nation! Deadline: March 15 Information: www.scholastic.com/kidsareauthors Greeting Card Contest What you need to do: Make a handdrawn holiday greeting card with the theme “Making Spirits Bright.’’ Who can enter? Kids age 14 and younger who live in the United States. Contest sponsor: Pier 1 Imports and UNICEF, an organization that helps kids with things such as clean water and education. What do you win? A $5,000 scholarship and $500 worth of art supplies for Kids Are Authors Competition your school. Plus, your card will be sold What you need to do: Grab at least two of as the official UNICEF holiday card! your friends and an adult to supervise as Deadline: March 12 you write a fiction or nonfiction book. Information: Who can enter? Students in kinder- youth.unicefusa.org/contests MARK GAIL/Washington Post Lego robot Roberta gets some tweaking by, from left, Claire-Solene Becka, Lyla Jones and Kelsea Bowen at a recent First LegoLeague competition in Laurel, Md. The girls team didn’t advance but aims to try next year. LEGO TRIVIA In 2010, more than 31 billion LEGO parts (bricks and other pieces) were produced. That’s 1,000 per second. ARE LEGO ROBOTS FOR YOU? You don’t have to be a science type of kid to enjoy the First LEGO League. Creativity is key, and a good team needs kids with writing and public speaking skills, said Bill Wiley, director of the robotics program at the Potomac School in McLean, Va. Ask yourself these six questions. Wiley said if you answer “yes” to any two, you probably would enjoy it! • Are you creative (artistically or technically)? • Do you like a challenge? • Do you have a group of friends with whom you would like to do something different? • Do you like to work with a team? • Are you detail-oriented? • Are you a big-picture thinker? To find out more about starting or joining a First Lego League team, your parents or teacher can go to www.usfirst.org and click on the “FLL” link at the top and then the “Team Stuff” link on the left. Other girls focused on designing the robot, writing the research paper and even coming up with the jokes for their presentation. “I liked how by working to- gether we were able to figure things out,’’ said 11-year-old Claire-Solene Becka, who is also on Kelsea’s team. Lindsey Vanderlyn, 15, was on her First LEGO League team for six years — and the experience paid off when her current team won the Virginia state competition in December. They will go to the First LEGO League world championships in St.Louis in May. “Every year, you learn more about what the robots do and how to actually do the research project,’’ she said. “It was just really,really cool.’’ Kelsea and her teammates, including her twin sister,Sydney,learned this the hard way. They figured out that Roberta’s light sensor didn’t work because the light in the auditorium was different than it was in the science lab at school, where Roberta was built and tested. Roberta did better in Rounds 2 and 3, but Kelsea and her team didn’t advance. Of the 20 teams that competed, only six moved on to the state final. Still, the girls want to try again next year. “It’s all of our first time doing robotics,’’ said ClaireSolene,“It’s just really fun.’’ When religious beliefs and sports collide By Fred Bowen Special to The Washington Post The Iowa state wrestling tournament made big news recently when two girls qualified for the tournament. It was the first time any girls had competed in the 91-year history of the event. But when Cassy Herkelman, a 14-year-old freshman, was matched against Joel Northrup, a 16-year-old, Northrup refused to wrestle her and forfeited the match. Northrup said he wouldn’t wrestle Herkelman for religious reasons. “Wrestling is a combat sport,and it can get violent at times,’’ Northrup explained in a statement. “As a matter of conscience and my faith, I do not believe that it is appropriate for a boy to engage a girl in this manner.’’ His father, a minister in an independent Pentecostal church, added, “We believe in the elevation and respect of woman, and we don’t think that wrestling a woman is the right thing to do. Body-slamming and takedowns: Fullcontact sport is not how to do that.’’ I don’t agree with Northrup’s decision. I think girls should be allowed to compete against boys, especially in sports such as wrestling,where there are no girls’teams.Part of competing is having your opponent treat you like anyone else in the sport. I’m not sure why a wrestler should treat girls with more respect than boys. If it’s bad to body-slam a girl, why isn’t it bad to bodyslam a guy? Herkelman can handle herself. She qualified for the state tournament in the 112-pound division with a record of 20 wins and 13 losses. All of her matches were against boys. After Northrup forfeited the match to her, Herkelman lost two matches and was eliminated from the tournament. She said she had no hard feelings toward Northrup: “He had the right to make his own choice, and he made his choice.’’ I respect Northrup for standing up for his beliefs. He didn’t say Herkelman should not be allowed to wrestle; he just said he wouldn’t wrestle her. Northrup, who had a record of 35-4 and was ranked fifth in the state in the 112pound division, lost his chance to win a state championship by forfeiting the match. That’s a big sacrifice. He dropped into a consolation bracket, where he was eliminated from the tournament after he lost a match. Northrup is not the first athlete to put religious beliefs before athletic success. In 1965, Sandy Koufax was the best pitcher in baseball, and his team,the Los Angeles Dodgers, was in the World Series. But Koufax, who is Jewish, refused to pitch the first game of the Series because the game was scheduled to be played on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish religion. Koufax’s World Series had a happier ending than Northrup’s tournament. He pitched later in the series, winning two games, including the deciding seventh game, in which he shut out the Minnesota Twins. Sandy Koufax put religious beliefs before love for his sport. People admired him for making that decision.Shouldn’t we admire Joel Northrup,too? Fred Bowen is the author of 16 sports books for kids. “Real Hoops,’’ his latest book, has just been published. Service salutes McClure GUARDS LEAD CSI TO TITLE Sports 1 CAREY TAKES STATE CROWN SUNDAY March 6, 2011 Service salutes McClu...

The geek in me loves things that smell and taste of place. I think my brain is wired that way. That’s why certain wines appeal to me while others leave me cold. The same can be said for a few of my other favorite things—coffee, tea, olive oil, scotch whisky, tequila and honey. Notice I haven’t uttered the word terroir yet because most things, including wine, are more influenced by inputs, process and intent. But there exists a terroir component in many of these things and the more it shows itself, the more I like it. Honey is first and foremost a product of the available flora. It is generally a pure or nearly pure expression of whatever the floral input is. Clover honey, for instance, expresses clover’s essence but clover is a ubiquitous floral species and not particularly expressive of place. Terroir expression can be muted in such cases. For honey to have any chance to express a sense of place it must first be of pure origin—mostly of one floral species and from a single, preferably unique, location. This brings me to Madagascar and its incredible biodiversity, its unique honeys and the Swiss connection that brings this piece together. In the first few decades of the twentieth century Madascagar was a significant source for tropical products including the cash crops of vanilla, cocoa, coffee and honey. Honey was its third most valuable export with 30,000 tons shipped annually. Most of it was harvested by ordinary citizens as a primary or secondary source of income. Many of them used primitive and inefficient beekeeping techniques grounded in tradition or were “honey hunters” who would forage, often unsustainably, in vast tropical forests. Not much has changed since then except for the challenges of a deteriorating environment. Madagascar even has its own sub-species of African honey bee known as Apis Mellifera Unicolor. It is distinguished by its nearly solid black color and is the only sub-species on the island. It’s an aggressive bee that seems to display floral preferences depending on where on the island it is located (see map below). This is particularly important if one is seeking pure varieties of honey that may be expressive of place. Today, between decimated native forests and the degradation of other habitats, honey exports have fallen to 3,000 tons annually with severe consequences to the micro economy. Once local ritual and dietary quotas are met, whatever honey is remaining does not go far. Because of this shortfall and the fact that part-time honey production can boost a family’s income by 50% the Malagasy government and concerned NGOs are scurrying to catch up. Pest eradication is vitally important and is achieved through repair and preservation of native habitats—the devastating varroa mite is a current challenge to local bee populations. Programs to modernize beekeeping techniques are very much needed and when coupled with education can double or even triple current yields, so the stakes are high. Government efforts to streamline the paths to market, especially lucrative export markets, are essential and private investment must be encouraged. NGOs can and do help in this process. The Slow Food Foundation is a partner in this endeavor and a staunch defender of bee populations around the world. Its Arca del Gusto project lists at least twenty varieties of honey in danger of disappearing including Madagascar’s Litchi and Mokarana types. Another such NGO is Helvetas a Swiss non-profit based in Zürich which partners with Madagascar’s Compagnie du Miel—co-founded by Swiss national Arnaud Steinfels and Thibaut Delpon from France. Their company purchases honey from as many as 500 local producers who practice sustainable methods in some of the most remote places on earth. The prices they pay allow for local producers to reinvest in new hives or to even venture into upstream extensions or new businesses altogether. The very essence of sustainability and socially conscious investment. My introduction to Compagnie du Miel was at a recent dinner party where an incredible mangrove honey was served with some French cheeses. The aroma and flavor of that honey was remarkable: dark, pungent, blackstrap rum-like with buttery diacetyl notes and dried flowers. It was amazingly complex and medicinal in flavor; very lightly crystallized but luxurious and melty in the mouth. It reminded me of a wine’s complexities reinforced by a highly perfumed, Bual-like finish. Salty notes throughout. A cigar-chomping, rum lover’s honey. When I exhibited an obviously enthusiastic interest several other varieties appeared. My notes are based on this informal tasting. Miel d’Eucalyptus Robusta—(Eucalyptus robusta) A species native to Australia and brought to the island for commercial purposes. It is found mostly in the central highlands. Strong, almost volatile, buttery and feral notes. One guest described a “poopy” scent that I attributed to a subtle note of well-composted manure. Not at all unpleasant but it took me right to the wild place from which this honey comes. Fragrant with light caramel notes and a strong, floral honey finish. Miel de Palissandre—(Dalbergia maritima) From the environmentally threatened Rosewood species. Hugely overexploited hardwood and therefore a rare honey. Dark with a distinct prune character. Recalls an old Armagnac with intense floral and spicy notes. Intense almost rancio flavors that would not be out of place in a sherry made from Pedro Ximenez. This is majestic. One to savor in espresso spoon amounts. Miel de Litchi—(Litchi chinensis) Gravely threatened in Madagascar by climate change. Production has been falling in each of the last fifteen years. Slow Food’s Arca del Gusto has called out its tenuous existence. This is a very subtle honey with a notable rose petal fragrance and cooling mentholated notes. Very highly perfumed and exotic finish. Miel de Jujube—(Ziziphus jujuba) An invasive species in Madagascar that threatens native forests along the entire west coast of the island. A very clean honey that nonetheless has some deep, slightly roasted flavors. Perhaps the simplest of the bunch but compelling for its creamy texture and melting presence on the tongue. Miel de Mokarana—(Macaranga alnifolia) Native tree to Madagascar that is in danger of disappearing. Very exotic, creamy honey that is redolent of dried fruits and notes of apricot. Perhaps the most exquisitely balanced honey of the bunch and, unfortunately, the rarest. Beautiful caramel notes to finish. One senses the tropical forest in this one. Miel de Niaouli—(Melaleuca quinquenervia) Found in the Southeast of the island within its silty, swampy confines. Bottle-brush shaped flowers are especially attractive to bees. This plant’s essential oil is a sought after ingredient in the perfume industry. It’s no surprise then that this is a highly perfumed honey with deeply fruity and somewhat woody notes. Not as complex as the others but reminiscent of a fine lowland Scotch. Miel de Mangrove—(Sonneratia alba and Avicennia marina) Found in the brackish or salt waters of the Northwest coast. Mangrove swamps are currently endangered. Sustainable practices such as beekeeping and honey production help to preserve the environment. (See tasting notes above).

The UK’s leading wildlife, conservation and environment groups are calling for the government to retain and extend a ban on neonicotinoids to protect bees In an open letter to the UK government, 18 leading wildlife and environment organisations say there is now more than enough evidence to retain a ban on neonicotinoids and extend it to all crops. They argue the move is essential to reverse the recent decline of bees and other pollinators. EU restrictions which ban the use of three neonicotinoids – or “neonics” – on flowering crops and have been in place for three years, are due for review in 2017. The ban was introduced after the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) concluded that the chemicals posed a “high acute risk” to honeybees. “Since 2013 many more independent laboratory and field studies have found neonics impairing the ability of different bee species to feed, navigate and reproduce resulting in declining populations,” the letter reads. Scientific evidence and public opinion support ban Signatories of the letter are representatives of Friends of the Earth, Freshwater Habitats Trust, Sustain, The Tree Council, Bat Conservation Trust, RSPB, Natural Beekeeping Trust, Scottish Wildlife Trust, Freshwater Habitats Trust, Soil Association, Greenpeace UK, Buglife, Environmental Justice Foundation, The Wildlife Trusts, Angling Trust & Fish Legal, Pesticides Action Network, Butterfly Conservation and ClientEarth. They describe the review as Environment Secretary Andrea Leadsom’s “chance to catch up with scientific evidence and public opinion by keeping and extending the ban as part of properly protecting Britain’s bees and pollinating insects”. A YouGov survey carried out for Friends of the Earth in August found that 81% of respondents want to keep the EU ban on neonicotinoid pesticides, and only 5% of people think it should end. Neonics are pervasive and persistent in environment “Since [EFSA’s analysis three years ago] dozens of new studies from around the world have been published, including a major Swedish field trial in which neonicotinoids were shown to impact profoundly on bumblebee colonies and solitary bees,” commented Dave Goulson, Professor of Biology at Sussex University. “Work from Italy has shown that even tiny doses of neonicotinoids impair the immune system of honeybees, rendering them susceptible to infections. Perhaps more concerning, it has become clear that neonicotinoids are persistent and pervasive in the environment, so that soils, wildflowers, ponds and rivers commonly contain significant levels. “This widespread pollution of the environment with these potent neurotoxins has now been linked not just to bee declines but also to declines in butterflies, aquatic insects, and insect-eating birds. With farmland wildlife populations in free fall, it is surely time to extend the moratorium on neonicotinoids to cover other uses.” “We can’t afford to take any risks with our insect pollinators so to protect them the moratorium must stay in place for the three restricted neonicotinoids,” added Dr Christopher Connolly, a reader in neurobiology at the University of Dundee. Dr Penelope Whitehorn, an applied ecologist at the University of Stirling, says it is vital that the government properly supports farmers on ways to maximise yields and minimise chemical inputs with the use of integrated pest management.

I’ve always loved log hives, loved the notion of them, the look of them, the creation of them. But it was into the second day of our log hive workshop with Matt Somerville that I really “got it.” Class participant Jenne Johnson said to Matt, “So, if I have, say, ten acres of land, how many of these hives would I need to properly pollinate it?” Matt replied, “Put up as many as you like and let the bees decide.” “Let the bees decide…” I smacked both hands to my head to keep my brains from flying out all over the place. Had those four words ever before been uttered on the North American continent? Not often, I thought… “Let the bees decide…” Here in the States, we’ve never let the bees decide. Anything. Honeybees came here in boxes since the 16th Century, and have been kept in boxes ever since, except for those lucky enough to swarm off to the freedom of forest and hollow. Like ivy and sparrows and cattle and comfrey—and we humans from far shores, too—bees naturalized into the welcoming arms of the American Frontier, a place big enough for everyone. Until lately. Especially for our bugs and birds, civilization building in the Americas has not been kind. All of our avian and insect friends find fewer and fewer nesting sites available. And food sources are becoming scarce and less nutritious. Hobby beekeepers are told to make sure their bees don’t swarm and bother neighbors by setting up colonies in eves and siding—because where else can bees go these days? Amidst all these challenges, however, we have been hearing a whisper from all over the bee world, a small but insistent voice that speaks to many of us saying, “Why not offer homes for wild bees? Not to capture them, but to restore them safely to nature?” Our bee charity, Preservation Beekeeping Council (PBC), noticed the rekindling of the ancient Zeidler movement—tree beekeeping—in Europe, and our club member Barry Malmanger designed a let-alone hive we could hang in trees that would mimic the size and insulation of a log hive. Such a box is not so much a hive, as unmanaged safe habitat for bees, something much needed by bees these days. We’ve been hanging them on private and public lands, and have nearly a dozen of them up now. We call this our Beehaven Box, but we still wanted to learn log hive making from the experts, so we contacted Matt Somerville, famed log hive crafter from Devon. Since the Learning From the Bees conference that we attended in Holland last year, reaching out across the big pond doesn’t seem as intimidating. Matt had the time, we had the desire, and suddenly, our man from Devon was here with us in Washington State, USA, working with Joseph Freeman and Barry to put together the parts and processes required to safely hollow out a 30-inch long log section for bees. In preparation for Matt’s arrival, Joseph and Barry began making sturdy “trestles” to hold the logs near hip-height for working them. We purchased heavy ratchet straps to hold the logs in place. Club Member Angel Hayes, a metal worker, created several long-handled gouges to peel off the interior of the log after the initial cuts have been made with a long-bladed chain saw. Long before we students even showed up, Matt, Joseph, and Barry had been assembling tools, the trestles, and a small stack of appropriate logs. Two full day’s work were required to get the workshop all set up to go. Quickly, we all realized we’d have been utterly lost in the process without Matt’s guidance and instructions. It is a joy to see an artist deep in the midst of his/her medium, and Matt astonished us with his easy command of the tools, and the logs. He told us casually that he could “knock out about three log hives in a day,” and our jaws collectively dropped. January in the Pacific Northwest is not a kind time of year, and the weekend we gathered to make the hives was cold, foggy, and typical. We all wore many layers, most of which we removed as the work got going. Matt and Joseph demonstrated the initial chain-saw work to take out the centers of the logs. If you have never worked a chain-saw in your life, do not attempt this potential deadly aspect of making the hive by yourself. Find someone who knows their way around one of these machines, and pay them if you need to. You can’t seriously hurt yourself with the rest of the processes of Log-Hive-Construction-ala Matt, but the chain saw aspect is not to be undertaken lightly. When the initial interior of the logs had been knocked out with a mallet, we lined up in teams of two or three to begin working with the long-handled gauges to sheer off long strips of wood and increase the inner dimension of the log. Matt demonstrated peeling long, thin strips of the wood away with grace. We worked hard to become familiar with a very unfamiliar tool. In minutes, all of us were pulling off layers of clothing despite the cold morning. Wrestling with the gauges warmed us all up fast! All of us struggled to find ways to hold the gauge and shoulder into it to strip the wood away. While Matt can move through this part of the process quickly—at least a whole lot more quickly than any of us—for most folks, this would not be a one-day process. We purchased a gauge and a trestle stand for our bee club, so that anyone who would like to make a log hive can borrow them. Hollowing a log over a period of days (or weeks), the task becomes less of a marathon, and the exercise will give you rock-hard arms and abs with repeated “reps” of the gauge on the wood. We imagine that a small group might work together to create one, and get it done with the benefit and joy of teamwork. After many hours of work, we had a few of the logs hollowed to our liking. Matt showed us how to affix the long, thick limbs that would serve for the legs of the hive. While Matt was eager to teach us the process of raising the log hives into trees with climbing gear and ropes, we realized that none of us attending the workshop would ever be doing this: the hives would need to be on long legs. Each log is closed at each end with a ‘plate’ of wood secured with wooden latches so that the hive can be opened and cleaned when needed. And to be sure that no condensation would ever be falling on the bees in these hives, Matt showed us how to staple a tarp around the top of the hive, stuff the round tarp-tube with a thick bed of shavings, and secure the ends shut. Then, a bucket, a small trough, a straw hackle, or any other topping you could imagine and construct is set on top for a final bit of weatherproofing. The team of us worked steadily for two full days and all of us were sore and creaking (except Matt) by the close of the second day. That was when we actually got to see the completion of all our hard work as Matt raised the first log up on its legs. Seeing one of these hives go up in front of your eyes is nothing like seeing photos of them. The hive is angled up to its standing posture, with all hands on deck to support the rising. Then, suddenly, there it stands: solid, large, and almost imposing in its stature. Like a Sun Hive, the sheer artistry of the standing log makes a powerful statement all on its own. Crouching beneath the hive, my hands running along the smooth, peeled limbs of the legs, I felt humbled. All the hours, sweat, and blisters we had put into the creation of these beautiful bee homes were so very worth it. I believe that alternative hives like Matt’s log hive, and also Sun Hives, are more than bee homes. They are truly large works of love, fusing bees with the profound healing power of art. In their form, size, and breathless beauty, such hives invite us to “see” bees in a way that is far removed from the white box sitting in the middle of a field. The bees in the white box have been treated as slave laborers for too long. Bees who come to occupy these log hives will be living in a way that honors their being and their vast worth to the planet. “See them?” we say with these hives of log and straw. “See how wondrous the bees are in their complex lives and their unending generosity. Surely, they deserve a palace instead of a hovel.” Things of great worth are traditionally treated with great care and lavish attention, from the smartly polished Rolls Royce parked in the heated garage, to the prize artworks hanging in museums, to the ceramic vase from our great-great-great grandmother. We honor things of worth by our treatment of them. These hives of log and straw—especially when placed in public areas such as parks or forests—offer us yet another way to influence the way people see bees, and imagine them. Seeing bees fully encased in the love, art, and beauty of these hives invites the imagination to come out and play: who abides in such a fantastical, whimsical dwelling? Who are these bees, really? Imagination. Beauty. Love. These are the virtues that can heal the planet. Our log hive adventure was saturated in these qualities, from the first buzz of the chain saw to the scent of fresh wood, to the sight of the completed, utterly awesome hive towering over us. What could be better for bees, or their tenders? —Bee well, Susan Knilans

New Zealand this month became the first country to sign a Mutual Recognition Arrangement for organic product certification with China. This means organic products with a certification via the MPI Official Organic Assurance Programme (OOAP) are now automatically certified in China - and vice versa. Once the agreement has been implemented - potentially by the middle of 2017 - the organic sector will no longer have to go through the expensive process of bringing Chinese certifiers to New Zealand every three months in order to be able to sell their food in China. The deal, signed in Beijing on November 14, follows three years of low-key negotiations and a year of intense cooperation involving the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), organic producers, and certifiers in both countries. The arrangement covers the export and import of organic foods and ingredients, with the exception of apiculture (beekeeping), aquaculture (fish, seafood and aquatic plants), and textiles. At least 95% of the ingredients in organic processed products exported under the deal need to have been grown and processed in New Zealand or China, and be certified in accordance with New Zealand’s OOAP or Chinese organic standards. MPI Manager Food Production and Processing Jacqui Bird says the deal will support the growth of the New Zealand organics sector by providing increased export and import opportunities. “Exports of certified organic produce to China are currently worth $27 million and are likely to grow due to reduced compliance costs and the increased certainty and facilitation that the arrangement provides New Zealand exporters. A wider range of organic ingredients will also be available for processed food and organic inputs for other producers.” Rick Carmont, Executive Director of the Organic Exporters Association of NZ believes certification compliance costs for the Chinese market will fall from around $150,000 a year to less than $40,000, and that exports of NZ organic products to China could double within a year of the deal coming into force. “This is another boost for the organic sector. China has one of the tightest markets in the world in terms of meeting organic standards. Chinese consumers care about organic production and are looking for it [see “Take note: Chinese consumers want more healthy food” below]. But at the moment there is lot of NZ produce going into China that is certified organic in New Zealand but moves to China as non-organic because producers can’t justify the cost of certification. “I expect to see a big increase in organic dairy products going to China, as this deal will streamline a lot of dairy processes. Under the present regime every dairy farmer has to be visited by a Chinese certifier every year. “We also export a lot of organic wine, meat and fruit, and this will take a lot of compliance costs out and boost exports.” The organic industry in China has grown rapidly in recent years, according to one Chinese media report, despite the nation’s economic slowdown. Total sales of organic products reached 60 billion yuan ($12.3 billion) last year, twice as much as in 2013, with the most popular products being dairy, wine, rice and vegetables. Chinese certifiers will still need to be involved in the organic export process, Rick says, as all Chinese organic products must carry a unique 17-digit barcode and these will need to come from China. But once systems are set up, this should be a relatively straightforward process. Jacqui Bird says the Chinese deal takes the number of countries with mutual recognition of organic certification to 36, most of them in Europe. The next priority for MPI is to get a similar deal with South Korea and the US. Some NZ organic producers have expressed concerns about the impact of increased imports on the local sector, and a Beijing news report suggested some Chinese companies’ “controversial practices” had damaged the sector’s credibility. However, Jacqui says China significantly stepped up enforcement of organic standards in April 2014, and MPI officials reviewed the Chinese organic system in a series of visits over the last year. She says MPI is happy with the country’s technical and administrative standards. “We’ve done the hard work for importers bringing organic ingredients into NZ, and we believe the Chinese systems stack up. Importers and consumers can be confident organic means organic. Consumers will benefit from a wider range of organic ingredients being available for processed foods, filling a gap for products we don’t produce here. Things like rice, legumes, tea, or rice flour.” Rick Carmont Says being the first country to sign a mutual recognition agreement for organic product certification with China is “a big tick to the New Zealand food safety system”. He says that in the same way that China signed its first Free Trade Agreement with New Zealand, so we were a small, non-threatening country which could act as a trade model for future agreements. “And we were hungry for it.” Over the next few weeks, OANZ will be exploring the impact of the China mutual recognition agreement with our members and the entire sector. Let us know your thoughts and we’ll report back in the December issue of Organic DirectioNZ

EAST TROY—Inside a small wine-stem glass, the honey-colored liquid was cold, effervescent and translucent gold, like champagne or nectar-tinged rainwater that spills from inside a flower. It was mead. Alias: honey-wine. Alias: “the nectar of the gods.” At The Hive Taproom, a mead house in East Troy operated by Tim Guild, a former fluid dynamics engineer, and his spouse, Ayla Guild, a former large-animal veterinarian-turned beekeeper, the mead flows with fizz. For the last 10 months, the Guilds have cultivated a local following for their special brand of mead at The Hive. They call it “dry, carbonated honey beer.” It’s a dry, cold-brewed alcoholic beverage with mild carbonation and a cider-like character of a mild sweetness that comes from its foundational ingredient—fresh, fermented honey. The basic definition of mead is that it is fermented honey. Some cultures and people call the drink honey-wine because, depending on how it’s fermented or brewed, it can be wine-like. It is made from the fermented sugars of watered honey, sometimes augmented with grapes or other fruits commonly used to make wine. As in the brewing style the Guilds use at The Hive, mead sometimes is spiced with hops similar to those craft brewers use to make beer. Describing the experience of drinking and tasting mead served from the tap at The Hive is like describing the wind. Each of the dozens of mead varieties Tim Guild brews and carbonates onsite has a different character, color, scent and flavor. Some have the tangy sharpness or the boldness of a hoppy beer, or the bourbon-like woodiness from quick aging in oaken barrels. Other varieties have a fruitiness that varies from the bite of lemon, cherry and apple to the mellow softness of melon. The drink tends to split the wickets between lightly sweet, dry wine or slightly bubbly champagne, and cider or beer. Yet underneath (or on top or in between—it’s hard to pinpoint, really) is the basic characteristic of raw honey—a round, light sweetness that filters its way through and lingers in taste and smell. Customers who pay to be special members of The Hive get to drink from Guild’s personalized clay jars kept on a shelf behind the honey-colored bar. Quaffed from those little tankards, it’s easier to imagine the Dark Ages spirit of a drink that some scholars believe has been made for at least 9,000 years. The Guilds’ first major experience with mead came a few years ago in the Santa Barbara, California, area, where Tim and Ayla found a taproom serving mead. Tim, a native of Santa Barbara, said the drink was simply … different. The couple noted mead was both wine- and beer-like, but with one difference: People who drink it will tell you they don’t feel that heavy, “stumbly-mumbly” feeling—the sort of tired, thick feeling you can get from beer. “We use the tagline “A Better Buzz,” Tim said. The Guilds thought they could bring the drink to market on a microbrewery scale to Wisconsinites who for years have embraced locally made craft beers and wines. The Hive’s twist, which is what sets its apart, is that the Guilds cold-brew and hand-carbonate the drink, which imbues it with a light, crisp body that’s as beer-ish as it is wine-like. The Hive is one of just two mead taprooms in the state that serve mead that is cold and carbonated. “I think cold, dry and carbonated is something that people here are used to,” Tim Guild said. “The craft beer market already rolled out some carpet for us. There’s a number of people who are used to going to craft tap rooms and places, and they expect to have something they’ve never had before. And so (carbonated, cold, dry) mead just seemed like the next progression of something different.” Guild taught himself to brew mead, a 2- to 4-week-per batch process of fermentation that is similar to wine or beer but without the typical boiling of ingredients that beer brewing uses. As the mead’s base, The Hive uses raw, unpasteurized local honey—about 7,000 pounds a year—including some Ayla produces from 23 beehives she keeps. The honey, which is the basis for all sugars used in the Guilds’ fermenting process, is turned to mead through cold-brewing and fermentation with other ingredients including coffee, tea, fruits and hops. Low-heat brewing means naturally-occurring antihistamines, antimicrobial and antibacterial compounds in honey, at least in theory, will stay intact from brewing to the customer. “I think what we do lends itself more to traditional wineries, where it’s all about touch, taste and smell. I don’t have any automation, and I’ll just put some stuff in and then dump the recommended ingredients and let it go,” Tim said. “There’s just a lot of feeling around in the dark for what’s going to be.” One of The Hive’s more adventurous varieties is “Vote for Pedro,” a mead brewed with honey and fresh, locally roasted San Pedro Mexican coffee. It’s got a coffee scent and flavor along with light honey sweetness. The name “Vote for Pedro” references the 2004 film “Napoleon Dynamite,” and it is a cultural nod to the 30-something millennials who fit the same age demographic as the Guilds. The Hive, a steel-roofed former bakery the Guilds gutted and rehabbed, is set up with a contemporary European pub-style atmosphere: No televisions, very spotty internet connection and an emphasis placed on live jazz and blues, conversation and games such as tavern shuffleboard and music. The Guilds, who have two young children, have sought to create a space that beckons to families, and they encourage people to bring along their kids and dogs. They have a family room set up with play mats and toys so parents can play with their children. The Hive, which operates as an afternoon and evening tap room Thursdays through Sundays (some Wednesdays are “members only” days), also is making forays into special events that host food trucks, artists, painting events and even yoga classes. The couple call The Hive an “analog” environment where families can connect on a personal level, eschewing Snapchat for regular, face-to-face conversation. Ayla, a Minneapolis-area native who learned beekeeping from scratch from an East Troy-area beekeeper, is fascinated by the almost human social structure of bees. Ayla said she remembers a game she and Tim played when they lived in Philadelphia: “Wawa smile.” When they’d go into the Wawa chain of convenience stores, they’d try to make the store cashier smile or laugh. Ayla said the idea was to brighten somebody’s day, whether it was the clerk or the customer in line behind them. “We’re trying to do that on a big scale with The Hive—to bring back what’s missing,” she said. “To talk, to communicate and to make each smile.”

It was so humid as we walked under the trees that I could feel sweat dripping off me. I paused to reapply my suncream, but my colleague Dada stopped me. I wouldn’t do that, the smell of it will agitate the bees. Do not approach the hives from the front either in case they get fierce.” Nervously, I put away my suncream, hoisted my rucksack, and continued to follow him towards a group of yellow wooden boxes on the outskirts of Ankingabe village. I recently spent 2 weeks in the city of Ambanja, Blue Ventures’ northernmost base in Madagascar. My three colleagues and I had left the office very early that morning and driven towards the coast until the potholes in the road became so big that our 4 by 4 could go no further. From there it was a two hour cross-country hike to our destination, a small coastal village in the Ambanja bay called Ankingabe. The hike was the perfect chance for me to soak in my beautiful surroundings and ask plenty of questions! “Over 1,500 hectares of mangroves have been deforested in this area over the last 15 years, mostly to burn for charcoal production” Dada explained to me as we walked. “Local people are aware that this isn’t sustainable, but making a living is a struggle in such a remote place, so they’ve asked for our help in setting up beekeeping and fuelwood plantation programmes. We have a partner in the private sector called T’Telo who are the only company in Madagascar able to export honey. Mangrove honey is delicious and slightly salty, and T’Telo have committed to buying all the honey produced here.” So the key aim of these programmes” my colleague Emmanuel summarised for me, “is to take pressure off the mangrove forests and fisheries. Beekeeping provides an alternate income source, and the fuelwood plantations can be used to produce charcoal.” Eventually we arrived in Ankingabe, where Dada and Emmanuel were both greeted warmly by the villagers. Dada introduced me to Befanony, Ankingabe’s primary beekeeper, and his family, before leading the way through the trees towards the hives. “These hives were built in a copse of coffee and mandarin trees so that the bees will stay here, even when the mangroves aren’t in bloom” Dada explained to me as we approached. I kept a safe distance as we meandered between the hives, as I could see the bees congregating around their entrances and I was still slightly nervous about the potential effects of my suncream… As we reached one of the central hives, Dada put on his protective hats and Emmanuel began pumping the sawdust bellows he was carrying. “The smoke helps to keep the bees off us” Dada explained before advancing on the hive. In complete contrast to my trepidation, Emmanuel and Befanony followed him to watch closely as Dada carefully removed the lid, brushed some confused bees out of the way, and began removing the hive racks to study the honeycomb. My colleague Haja remained to explain the process to me while we watched from a few metres away. This monitoring process involves checking each rack to see whether the larvae are healthy, whether there’s honey, and whether there are any other bugs like ants that need to be removed. Sometimes you need to remove a second queen so that she isn’t producing rival bees. It’s very important that this process doesn’t take longer than 10 minutes or else the bees will leave! We’re also teaching people here how to trap wild queens so that they can be moved into empty or abandoned hives.” Watching Dada work was fascinating. He was going through the monitoring process at an impressive pace, but still taking great care to gently move bees out of the way if they were in danger of getting crushed as he removed or replaced the racks. I was so engrossed that I noticed far too late that my legs were covered in mosquitos! After the hive monitoring was over, Befanony gathered the villagers who were involved in the plantation programme, and we set off through the rice fields to check on its progress. With Haja as my translator, Befanony explained to me why they’d asked Blue Ventures for support with fuelwood plantations. At the moment, the government is banning us from cutting the mangroves, but we need wood to build our houses and pirogues, and to sell. We know that cutting the mangroves isn’t sustainable, and we are afraid we will go to prison when we do, but with our new plantations we can use the trees for whatever we want. “There are other benefits too” adds Emmanuel, as we reach the plantation area, “the flowers from these acacia, eucalyptus and lemon trees will hopefully attract more bees, and you can also sell the lemons which are in high demand for lemon chilli, a regional delicacy.” Emmanuel and Dada studied all the saplings, giving advice on how to optimise their growth, and encouraging the villagers to keep one metre clear around each one to prevent the invasion of wild plants and to decrease fire risk. On our return to Ankingabe we were invited to stay for a meal with Befanony’s family. Sitting at ease in his house with one of his children on his lap, he told me how his relationship with Blue Ventures began. “In this village we understand the need to preserve our resources and to start new livelihoods, so we came to Blue Ventures with our need. For us, the beekeeping and fuelwood plantations bring a lot of advantages. The money we get from the honey makes the time spent monitoring the hives worth it. As for the new trees, not only can we do what we want to them without fear, but they also make it easier to keep bees.” Our relationship with Blue Ventures is very beneficial to this village, and we look to repay their training and support with good work. Hopefully then we can work together on more alternative livelihood opportunities in the future.” All photos in this blog were taken by Ben Honey. Find out about alternative livelihoods in the southwest of Madagascar. Blue Ventures would like to thank our supporters and funders including the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust.

Are you on the search for how to start beekeeping in Wycombe Pennsylvania? A number of folks say beekeeping classes in PA can be costly and there are alternative ways to master honey bee farming without spending a fortune in training. Beekeeping is a hobby that depends on having fire that is complete. You cannot should you not enjoy coping with live creatures start a company such as this. Working with bees is like working with any kind of fowl or animals; it needs care and knowledge to keep bees productive and healthy. In order that it doesn’t create any difficulty for the company later on, you should take complete care of each little matter. – Selecting the correct tools Starting beekeeping without picking the correct tools is like entering the conflict with swimming costumes. Before you begin your business you should be well prepared, or it is going to be a total loss for money and your time. Ask your self several questions before you select your hives that are acceptable. This depends a lot on what is the aim from starting beekeeping. Should you be willing to invest time and some cash in a bee keeping business then you certainly might want to know how long will you take good care of your hives. Are you prepared if it’s best choice for you to buy a costly hive? These type of questions will be asked to you once you see an expert bee keeper to consult with him about the greatest hive to purchase. Every hive has its own specifications, maintenance and honey generation quantity. – New technology and procedures Should you be looking at bee keeping as a company then you must analyze a lot about their nature, bees and the latest technologies that emerged in this career so that you can keep all of your info up so far. Your bees are once they begin creating honey the machines of your factory which will generate cash for you all the time, so keeping your thoughts focused on them and your head open for what’s new in the industry will get you on top of the business.

To be up to date with the latest information in the apiculture industry to may visit our beekeeping latest news. On the other hand if you are beginning beekeeping and would like to start professional beekeeping today get a copy of our beekeeping for beginners ebook. Beekeeping can be a full-time profession or a hobby that is simple. Yet, more often than not, what started as a hobby would become a profession. But you cannot only decide and tell yourself you will start to do beekeeping. Before starting on any avocation or profession, you need to have adequate knowledge and understanding on the area that you are going to enter. Then it’s about time to indulge yourself in your line of interest if you’ve been putting off your interest in beekeeping for quite a while. Bee farming may appear easy; by learning the fundamental beekeeping lessons, you can be got away to a good start. What does a beekeeper need to know? First, you should have interest that is complete on beekeeping to start at the right foot. You should have agreed to share your dwelling space. There are possible risks in beekeeping that can damage not only you but your family also. If you decide to allow the bees inside your living space, then you definitely must understand the supplies and equipment you will use for beekeeping. Your focus is not only to earn money by selling honey; a good beekeeper should have fire and a keen interest in rearing bees. An apiarist should know the right location for the beehives. You have to make sure that beekeeping is allowed in your town if you decide to set your beehives at your backyard. There are several places restricted to beekeeping; you have to get permission about this. Beekeepers must know whether beekeeping supplies are available in the area where the beehives are situated. You may never know when you must attend a local beekeeping store; it is best that a nearby beekeeping store is not inaccessible. Protective tools and equipment can also be essential for beekeepers to understand. Beekeepers are prone to bee stings; the ensemble that is correct must be worn during beekeeping sessions. Know the right type of suit to pick to keep you from any potential risk in beekeeping. Last but definitely not the least, among the beekeeping lessons you have to know is that: it’s not unimportant for the beekeeper to know the appropriate manner of picking honey. All the beekeeping attempts would be useless if you’re incapable to harvest honey from your bees. The procedures should be known by a beekeeper in collecting the honey from your comb; beeswax is also part of the yields in beekeeping.

