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Massive Solar Project Carves Up North Smithfield’s Whortleberry Hill
January 30, 2020
NORTH SMITHFIELD, R.I. — The consensus, at least of the seven residents sitting at the long rectangular table, is that the town sold out the environment for a concession stand.
In 2018, the Town Council, by a 4-to-1 vote, greenlighted the development of one of the largest ground-mounted solar installations in the state. The arrangement for the developer to build a bathroom and concession stand at the town’s athletic complex was formalized at a council meeting last October.
To help make the project happen, the council, led by then-president John Beauregard, a vocal supporter of the solar-energy proposal who would lose his re-election bid in November 2018, first created a special zoning district that allowed Green Development LLC to bypass the Zoning Board of Review by nullifying the need for a special-use permit. The decision drew criticism from neighbors and environmental advocates.
Weeks Street resident Cynthia Roberts sent a letter, dated May 7, 2018, to the Town Council expressing her “serious concerns over the proposed overlay ordinance.” She wrote that the process was long hidden from the public and that it benefits a few special interests.
“The overlay district was imposed on the community,” she said. “The only ones who supported it are the ones who are going to benefit from it. … A poor and untransparent process has led to this point.”
A PowerPoint presentation given by North Kingstown-based Green Development at an April 2018 Town Council meeting encouraged the creation of the solar overlay district. Company representatives said the town would reap $40 million in local economic benefit over 25 years from the company’s “temporary use of only 1% of North Smithfield’s land.”
The community benefits of creating this special district, according to the presentation, included $402,000 in annual tax payments for a total of $10 million over 25 years; a one-time upfront donation of $287,500 to be used at the town’s discretion; no added strain on fire, police, or the school system; and open space would be preserved because solar is a placeholder.
Green Development and the council eventually agreed that the bathroom and concession stand would replace the proposed one-time payment. Payments totaling about $5.6 million over 20 years is the most recent figure tied to the project.
The controversial renewable-energy developer has proposed building a 38.4-megawatt solar facility on 417 aces of private land off Iron Mine Hill Road. If built, the solar installation would be split into nine entities — each would generate less than 7 megawatts of electricity and be interconnected separately — to avoid size limitations in Rhode Island’s Renewable Energy Growth Program.
ecoRI News recently meet with the seven opponents, including Roberts, in the community room at Marshfield Commons on Metcalf Marsh Drive. They and other project opponents, first and foremost, object to the clear-cutting of some 200 acres of forestland on Whortleberry Hill between Greenville Road and Route 146.
Opponents have noted that the Whortleberry Hill ecosystem is on the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management’s 2015 Wildlife Action Plan’s “conservation opportunity areas” map and is designated a regional “wildlife corridor” critical to animal migration and a “natural heritage area” that is home to state-listed species that are endangered or threatened.
Mike Rapko noted that the site that is being clear-cut empties into the Blackstone River. He said a major stream runs through Cedar Swamp to the Branch River which feeds the Blackstone River.
Opponents have also noted other concerns about the project, such as increased runoff and more flooding caused by the clear-cutting of forest, possible blasting during construction, and the installation’s potential impact on water quality, as many of the homes in the area have private wells and Woonsocket reservoirs are to the south.
They also have questions that they claim have yet to be adequately answered. Will erosion controls be put in place? Will toxic pesticides and herbicides be applied to the grass surrounding the arrays? How will the project be taxed?
They have requested a third-party engineer be hired — paid for by Green Development but working for the town — to oversee the entire process, rather than relying on Green Development’s hired engineer to keep the town informed.
Greenville Road resident Bethany Levin said the town should be allowed to vote on the project.
The Planning Board has shared many of the same concerns. Last year it requested an emergency moratorium on commercial solar projects, saying the town’s ordinance needed to be updated to keep up with the size and number of projects being proposed. The council approved a two-month moratorium and passed requirements for decommissioning solar arrays.
Green Development, which has also proposed erecting a 462-foot-high wind turbine on Old Smithfield Road, has told the town it’s willing to pay $7,000 per megawatt annually for the 38.4-megawatt project — $2,000 more per megawatt than state law requires. The company has made similar offers to municipal officials in Coventry and Exeter.
Mark DePasquale, Green Development’s founder, has noted that his company has donated to the town’s annual fireworks display, which debuted in July 2018, not long after the Whortleberry Hill solar project was first introduced.
An oak forest and a mixed oak/white pine forest occupy the hills and stony slopes of the project site. Wetland habitat covers nearly 18 percent of the site.
