Mary Mezack

Awesome Card Trick?

2009-05-24T06:40:00.002+02:00

Scouse Vasectomy

2009-05-14T01:18:00.000+02:00

After having their 11th child, a Liverpool couple decided that was enough, as the social wouldn't buy them a bigger bed and they weren't strong enough to nick one.
The husband went to his doctor and told him that he and his wife didn't want to have any more children.

The doctor told him there was a procedure called a vasectomy that would fix the problem but it was expensive. A less costly alternative was to go home, get a firework, light it, put it in a beer can, then hold the can up to his ear and count to 10.

The Scouser said to the doctor, 'I may not be the smartest guy in the world, but I don't see how putting a firework in a beer can next to my ear is going to help me.'

‘Trust me, it will do the job', said the doctor.

So the man went home, lit a banger and put it in a beer can. He held the can up to his ear and began to count, '1, 2, 3, 4, 5,' at which point he paused, and placed the beer can between his legs so he could continue counting on his other hand.

This procedure also works in Leicester, parts of Wiltshire, and anywhere in Wales!

Super Saimon Deluxe

2009-05-12T18:57:00.000+02:00

Super Saimon Deluxe is a classic brain game that will test your sonic recollection abilities. To play, just mash the big pretty buttons, or press the corresponding arrow keys in the correct sequence before the timer runs out! Exercise your brain and improve your mental response-time!

you can find more sequence memory games here

The Strangest Song. Book review

2009-05-04T20:08:00.000+02:00

Gloria Lenhoff was born prematurely in 1955. Although she was originally assessed as a healthy child, she did not develop normally. It was not until Gloria was in her 30s that her developmental problems were associated with a specific diagnostic label. Williams Syndrome was identified. This is a genetic condition that occurs once in 7,500 births. It results in a characteristic physical appearance: restricted physical growth, small pointed facial features and restricted intellectual development.

This book, written with Gloria’s parents, is the story of her subsequent life, paralleled by the story of Williams Syndrome itself. Williams Syndrome leads to one particularly fascinating characteristic: musical ability. Howard Lenhoff noticed that his daughter was especially attentive when he played the guitar or played a record. She seemed to respond particularly to sound and noise. This story is the narrative of how Gloria Lenhoff became a performing singer, and how her life was shaped by a musical competence at odds with all her other limitations.

That aspect of her story begins with an account of her bat mitzvah, when she sang from the Song of Songs, and also played the accordion that her mother had given her in an attempt to foster her developing musical interest.

The story continues with two related narratives. There is Gloria’s own career as a singer. She progressed to giving public performances andmaking recordings, able to memorize and perform songs in different genres and different languages. It is also the story of how her father Howard Lenhoff worked to establish the research credibility of the association between Williams Syndrome and musical ability. The narrative takes us beyond the Lenhoff family, to encompass theWilliams Syndrome Association and the eventual provision of musical opportunities for people affected by it.

This is not an academic study of Williams syndrome, nor is it a contribution to our general understanding of dysmorphic and other genetic syndromes.

Readers of this journal will, however, find it a fascinating case study of how parents of affected children can work to search for and establish meaning; how they can develop their own forms of expertise in trying to unravel genetic problems; how self-help groups can mobilize and sponsor scientific knowledge in specific conditions.

It is also an example of the savant narrative, another example of unusual creative or performing abilities associated with disabling conditions. It is a fascinating account of how one small deletion (on chromosome 7) can give rise to a complex picture of physical, personal and intellectual characteristics.

The Toughest Show on Earth: My Rise and Reign at the Metropolitan Opera. Book review

2009-04-22T10:48:00.000+02:00

As a researcher who studies the careers of executive-level arts managers, I found the opportunity to explore and learn about Joseph Volpe’s career as general manager of the Metropolitan Opera more than rewarding. Volpe, with Charles Michener, begins his book with a comprehensive discussion of his biographical background. From this historical overview of Volpe’s personal history arises the question: are leaders born or made? This question resurfaces repeatedly like a leitmotif from a Wagner opera, with Volpe providing only momentary glimpses of ways to begin constructing a sufficient answer. Nonetheless, Volpe presents the reader with an opportunity to better understand how characteristics and personality traits of leaders may manifest themselves as early as childhood. Volpe concludes his autobiographical outpouring by identifying one of his most significant mentors, Eddie Lapidus.

Several chapters in the book chronicle the history of the Met. Volpe reminds us of the country’s newly rich and their impact on the history of opera in the United States, particularly in the Northeast. The Met was formed in October 1883 for the social benefit and pleasure of a handful of New York’s wealthiest families.

Volpe provides useful stories to support this assertion. For example, the wife of William H. Vanderbilt, a son of Cornelius Vanderbilt, had been denied acceptance into the New York upper crust because she was precluded from receiving a box at the Academy of Music in 1880. Essentially, William H. Vanderbilt and others founded the Met. Still, as time progressed, the Met has grown beyond the ambitions and vanities of its original benefactors, and now more than 130 million people benefit annually from the creative and artistic genius of the world’s finest opera house.

Opera boards seek executive opera administrators with two or more years of executive or progressively responsible managerial experience. Executive-level managers in opera must demonstrate skills in the areas of budget preparation, human resources management, financial management, and strategic planning; they must also be capable of directing and leading the marketing, education, and fundraising departments, as well as negotiating contracts, interpersonal and community relations, and board development. Volpe introduces many case studies in these areas. For example, he relays intriguing stories regarding his dealings with donors Sybil Harrington and Louise Humphrey, two of the Met’s most infamous board members.

Harrington underwrote new productions of Don Carlos, Un Ballo in Maschera, Manon Lescaut, La Traviata, La Boheme, Francesca da Rimini, and a host of other projects (96–102). Humphrey, a onetime president of the Met’s board, was a fine hostess and generous benefactor (109).

Their generosity is the type we hope to The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society inspire in all board members, donors, and volunteers of arts organizations.

In the area of financial management, Volpe discusses an economically lucrative deal wherein the Met sold two properties that netted $4 million - $2 million in cash and $2 million as a mortgage with an interest rate of 12.5 percent (108, 250–58).

Another excellent financial management and strategic planning case study emerges in Volpe’s retelling of an anecdote about Lincoln Center’s unveiling of a mock-up of a new adornment for a plaza - an eighteen-foot-tall twisted bronze pylon with four clock faces, each emblazoned with the name of the clockmaker, Movado. In return for the right to advertise its name on New York City’s most prestigious cultural site, Movado agreed to pay Lincoln Center $250,000 a year for five years toward the upkeep of the plaza, as well as $750,000 to produce the work. Although Volpe was unsuccessful in preventing the project, he was able to convince Movado and Lincoln Center leaders to move the clock off the plaza into a public park maintained by the city (233–36). But perhaps the most revealing case study Volpe provides is in artistic administration and human resources management, necessary areas that are all too often forgotten in arts administration curricula.

Volpe’s demonstrable managerial instinct has perpetuated his global reputation as the manager who fired Kathleen Battle, Roberto Alagna, and Angela Gheorghiu (132–50, 219–22).

But Volpe also discusses his managerial approach in handling stage directors, whom he calls “The New Prima Donnas” (155). Stating, “One phenomenon none of my predecessors had to contend with was the rise of the prima donna director” (155). One director who particularly challenged Volpe was Elijah Moshinsky.

Volpe explains, “For nine seasons, from the spring of 1994 to the fall of 2001, Elijah Moshinsky was the closest thing the Met had to a house director. . . . For all the success of most of Moshinsky’s productions, he became increasingly difficult to work with” (157). Ultimately, Moshinsky, too, was released from his contract. Yet not all of Volpe’s interactions with opera professionals were difficult. He had excellent relationships with Renee Fleming, Susan Graham, Denyce Graves, Deborah Voigt, and a host of other artists at the Met. Volpe’s managerial style set a precedent that allowed executive-level arts managers to no longer tolerate the prima donnas. The November 2002 issue of Opera News, which surveys professional opera singers’ views on the use of the term prima donna, supports this belief (32–35).

In The Toughest Show on Earth, Volpe combines anecdotes, case studies, historiography, cameos of opera’s most intriguing characters, and straightforwardness to afford a fascinating peek into the career of an executive-level arts manager.

This book is a must-read for arts administration professors considering teaching a course in opera administration and for arts administration students aspiring to have a career in opera administration.

Building Louisiana: The Legacy of the Public Works Administration. Book review

2009-03-16T19:57:00.000+01:00

Robert Leighninger provides an invaluable contribution to the study of public culture with his resurrection of the Spring 2009 77 forgotten legacy of the New Deal - the long-term capital outlays that created community structures of enduring importance.

In just six years, the Roosevelt administration transformed the face of the American landscape with its investment in infrastructure development.

These public works are largely taken for granted, and their provenance remains lamentably unknown. Leighninger’s studies provide a much-needed corrective to the widespread notion that public investments are of no importance and that government can play no role in improving people’s lives. Leighninger demonstrates the value of public works by an extensive use of descriptive analysis and visual images. It should be noted that the photographs were largely taken by the author.

Public infrastructure development is categorized as either physical or cultural.

In Building Louisiana, the author asserts that physical infrastructure constitutes the basic underpinnings of modern industrial society; the roads, bridges, canals, airports, sewer systems, waterworks, dams, and electrical power plants that we use to produce goods and services to move them and ourselves across the landscape, and to keep us safe and healthy at work and at home. (xviii) These issues are dealt with in Long-Range Public Investment, which discusses the activities of the various “alphabet soup agencies” involved in these construction projects: the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Public Works Administration (PWA), the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

To cite the work of one agency in one locale, the PWA in New York City built the Triborough Bridge, the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, the Henry Hudson Drive, major parts of the Eight Avenue subway, and three Staten Island ferries among its 107 projects (Long-Range Public Investment 86). Among other iconic public works projects of the New Deal are Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park, the San Francisco Cow Palace, Hoover Dam, the Mississippi River bridges at New Orleans and Vidalia, Washington’s National Airport, and San Antonio’s River Walk (originating as a flood control project, but elaborated with a network of walkways, shops, and restaurants).

The River Walk brings us to the component of New Deal public investment that would be of the greatest interest to the readership of JAMLS: the cultural infrastructure. This “consists of the facilities that allow us to educate our children and ourselves, conduct government, administer justice, and otherwise transmit our culture through museums and other venues for art performances and displays” (Building Louisiana xviii).

In a personal prelude, Leighninger notes the number of New Deal projects on the campus of Louisiana State University (LSU), where he taught for many years before moving to Arizona State. These include the university lakes (WPA), a sizable copper-domed coliseum (WPA), the faculty club (PWA), the geology building (PWA), the student health center (WPA), and the baseball and football stadiums (WPA). Full disclosure requires this reviewer to acknowledge that he is also a professor at LSU and knows the author (although more from cultural colloquia than from campus). Since this work is exclusively researched, beautifully photographed, and well written, there is no personal interest involved. At the same time, this reviewer is familiar with many of the works discussed here; consequently, his appreciation for what he learned was particularly heartfelt.

Given the vast array of projects nationwide - both spectacular and quotidian - Leighninger argues that “we need to see everything by one agency in at least one state before we can begin to reckon the importance of all New The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society Deal public works programs to America” (Building Louisiana xxiii). If I have a quibble with this methodology, it is the exclusive emphasis on the PWA.

Although the WPA was conceived as an emergency relief program for the employment of the needy and the PWA’s mission was in constructing major capital improvements, these distinctions were not always that clear-cut. To cite two already mentioned examples, the WPA built both the River Walk in San Antonio and LSU’s 6,000-person-capacity Parker Coliseum. These were identical to PWA projects in scope, impact, and cultural significance. As Leighninger observes, “What people remember about public works in the New Deal, if they remember anything at all, is the WPA” (Long-Range Public Investment 55). He might have done better to have dealt with both as the joint legacy of the New Deal.

Courthouses might be considered the PWA’s private presence. Eleven parish (county) courthouses were built in just three years - a record not surpassed before or since. Following PWA policies, they were built to last. “All are still standing, and all are the focus of parish judicial life. . . . Camerson Parish courthouse has survived two hurricanes while the buildings around it were flattened” (Building Louisiana 109). The courthouse architecture marked a distinct departure from the usual adaption of a historical motif. If not exactly modern, the dominant design was a variant of the art deco style adapted to conform to the expectations of a public building. Sometimes termed “PWA moderne,” the stylistic compromise has been variously labeled: “stripped-down classicism, starved classicism, American modern, and Greco-deco,” which “allowed a retention, though simplified, of the basic elements of the classical facade: base, column, and entablature. It permitted some ornament: simple bas-relief sculpture panels and similar low carving of capitals and cornices” (Building Louisiana 111). Overall, the courthouses pictured (as well as the school buildings) exude a feeling of architectural distinction and dignity.

Both of the books discussed herein provide a welcome reflection on the positive contributions that government can make in improving the nation’s well-being through investment in infrastructure development.

The importance of dams, roads, rural electrification, and, as Louisiana citizens are all too well aware, flood-control systems cannot be underestimated. As Leighninger eloquently argues, the cultural infrastructure built by the New Deal testifies to the value of public investment for community development: “The structures they built were contributions to a future where citizens are safer, healthier, better educated, and better administered” (Building Louisiana 182). The physical durability and aesthetic sensitivity that characterized these building projects bears witness to the nobility and seriousness of purpose that characterizes the public sector at its best.

Both of these books are of immense importance to understanding the politics of public purposiveness. Long-Range Public Investment disproves the facile dismissal of public works as “pork barrel,” or unnecessary undertakings best left to private initiative. Building Louisiana beautifully visualizes the contributions of aesthetics to the public sector. It should also animate similar studies to be undertaken in all the other states and many communities.

Butter on the Popcorn?

2009-02-04T18:36:00.000+01:00

Now working just plain sucks in the first place, but working in a movie theatre has to be the worst (save for being a dishwasher). I don’t work at a normal movie theatre that shows all the good movies, I work at the IMAX theatre with the six story screen.

Normally the IMAX shows documentaries and short films, but every once in a while we get a full length film. Right now we have ‘The Polar Express’, which is a good movie the first 10 times you see it, but when it is the only movie playing and it plays about 5 times a day you can get real sick and tired of the damn thing. I can say all the lines for the last 20 minutes of the movie.

I’m not a people person in the first place, but get 400 people crammed inside a theatre lobby, with a long ass concession line, and it is getting close to the movie’s start time and all those people start to bitch and moan about how long it is taking for everything to go. I really don’t feel like getting fired at this particular moment so I try to explain that we are not staffed for this amount of people. They don’t listen to my explanation and just continue on, at that point I just leave and get back to work.

Our concession is so overpriced it is even funny, when someone orders even a small popcorn they are shocked at the three dollar price tag. Then they bitch about how slow we are when we are going as fast as we can to get everybody’s orders done. Usually it is the person ordering that takes forever because they don’t know what they want. How hard can it be, we only sell popcorn, coke, and candy.

When we let our customers into the movie we hand them 3D glasses, which we clean after every use. You would think that if you felt something damp on the glasses you would assume that it would be water. Nope, when someone feels wetness on their glasses they immediately turn to me and complain that their glasses are wet, I tell them they have just been washed and they shut up and move along. I really hate the people who inspect their glasses right in front of me to make sure they are clean, and if they don’t pass their inspection they assume I will hand them another. I take the glasses from them, look them over, tell them they are fine and to move along. That really pisses them off. Most of the scratches and water dots on the glasses aren’t even noticeable once the movie starts. I loathe the people who bring back their glasses broken. I’ve gotten to the point where I charge them five bucks for a new pair, I made almost fifty bucks one night. I’m not even going to start on the people who want glasses for their one year old.

After the movie lets out we have an announcement that tells everybody to exit out the back. Do the people listen? Not really, we still have a few who try but get told to go up. Then you got the old people who ‘can’t walk up the stairs’. How did they get to their seats in the first place? Then the cleaning of the theatre takes place. I don’t get it, you wouldn’t leave your food and spilled drinks all over your house, so why do you do that at a movie theatre? Do you completely forget courtesy when you enter a theatre? I wish I could slap every person who leaves their shit laying on the theatre floor.

I almost forgot the soundtrack, the thirty minute soundtrack that plays over and over. I’ve heard the same Christmas songs 16 times a day for the last two months. I am close to losing my fucking mind. I really hate it when I hear the songs in my head after I go home from work.

I hate this job, but it’s a paycheck and I need the money.

It's Eeeeeevil

2009-02-03T21:35:00.000+01:00

I HAVE to get to studying Business Math for the final this week. I've been avoiding this evil subject since we got out of class Thursday because it's Greek to me. It doesn't matter how much studying I do, the concepts just do not sink into my already-overloaded brain.

I know, I know. Just sit down and do it. So, here goes. I'm off to raise my blood pressure and cause an ulcer with this useless subject.

The 'Memory Card' game from Club Penguin

2009-01-28T00:02:00.000+01:00

Memory card game. Downloadable movie

2009-01-06T13:03:00.000+01:00

Argh its at times like these that i wish i was smoking again.
I went to pay the school dinner money bill when i picked up the kids. Gaby showed me a letter in her bag and told me how her teacher had told her off for not having her packed lunch.
But i hadn't told the office to sign them over to packed lunches yet? Sir had talked about it with me and had said how it would be easier if we kept them on hot dinners, even if it was more expensive in the long run.
On the letter was written that i had authorised Gabs to have packed lunches as from today. Confusion and madness reigns. So now both the kids are on packed lunch. Which meant i had to go into the town to buy all the gear. Lunch boxes and flaskes stuff. AND all the ickle food that you put in the lunch boxes. I forgot tin foil so i just hope against hope i got enough for sarnies in the morning!
Doh.
Sir wont be pleased.
Gabs was desperate to have a PS2 game .. Ratchet and Clank or something, and it was on the buy 2 for ?30 rack. That was it for me i was hooked. Never take me shopping in a bargin basement! So i picked up Lord Of The Brown RIngs, Two Towers game for PS2 for myself (ish).
Tally wanted a chicken that shat eggs.
We all went away happy ;)
Oh except.. i was at the whole in the wall and it bloody well swallowed my bank card. No more writing out cheques for me.

2008-12-28T18:46:00.000+01:00

(Might be a repeat...)

I will never hear church bells ringing again without smiling . . .

Upon hearing that her elderly grandfather had just passed away, Katie went straight to her grandparent’s house to visit her 95-year-old grandmother and try and provide some comfort to her.

When she asked how her grandfather had died, her grandmother replied, “He had a heart attack while we were making love on Sunday Morning.”

Horrified, Katie told her grandmother that 2 people nearly 100 years old having sex would surely be asking for trouble.

“Oh no, my dear,” replied granny. “Many years ago, realizing our advanced age, we figured out the best time to do it was when the church bells would start to ring. It was just the right rhythm. Nice and slow and even . . . Nothing too strenuous, simply in on the Ding and out on the Dong.”

She paused to wipe away a tear, and continued, “He’d still be alive if the ice cream truck hadn’t come along.

2008-11-24T02:45:00.000+01:00

Your Honor, i present exhibit A ... The Freaky Little Toed Foot Belonging To Fluffy:

Truely horrifying.
I have whacked some BEAUTIFUL pics onto my moblog. Some of the baby, GABY, Tally, and even SEXYMUM!
wooooooohooooooo
Here is a taster of the joys of my Milly

News of the Weird

2008-10-02T01:37:00.000+02:00

Latest from the Class-Action Lawyers' Money Tree:

(1) The six lawyers who helped 83 Wal-Mart workers win about $2,500 each (for being improperly denied overtime pay) asked the Portland, Ore., judge in December for fees totaling $2.57 million, about 12 times the clients' total winnings (citing the difficult work, Wal-Mart's contentiousness, and the case's implications beyond their 83 clients).

(2) And when phone company customers won $25 refunds in a September class-action settlement with Ameritech in Madison County, Ill., lawyers got $1.9 million in legal fees; a local watchdog group said (based on experience) only about 10 percent of eligible customers would bother to apply for refunds, meaning that lawyers' fees would ultimately account for about 60 percent of the amount Ameritech pays out.

Some Tweaking

2008-09-24T14:16:00.000+02:00

I've noticed that the headline and the body of my posts is showing up stuck together in the RSS feed. Why in hell would that happen?
Transportation

Ah, well. I'll look at it later. Today, a friend is bringing our new (used) car. It's a Ford be-nothing econo box Focus Aspire, but it's a later model (1999 1997 I think), has low mileage and he's letting us have it at a really good price.

We've been sweating over our old car, a 1989 Nissan Stanza, that I bought new while in the military, because there's a strong smell of gas after driving it a while. I figure there's a fuel-line leak somewhere, but can't afford to get it fixed. We just spent $500 just to get the starter replaced, and don't want dump more cash into a car that is probably headed for the bone yard or demolition derby.

The Stanza has actually been a very reliable vehicle.The car has been all over the United States taking me to new military assignments, and I'm sorry to see it go. But, it's seen better days with about 130,000 miles on it. We also have a 1988 Dodge Aries K that is sitting in the back yard waiting for a trip to the junk yard. The engine is shot, the shocks are gone, and it's no longer a viable means of transportation.

Sometimes it's just best to move on.

2008-09-02T00:17:00.000+02:00

Well....I'm so frazzeled, I don't know. I really would like to go to MCAD, or something, next fall. Not this coming fall, because I'm going to SNC. Which is sad, because I'm already assuming that I don't want to go there. I don't know, I just want more. I don't know if I want to do English, I mean, I think I do, I don't know. *sighs* I'm rather emotional right now. I'm just sick of so many things.

I'm eating this popcorn, it's like "94% Fat Free Kettle Korn", it tastes like shit. Ish.

I'm really stressing about school. I don't know why, but I am. I'm getting really anxious. I also have to find a job. Curses.

I gotta go eat shitty popcorn, adieu.

2008-07-14T11:04:00.000+02:00

Well! Easter Sunday was fun. I woke up at like, 8:30, and the Easter Bunny had come! I got Yahtzee! and the new John Mayer CD. Well, it's not new, but, you get it. Heh. And then Steve made bacon and french toast, and around 12:15ish, my aunt and uncle came over. We had ham, potatoes, roasted vegetables, aspagaragus, and some other stuff. So yeah. Around 4, I went to Bryce's, I brought him an Easter basket. Haha. It's fun. :-D I bought him some seeds, like, uh..jalapeno and green pepper seeds, cause those are the only vegetables he'll eat raw! Hah. And I made him a key chain, but it's kinda ugly. Hah. But yeah. I felt bad, his mom was like, "Did YOU get her anything?" And he's like, "No...", and she's like, "Ugh, you're SO inconsiderate!". I was like, "oh, no, he's very considerate!". Hah. I felt bad. Poor kid. I 'member last year, I painted him a plate, and I think he knew I was sad cause he didn't get me anything, so he and his mom went out and bought me stuff from Bath and Body Works, and left it for me to find in my room, I thought it was so romantic. Hehe. Hah. But yea!

I have to work on math, English, Speech, and yea...I have to do my speech tomorrow, I think?, and I have a math test on Wednesday, and an English project on Thursday and Friday. So yea! *groans* So, I'm going to go, but I'll write more later....

I Don't Get Me

2008-03-24T17:47:00.000+01:00

I'm not sure why my nature has turned so self-destructive this term. Well, at least educationally. Personally...a little, I suppose. Mostly it's been things that have the possibility to lead to disaster. That little element of risk that makes life so interesting. I've been flirting with that far too often. No regrets though, about anything. Maybe some things I've done lately shouldn't have happened...but no regrets at all.

As for school...in the last 5 weeks, I have taken 4 six day weekends. And that week that wasn't a six day weekend, only wasn't because I attended one 50 minute lecture on Wednesday. That hardly makes up for it.

Now I find myself with 3 major papers due, along with 5 books to be read for said papers. Exams begin in 9 days...eugh.

Bright side? This crappy term is almost over.

Won't be posting much for the next week, too busy. And now I have to crack down, or I will fail. No more risk of failing, if I don't get to it, I will.

So cheers for now.

2008-02-27T01:03:00.000+01:00

Well...It's about ten to three, and I'm extremely tired. I got home last night from Bryce's around 12:15...Well, that'd be this morning, I guess? And than I woke up at like, 11:30 this morning. Which is a lot of sleep for me. But that's okay. I had to go to Byerly's, and than I went to Target to get Easter presents. I feel bad, I bought my mom and step dad a present, but I had to use my mom's own money since I didn't have any! :/ Talk about bad. Heh.

I have to clean a lot today, I think we're having people over tomorrow for Easter lunch/brunch/dinner. I have to clean my room, my bathroom, the laundry room, and a bunch of other things too. I also have to do my english homework, and work on my Speech, too. Blah.

I think I'm getting a cold. That, or, my allergies are coming back. Phoeey.

Anyway, I have to go. If anyone knows of a good mini-golf course around here, lemme know! Thanks.

Having a semi productive day

2008-01-09T11:39:00.000+01:00

Thoroughly washed the kitchen and utility room floor which was disgusting. Now however i keep almost slipping over. Will have to call in the grit lorrys just to make a cuppa.
I managed to organise the kids packed lunches today. Without a hitch too. Am i becoming more grown up at last? More able to cope? It did seem easy.
I even got the kids in to school so early that i parked up and walked across, letting them play before the bell went. Ok admitedly i was trying to get ready early enough to walk it, but still. Normally im five minutes late. Lets hope its the start of a new more efficient me.
Ron's comments are very addictive. I'm finding it hard to tear myself away! Damn internet and its easily accessable fun and games ;)
Still Fag Free! Day ooo 14 ish? I really ought to just look back at my previous posts and check the date.

2007-12-28T21:30:00.000+01:00

Honey, our lives will be a whole lot easier if you stop thinking that the sky is falling every time that we have a minor disagreement.

We are a family living together through all the trials of everyday life. This is not a walk in the park, and everybody is not going to be cheery all the time. I may not be working at a paying job any more, but I've still got plenty of stress all day long and I've never been particularly perky.

Our children are chaos, but they are wonderful. We should enjoy them at this tender young stage in their lives. They are going to grow up and have school, homework and all kinds of sobering influences on them soon enough. Right now they have only the exuberance of childhood, so let's allow them to live that.

You are not failing if we have disagreements. As always, we just need to keep talking and get on with life. The rest tends to fall into place. We love and respect each other and our children. That is the base for everything else.

We don't have perfect lives, but we do have good lives. So be happy and thankful for everything we do have. I am. And I'll be with you through it all.

2007-10-24T09:36:00.000+02:00

Yay! So, for the past two days, our internet has been down. So this morning, Steve went to get a new modem. Well, after connecting everything, it STILL didn't work! What the fuck?! So then, I called Road Runner, because I knew if my mom or Steve did it, they'd get confused. Heh. So yeah. But now it's up! I had to talk to this guy who was really hard to understand. But, he helped, so it's great.

Courtney, Brea, and I went to Hanson last night! Hehe. It was actually pretty fun. We got to the parking garage, and Courtney forgot the tickets, so we had to go home. The opening band, Ingram Hill, was really good. They're kinda rock countryish, and the lead singer is super hot! Haha. I got his autograph. Hehe. Anyway...I work today from 3-8, and it sucks, because it's going to be slow as hell. But I think Justin is managing. Hehe. So yeah. I'm going to turn in my two weeks soon. My mom told me she's getting depressed about me going to school, and I feel bad, because I think I am too. It's not good.

But yeah, I gotta run! I'll write later.

2007-08-04T01:02:00.000+02:00

So...I work today from 11-8. Good god. I'm not looking forward to it, at all. Yesterday I worked from 3-8, and it went by really fast. I was the only server on at 3 til 5, and I totally got slammed! It kinda sucked. But then things settled down. Kayla and I both gave our two weeks notice, heh, so that's nice. Hopefully, Lesley won't flip out. That'd suck! But yeah.

My mom can't find my birth certificate, and in the same folder, my proof of citizenship!!!! NOT GOOD!!!!! I wasn't born here (obviously), and so it's not like I can go to some hospital and get it. Heh. So yeah. I'm not very happy and I know my mom isn't, either. Hah.

Yesterday night was fun. I was so exhsausted, though. I went to Bryce's, and we just kinda hung out. I got my lap top yesterday, too. It's pretty awesome. More heavy than I thought, but it's pretty tight. I'm excited about it.

Anyway. I gotta run for now, I think I might stop somewhere and grab a bite to eat. But IDK where. Anyway. "Peace out, a-town"...

Once a secret, always a secret?

2007-07-24T19:18:00.000+02:00

When is a government secret no longer a secret? Generally, when it shows up at the National Archives, that's one pretty good clue.