Welcome to FAO's NWFP-Digest-L a free e-mail journal that covers all aspects of non-wood forest products. A special thank you to all those who have shared information with us. Back issues of the Digest may be found on FAO's NWFP home page: PRODUCTS, COUNTRY INFORMATION AND NEWS 1. Acai used to create orthodontic solutions 2. Bamboo: money that grows as you watch 3. Armenia Tree Project 4. Botswana communities rehabilitate arid rangeland, save livelihoods 5. Brazil: Amazonia hype 6. Brazil: Amazonia¿s cosmetics conquer the world 7. Cameroon: Poverty alleviation ¿ Non-Timber Forest Products work 8. Colombia debt swap yields $10 million for tropical forest conservation 9. Ghana's forest resources under threat 10. Kenya: Kwale residents living on wild food 11. Kenya: Nation staff plant trees to mark World Environment Day 12. Malaysia: Nomadic Malaysian tribe tells of life in the forest 13. Melanesia: Community-based ecoforestry protecting forests 14. Namibia: US $7.1m World Bank grant for community-based ecosystem project 15. Namibia seeks to commercialize hoodia 16. South Africa: Law now protects South Africa's biodiversity 17. South Africa: Taking the sting out of beekeeping 18. Uganda: Fruits to help fight poverty in the north 19. Uganda: Ecotourism gets a boost 20. Vietnam: Natural resources protection and biodiversity conservation 21. Zambia: North western bee products gets German fair certificate 22. Zambia: State launches K3bn forestry credit facility 23. Zimbabwe: Animal, plant life dwindling 24. Can 'plant passports' put bioprospecting back on track? 25. CBD forest web portal EVENTS AND TRAINING COURSES 29. Sustainable tourism 30. Workshop on Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) Networking in Lao PDR 31. International Scientific Conference 32. Environmental assessment and sustainable forest management 33. Evaluating forestry incentive and assistance programmes in Europe ¿ challenges to improve policy effectiveness 34. International symposium on the role of forests for coming generations: philosophy and technology for forest resource management (FORCOM2004) 35. I International Fair and Forum: ¿Non-Timber Forest Products ¿ Culture of Use¿ 36. International conference on ecotourism planning and management in protected areas 37. 17th Commonwealth Forestry Conference 38. Global conference on indigenous knowledge and traditional medicine LITERATURE REVIEW AND WEB SITES 39. Fact sheets on medicinal herbs 40. Other publications of interest 41. Web sites and e-zines 42. Volunteer staff sought 43. Environmental Sciences Fulbright Scholar Program 44. Worms combat toxic wasps that threaten SA pines 45. Mini-livestock ¿ BEDIM Source: O Estado de S.Paulo, 21 May 2004 (in Amazon News, 27.5.04) From the natural dye of the açaí, a typical Brazilian fruit, researchers form the Brazilian Company of Agri-business Research (EMBRAPA) have developed a substance that will be useful for revealing the existence of bacterial plaque on teeth. In addition to its being natural, the orthodontic substance is easy to remove, tasteless and not harmful to one¿s health. The researchers stated that the next step is to construct a factory to process açaí, which will contribute to new job sources in Amazonia. Source: The Nation (Nairobi), 10 June 2004 A giant bamboo introduced into the country last year which achieves the phenomenal growth rate of one metre per day, could be a possible money spinner for local farmers. The World Agroforestry Centre has already distributed more than 800 seedlings of the giant bamboo,Dendrocalamus giganteus, to farmers in Kericho, Kisii, Nandi South, Nyamira, Nyando, Siaya, and Vihiga Districts. The giant bamboo is nature's fastest growing woody plant. Its culms (poles) are the strongest, lightest natural material known to man. A square metre of flooring derived from this plant will sell for as much as Sh8 000, while in Southern Asia it is used for reinforcing concrete and for scaffolding on skyscrapers. It absorbs water faster than most plants and is used in some parts of the world for cleaning sewage. Even more important, it soaks up heavy metals. It is a potential answer to polluted waters in Kenya, including Lake Victoria whose shores are dotted with large urban centres that discharge domestic and industrial waste into its waters. Working with municipal authorities, ICRAF has plans to introduce the bamboo for waste water treatment in Kisumu and Kakamega. Further afield, ICRAF is also looking at local authorities in Nairobi, Mwanza and other towns dotting Lake Victoria's shores. No other woody plant matches the bamboo's versatility in environmental conservation and commerce. It is a viable replacement for both hardwoods and softwoods. Its growth rate is three times that of eucalyptus, and it matures in just three years. Thereafter, harvests are possible every second year for up to 120 years. India has some 20 million acres of commercial bamboo that account for 60 percent of the country's massive paper requirements and much of its commercial timber needs. Over two million tons of edible bamboo shoots ¿ rich in vitamins and low in carbohydrates, fats and proteins - are consumed around the world every year, mostly in Asia. However, bamboo remains an untapped resource in Africa, a state of affairs ICRAF is addressing through a pilot project in Kenya. The project aims to create awareness on the environmental and economic benefits of bamboo in the Lake Victoria Basin, and hopefully popularize it throughout the region. Interestingly, bamboo, a member of the grass family, is not new in Kenya. According to Prof Chin Ong, a hydrologist with ICRAF, Kenya's water catchments were once covered in bamboo, but most of these forests have since been cleared. This commercially attractive species can grow in areas traditionally used for sugar cane and coffee cultivation, thus providing an alternative or additional cash crop.Arundinaria alpina, a species of bamboo native to Kenya, will yield as many as 20 000 culms per hectare per year ¿ with each culm growing to a height of 12m. Most species in fact grow to over 30m at full maturity. Kenya has few privately owned commercial timber plantations. Most of the country's timber comes from government forests managed by the Forest Department. However, these forests have been severely over-exploited with only limited replanting. Timber firms are now reportedly forced to import timber from the Congo and Tanzania to manufacture hard and soft board. The country's leading paper manufacturer, PanPaper of Webuye, is also reportedly using plantation softwoods to fuel its boilers and make paper pulp. With its rapid growth and high woody fibre production, bamboo would supply both industrial needs. At the household level, bamboo would be a valuable source of firewood and charcoal. It yields more than 7 000 kilocalories per kilogram, equivalent to half the yield from an equivalent amount of petroleum. Some species of the plant have large thorns, making them ideal for security hedges. Others grow tall straight culms that form ideal windbreaks that can be sustainably harvested annually. And of course edible bamboo shoots would be a nutritious addition to the family table. These shoots, mild and very crunchy, can be eaten raw or cooked. The Kenya Forestry Research Institute already grows several high quality edible varieties. Bamboo rhizomes anchor topsoil along steep slopes and riverbanks, very effectively controlling erosion. Bamboo leaves, sheaves and old culms that die and fall to the ground decompose and create a thick humus layer that enriches the soil. Studies in South East Asia and Kenya have also shown that natural bamboo forests have excellent hydrological functions that promote soil health. Some species of bamboo absorb as much 12 tonnes of atmospheric carbon dioxide per hectare, a valuable asset to deploy against global warming. Bamboo can be propagated from seeds, though most species flower just once every 15 to 120 years. More viable mass propagation techniques include tissue culture. Source: Press Release, 17June 2004 (in CENN ¿ 22 June 2004 Daily Digest) The Armenia Tree Project (ATP) is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1994 with the vision of safeguarding Armenia's future by protecting its environment. Funded by contributions from Diasporan Armenians, the ATP has planted and rejuvenated 531 000 trees at more than 400 sites ranging from Gyumri to Goris. ATP has just celebrated its ten years of greening Armenia. During the celebration, ATP Executive Director Mr. Jeff Masarjian said that ATP has planted and restored over half a million trees in Armenia, while providing jobs for hundreds of people. Plans for the next decade include expanding community reforestation programs in partnership with villagers and other organizations, which will also provide social and economic development opportunities. ATP¿s new tree nursery in Vanadzor will produce over one million saplings each year to begin reforesting the devastated landscape of Armenia. Dr. Nora Gabrielyan, who is the author of over 16 books on Armenia's diverse plant life, spoke about Armenia's unique and varied ecosystems and identified examples of rare and endangered flowering plants that rely on rapidly disappearing forest habitats. "The forests, which recently covered only 10 percent of the territory of our country, now cover even less," Dr. Gabrielyan explained. "If trees are chopped down without any plan or thoughtful system, the consequences will affect everything ¿ underbrush with rare plants immediately disappears, the rain washes away soil, springs dry up, the biodiversity becomes impoverished, and the climate changes." For more information, please contact: Source: UNDP Newsfront, 2 June 2004 Standing atop a sand dune, Klaas Matthuis can see more dunes almost surrounding Struizendam, his village in Botswana on the border with South Africa. They are bare of vegetation except the one he stands on, which has large clumps of grass, trees and shrubs. Mr. Matthuis, vice-chairperson of a new community resource management committee, is showing visitors from Kenya, Mali, and the University of Oslo in Norway the dune that has been stabilized by fencing out goats and cattle and planting various indigenous species. People in most remote villages in Botswana, as elsewhere in the arid zones of Africa, depend heavily on natural resources for their livelihoods, as there are few alternatives other than government welfare. But poverty often pushes them to over-exploit resources to meet immediate needs. Mr. Matthius dreams of seeing the sand dunes stabilized so they no longer threaten to engulf houses. Through a regional project to restore indigenous vegetation implemented by UNDP and theUnited Nations Environment Programme(UNEP) with support from other partners, he and his neighbours are beginning to turn that dream into reality. One of the committee's first priorities was to help the community to draw up an action plan to reverse environmental losses and improve livelihoods. The project covers steps to conserve the whole spectrum of local resources, including wildlife and products such as firewood; grass for grazing and thatching; medicinal plants like devil's claw (sengaparile [Harpagophytum procumbens]), sold to European markets, particularly Germany, to make medication to control high blood pressure; a caterpillar known asphane, a local delicacy sold widely in the region; and the morula tree (Sclerocarya birrea), whose nuts are used for oil and sweets, fruit for jam and beverages. Thirteen other villages hard-hit by environmental degradation have recently completed similar plans. In addition, villages in two areas in Kenya and two sites in northern Mali are following a similar strategy. All the local plans benefit from indigenous knowledge and traditional land management systems. A key element is for community members to take the lead role in conserving biological diversity and bettering income-earning opportunities. TheGlobal Environment Facilityis providing US$8.7 million for the five-year pilot initiative through UNDP and UNEP, and another US$3.5 million comes fromGerman Technical Cooperation(GTZ), the University of Oslo, and the governments of Botswana, Kenya and Mali. Source:Jornal do Brasil, 6 June 2004 (in Amazon News, 11.6.04) It is tapicoquinha here, boi-bumba there and priprioca over there. The Amazonian influence and the crafts of its indigenous people are everywhere and have begun to win over trendsetters. To obtain attention internationally, Brazilian fashion promotes the national identity line: necklaces created with guarana, coco and acai seeds can cost up to R$490 in New York City. In addition, Epoca Cosmetics has the Amazonic Boat line that includes soap made from copaiba and andiroba. A tendency explored by the very Brazilian Natura, which not only was the first to present products with the face of Amazonia, it is also involved in sustainable development in the region. Source:O Estado de S.Paulo, 22 April 2004 (in Amazon News, 29.4.04) Shampoos, conditioners, hair dyes and cosmetics made from Amazonian fruits and plants have begun to occupy the competitive international market, offering great business opportunities for national manufacturers. Mixing cupuaçu, guaraná, copaíba and buriti, cosmetic companies have conquered clients in Europe, Asia and the US by¿ offering genuine Brazilian products and opening doors for export growth in this sector. Farmaervas decided to explore the export potential with cosmetics made from Brazilian herbs and fruits and today sells its products in Europe, Japan and South Africa. At the moment, 5% of their production is exported, with this percentage scheduled to increase to 15% during the next two years. The company manufacturers 550 000 bottles of shampoos each month; their Green and Amazonia Lines use Para nut, pequi, copaíba, andiroba, jaborandi and other typical Brazilian plants. During the last Cosmoprof, a worldwide cosmetic trade fair, Farmaervas¿ products drew a lot of international attention. Surya Henna, a Brazilian cosmetics manufacturer, presented its line of hair dyes produced from Brazilian fruits and herbs from India during the Cosmoprof. International sales represent 20% of Surya Henna¿s total sales and it plans to double its exports this year. Source:Cameroon Tribune(Yaoundé), 17 June 2004 The panacea for rural communities in forest zones in Cameroon is spelt out in three recent publications. Research has intensified to enable local forest communities and small farmers to gain their rightful share from forest resources. Recent research concerns Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFP), with an emphasis on increasing the production, transformation and the value of the products. The Centre for International Forestry Research, CIFOR, which is committed to conserving forest resources and improving the livelihoods of people in the tropics, has been undertaking research in this field for over ten years. One of CIFOR's recent publications is titled "Forest Products, Livelihoods and Conservation; Case Study of Non-Timber Forest Products Systems, Volume 2 Africa". The 333-page book highlights the importance of NTFP in poverty alleviation and livelihood improvement. In presenting the book, the regional representative of CIFOR to Cameroon, Dr Ndoye, said that the study had been carried out in ten African countries, Cameroon included. Focus was on medicinal plants, fruits and oils, wood carving and wood, fibre and weaving products, and animal products. The researchers compared and contrasted individual and collective cases of NTFP basing on production, processing and trade. The case studies offer an invaluable resource for researchers, development practitioners and conservation workers interested in understanding the links between commercialization, livelihoods and forest conservation. The second publication "Riches of the forest: For health, life and spirit in Africa". Edited by Citlalli Lopez and Patricia Shanley, this 115-page document brings to light the crucial role of NTFP in providing resources for local livelihoods. The research was conducted in Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya and Zimbabwe. Studies on animals and insects focused on bushmeat; studies on fruits centred on bitter cola, dried kernels, bush plum and shea butter; as for medicinal plants, focus was on prunus medicinal bark. The researchers were equally interested in wood products such as woodcarving, chewing stick and fuelwood. A special study was carried out on rattan and palm in Cameroon. The study helped to bring to life the people and products behind the research and the importance of drawing up policies for the sustainable management of the resources to improve the livelihood of the local communities. It presents the diverse opportunities and problems gatherers and traders in NTFP face and their manner of responding to change. The third publication, "Nature wealth and power: emerging best practices for revitalising rural Africa NWP", presents principles and practices to guide investment in rural areas of Africa. For full story, please see:http://allafrica.com/stories/200406170304.html Source: CEPF E-News, June 2004 Colombia unveiled a debt-for-nature swap with the United States that will allow it to invest at least US$10 million over the next 12 years to protect nearly 11 million acres of its tropical forests. Under the agreement, the U.S. Department of the Treasury will contribute US$7 million to the deal, while Conservation International's (CI) Global Conservation Fund, The Nature Conservancy and (World Wildlife Fund) WWF will contribute an additional US$1.4 million. The funds will go toward canceling part of Colombia's debt to the United States. In exchange, Colombia will invest at least US$10 million to protect tropical forests in key areas of the Andes, the Caribbean coast and the Llanos, or plains, along the Orinoco River. Colombia is one of the five most biologically diverse countries on the planet, harbouring one of every ten species of plants and animals in the world. Under the agreement, Colombia will destine half the funds toward financing local environmental organizations that are working in selected areas. The other half will go toward the Fondo Patrimonial, or Heritage Trust, which the government expects to use to leverage additional loans of up to US$40 million that will guarantee the long-term financial sustainability of Colombia's existing protected areas. Funds from the debt swap will be focused in three areas key for tropical forest conservation. In the tropical Andes, funds will go toward 1.7 million hectares that are home to some of the nation's last remaining stands of oak. In the Llanos of the Orinoco River basin, the funds will go toward the 1.4 million hectare Tuparro National Park and its buffer zone. A UNESCO Natural Biosphere Reserve since 1979, the park is also home to dozens of unique species. Along the Caribbean coast, conservation efforts will focus on 1.3 million hectares, including the world's highest coastal mountain, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Funds from the debt swap will go toward establishing private and public protected areas and reserves, and restoring and maintaining existing protected areas. Funds will also be used for capacity building among researchers, individuals and organizations involved in local conservation. The agreement will be managed by an oversight committee composed of representatives from the governments of Colombia and the United States, as well as the Conservancy, WWF and CI. "Increasingly, there are indications that we are going to lose our natural heritage if we don't dedicate ourselves to protecting it," said Fabio Arjona, the director of Conservation International in Colombia. "This debt swap is a perfect example of how the conservation community needs to work ¿ hand-in-hand with government to protect our biological riches. We hope this swap sets an example for other organizations and other nations." Debt-for-nature swaps were established under the Tropical Forest Conservation Act (TFCA) of 1998 to allow nations to reduce their foreign debt burden in exchange for making local-currency investments in conservation work. In the past, Bangladesh, Belize, El Salvador, Panama, Peru and Thailand have benefited from the TFCA. For full story, please see:www.conservation.org/xp/news/press_releases/2004/042304.xml Source:Ghanaian Chronicle(Accra), 17 June 2004 The country's loss of over 75% of its original high forest cover and other valuable structures and resources through wildfires has been blamed on human activities and climatic hazards. The remaining 25% of the forest resources still faces enormous threat due to rapid population growth, general disregard of environmental conservation, improper disposal of industrial and domestic waste, illegal and uncontrolled logging and the annual ritual of wild and bush fires. At the recent regional Consultative workshop on the National Wildfire Management Policy, the Executive Director of the Forest Service Division, Mr. John Ekow Otoo, expressed the need for all Ghanaians to defend and respect the Policy to prevent the country from further devastating annual wildfires, which have had a significant negative impact on the socio-economic and environmental well being of the country. He said that the annual incidence of wildfire ranges from 30% in the high forest and transitional zones to over 90% in the dry Northern Savanna zones. The Brong Ahafo Regional Minister, Nana Kwadwo Seinti, said that the right enforcement of the Policy would significantly benefit the region since it has a large number of ecotourism sites, which have a great potential for the tourism industry in the country. For full story, please see:http://allafrica.com/stories/200406170016.html Source:The Nation(Nairobi), 14 June 2004 Residents of Kwale have resorted to eating wild tubers and fruits as famine ravages the district. A spot check byTheNationin the worst-hit areas of Samburu, Kinango and Lungalunga divisions, found most of the homes deserted, as some villagers were said to have fled to others parts of the district due to famine caused by prolonged drought. For full story, please see:http://allafrica.com/stories/200406140940.html Source:The Nation(Nairobi), 6 June 2004 The Nation Media Group staff yesterday planted 1 000 trees at the Karura Forest, Nairobi, to mark the World Environment Day. So far it has planted 2 000 trees on more than five acres of land here. The planting at Karura also affirms Nation Media Group's commitment to corporate social responsibility programmes. Last month, its Chief Executive Officer Mr Wilfred Kiboro led another group in planting 1 000 indigenous trees in the same forest. The Nation Media Group is working in partnership with Dr Pravin Shah of the Millennium Trees who plans to plant 10 million trees all over the country in his lifetime. This part of the forest will be known as the Nation Millennium Tree Forest. Dr Mark Nicholson, who joined the Nation staff in the tree-planting exercise, said that while people can make money from planting trees, indigenous trees were also important for hard wood and medicine properties. He called upon people to plant ten trees for every tree cut. For full story, please see:http://allafrica.com/stories/200406070380.html Source: Miki Fujii,Daily Yomiuri, Saturday, 1 May 2004 (in Community Forestry E-News 2004.05 May 2004) Aina Ikeda (not her real name) launched her oral history collection project in Sarawak near the border of Kalimantan, which is known as the place of origin of the Penans, said to be the last nomadic people on Earth. Only about 400 of the 10 000 Penans still follow their traditional nomadic lifestyle. Penan guardianship of the forest and its natural resources is reflected in the custom of "molong" that requires an individual or community to control the use of resources for the sake of future generations, and is visualized by a special symbol created by natural materials such as rattan. The forest provides the Penans all their needs for survival: food, shelter and medicine, but it is threatened by logging activities. The village studied by Ikeda has already lost nearly half of its communal forest area and a road now crosses their land. The Penans have demanded that the government protect the forest, which they claim belongs to them as communal property and not to the concessionaires. Timber products are a major source of Sarawak¿s income, and according to the International Tropical Timber Organization, Japan imported 40 percent of its timber products from the state in 2002. For full text, seehttp://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20040501wo62.htm Source: Community Forestry E-News 2004.05 May 2004 Melanesia, which includes Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Kanaky (New Caledonia), Fiji, East Timor and West Papua (Indonesia), is unique in the world in that 95% of its land is still under community ownership by indigenous people. The forests they control are part of the largest remaining rainforest in the Asia Pacific region and the third largest tropical forest on Earth after the Amazon and Congo. Illegal and destructive industrial logging is rampant, mainly by Malaysian companies who have moved from Sarawak and elsewhere in Asia as the forests were exhausted. Associated with logging comes poor governance, corruption, lack of control and monitoring, and a situation where landowners receive very little financial benefit and suffer disastrous social and environmental impacts. In response, for the last 15 years NGOs have targeted community forest management as a solution to the crisis in the forests and to support the customary forest owners. There is a wealth of successful examples of community forestry programmes as well as some that didn't last but were instructive in discovering the formula for success. Most programmes have focused on training and marketing support. The Solomon Islands¿ Ecoforestry Programme has trained 56 landowning groups and is currently supporting 'ecotimber' production and exports providing a net value to communities of US$520,000 in the last 5 years, as well as protecting their 40 000 ha of forest from logging. By: Grant Rosoman, Greenpeace Forests Campaigner, in: WRM Bulletin 82, May 2004 Source:UN Integrated Regional Information Networks, 3 June 2004 The World Bank this week approved a US $7.1 million Global Environment Facility (GEF) grant to Namibia for scaling up community-based ecosystem management to the benefit of rural people. The grant is a part of a total amount of US $32.43 million intended for the projec, with contributions from the Namibian government, the French GEF, USAID, and the German development bank, KfW, making up the balance. The five-year initiative to improve rural livelihoods, promote sustainable environmental management, biodiversity conservation and sustainable land use will run as part of Namibia's "Community Conservancy" programme. The project encompasses the development of community-based tourism facilities, including joint ventures with the private sector, trophy hunting, game meat production, the commercialization of indigenous plants and craft production. For full story, please see:http://allafrica.com/stories/200406030865.html Source:The Namibian(Windhoek), 3 June 2004 NAMIBIA has requested CITES to list the Carrion Flower (Hoodia) in Appendix II, to enable it to sell the natural resource. Plants and animal species classified in the Convention on International Trade In Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Appendix II can be sold in controlled commercial trade. Appendix I contains highly endangered species and no trade on them is allowed. Dr Pauline Lindeque, who deals with CITES-related matters at the Ministry of Environment and Tourism, said Namibia made the proposal as Hoodia was not at present listed at all. Botswana and South Africa have also made the same proposal. Hoodia has appetite-suppressing properties and is found only in the arid regions of Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. It has dominated discussions in the pharmaceutical industry in Europe and the United States over the past five years. In February, Environment Minister Philemon Malima told a CITES¿ Plants Committee in Windhoek that Namibia was conducting cultivation trials to get small-scale farmers involved in the growing of Hoodia for commercial purposes. He said that the cultivation of Hoodia for commercial purposes would reduce the pressure on wild harvesting and prevent over-utilization. Namibia's proposal will be tabled at the 13th CITES Conference of Parties, to be held in Bangkok, Thailand in October. For full story, please see:http://allafrica.com/stories/200406030121.html Source:Cape Argus(Cape Town), 3 June 2004 President Thabo Mbeki has signed into law South Africa's new Biodiversity Act, which is hailed by some as the most significant environmental legislation adopted in ten years of democratic government. Because of its incredibly rich biological diversity, South Africa is ranked the third most biologically important nation in the world, after Brazil and Indonesia. The new act now gives the highest possible political protection to this biodiversity. Among other things, it requires full environmental impact assessments before the introduction of any genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The act also makes provision for communities to share the profits of any exploitation of natural materials involving their indigenous knowledge. An example is the case of the San/Bushmen communities who will benefit from a commercial slimming product derived from the Hoodia cactus plant, which they have known for centuries, chewing its leaves as an appetite suppressant. "The act regulates for the first time what we call 'bio-prospecting'," explained Environmental Affairs and Tourism director-general Chippy Olver. "For companies to be able to bio-prospect, they will now have to go through a regulatory system which gives protection to indigenous communities." Also for the first time, the act gives a legal framework for agreements such as the contract between the National Botanical Institute (NBI) and US horticultural company Ball to develop commercially valuable hybrids from some indigenous South African plant species. And it will make it significantly more difficult for developers to damage or destroy any biologically sensitive natural areas. The act creates a basic legal framework in terms of which the Environment Minister can promulgate a national biodiversity strategy and action plan. It also provides for the identification of biodiversity "hotspots" and "bio-regions", which will then be given legal recognition. The act would not require developers to get additional permits, Oliver suggested. "But it will add a very important dimension, because over the next few years all these bio-regions will be given legal recognition, and then any environmental impact assessment will have as its point of departure the bio-regional plan." The act also covers alien invasive species, which are a major threat to biodiversity, and puts obligations on private landowners and the government to clear alien invasive vegetation from their properties. It also establishes the SA National Biodiversity Institute (Sanbi), which is the legal successor of the current NBI. For full story, please see:http://allafrica.com/stories/200406030117.html Source: Inter Press Service (Johannesburg), 4 June 2004 While much of this year's World Environment Day (Jun. 5) will be spent discussing the fate of the oceans, something altogether smaller is also receiving attention in South Africa: the bee. "Our people used to smoke (out) bees, (and) that resulted in the burning of the forests. That's one of the reasons why the African indigenous bee is threatened with extinction. Our task now is to conserve this bee," Rejoice Mabudafhasi, Deputy Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, told IPS. The African bee is regarded as the most aggressive of bee species. But, "It's also the most hardworking in the world. And its (honey) has got a sweet natural taste," says Mabudafhasi. This flavour ¿ and the role bees play in pollinating the crops that supply fruit for South Africa¿s large fruit industry ¿ has ensured that the insects have economic as well as environmental worth. The bee industry is currently thought to be worth almost US$466 million, according to various sources. As a result, efforts are underway to give people who fear bees a sense of their importance. "We tell the communities, 'Don't burn the bees. Don't torch them. Stop forest fire in the plantations. Look after the bees'," says Jean-Marie Jullienne, Chief Executive Officer of the Bee Foundation, a private company based in Pretoria that will be working with government to train new beekeepers. "A bee lives only between 32 to 35 days - it has a very short lifespan. This is why we need to educate the community to look after them". As part of its efforts to alert South Africans to the value of bees, the Foundation plans to help 100 000 people in rural areas set up their own beekeeping businesses over a three-year period. It will sell specially designed beehives (which come equipped with bee populations) to these people at a reduced rate of about US$62 each; the market price for the hives is between US$93 and US$124. No specialized skills are needed to manage the hives. When the honey is ready for harvesting, staff from the Bee Foundation will collect it - paying farmers just over US$120 for every kilogramme of honey. As each hive is expected to yield at least 20kg of honey every year, the farmers can look forward to a gross annual income of about US$2 500. After repaying the loans taken out to buy the hives, the farmers will have a net monthly income of US$155 ¿ no small amount in a country where most of the population was impoverished by apartheid. South Africa currently has up to 10 000 beekeepers, but there is room for an additional 10 000, according to industry analysts. According to Julliene, "We produce only 2 000 tons per year. And we consume 3 000 tons per year. To fill the gap we import 1 000 tons every year from China and Australia. Yet South Africa has the capacity to produce 100 000 tons of honey per year." Mabudafhasi believes that alerting people to the value of bees will put an end to the destructive practice of smoking them out. Bee farming has the advantage of being less capital-intensive than other agricultural activities, as it does not require large tracts of land, seed, fertilizer - or expensive machinery to till the soil and harvest crops. In addition honey production is not dependent on weather conditions. Nonetheless, this potentially lucrative activity has, until now, been largely ignored in Africa. "We have millions of hives in the trees. We need to bring the bees from the wild into the boxes ¿ and we have asked for the support of the forestry officials (to do this)," Jullienne says. "People in Africa have always been bee hunters not beekeepers. Our role is to educate them and make them become beekeepers". For full story, please see:http://allafrica.com/stories/200406040756.html Source:New Vision(Kampala), 22 June 2004 Northern Uganda is endowed with various herbs and nutritious fruit trees which can help in fighting poverty and improve nutrition. But because of insecurity, ignorance and inadequate funds, the biodiversity is not being tapped. One of the vitamin-rich fruit trees is Borassus palm (tugo), which grows in the wild. Its trunk is split and used as poles for roofing houses and its leaves are used for making mats. "Tugo fruits are also used for making salt. The fruits are rich in food values and money can be earned from it," said George Obong, the coordinator of The Northern Foods Project (NFP). The community-based NGO is piloting processing tugo wine from the fruit. Started last year with only ten members, the project now has over 60 members, most of whom are rural-based women from the pilot sub-counties of Adekokwok (Lira) and Aboke in Apac district. Each member must have at least one tugo tree in their garden. Alice Okello, a 75-year-old disabled widow in Boroboro parish has over 500 palm trees, and is one of the women getting hands-on skills to process tugo wine. "Apart from wine, tugo can be used for making salt, honey and nutritious porridge, especially for children," she said. Other uses include making baskets, bags, other handicrafts from its foliage, and as woodfuel. The NGO has over 200 types and uses of local plants. Some of the traditional plants are effective medicine for different diseases. It has also started 'manufacturing' vaseline, in 50gm and 100gm packs sold at sh600 and sh1 000, which is effective in curing skin rashes, pimples and scabies. Last year, a team from the Natural Chemotherapeutic Research Laboratory (NCRC) under the Ministry of Health at Wandegeya, Kampala, visited the Northern Foods Project to ascertain its viability. The centre's director, Dr. Grace Nambatya, hailed the project for being in line with the government's objective of using a community-based approach to boost nutrition and fight poverty through community awareness of indigenous plants and their values. "Our role is to identify such community initiatives so that we can assist them with the Poverty Action Fund (PAF), through the Ministry of Finance," Nambatya said. She added that the insecurity in Apac and Lira districts have not halted their plans. The project has three components: Food processing to fight malnutrition, medicinal plants for community health, and art and crafts to raise household incomes. It is aimed at sustainable utilization and management of natural resources, including fruit crops and medicinal plants, as well as rational exploitation of the fruit crops to ensure proper ecological balance and soil conservation. She said that after identifying their needs, her department would help the NFP with processors and train them on how to preserve and package their products. "What we now need is funding, security and the market. We have enough raw materials and many members are willing to join hands in the project," said Obong. For full story, please see:http://allafrica.com/stories/200406220124.html Source:New Vision(Kampala), 21 June 2004 The tourism industry will have a chance to showcase its products when the African Travel Association (ATA) holds its eighth cultural and ecotourism symposium and launch ATA Uganda Chapter in October. ¿We believe Africa's turn has come. It has everything to offer. There is no reason why it can't benefit from the booming global tourism," ATA's Jane Thompson said. Thompson is part of the ATA delegation¿s on site inspection of some of the tourism products as part of the preparations for the highly rated October function. ATA is an international organization which promotes tourist attractions in Africa. It educates and trains interested travel agents, meeting and conference planning, group tour organizers and incentive companies about the products and services offered by the tourism industry in Africa. It also publishes the popular Africa Travel Magazine. Thompson said the ecotourism symposium would help Uganda learn from other ATA partners and get recognition as one of the accessible tourism destinations. Delegates are expected from Africa, Europe, US and Asia. She said that ecotourism was a critical component because ¿if you don't conserve, you will lose your products". She said that the learning experience would be important to travel agents. Delegates will take home experience of what they have learnt about Uganda's products. She warned, however, that "success will depend on the tourism ministry. "It is a great time for Africa," Marlene Melton president of African Ventures Inc, USA said. She said Uganda had much to offer in tourism "but proactive promotion is required." Susan Muhwezi, the special presidential assistant said tourism was in line with President Yoweri Museveni's initiative to eradicate poverty. For full story, please see:http://allafrica.com/stories/200406211263.html Source: VNA, Friday, 14 May 2004 (in Community Forestry E-News 2004.05 May 2004) The government recently presented two documents for natural resource management and biodiversity conservation. The first,Management Strategy for a Protected Area System in Viet Nam to 2010aims to establish, organize and manage effectively a protected area system to protect the rich and unique biodiversity resources and landscapes of Viet Nam. TheCentral Truong Son Biodiversity Conservation Initiative, period 2004-2020focuses on maintaining the natural ecosystem's functions to secure the global biodiversity value of the landscape for future generations, ensure environmental services such as watershed protection and soil conservation, and through sustainable management improve livelihoods for rural communities. The result of a long term cooperation between the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the WWF Indochina with financial assistance from the Danish Government, and technical assistance from the WWF Denmark and WWF Indochina, the documents reflect the efforts of the Vietnamese government and people, international experts and communities to manage and protect Viet Nam's natural resources and unique landscapes. The implementation of the two strategies will also contribute to global biodiversity conservation and implementation of the international conventions that Viet Nam has pledged. For the full text, seewww.vnagency.com.vn/NewsA.asp?LANGUAGE_ID=2&CATEGORY_ID=32&NEWS_ID=99477 Source:The Post(Lusaka), 7 June 2004 THE North Western Bee Products has earned a German fair trade certification for its honey. General manager Bob Malichi said that the company has been growing at a fast rate, especially in the past three years, which he attributed to the commitment of workers and out-grower beekeepers. He said that last year alone the company had a bumper harvest and exported 144 metric tonnes of honey to Germany and the United Kingdom. Malichi said there was tremendous demand for organic honey in the United Kingdom and Germany and added that the company's honey was organic and was fairly traded, hence the German certification. He explained the certification was one of the highest ratings on the world market for bee products. "Our only threat is China which produces massive quantities of honey." Malichi said that the North Western Bee Products was the second largest employer in the province after the government. The company had 6 472 registered beekeepers and had contributed enormously to poverty reduction within its catchment area covering Mwinilunga, Kabompo, Mufumbwe, Solwezi and Kasempa districts. Honey costs 1 200 British Pounds per tonne while bee wax costs 2 300 British Pounds per tonne. Malichi said that their target was to produce 54 metric tonnes of honey this season. He added that the company was now refocusing and looking at the plight of women by encouraging their involvement in bee keeping. For full story, please see:http://allafrica.com/stories/200406070945.html Source:The Times of Zambia(Ndola), 3June 2004 Government has launched a K3 billion forestry development credit facility aimed at providing affordable financing to the micro, small and medium enterprises in the forestry sector. During the official launch of the credit facility, Tourism, Environment and Natural Resources Minister, Patrick Kalifungwa, said the money has already been released to his ministry and would be disbursed according to the criteria to be worked out by the various stakeholders, and guidelines would also be used to invite applications from eligible Zambians. "This facility will ensure rational use of the forest as credit to develop the forest land," he said. He explained that the money would be available as credit to develop the forest resource through activities such as planting of trees, training in optimal utilization of forest resources and re-capitalization of forest resources. Mr Kalifungwa said the money would also be used for processing of wood and non-wood products to produce quality finished products for local consumption and export. Mr Kalifungwa has said about 200 000-300 000 hectares of land were being deforested annually. For full story, please see:http://allafrica.com/stories/200406030208.html Source:The Herald(Harare), 21 June 2004 Many unique animal, bird and plant species could silently be disappearing from the face of the earth mainly due to human invasion. Effective protection and sound management of areas with protected species has been and still remains the major challenge facing countries that are home to rare plants and animals. Information compiled between 1990 and 2002 and posted on the World Resource Institute's EarthTrends website indicates that of the 270 known mammal species in Zimbabwe, 11 are threatened with extinction; of the 4 440 higher plant species known in the country, 141 were on the verge of extinction, while ten of the 229 known breeding bird species are in danger of disappearing from the face of the earth. Zimbabwe's conservation success story in the 1990s resulted in many farmers cashing in on the abundance of wildlife by turning some of their vast holdings into conservancies. But these gains risk being reversed if Zimbabwe fails to maintain the standards it has set for itself and other Southern African countries. The Presidential Land Review Committee Report compiled by the former Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet, Dr Charles Utete, and released in September 2003 expressed concern at the welfare of the country's natural resources, such as wildlife. The needs and grievances of communities who have settled in protected areas such as the Gonarezhou National Park must be addressed without delay because the environmental impact of their continued stay there could have far reaching consequences. There is an urgent need to act in light of well documented evidence that impoverished communal areas can no longer fulfil the basic needs of communities. The large scale dependence by Zimbabweans on forest resources for fuel, construction timber, etc, has become unsustainable with rampant deforestation and woodland degradation. It has been said that poverty is the greatest enemy of the environment. Evidence of this abounds in the communal areas where poor families are trying to make ends by exploiting the country's natural plant resources. The baobab tree, whose bark is used extensively in mat-making, is now on the brink of extinction. The over-exploitation of the giant tree for commercial purposes has rendered the baobab incapable of effectively regenerating its bark. For hundreds of years Southern African communities have stripped the tree bark to extract pulp which is used to treat fever, diarrhoea, malaria and as a vitamin C supplement. But such extraction posed very little threat to the tree since damage was minimal and infrequent such that the tree had a good chance of regenerating. Compiled data from many organizations indicate that the baobab, an unmistakable feature of the landscape in most drought prone parts of Southern Africa, has been and still is a source of livelihood for many communities. The baobab is a multi-purpose tree. Its leaves and fruit are good as relish substitutes. The fruit is used as a fermenting agent in traditional brews and makes a refreshing traditional drink when dissolved in milk. The seeds, which yield an edible substitute for vegetable oil, can also be eaten raw or roasted or ground to produce a coffee like beverage. Pulped seeds are also known to cure gastric, kidney and joint ailments. But all this treasure is at risk as economic survival continues to dictate the future of these vulnerable and sometimes unique species. For full story, please see:http://allafrica.com/stories/200406210677.html Source: ¿Nature¿, 10 June 2004 (in SciDev.Net Weekly Update: 7-13 June 2004) The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) agreed at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 sought to promote the sustainable use of biological resources in a way that would bring benefits to countries where they are found ¿ many being the poorer developing nations. But instead, the search for potentially valuable natural products, such as medicinal compounds in plants, has often elicited suspicion and fear of exploitation. In a recent article, Rex Dalton describes how, although some success stories exist, the predicted bonanza of new drugs has failed to materialize. This is partly because major pharmaceutical firms have withdrawn funding ¿ apparently put off both by doubts about commercial benefits, and by a lack of firm rules about benefit-sharing between host nations, scientists and commercial sponsors. A new framework under discussion may dispel fears on all sides ¿ and lure the commercial giants back into the field. A central component would be a user-friendly certificate that would travel with compounds stating their origin and who hold rights to them, a bit like a passport. But the United States is raising barriers to a new access and benefit-sharing agreement. And there are fears that biological resources may disappear before agreement is reached. Link to full article inNature Reference:Nature429, 598 (2004) Source: H. Gyde [email protected], Forest Information Update, FIU 31 MAY 04 Facilitating the implementation of the Expanded Programme of Work on Forest Biological Diversity, the CBD Secretariat has developed a forest web portal to allow Parties, other governments, NGOs, research practitioners, project managers and other actors in civil society to reflect on and analyse their common experiences in implementing the objectives of the expanded programme of work. Each month throughout 2004-2006, the portal will feature focused information and discussions on a topic drawn from the 27 objectives of the expanded programme of work. This will permit all stakeholders to report monthly on those activities related to each objective. The portal will feature tools such as: online discussions with other practitioners, a continually updated database of best practices, and background information on the monthly topics. You are invited to register and become a full participant in the process (see:www.biodiv.org/programmes/areas/forest/portal/home.shtml). On a monthly basis, an electronic discussion forum will be structured around each of the 27 objectives of the expanded work programme on forest biodiversity (available atwww.biodiv.org/decisions/default.aspx?dec=VI/22). Each month, the portal will contain the following sections relevant to each objective: (i) background on the topic; (ii) guidance on indicators of progress related to the implementation of the objective; (iii) any background information on relevant CBD principles and guidelines that apply to the objective; and (iv) supplementary information, including links to other websites and relevant publications. The monthly discussion topic corresponding will be moderated and archived for further analysis and synthesis. A database of best practices related to each topic is available on the site. Users are able to submit their case studies to the database for presentation on the portal. From: Taiga Rescue [email protected] We are collaborating with. John Kennedy (below) to develop a boreal forest exhibit at the 2005 Chelsea Flower show in London, England. A tentative design concept is ¿vanishing boreal medicine¿, with which we are hoping to establish an educational exhibit highlighting disappearing boreal forest flora that indigenous peoples make use of for food, medicine and tools. We need your help to compile a list of plants that are endemic to the boreal and that are significant to indigenous peoples. More particularly, we would like help on a "Preliminary Planting List." This is just a long list of plants with the following essential criteria that all of the plants on the list must meet: 1. They grow in the taiga 2. They are in leaf / flower, or simply look good in spring (when the show is on) 3. Are of some use or benefit to humans 4. Can survive the transportation to, and installation at Chelsea for about a month. 5. We can get as plants without taking from the wild, unless we are rescuing them from logging or construction sites. The following are the preferred criteria that a few special plants must meet. 1. They are endemic to (unique to) the taiga 2. They look spectacular in spring 3. They are very useful plants for indigenous people and have a tradition of use for numerous things, like medicine, tools, food etc. 4. Not commonly found in cultivation and horticulture (although we will be able to source the plants without taking them from the wild.) The plant list can include evergreen and deciduous forest trees, understorey shrubs, heathers and heaths, epiphytes, lichens, mosses, grasses, wild flowers, annuals, perennials, bulbs and corms, ferns, clubmosses, rushes: anything as long as it's a plant: it could also be dead: like drift wood, pine cones or unusual fruiting bodies, dieback from last years growth (like tall grasses), etc. And also mushrooms and fungi too. The plants don't have to be "pretty." People could maybe just tell me about their favourite Taiga plants and we'll make the list out of that. I need to send the application away on the 30 June 2004. Any suggestions, photo or descriptions about the plants (Latin names preferred) can be sent to me directly or to Mr. Kennedy ([email protected]) For more information, please contact: From: Manish [email protected] Please provide information on the success and failures of cultivation of medicinal plants. The information can be in the form of reports, papers, articles, review etc. This will be helpful to me in my project in the tropical forests of India. Hoping for a positive response from your side. If you can help, please contact: Faculty, Ecosystem Management and Technical Forestry Branch Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM) Nehru Nagar P.O Box 357 Bhopal (M P). Pin: 462003 India From: Fu Jinhe, INBAR [email protected] Below is the outline of "Bamboos of the world". I am looking for some possible sponsors to fund publishing this book. If are interested or know of possible sponsors, please contact me. Bamboos of the world This book will includes about 300 of the most important/common bamboo species in the world. We will invite famous bamboo experts from Asia, America, Europe and Africa to compile the loose-leaf compendium. Each species: 1-4 pages, total 400-600 pages, like a loose-leaf book 1. Latin name plus colour photos. It should include 1-5 color photos for individual culm, branching, shoot/flower/seed and grove/plantation etc. 3. Brief description (size, taxonomy). It should be helpful to identify the bamboo species with the assistance of above photos 4. Origin and distribution 5. Requirement on climate and soil. It will be helpful to bamboo growers. 6. Growth, cultivation, yield and stand management 7. Uses (landscape, plantation, timber, construction, pulp and paper, handicraft etc) 8. Main references This work will take about 2 years. Fu Jinhe, Ph. D. International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR) Mailing Address: Beijing 100102-86, Beijing 100102, P. R. China Tel: +86-10-6470 6161 ext.208 Fax: +86-10-6470 2166 EVENTS AND TRAINING COURSES From: FAO¿s NWFP Programme 7-9 July 2004 For more information, please contact: Gaye McKeogh, Conference Manager, Wessex Institute of Technology; 9 July 2004 Vientiane, Lao PDR NTFPs play an important role in poverty alleviation, sustainable management of natural resources and private sector development in Lao PDR. There are more than 50 organizations working in Lao PDR in the NTFP sector. FRC/NAFRI and SNV recently carried out a survey among these organizations, which identified a strong need for: ¿ development of entry-level tools for enterprise development and marketing; ¿ need for better coordination between field implementing organizations; and ¿ exchange of information and documentation of successful field experiences in the form of case studies. The objective of the workshop is to identify opportunities for information exchange and co-operation through networking among organisations working in the NTFP sub-sector in Lao PDR. The expected outcomes are: ¿ shared understanding on what each organisation wants to achieve and what it can offer in cooperation/exchange of information on NTFP development; ¿ a shared vision on what networking is and how it could be done in Lao PDR; and ¿ a ¿to-do¿ list of networking/exchange activities that could be followed up in informal meetings/partnerships between groups of organisations/individuals. Representatives from organisations working in the NTFP sector in Lao PDR will be invited to join the workshop. There will be an opportunity during the workshop to enhance sharing and information exchange. Participants are invited to prepare/bring any pictures, posters, reports and/or other materials illustrating their NTFP work. Participants will also be asked to prepare a summary of what they expect to gain from networking and what they expect to contribute, in advance of the workshop. The workshop will be hosted by the following organizations: ¿ Forest Research Centre, Dong Dok ¿ National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute, Dong Dok ¿ Regional Community Forestry Training Centre (RECOFTC), Thailand ¿ SNV, The Netherlands Development Organisation, Lao Country Office For more information, please contact: Mr. Kamphone Sengdala, tel. 021-770892 or 020-5526753,[email protected]; Mr. Joost Foppes, SNV-FRC NTFP adviser, tel.. [email protected] 20-23 September 2004 The objectives of the conference, which is being organized by the Slovak Forest Research Institute, are to bring together the latest international research throughout: ¿ forest ecosystems ¿ natural ecosystems ¿ landscape ecology ¿ soil protection ¿ sustainable forest and landscape management. For more information, please contact: Prof. Julius Novotny Forest Research Institute Telephone: +421-45-5314 171 Fax: +421-45-5321 883 22 September 2004 Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso FAO, in cooperation with the Secrétariat sous régional pour l'évaluation environnementale en Afrique centrale (SEEAC), and CIRAD-Foret, is supporting this one-day seminar on Environmental Assessment and sustainable forest management. Environmental impact assessment and strategic environmental assessments as tools for sustainable development are gaining importance all over the world, and also in the Central Africa region. The aim of the seminar will be to take stock of the practical experiences in applying environmental assessments in the forestry sector in Africa, and to better understand its potential and applicability vis-à vis other existing instruments of SFM.Papers and contributions are solicited before 16 July 2004 For more information, please contact Forestry Officer (Utilization and Environment) Forest Products Division, FAO Forestry Department viale delle Terme di Caracalla, Rome, Italy +39-06-57052044 (tel) +39-06-57055618 (fax) 33. Evaluating forestry incentive and assistance programmes in Europe ¿ challenges to improve policy effectiveness 10-12 October 2004 This conference is being organized by the Forest Research Institute in Warsaw (FRIW), European Forest Research Institute (EFI) with financial support from the Commission of the European Communities, DG - Research. For more information, please contact: Forest Research Institute Section of Planning and Foreign Relations Bitwy Warszawskiej 1920r. Street, No3 00-973 Warsaw, Poland Phone:+ 48 22 8234565 Mobile:+ 48 608846483 34. International symposium on the role of forests for coming generations: philosophy and technology for forest resource management (FORCOM2004) 17-22 October 2004 This symposium will seek to present and exchange state-of-the-art scientific as well as practical results and techniques relating to forest resource management among researchers, federal officials, practitioners and local stakeholders. For more information, please contact: Dr. Naoto Matsumura Forest Planning for the Environment Fac. of Bioresources, Mie University Tsu, 514-8507, Japan Phone: (+81) 59-231-9507 Fax: (+81) 59-231-9517 30 October ¿ 3 November 2004 IUCN-The World Conservation Union Office for Russia and CIS in collaboration with The Federal Agency on Forestry of Russia, NGO ¿Stayer¿ and the All-Russia Exhibition Center announce an international fair and forum on non-timber forest products:¿NTFPs ¿Culture of Use¿.The Fair is supported by the IUCN-CIDA project ¿Building Partnerships for Forest Conservation and Management in Russia¿. Forests are a rich treasury of goods and services created by Nature. Local communities have the potential to use forests in a sustainable way without the destruction of the forest environment. One of the most important resources of the forest are non-timber forest products (NTFPs) consisting of any plant or fungi resources of the forest other than timber, pulpwood, or firewood. Examples of NTFPs include berries, mushrooms, and herbal medicines. Although actual ¿products¿ vary from place to place, NTFPs are used around the World by all cultures. NTFPs include not only food products, such as herbal teas, preserved and fresh wild berries, mushrooms and fruits, but also a wide range of health products, natural cosmetics, medicine and crafts. The importance of NTFPs can not be overemphasized for Indigenous cultures, in which these products often are the focus of not only subsistence use, but also of high cultural and spiritual importance. The interest in using NTFPs as a tool in economic development has grown enormously in recent years. Many experts and community development projects view NTFPs as a key part of a local sustainable livelihood strategy (including tourism, cultural activities, hunting, herding). However, the NTFP sector still faces many challenges, including, on the local level, a lack of information on marketing opportunities, existing processing and packaging equipment and technologies, and sustainable harvesting practices. On the other hand, land and forest managers and decision makers often overlook the benefits, which could be provided by sustainable small business NTFP development to local communities, specifically in poor and distant areas, where economic development opportunities are severely limited. The Fair will bring together NTFP producers, producers of processing and packaging equipment, forest and protected areas managers, experts and NGOs from different regions of Russia and many countries of the world in a forum of knowledge exchange and networking to advance the NTFP sector. The major focus of the Fair is to showcase the sustainable harvesting practices and sustainable NTFP-based small businesses, to share the lessons learned in NTFP business development in Russia and elsewhere, and to demonstrate the potential of NTFP small business development to increase the incomes of forest communities. For NTFPs and equipment producers the Fair will be an excellent opportunity to present their products, find new buyers and explore new markets. It is also a good opportunity for business people involved in the sector to discuss and voice their concerns about challenges for NTFP development in Russia and elsewhere. We believe that the presence of the general public at the event will foster interest in the sustainable development of natural resources. The results of the planned round table discussions will be shared with the general public and decision-makers through a press conference; a bilingual catalogue of the Fair¿s participants and sponsors will also be published. Please apply for participation in Fair and\or forum before 1 August 2004 For more information please contact: 28 February-3 March 2005 HNB Garhwal University, Srinagar Garhwal India Call for Papers: Following the success of past conferences, the High Altitude Research Institute, HNB Garhwal University, Srinagar Garhwal, Uttaranchal, northern India, invites participants to submit abstracts for papers to be considered for inclusion in the 2004 conference. The theme of the conference is on ecotourism in protected areas and all subjects relevant to this topic are invited. Particular interest will be given to papers that examine Ecotourism in High Mountain areas but notwithstanding this the invitation is made for papers to be presented on any aspect of ecotourism research. Topics will include the planning, development, management and monitoring of ecotourism as well as issues of marketing, impacts and advancement. Contributions related to community ecotourism development will be ascribed a particularly high priority. Both Academic and Professional abstracts are invited but it is important that at least one author of each submitted paper must register and be present at the conference. Prospective contributors should email the organizing committee immediately with their abstracts to ensure inclusion in the final program. Academic papers should include an abstract of no more than 300 words, which should be emailed immediately to the conference organizing committee. Once accepted a full paper of no more than 3000 words (including the 300 word abstract) should be submitted to the conference organizing committee by 31 August 2004. Professional abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted by 31 October 2004. Send abstracts or inquiries to the Conference Paper Review Professor Ross K. Dowling, School of Marketing, Tourism and Leisure Edith Cowan University Joondalup WA 6027, Australia Tel: IDD+ (618) 6304 5891 Fax: IDD+ (618) 6304 5840 Prof. S.C. Bagri, Centre for Mountain Tourism and Hospitality Studies HNB Garhwal University Srinagar Garhwal - 246174, Tel: 01346 - 251051 (O) - 252650"¦ Fax: 01346- 252174 & 252424 28 February -5 March 2005 Colombo, Sri Lanka. Preparations for this conference, which will convene under the theme of 'Forestry's Contribution to Poverty Reduction,' are currently underway. For more information contact: Libby Jones, Secretary, Standing Committee on Commonwealth Forestry, Forestry Commission, UK 16-18 March 2005 Johannesburg, South Africa The main objective of this conference is to review current indigenous knowledge laws and to recommend changes and amendments wherever necessary. It will also give participants a chance to educate indigenous healers on how to develop and protect their medical products, process and procedures; and also to promote collaboration between indigenous healers, conventional medical practitioners and corporate institutions for joint development and sharing of intellectual property rights of medicinal products, processes and procedures. For more information, please contact: J. William Danquah, President & Chief Executive Officer, Africa First LLC, 517 Asbury Street, Suite 11, Saint Paul, MN 55104, USA, Telephone 651 646 4721, Telefax 651 644 3235, LITERATURE REVIEW AND WEB SITES From: Pankaj [email protected] Here is the list of twelve new fact sheets on medicinal herbs recently published and available on the Internet. 1.Chhui-Mui or Lajwanti (Mimosa pudica Linn.) 2.Sarphonk [Tephrosia purpurea (Linn.) Pers.] 3.Kaua-kaini (Commelina benghalensis Linn.) 4.Shivlingi (Bryonia laciniosa Linn.) 5.Dikamali (Gardenia resinifera Roth.) 6.Chirchita or Onga (Achyranthes aspera var. perphyristachya Hook. F.) 7.Mithi Patti (Scoparia dulcis Linn.) 8.Bramhi (Bacopa monnieri) 9.Kamala or kamopillaka (Mallotus philippinensis Muell.) 10.Akarkara (Spilanthes acmella Murr.) 11.Kans (Saccharum spontaneum L.) 12.Nirmali (Strychnos potatorum Linn.) For more information, please visit: From: FAO¿s NWFP Programme Beukering, P.J.H. van; Cesar, H.S.J.; &Janssen, M.A..2003. Economic valuation of the Leuser National Park on Sumatra, Indonesia.Ecological Economics. 44: 1, 43-62. de Merode, Emmanuel; Homewood, Katherine; & Cowlishaw, Guy. 2004. The value of bushmeat and other wild foods to rural households living in extreme poverty in Democratic Republic of Congo.Biological Conservation118¿5; 573 - 581 Ducousso M; Ba A.M.; Thoen, D.; Hall, I. (ed.); Yun Wang (ed.); Danell, E. (ed.); Zambonelli, A. 2002. Ectomycorrhizal fungi associated with native and planted tree species in West Africa: a potential source of edible mushrooms.Edible mycorrhizal mushrooms and their cultivation. Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Edible Mycorrhizal Mushrooms, Christchurch, New Zealand, 3-6 July, 2001. Fahrig, L.2003. Effects of habitat fragmentation on biodiversity.Annu. Rev. Ecol. Evol. S.34:487-515 Gordon, I.; Ayiemba, W.2003. Harnessing butterfly biodiversity for improving livelihoods and forest conservation: the Kipepeo Project.Journal of Environment and Development. 12: 1, 82-98; The Kipepeo Project is a community-based butterfly farming project on the margins of Arabuko-Sokoke Forest on the north coast of Kenya. This forest is a globally important forest for biodiversity conservation. In the early1990s, 54% to 59% of the local community wanted the entire forest cleared for settlement and the forest was invaded by farmers on several occasions. The Kipepeo Project was set up to change community attitudes to the forest by giving them a stake in its conservation. Kipepeo trained farmers living next to the forest to rear forest butterflies. Butterfly pupae were purchased from the farmers for export to the live butterfly exhibit industry in Europe and the United States. Cumulative community earnings from 1994 to 2001 exceeded US$130 000 with significant positive effects on both livelihoods and attitudes. The project has been financially self-sustaining since 1999. Butterfly monitoring indicates that there have been no adverse effects on wild butterfly populations. Honnay, O et al. eds.2004.Forest Biodiversity: Lessons from History for Conservation. CABI Publishing, ISBN 085199802X, Ladio, A.H., and Lozada, M.2004. Patterns of use and knowledge of wild edible plants in distinct ecological environments: a case study of a Mapuche community from northwestern Patagonia.Biodivers. Conserv.13(6):1153-1173. Lund, H. Gyde; Dallmeier, Francisco; Alonso, Alfonso. 2004. Biodiversity: Biodiversity in forests. MS 146. p.33-40. In:Encyclopedia of Forest Sciences. J. Burley, J. Evans and J. A. Youngquist (eds.). Elsevier/Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-145160-7. Manandhar NP; Singh VK (ed.); Govil JN (ed.); Singh G. 2002. Ethnomedicinal plants diversity and their conservation in Nepal.Recent progress in medicinal plants. Vol 1: Ethnomedicine and pharmacognosy. 41-46. Sci Tech Publishing LLC; Houston; USA Messerli, S.2002. Agroforestry ¿ a way forward to the sustainable management of the walnut fruit forests in Kyrgyzstan.Schweizerische Zeitschrift fur Forstwesen, 153: 10, 392-396 The unique walnut fruit forests in Kyrgyzstan are a good example of the multifunctional use of forests in temperate zones. Not only are non-timber forest products (NTFPs) collected but the land in and around the forests is used for grazing and haymaking, as well as arable cropping and the establishment of fruit orchards. Apart from sustaining the lives of the local mountain people, these forests are extremely rich in biodiversity and have an important function as a watershed for the Ferghana valley. The simultaneous dependence of the population on both agriculture and forest offers ideal conditions for the extension and improvement of existing agroforestry systems. However, solutions must be found concerning the practice of uncontrolled grazing, the insecure land and tree tenure situation, the low productivity of existing land use systems, the lack of agricultural advice and training, and the serious impact of firewood collection. Sawathvong, S.2003. Participatory land management planning in biodiversity conservation areas of Lao PDR. Acta Universitati Agriculturae Sueciae Silvestria. No.267, 44 pp. + Papers I-V. The importance of integrating forest conservation and rural development objectives is much better understood today than in the past. Despite an increased understanding, such integration in many countries remains poorly supported in terms of coordination between government agencies and stakeholders. Environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity conservation areas to competing alternative uses are widespread throughout the world and Lao PDR is no exception. The forest policy in Lao PDR has developed under the framework of international conventions. The protected area system has been established with the aim of conserving healthy and diverse forests. Rehabilitation and reforestation policies are important complements. The former rules by decree approach has been replaced by a set of laws and regulations. This thesis presents and discusses a management approach for biodiversity conservation areas in Lao PDR. As part of that, it highlights the significance of appropriate policies and legislation as a base for sustainable management, discusses various interdisciplinary and interactive planning methods tested in case studies, and analyses the utilization of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) as part of a strategy for sustainable management of biodiversity conservation areas. The integration of techniques from social sciences and natural sciences is emphasized to encourage local participation in managing the conservation areas. The recognition of NTFPs plays an important role in the conservation and development of protected area management. A literature review was made to gain insight into the research trend in Southeast Asia in terms of tenure rights of NTFPs and the way people utilize them. Quantitative resource assessment is an important part in sustainable management. In a case study, a participatory two-phase sampling approach for cardamom assessment was developed and tested with promising result. Stone, M., and Wall, G.2004. Ecotourism and community development: case studies from Hainan, China.Environ. Manage.33(1):12-24. From: FAO¿s NWFP Programme Biodiversity Information Sharing Service (BISS) The most comprehensive on-line database for species and protected areas in South East Asia. It provides descriptions, pictures, distributional data with maps, information on uses and conservation status of many thousands of flora and fauna species across the ASEAN region, including the protected areas and country profiles of the ten ASEAN countries. CBD forest web portal FAO Terminology Web Site The FAO Terminology Web Site has been updated and enhanced. Designed to provide a multilingual support to any user working on FAO communications, information and documentation, the major tools on the site are: *FAOTERM TERMINOLOGY DATABASE (further enhanced to help standardize and harmonize the vast quantity of titles and technical terms in FAO documents and publications) and *NAMES OF COUNTRIES DATABASE (to facilitate the consultation and harmonization of country names *The site also offers other language resources to users which include links to international terminology databases, references and language-specific sites. Goods from the woods Conservation International has launched a newsletter focused on the Earth's biodiversity hotspots. The newsletter aims to raise awareness about the importance of the hotspots and to expand the reach ofwww.biodiversityhotspots.org, the award-winning Web site with a comprehensive collection of information available about the hotspots. To subscribe to Hotspots E-News, visitwww.biodiversityhotspots.org/xp/Hotspots/home/enewsletter.xml. WWF- Perú lanzó renovada página web Conmemorando el Día Mundial del Medio Ambiente, el 5 de junio, WWF Perú lanzó su renovada página Web:www.wwfperu.org.pe, contribuyendo así con difundir información precisa sobre los esfuerzos y objetivos logrados en la conservación de la biodiversidad en el Perú, a través de los proyectos que implementamos en el campo. Source: H. Gyde [email protected], Forest Information Update, FIU 31 May 04 Coral Cay Conservation is currently recruiting for number of voluntary staff positions on our tropical forest conservation projects in Malaysia and the Philippines. See:www.coralcay.org Source: CFRC Weekly Summary 5/20/04 The Fulbright Scholar Program is offering 37 lecturing, research, and lecturing/research awards worldwide in environmental sciences for the 2005-2006 academic year. While many awards specify project and host institution, there are a number of open "All Disciplines" awards that allow candidates to propose their own project and determine their host institution affiliation. Application deadline 1 August 2004 Source:Sunday Times(Johannesburg), 20 June 2004 Microscopic worms are being used to invade the bodies and eggs of wasps in a war to save South Africa's pine plantations and 160 000 jobs. In KwaZulu-Natal the first 1 200 pine trees have been inoculated in a multimillion-rand programme to raise and spread nematode worms throughout the country's plantations. "If left unchecked, there will probably be no pine forestry left and it will spread further into Africa," said Mike Wingfield, Mondi Professor of Forest Protection at the University of Pretoria. The killer is a European insect called the sirex wood wasp that lays its eggs in pine trees, said Brett Hurley, an entomologist managing the programme. The female inserts a toxic mucous and fungus - on which her larvae feed - into the pine, which kills it. It is not possible to spray for the wood wasp as the damage is done inside the tree. The European worms get into the wasp larvae, Hurley said, and remain in their bodies until they mature. Then the worms move into the reproductive organs, sterilising the females, who end up laying eggs full of worms. "This pest is going to be with us forever. It's very unlikely that we will wipe it out," Wingfield said. "What we're trying to do instead is contain it." For full story, please see:http://allafrica.com/stories/200406210130.html From: FAO¿s NWFP Programme BEDIM (Bureau for Exchange and Distribution of Information on Mini-Livestock) has been active worldwide for many years in the controlled development of mini-livestock, i.e. African and South American grasscutters, guinea pigs, frogs, giant snails, termites, butterflies, capybaras and other rodents. BEDIM produces and publishes aSemestral Information Bulletin on Mini-Livestockwith the financial support of the FAO Animal Production and Health Division. The association wishes to enrol all those who are interested, either professionally or through scientific curiosity, in mini-livestock. A range of fee categories are envisaged and reductions may be accorded to members from developing countries. For more information, please contact: Unité de zoologie fondamentale et appliquée Faculté universitaire des sciences agronomiques Passage des déportés 2 B-5030 Gembloux, Belgique Fax: +32 81 622312 This list is for information related to any aspect of non-wood forest products. Cross-postings related to non-wood forest products are welcome. Information on this mailing list can be reproduced and distributed freely as long as they are cited. Contributions are edited primarily for formatting purposes. Diverse views and materials relevant to NWFPs are encouraged. Submissions usually appear in the next issue. Issues are bi-monthly on average. To join the list, please send an e-mail to: [email protected] with the message: To make a contribution once on the list, please send an e-mail to the following address:[email protected] To unsubscribe, please send an e-mail to:[email protected] with the message: For technical help or questions [email protected] Your information is secure--We will never sell, give or distribute your address or subscription information to any third party. The designations employed and the presentation of materials in the NWFP-Digest-L do not necessarily imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Non-Wood Forest Products Programme Viale delle Terme di Caracalla 00100 Rome, Italy Web site NWFP programme:www.fao.org/forestry/foris/webview/fop/index.jsp?siteId=2301&langId=1

One of my favorite books, since I started having favorite books, is The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. She did something fantastic, something that all of my favorite authors seem to do: she taught me something I didn’t know. In Secret Life, I learned about the fragile coexistence bees must maintain in order to make honey, and how it’s very similar to how a writer must be in a certain broody mood, a composer must have the most perfectly vivid dream, a sculptor must see exactly the right flash of inspiration in nature, in order to be able to create. A bee’s mood requires the same kind of dynamic. Be they hot/cold/agitiated/afraid or whatever, their mental health will determine how much honey they ultimately produce and how good it will be. I was also shocked to learn during my many passes through Secret Life that the kind of flower the bees drink from can determine the color and flavor of the honey they will later produce, and honey can actually come in a vibrant purple color if the bees eat from (and beekeepers debate this all the time) elderberry plants, blueberry plants, or possibly even the flowers of the kudzu plant. There is speculation that purple honey is purple because drought might cause the honeybee to eat from those plants even though it doesn’t really like them, which would explain why there isn’t more of it. I don’t know what causes it for certain, nobody does really, but I would fall over dead of happiness if I ever saw purple honey, especially since word on the street is that it tastes like grape soda. It’s on my Bucket List. Read more about it here: Purple Honey I didn’t really like honey when I was growing up. It wasn’t sweet enough for me, having been raised on coca colas and sugar-coated Frosted Flakes with pure white sugar sprinkled not top. When I hit my thirties though, I started heeding the wake-up call about processed sugar. My expanding global perspectives started to match the expanding size of my…everything. At first, I began to think maybe I could tolerate honey in my coffee, then soon I was spreading it on my toast. Conveniently, my in-laws were from a tiny little town called Port St. Joe, Florida, which was a short driving distance from an assortment of tiny roadside stores that sold raw honey for practically nothing. A honey run made for a perfect Sunday afternoon drive. Soon, in addition to having my coffee and toast slathered in it, I started making honey butter biscuits at home for my family, way before Whataburger made this its Number One breakfast item. Now, I find myself replenishing my honey stock pretty regularly because I use it for practically everything. Beekeeping’s in my blood. I think I might be one of the lucky few still around who have an endearing history with real raw honey. In turn, it makes me sad to realize that future generations may not be able to get their hands on the kinds of honey I have grown up on, the honey that’s been made by real live honeybees for literally thousands of years. My grandmother on my father’s side was a beekeeper and my in-laws (the ones from Port St. Joe) were also beekeepers. I guess maybe that’s where part of my uncanny and peculiar appreciation for honey comes from. It’s an intriguing part of my family history. Another favorite book of mine that comes to mind regarding bees is Fried Green Tomatoes by Fannie Flagg. In that story, there was a central figure she called the Beekeeper, and she could approach a bee hive the size of a pillow without a screened hood or gloves on. She had the touch. She was a Bee Whisperer. She went out into enormous open fields, flower meadows perhaps, and looked for the giant hives hanging in the places where they’re supposed to be found: between the branches of mammoth live oak trees or fallen tree stumps, perhaps inside barns and up top in the barn lofts, or underneath tractors. Sometimes, they’re even found inside of the walls of a house, a house like the one I lived in a few years back. A few years ago, my son’s bedroom room in our old Prohibition-era home buzzed and hummed strangely one day, but I didn’t pay it much attention. Then, that hum picked up and rattled our walls constantly for the rest of that summer. We started noticing bees swarming outside his bedroom window and then grew somewhat alarmed when they started coming inside through the pipes underneath the bathroom sink. Once inside, they couldn’t seem to find their way back out, or maybe (as I suspected) they couldn’t find water, so they committed mass suicide in the thousands all over his bedroom. They even pooped yellow pollen in drips all over his walls before they cashed it in, sprinkling the icky goo all across the tops of all the furniture and on the floor. This was a little unnerving for me to experience, so in a panic I tried to seal the pipe hole underneath the sink, spraying sealant and doing all the things one does to keep invaders out. Psh! More and more mass bee suicides came every single day. Once a hive has taken root, the only way to get the bees to go away is to have them humanely relocated. God Save the Queen! We left town for a few days on a family vacation before I’d quite figured out how to fix my bee dilemma. When we returned, the scene awaiting us in the bedroom was something out of a horror movie. The floor, the bed, and all the furniture and window sills were absolutely carpeted in dead bees. I didn’t freak out…all the way at least…but I did contact my landlord. Thankfully for us all, she was somewhat of an environmentalist and went right to work to save their lives before I Raid-bombed the place. The sheetrock in the bathroom wall had to be ripped out before we could have a beekeeper come to remove the hives, hives that had been built inside the framing of both the first and second floors of our place. My landlord, being the humane bee-lover that she was, made sure that not only the queen lived, she had her sent off to a resort for bugs of sorts, to a forest down by the river, to be one with nature. The hives we found inside the walls were over five feet tall and were extracted with the delicate precision of a professional, as if we were removing bombs we didn’t want to detonate. We were able to keep jars and jars and jars of delicious honeycombs, and every day in one way or another, I could pull one of those combs out in all of its messy gloriousness and drizzle it over the tops of freshly cooked biscuits or on top of my Cheerios, and it also made the perfect dipping sauce for my bacon. We had honey coming out of our ears. Sadly, honeybees are in grave danger of extinction and we are seeing less and less of them not just in America, but all over the world. Albert Einstein believed that if the honeybee ever goes extinct, man is doomed as well because there’s no more pollination. If there’s no pollination, nothing else will grow. Raw natural honey can also be replicated by chemical adulteration now, too, which is never good for us. Food manufacturers and Agro-corporations are ruining the flowering meadows where bees feed and toxic pesticides are killing off whatever doesn’t starve to death. What is being sold in its place is nothing more than flavored corn syrup, reproduced and sold cheaply in any grocery store but trust me, it aint the good stuff! My face wrinkles up just thinking about it. As far back as I can remember, when we wanted honey we got in the car (in college, it was alongside my future husbands’ ornery grandmother) and we drove to some random house situated off a dusty dirt road in a town like Wewahitchka, Florida. We walked up to the back porch and deposited a few dollars in a shoes box to buy a jar or two of tupelo honey, using the honor system. Tupelo honey gets its name from the tupelo tree. Tupelo honey doesn’t crystallize, which is unique, and it’s highly valued for its extraordinary deliciousness. Where I come from, if someone is particularly adorable, one might say she’s as sweet as tupelo honey. Anyway, back to the honey run. No one was ever home at these places, there was no one to actually sell it to us. There didn’t need to be. It was a mom-and-pop side job for folks, people like L.L. Lanier and Sons, people in tiny little towns all around where I grew up, something that came off to me as more of a hobby than a vocation. The epicenter of tupelo honey production in the United States is Apalachicola Florida, about twenty miles from Port St. Joe, which is just a short drive from Wewa. Locally-grown honey is always found mostly in ultra-rural, time-warpy parts of the country, so commonplace that even regular people are sometimes tempted to try their hand at it. I recall a conversation with my mother-in-law about this when I was nursing my son through a nasty bug one time. She admitted to keeping bees in her younger days so she and I laughed as we compared the toughest days of a mother’s existence being a toss up between the long strain of the stomach flu we were fighting (my offering) and having four children processing honeycombs in her kitchen all at the same time (hers). Nowadays, it’s harder to get your hands on honey like that, from people like the old man in Wewa, from those quaint, invisible places lost in time. Now, when I open my cupboards I see just one kind of honey, and it’s not the good kind. It’s that sad plastic bear with the yellow cap on top. An imposter. I used to see an enormous jar of Wewa honey, or four or five of them…jars with no labels, bought right off that man’s back porch. I haven’t forgotten the difference, I know what’s real. If you want to treat yourself to something magical, take a long drive and go find some for yourself. I bet it’s right under your nose, somewhere close by. Just look for the wildflowers.

Fighting for the last Eden: saving Madagascar’s unique species Life hangs in the balance in Tsitongambarika, Madagascar’s anti-extinction frontline It’s nearing midnight, when our guide, Andry, darts into the undergrowth. In the velvet dark of the forest, lit only by the sharp stabs of our torches and the gentle glow of the waning moon filtering through the canopy, it’s hard to see what the excitement is all about until he crouches down, pointing. “Chameleon,” he says, barely louder than a whisper. Only four centimetres long, and the mottled light brown of a fallen leaf, it’s only the deep green of a seedling pushing through the leaf litter beside it that lets us see it—tiny and immobile except for a single eye swivelling back to observe us. She might not be much to look at compared to her brightly coloured cousins, but this tiny female has a surprise for us. She’s a new species, as yet undescribed and only the fourth member of her kind ever sighted. A potent reminder of the mystery and the richness of Madagascar’s landscape. Eden under pressure The 41,000 ha Tsitongambarika forest is one of Madagascar’s few remaining stands of humid lowland forest, a globally unique ecosystem with 80 – 90 per cent of its life made up of endemic species. But it’s also an ecosystem under threat, ringed by villages comprising over 60,000 people and under pressure from illegal timber exploitation and encroachment by slash-and-burn agriculture and other forms of shifting cultivation. Tsitongambarika’s unique flora and fauna has led to the forest being named an Alliance for Zero Extinction site, a classification only granted to irreplaceable habitats that are the sole home of one or more endangered or critically endangered species.These key sites are amongst the top priorities if global biodiversity loss is to be halted and reversed. While four species, the Anosy Mouse Lemur (Microcebus tanosi), the Red-legged Fire-Millipede (Aphistogoniulus corallipes) land snail Boucardicus simplex, and flowering plant Foetidia delphinensis were responsible for triggering Tsitongambarika’s identification as an Alliance for Zero Extinction site, the true importance of the forest goes far beyond this, and is only now coming to light. “Literally every time a survey is undertaken, we find a new species,” Andry Ravoahangy, project partner Asity Madagascar’s Forest Programme Coordinator says. Since the Global Environment Facility and UN Environment-supported Alliance for Zero Extinction project started its work in Tsitongambaraika in 2016, 10 endemic plant species have been discovered by the project team and partners, alongside amphibians, chameleons, snakes and lemurs—all new to science. Andry estimates that the forest is home to well over 60 endemic and endangered species in total, in addition to a wealth of biodiversity yet to be uncovered. The thin green line Preserving Tsitongambarika has been a race against time for Andry and his team, with Asity Madagascar working for over 10 years to have the forest granted permanent conservation status by the Government of Madagascar—a milestone now realized under the Alliance for Zero Extinction project. But much has been lost along the way. As we trek into Tsitongambarika, forest ranger and local villager Monja stops us at a lone tree standing amongst otherwise denuded hills. “This is where the forest reached 50 years ago,” he tells us, as he points out the green line on the horizon that is our target, beyond another three kilometres of scrubby grassland and scorched earth. “When I was a boy, the forest was dense,” Monja says, “but by the time I reached my twenties, a lot of areas had been ravaged by deforestation. The most shocking thing was the transformation of our village. When whole forests disappear, even firewood for domestic use is hard to find.” “The worst thing was the difficulty of accessing safe drinking water. Springs dried up, even the water needed to irrigate our rice fields disappeared.” Today, Monja is one of 263 rangers supported by Asity Madagascar and the Alliance for Zero Extinction project to help manage the forest, guarding against illegal timber exploitation and shifting agriculture. “Being conscious of the intense destruction of the forests here is one of the reasons that pushed me to take this job,” Monja says. “I’m proud of being a ranger. I was appointed by the community and not only is it a prestigious job, it brings me closer to nature.” The road to recovery Conservation is a complex game in a country like Madagascar, where a fragile political climate, widespread poverty and an ongoing race for natural resources all make community backing essential to successfully protecting the island’s remaining biodiversity. Alongside working with community rangers and associations to manage the forest, the project team have given local people a stake in managing their natural resources and introduced sustainable livelihood activities like vegetable farming and beekeeping that help communities thrive without threatening Tsitongambarika’s flora and fauna—and the ecosystem services they provide. Florent, Monja’s neighbour from Enato village on the fringe of the forest, describes himself as a former “champion of slash-and-burn”. Now though, with support from the project, Florent has turned to beekeeping to supplement the rice farming that supports his family of nine. “When I planted cassava [in the forest], I could only make 100,000 to 300,000 Ariary a year [US$29 – 85],” Florent says. “With beekeeping I can make 400,000 to 500,000 Ariary [US$113 – 141]. It’s a big difference.” “My wife is happy. Thanks to the income from beekeeping, she can buy rice and other crops, and the extra income can be saved for the future. I can expand the livelihood of my family without destroying the forest.” Florent is one of 1,640 people who have taken up new livelihood activities since the project began, reducing pressure on the forest and opening the way to a sustainable future for both Tsitongambarika and the region’s residents. Keeping up the fight Just two years into its three-year lifespan, the Alliance for Zero Extinction project has had a transformative effect on local villagers’ relationship with the forest, rebuilding a sense of ownership and a respect for the balance between people and nature. But, despite this progress, Tsitongambarika’s future is far from secure. With rich bauxite and mica deposits in the region, pressure remains to explore potential new mining sites surrounding the forest, while political instability poses a continuing threat to maintaining the progress that has been made so far. “If we walked away now, the forest could be lost. It could be gone in ten years,” Andry says, citing the extraordinary toll taken on the nation’s protected areas when enforcement broke down following the political crisis of 2009. “Conservation depends on local people, but they need to be supported for change to be sustainable.” For now though, in Enato and villages around Tsitongambarika, the benefits are clear, and the will is strong. “My greatest dream is to reach old age in order to be able to contribute to the protection of the forest as long as I have strength and health,” Monja says, nodding towards the trees. “The future of the next generations is at stake.” This story originally appeared on the UN Environment website. It is reprinted here with permission. The Alliance for Zero Extinction (AZE) comprises 100 non-governmental biodiversity conservation organizations working to prevent extinctions by identifying and safeguarding sites that are the sole remaining habitats of species identified as Endangered or Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. The Alliance for Zero Extinction: Conserving Earth’s Most Irreplaceable Sites for Endangered Biodiversity project is a US$6.7 million Global Environment Facility-backed partnership between UN Environment, BirdLife International, American Bird Conservancy, IUCN, and the Governments of Brazil, Chile and Madagascar, to halt global extinctions and safeguard the habitats in which endangered species live. The project is currently providing technical assistance to improve the management of five demonstration sites in Brazil, Chile, and Madagascar and has so far improved the conservation status of 17 endangered or critically endangered species.

Issue 1, July 2013 Weed & Pest Management We are the lead CRI for New Zealand’s research into terrestrial biodiversity, and a major player in post-border biosecurity research – research that aims to reduce or eliminate key threats to our native biota, such as predation by introduced mammals. Landcare Research is working with a wide range of groups undertaking pest and biodiversity research, all aimed at underpinning PFNZ. The vision requires a very broad research front, including large-scale aerial control of pests, quantification of biodiversity condition, social science, and real-time information on predator abundance. However, it’s more complex than you think! Predator-free NZ is not as simple as just ‘killing predators’. Predators such as feral cats and ferrets are mobile, and can (and do) move large distances across the landscape. Smaller predators such as stoats, rats and mice (sometimes termed ‘mesopredators’) can breed rapidly. Large movements and fast breeding both contribute to the problem of reinvasion, and that’s before we begin to consider other factors such as how different habitats might influence predator biology and our ability to target them over very large scales. Indeed landscape-scale habitat complexity will very likely pose unforeseen challenges for PFNZ. To investigate this problem, Grant Norbury and colleagues recently completed a study of ecological interactions among a suite of invasive mammal species – rabbits, ferrets, stoats, feral cats, hedgehogs, and house mice – and their combined impacts on native lizards and invertebrates. The team conducted their experiments in a mosaic of unmodified shrubland–grassland with few rabbits, as well as in highly modified pasture supporting plenty of rabbits. In their 4-year experiment, top predators (ferrets, stoats and cats) were suppressed to low abundance at several replicate sites, and the responses of vegetation, ‘mesopredators’ (mice), and the remaining invasive mammals were measured. The team expected that native fauna would benefit from the removal of top predators, but removal of stoats, ferrets and cats resulted in unforeseen outcomes. First, ‘mesopredator release’ of mice was evident at some sites, which had a flow-on effect to lizard populations because more mice were present to eat lizards. Also, when fewer rabbits were present, the increased flush of vegetation – particularly seed from introduced pasture grasses – also boosted the mouse population, again resulting in negative impacts on native fauna. The situation was further exacerbated by the ability of cats, ferrets and stoats to move easily between areas of high rabbit abundance (modified pasture) and low rabbit abundance (natural grassland–shrubland), compounding predation impacts on native fauna in those areas. This ‘landscape supplementation’ effect on predators is a key process to consider when managing invaded communities in complex landscapes: a lesson for managing invasive mammals at the scale of PFNZ. Achieving a predator-free New Zealand is a long-term aspirational goal. The journey has just begun and will require the cooperation of numerous agencies, corporates, community groups and the general public – over decades. It will also require robust, evidence-based decision-making, underpinned by good scientific principles, at every step along the journey. The Predator Free New Zealand Trust has recently been established to promote this vision. Landcare Research Chief Executive Dr Richard Gordon has been invited to be a founding Trustee. Contact: Andrea Byrom Website: Predator-free New Zealand (PFNZ) Norbury GL, Byrom AE, Pech RP, Smith J, Clarke D, Anderson D, Forrester G. In press. Invasive predators and habitat modification interact to generate unforeseen outcomes for indigenous fauna. Ecological Applications. Presentation on PFNZ by Andrea Byrom and Susan Timmins (DOC). Landcare Research has devoted two special issues of Kararehe Kino, our vertebrate pest research newsletter, to Predator-Free New Zealand: Penny and John made a significant contribution to an international project endeavouring to eradicate invasive rodents from the island of Pinzón, in the Galápagos Archipelago. In 2011, Penny conducted feeding trials at the Charles Darwin Research Station, on Santa Cruz Island, to assess the toxicity of brodifacoum rat poison to the Galápagos’ world-famous tortoises and other reptiles. She also conducted a risk assessment of rodenticide application for all of the native reptiles, mammals and birds that inhabit Pinzón and the neighbouring Plaza Sur Island. Five years ago, most of the major islands and smaller rocky outcrops in the Galápagos experienced a plague of invasive mice and rats. The rodents feed on the eggs and young of seabirds, land birds and reptiles, and have brought several species – including the rare Pinzón giant tortoise (Chelonoidis duncanensis) – to the brink of extinction. In 2007, the Galápagos National Park Service and the Charles Darwin Foundation developed an initiative code-named Project Pinzón, a military-style plan-of-action to kill invasive rodents on three islands, – starting with North Seymour (1.8 square kilometres), then moving on to Rábida (5 square kilometres) and, finally, Pinzón (18 square kilometres) – plus about a dozen smaller outcrops and islets. This US$3 million project was one of the most high-profile and challenging rat eradications ever attempted. One of the biggest uncertainties was what impact would brodifacoum have on non-target species. The results showed that although the tortoises and reptiles were not at serious risk from poisoning, as a precaution a small population of tortoises would be held in captivity; also risk mitigation plans for lava gulls, hawks and iguanas needed to be implemented. Insufficient data on land snails, snakes and geckos meant that risk could not be estimated for these species. The results were used in the bait project to limit the risk to non-target species. The poisoning took place on Pinzón in November–December 2012 and appears to have been successful. The full story was reported as a News Feature in the May edition of Nature 497 (7449), 306–308 Contact: Penny Fisher German wasps (Vespula germanica) and common wasps (Vespula vulgaris) are now widespread throughout New Zealand and in some habitats they are among the most common insects encountered. As a result, wasps have detrimental impacts on native ecosystems, economic impacts on beekeeping, give rise to human health issues, and cause disruption to recreational activities. But Landcare Research and Plant & Food Research scientists are advocating research into “RNA interference” (or RNAi), which is a fundamentally different approach to wasp control that offers consistent and long-term benefits. Researcher Darren Ward says RNAi is a natural biological process that prevents gene expression, and causes the destruction of specific molecules. By the exact targeting of specific genes, RNAi can be used to “turn off” genes involved with wasp biology. RNAi has a number of benefits because: - it does not involve the use of pesticides; - is extremely species-specific, thus avoiding non-target effects; and - many pests are evolving resistance to chemicals, and new control approaches are needed. Such technology could be applied to German and common wasps but the concept needs to be proved. Key research steps are needed that involve sequencing the wasp genome, finding specific genes to target wasps, undertaking trials to prove RNAi can affect wasp growth and/or survival, and also trials to show such technology does not affect other species. Darren suggests the technology could be applied to wasps at liquid bait stations, and easily carried out by members of the public, beekeepers, in public recreation areas, orchards etc. This is a fundamental paradigm shift in wasp control because it does not involve the use of pesticides and avoids non-target effects (including on honey bees). A proposal to develop RNAi technology for the control of German and common wasps has been submitted to the 2013 Biological Industries Round (Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment Science Investment Round). The proposal is a collaborative effort between Landcare Research and Plant & Food Research, and aims to have the key research steps completed in two years. The investigation of RNAi as a control tool for managing German wasps and common wasps was also included in a report by Landcare Research for an Envirolink project initiated by Tasman District Council and supported by the Regional Council Biosecurity Working Group. The report’s objectives were to summarise wasp impacts, review current control methods, and recommend and prioritise the most promising options for control. Several recommendations were made regarding the control of wasps, and the top five are listed below. The recommendations cover a range of control methods, as the control of wasps may require multiple methods. - Support research into “RNA interference” technology. It is a fundamentally different approach to wasp control and offers several advantages including non-toxicity and extremely high specificity (and thus has no non-target effects). - Undertake a feasibility study for the biological control of wasps to determine the range of possible agents, their likely effects on wasps, and the best origins from which these agents should be sought. - Conduct experiments and/or modelling to determine whether trapping effectively reduces wasp numbers. - Conduct further field trials with pathogenic fungi to determine their effectiveness as a non-toxic alternative to the baiting method using insecticides. - Identify those pheromones that are fundamental to disrupting nest activities. This should include the mechanisms for delivery of pheromones to wasp nests. Contact: Darren Ward Website: Ants, wasps and bees (Hymenoptera) Meanwhile, a wasp biocontrol action group has now been formed in the Nelson region as a result of our researchers seeking public involvement as they investigate the feasibility of undertaking a new biocontrol programme aimed at attacking European wasps. We intend to apply for a Sustainable Farming Fund grant to study the safety and biocontrol potential of promising-looking mites that were recently discovered and that appear to attack wasps. During a recent study on the chemical ecology of European wasps a researcher serendipitously discovered mites on the wasps. The mites appeared to attach to wasps with their mouthparts and were located in areas difficult for the wasps to groom. In addition, wing deformation was apparent in infected wasps, and heavily infected wasp colonies collapsed. “These finding encouraged us to reinvestigate a biocontrol programme for wasps in New Zealand, and pursue this potentially promising mite-agent,” says Landcare Research scientist Ronny Groenteman. “But, projects like this require public involvement and therefore we’re inviting members of the public, industry groups and other stakeholders to listen to our presentation and to be a part of our application.” Ronny says researchers have several key questions they want to investigate: - What are these mites? We know they are not Varroa but are they native or introduced? - Do they actually feed on the wasps (or do they just hitch a ride)? - How prevalent are they (have they simply been overlooked until now)? - Are they the cause of wasp wing deformation? - Could they jump onto honey bees, bumble bees, native ants or native solitary bees? - Can they build up to densities that could lead to colony collapse in feral nests? “Biocontrol agents aren’t a ‘quick fix’ but instead work quietly over a number of years in conjunction with other existing control methods. While wasp biocontrol agents introduced to New Zealand 30 years ago failed to establish, this mite could be playing a different game, and it is already here and established. We are convinced that investigating its potential is the prudent thing to do,” Ronny says. Presentations will be held in several parts of the country over the following months. “Possum Stomp” is a fun game where a kiwi tries to protect its nest from zombie possums, and is a teaser for a wider educational online game called “Ora” that will be introduced in 2014. This game will allow players to undertake pest control operations by selecting and utilising a range of different methods and to measure the outcomes of their choices. However, for every decision taken by the player there will consequences, says researcher Bruce Warburton. “One of the main aims is to teach people about the complexities of managing pests in New Zealand. If people don’t want to use a particular tool, say 1080, they don’t have to but there may well be consequences related to budget, biological, or regulatory constraints.” Landcare Research models developed by researcher Pen Holland run beneath the game and show participants what would happen to the forest canopy as a result of the pest strategies they choose. “Some people may choose to kill nothing and Pen’s model will show how the forest canopy will decline from possums eating it,” says Bruce. “Therefore, that will be the consequence of that player’s decision.” In comparison, Possum Stomp will be a fun game to get people interested in Ora. “The player acts as the kiwi that has to run around and stomp on the zombie possums before they steal the eggs. The zombie possums are effectively representing all invasive pests and the kiwi represents New Zealand’s indigenous biodiversity,” Pen says. The gaming environment marks a significant change in how science can be translated from research to the public and both researchers are hoping the gaming medium proves to be effective. “It’s educational but we’re also going to observe peoples’ strategies for pest management and use that to crowd-source some solutions,” Pen says. Development of the Ora and Possum Stomp games are also an element of a wider research programme led by Bruce aimed at developing new technologies for pest control. “We need to ask ourselves why do all this research on new technologies if the public don’t know about them or more importantly don’t accept them? So, it’s about engaging communities in discussions and decisions about different pest control options, but we want people involved in discussions to be informed and one way of informing them is by playing games. “Currently we present our science in boring scientific papers and contract reports which few people know about or read, and the challenge is how we can better transfer that knowledge. The gaming method is one option that can reach a lot of people and make it personal.” The game has been developed in collaboration with Hazel Bradshaw, a PhD student at the Human Interface Technology Lab (University of Canterbury), who is studying how the gaming environment can be used for knowledge transfer. |Stompy the kiwi Contact: Bruce Warburton Landcare Research in partnership with Forest & Bird and the Ornithological Society continue to take a lead role in the nationwide annual Garden Bird Survey, which for seven years has provided a snapshot of the birdlife living in New Zealand gardens. Organiser Eric Spurr says the survey continues to grow each year and has several aims. “Obviously, we want to encourage people to become interested in birds and the environment but we also want to look at trends in bird numbers over time which will assist in long term management of certain species. We need to know if native birds such as kereru, tui, bellbirds, fantails, and grey warblers are increasing or declining over the years in our gardens and in our towns.” Progress results from the 2013 survey show house sparrow is by far the most common species this year, with 44,969 counted so far (average 13.4 per garden). This compares with 12.3 per garden at the same stage last year. Silvereye is second (29,184 or 8.7 per garden), down slightly on the 9.6 per garden last year. Eric is unsure yet why silvereye numbers are down. “Autumn and early winter temperatures were above average over most of the country, despite the snowfalls in late June, and so perhaps there was still plenty of natural food around.” There have been 3368 survey returns entered online so far, but Eric expects this to rise to over 4000. The survey took place between 29 June and 7 July and volunteers were asked to look for birds in their gardens for one hour, and for each species they detected record the maximum number seen or heard at any one time over that hour. Eric said results are much the same as in previous years, with similar species occurring in the top 10 every year. “House sparrow has been the most common species every year. The most common native species have been silvereye (2nd), tui (5th), and fantail (8th).” The survey provides valuable information about trends in garden bird populations, potentially helping guide conservation efforts, such as the Greater Wellington Regional Council and Department of Conservation’s possum, rat, and stoat control programmes. These pest control operations have resulted in increased numbers of native birds in city bush reserves, but Eric says it is too soon yet to tell whether there has been an increase in the numbers of native birds in domestic gardens. The garden bird survey website has a graph of results that is updated as new results come in. There is also a map showing where different species have been reported from. The map and graph were developed by Andy Ball from Fairfax Media, and Eric encourages people to look at them on the Garden Bird Survey website. Website: Garden bird survey The detection of bacterial disease on kiwifruit vines in the Bay of Plenty in November 2010 prompted a large-scale biosecurity response, but little is known about the role of Landcare Research in the initial disease identification using our International Collection of Micro-organisms from Plants (ICMP) collection. Use of this resource to identify the disease has allowed authorities and growers to act, manage and plan for the future. The early symptoms of the disease are leaf spotting; this can progress to cane and leader dieback and, in extreme cases, vine death accompanied by the production of bleeding exudates. Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae (Psa) was subsequently identified as a bacterium that can result in the death of kiwifruit vines. ICMP is one of our five internationally renowned collections and a major international collection of plant bacteria, as well as a repository for microorganisms of plant and environmental origin. Individually and collectively, these collections are a formidable piece of armour in New Zealand’s ongoing battle to protect biosecurity and conservation. The first question that investigators faced with the discovery of Psa was to understand if it was a new incursion to New Zealand, or if the bacterium had been here for some time but only recently had become a problem due to a change in environmental conditions. Many plant pathogenic bacteria are able to live happily in the environment, such as in soils and on leaf surfaces, without causing disease. A change in conditions such as wounding or extreme weather events can make the plants weaker and more susceptible to disease. Researcher Bevan Weir says the ICMP stores over 9000 bacterial strains, many from important New Zealand plants. “The very first sample from kiwifruit, from 1972, was isolated by a young technician, Paula Wilkie, and she’s still with us today and it was fantastic having that experience during the Psa incursion.” These many strains meant Landcare Research could respond quickly by looking for all records of similar kiwifruit bacteria that had been deposited in the collection. “Of course, the hope was that the bacterium has been here for a while and it’s just some environmental conditions that gave rise to the pathogen and that it would disappear again,” says Bevan. “However, screening found nothing that matched Psa, which suggested it was a new incursion.” The ICMP also allowed researchers to help develop an improved diagnostic test for the disease. ICMP cultures were used as both positive and negative controls to ensure that the test only picked up Psa bacteria and not any of the other very similar plant pathogenic bacteria present in New Zealand. Bevan says that without the ICMP, diagnosis would have been significantly slower and this would have, in turn, slowed the response. “We would not have had anything from kiwifruit to compare with and if MAF (now MPI) had to go overseas for samples it could’ve taken weeks.” The ICMP contains over 18 000 strains of fungi and bacteria. Most strains are stored using liquid nitrogen or in vacuum-dried ampoules. The ICMP laboratory is a MAF (MPI) approved PC2 Containment Facility and a Transitional Facility for Microorganisms. “You just never know what, among those thousands of cultures, could be useful in the future,” Bevan says. Contact: Bevan Weir Botanists, conservation staff, biosecurity managers and the general public have a new diagnostic tool to assist them in the identification of New Zealand plant families and genera thanks to an online key developed by scientists at Landcare Research. In fact, the key is the first of its type in the world that goes beyond family level for a whole country’s flowering plant flora. Until now a major obstacle to experienced and inexperienced botanists alike was how to identify a family or genus for a flowering plant they didn’t recognise. Traditionally, two methods were used but neither was particularly easy, says researcher David Glenny. “The first was to use a key to families in a volume of the New Zealand Flora series. This required very complete plant material, with flowers or fruit or both. “The second method of identification was to become familiar with the families and genera of flowering plants. This method works well for the native flora where we only have 200 genera, but is significantly more difficult with the 800 non-native genera. “However, the new online interactive key shortcuts this process and allows users to go directly to a genus for the 1085 flowering genera that are wild or casual in New Zealand,” Dr Glenny says. “The key does not require users to identify the family first, but the genera are organised in the key into families, so using the key will remind users of the families. “The key largely runs on simple characters like division of leaves, whether leaves are opposite or alternate, leaf length and width, flower and fruit colour. Having flowers or fruit will certainly help with identification but the key can be used without these. Using leaves alone may take users to a number of genera at which point flicking through the images of the key is likely to result in them deciding on a genus. The key has nearly 9000 images.” This key has been funded by TFBIS (Terrestrial & Freshwater Biodiversity Information System), a fund administered by the Department of Conservation. Illustrated interactive keys are seen as a powerful new tool in high demand by users in the biodiversity and biosecurity sectors. The key can be found at Key to flowering plant genera of New Zealand, or easier, Google “flowering genus key”. Contact: David Glenny Land & Water S-Map, New Zealand’s digital mapping service, has undergone a major overhaul, with changes that improve its accuracy and make it easier for land managers to use, whether at farm, local, regional or national scale. Researcher Linda Lilburne says coverage has been extended to include new areas in the Gisborne, Waikato, Canterbury, Auckland and West Coast regions while some of the Bay of Plenty (Mamaku Plateau) has been updated. “Various minor corrections have been made, along with a major update to the way that PAW (Profile Available Water) is calculated. This has resulted in significant changes, particularly increases in PAW estimates for soils formed from pumice and volcanic ash. The most significant changes occur in North Island soils around Waikato, the Bay of Plenty and parts of upper Manawatu-Wanganui. “Furthermore, all the factsheets have been modified and now include hyperlinks to the extended glossary.” Linda says the upgrade is part of ongoing efforts to ensure S-Map remains accessible and easily used by all users. Of course the development of S-Map has revolutionised how New Zealanders access information on soil. Previous soil databases were patchy in scale, age and quality while many maps do not adequately describe the underlying properties of the soil types they represent. S-Map integrates existing reports and digital information and updates soil maps where existing data are of low quality. The goal is to provide comprehensive, quantitative soil information to support sustainable development and scientific modelling. Contact: Linda Lilburne In line with recent recommendations from the Land and Water Forum (2012) and the Ministry for the Environment (2013), collaborative approaches are being widely promoted in New Zealand as a promising means to resolving conflict over the management of freshwater resources. In late 2012, Hawke’s Bay Regional Council convened a collaborative stakeholder group, facilitated by researchers from Landcare Research and the Cawthron Institute. The purpose of the group is to recommend allocation limits and water quality targets for the proposed plan change for the Greater Heretaunga and Ahuriri catchment. The key drivers for the plan change are a requirement for the council to give effect to the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management and the expiry of a large number of water permits in the two catchments from 2015 onwards. The collaborative process is referred to locally as the TANK process after the four sub-catchments affected by the plan change: the Tutaekuri, Ahuriri, Ngaruroro and the Karamu. As part of the MBIE-funded ‘Freshwater Values, Monitoring and Outcomes’ programme, Nick Cradock-Henry (Landcare Research) and Natasha Berkett (Cawthron institute) are evaluating several aspects of the TANK process with an eye to incorporating these into future collaborative decision-making processes. Unlike other evaluations of collaborative processes – which have nearly all been based on final results, this one is longitudinal in nature. Design, process and outcome are being evaluated at three points in time: soon after the process began in October 2012, approximately halfway through, and at the end of the formal series of meetings later this year. The aim of the evaluation is to assess participants’ changes in attitude, social learnings, and overall satisfaction with the process. The evaluation will also help facilitate best practice, identify potential pitfalls in advance, and contribute to the discussion on the application of collaborative processes in natural resource management. The goal is to evaluate not only the outcome of the TANK process, which can include more than just reaching consensus, but also the way the process was conducted. The evaluation of the process is done using surveys (administered online to participants), through feedback forms, stakeholder interviews and detailed observation. These multiple methods enable researchers to produce snapshots of the process through time, to track any changes in participants’ views and opinions, and to facilitate comparison between this and other collaborative processes. Based on feedback so far, participants have continued – with each successive meeting – to express greater confidence and higher degrees of satisfaction with the process, including the way it is being organised and facilitated. Respondents were generally supportive of the way the TANK process was being managed and coordinated at the time of the first survey in late November 2012 (76%) and understood the criteria of both accountability and adherence to clear ground rules (70% and 63% respectively). As part of the evaluation, respondents were also asked to rank design considerations they considered integral to a successful outcome. For TANK participants, the most important criterion is that “participants have equal opportunity to speak about their values”. Ensuring equal representation is a significant challenge for any collaborative process, as the potential range of affected parties is almost limitless. The TANK process has addressed this in part, by ensuring that individuals are aware of their responsibility to communicate with wider industry, community and sector groups, and by ensuring the group is as diverse as possible, while still remaining practical. While the research has just crossed the halfway mark, it is providing valuable insight into the potential for collaboration, but also the pitfalls, and contributing to design considerations for best collaborative practices. Collaborative processes for freshwater management are fast becoming a popular planning tool with many alleged benefits relative to alternative planning models. There is agreement among advocates and critics alike that careful evaluation of collaborative planning is required to assess the merits of such processes and to develop best-practice guidelines. In the ongoing evaluation of this collaborative process in Hawke’s Bay, findings show there is wide support for the collaborative process among participants, which is consistent with other much larger surveys of stakeholders engaged in collaborative decision-making and planning processes elsewhere. The Hawke’s Bay case study also provides important insights into best-practice management of collaborative planning. The case-study experience shows the importance of allowing sufficient time to build trust and social capital among participants; to ensure the delivery of science to support decision making by stakeholders; and the value of engaging as a group, outside the deliberation room. Consideration of these and other design criteria outlined can help ensure all key stakeholders remain engaged in a collectively driven process. Contact: Nicholas Cradock-Henry The ‘Survey of Rural Decision Makers’ was designed jointly by Landcare Research and AgResearch with input from the Ministry for the Environment, the Ministry for Primary Industries and Dairy NZ. The survey is part of a wider programme of work that will enable the developers of agent-based models to include a wider range of validated behaviour types into their modelling. The spatially-explicit economic model Agent-based Rural Land Use New Zealand (ARLUNZ) was developed by Landcare Research to analyse the impact of policies on land use, farm returns and environmental impacts. ARLUNZ can help forecast the land use effects resulting from changes in social networks and decision-making. However, before we even start the modelling, the survey itself has attracted considerable interest and the resulting (almost raw) data provides some useful insights. Here, researcher Pike Brown shares some of the initial analysis. Waikato rural decision-makers have 10% more farming experience, on average, than respondents from Canterbury and Southland – with the vast majority working on more than one farm in their career. Waikato farms are predominantly dairying, which differs from the other two regions, where sheep and beef is the main enterprise. Canterbury farms are larger than Southland and Waikato farms, on average. Over half of the Canterbury respondents stated that they undertake more than one enterprise on their farm and 46% of respondents had changed the mix of enterprises (in terms of land use in hectares) by more than 20% in recent years. Rural decision-makers in Canterbury are more likely to hold intentions to intensify their enterprise mix than decision-makers in either Southland or Waikato. The majority of respondents (in all regions) believe that they are unlikely to change their enterprise mix due to regulatory pressure in the next 5 years. Interestingly (but perhaps not necessarily related) decision-makers in Canterbury were more educated than their counterparts in the other two regions. Respondents in Southland are statistically younger and less educated on average than those in the other two regions. However, tradition is a stronger motivator in Southland than in either Canterbury or Waikato. Overall the results indicate that although tradition is not the primary motivation for farming decisions for a majority of respondents, it is nonetheless an important motivator for some. While Southland respondents are more oriented towards production than Waikato and Canterbury respondents, they also acknowledge the importance of sustaining natural habitats for native fish and birds to a greater degree. While most respondents believe their family members and farming community want them to farm in an environmentally sustainable manner, they also acknowledge that the social expectation for farming sustainably is significantly stronger amongst the New Zealand public. Only 22.5% of respondents had selected a successor, and if one was identified, it was usually one of their children. Social networks of rural decision-makers’ are of a similar size across regions, but dairy farmers are considerably more connected through their peer networks than other farmers in all three regions. Veterinarians are the most trusted and important source of farming information for respondents, followed by accountants. Overall, other farmers are the third most trusted and important source of information for rural decision-makers (only 5.5% of farmers surveyed did not discuss farming with any other farmers). The least trusted and least important sources of information were central government, television and radio, and regional councils. The survey questions covered farmer demographics, farm characteristics, succession plans, risk tolerance, profitability, information sources, objectives, farm management practices, farmer intentions, perceived behavioural control, social norms, and environmental attitudes. The analysed sample comprised 283 farmers in Canterbury, 136 in Southland, and 117 in Waikato. Conclusions – so far These data were also used in an inferential model to understand which rural decision-makers had adopted specific management practices. To summarise the results, land use by itself is not a sufficient predictor of behaviour. Aspects that do shape the behaviour of decision-makers include demographics (e.g. age and gender), land characteristics (e.g. size of farm), location, attitudes, level of perceived personal control, social expectations, and the size of one’s social network. Conversely, a decision-makers’ tolerance of risk is not a sufficient predictor of behaviour. A similar survey with expanded questions for growers and foresters was developed with support from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s Science and Innovation group. It has currently been distributed in 13 other regions and anonymous results will be available in October. Contact: Pike Brown Much of the work at Landcare Research is a direct response to a policy question or challenge – usually one that requires robust evidence presented from an independent source. To help others with similar questions, particularly with information that can be applied in a number of areas, we are developing a range of short policy briefs to make this knowledge accessible. Recent work in the Freshwater Values Monitoring and Outcomes programme underpins two new policy briefs. Using mātauranga Māori to inform freshwater management provides practical guidance for integrating traditional knowledge into freshwater management policy and practice under the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. A framework of six steps is recommended to create a robust and consistent process to support the engagement of iwi / hapū in the decision-making, planning and policy development. The values, activities and uses identified in this process can then be called upon for monitoring, and the setting of appropriate local limits and standards. This work will also be presented at the upcoming Landcare Research Link seminar in Wellington on 30 July at the Ministry for the Environment. Understanding conflict over freshwater values in a regional plan. Documenting freshwater values in a regional plan makes specified values more prominent than those not included – and this shapes the field on which stakeholders make claims about desirable environmental and community futures. The experience of Tasman District Council shows that, for stakeholders, the documentation process is inextricably linked to the decision process for making trade-offs between values. The Land and Water Forum has recommended collaborative processes as a way to identify values and resolve contests over them. The Tasman experience suggests these steps may be more effectively approached through a single process, rather than documenting values first and only later using these to guide decisions. A single process focuses the debate on how to accommodate competing values rather than debating which values are significant enough to include in a plan. This work was presented at the June Landcare Research Link seminar and the presentation can be found here. Contact: Christine Harper - Building Mana Whenua Partnerships for Urban Design - Understanding Conflict over Freshwater Values in a Regional Plan The Valuing Nature conference in Wellington earlier this month provided a platform where government, business and researchers could start the discussion about how NZ could account for natural capital and the services provided by our natural capital (or ecosystems services). The conference brought together international experts in ecosystem services assessment who were able to share experiences from UK, the IPCC and United Nations initiatives. Panel discussions with NZ scientists and thought-leaders (including Suzie Greenhalgh and Caroline Saunders of Landcare Research) provided local content and plenty of opportunity for discussion on topics as diverse as freshwater reforms, environmental domain plans, collaborative processes and the cost of environmental health. Nick Smith (Minister for Conservation) opened the conference by reminding us of current government priorities: - Good environmental reporting. NZ needs to understand the state of its natural capital alongside the state of the economy (GDP). The RMA reforms before the House will ensure greater consistency of reporting and less contest about the underlying methodologies. - Collaborative Processes. The Land and Water forum is an illustration of how NZ can move from a contested model to one of shared outcomes. - Smart use of economic tools. NZ needs to improve economic tools to ensure optimal use of natural resources and not to run down its natural capital. An important message is that we can’t put a dollar value on everything, but in some situations a market instrument would bring about better outcomes. - Science and technology. Human innovation is an important component of how to resolve many of the environmental issues facing NZ. One of the conference keynote speakers Sir Bob Watson* highlighted the value of spatialised information to optimise ecosystem services. His description of the UK’s National Ecosystem Assessment (UK-NEA) generated significant interest - which continued into the workshop session on the next day. Short Master Class on Ecosystems Services and Natural Capital - Because many goods and services provided by ecosystems (e.g., clean water and air) are not included in markets, they are often taken for granted, undervalued, or not valued in decision-making processes (e.g., in balance sheets and cost-benefit analyses). - Nature and the benefits people derive from it are part of an ‘invisible economy’ that is widely believed should be made explicit in decisions. - Developing approaches to explicitly include nature into decision making is an opportunity to improve policy and biodiversity outcomes, at least in part by capturing the value of investing in natural capital both nationally and regionally. - National natural capital assessment can provide the basis for achieving this and is based upon a conceptual framework that emphasises a collaborative approach for integrated assessment of ecosystem functions, stocks and flows, future scenarios and implications for human wellbeing. - International considerations include obligations and agreements, best practice and the integration of global and national assessments / processes Following the full conference, a further workshop explored the opportunities and possibilities for conducting a NZ Natural Capital Assessment. This session was led by the Department of Conservation and made the most of the experience of our international visitors along with 25 representatives from central government, local government, and CRIs. John Dymond and Georgina Hart from Landcare Research participated and Bob Frame was one of the facilitators. The knowledge brought to the workshop drew on a wide range of interests and expertise. The workshop covered key steps towards recognition of the value of ecosystems and the services they provide, and how they need to be managed for sustainable economic growth. The vision of “embedding the understanding of natural capital at all scales of decision making” was agreed by the workshop participants and delivered as an accord to the Minister of Conservation, Hon Dr Nick Smith, at the end of the day. Importantly, the workshop also developed a draft strategy and process to continue to develop the vision and accord. An integrated multi-disciplinary, multi-scale, collaborative approach is favoured to capture the connectivity and interdependencies of ecosystem services and the participation of diverse stakeholders. *Sir Robert Watson has held many interesting positions including chair of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), chair of MEA (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment), and chair of the UK-NEA (United-Kingdom National Ecosystem Assessment). Contact: Christine Harper

The Honey Bus: A Memoir of Loss, Courage and a Girl Saved by Bees Warning: before starting Meredith May's memoir, be sure there's a jar of honey in the house. While The Honey Bus: A Memoir of Loss, Courage and a Girl Saved by Bees is a testimony to a child's resilience and her grandfather's support, it is also an homage to bees and their golden nectar, and a craving for honey is inescapable. Before May was five, her parents' tumultuous marriage ended in divorce, and her mother moved her two children from the East Coast to California's Carmel Valley, to live with her parents. "Somewhere over Middle America, she had relinquished parenthood," May writes, so no-nonsense Granny took control. But May gravitated to her Grandpa's workshop, a World War II Army bus outfitted with beekeeping equipment, stacks of honeycombs and barrels and pipes for honey-collecting. Their bond was immediate, but May had to earn her way into the Honey Bus. Casually swatting at a bee as if to kill it, she incurred Grandpa's rare wrath: "You. Must. Never. Hurt. Bees," he said, prompting her eager absorption of his bee expertise. She helped Grandpa in the bus and with the hives on his acres of wild Big Sur lands. Through her painful adolescence with her alternately neglectful and abusive mother, "the hive was predictable... it was a family that never quit." A fifth-generation beekeeper who now tends hives in a San Francisco community garden, May devotes more of her memoir to bees than to her difficult life. She honors her grandfather by pledging to work to stop the alarming bee decline. The Honey Bus is a call to action and an inspiration. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco

Click on the titles to view the full story of previous OARDC Impacts. Bad for Mosquitoes, Good for People Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center entomologist Peter Piermarini and his collaborators' discovery could pave the way to the development of new insecticides to fight deadly mosquito-transmitted diseases such as malaria and West Nile virus. Benefits of Tearing Down Dams: Healthier Rivers, Cleaner Water Tear down a dam, and a river will change. But how? And how much? To find out, Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center scientists Mazeika Sullivan and Kristin Jaeger are studying the impacts of dam removals and documenting the exact changes seen in the rivers’ flow, biology and water quality. Cleveland Empty Lots Yield Environmental Benefits Decades of population losses have left the city of Cleveland with 3,600 acres of vacant land. Currently, Cleveland plants turfgrass on empty lots, but it’s expensive to maintain and offers few benefits. Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center entomologist Mary Gardiner started a large-scale, never-before-attempted project that examines the impact of eight different landscape treatments on the biodiversity and ecosystem function empty lots. Energy Independence That’s Good for the Environment Researchers and industry partners are working together to test and expand an Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center technology that can produce renewable fuel from organic waste and bioenergy crops via a patent-pending technology developed by OARDC engineer Yebo Li and operated by quasar energy group, a Cleveland-based renewable energy company. From Lab to Industry; LARAD Inc. Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center virologist Daral Jackwood's cutting-edge technology for making vaccines and diagnostic tests to combat poultry and livestock diseases and to safeguard our food production system has led to the creation of a startup company, LARAD Inc., which is the first OARDC spinout into the university’s BioHio Research Park, an agbioscience technology park based on the Wooster campus. Growing Ohio's Fish Farms Today, the aquaculture indsutry generates nearly $50 million a year for Ohio’s economy, and OARDC’s Ohio Center for Aquaculture Research and Development works to further advance it with studies to improve the genetics, nutrition and production of Ohio’s farmed fish — and the profitability and success of the state’s 140-plus fish farms. Healthy Bees, Healthy Agriculture: Striking a Balance Bees are crucial to agriculture and food security, however this valuable resource is at risk. The Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center and Ohio State University Extension work together with the beekeeping industry and others to deliver programs which promote healthy bees and environments that boost bee numbers. Improving Water Quality: Wetlands Offer Keys to Cleaner Water Cleaner water for Ohioans could spring from 52 acres in Columbus. The Ohio State University’s Wilma H. Schiermeier Olentangy River Wetland Research Park, supported in part by the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, conducts globally known, locally relevant research on wetlands and how to protect, build and use them to improve water quality. New Hypoallergenic Latex Creates Business Opportunity Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center researchers have developed new materials that will allow medical professionals to have the natural latex gloves they prefer, while avoiding the risk of allergic reactions. On-Field Ohio: Rewriting Ohio’s Phosphorus Risk Index Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center researcher Elizabeth Dayton, who is in the midst of the three-year On-Field Ohio project, which seeks to revise the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Natural Resources Conservation Service Ohio Phosphorus (P) Risk Index to be more precise in predicting the risk of phosphorus moving off farm fields. Opening Doors for New Research into Cancer-fighting Food Dyes Anthocyanins are powerful antioxidants that also give color to most red, orange, purple and blue fruits and vegetables. Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center scientist Monica Giusti is internationally known for her research on their potential as cancer-fighters and as natural food dyes. But Giusti’s lab budget wasn’t limitless and the anthocyanins she studied weren’t cheap. So she made her own — slashing costs 10- to 20-fold. Serving, Growing Ohio’s Grape and Wine Industry The “polar vortex” winter of 2013–2014 hit Ohio’s wine grapes hard. Ohio grape growers estimated their vinifera losses at 97 percent. Imed Dami, who works to help growers recover from that damage and reduce or prevent it in the future as the leader of the Ohio Agricultural Research andDevelopment Center’s viticulture, or grape-growing, research. Tackling a New Swine Disease and its Economic Impact In 2013, a new swine disease showed up in the U.S. With funding from the National Pork Board, Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center scientists are conducting research to answer crucial questions about and develop effective tests and vaccines against PEDv. Two-stage Ditch a Win-Win for Farmers and the Environment Drainage ditches are often a must to grow crops in Ohio. But conventional ditches can have drawbacks. Today there’s a better way to dig a ditch, thanks to Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center scientists and the innovative “two-stage” ditch design, which benefits not just farms but water quality. Vegetable Safety Team Tackles Food Safety Head-on The Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center’s Vegetable Safety Research and Extension Program comprises one of the most comprehensive teams at a single institution studying the overlap of vegetable production and safety.

Our increasingly urban world demands clever innovation and utopian ideas if we are to have a liveable, sustainable future. The idea of ‘resilient cities’ has taken hold in recent years, and at the heart of this is food and energy sovereignty. It’s linked to the emphasis on community control and localised production, because reliance on distant food chains and their over-packaged products does not foster resilient communities, or indeed healthy ones. So people are devising new ways to produce and source food. A noticeable trend has been the rise in urban beekeeping. Bans were lifted in the UK and some US states, and hives now adorn the rooftops of thousands of buildings in towns and cities. There’s even bees on top of the Tate Modern gallery! Honey is something you make together" – Bybi director Oliver Maxwell Younger, city-dwelling people are turning to beekeeping as a way to connect with nature, and do something good for the environment. The idea that you’re creating a home for an extra 50,000 ‘pollinators’ is appealing when we’re faced with news of bee decline and the accompanying environmental ruin. Environmentalists promote urban beekeeping as a strategy to halt bee decline and counter the factory-farm nature of much of our honey production. Copenhagen’s ‘ultra-local’ honey producers Beekeeping isn’t just an individual pursuit though. Social enterprises like Bybi in Copenhagen are showing how this form of local food production can be successful – not just in commercial terms, but socially too. At the core of this model is a recognition of cooperation and interdependency in urban models of food production. Urban beekeeping, says director Oliver Maxwell, is “not something you can do yourself. You need to involve the organisations, the citizens, the schools – the whole process. That’s why we say that honey is something you make together.” Maxwell first had the idea for Bybi in 2009 while attending a climate conference in Copenhagen. With a background in anthropology, his interest is in the role of partnerships in production. Cycling past some bee hives on the edge of the city, he was intrigued and tracked down the beekeeper. Five years later, Bybi has around 200 colonies spread across 25 urban sites. The name means simply ‘City Bee’, and the model is a fairly simple one. Organisations, from businesses to housing associations, can host hives on their rooftops or in gardens for rental; in return they get a programme of events or skills training. Business seeking to show their involvement and commitment to local communities have been keen partners in the project; Bybi also work with schools and run tours and workshops, giving people an insight into the fascinating world of bees. Training and work opportunities for the long-term unemployed, homeless and refugees have been central to the project. The current team includes a beekeeper from Syria, learning Danish while he helps with the hives, and a Sudanese refugee. A professional beekeeper heads up the team, looking after the 200 colonies that dot car parks and roofs across the city. Though Bybi’s honey is not organic, this is due merely to the stringent definitions that require the pollen to be 5km from a settlement - virtually impossible to find in Denmark. Honey is actually very pure, because the bees themselves strictly control its production, rejecting any polluted pollen before it enters the hive. Each site, explains Maxwell, has its own distinct flavour. It’s highly affected by seasons, with flavours morphing every few weeks depending on climate and weather - honey production is not something you can really control. “It’s a wild process”, he says, which speaks of the incredible diversity in nature and human life. Bybi’s “concentrated sunshine”, as he calls the honey, is proof of the city’s diversity and capacity which we’re only now becoming aware of. Food from the brood The company is innovative in other ways, selling by-products of beekeeping that would otherwise be discarded. In a corner of the Bybi website you can find the ‘experimentarium’; an illustrated guide to the more unusual products. Pollen is edible; bees preserve it using nectar and digestive fluids, packed into empty honeycomb cells. It’s basically fermented, so people sometimes refer to it as ‘bee bread’. It’s a pretty ingenious feat on the part of the bees, but this bee bread is also edible. Predictably, it’s been dubbed the latest ‘superfood’ for its high vitamin and protein content – to see an example of its use in cooking, check our recipe page. An even lesser-known product of beekeeping, and one which Bybi are unusual in selling, is bee larvae. The drone larvae are regularly discarded and these bees don’t have a pollinating role, so it’s arguably an ethical, as well as nutritious, food source. Currently Bybi supply the world-famous Noma restaurant with larvae, and as the interest in edible insects continues to grow, more beekeepers may follow suit. A model to follow? The argument for expanding this model of social enterprise urban beekeeping is strengthened by the professional knowledge it brings in. One problem with the rise in ‘DIY’ urban beekeeping is that amateur apiarists lack the experience necessary, leading to swarms and other problems. Diseases and genetic problems can occur in colonies without a degree of expertise, and this is a particular problem for urban bees, as Oliver Maxwell explains. “If you don’t change your queens regularly, you get very aggressive bees. Not a good idea in the city.” Combined with the phenomenon of swarming which occurs when colonies are left unattended, this has led to some concerns – and a rash of newspaper headlines – over the dangers which accompany urban beekeeping. But a model like Bybi’s goes a long way to ensure these pitfalls are avoided, due to the use of professional beekeepers to oversee the hives. Additionally their commitment to training new workers not only provides opportunities to those facing social disadvantages, but also means more skilled beekeepers on the scene. Similar projects have had success in the UK, with Hope Street Honey in Liverpool as well as two nearby cathedrals providing Liverpool with its own ‘ultra-local’ honey source. The benefits of these projects are diverse - not just employment and training opportunities, but the reclamation of derelict land and buildings. Bybi demonstrates that food production can be deeply integrated into the fabric of the city, and provide a social good as well as nutrition. This is in a sense a deeply utopian project which is nevertheless grounded in reality; Bybi operates as a successful business and embraces the private sector – though Maxwell adds that they would not work with some companies. With the emphasis on diversity and interdependence between groups and processes in the city, his vision for Bybi is reminiscent of Chris Carlsson’s Nowtopia, albeit with a commercial edge. Maxwell describes his goal as proving that he can create an industry that “enriches, rather than destroys […] where every step in the production chain has an effect that is more than its superficial function. I want to show that we can do something that is really local, really embedded.” It’s a model that goes far beyond beekeeping, and Bybi shows how we might think more imaginatively about how we produce our food, how we shape our cities, and what the future of the two could look like. Based on a BUGSfeed interview by Jonas Bruun.

A running theme in the Science Market Update is that nature seems to have all the answers to our bioscience questions, if only we know how to ask them. For instance, how do we make an anesthetic strong enough to make a scorpion sting painless? And what can we do to keep antibiotics from becoming ineffective? Today’s question, posed by researchers at Michigan State University, is: how can we quickly gather precise water pollution data over entire rivers and lakes? To which nature answers: send in a fleet of water striders. Science Market Update Words like “toxic” and “lethal” are very subjective in the world of life science research, where one creature’s poison is another creature’s pleasure. For instance, we saw some fantastic research last year at the University of Minnesota involving bacteria that ate enough chlorine to detoxify superfund sites. Following in the tiny footsteps of these microbes, bacteria under investigation at Michigan State University enjoy consuming the toxic byproducts of biodiesel plants, indicating a greener and more sustainable future for the industry. Around the world, the number of bees is abruptly decreasing. Known as colony collapse disorder, the phenomenon is affecting agriculture on the global scale. According to a report by the United Nations, crops reliant on honeybee pollination sum up to a net worth of $200 billion, and the decline in population is increasing the cost of beekeeping by an average of 20%. Looking into the matter are bioresearchers from Michigan State University, who are busy deriving the genes responsible for pollination. A human’s first instinct upon seeing a scorpion is to get away from it as fast as possible. The grasshopper mouse, on the other hand, routinely feeds on bark scorpions, as seen in the video below. Despite the venomous nature of their prey, the mice suffer no side effects from their mealtime and aren’t even that bothered while they’re eating. The secret of their immunity is inspiring researchers at Michigan State University to look into the medicinal properties of this mouse’s body. The arena of renewable energy has expanded to include a number of different methods and natural resources. At Michigan State University, a new and unlikely contender has entered the scene. Decomposing microorganisms are the key behind the university’s incredibly efficient anaerobic digester, which they put into operation this Tuesday. Science researchers at Michigan State University recently published a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that says they have discovered a second molecular door that can be used in creating mosquito repellant. Scientists long believed that there was only one molecular gateway in targeting disease-carrying mosquitoes, but this door is coming to a close. Pyrethroid insecticides have been used for years and work so well as an insecticide that the World Health Organiation uses them with the mosquito nets they distribute around the world. Researchers at Michigan State University have developed a groundbreaking new method of detecting Parkinson’s disease at an earlier stage, making it possible to treat the disease and control symptoms more effectively. Professor and chair of Michagan State University’s Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders Rahul Shrivastav helped in part to develop the method of detection, which involves monitoring speech patterns, movement patterns of the jaw and tongue in particular. According to the Michigan State University news page, these signs are detectable before the disease begins to affect other muscles and movement. The summer is finally approaching, which means biotechnology news related to mosquito outbreaks is especially hot. (We had the same thought last summer; see Irvine Research Lab Produces Transgenic Mosquitoes to Combat Malaria and Rock Neurogenetics Lab in the Press for Mosquito Research, Fashion Scents.) As was the case last summer, researchers are working hard to reduce the impact of malaria, which is largely transmitted by mosquitoes. At Michigan State University, they are taking a unique approach to this old problem: instead of protecting humans from mosquitoes, just protect mosquitoes from malaria in the first place. By this point, most Americans are familiar with the gelatinous yellow pill harked by many as a critically necessary supplement. Fish oil pills, packed with omega-3 fatty acids, are sold in many grocery stores and can be found in even more households nationwide. At Michigan State University, bioresearchers are delving deeper into the effects of fish oil on the body. What they have found may sound a little surprising at first: fish oil can increase immunity in people with certain health conditions. Michigan State University is helping to make East Lansing a highly funded market for biotechnology vendors and lab suppliers in Michigan, according to the latest NIH and NSF research funding statistics. In 2012, the NIH awarded Michigan State University $46.1 million in research funding. The money will go towards a number of research projects across various departments at the university. We have broken down the number of projects awarded money in each science research discipline and the total amount of funding for those projects in the list below: Tags: Michigan State University, 2014, Midwest, 2013, Michigan, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Research Funding, MI, Front Line event, NIH, science research, East Lansing, MSU, NSF, lab suppliers, funding statistics

Is Honey Vegan? From bee to hive to bottle, here’s the buzz on honey, one of veganism’s most contentious foods. Hotly-debated honey often raises the same question that eggs, cheese, and butter do—Is it vegan? By definition, vegans do not eat animals or use animal products, typically for ethical or environmental reasons. While bees make honey themselves, which is an animal product, whether you consume it or not depends on your beliefs as a vegan. Before we dive in, a quick biology lesson—all bees, specifically honeybees, are animals. These small, but mighty Arthropods belong to the Insecta class, a subcategory of the massive Kingdom Animalia, which includes living creatures from tigers to jellyfish. Bees depend on energy-rich honey as their primary food source. Bees suck nectar from flowering plants and carry it back to their hives for processing into honey. Simultaneously, bees release pollen, which acts as a natural fertilizer for these plants. Along with butterflies and hummingbirds, bees are natural pollinators, and many key fruit and vegetable crops such as apples, Brussels sprouts, and pumpkin depend on their pollen to reproduce. Back at the hive, bees work to thicken the collected nectar into honey before sealing it inside honeycombs as future food. Bees do not hibernate, so they naturally produce an excess of honey to survive a brutally-cold winter. This is where beekeepers come into the picture—they harvest the excess honey from the hives so that it can be packaged for consumer use. Beekeeping can be traced back to ancient Egypt, where it was valued for its culinary and medicinal applications. Modern beekeepers tend to bees in apiaries, a site where beehives are kept. To collect the honey, beekeepers extract it from the honeycombs found inside the hives. Often times, beekeepers will pump a small amount of smoke into the hives to calm the bees beforehand. According to a USDA report on sugar and sweeteners, commercial beekeeping yielded 161.9 million pounds of honey in 2016. While honey can be made from a variety of plants, the most common are clover and wildflower honeys. Can Vegans Eat Honey? The answer depends on your individual views as a vegan. Whether it's clover, wildflower, or even manuka honey, we've explored both sides of the argument to help you decide if this syrupy sweetener is right for you. 1. Why Vegans Would Eat Honey Many vegans abstain from honey for ethical and environmental reasons. From 2015 to 2016, beekeepers in the United States reported an overall loss of 44% of their colonies in warmer and colder months. Whether you’re vegan or non-vegan, this is a concerning finding—bees thrive in warm weather, so some colony loss in cold weather is expected. Year-round loss, however, is more alarming and could evidence issues with current beekeeping practices. Here are several reasons why a vegan would avoid honey. - Hive burning: American Foul Brood, a highly-contagious disease, is deadly for honey bees. One option to control the outbreak is for beekeepers to burn affected hives along with the sickened bees. Many vegans view this as a cruel and unnecessary practice, since beekeepers can prevent the disease through regular monitoring. - Wing clipping: Clipping the queen bee’s wings prevents her from swarming, or leaving the current hive to start a new one. While intended as a way to control bee populations in commercial beekeeping, many vegans view this practice as inhumane. - Honey substitutes: A common practice intended to sustain bees’ food supply, beekeepers will replace the honey they remove from hives with substitutes such as high fructose corn syrup. However, a 2013 study by the University of Illinois confirmed that honey contains essential nutrients that bees need to stay strong and healthy. Without a honey-rich diet, bees are more susceptible to disease outbreaks that can wipe out entire colonies. For vegans, this practice raises the question—If honey is an essential part of bees’ survival, do humans have any part in harvesting it for themselves? While honey is energy rich, and accepted as a healthy sweetener, it is by no means essential to human survival. - Pesticide use: Neonicotinoid, a widely-used insecticide, is often used to protect bee colonies from harmful intruders such as mites or fungi. While conflicting research exists over whether this practice is contributing to the recent colony collapse, the EPA is taking steps to find alternative ways to protect honeybees. 2. Why Vegans Would Avoid Honey Some vegans choose to consume honey if they know it’s from a humane and sustainable source such as a small-scale, local farm. These vegans may approve honey if it was harvested only from an abundance inside the hive, or when it’s “raw honey,” meaning it has been processed as little as possible. The majority of the honey you see at grocery stores has been filtered and pasteurized to create a smoother consistency and a more pleasing appearance. Many consider this practice completely unnecessary, as honey does not need to be pasteurized in the same way as milk because it is highly acidic and a natural bacteria inhibitor. Raw honey retains many of the nutrients that processed honey lacks, since it has not been heated or filtered in any way. You’ll know it when you see it, as raw honey often contains actual pieces of pollen or honeycomb. Vegan Substitutes for Honey If you do not eat honey, there are plenty of suitable substitutes that can be easily swapped into recipes. While we recommend choosing “clean,” unprocessed sugars such as maple syrup, it’s important to verse yourself in the options out there. Agave Nectar: Derived from the agave plant, agave nectar has a similar consistency to honey, but is a notch sweeter. Touted as a natural substitute for artificial sweeteners, agave is controversial because it is highly-processed. Maple Syrup: Made from the sap of red, black, or sugar maple trees, maple syrup has a similar consistency to honey but a more concentrated sweet flavor. Due to its high antioxidant and mineral count, maple syrup is widely embraced as an ideal sweetener. Make sure that “pure maple syrup” is the only ingredient on the bottle you’re purchasing. See More: Ways with Maple Syrup Sorghum Syrup: Made by extracting and boiling down the juice from sorghum, a whole grain cereal, this mild-flavored, sweet syrup is often enjoyed on its own as a topper for pancakes or waffles or as a spread for biscuits. Try sorghum syrup is these delicious Double Sorghum Spice Cookies. Molasses: This thick, dark brown syrup is made by refining sugarcane or sugar beets. Typically, molasses is used as a sweetener for baked goods such as cookies, but it’s also used in savory applications (think baked beans!). Looking for inspiration in the kitchen? Check out our Vegan Cooking Guide for delicious ideas and more.

An unprecedented initiative for financing and referencing Regional Producers A first in France: CARREFOUR partners with MiiMOSA, a crowdfunding platform to conduct a pilot project at the Carrefour Claira shopping center. This project aims to involve customers in the financing of local producers and in referencing their products in their hypermarket. The development of local products is an important focus of the Carrefour 2022 transformation plan For this purpose, Carrefour will rely on the expertise provided by MiiMOSA, a crowdfunding operator that specializes in participatory financing of agricultural and food processing projects. Through MiiMOSA, farmers will first of all be able to collect between € 1,000 and € 70,000 from committed citizens, whom they will thank by offering appropriate gifts (products, farm experiences, etc.). Secondly, they will gain visibility through referencing in the store. Farmers in the Perpignan region have until September 30, 2018 to submit their project. How does it work? 1. Until September 30, producers can visit the website carrefour.miimosa.com and propose a project for installation, development or diversification in agriculture and food processing: market gardening, beekeeping, livestock farming, viticulture, brewing activity, etc. 2. They will then receive support from the MiiMOSA teams to launch crowdfunding financing 3. The projects whose total amounts collected reach their goal (on average, 75% of success on MiiMOSA) will benefit from Carrefour’s support in managing the gifts they will provide and the promotion of their products in the stores. June 6th to 9th, Carrefour Brasil took part in the 14th edition of the...Read more ● Carrefour is the first retailer partnering with Google in France on...Read more