Then again, maybe not. In a program that predates the secretive Bush administration, the nation's intelligence agencies have been taking thousands of declassified documents out of the archives, essentially making them secrets again.

Hadn't heard about that? That's because the program itself is a secret.

According to a story in The New York Times, the push to pull documents is a backlash -- stronger since 9/11 -- against a Clinton-era executive order that made it harder to keep secrets more than 25 years old.

Read more

My Penguin Summer

2007-07-24T18:27:00.000+02:00

"What a summer it was! Penguins were everywhere-riding the waves, tending their nests, and patrolling the shore."

I get my best photos while at eye-level with my subjects, such as the gentoo penguins at left. They mostly minded their own business and ignored me. Sometimes they even tripped over my legs.

What could be more peaceful than a stroll along the beach? King penguins often move in an orderly line (below). That would make any teacher proud!

There I was-just me and the penguins. You must be thinking, Where's the snow? Where's the ice?

* It's true that some penguins live in Antarctica, where it's always snowy and icy. But many penguins rarely, if ever, see the white stuff. That's why I wanted to take pictures that show penguins not on snow and ice.

* My choice of places was the Falkland Islands, located off the southern tip of South America (see map on page 8). That's way below the equator. There the seasons are the opposite of those where I live, in Germany. So, for me, Christmas and the New Year come in wintertime. But I spent these holidays down there, where it was summer breeding season for penguins.

* During my five-week stay, I got to know four different species of penguins. Let me introduce them to you.

How do you like my campsite? I stored everything-camera equipment, clothes, cooking stuff-under this sheltering rock.

"Turns out, my nearest neighbors were a family of magellanic penguins."

After landing on this tiny, windswept island, I was dropped off with all my gear at my new home-away-from-home.

* I set up my tent near a colony of magellanic (maj-uh-LAN-ik) penguins. They're the ones with the double bands of black on their fronts. I soon discovered that one pair was nesting in a hole only about six feet (2 m) away. I worried that I might disturb them. But the birds just gave me a funny look and then went back to their business.

* Because I was a huge penguin fan, I thought to myself: How wonderful! But later, while trying to sleep in the tent, I thought: How noisy! These penguins spent nearly the whole night hollering at each other. They sounded just like a bunch of braying donkeys.

SOUTH AMERICA

Falkland Islands

That's my next-door neighbor below, heading to its nesting burrow. One day, I saw a chick poke its head out of the burrow (left).

"For me, the little rockhopper penguins with their wild 'hairdos' were the most fun to watch."

Yes, it's true: Rockhoppers really do hop on rocks. No chunks of ice here.

More rockhopper penguins breed in the Falklands than anywhere else. They're the smallest penguins on the island, standing less than two feet (55 cm) tall. And they're the ones that made me laugh the most.

* Their spiky crests make them look like punk rockers. But that's not the only thing about them that cracked me up. I got a kick out of watching them on the go, too.

* For one thing, rockhoppers are never alone, and they're always in a hurry. When it's time to go fishing, they all dash down to the beach and dive in. Then, on the return trip, they pop out of the waves and sprint across the sand. It was the funniest daily commute I'd ever seen!

* After each fishing trip, the rockhoppers take a long, hilly hike from the beach up to their nesting area. This journey messes up their feathers. So at the end they take a refreshing shower under a rocky waterfall.

* It must be hard for them to be patient and take turns-they act grumpy, and fights often break out. After-ward, they stretch and pose. It's as if they're enjoying their sparkling-clean look. If a hopper shook its feath-ers dry when I was around, I got my own shower!

Nothing beats a freshwater spa treatment after a day of fishing in the salty sea.

Surf's up! Here come the gentoos, heading for home after a day of fishing.

"You can always tell the gentoo penguins, with their white bonnets and bright orange beaks."

As soon as they reach shore, penguins, such as these two, must quickly get on their feet and rush out of the waves.

This gentoo chick is only a few days old. Note the sandy-not icy-nest.

On my summer island, each species of penguins has its own section of beach to come ashore on. Some-times, I would climb high above these landing places to watch the penguins return from the sea. On other days, I would go right down to the beach to welcome them out of the surf. Of course, I was always ready with my camera.

* I often had to choke back laughter, watching these landings. Just imagine trying to get from your belly up onto your feet without using your hands. Penguins can do it-but not always gracefully. Not always fast enough, either. After all, the next wave is crashing in right behind!

* Once ashore, the gentoo penguins don't have so far to go. They nest much closer to the water than the rockhoppers and magellanic penguins do.

* There's not much to a gentoo or rockhopper nest: just a few sticks, stones, leaves, or grasses. The nests are very close together, too. The magellanics prefer the privacy of burrows. And king penguins don't make nests at all. Instead, they hold their single eggs on top of their feet until they hatch!

* The kings are the biggest and most colorful penguins of the Falklands (see photo at bottom of pages 6-7). To me, they also seem the most stylish and handsome of all the penguins.

I'm so glad I got to share my penguin summer with you. I hope you agree that penguins are cool-even when they're not on snow and ice!

By Solvin Zankl

She hates that!

2007-07-21T11:23:00.000+02:00

You think you have the moves? Well, hotshot, we'll bet at least half the things you're doing in the bedroom really do drive her crazy--and not in a good way. We sent the MF Sex Squad to the streets of New York to poll 1,000 women. Their mission: to find out the ladies' biggest pet peeves under the sheets. Here are the top 10 responses.

she hates it when …

1. You only perform fast, jackhammer-type sex.

Why: "It feels more like you are trying to puncture a lung than give me an orgasm," says Liz, 21. "That just makes me numb--varying your rhythm keeps it interesting"

2. You stick your tongue inside her ear.

Why: "It's like getting hit on the side of the head with a big wave," says Ashley, 19. "Or a large, wet jellyfish."

3. You think just inserting your fingers into her vagina is enough to get her off.

Why: Penetration alone won't do. "You can't just go in and feel your way around," says Jen, 27. "You've got to have a plan of action."

4. You vigorously tweak her nipples.

Why: Pinching with varying degrees of pressure depending on her cues? Good. Sadistic, 180-degree turns? Not so much. "You think it feels good?" challenges Deanna, 29. "Let me do it to you and see how you feel about it."

5. You lick her belly button.

Why: "It stays wet in there a long time and ends up feeling sticky," says Julie, 23. You want to use your tongue? Head south.

6. You talk dirty to her--in a derogatory way.

Why: Some girls get off on it--but not all. "Being called a dirty whore doesn't turn me on," says Katie, 32. "It just pisses me off."

7. You hit any part of her body with your erect penis.

Why: "It just makes me want to slap it back," says Trina, 20.

8. You switch it up too much during oral sex.

Why: "Variety is good," says Eva, 30. "But once you've hit the spot and I'm enjoying myself, stay with it. I don't want you to move on to something new."

9. You excitedly suggest she try something you've seen in a porn film--because, after all, the girl was having so much fun.

Why: "She gets paid to do that," says April, 24. "We don't."

10. You put your hand on the back of her head when she's giving you oral sex.

Why: "That is way too controlling," says Karen, 26. "And it makes it seem like we're only there to please you and do your bidding."

Ginny's Song

2007-06-29T13:15:00.000+02:00

HANK HAD BEEN HOME SIX weeks before he picked up his violin, and it was another ten days before he did anything but hold it. After three years, it felt comforting just to curl his fingers around it, like a child with a teddy bear. When he put the violin in his lap, he felt he could return to his boyhood, with Mr. Luckley scowling and saying, "Are you playing that instrument or strangling it? Start over, start over!"

Maybe that was why it took him so long to raise the instrument to his chin, why he spent nearly two months playing the war hero to the delight of his parents and little brothers while he felt like a hypocrite inside. He'd hurt his knee in boot camp and been declared unfit for combat, had been shuttled from one menial job to another, and eventually been shipped overseas as an aide. He'd survived bombings and the shrill fear of air raids, but that was hardly hero stuff in his opinion. His family begged to differ, so he humored them, smiling emptily and waiting to escape.

He took long walks around the neighborhood at dusk. His family had moved in June of '42, right after he'd graduated from high school and shortly before he'd joined the army, so he wasn't overly familiar with his surroundings. There was always the possibility that he might become lost, and every night when he arrived home, he felt a little disappointed.

The walks were only a physical escape, though. He knew that music would be a more satisfying one. So he plucked up the courage his family had been falsely heralding for weeks and tuned the violin, then picked up the bow. The instrument felt heavy, and he could hear Mr. Luckley again. "Gently, Henry. Don't squeeze it. Treat your violin as you would a woman. Would you squeeze a woman?"

He'd been thirteen then and could remember blushing and directing a fierce hatred toward his teacher for the rest of the lesson. Now, eight years later, he managed a shaky grin as he loosened his grip and began to play.

His playing sounded heavy and awkward, but he persisted, hoping his ineptness would shake off like a coat of rust and he would find the pure, sweet music of his memory. He could hardly expect to be good after all this time and he attempted to scold himself for not hunting down a secondhand violin while he was in the army, and keeping in practice. He knew, though, that he could never have played real music there; the fear and the tension wouldn't have allowed for it. Besides, it had felt almost good to deny himself, a reminder that he was fighting a war even if he wasn't on the battlefield.

Of course things were different now. He was home, and the violin became part of his nightly routine. After a few weeks the bow felt natural in his hand, and the music no longer jarred him. He dug out some battered sheet music and managed to play a Bach piece that made him feel eleven years old again with Mr. Luckley standing imposingly beside him. Night after night he worked his way through the sheet music, rarely hitting a sour note, picking up speed. Yet always the music lacked a soul, and whenever he tried to escape the confines of the black-and-white pages and delve into his own compositions, the notes fell and shattered like glass.

Hank could hear Mr. Luckley in his ear--"You're not feeling the music, Henry"--and he wholeheartedly agreed with the specter of his old teacher, but he couldn't recapture the joy that used to hug him every time he picked up his violin. He couldn't even say where he'd lost it, whether he'd forgotten it in the old house, or had buried it overseas, or whether it had run away when he came back to seize it.

So he went looking for it, taking the bus back to his hometown one Saturday. He stood in front of his former house, expecting to feel a rush of memories, but he felt only drained. He went up the path of the house next-door instead, the Cookes' house, and though he hadn't thought of Ginny Cooke in a while, he suddenly felt eager to see her, to hear her contagious, musical laughter.

He hadn't even made it up the steps when a dour woman with a baby and two squabbling children came out, slamming the door behind them. "Whatever it is you're selling, I'm not interested," the woman said without looking at him, herding the children into the car.

Hank backed away, frowning. His hunger to see Ginny had increased in the moments since the idea first entered his head. Though he couldn't explain why, he felt certain there was a connection between his old neighbor and his music; if he could find her, he could recapture the magic in his violin. He leaned against the maple tree that bordered their old properties and remembered the one time he had played for Ginny. He'd said it was a birthday gift for her--she'd just turned sixteen--but he doubted she had appreciated it; Ginny wasn't the type to listen passively to anything. It had instead been a gift to himself. Watching her in the autumn twilight had inspired him, and he was sure he'd never played better than that evening.

They'd never spoken of it afterward. He could remember how badly he'd wanted to ask her if she'd liked it as they walked to school the next morning, but though he had never been shy, he'd been unwilling to speak then unless she said something first. She never had. He got the feeling that she, too, wanted to say something but could not, though maybe that was wishful thinking on his part. Still, surely it was strange that she hadn't said anything. Ginny was always talking--why hadn't she given him one of her careless thank yous, or teased him about his "fiddle friend," as she always did when he had to go practice?

As a teenager, the feeling of that evening and his wondering over their dual silence afterward had faded quickly into the monotony of chores and football games and geography tests. Ginny had gone back to being just Ginny. So why did he now feel so consumed by that one autumn evening? He wrapped his arms around the tree trunk, as though it had absorbed the long-ago song and might give it back to him. He couldn't recall even the melody, but he was sure that if Ginny were sitting under the tree again right now, weaving yellow leaves into her dark hair and laughing at him, he could play that song in an instant. And this time they would talk about it afterward.

He let go of the tree, feeling foolish, and tromped to the next-door neighbors' house on the other side. He was relieved when a familiar face answered his knock. Old Mrs. Cowley stared blankly, then opened the screen so she could hug him. "Hank McLennan! Don't you look fine!"

"You look pretty fine yourself, Mrs. Cowley," he said with one of the most genuine smiles he'd worn in the past three years.

"Come in, come in. I just made gingersnaps. You always loved my gingersnaps. My, you've gotten tall."

He hadn't grown an inch since high school, but he didn't tell her that as he sat and took a gingersnap. Mrs. Cowley asked him about his family, and he told her everything she wanted to know without the least bit of impatience.

"I certainly miss you folks," Mrs. Cowley said, nudging the cookies closer to him. "The people next-door now keep to themselves, act like it grudges them to say hello. "Though I admit they're not as bad as the folks who moved into the Cookes' old house--they're downright rude."

"What became of the Cookes?" Hank asked, afraid to look at her in case she didn't know.

"Well, they moved away in, let me think… '43? You remember, Mr. Cooke worked in the Blackmoor office, the company that made those sewing machine parts. Mrs. Cooke always had the latest model; would've been the envy of the neighborhood if she hadn't been so sweet. Anyhow, Blackmoor started manufacturing something for the war--can't recall what--and Mr. Cooke got transferred to Hamilton. The whole family was upset, but there was nothing they could do but up and move."

Hank clung to the name of the city, Hamilton, for the rest of the visit and resisted the urge to rush there when he left Mrs. Cowley's. Instead he walked to the depot and sat on a bench for an hour, waiting for the next bus home. There was no one else he wanted to see here. He knew Mr. Luckley had died about a year ago, but even if the old man had been living, he wasn't sure he would have visited him. He doubted that Mr. Luckley would have understood his problem, or been sympathetic. He knew what his teacher would say.

"Don't be a fool, Henry. Either the music is in you, or it's not. You can't go looking for it like a lost mitten."

Mr. Luckley was usually right, too. But that didn't mean he had to listen.

He was being a fool, but he still tried to rationalize it to himself. After all, he needed a job. And he was twenty-one, an age when he ought to be on his own. So he ignored his brothers' protests, his father's unspoken questions, and the hurt look in his mother's eyes, and he got himself a room and a job in Hamilton.

The job wasn't much--night watchman at a factory--and neither was the room, a tiny, stuffy box in one of the city's poorest boardinghouses. He could have gotten the same job, or better, at home and lived with his family, but he was still happy as he rearranged his possessions in his new room, tucking his violin under the bed.

For a week he slept days and worked nights, feeling cheerful at the possibility that he might be living in the same city as Ginny. He knew he might never find her, so he put off searching, not wanting his good mood to dissipate.

Still, he couldn't delay forever, so one day he rose at noon and went to the Blackmoor building. After talking to one frenzied secretary who'd never heard of Mr. Cooke, he was directed to a second who said she thought Mr. Cooke had retired, though she wasn't sure. When he asked to speak with someone who might know for certain, the woman frowned and refused, saying everyone was too busy.

He left, shoulders squared, and went to the high school, figuring that freckle-faced little Carson Cooke must be about fifteen now. The high school, however, had no record of him. Hank was not deterred; Carson might go to private school, or boarding school, or be in the penitentiary for all he knew. There was no reason to believe the Cookes weren't still in Hamilton.

There was no reason to believe they were, either. He tried the telephone operator, but she couldn't find Mr. Cooke in her listings. Perhaps they didn't have a phone of their own or perhaps they lived outside of Hamilton. He asked in shops and doctors' offices, combed the newspapers, stayed alert wherever he went in hopes of seeing Ginny. He expanded his search to the surrounding towns, though he never tried their schools or telephone operators, unwilling to meet with more direct defeats. The indirect were bad enough; with every passing day he felt more dejected, and his violin sounded more mechanical. Once music had been constantly on his mind, a song weaving its way through his brain. Now Ginny consumed him, and he was aware only of the gnawing within himself. He ignored the girl at the boardinghouse who hinted for an invitation to the movies and he was glad that his job required routine and not brainpower. It gave him more time to think about finding Ginny.

But the more he thought, the more he was tempted to give up. Even if he found her, there was no telling what would happen. They had been friends once, good friends in a lighthearted, bantering way, but that was four years ago. He couldn't even admit to himself why he wanted to find her so badly, whether it was because he thought he could regain his music through her, or whether he was in love with his memory of her. The first reason seemed selfish, the second foolish, and all he knew was that he had to find her, that every time he thought of her, it was with a wisp of that long-forgotten song, just out of reach.

So he stayed on, though it became apparent that if he wanted to remain in his little room, the cheapest available, and subsist on something more than tea and crackers, he would need to increase his income. He could remember Mr. Luckley saying, in one of his rare generous moods, that perhaps Hank might earn a livelihood with his violin, and though he knew this wasn't what his old teacher had meant, he advertised himself as a beginning violin instructor.

He returned from another failed search for Ginny one day to find a message from his landlady. Someone had called for him on the telephone and would be coming the next day as a prospective pupil. Her name was Annie Redden, and Hank pictured a pigtailed ten-year-old, the only kind of pupil he thought he could handle right now.

So he was startled and dismayed to find that the person knocking on his door the next afternoon was neither pigtailed nor ten. Her hair was swept up in an old-fashioned pompadour, and though she barely came up to his elbow, she was at least eighteen, maybe twenty.

"You're Mr. McLennan? The violin teacher?"

"Hank," he corrected, alarmed at being called Mr. McLennan. A moment later he was sorry; perhaps it wasn't proper. The girl only nodded, unconcerned.

He realized he was still standing in the doorway like an idiot and he stepped aside to let her in while he tried to explain himself. "I was expecting someone younger. I'm only a violin teacher for beginners." He was careful to leave the door ajar; his landlady wasn't particular about callers, but he had the sudden urge not to be unseemly.

"Well, I'm only a beginner!" she said brightly. He fought down a frown, convinced she was some silly girl who wanted to learn songs like "Blitzkrieg Baby" and "GI Jive." She patted her violin case and beamed at him, and for a moment she did look ten. "I've been fooling around on this fiddle forever, but I didn't get it into my head to take lessons until I was fifteen, and as soon as I found a teacher, he joined the army. Violin teachers were just another shortage of the war, I guess."

"I guess," he agreed. "Can you play something for me, Miss-uh-Redden?"

"Annie. And I can, as long as you don't mind listening to my own crazy music. It's all I know."

Lovingly, she took out her violin, and Hank steeled himself for "crazy music." He was determined not to be a grouchy, scornful teacher of the Mr. Luckley variety.

He didn't get much opportunity to test his patience, however. After inwardly cringing at the unorthodox way she held her bow, he felt enchanted the moment she began to play. The notes seemed to pour out of her instrument like a waterfall, and he was drenched with the joy of all he had been missing since his own violin sang like that. At the same time, a curdled streak of jealousy ran through this joy, and he felt especially miffed when Annie stopped and put down her violin with an oblivious expression, apparently unaware of the gift she possessed.

"You've come to the wrong teacher," he said, trying to correct the gruffness in his voice midsentence. "You're no beginner."

"But I am, that's just the problem," Annie said with a sigh. "I know I play well—"

More than well."

"--but I don't even know what I'm playing. I want to be able to read music, to play other people's songs. And to write down my own. Can you teach me that?"

He admitted he could, and they agreed to meet every Tuesday afternoon.

He received one other answer to his ad, so two afternoons a week he gave up the search for Ginny and struggled along with his two pupils--for they were struggles, The second student, Gladys Heilmacher, age eight, spent her lessons glowering over her violin, the bow clenched in her chubby fist. She wouldn't relax despite his efforts to put her at ease, so he stopped trying and accepted her as punishment for whatever he had once put Mr. Luckley through. Gladys was conscientious if nothing else, and within a few weeks she could play a simple melody that plodded off the strings the way Gladys herself plodded. When the hour was over and Gladys left with her equally glowering, plodding mother, Hank always collapsed into a chair, feeling exhausted and hopeless.

Annie's lessons tended to end in exhaustion, too, but never hopelessness. Annie did not learn as quickly as Gladys did, but her music never plodded. Instead she seemed to fight against the notes, as well as against him, questioning everything he told her and resisting all suggestions until he got aggravated enough to raise his voice, at which point she would burst out laughing.

It took Annie longer to learn her scales than Gladys, and even then she was apt to let her bow wander off in the middle of them as she followed her own whim of a song.

"You're not trying," he noted. He was past the point of being exasperated and was instead amused.

Annie's blue eyes grew large innocent. "Oh, but I am!"

He raised his eyebrows.

"Well, I try to try, anyway. I want to learn properly, honest, but the music just … gets away from me. Surely you understand."

"My violin teacher was much less understanding than yours," was all he said, which made Annie laugh.

There was no Mrs. Heilmacher to come for Annie at the end of her lessons, and she often stayed for tea and whatever he'd gotten as a cheap day-old leftover from the nearby bakery. He hadn't realized how lonely he'd been until he had Annie as a friend. This wasn't like talking to the girl down the hall, who waylaid him with prattle about who was going to be on the radio tonight and the latest Spencer Tracy movie. This was real conversation, and he found himself talking about all sorts of things. Not everything, for sure, but he did tell her about looking for Ginny, although he didn't attempt to explain the complicated reasoning behind his search. He wasn't sure he understood that himself.

He liked listening to her better. Annie spent her days taking care of her aunt, a feeble, needy woman who wanted someone constantly close by. Annie could only come to lessons by paying her younger sister to stay at the aunt's house for the afternoon.

"It seems like a lot of trouble to go to," he told her. "Expensive trouble, too."

Annie raised her eyebrows. "You don't know my aunt. I'd take accordion lessons just to get out of that house once a week." But she laughed as she said it, the way she always did when she came close to complaining so he couldn't feel sorry for her.

"Besides, these lessons are an investment," she added. "Someday, when I'm good, I'm going to take my violin all over the country and fiddle for my supper."

"Oh, you're good enough for that now."

"You think?"

"Sure. Supper doesn't cost much. … "

She laughed again, as he'd known she would. Her laughter was as joyous as her music.

Tuesday afternoons with Annie became the bright spot of his week. They made up for Gladys's dull lessons, and they got him through the five futile days of looking for Ginny. Sometimes he would forget that Annie wasn't beside him on those days, and he would turn with some humorous observation only to find himself alone.

Mostly, though, his mind was on Ginny. As the weeks passed, he became convinced that the Cookes weren't in Hamilton, yet he couldn't stop looking. It was a compulsion; if he admitted defeat, he was sure something inside him would crumble away; irretrievably lost.

So he kept looking, dreaming up new scenarios of what had become of her, none of them particularly happy. Probably she was married. Ginny was the type to marry young--not a flirt, but one of those teasing, easy-to-talk-to girls that all the boys love. He could picture her bossing around a husband, a baby on her hip. He didn't like to think of her being married, but it didn't deter him from wanting to find her.

Once he imagined that he found her, but she didn't remember him. That thought was thoroughly depressing, and it took a while to convince himself that Ginny Cooke would never forget a lifelong friend after only four years. Probably she had forgotten the time he'd played the violin for her, but that didn't matter. As long as she would give him a smile of recognition, or maybe a hug, and say, "Hank!" he'd be satisfied.

"Why?" Annie asked when he expressed this sentiment to her.

"Why what?"

"Why would you be satisfied?" She frowned. "If I were looking for my long-lost love, I'd hardly be satisfied if all he did was smile at me. And I'd be downright upset if it turned out he was married."

"I never said she was my long-lost love," he pointed out.

"Well, isn't she?" When he didn't say anything, Annie continued. "Why else would you look for her all this time?"

He didn't mention Ginny to Annie after that. He told her funny stories about himself as a kid, and he talked about his brothers, and he mimicked Gladys's stodgy ways until Annie howled with laughter. Once he talked about the war, about the constant knot of fear in his stomach and how he felt like a coward for being so scared when so many others had it worse. She listened to him in a way that seemed tangible, like a hand to squeeze, and though he thought he'd regret telling her these things, he never did. He didn't talk about Ginny, though, and he didn't talk about music.

Annie's lessons went on for four months without her making any progress in learning to read music, and then, in a few weeks, everything came together for her. She mastered the skill as though she'd always known it and only needed to be refreshed. Annie was delighted by her sudden progress but didn't seem to find it unusual; Hank was amazed for both of them.

Hank was also the one who gave her the push he knew she needed. As they sat down to tea after a lesson in which she had dazzled, he gave her the card.

"What's this?"

"Your new teacher." He had noticed the DuBois Conservatory on his daily walks around Hamilton, and last week he had forced himself to go in, to meet with the teachers and interview them as carefully as though he'd been picking an instructor for himself. The man he'd chosen reminded him a little of Mr. Luckley, if Mr. Luckley had been short, and British, and smiling.

He knew he would miss Annie, both having her as a pupil and having tea with her on Tuesday afternoons, but he shut these thoughts away. He was surprised to see the expression on Annie's face, as though she were angry with him, or going to cry.

"You're not a beginner anymore," he said gently. "I've got nothing left to teach you."

"All right," Annie said quietly, and sipped her tea. Hank watched her and thought of his own last lesson with Mr. Luckley. He had been fourteen, the Depression was dragging on, and his parents had no money for violin lessons. He remembered the ugly taste in his mouth all through that last lesson, while he tried to pretend he didn't care and his violin wept for him.

At the end of the lesson Mr. Luckley was as forbearing and ferocious-looking as usual, even as he said, "Well, Henry, you were not my most talented pupil, but I think you had the most heart."

He wanted to cry, or say thank you, but being fourteen he did neither.

Mr. Luckley continued. "I would teach you for free, you know. But I'm not making that offer. You don't need me anymore. It's time for you to become your own musician." He put a hand on Hanks shoulder, lightly, yet it seemed to sink into Hanks skin. "I won't wish you good luck; luck is for fools. But I wish you well, Henry."

He had left while Hank had stood there, silent and helpless and wanting to yell, "Wait! I need you. Teach me more."

Annie put her cup down with a clatter, jarring him back to the present. He thought he could see danger in her eyes. "If this is our last lesson, then you need to do something for me."

"What's that?"

"Play your violin."

He forced himself to smile as he refused.

Annie smiled sweetly in return. "I'm not letting you refuse. You are going to play for me. All this time I've known you and all you've done is demonstrate scales on my violin."

"Maybe I don't know how," he kidded. "Maybe you've been taking lessons from a fraud."

"A fraud who knows the instant I make a mistake, and how to correct it." She stooped and reached under his bed. "A fraud with his own violin."

She took the violin out of the case and placed it in his lap. He looked at it, and then at her. "Annie…"

She returned his gaze, unwavering.

"Look, I don't play like you do. I used to, but I can't anymore. I'm mediocre at best."

She continued to look at him. "Did you ever play for Ginny?"

He raised his eyebrows, wondering how her mind worked. "Once. A long time ago. It was the most beautiful song I ever played." The words sounded stark and meaningless even to him.

"You loved her."

It wasn't a question, but he answered it anyway. "I don't know."

She looked at him a moment longer, then picked up her own violin. "Play with me, if you won't play alone," she said, and began one of her swooping, impromptu songs, the notes jingling off the bow like so many smiles, the kind of melody that couldn't help but make you happy.

Grinning, Hank put his violin to his chin and began to accompany her, his fingers moving instinctively. This wasn't music, it was one of their silly conversations, or the sweet cake they ate with their tea. But slowly the song changed, becoming deeper and realer until he began to falter, consumed by the undertow of Annie's talent. When she glared at him over her violin, however, as fierce as Mr. Luckley ever was, he felt compelled to keep trying and he turned himself over to her. He felt like a puppet connected to her by his violin strings; she was giving him his cues as surely as though she were moving him herself. Their music joined together, two streams converging, and he was overcome by the current of it, washing over him at such a rate that he would have been swept away but for Annie's steadying pace. This was music, this was real, and his heart was ready to burst, but he had to keep playing or else fall behind and drown.

He didn't know how long they played, or how they stopped, only that he was completely drained when they did.

"Was that the most beautiful song you ever played?" Annie asked softly.

"It was your song," he managed to say. "Not mine."

Something changed in her face, and she put her violin away and got up. "Thanks for teaching me, Hank," she said, her voice distant and flat, and she stuck her hand out. He shook it mechanically and felt a piece of paper slip into his palm. He looked at it a long time, then looked at her.

"I have a cousin who works at Blackmoor," Annie said, her voice still dull. "I had her ask around. Your Ginny is in Boston; there's the address. Are you going to chase after her?"

He didn't say anything.

"You should, I suppose. But you don't have to go chasing after old memories to find happiness. That was you playing the violin a minute ago, even if you're too much of a dolt to know it."