LIKE US? To Receive a Monthly DIGESTWORLD Reminder, Click the Link to Send Email Request: SUBSCRIBE NOTE: Place Cursor over a photo for a few seconds to read text description. CLICK FLAG TO OPEN FIRST-AID KIT.== == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == All the tools you need for a simple Speed Trace IN ONE PLACE. Great Way to show Gratitude for DIGESTWORLD is to use the above Google Search Engine to Search this Site or the entire Web wherever you find it in DIGESTWORLD pages. Much Thanks in Advance for Clicking on the Google +1 Above to Show You Liked Us. == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == ~~~~~~~~ In Memoriam: Harry Morgan (1915 - 2011) ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ Starred in Dragnet, December Bride, M.A.S.H. ~~~~~ WELCOME TO DIGESTWORLD ISSUE#127 July, 2012== == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == ==Quote for the Freedom Month of July: I was once a young man, but I recovered. — Howard Baker, US Senator , [February 1, 1999] == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == ==By Subscription only.== == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == Editor: Bobby Matherne, Asst. Editor: Del Matherne [To Contact Editor Click Here!] To Subscribe, Click Here or copy into your Browser this URL: http://www.doyletics.com/subscrib.htm To Unsubscribe, see bottom of any DIGESTWORLD Issue. ©2012 by 21st Century Education, Inc, Published Monthly. To Read All of Bobby's Writings Click Here! ~~ Click on Heading to go to that Section (Allow Page First To Fully Load). NOTE: DIGESTWORLD is a Trademark of 21st Century Education, Inc. ~~ DIGESTWORLDArchived DIGESTWORLD Issues GOOD MOUNTAIN PRESS Presents ISSUE#127 for July 2012 Table of Contents 1. July's Violet-n-Joey Cartoon 2. Honored Readers for July 3. On a Personal Note Flowers of Shanidar Poems 4. Cajun Story 5. Recipe of the Month from Bobby Jeaux’s Kitchen: Fruit Smoothie 6. Poem from Three Lectures on the Mystery Dramas:"Karma Spins" 7. Reviews and Articles Added for July: 8. Commentary on the World - ARJ2: Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer’s Craft by Brooks Landon - ARJ2: The Neuroscience of Psychological Therapies by Rowland W. Folensbee - ARJ2: The Leopard, A Novel by Jo Nesbø - ARJ: Transforming the Soul, Volume 1, GA#58 by Rudolf Steiner 1. Padre Filius Cartoon 2. Comments from Readers 3. Freedom on the Half Shell Poem 4. COMING SOON: THE FALL OF THE TIMES-PICAYUNE! ! ! ! 9. Closing Notes — our mailing list, locating books, subscribing/unsubscribing to DIGESTWORLD == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == DIGESTWORLD ISSUE#127== == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == ARCHIVED DIGESTWORLD ISSUES ON THE WEB ~ ARCHIVED DIGESTWORLD ISSUES ~2000: INAUGURAL YEAR: Jun #1 Jul #2, Aug #3, Sept #4, Oct #5, Nov #6, Dec #7 2001: Jan #8, Feb #9, Mar #10, Apr #11, May #12, Jun #13, Jul #14, Aug #15, Sep #16, Oct #17, Nov #18, Dec #19 2002: Jan #20, Feb #21, Mar #22, Apr #23, May #24, Jun #25, Jul #26, Aug #27, Sep #28, Oct #29, Nov #30, Dec #31 2003: Jan #32, Feb #33, Mar #34, Apr #35, May #36, Jun #37, Jul #38, Aug #39, Sep #40, Oct #41, Nov #42, Dec #43 2004: Jan #44, Feb #45, Mar #46, Apr #47, May #48, Jun #49, Jul #50, Aug #51, Sep #52, Oct #53, Nov #54, Dec #55 To Receive a Monthly DIGESTWORLD Reminder — Click Here. For Best View of Text and Photos, Close Window Until Archived Years Almost Double Space == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == 1. July Violet-n-Joey CARTOON: == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == For newcomers to DIGESTWORLD, we have created a webpage of all the Violet-n-Joey cartoons! Check it out at: http://www.doyletics.com/vjtoons.htm Also note the rotating calendar and clock that follows just to the right of your mouse pointer as you scroll down the page. You'll also see the clock on the 404 Error page if you make a mistake typing a URL while on the doyletics.com website. The Violet-n-Joey Cartoon page is been divided into two pages: one low-speed and one high-speed access. If you have Do NOT Have High-Speed Access, you may try this Link which will load much faster and will allow you to load one cartoon at a time. Use this one for High-Speed Access. This month Violet and Joey learn about The Walking Wombed. #1 "The Walking Wombed" at http://www.doyletics.com/images/061612vj.gif == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == 2. HONORED READERS FOR July: == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == Each month we choose to honor two Good Readers of our DIGESTWORLD from those all over the World. Here are the two worthy Honored Readers for July, 2012: Vesa Salonen in Finland Ted McGlone in New York Congratulations, Vesa and Ted! == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == 3. ON A PERSONAL NOTE: == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == Out Our Way: There's a ditty which goes, "Home again, home again, jiggity-jig!" and that's how Del and I felt back home after being away half of April and half of May on a long cruise. For me it meant getting back to my usual work of reading and writing at my normal workstation with two PC's and three monitors. When one PC is busy, I can switch to doing work on the other one. Comes in handy when doing the last stages of publication of each DIGESTWORLD issue: I can add code to the Issue on my old PC, then instantly display it on the new PC. I can crop and size photos on one monitor of old PC while coding .html on the other monitor. One result of being home for the whole month of June was that I was able to finish reading two books and write reviews for them, plus reviews for two books I finished reading while on the cruise sans a working laptop. Lots of things for my Good Readers to enjoy this month and lots of room for photographs. For easier navigation, review links in the Table of Contents will now move you to the review included in the Issue; no longer any need to scroll down to find a particular review. If you wish to read a review on-line outside the Issue, you'll find a link to take you to the Review on-line. For those who wish to print the review separately for reading, simply Click on the Book Cover and the review will open in Printable Form (PDF). Remember: if you prefer to print archived reviews, the most recent ones are available on-line in a Printer-Ready version which will minimize the amount of pages you have to print. Simply look in the upper left corner of each review and click on the Printer Ready link, if it's present. It will open a PDF version of the review which can be printed. One other change beginning this Issue will be that photos will accompany each of the five Flowers of Shanidar poems from now on; the hand-drawn flowers which mark each Chapter will move to the left of the pages. A GARDEN BOON Due to our prolonged trip, I didn't plant our usual Spring Garden, but shortly before we left a couple of cucumber and watermelon vines had begun growing and we returned home to large Washington Parish watermelons ready to eat and 11" cucumbers filling up the garden. Cherry tomato plants had spontaneously sprung up, which I staked and we began eating them in salads. The day before we left for the long cruise, our gardener neighbor Connie offered me 3 eggplant seedlings which I planted. These are now producing long, white lady-finger eggplants which are delicious and easy to peel and cook. Our LSU fig tree has given a bountiful June harvest this year, after losing its complete crop last June due to the hailstorm. We just filled a dozen pint jars with its delicious fig preserves for ourselves, family, and friends. The green onion crop did well and we dug up several bags of bulbs to plant for the Fall. Our basil and parsley plants have been reestablished and provide an aromatic beginning to any cooking in Bobby Jeaux's Kitchen.We have okra plants established for the Summer garden and expect the okra flowers and delicious pods to be producing any day now. We made a delicious Cajun Stir Fry with items from the garden, but have had to buy the okra from Rouse's Supermarket. Not anymore, we expect okra from the garden for the rest of the summer months. We have two artichoke plants growing in the Secret Garden where there is excellent drainage and expect great things from them of an edible nature. The previous artichoke plants looked great, but the water-logged soil after rains last year did them in. On the non-edible side, the garden across the front of Timberlane became symmetrical by our transplanting one of the two ten foot high palm trees from the northeast corner to the southeast corner. I wanted the palm that was closer to the house moved to keep squirrels from climbing it onto the roof. It now is situated in a new extension of the garden as far away from the house's corner as its companion is on the other corner.Del quickly added matching flowers to the extended garden space and it now looks as if the palm and garden had been there for many years. She also had the garden extended out from the Meditation Garden and new plants to bring color to that area. She and I bought and planted a new Japanese Yew to replace the shrub which had died across the back of that garden. The yews will soon form a private and shady area for the Meditation Garden. A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO OMAHA LSU's baseball team was headed to Omaha and another National Championship in Baseball, its first for this decade. It beat the Oregon Beavers in the regional playoff and headed into the Super Regional only have to wade across a Stony Brook to get to Omaha. Well, you might say they slipped and fell on their face in that brook. The first game of the playoff found LSU down by one run in the top of the 9th inning and LSU hit a home run. Stony Brook tied the game in the bottom. Same thing happened in the 10th inning and 11th inning (no homer, but a run), then the game was rained out.The next day, LSU started its best pitcher, Kevin Gausman, and the Tigers got one run in the top of the 12th inning and Gausman got the other side out. LSU wins! The next game began in 30 minutes or so and Kevin was pitching an excellent game, holding Stony Brook to only one run, until a downpour came down when Kevin was pitching and he couldn't control the wet ball and allowed two runs to score. Lacking that downpour, LSU could have gone to Omaha, skipping right over that slippery Stony Brook. One can look to an interesting parallel in the Football and Baseball seasons for the past 12 months: each team won the SEC Championship outright by having the best record in the powerful conference, but each one went on to lose a crucial game and missed the National Championship. Which leads us to those very powerful two words: Next Year! DRIVING ME MAD Yes, trying to get my driver's license renewed drove me mad this month! I was spoiled by being able to renew it every four years by mail, but this year, I had to renew it in person. I heard about an easy place to get it renewed under the GNO bridge and went there, only to find a line around the corner, so I went back home. The next day I decided to drive to the Hahnville Courthouse where I always got my license renewed while I was working at the Nuclear Power Plant nearby. It was a long drive, but one I hadn't taken in a year or so, and I enjoyed it. But a sign on the door of courthouse said, DMV moved across the street. Well, there's the River Road and two side streets to choose from, but I assumed it meant the River Road, and walked across the street. Saw a Sheriff's office, so I went in and asked for help. I saw another sign that was no help saying DMV not Here.The gal said the DMV has moved down river. "On this side of street?" I asked and got a "Yes, next to the Library", another less-than-helpful answer as the library has moved since I went to Hahnville High School, but I have never been to its new location. I began walking in that direction, past Muller's Garage, but no DMV office. Soon I was too far from my car, so I went back to get in it and drive to find the library, which I did, but no DMV. At least not at first, but I drove through the entire parking lot and on the way out, there was a DMV office with a lady standing outside. I drove up to ask her if this is where I get my driver's license renewed, but before I could open my mouth, she said, "Our cable has been cut, COX is on the way to fix it, but we can't do anything until it's been fixed." [NOTE: a few weeks later, I went to Auto Parts store which had a guy out front to tell me he couldn't sell me antifreeze because their internet was down. Maybe the transit of Venus across the Sun caused these disruptions?] So, it was a nice day for a drive, but after two attempts, I was still without a driver's license which will expire in a month or so. The run-around I was given in Hahnville reminded of a classic story of navigating in a small town that a friend of mine in New England encountered while trying to find a plant in Georgia. His instructions from a native went this way, "Go down to where the old school used to be and turn left." Yes, telling me to go where the new library is was just about as bad as that. Everybody knows where the old school used to be and where the new library is located, except a person who is not from the immediate area! There was another place located on Scottsdale Blvd where Del had gotten her license renewed, so I was determined to go there and get mine. It was only a couple of miles away, and it had not been moved according to its website. Heck, maybe even their COX cable was not broken! I decided to go there before it opened, thinking there would be no line, but when I arrived at 7:50 am, there was line going out the front door and all around the side of the building as far as I could see. For the third time, I struck out. When I got home, Del said, "I went there at 3 and there was a little bit of a line, but most of them needed to transfer titles, etc, and few needed driver's licenses renewed. So I went back at 3 and you guessed it: another line out the front door! This was a bit unbelievable, so I decided to park and watch it and soon the line had at least gone indoors. So I went in the door and discovered the problem: it was a Courtroom Building and the metal detector was stopping everyone who came into the building; after five people were in the queue, the next one had to wait outside.I went through the detector and into the DMV, got in a queue of six people to get a number to be waited on, then in about one-third of a crossword puzzle, I was called to pay for my license, get my eye test, and wait for my license to be printed. I'm good for another decade or so without having to go through this mess again. CAT & MOUSE DINNER This year marked the 12th Anniversary of the Cat & Mouse Dinner. It was begun by Russ Copping, whose wife Susan had been bugging him about why he always got to go to some Black Tie elegant dinner at Antoine's and other places in THE French Quarter, but only with the guys, while she and other wives were never invited. With this inspiration, Russ began this event. After an elegant dinner at Antoine's topped off by Baked Alaska dessert, the guys pay tribute to their wives in some way, a poem, a song, or a memory with their lady and the other assembled couples. Each June for ten years, I have challenged myself to come up with something original and this year it was a poem. Our anniversary is a few weeks after the Cat & Mouse Dinner each year, so the dinner and my poem are my anniversary gifts to Del. The hardest part is that Del is my copy-editor, but she doesn't get to read or hear this one before I recite it in public, as she does with most of my other writing, so how can I know if she will like it? Here's my poem: So Much More I wasn't looking for a friend when you came by But I have gotten so much more. I wasn't looking for a wife when I found you But I have gotten so much more. I wasn't looking for someone to cook for when I cooked that seafood gumbo But I have gotten so much more. I wasn't looking for a bookkeeper when you began doing my bank books But I have gotten so much more. I wasn't looking for a copy-editor when you first read my reviews, But I have gotten so much more. I wasn't looking for a mother for my kids when I met you But I have gotten so much more. I wasn't looking for a lifelong companion when I fell in love with you But I have gotten so much more. I wasn't looking for an equal partner when we first joined forces But if I try hard, sometimes that happens. I wasn't looking for a smile from you when I wrote this poem But it just might happen. I wasn't looking for this next stanza when I started this poem, But I have gotten it and so much more. You weren't looking for me When I wasn't looking for you But we have gotten each other — and that is so much more! It was a wonderful evening and I will share some photos of the event in this issue. When our grand-daughter Jennifer visited here, she pointed at a large watermelon and said, "That one's got my name on it!" When it came time to pick up the watermelon crop, her melon had grown quite large, so I put it aside to deliver it to her. A Thursday night would be a good time as she works at Terranova Supermarket on Esplanade Avenue, a short distance away from where we attend the Thursday at Twilight Concerts in City Park. The first week we wanted to go, we had a huge thunderstorm and decided to stay home. The next Thursday, it was gray, overcast and raining. so we again canceled. The third week, it was raining again, but I told Del, "We're going anyway. We've got to deliver the watermelon I promised to Jenny." Luckily the rain let up, but it was still drizzling when we drove up to the supermarket and Jenny was standing in the doorway talking to someone. She couldn't believe we had driven out in the rain just to deliver her watermelon, and she was really thrilled to receive it. Although we missed two Thursdays because of bad weather, we made two City Park events. The first was Bruce Daigrepont and his Cajun Band, and the second was Banu Gibson, the singer, with Connie Jones and David Torkanowski. She announced that Connie had just received an Honorary Doctorate from Loyola University. Joins Doc Severinson as a Trumpet doctor, Doc Conn-eee Jones! Connie told me that at age 82, Doc Severinson still practices his trumpet three hours a day. LAST MINUTE NOTES Del spent five days visiting with kids and grandkids in Alexandria, a few hours from here. One of the thrills for her was getting to go the Chucky Cheese for the first time. She loves the video games and you can't go in Churcky Cheese without a kid. Our grandson Thomas was also excited because his younger cousins being along allowed him to get in also. Growing pains for teenagers: no more Chucky Cheese! While she was up there, my daughter Maureen was finished with school for the summer and came to have lunch with me at Timberlane. I had some sand to give her that I had collected at her request from our trip. She didn't specify where, so I chose the sand from Mykonos on the Shirley Valentine beach from the wonderful chick flick, "Shirley Valentine" plus some dirt from the ground around Mary's house in Ephesus.We walked around the grounds of Timberlane, looking at the new gardens and picking figs. She loved the fresh figs and raved about the delicious lunch she had. We talked about the week at the beach we have planned for later in the summer in Orange Beach where all of our Matherne children and their offspring will be joining us.IMPORTANT MESSAGE: Del was having lunch one day with her girl-friends and Guntis joined me for lunch that day. He wanted to go to the Point Restaurant on Fourth Street near the Harvey Canal Bridge, my old stomping grounds, so I invited him for a short drive through Westwego, past the one house I've lived for 15 years, longer than any other home I've had, from 1940 to 1955. His lady Anne has gone to spend her summer in New England with grandchildren. Been there, done that, and I'll take New Orleans summers over New England anytime. I rode a motorcycle back in the 1970s when I lived in Foxborough, Massachusetts, and I was chagrined to find that there was not a single evening where I could ride comfortably outdoors during the summer with short sleeves on! Heck, the reason I decided to move back was not the cold winters, I loved them, but like avocado pits are too large, New England winters are too long: one February I was sitting beside a window catching some rays of the Sun when I occurred to me that it would be three months before I could wear a short sleeve shirt during the daytime! That prompted me to haul myself back to a place where the weather suits my clothes preferences, New Orleans. Yesterday morning I went outside at 6 am with a tank top on and it felt just right to have bare shoulders with a tropical breeze blowing over them. This is time of the month when I hope nothing happens for the rest of the month so I can close out my personal notes without have to add anything to them. If these notes seem shorter this month, it's because so much of my time was spent reading and writing and those activities speak for themselves without my having to mention them here. EVERY GOOD THING MUST COME TO A NEW BEGINNING, SO UNTIL NEXT MONTH For the past 30 days June has been a month of warm summer days, visits with and family and friends. The red, white, pink, and purple Crepe Myrtles trees in New Orleans are coming into full bloom everywhere. No June drought like last year so our citrus and fruit trees look to have a great year. Our Bird of Paradise plants have long, lush-green leaves and will likely bloom for the first time. For summer in New Orleans, natives have learned to wear as little clothes as possible and enjoy the cool mornings and twilight times. God Willing and the winds stay breezy and the showers occasional, we will see you next month in DIGESTWORLD. Till then, whatever you do, wherever in the world you and yours reside, Remember our slogan: Take Care of Yourself in Twenty-Twelve ! ! ! To those Good Readers who are puzzled by How the Moon could be Rising In Front of a Mountain, Click on Photo. To see 161021 photo, Click Here. ALSO: if you are puzzled because you No Longer get our Monthly Reminder, you may have Changed Your Email Address without notifying us. NOTIFY US NOW by a simple Click Here! Here's the Sting: You will NOT receive a Monthly Reminder unless you have Re-subscribed under your new address to DIGESTWORLD. If you've already receiving DIGESTWORLD Reminders, ignore this message. If you're not subscribed, and would like to Subscribe to DIGESTWORLD Reminders to receive one short email a month to inform you of the latest ISSUE, now's a good time. SUBSCRIBE NOWby Clicking Here. Yes, this message does no good to those who changed their email address without notifying me — but it can alert those of you who are going to change your address. If you've changed or are planning to change your email address, Click Here to SEND NEW ADDRESS. (Alternate way is to copy into your Browser this URL: http://www.doyletics.com/subscrib.htm ) EASE OF VIEWING NOTES: NOTE: For Internet Explorer Browsers, DIGESTWORLD is best viewed at 100% Zoom and the Window's width sized so that Digest Archives lines are single-spaced, just barely. Adjust Window width so that Mountains almost touch the Archive Numbers, especially if you find some Photos overlapping text. PHOTO CAPTIONS (CURSOR FLYOVER ISSUE RESOLVED):If you have been enjoying the photos in DIGESTWORLD, but have wondered who or what you were looking at, you will now be able to hold your cursor still over the photo and the photo's description will appear. (Test on Butterfly-Crab Image at Right.) We spend a lot of time writing these photo captions and hope you will read them. All the Archived Issues have been updated to provide descriptions when your cursor rests for a second on a photo. Note that older Reviews have not been updated. If you haven't finished reading text when description disappears, move cursor away and back on photo to finish. We thank you for your patience and hope this pleases you. Quotes Selected from quotes.htm this month: - People only pay attention to things they discover for themselves. Tony Perkins in the movie "Pretty Poison" New Stuff about Website:TIDBITS PAGES: Household Hints and Cures has a New Series thanks to Candace Reed. Check it out by CLICKING HERE! Five Flowers of Shanidar Poems, One from each Chapter: These poems are from Bobby Matherne’s 1990 book of poetry, Flowers of Shanidar. and have never been published on the Internet before. Each month this section will have five poems, one from each Chapter of the book. (Flowers drawn by Artist Maureen Grace Matherne) 1. Chapter: Hollyhocks Mendeleev did as he was able To create a periodic table. He left blank spaces for the elements And he ignored the Ph D's laments. "Dmitri," they would wail, "they just don't fit. Your table has some vacant spots in it." "Yes, I know," the table maker replied, "But by their holes, the missing can be spied." Leave blank spaces in your life: Ones not filled with toil or strife. Plan them empty without sin, Joy will come to fill them in. 2. Chapter: Hyacinths Circles of ScienceThe paradigms of science are a worthy lot They separate the wheat from the chaff, the kettle from the pot. But they are the enemy of any new idea that you've got. If Reality is formed from ideas (and few dare say that it's not) Then science is the enemy of progress The very thing that it says it does the best. 3. Chapter: Rose Mallow Dance of Energy is in the tub as I pull the plug. As she swims, the water that washes against her shell has earlier washed Against every part of my body. In the ocean is water that has washed Every part of Mother Earth's body and dissolved within itself, Evenly distributed:Silt of the Mississippi, Nile, and PoAnd when we bathe our bodies in her ocean, Minerals from the gorge of the Grand Canyon, the angular outcroppings of the young Detritus of 3 billion years of baths and showers by the Mother of Us All. we, like you, dear Ladybug, rub the molecules of our shell with molecules of our Mother's body And in the dance of molecules exchange our fields of energy. Life's what's bringing things together Life's what's pulling things apart. Babe and parents grow together Loving, nourishing each other Life's what's bringing them together. The teen goes off to college Leaving parents with an empty heart Life's what's pulling them apart. Left at home's an empty nest They re-create what they like best Life's what's bringing them together. Father gives away his daughter Into marriage at the altar Life's what's pulling them apart With his grandchildren he's a hit They love for him to babysit Life's what's bringing them together. The caterpillar is a moving warehouse Gobbling up leaves as it plows Across the tender tips leaving Barren twigs in its tenebrous wake. Green chyme fills the worm-like tube Which undulates from leaf to leaf Until the star wave arrives From a butterfly-to-be. The message is to begin to spin A chrysalis, a tomb, a womb For the butterfly seed within To sprout and grow and fend. And in the fending feeding On the dark spearmint jello Of its pendulous home Until the food is gone. Hungry, with claustrophobic wings, The flyer nibbles away The warehouse walls And blow-dries its feathery appendages. New Stuff on the Internet: - [Sent by Kristina in Australia] Get a Line on Some fun: CLICK HERE! Movies we watched this past month:Notes about our movies: Many of the movies we watch are foreign movies with subtitles. After years of watching movies in foreign languages, Arabic, French, Swedish, German, British English, Russian, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, and many other languages, sometimes two or three languages in the same movie, the subtitles have disappeared for us. If the movie is dubbed in English we go for the subtitles instead because we enjoy the live action and sounds of the real voices so much more than the dubbed. If you wonder where we get all these foreign movies from, the answer is simple: NetFlix. For a fixed price a month they mail us DVD movies from our on-line Queue, we watch them, pop them into a pre-paid mailer, and the postman effectively replaces all our gas-consuming and time-consuming trips to Blockbuster. To sign up for NetFlix, simply go to http://www.netflix.com/ and start adding all your requests for movies into your personal queue. If you've seen some in these movie blurbs, simply copy the name, click open your queue, and paste the name in the Search box on NetFlix and Select Add. Microwave some popcorn and you're ready to Go to the Movies, 21st Century Style. With a plasma TV and Blu-Ray DVD's and a great sound system, you have theater experience without someone next to you talking on a cell phone during a movie plus a Pause button for rest room trips.Hits (Watch as soon as you can. A Don't Miss Hit is one you might otherwise ignore.): P. S. Ask for Blu-Ray DVD movies from NetFlix."Albert Nobbs” (2011) Glenn Close in a tour de force performance as a lifetime waiter in a Hotel in Dublin who hopes to take a wife and open a tobacco shop. Look for ‘Shirley Valentine’ as Mrs. Baker, the hotel owner. "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” (2011) Hunt’s been a bad boy and accused of blowing up Kremlin, so IMF has disavowed him, the Russian forces are trying kill him, and a rogue Russian is trying to start WWWIII by firing a missile at San Francisco where Hunt’s wife lives. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to believe all this crap, like walking up eleven stories on the glass outside of the 120th floor, etc. "Contraband” (2012) our first 2012 movie of the year, in June, with Mark Wahlberg, starring the City and Port of New Orleans in another "this is my last job” movie, a smuggling job on a cargo container ship, netting him cocaine, 200 million in counterfeit bills, and a 140 million dollar Jackson Pollack, which customs thought was an old painting tarp! No Art-Sniffing dogs! Dark amoral movie, but gripping. "Get Low” (2009) 2nd viewing, see digest10b; Robert Duval stars as a hermit for 40 years who gives himself a funeral party inviting the whole region in order to tell his story. A DON’T MISS HIT ! "The Wizard of Oz” (1939) see also W. C. Fields wanted to play the Wizard, but kept dickering over his salary too long. Frank Morgan was chosen and played five characters, see if you can spot them. Buddy Ebsen was chosen for Tin Man and during application of aluminum dust to his make-up he was suddenly unable to breathe and took months to recuperate. The list of movies made in 1939 is incredibly long, with every title recognizable. A flawless masterpiece which never grows old. The lyricist thought of Kansas as flat and drab with the only color provided by the occasional rainbow and thus came his inspiration for the timeless song, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. I didn’t see this movie in Technicolor until I was 25 or so, kids today are lucky. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! "Meet Me in St. Louis” (1944) five years after "Oz” Judy Garland grows up and gets herself a beau in this amazing period piece about the Louisiana Purchase Centennial Fair held in St. Louis. Note how Halloween back then was TRICK only. "Hemingway” Disk 1 of 2 (1988) lives through Stacy Keach in this excellent portrayal of his life and four wives Disk 1 takes us through to Pauline. A DON’T MISS HIT ! "Hemingway” Disk 2 of 2 (1988) Hemingway moves on from Pauline, skipping one wife, to Mary Welsh. Powerful scene in which he saves her life after a miscarriage by directing a timid newbie doctor how to get blood into her veins. Unfortunately only twenty seconds of their long life in Kenya in the shadow of Kilimanjaro. A DON’T MISS HIT ! "Young Adult” (2011) is Charliz Theron’s writing genre as a successful writer who discovers you can go home again, but home has never changed and neither have you. A nightmare from which she awakes to find that all her friends have grown up back home and she has remained a young adult. A poignant look at the seamy side of success. “Alex and Emma” (2003) make a delightful pair, the writer and the steno taking dictation and giving suggestions, getting back “I’m writer, you’re the typist” from Alex. Luke Wilson and Kate Hudson aggravate each other into love, thanks to her final suggestion. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! “Jane Austen’s Persuasion” (2007) will persuade you that Austen was a brilliant novelist and the BBC does her books-into-movies the best of anyone. Anne Williams, will she get her man before someone else builds such expectations of their crowd that he has to marry that someone else. Why wait for proposal to be offered or accepted before announcing it? Was that considered old-fashioned in Austen’s day? “The Vow” (2012) Great movie! Brought back memories flooding — triggered by a woman who never regained her memories but regained her life. True story of a woman who refused to make a machine of her mind (what Petrarch said about being a lawyer) and had to do it twice before her family would allow her to become an artist. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! ! ! “My Week With Marilyn” (2011) what does a third-assistant director do? Sometimes he goes skinny dipping with Marilyn Monroe and writes a memorable tale. First movie where we get to see behind the mask of a famous movie star to the woman herself. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! ! "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" (2011) Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock are supporting staff to the young man who stars in his amazing adventure in discovering the Sixth Borough his father told him about before dying in one of the towers in "the worst day ever". It's a movie you don't want to end, so full of tender emotions and good feelings. A DON'T MISS HIT ! ! ! ! ! Misses (Avoid At All Costs): We attempted to watch these this month, but didn't make it all the way through on most of them. Awhile back when three AAAC horrors hit us in one night, I decided to add a sub-category to "Avoid at All Costs", namely, A DVD STOMPER. These are movies so bad, you don't want anyone else to get stuck watching them, so you want to stomp on the disks. That way, if everyone else who gets burnt by the movie does the same, soon no copies of the awful movie will be extant and the world will be better off. "My Father the Hero” (1994) is clueless, as is his teenage daughter; they deserve each other but not my viewing of this idiotic puerile farce. A chick flick that doesn’t click. “The Woman in Black” (2012) watching Harry Potter star, I wondered if he had his scar removed surgically. Starts off sad and ends tragically, as expected. In last scene we see Daniel Radcliffe smiling for the first time. Your call on these — your taste in movies may differ, but I liked them:"Conflict” (1945) Bogart has a perfect alibi for his staging of his wife’s death, but one tiny slip a rose to do him in. “The Station” (2001) sells gasoline and stages adventure during a snowy Polish winter with a dying gangster and a bag of money, a Keystone Kops confusion of bad guys and good guys. == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == ==Le Broussard Cajun Cottage, drawn by and Copyright 2011 by Paulette Purser, Used by Permission Merci Beaucoup to mon frere T-Paul in Opelousas for this story. == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == ==Boudreaux and Broussard worked part-time for Father Usay, the priest for Our Lady of the Sea, a small church next to the road along the bayouside, repairing the roof, painting, and cutting the grass. One week, the good Father asked the Cajun duo to put up a message on the Church Sign near the highway in front of the church. The message they wrote read: BEWARE! THE END IS NEAR! The two friends were standing up by the road admiring their work when a teenage boy drove by, stuck his head out the window of his pickup truck, gave them the one finger salute, and yelled "Idiots!” at them. Boudreaux looked at his friend and said, "Mais, w’at you t’ink dat was about?” Before Broussard could answer, they heard a big splash and they both looked down the bayou. == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == 5. RECIPE of the MONTH for July, 2012 from Bobby Jeaux’s Kitchen: (click links to see photo of ingredients, preparation steps) = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =Fruit Smoothie Background on Fruit Smoothie: One of the wonderful features of our original VitaMix is the spout which can fill a glass or two of the smoothie as soon as it is ready. Have extra fruit sitting in the fridge? Pop it into a blender with a few smoothing ingrediants and you'll be sipping cool in no time at all. Made more than you anticipated? No problem, just pour extra into ice cube trays and freeze for gnoshing on later while watching a movie. Two scooops of small ice cubes (or whatever you have) Large spoons of Plain Yogurt Strawberries, pineapple chunks, apricots, etc. Couple of teaspoons of Honey An ounce or two of orange or other fruit juice for liquid One or two fresh bananas Squirt honey over the pineapple chunks and stir around. Add one or two scoops of small ice cubes, then the fruit, yogurt and orange juice. Blend until smooth, then pour into glass ande enjoy. If any left over, pour into ice cube trays and freeze for later enjoyment. One tray as shown fills two tumblers. Allow to sit for about 15 minutes, then it will chop easily with a fork and can be eaten easily for a late night treat in the summer time. == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == 6. POETRY by BOBBY from Three Lectures on the Mystery Dramas: = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Karma SpinsKarma spins in World becoming How our lives in one life lives. How we live and have our being In this one life that we live, Spinning knots from out of threads Forming lives from living circles Weaving one life where it leads To where this karma lives in us. On the shore the waves are lapping In my soul a tidal surging Overwhelms me from within Tossing threads of karma flying. All my threads become as glimmer Beings — each one quite unique — Theodora as a seeress seeing Reveals to us what humans seek. With so much light upon the shore A light pours out from in my soul, Kindling my own karma as it crosses With the karma of the world. With the wings of love I journey On my way to higher worlds, With the morning star to lead me With the blazoned flag unfurled, My spirit eyes which should awake Spirit lay as seed within me And I this deed of heaven take As my awaited destiny. A clever cat with crass eclat Spins endless tales of everyday And out the dross of nighttime’s hat Extracts the truth of spirit’s way And finds that bridge that leads Along the spirit's hidden way From human thoughts to living deeds From nighttime dreams to light of day. == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == 7. REVIEWS and ARTICLES for July: = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = And for my Good Readers, here’s the new reviews and articles for this month. The ARJ2 ones are new additions to the top of A Reader’s Journal, Volume 2, Chronological List, and the ART ones to A Reader’s Treasury. NOTE: these Blurbs are condensations of the Full Reviews sans footnotes and many quoted passages. 1.) ARJ2: Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer’s Craft by Brooks Landon Why am I reviewing my first Transcript Book? Over the past twenty years I have continued my college education, expanding it from Science into the Arts side of Arts & Science with the help of the Teaching Company's courses. They have allowed me to study with eminent professors from Cambridge to Iowa without having to travel long distances to do so, but I did leave home for the lectures because I chose to listen to these audio tapes and CD's in the comfort of my Maxima automobile over its fine Bose sound system. After I retired in 1995 to begin writing full-time, I enjoyed being home all day, writing and reading at my leisure on things I was interested in, and soon I was publishing books and creating a website. In 1998, my daughter Maureen invited me to attend graduate courses on Education with her at the University of New Orleans where she was working on her Ph. D. Over a couple of years, I received credit for courses, in College Curriculum, College Teaching, etc. and enjoyed being back in college. Maureen and I would meet at PJ's Coffeeshop near the campus and her friend Mary, taking the same class as we were would join us for a latte and some discussion of the upcoming class or the term project we were collaborating on, and then we would drive together in one car to save on the auto registration fee. The double latte would keep me bright and awake during the three-hour lectures which were interesting and exciting enough without the coffee, but I came to enjoy PJ's lattes. After Maureen moved on into Statistics and Administration courses, I stayed home to work once more. But I noticed that during those long days at home, with my wife still working away from home full-time, I missed the Break Room which we had at all my previous jobs, a place where I could get up from my desk, walk over to a place to get coffee and interact with co-workers who might be taking a break at the same time. As fun and free as it was working at my own pace at home, I decided it was time for me to find, to create my own Break Room, and that turned out to be our local PJ's Coffeeshop, about 20 minutes drive from my desk. It was at this time, that I began ordering Teaching Co. courses and listening to them on my way to PJ's for a coffee break. During a round-trip to PJ's in the morning, I could get through one complete lecture or so of whatever course I was taking. Over the past dozen years I have bought and listened to over 60 Teaching Company lectures.(1) One could say that I used to go to PJ's on my way to college and now I go college on my way to PJ's. Through all the courses, I absorbed the information verbally and rarely had to open the small Summary Book of each lecture, mostly I did so for spelling of unusual words and places, or to look at diagrams and maps. If I wanted to refresh my memory, I would re-listen to the lectures, which has also proved helpful in a few cases. About five years ago, I noticed that the Teaching Company was offering Transcript Books, a complete transcription of the lectures. When I ordered a second copy of "Building Great Sentences" I was offered the Transcript Book for half-price, and I accepted it, thinking this was a course that I wanted to re-study the way I do books, and that means writing a review of it after reading it. A few words about the lecturer, Professor Brooks Landon, Ph. D., professor of English at the University of Iowa: he is a delight to listen to and the information he presents is congruent in both content and process: if he is discussing the virtue of cumulative sentences, he will be speaking in cumulative sentences as well as offering outstanding examples of other writers doing so. He demonstrates, lecture after lecture, that he has mastered the content he is presenting and is able to demonstrate his mastery in his own speaking and writing. And a few words about the Transcript Book format: each lecture begins with the summary of the lecture in the Summary Book that comes with the CD and then is followed by full lecture. My quoted passages may thus come from either and not noted which. His summaries are as brilliant as his full text, but shorter, more concise. And a few words about how my taking Landon's course has change me: I came to realize that my writing style was better suited for scientific writing than literature: I was as if still in the hobbles of high school English. The marvels of cumulative sentences that he unfolded to me opened my eyes to the possibility of writing a narrative of events, invoking emotions, feelings, and anticipations of readers, pulling the readers into a new reality, grabbing their attention, keeping them rapt in breathless anticipation. And that previous sentence would have been impossible for me to write absent Prof. Landon's lectures. The good professor was not presumptuous with his title "Building Great Sentences", nor with the subtitle "Exploring the Writer's Craft". The writer's craft is constructed of sentences, no matter what form it takes or what subject it handles. Annie Dillard once told a person who asked her if he might become a writer, "I don't know. Do you like sentences?" [page 2] "This is what I mean when I call myself a writer," writes novelist Don Daylily, "I construct sentences." If you don't like sentences, you will be bored with being a writer in short order. If you love sentences, they will become objects of affection: you will play with them in sometimes endless combinations, petting them, coddling them, ruffling their feathers, scalping them, marching them, etc, until at last you find a living sentence that cannot be further improved, up until now. I add that last phrase, because a written sentence can be improved by the next person who reads it; an assiduous writer wants to be that next person. For myself, after I have written a long review or essay and have turned it over to my copy-editor, the best part is yet to come: the phase of writing that I, after Annie Dillard's lead, call "Playing with Sentences". This phase begins with gestation, which I see as a process of forgetting, forgetting that these words I am about to read were written by me, a process which can happen overnight, but usually three or four days is better. I begin reading the piece of writing as if someone else wrote it, and I find kinks in the wording, a better way of saying the same thing, a new word order, phrases that are redundant, typographical errors, and an amazing zoo of weird animals that have filled my writing. I tackle the zoo by keeping the animals I like and releasing back into the wild of the Text Sea(2) those I dislike. This might seem like drudgery to many writers, but consider how often you read an article or a passage in a book in which you think you could have written it better than the author: Well, here's your chance to do exactly that! Since I am also the publisher of my work, I have the ability to publish my writing on-line at any time in the process of writing and revision. Since I currently average about 3,000 readers a day of the material on my website, as soon as I publish something on-line, some of those readers may be reading the new material, and that thought creates in me the impetus to re-read the material on-line as soon as possible and go through another level of playing with sentences! Catch that crazy aardwolf roaming in one of my sentences and toss her out before some strange reader catches sight of her. Don't you know about the promiscuous habits of the female aardwolf? One never knows where its offspring might emerge into sight and turn a readable sentence into a risible one. Okay, all you writers and wannabe writers out there, Raise your hand if you like dealing with grammar! Hmmm, can't see any hands going up — makes sense to me, because grammar ain't no fun, no how! If a centipede tried to parse the order in which his legs move, he could never advance a centimeter, and a millipede nary a millimeter. Parsing, graphing and analyzing sentences is about the boringest job imaginable. Grammar to sentences is as important as learning to pedal a bicycle, how to start it going, and how to stop it safely, but one soon forgets the grammar of bike-riding when the cool air is blowing past your face and shoulder, and thus should it be for a writer. Grammar is important for stopping and starting parts of a sentence, but concentration on grammar will not allow you to create breezy sentences that cool and delight your readers. Professor Landon recognizes this and focuses on rhetorical aspects of sentences rather than grammatical aspects. If you wish to learn about how to create sentences that live, he will help you. [page 3] We will learn how what is generally referred to as a sentence's style results from the strategies it employs for combining its underlying ideas or propositions. Accordingly, our goal will be to learn everything we can about how the sentences combine ideas. Understanding how sentences put ideas together is the first step in understand how they do things, the ways in which they work, the way they present information, and the ways they unfold their meanings — and to learn how t make them work for us. . . . Because our concern will be with how sentences work, the terms we will use will be rhetorical rather than grammatical, terms that help us understand how sentences move, how they take steps, speeding up and slowing down, how make us feel, rather terms that label the parts of sentence much as we would label the parts of dissected — and quite dead — frogs. This means that we will study the sentence as a thing in motion, a thing alive, considering the strategies that give sentences pace and rhythm, particularly the duple rhythms of balance and three-beat rhythms of serial constructions. If you are looking for someone who will teach you how to write correctly or fix some problems you have in your writing, Professor Landon is not your man. [page 8] In other words, this is a course in which we will dance with language, not a course in which will trudge toward remedial correctness. This is a course designed to help you write better sentences. Write better sentences using the moves and strategies of the cumulative sentence as "employed by professional writers and best understood in terms first laid out by composition theorist Francis Christensen back in the 1960s." (Page 8) Writing better sentences will often include writing longer sentences than you ever wrote before, and this may seem strange to you at first, until you notice the power that a well-constructed cumulative sentence can bring to bear when describing a narrative situation in particularly. [page 10] Listen to Joseph Conrad's elegantly balanced and extended sentence describing a native woman in the "Heart of Darkness", and I love this sentence, "She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress." Gertrude Stein was a master craftsman of words and sentences, often writing sentences longer than a page. Here is a passage from her book I read back in 1984 in which one of her most memorable phrases appears. You likely have heard it, but perhaps never in its original context. These are some of her shorter sentences, but one can see the master at work. [page 218 from How to Write ] It is natural to suppose that a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose. It is as natural to suppose that everything is why they went. It is also as natural to suppose that they might be inattentive when they had aroused what was why and when it could be lost. Where could it be lost. It is natural to suppose that because inadvertently they were obliged to be careful they might be nearly very often very well inclined to like and admire it here. On page 39 of the same book, Stein begins her chapter "Arthur a Grammar" with this sentence, "Successions of words are so agreeable." In her entire book, there appears to be not a single question, merely declarative statements and sentence fragments. A sentence fragment is a succession of words that is agreeable. Her book How to Write breaks nearly every rule of sentence construction I was taught in high school and college. On pages 11, 12 Landon offers nine ways Stein might have written her saying using sentences and questions, but none of them got close to her "Successions of words are so agreeable." Nevertheless he distills an important point from her writing. [page 11] "Why should a sequence of words be anything but a pleasure?" is a saying attributed to Gertrude Stein, and certainly the sequences of words we identify as sentences are capable of providing pleasure, just as surely as they are capable of conveying crucial information. Sometimes the most important information sentences convey is pleasure, as they unfold their meanings in ways that tease, surprise, test, and satisfy. Sometimes the way sentences unfold their meaning is the most important meaning they offer. To be a writer, it seems to me, is to understand that a succession of words may be agreeable while offering either pleasure or displeasure, something Gertrude Stein famously understood. To be a writer is to understand what a proposition is and when a succession of words contains one. Landon understands this well, and I very much appreciate his sharing that understanding with me. What I got from his exposition is that the sentence is the visible piece of writing , like the part of iceberg sticking out of the seawater, and the proposition or propositions are the underwater and invisible pieces of the sentence, often not visible and not written out. A simple sentence such as this: "The Titanic sailed." brings up all kinds of hidden meanings we call propositions, very much as the short biblical passage, "Jesus wept." is more that a description of a man weeping. [page 12] I like to think of the written sentence as the part of the iceberg you see above water, while many of it underlying propositions remain out of sight underwater. To put it another way, propositions are the atoms from which the molecule of the sentence is constructed. The above passage inspired me to write a litany of propositions, each line is short, but the propositions embedded in each one can create juxtapositions which range from mundane to humorous to nonsense. The writer writes the words and the reader reacts to the propositions which arise within while reading. What is a Writer? A writer is: A blacksmith of words A mason of phrases A builder of sentences An architect of books A plumber of meanings An electrician of shocks A painter of adjectives Dali depicting dripping metonymy Monet painting pools of similes Magritte scratching scrimshaw of metaphors Picasso penning blockheaded verse Da Vinci creating a TV Dinner Michelangelo painting a Cistern Beethoven composing Be Bop Mozart reciting the rosary Bach eating a Zweibach Arnold Palmer playing Putt-Putt Jack Nicholson playing Jack Nicholas Bogart making a double-bogey Tiger losing his balls in the Woods A lion tamer going wild Fred Astaire taking boxing lessons Esther Williams learning to tap dance Busby Berkeley repairing kaleidoscopes Noah opening a zoo Moses learning to read Bobby writing propositions. Want to be a writer? My advice is this: Become sentence acrobats swinging on a star, leaping from one clause to another, Flying mast-over-beam, mid-air, with Your only net the moist ground below Your only tent the night sky above, Navigating without maps, Hope as your only compass. On page 42, Landon offers us a sentence that is jampacked with propositions with the base clause coming first, "He drove the car carefully, his shaggy hair whipped by the wind, his eyes hidden behind wraparound mirror shades, his mouth set in a grim smile, a .38 Police Special on the seat beside him, the corpse stuffed in the trunk." Then he shows in succeeding pages the effect of moving the base clause through the middle of the sentence all the way to the end, "His shaggy hair whipped by the wind, his eyes hidden behind wraparound mirror shades, his mouth set in a grim smile, a .38 Police Special on the seat beside him, the corpse stuffed in the trunk, he drove the car carefully." Note the different in tone of the each possibility of sentence structure, all of which are under the selective eye of the writer. But the first sentence form was the one that Landon liked, the surprise of the corpse in the trunk coming at the end. He says "even Professor Strunk suggests, 'The proper place in the sentence for the word or group of words that the writer desires to make the most prominent is usually the end.'" During my training in the 1980s for certification as an NLP Practitioner, we were asked to learn the 32 kinds of presuppositions that Bandler and Grinder outlined in the Glossary of their book, Structure of Magic, in 1975. They explained how presuppositions represent hidden propositions lying dormant in the visible statements that one makes and how one must be ready to identify them when in they appear in clients' statements about themselves. For example, a young girl in therapy opens her statement to Dr. Milton Erickson, "My mother got pregnant out of wedlock, and here I am." Two simple statements, but fraught with propositions about the girl's life and the problems she was currently experiencing. Landon says, " 'I like hamburgers' expresses a thought, but what exactly do I mean by like?" Or what kind of hamburgers, perhaps? A recent movie was named "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle" — its droll title calling up any number of propositions about hamburgers because of the hamburger chain named White Castle is famous for its hamburgers. The entire movie can be understood like a long suspended syntax sentence with the base clause of "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle" and which sentence is only fulfilled when the two buddies wind up after many adventures in a White Castle outlet to order their hamburgers. Landon uses the word form as I use the word process, thus the form of a sentence, to my way of understanding it, is the process one goes through in reading or hearing it. It is a live process which everyone does for oneself in a unique fashion and creates the variety of responses that different people have to the same writing. Landon claims that "form is content and style is meaning", and he explains it this way: [page 17] Another way of looking at this assumption — that form is content, style is meaning — is to say that when we write, we are doing something with our sentences, and what we do unfolds in time, whether to our readers' eyes or ears. The summarizable or paraphrasable information conveyed in our sentences is only a part of their meaning, since what they do to a reader, the way they direct the reader's thinking and unfold information, may be as or more important than the information they contain. A process is something which only unfolds in time; content is something which is frozen in time. Process is a territory; content is the map of the territory. As Alfred Korzybski famously claimed and proved to be so in his General Semantics, "A map is not the territory; it cannot represent all the territory." If we summarize, we create a map of a process thereby squeezing the life out of the process all the while pretending that we have allowed the reader of our summary to have the vital information of the original. But the very vital, living portion, of the original will likely be in the exact order of the words used in the original and the living effect it has on people reading it. That is why I chose to emphasize Gertrude Stein's original words, "Successions of words are so agreeable." She apparently, so far as I can discover, did not write her thought as this question, "Why should a sequence of words be anything but a pleasure?" (3) but instead wrote a concise declarative sentence about the subjective agreeable effect that a succession words can have on one; whether or not one's succession of words describes a pleasurable or painful event, one can still find the succession of words agreeable. This aspect of living meaning is the reason that one quotes the direct words of an author whenever possible and distinguishes one's own paraphrasing from the author's original words. On page 23, Landon quotes John Steinbeck's memorable passage about the Mexican sierra, a fish which will challenge all the strength and wiles of a fisherman and has XVII-15-IX spines in its dorsal fin. One can only count those spines on a dead sierra, however, not on pulsating, thumping fish which lands on board, flashing its colors in the Sun. Spines are content and the live sierra is process. Summarizing a sierra's fins may have a content and scientific value, but the process of catching a live sierra is lost thereby. Sentences are like the live sierra, they thump and pulsate, and our heart thumps and pulsates when a sentence grabs us and won't let go until, exhausted, we come to its end. [page 24] Sentences are alive. We experience them in time, and we react to them unfolding as they twist and turn, challenging us, teasing us, surprising us, and sometimes boring or confusing us as we read them. Accordingly, whenever possible, I will use terms in this course that focus on the sentence as a thing in motion, an experience, something with which we form a relational reality when we read, rather than as something stiff and lifeless, whose parts can be counted or named. . . . I see this distinction as primarily between viewing the sentence as a grammatical phenomenon or as a rhetorical phenomenon. To put it simply: grammar deals with content; rhetoric deals with process. Both are important to a sentence, but unfortunately the way English is taught in most places focuses mostly on grammar (content), ignoring the much more difficult aspect of rhetoric (process). Content can be taught, but process can only be learned. Landon equates grammar with the counting of spines on a dead fish (Page 30) and rhetoric with "the best ways of getting and holding attention with language, and shaping that attention to achieve particular outcomes." (Page 31) Rhetoric is like landing a lively sports fish, cleaning it, and preparing an elegant and tasty seafood dish with it, such as Pampano en Papillotte. Does Prof. Landon suggest that we all write longer sentences? No, he does not. [page 25] It's far easier to remember the term simple and direct as a summary of Jacques Barzun's advice in his Simple & Direct: A Rhetoric for Writers than it is to remember simple does not mean simplistic, direct does not mean short, and simple and direct does not mean that we should write like Ernest Hemingway in a hurry. Instead he calls for sentences to be as long as the sentence demands for its fullest understanding, and one can be sure that if one writes a long sentence that is interesting and cannot be easily summarized, that Prof. Landon would likely approve of the sentence. [page 25] Accordingly, one of the assumptions shaping my approach to teaching writing is that unless the situation demands otherwise, sentences that convey more information are more effective than those that covey less. Sentences that anticipate and answer more questions that a reader might have are better than those that answer fewer questions. Sentences that bring ideas and images into clearer focus by adding more useful details and explanation are generally more effective than those that are less clearly focused and that offer fewer details. In practice, this means that I generally value longer sentences over shorter sentences, as long as the length accomplishes some of those important goals I've just mentioned. Landon doesn't mince words when it comes to the definition of style, but rather gives us a short one that anyone can remember, "Style is what the writer writes and/or what the reader reads." He adds, "That's about as inclusive a definition of style as one can get." (Page 32) His definition focuses on style as process: what the writer writes — what the reader reads. Yes, content is important, but without style, few will read it. Landon chooses(4) the final sentence of Joseph Conrad's The Secret Sharer to illustrate a cumulative sentence in which the base clause is in the second position and fourth position (involving the narrator seeing white hat), but the sentence encapsulates the entire story into one sentence. [page 47 The Secret Sharer] Walking to the taffrail, I was in time to make out, on the very edge of a darkness thrown by a towering black mass like the gateway of Erebus-- yes, I was in time to catch an evanescent glimpse of my white hat left behind to mark the spot where the secret sharer of my cabin and of my thoughts, as though he were my second self, had lowered himself into the water to take his punishment: a free man, a proud swimmer striking out for a new destiny. We can almost hear the music swell as Conrad's narrator marks the departure of Leggatt, whom the narrator has helped escape formal trial for a murder at sea, having decided that Leggatt's action was justified by an extreme set of circumstances, an early brief for situational ethics. Landon loves cumulative sentences — as he explains: [page 49] I like everything that a cumulative sentence does, from the way it allows us to add detail or information to a base clause, to the way its distinctive rhythm calls attention to the sentence as a thing in motion, making it particularly effective for capturing actions. It's no accident that sportwriters and writers of hardboiled detective stories use cumulative syntax for all its worth. Here is a suspensive syntax, cumulative sentence describing two real events which happened to me, the second event about ten years after the first: I began to write a suspensive syntax sentence describing a peaceful Easter Sunday morning, one I remember well, the walking outside early to fetch my newspaper to read while drinking my first cup of coffee to be poured shortly from the pot brewing in the kitchen, everyone in the house sound asleep, my wife in our bed, our daughter and her three small children in the guest room and living room, the baskets lovingly prepared and left by the Easter Bunny gracing the buffet a few feet from where three angelic faces were smiling on air mattresses on the floor, my oyster-dressing stuffed turkey newly placed into the oven, the shrimp-stuffed merlitons, green bean casserole, and pecan pies, all in a state of readiness for a grand family meal in a few hours, given no unforeseen circumstances such as the drain pipe from the water heater dripping water, which I noticed as I turned in the breezeway, requiring immediate attention, leading me to run up the steps into the attic to troubleshoot the dripping, which I soon discovered to my chagrin, came from the leaking heater and which I figured might be stopped by tightening a faucet but instead the faucet shot out of my hand, flying across the top of the living room, unleashing a continuous half-inch stream of scalding hot water in its wake with my only recourse to divert the hot water into the drain pan with my foot insulated from the heat by the sole of my deck shoe and to attempt to shut off the water, only the shut-off valve was unreachable without removing my foot, and I began screaming loud enough to waken the dead, or at least fetch my sleeping wife to the ladder to the attic, where I could request she immediately shut off the main water valve, but before I could complete my suspensive syntax sentence, my wife came into our cruise ship stateroom to ask what I was doing. As a writer of poetry and prose, I appreciate Landon's including this passage from Josephine Miles' 1967 book Style and Proportion: The Language of Prose and Poetry. [page 61, Miles] While every few feet, verse reverses, repeats, and reassesses the pattern of its progression, prose picks up momentum toward its forward goal in strides variably adapted to its burdens and purposes. Both use steps; neither merely flows; each may be perceived and followed by its own stages of articulation. Landon introduced me to Ursula Le Guin's fine book on writing, Steering the Craft which I then bought, read and reviewed in 2009. He notes her advice on the virtue of long sentences which end with this quote on page 40 of her book. [page 71, Le Guin] Teachers trying to get school kids to write clearly, and journalists with their weird rules of writing, have filled a lot of heads with the notion that the only good sentence is a short sentence. This is true for convicted criminals. He offers us, however, a caveat about constipated sentences with clauses so crammed together that one cannot pull any sense out of them. Here's one example of such a sentence, followed by its version loosened up by Landon. [page 73] It is encouraging to note the progress made by beekeeping to meet the challenging times, particularly in connection with the difficult problem of pesticides as they relate to the keeping of bees in the highly cultivated areas where bees are needed for pollination. If your eyes glazed over reading that sentence, so did mine — unfortunately I used similar writing structures when I was writing for scientific publications in my youth. Note the improvement after he administers a cumulative dose of literary Ex-Lax: [page 74] Beekeeping is making encouraging progress, responding to challenging times, facing challenges such as the difficult problem of pesticides, the problem being to keep bees in the highly cultivated areas where bees are needed for pollination. Landon excavates John Erskine's contribution to the cumulative sentence, his 1946 essay, "The Craft of Writing". Here's Landon quote of Erskine: [page 89, Erskine] Let me suggest here one principle of the writer's craft, which though known to practitioners I have never seen discussed in print. The principle is this: When you write, you make a point not subtracting as though you sharpened a pencil, but by adding. When you put one word after another, your statement should be more precise the more you add. If the result is otherwise, you have added the wrong thing, or you have added more than was needed. As a wood sculptor, artisan of a craft which proceeds by subtracting, I can see now that writing is more like clay sculpting which proceeds by adding and adding until you achieve the precise result you desire with your sculpture. Here is another quote from Erskine that is insightful, the concept of a noun as a trailer hitch, what you add to the noun is like what you hook onto a trailer hitch determines what kind of activity you are going to participate in. [page 89, Erskine] What you wish to say is found not in the noun but in what you add to qualify the noun. The noun is only a grappling iron to hitch your mind to the reader's. The noun by itself adds nothing to the reader's information; it is the name of something he knows already, and if he does not know it, you cannot do business with him. The noun, the verb, and the main clause serve merely as a base on which meaning will rise. The modifier is the essential part of any sentence . . . In practice, therefore, the sentence proceeds from something the reader may be expected to know already toward whatever new thing we wish to tell him. we proceed by addition. Here is a sentence I most admire, written by Landon, illustrating in process what is being discussed in content, a cumulative sentence written to describe the virtues and structure of cumulative sentences while demonstrating an effective example of a cumulative sentence in itself. [page 102] The cumulative is, as Francis Christensen suggested, a generative syntax in the sense that it encourages writers to add information to their sentences, relying on free modifying phrases after the base clause, each new phrase a step forward for the sentence, each new phrase sharpening the sentence by adding new details or offering clarification or explanation for propositions advanced in the base clause or preceding modifying phrase. Cumulative sentences can consist of coordinate modifying phrases and subordinate modifying phrases. The example Landon gives below consists of subordinate and coordinate modifying phrases, he shows the subordinate phrases by (2), (3), (4), and (5) and the coordinate phrase by repeating the number like this (2) (2). [page 133] (1) Cumulative sentences can take any number of forms, (2) detailing both frozen or static scenes and moving processes, (2) their insistent rhythm always asking for another modifying phrase, (3) allowing us to achieve ever-greater degrees of specificity and precision, (4) a process of focusing the sentence in much the same way a movie camera can focus and refocus on a scene, (5) zooming in for a close-up to reveal almost microscopic detail, (5) panning back to offer a wide-angle panorama, (5) offering new angles or perspectives from which to examine a scene or consider data. If you have any doubt about whether your cumulative sentence works, read it aloud is Landon's prescription. You'll know because if works, the gyroscopic action of the sentence will keep it in balance; your eyes will see the pretty picture the content portrays and your ears will hear and you will feel the balance of the gyro-action. Here's a masterful paragraph by Landon in which he uses the hand as a simile for the cumulative sentence, using a cumulative sentence to do the heavy lifting. Note the variation in size of his sentences. [page 163] We should think of cumulative form much as we think of the human hand, which functions in an infinite number of ways, depending on what we need it to do. Sentences are like hands. we use both to meet the needs of particular situations, and the point is almost never how we label or classify either our sentences when we set them to particular tasks, or what a hand does when we use to point or pick up or squeeze or gesture or sort or hold, or do any of the infinite number of tasks a hand routinely performs. the point is simple to get the job done. Are you a writer or a security camera? I admit that I began as a security camera, simply recording events I saw as accurately as possible. It worked for my scientific writing, but reporting on a meeting of our Lockheed Management Club, which was a congenial get together with a guest speaker, I needed to put some feelings and some fun into the report. Writing up those meeting blurbs for our monthly newsletter became fun for me and I looked forward to the opportunity. [page 191] One of the most important assumptions of this course is that the most effective prose establishes a relationship between writer and reader. That's a relationship between two people, two distinct personalities. If our writing doesn't offer some glimpses of writers as personalities, it's hard to say that it has a style, much less that its style will appeal to readers. As I noted in the last lecture, if our writing displays no more of the way we think, the ways in which we process information, than does objective technology, such as that we might find in a security camera at a convenience store, it probably doesn't matter that what we write accurately records and reports information. That's the difference between a writer and a security camera: The security camera only records what takes place in front of its lens, while the writer thinks about, reflects upon, forms opinions about, and frequently comments on what he or she is writing about. One form of objective technology which has become popular is YouTube which provides a security camera view with audio. It has its place, but it cannot take the place of writing because the videos cannot provide what the actor or subject is thinking about, reflecting upon, forming opinions about while being recorded, something in the purview of every writer. I think that Landon has hit on the primary reason why all the jazzy Internet media have not reduced the popularity of magazines, those colorful shiny objects you can handle and open up to find filled with opinion, insightful reflections, informational commentary, and delightful stories. In fact, from what I hear the popularity of magazines have increased since the advent of the Internet! Alan Turing proposed a way of determining if computers have reached the level of human intelligence: we interact over a keyboard (like via email) and if we determine by the answers coming back that a human being is on the other end, but it turns out to be actually a computer, then computers have reached the level of humanity. I once proposed that a computer writing poetry was no big deal, but if a computer could select great poetry, that would be a big deal — those automatons we call computers would have reached the level of humanity. Unless we write like a human being, including some of what we think, feel, or have opinions about, we might as well be an automaton, because we have lost the essence of our own humanity. [page 192] The style of our writing is determined by a huge number of variables, but one aspect of that style should always be that our writing present us as individual consciousnesses, as personalities who process the information we pass on in our writing, rather than as automatons who only record, report, or summarize information, as if it were being spewed out by a machine, or even worse, by a committee. Now, in a transcribed lecture, one might expect to find a typographical error due to a phonological ambiguity, but this one is so droll that it deserves special mention. First, the passage as printed and spoken: [page 196] Some cumulative sentences place a second-level modifying phrase just after the first clause in a compound sentence and just before the second clause, as in this sentence from E. B. White:They damned the falls, shutting out the tide, and dug a pit so deep you could look down and see China. Did you pick up the typo? If not read the above passage again. If this was being transcribed by an automaton, like Dragon Naturally Speaking, a Word Perfect product that I fought with years ago before giving up on it, the typo would be natural: it's due to the phonological ambiguity of dam and damn. It's just a damn typo! Or a dam typo! Clearly E. B. White didn't said that damning the falls would shut out the tide. Blame the damn automaton or an inattentive copy-editor who should have caught the transcription error. Every now and then a marvelous phrase comes along which rolls off the tongue and tickles the fancy, and Edwin Newman, the droll and learned television commentator and writer came up with this one, "microcluster of structured role expectations." Here it is in context: [page 244, italics added] And Edwin Newman also utilizes this two-sentence suspensive patter to powerful effect in his essay on viable solutions: The day is not far off when someone about to join his family will excuse himself by saying that he does not want to keep his microcluster of structured role expectations waiting. True, I came upon this gem of social-scientific jargon in London, but that only shows how far our influence has spread and how determined the British are to join the Americans at the kill when the English language finally is done to death. My wife and I have four offspring each from our first spouse. Each set of four offspring bring with them, singly or en masse, a unique microcluster of structured role expectations and God help the step-parent who unwittingly transgresses upon one of those! In the various chemical, manufacturing, and power plants where I worked, we shortened the process of stepping out of bounds of a microcluster of structured role expectations, by calling it a cluster-f---k. This phrase brought a sense of levity to the chaos and helped those of us involved to maintain a degree of sanity, which we might else have lost. When building suspensive sentences, one should be aware of what Mark Twain said about German in a speech: [page 257, Mark Twain] A verb has a hard enough time of it in this world when it is all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between those two limits they just shovel in German. All the English courses I took gave explanations of how to use colons and semi-colons, but none of them were very useful to me as a writer, but finally, after Lecture 16 of Professor Landon, I got it: Use colons to perform the magic trick that you built up to, but which no one expects. Use semi-colons to build up to the final trick; like in joke-telling where everyone expects a joke to end in a punch line; the build-up happens in-between, separated by semi-colons; then following the colon: the punch-line! Balanced sentences, we recognize their power when we read them, but may not recognize them as part of the form called balanced sentences. [page 283] A balanced sentence hinges in the middle, usually split by a semicolon, the second half of the sentence paralleling the first half, but change one or two key words or altering word order. In this sense, the second half of the sentence can be thought of as a kind of mirror image of the first half, the reflection reversing the original image. Balanced sentences really call attention to themselves and stick in the mind, drawing their power from the tension set up between repetition and variation. Here are some practice balanced sentences I wrote to get familiar with the form: Did I write this sentence, or did it write me? Much as he wrote the sentence, the sentence wrote him. Try to write the sentence; it will then write you. Write if you will, and will if you write. And a short poem this meditation inspired: What Is It To Be A Writer? To write sentences To forge them in the fires of will To ink them upon a page To abandon them to the surprise of unsuspecting readers. Parallelism is another form in sentences, and I am delighted to discover that faulty parallelism escapes the notice of computerized grammar and style checkers as pointed out by Landon here: [page 294] In similar fashion, The Little, Brown Handbook (5th ed.) Offers this restrained and somewhat redundant definition: "Parallelism matches the form of your sentence to its meanings: when your ideas are equally important or parallel, you express them in similar, or parallel grammatical form," and it offers the understated example, "The air is dirtied by factories belching smoke and vehicles spewing exhaust." The only advantage for parallelism cited in The Little, Brown Handbook is that "it can work like glue to link the sentences of a paragraph as well as the parts of sentence," and it devoted equal attention to warning that computer grammar and style checker "cannot recognize faulty parallelism" because they "cannot recognize the relations among ideas." This last caveat should cool the ardor of Artificial Intelligence fanatics who claim computers will come to be as smart as a human being, a goal as outrageous as it would be to claim humans will come to be as smart as God.(5) [page 299] One of the best-known examples of the balanced sentence comes from John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address: "Ask not what you country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." The double beat or duple rhythm of balanced form may derive its almost visceral power from the basic lub-dub beat of the human heart; the double words and forms of the balanced sentence derive their power an ability to stick in the mind from a mirroring effect that asks not what we can do with balanced form but what balance forms do to us. In Kahlil Gibran's book, Mirrors of the Soul (published 1965, 1915 translation) in Chapter 8 "Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You," there is an Essay titled "The New Frontier" which contains the following two passages: [page 60, 61 Gibran] There is in the Middle East an awakening that defies slumber. This awakening will conquer because the sun is its leader and the dawn is its army. In the fields of the Middle East, which have been a large burial ground, stand the youth of Spring calling the occupants of the sepulchers to rise and march toward the new frontiers. . . . Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country. For President Kennedy's Inaugural Address, his speech writer apparently borrowed the Essay title for the theme for Kennedy's presidency, The New Frontier, and slightly reworded this wonderful parallel construction for his famous imperative statement "Ask not what you country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country" which is remembered and attributed to Kennedy, up until now. Landon introduced me to William Gass's On Being Blue which I quickly acquired and reviewed. He said, Gass writes sentences that "do things, they are alive, are closely tied to the body's basic rhythms, and, when in the hands of a masterful writer, can be taught steps that dance across the lips and across the page." I will include the last half of the long two-sentence paragraph of Gass's that he quotes below: [page 333] . . . blue is the color of the mind in borrow of the body; it is the color consciousness becomes when caressed; it is the dark inside of sentences, sentences which follow their own turnings inward out of sight like the whorls of a shell, and which we follow warily, as Alice after that rabbit, nervous and white, till suddenly — there! climbing down clauses and passing through 'a-n-d' as it opens — there — there — we're here! . . . in time for tea and tantrums; such are the sentences we should like to love — the ones which love us and themselves as well — incestuous sentences — sentences which make an imaginary speaker speak the imagination loudly to the reading eye; that have a kind of orality transmogrified; not the tongue touching the genital tip, but the idea of the tongue, the thought of the tongue, word-wet to part-wet, public mouth to private, seed to speech, and speech . . . ah! After exclamations, groans, with order gone, disorder on the way, we subside through sentences like these, the risk of senselessness like this, to float like leaves on the restful surface of that world of words to come, and there, in peace, patiently to dream of the sensuous, imagined, and mindful Sublime. Professor Brooks Landon is not offering rules for writing, but suggesting what rules we should follow and which rules we should not follow, and should is too strong a word for his suggestions, as he gives us many options to choose from, such as: writing style should be what Richard Graves suggests, "a way of finding and explaining what is true.” [page 380] I mention all of this as a background for my heartfelt reminder that these lectures are investigations, interrogations, explorations, and celebrations of the sentence and of prose style. They are not meant as a verbal textbook that sets forth yet another set of guidelines or rules for good writing. So much that is wrong with writing instruction is wrong because a single person's beliefs have somehow been elevated to ex cathedra pronouncements and passed along from teacher to teach and from teacher to student through generation after generation, without ever being challenged, without ever being tested against experience, without ever really being though about. In these lectures, I have tried to do some serious thinking about the received truths that have so largely guide dour efforts to teach writing. So what is style? Richard Graves says that the purpose of style "is not to impress but to express," which seems to me a common foible of writers at an intermediate stage of learning to steer their craft. If a writer can learn to avoid the extremes of technique, somewhere along the way one's own voice will begin to appear and others will call it a style. Style is ultimate gift which keeps on giving, as Landon explains below: [page 387] As Lewis Hyde has so brilliantly explained the process of gifting in his The Gift, most indigenous peoples believe that the essence of gift-giving is that the gift must remain in motion — that it must keep moving as it is given again and again, passed from hand to hand. In this important sense, style is indeed a gift that keeps on giving just as it is a gift that can and must be passed along. A popular expression "re-gifting" has arisen, as if we should acknowledge that we are passing along a gift we previously received from someone else, all of which is unnecessary if we rightly understand the gifting process as a living process which continues indefinitely. Brooks Landon's lectures and writing are a wonderful gift which I am honored to have a chance to offer as a gift to others. May you study his work in detail and pass it along to others as well. ---------------------------- Footnotes ----------------------------------------- Footnote 1. The first courses I bought on Video Tape, but soon found that I preferred audio format because of the convenience of listening in my car. Only once since did I buy a course on DVD, because it was only offered in Video format, but after 5 or more years, I have only watched about 10% of the course. Return to text directly before Footnote 1. Footnote 2. A marvelous concept created by Jasper Fforde in his Thursday Next novels. See The Eyre Affair which started the fun. Return to text directly before Footnote 2. Footnote 3. I suspect, but have no proof, that this question was a summary made from memory and not a direct quote from Gertrude Stein, and that the original quote was "Successions of words are so agreeable." Return to text directly before Footnote 3. Footnote 5. Anyone who claims humans will become able to write computer software to recognize the relations among ideas, in my opinion, does not have ideas worth relating to each other. Return to text directly before Footnote 5 Read/Print the Review at: 2.) ARJ2: The Neuroscience of Psychological Therapies by Rowland W. Folensbee Genetics is the science of the acquisition and transmission of physical body traits, and has as its basis the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, and neuroscience. Doyletics is the science of the acquisition and transmission of physical body states, which has as its basis the same fields, especially neuroscience, which led me to study this new book by Rowland W. Folensbee. The advances in neuroscience should sustain the insights, theory, and predictions of doyletics, if doyletics is to have any credibility as a science, and if not, one can throw doyletics into the trash-bin of history with other pseudo-sciences which flourished for a time and faded away. Folensbee is interested in how the insights of new advances in neuroscience could help us to understand and improve psychological therapies. [page 1] Knowledge of brain structure and function has developed rapidly in recent decades; accompanying this increase in knowledge has been the rapid development of our understanding of how brain function relates to human behavior. The roles of specific areas of the brain in specific types of cognitive and emotional processes have been delineated and the complex patterns of interaction between specific areas of the nervous system required for thought and behavior have been increasingly well identified. Processes at the molecular and cellular levels and their relationships to memory, cognition, and affect have been described with increasing clarity. The biological underpinnings of specific psychiatric and neurological disorders have been outlined, and these findings have directly led to improvements in medical, psychological, and behavioral interventions for the various disorders. The science of doyletics has therapeutic applications, but the science of doyletics provides insights to areas of human health and well-being which have never been considered part of any psychological therapy, providing insights into periodic illnesses, periodic muscular discomfort, as well as specific diseases such as rashes, sea-sickness, and shingles, among other things. The areas to which the field of doyletics can provide help are expanding every year, the most recent being the understanding of the etiology of Post-Traumatic-Stress Disorder (PTSD) and how to provide relief for its sufferers. For over fifteen years, I have been developing the science of doyletics which is devoted to providing a simple self-help memory technique to provide oneself relief from onerous and unwanted physical body states, as well as providing the underlying scientific basis of all psychological therapies. The title of this book claimed to explain the neuroscience of psychological therapies, and if it did so, it would provide evidence for the groundwork I laid with the science of doyletics, the science of the acquisition and transmission of physical body states, or doyles. Folensbee's book does exactly that, albeit using other technical terms to do so, but if one aligns the terms, one finds that this book supports the theory of doyletics over the decades. The science of doyletics would not have been possible without the splendid insights and hard work of Doyle Philip Henderson some forty years earlier. The first insight he came upon after a lifetime holding the unanswered question, "What are emotions?" His answer was that "Emotions are recapitulations in adulthood of early childhood events."Doyle was a pioneer in digital electronics design for Berkeley Instruments, and his instrument-design expertise led him to see that feelings, the physical body states which arise in the present, must have been stored in early childhood and triggered by the present situation. From his initial insight he began a life-long study of how to help people remove unwanted bodily states (feelings, emotions). His first methods were long and tedious, requiring a session director to place clients into a state of progressive relaxation and direct them backwards in time to the original event during which the unwanted bodily state was stored. In these often hours-long sessions, Doyle would have the person go down in stages to before the original event and then in stages after the original event, each time noting the presence of affect as the original event was evoked. Sometimes the reactions of the client were violent, a man kicking a hole in the wall, a woman vomiting in Doyle's mouth as he kissed her to evoke the unwanted bodily state. Each time he cycled around the original event, he would have them re-relax and eventually the reactions tapered off until they disappeared entirely. Over twenty years of doing this work, Doyle noticed that if a person were taken back below five years old, the unwanted feelings never returned, but if during the session the person was only taken back to 6, 7, 8, 10 or 15 years old, the unwanted feelings would return. He noted experientially that there was a dramatic difference which occurred at the time of five-years-old, a boundary of a sort. In the theory of doyletics we postulate that the human brain has a way of storing physical body states in the root brain, an ability which precedes by aeons the higher level of cortical memory which we have currently. These physical body states we call, after the innovator, doyles, and say that they are stored in doylic memory(1). Whenever some portion of an event's doylic memory occurs in the present, the full doylic memory of an event enters in the human's body, bringing with it a complex of bodily states, some of which we will be conscious of because we can feel them, others of which we may not be aware of because they involve internal changes in the homeostasis of our bodily organs and muscles. Whether we are aware of these changes or not, if we are conscious of the any of the effects, we have the option to extirpate the unwanted bodily states by a Speed Trace. The Speed Trace is a simple memory technique which is easily learned and can be utilized whenever an unwanted bodily state occurs. What does a Speed Trace do? Simply this: it converts the doylic memory into a cognitive memory, quickly and easily. We call it cognitive memory to contrast it from the doylic memory which is non-cognitive, residing as it does in the root brain, while cognitive memory resides in the cortical region of the brain after being passed through the hippocampus. One may say that a Speed Trace extirpates unwanted bodily states because after a successful Speed Trace the bodily states will not recur when submitted to the same stimuli. For example, seasickness, once a Speed Trace is done, will not return. One can say that the Speed Trace converts an unconscious bodily state into a conscious memory of the original event which stored the bodily state. One often gets a glimpse of the original event immediately when a Speed Trace is done, a dim vision of the event or perhaps a question arises in one's brain which offers a clue to the original event. Whether the conscious memory comes or not, the bodily states will disappear. The occasional recovery of conscious memory of an original event provides useful confirmation to otherwise skeptical users of the Speed Trace. In his Introduction Folensbee claims that in his experience, the range of technical details of connecting brain and behavior is too vast to be grasped by clinicians. In my experience, these same details can be explained to laypersons quickly and simply by using the terms and concepts of doyletics. [page 1] The host of advances in the understanding of connections between the brain and behavior can support psychotherapeutic conceptualization and intervention (e.g. Cozolino, 2002; Pliszka, 2003). However, it is the author's experience that the vastness of the relevant literature combined with the complexity of the relationships between brain function and behavior, affect, and cognition serve to preclude the use of such understanding by many practicing clinicians. The terms alone are frightening: dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, superior temporal gyrus, ventricular epithelium. The steps and interactions in the brain comprising so basic a task as focusing attention (Posner & Raichle, 1994) can leave a clinician feeling hopeless in regard to ever understanding enough about the brain to apply such information to clinical intervention. During discussions with fellow clinicians, a moment of early interest seen in a colleague's eye quickly glazes over, turning into blank dullness reflecting a brain that has escaped from a task that seems impossible and therefore irrelevant. Folensbee would be surprised how easily the average layperson is able to use the Speed Trace unassisted to achieve permanent relief, without even understanding the scientific basis of doyletics, much the complex menagerie of terms Folensbee uses in the above passage and in his book to describe the neuroscience of psychotherapy. Folensbee makes two statements that I would like to discuss: [page 1, 2] This book has emerged from the author's experiences as a clinician struggling to grasp the implications of "the brain" for psychotherapy intervention. . . . Neuroscience has become one of the primary tools in the author's clinical armamentarium. Any clinician who wishes to understand "the brain" can do so in minutes by studying the theory of doyletics which explains the how original events are stored as doylic memories, and learning to use doyletics' Smart Bomb, the Speed Trace, which converts doylic memories into cognitive memories (implicit memories into explicit memories). The Speed Trace provides an individual (and any clinician) with a quick and easy method of removing their own (or a client's) unwanted bodily states without having to ever understand the complexities of neuroscience nor explain them to their client. Interested clinicians can spend years studying the complexities of neuroscience at great time and expense, or spend minutes learning the Speed Trace at little time and no expense. One of the phenomena discovered by doyletics was that of cascading doyles, in which one doylic memory triggers another doylic memory and a continuing sequence occurs like in an avalanche(2). Cascading doylic memories were described back in 2000, and Folensbee describes how neural networks (such as one containing a doylic memory) can cascade into each other: (Page 19) "Shared neurons lead one network to trigger another." Another phenomenon of doyletics stemmed from persistent concerns that users of the Speed Trace have voiced over the decades, "Can one trace away a good doyle?" They wanted to know if one were doing a trace while feeling good, would the good feeling doyle also go away. From long experience with tracing, my own and many others who have written me, not once has anyone reported tracing away a good doyle. My understanding of this situation is this: bad doyles can be stored by one event, but good doyles are constantly reinforced by hundreds or thousand of events, so it follows that good doyles would be more robust than bad doyles and not susceptible to being traced away. Folensbee puts it this way, using neuroscience to explain what doyletics has found to be true experientially. (Page 19) Through repeated experience, synapses that connect various neurons in the network are altered to fire more readily, thereby tying together the pieces of the network. It also appears that connections between neurons of a frequently triggered network are strengthened through the development of an increasing number of synapses connecting each neuron to the others. A doylic memory can be triggered by the slightest sensory input initially and as additional inputs arrive, the doylic memories can home in on a particular good feeling state, e. g., a smell of leaves and a view of a Fall sunset at age 3 years old, might lead to one cherishing a memory of one's girl friend on a similar day while in college, and even decades later that doylic sequence could bring up that vivid memory. [page 19, 20] For example, input consisting of the smell of autumn leaves combined with the golden glow of the sun at a certain angle can trigger a complete neural network that supports a 30-year-old memory of a college football game shared with a girlfriend wearing a unique brown woven vest. When events happen to us before five years old, they are most often stored as doylic memories (implicit memories) in the amygdala because the pathway through the hippocampus to the cortical region is not fully operational. The amygdala acts as subcortical storage and any events stored there will continue to feed up doylic memories for the rest of one's lifetime, unless removed by some tracing process. Joseph LeDoux did his major work in this area and reported it in his classic book, The Emotional Brain, upon which much of the theory of doyletics was based. [page 21] Neural networks are likely to be connected by way of multiple pathways. Some pathways are likely to include areas of the cortex that are available to conscious processes, while other pathways are likely to be through subcortical tracts that offer little likelihood of being consciously identified. LeDoux (1996) conducted research with rats that helped identify a subcortical neural pathway between auditory receptor cells and the amygdala, which houses a primary center in the brain for processing fear. It was originally believed that auditory input must pass from auditory receptors through the auditory processing center in the cortex and then to the amygdala in order for fear learning to be established. LeDoux first trained rats to expect electrical shock whenever a bell sounded. Later, all connections between auditory receptor neurons and the cortex were cut. Experimental rats continued to respond to a bell with signs of fear after the connections were cut. It was discovered that this response remained due to the activity of a previously unidentified subcortical pathway. If a human subject experienced the same removal of cortical connections after developing a classically conditioned association between sound and shock, the subject would continue to demonstrate fear when the bell sounded; however, the human subject would report being baffled regarding why the fear was occurring. Such a fear response to sound might then remain unexplained no matter how many years of psychoanalysis the subject subsequently obtained. In a human being who was classically conditioned to a fear response before her cortical connections were completely functional, i. e., before five years old, that fear response would continue to plague her into adulthood. The sound of a man whistling in the dark to cover his abusing of a four-year-old girl would continue to send the girl, even though grown up into a 60-year-old woman, into a spasm of terror(3). In LeDoux's work, once he disconnected the amygdala surgically from his rats, the fear response completely disappeared. Of course, all fear responses disappeared and that would not be useful for helping human beings. A memory technique which selectively removes the fear response by moving the doylic memory from the amygdala into the cortical region would be very useful, because the implicit memory would be converted into an explicit or conscious memory. That is what various psychotherapies do, but often requiring years of psychoanalysis, etc. The Speed Trace provides a simple memory technique which can extirpate such memories in minutes and does so permanently. Neuroscience helps us to understand the flashback phenomena associated with PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. [page 23] During a flashback the visual system is activated as part of the traumatic memory and, as a result, the visual system is not available for use in reception of new visual input. Neural networks associated with the memory of a traumatic event include a high level of emotional intensity derived from emotion centers in the amygdala (LeDoux, 1996; McGaugh, 2004). This intensity gives "power" to the flashback, and this power effectively prevents frontal lobe executive centers from intentionally using the visual system to process current input. As a result, a client may experience a temporary inability to see the external environment even though frontal, decision-making areas of the brain are attempting to override the control over visual processing exerted by the powerful flashback. If a client understands the reason he cannot see the therapist while experiencing the flashback, the likelihood that the client will view himself as "crazy" will be lower. The above analysis seems to neglect that a flashback is a flash, not a continued image, so if one is unable to see one's surroundings for a period longer than an instantaneous flash, it must be due to the effect of the emotional intensity which prevents one from recording a continuous visual image during the event, allowing only an occasional flashback to be stored. This seems consistent with the revelation that a flooding of glucocorticoids during trauma disables the hippocampus temporarily, thereby preventing conscious recollection of events during the intense extent of the trauma(4). But notice that visual recording by the cortical region is not possible during the original event, something not mentioned in the passage above, something which prevents conscious recall, making the event into an implicit memory instead of an explicit one. Implicit memory we have postulated is identical to doylic memory, and we know from experience that a Speed Trace can convert doylic memory into regular memory, meaning that it can therefore convert implicit memory into explicit memory and allow recording of the visual portions of the original event by the cortical region of the brain, absent the flooding of glucocorticoids into the hippocampus which prevented the recording and conscious recollection during the original traumatic event(5). [Page 29] Memory can be defined as the process whereby "knowledge is encoded, stored, and later retrieved" (Kandel et ai., 2000a, p. 1245). On its surface, such a definition hints the brain is a static recording device waiting to take in and store the input offered to it. This is not the case. Instead, the brain interacts with the environment, including the external world and the person's own body, in multiple dynamic ways and changes form in response to these interactions. The form the brain takes subsequently influences its interactions with the environment in the future. Stated another way, "Memory is thus the way the brain is affected by experience and then subsequently alters its future responses" (Siegel, 1999, p. 24). Psychotherapy can be viewed as a process of recognizing how the brain has been shaped by its past and then applying this recognition to develop better ways to use the brain in future interactions with the world. In the first paragraph of his Chapter "Memory and Learning" above, Folensbee summarizes how memories shape the brain and the importance of finding better ways for the brain to interact with the world. My own summary sentence would be written about the Speed Trace, because that is exactly what it does: provides the brain a better way to interact with the world after some traumatic event has prevented the conscious portion of the brain from storing and dealing directly with an event, whether an unpleasant event or an illness before five years old, or an intense traumatic event at any age thereafter. The science of doyletics has explained how the myriad of psychotherapies work and can replace them by a simple memory procedure that anyone can do for themselves. In addition doyletics postulates that the amygdala functioned as the original storage area of the brain before the evolution of the cortex, providing primitive Man with the ability to have limited memories and a full-range of emotions until such time the cortex arrived to provide a full-range of conscious memories(6). Those of you who lived through the evolution of personal computers will recall the days of the floppy disk, the clunky, slow, and low-storage devices which constituted the only method of storage on the first PC's. With the advent of hard disk drives, the old floppy disks were copied to the hard drives, and only called out if the hard drive failed, as an ultimate backup system. It seems that our amygdala acts as such a backup system for our cortical region. Until our cortical region is fully operational at five years old, all memories and emotions (bodily states) are stored in the clunky amygdala, but after five years old, all memories are stored in the cortical regions so long as the hippocampus is able to provide the connection. If, as in intense trauma, the hippocampus is flooded with glucocorticoids and unable to pass memories to the cortical region of the brain, the amygdala steps in and goes into its original mode of operation under five years old and begins recording the memory and emotions, storing new emotions never before experienced. There is a problem with the following sentence on page 31, "When two neurons (A and B) both enervate a third neuron (C), the process of long term potentiation can in effect form a bond between them even though they are not directly connected." The verb enervate does not mean to energize or activate, but means exactly the opposite; it means weaken or destroy the vitality of. Enervate is the wrong word to use in that sentence, so far as I can tell — both from the context within the sentence and the context in the paragraph surrounding the sentence, an error which can only be attributed to the author and to the copy editor. No computerized grammar or style checkers can catch an inversion of meaning. This next passage is very useful because it shows that the neuro-chemicals which disable the hippocampus’s ability to create cognitive (explicit) memories are the same neuro-chemicals which turn on the amygdala’s ability to store doylic (implicit) memories. Simply put, when stress causes the hippocampal function to cease passing cognitive memories to the cortical regions, it causes the amygdala to begin storing doylic memories, thus revealing the backup mechanism we discussed earlier. [page 37] Research indicates that development of associations between events and emotions is an example of non-hippocampal learning based on simple pairing, even in the absence of awareness and insight. LeDoux (1996) described the process whereby in the presence of severe trauma, the hippocampal system ceases to function effectively, that is, aware learning and memory is disrupted. However, he indicated that memories associating fear with incoming sensory information are made even stronger by the same neuro-chemical events that disrupt hippocampal functioning. The result is that a subject can learn to be afraid of something without being consciously aware of the experience that is being learned. There is the control mechanism I had been seeking which allowed the brain to move to its backup "floppy disk" when the primary "hard disk" was deactivated! The same neurotransmitters(7) which deactivate the hippocampus (hard disk) activates the amygdala (floppy disk). The effect is to ensure that some record is made of every event, even events that are so intense and traumatic that the cortical region will never receive notice of them due to the temporary non-functioning of its gatekeeper, the hippocampus. The gatekeeper does this by shutting down conscious memory and opening up doylic memory. When the newest type of brain storage, cognitive or conscious memory, is not available, the older type of brain storage, doylic or implicit memory, is made available. After the traumatic event is over, the hippocampus begins to work normally again, and the doylic or implicit memory begins to bleed through to consciousness in brief glimpses we call flashbacks. These flashbacks indicate the need for converting the intense terror (doylic memory) into cognitive memory, something a Speed Trace can accomplish. How does the Speed Trace accomplish this? By holding the mild doyles (which will later cascade into intense terror) while counting down one's ages from the present age, eventually one will go past the age at which the intense terror occurred, but this time the hippocampus will be working normally, and it will send up to the cortical regions the cognitive memory which it had been unable to send during the traumatic event's time of intense terror. Folensbee calls doylic memory and cognitive memory "two forms of learning", something I think is unnecessary, but I share his terms so that the next passage will make sense to the Reader. [page 39] The lack of synchrony between these two forms of learning can be very distressing for clients who believe that continuing to have maladaptive emotional reactions despite the presence of insight to the contrary is evidence of the severity and permanence of their pathology. The lack of synchrony leaves clients feeling very out of control of themselves in a basic way that threatens self-esteem and positive identity. This lack of synchrony, when seen from the perspective of doyletics, indicates the need for a Speed Trace. When one performs a successful trace, one holds the unwanted "emotional learning", i.e., doylic memory, while counting down one's age from the present until one goes below the age of five, called in doyletics, the Memory Transition Age. Somewhere below that age, one will be unable to hold onto the unwanted implicit memory because it will have been converted into an explicit memory. At that point, if the tracer asks, "What's a plausible thing that could have happened to me at that age?" often a dim vision or some auditory information, perhaps as a question, will happen. In various ways, different for every trace, a hint as to what happened will be revealed to the tracer. What was implicit will be made explicit. What was a doylic memory will be made a cognitive memory. The lack of synchrony will disappear, and the person will be in balance again, possessing new information about past events and no longer beset by the onerous doylic memory. When one is empowered by having the Speed Trace available, one welcomes the very signal that one previously called "being out of control" because one has a way to remove the signal, the feeling, the emotion, the acting out, etc, by a Speed Trace, and as such one never feels out of control. Contrast that with the reactions to the same situation to a person who has never heard of the Speed Trace. [page 42] To the conscious brain using declarative or narrative processing, it is difficult to explain how the brain arrived at the subsequent impulse. Too often, the impulse expressed in the emotion may run counter to the declarative, logical decision a person may make. As a result, emotions are experienced as out of control. The Memory Transition Age of five years old was arrived at through many years of tracing. This is the age one can be sure that, if one went below it during a Speed Trace, one would be able to permanently erase a doyle, that is, convert it into a cognitive memory. From numerous reports, many people have conscious memories which go back before five years old, so the hippocampus gateway is working part-time as early as three years old(8). When any system comes on line, often parts of it work before other parts and the system itself operates in some cases and not other cases. The memory system of which the hippocampus is a part operates that way, and this results in some cognitive memories being stored before five years old. In the passage below, the concept of infantile amnesia, first postulated by Freud, is a misnomer because even infantile brains have permanent storage of implicit (doylic) memories. The infantile amnesia concept has been useful because over the years since Freud posited its existence, it has provided data about the onset of explicit (cognitive) memories. The phrase long-term memory is also a misnomer as it can be applied both to explicit hippocampal memory and also to implicit (doylic) memories. Doylic memories can be stored for a lifetime, if not traced away. Given those stipulations, note how neuroscience sustains the doyletics postulation of a Memory Transition Age (before which no cognitive memories are saved), but neuroscience moves it a year or two lower, in ignorance of the MTA’s efficacy in a Speed Trace. [page 43, 44] The concept of infantile amnesia discussed in Chapter 4 is particularly relevant to understanding early affect-laden memories. Long-term memory storage that includes hippocampal memory systems does not come "on line" until around the age of 3 or 4 years old because the neural substrates required for such memory have not yet developed (Squire et al., 1993). A child's memories of emotional experiences during the first 3 or 4 years of life are therefore implicit memories, and it is unlike an adult can have direct, conscious awareness of these events. Applying LeDoux's reasoning regarding early memories in general (1996), it seems likely that conscious awareness of early sensory memories and connected affect stored during these early years may sometime be established as a newly constructed "memory of the memory". As with other early memories, it seems likely that early emotional memories will not be the same as memories of initial experiences stored using hippocampal systems later in life. Over decades, we have recommended to newcomers to doyletics that they begin their first Speed Trace using a food dislike. Why? It is easy to trigger, it is easy to hold the doylic affect in place during the trace, and it is easy to confirm after the trace that it was successful. Unfortunately we have also found that most people have lost childhood food dislikes by the age to 40 to 50. I recall a food dislike that I had for macaroni and cheese, I would go to bed hungry if that was all that was served for supper, as it sometimes was. As I went away to college, I avoided macaroni and cheese easily, but noticed that there were some cheeses that I liked, and some macaroni that was tasty, so I wondered why the combination would seem so distasteful to me, so about age 26 or so, I would eat a bit of macaroni and cheese at pot luck dinners and found I no longer had a dislike for it. After working in doyletics theory and research for several years, I began to wonder about how that dislike went away "by itself" — meaning without my doing a Speed Trace on it. I remembered spending time thinking back to times when I had macaroni and cheese placed in front of me, but nothing came to me, so far as I knew. After becoming aware of how common the loss of food dislikes is with advancing age, the thought came to me: Perhaps other people also figured out how to do this process on their own. Perhaps they did traces down their ages, somehow getting back below the Memory Transition Age while thinking of the distasteful food and managed a successful conversion of the distaste reaction (the implicit memory) into an explicit memory, and thenceforth could eat the disliked food, as I could with macaroni and cheese. These traces could be called unconscious Speed Traces, as they were done without being conscious of the procedure but achieving a successful trace anyway. Psychoanalysis does a similar thing as it winds back into client's lives and after many sessions clients declare themselves cured because they have finally recalled what happened to them — this is a true statement, but the cause and effect is reversed: they cured themselves via an unconscious Speed Trace and immediately afterwards were able to recall what had happened to them. The recall came from the process of converting an implicit memory into an explicit or declarative memory, a doylic memory into just a memory. Once no longer an implicit memory, the hangup, the unwanted feelings, disappeared, and instantly they were able to remember what had happened. [page 44] The amygdala and emotional processing seem likely to serve a central role in the unfolding activation of neural networks. Within the context of psychotherapy, it therefore seems likely that attending to and influencing emotional activity can support understanding of a client's history while also facilitating positive change. The lesson from this book is that neuroscience is discovering how early life experiences are stored in the amygdala and are fed back to the human being as they grow into adulthood. Unfortunately the focus of the author is on the narrow field of psychotherapy while a vast area of implications of these new findings in neuroscience await to be discovered and investigated that fall outside the purview of psychotherapy. For example, Doyle Henderson mentioned to me over fifteen years ago that what doctors today called illness or disease are usually what would be better labeled healing states. Some bacteria or virus or poison enters the body and the body immediately activates healing states to combat the foreign agent. Chicken pox virus, for example, enters a young boy of 4 years old and immediately he breaks out in spots all over his face and body.The disease is the virus, not the spots — however, when we say he has "chicken pox” we think of the spots which are actually the body’s way of healing itself, those healing states. Why do I emphasize healing states? Because they can be stored as implicit or doylic memories! And once stored, they can be re-activated later without there being a virus present because the healing states are stored in the same amygdaline region of the brain where other emotions, feelings, and bodily states are stored. If this process is understood, one can deduce that this young boy will be subject to shingles when he gets above the age of 50 or so. Doctors like to claim it is the chicken pox virus which causes shingles, and that the virus lies dormant, but consider this way of thinking of it: it is the healing states of chicken pox which lie dormant and recur at a later date as shingles. If this were so, it should be possible for a Speed Trace to remove the scourge of shingles quickly and easily, and this has indeed happened and is reported here: http://www.doyletics.com/shingles.htm There is another deduction one could make about a boy who had chicken pox above the Memory Transition Age (5): he would never have shingles! Why? Because no more implicit memories were being stored when he had chicken pox and therefore the healing states were not stored doylicly. The chicken pox, rightly understood, can never recur, but its healing states, if stored doylicly, can recur later in life as shingles. At age 72, I have never had shingles and expect not to have them. Why? Because I loved school from an early age and began school at the age of 7 in the First Grade. Chicken pox was the only childhood disease where I was allowed outside during its course. I could see my Elementary School through the back fence of our yard, and I recall hanging on the fence looking at it, wishing I could be in school. This indicates to me that I likely had chicken pox above the Memory Transition Age and will never have shingles. Another childhood disease is Red Measles. I had that as a child, probably under age 5 as most children do. At age 35, I was living in New England and came down with Red Measles, something that is not supposed to happen a second time. I thought I had some flu perhaps and my local GP gave me some medicine, but I only got worse. My eyes were light-sensitive and I developed red spots on my chest. I went back to the GP and he sent me to an internist. The doctor examined and excused himself, and a few minutes later I saw him with his colleague looking up something in a large medical dictionary in the hallway — I became very worried. The doctor came back in and said, "Don't worry. It's rare to see a case of Red Measles in an adult, so my partner and I had to look it up to be sure. Go home, stay in dark room and you'll be fine in a few days." Naturally I called my mother to ask her if I had the Red Measles as a child, she raised 6 children and would know it was that kind of measles. She said, "Yes." If I had been aware of doyletics at the time, I would have asked her how old I was, if I were in school when they happened. I didn't ever find out, but I probably would have remembered if I had to stay in bed and not go to school, and I had a near perfect attendance record through school. What happened? Am I saying Red Measles can recur, in violation of medical expectations? No, what I think happened was that the healing states of Red Measles recurred by virtue of my having had them before the age of 5. Many problems were going on in my life, and that enforced week at home allowed me to observe them, so there was a good outcome from the appearance of those healing states. My wife would have a severe bout or two of bronchitis once a year, usually around the same time of year. One year, after working on the concept of healing states, I suggested that she do a Speed Trace on the bronchitis symptoms. She did, and when the symptoms went away at age 2, she saw herself under a white tent. Later she asked her mother if she ever had bad bronchitis and found out that at age 2, she had bronchial pneumonia and the doctor and nurse had to construct a temporary humidifier tent using a white sheet over her bed. Those healing states stored at age 2 would return around the anniversary of her serious bout and since that one trace, she has not had recurring problems with bronchitis again, the yearly bane has gone. One more story on healing states, as I think this is one aspect of doyletics which medical science can learn from. My first-born child, my daughter, was the first of my children to learn the Speed Trace, and one year in mid-January we dined together for her birthday dinner. She said her shoulders had been hurting her, and they seemed to do so every year around this time. Having discovered from my wife's annual bout with bronchitis that healing states can be periodic, I suggested that she do a Speed Trace on the pain in her shoulders. I heard back from her the next day that her shoulders were feeling better since the trace. We deduced that the pain in her shoulders occurred as she went through the birth canal and was stored as a doylic memory which came back each year around her birthday. Some 12 years later the pains have not returned. [page 59] It is now recognized that a child's brain functions much differently than does an adult's brain, but often the extent and nature of the differences between the adult's brain and the child's brain are not fully appreciated. Adequate appreciation should include recognition that children's brains absorb, perceive, process, and respond to experiences in ways that are different from the processing in adult's brains. Adequate appreciation of differences should also include understanding that much of the information held in the mature, adult brain was taken in and integrated when the brain was much less developed and, as a result, much of the information on which the adult brain relies for processing current experiences is immature in structure and activity. In summary, we have learned from this book that much of our adult experiences stems from events stored in our childhood as implicit or doylic memories and recapitulated in the present. In doyletics, we do not consider these recapitulated experiences as immature, but rather as the holding onto the only form of memory the brain could store at the time of the event, namely amygdaline storage of bodily states of all kinds, waiting for such time as we discover them to be inappropriate or unwanted as an adult, at which time we can trace and erase them, converting them in the process into explicit or cognitive memories in the upper cortical regions, turning them into declarative memories that we can discuss. In doyletics, we have a motto which answers the many questions we receive from new users, "Is this something, I can trace?" and that motto is: When in Doubt, Trace It Out! The only thing you have to lose is the unwanted doyles which are troubling you. Doing a Speed Trace is equivalent to asking your own body, "Is this a doyle?" If the answer is yes, it will go away; if not, it is not a doyle or the trace can be tried again later. Why use the Speed Trace instead of other some psychotherapy? The Speed Trace is not a psychotherapy, and if one feels they need a psychotherapist, they should find one. The Speed Trace is a memory technique which works on all kinds of bodily states, many of which one would never go to a psychotherapist to be rid of. I had one such bodily state since I was a two years old. Whenever I went to the beach and laid supine on the sand without an umbrella or roof over my head, I would feel as if I were beginning to fly off the Earth. It was irrational and I had learned to control it simply by keeping my eyes closed if I were on my back on the beach. Several years after learning to do the Speed Trace, I was on a beach with my wife, she was asleep on the blanket next to me, and I was on my back and looked up and felt the weird sensation of flying up. I immediately tested it for being a doyle by closing my eyes and it went away. I knew it was a doyle, an implicit memory, so I opened my eyes and with the proprioceptive sensations firing off which were so scary to me, I began the quickest Speed Trace I ever did and when I arrived at the age of 2, the sensations disappeared and have never returned in the ten or so years since. I asked myself, "What's a plausible thing could have happened to me at age 2?" and got a glimpse of me as a young boy of two being tossed face up into the air by my dad or uncle while at the beach. That was the explicit memory created by the Speed Trace when it converted the implicit memory of flying into air in a simple cognitive and declarative memory. Never would I have ever thought to mention this to a psychotherapist, but it was an irrational stored memory of my childhood which my brain held for me until I was able to convert it into a declarative memory. In pointing out the difficulty of traditional means of psychotherapy, Folensbee writes: [page 126] Finally the slowness of change in procedural connections has the potential to result in the client giving up when change is not quickly forthcoming. Awareness of how declarative systems can influence procedural systems can offer encouragement and structure that support continuing participation in activities likely to lead to positive change in the long run. Thus, while establishing new connections between declarative memory processes and the old procedural memory is not likely to immediately eliminate maladaptive emotional responses or behaviors, engaging the declarative processing systems offers multiple ways to begin to effectively facilitate positive change. This is definitely a declarative mouthful and must make sense on some level, but what I know from personal experience is that many of the people who gave up after years of frustration and lack of success with such approaches have come to learn the Speed Trace and solved their problems by removing "maladaptive emotional responses and behaviors" on their own by doing Speed Traces. ---------------------------- Footnotes ----------------------------------------- Footnote 1. The term doylic memory refers to what is labeled implicit memory by Folensbee and others. The term cognitive memory is the same as explicit memory.Return to text directly before Footnote 1. Footnote 2. Details on cascading doyles can be found in several places on the website by using any of the Google Search boxes on any Review or DIGESTWORLD page.Return to text directly before Footnote 2. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Return to text directly before Footnote 3. Footnote 4. Reported by Dr. Robert Sapolsky in his Lecture Course, Biology and Human Behavior, 2nd Edition, The Teaching Co.Return to text directly before Footnote 4. Footnote 5. The other important implication is that doylic memories can be created above 5 years old, if and only if they occur during a traumatic event. This capability was postulated by Doyle Henderson's friend and associate Clovis, who reported suffering from doylic memories recurring after he was hit by a lightning bolt.Return to text directly before Footnote 5. Footnote 6. From page 42, "There is evidence that suggests it is reasonable to conceive of the affect system as an early, primitive form of information processing and memory that now works both independently and in conjunction with the newer hippocampal memory system (LeDoux 2002; MacLean, 1990).Return to text directly before Footnote 6. Footnote 7. The particular neurotransmitter appears to be noradrenaline, per page 43, ". . . when stress is chronic, or when the stress reactions becomes extreme, as in the case of trauma, the higher noradrenaline levels lead to reduced functioning in the hippcampus while facilitating processing with the amygdala." Return to text directly before Footnote 7. Footnote 8. Three years old is the age at which the brain reaches full-size, almost doubling in weight after birth. From then on, few neurons are created, but the interconnection of neurons begins apace, making possible the storage of cognitive memories in the cortical regions of the brain. Return to text directly before Footnote 8. Read/Print the Review at: 3.) ARJ2: The Leopard, A Novel by Jo Nesbø Fans of The Snowman will be delighted to find that Harry has crawled out of his Hole and returned to Oslo to track down another serial killer. Victims are found to have drowned, not in water, but in their own blood. As we discover, most of the deaths could be categorized as either murders or suicides. A bloody mess awaits our hero as he is dragged away from his penurious existence in Hong Kong, where he bet everything he had and didn't have on a horse-race and his debtors must be paid off to secure his release to return to Norway. Katrine Bratt from The Snowman returns to serve as Harry's computer search expert, but must do so while she is in locked in a mental institution. The police in Oslo have paid for Harry Hole's return and assigned him a dungeon (abandoned prison) and a couple of people to help him, but a fight is underway between the official government police and the private firm hired to do police work, and there seems to be a leak between the two competing organization which makes Harry's already impossible task a lot harder. No one can establish a connection between the first two random killings, except the pattern of death, when suddenly a prominent member of Parliament is murdered similarly. The tracks lead to an isolated alpine resort where eight people were together at one point in time, but by the time Harry finds this information several of the eight have been killed and the rest are both possible suspects and possible victims, one of them in the Congo and another in Australia. All these conditions would have challenged Harry in his prime, but he is emaciated and has a fractured jaw barely held together when he arrives back in Oslo. In addition, his father is dying in a hospital when he arrives, and he must spend time with him, and listen to him give him reminiscences from his childhood and tips on life such as what one might do to survive in an avalanche. To get anything done, Harry must break rules and not get caught, thus Katrine Batt proves useful to him as she is certifiably crazy. [page 93] Katrine Bratt laughed. Her other laugh, the evil-witch variety. "I'm beginning to see. Katrine Bratt, the brilliant detective, is not my strongest qualification here, but" — she threw up her hands — "Katrine Bratt, the patient is. Because she, being of unsound mind, cannot be prosecuted." "Correct." Harry smiled. "And you're one of the few people I can trust to keep your mouth shut. And if you're not a genius, you're definitely smarter than the average detective." "Three smashed nicotine-stained fingers up your tiny little asshole." "No one can find out what we're up to. But I promise you we're the Blues Brothers here." " 'On a mission from God'?" she quoted. A female John Belushi working search engines illegally from a mental hospital's recreation room is Harry's Ace-in-the-Hole, if you will. Katrine comes through with a startling revelation, there was no connection between the three murder victims, but she searched all missing people and found a fourth potential victim who would tie all four together, putting them on the same train to the mountains. Soon a plot to trap the killer is engineered announcing that the witness from Australia will be taken to the isolated cabin in the snowy reaches of the mountain to identify all eight people who were there. Instead it is only Harry and Kaja, the friendly gal who is sharing Harry's bed, and they are trapped in an avalanche. Here is a scene that works in a novel, but will cause great problems for movie makers: "How can you film a scene in which Harry is completely surrounded by packed snow inside a cabin and has to find some way to get air before his body heat melts the snow touching his body, allowing it to re-freeze and become an air-tight ice chrysalis suffocating him. His father's words of advice become a life-line to save Harry, but can Harry also find and save Kaja who is nearby in the cabin. But Harry is a consultant, which he defines as "an overpaid, overrated guy who thinks he knows something you don't." (Page 293) And time and again Harry extricates himself from dilemmas which have killed lesser people. The closer we get to the end of the novel, the more possibilities arise for who might be the killer. Finally a man is arrested and claims that he was only revealing the identities of the other members of the party of eight to someone who was doing the killing, but now this someone has completely disappeared. A trip to the Congo puts Harry and Katrine's life in jeopardy, again, and there is no way out, they will both die. Can the author be killing off the hero and herostratic Harry Hole? This book is a page turner and will have you skiing downhill like an Olympic racer flying over moguls, spraying snow in every direction, schussing breathlessly to the very last page, to the finish line. Read/Print the Review at: 4.) ARJ: Transforming the Soul, Volume 1, GA#58 by Rudolf Steiner Rudolf Steiner says that every time in which we live is a "time of transition", but there are times of huge jumps in spiritual life. (Page 2) This is certainly true of the early part of the 21st Century in which we currently live, but these transitions are never noticed until they have happened and passed; when we are living through a transition, we are scarcely aware of it, hardly notice the incipient changes which will be so noticeable in retrospect. To give a familiar example, take the decade of the Roarin' Twenties — everyone was having too much fun to give the decade a name before it had passed into history. It was only the onset of the Great Depression which called our attention to the spectacular fun the previous decade had been. [page 2] People living between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, and in our time, have needed to relate differently in their soul and spiritual life to the world about them than humankind did in earlier times. And the further back we go in human evolution the more noticeable it becomes that human beings had different longings, different needs, and gave different answers from within themselves to questions concerning the great riddles of existence. We can gain a clear impression of transition periods such as these by acquainting ourselves with individual people who had retained certain qualities of feeling, knowing and willing from earlier periods, but who nevertheless felt the urge to meet the demands of a new age. Such historic characters can be found in most of the epochs of human evolution. In particular Steiner singles out one great thinker, Francis Joseph Philipp, who pointed out how important it was for Man to know his inner being. (Page 3) Steiner's spiritual science was called anthroposophy for exactly that reason, to become the science of knowing the full human or anthropos, both in body and inner being (spirit and soul). People today ridicule the very idea of a spiritual science, boldly claiming without bothering to examine the issue, that it is irrational to speak of a world lying beyond our senses. Steiner himself did examine the issue as he explains here: [page 6] Are there then any rational grounds for saying that it is nonsensical to speak of such a spiritual world, of a world lying beyond the sense-perceptible? A glance at the progress of our ordinary science should be enough to justify this question. But precisely by considering impartially the course of this progress and the wonderful advances that have been made in unraveling the secrets of external nature, we should become aware that a higher, supersensible knowledge must exist. How is that? Clearly not many people bother to consider the issue at all, and if they do, they bring scientific prejudices with them and by virtue of those preconceived notions, act very non-scientific. Shouldn't a scientist act without prejudice when examining the basis of science itself, not accept some premises laid down by Bacon centuries ago as if they were the God's truth, namely, that a scientist must only accept what arrives from the senses? If that were so, one would be unable to explain why people before the Copernican revolution had the same data arrive via their senses as the people after that revolution. The revolution was a turning-about of a way of thinking, a new way of interpreting the data which arrives at our senses when we view the Sun's passage in the sky during the course of a day. That revolution was an evolution of thinking and our thinking is not data that reaches us from our senses, is it? This change from saying the Sun crossed the sky to saying the Earth rotates was made possible by an evolution of human consciousness. [page 7] Anyone who studies these changes without prejudice must say to himself: Human beings have acquired something they did not have before. They have learnt to see the outer world differently because with regard to the forces of cognition they apply to the sense world there has been a further development. Therefore it became clear to them that the sun does not revolve around the earth; for their new cognitional faculties compelled them to think of the earth as going round the sun. In other words, in our time human beings have other forces at their disposal than they had in earlier times. Saying the Earth rotates and the Sun only appears to move is thus a way of saying we as human beings have developed a new way of understanding the world which did not exist before, in fact, a way in which we were incapable of understanding the world before. In the geocentric fashion, earlier humans understood the heavens to be organized in the way that humans move spiritually through them at night when asleep and in the time between death and a rebirth, we examine outward from the Earth, encountering first the Moon, then Venus, then Mercury, then the Sun, then Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. In our heliocentric fashion, today's humans understand the heavens as the Sun being in the center of the Solar System and the various planets revolving around it. Our Moon is demoted from a planet to satellite of Earth, just as Earth is a satellite of the Sun. The geocentric way is useful for navigating the heavens at night with our spirit; the heliocentric way is useful for sending rockets into orbit around various celestial objects. Both are useful, and neither deserves the derision of any rational person who would examine the issues involved. [page 7, 8] No one who is proud of the achievements of physical science and who studies progress impartially can have any doubts at all that human beings are capable of inner development, that we have more in us than natural forces, and that our powers have been remodeled from stage to stage until we have become what we are today. But we are called upon to develop more than outer powers; human beings have in their inner life something which enables them, in the new light of their inner capacities, to bring the world to life once more in knowledge. We humans have understood the world of the senses, examining carefully the dead objects under the microscope, the flight of rockets and other dead objects in outer space, the design and manufacture of computers using dead objects made of silicon and various other mineral elements. We have paved our cities with dead concrete, built huge skyscrapers of dead steel and glass, constructed autos and planes similarly to move us around the surface of this planets and off it at times in orbit, to the Moon, Mars, and other planets. We have brought dead objects to the world and now it is time for us to bring life once more into the world, the same life of the living spirit which once filled human thoughts and perception via the various myths and symbols of earlier times. We will achieve this differently this time because we are different people, our consciousness has evolved and we can only get glimpses of how we will proceed from now on from such visionaries as Goethe. [page 8] 'Man, placed at the summit of nature, is again a whole new nature which must in time achieve a summit of its own. He ascends towards that height when he permeates himself with all the perfections and virtues, summons forth order, selection, harmony and meaning, and attains in the end to the creation of a work of art.' This is not a plan for skyscraper, an interplanetary rocket, or an electric automobile, but rather a design for a whole new human being which each of us has the possibility of being involved with, and those who are oblivious to this possibility are also involved, but their involvement may be a hindrance rather than a furtherance of this end. Goethe allows us to glimpse a new human ability currently evolving as our ability to finely observe the surfaces of things with our sensory apparatus evolved from Bacon's time to today. Our next evolution will allow us to finely observe the inner spirit of living things. [page 9] Is there not the possibility that human beings can apply their inner forces not only as a mirror of the external world? May it not be that if they developed further forces within themselves that were once slumbering within them these might light up spiritually, so that their spiritual eyes and spiritual ears — as Goethe calls them — might be opened, enabling them to perceive a spiritual world behind the sense world? Rudolf Steiner can ask these questions because he was born with spiritual eyes and ears as Goethe predicted, so he knows what it means for human to perceive a spiritual world behind the sense world, and being able to do so allows him to perceive that such a capability is on the way to becoming a widespread humanity capability. He understands that human cognition is a supersensible faculty already present in human beings, even though it has been mostly used for manipulating the world of the senses, up until now. [page 10] . . . in human beings themselves there is something that cannot be perceived by physical senses. For how could it be thought that human reason, for example, is a visible entity? What sort of impartial thinking could fail to admit that human cognition is by its very nature a supersensible faculty? Immanuel Kant had that sort of human cognition, even though he considered it blatantly for human to penetrate with spiritual vision the sensory world. [page 10, 11] One particular thinker reduced this faculty to the smallest limit; it was impossible, he said, for human beings to penetrate by any kind of supersensible vision into a world that is as real to us spiritually as are animals, plants, minerals and physical human beings in the world of the senses. Yet even he had to recognize impartially that something supersensible does exist and can never be denied. How could anyone say that about Kant? Does Kant not claim that there is no way for human beings to observe and experience the spiritual world, That one cannot know the ding an sich, the thing in itself? Yes, but Kant allows for a loophole, and a loophole in a logical argument can be big enough to allow any size physical object, the metaphorical Mac Truck, to drive through. What is the loophole? [page 11, 12] Kant had to recognize that human beings do not follow only instinctive impulses, as lower animals do; they also follow impulses from within their souls which can raise them far above subservience to mere instinct. But the loophole, Kant claimed, only gets us to the boundary of the supersensible world, and no further. [page 12] Kant's philosophy prohibits human beings from going any further than to the boundary of the supersensible world. Everything that is actually within these realms from which come the voices of conscience, duty and the categorical imperative is withdrawn from our observation, despite the fact that it is of the same supersensible nature as the soul. According to Kant human beings cannot enter that realm; the most they can do is draw conclusions about it. If Kant sounds as silly to you as he does to me, remember that his viewpoint is the commonly accepted one by all materialistic philosophers today. Rudolf Steiner counteracted Kant's silly but serious philosophy with the equally serious, but not silly, philosophy of Goethe. What did Goethe have to say to Kant? [page 13] Kant, says Goethe, claims that human beings have only an intellectual, conceptual power of judgement and not a pictorial faculty which could have experiences in the spiritual world. But — Goethe continues — anyone who has exercised himself with the whole force of his personality to wrest his way through the sense world to the supersensible, as I have done, will know that we are not restricted to drawing conclusions, but through a pictorial power of judgment we are actually able to raise ourselves into the spiritual world! Goethe visualized the full progression of any plant's growth from its seed to its fruiting stage, quite an adventure out of which he found what he called the Urpflanze or archetype for all plants. Goethe clearly "passed the adventure of reason with flying colors!" (Page 13) Building upon Goethe's pioneering work, Steiner claims his own spiritual science is transforming the souls of people so that they can enter the spiritual world, going past Kant's so-called impenetrable barrier. [page 14] The pictorial judgement that Goethe had in mind when he spoke out against Kant is in a certain sense the beginning of the upward path which is by no means unknown today. Spiritual science is therefore now reaching the position, as we shall see, where it can show that there are hidden faculties of knowledge which in ascending order penetrate ever further into the spiritual world. In the past people who could see into the spiritual world were called initiates and what they saw they transformed and preserved as myths and symbols, myths and symbols which we do not understand today because we interpret them out of our sensory-based experience of the world. In those days, people understood the spiritual world and grasped the meaning of the myths and symbols directly, but we today are separated from this way of thinking by an evolution of consciousness of which we are not aware, up until now. [page 17] We come to understand legends and myths only when we take them as symbols expressing a real knowledge of the spiritual world. In those times these very symbols were the way to speak to the widest circles of the people. It is a mistake to assume — as it so often is nowadays — that the human soul has always been just as it is in our century. The soul has changed; its receptivity was quite different in the past. When people were given the symbolic picture in the myth they were inwardly satisfied, for they were moved to see in the visible picture a much more immediate impression of the reality behind it. Today myths are regarded as fantasy, but when in former times the myth was received into human souls secrets of human nature opened to them. And when people looked at the clouds, the sun and so forth, they understood as a matter of course what the myth had told them. For a smaller number of people the symbol brought them what we can call higher knowledge. The Star of David, Mogen David, and Solomon's Key are different names for two interlocking triangles, one facing up and one facing down. What does this symbol mean? Gazing upon it was a means of enlightenment in ages past, an instrument of looking into the spiritual world as surely as a microscope is an instrument of looking into the material world today(1). [page 18] Today the humans soul is different. In the age when we have to develop so as to be able to give modern answers to questions about nature and life, we cannot respond in the old way to such things as the interlocked triangles, the one pointing upwards, the other downwards. In former times this picture stirred something in people's souls, and they could see into something beyond it. Just as nowadays we can look through a microscope and see plant cells that cannot be seen without it, so did these symbolic figures serve as instruments for the soul. Those who held Solomon's key as a picture in their mind's eye could see into the spiritual world in a way that they could not have done without the picture. When people ask what we see in a microscope, we must explain using the logical terms of biology; similarly when people ask someone to explain what they see when contemplating the Solomon's Key, we expect them to explain using logical concepts of external science. This is how spiritual scientists must speak today, Steiner said, and followed his own advice when giving over 6,000 lectures to a wide variety of people of different backgrounds. Today his lectures in print require a certain exegesis in order to be palatable to the modern ear and cognition, but his deep truths ring true if one's ear is rightly tuned. [page 21] The spiritual researcher is in fact speaking of realms that mean something to present-day understanding. And we shall see that the symbols that were once a means to gaining knowledge of the spiritual world have become an aid to spiritual development. For instance, Solomon's key which once called forth in the soul real spiritual perception does so no longer. But if today souls allow themselves to be acted upon by what the spiritual researcher can explain concerning this symbol, something in the soul is aroused that can lead them by stages into the spiritual world. Then when they have acquired vision of the spiritual world they can tell other people about it in the same logical terms that apply to external science. Spiritual science or esotericism must therefore speak today in a way that can be grasped by anyone who has a broad enough understanding. Whatever spiritual researchers have to impart must be clothed in conceptual terms that are customary in other sciences, otherwise they would not be paying due regard to the needs of the times. Not everyone can straight away see into the spiritual world but, because the appropriate forces of reason and feeling exist now in every soul, spiritual science if rightly presented can be grasped with ordinary understanding by everyone. When we are small children, we want books with photos and drawings in them, but as we age, we progress gradually over the years to enjoying reading books with no pictures in them, preferring the images we see in our mind which are conjured up by the words to the images some artist sees in their mind. Often when we view a movie of a book we enjoyed reading, we are disappointed by the visual images presented by the movie because they are not as vivid as our own images while reading. Human beings as a whole went through a stage of being entranced by the visual images of symbols, and now we want a new level of understanding and reasoning to be provided as the symbols no longer grab our attention. Jean Piaget said about our development through childhood, "Everything we know we base on our current frame of reference." This dictum is equally true about the development of humanity over the ages, what I call the evolution of consciousness, and it explains why we do ill to criticize people of ages past using our current frame of reference: if these people had had our current frame of reference, they could not have behaved the way they did. In the future of humanity, people who have not learned this lesson will likely look back and criticize us for our current frame of reference. [page 22] If we now consider the relationship between the spiritual researcher and his public and look once more at the difference between the past and present situation in regard to spiritual science, we can say: The symbolic pictures used by spiritual researchers in the past acted directly on the human soul because what we today call the faculties of reason and understanding were not yet present. The pictures had the effect of giving direct vision into the spiritual world without the people receiving them being able to test with their reason what the spiritual researcher gave them. The pictures acted with the force of suggestion, of inspiration, and the people subjected to them were carried away and unable to resist them. If an evil person were to give them a false image, the people would be likewise enthralled and led into evil deeds. Our history as a human race is filled with periods of both goodness and degeneration. Today, if we avoid having blind faith and instead apply our unbiased judgment, which requires us to recognize our current frame of reference, we can see through the evil charlatans' ruses and rightly understand the true mission of a spiritual science researcher. [page 23] From now on this will be the mission of spiritual science: to ascend, through developing hidden powers, into a spiritual world, just as the physiologist, by means of the microscope, descends into a realm of micro-organisms invisible to the naked eye. Ordinary human powers of reasoning will be able to test the findings of spiritual research as it can test the findings of physiologists, botanists and so on. Ordinary common sense will be able to realize that it is all thoroughly consistent. People have asked me how could I as a physicist accept the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, and when I answer them, it comes down to his work and writings being thoroughly consistent, internally and externally, meaning this: his content and process match up at all levels. Nowhere is this so clear as in his classic book, The Philosophy of Freedom where he talks about the twelve ways of understanding the world (World Outlooks) and writes out of each of the twelve ways(2). Steiner understood that Goethe was telling everyone lost in the labyrinth of the material world that help was on its way. [page 25 from Faust I, sc. 1, 11.443-6] The spirit world is ever open, Dead is thy heart, thy sense-veil closely drawn! Up, scholar, let thy breast unwearied Bathe in the roseate hues of dawn! In the dawn glow of the spirit! In Lecture 2 Steiner explains how anger is a part of our evolution as a human being, taking time first to explain how our various human components are formed. [page 29, the physical body] Referring . . . to our physical body, which harbors the same physical and chemical laws as does the external physical-mineral world, we can ask when do we see the actual nature of these laws. We see them when a human being has ceased to have life. When a human being has passed through the gate of death, then we see what the laws that govern the physical body are really like. They are the laws that lead to the decomposition of the body, and their effect on it is then quite different from their action during life. They are always present in the physical body, but the reason why the human body does not obey them is that between birth and death an antagonist of dissolution is active there — the etheric or life-body. [page 29, the etheric body] As a result of observation, however, and not merely on the strength of logical inference, spiritual science recognizes over and above the physical body a second member of the human being, what we call the etheric body or life-body. Only brief reference can be made here today to the structure of the human organism, for on this occasion our task is quite a different one — but knowledge of this underlying structure is the foundation on which we have to build. Human beings have an etheric body in common with everything that is alive. [page 30, the astral body] We can distinguish a third member too of the human organism, the carrier of pleasure and sorrow, joy and pain, of urges, desires and passions — of everything we call our psychological and mental life. The carrier, please note, but not the actual soul itself. Human beings have this in common with all those creatures who possess a certain form of consciousness, namely, the animals. Astral body or body of consciousness is the name we give to this third member of the human organism. [page 30, the "I"] Within these three members we can distinguish further the spark which makes man the crown of creation, and which he has in common with nothing else. It has often been remarked that our language has one little word which points directly to this inner core of man which makes him the crown of earth creation. These flowers here, the desk, the clock — anyone can name these objects. But there is one word we can never hear spoken by another with reference to ourselves. It is expressed by the little name of 'I'. Think for a moment about whether the word 'I' can come to you from outside if it means yourself. If you want to call yourself 'I' this 'I' must sound forth from within yourself and designate your inmost being. This is why the great religions and world views have always regarded this name as the 'unspeakable name' of that which cannot be named from outside. Indeed, with this designation 'I' we reach the innermost being of a person, which can be called the godlike element in him. Francesco Redi narrowly escaped being burnt at the stake when he proclaimed, "Life can only arise from the living." Steiner with his spiritual science which proclaims that "soul and spirit can only issue from soul and spirit" has not escaped being burnt at the stake of modern scientific opinion for his claim because it presupposes reincarnation to be a fact of our existence. (Page 33) When I came to see my life as a riddle bordered by an enigma on each end — birth, life, death — I began searching for answers to the riddle and enigmas and found them in the works of Rudolf Steiner. [page 33] Whereas Redi's statement is of restricted interest, the statement by spiritual science, 'soul and spirit can issue only from soul and spirit', concerns everyone. That a human being does not live once only but passes through repeated lives on earth, every life being the result of earlier lives and the starting point of numerous subsequent lives, is the kind of knowledge that interests everyone. All confidence in life, all certainty in our work, the solution of all the riddles facing us — they all depend on knowing this. People will draw more and more strength from this knowledge for coping with their lives, and for confidence and hope in facing the future. It is the "I" which is at work in one incarnation after another, going from life to life, and evolving each time. In our time our individual "I" is working on our three bodies, astral, etheric, and physical to cleanse and purify them into Spirit Self, Life Spirit, and Spirit Man(3). This working is a conscious working, requiring volitional involvement of our "I", our ego. [page 34] But how does this evolution proceed? By the ego working on the three lower members of the human being. There is the astral body, the vehicle of pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, instinct, desire and passion. Let us look at a person on a low level, whose ego has done little as yet to cleanse his astral body and so is still its slave. In a person on a higher level we find that his ego has worked upon his astral body so that his lower instincts, desires and passions have been transformed into moral ideals, ethical judgements. From this contrast we can gain a first impression of how the ego works on the astral body. In every human being it is possible to distinguish the part of the astral body on which their ego has not yet worked and the part which the ego has consciously transformed. The transmuted part is called Spirit Self or Manas. The ego is able to become even stronger, and it will then also transmute the etheric body. Life Spirit is the name given to the transformed part of the etheric body. And if the ego acquires such strength that it is able to extend its transforming power as far as the physical body, we call the transmuted part Atma, or the real Spirit Man. This is how evolution takes place. The outer members of the human being, which are not actively acquired but given, are transformed by the ego. The process of evolution described above is happening right now with each person's "I" or ego working on the three bodies to some extent. The more evolved the person is, the more the astral, etheric, and physical bodies have been purified into the Spirit Self, Life Spirit, and Spirit Man. As the "I" works its way through astral to etheric, the work gets harder, and the physical body is the hardest of all, so at any one time, there will be the most progress made on the astral, less on the etheric, and the least on the physical body (which will be completed last). This is our present and our future, whether we are aware of it now or not, at some point we will become aware of it, and the sooner this happens the easier it will be for us as an individual. The next process of evolution is one that we have almost finished, as the major portion of this development took place in our past without us in previous lifetimes being aware of it. The "I" or ego worked on the astral body to produce a Sentient Soul, on the etheric body to produce an Intellectual Soul(4), and on the physical body to produce a Consciousness Soul. [page 34, 35] So far we have been speaking of the conscious transforming of the astral body. But in the far distant past, before the ego was capable of working in this conscious way, it worked unconsciously — or rather, subconsciously — on the three outer human sheaths, beginning with the astral body, the carrier of our emotions, desires and instincts. The part of the astral body that the ego worked on in this way, this transmuted part of the astral body, we call the first member of the human soul, the sentient soul. This is how the ego lives in our inner being, and it created the sentient soul at a time when human beings lacked the requisite degree of consciousness for transforming their instincts, desires and so forth. In the etheric or life body the ego created, before the age of consciousness, what is called the intellectual soul. And in the physical body the ego created the inner organ we call the consciousness soul. For spiritual science the human soul is not a vague, nebulous entity, but an essential part of our inner being, consisting of three distinct members — sentient soul, intellectual soul and consciousness soul — within all of which the ego is actively engaged. Animals, lacking an "I", are unable to create any of these three bodies, and anyone who treats animals as if they had a soul are simply projecting onto animals a human frame of reference which they do not have. Steiner clearly describes the evolution of minerals, plants, animals, and human beings, and in that evolution one can rightly understand that human beings are a separate entity from animals, that animals completely missed a stage of development which humans underwent. Humans did not evolve from animals, rather animals remained behind during a stage of evolution. Humans are not higher apes, but rather apes are examples of the highest stage an animal can reach as an animal. To understand the difference between our sentient body which any animal has and our sentient soul which only a human has, one needs to make the distinction between a percept and a concept. Humans are like the captain of a large ship traveling at seas which is dividing the water into percepts and concepts: when the Captain looks to the right side he sees only percepts arriving from the sentient body side of the ship, when he looks to the left side he sees only concepts which are arriving from the sentient soul side of the ship. If you look at a rose, you receive a percept; ; if you look away from the rose and recall it, you are receiving a concept of the rose. [page 36] Perception brings us into communication with the external world, concepts belong to the soul. The boundary between inner experience and the outer world can be precisely drawn. Directly we begin to experience something inwardly, we owe it to the sentient soul — as distinct from the sentient body which brings us our percepts and enables us to perceive, for example, the rose and its colour. Concepts are located in the sentient soul, which is also the bearer of all that we call our sympathies and antipathies, of the feelings that things arouse in us. When we feel the rose to be beautiful, this is an inward experience belonging to the sentient soul. The second step is to understand the intellectual soul and how we operate through its use.(5) [page 36, 37] The higher principle brought into being by the work of the ego on the etheric body is what we call the [intellectual] soul. Through the [intellectual] soul human beings are enabled to do more than carry about with them the experiences aroused in them by their perceptions of the outer world. They take these experiences a stage further. Instead of merely keeping their perceptions alive as images in the sentient soul, they reflect on them and involve themselves with them until these form themselves into thoughts and judgements, into the whole content of a person's inner life. The inner cultivation of impressions received from the outer world is the work of what we call the [intellectual] soul. The third step is to understand the consciousness soul and how we have come to know and explain the world in which we live by dint of its presence in our current frame of reference. [page 37] A third principle is brought into being when the ego has created in the physical body the organs whereby it is enabled to go out from itself and to connect once again its judgements and ideas with the external world. This principle we call the consciousness soul because the ego is then able to turn the inner experiences aroused in it by the stimuli from outside into conscious knowledge of this outer world. When we give form to the feelings we experience so that they enlighten us concerning the outer world, then the content of our minds becomes actual knowledge of the outer world. It is by means of the consciousness soul that we fathom the mysteries of the outer world, that we become knowledgeable people. At this point some of you may be wondering why Steiner uses the word "ego" which has so many dreadful connotations today. He is aware of the ego being a "two-edged sword" (Page 37), one which cuts for good and one cuts for bad, one edge is selfless and one is selfish. Steiner explains that those who enrich themselves risk hardening their ego and losing thereby the riches of the world(6). [page 38, 39] This is one aspect of the ego; and we are duty-bound to endeavor to make our ego as rich and as many-sided as we can. But there is also a reverse side of this progress of the ego, and this is called selfishness or egoism. . . . It is indeed the task of human beings to enrich themselves inwardly, but this does not imply a selfish hardening of the ego and a shutting off of themselves and their riches from the world. In that event human beings would indeed become richer and richer, but they would lose their connection with the world. Their enrichment would signify that the world had no more to give them and they nothing to give the world. In the course of time they would perish, for while striving to enrich their ego they would be keeping it all for themselves and would become isolated from the world. This caricature of ego development would impoverish the human ego to an increasing extent, for selfishness lays waste a person's inner being. So it is that the ego, as it works in the three members of the soul, acts as a two-edged sword. . . . The ego has to work on each of the three soul members in such a way that in both these directions justice is done where human evolution is concerned. The next topic could be called "Anger as an Educator", a title that educators might get angry over, as they deem any anger as wrong and evil. But what is evil? Rightly understood, "evil is a good out of its time", in Steiner's own words. Lucifer's deed of bringing light to humankind was a good out of its time, something that would be good, namely light, humankind was not ready for, so it was something out of its time, and evil. A good out of its time, evil, will always be balanced by an equal good later, as Lucifer's deed was balanced later by Christ's deed in the Mystery of Golgotha. How does anger arise? It arises as an impulse in the sentient soul which the intellectual soul is not prepared to deal with. Any parent who's raised children, knows that their teenage years are filled with anger of some kind, and rightly so, as teenagers are bombarded with impulses from their sentient soul which their intellectual soul is not prepared to deal with. So the teenager gets mad at one or both parents, often simply because they are the only ones who will listen to the teen's ravings, after all, parents can be blamed for almost anything that upsets a teenager, can they not? After all, if they had raised the teenager better, this would not have happened, right? [page 41] First, we judge an event in the outer world by getting angry; then, having first learnt unconsciously to disagree with something that is not right — learning unconsciously by way of anger — we learn, through this very way of judging, to become more and more ready in the higher part of our souls to have enlightened judgement. So in a certain area anger is an educator. It arises in us as an inner experience before we are mature enough to form an enlightened judgement about something unacceptable to us. This is how we should look at the anger which can overcome young people, before they are capable of considered judgement, at sight of an unjust or foolish action which violates their ideals; we are justified in calling this righteous anger. It is a dimly recognized judgement made by the sentient soul before we are mature enough to pass enlightened judgement. Jesus himself was moved to anger by the money-changers in the temple, was he not? Steiner says it is by anger that we are enabled to move into "light-filled clarity". (Page 41) Each human being must operate on the world out of their own frame of reference, doing what they can do at their current level in the process of moving to a higher level. [page 41, 42] For no one does better at acquiring self-assured judgement than a person who, starting from the right feelings, has passed through the stage of being moved to righteous anger by anything mean, immoral or senseless. This is the mission of anger. Anger has the mission to raise the human ego to higher levels. Before we can master ourselves and judge clearly, it leads us by means of what we can do to what we cannot yet do. But anger can become rage, and certainly that is not good for anyone? I can hear some of you thinking to yourselves, as I have thought that to myself on many occasions. Anger can become rage because of free will: being free, anything can degenerate, even anger. [page 41] Anger can degenerate into rage and serve to gratify the worst kind of egoism. This must be so, if human beings are to be able to develop freedom. But we must not fail to realize that the very thing which can become evil may, when it shows its proper nature, have the mission of assisting our progress. It is just because human beings can allow good to turn into evil that something which has been developed into a good quality can become a possession of the ego. Therefore anger is to be understood as the herald of the force that can raise a human being to calm self-possession. Jesus' anger at the money-changers in the temple gives us a model for righteous anger, which we can model when we encounter injustice or stupidity in our world today. Jesus got angry and he took immediate action by overturning their tables and chasing the changers from the temple, saying they had changed the temple into "a den of thieves." In German the vernacular phrase for being furious is to "poison oneself" (sich giften ), but a little poison used homeopathically can help one who is ill become well, and anger works the same way. Anger is a two-edged sword: it can reduce awareness (if suppressed internally) or it can promote selflessness (if expressed externally). [page 43] Anger which eats into the soul is a poison which damps down the ego's self-awareness, yet the very expression of it points to the other factor it promotes, namely, selflessness. Steiner says that "we would just melt into nothing if we had to remain indifferent to everything around us, and we could not judge it calmly." In addition we would be free, but without an ego and with no chance of acquiring enlightened judgment. (page 43) [page 43] Life shows us that a person who is unable to flare up in righteous anger at injustice or stupidity will never acquire real love and kindness, whereas a person who educates himself through righteous anger will acquire a heart aglow with love, a heart that leads to the doing of good deeds. Love and kindness are the obverse of righteous anger. Anger that is conquered and purified becomes transformed into love and kindness. A loving hand is seldom one that has never clenched in response to injustice or foolishness. Anger and love are complementary. We move now into the next lecture where Steiner promises to show us "how the ego becomes mature enough to educate itself in the rational or perceptive soul by understanding the mission of truth on a higher level." (Page 48) We can lead into this revelation by asking, "Which kind of teacher did you learn more from in grade school: the cold fish dictator who made you write sentences on the board like "I will do my homework" after school for an hour, or the one who got red-faced in anger at if you missed an important homework assignment? Think about that. [page 51, 52] To visualize the way anger works in the soul let us imagine two teachers faced with children who have done something wrong. One teacher will lose his temper and immediately punish the child. The other teacher may not be capable of letting go in anger, yet neither is he able to do the right thing out of full self-control from out of his ego. . . . An outburst of anger involves more than the punishment imposed on the child. Anger stirs the soul, working upon it so as to destroy selfishness. Anger acts like a poison on selfishness, and we find that in time it gradually transforms the powers of the soul, making it capable of love, whereas the teacher who has not yet attained inner tranquillity and yet inflicts a coldly calculating punishment will, since anger does not work in him as a poison, become an increasingly cold egoist. Which of the two teachers will have the respect of their pupils? Remember back to your schooldays and you will find the answer. You may have disliked the cold-fish Victorian spinster and the hot-tempered Irishman, but you respected the one who openly got angry when you fell short of your own potential. We also learned from him that it was okay to get openly angry at others ourselves, and that is an important lesson in becoming more mature. From the spinster we got that message that becoming old was a sad and lonely proposition, one to be avoided. We did what she demanded of us in class, but at recess on the playground we vented our anger at her, and only in this indirect way did her stoic disposition provide us a lesson in maturity. Anger weakened the ego of the Irishman and prevented him from becoming a stone-cold egoist. But neither self-composure or fiery anger can get us very far without truth. [page 57] Truth has this unique characteristic: we can strive for it while remaining entirely within ourselves yet — while living in our ego — we can acquire something which fundamentally speaking has nothing to do with the personal. In my lifetime I have met many original thinkers and inventors and they all had this one distinguishing feature: anger at those who didn't believe in their creations. They demonstrated a strong combination of egoism and a search for truth, which invariably led them again and again to anger at skeptics who were unable to see the truth they had uncovered. Considering that their truth was not as yet known commonly by the world, this was not at all surprising, but the anger was always there. [page 57] Whenever people are driven to have their own way, what drives them is egoism. When they want to do something they think is right, but someone stands in the way, they get angry, which is an expression of self-seeking. But if they are bent on attaining truth, this self-seeking must be subdued. Steiner points to mathematics as the one field where humankind has "curbed their passions and desires, and do not permit them to have a say." One cannot argue that 2 and 2 equals 4. Whatever disputes arise in mathematics, eventually someone will provide a proof, and the dispute goes calmly away. [page 59] By opening ourselves to truth, truth becomes all the stronger and we are released from the self. Whereas anger weakens us, truth strengthens. Truth is a stern goddess; she demands to be at the center of a unique love in our souls. The moment one fails to get away from oneself and prefers something else to her, she takes immediate revenge. Some time ago I came upon an interesting interpretation of the myth of Pandora who had two brothers, Epimetheus and Prometheus, whose names can be seen to mean "hindsight" and "foresight" or what is translated as reflective thinking and creative thinking in this book. Steiner points out forcefully that spiritual science comes from creative thinking. [page 61] So there are two kinds of truths, and they must be kept strictly apart, those that arise from external observation, by means of reflective thought, and those that arise through 'creative thought'. How can truths of this kind be verified? What makes them true? The inventor of a clock can spend a lot of time giving us proof that he thought it out correctly. But we shall only give him our confidence if he can show us that the clock does what he expects. Anything we think out in advance must prove itself in practice, and yield results that can be recognized. The truths of spiritual science or anthroposophy are of this kind. We cannot learn about them in the first place from our outer experiences. We cannot come to understand that each human being appears in successive incarnations by examining the external world with reflective thought, but only by proving it in our own life. [page 62] If we look at life with the knowledge that the soul repeatedly returns and ever and again goes through a series of events and experiences between birth and death, we shall find how much satisfaction, how much strength and productivity these thoughts can bring. Or again, if we ask how the soul of a child can be helped to develop and grow stronger, presupposing that an eternally existent soul is here working its way into a new life, then this truth will shine in on us and give proof of its fertility in outer reality. Any other proofs are false. The only way a truth of this kind can be confirmed is by proving it true in daily life. Truths that have been actually arrived at in thought and not through external observation cannot be proved in the same way as reflective truths. They have to prove their worth and show their fruitfulness in life itself. There is a vast difference between these two kinds of truth. Those of the second kind are grasped in the spirit and verified through outer observation. My academic career began as a physicist, and I spent a lot of time in reflective thoughts which investigated how the external world works. I was well on my way to becoming a cold egoist, as Steiner explains in this next passage. [page 63] The creative power of the ego is lamed and devitalized; the self loses strength and can no longer stand up to the world if it is concerned only with reflective thoughts. Nothing does so much to isolate the ego, to make it withdraw into itself, and to look with hostility on the world, as merely reflecting on it. People can become cold egoists if they are intent only on investigating the outer world. What do they want this knowledge for? Do they mean to place it at the service of the gods? If people desire only this kind of truth they want to have it for themselves, and they are on the way to becoming cold egoists and misanthropists in later life. They will become recluses or will sever themselves from humanity in some other way, for they want to possess the content of the world as their own truth. All forms of seclusion and hostility towards humanity can be found on this path. Souls become increasingly dried up and lose their sense of human fellowship. Gradually I began to move toward a study of the spiritual world, because nothing in the field of physics allowed me to comprehend the riddle which is life and the two enigmas, birth and death, which embrace this one lifetime. I had devoted the first half of my life to the study of science and I began to devoted the second half of my life to the study of the arts — for myself, that meant to begin viewing the world as an artist does in my every endeavor. Suddenly I discovered what feelings were, a discovery which brought me out of my incipient isolation into the connected world of people. Here's how Steiner describes the artist: [page 64] Now an artist comes along, and his soul confronts the picture that nature sets before him. He does not merely reflect on it but lets nature's creative power work upon him. He creates a work of art which does not contain merely a reflective thought but a productive force. . . . In this realm human beings relate in a different way, as they themselves are productive. They bring their thoughts to realization in life; here they are working according to nature's own example. This is how it is with us when we go beyond mere observation and reflective thinking, and make space for something to arise in our souls that we cannot get from mere observation. We see there are two distinctly different kinds of truth, the Epimetheus-kind of reflective thinking and the Prometheus-kind of creative thinking. [page 65] This is how different the two kinds of truths are, the one reached by creative thought and the other by reflective thought. The latter kind, derived from investigating existing things or current experience, will always lead to abstractions, and the soul will be deprived of nourishment and dry up. The truth that is not acquired from outer experience, however, is creative and by the force of its own strength it assigns human beings a place in wider existence where they can cooperate in shaping the future. One kind of truth can be called hindsight and the other kind foresight; one looks back over the past, the other looks into the future; one is filled with regrets, the other is filled with optimism; one will starve on the abstract, the other thrive on the creative; one sees the world as it was, the other sees the world as it can be. This is a personal choice each person makes, whether or not one is a aware of it being a choice or not. [page 65, 66] Those people who are active in their striving for truth will soon find how much reflective thinking impoverishes them. And they come to understand that the devotees of reflective thinking are filling their minds with phantom ideas and bloodless abstractions. Such people may feel like outcasts, condemned to a mere savoring of truth, and may come to doubt whether they have any spirit to playa part in shaping the world. On the other hand, if we experience a truth acquired by creative thinking we shall find that it nourishes and warms the soul and gives it new strength at every stage in life. It fills us with joy when we are able to grasp truths of this kind and discover that in connecting them up with the phenomena of life we can say to ourselves: Now I not only understand what is going on there but I can now explain it in the light of having known something about it previously. Epimetheus opens Pandora's Box, all the ills of the world based on reflective thinking is let loose and only Hope remains behind, showing what is the last refuge of the abstract reflective thinker. [page 72, italics added ] Only one thing is left to the merely reflective thinker. While creative thinkers unite their ego with the future and break free from themselves in living for the future, reflective thinkers, with regard to the future, only have this one thing left them: to hope that things will happen, for, not being creative thinkers, they will have no part in shaping it. Epimethean reflective thinkers are the ones who fill Ayn Rand's famous novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, who are systematically regulating and stifling the productivity of America; they can only hope for the best. Her heroes are promethean creative thinkers who make things happen to create a better future for all of humanity. If you ask them, they will answer, "I hope for nothing." [page 72] If a promethean person were to speak of the future he would say: 'I hope for nothing, but will work out of my own forces to shape the future.' Earlier we discovered how anger is in effect the tutor of the sentient soul. In Lecture 4 Steiner reveals that truth is the tutor of the intellectual soul. [page 82, 83] This describes briefly the content of the intellectual soul. We have seen how untamed passions, such as anger, educate the soul if they are overcome. We have seen also that the intellectual soul is really educated by truth, when truth is understood as something one has to take hold of completely within oneself and which one should take account of at all times; something which, despite being an inner possession, leads us out of ourselves, enlarging the ego and making it stronger and stronger and more selfless in its own right. These then are the means of self-education for the sentient soul and intellectual soul. Which leaves us wondering what about the consciousness soul? From where does it gets its stimulus into being? We cannot gain knowledge of the spiritual world merely by hoping and waiting for it or expect our sensations and perceptions of the physical world to allow us to acquire more than the knowledge of the physical world. So where does it come from? [page 83] There is something that reaches out from the intellectual soul to the consciousness soul, and this is thinking — thinking with its strength and cleverness. The consciousness soul can develop only because human beings are thinkers; for the consciousness soul, with its self-awareness, has to know both the world and itself. We are so used to the phrase "cold, hard logic" that we are led to assume that all logic is cold and hard, but logic gets its very beginnings in feeling which provides us a direct connection to the spiritual world. Yes, we can act as if logic, once accepted and proven, exists separately from its origins in feeling, but, rightly understood, that is not the case. [page 84] Logical thinking cannot be proved primarily by logical thinking, but only by feeling. In fact, everything that constitutes logic is in the first place proved through feeling, by our soul's infallible feeling for truth. . . . What kind of feeling do we need if it is to provide the drive not only for thinking in general, but for thinking about worlds with which we are at first unacquainted and cannot survey? Feeling of this kind must be a force that strive from within towards an object as yet unknown. When the human souls wants to encompass with feeling some other thing, we call this feeling love. I have a feeling that this next statement of Rudolf Steiner is true: [page 85] To love the supersensible before we are capable of illuminating it with thought is not only possible but is indispensable. When our will gets involved, it can lead us to reach out to the supersensible world before our thinking can achieve it, and this quality of will we call devotion. When love and devotion appears together, we call it reverence. We have seen previously that anger is the tutor for our sentient soul, and now we can see that reverence is the tutor of our consciousness soul. In the transformation of the soul, the eponymous theme of this book, the ego, our "I", is the essential ingredient. [page 86] Anger needs to be overcome and discarded; a sense of truth has to fill the ego. Reverence has to flow from the ego towards the thing that needs to be known. In this way the ego raises itself out of the sentient soul and the intellectual soul by overcoming anger and other passions and by cultivating a sense of truth, and now it is increasingly drawn towards becoming a consciousness soul through the influence of devotion. In Steiner's metaphor below he reckons our three souls as the three strings of a musical instrument like a balalaika, and the ego, our "I", as a musician who tunes these strings, adjusting them, not too loose, not too tight, causing them to vibrate in harmony, producing the music of life. A child scrapping a bow across a balalaika will produce a chaos of cacophony because it does not yet understand the unique nature of the three strings. [page 98, 99] We must also remember that the human soul embracing the inner life of man, is not merely a chaos of intermingling feelings, concepts, passions and ideals, but has three distinct members: the sentient soul, the lowest; in the middle the intellectual soul; and the highest, the consciousness soul. There three soul members are to be clearly distinguished, but they must not be allowed to fall apart, for the human soul must be a unity. What is it then that holds them together? It is the ego, it is what, in the true sense, we call the human "I", the bearer of our human consciousness of self, the active element within our soul, which plays upon its three soul members as a musician plays upon the strings of an instrument. And the harmony or disharmony is the basis of human character. Through more than 15 years of discussing Rudolf Steiner's works with others, I have on rare occasions found someone saying or claiming something was true because Herr Doktor had said it or written it. That never seemed to be the case for me because I questioned everything Steiner wrote, accepting it only if it made sense for me, not accepting it merely because the Master had said it. In Lecture 6, Steiner himself spells out clearly for us and for all time how we are respond to what he or anyone else has said. [page 135] . . . we are told that in the old Pythagorean Mystery Schools there was a familiar phrase: 'The Master has said.' But this never meant: 'The Master has said, therefore we believe it!' For his students it meant something like this: 'The Master has said it; therefore it presents us with a challenge to reflect on it and see how far we can get with it if we bring all our forces to bear on it.' In the first ten books I read of random lectures given by Steiner, I didn't get very far as I had few forces to bring to bear on them. Not until I read his basic works did I begin to develop forces with which to draw meaning from his lectures. The first time I read "An Outline of Occult Science" I wrote a single page review of it; the second time I wrote a 127 page review of the first five chapters and I haven't completed the last three chapters as of now(7). My Steiner reviews represent my application of my full forces upon understanding his work at the time I read and review a book of lectures. My reviews represent my own evolution of consciousness, the progress my ego, "I", has made to date on the development of my sentient soul, intellectual soul, and consciousness soul. It delights me to have people share with me that when they get stuck while reading a Steiner book, they say to themselves, "Let me go see what Bobby Matherne has to say about this book." Perhaps through watching me stumble through to an understanding of what Steiner has to say to modern readers, they can come to develop their own forces to establish their own view. "People only pay attention to things they discover for themselves," as Tony Perkins spoke in the movie, "Pretty Poison", an old B-movie — i. e., what we discover for ourselves is more important than what some respected authority figure has to say. So far I can determine after reading and reviewing over 197 books of his, one can never discover in Steiner's works anyplace where he claims vegetarianism is a requirement for understanding the spiritual world. On the contrary, he goes to great lengths to counteract the tendency of his followers to argue for a vegetarian diet. One night after a meeting where vegetarianism was discussed, members of the class went out to a small local diner with him. As they ordered, each one spent a lot of time hassling the owner of the diner to find some vegetarian dish they could eat. When it came time for Steiner to order, he told the owner, "I'll have the Special." The Special was a meat dish, and you can imagine the gasps which must have gone around the table. In Lecture 6, he gives his guidance to those who might otherwise harm themselves by switching to vegetarianism. [page 140] Vegetarianism will never lead anyone to higher worlds; it can be no more than a support for people who think to themselves: I will to open for myself certain ways of understanding the spiritual worlds; I am hindered by the heaviness of my body, which prevents the exercises from having an immediate effect. Therefore I will help myself by relieving my body of a certain amount of strain. He adds that if one simply turns into a vegetarian to acquire certain spiritual powers, they will likely find their soul stays the same, their body weakens, and they will achieve only a false asceticism which allows them to see into a pseudo-spiritual world, not the real spiritual world. (Page 141) [page 141] When you have stopped enjoying eating meat then refraining from eating it is of some use with regard to the spiritual worlds. Until then, breaking the meat-eating habit can be helpful only in getting rid of the desire for meat. If the desire persists, it may be better to start eating meat again. For to go on tormenting yourself about it is certainly not the right way to reach an understanding of spiritual science! A Sufi saying goes, "Counterfeit gold exists because real gold exists." That will help us to understand how it is that false asceticism can exist. [page 141] From all this you can clearly see the difference between true and false asceticism. False asceticism often attracts people whose sole desire is to develop the inner forces and faculties of soul, for it will not matter much to them whether they gain real knowledge of the outer world. Their aim is simply to develop their inner faculties and then to wait and see what comes of it. Basically their ego remains as it was to begin with and no higher powers are attained. Another problem comes if people strive for humility and surrender and become so involved with themselves that they become egoists in the worst sense, which can degenerate into ambition and self-aggrandizement. (Page 142) In Lecture 7, he elaborates on how the ego can affect us in good ways and bad ways. [page 161] How does egoism affect the consciousness soul through which human beings acquire knowledge of the world around them? In other words, when can a piece of knowledge be really fruitful? It will be truly effective only if it brings a person into harmony with the rest of the world, which means that the only concepts and ideas that can enliven the human souls are those that are drawn form the outer world, from a living understanding of the worlds, and then only if we relate to the world in harmony! This is what all knowledge selflessly pursued, where we seek step by step to reach the great truths of existence, are so health-promoting for the soul, which then passes this on to the physical body. On the other hand anything that draws us out of a living connection with the world, as inner brooding does, or anything that brings us into discord with the world, will have a hardening effect. In Lecture 8, Steiner strongly rebuts any claim that spiritual science's view of one's incarnating into serial lifetimes on Earth means it has adopted Buddhism. [page 180] By now people should have grasped that spiritual science is not concerned with names but with actual truths that can be researched independently of any name that may be given to it. . . . At the same time it is essential to point out that spiritual science provides a means of testing the spiritual sources of every religion — including Christianity, the basis of our European culture on the one hand, and Buddhism on the other. For those who wish to understand how two diverse religions such as Christianity and Buddhism can deal with reincarnation, he provides this antistrophe: [page 186] If as spiritual scientist we stand for reincarnation we must say: For Buddhism, the central unifying element in a person's life on earth does not endure; only his actions have effects for the next life. For Christianity, the unifying element in a person's life is his ego with its contents. This ego endures, and carries over into the next life all the fruits of the preceding one. He compares the ends expected by the two religions thusly: [page 190] While Buddhism sees release from earth existence in terms of ascending to Nirvana, Christianity sees its aim as a continuing process of development whereby all the products and achievements of the various incarnations shine forth in ever higher stages of perfection until, spiritualized, they are resurrected at the end of earth existence. The turning point in Earth evolution was the Mystery of Golgotha when Christ Jesus died on the cross and his great Spirit entered the Earth, and this turning point led humans to a new way of perceiving which no longer required long training in Mystery Schools to be an initiate. What initiates learned through their arduous training, humans could acquire on their own from then on, with Christ's help. One must understand this to be the basis of John the Baptist's loud proclamation at the time, "The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." [page 196] . . . [The Baptist] was simply using a technical expression for abilities human beings acquired when they began to obtain knowledge of the world in conscious self-awareness and no longer through [the Mystery School] inspirations. The Baptist's call means that knowledge of the world in concepts and ideas is approaching. Human beings are no longer dependent on the old clairvoyance, but can investigate and understand the world for themselves. And this mightiest of impulses to obtain knowledge by way of their 'I' and not through inspirations was given by the Christ. One of the Beatitudes that is often not clearly understood is, "Blessed are the poor in spirit for their's is the Kingdom of Heaven" [Matt. 5:3] and Steiner explains its meaning. By those who were poor in spirit Jesus was speaking of those who no longer had direct spiritual experience through their loss of the old clairvoyance, but they are truly blessed because they will find a new way to the spirit by dint of His Deed on Golgotha. [page 197] Blessed are they, for their's is that which will be revealed to them through their own ego, and can be achieved by way of ego-consciousness. For some of you who still ponder the question, "Why read Rudolf Steiner?" I think the best answer I can give is what the Greek philosopher Heraclitus is reported to have said in this next passage. [page 48, 49] Our study today has shown us, too, that the practical presentation of the Greek legend also bears out the words of Heraclitus: 'You will never find the boundaries of the soul, by whatever paths you search for them; so wide and deep is the soul's being.' . . . The boundaries of the soul are so wide that you may search along every path and not reach them, so comprehensive is the being of the soul. From my extensive studies of his works, I can say that Rudolf Steiner explored the boundaries of the soul so much that every book of his lectures I delve into becomes a source of new and mind-boggling concepts which lead further to the wide, deep and limitless boundaries of the soul. ---------------------------- Footnotes ----------------------------------------- Footnote 1. Edward Reaugh Smith devotes two pages of his Burning Bush to Solomon's Key, explaining how Steiner received the information on its spiritual uses. (Page 672) Also called the Mogen David, I received one made of PVC pipes from my friend Warren Liberty. It contained only right angles, but, when viewed from over 30 feet away it will turn into the double-triangle figure, as seen in the photograph. Return to text directly before Footnote 1. Footnote 2. Tom Last, who read this book several dozen times shared his insights with me and we developed this set of web-pages to help earnest students of Steiner's work to decipher the many levels at work in his The Philosophy of Freedom. Return to text directly before Footnote 2. Footnote 3. These spiritual scientific names were coined by Steiner to replace the older esoteric names of manas, buddhi, and atman. Return to text directly before Footnote 3. Footnote 4. The translator renders the German phrase into "rational soul" or "perceptive soul" while most other translations use Intellectual Soul, but it will be useful to remember the perceptive attributes of the Intellectual Soul. Return to text directly before Footnote 4. Footnote 5. To avoid confusion, in all quoted passages the word "intellectual" will replace the phrase "rational or perceptive" which seems to point to two different souls instead of the one intellectual soul. Return to text directly before Footnote 5. Footnote 6. The effects of hardening the ego is magnificently portrayed by Charles Dickens in his classic tale, A Christmas Carol. Return to text directly before Footnote 6. Return to text directly before Footnote 7. Read/Print the Review at: = == == == == == == == == == == I hear often from my Good Readers that they have bought books after reading my book reviews. Keep reading, folks! As I like to remind you, to obtain more information on what's in these books, buy and read the books — for less information, read the reviews. == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =In this section I like to comment on events in the world, in my life, and in my readings which have come up during the month. These are things I might have shared with you in person, if we had had the opportunity to converse during the month. If we did, then you may recognize my words. If I say some things here which upset you, rest assured that you may skip over these for the very reason that I would likely have not brought up the subject to spoil our time together in person. Padre Filius, the cartoon character created by your intrepid editor and would-be cartoonist, will appear from time to time in this Section of the Digest to share with us some amusing or enlightening aspect of the world he observes during his peregrinations. This month the good Padre reads a Headline about Actor Rip Torn Breaking into a Bank. 2. Comments from Readers: - EMAIL from Christopher Tidmore on his Trip Around the World by Land:RJM: I have mentioned Chris' trip to many people, saying that he is traveling from England to Australia by Land and their mouths have dropped open. Here is his description of the vehicle he is riding during his Mad Adventure through Asia, down the Malaya Peninsula, and, yes, by water to Australia. We are driving during through a rain storm, having loaded the bus mere moments before the torrents fell upon us. To call our conveyance a bus, perhaps, is an inaccurate statement to say the least. Will, who is the CEO, owner, driver, mechanic, sometimes dishwasher, and chief intellectual father of Madventure Travel, designed the myriads of parts of the odd and wonderful vehicle. Image the world’s largest SUV mating with a Winnebago. The all-terrain 18-Wheeler holds a travel cabin on top seating 40, toilet and firewood strapped to the back, features complete lockers of kitchen, storage, and tools below, with water and petrol tanks strapped to the bottom, all guided by driven by a trucker’s cab. On the front stands a balcony, with two seats, but thanks to active (and intrusively regulatory) European police, no one can sit upon it until we go off road in Asia. There are slots for the tables that we eat upon in evening to be slid into groves between the cab and the "structure”. Cubbyholes for every assortment of good that a six month trip might need. Food storage (and a safe, euphemistically called the freezer) rest under the passenger floorboards of the upper story), and an actual freezer near the back. It suffices to say that Madbus (henceforth my name for our conveyance) fits no approved definition of Eurotravel, despite its obvious comforts and utility. We travelers were warned of the dangers of curious traffic cops flagging down our vessel, for a look. If questioned, due to the oddity, we must tell the truth, as stated in our booking agreement. "We are traveling, for free, through Europe." Or as one customs agent wondered at the Port of the (Cliffs) of Dover, "What you’re doin’. Runnin’ a charity car?" He looked upon the group that ages usually from their late 20s to late 30s, with a few quite above that into the range of pensioners, with just a bit of skepticism. In collared shirts and fleece jumpers, we did not fit the Bohemian image of wanderers, one supposes. Just call us Gypsy Preppies. - EMAIL from Gary: Can you answer a question; do all doyles happen before age 5 and can we get rid of learned responses after age 5? Regards, Gary ~~~ REPLY ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dear Gary,According to our research, doyles are formed during five and under ages, going back to early womb periods. There is a prominent exception which puzzled me and Doyle Henderson for years: his long-time friend Clovis felt that he had doyles that were created during a lightning strike. Recent research in neuroscience shows that during intense trauma, like a lightning strike or battle-field explosion, the hippocampus is flooded with noradrenaline which effectively blocks its ability to transmit cognitive memories to the cortical region while at the same resurrecting the amygdala's ability to store doyles. This is switched during the height of trauma and switched off thereafter. If there is no history of your having undergone a severe trauma, the best thing is for you to assume you must trace down below five years to extirpate a doyle. Doyles are doylic memories and not really 'learned responses' as they can be stored by one event and last a lifetime. A Speed Trace is a memory technique which changes a doylic memory into a regular memory. A doyle should not be called a learned response, as no consciousness or repetition is required for a doyle to be stored. P. S. Read the new review The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy for additional details about how neuroscience research is confirming the theories of doyletics. - EMAIL from Salvo in Australia: I too, had wondered, what had happened to your regular DW. No biggie. Enjoyed reading abou the trip. Hope all is well. 3. Poem from Freedom on the Half Shell:"The Pledge of Freedom" Give me your poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free and I will give them taxes, regulations, restrictions, and every manner of unfairness ever created by persons saddled with the illusion that they can decide what is best for someone else's welfare. The individual, like the business professional, knows what's best in a given situation and, given the freedom, will take that action. The forces of coercion are prying open the shell that contains the living muscle and spirit of the American people — will we resist those forces and keep our muscles and spirit alive, free to open at will, or will we give up like the oyster and settle for "freedom on the half shell?" Here is another poem from Freedom on the Half Shell: The Pledge of Freedom NOTE: These United States have a rich history, but the Pledge of Allegiance was written by the Socialist Francis Bellamy who saw these United States as a capital R-type Republic which France had. This Pledge of Freedom was written by a native-born son of one of these United States and an American. I pledge allegiance to this Land and to the Freedom for which it stands, One Country Under God, with Liberty and Justice for All. What Ricky Matthews really said about the Times-Picayune dropping its daily newspaper publishing busines is this, "We will have by far the largest and most experienced news gathering team in Louisiana." Hmmm, rather interesting that Matthews never mentioned that the Times-Picayune already has the largest percentage of readership of any large daily newspaper in the country and is earning 11% profit in its current configuration as a daily newspaper. All of which could go out the window if the TP begins publishing only three newspapers a week in the Fall, as announced recently. From what I hear, the Morning Advocate is poised to begin delivering daily editions in the New Orleans area and as soon as that happens, I'm poised to throw the TP down the toilet where its news-mangling New Jersey-soiled editions belong, and subscribe to the newspaper that won my heart during my four years of residence in Baton Rouge. A local paper, owned by local people, a Louisiana newspaper for Louisiana people, which reports, managing news instead of mangling news. Sports-mangling: for most the 50 years since I graduated from LSU, I have read the sports pages of the TP mangling the results of LSU and Tulane sports contests. If LSU won the SEC Baseball Championship and Tulane lost a game 10-0 on the same weekend (as they did in 2012), LSU got 3 column inches and Tulane almost half a page. Fifty years of this kind of news-mangling without a choice is enough for me. Flush the TP! Bring on the daily Morning Advocate! If the TP's New Jersey owners think seat belts and helmets should be forced on drivers, the TP blasts off its Editorial pages in locked step. In a Republican and Conservative State, the largest daily newspaper has time and again pushed its Liberal biases and agenda upon unsuspecting readers as it were God's truth, and the people of New Orleans have not had any option but to pay for it and ignore it because the birds and the crawfish didn't care what was written upon what they shat or decomposed upon. I haven't weighed how much junk mail is stuck between the issues of the soon-to-be non-daily editions of the TP, but my guesstimate is about 30% percent of the weight of the paper over seven issues is pure junk, stuff I never clip, read, or look at, simply extract and toss in the garbage can. When the TP goes to three issues a week, I predict the percentage of this dead weight will increase to about 50%, and I strenuously object to paying for throw-away junk mail. Lord Knows, enough of it comes free in mail box in the course of the week, so why should I pay for a newspaper subscription to have another large volume of it delivered? Come the FALL of the TIMES-PICAYUNE, I will save our garbage collectors a lot of heavy lifting by canceling my subscription. == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == 9. CLOSING NOTES: = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Thanks to all of you Good Readers for providing the Sunshine which has made this site a Blooming Success. — Especially those of you who have graciously allowed us to reprint your emails and show photos of you and by you on this website — you're looking good! By May 1, 2019, in its 20th year of publication, the DIGESTWORLD and the doyletics website has received over 21.4 MILLION VISITORS ! ! ! We have received about ONE MILLION VISITORS per Year to the Doyletics Website since its inception June 1, 2000, nearly twenty years ago. Almost 2 million in the past 12 months. We are currently averaging about 150,000 visitors a month. A Visitor is defined as a Reader who is new or returns after 20 minutes or more has passed. The average is about one visitor for every 10 Hits. IMPORTANT NOTES about DIGESTWORLDtm Our DIGESTWORLD came into existence years before Facebook and all the other social media which interrupt people's schedules many times a day. All our photos, reviews, cartoons, stories, etc, come to you via a link inside of one short email Reminder at the beginning of each month. We hope you appreciate how we let YOU choose when to enjoy our DIGESTWORLD Issues. To Get a Monthly Reminder, Click Here . We especially want to thank you, our Good Readers, in advance, for helping our readership to grow. NOTE our name is now: DIGESTWORLD. Continue to send comments to Bobby and please do create links to DIGESTWORLD issues and Reviews on LinkedIn, on your Facebook page, and on other Social Media. When you copy any portion of a webpage or review, please include this text: "Copyright 2018 by Bobby Matherne". Email your friends about the reviews, the handy doyletics Speed Trace, the Household Hints, the cartoons, the Cajun jokes, the recipes, the poems, and the photos in all the DIGESTWORLD Issues archived on our website. Urge them to subscribe to the DIGESTWORLD Reminder so they won't miss a single issue! The Subscription Process SIMPLE: no Reply Confirmation is required. An email to the Editor with your First and Last names is all that's required. There is never a charge for viewing any page on our website; nor for any of the guidance we offer to people using the FIRST AID KIT or asking for help with doyletics in any other areas. For those who are able to contribute to the site we offer a year's subscription for receiving the DIGESTWORLD Monthly Reminders for $50. ~~ NOTE: DIGESTWORLD is a Trademark of 21st Century Education, Inc. ~~ The cost of keeping this website on-line with its 300 Gbytes of bandwidth a month is about $50 a month. Thank you, our Good Readers, for continuing to patronize our advertisers when they provide products and services you are seeking as you visit any of our web pages. Remember the ads are dynamically displayed and every time you read even the same page a second time, you may find new products and services displayed for your review. Our reviews, digests, tidbits, etc, all our webpages act as Google magnets to bring folks to the website to learn about doyletics and frequent our advertisers, so they support one another in effect.We wish to thank all Good Readers who have made a contribution to the doyletics.com website! Special thanks go to Chris and Carla Bryant in Corpus Christi and Gary Lee-Nova in Canada! And to our newest supporting subscribers Georgi Barioni and Bob Gehrig in Phoenix. We welcome your contributions to the support of the website and research into the science of doyletics. To obtain our street address, email Bobby at the address found on this page: http://www.doyletics.com/bobby.htm and we will send it to you. Every $50 subscription helps toward keeping this website on-line for another month. If you can't send money, at least show your support by sharing your favorite Issue of DIGESTWORLD and Reviews with a friend. You can read a description of how to do a Speed Trace (either in English or Spanish): Learn to Do a Speed Trace Here Or Watch Bobby extemporaneously explain How to Do a Speed Trace on Video: To make a connection to the Doyletics website from your own website, here's what to do. You may wish to use the first set of code below to link to the site which includes a graphic photo, or to use the second set of code for a text-only link. Immediately below is how the graphic link will look on your website. Just place this .html in an appropriate place on your website. <CENTER> < — with graphics link — > <A HREF="http://www.doyletics.com/index.htm">Learn to Do a Speed Trace Here<BR> <IMG SRC="http://www.doyletics.com/doylepb.gif" width="309" height="102" border="2" TITLE="Learn to Remove Doyles — all those Unwanted Physical Body states of fear, depression, migraine, etc." ALIGN=middle><A/></CENTER> <CENTER> < — text only link — > <A HREF="http://www.doyletics.com/introduc.htm">Learn to Do the Speed Trace at doyletics.com <A/> Check out the new additions to the Famous and Interesting Quotations at: == == == == == == == == == == == My reviews are not intended to replace the purchasing and reading of the reviewed books, but rather to supplant a previous reading or to spur a new reading of your own copy. What I endeavor to do in most of my reviews is to impart a sufficient amount of information to get the reader comfortable with the book so that they will want to read it for themselves. My Rudolf Steiner reviews are more detailed and my intention is to bring his work to a new century of readers by converting his amazing insights into modern language and concepts. == == == == == == == == == == == A Short Email Reminder for the Newest DIGESTWORLD Issue is mailed monthly to: Friends and associates People who have expressed interest in Bobby's writing. People who have Asked to Receive the DIGESTWORLD Reminder. Please Don't Bug Us Nothing BUGS US more than losing Hale-and-Hearty, Ready-to-Read Good Friends from the DIGESTWORLD Reminder List. So we've made it easy for Good Readers who have changed their Email addresses and Friends who would like to begin receiving the DIGESTWORLD Reminder at the first of each Month: IT'S EASY to RE-SUBSCRIBE or SUBSCRIBE: As of August, 2011 we have begun using a Contact Manager with an Email Merge feature which allows us to send personalized Emails to everyone in our Contact List. You can receive the colorful Email containing the DIGESTWORLD Reminder beginning with "Dear [Your First Name]". It is important that we have your First Name, so if the name you are addressed by in your Reminder is not your first name, please notify us of the name you wish us to use. For convenience you can send a quick email to give us your name by Clicking Here. To Contact Bobby, his Email address is visible on this page. NOTE: As of 2018 the Topica.com List messages are NO LONGER READABLE! Please do your part by letting us know of any email address change so that you may continue receiving the DIGESTWORLD Reminders. Most of our Readers come from folks who don't get these Reminders, but we offer the DIGESTWORLD Reminder as a service to our regular Good Readers. To send us your new email address, CLICK HERE! . If you discovered this page by a Google Search and want to SUBSCRIBE NOWIf you have enjoyed a particular issue, let us know, especially around the first of each month when those "lost soul" messages are bugging us, Send us a quick email by Clicking Here! Simply Click the Link at right to send an Email Request: SUBSCRIBEIf you have a friend or two that you think would enjoy reading the DIGESTWORLD, suggest they view the current DIGESTWORLD Issue and perhaps they'll decide to Subscribe. To unsubscribe from the DIGESTWORLD Reminder List: Click Link at right to send a Blank email to: UNSUBSCRIBE If the above links which provide canned emails don't work on your system, you can send a Subscribe/Unsubscribe request to the address found on this page: http://www.doyletics.com/bobby.htm Please include your first and last name when Subscribing. == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == 10. GRATITUDE - in Three Easy Steps: = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Maintaining a website requires time and money, and apart from sending a donation to the Doyletics Foundation, there are several ways you can show your gratitude and support our efforts to keep doyletics.com on-line. One would be for you to buy a copy of my Dolphin Novel, The SPIZZNET File. Books May be ordered in hardback or paperback form from Xlbiris the Publisher here: The best source at the best price is to order your copies on-line is from the publisher Random House/Xlibris's website above. Two would be for you to use the Google Search Engine for your web searches or to find an item on doyletics.com website. New reviews will have a place to do a Google Search at the top and the bottom of the reviews. Just enter a search phrase in the box below to do a Search. Note you can check whether to Search just this site or all websites. Three would be for you to let us know you like us by Subscribing to our monthly Reminder. One short email each month with a link to our Latest DIGESTWORLD Issue will keep you apprised of our latest reviews, photography, poetry, Cajun stories, recipes, Movie Blurbs, Travels, and even more! Simply Click Here: Subscribe Me! Thank you in advance! Like Us? Subscribe to Receive a Monthly Email Reminder of New Reviews & New DIGESTWORLD Issues — CLICK == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == 21+ Million Good Readers have Liked Us 21,550,958 as of May 20, 2019 Mo-to-Date Daily Ave 4,786 Readers For Monthly DIGESTWORLD Email Reminder: Subscribe! You'll Like Us, Too! == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == Any questions about this DIGESTWORLD ISSUE, Contact: Bobby Matherne Does your Face sometimes resemble the Faces Below? If so, Click on the Faces or Flags to Dig into our First Aid Kit. To follow Research in the science of doyletics, Read our Monthly DIGESTWORLD Issues. Click Here to get Monthly Reminder. For Copies of Reviewed Steiner Books, Click on SteinerBooks Logo below. Visit Bobby's Other Reviews, Articles, and Essays Books are Lighthouses Erected in the Sea of Time Visit the Counselor's Corner for Suggestions on Incorporating Doyletics in Your Work. e-mediatelytm is a Trademark of 21st Century Education, Inc. Prototyped 2000.

Professional honey producers say individuals must stop spending their money on costly how to start beekeeping classes in Parkersburg Iowa because they can get affordable training through online information plus ebooks which cost far less than beekeeping classes. Beekeeping, like every other activity, has its own dos and don’ts. Beginning beekeeping generally involves purchasing bees and the needed equipment. However, some people who are beginning this avocation generally make several blunders. It’s ok to make mistakes, and also this post can help new beekeepers prevent making precisely the same mistakes others have before. Here are three errors which every beekeeper should avert: 1. Not understanding the best time to begin hobby or a beekeeping business can prove to be a catastrophe. It often leads to a loss of your bees and cash. Since most bees expire during the winter, winter is the worst possible time to begin. This would compel a beekeeper to buy a new mountain of bees, which would cost more cash. Autumn is another poor time to begin beekeeping, since there are fewer blooms, thus a smaller amount of honey harvested. The best time to begin beekeeping is during summer, which can be the time of the year where there are lots of flowers that are blooming. 2. Purchasing used equipment and old books on beekeeping. This really is a standard error made by many beginning beekeepers. Purchasing used gear and old beekeeping books isn’t a good idea, although it’s clear that one would want to conserve money as much as possible. First, used gear can come with “familial” problems. The extractor outlet might have a flow, or the uncapping knife might not be sharp enough to uncap all the wax. This would surely affect the quality of one’s honey, which will ben’t an ideal situation particularly if a beekeeper is intending to begin a honey-selling business. Second, outdated information can be provided by old books on beekeeping. One might be stuck using the conventional approach when there are quicker and better ways manufacture honey and to keep beehives. 3. Refraining from buying protective equipment. Think about this. He/she will most likely come out as a pincushion with all the bee stingers stuck to their body, if one does not wear protective gear when handling the hives and gathering the honeycombs. Protective equipment is pricey, yes, but it is going to help beekeepers avoid having to pay medical bills. These three blunders happen to be presented here to help future beekeepers avert them. Before getting started beekeeping, it’s best to consult with a specialist beekeeper. If buying a particular item looks overly high-priced, consistently consider the ending cost (if they don’t purchase this thing now, will it cost them more later on?). Ultimately, it’s up to the person to determine the best strategy.