Her eyes were flashing, and she shook her head at him one last time before striding out the door.

He stared at the address, holding Ginny in his hand and then placing her gently on the table. He was still clutching his violin in his other hand and he sat for a moment trying to absorb the silence and the events of the afternoon together.

He brought the violin back to his chin, remembered the long-ago golden evening, and began to play. He thought it was Ginny's song, though he wasn't sure. Whatever it was it was beautiful, and he began to cry years of unshed tears because the music was his again and he could feel it pulsing through his body.

He could have played all afternoon, reclaiming his lost prize, but he cut himself off midnote and laid the violin down. He had his priorities, after all, and the music could wait. He reached for the slip of paper with Ginny's address, folded it four times, and placed it in the wastebasket. Then he walked out of his room and onto the street, knowing that if he hurried he could catch Annie.

By Valerie Hunter

Mutant Monty on the run

2007-06-21T13:55:00.000+02:00

Hot and Cold Sex

2007-05-11T10:47:00.000+02:00

After his exam the doctor said to the elderly man: "You appear to be in good health. Do you have any medical concerns you would like to ask me about?"

"In fact, I do," said the old man. "After I have sex I am usually cold and chilly, and then, after I have sex with her the second time, I am usually hot and sweaty."

After examining his elderly wife, the doctor said: "Everything appears to be fine. Do you have any medical concerns that you would like to discuss with me?"

The lady replied that she had no questions or concerns. The doctor then said to her: "Your husband had an unusual concern. He claims that he is usually cold and chilly after having sex with you the first time, and then hot and sweaty after the second time. Do you know why?"

"Oh that crazy old fart," she replied. "That's because the first time is usually in January and the second time is in August."

A Classics Major Gets Laid...Maybe

2007-04-12T21:03:00.000+02:00

Come hither, yonder wench and allow me tell you the tale of horny Aphrodite – the goddess who never wanted for attention! Hers is a tale of tawdry torment, of bounteous lust, of skin-slapping without end! ‘Tis the tale of the night fox, indeed it is! Ha, ha, ha. Oh, yes! Oh yes, indeed!

Are you ready to bow down to the Scepter of Agamemnon, my love? You must be, for your eyes sing songs to my heart’s delight and your lips are full and red! Ours shall be a boning that sweeps away time and space – more akin to the chaos of the void than the harmony of the Cosmos, yes?

Methinks my mighty oak be ready for the damp glen of your nether regions.

Come now, my love, for the time is nigh! We shall be off and soaked as a salt-sprayed ship bound for the Aegean! And when we arrive, I shall enter your gates as innocently as a Trojan horse, only to release armed Greeks into your burning citadel….

Ready your sopping galley, for my seamen are set to board!

Oh hey – wait. Do you have money for cab fare?...‘cause my Visa’s sorta maxed out after all those shots. Yeah? Great.

Then let us leap as fleet-footed Mercury, for I’m about to pass out!

CREDIT CARD PRACTICES

2007-03-12T21:15:00.000+01:00

Statement of Vikram A. Atal Chairman & Chief Executive Officer Citi Cards

Committee on Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Permanent Investigations

March 7, 2007

Thank you Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee. My name is Vikram Atal, and I am the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Citi Cards. I joined Citibank in 1986 and began working in the company`s cards business in 1996. I have been CEO of Citi Cards since September 2005. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the credit card business and how we serve our customers. These are important issues that I know have long been of interest and concern to you and I look forward to reviewing them with the Subcommittee.

I understand that the Subcommittee`s primary focus today is on issues relating to the transparency and fairness with which card issuers treat their customers. We welcome that conversation and I will explain what we have been doing at Citi in recent years to pursue those ends, including important new initiatives that we have recently announced. Our overriding commitment is to put our customers first. That`s good for our customers and good for business. We think we do quite a good job of that, but are also continually looking for ways to do still better.

Background

At the outset, I`d like to step back for a moment and provide some context for addressing the important issues the Subcommittee has identified. To appreciate how interest rates, fees, and grace periods work, it is important to understand how the credit card business model works, how that has changed in the past 20 years, and why we think this change fundamentally has served the public. Credit cards have become an integral part of our nation`s economy, providing real and significant benefits to merchants and consumers alike. Merchants of all sizes benefit from the liquidity, security, and efficiency of credit cards. And for consumers, credit cards are a safe and convenient alternative to cash, making everyday purchases more efficient, opening up the option of online shopping, and facilitating consumers` ability to track and manage their spending. Responsible credit card use is also often an individual`s first step toward establishing the positive credit record necessary to finance a car, a house, or a small business, or to achieve other personal financial milestones.

At the same time, to understand how the business of credit cards works, it is crucial to recognize what is actually going on whenever a person uses his or her credit card. While I imagine that most people don`t think of it this way, the reality is that every time a person uses a credit card to buy something, we are in effect making them an unsecured loan -- one that is a lot riskier from a lender`s perspective than many of the common loans consumers take out. A credit card loan, after all, is not backed up by any tangible security as are mortgages, auto loans or home equity lines of credit. Nor is it based on any detailed or personal familiarity between a local banker and his customer. It is an extension of credit secured only by a customer`s promise to repay.

Before the late 1980s, the credit card market was essentially a one-size fits all proposition and was far narrower than the market we see today. Customers were typically assessed a $20 annual fee and interest rates were nearly 20% across the board, regardless of the risk profile of any particular customer. In the last 15 years, this model has changed dramatically. Underwriting practices have become more refined, allowing banks both to offer lower priced credit for people with solid credit histories and to extend credit to customers who were previously underserved or had no access to unsecured credit. The availability and competitive pricing for credit cards combined with more precise underwriting analytics has, over time, led to an expansion of consumer credit across the economic spectrum. Banks are able to open more new accounts, increase existing account credit lines, and offer rewards programs and the like to a broad range of customers.

The capacity to consider risk when making credit available is the key that makes this system work. Without that ability to differentiate risk, less creditworthy consumers would have fewer appropriate means of accessing credit, relatively risk-free consumers would face a higher cost of credit, and bank lending strategies would be significantly curtailed. Our practices as they concern interest rates and fees all need to be considered in this light. As a general matter, the broad expansion of credit I`ve referred to-- some call it as the democratization of credit -- has been a good thing. Average credit card rates have declined nearly six percentage points compared to the average rates that prevailed in 1990. Overall, credit card debt remains a small portion of household debt. The Federal Reserve has reported that credit card balances as a percentage of total household debt actually declined from 3.9 percent in 1995 to 3.0 percent in 2004.

The lending model for credit cards is unique and the business works on a relatively thin margin. Year after year, we make roughly the same return of $2-2.50 for every $100 we lend, which equates to only about $1 for every $100 of sales charged to our credit cards. And even that margin depends on careful management of several different kinds of risk -- the credit risk involved in whether customers will be able to repay their obligations; the interest rate risk that our own cost of funds may rise more rapidly than expected; general economic risk; the fraud risk that cards fall into the wrong hands and are used illegally; and the operational risk that any business faces when managing complex systems.

Citi`s Record of Serving Customers

We operate in a highly competitive marketplace in which consumers have numerous payment card choices. Customer satisfaction drives our revenues and lost customers are difficult to replace. We constantly work to meet consumer demand and maintain customer loyalty, because we know that if we don`t provide the best products and the best service, our customers will go elsewhere. So our mission is to put our customers first. With this in mind, we have taken many steps in recent years to improve the products and services we offer our customers. I want to discuss briefly a few of these, and I want to start with two important changes that we announced just last week.

Universal Default. First, we are eliminating re-pricing for what we call ``off-us`` behavior, known by some as ``universal default.`` It is standard practice for credit card issuers to consider a customer`s credit behavior with respect to other financial commitments to other companies, and to increase their interest rates if warranted by such behavior. That is not an illogical practice, since a customer`s credit behavior elsewhere has proven to be predictive of their behavior with us. Still we recognize why customers, and others, would question the practice. So even before last week, we engaged in the customer-friendly practice of giving customers the right to opt out of any such proposed increase in their interest rates, while still maintaining full use of their card until expiration. But last week we decided to go even further. We eliminated the practice altogether for all customers during the term of their card. Citi will consider increasing a customer`s interest rate only on the basis of his or her behavior with us -- when the customer fails to pay on time, goes over the credit limit, or bounces a checks. This change will be described in our customer communications by summer.

``Any time any reason.`` Second, we are eliminating what is commonly known as ``any time for any reason`` increases to the rates and fees of our customer accounts. Traditionally, credit card issuers have taken the position that they can increase the rates and fees of a cardholder`s account at any time for any reason, for example, to respond to general conditions in the financial markets. But last week we announced that we are giving up that practice. Once a card is issued, we will not voluntarily increase the rates or fees on the account until the card expires and a new card is issued (generally two years). The interest rate on the card, if linked to the prime rate as is typically the case, would still go up or down as the prime rate moves. But the only reason we would consider increasing the rates or fees before the card expires would be if a cardholder pays Citi late, exceeds the credit limit, or pays with a check that bounces. We believe we are the first bank to adopt this policy. When a credit card expires and a new card is issued we will, as is customary, consider a customer`s credit risk and general market conditions in establishing new rates, fees and terms of the account. If we believe any changes are needed at that time, we will give the customer advance notice and the right to opt out. We are implementing the change immediately for new customers and will have it implemented for existing Citi branded credit card customers in April. It will be reflected in our customer communications by the summer.

Customer Alerts. In recent years we have seen our customers change the way they prefer to interact with us. They have demanded greater utility online and look for us to provide the tools that allow them to manage all of their account needs through the Internet. This has included viewing their account activity in real time, making payments, changing addresses, requesting statements, and ordering additional cards.

In response to customer expectations we have also developed a set of online tools that are designed to make it easy for cardholders to avoid late fees and to understand and manage their relationship with us. For example, because pay days vary, our customers can choose the day of the month they would find it most convenient to pay their bills. And they can elect to be notified, in advance, about key dates and information related to their bills when they are approaching their credit limit or a payment due date, for example. The program is highly flexible: cardholders can choose which alerts to receive and, for some alerts, how often to get them -- daily, weekly or monthly. These individualized services exist now but are going to be improved in the months ahead to make sure customers are aware of these opportunities and can use them easily. Alerts are particularly helpful for people who tend to wait until the last minute to pay their bills. We think this kind of customer is better off interacting with us on the Internet. Indeed, when a customer calls to pay by phone, we educate them about how to pay on the Internet. And in fact that`s why we have decided to waive the fee for new customers paying by phone for the first time, while encouraging them to pay online next time.

Financial literacy and consumer credit education. Citi is an industry leader in financial education and literacy and we have put in place numerous programs to encourage and promote responsible borrowing. We believe it is in the industry`s interest to do business with educated consumers who have the ability to pay their bills on time and avoid credit pitfalls.

The centerpiece of our credit education effort is the Use Credit Wisely program, an online program designed to assist consumers in understanding credit basics, how credit works, budgeting, and how to work through difficult situations such as disability or living on a fixed income. The Use Credit Wisely program also includes specific information and resources on fraud prevention, identity theft and legal rights for consumers; a credit education web site in Spanish for Hispanic consumers and Use Credit Wisely for Business, a site designed specifically for the needs of business owners. In addition, through the innovative components of our Credit-ED program, Citi provides ongoing support and the latest resources through a variety of targeted channels to help students manage their credit and money responsibly. Since its inception in 2000, the Credit-ED program has distributed more than five million credit education materials free to students, administrators, and parents. Our mtvU Card was acknowledged by the advocacy group Consumer Action as the most impressive program for rewarding students based on good grades and responsible credit behavior.

We are proud that Drexel University`s LeBow College of Business in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has incorporated the Credit-ED challenge as part of the university`s financial education curriculum requirement for freshmen. For students, parents, and campus administrators, Credit-ED`s comprehensive credit education site, www.Students.UseCreditWisely.com, features a number of free interactive tools and information on using credit wisely. Moreover, in 2004 Citigroup and the Citigroup Foundation made a 10-year, $200 million global commitment to Financial Education and to date have made donations of nearly $53 million to Financial Education programs in 68 countries.

Security and protection. Citi is an industry leader in protecting customers from theft and fraud and in offering immediate and effective help to victims. We pioneered the prevention and detection of credit card fraud and have been in the forefront of researching and discovering new and innovative ways to protect our customer accounts and personal information. Starting in 1989, we offered customers our Fraud Early Warning feature and in 1992, we introduced the Photocard to help deter unauthorized use of credit cards. Today, should our card members become victims of identify theft or fraud, we offer the most comprehensive and innovative free service Citi Identity Theft Solutions to help them. We have a dedicated team of specialists who immediately assist victims of identity theft and fraud, and help prevent victims` accounts and credit status from being affected. Our service streamlines and simplifies the entire process of re- establishing a victim`s identity and credit history -- saving the customer significant time, money and inconvenience - even if the fraud happened on another credit card.

Disclosure. We realize it can be difficult for credit card customers to understand the statements and other materials card issuers send out. Our goal is to assure ``no surprises`` for our customers and to continually improve upon our practices. This means that all of our written materials must describe our products, clearly, accurately, and fairly. In fact, the effective and simpler to read disclosures cited by GAO in its September 2006 report on credit cards were all Citi disclosures.

We are also in the process of a major initiative to redesign our customer statements. We are currently using the redesigned statement with some two million of our customers and are working with them to understand how we might continue to improve the statements. Some key features of the current new statement include: color printing; clarified purchase section; enhanced display of rewards information; improved display of statement messages; prominent messaging for checks; laser high-quality charts/graphs/photographs; more flexibility with varying typefaces, type treatments and increased point size.

Hardship assistance. Citi has put in place a number of customer assistance programs to help people in need. We know that keeping up with credit card bills can become difficult in times of sudden illness, job loss or other catastrophic event. For these temporary hardships we offer programs that can include full or partial deferments, APRs as low as 0%, and/or suspension of late and over-credit-limit fees for up to 12 months. And we also offer longer-term paydown programs that include fee waivers and reduced interest for five years, with the goal of helping the customer to pay off his balance by the end of the period.

Going Forward

Mr. Chairman, we are working on a daily basis to enhance the products and services we provide our customers. At Citi, we put our customers first. We seek always to treat them fairly and communicate with them in a clear and understandable way. Above all, we want to make sure that our customer`s Citi Card is a convenience that can make managing their financial affairs as easy and stress free as possible. This job is never finished and we know that there is always room for improvement. I look forward to answering any questions that you may have.

Source: FDCH Congressional Testimony, Mar 07, 2007

Best Break - Off letter

2007-03-06T16:34:00.000+01:00

A soldier stationed in Afghanistan recently received a letter from his girlfriend back home. It read as follows:

Dear Ricky,

I can no longer continue our relationship. The distance between us is just too great. I must admit that I have cheated on you twice, since you've been gone, and it's not fair to either of us.

I'm sorry.

Please return the picture of me that I sent to you.

Love, Becky....... .......

Snail

2007-02-25T10:18:00.000+01:00

Race Against Terror

2007-01-19T20:35:00.000+01:00

As Greece prepared to host the 2004 Olympics, a terrorist group called November 17 held Athens in its violent grip. It had to be stopped before the Games could begin

On December 23, 1975, Richard S. Welch, the C.I.A.'s Athens station chief, and his wife, Cristina, left a Christmas party at the American ambassador's sprawling residence, near the U.S. Embassy. Their driver steered the Ford sedan through the jasmine-scented night toward their villa, in the residential suburb of Paleo Psychiko.

Welch, a slight, balding, tweedy 46-year-old with a thin gray mustache, was a Harvard-educated classicist who looked more like a professor than a C.I.A. agent. At the high-spirited embassy party, he had chatted amiably with his fellow American expatriates. If Welch was concerned that an Athens newspaper had recently printed the names and addresses of top C.I.A. officials in Greece, he didn't mention it. But he left at 10 P.M. — an early hour for Greece.

When his driver pulled up outside his two-story stucco villa, at 5 Vas. Frederiki Street, which had been home to every C.I.A. station chief before him, Welch didn't notice a green Simca following them. He was getting out of the car when someone called out in Greek, and he turned to see three masked men approaching on foot. Neither Mrs. Welch nor the driver noticed that a fourth person, sitting in the Simca, had the slender build and fine features of a woman. Gunshots punctured the silence, and Welch fell to the ground as the attackers ran back to their vehicle, which sped away.

Mrs. Welch ran to the nearby home of her husband's deputy, screaming, "They've shot Dick!" Richard Welch was dead by the time help arrived. The three Welch children spent Christmas Day preparing for the funeral of their father.

Welch's assassination was the start of a wave of bloodletting that for the next 27 years turned Athens and its suburbs into a war zone. Twenty-three men were murdered by guns, car bombs, missiles, and bazookas — five of them American, one British, two Turkish, and the rest wealthy Greek businessmen or prominent politicians of the conservative New Democracy Party.

The terrorists who perpetrated these crimes called themselves November 17, after the date in 1973 when students staged an uprising against the junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to '74. After the Welch killing, the group sent a statement full of Marxist rhetoric to three Greek newspapers and the new leftist French paper Libération, in Paris. (An editor of that paper was told to go to the home of Jean-Paul Sartre to pick up the document.) But none of the newspapers published the statement, suspecting that it came from a fringe group eager to falsely claim credit for the crime.

A year later, when members of the group assassinated a former police commander under the junta, the same papers received a second proclamation, and printed both. These statements would become a hallmark of November 17, which would operate for nearly 30 years without a single arrest. Their goal was to inspire an anti-capitalist popular uprising against Greece's ruling classes by showing that agents of the "Western imperialists who propped them up" could be attacked without fear of consequences.

The terrorists eventually felt so invulnerable that they began taunting the police. After two killers rode motorcycles through central Athens carrying a three-foot assault rifle, a jeering letter was sent to the newspapers: "We circulate under their nose with a weapon that is visible from a kilometer away." Members of November 17 fired rockets at foreign companies, set off bombs at embassies and hotels, stole bazookas from the Athens War Museum, and raided a military base to seize weapons, later sending Greek newspapers a photograph of the armory they'd accumulated, arranged in front of a red-and-yellow "17N" flag.

With one brazen attack after another, November 17 achieved mythical status in the land where myths and legends began. But as the 20th century neared its end, the terrorists threatened Greece's opportunity to reclaim its most cherished tradition — the Olympic Games. Greece, where the Olympics were born, in the eighth century B.C., had never hosted them officially since they were revived, in 1896. Then, in 1997, after decades of trying, Athens finally earned the right to hold the Games, in the summer of 2004.

But with November 17 making a joke of law enforcement, how could anyone feel safe at the Athens Games? No one could forget the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the Munich Olympics, in 1972. "Can the Greek government assure American and British athletes and visitors that November 17 won't be part of the welcoming committee in 2004?" asked former C.I.A. director James Woolsey, in a New York Times article. "If they offer those assurances without breaking the group, how much are those assurances worth?"
"Into the Lion's Den"

In 1999, Greek prime minister Kostas Simitis was forced to replace three members of his Cabinet who had participated in a bungled effort to hide a wanted Kurdish rebel leader. One of them was the minister of public order, in charge of security for the Olympic Games.

To fill this hot seat, Simitis turned to a young politician who had no experience in law enforcement-44-year-old Michalis Chrisohoidis. An intense, twice-divorced lawyer who had grown up on a small farm in northern Greece, Chrisohoidis had been elected to Parliament at the age of 34 and had worked under Simitis, an economist, in the Ministry of Trade and Industry.

At first, Chrisohoidis was not eager to accept his former boss's offer. "I asked him bluntly, 'Why are you throwing me into the lion's den?,'" Chrisohoidis recalls. "He replied that we had to eradicate terrorism in Greece before the Olympics or see our country humiliated before the world. This just increased my anxiety, because terrorism had been a priority for all administrations in the last 25 years, but not one member of November 17 had been arrested or even identified."

Chrisohoidis had vivid memories of 1989, his first year in Parliament, when his fellow M.P. Pavlos Bakoyannis was killed as he entered his office building. Struck by six bullets, Bakoyannis managed to stagger into the building, leaving a trail of blood until he collapsed and died.

At the time, Bakoyannis's father-in-law, New Democracy Party leader Constantin Mitsotakis, had just secured a major victory in national elections. Bakoyannis's young widow, Dora, won her dead husband's seat in Parliament and took the lead in passing tough new anti-terrorism legislation. When her party lost power, in 1993, the new, socialist PASOK government immediately repealed the law, but she continued to speak out against her husband's assassins. "The long struggle to turn Greek public opinion against November 17 … began with the killing of my husband," says Dora Bakoyannis, now the Greek foreign minister.

International criticism of Greece for not making any progress against November 17 had been building since 1989. The headlines in the U.S., whose citizens had been targeted as agents of imperialism, included the following: GREECE: CLIMATE FOR TERROR (The Washington Post); GREECE, HAVEN FOR TERRORISTS (The New York Times); GREECE: SANCTUARY OK INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM (Reader's Digest). After Welch's killing began the reign of terror, November 17 killed 4 more Americans and wounded more than 100.

On November 15, 1983, U.S. Navy captain George Tsantes, 53, the chief of the Joint United States Military Assistance Group, Greece, and his Greek-American driver, who was taking Tsantes to work, were ambushed at 7:30 A.M. Two men on a scooter, their faces covered by crash helmets, pulled up alongside the car at a traffic light and fired four bullets into Tsantes and three into his driver.

"It was a terrible loss for us," Tsantes's daughter, Stephanie, would tell a Greek court 20 years later. "When I returned home, my mother was curled [on the floor], crying hysterically. Even today she's so afraid of this country that she doesn't dare to travel here."

On June 28, 1988, U.S. Navy captain William Nordeen, 51, who lived in the suburb of Kefalari, kissed his wife good-bye and walked out to his car. As he drove past a Toyota sedan parked down the street from his house, a bomb in the Toyota exploded, setting his car on fire and hurling his body into the yard of a deserted villa 45 feet away.

On March 12, 1991, as U.S. Air Force sergeant Ronald Stewart, 35, was walking near his home, in the seaside suburb of Glyfada, a bomb in a parked car was detonated by remote control, blowing off both his legs. He was taken to a hospital and bled to death on the operating table. He had been due to return to the U.S. in two weeks. Stewart was a purchasing agent for the military hospital in Athens and had nothing to do with military operations, but, as the head terrorist told one of his assassins, "even the small fry are to blame."
"What Took You So Long?"

That no one was arrested in connection with any of these attacks was not necessarily proof of the terrorists' criminal genius. According to a report compiled later by the U.S. Embassy in Athens, the Greek police officers who first arrived at the scene of Stewart's murder "demonstrated an egregious lack of adequate crime scene presentation/protection … and collection protocol by evidence technicians."

One of the first things Chrisohoidis did as minister of public order was to call for all the files on November 17 crimes and summon the man who had been in charge of the anti-terrorism unit in the national police: Fotis Nasiakos, a short, stocky 47-year-old, with unruly salt-and-pepper hair, a florid complexion, and the tense restlessness of a veteran field commander.

Nasiakos had spent 15 years in the anti-terrorism unit, three of them as chief, trying to make headway against November 17, but he had received little support from his superiors in the police or from the revolving cast of politicians in the ministry.

"When I met Fotis for the first time, I saw a man who was demoralized," Chrisohoidis recalls. "He put some bound papers on my desk and said, 'I know you're going to replace me in the next round of promotions, but before I go I want to leave this report with you so all my work doesn't come to nothing.' I read the report and saw that it was a comprehensive overview of November 17 attacks, with some telling insights." Even though Nasiakos didn't belong to Chrisohoidis's party, the minister kept him as chief of the unit and told him to have the intelligence section pursue the leads in his report.

"We don't have an intelligence section" came the response. So Chrisohoidis ordered Nasiakos to set one up.

To head the new section, Chrisohoidis and Nasiakos chose an earnest detective named Fotis Papageorgiou, whose dark hair, broad face, and penetrating brown eyes behind half-rimmed glasses gave him the appearance of a thoughtful Russell Crowe. Computer-savvy, with a keen memory and a passion for details, Papageorgiou, then 39, was assigned to pore over clues from November 17 attacks, make connections, and report his findings to Nasiakos.

At about the same time, the special prosecutor assigned to the anti-terrorism unit asked to be transferred. In his place came 44-year-old Yiannis Diotis, an Athens-trained lawyer with a halo of gray hair, a boxer's nose, and perpetually frowning eyebrows. Diotis had served in the post once before and was eager for another chance to build a case against November 17.

This new team — the minister, Chrisohoidis; the anti-terrorism chief. Nasiakos; the head of intelligence, Papageorgiou; and the special prosecutor, Diotis — soon began to transform the campaign to bring down November 17. "Until they took over, each crime had been investigated separately and then tucked away in a file when no progress was made," says U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs R. Nicholas Burns, who was then ambassador to Greece. "They began to look at November 17 in a comprehensive way for the first time."

A study of the files revealed, among other things, that November 17's typed proclamations frequently alluded to France, echoed the thinking of French radicals, and were first sent to a French paper. Following up, Chrisohoidis asked Nasiakos to compile a list of activists based in Paris during the junta years and to find out what they had been up to since then. Working closely with Papageorgiou's intelligence unit, Nasiakos came up with some 250 names. "We tracked down all of the names except one, says Papageorgiou. "All had returned to their pre-junta interests and were easy to locate — except for Alexandros Giotopoulos, who had vanished."

Chrisohoidis decided to go to Paris and speak to the head of France's anti-terrorism unit. When he got there, the first thing the French official said was "What took you so long to come to us?"

The French described Giotopoulos as six feet two inches tall, with incipient jowls, inquisitive blue eyes, and a genial manner that could turn instantly to cold hostility. He was born in Paris in 1944, the son of a Greek Trotskyite who opposed the uprising of Greek Communist guerrillas in the late 1940s. Alexandros Giotopoulos would strive to erase this blot on his family's Marxist credentials by becoming the biggest radical of all. Even among the Greek leftists who spent the junta years plotting revolution in the smoky cafés of Paris's Left Bank, Giotopoulos stood out both for his height and for the ferocity of his plans.

"The first mention [of Giotopoulos] in our own files was in a junta case tried in Thessaloniki in 1971," recalls the former anti-terrorism chief, Nasiakos. "He wasn't at the trial, because he had fled to Paris, and his name was misspelled as 'Alexandros Yiatropoulos,' but he fit the description of the tall assassin mentioned by witnesses in several killings." In one instance, a victim lived long enough to say, "The tall one got me."

French files showed that Giotopoulos had been picked up by Paris police in 1971 for carrying false documents, but was released and disappeared. Informants reported that he had gone to Cuba to study with the Tupamaros, an urban guerrilla group founded in Uruguay that engaged in political assassinations, including the kidnapping and murder of F.B.I, agent Dan Mitrione, dramatized in the film Stale of Siege.

That struck a chord with Greek investigators, because the influence of the Tupamaros was evident in the November 17 flag — a yellow star with "17N" in its center against a red background. The Tupamaros' flag includes a red diagonal band with a yellow star in the middle and a black T in its center.
Shattering the Myth

With the anti-terrorism unit now on track, Chrisohoidis felt confident enough to move Nasiakos out of it and make him chief of the national police. His replacement as anti-terrorism chief was Stelios Syros, a street-smart veteran of the homicide bureau. A never-married workaholic, Syros used the sources he had developed during two decades in the criminal and anarchist underworld of Athens to gather names of suspected November 17 assassins.

Syros's efforts were complicated by the consensus among Greeks that November 17 couldn't be stopped — certainly not by Greek police or the Greek government, which, it was widely believed, were not even trying to capture them. In one incident, in 1991, police were told to look for November 17 assassins lurking in a van near Kolonaki, the fashionable square where stylish Athenians crowd the outdoor cafés. The police tailed the van until the occupants opened the back door, revealing that they were heavily armed. The police commander immediately called off the pursuit, saying later that he didn't want to instigate a gun battle that would likely kill innocent civilians.

Eyewitnesses to November 17 murders were afraid to testify, because the police were powerless to protect them. One passerby who saw the May 28, 1997, killing of young Greek shipowner Costas Peratikos, in Piraeus, appeared on the evening news to describe the scene. Two days later, the witness found his car torched.

Even worse for the anti-terrorism team, many ordinary citizens considered the terrorists to be heroes — assassinating rich capitalists and Western diplomats whose countries they blamed for Greece's political turmoil and for Turkey's 1974 invasion and partial takeover of the Greek island of Cyprus. Graffiti throughout the nation demanded, AMERICA OUT OF GREECE and DEATH TO THE IMPERIALISTS.