Professional honey producers say individuals should stop spending their hard earned money on costly how to start beekeeping classes in Water Valley Kentucky because they can get affordable training through online information plus ebooks which cost far less than honey bee farming classes. A lot of folks don’t realise that beekeeping can get tons of money to you if you desire to begin beekeeping as a business and is a million dollar industry. But one thing for sure is that it needs lots of effort and time for this to be successful. When beginning of in beekeeping one has to definitely learn bee biology from an experienced beekeeper or get helpful tips on bee biology. One of the first things to understand before you start beekeeping is that since bees boom on blooms, the winter season is a big challenge in their opinion. Simply because bees discover that it’s hard eat there own honey, which can be simply regurgitated food and sometimes to produce honey. Its quiet an astonishing thought bees have mastered the craft of making it during the winter months without flowers, but it does occur. The normal time for bees to generate huge amounts of honey is the warmer months like in summer, and is the time where you will find many beekeepers farming Beekeeping can be a costly hobby if you don’t understand what you are doing. You can end up making costly errors along the way. It may appear cheap because you place some slides for bees ahead and can make a box, but you need to know of the right locations to place your cartons for them to construct their hives. In order to obtain additional knowledge in beekeeping one must learn entomology, which is an essential part of the beekeeping business. You must understand what kind of predators will predate on your bees, such as wasps, yellow jackets, microscopic mites, and hornets. Science also plays a big role in beekeeping because it teaches you the way to keep bee’s habitat healthy and free of pests. Beekeeping stretches back generations in some families, which then makes a lot of people serious and dedicated about honey bee’s action, which will be essential in almost any beekeeper training. Lots of beekeepers mastered the ability of beekeeping through their grandparents and parents. And to them is merely an easy chore to do on the farm, but in the long run eventually became something that was marketable as a merchandise in the worldwide marketplaces. But apart in the learning curve when mastering this fascinating hobby, you can easily be on your way to successful beekeeping in case you are willing to learn and strive for success.

|Derbyshire - Hearthstone Farm Organics| Hearthstone Farm OrganicsHearthstone Lane Tel: 01629 534304 Ian, Joyce & Mandy Gilman would like to extend to you a warm welcome to their home. Situated high above the village of Matlock in Derbyshire, Hearthstone Farm is an Organic working family farm producing beef, pork and lamb by traditional environmentally friendly methods.We pride ourselves on the quality & taste of our produce available in the Farm Shop. B&B in our 16th Century farmhouse offers a warm welcome and comfitable environment from which to explore the surrounding countryside or vist our stately homes and beautiful Derbyshire Dales. Creation date : 29/06/2007 @ 20:45 Last update : 11/12/2007 @ 22:57 Category : Derbyshire Page read 9353 times Print the page |Other Organic Links| FAQs Job Vacancies Press Releases Acreditation Bodies Animal Feeds Articles - Health Articles - Organic Baby Beekeeping Bespoke Cookies Blogs and Campaigns Brittany Candles Catering Clothing Complementary and Holistic Therapies Conservation Courses Crafts Drinks Eco/Green Ethical Events Farmers Markets Farming Flowers French Food Gardening Gifts and Hampers Green Search Engines Health Health and Beauty Holidays Holidays - Brittany Home Honey and Honey Products Ice Boxes National Nutritional Therapy Organic Farming Software Organic Food and Health Store Organic Toys Outdoor Activities Paints Permaculture Pets Plants and Herbs Portals Producers Belgium Producers Brazil Producers China Producers France Producers Ireland Producers Portugal Producers Spain Producers UK Recipes Recycling Restaurants Self Sufficiency School Teas Vegan Vegan, Diabetic, Paleo & Free From Wholesalers & B2B

|Organic Food by County| Aberdeenshire Angus Antrim Ayrshire Bedfordshire Berkshire Berwickshire Borders Buckinghamshire Cambridge Carmarthenshire Ceredigion Channel Isles Cheshire Clwyd Conwy Cornwall County Down County Durham Cumbria Denbighshire Derbyshire Devon Dorset Dumfries and Galloway Dyfed East Lothian East Sussex East Yorkshire Essex Fife Glamorgan Gloucestershire Greater Manchester Gwynedd Hampshire Herefordshire Hertfordshire Highland Isle of Man Isle of Wight Isles of Scilly Kent Lanarkshire Lancashire Leicestershire Lincolnshire London Monmouthshire Norfolk North Yorkshire Northamptonshire Northern Ireland Northumberland Nottinghamshire Orkney and Shetland Oxfordshire Pembrokeshire Powys Ross-shire Roxburghshire Rutland Shropshire Somerset South Yorkshire Staffordshire Suffolk Surrey Tyne and Wear Tyrone Warwickshire West Lothian West Midlands West Sussex West Yorkshire Wiltshire Wirral Worcestershire | |Crafts - Julie Linn Jewellery| Julie Linn Jewellery07779 336809 Follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/julinnjewellery Contemporary sustainable jewellery with a historical twist The juxtaposition of old and new is beautifully combined. A 'taken for granted' item, or material, provides the inspiration and often the key component in each piece of Julie's sustainable jewellery. Waste materials such as paper, leather and rubber; or emotional keepsakes are combined with silver to stir emotion and memory. Julie uses modern technology alongside traditional silversmithing techniques to produce a sophisticated feel. In her work Julie often explores scale, materials and form using multiples. A balanced mix of precious and non-precious materials are incorporated, and the eco-friendly range of neckpieces consist of paper, seed paper, silk and leather. The new range 'rubberfly' which launched at British Craft Trade Fair, April 2010 features bicycle inner tubes! about the designer Julie established her company Julie Linn Designer/Maker in October 2009 following a career change from IT and Skills training. She graduated from Staffordshire University in 3D Design:Craft and now specializes in creating bespoke design-led jewellery. Her limited edition ranges are primarily inspired by architecture and historic dress. Please visit the gallery for images and please contact Julie if you'd like further information or to discuss your requirements. Most items can be customized to suit you as each are handmade. Call 07779 336809 or email [email protected] See website for list of events and exhibitions. Creation date : 22/11/2010 @ 16:36 Last update : 22/11/2010 @ 16:36 Category : Crafts Page read 5609 times Print the page |Other Organic Links| FAQs Job Vacancies Press Releases Acreditation Bodies Animal Feeds Articles - Health Articles - Organic Baby Beekeeping Bespoke Cookies Blogs and Campaigns Brittany Candles Catering Clothing Complementary and Holistic Therapies Conservation Courses Crafts Drinks Eco/Green Ethical Events Farmers Markets Farming Flowers French Food Gardening Gifts and Hampers Green Search Engines Health Health and Beauty Holidays Holidays - Brittany Home Honey and Honey Products Ice Boxes National Nutritional Therapy Organic Farming Software Organic Food and Health Store Organic Toys Outdoor Activities Paints Permaculture Pets Plants and Herbs Portals Producers Belgium Producers Brazil Producers China Producers France Producers Ireland Producers Portugal Producers Spain Producers UK Recipes Recycling Restaurants Self Sufficiency School Teas Vegan Vegan, Diabetic, Paleo & Free From Wholesalers & B2B

Are you searching for how to start beekeeping in Mechanicsburg Pennsylvania? A number of individuals say honey bee farming classes in PA can be costly and there are alternative ways to learn honey bee farming without spending a fortune in training. Beekeeping is a hobby that depends on having complete fire. You can’t start a company like this if you do not enjoy coping with creatures that are live. Working with bees is like working with another kind of fowl or animals; it wants attention and knowledge to keep bees productive and healthy. In order that it doesn’t create any difficulty for the business in the future, you should take complete care of every single small thing. – Choosing the appropriate tools Starting without choosing the proper tools beekeeping, is like entering the conflict with swimming costumes. You should be prepared before you start your business or it is going to be a total loss on your money and time. Ask your self several questions before you select your suitable hives. This depends on what is the target from beginning beekeeping a lot. Should you be willing to invest some cash and time in a bee keeping company then you certainly may want to understand how long will you take care of your hives. Are you prepared to buy a pricey hive if it is best option for you? These sort of questions will be asked to you once you see a specialist bee keeper to consult him about the best hive to purchase. Every hive has its own specifications, care and honey generation amount. – New technology and processes In case you are taking a look at bee keeping as a business you then must study a lot about the newest technologies, their nature and bees that emerged in this livelihood to be able to keep all your info up thus far. Your bees are the machines of your factory that will create money for you all the time once they start producing honey, so keeping your thoughts focused on them and your mind open for what is new in the sector will get you on top of the hobby.

Are you on the search for how to start beekeeping in Harrisburg Pennsylvania? A number of folks say honey bee farming classes in PA can be costly and there are cheaper ways to master honey bee farming without spending a fortune in training. Beekeeping is a hobby that depends on having fire that is whole. You cannot should you not like dealing with live creatures start a company like this. Working with bees is like working with another type of animals or birds; it wants knowledge and care to keep bees productive and healthy. In order that it doesn’t create any problem for the company in the future, you should take complete care of each and every little thing. – Choosing the appropriate tools Starting beekeeping without selecting the appropriate tools is like entering the battle with swimming costumes. Before you start your business you should be well prepared, or it will likely be a total loss for your time and money. Ask your self several questions before you choose your hives that are appropriate. This depends a lot on which is your aim from starting beekeeping. In case you are willing to invest some cash and time in a bee keeping company then you certainly might want to understand how long will you take good care of your hives. Are you ready if it’s best choice for you to buy a costly hive? These kind of questions will be asked to you once you visit an expert bee keeper to consult with him about the hive that is best to purchase. Every hive has its own specifications, care and honey generation quantity. – New technology and procedures If you’re looking at bee keeping as a business then you must examine a lot about bees, their nature and the newest technologies that emerged in this profession in order to keep all your info up thus far. Your bees are once they begin producing honey the machines of your factory that will generate money for you all the time, so by keeping your ideas, they were focused on and your mind open for what’s new in the sector will get you on top of the hobby.

Movie Ratings & Reviews Last film added: December 16, 2018. There are currently 1603 films in the database (since 1996). - A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) 10 A futuristic adaptation of the tale of Pinocchio, using intelligent robots with real feelings. - Adaptation. (2002) 10 A screenwriter writes himself into the screenplay he's trying to adapt from a nonfiction book. - Amazing Screw-On Head, The (2006) 10 A TV pilot featuring Emperor Zombie and Lincoln. Any last words before I spark it? - Arrival (2016) 10 Linguistics professor Amy Adams and the tense puzzle of 12 alien spacecraft. Deeply affecting humanity. - Artist, The (2011) 10 A jaded modern audience can enjoy this silent movie like it's 1927. Remarkable and charming. - Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) 10 Her father's ill, ice caps are melting and aurochs are invading six-year-old Hushpuppy's bayou. Love. - Before Midnight (2013) 10 Linklater's second sequel to Before Sunrise, set another nine years later, in Greece. Brilliant, believable. - Before Sunset (2004) 10 Richard Linklater directs the sequel to Before Sunrise, set nine years later, in Paris. - Being John Malkovich (1999) 10 Spike Jonze directs puppeteer John Cusack who discovers a portal into John Malkovich's mind. - Big Fish (2003) 10 A son learns about his dying storyteller father by piecing together his legends and myths. - Boyhood (2014) 10 Richard Linklater's endearing, masterful 12-year epic of the life of a young man. Amazing achievement. - Dark City (1998) 10 Rufus Sewell struggles to recover his memories in a nightmarish world run by telekinetic beings. - Enemy (2014) 10 Surreal, spider-infested portrayal of a man's subconscious war over infidelity, control by women. Haunting menace. - Eraserhead 2000 (2001) 10 David Lynch's restored first feature film. A nightmarish 1977 masterpiece of grotesque, eerie postindustrial life. - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) 10 Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet undergo a procedure to erase each other from their memories. - Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) 10 Compelling portrait of Banksy and many of the world's most infamous graffiti artists at work. - Fall, The (2008) 10 Tarsem Singh, director of 'The Cell,' creates a delightful fantasy based in 1920s Los Angeles. - Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) 10 A brilliant adaptation by Wes Anderson of the classic Roald Dahl book. Fantastic stop-motion animation. - Fargo (1996) 10 Stubborn, pregnant police officer Frances McDormand investigates a bungled crime. A Coen Brothers masterpiece. - Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997) 10 A documentary about an elderly topiary gardener, a retired lion tamer and a robotics designer. - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) 10 As your attorney, I advise you watch Johnny Depp as gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. - Fight Club (1999) 10 This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. Edward Norton stars. - Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) 10 Forest Whitaker lives on a New York rooftop, with pigeons, and follows the Samurai code. - Grand Budapest Hotel, The (2014) 10 Wes Anderson crafts a wonderful pre-WWII Europe inspired by the late Austrian writer Stefan Zweig. - Ghost Story, A (2017) 10 Bedsheet-covered meditation on the passage of time and death's inevitability. A profoundly sad haunted house. - Ghost World (2001) 10 A witty appraisal of America during the summer following Thora Birch's high school graduation. - Gravity (2013) 10 Breathtaking masterpiece inspires profound reflection on Earth and humanity. Among the greatest films ever made. - Happy Accidents (2000) 10 Marisa Tomei wonders if her boyfriend Vincent D'Onofrio is really a time-traveler, or just delusional. - Her (2014) 10 Spike Jonze's ingenious, surreal meditation on being human, knowing one's self and falling in love. - Hugo (2011) 10 In the 1930s, a boy lives in the walls of a Paris train station. Extraordinary. - Hurt Locker, The (2009) 10 An intense, complex war film. Intelligent, exhilarating psychological thriller about urban warfare in Iraq. - In the Realms of the Unreal (2004) 10 Visionary artist Henry Darger was a hospital janitor who privately authored a 15,000-page fantasy novel. - Inception (2010) 10 Brilliant concept and direction by Christopher Nolan. A dream within a dream within a dream. - Inglourious Basterds (2009) 10 A funny, violent Tarantino film about guerrilla soldiers in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. - Inland Empire (2006) 10 Lynch examines Hollywood and its artistic constraints in a bizarre/long jumble of movies within movies. - Interstellar (2014) 10 NASA explorers travel through a wormhole seeking habitable planets. Grand, quantum portrait of human endurance. - It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012) 10 Don Hertzfeldt's feature-film version of his animated philosophical trilogy about Bill and his shattered psyche. - Junebug (2005) 10 Childlike, awestruck Amy Adams is fantastic. Where would I be if I was a screwdriver? - Juno (2007) 10 A whip-smart 16-year-old girl is faced with an unexpected pregnancy and makes an unusual decision. - Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) 10 Quentin Tarantino directs Uma Thurman as the Bride in a martial-arts quest of revenge. - Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004) 10 Quentin Tarantino directs Uma Thurman as the murderous Bride bent on exacting vengeance against Bill. - Lady Bird (2017) 10 In 2002, 17-year-old Saoirse Ronan comes of age in Sacramento. Gerwig is keenly perceptive, funny. - Lost Highway (1997) 10 David Lynch's brilliant cinematic Möbius strip of paranoia, adultery, murder, and Freudian psychology. - Lost in Translation (2003) 10 Unhappily married movie star Bill Murray meets neglected newlywed Scarlett Johansson in Tokyo. - Memento (2000) 10 A man with no short-term memory uses tattooed notes to hunt down his wife's killer. - Midnight in Paris (2011) 10 A surreal, inspired masterpiece by Woody Allen about the importance of living in the present. - Moon (2009) 10 One man and a computer run a lunar base that supplies Earth with energy. Meditative. - Moonlight (2016) 10 A masterpiece. Tenderly chronicles a young black man's rough and anxious life in 1980s Miami. - Moonrise Kingdom (2012) 10 Wes Anderson's charming story of two 12-year-old lovers who flee their 1960s New England town. - Mr. Nobody (2010) 10 Nemo Nobody is the last mortal in the world. Mind-bending story across time. Perfect soundtrack. - Mulholland Drive (2001) 10 David Lynch directs a dark Hollywood conspiracy about the psychosis of becoming someone else. - Perks of Being a Wallflower, The (2012) 10 A coming-of-age story about a shy freshman who meets his first love. Surprisingly deep, moving. - Planet Earth (2006) 10 Spectacular 11-part BBC documentary of the diversity of Earth's life, from the poles to deserts. - Pi (1998) 10 A paranoid mathematician searches for a number to unlock the universal patterns found in nature. - Punch-Drunk Love (2002) 10 Businessman Adam Sandler begins a romantic journey with a curious woman amidst personal chaos. - Scanner Darkly, A (2006) 10 Richard Linklater, Philip K. Dick, Keanu Reeves, Radiohead and interpolated rotoscoping animation. Brilliant. - Searching for Sugar Man (2012) 10 The incredible true story of Rodriguez, the greatest 1970s rock icon who never was. Heartwarming. - Short Films of David Lynch, The (2002) 10 A detailed DVD collection of Lynch's six short films, dating 1966 to 1996. Horrifically odd. - Sin City (2005) 10 Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez create a brilliant piece of ultra-violent, stylized noir. Visually stunning. - Sling Blade (1996) 10 Amazing Billy Bob Thornton film. I don't reckon I got no reason to kill nobody. - Social Network, The (2010) 10 Fincher's chronicle of the founding of Facebook. From Harvard in 2003 to 500 million friends. - South Park - Imaginationland (2007) 10 Epic three-part story arc from season 11 released as a standalone movie. The best ever. - Stay (2005) 10 The desperate psychological nightmare of a dying man. A visually rich, ghost-inhabited alternate reality. - Sweet Hereafter, The (1997) 10 Poignant tale about the redemption of a small town after a tragic school bus accident. - Trainspotting (1996) 10 Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a starter home. Choose a career. Choose a family. - Tree of Life, The (2011) 10 Terrence Malick's insightful, gorgeous and bold vision. Sincerely explores the meaning of life and love. - V for Vendetta (2006) 10 The Wachowski Brothers present the futuristic landscape of totalitarian Britain, starring Natalie Portman. - World of Tomorrow (2015) 10 Brilliant Don Hertzfeldt short. A little girl experiences a mind-bending tour of her distant future. - World of Tomorrow Episode Two: The Burden of Other People... (2017) 10 Dazzling and poignant sci-fi. Don Hertzfeldt reverse-engineered this sequel from audio of his five-year-old niece. - You Can Count on Me (2000) 10 Drifter Mark Ruffalo reunites with sister Laura Linney in their childhood hometown. - 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) 9 Winstead awakens in a bunker. Is the outside world under widespread attack? Tense chamber piece. - 12 Years a Slave (2013) 9 Gut-wrenching adaptation of the 1853 autobiography of free-born Solomon Northup who was abducted into slavery. - 127 Hours (2011) 9 Mountain climber Aron Ralston's harrowing week trapped in a canyon. Survival instincts and prophetic visions. - 13th (2016) 9 In-depth look at racial inequality, criminalization and the prison-industrial complex in the U.S. Essential. Tragic. - (500) Days of Summer (2009) 9 Offbeat, witty romantic comedy (not a love story) starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. Great. - About Schmidt (2002) 9 Jack Nicholson is entering retirement and doesn't know what to do. Warning: Kathy Bates nudity. - All the Real Girls (2003) 9 This believable natural drama about love and anger stars Zooey Deschanel. - American Beauty (1999) 9 A dark drama of suburban picket-fence depression and frustration. Stars Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening. - American Hustle (2013) 9 Fictionalization of the Abscam FBI sting operation of the early 1980s. Stylishly brilliant criminal behavior. - American Movie (1999) 9 A hilarious documentary about an amateur filmmaker struggling to produce his latest horror film. - American Splendor (2003) 9 Welcome to the life of Harvey Pekar, a hospital clerk, music collector and comic-book writer. - Animation Show, The (2003) 9 A collection of short films (mostly comedy) put together by Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt. - Animation Show 2005, The (2005) 9 Don Hertzfeldt, Bill Plympton and other animators return in this second collection of excellent shorts. - Animation Show 2007, The (2007) 9 The touring festival's third anthology of animated shorts collected by Don Hertzfeldt and Mike Judge. - Annihilation (2018) 9 Natalie Portman joins a perilous expedition into the Shimmer, a quarantined disaster area. Hallucinogenic mystery. - Anomalisa (2016) 9 A joyless motivational speaker just going through the motions has an extraordinary experience. Stop-motion humanity. - Another Earth (2011) 9 A second Earth from a parallel universe appears in the sky. A meditation on destiny. - Apostle, The (1997) 9 Robert Duvall stars as a Texas preacher who changes his name and flees to Louisiana. - Argo (2012) 9 Amazing CIA-Canadian secret operation, via Hollywood, to return six Americans during the Iran hostage crisis. - As Good as It Gets (1997) 9 Come on in, and try not to ruin everything by being you. Jack Nicholson stars. - Atonement (2007) 9 One night in 1935 England, bearing false witness changes three lives forever. Keira Knightley stars. - Beautiful Girls (1996) 9 A New York jazz pianist returns to his small hometown for a high school reunion. - Beginners (2011) 9 Mike Mills's story of a graphic artist whose terminally ill father announces that he's gay. - Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey (2011) 9 The story of puppeteer Kevin Clash, the heart and soul of Elmo. Touching and inspiring. - Birdman (2014) 9 Washed-up movie star Keaton attempts a comeback via Broadway play while battling his ego. Surreal. - Black Swan (2010) 9 Ballet dancer Natalie Portman slowly loses her mind while preparing to star in Swan Lake. - Blackfish (2013) 9 The horrors of SeaWorld. Shows the devastating consequences of keeping intelligent, sentient creatures in captivity. - Black Mirror - Seasons 1-2 (2014) 9 Provocative sci-fi satire. Explores technology's darker ramifications on society. Gamification, limitless storage, AI. Brilliant. - Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glo... (2006) 9 A most gloriously comical moviefilm for make advertise American prejudices and cultural intolerance. High-five! - Bourne Ultimatum, The (2007) 9 The third installment, with Bourne as clever as ever. A satisfying and frenetically edited action-thriller. - Brand Upon the Brain! A Remembrance in 12 Chapters (2006) 9 Guy Maddin's homage to silent film. A return to an abandoned island home. Orphanage memories. - Breaking the Waves (1996) 9 Recently paralyzed Stellan Skarsgård urges his wife to have sex with another. Devastating von Trier. - Brokeback Mountain (2005) 9 Two sheepherders in the summer of 1963. I wish I knew how to quit you. - Broken Embraces (2009) 9 Pedro Almodóvar's cinematic poem about a blind writer-director and his lost love Penélope Cruz. - Broken Flowers (2005) 9 Bill Murray receives a mysterious pink letter that causes him to reflect on his past. - Bringing Out the Dead (1999) 9 Nicolas Cage is a burned-out paramedic haunted by visions of people he's tried to save. - Capote (2005) 9 A profile of writer Truman Capote, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, set during the early 1960s. - Captain Fantastic (2016) 9 A survivalist raising his children in an isolated Washington forest must return to civilization. Parenting! - Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011) 9 Inside France's Chauvet Cave, Werner Herzog idiosyncratically explores the history of art and human culture. - Chicken Run (2000) 9 Aardman Animations presents a comedy escape drama on a sinister chicken farm in 1950s England. - Children of Men (2007) 9 Humankind is facing the likelihood of its own extinction. Set in dystopian London in 2027. - Chop Shop (2008) 9 A hard-working, resourceful street orphan in Queens struggles to create a better life for himself. - Citizenfour (2014) 9 Whistleblower Edward Snowden releases classified info about mass global surveillance by the NSA. Gripping, chilling. - Contact (1997) 9 Jodie Foster stars in this Carl Sagan story about the search for intelligent extraterrestrial life. - Coraline (2009) 9 A secret door reveals a young girl's alternate, button-eyed life. Fantastic experience in RealD 3D. - Cove, The (2009) 9 Activists infiltrate a cove near Taijii, Japan to expose tragic abuses of dolphins. Thrilling investigation. - Cube (1998) 9 Seven complete strangers awaken one day in a cubical Kafkaesque maze filled with deadly traps. - Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The (2008) 9 A man ages backwards, with bizarre consequences. Directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt. - Dallas Buyers Club (2013) 9 In 1985, Ron Woodroof defies the FDA and helps HIV/AIDS patients get medication. Empathic, remarkable. - Darjeeling Limited, The (2007) 9 Three estranged, drug-addicted brothers meet for a train trip across India. Heartwarming Wes Anderson cinema. - Dark Days (2000) 9 A cinematic portrait of the homeless population living permanently in New York City's underground tunnels. - Dark Knight, The (2008) 9 Nolan's nightmarish adaptation of Batman, Joker and Two-Face raises the bar for comic-book movies, again. - Departed, The (2006) 9 Martin Scorsese's gritty crime drama is centered on two cops, the Irish mob and rats. - Descendants, The (2011) 9 George Clooney reconnects with his two daughters after his wife is seriously injured. Poignant imperfections. - Dirty Pretty Things (2002) 9 Turkish chambermaid Audrey Tautou works at a London hotel where drug dealing and prostitution abound. - District 9 (2009) 9 Biotechnology fable about an extraterrestrial race forced to live in slum-like conditions on Earth. Political. - Django Unchained (2012) 9 Tarantino's story of a freed slave, German bounty hunter and brutal Mississippi plantation owner. Nuts. - DMT: The Spirit Molecule (2010) 9 Strassman and Hancock explore connections between human spirituality and neuroscience through psychedelics. - Donnie Darko (2001) 9 A complex chain of events determine the fate of a teenager and a giant bunny-rabbit. - Double, The (2014) 9 Cinematic adaptation of the Dostoevsky tale, full of loneliness and paranoia. Charmingly absurd, bureaucratic dystopia. - Dunkirk (2017) 9 Nolan's depiction of Allied soldiers trapped by Nazi forces on the beaches of northern France. - Drive (2011) 9 Getaway driver Ryan Gosling falls in love with his married neighbor. Badass, stylish character study. - Drunk History - Season 1 (2008) 9 Drunk historians try to describe history while Jack Black, Michael Cera and others reenact. Hilarious. - Eastern Promises (2007) 9 Cronenberg's metaphysical exploration of Russian mobsters in London. A fantastic descent into the underworld. - Edge of Tomorrow (2014) 9 Cruise is caught in a time loop as Earth battles an alien invasion. Inspired blockbuster. - Encounters at the End of the World (2008) 9 Werner Herzog travels to Antarctica and talks to wayward travelers and philosophers on the frontier. - Enter the Void (2010) 9 Stunning and technically ingenious. A drug dealer takes the ultimate trip, from DMT to out-of-body. - eXistenZ (1999) 9 Game designer Jennifer Jason Leigh creates a virtual-reality experience indistinguishable from real life. - Ex Machina (2015) 9 A young programmer is selected to help evaluate a female A.I. dubbed Ava. Thrilling, smart. - Eyes Wide Shut (1999) 9 A dangerous odyssey of sexual and moral discovery starring Kidman and Cruise. Kubrick's last film. - Fighter, The (2010) 9 The early years of boxer Micky Ward and his blue-collar family who misguidedly exploit him. - Finding Nemo (2003) 9 Pixar Animation presents a father-son underwater adventure featuring Nemo, an adventurous boy clownfish. - Finding Neverland (2004) 9 Marc Forster presents Barrie's friendship with a family who inspired him to create Peter Pan. - Florida Project, The (2017) 9 The magical adventures of six-year-old Moonee, living in poverty in the shadow of Disney World. - Following (1998) 9 A dark thriller by Christopher Nolan about a young writer who follows strangers around London. - Food, Inc. (2009) 9 A disturbing look inside America's corporate-controlled food industry. Necessary documentary about what we eat. - Frances Ha (2013) 9 Delightful, compassionate portrait of floundering NYC hipsters by Noah Baumbach and the quirky Greta Gerwig. - Frisky Dingo - Seasons 1 and 2 (2008) 9 A supervillain named Killface plans to destroy humanity using the Annihilatrix. Clever and often hilarious. - Gattaca (1997) 9 In a sterile, genetically-enhanced world, Ethan Hawke was born naturally, with dreams of space travel. - Go (1999) 9 Three different comedic perspectives on a botched drug deal. Set in L.A. and Las Vegas. - Go-Getter, The (2008) 9 A great road movie, starting from Eugene, Oregon. Features Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward's music. - Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (2008) 9 A fast-moving, entertaining portrait of late gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, narrated by Johnny Depp. - Gosford Park (2001) 9 In 1932 England, this Robert Altman drama explores multiple storylines of party guests and servants. - Grindhouse (2007) 9 Tarantino/Rodriguez double bill. A gory, witty homage to seedy 1970s B-movie thrillers, including fake trailers. - Grizzly Man (2005) 9 Director Werner Herzog explores the life, death and values of grizzly bear activist Timothy Treadwell. - Heaven (2002) 9 The first of the Kieslowski trilogy, starring Cate Blanchett. Tom Tykwer directs this philosophical escape. - Helvetica (2007) 9 No modern typeface is more ubiquitous than Helvetica. What are the responsibilities of graphic designers? - Hidden Figures (2017) 9 Spotlights NASA's black female mathematicians during the 1960s space race, especially Katherine Johnson. Vital history. - High Fidelity (2000) 9 John Cusack, a record store owner and compulsive list-maker, recounts his top five relationship breakups. - How to Die in Oregon (2011) 9 Peter Richardson's respectful, heartbreaking documentary about physician-assisted suicide and the beauty of life. - Hype! (1996) 9 The Seattle grunge music scene of the early 1990s and its effects on American culture. - Ice Storm, The (1997) 9 An ice storm hits 1973 suburban Connecticut as middle-class families shatter social taboos through experimentation. - In Pursuit of Panama (2009) 9 An allegorical, Kerouac-like documentary about two lifelong friends who embark on a seven-country road trip. - In the Company of Men (1997) 9 Two businessmen decide to find, romance, and dump a vulnerable woman in this black comedy. - Inconvenient Truth, An (2006) 9 Al Gore's lecture about global warming and environmental responsibility is Carl Saganesque. It's PowerPoint cinema! - Incredible Adventures of Wallace & Gromit, The (2001) 9 Aardman Animations presents the first three Wallace & Gromit short films. Cracking toast, Gromit! - Incredibles, The (2004) 9 Pixar Animation presents a family of undercover superheroes forced into action to save the world. - Inexplicable Universe: Unsolved Mysteries, The (2013) 9 Six Neil deGrasse Tyson lectures exploring what we don't know about how the universe works. - Inside Job (2010) 9 Comprehensive analysis of the global financial crisis of 2008. Corruption in politics, regulation and academia. - Inside Out (2015) 9 A Minnesota tween is moved to California. What goes on in her head? Pixar brilliance. - Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking (2010) 9 Discovery Channel cosmology miniseries that discusses aliens, time travel and the history of the universe. - Into the Wild (2007) 9 Christopher McCandless abandons his privileged life and adventures to live alone in the Alaskan wilderness. - Isle of Dogs (2018) 9 The mayor of Megasaki, Japan banishes all dogs to Trash Island. Charming Wes Anderson stop-motion. - It Follows (2015) 9 A terrifying supernatural entity starts following a young woman after a sexual encounter. Gripping, ingenious. - Jacket, The (2005) 9 Military veteran Adrien Brody can foresee his own death and possibly change Keira Knightley's future. - Jodorowsky's Dune (2014) 9 Behind Jodorowsky's ambitious, influential mid-1970s sci-fi film failure. With Dalí, Giger, Welles, Jagger, Pink Floyd. - King's Speech, The (2010) 9 Inspiring portrait of the stammering King George VI of Britain and his ballsy speech therapist. - Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) 9 Hilarious. An ironic, smartass tribute to detective fiction, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer. - L.A. Confidential (1997) 9 A film of police corruption, tabloid journalism and Hollywood sleaze, set in 1950s Los Angeles. - Lars and the Real Girl (2007) 9 A remarkable achievement that reveals pure, heartbreaking humanity through a sex doll from the Internet. - Last Night (1998) 9 There are six hours until the end of the world. What would you do? - Last Week Tonight with John Oliver - Seasons 1-4 (2017) 9 The very best news satire program. Weekly updates from former 'Daily Show' host and correspondent. - Lego Movie, The (2014) 9 Irreverent, smartly funny and even subversive. Remarkable for a 100-minute toy advertisement. Well played, Lego. - Life of Pi (2012) 9 A shipwrecked Indian boy survives on a lifeboat, with zoo animals for company. Magical fable. - Limbo (1999) 9 A film set in Alaska's wilderness about people living in limbo. There is no ending. - Locke (2014) 9 The Tom Hardy show. An intense series of phone calls while driving to London. Gripping. - Looper (2012) 9 In 2042, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a hired assassin who kills people sent from the future. - Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The (2003) 9 I don't think there's going to be a return journey, Mr. Frodo. - Machinist, The (2004) 9 Insomniac industrial worker Christian Bale is a walking skeleton in this paranoid schizophrenic thriller. - Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) 9 The fourth and best chapter. Charlize Theron rebels against tyranny in post-apocalyptic Australia. Car chase! - Magnolia (1999) 9 A study of nine interconnected lives and random events one day in San Fernando Valley. - Man from Earth, The (2007) 9 Set in a single room, this thoughtful, philosophical play might blow your mind a little. - Martian, The (2015) 9 Astronaut Matt Damon, accidentally abandoned on Mars, has just one month of supplies. Compelling realism. - Matrix, The (1999) 9 Déjà vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something. - Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015) 9 A Pittsburgh high-schooler is deeply changed after befriending a classmate with cancer. Witty and heartbreaking. - Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005) 9 Miranda July's exploration of people struggling to connect with one another in this modern world. - Meeting People Is Easy (1999) 9 A documentary about the band Radiohead. An OK Computer travelogue of the disorientation of touring. - Melancholia (2011) 9 Kirsten Dunst suffers from melancholia and a mysterious planet threatens Earth. Epic Lars von Trier. - Michael Clayton (2007) 9 This paranoid, intelligent legal thriller stars Clooney as a large New York law firm's fixer. - Million Dollar Baby (2004) 9 Clint Eastwood works with a determined Hilary Swank in her attempt to become a boxer. - Minority Report (2002) 9 An excellent futuristic thriller with irrelevant distractions, including vomit, snot and anthropomorphic plants. - Monster (2003) 9 Charlize Theron is nearly unrecognizable in her moving portrayal of serial-killer prostitute Aileen Wuornos. - My Winnipeg (2008) 9 Haunting, personal portrait of filmmaker Guy Maddin's hometown of Winnipeg, and of his psyche. Unique. - Mystic River (2003) 9 A childhood tragedy overshadows the lives of three Boston men, who are reunited as adults. - No Country for Old Men (2007) 9 A heroin stash and $2 million spirals into catastrophic violence, courtesy of the Coen Brothers. - O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) 9 The Coen Brothers present Homer's Odyssey, set in the 1930s Deep South, starring George Clooney. - Office Space (1999) 9 I'm going to have to go ahead and ask you to come in on Sunday. - Others, The (2001) 9 Nicole Kidman lives in a darkened and haunted old house with her two photosensitive children. - Pianist, The (2002) 9 A Polish Jewish musician struggles to survive the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto of WWII. - Pixar Story, The (2008) 9 Documentary about the history of animation, and the origin and successes of Pixar Animation Studios. - Place Beyond the Pines, The (2013) 9 Motorcycle stunt rider Gosling wants to provide for his newborn son. Haunting modern Greek tragedy. - Predestination (2015) 9 Paradoxical head-trip. A temporal agent pursues an elusive terrorist through time, tries to prevent disasters. - Prestige, The (2006) 9 A rivalry of deadly stage illusions escalates between Victorian-era magicians. David Bowie is Nikola Tesla! - Primer (2004) 9 This puzzle film of time-travel paradoxes and loopholes begins with four inventors in a garage. - Prisoner - Complete Series Megaset, The (2006) 9 Resigned secret agent McGoohan becomes trapped in an idyllic village. A 1967-68 TV cult classic. - Rango (2011) 9 A chameleon arrives in a lawless Wild West outpost in need of a new sheriff. - Red Turtle, The (2017) 9 A man stranded on a deserted island encounters an enormous red turtle. Dialogue-free Japanese fable. - Requiem for a Dream (2000) 9 Purple in the morning, blue in the afternoon, and orange in the evening. - Revenant, The (2015) 9 The resilience of Leonardo DiCaprio, 1820s frontiersman on a fur trading expedition. Epic survival tale. - Revolutionary Road (2009) 9 Titanic II is emotionally devastating, gut-wrenching and profound. Shakes the American Dream to its core. - Room (2016) 9 A loving mother raising her boy within the confines of a small shed. Incredibly moving. - Room 237 (2013) 9 Explores the meaning of Kubrick's 'The Shining': Native American genocide, the Holocaust, Apollo moon landings? - Royal Tenenbaums, The (2001) 9 Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson present a dysfunctional family reunion of former child prodigies. - Ruby Sparks (2012) 9 Ingenious dissection of a man falling in love with his own idea of a woman. - Rushmore (1998) 9 Wes Anderson's hilarious follow-up to Bottle Rocket, starring prep-schooler Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray. - Safety Not Guaranteed (2012) 9 A man places a classified ad seeking a companion for time travel. Genuinely touching, sweet. - Savages, The (2007) 9 Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman become responsible for their ailing father's care. Witty humanity. - Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) 9 Clever graphic novel adaptation about a boy who must defeat his girlfriend's seven evil exes. - Selma (2015) 9 Martin Luther King's campaign to secure equal voting rights via a 1965 Alabama march. Vital. - Senna (2011) 9 Poignant documentary of the rise and tragic death of Brazilian F1 racing driver Ayrton Senna. - Shape of Water, The (2017) 9 Love story between a mute janitor and an amphibious creature at a 1962 top-secret laboratory. - Shine (1996) 9 Uplifting Geoffrey Rush film that's based on the true story of Australian pianist David Helfgott. - Silver Linings Playbook (2012) 9 Warm, quirky film about dealing with mental illness (through football, dance). Jennifer Lawrence is wonderful. - Single Man, The (2010) 9 A heartbroken English professor is having trouble coping with his life in 1960s California. Wonderful. - Sixth Sense, The (1999) 9 Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment star. I see dead people. - Slumdog Millionaire (2008) 9 A love story intertwines the slums and gangs of Mumbai with a TV game show. - Song of the Sea (2014) 9 Magical journey of Irish siblings to free fairy creatures trapped in the modern world. Beautiful. - Source Code (2011) 9 An ingenious and exciting thriller with some gaps in logic. Profound filmmaking by Duncan Jones. - South Park - The Complete 13 Seasons (2009) 9 The misadventures of four irreverent grade-schoolers in the quiet, dysfunctional town of South Park, Colorado. - Spotlight (2015) 9 True story of Boston Globe journalists uncovering systematic child molestation cover-ups in the Catholic Church. - Squid and the Whale, The (2005) 9 Based on director Noah Baumbach's adolescence in Brooklyn. Two brothers deal with divorce during 1986. - Star Trek (2009) 9 An inspired reboot of the Star Trek franchise. J.J. Abrams expertly renders the lens-flare brilliance. - Station Agent, The (2003) 9 A solitary man with dwarfism inherits an abandoned train depot and moves in. Understated magic. - Steve Jobs (2015) 9 Explores Jobs's ruthless drive to revolutionize computing. Behind the scenes of three iconic product launches. - Straight Story, The (1999) 9 A David Lynch and Disney anomaly. An old man rides his tractor across the Midwest. - Stranger Than Fiction (2006) 9 Will Ferrell tries to figure out who's narrating his unraveling life. Maggie Gyllenhaal is adorable. - Stranger Things - Seasons 1-2 (2017) 9 A small Indiana town in the 1980s has a shadowy parallel dimension. Thrilling, emotionally resonant. - Submarine (2011) 9 A 15-year-old resolves to lose his virginity and save his parents' marriage. Witty and heartfelt. - Synecdoche, New York (2008) 9 Charlie Kaufman blends self-referential existence with a living play inside a New York City warehouse. - Take Shelter (2011) 9 Tense, haunting film about a father being driven mad by apocalyptic visions. Paranoid or prophetic? - Tape (2001) 9 Richard Linklater presents Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman dissecting high school memories in a motel. - There Will Be Blood (2007) 9 A P.T. Anderson film about family, greed, religion, and oil, centered on a California prospector. - Three Kings (1999) 9 The Gulf War aftermath, stolen Iraqi gold, skeet-shooting with Nerf footballs, and George Clooney. Fantastic. - Through the Wormhole - Season 1 (2010) 9 Compelling TV series that explores the deepest mysteries of human existence. Hosted by Morgan Freeman. - Titanic (1997) 9 Romantic tale of a rich girl and poor boy who meet on the 'unsinkable' ship. - Torrey Pines (2016) 9 Stop-motion adventure of 1990s youth. Director Clyde Peterson also leads queercore band Your Heart Breaks. - Toy Story 3 (2010) 9 Andy's going to college. Even better than the first two, with a particularly poignant ending. - Triangle (2010) 9 Passengers aboard a yacht are struck by mysterious weather conditions. Time runs in terrifying circles. - True Grit (2010) 9 The Coen Brothers' remake of a classic Western has both ugly violence and touching humanity. - Truman Show, The (1998) 9 Insurance salesman Jim Carrey discovers his entire life is actually a TV show. - Twin Peaks - The Definitive Gold Box Edition (2007) 9 David Lynch's groundbreaking 1990-91 TV series. It's a paranormal murder mystery set in northern Washington. - Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) 9 David Lynch revisits the surreal, mystical character of a quaint Washington town 25 years later. - Under the Skin (2014) 9 Existential, visually mesmerizing film about loneliness by Jonathan Glazer, starring the otherworldly Scarlett Johansson. - Up (2009) 9 An old man ties thousands of balloons to his house, flies to South America. Poignant. - Up in the Air (2009) 9 Downsizing expert Clooney spends his days isolated in planes and hotels. Complex, intelligent and moving. - Upstream Color (2013) 9 Shane Carruth's fragmented, hypnotic story of lost identity. Puzzling allegory via Thoreau and psychotropic grubs. - Vera Drake (2004) 9 Set in 1950s London, this film portrays a modest working-class woman who also performs abortions. - Virgin Suicides, The (1999) 9 Lives in an affluent American suburb in the 1970s are forever changed by five sisters. - Waking Life (2001) 9 Richard Linklater presents a uniquely animated universe that explores dream life and real life. - Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) 9 Aardman Animation's full-length feature of the claymation duo. Giant vegetables are protected by security systems. - WALL-E (2008) 9 Humans have left Earth, but a charming, curious robot is still cleaning up our mess. - Watchmen (2009) 9 Zack Snyder successfully films Alan Moore's graphic novel about an alternate, quantum America in 1985. - When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions (2008) 9 Discovery's compelling six-part series about the race into space, the moon landings, shuttles, and beyond. - Where the Wild Things Are (2009) 9 Spike Jonze adapts Maurice Sendak's classic story for the screen. Reality is a child's imagination. - Whiplash (2014) 9 Driven by his cutthroat instructor, a conservatory drummer is hellbent on becoming a jazz great. - Winged Migration (2001) 9 Documentary on the migratory patterns of birds, shot over three years on all seven continents. - Winter's Bone (2010) 9 Powerful noir drama about a resilient 17-year-old who tries to find her missing, drug-dealing father. - Wonder Boys (2000) 9 English professor Michael Douglas gets caught up in misadventure while trying to finish his novel. - Wonderfalls - The Complete Viewer Collection (2004) 9 Arguably the best cancelled television series ever. Only 4 of the 13 episodes actually aired. - Wrestler, The (2008) 9 Professional wrestler Mickey Rourke must retire, but life outside the ring is a dispiriting struggle. - Zero Dark Thirty (2012) 9 Riveting story of the decade-long manhunt for Osama bin Laden. Finale balances catharsis with despair. - 11:14 (2005) 8 An account of five seemingly random storylines that dreadfully converge one night at 11:14. - 12 Angry Men (1997) 8 Excellent made-for-TV remake of the 1957 classic, starring George C. Scott and Jack Lemmon. - 180° South: Conquerors of the Useless (2010) 8 An outdoorsman retraces the epic 1968 journey of his hero Yvon Chouinard to Patagonia. Inspiring. - 20th Century Women (2017) 8 A teenager is raised by his bohemian mother and two young women. Southern California, 1979. - 21 Grams (2003) 8 Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, and Naomi Watts star. How much does your soul weigh? - 25th Hour (2002) 8 Edward Norton revaluates his life in the 24 remaining hours before a seven-year jail term. - 300 (2007) 8 An epic rendering of Miller's graphic novel about the Battle of Thermopylae. Stunning Spartan art-blood. - 3:10 to Yuma (2007) 8 Complex Western remake centered on a stagecoach robbery. Stars outlaw Crowe and rancher Bale. - 50/50 (2011) 8 Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a 27-year-old who was just diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. - Abel Raises Cain (2005) 8 A documentary about world-class hoaxer Alan Abel, who exposes the media's obsession with the salacious. - Adjustment Bureau, The (2011) 8 Politician Matt Damon and a ballerina are affected by mysterious forces keeping the lovers apart. - Adventure Time - Seasons 1 and 2 (2011) 8 A boy and a magical dog are hero-adventurers in the Land of Ooo. Hilariously bizarre. - Almost Famous (2000) 8 A high-school boy is given the opportunity to write about a rising 1970s rock band. - American Gangster (2007) 8 In Manhattan during the 1970s, heroin kingpin Frank Lucas smuggles drugs into America from Vietnam. - American History X (1998) 8 There's nothing like neo-Nazi skinhead Edward Norton shattering your teeth against a concrete curb. - Antichrist (2009) 8 Lars von Trier offers a bleak, self-indulgent vision of female sexuality and human cruelty. Shocking. - Arrival, The (1996) 8 Astronomer Charlie Sheen discovers intelligent alien life, but the aliens are keeping a deadly secret. - Art & Copy (2009) 8 Documents advertising's history and influence. Wisdom and inspiration from creative artists behind the campaigns. - Attack the Block (2011) 8 A rowdy teen gang in South London exuberantly defends their block from an alien invasion. - Avatar (2009) 8 Cameron delivers a forbidden love story set in an extraordinary, photorealistic alien world. 3D wonderment. - Avengers, The (2012) 8 Nick Fury brings together Marvel superheroes to save the Earth from Loki. Very balanced effort. - Away From Her (2007) 8 A man deals with the progression of his wife's Alzheimer's. Sarah Polley's character-driven directorial debut. - Babadook, The (2014) 8 A single mother and her troubled boy find a creepy children's book. Slowly enveloping dread. - Baby Driver (2017) 8 A baby-faced getaway driver is in deep trouble following a botched heist. Musical chase scenes. - Bag It (2011) 8 Funny/disturbing environmental documentary about plastic bags, the ACC, BPA, phthalates and child development. - Batman Begins (2005) 8 The prequel to the Batman series, directed by Christopher Nolan, includes an awesome Batmobile. - Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010) 8 Compelling, accessible animated superhero film, featuring Batman, the Red Hood, Nightwing and the Joker. - Beautiful Losers (2009) 8 A collective group of do-it-yourself artists and designers in 1990s New York find success. - Before Night Falls (2000) 8 A portrait of the life of Cuban author and exile Reinaldo Arenas, starring Javier Bardem. - Best in Show (2000) 8 Christopher Guest presents a colorful array of dog owners competing at a national dog show. - Between the Folds (2008) 8 PBS documentary about artists and scientists who have devoted their lives to modern origami. - Big Hero 6 (2014) 8 A robotics prodigy and inflatable robot Baymax become covert heroes of San Fransokyo. High-tech Pixar. - Big Lebowski, The (1998) 8 Comedy about a pothead bowler who is mistaken for a deadbeat philanthropist. Stars John Goodman. - Big Short, The (2015) 8 Breaks the fourth wall to reenact the credit and housing bubble collapse of the mid-2000s. - Birth (2004) 8 Jonathan Glazer references Kubrick in this film about the possibility of reincarnation, starring Nicole Kidman. - Black Panther (2018) 8 The advanced African kingdom of Wakanda, powered by vibranium, is in transition. Socially conscious Marvel. - Blair Witch Project, The (1999) 8 In 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in a Maryland forest while researching a local legend. - Blood Into Wine (2010) 8 Eccentric rocker Maynard James Keenan's journey from L.A. to running a world-class vineyard in Arizona. - Blue Valentine (2010) 8 Deftly alternates between a dysfunctional couple's earlier in-love happiness and their later anguish. Remarkable. - BoJack Horseman - Seasons 1-5 (2018) 8 Absurd adult cartoon about a washed-up 1990s sitcom horse in Hollywood. Surprising wit, depth, self-loathing. - Boogie Nights (1997) 8 About the Los Angeles pornography industry of the 1970s and 1980s. Heather Graham is Rollergirl. - Bottle Rocket (1996) 8 The oddball Wilson brothers bungle their way into a crime spree. Wes Anderson's directorial debut. - Bourne Supremacy, The (2004) 8 A sequel that tops the original. Matt Damon resumes his life as a trained assassin. - Bowling for Columbine (2002) 8 Michael Moore explores the roots of America's propensity for gun violence and the fear-mongering media. - Box, The (2009) 8 Richard Kelly's third film is intriguing, frustrating, surreal and brimming with water imagery. Haunting absurdity. - Breadwinner, The (2017) 8 A brave 11-year-old Afghan girl dresses as a boy to survive the Taliban. Beautiful, heartbreaking. - Breaking the Huddle: The Integration of College Football (2008) 8 HBO chronicles the profound effect of the 1960s Civil Rights movement on college football programs. - Brick (2006) 8 A memorable noir mystery set at a modern-day Southern California high school, using 1940s slang. - Brooklyn (2015) 8 An Irish immigrant lands in 1950s Brooklyn, but ends up having to choose between countries/lives. - Brothers Bloom, The (2009) 8 A charming tale of con artists and the intricate scams they concoct and live out. - Bubble (2006) 8 Soderbergh's haunting, low-budget film featuring a doll factory in a decaying Midwest town, and murder. - Bug's Life, A (1998) 8 A misfit ant, looking to save his colony from grasshoppers, recruits some inept circus bugs. - Bunny and the Bull (2009) 8 A surreal, Gondry-esque comedy starring an agoraphobic man who reconstructs a tragic European road trip. - Buster's Mal Heart (2017) 8 A motel concierge (possibly lost at sea), Y2K, and a cosmic event called the Inversion. - Catch Me If You Can (2002) 8 Successful con-artist and millionaire Leonardo DiCaprio holds multiple identities. FBI agent Tom Hanks gives chase. - Cars (2006) 8 Pixar presents hotshot rookie racecar Lightning McQueen, who crashes through Radiator Springs on Route 66. - Cell, The (2000) 8 Psychotherapist Jennifer Lopez journeys inside a comatose serial killer's mind, hoping to recover information. Graphic. - Chasing Amy (1997) 8 Two friends find success as creators of a hit comic book. Then they meet her. - Christmas, Again (2015) 8 Life of a dejected Christmas-tree salesman. Small observations about human behavior, the importance of timing. - Chronicle (2012) 8 Don't abuse your children or they might grow up to destroy Seattle with powerful telekinesis. - Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrob... (2005) 8 Four British children travel through a magical wardrobe into C.S. Lewis's mythical land of Narnia. - Cider House Rules, The (1999) 8 Tobey Maguire, raised in an orphanage and trained to be a doctor, explores the world. - City Dark, The (2012) 8 Documentary about the human and global consequences of modern light pollution and the disappearing stars. - Clear Cut: The Story of Philomath, Oregon (2006) 8 A documentary about political conflict in an Oregon logging town, directed by Peter Richardson. - Cloud Atlas (2012) 8 An ambitious, sprawling epic from the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer. Complex, spectacular, gimmicky and disjointed. - Closer (2004) 8 Natalie Portman plays a cheeky pink-haired stripper in this film about relationships, attraction, and betrayal. - Cloverfield (2008) 8 It's Godzilla epicness, Blair Witch Project shakiness, and Alien viciousness concealing a Manhattan love story. - Coco (2017) 8 On Día de los Muertos, an aspiring musician crosses into the afterlife seeking his great-great-grandfather. - CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap (2015) 8 Exposes the lack of women and minorities in tech. Explores reasons why and possible solutions. - Coffee and Cigarettes (2003) 8 Jim Jarmusch directs this series of black & white vignettes, centered around coffee and cigarettes. - Cold Weather (2011) 8 Charming mumblecore mystery set in Portland, Oregon. I want to be friends with the leads. - Comet (2014) 8 Bittersweet, jumbled retelling of moments from a couple's six-year relationship. Dreamlike references to parallel universes. - Computer Chess (2013) 8 Bizarre story about artificial intelligence via 1980s chess programmers. It's like 'Pi' meets 'Napoleon Dynamite'. - Congress, The (2014) 8 Ambitious, futuristic amalgam of Hollywood actor digitization and animated illusory utopia. Trippy. Robin Wright stars. - Conjuring, The (2013) 8 Creepy-as-hell 1971 paranormal investigation of a haunted Rhode Island farmhouse by Ed and Lorraine Warren. - Constant Gardener, The (2005) 8 A story of corruption in the pharmaceutical industry and how AIDS-ravaged Africa is being exploited. - Corpse Bride (2005) 8 Tim Burton presents a shy groom whisked into the underworld after inadvertently marrying the dead. - Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey - Episodes 1-7 (2014) 8 Neil deGrasse Tyson picks up where Carl Sagan left off. The story of our universe. - Crash (2005) 8 The lives of a multiethnic collection of Los Angeles characters grippingly interweave over two days. - Cremaster 3 (2002) 8 Matthew Barney's art installation epic where he plays the Entered Apprentice and faces bizarre adversaries. - Dancer in the Dark (2000) 8 Björk arrives in America with her son, expecting life to be like a Hollywood film. - Dangerous Method, A (2011) 8 How the relationships between Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud and Sabina Spielrein gave birth to psychoanalysis. - Dark Knight Rises, The (2012) 8 Very emotionally dark film that rises to an impressive, satisfying finale for Nolan's Batman trilogy. - David Lynch: The Art Life (2017) 8 Lynch discusses his early life, his art and his creative process. Meditative smoking and painting. - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) 8 Ten years after the simian flu pandemic, human survivors and apes are drawn into battle. - Death Proof (2007) 8 Tarantino's half of Grindhouse. Scarred stuntman Kurt Russell uses his car to murder voluptuous women. - Deconstructing Harry (1997) 8 Between air conditioning and the Pope, I choose air conditioning. A Woody Allen movie. - Dope (2015) 8 In a tough L.A. neighborhood, an overachieving teen's life changes following an underground party. Charming. - Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (2008) 8 Joss Whedon's three-part online musical miniseries. Filmed during the writers' strike, starring Neil Patrick Harris. - Drag Me to Hell (2009) 8 Loan officer Alison Lohman becomes cursed after evicting an elderly gypsy woman from her home. - Dynamic:01 - The Best Of DavidLynch.com (2007) 8 A collection of short films and interviews created for subscribing members of DavidLynch.com. Weird experiments. - East, The (2013) 8 Private intelligence agent Brit Marling infiltrates an anarchist group that attacks her firm's corporate clients. - Election (1999) 8 Obnoxious overachiever Reese Witherspoon is running for student body president. Cue vindictive teacher Matthew Broderick. - English Patient, The (1996) 8 A three-hour, WWII-era love story. A young nurse tends to a badly burned Hungarian mapmaker. - Everybody Wants Some!! (2016) 8 Good-natured look at the 1980 college party scene, the shenanigans of an unsupervised baseball team. - Everything is a Remix (2012) 8 Four-part video series by Kirby Ferguson about the culture of copying, transforming and combining media. - Experimenter (2015) 8 True story of social psychologist Stanley Milgram's experiments on human obedience, by using electric shock. - Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) 8 A searing indictment of the Bush monarchy. The huddled masses bring forth their moral indignation. - Fast Food Nation (2006) 8 A humanistic, fictionalized behind-the-scenes portrait of America's fast food and meat packing industries. - Finding Dory (2016) 8 The forgetful blue tang fish searches for her long-lost parents, journeys to an ocean conservatory. - Finding Vivian Maier (2013) 8 Fascinating investigation into the mysteries of an eccentric, secretive nanny with a prolific photographic legacy. - Forks Over Knives (2011) 8 Vast evidence that a whole foods, plant-based diet can reverse diseases caused by animal-based foods. - Fountain, The (2006) 8 Three stories of love/mortality that weave in the legendary quest for the Fountain of Youth. - Franklyn (2009) 8 In a future metropolis (see Dark City, Blade Runner) and contemporary London, Eva Green stars. - Frost/Nixon (2008) 8 A dramatic retelling of the post-Watergate television interviews between David Frost and Richard Nixon. - Full Frontal with Samantha Bee - Seasons 1-2 (2017) 8 Weekly news satire, with particular attention to women's issues, from the former 'Daily Show' correspondent. - Future, The (2011) 8 Miranda July weaves a magical, heartrending film on loneliness and mortality. And a stray cat. - Garden State (2004) 8 Zach Braff returns to his hometown. There he meets Natalie Portman, who changes his life. - Get Out (2017) 8 A black man meets his white girlfriend's parents for a weekend at their estate. Razor-sharp. - Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005) 8 Simplifies historical conflict (1950s McCarthyism) to illustrate TV journalism's responsibility to question authority. - Good Will Hunting (1997) 8 Troubled MIT janitor Matt Damon is a gifted mathematician. Can he turn his life around? - Gone Girl (2014) 8 Embrace media hysteria and lose faith in marriage and justice with Fincher's dark psychological thriller. - Grand Night In: The Story of Aardman, A (2015) 8 History of Aardman Animations, the acclaimed British stop-motion animation studio behind Morph, Wallace & Gromit. - Gruffalo, The (2009) 8 A cunning mouse outwits a succession of predators while walking in the deep dark wood. - Gummo (1997) 8 A disturbing, plotless tale of freakshow characters living in tornado-ravaged poverty, by Harmony Korine. - Half Nelson (2006) 8 Inner-city junior high history teacher Gosling forms an unlikely friendship with a student. Complex, absorbing. - Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) 8 Poppy is a cheery North London schoolteacher whose optimism tends to exasperate those around her. - Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) 8 Stunning grotesqueness and visual poetry from Guillermo del Toro. Incredible set design and beautiful effects. - Hilary and Jackie (1998) 8 About the brilliant concert cellist Jacqueline du Pre, from the perspective of her sister Hilary. - Hire Film Series Vol. 1, The (2001) 8 Five short BMW-commissioned films starring Clive Owen. Directors include Kar-Wai Wong and Ang Lee. - History of Violence, A (2005) 8 A Cronenberg art film that's also an accessible crime drama. Based on a graphic novel. - Hole, The (2001) 8 British psychological thriller featuring teenagers in a bomb shelter. Stars Thora Birch and Keira Knightley. - Hot Fuzz (2007) 8 A clever, over-the-top pastiche of every buddy cop movie you've ever seen, set in London. - How the Fire Fell (2011) 8 Edward P. Davee's haunting, dreamlike portrayal of Edmund Creffield's early-1900s cult in Corvallis, Oregon. - Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) 8 Adventures of a misfit teenager and his foster 'uncle' in the wild New Zealand bush. - Igby Goes Down (2002) 8 A sarcastic 17-year-old boy rebels against the money and privilege he was born into. - Illusionist, The (2006) 8 In 1900 Vienna, Edward Norton is Eisenheim the Illusionist. This lush production inspires supernatural reflection. - Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, The (2009) 8 Gilliam shows us the death of magic (while honoring Heath Ledger) in spectacular visual form. - Imitation Game, The (2014) 8 How Alan Turing helped crack Germany's Enigma code during WWII and saved millions of lives. - In the Bedroom (2001) 8 Tragic story about a couple's only son who falls in love with a single mother. - In the Shadow of the Moon (2007) 8 The surviving crew members from NASA's Apollo missions tell their story in their own words. - Indie Game: The Movie (2012) 8 Follows the emotional journeys of independent game development, featuring Super Meat Boy, Fez and Braid. - Inherit the Wind (1999) 8 Like 12 Angry Men, another excellent made-for-TV remake starring Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott. - InnSæi: The Sea Within (2016) 7 A global journey to reconnect human intuition within our modern world of distraction and stress. - Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) 8 Coen Brothers adaptation about a young singer navigating the Greenwich Village folk scene in 1961. - Insider, The (1999) 8 Based on a true story about malpractices in the tobacco industry and powerful Big Tobacco. - Insomnia (2002) 8 Two L.A. homicide detectives are dispatched to Alaska to investigate the murder of a teen. - Invisible War, The (2012) 8 Investigation of the rape epidemic in the U.S. military and its profound consequences. Tragic, appalling. - Iron Giant, The (1999) 8 A boy makes friends with a giant alien robot that the government wants to destroy. - Iron Man (2008) 8 Robert Downey Jr. builds an armored suit and decides to use the technology against evil. - Julien Donkey-Boy (1999) 8 A Dogme 95 video-art exercise about the effects of schizophrenia on family life. Poetic desperation. - Jungle Book, The (2016) 8 Can't really go wrong with Bill Murray and Christopher Walken voicing characters in this adaptation. - K-PAX (2001) 8 Kevin Spacey is either extraterrestrial or delusional. And he eats a banana without peeling it. - Kick-Ass (2010) 8 A high-schooler decides to become a superhero. Ultraviolent, stylized brutality and absurdist comedy ensues. - King Corn (2007) 8 Good-natured introduction to industrialized agriculture. We subsidize the Happy Meals, but not the healthy ones. - King Kong (2005) 8 Naomi Watts is amazing and the special effects are over-the-top fantastic, but it's excessively long. - King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, The (2007) 8 Curiously compelling documentary about a classic arcade battle between two Donkey Kong video game champions. - Knocked Up (2007) 8 Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl have a drunken one-night stand with unexpected consequences. Very funny. - Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) 8 A young boy searches for a magical suit of armor, fights vengeful spirits. Stop-motion origami. - Kundun (1997) 8 Martin Scorsese directs the true story of Tibet's 14th Dalai Lama, from childhood to exile. - Kung Fury (2015) 8 In 1985, a Miami cop goes back in time to kill Hitler. Over-the-top crowdfunded action-comedy. - Lantana (2001) 8 An Australia-set mystery that examines the stories of four married couples and a murdered woman. - Layer Cake (2004) 8 A clever British crime film about a successful cocaine dealer planning an early retirement. - Let Me In (2010) 8 A bullied young boy befriends a lonely young female vampire in this visceral English-language remake. - Light Bulb Conspiracy: The Untold Story of Planned Obsole... (2011) 8 History of planned obsolescence, the hidden mechanism at the heart of our wasteful consumer society. - Limits of Control, The (2009) 8 Jim Jarmusch's stylized, dreamlike tale of an enigmatic loner on a shadowy criminal mission. Meditative. - Lincoln (2012) 8 Spielberg's portrait of a deeply conflicted Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Incredibly well-written dialogue. - Little Miss Sunshine (2006) 8 An entertaining comedy about a dysfunctional family's California roadtrip. Everyone just pretend to be normal. - Little Prince, The (2016) 8 An overscheduled girl befriends an eccentric aviator, who shares his extraordinary world. Moving, charming adaptation. - Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (2016) 8 Werner Herzog explores the Internet's evolution, ponders its societal influence. Cyberwarfare, AI, telepathy, etc. - Lobster, The (2016) 8 Absurd allegory for how society regards romantic relationships and loneliness. A provocative, original love story. - Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) 8 Four Cockney men pool their money for an illegal high-stakes card game, with unpleasant results. - Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup (2009) 8 Investigates the conspiracy theory that 9/11 was an inside job. An example of history repeating? - Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The (2001) 8 He is passing into the Shadow World. He'll soon become a wraith like them. - Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The (2002) 8 We needs it. Must have the precious. They stole it from us. Sneaky little hobbitses. - Lucky Number Slevin (2006) 8 A clever Pulp Fictionesque story of violent revenge featuring rival crime bosses Kingsley and Freeman. - Man on the Moon (1999) 8 Jim Carrey is eccentric comedian Andy Kaufman, a television star and self-declared intergender wrestling champion. - Man Who Wasn't There, The (2001) 8 Barber Billy Bob Thornton blackmails his wife's boss and lover. Directed by the Coen Brothers. - Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) 8 Elizabeth Olsen struggles with her fragmented identity and family situation after fleeing an abusive cult. - Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack - Seasons 1-3, The (2010) 8 Cartoon seafaring adventures of young Flapjack and pirate K'nuckles who live in a talking whale. - Mary and Max (2009) 8 An Australian girl becomes pen pals with an obese New Yorker with Asperger's. Charming claymation. - Master, The (2012) 8 Directionless WWII Navy veteran meets the charismatic leader of The Cause. Draws from Scientology's origins. - Matchstick Men (2003) 8 Con-artist Nicolas Cage is an obsessive-compulsive agoraphobe whose life changes drastically when Alison Lohman appears. - Men in Black (1997) 8 Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones must save the world from an intergalactic terrorist. - Messenger, The (2009) 8 Poignant military tale about soldiers assigned to notify families of casualties during the Iraq War. - Milk (2008) 8 Van Sant's biography of openly gay politician Harvey Milk. An empathic portrayal by Sean Penn. - Mindscape of Alan Moore, The (2003) 8 Creative philosophies from the brilliant comic writer of Watchmen, V for Vendetta and From Hell. - Mistress America (2015) 8 A college freshman in New York meets her spirited stepsister-to-be. Greta Gerwig is brilliant, charming. - Moneyball (2011) 8 Billy Beane's management of the Oakland A's baseball team through new computer-based analysis. Intelligent. - Monster Calls, A (2016) 8 A yew-tree monster helps a 12-year-old cope with his single mother's terminal illness. Devastating fable. - Monsters (2010) 8 Six years after aliens invaded Earth, two Americans enter the Infected Zone. Satisfying, affecting road-movie. - Monsters, Inc. (2001) 8 Pixar presents a bunch of scary monsters who are afraid of being contaminated by children. - Moon Man (2012) 8 Moon Man hitches a ride to Earth on a comet and discovers children need him. - More Tales from the Script (2010) 8 Fascinating unheard stories from top Hollywood screenwriters. A 47-minute continuation of Tales from the Script. - Mother! (2017) 8 Aronofsky's unsettling, grotesque allegory of artistic creation and consumption. The chaotic horror of powerlessness. - My Blueberry Nights (2008) 8 A soul-searching journey across America, starring Norah Jones. Beautifully shot, but Kar-Wai Wong's weakest film. - My Son the Fanatic (1998) 8 Set in Britain, a Pakistani taxi-driver is attracted to a prostitute. Enter the Islamic fundamentalists. - Napoleon Dynamite (2004) 8 It's pretty much my favorite animal. It's like a lion and a tiger mixed. - Neverwas (2007) 8 A psychiatrist befriends a patient in a mental institution and discovers his father's secrets. Magical. - Nightcrawler (2014) 8 Chilling satire of tabloid TV news culture. Chasing ratings mutually supports chasing ambulances. Genius Gyllenhaal. - Nocturnal Animals (2016) 8 Wealthy art gallery owner Amy Adams receives a draft of her ex-husband's violent new novel. - Nothing (2005) 8 Vincenzo Natali, the director of Cube, presents a film about nothing with his two friends. - Nymphomaniac: Volume I (2014) 8 Lars von Trier overlays explicit sexual encounters (via porn doubles) with philosophy, religion, biology, math. - Oceans (2010) 8 Exquisite cinematography of majestic undersea creatures with terribly dull, sentimental Pierce Brosnan narration. - October Sky (1999) 8 The true story of Homer Hickam, a coal miner's son who became a rocket scientist. - One I Love, The (2014) 8 Weekend getaway of a married couple on the brink of separation becomes clever plot twist. - Only Lovers Left Alive (2014) 8 Jim Jarmusch's stylish vampires are an ancient source of creativity for human culture. Clever, cool. - Out of Sight (1998) 8 Career bank robber George Clooney breaks out of jail and kidnaps Jennifer Lopez. Sparks fly. - Palindromes (2005) 8 Todd Solondz's provocative fable about a 13-year-old girl who is played by eight different actresses. - Paranoid Park (2007) 8 Dreamlike, fractured story about a young Portland skateboarder's life and a security guard's accidental death. - ParaNorman (2012) 8 Norman survives stop-motion ghosts, zombies and grownups to save his town from a centuries-old curse. - Paterson (2016) 8 One week in the quiet life of Paterson, a poet in Paterson, NJ. Existential Jarmusch. - People, Places, Things (2015) 8 Graphic novelist Jemaine Clement, now single-parenting twin girls, can't get let go of his ex. - Persuaders, The (2004) 8 The cultures of marketing and advertising influence what Americans buy and how they view themselves. - Planet Terror (2007) 8 Rodriguez's half of Grindhouse. Rose McGowan mows down flesh-eating, mutating zombies with a machine-gun leg. - Pleasantville (1998) 8 Two teenagers find themselves in a 1950s sitcom. Their behavior accidentally transforms their black-and-white suburb. - Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire (2009) 8 Dark social commentary and ugliness with an ending that's hopeful, but not happy and contrived. - Prisoners (2013) 8 Two little girls are abducted. Can the detective or father-turned-vigilante solve the puzzle in time? - Prometheus (2012) 8 Waxes philosophical and connects the Aliens franchise with Chariots of the Gods and Jesus Christ. - Proposition, The (2005) 8 Violent and mythological. Nick Cave wrote the screenplay and scored this Australian Western about retribution. - Pushing Daisies - The Complete First Season (2007) 8 A man can bring dead people back to life, with Amélie-style narration. Whimsical forensic romance. - Quiet Place, A (2018) 8 In the post-apocalypse, people live in silence while hiding from blind creatures with supersensitive hearing. - Rabbits (2002) 8 David Lynch's nine-episode sitcom starring people in rabbit suits, accompanied by laugh tracks. Plotless, eerie. - Reality (2015) 8 Surreal, compelling nonsense from absurdist Dupieux, who has taken a page from Lynch's Mulholland Drive. - Reel Injun (2009) 8 How depictions of Native Americans in cinema have shaped perceptions of their cultures and histories. - Regret to Inform (1998) 8 The filmmaker goes on a pilgrimage to the Vietnamese countryside where her husband was killed. - Rescue Dawn (2007) 8 American pilot Christian Bale is shot down in Laos during a top-secret Vietnam War mission. - Road, The (2009) 8 Viggo Mortensen and his son try to survive in post-apocalyptic America. Noble and heartbreaking humanity. - Road to Perdition (2002) 8 The result of hitman Tom Hanks's son witnessing what his father does for a living. - Robot Chicken - Seasons 1-3 (2007) 8 Demented stop-motion animation using action figures and toys. These sketch-comedy vignettes skewer pop culture. - Rock-afire Explosion, The (2008) 8 The inventor behind (and fans of) the Showbiz Pizza and Chuck E. Cheese's animatronic puppets. - Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) 8 How the Rebel Alliance stole the Death Star plans. Occurs between Episodes III and IV. - Ronin (1998) 8 This mission is to recover a mysterious briefcase. Robert De Niro and Natascha McElhone star. - Room on the Broom (2012) 8 A gentle witch offers rides to a variety of animals on her increasingly crowded broom. - School of Rock, The (2003) 8 Richard Linklater directs rocker Jack Black as a fourth-grade substitute teacher in a private school. - Seinfeld - The Complete Series (1998) 8 A sitcom about nothing. Starring New York stand-up comedian Jerry Seinfeld and his neurotic friends. - Sexy Beast (2000) 8 Brutal gangster Ben Kingsley recruits a retired safecracker for one last job. Jonathan Glazer directs. - Shakespeare in Love (1998) 8 A young Shakespeare meets Gwyneth Paltrow and is inspired to write Romeo and Juliet. - Shaun of the Dead (2004) 8 Romantic comedy set during a weekend zombie invasion of North London. A brilliantly aloof parody. - Shopgirl (2005) 8 A love triangle of Claire Danes, Jason Schwartzman and Steve Martin. Elegant examination of love. - Shrek (2001) 8 No, not my buttons! Not my gumdrop buttons. - Shrek 2 (2004) 8 Well, folks, it looks like we're up chocolate creek without a Popsicle stick. - Shutter Island (2010) 8 Leonardo DiCaprio investigates a disappearance from a hospital for the criminally insane. Chilling and clever. - Sicario (2015) 8 Idealistic FBI agent Emily Blunt is enlisted to aid in the escalating inter-American drug trade. - Sideways (2004) 8 Two middle-aged men embark on a weeklong road-trip through California's wine country. American life-affirming. - Simple Plan, A (1998) 8 Three people find $4 million in the cockpit of a crashed plane. Keep it secret? - Six-String Samurai (1998) 8 In a post-apocalyptic America, samurai guitarist Buddy Holly journeys to Lost Vegas to become king. - Smoke Signals (1998) 8 Two young Indian men from an Idaho reservation take a life-changing road trip together. Soulful. - Snatch. (2000) 8 Brad Pitt stars as a gypsy bare-knuckle boxing champion who speaks a hilariously unintelligible dialect. - Snowpiercer (2014) 8 Earth's remaining inhabitants are confined to a class-divided train circling the frozen globe. Stylish allegory. - Solaris (2002) 8 Soderbergh's remake is quite good, with much credit due to George Clooney and Natascha McElhone. - Special (2008) 8 Michael Rapaport participates in an experimental drug study and becomes sure his superpowers are strengthening. - Spider-Man 2 (2004) 8 Tobey Maguire continues his demanding double life as student and superhero. Enter supervillain Dr. Octopus. - Splice (2010) 8 Intelligent creature feature focused on ethical quandaries in biotechnology. What's the worst that could happen? - Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013) 8 Well-crafted Abrams sequel explores the bromance between Kirk and Spock, introduces their most famous nemesis. - Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015) 8 Abrams redeems the franchise as much as could be expected. WTF, giant Lincoln Memorial Gollum. - Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017) 8 Another one! Rey finds hermit Luke Skywalker, then battles Kylo Ren and the First Order. - Startup.com (2001) 8 Examines the start-up phenomenon by documenting the existence of new media company govWorks.com. - Storytelling (2001) 8 Todd Solondz presents two provocative stories. Prepare to have your politically correct sensibilities violated. - Sunshine (2007) 8 Could've been great science fiction, but it slips away with B-movie horror and religious metaphors. - Super 8 (2011) 8 In 1979, a mysterious train crash provides a monster-movie backdrop to a sweet love story. - Superbad (2007) 8 Friends Seth and Evan display a charming, hilarious crudeness in this coming-of-age high school comedy. - Swimming Pool (2003) 8 An English mystery writer finds murder and intrigue in Paris, with Ludivine Sagnier. Rich symbolism. - Syriana (2005) 8 A thriller of corruption and power related to the oil industry, with four parallel stories. - Tao of Steve, The (2000) 8 An underachieving, overweight kindergarten teacher has developed an effective Zen-like system for seducing women. - Tales from the Script (2009) 8 Veteran Hollywood screenwriters share their triumphs and failures, insider insights, anecdotes and artistic compromises. - Tangerine (2015) 8 A transgender prostitute tears through L.A. on Christmas Eve seeking her unfaithful pimp. Raunchy, empathetic. - Team America: World Police (2004) 8 Subversive political satire, with explicit puppet sex. You are worthress, Arec Barrwin. America! Fuck, yeah! - Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak (2009) 8 Diary-style documentary by Spike Jonze about Maurice Sendak, the unconventional author of iconic children's books. - Terms and Conditions May Apply (2013) 8 Documentary examines the erosion of privacy in the digital age. How corporations and governments spy. - Tetro (2009) 8 Stylish indie film by Francis Ford Coppola. Could've been better with fewer staged productions though. - These Amazing Shadows: The Movies That Make America (2011) 8 The National Film Registry's history and the cultural, historical and aesthetic significance of motion pictures. - Thin Red Line, The (1998) 8 Terrence Malick presents a remake of the novel about the 1943 Guadalcanal conflict during WWII. - Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (2001) 8 Five contemporary stories are woven together, examining the dramatic impact people have on one another. - This is Not a Conspiracy Theory (2018) 8 Six-part (2014-2018) episodic documentary by Kirby Ferguson about the hidden forces that shape our lives. - Theory of Everything, The (2014) 8 Touching biography of physicist Stephen Hawking. Explores his personal life as ALS ravages his body. - THX 1138: The George Lucas Director's Cut (2004) 8 Lucas restored his influential 1971 film, enhancing it with CGI magic (including lame shell dwellers). - Time Code (2000) 8 Mike Figgis's innovative film is composed of four simultaneous takes, each occupying a screen quadrant. - Tim's Vermeer (2013) 8 Ingenious. Inventor Tim Jenison works to replicate the painting techniques of Dutch master Johannes Vermeer. - Topsy-Turvy (1999) 8 After Gilbert and Sullivan's latest play is critically panned, the frustrated team threatens to disband. - Toy Story 2 (1999) 8 All right, nobody look till I get my cork back in. - Traffic (2000) 8 America's war on drugs, with Michael Douglas and Benicio Del Toro. An unbeatable market force. - Trance (2013) 8 An art heist gone wrong, or was the whole thing meticulously planned? Hypnotizing psychological thriller. - Tropic Thunder (2008) 8 Ben Stiller's big-budget satire of celebrity excess and Hollywood action movies. Downey Jr. is hilarious. - Truth About Romance, The (2013) 8 Losing what you thought you wanted can reveal a new adventure. Danielle Jackson is magnetic. - Unmade Beds (2009) 8 The stories of Vera and Axl intersect via artsy, free-spirited squatters in a London warehouse. - Vanishing of the Bees (2011) 8 Investigation into implications of the worldwide collapse of the honeybee. Slow death by systemic pesticides. - Venture Bros. - Seasons One and Two, The (2006) 8 The warped misadventures of a middle-aged mad scientist, his teenage sons, and their maniac bodyguard. - Waiting for 'Superman' (2010) 8 Devastating portrait of the failing U.S. public school system and its consequences for the future. - Wag the Dog (1997) 8 Before elections, a Washington spin-doctor and a Hollywood producer join efforts to fabricate a war. - Waste Land (2011) 8 Uplifting documentary highlighting the transformative power of art and the beauty of the human spirit. - We Don't Live Here Anymore (2004) 8 An emotionally complex character drama that explores human weakness, starring Mark Ruffalo and Naomi Watts. - What We Do in the Shadows (2014) 8 The real lives of vampire roommates in a New Zealand flat. Funny interactions with werewolves. - William S. Burroughs: A Man Within (2010) 8 Never-before-seen footage and exclusive interviews with friends and colleagues of the influential postmodernist novelist. - Witch: A New-England Folktale, The (2016) 8 A Puritan homesteading family in 1630s New England is torn apart by forces of witchcraft. - Wreck-It Ralph (2012) 8 Charming pixel-art story of an arcade video game villain who wants to be a hero. - Your Friends & Neighbors (1998) 8 Six people play musical beds. Stars Amy Brenneman, Catherine Keener, Nastassja Kinski, and Ben Stiller. - X-Files: The Complete Collector's Edition, The (2002) 8 FBI agents Mulder and Scully investigate paranormal cases and discover alien conspiracies within our government. - Zeitgeist: The Movie (2007) 8 Important, incendiary exploration of global societal control through religion, 9/11, foreign wars and central banks. - Zodiac (2007) 8 A cerebral, gripping thriller based on actual unresolved 1970s case files about the Zodiac Killer. - Zootopia (2016) 8 A bunny police recruit and a con-artist fox work together to uncover a savage conspiracy. - 2 Days in New York (2012) 7 Artist Julie Delpy's neurotic French family visits New York for the weekend. A likable farce. - 28 Days Later (2002) 7 Four weeks after a deadly virus spreads throughout the UK, a few survivors seek sanctuary. - 28 Weeks Later (2007) 7 Bloody sequel to 28 Days Later. The rage virus annihilated Mainland Britain six months earlier. - 40-Year-Old Virgin, The (2005) 7 Steve Carell stars as a lovable, middle-aged virgin with misguided coworkers. Catherine Keener is perfect. - 8 Mile (2002) 7 Eminem is a young struggling rapper in Detroit. Co-stars Kim Basinger and Brittany Murphy. - 9 (2009) 7 A visually stunning, steampunk world inhabited by robot rag dolls. Ending is weak, plot underdeveloped. - About a Boy (2002) 7 A little boy teaches cynical, immature Hugh Grant how to act like a grownup. - About Time (2013) 7 Sweet tale of a man from a family of time-travelers. Sentimental tearjerker, but inspires reflection. - Across the Universe (2007) 7 A psychedelic love story musical set in the 1960s, using the songs of The Beatles. - Addicted to Love (1997) 7 Black comedy about jilted lovers starring Meg Ryan as a tough revenge-seeking motorcyclist. - Advantageous (2015) 7 Dystopian future where a middle-aged woman undergoes a drastic biomedical procedure to support her daughter. - Adventures of Tintin, The (2011) 7 Spielberg and Peter Jackson adapt Georges Remi's classic comic strip about journalist Tintin and Snowy. - Agora (2010) 7 Condemning historical drama of ancient conflict between science and superstition, centered on Hypatia of Alexandria. - Alien: Resurrection (1997) 7 Part four of the series, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Stars Sigourney Weaver and Winona Ryder. - Amistad (1997) 7 A somber, mushy American courtroom drama about the mutiny aboard an African slaveship in 1839. - Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) 7 Do you really love lamp, or are you just saying it because you saw it? - Angela's Ashes (1999) 7 Based on Frank McCourt's autobiography about his childhood in the Limerick slums. Stars Emily Watson. - Animatrix, The (2003) 7 An anthology of nine short anime films detailing the backstory of the Matrix. - Antz (1998) 7 Woody Allen is a neurotic ant who has become disenfranchised from his totalitarian colony. - Appaloosa (2008) 7 Satisfying Western by Ed Harris about hired guns. Zellweger's face is a creepy kabuki mask. - ARQ (2016) 7 Stuck in an accidental time loop in a dystopian future, a disoriented couple attempts survival. - Atom Smashers, The (2008) 7 How does life exist? Documentary chronicles the search for the Higgs boson by Fermilab physicists. - Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) 7 Sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads! Throw me a bone here! - Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009) 7 Surreal black comedy from master storyteller Werner Herzog. Nicolas Cage is a drug-addled, maniacal detective. - Ballad of Jack and Rose, The (2005) 7 Symbolic Oedipal story explores losses of innocence and the death of a 1960s counterculture movement. - Beautiful Mind, A (2001) 7 The struggles of a mathematical genius, inspired by the life of John Forbes Nash, Jr. - Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996) 7 Beavis and Butt-Head visit Vegas, the Grand Canyon and the White House. I am Cornholio! - Before I Disappear (2014) 7 Circumstances cause a suicidal man to drag his young, precocious niece across Manhattan one night. - Before I Wake (2018) 7 Parents haunted by their lost child. The surprisingly rewarding payoff redeems the clichéd Canker Man. - Bernard and Doris (2008) 7 An HBO Films picture about tobacco heiress Doris Duke (Sarandon) and her gay butler (Fiennes). - Best of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, The (2005) 7 My childhood memories, now on DVD. A first-rate reMASTERing of this moralizing homoerotic 1980s toy-advert. - Big River (2010) 7 An update/companion to 2007's King Corn. Explores the ecological consequences of industrial corn production. - Big Sur (2013) 7 Depressed alcoholic Beat writer Jack Duluoz/Kerouac retreats to a small cabin in California's Big Sur. - Billy Elliot (2000) 7 A young boy discovers ballet and secretly decides to dance instead of taking boxing lessons. - Black Balloon, The (2008) 7 Explores the intense emotions of the family of an Australian teenager and his autistic brother. - Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, The (2011) 7 Found footage shot by Swedish journalists documenting the Black Power Movement. Great Angela Davis interviews. - Black Snake Moan (2007) 7 Provocative, ludicrous and sweet. Blues musician Samuel L. Jackson and sex-addicted Christina Ricci star. - Blank City (2011) 7 Snapshot of late 1970s underground/punk filmmaking in New York during the No Wave movement. - Bomb It (2008) 7 A global history of street art. Explores cultural/political issues of tagging, graffiti and art activism. - Boondock Saints, The (1999) 7 Two Irish brothers believe it's God's will for them to rid Boston of evil men. - Bourne Identity, The (2002) 7 In Paris, Matt Damon tries to remember his identity and why he is wanted dead. - Bowfinger (1999) 7 Aspiring movie producer Steve Martin attempts to trick Eddie Murphy into starring in his film. - Boxtrolls, The (2014) 7 An orphan raised by underground cave-dwelling trash collectors tries to save his friends from extermination. - Boys Don't Cry (1999) 7 Hilary Swank plays a young man who is actually a woman. Romantic, ugly, and tragic. - Breakdown (1997) 7 Kurt Russell searches for his missing wife after his car breaks down in the desert. - Brief History of Graphics, A (2014) 7 Five-part series by Stuart Brown of XboxAhoy covering the history/milestones of video game graphics/techniques. - Brothers Grimm, The (2005) 7 A cartoonish big-budget spectacle based on German folktales. Terry Gilliam directs and Matt Damon stars. - Buffalo '66 (1998) 7 Social misfit Vincent Gallo is rescued from emotional peril by Christina Ricci, who he kidnaps. - Cabin in the Woods, The (2012) 7 Turns the horror genre on its head, but crammed with excessive wink-wink cleverness and CGI. - Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) 7 Steve Rogers volunteers for a top-secret research project that turns him into Captain America. Charming. - Carnage (2011) 7 Two pairs of parents, including Kate Winslet, bicker for 80 minutes in a Brooklyn apartment. - Cashback (2007) 7 An insomniac artist starts working the graveyard shift at the local supermarket after a breakup. - Cast Away (2000) 7 Tom Hanks talks to a volleyball named Wilson, splits coconuts, and successfully makes fire. - Cat's Meow, The (2001) 7 Fictionalized story of the Hollywood murder that occurred aboard William Randolph Heart's yacht in 1924. - Chappie (2015) 7 Both brazenly ridiculous and ingenious. Die Antwoord teaches a conscious AI how to do crimes. - Charlie Bartlett (2008) 7 A charismatic rich kid acts as a psychiatrist to students of his new high school. - Chicago (2002) 7 A musical about celebrity worship, set in 1920s Chicago, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renée Zellweger. - Chloe (2010) 7 Implausible psychological drama with lots of nudity by escort Amanda Seyfried and doctor Julianne Moore. - Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury, The (2004) 7 Peter Chung's animated short film bridges the Riddick story between 'Pitch Black' and 'The Chronicles'. - Clerks II (2006) 7 The sequel to Kevin Smith's breakthrough comedy. Dante and Randal are back in New Jersey. - Collection of 2005 Academy Award Nominated Short Films, A (2006) 7 Death abounds. I enjoyed Six Shooter and Jasper Morello. Hated the Moon and the Son. - Conan O'Brien Can't Stop (2011) 7 Behind the scenes of Conan O'Brien's frenetic 2010 comedy tour. Revealing but not especially funny. - Conspiracy Theory (1997) 7 Paranoid Mel Gibson collects 'The Catcher in the Rye' books and Julia Roberts likes horsies. - Contagion (2011) 7 Soderberg's disaster-thriller about a deadly outbreak of infectious disease and the dire global consequences. - Contender, The (2000) 7 Joan Allen runs for Vice President. What sexy dirt can we dig up on her? - Cookie's Fortune (1999) 7 The death of a widow in a small Mississippi town leads to mystery. Good-naturedly humorous. - Crazy/Beautiful (2001) 7 Kirsten Dunst, a rich underachieving teenager with an aversion to shampoo/bras, meets a hardworking Latino. - Dawn of the Dead (2004) 7 Zack Snyder's witty remake of the 1979 horror classic, starring Sarah Polley and Ving Rhames. - Dead Like Me - The Complete First Season (2003) 7 Showtime TV series about the lives of undead grim reapers trying to make ends meet. - Desert Blue (1998) 7 A struggling roadside town. The world's largest ice cream cone. Christina Ricci blows stuff up. - Dick (1999) 7 A clever comedy about how two cheerful teenagers blew the Watergate scandal wide open. - Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them, The (2014) 7 The tragic dissolution of a romantic relationship, told from two perspectives in two independent chapters. - Dogma (1999) 7 Kevin Smith presents two renegade angels trying to exploit a loophole. Alanis Morissette plays God. - Dolphin Tale (2011) 7 Charming family film based on a true story. The actual dolphin involved stars as herself. - Doubt (2008) 7 A nun confronts a priest after suspecting him of abusing a student. But did he? - Drakmar: A Vassal's Journey (2008) 7 A sensitive 14-year-old escapes to the medieval fantasy kingdom of Adria to survive his adolescence. - Eagle vs. Shark (2007) 7 Quirky portrait of awkward, misfit New Zealanders. Akin to Wes Anderson films and Napoleon Dynamite. - Elf (2003) 7 Will Ferrell, raised as an elf at the North Pole, just arrived in the U.S. - Elysium (2013) 7 In 2154, only the wealthy are citizens of a space station orbiting the ruined Earth. - Elizabethtown (2005) 7 Cameron Crowe's good-hearted romantic comedy featuring Kirsten Dunst. It hit really close to home. - Enemy of the State (1998) 7 Will Smith becomes a target after learning of a politically motivated murder. Surveillance and paranoia! - Europa Report (2013) 7 Six astronauts travel to Jupiter's moon in search of life. NASA-style realism through found footage. - Everything Is Illuminated (2005) 7 A Jewish-American man endeavors to find the Ukrainian woman who saved his grandfather in WWII. - Everything Must Go (2011) 7 Alcoholic Will Ferrell relapses and ruins his life, then begins living on his front lawn. - Exploding Girl, The (2010) 7 A young epileptic woman, back home from college, struggles with her feelings for her boyfriend. - Extras - The Complete Series (2007) 7 Movie extra Ricky Gervais weasels his way into speaking roles, then finds commercial success miserable. - Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011) 7 A nine-year-old copes with the loss of his father on 9/11. Poignant, manipulative, almost exploitative. - FairyTale: A True Story (1997) 7 Two young girls in 1917 take a photograph, believed to confirm the existence of fairies. - Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) 7 The adventures of writer Newt Scamander in New York's secret community of witches and wizards. - Fifth Element, The (1997) 7 New York cab driver Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich star in this futuristic action film. - FL: Unpremeditated Movie (2013) 7 No-budget documentary by MTO that chronicles his controversial graffiti art and intervention in Sarasota, Florida. - For No Good Reason (2014) 7 Depp visits Ralph Steadman to discuss the motivation/process behind his deranged/Gonzo art. A bit congratulatory. - Fracture (2007) 7 Hotshot attorney Ryan Gosling goes up against Anthony Hopkins, a manipulative criminal, in court. Clever. - Frankenweenie (2012) 7 Tim Burton's stop-motion love story between a boy and his (undead) dog. Classic horror homage. - Frequencies (2014) 7 Ambitiously explores philosophical notions of fate and free will in an alternate reality of frequencies. - From Hell (2001) 7 A stylized whodunit set in Victorian Era London, starring clairvoyant police detective Johnny Depp. - From One Second to the Next (2013) 7 Short documentary chronicling the devastating consequences of texting and driving, directed by Werner Herzog. - Full Monty, The (1997) 7 Six unemployed steel workers form a male striptease act. Anti-fat-bastard cream there is not. - Funny Games (2008) 7 An aggressively unpleasant film that tortures the audience for its bloodlust. Both sadistic and pretentious. - Galaxy Quest (1999) 7 A funny parody of Star Trek-style sci-fi television shows, starring Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver. - Game, The (1997) 7 Wealthy financier Michael Douglas gets involved in a live-action game without rules. A puzzle thriller. - Ghost in the Shell (2017) 7 Scarlett Johansson, now cyber-enhanced, is the perfect weapon. A big-budget spectacle that honors the anime. - Gia (1998) 7 Frequently naked Angelina Jolie is Gia Carangi, a top fashion model from the late 1970s. - Gift, The (2000) 7 Cate Blanchett has ESP and Katie Holmes flails about while topless. Thought you should know. - Girlfight (2000) 7 Quick-tempered Michelle Rodriguez secretly trains as a boxer. She achieves remarkable success and finds love. - Girlfriend Experience, The (2009) 7 Soderbergh's experimental film about free enterprise via the life of a high-end Manhattan call girl. - Gnomeo & Juliet (2011) 7 It's Toy Story/Shrek with feuding Shakespearean garden gnomes. Charming, bizarre and loaded with pop-culture gags. - God Forgive Us (2014) 7 Parallel stories of four struggling strangers build to an unexpected collision. Engaging indie. Acting is passable. - Gods and Monsters (1998) 7 Explores the last days of Frankenstein director James Whale, starring Ian McKellen and Brendan Fraser. - Golden Compass, The (2007) 7 A fantasy adventure that rushes forward with a spectacle of soul-animals. Could be more engaging. - Gone Baby Gone (2007) 7 Ben Affleck directs Casey Affleck in a story about a little girl's kidnapping in Boston. - Good Dick (2008) 7 A lonely, introverted girl who rents adult films meets a young, chatty video store clerk. - Good Shepherd, The (2006) 7 The early history of the CIA, viewed through a fictional man's life. Serious and tedious. - Gray Area, The (2010) 7 Three young men mourn the death of a friend, investigate the circumstances. Shot in Portland. - Great Directors (2010) 7 Conversations with 10 of the world's greatest living directors, including David Lynch and Richard Linklater. - Great Gatsby, The (2013) 7 Luhrmann's anachronistic telling of the Fitzgerald novel. It works, despite hyperactive production design and Jay-Z. - Green Mile, The (1999) 7 Death row guard Tom Hanks observes intelligent mice and the healing power of a prisoner. - Grosse Pointe Blank (1997) 7 Professional assassin John Cusack attends his ten-year high school reunion party. Also starring Minnie Driver. - Gruffalo's Child, The (2011) 7 The child of the Gruffalo ignores her father's warnings and seeks the Big Bad Mouse. - Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) 7 Goofy, formulaic Marvel Universe blockbuster. Can an oddball group of intergalactic criminals save the galaxy? - Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) 7 The ragtag, intergalactic crew fights to stay together and unravels the mystery of Quill's father. - H. (2016) 7 Two women named Helen struggle to cope following strange atmospheric phenomena in Troy, NY. Unsettling. - Hamlet (2000) 7 An update of the Shakespeare play, set in New York in 2000, starring Ethan Hawke. - Hangover, The (2009) 7 Las Vegas-set comedy centered around three groomsmen, the groom and one night of drunken misadventures. - Happy Town - Episodes 1-8 (2010) 7 Paranormal crime drama that aspires to be Twin Peaks. Dark mysteries in an idyllic town. - Happythankyoumoreplease (2011) 7 Six 20-something, self-absorbed New Yorkers deal with love and the undeniable prospect of actual adulthood. - He Died with a Felafel in His Hand (2001) 7 Darkly humorous series of vignettes of shared-housing experiences across Australia. A search for meaning. - Hellboy (2004) 7 A good-hearted demon is produced in a black-magic Nazi ceremony. This is his story. - Hellboy Animated: Blood and Iron (2007) 7 Hellboy ends up battling the goddess Hecate after a professor resurrects a powerful female vampire. - Hercules (1997) 7 Disney movie about the son of Zeus who becomes a hero to reclaim his immortality. - Hi-Line, The (2000) 7 Set in rural Montana, this thoughtful character drama stars a young naïve Rachael Leigh Cook. - High Art (1998) 7 Explores the romance between photo editor Radha Mitchell and heroin-addicted photographer Ally Sheedy. - History Boys, The (2006) 7 A class of bright, funny history students pursue acceptance into Oxford or Cambridge. Highly literate. - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The (2005) 7 So long, and thanks for all the fish, Douglas Adams. And thanks for Zooey Deschanel. - Home (2009) 7 A film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand featuring aerial footage from around the globe. Beautiful but tedious. - Horse Whisperer, The (1998) 7 After a tragic accident, Kristin Scott Thomas enlists the help of mystical horse-healer Robert Redford. - House of Sand and Fog (2003) 7 Should the house belong to emotionally unstable Jennifer Connelly or Iranian immigrant Ben Kingsley? Tragic. - How I Live Now (2013) 7 An American teenager's visit to the English countryside changes dramatically when World War III begins. - Human Traffic (1999) 7 Follows a group of sex-obsessed British clubgoers. It's something like Trainspotting for the rave scene. - Hunger Games, The (2012) 7 Jennifer Lawrence's soulfulness carries this televised survival competition in which teenagers fight to the death. - Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The (2013) 7 Jena Malone helps Jennifer Lawrence carry the sequel about rebellion following the 74th Hunger Games. - Hunt for Gollum, The (2009) 7 Chris Bouchard's impressive Lord of the Rings film. Gandalf sends Strider out to find Gollum. - Hurricane, The (1999) 7 The story of Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter, a boxer wrongly imprisoned for murder, starring Denzel Washington. - Hush (2016) 7 A deaf-mute writer lives alone in the woods. A masked killer appears in her window. - I, Robot (2004) 7 In 2035, detective Will Smith investigates a murder. Based on Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. - I Am Legend (2007) 7 Will Smith, sole survivor in New York City, seeks a cure for the deadly virus. - I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016) 7 A hospice nurse cares for an elderly horror novelist in an old house. Persistent unease. - I Cannot Go on as I Am (2015) 7 Silent musical by Edgardo Flores. A woman loses her job and lover. Meaning in stillness. - Ice Age (2002) 7 An animated saber-toothed tiger, sloth, wooly mammoth, and saber-toothed squirrel discover a lost human infant. - Idiots and Angels (2009) 7 Bill Plympton's animated dark comedy about a morally bankrupt man who wakes up with wings. - In Good Company (2004) 7 Magazine ad executive Dennis Quaid's new young boss begins dating his teenage daughter Scarlett Johansson. - Ingredients (2009) 7 Compares America's industrialized food system to a rising local-growth movement, from Oregon to New York. - Ink (2009) 7 High-concept visual thriller that weaves the conscious with the subconscious. Falls down on unconvincing acting. - Intolerable Cruelty (2003) 7 Renowned LA divorce attorney George Clooney is fascinated by revenge-seeking gold-digger Catherine Zeta-Jones. - Into the Inferno (2016) 7 Werner Herzog explores the cultural power of volcanoes in Vanuatu, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Iceland, North Korea. - In Your Eyes (2014) 7 Two seemingly unconnected people have an unexplainable telepathic bond that allows them to share experiences. - Iris (2002) 7 True story of novelist Iris Murdoch and her husband John Bayley, from youth to Alzheimer's. - Iron Man 2 (2010) 7 Fun, explosion-packed sequel that's almost as good as the first. Downey Jr. and Rourke shine. - Island, The (2005) 7 It's Logan's Run utopia meets Philip K. Dick paranoia, starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson. - It Might Get Loud (2009) 7 Documentary on the electric guitar starring rock musicians Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White. - Italian Job, The (2003) 7 This remake stars Mark Wahlberg and Charlize Theron in an Italian gold bullion heist. - Jack Goes Boating (2010) 7 Philip Seymour Hoffman explores the dreams and failures of two awkward, working-class New York couples. - James and the Giant Peach (1996) 7 Roald Dahl's story of an orphan who befriends humanoid bugs living inside a giant peach. - Jarhead (2005) 7 Explores the psychological effects of being a soldier in Desert Storm, guarding oil, fighting no-one. - Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) 7 Includes many self-deprecating parodies of Hollywood stars as the stoned duo head out to California. - Jesus Henry Christ (2012) 7 Measured quirkiness that evokes Wes Anderson's style about a 10-year-old prodigy. Toni Collette is great. - Journey of the Universe (2011) 7 Explores of the epic history of the cosmos, Earth and humanity. Sometimes goofy but also profound. - Jurassic World (2015) 7 An enjoyably self-conscious, formulaic blockbuster of dinosaur de-extinctions. Part four! Bryce Dallas Howard is fun. - Just Like Being There (2012) 7 Celebrates gig posters by contemporary artists nearly 50 years after the first iconic concert posters. - Keyhole (2012) 7 Guy Maddin's surreal take on Homer's Odyssey. A mysterious, dreamlike journey of Ulysses and ghosts. - Kill Your Darlings (2013) 7 A 1944 murder draws together Beat Generation greats Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. - King of California (2007) 7 Mentally unstable Michael Douglas is convinced that Spanish treasure is buried in suburban California. - Knee Deep (2007) 7 In rural Maine, a young, hardworking dairy farmer is betrayed by family. A humanistic documentary. - Lawless (2012) 7 The bootlegging Bondurant gang were outlaw heroes during Prohibition. Brutal violence. Tom Hardy is indestructible. - L.I.E. (2001) 7 Explores the questionable friendship between a troubled Long Island boy and a much older man. - Last Samurai, The (2003) 7 American military advisor Tom Cruise embraces the Samurai culture he was hired to destroy. - Lawn Dogs (1998) 7 Ten-year-old Mischa Barton befriends the lawn cutter, a fellow outsider, in an upscale gated community. - Pearl Jam: Let's Play Two (2017) 7 Eddie Vedder's Chicago Cubs fandom during their 2016 World Series run, plus Wrigley Field concerts. - Liar Liar (1997) 7 His disappointed son's birthday wish renders lawyer Jim Carrey incapable of lying for 24 hours. - Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The (2004) 7 Oceanographer Bill Murray leads a surreal voyage in search of a mythical jaguar shark. - Life During Wartime (2010) 7 Todd Solondz sequel explores the virtues of forgiving and forgetting through troubling, dysfunctional family scenarios. - Life Less Ordinary, A (1997) 7 Cleaning man Ewan McGregor takes Cameron Diaz hostage after being fired. Heaven offers romantic help. - Lilo & Stitch (2002) 7 A Hawaiian girl adopts an unusual pet who is actually a notorious extraterrestrial fugitive. - Limey, The (1999) 7 A dangerous English ex-con travels to Los Angeles to avenge his daughter's death. - Limitless (2011) 7 An experimental drug enables a struggling writer's success. Fun fantasy. Requires major suspension of disbelief. - Little Fish (2005) 7 In an Australian Little Saigon district, Cate Blanchett is trying to escape her drug-addicted past. - Live from Baghdad (2002) 7 Robert Wiener's memoirs of CNN reporters in Iraq during the Gulf War bombing in 1991. - Loneliest Planet, The (2012) 7 A pivotal, instinctive reaction divides a couple's hiking trek in Georgia's Caucasus Mountains. Slow, stunning. - Look Around You - Series 1 and 2 (2005) 7 A BBC TV comedy series that satirizes 1970s educational science programs. A nonsensical, faithful homage. - Love & Teleportation (2013) 7 A disgraced quantum mechanics professor invents a teleportation machine in his garage. Clever, charming ending. - Lucy (2014) 7 Stylish, fast-paced existential thriller. But you must concede the utter nonsense about 10% brain capacity. - Lunopolis (2009) 7 Pseudo-documentary about aliens on the moon and a secret Scientology-like group. A fun, riveting conspiracy. - Malice in Wonderland (2010) 7 A woman descends into a gritty underworld after encountering a London taxi driver. Clever update. - Margot at the Wedding (2007) 7 Jennifer Jason Leigh plans to marry Jack Black, but estranged sister Nicole Kidman shows up. - Mascots (2016) 7 Offbeat, uneven look into the weird world of competitive mascots. The fourth Christopher Guest mockumentary. - Match Point (2006) 7 Woody Allen's ugly story of infidelity amidst British wealth. Tennis, opera, investments, horses and murder. - Matrix Reloaded, The (2003) 7 Part two of the Matrix trilogy. Agent Smith returns as a destructive computer virus. - Matrix Revolutions, The (2003) 7 Part three of the Matrix trilogy. The machine army reaches the human city of Zion. - Men Who Stare at Goats, The (2009) 7 A reporter in Iraq learns about a secret, psychic U.S. Army unit. It's pretty amusing. - Metropia (2010) 7 Bleak dystopian future of Europe with a fascinating, photomontage animation style. An unsettling Orwellian plot. - Mexican, The (2001) 7 El Camino! El truck-o. This comedy stars Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts. Now you're blameshifting! - Mimic (1997) 7 Mutant cockroaches evolve into creatures able to mimic and destroy their predators. Stars Mira Sorvino. - Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things (2016) 7 Inside the lives of minimalists striving to exist meaningfully with less. A familiar anti-consumerism premise. - Minus Man, The (1999) 7 Inconspicuous serial killer Owen Wilson drifts into a quaint coastal town looking to start over. - Moana (2016) 7 Disney musical set in Ancient Polynesia. A girl befriends a demigod to save her people. - Monster's Ball (2001) 7 Prison guard Billy Bob Thornton reexamines his racist attitudes with naked Halle Berry. - Moulin Rouge! (2001) 7 Baz Luhrmann musical starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor in Paris. 'Cause we can cancan! - Mulan (1998) 7 A girl secretly joins the Chinese army disguised as a man and becomes a hero. - My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2010) 7 Werner Herzog and David Lynch! A disturbed man mysteriously slays his mother with a sword. - My Week with Marilyn (2011) 7 Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe in 1956, through the eyes of a London film student. - Negotiator, The (1998) 7 Police negotiator Samuel L. Jackson has been framed. Can negotiator Kevin Spacey save his life? - Nines, The (2007) 7 The lives of a troubled actor, TV producer and video-game designer intertwine in mysterious ways. - No No: A Dockumentary (2014) 7 The story of baseball star Dock Ellis, most famous for his 1970 no-hitter on LSD. - Notting Hill (1999) 7 Romance blooms between American celebrity Julia Roberts and unassuming British bookstore owner Hugh Grant. - Nowhere Boy (2010) 7 Chronicle of John Lennon's emotional teenage years, marked by the reentrance of his absentee mother. - Nymphomaniac: Volume II (2014) 7 Lars von Trier further explores one woman's tragic life story and sexuality. Quite bleak, intellectual. - Objectified (2009) 7 Documentary about how humans relate to manufactured objects, featuring designers like Dieter Rams and Apple. - Oblivion (2013) 7 A dazzling, futuristic Tom Cruise space vehicle. Sadly overexplains the post-apocalyptic mystery. Fuck you, Sally. - Ocean's Eleven (2001) 7 A collection of big-name celebrities target three Las Vegas casinos for a multimillion dollar heist. - Ocean's Twelve (2004) 7 Second verse, same as the first. This heist movie is a likable but self-serving celebrity-fest. - Oculus (2014) 7 Explores if inanimate objects can manifest supernatural violence. Trippy psychological horror via a reality-bending mirror. - Okja (2017) 7 A Korean girl's best friend is a GMO created by a powerful corporation. Over-the-top antics. - Old School (2003) 7 Disillusioned friends Will Ferrell, Luke Wilson, and Vince Vaughn try to recapture their college days. - Panic Room (2002) 7 This David Fincher thriller presents three burglars searching Jodie Foster's brownstone mansion for hidden fortune. - Perfect Sense (2012) 7 Follows Ewan McGregor and Eva Green as an epidemic robs people of their sensory perceptions. - Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006) 7 Tom Tykwer's memorable film about an 18th century Parisian murderer, with a profoundly flawed climax. - Pete's Dragon (2016) 7 When a boy is orphaned in the forest, a magical dragon named Elliot protects him. - Phoebe in Wonderland (2009) 7 An unconventional drama teacher inspires a troubled girl. Elle Fanning and Patricia Clarkson are amazing. - Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, The (2006) 7 The Brothers Quay present a dark fairytale about a diabolical doctor and beautiful opera singer. - Pieces of April (2003) 7 Katie Holmes invites her dying mother and estranged family to her apartment for Thanksgiving dinner. - Pineapple Express (2008) 7 Stoner Seth Rogen freaks out after witnessing a murder. Pot-joke heavy and also fairly violent. - Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) 7 A well-made Disney/Bruckheimer swashbuckling blockbuster, starring pirate Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley. - Pitch Black (2000) 7 Marooned space travelers struggle to survive on a deserted, sun-scorched world. Vin Diesel is Riddick. - Playing by Heart (1998) 7 Parallel stories of eleven Los Angeles characters converge, with an all-star cast including Angelina Jolie. - Pompeii: The Last Day (2003) 7 A dramatized recreation of the destruction of Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. - Princess and the Frog, The (2009) 7 Disney fairytale set in Jazz Age-era New Orleans. Waitress Tiana kisses a frog prince. Voodoo. - Prisoner, The (2009) 7 AMC miniseries based on the classic 1960s TV show. Interesting but muddled. Caviezel lacks personality. - Pollock (2000) 7 The life, career, and artistic techniques of American painter Jackson Pollock, played by Ed Harris. - Pontypool (2010) 7 Thoughtful psychological thriller. A virus with zombie-like symptoms is somehow infecting a small Ontario town. - Quills (2000) 7 A Napoleonic era asylum confines the pleasure-seeking Marquis de Sade, with laundry maid Kate Winslet. - Radiant City (2007) 7 Faux-documentary about the disaggregated, unwalkable, intolerant nature of modern suburbia. Mocking. - Rainmaker, The (1997) 7 Young lawyer Matt Damon and Danny DeVito star in another freakin' adapted John Grisham novel. - Reader, The (2008) 7 Kate Winslet initiates a surprising, secretive romance in this solemn drama set in post-WWII Germany. - Religulous (2008) 7 Bill Maher's provocative, smartass dialogue with Jews, Christians and Muslims. An irreverent but smug rant. - Return to Paradise (1998) 7 Two friends decide whether to help a third friend arrested in Malaysia for drug possession. - Rewind This! (2013) 7 The cultural and historical impact of the VHS tape. How home video changed the world. - Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) 7 Interesting franchise origin story with dull characters. Heavy on special effects and light on significance. - Road to Nowhere (2011) 7 Shannyn Sossamon's emotive performance carries Hellman's thin neo-noir mystery that blurs film with real crime. - Robot & Frank (2012) 7 An aging ex-jewel thief bonds with a robot butler programmed to look after him. Predictable. - Robot Stories (2004) 7 Four stories about a futuristic society grappling with its relationship to the growing robot population. - Rosewater (2014) 7 Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari is jailed in Iran under suspicion of espionage. Jon Stewart directs. - Rounders (1998) 7 Reformed gambler Matt Damon must return to playing big stakes poker to save Edward Norton. - Rum Diary, The (2011) 7 Hard-drinking American journalist Johnny Depp takes a newspaper job in Puerto Rico during the 1950s. - Saddest Music in the World, The (2004) 7 Guy Maddin oddity. A Canadian beer baroness organizes a saddest-music contest during the Great Depression. - Salt (2010) 7 Insanely violent and illogical. CIA agent/Russian spy Angelina Jolie is an unstoppable killing machine. - Saving Capitalism (2017) 7 Robert Reich's demoralizing yet hopeful account of how American politics became rigged by crony capitalism. - Saving Private Ryan (1998) 7 During WWII, three brothers are killed. The Army tries to save the sole surviving brother. - Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The (2013) 7 In this remake, daydreaming photo manager Ben Stiller finds himself in an extraordinary real-life adventure. - Secret of Kells, The (2009) 7 A hand-drawn medieval adventure of the boy behind the famed Book of Kells. Intricate visuals. - Secretary (2002) 7 James Spader is involved in a sexual, sadomasochistic story? You're kidding! Maggie Gyllenhaal is great. - Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012) 7 As a deadly asteroid approaches, neighbors Steve Carell and Keira Knightley end up traveling together. - Septien (2011) 7 Weird little movie about three eccentric brothers. The underlying bearded angst is charming and absurd. - Serenity (2005) 7 Finale to the cancelled Firefly TV series. Features space-age weaponry, martial arts, and witty dialogue. - Seven Years in Tibet (1997) 7 Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian mountain climber, becomes friends with the Dalai Lama. A true story. - Shadow of the Vampire (2000) 7 This amusing cannibalization of cinematic history muddles Max Schreck's convincing turn as vampire Count Orlok. - Sherlock Holmes (2009) 7 Ritchie's overwrought, violent CGI explosion. Quick-witted Downey is great, but why is Holmes constantly fighting? - Sherrybaby (2006) 7 Former drug addict Maggie Gyllenhaal is out of prison, seeking her daughter and emotional recovery. - Silent Hill (2006) 7 Fantastic atmosphere and set design. A grotesque purgatory of undead meat-creatures, cults, and zombie nurses. - Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) 7 The Eva Green show. Visually stunning and gritty like the Miller/Rodriguez original, but less compelling. - Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang (2016) 7 The grand celestial ambitions of Chinese contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang, famous for his pyrotechnic displays. - SLC Punk (1999) 7 In 1985, Matthew Lillard is one of two dedicated punks in conservative Salt Lake City. - Sleepy Hollow (1999) 7 Constable Icabod Crane is sent to a village to investigate murders by a headless horseman. - Sliding Doors (1998) 7 Parallel story lines explore fate and how simple moments change our lives. Stars Gwyneth Paltrow. - Small Time Crooks (2000) 7 Woody Allen's cookie store business becomes a success, though it was a cover for robbery. - Snowden (2016) 7 A paranoid thriller, plus ethical dilemma, about leaking the NSA's illegal surveillance techniques. Gordon-Levitt stars. - Soaked in Bleach (2015) 7 Compelling docudrama about the last days of Kurt Cobain. Re-open the death investigation, Seattle PD. - Snow Falling on Cedars (1999) 7 Newspaperman Ethan Hawke figures into the murder trial of a Japanese-American in the post-WWII 1950s. - Sons of Perdition (2010) 7 Three teenagers exiled from an FLDS polygamist cult try to survive in mainstream America. Distressing. - Son of the Congo (2015) 7 Basketball star Serge Ibaka returns to the Congo with the hope of uplifting communities. Heartwarming. - South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut (1999) 7 I'm sorry I can't help myself. That movie has warped my fragile little mind. - Spider-Man (2002) 7 Tobey Maguire is bitten by a genetically engineered spider and subsequently wins Kirsten Dunst's love. - Spring Breakers (2013) 7 Harmony Korine's latest artsy trainwreck/portrait of American cultural dysfunction, loaded with topless party girls. - Stanley Kubrick's Boxes (2008) 7 Kubrick's incredible attention to detail revealed in 1,000+ boxes of his meticulously sorted film materials. - Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005) 7 Anakin becomes Darth Vader. Woodenly acted, but better than the first two episodes it is. - Stardust (2007) 7 A funny Neil Gaiman fairytale set in England that feels somewhat like The Princess Bride. - Starlet (2012) 7 The unlikely friendship between a 21-year-old actress and a lonely elderly woman in Los Angeles. - Stir of Echoes (1999) 7 After being hypnotized at a party, Kevin Bacon begins seeing haunting visions of a ghost. - Stoker (2013) 7 A mysterious uncle appears in the life of a grieving, impressionable teenager. Dark and stylish. - Suicide Kings (1997) 7 Ex-mob boss Christopher Walken is kidnapped by four young men attempting to pay a ransom. - Summer of Sam (1999) 7 Spike Lee explores the Son of Sam murders in a South Bronx neighborhood during 1977. - Sunshine (1999) 7 Follows the fate of a Hungarian Jewish family through three generations in the 20th century. - Super Size Me (2004) 7 Spurlock only eats McDonald's food for one month to see what happens to his body. - Superman Returns (2006) 7 Bryan Singer's reverent reboot of the Superman franchise. Good, but lacks surprises and new ideas. - Surviving Picasso (1996) 7 Natascha McElhone is Francoise Gilot, Pablo Picasso's only lover strong enough to withstand his cruelty. - Sweet and Lowdown (1999) 7 The life of a fictional jazz guitarist, starring Sean Penn, Samantha Morton, and Uma Thurman. - Swingers (1996) 7 Funny 1990s dating rules seminar. Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn barhop through Los Angeles clubs. - Swiss Army Man (2016) 7 Surreal, earnest adventures of a stranded man and the gaseous corpse he befriends. Poetic slapstick? - Taken (2009) 7 A fast-paced xenophobic thriller. Professional spy Liam Neeson exacts vigilante justice on everyone. Everyone! - Talented Mr. Ripley, The (1999) 7 In the 1950s, Matt Damon is sent to Europe to retrieve millionaire playboy Jude Law. - Thomas Crown Affair, The (1999) 7 Millionaire playboy Pierce Brosnan amuses himself by stealing artwork. Enter sexy insurance investigator Rene Russo. - There's Something About Mary (1998) 7 The Farrelly Brothers present a gross-out romantic comedy starring good-natured Cameron Diaz and Ben Stiller. - Third Contact (2012) 7 Psychological thriller explores madness, depression, quantum suicide and immortality. It's a dark, puzzling poem. - Thumbsucker (2005) 7 A quirky 17-year-old who still sucks his thumb grapples with the anxiety of impending adulthood. - Time Lapse (2015) 7 A mysterious device takes pictures 24 hours into the future. Engaging time-machine premise, passable acting. - TiMER (2010) 7 A biotech implant counts down to the moment you're supposed to meet your soulmate. Charming. - Tin Man (2007) 7 Dark re-imagining of the Land of Oz. Zooey Deschanel stars in this three-part Sci-Fi miniseries. - Tomorrowland (2015) 7 I can't resist the retro-futurism of 1960s World's Fairs. Magical adventure into an alternate dimension. - Turbo Kid (2015) 7 Good-natured 1980s nostalgia. A post-apocalyptic wasteland with bicycles. Fun homage. Laurence Leboeuf is a delight. - Transformers (2007) 7 Spectacularly rendered Autobot and Decepticon destruction. ADHD kids love these plotless nonsensical blasts. - TRON: Legacy (2010) 7 The son of virtual-world designer Flynn enters The Grid, 20 years after his father's disappearance. - Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (1998) 7 Jewel-toned, deadpan absurdity from the inimitable Guy Maddin. A kitschy, disorienting fantasy of frustrated desires. - U Turn (1997) 7 Drifter Sean Penn becomes entangled with femme fatale Jennifer Lopez after his car breaks down. - Unbreakable (2000) 7 A mystery thriller about unrealized supernatural powers. Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson star. - Uncanny (2015) 7 A groundbreaking A.I. exhibits emergent behavior. Quite similar to 'Ex Machina' but actually predates it. - Valhalla Rising (2010) 7 Aggressively minimalist, intensely violent film set in the Dark Ages. Brooding and stylish, but unmemorable. - Vegucated (2011) 7 Three New Yorkers adopt a vegan diet for six weeks, get educated about animal agriculture. - Vine of the Soul: Encounters with Ayahuasca (2010) 7 Explores sacred plant medicine. Two Canadians visit the Amazon to drink the hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca. - Waiting for Guffman (1997) 7 Christopher Guest plays a flamboyant off-Broadway director trying to bring some showbiz to small-town Missouri. - Waking Ned Devine (1998) 7 When a lottery winner dies of shock, his fellow townsfolk attempt to claim the money. - Wedding Crashers (2005) 7 Divorce mediators Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson make a lifestyle out of sneaking into weddings. - Who Took Johnny (2015) 7 Examination into the famous 1982 disappearance of Iowa paperboy Johnny Gosch. Case appears essentially solved. - Wild Man Blues (1997) 7 A documentary about Woody Allen's life as he tours with his New Orleans jazz band. - Winter Passing (2006) 7 Zooey Deschanel visits her novelist father, now rooming with a young woman and Christian rocker. - World War Z (2013) 7 U.N. employee Brad Pitt races around the world trying to stop the deadly zombie pandemic. - World's Fastest Indian, The (2005) 7 Burt Munro sets the land-speed world record on his home-built 950cc Indian motorcycle in 1967. - Wrong (2013) 7 Absurdist Dupieux film about a man changing others' lives while looking for his lost dog. - X-Files: Fight the Future, The (1998) 7 David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson must fight the government in a conspiracy about alien colonization. - X-Men (2000) 7 The superheroes from a private academy for mutants must oppose a powerful mutant terrorist organization. - X2: X-Men United (2003) 7 Mutants continue to struggle against fearful human society and are attacked by military forces. - XX/XY (2002) 7 A three-way relationship during college still haunts and complicates Mark Ruffalo's life 10 years later. - Z for Zachariah (2015) 7 A radioactive global catastrophe. Three survivors? Mesmerizing first half. Weak love triangle. Clever water wheel. - Zero Effect (1998) 7 Bill Pullman is private investigator Daryl Zero, a paranoid genius investigating blackmail. One-liners abound. - Zero Theorem, The (2014) 7 A computer hacker trying to discover the meaning of life keeps being interrupted by Management. - 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) 6 The Taming of the Shrew, set in a modern high school, starring Julia Stiles. - 4th Dimension, The (2008) 6 Feels inspired by Eraserhead and Pi, but this Aphex Twin-scored meditation on reality ultimately disappoints. - 50 First Dates (2004) 6 Sandler repeatedly attempts to woo Barrymore, who can't make new memories since her accident. Silly. - 9 Songs (2005) 6 Over 69 minutes, a young couple's intense sexual encounters are interspersed with nine rock concerts. - Absolute Power (1997) 6 Career thief Clint Eastwood witnesses a horrific crime involving ruthless U.S. President Gene Hackman. - Air Force One (1997) 6 When Russian neo-nationalists hijack Air Force One, President Harrison Ford chooses between family and country. - Alice in Wonderland (1999) 6 A made-for-TV, family-friendly version with a cast of Hollywood all stars. It's hardly worth watching. - All My Friends Are Funeral Singers (2010) 6 A fortuneteller lives in a house crowded with ghosts at the edge of the woods. - American Pie (1999) 6 Four teenage boys enter a pact to lose their virginity by prom night. - American Psycho (2000) 6 Christian Bale is a wealthy serial-killer hobbyist with a passion for weapons of human mutilation. - Anger Management (2003) 6 Adam Sandler is sentenced to an anger-management program led by aggressive instructor Jack Nicholson. - Another Year (2010) 6 British dramedy of weak, ordinary characters. Every dull statement is a rhetorical question, isn't it? - Any Given Sunday (1999) 6 Oliver Stone explores the world of professional football. Look for the eyeball on the field. - Anywhere But Here (1999) 6 Susan Sarandon and daughter Natalie Portman try to start a new life in Beverly Hills. - Arlington Road (1999) 6 Widowed professor Jeff Bridges begins to suspect that his neighbor Tim Robbins is a terrorist. - Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) 6 Mini-me, we do not gnaw on the kitty. Just pet him, stroke him, love him. - Austin Powers 3: Goldmember (2002) 6 Have you got any idea how many anonymous henchmen I've killed over the years? - Awakening, The (2012) 6 In 1921 England, a boarding school reports sightings of a child ghost. Unresolved, muddled plot. - Babysitter, The (2017) 6 A 12-year-old trying to spy on his hot babysitter learns too much and is imperiled. - Bandits (2001) 6 Two bank robbers fall in love with Cate Blanchett, the bored housewife they've taken hostage. - Beat Hotel, The (2012) 6 Collects fragments of 1950s-era Ginsberg, Corso, Burroughs and Gysin living in a rundown Paris hotel. - Beowulf (2007) 6 I am Beowulf! My lips don't move right and my eyes are dead. Corny, unsatisfying. - Besieged (1998) 6 Housekeeper Thandie Newton goes into exile in Italy after her African husband is jailed. - Best Man, The (1999) 6 A marriage causes a reunion of college friends. Taye Diggs and Nia Long star. - BFG, The (2016) 6 Spielberg-directed adaptation of the classic Roald Dahl book about giants and a 10-year-old British girl. - Big Daddy (1999) 6 Would-be lawyer Adam Sandler adopts a six-year-old boy, hoping to win Joey Lauren Adams back. - Blood: The Last Vampire (2001) 6 A vampire horror anime set in 1966 on a U.S. Air Force base in Japan. - Blood Work (2002) 6 Retired FBI profiler Clint Eastwood returns to service following clues from his own heart transplant. - Blow (2001) 6 Johnny Depp plays George Jung, who established the American cocaine market in the 1970s. - Blue Crush (2002) 6 Blonde surfer girl Kate Bosworth prepares for a surf competition while looking extremely attractive. - Boiler Room (2000) 6 A derivative story of stock market scammers, chop shops, and conspicuous consumption. Stars Giovanni Ribisi. - Bolt (2008) 6 A lovable cartoon dog movie. Plus, Miley Cyrus sounds like she drinks whiskey every night. - Bottom of the World (2017) 6 Trippy mystery of a guilty subconscious. Dreams within dreams, but falls flat in the end. - Breast Men (1997) 6 HBO movie follows two doctors who invented silicone breast implants through time. David Schwimmer stars. - Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) 6 Neurotic British woman Renée Zellweger is determined to improve herself while looking for love. - Brown Bunny, The (2004) 6 An aimless, gut-wrenching film of loneliness, sexual obsession and guilt. Vincent Gallo is fearlessly narcissistic. - Burn After Reading (2008) 6 A CIA agent's memoirs falls into the hands of opportunistic idiots. Pointless Coen Brothers farce. - Butterfly Effect, The (2004) 6 An excellent concept. Did you really think Ashton Kutcher and friends could pull it off? - Byzantium (2013) 6 Two mysterious women take refuge in a seaside town. An outlandish but effective vampire story. - Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary (2009) 6 A metadocumentary. This film about making documentaries should have been richer, deeper and edited better. - Cartoon Noir (1999) 6 Six oddball, animated shorts from five countries, featuring supernatural elements and darker themes. Mediocre. - Changing Lanes (2002) 6 A fender-bender between lawyer Ben Affleck and businessman Samuel L. Jackson escalates into a feud. - Chasing Sleep (2001) 6 An insomniac wakes up to find his wife missing and proceeds to lose his mind. - Choke (2008) 6 Screen adaptation of the Palahniuk novel about a sex-addicted scam artist and his hospitalized mother. - City of Ember (2008) 6 An underground city is falling apart after 200 years. Fairly dark for a kids' movie. - Civil Action, A (1998) 6 Lawyer John Travolta stars in this courtroom drama about a company's responsibility for toxic waste. - Close Your Eyes (2002) 6 A hypnotherapist receives visions from the inside of his patients' minds. A key to immortality? - Colony (2010) 6 Slow and unfocused documentary about beekeeping, and the struggle to cope with colony collapse disorder. - Cop Land (1997) 6 Sheriff Sylvester Stallone uncovers a massive, deadly conspiracy. Will he cross the crooked cops? - Coyote Waits (2003) 6 A murder mystery set on a Navajo reservation. Part of PBS's American Mystery! series. - CQ (2002) 6 The story of a young sci-fi filmmaker in Paris. Model Angela Lindvall serves as eye-candy. - Crank (2006) 6 An entertaining movie because it is so intentionally ridiculous. Chock full of contrived adrenaline rushes. - Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus (2013) 6 Two rather insufferable young Americans seek the legendary hallucinogenic cactus in Chile. Anticlimactic drug trip. - Dan in Real Life (2007) 6 A very sweet, unremarkable romantic comedy. Steve Carell is a struggling single parent and widower. - Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010) 6 Animatrix-style companion to EA's video game. Dante enters the nine circles of hell, battles demons. - Death to Smoochy (2002) 6 When children's television show host Robin Williams is fired, he plots revenge against Edward Norton. - Deep Impact (1998) 6 Who will survive when a comet collides with Earth? It sucks much less than Armageddon. - Déjà Vu (2006) 6 Are you ready for the space-time continuum to get Bruckheimered? Explosions! Insulted intelligence! More explosions! - Devil's Advocate, The (1997) 6 Hotshot lawyer Keanu Reeves learns that his new boss, Al Pacino, is the Devil himself. - Devil's Own, The (1997) 6 New York cop Harrison Ford discovers that houseguest Brad Pitt is an IRA terrorist. - Edge, The (1997) 6 Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin are stranded, dangerously unequipped, after their plane crashes in Alaska. - Embers (2015) 6 Survivors of a global neurological epidemic, unable to make memories, live entirely in the present. - Enemy at the Gates (2001) 6 Two Russian and German snipers play a game of cat-and-mouse during the Battle of Stalingrad. - Erin Brockovich (2000) 6 Single mother Julia Roberts becomes a legal assistant and brings down a toxic power company. - Equilibrium (2002) 6 In a super-serious fascist future, Christian Bale has mastered the technique of the gun kata. - Extraordinary Tales (2015) 6 Animated anthology of five stories adapted from Edgar Allan Poe. Disjointedly connected via Death character. - Face/Off (1997) 6 Undercover agent John Travolta and terrorist Nicolas Cage assume each other's identities by exchanging faces. - Faculty, The (1998) 6 High school students Jordana Brewster and Clea DuVall suspect that their teachers are becoming aliens. - Family Man, The (2000) 6 On Christmas morning, investment broker Nicolas Cage wakes up in a life-altering Dickensian parallel universe. - Fast and the Furious, The (2001) 6 Welcome to the underworld subculture of Los Angeles street-racers and car hijacking, starring Vin Diesel. - Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (2005) 6 Beautifully rendered CGI could not hold my interest. For Final Fantasy video game fans only. - Forgotten, The (2004) 6 Julianne Moore is told that her nine-year-old son never existed. Who is fabricating reality? - Foxfire (1996) 6 Five wild teenage girls (including Angelina Jolie) become friends after sexual harassment by a teacher. - Frailty (2002) 6 Bill Paxton's chilling study of a family's disintegration. The plot twists and payoff underwhelmed me. - Freeway (1996) 6 Little Red Riding Hood adapted into a corrosive, white-trash, road-crime movie. Stars Reese Witherspoon. - Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006) 6 A fictionalized, metaphorical account of the formation of artist Diane Arbus. Nicole Kidman is brilliant. - Get Smart (2008) 6 Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway are super-secret spies or whatever. Can their gadgets defeat KAOS? - G.I. Jane (1997) 6 Demi Moore gets a crewcut and perseveres through rigorous Navy SEALS training, flotation devices intact. - Giant Mechanical Man, The (2012) 6 Jenna Fischer is charming in this offbeat celebration of confused, aimless adults. Annoying supporting characters. - Girl, Interrupted (1999) 6 Account of an 18-month stay at a mental hospital in the 1960s, starring Winona Ryder. - Girl Asleep (2016) 6 Vibrant and fantastical. Chaotic caricature of a teenage girl coming of age in 1970s Australia. - Give 'em Hell, Malone (2009) 6 Mediocre, ultraviolent detective noir in need of a better director. Ridiculous villains in second-rate makeup. - Gladiator (2000) 6 Set in digitized ancient Rome, this epic spaghetti Western-style movie stars army general Russell Crowe. - Glass House, The (2001) 6 Leelee Sobieski and Stellan Skarsgård manage to make this a reasonably decent movie. - Godzilla (2014) 6 Godzilla rises again in this nuclear-powered remake that spans the Pacific. Awesome monsters, dull humans. - Great Expectations (1998) 6 Modernization of classic Charles Dickens story, starring New York painter Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow. - Haiku Tunnel (2001) 6 A comedy about tempness versus permness, both in the workplace and in life. - Haunter (2013) 6 A 1985 teenager's stuck in a time loop. Predictable yet illogical 'Groundhog Day' with ghosts. - Havoc (2005) 6 Two affluent suburban girls clash with Latino gang culture. Stars Anne Hathaway and Bijou Phillips. - Hellboy Animated: Sword of Storms (2006) 6 A samurai sword sends Hellboy into a dangerous realm of Japanese legends, ghosts and monsters. - Heroes - Seasons 1-3 (2009) 6 Cleverly structured graphic novel in TV-show format about people with diverse superpowers. It became unwatchable. - Hidalgo (2004) 6 American Viggo Mortensen and his horse enter a 3,000 mile survival race across Arabia. - Hideous Kinky (1998) 6 A hippie British woman travels to Morocco with her two young daughters. Stars Kate Winslet. - Holy Smoke! (1999) 6 While traveling in India, Kate Winslet falls under the influence of a charismatic religious guru. - Homegrown (1998) 6 Small-time marijuana-grower Billy Bob Thornton and Kelly Lynch try to get rich following a murder. - Hot Girls Wanted (2015) 6 Superficial documentary of lost and confused young women being exploited in the amateur porn industry. - How Beer Saved the World (2011) 6 Simplifies human history to exaggerate the importance of beer to civilization. BEER! Extreme hyperbole! - Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, The (2014) 6 Jennifer Lawrence's charisma is the only thing holding this trilogy together. Sadly underdeveloped, yet overdone. - Hyde Park on Hudson (2012) 6 On the eve of WWII, Bill Murray is FDR and Laura Linney is his mistress. - Ice Harvest, The (2005) 6 Mob lawyer Cusack and strip-club owner Thornton attempt to embezzle $2 million on Christmas Eve. - Imagination (2007) 6 Eric Leiser's surreal experiment with puppetry, stop-motion sketches and claymation. And unconvincing actors. - Immortals (2011) 6 Tarsem's Greek epic succeeds at being a gorgeous, self-important spectacle. It's less enjoyable than 300. - In Time (2011) 6 Promising concept plays like a contrived mishmash of Logan's Run, Robin Hood, Bonnie and Clyde. - Incredible Hulk, The (2008) 6 Too bad the awkward computer-generated creatures killed the movie, despite Edward Norton. Noisy and boring. - Independence Day (1996) 6 Gigantic spaceships piloted by a mysterious alien species approach Earth. Then the White House explodes. - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) 6 Indy battles the Soviets in 1957. Spielberg/Lucas feature Area 51 and interdimensional cosmic Mayan nonsense. - Ingenious (2009) 6 Likable rags-to-riches comedy based on the true story of an Arizona inventor of novelty items. - International, The (2009) 6 Worth watching for the Guggenheim Museum shootout, but this globetrotting thriller is fairly unremarkable. - Into the Forest (2016) 6 Post-apocalyptic survivalist story with surprisingly limited hardship. The sisterhood of the talented Page and Wood. - Inventing the Abbotts (1997) 6 A tale of class division and forbidden love set in the 1950s, starring Liv Tyler. - John Carter (2012) 6 Hectic, violent CGI epic about Mars. Sort of fun, but I was never emotionally invested. - Keeping the Faith (2000) 6 Priest Edward Norton and rabbi Ben Stiller both fall in love with Jenna Elfman. - Killshot (2009) 6 Diane Lane is placed in the witness protection program. Is she safe from Mickey Rourke? - Kingdom, The (2007) 6 FBI agents are sent to investigate a Saudi bombing. It's really just a revenge movie. - Last Night (2011) 6 Tense study of whether tempted spouses will actually commit adultery. Knightley glows, Worthington is dull. - Laurel Canyon (2002) 6 An uptight young man moves in with Frances McDormand and experiences a clash of lifestyles. - Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (2010) 6 A young owl is abducted, but he escapes and seeks out the legendary Guardians. - Life as a House (2001) 6 Terminally ill Kevin Kline takes custody of his teenage son. Jena Malone is charming. - Lifeguard, The (2013) 6 Lovable Kristen Bell's sensitive, sympathetic performance saves this uninspired movie. But she's actually too likable. - Limbo (2005) 6 A bullet sends a man into a repeating time loop. Afterlife as low-budget film noir. - Dr. Seuss' The Lorax (2012) 6 Hyperactive disservice to Seuss. Teaches how to blindly consume and toss marshmallows to adorable bears. - Love (2012) 6 Lonely astronaut stranded aboard the ISS develops cabin fever, becomes one with the universe. Posthumanism. - Lovelace (2013) 6 Superficially explores the story of one-time porn star Linda Lovelace and her sleazy, abusive husband. - Lulu on the Bridge (1999) 6 After Jazz saxophonist Harvey Keitel is accidentally shot, he enters into a hallucinatory, obsessive affair. - Mad City (1997) 6 Museum guard John Travolta takes hostages. TV newsman Dustin Hoffman leads the sensational media frenzy. - Majestic, The (2001) 6 In 1951, a blacklisted Hollywood writer loses his memory. Predictable, sentimental and syrupy, but charming. - Man with the Iron Fists, The (2012) 6 RZA's martial arts thriller combines kung-fu action and hip-hop style. Saga of a Chinese blacksmith. - Meet Joe Black (1998) 6 We have Brad Pitt as Death, media tycoon Anthony Hopkins, and intriguing daughter Claire Forlani. - Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, The (1999) 6 Young Milla Jovovich receives a vision to rid 15th century France of its oppressors. Stylish. - Million Dollar Hotel (2000) 6 A dilapidated California hotel plays host to mentally ill people unable to afford medical insurance. - Mirror Mirror (2012) 6 Visually stunning like all Tarsem movies, and Julia Roberts was cast appropriately, but jarringly jokey/dopey. - Mission: Impossible II (2000) 6 Secret agent Tom Cruise seeks a German-manufactured virus before it falls into the wrong hands. - Mr. Brooks (2007) 6 A surprisingly likable and engaging Hollywood serial killer movie, especially with Costner as the lead. - Multiplicity (1996) 6 Michael Keaton never has enough time, and so he has himself cloned. Andie MacDowell costars. - My Best Friend's Wedding (1997) 6 A lame wedding-based romantic comedy, with musical numbers, starring Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz. - Mystery Men (1999) 6 A group of inept amateur superheroes must try to save their city from supervillian destruction. - Night at the Museum (2006) 6 New night security guard Ben Stiller discovers that museum exhibits come to life at night. - Ninja Assassin (2009) 6 A ninja turns his back on the orphanage that raised him. So much CGI blood. - Ninth Gate, The (1999) 6 Rare book dealer Johnny Depp seeks out the last two copies of a demon text. - New World, The (2005) 6 Malick depicts Pocahontas's life in 1600s Virginia. It's epic, sluggish, and burdened by disjointed voiceovers. - Next (2007) 6 Nicholas Cage can see the future. An unsatisfying Philip K. Dick adaptation of slow-mo explosions. - Nothing to Lose (1997) 6 Tim Robbins kidnaps would-be carjacker Martin Lawrence and schemes to repair his miserable life. - Novocaine (2001) 6 Dentist Steve Martin is manipulated into a practice-threatening disaster by crafty seductress Helena Bonham Carter. - On the Road (2012) 6 I struggled to get into this disappointing yet interesting-enough adaptation of the 1957 Kerouac novel. - Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003) 6 The finale of Robert Rodriguez's Mariachi trilogy. Johnny Depp redeems this overstuffed spaghetti Western. - One Hour Photo (2002) 6 Robin Williams is a one-hour photo lab employee who becomes obsessed with a suburban family. - Orange County (2002) 6 Jack Black tries to help smart highschooler Colin Hanks get admitted into Stanford. - OtherLife (2017) 6 Biological software can induce time-compressed virtual realities, or make false memories. A lonely, cautionary tale. - Pacific Rim (2013) 6 Predictable monster-robot movie that's smarter than Transformers, but silly. I expected more from del Toro. - Parallels (2015) 6 A mysterious building is the gateway to infinite parallel Earths. Interesting concept, but mediocre execution. - Peacemaker, The (1997) 6 George Clooney and Nicole Kidman investigate a nuclear explosion in Russia, unraveling a terrorist conspiracy. - Pee-wee's Big Holiday (2016) 6 A Netflix revival of Pee-wee Herman's childlike antics and fun-house sketch humor. Fulfills 1980s nostalgia. - Permanent Midnight (1998) 6 Ben Stiller plays desperate comedy writer and heroin addict Jerry Stahl. Maria Bello also stars. - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) 6 An overlong cartoonish setup to the third movie in the Disney franchise. Johnny Depp shines. - PU-239: The Half Life of Timofey Berezin (2007) 6 A nuclear plant worker with radiation poisoning tries to sell stolen plutonium to Moscow gangsters. - Pumpkin (2002) 6 College sorority girl Christina Ricci is drawn into a relationship with a young disabled man. - Push (2009) 6 Dakota Fanning was the only compelling part of this telekinetic incoherence set in Hong Kong. - Pushing Tin (1999) 6 John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton are air traffic controllers playing a game of one-upmanship. - Replacement Killers, The (1998) 6 Professional killer Chow Yun-Fat betrays a crime boss. Document forger Mira Sorvino offers her help. - Revolt (2017) 6 Amnesiac soldier Lee Pace wakes up during a cataclysmic alien invasion in the Kenyan countryside. - Revolver (2007) 6 This stylish Guy Ritchie art film about con-men feels jumbled, pretentious and psychoanalytical. But intriguing. - Rid of Me (2011) 6 A socially awkward newlywed's emotional breakdown and rebirth in Laurelwood, Oregon. A hard-to-watch indie. - Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997) 6 Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow create fabrications of their lives at their high school reunion. - Rubber (2011) 6 Dupieux's surreal grindhouse spoof and commentary on the absurdity of cinema, starring a homicidal tire. - Rules of Attraction, The (2002) 6 Mean-spirited film about shallow, spoiled kids at Camden College. Artful rewinds, vulgarity and Shannyn Sossamon. - Rundown, The (2003) 6 Mob thug The Rock is sent to the Amazon to retrieve treasure-hunting Seann William Scott. - Rush Hour (1998) 6 Jackie Chan and comedian Chris Tucker partner to rescue a kidnapped daughter. A paint-by-numbers formula. - Salinger (2013) 6 Invades the privacy of J. D. Salinger. Engaging speculation, but trumpeted through a flawed, self-important lens. - Salton Sea, The (2002) 6 After his wife is murdered, Val Kilmer drifts into a world of speed junkies. - Saw (2004) 6 Cary Elwes wakes up in the secure lair of a serial killer nicknamed Jigsaw. Grisly. - Secret Life of Pets, The (2016) 6 The silly escapades of some Manhattan pets and a psychotic rabbit. Both cute and annoying. - Secret Window (2004) 6 You stole my story! This combination of Johnny Depp and Stephen King should've been better. - Self/less (2015) 6 Explores the premise of transplanting minds into new bodies. Turns into a conventional action movie. - Shallow Hal (2001) 6 Shallow Jack Black falls in love with 300-pound Gwyneth Paltrow because of her inner beauty. - Siege, The (1998) 6 Martial law is declared in New York City after an Islamic religious leader is abducted. - Silent House (2012) 6 Thrilling performance from Elizabeth Olsen. Shot to mimic one continuous real-time take. Letdown by ending. - Six Days Seven Nights (1998) 6 Cargo pilot Harrison Ford and New Yorker Anne Heche become stranded on a tropical island. - Sleeping Beauty (2011) 6 Detached, calculating portrait of a directionless, unaware student drawn into a mysterious world of desires. - Small Soldiers (1998) 6 When missile technology is used to enhance toy action figures, the toys go to war. - Snakes on a Plane (2006) 6 A cheesy Samuel L. Jackson horror-comedy that knows it's ridiculous and plays it refreshingly well. - Soloist, The (2009) 6 Downey Jr., Foxx and Keener are great, but this biography feels slightly heavy-handed and exploitive. - Southland Tales (2007) 6 Richard Kelly's dystopian, genre-defying mess of destruction and pop-culture doom. Bad actors cast on purpose? - Space Cowboys (2000) 6 A humorous bunch of geriatric NASA astronauts take turns bickering, apologizing, and being implausibly heroic. - Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) 6 Jar Jar is muzzled, Yoda breaks out his light-saber, and Natalie Portman bares her midriff. - Stigmata (1999) 6 Hairdresser Patricia Arquette shows signs of stigmata, the wounds of Christ. A Vatican priest investigates. - Sunshine Cleaning (2009) 6 Cash-strapped single mother Amy Adams works as a maid, but is looking for new opportunities. - Super (2011) 6 A depressed everyday guy transforms himself into the superhero Crimson Bolt. Ellen Page is great. - Super Troopers (2001) 6 You must have eaten, like, a hundred bucks worth of pot. Am I saying meow? - Taking of Pelham 123, The (2009) 6 Another generic, disposable Tony Scott thriller. This one has subway trains and stars Denzel Washington. - Tangled (2010) 6 Disney's story of Rapunzel. A bland, computer-animated corporate musical that made me borderline suicidal. - Tetsuo: The Bullet Man (2010) 6 The third film in Tsukamoto's series about technology's dehumanizing influence. Human bodies as weapons. - These Final Hours (2015) 6 Just hours before a global extinction event, most people go crazy. One man finds redemption. - Thirteenth Floor, The (1999) 6 A sci-fi thriller about computer-simulated universes where people only believe they are real. - Thor (2011) 6 The powerful but arrogant warrior Thor is cast out of Asgard and sent to Earth. - Tideland (2006) 6 A young girl with drug-addicted parents creates a half-fantasy world with doll heads, deranged neighbors. - Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) 6 Pierce Brosnan is James Bond. This time Michelle Yeoh and Teri Hatcher are Bond girls. - Training Day (2001) 6 As a rookie narcotics officer, Ethan Hawke is partnered with rogue detective Denzel Washington. - Trainwreck (2015) 6 Commitment-phobic career woman Amy Schumer grows up. An irreverent and candid comedy about relationships. - Trekkies (1999) 6 A somewhat affectionate documentary about the phenomenon of Star Trek fandom in its many-splendored geekiness. - Trick 'r Treat (2009) 6 Four interwoven Halloween stories. It doesn't rely on lame CGI ghouls and jack-o'-lanterns! Pretty decent. - Tuesdays with Morrie (1999) 6 A made-for-TV movie with sportswriter Hank Azaria and retired professor Jack Lemmon, dying of ALS. - Tulse Luper Suitcases: The Moab Story, The (2003) 6 This Peter Greenaway multimedia project is too ambitious, difficult, and intertextual. Caroline Dhavernas still shines. - U-571 (2000) 6 During WWII, American submariners board a German submarine trying to capture their Enigma cipher machine. - Upside Down (2013) 6 If you can somehow accept the ludicrous science/impossible physics, it's charming. An ambitious love story. - Vanilla Sky (2001) 6 Tom Cruise's useless remake of Open Your Eyes. Penélope Cruz reprises her role, in English. - VANish (2015) 6 A drug lord's daughter is taken hostage by amateurs. Entertaining mayhem ensues inside their van. - Veronica Guerin (2003) 6 Irish journalist Cate Blanchett is murdered by drug dealers she exposed in her newspaper articles. - Wanted (2008) 6 A young man finds out his long-lost father is an assassin. Then hyperkinetic bullet-bending ensues. - Way, The (2011) 6 A grieving father embarks on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage. Sincere, but too explanatory, awkward. - We Were Soldiers (2002) 6 Details a major battle in the Vietnam War, starring Mel Gibson and trout-lipped Madeleine Stowe. - Weather Man, The (2005) 6 Successful Chicago weatherman Nicolas Cage's personal life is a failure. So he takes up archery. - Wet Hot American Summer (2001) 6 A spoof composed of loosely related comedy sketches set at a summer camp in 1981. - Wedding Singer, The (1998) 6 Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore star. Now get out of my Van Halen t-shirt. - What Lies Beneath (2000) 6 Professor Harrison Ford totally freaks out. Michelle Pfeiffer and model Amber Valletta are quite stunning. - What the Bleep Do We Know!? (2004) 6 Life is a quantum world of possibility. It's spoiled by less-than-credible talking heads and soundbites. - Wheelman (2017) 6 A getaway driver is double-crossed. Top-speed BMW driving plus cell-phone cursing. 'Locke' it is not. - Wild Blue Yonder, The (2005) 6 Werner Herzog fashions a boring sci-fi documentary from beautiful undersea Antarctica footage and NASA video. - Wonders Are Many: The Making of Doctor Atomic (2008) 6 Irritating modern opera rehearsals dominate the story of Oppenheimer and the 1945 Trinity atomic test. - World Is Not Enough, The (1999) 6 Pierce Brosnan is James Bond and the ever-cerebral Denise Richards plays a nuclear scientist. Cough. - XX (2017) 6 Four-part anthology of short horror films directed and written by women, including musician St. Vincent. - Yesterday Was a Lie (2010) 6 Ambitious indie that explores the sci-fi film noir genre. Packed with Jung and consciousness theories. - Zathura (2005) 6 A fairly charming family movie that explores childhood adventure. It's basically Jumanji in outer space. - 200 Cigarettes (1999) 5 Gaby Hoffmann's Brooklyn accent was great. But then you have the Affleck brothers. - 2012 (2009) 5 So soulless and insulting that we don't care about billions dying in the global cataclysm. - Æon Flux (2005) 5 Charlize Theron is a stunning, athletic heroine. But they've destroyed the meaning of the series. - After.Life (2010) 5 Christina Ricci is constantly naked in this pretentious horror film featuring a creepy funeral director. - Alice in Wonderland (2010) 5 Tim Burton took a story I love, stripped out the allegories and added CGI. Sigh. - All I Wanna Do (1998) 5 It's 1963 and Kirsten Dunst, Gaby Hoffmann, and Rachael Leigh Cook are pissed-off schoolgirls. - Amityville Horror, The (2005) 5 While overproduced and derivative, this horror remake starring Ryan Reynolds exceeded my expectations. - American Pie 2 (2001) 5 The sequel to the famous prom night of sexual misadventure. Eugene Levy is still brilliant. - Animal Factory (2000) 5 How to become a hardened criminal in prison. Willem Dafoe mentors young Edward Furlong. - Apt Pupil (1998) 5 A boy blackmails neighbor Ian McKellen after suspecting him to be a Nazi war criminal. - At First Sight (1999) 5 Girlfriend Mira Sorvino encourages blind Val Kilmer to have an operation to regain his sight. - August Rush (2007) 5 An orphaned musical prodigy uses his gift to help find his birth parents. Overtly sentimental. - Bad Company (2002) 5 Cliché-ridden but mildly amusing Chris Rock action movie, courtesy of Jerry Bruckheimer. - BASEketball (1998) 5 Trey Parker and Matt Stone combine basketball-shooting skills with baseball rules and become pro athletes. - Be Cool (2005) 5 The entire premise involves having John Travolta and Uma Thurman reprise their Pulp Fiction dance. - Bedazzled (2000) 5 Brendan Fraser sells his soul to the Devil (Elizabeth Hurley) for seven wishes. Mindless remake. - Beyond, The (2018) 5 Faux-documentary of astronauts, wormholes, cybernetics, alien life. Far-fetched pseudoscience. Solid visual effects. - Birthday Girl (2002) 5 Nicole Kidman arrives in a small town as a bank clerk's Russian mail-order bride. - Bone Collector, The (1999) 5 Detective Denzel Washington and street cop Angelina Jolie track down a serial killer in Manhattan. - Born of Hope (2009) 5 Kate Madison's Lord of the Rings prequel, based on Tolkien's appendix paragraphs. Decent low-budget effort. - Bounce (2000) 5 Ben Affleck switches plane tickets with a man. The plane crashes. He meets Gwyneth Paltrow. - Brokedown Palace (1999) 5 Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsale are arrested for smuggling drugs while vacationing in Thailand. - Bruce Almighty (2003) 5 Reporter Jim Carrey is given almighty powers to teach him how difficult God's job is. - Chronicles of Riddick, The (2004) 5 Five years after Pitch Black, wanted criminal Riddick arrives on a new planet. Weak script. - City of Angels (1998) 5 Celestial duty or earthly love? Will angel Nicolas Cage become human for Meg Ryan? Sappy! - Cloverfield Paradox, The (2018) 5 Absurd, unstable jumble of sci-fi space horror that connects to the previous two Cloverfield movies. - Crank 2: High Voltage (2009) 5 Chev Chelios is back in an even more random and intentionally absurd movie. Insane action. - Crow: City of Angels, The (1996) 5 The spirit of the Crow resurrects another man seeking revenge for his son's murder. - Cube 2: Hypercube (2002) 5 Bizarre, nonsensical sequel packed with bad dialogue/acting. Devoid of Cube's existentialism and simplicity. - Daredevil (2003) 5 Ben Affleck, who can't act, zipped into a maroon bodysuit. Enough said. - Deep Blue Sea (1999) 5 To cure Alzheimer's disease, scientists genetically engineer sharks with deadly intelligence. What could go wrong? - Delirium (2018) 5 Topher Grace, recently released from a mental institute, inherits his father's mansion. Haunted? Or psychosis? - Disturbing Behavior (1998) 5 Why are these teenagers such perfect upstanding citizens? Katie Holmes has a sinister explanation. - Doctor Dolittle (1998) 5 Veterinarian Eddie Murphy talks to the animals and can hear them talk back. Mental institution? - Double Jeopardy (1999) 5 Paroled Ashley Judd was framed for her husband's murder, but suspects he is still alive. - Down to Earth (2001) 5 After dying before his time, aspiring comic Chris Rock is reincarnated as a wealthy businessman. - Due Date (2010) 5 Downey Jr. is forced to hitch a ride with Zach Galifianakis to make it home. - Duets (2000) 5 Inside the lives of professional karaoke hustlers. Everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow to Huey Lewis sings. - EdTV (1999) 5 Video store clerk Matthew McConaughey agrees to have his life televised 24 hours a day. - End of Days (1999) 5 Satan visits New York in search of a bride. It's Arnold Schwarzenegger, pyrotechnics, and CGI. - Entrapment (1999) 5 Agent Catherine Zeta-Jones tries to track down and help capture master art thief Sean Connery. - Evolution (2001) 5 I kept wishing for the alien life forms to kill David Duchovny and Orlando Jones. - Excess Baggage (1997) 5 Alicia Silverstone fakes her own car-trunk kidnapping in order to attract her wealthy father's attention. - Extinction (2018) 5 A father is plagued by nightmares of a deadly alien invasion. But there's a twist. - Fantastic Four (2005) 5 Exposure to cosmic radiation creates superhero scientists: Mr. Fantastic, Human Torch, Thing, and Jessica Alba. - FDR: American Badass! (2012) 5 As expected, the two-minute trailer was funnier than the movie. Crude/dumb humor, with Nazi werewolves. - Feed (2006) 5 An Internet sex crimes expert investigates feeder-gainer relationships (sexual fetish of the grotesquely obese). - Final Destination (2000) 5 It begins with a plane crash and demonstrates that you can't cheat predestined death. Much. - Final Destination 2 (2003) 5 Ali Larter is back on Death's path of destruction. Features gruesome accidents galore. - Final Destination 3 (2006) 5 Better than the first two. I watched the Rube-Goldberg deaths with amusement. The nudity helped. - Frequency (2000) 5 A firefighter receives future-sent communications via a ham radio and some silly fluke involving sunspots. - Girl from Monday, The (2005) 5 Citizens have become property traded on the stock exchange, but aliens are supporting the resistance. - Glitch in the Grid (2011) 5 Three artists find spiritual renewal in this imaginative but self-indulgent film by the Leiser Brothers. - Gnome Alone (2017) 5 Help garden gnomes battle the Troggs and save the world? Or befriend wicked teenage girls? - Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000) 5 Nicolas Cage and Angelina Jolie have steal to 50 exotic cars in one night. - Gun Shy (2000) 5 Undercover DEA agent Liam Neeson almost gets killed. He begins attending group therapy for support. - Halo Legends (2010) 5 Collection of seven Halo stories. Starts out heavy-handedly and badly animated, but eventually gets better. - Happy Gilmore (1996) 5 Rejected hockey player Adam Sandler becomes an unlikely golf star to save his grandmother's house. - Harvard Man (2001) 5 Mixes basketball and crime with sexual and chemical experimentation. And cheerleader Sarah Michelle Gellar. - Home (2015) 5 Adorable cuttlefish-like aliens attack Earth, then learn to love Rihanna's music. I guess? Zany, underdeveloped. - Home Fries (1998) 5 Brothers Luke Wilson and Jake Busey want pregnant Drew Barrymore for very different reasons. Dumb. - Hope Floats (1998) 5 Former beauty queen Sandra Bullock falls on hard times and returns to her small hometown. - Host, The (2013) 5 From the writer of Twilight comes a poorly structured alien-human romance, presumably for adolescent girls. - Hostel (2005) 5 Hedonism and bare breasts mixed with horrific gore, grisly torture, and the slandering of Slovakia. - How It Ends (2018) 5 After an apocalyptic event, a man travels west toward Seattle. How it ends is stupidly. - How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) 5 A live-action remake of the Dr. Seuss book, starring Jim Carrey and cheerfully crass consumerism. - How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003) 5 Kate Hudson is completely insane. Our love fern! You let it die! - Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, The (2015) 5 The downhill slide concludes. Was almost wishing Katniss would shoot every character with an arrow. - iBoy (2017) 5 A teen gains superpowers after smartphone fragments enter his brain. Bruv, mind-hacking everything is easy! - Instinct (1999) 5 Set in a maximum-security prison, psychiatrist Cuba Gooding Jr. examines madman anthropologist Anthony Hopkins. - Interview, The (2014) 5 Sophomoric Seth Rogen comedy about North Korea/dick jokes. Gained notoriety due to Sony Pictures hack. - Joe's Apartment (1996) 5 Joe discovers he shares his run-down New York apartment with thousands of singing, dancing cockroaches. - John Q (2002) 5 Denzel Washington takes the emergency room hostage until doctors agree to perform his son's transplant. - Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008) 5 Brendan Fraser travels to Iceland looking for Verne's lost subterranean world. Turn off your brain. - Just Married (2003) 5 Ashton Kutcher and Brittany Murphy are on their honeymoon in Europe. Things go really badly. - K-19: The Widowmaker (2002) 5 Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson star in this dull tale of a malfunctioning nuclear submarine. - Kiss the Girls (1997) 5 The first of many mediocre Ashley Judd crime thrillers. This one also stars Morgan Freeman. - Knowing (2009) 5 A disappointment from Alex Proyas. I was ready for the apocalypse after two long hours. - Kung Pow! Enter the Fist (2002) 5 It is an honor having you beat up random people in our city. - Last Survivors, The (2015) 5 A teen girl tries to evade masked marauders in drought-stricken, post-apocalyptic Oregon. High body count. - League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The (2003) 5 In an alternate Victorian Age world, Captain Nemo, Tom Sawyer, and Dr. Jekyll join forces. - Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) 5 Chris Rock joins the Mel Gibson-led LAPD quartet. The crimes involve immigrant smuggling and counterfeiting. - Little Nicky (2000) 5 Adam Sandler is one of Satan's sons. Patricia Arquette's elastic underwear-band saves her from Hell. - Malibu's Most Wanted (2003) 5 A white Senator's son wants to live the hip-hop lifestyle. Don't be hatin'. - Man with the Iron Fists 2, The (2015) 5 RZA, the kung-fu blacksmith, arrives unceremoniously in an oppressed silver-mining village in feudal China. Fight! - Martian Child (2007) 5 It's emotional manipulation from Mars. This is K-PAX with a six-year-old instead of Kevin Spacey. - Men in Black II (2002) 5 A semi-amusing replica of the original popcorn flick. The train-station locker creatures steal the show. - Metro (1997) 5 Hostage negotiator Eddie Murphy is targeted by an escaped bank robber he once helped imprison. - Mickey Blue Eyes (1999) 5 English auctioneer Hugh Grant proposes to the daughter of a mafia kingpin, who requires favors. - Mist, The (2007) 5 A fairly derivative, depressing creature-horror film with too much religious ranting. Final scene is staggering. - Mod Squad, The (1999) 5 An undercover cop recruits three minor delinquents to bust a drug ring. Stars Claire Danes. - Murder at 1600 (1997) 5 Washington homicide cop Wesley Snipes and agent Diane Lane investigate murder inside the White House. - National Treasure (2004) 5 Diane Heidkrueger has been able to capture my attention since her mid-1990s modeling days. - Number 23, The (2007) 5 Far-fetched but sometimes clever thriller starring Jim Carrey. 23 equals bad numerology and worse directing. - One and Two (2015) 5 Siblings with teleportation powers live with their abusive father on an isolated Mennonite-like farmstead. WTF. - Outside Ozona (1998) 5 Oklahoma motorists listening to the same radio station DJ are connected by a serial killer. - Palmetto (1998) 5 Recently released ex-con Woody Harrelson gets involved in a fake kidnapping scheme that turns real. - Pandorum (2009) 5 Derivative sci-fi thriller on a spaceship. Crewmembers wake up with no knowledge of their mission. - Payback (1999) 5 Thief Mel Gibson plots revenge when he is betrayed by his wife and best friend. - Perfect Murder, A (1998) 5 Remake of Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder, starring millionaire industrialist Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow. - Picture Perfect (1997) 5 Successful career woman Jennifer Aniston has an incomplete personal life. What makes the perfect mate? - Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) 5 This Disney pirate saga is worse than its predecessor (again). Yo-ho-horribly incoherent. Franchise over yet? - Planet of the Apes (2001) 5 Tim Burton reimagines the original film, poorly. Absurd plot, bad satire, pirouetting apes, no significance. - Playing God (1997) 5 Famed surgeon David Duchovny is stripped of his medical license and becomes a criminal doctor. - Practical Magic (1998) 5 Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman are cursed sisters with a hereditary gift for practical magic. - Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) 5 A live-action video game featuring a special dagger that can reverse time. Disposable Bruckheimer cinema. - Race to Witch Mountain (2009) 5 Good, family-friendly Disney fun that damages your will to live. Spectacularly bland and poorly written. - Reconstruction of William Zero, The (2015) 5 A geneticist with amnesia awakes under the care of his identical twin. Clever, but clumsy. - Red State (2011) 5 Ugly, preachy Kevin Smith film. The teen horror genre plus fundamentalist religious fervor and violence. - Remember the Titans (2000) 5 English LanguageSearch returned all English language films out of 1603 total rated films.