The November 17 assassins carefully cultivated their heroic image. Their proclamations tried to justify their killings but never mentioned the banks they robbed to support themselves. (Over 25 years, the group stole some $2 million, none of which has been recovered.) When they killed Greeks, they left statements on the scene, but when they killed foreigners they took days to issue them, because they often picked their victims at random and knew nothing about them. They would wait to get the details from news reports.

The first November 17 murder on Michalis Chrisohoidis's watch occurred on June 8, 2000. British defense attaché Brigadier Stephen Saunders was driving on Kifissias Avenue when two November 17 members pulled up on a motorbike. The man sitting behind the driver of the motorbike pumped several bullets into Saunders's abdomen.

Chrisohoidis rushed to the hospital where Saunders was being treated. "When the surgeon announced his death to Mrs. Saunders, describing the damage the eight bullets had done, she collapsed," Chrisohoidis says. "I was in shock but also very angry."

Chrisohoidis vowed that the Greek reaction to Saunders's murder would be very different from those in the past. "We made certain that everyone in the government condemned the killing," he says. "We encouraged the media to show the impact the murder had on the Saunders family. Then we held two memorial services and invited politicians from all parties to attend, which they did in huge numbers."

"The strong reaction to the Saunders murder was pivotal," says Sir David Veness, who was sent to Athens by Scotland Yard in the aftermath of the killing. "It allowed Michalis Chrisohoidis to accomplish three essential things: to make his own people in PASOK stop appearing to support radicals, to break the taboo of his government against seeking help from foreign agencies, and to undermine the support November 17 had with the public."

If the Greek public needed another reason to change its attitude toward November 17, it came with the close of the 2000 Summer Olympics, in Sydney. Suddenly, the world looked toward Athens, wondering what would happen when the Games opened there four years later. International opinion was not optimistic. A May 2000 article in Time began: "Twenty terrorist attacks against American targets in a 12-month period; a combined 40 strikes on U.S., French and British holdings; 52 anti-American protest marches, seven rocket attacks…. The country in question isn't Afghanistan or Iran. It's Greece."

Shortly after the national elections in October 2000, in which the Simitis government retained power by a slim margin, Chrisohoidis went on television to denounce November 17. On December 21, the families of the victims formed a group called Os Edo-or "No More." The group was headed by Costas Peratikos's father, Michael; the family of Pavlos Bakoyannis; and Dimitri Momferatos, whose father, a publisher, had been murdered.

The killing of Saunders and the activities of Os Edo provoked national shame and caused a sea change in Greek public opinion. The shift moved the Simitis government to push a strong new anti-terrorism law, which was finally adopted in 2002. "The law was crucial," says Yiannis Diotis, the special prosecutor. It allowed DNA evidence to be used in court for the first time, made being part of a terrorist organization a crime, provided for witness protection and lenient sentences for cooperating criminals, and called for terrorists to be tried by a panel of judges without jurors. "In previous trials of violent radicals, jurors participated and in most cases they were too frightened to convict anybody," Diotis says.
An Explosive Lead

With the opening ceremony of the Athens Olympics now just two years away, November 17 was lying low. Chrisohoidis and his team knew they had to do something to make the terrorists show their hand. In mid-June, they decided to leak a false report that the leader of November 17 had been identified and that multiple arrests were imminent.

It worked. "The break we had been hoping for finally came," says Chrisohoidis, "and when it did, all the policies we had put in place began to pay off so well and so quickly that it left even us stunned."

Savas Xiros, 40, a tall, swarthy, baby-faced man who made a living as a painter of religious icons, was walking by Piraeus harbor on the evening of June 29, 2002, carrying a heavy black bag. The contents of the bag were not religious icons but a gun, a grenade, and the components of a homemade time bomb. Xiros was to assemble the bomb and place it near a ticket office of the Minoan Ferry Lines, which had recently been accused of negligence after one of its ferries sank in calm seas with 500 people aboard, killing 82.

Police believe that the leaders of November 17, suffering from the loss of public support and perhaps fearing that the authorities were closing in on them, had decided that an attack on the ferry company would restore their image as freedom fighters avenging Greek citizens against heartless capitalists.

Xiros was an explosives expert and had been involved in the car bombings that killed Captain Nordeen and Sergeant Stewart. He usually used European-made timing devices, but this time he used a Chinese clock. As he assembled the bomb, it blew up in his hands with a thunderous explosion. Witnesses reported seeing an accomplice running from the scene as Xiros lay in a spreading pool of blood.

According to Yiannis Diotis. "The last three fingers of his right hand were blown off and shrapnel hit him all over his upper body, slashing his eyes, breaking the tympanic drum in one ear, and smashing into his chest, causing one lung to collapse. The last was the worst of his injuries, and he could have died." Savas Xiros was unconscious when an ambulance took him to Evangelismos Hospital, and he remained so for four days. But without saying a word, he provided Michalis Chrisohoidis's team with enough information to begin the dismantling of November 17.

At the suggestion of Scotland Yard. Chrisohoidis sent a photograph of Savas Xiros — taken from the ID card found in his pocket — to Greek newspapers and television channels, requesting that anyone recognizing the suspect call a special phone number where they could speak in complete anonymity.

Immediately people began to call in with information. "After a 24-year drought of any hard evidence, information started coming at us like a flood," says Chrisohoidis. One woman called to say that she had seen the man in the photo entering a rented first-floor apartment near her own on Patmos Street in Kalo Patissia, a working-class neighborhood of Athens.

The police had found a set of keys on Xiros and a .38-caliber handgun in the street near his body. Chrisohoidis gave the gun to his forensic staff, who determined that it had been used to murder a policeman during a November 17 bank robbery. A senior officer of the anti-terrorism unit took the keys to the address on Patmos Street, then called Chrisohoidis from inside the apartment: "Oh my God!" the officer said in a shaking voice. "You won't believe what's in here — guns, knives, grenades, rockets, a November 17 flag."

A squad of police forensic experts closed off the area and examined the apartment in detail. Along with the weapons, they found the typewriter that had produced all the manifestos and a computer with several disks outlining plans for future attacks.

Three days later, acting on information they had found in the hideout, the police raided a second safe house, at 73 Damareos Street, in the middle-class Athens area of Pangrati. There they found more weapons, documents, and manifestos bearing the fingerprints of a man they believed to be November 17's founder, leader, and chief assassin — Alexandros Giotopoulos.

Meanwhile, the police took fingerprints from the intact hand of the unconscious icon painter and matched one of them to a fingerprint found on a blue plastic bag that had been left in an abandoned getaway car used in the killing of Costas Peratikos, in 1997.

On his fourth day in the hospital, still blind and attached to tubes and a heart monitor, Savas Xiros realized as he faded in and out of consciousness that there were two men sitting next to his bed: Yiannis Diotis and Stelios Syros. They soon established a good-cop-bad-cop M.O. that would prove very effective.

"Stelios Syros was the spark plug," according to a former official in the antiterrorism unit. "He's not a man to draft lengthy reports, but he can walk into a room, look over a suspect, and with a few minutes of chatter know what his weaknesses are. He can shift smoothly from stern father figure to concerned friend to tough cop to patient psychologist as the situation warrants. Syros got so close to Savas that Savas said at one point during the 50 days he was in the hospital, 'I love Stelios more than my father.'"

Diotis, by contrast, at one point angered Xiros so much that he refused to speak for days. But the prosecutor also engineered a clever legal maneuver. Under Greek law, anyone in detention must be charged within 24 hours or released. If the police filed charges against Xiros, his accomplices would read about it in the papers and scatter.

Diotis decided that Xiros was not under arrest at all. "He was coming in and out of consciousness, so how could we charge a man who was in no condition to understand the charges?," Diotis asks, shrugging innocently. "So I decided to hold him as a material witness, not as a suspect, which gave us the opportunity to question him without the need to charge him and alert everyone to what he was saying." As he came to, according to Diotis, the first thing Xiros heard was the prosecutor telling him, "We know you're November 17, and we've got the evidence to prove it."

As Diotis recalls, Xiros sighed and nodded. "I know where I made my mistake," he said. "It was the blue plastic bag that I left in the car." He admitted he had been involved in Costas Peratikos's murder. This was the biggest breakthrough in the 27-year investigation of November 17, and the team celebrated with whiskey and cigars.

Syros and Diotis did not leave Xiros's side as he recuperated from his wounds and underwent a delicate operation that restored his sight in one eye. Police say Xiros confessed to having taken part in additional murders — those of Nordeen, Stewart, and Saunders — but he would not give up his November 17 comrades, providing only pseudonyms and false physical descriptions. (He later recanted his confession.)

Xiros had nine siblings — five brothers and four sisters. His father was a priest from the island of Ikaria. His mother, Mashoula, was such an ardent Marxist that everyone called her Moska ("Moscow" in Greek), a high-ranking police official says.

As soon as news of Xiros's accident hit the front pages, he was visited at the hospital by his father and his brother Christodoulos Xiros, 44, a hulk of a man who was a maker of musical instruments. To the television reporters clustered outside the hospital door, the pair expressed shock at Savas's accident. Barred by the police from entering his brother's room, Christodoulos shouted, "Stay strong, Savas!" Inside, Diotis and Syros immediately started asking Savas about Christodoulos's role in November 17.

On July 16, Christodoulos returned to the hospital and was arrested. That same day, Fotis Papageorgiou was dispatched to Thessaloniki, in northern Greece, to seize the Xiroses' younger brother Vassilis, 30, a wild-eyed, unkempt shepherd and sometime motorcycle mechanic.

Although Savas was reluctant to betray his accomplices, the police say, Vassilis spilled everything. "Once we got to Vassilis, we had it," recalls Papageorgiou. "He told us how he helped kill Saunders, [and] identified everyone he could by their rightful names. It was something! The kid can barely write his name, a real simpleton, but he gave up everyone he knew. When giving us his statement, he paused and asked, 'Is this going to take much longer? If I don't milk my goats, they're going to burst.' He thought after admitting to all those killings he would go back and milk his goats!"

Back in Athens, Diotis was questioning Christodoulos. "With what we had from Vassilis and Savas, Christodoulos didn't take long to start talking," Diotis recalls. "He's the most vicious killer of the three. He laughed as he told about all the people he killed."

As the Xiros brothers talked, officers from the anti-terrorism unit fanned out, arresting eight more members of November 17. For nearly a month after Savas blew himself up, the five-man team worked around the clock. In the evening, they would meet in the office of Michails Chrisohoidis, who would bring out a bottle of good malt whiskey and order food from La Strada, a nearby Italian restaurant. They would smoke and talk nearly all night, discussing strategy and piecing together information about the terrorists who were still at large.

"My wife kept a record, and in one 18-day period I went home to sleep for a total of 18 hours," says Papageorgiou. The workload even prevented Nasiakos from spending time with his wife after she was diagnosed with a serious illness. "She's had health problems ever since," he says. "I worked hard, but she paid the price."
The Biggest Fish of All

Confessions and arrests were coming so fast that the police could hardly keep up. But one man, Alexandros Giotopoulos, remained at large, and there was no clue to his whereabouts. Then Savas Xiros. still in the hospital, let a name slip.

Xiros had told Diotis and Syros that the leader of the group was known only as O Psilos — the tall one — or by his pseudonym, Lambros. Exploiting the bond he had built up with the wounded terrorist, Stelios Syros asked Xiros to tell him anything he could remember about Lambros. Xiros recalled that once, when he drove Lambros to a ferry in Piraeus, someone had called out the name Michalis and the boss had turned around.

Diotis jumped in, asking what Lambros/Michalis was doing taking a ferry from Piraeus. He had a summer home somewhere on an island near Paros and Leros, Xiros replied. He didn't know where, but he remembered parking the car on the Piraeus-Patmos-Leros ferry in a space reserved for the next-to-last stop. The investigators quickly determined that this stop was on the tiny island of Lipsi.

Xiros provided this scrap of information on July 16, the day his brothers confessed. The investigators knew that the next day's headlines might cause Giotopoulos, wherever he was, to disappear yet again. If he left Greece, they would never find him.

Nasiakos immediately called the police station on Lipsi and learned that it was staffed by two officers and that one was away, leaving a 25-year-old named Socrates Sioris as the only lawman on the island. Nasiakos asked Sioris if he knew of any Lipsi residents named Michalis.

"There's a Michalis Economou who has been battling the mayor over the color of his house," the young officer replied. "There's a rule here that all island homes must be white, but he insisted on painting his pink."

"Is he still there?"

"Yes, I saw him today."

Nasiakos asked Sioris to find out if Economou had made any reservations on the ferry. He warned that the man might have his own way of leaving perhaps on a private boat — and that if he did slip away, as he had done before, the entire campaign to stop November 17 would be lost.

'I started to panic." Nasiakos recalls. "Here we had finally located the leader of November 17 and the only one close to him was one novice police officer. But he turned out to be a palikari [brave lad] with great instincts, who checked the reservation list for the next day's ferry and found it included a Michalis Economou. It was too late for us to send officers from Athens, so our only options were Socrates and the four officers from the nearest island. Leros.

"On the following morning, the Athens ferry went only as far as Leros, and a local ferry went to Lipsi to pick up passengers for it," Nasiakos continues. "I told the Leros officers to go on the local ferry and when they got close to Giotopoulos, if he made any sudden move, to just push him into the sea because we didn't know what weapons he might be carrying — guns, grenades, explosives.

"When the local ferry landed on Lipsi, the four officers were on it, wailing, and Socrates came behind Giotopoulos as he stepped on the boat. They grabbed him in a sandwich and brought him down on the deck."

Fotis Papageorgiou hopped on a helicopter commandeered from the fire department and flew to Leros to reel in the biggest fish of all. "When I got to the police station on Leros," Papageorgiou says, "I saw that they had Giotopoulos lied to a radiator -hands, feet, chest — really secure.

"'Hello, Alecko,' I said to him, He looked at me contemptuously and snarled, 'You're a lackey for the Americans. What kind of Greek are you to let yourself become such a stooge?'

"I let him have it: 'I didn't bring the Americans or the Brits or the French. You did with your pointless killings. Now we have F.B.I., C.I.A., S.A.S. [Britain's special forces], foreign agents everywhere we turn, and you're the one responsible, not me.'"

This outburst took the wind out of Giotopoulos's sails. He slumped, defeated, and whined, "I know what you're going to do with me. In a week I'm going to be in Guantánamo," Papageorgiou recalls.

"That's what he was most afraid of," the intelligence chief remembers. "He still is. They all are."

Giotopoulos was brought hack to Athens and held in isolation. Of all the suspects arrested up to then, only Giotopoulos consistently maintained that he had nothing to do with November 17.

Investigating Giotopoulos's background, the team learned that for more than 30 years he had been using the alias Michalis Economou (taken from an early Greek Communist leader), which was printed on a forged identity card made for him by Savas Xiros. As Economou, he posed as a professor and book translator.

"He got into a university [in Paris] but never got a degree," says Diotis. "We did such a thorough check on him that we found out that he forged a high-school academic award he later boasted about. When I questioned him and mentioned the forgery, he was floored. Later he charged that we had used illegal methods to intrude into his private life. He's a piece of work!"

Both of Giotopoulos's residences, the illegally pink house on Lipsi and his Athens apartment, were registered in the name of his longtime companion, a Frenchwoman named Marie-Thérèse Peynaud. The investigating team called Peynaud in for questioning, but. like Giotopoulos, she firmly denied knowing anything about November 17. "She's very hard, very cool." says Nasiakos. "When we first brought her together with Giotopoulos, she was shocked about the charges against him and feigned ignorance that she even knew his real name. 'Michalis,' she said, 'why are these people calling you Alecko?'"

Peynaud signed a statement (or the police saying she had met Michalis Economou in Paris in 1973 and developed a relationship with him. "We usually met at cafés in the Latin Quarter district where students gathered." her statement read. She said she had accompanied him to Greece "at Christmas of 1975 and stayed for 15 days." which would have put her in the country at the time of Welch's murder. Four years later, she moved to Greece permanently to live with Michalis and eventually found a job at the Greek-French school in Athens. In 1993 she bought a second home, in Lipsi.

Peynaud, who retired after 18 years of teaching when she learned she had cancer, did not always have a smooth relationship with Giotopoulos. While living with her, according to information given to Greek police, Giotopoulos began a relationship with another woman — a teacher at the same school who was 14 years younger than Peynaud. According to what the younger teacher told police, her affair with Giotopoulos began in the early 1990s, and he went to live with her for four months after Peynaud found out about the relationship.

"Giotopoulos loved three things: women, lobster, and cigars." says Papageorgiou. "When I arrested him in Lipsi, he was carrying a small hag that had five cigars in it, and when he saw me searching it he shouted, 'Don't take my cigars.'"

Giotopoulos's capture led to even more arrests. "When you count the number of defendants along with the criminal acts they committed," says Diotis, "it turns out that in a period of one month we completed more than 1,000 criminal investigations. That has to be some kind of record, and not just for Greece."

One of those arrested was Pavlos Serifis, a balding, bespectacled hospital worker with a thick mustache and a receding chin, who turned out to be one of the original members of November 17 and one of the tour involved in the killing of Richard Welch.

In his confession, Serifis stated that the others involved in the Welch murder were his cousin Yiannis Serifis, Giotopoulos, and a woman he referred to as Anna. "She must have been about 30 years old at the time, tall, around live feet seven inches, blonde, good-looking, and well educated." he stated.

Pavlos Serifis did not divulge Anna's identity in his confession. Yiannis Serifis and Peynaud have denied any involvement with November 17, and Peynaud has not been charged with any crime.
"A Creek Achievement"

A month and a day after Savas Xiros became the first November 17 member in custody, nearly every suspect had been arrested. But there was still an important leader at large. A dark, balding, bearded man with the sad eyes of a Byzantine saint, Dimitris Koufodinas was a beekeeper and seller of honey. He was also believed to be November 17's head of operations. Giotopoulos would select the victims, and Koufodinas would arrange the attacks. Despite a nationwide hunt. Koufodinas was nowhere to be found. But on September 5 he turned himself in.

Koufodinas, who had been living with the former wife of Savas Xiros, told police he was shocked and disappointed at Giotopoulos's disavowal of November 17. Koufodinas said proudly that he considered the assassinations political acts of resistance against exploiters of the Greek people.

"Koufodinas took full responsibility for his actions," says Nasiakos.

"But he did not say what actions and what his role was in them." Diotis interjects, "only that he was a member of November 17 and he took political responsibility for it."

"And he also said that November 17 was now finished." adds Papageorgiou.

Although some later retracted their confessions, almost all of the suspects were convicted of multiple murders in a trial that ended almost a year before the Olympics began. Most received multiple life sentences. In Greece, however, a life term is limited to 25 years, and "lifers" are eligible for parole after 16 years, even those convicted of murder. Those sentenced to multiple life terms can apply for parole after 20 years.

The killers of the four Americans may be released from prison in 17 years, or even earlier on medical grounds, something that does not please Diotis. "Savas has threatened to kill me when he gets out. and I'll only be in my late 60s then," he says, noting that he travels with bodyguards wherever he goes even now.

Another disappointment is that Richard Welch's assassination was not even mentioned during the trial, because in Greece there is a 20-year statute of limitations on all crimes, including murder.

Alexandros Giotopoulos. who Pavlos Serifis said pulled the trigger on Welch, received 21 life sentences for other murders he had committed. Serifis. the lookout on the Welch murder, was given 8 to 15 years for his involvement in other killings, hut he suffers from multiple sclerosis and is being permitted to spend his confinement at home.

While his cousin Yiannis could not he tried for the Welch murder, he was tried under the new law forbidding membership in a terrorist organization, as was Koufodinas's girlfriend, whose prints, police alleged, had been found in a November 17 hideout. Both were acquitted, but their cases are currently being re-heard by an Athens appeals court along with those of all the other defendants.

As for the anti-terrorism team, only Papageorgiou remains in place, as head of the intelligence section. Nasiakos retired from the police force. Stelios Syros was promoted to deputy chief of the national police, and Diotis was reassigned to cases involving antiquities smuggling.

The fact that Yiannis Serifis and "Anna," whom Pavlos Serifis implicated in the Welch case, are walking around free does not please Michalis Chrisohoidis, who was re-elected to Parliament in 2004 but had to give up his post as minister of public order when PASOK lost to the New Democracy Party. Still, he believes that both could be convicted of November 17 crimes that fall within the statute of limitations. "My group would have done it if we hadn't lost the election." he says. "It can still be done."

"We haven't closed the books on anyone," says his successor. Byron Polydoras. Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns has another warning for November 17 assassins: "Greece may have a statute of limitations on murder, but the U.S. doesn't."

What is certain is that November 17 is "finished." as Dimitris Koufodinas declared. If you consider how long and how freely its killers operated, that's a remarkable accomplishment for the men who brought about its destruction.

"It was a Greek achievement," says Tom Miller, the U.S. ambassador from 2001 to 2004. "We all helped the Brits, the French, our agencies — but the credit for dismantling November 17 belongs to the Greeks: to Michalis Chrisohoidis and his team. What they did was not only to end the reign of the most enduring and brutal terrorists in Europe, but to ensure a successful Olympic Games in 2004."

"If we had not stopped November 17," notes Yiannis Diotis, "and a few months before the Olympic Games began they had fired a rocket at one of the venues, how many would have risked coming to the Olympics in Athens? Would the 2004 Olympics have been held at all?"

Pavlos Bakoyannis managed to stagger into the building, leaving a trail of blood until he collapsed and died.

"Oh my God!" the officer said. "You wont believe what's in here — guns, knives, grenades, rockets, a November 17 flag."

"I told the officers, if [Giotopoulos] made any sudden move, to just push him into the sea," says Nasiakos.

"Savas [Xiros] has threatened to kill me when he gets out, and I'll only be in my late 60s then," says Diotis.

By Nicholas Gage, Vanity Fair, Jan2007 Issue 557, p64, 9p

Angry Shiek

2007-01-11T00:17:00.000+01:00

Three guys were on a trip to Saudi Arabia. One day, they stumbled into a harem tent filled with over 100 beautiful women. They started getting friendly with all the women, when suddenly the Sheik came in. "I am the master of all these women. No one else can touch them except me. You three men must pay for what you have done today. You will be punished in a way corresponding to your profession."

The Sheik turns to the first man and asks him what he does for a living.

"I'm a cop", says the first man.

"Then we will shoot your penis off!", said the Sheik.

He then turned to the second man and asked him what he did for a living.

"I'm a firemen", said the second man.

"Then we will burn your penis off!", said the sheik.

Finally, he asked the last man, "And you, what do you do for a living?"

And the third man answered, "I'm a lollipop salesman!"

Wintry night in Moscow

2007-01-08T21:04:00.000+01:00

Eating for Your Genes

2006-12-01T05:28:00.000+01:00

African Americans, Asians, and Hispanics can reduce their risk of developing diabetes by a whopping 46% just by making some easy changes in their eating habits, according to Harvard researchers who followed more than 78,000 women for 20 years. That's a big health payoff: These groups tend to have a much higher risk of the disease than Caucasians (who get only a 23% reduction in risk by munching wisely).

One of the most crucial shifts: favoring low-glycemic foods — which studies show help stabilize your blood sugar. Try these simple strategies:

Swap sugary drinks, such as soda and bottled sweetened teas, for water and freshly brewed unsweetened teas.
Ditch refined grains, like white rice, for fiber-rich whole grains, like brown rice or quinoa.
Pass on foods that contain saturated fats or trans fats; instead pick foods rich in polyunsaturated fats, including fish and nuts.
Keep meat choices lean, and incorporate other sources of protein into your diet, too. Try chickpeas and kidney and black beans.

For more information on the glycemic index, visit www.prevention.com/links

By: Marianne McGinnis, Prevention, Dec2006

'D' best seasonal supplement

2006-12-01T05:25:00.000+01:00

What if a pill could tower your risk of cancer by as much as 70%? Vitamin D may be that magic medicine. University of California San Diego researchers analyzed national cancer deaths between 1950 and 1969 and again between 1970 and 1994 — when people began staying out of the sun and wearing more sunscreen. (Our bodies require sunlight to make vitamin D.) Their comparison suggests that getting enough D could drive down mortality rates of 16 types of cancer — including breast and ovarian — by anywhere from 2 to 70%.

"Hundreds of lab studies show that vitamin D can stop cancer cells from proliferating and promote the death of tumor cells," says lead author William B. Grant, PhD. Experts now recommend that people get 1,000 IU of vitamin D a day in summer, and as much as 2,000 IU in winter when the sun is much weaker. Getting that amount from your diet is tough. Your best bet is to take 1,500 IU daily in supplement form.

By Sarf N. Harrar, Prevention, Dec2006

Bad Neighbors

2006-11-22T00:30:00.000+01:00

Even before the fracas with Terence Stagg, people along both sides of the 1400 block of Eighth Street NW could see the Benningtons for what they really were. First, the family moved in not on a Saturday or on a weekday but on a Sunday, which was still the Lord's Day, even though church for many was now a place to visit only for a wedding or a funeral. Perhaps Easter or Christmas. And those watching that Sunday, from behind discreetly parted brocade curtains and from porches rarely used except to enter and leave homes, had to wonder why the Bennington family had even bothered to bring most of their furniture. They had a collection of junk that included a stained queen-size mattress, a dining-room table with three legs, a mirror with a large piece missing from one corner, and a refrigerator dented on two sides. One neighbor joked to his wife that the Bennington refrigerator probably wouldn't work without a big block of ice in it. During the move, the half-dressed little Benningtons occupied themselves by running to and from the two small moving trucks, carrying in clothes that had busted out of cardboard boxes during the trip from whatever countrified shack they had left behind. Over the next two weeks, it became clear that the house at 1406 Eighth, with its three bedrooms, would be home to at least twelve people, though that number was fluid. The neighbors could never get a proper accounting, and they would never know who was related to whom.

They came in the middle of October, the Benningtons, bringing children--a bunch of perhaps five, from a two-year-old to a girl on the verge of being a teen-ager. Children who sometimes played outside on Friday and Saturday nights until nearly nine-thirty. And they were loud children, loud in a neighborhood where most of the kids were now in their teens and did no more harm than turn their portable radios up too high as they washed their parents' cars. Then, there was Neil, a tenth grader, and Amanda, a girl of no more than eighteen, who seemed to live night and day in tight bluejeans. She would be wearing them in her yard one early afternoon months later when Bill Forsythe, next door at 1408, stood at his bedroom window looking down at her with his second drink in his hand.

And the Benningtons came with a few young men, who sat on the porch on a legless couch covered with a cheap bedspread, drinking from containers in paper bags. But over the first two months that the Benningtons lived on Eighth Street most of those men, none more than forty years old, simply disappeared, until, by mid-December, the only one the neighbors still saw was Derek. He was a well-built and often shirtless loudmouth in his early twenties, who seemed to go off, maybe to some job, whenever he could get his nineteen-year-old Ford to run; it was the kind of car most of the established men on Eighth Street had owned on their way up to where they were now.

Grace Bennington appeared to be the matriarch; she might have been fifty, but, with her broad weight and her gray hair, it was difficult for anyone to be certain. On a good day, her Eighth Street neighbors might have said forty or forty-five, but on a bad day seventy-five would not have seemed unfair. Only one thing was certain--she had known hard work, and it showed in face and body. She moved about on stubby legs, favoring the outer sides of her feet as she walked, so that all her shoes were run down on those edges. There was also a man who looked far older than Grace, tallish, whom the neighbors sometimes saw. He always came walking up--never down--Eighth Street with bags of groceries, and he was always in the uniform of a train's sleeping-car porter. Finally, there was a woman who was rarely seen, and, when she was, the older children would be holding her hands as they took her for a walk. She wore coats and sweaters even on the warmest days, and that fall and winter saw many good days. She might have been beautiful, but no one could tell, because she was also always wearing sunglasses and a scarf pulled around to cover most of her face.

In early November, after the Benningtons had been in the neighborhood a tad more than two weeks, Sharon Palmer noticed Neil Bennington, the tenth grader, peering into his locker, in the second-floor hall at Cardozo High School. She knew very little about the family beyond what her parents and the rest of the Eighth Street neighbors were saying, and nothing they said was at all positive. Sharon lived at 1409, across from the Benningtons. A senior, she had, in the eleventh grade, become aware of her effect on boys--almost all of them. (Terence Stagg, next door at 1407, for whom she had long had eyes and heart, was a month or so from paying her any attention.) And Sharon, coming rather late to this awareness of her womanhood, had begun to take some delight in seeing boys wither as they stood close enough to her to smell the mystery that had nothing to do with perfume and look into the twinkling brown eyes she had inherited from a grandmother who had seen only the morning, afternoon, and evening of a cotton field.

When Sharon said hello Neil rose slowly, as though he knew all too well the accidents that came with quick movements. He seemed more befuddled by than taken with her femaleness after she told him who she was, and his innocence made her wish that just this once she could turn down the mystery that transformed boys into fools. He squinted and blinked, and with each blink he appeared to get closer to knowing who she was. As the brief conversation went on, it occurred to her that he was very much like one of her younger brothers--Neil and the brother forever had the look of true believers who had to start every sad morning by learning all over again that the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus did not exist.

That day, she saw Neil walking alone down Eleventh Street after school and she separated from her friends to go with him the rest of the way home. She thought Neil, like her brother, was adorable, a word she had just started using. Her father, Hamilton Palmer, saw them turn the corner from P and thought nothing of it. As the morning and afternoon supervisor at the main Post Office, on North Capitol Street, he was home most days by three-thirty. He was watering plants on his porch, and as Neil said goodbye to his daughter Hamilton opened the little gate on the porch that had been installed ages ago, when his children were too small to know all the ways the world beyond the gate could hurt them.

It was three weeks later that Hamilton Palmer began to think something might be amiss. Thanksgiving had come and gone, and people all over Washington were complaining that it just didn't feel like Christmas weather. Who could think of Christmas with people still in their fall sweaters and the trees threatening to bud? Neil and Sharon turned the corner again, this time accompanied by three other students, who lived farther down Eighth. Before the four left Sharon in front of her house, Hamilton's daughter touched Neil's shoulder and the boy smiled. It was not the touch so much as the smile that bothered Hamilton. He noticed for the first time that Derek Bennington was watching everything from across the street. He could not tell for certain, but he thought he saw Derek smirking.

Two days later, the Prevosts, at 1404, were robbed, with a television the most expensive thing taken. No one said anything, but the neighbors knew it had to be Derek. The next week, the Thorntons, at 1414, had their car stolen. The car was only a Chevy, five years old, but that was not the point, said Bill Forsythe, at 1408. His wife, Prudence, had complained about what a noisy heap the Thornton car was and that the neighborhood was well rid of it. A man's property is a man's property, Bill said, even if it's one skate with three wheels. After the car was taken, someone called the police and they came and spoke to the Benningtons in their house for some fifteen minutes. No one knew what went down, because the police left without talking to any of the neighbors. Derek walked out onto the porch soon afterward and stood, smoking a cigarette. He was alone for a good while, and then his mother, Grace, came and said something that made him put the cigarette out in the ashtray. She continued talking, and for every second she was speaking he was nodding his head slightly.

In December, more than a month before the fracas between Derek and Terence Stagg, Sharon Palmer returned a book she had borrowed from Neil. It was a Saturday afternoon, and when she went up the steps to the Bennington home, she saw that the screen door was shut but the main door was open. She couldn't see anyone from the threshold and she called "Hello" and "Neil," and then she knocked on the wood frame of the screen door. The radio and the television were playing. She did not want to think it, but she felt that this said something about them, maybe not about Neil but about all the rest of them. She waited about two minutes, and after she again called for Neil she opened the screen and stepped into the house, saying "hello, hello, hello" all the way. The woman in the sunglasses was sitting on the couch, and when Sharon asked for Neil the woman said nothing. There was a small child on either side of her, and they were watching a black-and-white television. Sharon immediately thought about the Prevosts' television, but she did not know if it had been color or black-and-white.

"I knocked, but I got no answer," Sharon said. "Is Neil here? I brought his book back." The woman tilted her head to the side as though to consider what she had heard. "Is he here?" The children were silent and their eyes were big, as though Sharon were a creature they had not seen before. Sharon told the woman again that she was looking for Neil. It would be better, Sharon thought, if I could see her eyes. Finally, the woman turned her face toward the next room. "Thank you," Sharon said.

The dining room was crowded with boxes, the state it must have been in since the day the Benningtons moved in. The dining table's missing leg had been replaced with one that had yet to be painted the color of the rest of the table.

"Hello, Neil? Neil?" She stepped into the kitchen, and she was not prepared for what she saw. It was immaculate, the kind of room her mother would be happy with. The floor was clean, the counters were clean, the stove was clean, the tiny table and its three chairs were clean. "Hello?" She turned and looked about the room with great curiosity. When she turned back, Derek was standing at the open screen door to the back yard, watching her.

"You lost?"

"No, I'm sorry. I knocked but no one answered."

"The May maid swayed away to pray in the day's hay," Derek said, not smiling. "Thas why you got no answer."

"I just came to return Neil's book. Is he here?"

Derek shouted twice for Neil. "Well, you can just leave it on the table, lady from across the street."

"He said that I could borrow another one. A book of Irish stories the library doesn't seem to have."

He shouted for Neil again, and, as she listened to his voice thunder through the house, she noticed a small bookcase beside the refrigerator. Four shelves, each a little more than two feet across. He saw her looking at it. "Just leave the book on the table. That readin fool'll get it."

"I can come back for the next one another time." She set the book on the table.

"Which one was it?" He was wearing an undershirt, and it hung on him in a way that did not threaten as those shirts often did on other men. The bare muscular arms were simply bare muscular arms, not possible weapons. It was a small moment in the kitchen, but Sharon was to think of those arms years later as she stood naked and looked down at the bare arms of her husband while the red light of an expensive German clock shone down on him.

"A book of stories--Mary Lavin's 'Tales from Bective Bridge.' My teacher shared two with me and I'm hooked."

"Hooked is good cept with junk, ask any junkie," Derek said, and he looked across at the bookcase. "The almighty reader might have it upstairs or in some box somewhere. His shit is all over the fuckin place." Shit, fuckin, she thought. Shit, fuckin. In a few quiet, swift steps he was at the table. He took up the book and looked at the spine and wrinkled his face. "Hooked, hooked," he said. The same kind of steps took him to the bookcase. He knelt, peered a moment, and put the book between two green books on the second shelf up from the bottom. " 'L' is for Lavin," Derek said, and found the collection. " 'M' is for Mary." He looked at it front and back. "I know one thing for sure: he loves this woman's work, so you bet not lose it. I think the almighty reader is part Irish and don't know it yet." In two more steps he was before her and she took the book and promised to return it just as it was. There was nothing untoward in his face--the lust, the hunger, that was in all the boys except Neil, boys with pimples and boys without. There was no smile from him and he did not look into her eyes, the twinkling and brown. He turned and went to the refrigerator and opened it. "You know," he said, his back to her and the light of the refrigerator pouring out over him, "you shouldn't be afraid of wearin blue." He took out a beer and closed the icebox with great care. "Forget the red. You wear too much red." He did not turn around but found an opener for the beer on the counter beside the icebox.

"What?"

Neil came in, with the same befuddled look he'd had the day Sharon introduced herself to him, and Derek pointed to him. "Where you been, boy?" Derek said. "Your girlfriend been waitin. You the worse fuckin boyfriend in the world."

"She ain't my girlfriend," Neil said, and raised his hand hello to Sharon.

"I gave your girlfriend one of Lavin's books, man."

"I told you she's not my girlfriend, Dee."

"Whatever, man." He drank from the beer as he walked to the back door. "You should tell your girlfriend that red really doesn't suit her. She ain't believin me, so maybe if it comes from her boyfriend." He went out the door, and Neil walked her to the front of the house.

Three neighbors saw Sharon Palmer leave the Bennington house that day--her father, Hamilton, from his upstairs bedroom, Terence Stagg, next door to the Palmers, and Prudence Forsythe, next to the Benningtons. Terence was standing at his living-room window and watched Sharon walk down the Bennington steps with a book in her hand. Neil Bennington was a wisp of a boy, not worth the notice of a young man like Terence. But Terence had seen Derek about, and like most of the men on Eighth Street he didn't think much of him; men like Derek had never seen the inside of Howard University, where Terence was in his second year, and they never would. As Sharon waited to cross Eighth, she lowered her head in a most engaging way, lowered it only for a second, as if to consider something, and Terence could see how she had filled out. Filled out in her red sweater, and her bluejeans not trampy tight but tight enough to let a man know if he should bother or not. She had filled out since the last time he had really taken a look at her, and that was a time he could not remember.

Terence was at her door that evening, asking a beaming Hamilton Palmer, who had also gone to Howard, how he was doing these warm days and then asking the father if he might talk a bit with his daughter this evening. Terence and Sharon stepped out onto the porch, and he invited her to a movie and a meal on Friday night. She had had two dates before--and one of those had been with a young man who was brother to her cousin's husband. Sharon was not one to keep a diary, but, if she had been, that meeting of a few minutes with Terence would have taken up at least two pages.

Terence called goodbye to Hamilton Palmer, who came out of the kitchen with Sharon's mother. They asked him how his studies were going, and Terence told them they were going very well and that he was hitting his stride. He was, in fact, going with a fellow Howard student, but Howard students who were not D.C. natives were taught from Day One never to venture into Washington neighborhoods except those where they could find a better class of people, meaning white people, for the most part, and so that girl from Newark would never know about Eighth Street. That Newark girl was so clingy, with her "Terence this" and her "Terence that." And, as he had watched Sharon come across Eighth, he had remembered something that his father, Lane, had recently told him: You are young and the world is your oyster. You shuck it, don't let it shuck you. What oyster would Derek ever shuck? Terence thought, as he listened to Hamilton. Well, fine, Hamilton said about Terence hitting his stride, and he came across the living room with his hand extended.

Sharon, ecstatic, did not get to Mary Lavin's "Tales from Bective Bridge" that night as she had planned. She could think of nothing but the evening with Terence. She tried sleeping, but found it was no use and so got up from bed and sat in the dark at her window, which, like the one in her parents' bedroom, faced Eighth Street. She was at the window again two weeks later, near about midnight three days before Christmas, when she saw Neil Bennington, carrying a small package that was bright even in the dark, dash across the street to her house, take the steps two at a time, and then dash back across the street to his place, his hands now apparently empty. By then, she had had a second date with Terence, and he had kissed her three times, once surprising her as he thrust his tongue into her mouth. She mistook what she felt at that moment for blossoming love. It was a rare cold night for that December, and she was tempted not to go downstairs. But she did. She opened the front door to find a small gift-wrapped package on the threshold between that door and the storm door. It had her name on it. With anxious fingers, just inside the living room, she tore open the shiny wrapping and found in a velvet-covered box a figure of brown wood, nearly perfectly carved. It was of a little girl no more than an inch and a half tall, in a dress that came down to her feet. She had on a bonnet. When Sharon held the figure to the light of a lamp, she could tell by the shape of the nose that it was a black girl. One of the girl's arms was extended somewhat, and there was a bracelet on it. That the bracelet was shining told her that it might be gold; that it was from a boy of no means from across the street told her that it might not be.

She was disappointed, because she did not want Neil to think that there could ever be anything between them, and such a thing, with such intricacy, with such compellingly quiet beauty, told her that was what he was thinking. But she did not want to hurt his feelings by returning the gift. Adorable people should not be hurt. She thought for a day and decided to give him a book, and she chose a small paperback edition of Ann Petry's "The Street." She came up to him as he stood at his locker at school, his head cocked to the side as if he were trying to decide what was needed for the final period of the day. Terence was picking her up after school. Neil seemed genuinely surprised by the gift. "I didn't get you anything," he said, blushing and blinking. "This is straight up embarrassin."

"That doesn't matter," Sharon said. "It's the season for giving. What are neighbors for?"

"I'll get you somethin, I promise," he said, biting his lip.

"You've already done a great deal. Believe me."

"All right," Neil said, moving his hand slowly down the table of contents. "All right, but I won't forget this. Ever."

More than five years later, on her way to becoming a nurse, she would attend a party at the home of one of her Georgetown professors. Her husband would not be able to be with her that night, but that was the way it had become. She would spend a good part of the evening in a corner with a glass of ginger ale. Just as she was about to excuse herself and leave, a white woman of some seventy years came up to her.

"I have been admiring that wondrous thing you're wearing," the white woman said. "Even from across the room, you can see how unique it is." She looked closer. "The carver must have used up all his eyesight making it. You have exquisite taste." The woman smiled, not at Sharon but at the Christmas gift that she had unearthed only recently from a trunk in her parents' basement.

"Someone gave it to me. It isn't much."

"It is much in that other way," the woman said. "I know a place down on F Street that would give you two hundred dollars for it. Please. May I?" And the woman raised a tentative hand, and Sharon nodded, and the woman took up the little girl in the bonnet and rested it between her fingers and then looked fully into Sharon's eyes. "It's not very old, perhaps less than ten years since it was created, but the artistry makes up for that. If the carver lost his sight, he may have thought it was worth it." That evening, for the first time, Sharon would notice the initials carved into one of the folds of the girl's dress. The initials were far from evident, but they were there if the time was taken to look for them. No, she said to herself, alone in the apartment she shared with her husband, I would not sell it. I don't even know if the carver is living anymore.

It was Amanda Bennington who first got into it with Terence Stagg. Late on a Saturday morning in mid-January, she and Derek had come home from the Safeway. They parked in front of the Staggs' house, across the street, while Derek took bags of groceries into their house and Amanda tidied up the car's trunk.

Sharon Palmer was watching from her bedroom window. Nothing had really been said, but it was known by then that she and Terence were a couple and might well have a nice future together. They had driven up in his father's Cadillac one evening the week before, and she saw Neil watching from his porch. She waved and he waved back. She and Neil were not walking home together as much as they had been, but they still shared books. Derek came out as Terence walked Sharon into her house.

Terence, that Saturday morning, was heading out his door when he saw Amanda fussing around in the trunk of Derek's Ford, which was parked in the spot where his father, Lane Stagg, had been parking his Cadillacs since before Terence knew what good things life had in store for him. It might as well be said that Lane Stagg owned that dot of public real estate. Before his family had awakened, Lane had gone out on an errand, purring quietly away in his new tan Cadillac, which had less than three thousand miles on it.

"Hey, you," Terence said to Amanda, and came down the steps to the sidewalk, too upset to take full notice of her behind as she bent over and puttered in the trunk. He was to excel in anatomy and dermatology when he got to Howard's medical school, but genetics and neurology would nearly cost him his future. Amanda straightened up, holding jumper cables, and looked Terence up and down. "Hey! You know you parked in my father's space?" Then, watching Amanda toss the cables back in the trunk and try to clean the dirt from her hands with a Kleenex that she had pulled from her back pocket, he pointed to Derek's car and said again, "Hey, do you know that you are parked in my father's space?" Since his first month at Howard, he had stopped referring to Lane as "my daddy."

"Hay for horses, not for people. Go down Hecht's and get em cheaper," Amanda said. They were the words of a small child, and they upset Terence even more. "It's a free country, man," Amanda said. "We all got a right to park where we wanna park." She pulled another bunched-up Kleenex from the back pocket of her jeans. She was dark and pretty, and in another universe Terence would have been able to appreciate that. "And besides"--she turned and pointed across the street--"somebody's got my brother's regular spot." That Saturday, the Forsythes, at 1408, had company from out of town, and the visitors' Trans Am was where Derek's Ford would have gone, in a spot covered with the oil that was forever leaking from his car. "We had stuff to take and it whatn't no use parkin way down at the corner. Maybe that Trans Am'll move before your daddy gets back."

"I don't care about that," Terence said. "You're just going to have to move that thing somewhere else."

Grace had been trying to teach Amanda to control her temper, but there were days and then there were days. "First off," Amanda said, "I ain't movin shit. Second off, it ain't no thing. It's a classic. Third off, you better get out my damn face. This a free country, man. You ain't no fuckin parkin police." She closed the trunk with both hands to make the loudest sound she could manage.

"I would expect something like this from trash like you," Terence said.

She flicked the Kleenex at him and he dodged it. "Since it's that way, you the biggest trash around here," she said. In another universe, before that moment Amanda would have liked him to come across the street and knock at her door and invite her to the Broadway on Seventh Street for a movie and a hamburger and soda afterward. She had seen Terence's well-dressed mother, Helen Stagg, quite often, had studied the woman as she came out of her house and looked up and down Eighth Street as if waiting for the world to tell her that it was once again worthy of having her. Amanda loved her own mother, in all her dowdiness, more than any human being, but she knew Grace would never be Helen Stagg. "If I'm trash, you trash."

"Typical," Terence said. "Real damn typical."

"Whas up here?" Derek came across the street, his keys in his hand.

"Derek, this guy say we gotta move the car cause his father got the spot."

"Ain't nobody own no parkin spot, neighbor. This a free country, neighbor," Derek said, the keys jingling at his side.

"I'm not your neighbor."

"Oh, oh, it's like that, huh?" Derek said, turning around twice and raising his arms in faux surrender. "You one a those, huh? All right." Amanda had stayed in the street behind the car, but Derek had continued on up to the sidewalk. "All right, big shot. Les just clear away, cause I don't want no trouble. Nobody want any trouble." He stepped back into the gutter. "All I can say is we got a right to be there, as much right as your daddy and that Cadillac of his with that punk-ass color." He looked at Amanda. "You done?"

"Yeah, I'm cool."

"Well, les go," and they waited to cross as two cars passed going up Eighth Street.

"I told you to move that damn thing," Terence said. His knuckles tapped the top of the trunk. "You people should learn to wash your ears out." He spat on the car.

Derek turned. "Just leave that somebitch alone, Derek," Amanda said. "He ain't worth it."

Grace Bennington came out of her house and yelled at Derek to come on in. Neil stood beside her, holding the hand of a girl of seven or eight. "Wipe that shit off," Derek said of the spit, a slow-moving blob on the black paint heading down toward the fender. The car didn't always run, but he kept it clean.

Derek counted all the way to ten, and Terence said, "Tell your funky mother to wipe it off."

"Even you, even poor you," Derek said calmly, "should know the law against sayin somethin like that. Man oh man oh man . . ."

It took but one hit to the lower part of the jaw to send Terence to the ground. He had seen the fist coming, but, because he had not been in very many fights in his life, it took him far too long to realize the fist was coming for him. Grace and Amanda screamed. The Bryants, at 1401, and the Prevosts, at 1404, came out, as did the Forsythes and their company who had the Trans Am, all of them still digesting their breakfasts. Sharon Palmer had watched with growing concern from her bedroom window. She had not been able to hear all that was said by the three, but, already on the path to love, she had admired the way Terence seemed to be standing up to Derek. By the time she got downstairs and out to the sidewalk, Amanda and Grace were tending to Terence. Seconds later, he awoke and saw the women, and told them to get the fuck away from him. Derek was already back across the street, sitting on the legless couch, watching the group around Terence and smoking a cigarette and waiting for the police to show up.

Lane Stagg was more disturbed about what had happened to his son than he would have been if this had been a fight between young men of equal age and status and Terence had simply lost after doing his best. No doubt, Lane Stagg thought, men like Derek Bennington had never learned to fight fair. Terence, after a quick trip to the hospital, was out of it for a day and a half, but he suffered no permanent damage and would recover to become the first person anyone in the neighborhood knew to become a doctor. "Let them crackers," Lane Stagg said after his second drink at the dinner to celebrate his son's medical-school graduation, "write that up in the immigration brochures about how descendants of slaves aren't any good and so all you hardworking immigrants just come on over."

The police came out that Saturday, but, because they didn't like doing paperwork and because no white person had been hurt, Derek was not arrested. He would not fare as well after the complaint weeks later by the white man from Arlington who owned the Bennington home. The white man and his family had been the last whites to live in the neighborhood. "Come on over to Arlington," his former neighbors kept telling him after they themselves had moved. "Over here, the blacks are all off in their own neighborhood, so you hardly ever see them." The white man and his wife had a son, deep into puberty, and the son was growing ever more partial to blondes, which Eighth Street didn't grow anymore.

After Terence came home from the hospital, Lane, working on his first drink, broached the idea of buying the house that the Benningtons were renting from the white man. He sat in his living room with his wife perched on the arm of his easy chair, and across from him, on the couch, were Hamilton Palmer, Arthur Atwell, and Bill and Prudence Forsythe. Lane Stagg started in on how the neighborhood was changing for the worse. And Hamilton, already seeing the Staggs as future in-laws, agreed. He was not drinking. And neither was Bill Forsythe. Prudence had quietly come upon Bill two weeks earlier looking out their bedroom window at Amanda Bennington collecting toys in her front yard. Prudence had watched him for more than five minutes before going to see what had captured him. Bill had a drink in his hand, and Amanda was wearing those tight bluejeans and it was not even one-thirty. "Nice day," Bill said to his wife, already drifting toward happy land and so unable to compose something better. "I'm fucking tired of you getting ideas," Prudence said. "I'm fucking tired of you and your ideas." "Honey," Bill said, "keep your voice down. The neighbors, honey. The neighbors." Meaning not the Benningtons, on one side, but Arthur and Beatrice Atwell, on the other. Prudence took the drink from Bill, and she did it in such a way that the ice cubes did not clink against the sides of the glass.

Lane Stagg, pained about his son, was as eloquent that evening as he would be at the last meeting of the neighbors, years later, as he argued that the building had really not housed the proper sort of folks in years. "What," he asked, "does that white man across the river in Arlington care about our neighborhood?" Lane Stagg had been the captain of his debating team in high school, when the schools had such things. He would have made a good lawyer, everyone said, but the son of a coal-and-ice man rose only so far. His wife, whose father and mother were lawyers, had married him anyway.

It was not a long meeting, but before it ended the good neighbors of Eighth Street decided that they would raise the money and buy the house and rent it to more agreeable people. "Let's drink to that," Lane said, and stood up. About then, Sharon Palmer came down from upstairs, where she had been comforting Terence. The medicine had finally overcome him and he had fallen asleep. "Thank you, sweet Sharon, thank you, thank you," Lane said, and he set his drink on the table beside his chair and put his arms around her. "It was the least I could do," she said.

After everyone had left, and his wife had gone to bed, Lane sat beside his son's bed. He had enjoyed his house for a long time, and it saddened him, beyond the effects of the liquor, to think that he would not see his grandchildren enjoy it. He loved Washington, and as he sat and watched Terence sleep he feared he would have to leave. He was hearing good things about Prince George's County, but that place, abutting the more redneck areas of the Maryland suburbs, was not home to him like D.C. He had heard, too, that the police there were brutes, straight out of the worst Southern towns, but he had come a long way since the boyhood days of helping his father deliver coal and ice throughout Washington. "Dirty nigger coal man and his dirty nigger coal son," children had called them. And that was in the colored neighborhoods of maids and shoeshiners and janitors and cooks and elevator operators. But he was a thousand lives from that now, even though he wasn't anybody's lawyer. With his reputation as a GS-15 at the Commerce Department and a wife high up in the D.C. school system and a big Maryland house and a son on his way to being a doctor, he could let the police in Prince George's know just what sort he was.

The good neighbors were helped by one major thing: the white man and his wife across the Potomac who owned the Bennington house had been thinking for some time about moving to Florida. Lane Stagg, Hamilton Palmer, Arthur Atwell, and Prudence Forsythe met with the white man on the highway in Arlington named for Robert E. Lee, in a restaurant that was named for Stonewall Jackson. They offered him thirty-one thousand dollars for the Bennington house. The white man whistled at the figure. Arthur Atwell was silent, as usual. He was semi-retired and liked to think he had more money than he really did have. The white man, Nicholas Riccocelli, whistled again, this time even louder, because the thirty-one thousand sounded good--he really had no idea how much the house was worth. For several moments, he studied a cheap print of a Dutch windmill on the wall beside the table and thought about how many days on a Florida beach thirty-one thousand dollars would provide.

Riccocelli said to give him a week to think it over, but he called Lane Stagg in four days and said they had a deal. The white man had never had any trouble with the Benningtons and so he felt he owed it to Grace and her family to tell them himself formally that they would have to move. He came late one Saturday afternoon in early February. When Derek told him that his mother wasn't home, Riccocelli wanted to know if she would be gone long.

"If there's something important," Derek said, "you can tell me." And when the white man told him that they would have to be gone in two months, Derek turned from his spot in the middle of the living room to look at Amanda and Neil standing in the doorway to the dining room. "Can you believe this shit?" he said. Then, to Riccocelli, he asked, "Why? Ain't we always paid rent on time? Ain't we?"

"Yes, but the new owners would like to start anew."

"Who are they?" Derek said. "You tell em we good tenants and everything'll be all right."

"I'm afraid," the white man said, "that will not work. The new owners wish to go in another direction altogether."

"Who the fuck are these people? What kinda direction you talkin about?" Derek said, and came two steps toward the man.

"Why . . . why . . ." Riccocelli was unable to complete the sentence, because he had thought their neighbors would have somehow let the Benningtons know. "Why, your neighbors around you." The man sensed something bad was about to happen and backed toward the front door. Where, he wondered, was the mother? She had always seemed so sensible.

"Get the fuck out!" Derek said, and grabbed the man by his coat collar. Riccocelli opened the door and Derek pushed him out. "You sorry motherfucker!" The woman who always wore sunglasses, seated between two children on the couch, began to cry, and the children, following her, began crying as well.

"Derek, leave him alone," Amanda said. "Leave him be."

Out on the porch, Derek still had Riccocelli by the collar. He pulled him down the stairs. "Derek!" Amanda shouted. "Please!"

"Don't hurt me, Mr. Bennington." The ride over from Arlington had been pleasant enough. Riccocelli was a small man, and his eyes barely came above the dashboard, but he enjoyed driving. There had been gentle and light snow most of the way from Arlington, and a few times he had seen lightning across the sky. Snow and lightning. How could a day like that go wrong? He would miss the snow in Florida, he had thought as he drove across Key Bridge. Now, as the two men stumbled and fell down the steps to the sidewalk, there was rain, also gentle, but the sky was quiet. "You mustn't molest me, Mr. Bennington." Riccocelli had parked behind Derek's Ford, and Derek half pushed and half carried him to the car and slammed him against it. "You come back and you dead meat."

After Riccocelli had gone, Derek went up and down both sides of the street shouting to the neighbors to come out and confront him. "Don't be punks!" he shouted. As he neared the Palmers' house, Grace came around the corner, and she and Amanda and Neil, who had been standing in the yard, went to him. "We got babies in that house, man! It's winter, for God's sakes!" Derek shouted. Sharon opened her door and came out onto the porch, but she was the only neighbor to do so. "We got sweet innocent babies in that house, man! What can y'all be thinkin?" His family was able to calm him, but before they could get him across the street the police arrived.

Arthur Atwell died of a heart attack at the end of February, not long after the Benningtons moved, and two days before Derek got out of D.C. jail. Arthur's widow, Beatrice, found that despite all Arthur had said there was not much money, and so she had to back out of the Bennington-house deal. She moved to Claridge Towers, on M Street, into an apartment with a bathroom where she could hide when thunder and lightning came. Everyone was sad to see her leave, because she had been a better neighbor than most. Those still in on the Bennington-house deal did manage to buy the house, but the good neighbors rarely found their sort of people to rent the place.

Sharon Palmer Stagg's car had been in the shop two days when she finished her shift at Georgetown University Hospital one Saturday night in March. It was too late for a bus and she thought she would have a better chance for a cab at Wisconsin Avenue, so she made her way out of the hospital grounds to P Street. She was not yet a nurse, but she did have a part-time job as a nurse's assistant at the hospital, where she often volunteered on her days off. Near Thirty-sixth Street, she saw a small group of young men coming toward her, loud, singing a song too garbled for her to understand. She was used to such crowds--Georgetown students, many with bogus identification cards that they used to buy drinks at the bars along Wisconsin Avenue and M Street.

She had been married for nine months. She was a little more than three weeks from meeting the white woman at the party. Terence Stagg was in medical school at Howard. His maternal grandparents, the attorneys, had been killed in a car accident by a drunken driver who was himself an attorney, and they had left their only grandchild more money than was good for him. Terence and his wife lived quite well in a part of upper Northwest Washington where the likes of the Benningtons could only serve.

Just before Sharon reached Thirty-fifth Street, the group of young men walked under a street light and she could see that two of them were white and the third was black. The black student, six or so feet from her, said to the white students, "I spy with my little eye something good to eat," and the three spread out and blocked her from passing. "I always have these fantasies about nurses and sponge baths," the black one said. She was wearing her uniform and that had told them all they needed to know. They came to within three feet of her and one of the white students held his arms out to Sharon, while the other two men surrounded her. She did not hear the car door behind her open and close.