Regarded as one of South Africa’s leading authors, Zakes Mda (real name: Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni Mda) is a multi-talented writer, whose work has received local and international recognition. Mda first rose to prominence in 1978, when he received the Amstel Merit Award for his play, We Shall Sing for the Fatherland. A year later, he won the Amstel Playwright of the Year Award for another his plays, The Hill. His first two novels, She Plays with the Darkness and Ways of Dying, both released in 1995, were literary successes in his native South Africa. The former won the Sanlam Literary Award, while the latter went on to win the 1997 M-Net Literary Award. In 2001, Mda’s book, The Heart of Redness, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book- Africa, and also received the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the Sunday Times Fiction Prize. The Madonna of Excelsior, published in 2002, was selected as one of the Top Ten South African Books Published in the Decade of Democracy. Mda’s autobiography, Sometimes There Is a Void: Memoirs of an Outsider, released earlier this year, was published in South Africa by Penguin, and is due to be released this week in the US by FSG. It was picked by the Guardian’s Alexandra Fuller, as one of her top ten African memoirs. In this interview, Zakes Mda talks about his writing, and his latest book, Sometimes There Is a Void: Memoirs of an Outsider. You are so many things – a writer, painter, academic, composer, farmer and film maker. How do you juggle so many interests? Any favourites? I don’t compartmentalize my life. I just live it. If on waking up I feel like painting a picture I paint a picture. Then I cook for the kids, and then go to class and teach, and then sit on my porch and watch the birds, then I write a poem. I just do what has to be done when it has to be done or when the mood takes me in a particular direction. I don’t have the stress of juggling anything. When and how did you decide to become a writer? I only know that it was before the age of ten. I read books that were readily available at home and comics that I bought. On a sojourn at my grandparents’ estate I listened to folk takes and participated in storytelling. I knew then that I wanted to be a writer. You have had such an illustrious career. What achievement(s) are you most proud of to this point, and what regrets, if any, do you have? I am proud of everything. I am also grateful for everything. I have no regrets. I have made many stupid mistakes in my life, and I will continue to make more. But I wouldn’t be who I am without them. Your memoir came out recently. What inspired you to write it? And, why now? I wrote Sometimes There Is a Void: Memoirs of an Outsider because I wanted to come to terms with my life, and with all the stupid mistakes that have made me who I am. I also thought there may be lessons to be learnt. Why now? Well, because last summer I had the urge to write it. I was also fearful that the older I get I’ll forget some of the events that have shaped me. The book’s subtitle – “Memoirs of An Outsider”- suggests a sense of alienation? Are you referring to your having had to leave South Africa at an early age, and do you still see yourself as an outsider as a result? Why? In the book, my outsiderness is interpreted in many different ways, many of which are figurative rather than literal. It begins from the time I was born and continues to this day. Tell us about your current work, teaching at Ohio University, and supporting the Africa Writers Trust. Are you optimistic about the future of African writing in the age of ebooks, Twitter and all? Writing is writing whatever the medium or the channel. Storytelling did not begin with books and will not end with books. If or when paper books come to an end, there will be other channels for the storyteller. The storyteller is for ever. So, the demise of the book as we know it, if it happens at all, does not worry me at all. I embrace new technologies. I teach creative writing at Ohio University, which is also my alma mater where I did an MFA (Theater) and MA (Telecommunications) thirty years ago, before going for a PhD in my own country at the University of Cape Town. I just like supporting and assisting emerging writers in Africa in any way I can. I spend a lot of time each year in South Africa working with, among others, writers (besides beekeeping in the rural Eastern Cape and working with HIV positive people in Johannesburg). The African Writers Trust, of course, is the brainchild of Ugandan writer Goretti Kyomuhendo, and I am grateful she invited me to serve. Who are your favorite African authors, and what are some of the best books you have read by an African author? Yvonne Vera is the love of my life. But there are many other writers whose work excites me – especially those of the younger generation. Unfortunately at the moment I am only exposed to Nigerian and South African writers, though I know wonderful things are happening in other parts of the continent. I love Sefi Atta, Thando Mgqolozana, , Zukiswa Wanner, Siphiwo Mhala, Biyi Bendele, and quite a few others. What advice would you give any upcoming African writers? The same old advice that every writer gives. You can only be a great writer if you become a great reader. And then of course, write. And write some more. The more you write the better you become. You May Also Like to Read…

Expert honey producers say folks must stop wasting their money on costly how to start beekeeping classes in Cedar Rapids Iowa because they can get affordable training through online information plus ebooks which cost far less than honey bee farming classes. Beekeeping, like every other activity, has its dos and don’ts. Beginning beekeeping typically includes the equipment that is needed and buying bees. Nonetheless, some people who are beginning this hobby usually make a few blunders. It’s okay to make mistakes, and also this article can help new beekeepers avoid making the exact same mistakes others have in the past. Here are three errors which every beekeeper should avoid: 1. Not understanding the best time to begin a beekeeping company or avocation can prove to be a catastrophe. It often leads to a loss of cash and your bees. Winter is the worst possible time to start, since most bees perish during the wintertime. This would compel a beekeeper to buy a new batch of bees, which would be more expensive money. Fall is another poor time since you will find fewer flowers, hence a smaller amount of honey harvested, to start beekeeping. The best time to start beekeeping is during summer, which can be the time of the year where there are loads of blooms that are blooming. 2. Purchasing used equipment and old books on beekeeping. This can be a familiar mistake made by many beginning beekeepers. It’s understandable that one would desire to conserve money as much as possible, but purchasing used old and gear beekeeping novels is not a good idea. First, used gear can come with “familial” issues. The extractor factory outlet might have a flow, or the uncapping knife mightn’t be sharp enough to uncap all the wax in one go. This would surely change the quality of one’s honey, which isn’t an ideal scenario especially if a beekeeper is intending to start a honey-selling company. Second, outdated info can be provided by old novels on beekeeping. One might be stuck using the traditional approach when there are quicker and better methods fabrication honey and to maintain beehives. 3. Refraining from buying protective gear. Think relating to this. He/she’ll most likely come out as a pincushion with all the bee stingers, if one doesn’t wear protective equipment when handling the hives and amassing the honeycombs. Protective gear is pricey, yes, but it is going to help beekeepers avoid having to pay medical bills from all the bee stings. These three blunders are presented here to help they are avoided by future beekeepers. Before getting started beekeeping, it is best to consult a professional beekeeper. If buying a certain thing seems too expensive, constantly consider the end cost ( in case that they don’t purchase this item now, will it cost them more later on?). In the long run, it truly is up to the person to determine the best course of action.

What many likely don’t know about honey is it takes “two million individual blossoms to produce one pound of honey,” says beekeeper Zac Browning, with each individual honeybee producing 1/12 of a teaspoon in its lifetime. With the planting of more row crops in states like North Dakota, Iowa, and so forth, producing that number becomes much more difficult for hives, given that wildflowers and other native plants are largely wiped out in place of row crops like corn and soybeans, which are sprayed with herbicide and leave “very little opportunity for habitat,” according to ecologist Clint Otto. Such changes in landscape, along with current challenges to honeybee health like parasites, disease, and pesticides, are likely a contribution to declining US honey production. It might help explain why almost all US organic honey now comes from Brazil, India, and Mexico. By its current reports, the National Honey Board states only about one-quarter to one-third of honey consumed in the US is produced here. Compared to honey production in the early 1990s, the US produces only about two-thirds of the honey today that it did back then. Conversely, honey demand has increased, with per person consumption nearly doubling since then—to make up the difference, annual imports, according to the USDA, have more than tripled since the early 1990s. In the last 10 years alone, US beekeepers have been losing an annual estimated average of 30 to 45 percent of their hives to sudden, unexplained bee death—a rate entomologists and beekeepers are alarmed by. Between the staggering declines in honeybee numbers and pesticide-free plants, with the exception of a few brands in Hawaii (where it’s been hard hit by pests in recent years), there’s almost no honey sold commercially and completely domestically produced and certified organic. The reason for this comes from the requirements it takes to reach certification, which includes general USDA standards, but not ones specific to honey just yet, which has been in the works since 2001—a different time altogether in terms of honeybee decline. “You have to be organic in managing your hives,” says Steve Ellis, who runs the Old Mill Honey company based in Barrett, Minnesota. “If you’re controlling for the varroa mite, there are chemistries and control methods that are certified organic,” explains Danielle Downey, executive director of Project Apis m., a nonprofit working with beekeepers. “Beyond that, you have to be able to certify all farmers in that area have organic practices for at least a three-mile radius,” Ellis explains. “In most commercial beekeeping operations, that is a nonstarter because we do not have control over other farmers…Unless you’re in a wilderness area or a national forest that does not have a spraying program, it’s very difficult for most beekeepers,” he says. Beekeepers in Mexico and Brazil, however, tend to have more options for larger forage areas, and Hawaii is the only certain US state to have that much pesticide-free ground. The fact of the matter is organic honey isn’t exactly a practical reality in the US, but like all things, that could change if more become aware of the importance of protecting local honeybee habitat. Producing more local honey away from large-scale, chemical-intensive agriculture would lower the chance of bees bringing pesticides back to the hive, which is good for beekeepers no matter their number of hives—and of course, it’s good for the bees themselves.

Expert honey producers say folks must stop spending their money on costly how to start beekeeping classes in Anamosa Iowa because they can get cheaper training through online information plus ebooks which cost far less than honey bee farming classes. Beekeeping, like every other activity, has its own dos and don’ts. Start beekeeping normally involves the needed gear and purchasing bees. Nonetheless, some individuals who are beginning this avocation normally make several blunders. It is acceptable to make mistakes, and also this article can help new beekeepers prevent making the exact same mistakes others have before. Here are three blunders which every beekeeper should prevent: 1. Not knowing the best time to start a beekeeping business or hobby can end up being a calamity. It often leads to a loss of cash and your bees. Since most bees perish during winter months winter is the worst possible time to begin. This would compel a beekeeper to purchase a new batch of bees, which would be more expensive money. Autumn is another lousy time to start beekeeping, since there are fewer blooms, thus a smaller amount of honey picked. The best time to start beekeeping is during summer, which is the time of the year where there are lots of blooming flowers. 2. Buying used gear and old books on beekeeping. That is a familiar error made by many beginning beekeepers. It’s clear that one would need to conserve money as much as possible, but purchasing used equipment and old beekeeping books is not a great thought. First, used gear can come with “familial” issues. The extractor outlet might have a flow, or the uncapping knife might not be sharp enough to uncap all the wax. This would definitely affect the quality of one’s honey, which isn’t an ideal situation particularly if a beekeeper is intending to start a honey-selling company. Second, info that is out-of-date can be provided by old books on beekeeping. One might be stuck using the conventional approach when there are faster and better methods manufacture honey and to maintain beehives. 3. Refraining from purchasing protective equipment. Think relating to this. He/she’ll most likely come out as a pincushion with all the bee stingers stuck to their body if one does not wear protective gear when managing the hives and gathering the honeycombs. Protective equipment is not cheap, yes, but it is going to help beekeepers avert having to pay medical bills. These three errors have been presented here to help they are avoided by future beekeepers. It truly is best to consult an expert beekeeper before getting started beekeeping. If purchasing a certain thing looks too pricey, always think about the ending price ( in case that they don’t buy this thing now, will it cost them more later on?). Ultimately, it truly is up to the person to decide the best strategy.