The black student touched her cheek and then her breasts with both hands, and one of the white students did the same, and both young men breathed sour beer into her face. Sharon pulled away, and the two looked at each other and giggled. As the black student inhaled deeply for another blast into her face, something punched him in the side of the face and he fell hard against a car and passed out. "Hey! Hey!" the white student who had had his hands on Sharon said to the puncher. "Whatcha do to our Rufus?" The puncher pulled Sharon back behind him and she saw a face from a long time ago and her knees buckled to see it. He might well have been a ghost, because she had not seen him in many years. "They spoil the best nights we have," Derek said to her.

The white student who had not touched her pulled out a knife, the blade more than three inches long. Derek reached into his own pocket, but before his hand came out the white student had stabbed him in his left side, through his leather jacket, through his shirt, into the vicinity of his heart, and Sharon screamed as Derek first faltered and then pulled himself up. In a second his switchblade was out and the blade tore through the student's jacket and into his arm, and the student ran out into P Street and down toward his university. "I wanted to keep this clean," Derek said. "But white trash won't let me."

"We didn't mean anything," the second white student said as he sobered up. He raised his arms high. "See--"

"Oh, you fucks always mean somethin," Derek said, holding his knife to the man's cheek and flicking it once to open a wound in the cheek, less than an inch from his nostrils. The man crumpled, both hands to his face. His black friend was still unconscious, and the man with the arm wound was shouting as he ran that they were all being killed by niggers. Derek sheathed the knife and returned it to his pocket and then pulled Sharon down the street to his car.

Within moments he had driven them down P, slowly, across Wisconsin, and to a spot just before the P Street Bridge. He turned on the light and inspected his side. "Shit!" he said. "Bad but maybe not fatal. Damn!"

"Let me help you," Sharon said.

After looking in the sideview mirror, he continued down P Street again, slowly. Two patrol cars sped past them, and she watched him watching them go in the rearview mirror. "Dead or alive, the black dude won't matter," he said to the mirror, joining the traffic moving around Dupont Circle. "But them white dudes are princes and the world gon pay for that." He became part of the flow going up Connecticut Avenue. "And it happened in Georgetown. They'll make sure somebody pays for that. But they were drunk and so describin might be a problem. Real drunk." He seemed unaware that she was there. "Thas why you never went to college, Derek. Black people gotta leave all their common sense at the front door. College is the business of miseducatin. Like them people would ever open the door anyway." She feared he might pass out, and she was comforted by the fact that in the near darkness of the car she could not see blood creeping around to the right side from the left. Two more police cars passed them, screaming. "They gonna pull that one patrol car they have in Southeast and the only one they got in Northeast and bring em over here to join the dozens they keep in Georgetown. You watch, Derek," he said to a carved wooden figure dangling from the rearview mirror. "You just watch."

"Derek," she said. "Stop and let me help you."

They had crossed Calvert, they had crossed Woodley, and he looked at her for the first time since they had entered the car. "I lied," he said. "I lied. Red wasn't a bad color. It was way good enough for you. Any color you put on is a good color, didn't you know that? You make the world. It ain't never been the other way around. You first, then the world follows." They were nearing Porter. Two blocks from the University of the District of Columbia he stopped, not far from her condominium building, which had one of the few doormen in Washington. "You can walk the rest of the way home," he said. "All the bad thas gonna happen to you done already happened."

She moved his jacket aside and saw where the blood had darkened his blue shirt, and when she touched him the blood covered her hand and began to drip. "Come with me and let me help you." And as she said this her mind ticked off the actual number of years since she had last seen him. Three days later she would have it down to months as well. She took a handkerchief and Kleenex from her pocketbook and pressed them gently to his side. "It's bad, but manageable, I think. We need to get you help, though."

He took her hand and placed it in her lap. "Let me be," he said. "You best get home. You best go home to the man you married to."

"Come in. You helped me, so let me help you."

"You should tell that glorious husband of yours that a wife should be protected, that he shouldn't be sleepin while you have to come home through the jungle of some white neighborhood. Tell him thas not what bein married should be about."

She took the bloody handkerchief and Kleenex and returned them to her pocketbook. She did not now want to go home. She wanted to stay and go wherever he was going to go to recover. She snapped the pocketbook shut. Her father had walked her down the aisle, beaming all the way at the coming together of his two favorite families. The church had been packed and Terence had stood at the altar, waiting, standing as straight as he could after a night of drinking and pals and two strippers who had taken turns licking his dick.

"You best go home."

"Please," she said. "Let me stay."

He reached across her and opened the door. "And one last thing," he said. "Neil been at me for the longest time to have me tell you it was never him. He was always afraid that you went about thinkin he was stuck on you, and he wanted me to set the record straight. He was always doin my biddin and now I'll do his and set the record straight." How long can the heart carry it around? How long? The answer came to her in a whisper.

She got out and shut the door, and he continued on up Connecticut Avenue, his back red lights, brightly vital, soon merging with all the rest of the lights of the Washington night. The man in the shop had promised that her BMW would be ready by the end of the week. Terence's Mercedes had never seen a bad day.

As soon as she locked the door to their condominium, she heard the hum of the new refrigerator, and then the icemaker clicked on and ice tumbled into the bucket, as if to welcome her home. The fan over the stove was going, and she turned it off, along with the light over the stove, the two switches side by side. In the living room, she noticed the blood on her uniform; if the doorman had seen the blood, he made no comment. In the half-darkness, the spots seemed fresh, almost alive in some eerie way, as if the blood had just that second come from Derek's wound. Bleeding. Bleedin. She had emerged unscathed. The overhead fan of grand golden wood was going, slowly, and she considered for the longest time whether to switch it off. In the end, she chose to stop the spinning. Her family had moved away from Eighth Street when she was in college, more than two years after the Benningtons left. And they had been followed by the Forsythes and the Prevosts and all the people she had known as she grew into womanhood. We are the future, Lane Stagg had proclaimed at a final dinner party at the Sheraton Hotel for the good neighbors. Who was left there now? Bad neighbors, her father had called those who came after them. Bad neighbors. The dinner party was held not long before the first contingent of whites had come back and planted their flags. The motor on the fishtank hummed right along; the light over the tank was on, and she turned that off. The stereo, which had cost the equivalent of seven of her paychecks, was not playing, but the power light was on, and she pushed the button to put the whole console to rest. She placed one finger against the fishtank, and all the fish in their colorful finery ignored it. Her father had risen at that hotel dinner and given the first toast, his hand trembling and his voice breaking at every fifth word.

Terence was sleeping peacefully, his arms and shoulders bare, and one foot sticking out of the covers, the fine German clock's dull red numbers shining down on him from the bedside table with the reassurance of a child's night-light. Her father hated such clocks, the digital ones that told the time right out; he believed, as he had tried to teach Sharon and her brothers, that children should learn to tell time the way he had learned, with the big hand and the little hand moving around a circle of numbers. She stood in the doorway and watched Terence and the clock, and for all the time she was there he did not stir. A burglar could come in, she thought, and he would never know it. She could stab him to death and end his world and he would never know it. She could smother him. The whole world could end and he would not know that, either. The insurance they paid on all that they owned--not including the cars and their own lives, which had separate policies--came to $273.57 a month. It is worth it, the white insurance man had said as he dotted the final "i," "because you will sleep better at night knowing you are protected." Knowing. Knowin.

She got out of her clothes in the bathroom, took off everything she had on, even her underwear, and found that the blood had seeped through all the way to her skin. She held her uniform up before her. She stared at her name tag and found it hard to connect herself with the name and the uniform and the naked person they belonged to. Am I really who they say I am? Bleeding. Bleedin. None of Derek's people had ever used the "g" on their -ing words; one of the first things she herself had been taught early in life was never to drop the "g." The "g" is there for a reason, they had told her. It separates you from all the rest of them, those who do not know any better. Sharon did not shower. Another Sharon in another time might have been unsettled by his appearing from nowhere, by the thought that he had been following her. But the idea that he had been there, out there in weather of whatever sort, out there in the dark offering no sign and no sound, out there for months and perhaps years, seemed to give her something to measure her life by. She did not yet know how to do that. After she turned out the bathroom light, she stood in the dark for a long time. In their bedroom, she decided against putting on underwear and so got into bed the way she came into the world. Terence stirred, pulled his foot back under the covers, but beyond that he did nothing. Almost imperceptibly, the rightmost red number on the expensive German clock went from two to three.

By Edward P. Jones

The Latest Invasion of North Africa

2006-11-18T19:25:00.000+01:00

The private-equity boom is extending into almost every corner of the globe--even, perhaps, into Colonel Muammar Qaddafi's Libya. Two Libyans with Western investment bank experience, Adel Saudi and Abdulla Boulsien, have set up Tuareg Capital to invest in Libya (and next door in Algeria). "We see a great opportunity to assist in the restructuring of the country," said Saudi, Tuareg's chairman, speaking from his Bahrain office. Saudi hopes to have $30 million raised by yearend and to eventually put together $100 million for investment in health care, oil services, tourism, building materials, and other sectors. The group is getting initial backing from Bahrain-based ASA Consultants and United Gulf Industries.

Through the companies he hopes to set up, Saudi wants to introduce top foreign firms to the Libyan market, now that Qaddafi has handed over his weapons of mass destruction program to the U.S., welcomed back American oil companies, and even brought in Harvard Business School's Michael Porter as an adviser.

For Tuareg, it's still early days. "We're trying to iron everything out," Saudi says. "Libya is not an easy country to do this in, you know."

By Stanley Reed, The McGraw-Hill Companies

25 Anti-Aging Tips

2006-11-06T19:24:00.000+01:00

How to take off 10 years or more-and look and feel better than ever

We used to think our fate was in the cards--or in the stars. Now, thanks to research unlocking the secrets to living longer and better, we know different. It turns out that 70% of the factors influencing life expectancy are due to good choices and good luck--not good genes.

What are the moves that will peel off the years? Prevention asked dozens of scientists studying aging, exercise, nutrition, and related fields which changes deliver the biggest payoff. Turn the page for their picks--powerful enough to make these researchers adopt them in their own lives.

1. stay the weight you were at 18
"Next to not smoking, this is probably the most important thing we can do to stay healthy and live longer," says Walter Willett, MD, chair of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Leanness matters, because fat cells produce hormones that raise the risk of type 2 diabetes. They also make substances called cytokines that cause inflammation--stiffening the arteries and the heart and other organs. Carrying excess fat also raises the risk of some cancers. Add it up, and studies show that lean people younger than age 75 halve their chances of premature death, compared with people who are obese.

The government deems a wide range of weights to be healthy (between 110 and 140 pounds for a 5-foot-4 woman), partly because body frames vary tremendously. So to maintain the weight that's right for you, Willett suggests you periodically try to slip into the dress you wore to your high school prom--assuming, of course, that you were a healthy weight at that age. If not, aim for a body mass index of about 23.5.

Willett can't use the prom-dress test himself. Nevertheless, at 6-foot-2 and a lean 184 pounds, he dutifully hews to the BMI of his youth.

2. take the dynamic duo of supplements
They're what Bruce N. Ames, PhD, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of California, Berkeley, swears by: his daily 800 mg of alpha-lipoic acid and 2,000 mg of acetyl-L-carnitine. In these amounts, he says, the chemicals boost the energy output of mitochondria, which power our cells. "I think mitochondrial decay is a major factor in aging," Ames says--it's been linked to diseases such as Alzheimer's and diabetes. In his studies, elderly rats plied with the supplements had more energy and ran mazes better. "If you're an old rat, you can be enthusiastic," Ames says. "As people, we can't be sure until clinical trials are done." (They're under way.) But the compounds look very safe--the worst side effect documented in humans is a rash, Ames says--and "the data in animals looks really convincing," says S. Mitchell Harman, MD, PhD, president of the Kronos Longevity Research Institute in Phoenix.

3. skip a meal
This one move could have truly dramatic results. Rats fed 30% less than normal live 30% longer than usual--and in a recent study at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the hearts of the leaner human calorie-cutters appeared 10 to 15 years younger than those of regular eaters. In other research, calorie restrictors improved their blood insulin levels and had fewer signs of damage to their DNA. Eating less food, scientists believe, may reduce tissue wear and tear from excess blood sugar, inflammation, or rogue molecules known as free radicals.

Edward Calabrese, PhD, and Mark Mattson, PhD, have opted for "calorie restriction lite." Calabrese, a professor of toxicology and environmental health sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, dumped the midday meal. Mattson, chief of the laboratory of neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging, has done without breakfast for 20 years. Try it Skip a meal a day. You don't need to try to cut calories; Mattson's research suggests you'll naturally consume less that day. Or try fasting one day a week. Just drink plenty of water.

4. get a pet
Open up your home and heart to Rover or Boots. Owning a pet reduces the number of visits to the doctor, prolongs survival after a heart attack, and wards off depression, says James Serpell, PhD, director of the Center for the Interaction of Animals and Society at the University of Pennsylvania. (His family has a cat, a dog, a large green iguana, a bearded dragon, and a dozen fish.) Pet ownership also protects against a major problem of aging: high blood pressure. In one standout study at State University of New York, Buffalo, stockbrokers with high blood pressure adopted a pet. When they were faced with mental stress, their BP increased less than half as much as in their counterparts without animal pals. But pick your pet with care. There is nothing stress-reducing about a dog that chews the baseboard to bits.

5. get help for what hurts
Studies suggest that continuous pain may dampen the immune system--and evidence is clear that it can cause deep depression and push levels of the noxious stress hormone cortisol higher.

So enough with the stoicism: Take chronic pain to your doctor and keep complaining until you have a treatment plan that works, says Nathaniel Katz, MD, a neurologist and pain-management specialist at Tufts University School of Medicine. Your mood will improve--and your immune system may perk up, too.

6. take a hike
To make the walls of your arteries twice as flexible as those of a couch potato, just walk briskly for 30 minutes, 5 days a week. That's what Hirofumi Tanaka, PhD, an associate professor of kinesiology and health education at the University of Texas, advises after tracking the elasticity of people's blood vessels using ultrasound.

With age, blood vessel walls tend to stiffen up like old tires--the main reason two-thirds of people older than age 60 have high blood pressure. Exercise keeps vessels pliable. Mild exercise also reduces the risk of diabetes, certain cancers, depression, aging of the skin, maybe even dementia. That excites exercise researcher Steven N. Blair, past president of the nonprofit Cooper Institute in Dallas. He's run nearly every day for almost 40 years. "Not bad for a 66-year-old fat man."

7. fight fair
Nasty arguments between couples increase the risk of clogged arteries. In a recent University of Utah study, women's hearts suffered when they made or heard hostile comments; men's hearts reacted badly to domineering, controlling words. "It's normal to have a fight with your spouse--it's a matter of how you fight," says Ronald Glaser, PhD, an immunologist at Ohio State University. What he and his wife, Ohio State clinical psychologist Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, PhD, put off-limits: "Getting nasty, sarcastic, or personal, or using body language like rolling your eyes. It's better to simply agree to disagree."

8. stop and plant the roses
Gardening or being around plants bears fruit. In one study, blood pressure jumped in workers given a stressful task---but rose only a quarter as much if there were plants in the room. And patients who had a view of trees as they recovered from surgery left the hospital almost a day sooner than those with a view of a brick wall.

9. hoist a few (weights, that is)
Everyone knows cardio exercise is key to slowing the advance of time. More surprising: Strength-training is crucial, too. That's because after their mid-40s, people lose 1/4 pound of muscle mass a year, gaining fat in its place. But, says Miriam E. Nelson, PhD, an associate professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition at Tufts University, "For a couple of decades, you don't have to lose any muscle, if you do the appropriate exercises." Even people well into their 90s can regain muscle, she's found. Just lift weights 2 or 3 days a week, for a minimum of 30 minutes. The payoff: more endurance, stronger bones, less risk of diabetes--and better sleep and thinking. Nelson rock climbs and does plenty of other weight-bearing exercise.

10. do a good deed
Pick up trash in the park or shop for a neighbor who needs help, says William Brown, PhD, a lecturer of psychology at Brunel University, West London. He studied people in Brooklyn and found that those who had a denser social network and gave more to their friends and family than they received--whether the gift was in the form of money, food, advice, or time--reported feeling healthier than others, even when he factored in activity levels. Another study, at the University of Michigan, looked at 423 elderly married couples; after 5 years, the pairs who were more altruistic were only half as likely to have died. "Many people grow up thinking it's a dog-eat-dog world," Brown says. "But there's a lot of data that suggests the best way to be healthy is to be kind to others."

11. eat a rainbow…
…made of vegetables, says Peter Greenwald, MD, director of the division of cancer prevention at the National Cancer Institute. Their cancer-preventing abilities are unparalleled. Remember: Aim for nine servings of fruits and vegetables each day.

12. sup from the sea
Don't just slap anything with fins onto your plate: You want fatty fish, such as salmon, sardines, and lake trout. They contain the omega-3 fatty acids DHA and EPA, which many studies show help prevent sudden death from heart attack. Omega-3s may also help ward off depression, Alzheimer's disease, and age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness--and maybe some cancers, although evidence is mixed.

To get more of the benefits of good fats, snack on an ounce (a handful) of walnuts a day. Use less corn oil, and more canola and olive oils. Greg Cole, PhD, a professor of medicine and neurology at UCLA, also avoids cookies, margarine, and snack foods such as chips, which are loaded with unhealthy trans fats. On his menu: two tuna sandwiches plus a couple of DHA-enriched eggs a week. He takes 2 g of fish oil daily.

13. belt out a tune
Exposing yourself to music might help boost your immune system: In a study done by Robert Beck, PhD, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Irvine, levels of an infection-fighting antibody called IgA increased 240% in the saliva of choral members performing Beethoven's Missa Solemnis.

14. drink a cuppa
Intrigued by studies (of mice, cells in lab dishes, and people) that say tea may fight prostate and breast cancer and heart disease, researcher Anna Wu, PhD, a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California, downs at least 3 cups daily.

Green is best, although black tea confers some benefits, too.

15. whittle your waist
To determine if your body is staying young, the tape measure is better than the bathroom scale: Your weight can remain the same while you lose muscle and pack on fat, including visceral fat, the culprit behind a thick waist. It's linked to a heightened risk of age-related ills such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease. If your waist measures more than 35 inches (for a woman) or 40 inches (for a man), you probably have too much belly fat.

The best way to shed that inner load: exercise, says Kerry Stewart, EdD, director of clinical and research exercise physiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In a 6-month study of 69 men and women, he found a 20% reduction in visceral fat, though participants lost only 5 pounds. Stewart's program was brisk but not too arduous: 45 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobics three times a week and 20 minutes of moderate-intensity weight training, also three times weekly.

16. double up on D
If there's one vitamin supplement you should take, this is it, experts say. Vitamin D is made in the skin when sun hits it--but as people get older, the D factory doesn't work as well. About half of Americans fall short. Research suggests that a lack of D raises the risk of osteoporosis, multiple sclerosis, and various cancers.

"No other nutrient is so widely deficient in the United States," says Meir Stampfer, MD, chair of the department of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. "Unless you eat a lot of fish, you have to supplement." Stampfer takes 1,800 IU daily in the winter and 800 to 1,200 IU a day the rest of the year. Make sure your supplement contains vitamin D3, the form the skin makes.

17. dine on curry
Turmeric, the spice that makes curry yellow, is loaded with curcumin, a chemical with potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. In India, it's smeared on bandages to help heal wounds. East Asians also eat it, of course--which might explain why they have lower rates than we do of various cancers and Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. (Animal research is promising.) Cole, of UCLA, makes sure he gets a good dose of Indian food with 'lots of yellow stuff' three times weekly. Don't like the taste? Try a daily curcumin supplement of 500 to 1,000 mg.

18. donate blood
The life you save may be your own. Many researchers think that we take in too much iron, mostly from eating red meat. Excess iron is thought to create free radicals in the body, speeding aging and raising risk of heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer's. Until menopause, women are naturally protected from iron overload, but after that the danger of overdose climbs.

Preliminary studies suggest you can lower your risk of heart disease by regularly giving blood. Thomas Perls, MD, an associate professor of medicine at Boston University who leads the New England Centenarian Study, donates a unit every 2 months. He has a rare blood type, so he's helping others--and he may get something out of it, too. If you're scared of needles, at least go easy on red meat: no more than a daily serving the size of a pack of cards.

19. look out for your eyes
Getting plenty of omega-3s in food or supplements may help ward off age-related macular degeneration. Plant antioxidants such as lutein and zeaxanthin (found in leafy green vegetables like kale and collards) are helpful, too. People who have drusen--tiny deposits within the retina that can be early signs of macular degeneration--can reduce their risk of blindness in both eyes by 25% if they take a supplement, says John Paul SanGiovanni, ScD, a staff scientist at the National Eye Institute. What to take, according to his study: 500 mg of vitamin C, 400 IU of vitamin E, 80 mg of zinc, 15 mg of beta carotene, and 2 mg of copper.

20. take fern extract for your skin
Studies suggest that the antioxidant-rich extract of the South American fern Polypodium leucotomos may help keep your skin youthful by protecting against free radicals and reducing inflammation. Until clinical trials find proof, "it's like chicken soup--it can't hurt and it might help a bit," says dermatologist Mary Lupo, MD, a Prevention advisor and a clinical professor of dermatology at the Tulane University School of Medicine. Lupo takes 240 mg every morning in a supplement called Heliocare, made by Ivax Dermatologicals. She also slaps on broad-spectrum sunscreen and Retin-A daily and eats a diet loaded with colorful fruits and vegetables--blueberries, raspberries, grapefruit, broccoli, spinach. It may also help to drink green tea and nibble flavonoid-rich dark chocolate, she adds. What you must do: Avoid excessive sun exposure and don't smoke.

21. take a deep breath
Strife at work, bumper-to-bumper traffic, little Will's report card: Stress increases the concentration of the hormones cortisol and norepinephrine in our bloodstream, kicking up blood pressure and suppressing the immune system. Chronic stress delays wound healing, promotes atherosclerosis, and possibly shrinks parts of the brain involved in learning, memory, and mood. "The key is lowering the concentration of those stress hormones," says Bruce Rabin, MD, PhD, medical director of the Healthy Lifestyle program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. He's devised a research-based program that mutes the hormone flow: It includes meditation, deep breathing, writing, chanting, and guided imagery. Check it out at http://healthylifestyle.upmc.com/

Deep breathing is the top antistress pick of Prevention advisor Andrew Weil, MD: He makes time for it at least twice a day. "It only takes 2 minutes," he says. "I do it in the morning, when I'm falling asleep in the evening, and any time I feel upset." Technique: Exhale strongly through the mouth, making a whoosh sound. Breathe in quietly through the nose for a count of 4. Hold your breath for a count of 7; then exhale with the whoosh sound for a count of 8. Repeat the cycle three more times.

22. hey-turn it down!
Exposure to noise damages the delicate hair cells of your inner ears. So when you're around loud noise, wear earplugs--the cheap type you can buy at the drugstore, or pricier ones that preserve sound quality. Andy Vermiglio, a research audiologist at the House Ear Institute in Los Angeles, offers free hearing tests at trade shows for audio engineers (aka sound guys). He can always tell which 40-year-old engineer was religious about ear protection and which one was careless: The latter typically has the hearing of a 70-year-old.

23. get more shut-eye
Some sleep problems raise the risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes--maybe even obesity. Everyone's sleep needs are different; to find out what yours are, sleep experts recommend you turn off the alarm clock when you're well rested, and see how long you naturally sleep. (Most people need 7 to 8 hours.) While you're at it, ask your spouse if you snore. Snorting and honking through the night are signs that you may have sleep apnea, which causes you to stop breathing at least five times an hour; it raises your risk of stroke. An estimated 18 million Americans have the disorder, but many don't know it, reports the National Sleep Foundation. Doctors are more likely to miss sleep apnea in women, says Joseph Kaplan, MD, codirector of the Mayo Sleep Disorders Center in Jacksonville, FL--and women may not want to mention their unladylike habit. Ladylike, schmadylike. Tell your doctor.

24. drop that hot potato
High-glycemic foods, rich in quick-digesting carbohydrates, can cause blood sugar spikes and crashes and contribute to overeating and diabetes risk which accelerates aging. We need to retrain our taste buds, says Willett. What to ditch: sugary drinks. And cut way back on America's favorite veggie, the potato. It has the highest glycemic index of any vegetable, sending more sugar rushing into the bloodstream faster. Willett's team at Harvard recently found that over a 20-year period, women who ate more whole grains and fewer spuds had a 20 to 30% lower risk of type 2 diabetes. His carb picks for his own dinner: brown rice and whole grain bread, and sometimes whole wheat pasta or bulgur.

25. put on your rose-colored glasses
"Embracing some of the positive aspects of aging is helpful," says Becca Levy, PhD, an associate professor of epidemiology and psychology at Yale. She found more than a 7-year survival advantage for older men and women with a positive attitude toward aging, compared with people who have a negative one.

If you're a cranky sort, you might also want to tweak your attitude about other things. "People who have a goal in life--a passion, a purpose, a positive outlook, and humor--live longer," says Robert Butler, MD, president of the International Longevity Center in New York City.

Embrace life, and the coming of old age--it happens to all of us. If we're lucky.

By Andreas Von Bubnoff and Joanna Lloyd

HIV-positive men commonly have unprotected sex with women

2006-10-30T03:11:00.000+01:00

Several recent studies have found that a high proportion of HIV-positive U.S. men engage in unprotected sex with female partners who are HIV-negative, revealing a significant danger to women's health and a contributing factor to the country's HIV epidemic.

Three papers in the August issue of the Journal of Urban Health: Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine find a larger number of HIV-positive men are sexually active with women than with other men, putting women at greater and increasing risk of exposure. Although many people living with HIV are aware of the harmful health effects of unprotected sex, a significant number still do not follow safer sex practices, such as using condoms. And the studies found HIV-positive men tend to fluctuate in their sexual habits, initiating unprotected sex after a period of consistently safer sex practices and vice versa.

Younger men living with HIV/AIDS and men with a spouse or steady partners were most likely to report unsafe sex, which also increased with the incidence of drug use, problem drinking, homelessness, depression and recent incarceration. Older age, optimism and use of antiretroviral medications reduced the likelihood of an HIV-positive man engaging in unprotected sex.

Based on the findings, the authors of all three papers emphasized the need for prevention initiatives aimed at HIV-positive men.

Source: Nation's Health, Oct2006

Say This to Her After Sex

2006-10-24T18:43:00.000+02:00

SHOW THIS TO YOUR MAN

• Just because you've treated your girl to a good time in the sack doesn't mean your job is done (sorry, buddy!), While basking in the afterglow, engaging her in some thoughtful pillow talk will benefit both of you…and it won't take a ton of effort. Try these sexy phrases.

"That was amazing."
You know the boot-knockin' was great, and deep down, she knows it too. (Come on, if she's a Cosmo girl, why wouldn't it be?) Still, she wants to hear you say just how un-freakin'-believable it was. "Women feel performance anxiety too, so she needs reassurance that she's skilled in bed," explains sexologist Gabrielle Morrissey, PhD, author of A Year of Spicy Sex. "The more positive feedback she gets from you, the more sexually confident and enthusiastic she'll be in the future."

"Wow, your body is so sexy."
While singing her praises, play up her hotness as well. "It's always a good idea to let your girl friend know how sexy you think she is, but it's especially important after intercourse," says sex columnist Josey Vogels, author of Bedside Manners. "Intercourse can cause a woman to feel vulnerable and exposed, so praising her beautiful stomach or butt will boost her confidence and make her feel more comfortable naked."

"How are you doing?"
Okay, it's obvious that you guys can't stand those probing, penny-for-your-thoughts questions. That's why she'll be über-impressed if you turn the tables — even if its just for half a minute.

"After sex, she feels more bonded to you, so checking in with her feeds her need to connect," explains Vogels. "When you instigate the dialogue, it shows that you really care about her as a person, not just about getting it on." Sure, it's kind of like slow torture, but on the bright side, your short after-sex convo will have fulfilled your "deep talk" quota for at least 24 hours.

"So, uh, what's your name again?"
We know what you're thinking: Are you people crazy? But hear us out. Clearly, you don't want to use this line on a girl you just met, but if you bust it out on a woman you've been with for a while, she'll get a good laugh.

"Sex is supposed to be fun, not something to take seriously all the time," says Morrissey. "By making a silly joke after sex, you're bringing playfulness and humor into your lust life." Not only will your wisecrack lighten the mood, but it also will make you fee] more bonded because it shows you can get intensely sexual, then truly let loose together.

By: Benjamin, Jennifer, Cosmopolitan, Oct2006

Hooray for DDT's Life-Saving Comeback

2006-10-24T18:33:00.000+02:00

By John Stossel, Human Events, 10/9/2006

Who says there's never any good news? After more than 30 years and tens of millions dead—mostly children—the World Health Organization (WHO) has ended its ban on DDT. DDT is the most effective imti-mosquito, anti-malaria pesticide known. But thanks lo the worldwide environmental movement and politically correct bureaucrats in the United States and at the United Nations, the use of this benign chemical has been discouraged in Africa and elsewhere, permitting killer mosquitoes to spread death. 1 don't expect any apologies from the people who permitted this to happen. But I am thankful this nightmare is ending.

DDT was banned by President Richard Nixon's Environmental Protection Agency in the early 1970s, after Rachel Carson's book. Silent Spring, claimed to show that DDT threatened human health as well as bird populations. But some scientists found no evidence for her claims. Even if there was danger to bird eggs, the problem was the amount of DDT used, not the chemical itself.

Environmental Hysteria Huge amounts of the chemical were sprayed in America. I've watched oid videos of people at picnics who just kept e^ing while trucks sprayed thick white clouds of DDT on top of them. Some people even ran toward the truck—as if it were an ice-cream truck—they were so happy to have mosquitoes repelled. Tons of DDT were sprayed on food and people. Despite this overuse, there was no surge in cancer or any other human injury.

Nevertheless, the environmental hysteria led to DDT's suppression in Africa, where its use had been dramatically reduc ing deaths. American foreign aid could be used to finance ineffective alternative anti-maiaria methods, but not DDT. Within a short time, the mosquitoes and malaria reappeared, and deaths skyrocketed. Tens of millions of people have died in that time. DDT advocates pointed out that the ban amounted to mass murder. But they could not move the rich, white environmental dogmatists who rcflexively condemn all kinds of chemicals and presumably lost no sleep when millions of poor African children died.

But now this has changed. Last month, the WHO announced that it supports indoor spraying of DDT and other insecticides "not only in epidemic areas but also in areas with constant and high malaria transmission, including throughout Africa." "The scientific and programmatic evidence clearly supports this reassessment," said Dr. Anarfi Asamoa-Baah. WHO assistant director-general for HIV/AIDS. TB and malaria, "DDT presents no health risk when used properly." WHO now calls DDT the "most effective" pesticide for indoor use. Some environmental groups have also changed their anti-DDT tune, including Greenpeace, Environmental Defense and the Sierra Club. Last year, Greenpeace spokesman Rick Hind told the New York Times, "If there's nothing else and it's going to save lives, we're all for it. Nobody's dogmatic about it."

Blood on Their Hands That's easy to say now. But what about all the people who died when groups such as Greenpeace dogmatically refused to budge on the ban? Might an apology be in order? Junk-science debunker Steven Miiloy. an adjunct scholar with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, wonders why the environmentalists took so long to change their minds. "There are no new facts on DDT—all the relevant science about DDT safety has been available since the 1960s," Milloy says.

Miiloy adds: "It might be easy for some to dismiss the past 43 years of ecohysteria over DDT with a simple 'never mind,' except for the blood of millions of people dripping from the hands of the WWF [World Wildlife Fund], Greenpeace. Rachel Carson, Environmental Defense Fund and other junk-science-fueied opponents of DDT."

Miiloy reminds us that the same people who spread DDT hysteria are now pushing the global-warming scare. "If they and others could be so wrong about DDT. why should we trust them now?" That's a fair question. For now, let's celebrate the coming elimination of malaria in Africa.

The Lowdown on Loveaholics

2006-10-23T03:57:00.000+02:00

The only thing that may be worse than a guy who avoids commitment is one who is lost without it

You probably know the type — in fact, you may have dated him a dude who moves from one megaserious relationship to another without taking a breather. If this brand of love behavior had a poster boy, it surely would be actor Chad Michael Murray. He split from his wife of five months, Sophia Bush, last September, and by April, he already was engaged to 18-year-old Kenzie Dalton. Ben Affleck, Tom Cruise, and Brad Pitt's romances have also had a 0 to 60 trajectory. Cosmo decided to get to the heart of why some men seem to have a hopeless addiction to love.

Surprisingly, experts say, love has little to do with it. "Some men are codependent and insecure and need the personal affirmation and stability that comes with being in a relationship," explains Jay Carter, PsyD, author of Nasty Men. More often though, serial monogamists are thrill seekers who get off on the rush of new romances. "They get caught up in initial feelings of lust and infatuation…and put their partners on a pedestal," says Carter. When reality sets in and they realize their new mates have flaws like everyone else, these guys can't get out of the relationship fast enough. Then they leap headfirst into yet another union to keep their romance high going.

While in hot pursuit of this early-love buzz, these guys don't take the time to measure their true compatibility with a partner. And worse, when the relationship inevitably falls apart, they don't pause to figure out why it didn't work.

So what do you do if you fall for a guy who has all the signs of a loveaholic? Bob Berkowitz, PhD, author of What Men Won't Tell You but Women Need to Know, says to tread carefully. "If he's had a slew of back-to-back serious relationships, there's a good chance you'll end up being another one on that list."

After a relationship ends, these guys don't pause to figure out why it failed.

By: Rotchford, Lesley, Cosmopolitan, Oct2006

Attention! Your Contention . . . Please

2006-10-09T21:32:00.000+02:00

By Terry W Sako

The onlookers are restless; the stall in the action has made them fidgety. They shift uncomfortably in their chairs, and their disgruntled murmurs echo from the walls of the confines. The air, electrically charged from the tension, seems to hum like a dynamo, and hangs heavy like swamp fog.

At a table sit we two, а la Russian roulette—bright, blazing lights overhead. Nervous sweat drips into my eyes, and my hand trembles as I take large gulps of water to slake my parched gullet. Every tendon in my body strains with the inflexibility of steel cable, in turn bunching my muscles and making them cramp. I strive to ignore the pain in my keester from hunkering in the hard wooden chair.

I’m gettin’ to old for this.

I gaze at my opponent, trying to get a line on her, but she is about as readable as the Rosetta Stone.

Then I scowl at her, trying to intimidate—to bend her will to mine—but no inch is given. Ominous, drab tombstones materialize out of the depths of her eyes—my name etched on the slabs—then fade away.

Finally, the showdown continues, and the crowd breathes a collective sigh.

I drum my fingers on the table, trying to break her concentration, and she flashes me a look of defiance. I sigh deeply and look down to the floor, the classic fake out of giving up, in a last-ditch attempt to throw her off.

Then, at that very moment, I look back up and meet her eyes, blazing fires burning in my pupils.

She grins at me, feral. I am predator, she conveys. You . . . are . . . prey.

I mentally implode, humbled by the swell of her confident vibes. Knowing what is coming next, I want to jump up and flee the scene. But I instead remain to accept my karma.

And as I hear my granddaughter Desiree’s dreaded utterance, my body wiggles like a worm on a hook.

"Go fish, Grampa!"

Funny Photoshop

2006-10-09T20:17:00.000+02:00

Blogs Put Businesses on Web Search Map

2006-10-09T19:47:00.000+02:00

Hunting for ways to boost revenue, a growing number of small businesses are adding another weapon to their marketing arsenal: blogging.

A blog lures more traffic to a company's website because it improves chances the site will reach the top of search-engine results. Blogs are easier and cheaper to update than conventional sites. And they encourage customer feedback on new products and services.

"Every company needs a blog,'' says Brian Brown, a self-employed blogging consultant at Pajama Market in Janesville, Wis., who has reviewed dozens of small-business blogs.

There are now millions of blogs, with an estimated 70,000 created daily.

Short for "Web log," blogs are online diaries with links to other websites and blogs. Most allow readers to post comments, making them more interactive than traditional websites, says Andy Wibbels, author of Blog Wild! A Guide for Small Business Blogging.

Sign-maker Joseph Iles, 37, has been blogging for two years at his Lincoln Sign Co. in Lincoln, N.H. And he's already seen a payoff. Iles attributes $33,000 in sales last year, or about 10% of total revenue, to customers he found through his Signs Never Sleep blog.

"If you can send an e-mail, you can do a blog," he says. "It's simple."

--- New small businesses spotlight products and get customer feedback

Blogs that got high marks from small-business blog consultant Brian Brown of Pajama Market in Janesville, Wis.:

Freewheel Bike, Minneapolis

Bike retailer founded in 1974, with 10 to 40 employees, depending on season. Blogging for two years.

Blog address: http://freewheelbike.com/page.cfm?PageID=121

What Brown likes: Variety of entries is good, with stories about employees and items on fixing bikes.

What Freewheel says: General manager Mike Roering and four other employees write entries showcasing the store's special bicycles. Customers have ordered bikes they saw on the blog. An employee attending this year's Tour de France wrote about the experience.

Lincoln Sign Co., Lincoln, N.H.

Sign shop started in 1972. Six employees. Blogging for two years.

Blog address: http://www.signsneversleep.typepad.com/

What Brown likes: Generous number of photos. Headlines are among the best-written Brown has seen.

What Lincoln says: The blog lets customers see how signs are made. Plus, co-owner Joseph Iles says writing about his shop caused him to think more about bolstering customer service. He writes all entries and takes all the photos, spending an average of 30 minutes a day on it.

Mani's Bakery Cafe, Los Angeles

Bakery started in 1988. About 40 workers. Blogging for 14 months.

Blog address: http://www.manisbakery.com/blogcafe/

What Brown likes: Frequent and varied entries such as recipes, diet advice and stories about employees and customers. It's well-organized, with easy-to-find search box and a place for readers to leave comments.

What Mani's says: Eight employees write entries, taking turns on a weekly schedule. The blog boosted revenue. But it was mostly created to give customers a place to offer feedback, says co-owner Carl Avery. --- 4 QUESTIONS What software do I use?

There are dozens of programs, says Andy Wibbels, author of Blog Wild! A Guide for Small Business Blogging. Google and others offer inexpensive, sometimes free, versions, including Blogger, TypePad, Movable Type and WordPress.

Who contributes to the blog?

The author can be the owner, an employee or several employees. In any case, contributors must write well and -- most important -- show they care about the company.

"It's that passion that wakes people up," Wibbels says. It tells readers: "There's a real person on the other side of the world who works there."

Some companies assign the blog to the marketing department or an outside publicist. That's risky if the writer fails to create the more casual tone that blog readers expect.

Consultant Brian Brown estimates that of the 80 small-business blogs he's reviewed, 80% are written by one person, usually the owner.

What should I write about?

A little bit of everything. A restaurant chef could reveal how she created a new dish. A dog trainer might write about a customer's frustrations living with a new puppy.

Good blogs are varied in subject and length of entries. "It's this crazy idea that maybe you should talk to your customers like your friends," Wibbels says.

How often should I write?

A new entry, or "post," each day would be terrific. If that's too ambitious for business owners juggling multiple responsibilities, Brown recommends at least three posts a week. Readers are more likely to return to a blog if they find fresh material. Plus, one of a blog's main functions is adding pages to a company's otherwise static website. Sites with lots of pages and many incoming and outgoing links are more likely to appear near the top of search-engine results.

Small Business Connection

It's a monthly series about managing small companies. Earlier installments at www.smallbiz.usatoday.com/ Got an idea? E-mail USA TODAY's Jim Hopkins at jhopkins@usatoday.com.

Join the conversation about small-business management on our Small Business Connection blog at http://smallbizblog.usatoday.com/ Posts you'll see this week:

"We have considered starting a blog, and undoubtedly will within the next six months or so. I recognize the value of blogs to help people find my website."

--Suzanne Hetts, co-owner, Animal Behavior Associates, Littleton, Colo.

"A blog would have to be tremendously entertaining for our customers or employees to bother reading it."

Source: USA Today, SEP 20, 2006

Super Success Stories

2006-10-09T19:14:00.000+02:00

Erin Matson, 25
Youngest president of a state chapter of the National Organization for Women, Minnesota

TAKING ACTION: At age 7, she advocated for her first cause: whether or not to declaw the family cat. "I've always [taken] action for things I believe in. I went on to write articles about sex discrimination for my high school newspaper."

SECRET OF SUCCESS: "I set my alarm clock on weekends. Yuck!"

Liz Funk, 17
Youth organizer

TAKING ACTION: When Liz couldn't find a group in her school that promoted a positive body image for girls, she started one. This group went on to help her stage a successful protest of MTV in Times Square in New York City. Ironically, the protest was aired on MTV.

SECRET OF SUCCESS: "I don't watch TV, and I study like a maniac."

Amita Kulkarni, 18
Youth Council chair, American Red Cross of Northwest New Jersey

TAKING ACTION: "Through my volunteer work with the American Red Cross, I've become passionate about [preventing] measles and HIV/AIDS. I [now] want to pursue a career in medicine. I've learned that people my age really can make a difference:'

SECRET OF SUCCESS: "I prioritize everything I do. And if I don't have time, I won't commit."

Matthew Axelrod, 25
Country director, North Africa and Egypt, U.S. Department of Defense

TAKING ACTION: Axelrod credits his high school public speaking club for helping him develop the skills he uses daily in his job.

SECRET OF SUCCESS: "I help other people out. That way, they're more likely to help me if I need it."

Source: Career World, Sep2006

Working with tiny things offers giant opportunities for almost everyone

2006-10-09T19:05:00.000+02:00

Suppose you are so inspired by the article you are about to read that you decide to devote your life to nanotechnology. You go into this exciting new field and work for more than 30 years. Finally, the day comes when you retire. You look back with pride on a remarkable body of work---and everything you worked on fits inside the period at the end of this sentence.

The things that nanotechnologists work on are small--so small they're measured in nanometers, Or billionths of a meter. How small is that? Well, take a look at the model car on the next page. It's made of just one molecule, 3 to 4 nanometers across. A line of 26,000 such "nanocars" would barely stretch across a human hair.

But small doesn't mean unimportant. Just ask the U.S. government, which has poured more than $5 billion into nano research since 2001. "Because of nanotech, we will see more change in our civilization in the next 30 years than we did during all of the 20th century," says Mihail Roco of the National Science Foundation.

Secrets of the Small
Hold on. Isn't everything made of atoms and molecules? What's so special about buildingwith tiny components? What's special is that never before have we been able to control things precisely at that level. Until now, manufacturing nano products has been "like trying to make things with LEGO blocks while wearing boxing gloves," says Ralph Merkle, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "You can push the LEGO blocks into heaps, but you can't really snap them together the way you'd like." Now nanotechnologists are learning to snap them together--and finding that nano stuff has surprising characteristics.

Consider the carbon atoms that make up pencil lead, for instance. Roll those same atoms into nano-size tubes and you get a material 100 times stronger than steel. Someday you might find such carbon nanotubes in bulletproof uniforms for soldiers or an elevator that ascends into space. You might find nanotubes in power lines, because they're exceptional conductors of electricity, and in hydrogen-powered cars, because they seem able to store hydrogen like a sponge.

Already you can find nanomaterials in certain products--in some sunscreens, scratch-resistant eyeglass coatings, and premium tennis rackets. But scientists are still figuring out the nanoworld. So in general, nanotechnology is still something you find in a lab. According to the National Science Foundation, however, so many companies will begin making nano things in the next 15 years that, together, they will employ 2 million people worldwide.

Getting a Nano Life
By the time you finish school, you will most likely have a broad choice of nano careers. You might, for example, design minute crystals called quantum dots, which convert sunlight into electricity, or computer chips that hold billions of transistors (the best today hold about 100 million). Have a flair for fashion? You might work with nanoclothing, now that researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come up with a nanofiber that changes color when zapped by an electric current.

How can anyone prepare for so many options? "Take math and a lot of science," advises James Tour, a professor of chemistry at Rice University in Houston. "In the past, biologists spoke a different language than physicists, who spoke a different language than chemists. The beautiful thing about nano is that it unites all of these subjects."

Following that advice might lead to a career as a research scientist with an advanced degree. But suppose your strengths lie elsewhere? According to employment experts, the field will soon have room for just about everyone. A born leader, for example, might get a business degree and oversee production teams. A detail person might work in quality control. A good arguer might become a lawyer, protecting his or her company's rights and inventions. And writers will certainly be needed to tell potential customers-and the world in general--what's going on in the field of nanotechnology. Community colleges train the experts who operate, maintain, and repair the incredibly precise equipment that controls nanomaterials.

Whatever path you take, stick with it, and you might eventually get to work on some really amazing stuff. Experts predict that by mid-century we may have nanorobots that patrol the bloodstream, fixing damaged cells. The future may hold nanocomputers made of biological molecules like DNA and even nanomachines that assemble themselves.

Does that seem unlikely? Well, how did you start off? You began as a single cell--a nanomachine--that assembled itself into a person.

FAST FACT
Without nanotechnology, there would be no iPod. Sales of products that use nanotechnology may reach $2.6 trillion in 2014.

FAST FACT
If a nanoparticle were the size of a soccer ball, then a chicken wound be the same size as Earth.

Source: Wellcome Trust

As The Table Turns

2006-10-09T19:00:00.000+02:00

By Deborah Russell

I closed my gallery and studio, in Salisbury, Maryland, in order to become a stay at home mom for my two grandsons.

I was tired of being stressed over the quality of daycare, and having to constantly wonder, if the personnel was educated enough to handle the responsibility of caring for pre-school and school aged children.

Instead of dressing in my work clothes or gallery reception finest, I decided to wear the “mom’s” uniform, become the family “martyr” and raise my energetic, loving and creative grandsons.

Maintaining a household and raising two rambunctious boys began to seem like a daydream, compared to the overwhelming amount of energy and work it takes when organizing exhibits, meeting public relations deadlines, attending numerous meetings each week, coordinating arts related events and providing “equal” wall space for thirty six visual artists.

My “job/career” of motherhood was just coming to an end, like the light at the end of a tunnel, my youngest daughter was fourteen and the decision did not come easy, to give up what I enjoy and love, to return to the role of super-mom.

I thought about the pros and cons for nearly six months before taking the final plunge. Since my strongest work background was “motherhood”, I felt my experience would make the job easier this time around. I would learn that thought could not have been further from the truth.

Like most stay-at-home moms, I had become “the home-maker” that I always dreaded. I was like a mega Betty Crocker; cook, maid, chief bottle washer, taxi driver, disciplinarian, nurse, playmate, mediator, counselor and tutor - twenty four - seven.

I admit, motherhood has its glorious and wonderful moments and had it not been for those sweet, precious moments (usually while they were asleep) I might have “jumped ship” and swam to the nearest tropical island. But, I stuck to the helm and battened down the hatches… and yelled, “Steady as she goes!”

Though, more often, I would be the odd one, in a crowd, that would say, “Isn’t motherhood the most rewarding and satisfying experience any woman could dream of having?” (Humm, not that I believed it entirely, but some say if you lie to yourself, enough, you start to believe the lie.

Why is it that career women put ambitions, careers and earning potential on hold to care for their husbands, children and grandchildren? What moves them to do this? They aren't the ones missing a chromosome, so it makes no sense...

Personally, I wanted something more for my grandsons, I wanted them to learn family responsibility, family ethics and to learn the home is the center of the universe and the table is the heart of the home.

And what a crock, that turned out to be. The general concept may be realistic and mostly true for the first few years, but believe me, that table turns quickly into a battlefield for homework, for the first and last word, and even for the last piece of any dessert.

So, in my “dream of motherhood”, instead of reviewing slides of paintings, sculpture and photography, I found myself checking small mouths, which grew to large mouths, to see if teeth were brushed. I became a connoisseur; taste – testing boy friendly vegetables and meals and became the head inspector, checking the consistency and depth of muddy socks and dirty underwear on bedroom floors.

I was no longer approached with resumes, publicity photos or promotional material, but with salamanders, unusual bouquets, pinecones, fishing nets and totally “boy”, 101 riddle and joke books.

The reality is, taking on the responsibility of motherhood is an experience that causes deep emotional attachment but, at the same time, you might strangely find yourself dreaming of the real glamour of life; data entry, answering phones, meeting clients and meeting PR deadlines to arts councils, news media and businesses.

One thing becomes evident, the gains do not seem to equal the loss. Motherhood is a full-time, terribly difficult job, which makes constant demands on your time and energy. There is no longer a question of what should be prioritized, because the obvious answer is always “children first”.

The nights you dream your husband will come in and sweep you off your feet with a bottle of wine, a fire, in the fireplace, and soft, romantic music become non-existent. He no longer knows who you are, nor does he care.

Your nights are filled with making dinner, doing dishes, last minute homework assignments, dirty clothes and a multitude of children’s activities; ie: music lessons, riding lessons, PTA meetings, chaperoning school trips, dances and organizing social calendars around school, holidays, birthdays, family deaths, injuries and dental and doctor appointments.

There is no time for the person you were (and inside, still was) because that person does not exist in the mystical realm of motherhood. Makeup becomes a luxury and when you have time to wear it, everyone becomes suspicious and wants to know where you are going, why and when are you coming back.

There is no money for pedicures, manicures, getting your hair done, so often you have three or four shades of blond, brown to sun-bleached red with about a ј inch of black and grey roots - you have given up on beauty secrets to divulge the “real” you: baggy eyes, tight lines around your mouth and lots of ugly, ill fitting clothes.

Your diet becomes ridiculous; you eat Oreos, dozens, out of the bag and over the sink between taxi rides to and from school. You eat macaroni and cheese (the nasty kind in the blue box that kids love) by the small Pyrex bowlfuls, without heating it in the microwave. You eat smores cereal instead of having that delightful, mixed green salad with Raspberry-Pecan vinaigrette that you so loved. In other words, the beauty of motherhood is non existent and it does nothing for your complexion or figure.

Motherhood is not glamorous, endearing or even rewarding, especially after the children become ten, eleven years old and decide that not only are you unattractive, your hair is fuzzy and your jeans are outdated, you are the most stupid person they have ever met. Really, how uncool is that?

Oh, did I mention killing the ego??? Well motherhood is notorious for teaching us that women are merely the fly specks on the screen of the home front. By age 12 and 13, the mother IS the family’s best kept secret.

Mom is no longer allowed to drop the kids off at the front door of the school, but can drop them off one-block away, if she promises (and crosses her heart, three times) to leave ASAP. She also must walk two aisles away when ever they are in a store together, or better yet; is “allowed” (by unanimous decision) to go to Starbucks while they trek off to the arcade and game room.

I’ve decided that all my worries, for their “formative years” being destroyed and defined by a stranger, were for nothing. They would have been better off raised in the wild by wolves or at least by one of those mythological creatures they were so fascinated with.

Hindsight tells me, childcare would be a wonderful and probably the best decision for any child, when they reach the middle-school years.

By the way, I think I have finally reached the age where I’d be a little embarrassed to be seen with them, but I’m still willing to take that chance.

Cute Twins

2006-09-10T12:23:00.000+02:00

Interesting Facts about American States

2006-09-10T11:06:00.000+02:00

Interesting facts about Colorado Alaska Alabama Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Massachusetts Maine Maryland Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Puerto Rico Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Virgin Islands Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

Prohibition of Coke and Pepsi

2006-09-07T09:42:00.000+02:00

The selling of Coca Cola and Pepsi has been prohibited in the Istanbul Convention & Exhibition Center, which hosts 1.5 million people annually.

The first Turkish prohibition for Coca Cola and Pepsi, which had been previously prohibited in Latvia, India and a university in England based on the claim that they contained some hazardous materials, came from a civil society in Turkey. Mustafa Ozbey, who changed the name of "My Showland "to" the Istanbul Convention & Exhibition Center, prohibited the sales of the popular soft drinks in his show center stemming from the desire to be a good role model and protect Turks from pollutants.

Ozbey stressed that the health of Turkish people was at least as important as the health of a Hindu or Latvian and added there would not be Coca Cola or Pepsi in any part of the convention center, which begins its next season in September. Ozbey said all of the canteens and kiosks around the center belonged to them, and added, "Even if we hire them out, we will assert our conditions in this frame." Ozbey said the Istanbul Convention & Exhibition Center was the second biggest convention center in the world and the biggest in Europe, and added: "About 30-40 percent of our visitors drink Coca Cola or Pepsi every year and, in fact, we earn a lot from these sales. Even if we only took advertisements from Coca Cola we could earn more; however, the health of Turkish people is more important for us."

Ozbey said great amounts of money leave Turkey due to the cola and cigarette industry, and added: "None of these kinds of goods will be available in our convention center until it is proven that they do not harm people's health."

Al-Azhar University Advises Against Colas

Leading Egyptian University al-Azhar advised against drinking Coca Cola and Pepsi, which have been prohibited in some countries recently. Vice Rector of al-Azhar Abduldaim Nasir relayed the news issued al-Medina Daily in Saudi Arabia that both of these colas included materials produced fro m pork. One of the leading intellectuals in the Islam world, Professor Abdulhalim Uveys, noted that Muslim intellectuals had previously released fatwas that the drinks produced by these trademarks were forbidden according to Islamic food regulations. Uveys said he also thought in the same way, and added: "Coca Cola has some alcohol ingredients and Pepsi has some pork ingredients. Also, the soft drinks produced by these two companies should not be drunk because, first of all, they harm people, as alcohol and cigarettes do; and secondly, drinking them can be considered unnecessary because there are no health benefits. And maybe the most important thing here is that both of these companies support Israel."

zaman.com

Learning Mother Love

2006-09-04T14:11:00.000+02:00

It's a shiny bright apple of a day in San Francisco and the three of us--me, my husband, Jeff, and our one-year-old son, Max--are at a concert. He's in red corduroy overalls and a striped shirt, his hair long and golden as the day ahead of us. The concert's been going on for an hour already, and the whole time Max has been content to sit on his father's lap, enthralled by the music. Already, a woman has come over to compliment us on our well-behaved baby. "What a love!" she coos, chucking Max under the chin. Someone else crouches and snaps his picture. And then Jeff says quietly, "I have to pee."

We both know what that means. He lifts Max up and sets him on my lap. Startled, Max looks around wildly. Jeff hastens to the bathroom, and Max begins to scream.

He wails when I try to rock him. He tries to peel himself off my body when I croon. And when I stand, trying to dance with him, he flails his hands. "Is he okay?" the person next to us asks with great concern, and I nod. "Colic," I lie, my mouth quivering. "A little stomach bug."

I walk with Max, trying to get away from the concerned stares, and then suddenly there's Jeff. He takes Max, and all the crying stops. We sit back down. I feel everyone's eyes upon me--even though no one may even be looking. I keep my head down, blinking hard, biting on the edge of my lip so I won't cry. My own son screams when I try to hold him. What kind of mother am I?

I halfheartedly hand Max a pacifier and he swats it out of my grasp. "Fine," I snap. "Do without:'

Jeff blinks at me. "He's a baby," he whispers. "You know better."

I did know better. I knew that for the first three months of Max's life, I was critically ill in a hospital, so all the bonding we were supposed to do just never happened. I knew that for the next three months I was still too sick to hold him, to feed him, to do more than talk to him. Babies can recognize their moms by scent. But this particular baby was more likely to recognize his blanket than he was me, simply because he had had more contact with it. The truth was, I didn't really know him. He didn't really know me. And what's more, he didn't seem to like me and I hadn't a clue what to do about it other than to sometimes, to my great shame and bewilderment, not like him back.

I tried, but I wasn't always a good mother. I didn't look the part, my hair falling out, my skin gray, bloated from the steroids I had to take for my illness, a postpartum condition that kept my blood from clotting. To bond with my baby, I began to care for him, changing his diapers when he'd let me, giving him his bottle because I was too sick to breast-feed. One day, I was leaning over him, tickling him with my hair trying to get him to laugh, when a hank of it slid off my head, dusting his belly. Horrified, I grabbed for the hair the same time Max did. I jerked it out of his hand so hard, he whimpered. Within minutes, we both were weeping.

Jeff soothed me. My friends soothed me. "Mothering is exhausting," a friend told me. "One day I was so tired, I put Sammy in the laundry hamper and left him there" She quickly added, "But I took him right out. Don't be so hard on yourself."

How could I be any less?

It was Jeff who pushed us together, who made himself scarce. Max, of course, was not happy, which, in turn, made me tense. But I was determined. I tried to do all the right things: to read to him, to splash him in his bath, to keep a smile on my face. One day, when I was reading to him, we both fell asleep on the bed together, and when we woke, we were gazing into each other's eyes and I felt the shock of connection. He lifted his small hand, like a starfish, and laid it against my cheek. He snuggled against me, and though I wasn't sleepy anymore, you couldn't have moved me with a forklift.

The great myth is that mother love comes instantly, as natural as breathing. Oh, maybe it does, for the lucky ones. All I know is that, as they say, "we wuz robbed," Max and me. We were robbed of parts of each other we needed, of that early, magic thrill of getting to know each other right from the start. Maybe bonding isn't easy or natural for anyone, but we never even got the chance. I missed out on the first few months, the plans I had had to read to him, to talk with him, the time I had arranged to be no one's but his. And he missed out, too. He had the adoration of his Dad and his grandmothers and a devoted baby nurse. But he didn't have me. And when we finally got to have each other, we both found a stranger in our midst. We both had to grapple with a person you get to know, you come to love.

Max is eight now. We spend almost all our time together, and I take nothing for granted. We're the love of each other's lives. I know the struggle it took to get there, I know what it cost both of us, and maybe that's what makes it all the more sweet. I listen to him. I make him laugh, and every time he calls for me or seeks me out or takes my hand, I feel undone by my happiness.

By: Leavitt, Caroline, Psychology Today, Aug2006

Make Your Diet Healthier - Overnight

2006-09-03T22:54:00.000+02:00

Easy tweaks that can transform your eating habits from so-so to super-healthy in just 24 hours

By now, you've heard the same advice a thousand times: Eat more vegetables. Drink more water. Don't skip breakfast. Seems so easy, right? Yes, in a perfect world, but life is complicated -and hectic! Even the healthiest women stray from their eat-right resolutions when they get caught up in day-to-day details. "One of the major reasons women don't follow their good intentions is because making the right choices can seem too overwhelming and time-consuming when you're busy," says Molly Kimball, R.D., nutritionist at Ochsner Health System's Elmwood Fitness Center in New Orleans. We at Shape know this all too well — which is why we broke down the most important healthy eating rules into the easiest possible steps. They're so simple, in fact, that you can transform your diet in no time.

IN THE MORNING

Prepare a quick smoothie. Sure, you'd love to sit down with a bowl of oatmeal — but you're already late for that 9 a.m. meeting. You still need to eat because a morning meal provides energy and keeps you from overindulging throughout the day. What to do? Whip up this on-the-go breakfast: Toss fruit, yogurt, ice and milk into a blender and zap until frothy. (If you like, mix in a tablespoon of peanut butter for more protein and a teaspoon of honey for sweetness.) For those times you're running really late, store some energy bars (for our picks, see "Best of the Bars," page 154) in your desk drawer.
Pop your multi while you eat Taking one ensures you cover all your vitamin bases — no matter how crazy your day gets. Plus, your body absorbs vitamins better with food, so swallow it with breakfast (even if it's a smoothie).
Order tea or coffee, straight up. Then flavor it yourself with a little bit of sweetener, a splash of skim milk and cinnamon. Barista-made beverages are often high in fat and sugar, which can eat up a big chunk of your daily calorie budget. For instance, a medium café mocha can have up to 400 calories. In fact, 21 percent of our calories come from beverages most of which don't offer much nutrition, reveals a recent study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. That's not good news for weight-conscious women because liquids don't satisfy your appetite as well as food. If you had a 300-calorie snack, chances are you'd eat less at your next meal. But have a 300-calorie drink and you're likely to eat just as much. "When given the choice, have something to eat instead of a beverage," says Christine Gerbstadt, M.D., R.D., owner of Nutronics, a nutrition consulting company based in Altoona, Pa.

AT THE OFFICE

Leave two pieces of fruit out on your desk. It's a visual reminder that you need to eat every three or four hours to keep your energy up throughout the day, says Roben F. Kushner, M.D., medical director of the Wellness Institute at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago and author of Dr. Kuskner's Personality Type Diet (St. Martin's Press, 2003). Hunger can cause you to think less clearly and can interfere with productivity. Protein can power you through the day, Gerbstadt says. For an extra energy boost, spread a little peanut butter on apples.
Take a sip of water every few minutes. Many women don't drink the recommended 8 cups of water a day, leaving them dehydrated — one of the most common reasons for daytime hunger and fatigue. In fact, just a 2 percent dip in hydration levels — right when you start to feel a little thirsty — reduces short-term memory and the ability to do simple math problems, reports a study published in the Archives of Environmental Health. Too often, women mistake this tiredness for hunger, and end up eating when they're really just parched. "You're more likely to drink something if it has a little flavor," says Kimball, who suggests adding a splash of cranberry juice to sparkling water or squeezing a slice of orange or lime into your bottle.

AT LUNCH

Don't watch the clock. You should eat when you're hungry, not when the clock tells you it's time for lunch. Some days, you'll want lunch at 11:30 a.m.; other days you might not be hungry until 1 p.m. — and that's okay. Heeding your internal hunger cues is essential for weight control, Gerbstadt says. If you're at the mercy of someone else's schedule — let's say you have a business lunch — adjust accordingly. If you're hungry before the meeting, have a 100- to 150-calorie snack to tide you over. If you have no appetite at the lunch, order something light (a salad or a bowl of soup) and plan to eat your real meal later on.
Take an actual lunch break. No matter how swamped you are during the day, step away from your computer and take 20 minutes to eat outside or in the break room. People who dine with distractions consume more than those who eat in peace, according to a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
At a restaurant, order a first course. The average restaurant meal contains 1,0002,000 calories — and that's without appetizers, bread, drinks or dessert, according to a research done by Healthy Dining, a San Diego-based company that helps restaurants slim down their menus. A surefire way to slash that number: Have a bowl of broth-based soup or a low-calorie salad first, so you'll eat less of the highercalorie main meal.
Stick to the two-carb rule. Carbohydrates cause your body to produce serotonin, a brain chemical that makes you feel drowsy. So earing more than two servings of refined carbs (a cup of white rice or pasta is one serving) in one sitting may leave you feeling sluggish.

DURING YOUR AFTERNOON ENERGY SLUMP

Brew a cup of green tea. Although visiting the coffee cart or soda machine sounds tempting for a quick pick-me-up, the instant boost you get will just leave you feeling even more drained. Green tea contains just enough caffeine to help you feel energized throughout the afternoon. Plus, it contains theanine, an amino acid that has a stress-reducing effect on the brain.
Have a salty-sweet treat. Instead of raiding the office candy jar, stash a bag of semisweet chocolate chips and peanuts in your desk drawer. Portion out 1 tablespoon each of the chips and nuts for a protein-filled snack for just 120 calories and 9 grams of fat. For a healthier treat, indulge in dark chocolate chips — they're higher in heart-healthy antioxidants.

AT DINNER

Follow the 2-to-1-to-l dinner ratio. Think of your dinner plate as two parts vegetables, one part starch and one part lean protein. "To maintain a healthy weight, you have to control portions," explains Amy P. Campbell, M.S., R.D., education program manager for the Disease Management Division at Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston. "This is a simple tool for watching your calories without having to measure anything." Piling on veggies first will leave less room for higher-calorie foods.
Leave the skins on. Rather than peeling your cucumbers and potatoes, or apples and pears for that matter, rinse them thoroughly and toss them into your dish as they are. The peels contain much of the nutritious antioxidants and fiber, Gerbstadt says.
Use quick-cooking grains. "You should get three or more servings of whole grains daily," Campbell advises. "Not just because of the additional fiber — they also contain B vitamins to help your body process food better so it can be used for energy." Fastcooking brown rice, whole-wheat couscous and quinoa take less than 15 minutes to make.

• Sneak in your veggies.
Instead of making a separate side dish, save some time and throw veggies into your main course. Some options: Add chopped broccoli or shredded carrots to a casserole, cook your rice in tomato juice or layer your lasagna with eggplant slices.

Raid your pantry. Too exhausted from your day to make a meal from scratch? In the rime it takes you to order in greasy Chinese takeout, you can throw together a no-fuss healthy meal with some kitchen staples: Toss together pasta, tuna fish, frozen peas, mustard, olive oil and pepper, or mix the pasta with spaghetti sauce and frozen spinach for a simple dinner.
Go ahead, have dessert.
Restrictive diets lead to deprivation, which can start a cycle of bingeing, weight gain and, feelings of guilt and shame, Kushner says. "Dismiss the idea of 'cheating'; there's nothing wrong about having a sliver of chocolate cake," he says. Instead of thinking I shouldn't have eaten that, resolve to eat a tiny bit less or take an extra-long walk during lunch tomorrow, and enjoy the rest of your evening.

Try not to work through lunch. Eating at your desk can cause you to take in extra calories.

Toss some chopped veggies into your casserole or main dish for extra nutrients.

shape shops

eating On the run? Try these 4 favorites

for lunch & snacks
The Wrapables Milano Lunch Tote ($20; http://wrapabfes.com/) is made of insulating neoprene to keep your sandwich and fruit cool till lunchtime.

to stay hydrated
Keep the Camel Bak Bottle ($14; http://camelbak.com/) on your desk so you'll sip all day long. The dishwashersafe flip-top bottle holds about 4 cups.

for salads on the go
Fit & Fresh's Salad Shaker ($10; fitfresh.com) contains an ice pack for keeping lettuce crisp, a compartment for utensils and a dressing cup and dispenser built right into the lid.

to keep smoothies cold
This insulated Raya by Thermos Tumbler ($13; http://thermos.com/). is made of an unbreakable polycarbonate plastic, so it will keep your coffee hot too.

slash your supermarket shopping time
A quick run to the grocery store can easily turn into an hour-long ordeal if you stop to study nutrition labels and figure out which brands are best to buy every time. Use these three healthy-eating guidelines to simplify your next trip to the supermarket.

Fill half of your basket with produce. Not only do fruits and veggies deliver nutrients and heart-healthy phytochemicals, they also help keep you slim. Several studies suggest an association between fruit and vegetable consumption and maintaining a healthy weight. "They have fewer calories per serving than many foods," says Ruth Litchfield, Ph.D., R.D., an assistant professor in the department of food science and human nutrition at Iowa State University in Ames. Plus, their high fiber content promotes a feeling of fullness. Don't forget about the frozen packages: They're just as healthy.
Pick up one new food each trip. "The key to eating healthy every day is not getting bored," advises Dawn Jackson Blatner, R.D., a weight-management specialist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. "So try new and different foods, like star fruit or a pomegranate. Don't know the first thing about fresh artichokes or okra? Throw some into your shopping cart and visit http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/5aday/month/index.htm for cooking suggestions. You may wind up with a favorite new dish!
Buy the little packages. Individually wrapped treats, like small bags of cookies or crackers, are pricer, but they're worth it if you're not a stickler about measuring out portions. (We know: It's far too easy to polish off half a box of crackers in one sitting!) For snacks, look for single-serving options that contain 100-150 calories.
Scan the shelves. Don't grab the first product you see. Many food manufacturers pay grocery stores to place their products at eye level, so you'll be more tempted to buy them. Take a few seconds to look around; often the healthier (and less costly) options are on the shelf above or below.

By: Gottesman, Nancy, Shape, Aug2006

Super Mouse

2006-09-02T01:12:00.000+02:00

Japanese Anecdotes

2006-09-01T15:24:00.000+02:00

By http://japan.freetraveler.net/

My father was taking a bath when he suddenly shouted, "Good heavens! I have a nosebleed coming from somewhere!"

I wonder, just where on my father could a "nosebleed" have come from...?

On the Hankyu Railway train, a boy of about 3 looked liked he had to pee.

Child: "Mama potty."

Mama: "Why don't you tell me sooner [hayaku]!"

Then the child thought of something and said rapidly [hayaku], "Mamapotty."

On the airplane to Okinawa, my father said pompously, "All of the islands of Okinawa have 'reference fish' [sanshouuo]!"

That should be "coral reef [fish]" [sangoshouuo]!!

On the "If I don't do it, who will?" sign inside a certain factory, the voicing marks on the ga of "who" were shaved off [changing dare ga, "who," to dare ka, "someone"] , making it "If I don't do it, someone will."

And this company's future will be....

The other day my sister was feeling blue because a boy had dumped her, so to comfort her my father meant to say "A person isn't [just] a face" but said "Your face isn't human."

My mother was watching TV when a beautiful female announcer came on. My mother said with a smile, "It'd be nice if someone like that married into our family."

But in my family the only guy is my father. Just who does my mother want a bride for?

At the confectioner's my mother asked for the country-style (crushed) sweet red-bean soup, and I asked for the strained sweet red-bean soup.

When the clerk asked, "Who (dochira) had the country-style (inaka)?" [but possibly "Where (dochira) is your hometown (inaka)?"], my mother answered instantly "Niigata prefecture."

During a marital spat, my father meant to say to my mother "Idiot!" [bakamono] but mistakenly shouted "Ghost!" [bakemono].

The quarrel got much worse.

When my mother gets a headache, she puts ice on her forehead.

Just the other day in the middle of the night, the pain got pretty severe. Through the darkness with her head swimming, she went to the kitchen. From the refrigerator she took out a plastic bag of ice that she'd put there in advance, put it on her forehead, and went back to sleep....

The next morning when she woke up, thawed squid had rolled onto her pillow.

One time when the family was gathered for dinner, my dad, who was mad about something, meant to say "Thanks to whom do you think you're able to eat this meal?!" but shouted "For whose benefit are you eating this meal?!"

My sister and I answered, "For our own benefit."

Hot Eyes Lol

2006-08-30T21:23:00.000+02:00

Wow!!! Though it and not a female thing, but I from it would not refuse! :-)

2006-08-26T12:34:00.000+02:00

Maybach Brabus SV 12

When I look into your eyes...

2006-08-25T18:50:00.000+02:00

Your memoey treasured in my heart
I can feel your breath, on the skin on my face
You don't know what you mean to me
but I don't need to show
how it suppose to be
I jus want to wishper some words
which I never tell you,
but you've ever heard

I loved you from the bottom of my heart
Not a single thing can make us apart
I jus do whatever says my heart
Let me jus hold you in mine in the dark
as its true love in my heart

When I think of you,
My heart-beats goes so fast
When I look into your eyes,
I feel your blushing art

I jus need to be so quite sometime
or I need to be loud at times,
I dont know what to do, where n' why
When I look into your eyes...

Ha!! That's Great!!!

2006-08-23T23:38:00.000+02:00

It has been known for many years that sex is good exercise, but until recently nobody had made a scientific study of the caloric expenditure of different sexual activities. Now after original and proprietary research they are proud to present the results.

REMOVING HER CLOTHES:
With her consent....................... 12 Calories
Without her consent.................... 187 Calories

OPENING HER BRA:
With both hands........................ 8 Calories
With one hand.......................... 12 Calories
With your teeth........................ 85 Calories

PUTTING ON A PROPHYLACTIC:
With an erection....................... 6 Calories
Without an erection.................... 315 Calories

PRELIMINARIES:
Trying to find the clitoris............ 8 Calories
Trying to find the G-Spot.............. 92 Calories

POSITIONS:
Missionary............................. 12 Calories
69 lying down.......................... 78 Calories
69 standing up......................... 112 Calories
Wheelbarrow............................ 216 Calories
Doggy Style............................ 326 Calories
Italian chandelier..................... 912 Calories

ORGASMING:
Real................................... 112 Calories
False.................................. 315 Calories

POST ORGASM:
Lying in bed hugging................... 18 Calories
Getting up immediately................. 36 Calories
Explaining why you got out of bed immediately......816 Calories

GETTING A SECOND ERECTION: If you are:
20-29 years old........................ 36 Calories
30-39 years............................ 80 Calories
40-49 years............................ 124 Calories
50-59 years............................ 972 Calories
60-69 years............................ 2916 Calories
70 and over......................... Results are still pending

DRESSING UP AFTERWARDS:
Calmly................................. 32 Calories
In a hurry............................. 98 Calories
With her father knocking at the door... 1218 Calories
With your wife knocking at the door.... 3521 Calories

Parents of twins, triplets and quadruplets provide support through their shared experience

2006-08-23T20:48:00.000+02:00

After a while, Stacia Schwarz got used to the stares, the comments from curious strangers and the occasional yell of "double trouble."

Ever since her identical twin daughters were born, her double stroller has become a magnet for attention. The twins are 3 years old now, and Schwarz has heard it all.

"I had one lady tell me the other day, 'I'm glad it's you and not me,' and I told her, 'Well, I'm glad it's me, too,' " said Schwarz, who lives in Overland Park.

Even though many mothers would not understand what it's like to have more than one baby at a time, Schwarz has a network of friends whose experiences are similar to hers. She's a member of Johnson County Mothers of Multiples -- parents of twins, triplets and even quadruplets who lend each other support, advice and secondhand baby supplies.

"It's just a great way to meet other people and families that you can bounce things off of and kind of figure out what you're doing when you're not sure what you're doing," said Marsha Golladay of Lenexa, a founder of the group.

The group got its start in 1998 after eight women branched off from the mother of multiples support group at Shawnee Mission Medical Center. The hospital group was primarily focused on infants, but the children of those moms were getting older.

Johnson County Mothers of Multiples grew by word of mouth and at the group's garage sales, where they recruited new members.

"We have just steadily gained momentum until the group now has close to 300 members, the sum of which includes twin and triplet moms and even a couple who have quads," said Golladay, whose fraternal twin girls are 11.

As the group grew, so did the garage sales. Every fall and spring, the group hosts a sale at a local church featuring items from 32 families.

"There's a tremendous amount of things because you figure everyone has two, three, four of everything," said Debbie Harris, who has 4-year-old fraternal twin boys. "When it's time to move on, you really just want to move on and clear everything out of your house."

Much of the parental interaction happens online at the group's message board at www.jcmoms.com. It allows bedridden moms-to-be and parents juggling babies on different schedules to chat anytime.

"The truth of the matter is, it's great to be surrounded by people who know exactly what you're going through and have figured out shortcuts or tricks of the trade," said Harris, of Overland Park.

The group meets offline, as well as at play sessions at Gymboree and parks. Members also coordinate a moms' night out, where the moms can enjoy a break and dinner with adults.

"None of us have known each other that long, but when you all have twins or triplets, we seem to bond really quickly," said Mo Edwards of Overland Park, the mother of 3-year-old identical twin boys.

They share advice, such as keeping charts to track feeding and changing, whether to put the babies in the same crib and how to manage 2-year-olds who haven't learned to share.

It's often more challenging to care for two babies than one, but Jessica Peters of Lenexa sees benefits now that her 3-year-old daughters are getting older.

"They're each other's companion, and now they can just play together," Peters said.

By: Uhlmansiek, Laura, Kansas City Star, The (MO), Aug 21, 2006

Favorite miracle max!

2006-08-23T19:43:00.000+02:00

By moosesgomoo22

Wives of British Sasians Dumped

2006-08-22T23:56:00.000+02:00

LONDON: Dozens of South Asian women have claimed their husbands have tried to get rid of them by duping them into travelling from Britain to the subcontinent and then abandoning them.

Lawyers and charities have taken up cases in which Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi women claim to have been tricked into giving up their passports and tickets, making it harder for them to re-enter Britain and rejoin their British-born children.

Experts say unscrupulous British South Asian men are using the ploy to avoid costly divorces and deny their wives the rights they have in Britain.

Anne-Marie Hutchinson, a lawyer at a London family law firm, said she had encountered 20 cases in the past 18 months involving wives born on the subcontinent and married to British South Asians, in which the wives had turned to British courts to try to gain custody of their children.

Ms Hutchinson said the racket was comparable to cases in which husbands fled abroad, taking the children with them.

``You could say it's abduction by a different means -- you take her away rather than the kids. It's a breach of human rights, forcibly separating a mother from her children.''

In May, a 22-year-old Indian-born wife of a British-born South Asian man told the High Court her husband's parents had lured her to India and abandoned her without a passport to cut her off from her baby daughter, who remained in Britain with her husband.

The man's parents had told the wife, who cannot be named for legal reasons, that her father was ill, but when she reached India she found him well and surprised by her visit.

The parents-in-law, after dropping the wife off with her relatives, flew back to Britain without telling her, leaving her without her passport, which they had always kept in their possession. The husband's family then claimed the wife had deserted her husband and child.

At a hearing on the case, the judge said: ``I am satisfied ... the father's family conspired and contrived to remove the mother from their family to India and to abandon her there and to keep her baby daughter for themselves. They have presented a thoroughly dishonest case to this court.''

Meena Patel, a worker at the charity Southall Black Sisters in west London, said cases were now coming to light because increased use of emails in Pakistan had made it easier for abandoned wives to make contact with charities and lawyers.

In many cases the wives are able to return to Britain, but often after long delays.

A spokesman for the Foreign Office said cases of spouse abandonment in South Asia appeared to be on the rise, with 45 cases in the past year, in one of which a man was duped.

Source: Australian, The, AUG 22, 2006

U.S. Male. Lol!!!!

2006-08-21T14:32:00.000+02:00

By Sander van Bussel

Grandpa

2006-08-15T19:35:00.000+02:00

A small boy was lost at a large shopping mall.

He approached a uniformed policeman and said, "I've lost my grandpa"

The cop asked, "What's he like?"

The little boy replied, "Jack Daniels and women with big tits."

Already Whole

2006-08-09T22:11:00.000+02:00

God save me
For my soul plunges
Without my permission.
I fell in love
With my distorted reflection;
Everything I’m not,
All that I need.

You make my heart beat
You make my heart break
For you, I’d make it stop.
That’s what my god will do
When I show my face,
Damnation for adoration,
Hardly a fair exchange.

How can you ask this of me
When another shares your blood,
Split down the middle
Sixty – forty.
I can’t risk it all
When you’re fractured.

I stagger, cough,
Choke.
I carry my life in my hands
Bleeding, beating, ripped
From my body.
I lay my love before you,
But you
You brought a lock of hair,
An eyelash, two,
Expendable.

Is that what I am?
I brought what you are;
My love, my life.
And you shuffle your feet
Look around coyly,
Pretend not to feel
The hot professions below you.

I’m your weeknight whore.
But I answer the call
Drive the distance
Every time.

I ache to spend every clock stroke
In your bed
Curled next to you
Just to breathe your air.
I have found my other half
But you’re already whole.

© j. Thompson

Ali's Review: Heart of the Woolf

2006-08-06T16:19:00.000+02:00

Heart of the Woolf

By: Kai Andersen

Published by: Loose Id

Length: Eight Inches. Read this story and you'll understand ;-) 142 pgs.

Ali's Report Card: A+

Adrienne Lee can no longer contain her carnal fantasies for her boss, Jake Woolf, behind her cool facade. And it's getting harder for Jake to hide his growing arousal for Adrienne, as well. Especially, when you add to the fact that he's and empath werewolf, and can both sense and smell her arousal. But is he ready for another relationship after the last time?
When working together on a project, Jake comes over to Adrienne's house and feeds more than her appetite for food. And while Adrienne doesn't mind sharing her body and bed with Jake, she'll have a harder time sharing her heart. Afterall, how will Jake handle it when he finds out she's into menage-a-trois?
When it becomes evident that someone is out to get her, Adrienne will question the loyalties of those she trust. Everyone around her seems to be hiding something, even her new bedmate.
Heart of the Woolf by Kai Andersen is a great suspenseful erotic romance. From the beginning of the story, it is filled with hot sex and chemistry between Jake and Adrienne. Jake is an alpha werewolf and because of his empath werewolf, has a kind heart. Right away his protective instincts kick in when he sees that Adrienne is in trouble. What more could a female ask for than a man who can read your thoughts and desires?
Adrienne isn't one to ask for help lightly. She's very strong and capable of taking care of herself, but realizes when to accept a helping hand. Especially when that hand belongs to Jake Woolf. Adrienne's fantasies liven this story up as you read about the predicament she's in when she starts to mix reality with fantasy.
The suspense in this story is edge of your seat. Just when you think you know who the bad guys are, Kai has found a way to change things up. Her writing leaves your heart pounding in the action scenes, both the sexy and suspensful ones. This story is the perfect mix of action, suspense and erotic romance.
And you'll just love how Jake deals with Adrienne's sexual need and the creative way he brings it to their bedroom. Oh, the ideas you'll get from this story, trust me they're good.
I have found another writer to add my list of authors to bug with my e-mails. Kai better be ready for me to start begging for her next Woolf story, as I'm sure you'll want to after you finish reading this story.
You can learn more about Kai Andersen and her stories at www.kai-andersen.com
Next from Kai will be Mine Over Matter, a release coming from Samhain Publishing, in November.

Good Joke

2006-08-04T18:32:00.000+02:00

A little boy and his grandfather are raking leaves in the yard. The little boy sees an earthworm trying to get back into its hole. He says, “Grandpa, I bet I can put that worm back in that hole.” The grandfather replies, “I’ll bet you five dollars you can’t. It’s too wiggly and limp to put back in that little hole.” The little boy runs into the house and comes back out with a can of hair spray. He sprays the worm until it is straight and stiff as a board. Then he stuffs the worm back into the hole. The grandfather hands the little boy five dollars, grabs the hair spray and runs into the house. Thirty minutes later, the grandfather comes back out and hands the little boy another five dollars. The little boy says, “Grandpa, you already gave me five dollars.” The grandfather replies, “I know. That’s from your grandma.”

Must Read

2006-08-01T05:16:00.000+02:00

This incident happened recently in North Texas.

A woman went boating one Sunday taking with her some cans of coke which she put into the refrigerator of the boat. On Monday she was taken to the hospital and placed in the Intensive Care Unit. She died on Wednesday.

The autopsy concluded she died of Leptospirosis. This was traced to the can of coke she drank from, not using a glass. Tests showed that the can was infected by dried rat urine and hence the disease Leptospirosis.

Rat urine contains toxic and deathly substances. It is highly recommended to thoroughly wash the upper part of soda cans before drinking out of them The cans are typically stocked in warehouses and transported straight to the shops without being cleaned.

A study at NYCU showed that the tops of soda cans are more contaminated than public toilets (i.e).. full of germs and bacteria. So wash them with water before putting them to the mouth to avoid any kind of fatal accident.

Please forward this message to all the people you care about.
(I JUST DID)

Funny Kids!

2006-07-30T14:56:00.000+02:00

The Future Bill Gates!

Im Jr.James Bond, Searching The Way for my Bed.

My First Kiss!

This is Called as Thrashing!

It's My Cloning!

I am an Playboy!

Meeting My Friend!

Dolce & Gabbana 2006

2006-06-28T04:22:00.000+02:00

See more on Dolce & Gabbana

Interesting Links

2006-06-27T21:16:00.000+02:00

Fall 2006 Runway Guide
Celebrity Makeup of the Week
Louis Vuitton FW06 Ads
Whose Next, Kelly Clarkson?
Hilary Duff & Her Sister Do MTV’s TRL
Top 50 Models women last update:june 26, 2006
Don't I Know You From the Party Pages?
Speaking of Originality
Cole Haan Women's New Arrivals

Videos

Interview with Jamison Scott / Fusion
Megahn Fabulous from California
Suzanne Knight
Interview with Ford Agent Emily Novak
Philip / NY Models

Very nice catling

2006-05-08T01:24:00.000+02:00

Interesting dog's links

2006-04-27T11:25:00.000+02:00

Pets Help Heal

It's been raining cats and dogs

Why dogs can't eat chocolate

Passing the pet test

One Incredible Weekend, Millions of Adoptable Pets

New ordinance would require 1 million L.A. county residents to spay or neuter dogs

County ready to adopt dog ordinance

Dogs trained to detect parasites

Dog training business aims for sustained growth

E-MAIL RESOLUTIONS FOR THE NEW YEAR

2006-01-03T12:26:00.000+01:00

I will try to figure out why I really need 9 e-mail addresses.
I will stop sending e-mail to my wife (husband).
I resolve to work with neglected children—my own.
I will answer my snail-mail with the same enthusiasm with which I answer my e-mail.
I will stop sending e-mail, ICQ, Instant Messages and be on the phone at the same time with the same person.
I will resolve to back up my 12GB hard drive daily…well once a week…okay, monthly then…or maybe.
I will spend less than one hour a day on the Internet. This, of course, will be hard to estimate since I'm not a clock watcher.
When I hear “Where do you want to today?” I will not reply “MS Tech Support.”
When I hear a funny joke I will not reply,”LOL…LOL!”
I will read the manual…just as soon as I can find it.
I will think of a password other than “password.”
I will stop checking my e-mail at 3:00 in the morning…4:30 is much more practical.
I resolve…I resolve to…I resolve to, uh,…I resolve to, uh, get my, ER…I resolve to, uh, get my, ER, off-line work done, too!
I will stop circulating the “Good Times Virus” and “Join the Crew” e-mail.
I will read all of the mail from all the lists I have subscribed to.
I will try the e-mail version of the Mrs. Fields cookie recipe.
I will not “throw” another snowball via e-mail; at least not ‘til next year.

I will remember to protect my friends e-mail addresses by putting their addresses in the Bcc:field when I am doing a mass e-mail.
I will keep my e-mail messages neat by copy and pasting into a new message instead of forwarding one that has to be opened 10x to read!