The Department of Environmental Management has signed off on Green Development’s utility-scale solar project.
The Planing Board is expected to address the project at its Feb. 6 meeting. The five-member board can do little to keep the project from moving forward, but it can place restrictions on its development.
“We definitely need to transition to renewable energy. No one argues that point,” Roberts said. “But how we do it matters.”
Green Development may have this in the bag now—and recent political actions surrounding the NS Conservation Commission suggest that further such outrages may be in the offing in that town—but if similar projects in other towns proposed for sensitive environmental areas, as Whortleberry Hill demonstrably is—local authorities need to pay attention to critical planning resource that is the mentioned DEM Wildlife Action Plan and its essential Conservation Opportunity Areas map.
As the Whortleberry Hill project, referencing the map, is north of Iron Mine road, the project area is indeed overplayed in the Conservation Opportunity Areas map as a "Natural Heritage Area," meaning that species that are "of Concern," "Threatened," or "Endangered" in Rhode Island are documented on the site. Un-noted, though, in the article, is that most of the site is also overplayed as an "Unfragmented Forest Block, 500-plus acres."
Conservation Commissions everywhere—especially the new one appointed in North Smithfield under a cloud of political suspicion—plus Planning Boards and Planners, would be wise to educate themselves about the Wildlife Action Plan and its excellent planning tool, the COA map. DEM has an liaison person especially appointed for the purpose of educating communities about the WAP, and Grow Smart Rhode Island is a private planning advocacy organization that offers its expertise in using the WAP for local planning purposes.
A further note:
The article notes that DEM has "signed off" on the project. In reference to my previous comment, this raises the question "How could DEM "sign off" if the project threatens to kill and/or expel from the site species that are Endangered, Threatened, or of Concern that are categorically identified as being on the site per the "Natural Heritage Area" designation on the Conservation Opportunity Areas map of DEM’s 2015 Wildlife Action Plan?"
The Energy Facility Siting Board hearings concerning the local environmental impact of the Invenergy power plant last year go a long way toward answering that question and providing a possible remedy.
What the article actually means by DEM’s "signing off" on the project—as you’ll find by clicking the live link—is that the project’s wetlands permit is likely to be approved. The text notes that the presiding officer sees no likely impediments to such approval. …But the key point here is that is is "wetlands" approval. DEM has jurisdiction over wetlands, scientifically qualifying wetlands known legally as "Jurisdictional Wetlands."
But the great conundrum in this case is that most of the Whortleberry Hill site overlaid by DEM’s Conservation Opportunity Areas map as "Unfragmented Forest 500-plus acres" and "Natural Heritage Area" falls into a legal nullity known as "Non-jurisdictional Uplands." A nullity because DEM, as the term makes clear, does NOT have jurisdiction over development questions in these non-wet uplands.
This leads to a central absurdity of our State’s wildlife and habitat protection scheme, one that the public should do something about.
Say, for example, you have the documented presence of the Wood Turtle in the existing Natural Heritage Area covering about half Whortleberry Hill solar project. Wood Turtles were documented in that forest by competent authority a few years ago and that led to the Natural Heritage Area designation on the COA map—the Wood Turtle being a Rhode Island species "of Concern," and since 2015 being under study by the US Fish & Wildlife Service for nationally Endangered Species status, decision pending in 2023.
Wood Turtles spend the winter hibernating in stream beds, and our example turtle on Whortleberry Hill spends her hibernation in the "major stream" running into Cedar Swamp cited by Mr. Rapko. The stream and its boggy bottomland qualifies as a "wetland," thus protecting the hibernating turtle from land development as per the Jurisdictional Wetland permitting authority granted by law to DEM. And as we see on Green Development’s site map, all such wetland on the site is duly protected from construction and will be left in its natural condition.
However, the when our Wood Turtle emerges from the stream in spring, it spends the rest of the warm months entirely on the land, ranging more than a thousand meters from its wetland hibernation site, all of it Non-jurisdictional Uplands. And she lays her eggs, always, in these Non-jurisdictional Uplands, too. That would be most of the land covered by the Natural Heritage Area overlay on Whorlteberry Hill found on the COA map: the land to be clear-cut, bulldozed, graded, fenced, and rendered entirely inhabitable to Wood Turtles and any other of the threatened interior forest species that theoretically could, or actually in fact do, dwell in that forest.
But, Non-jurisdictional means just that: DEM and the State of RI behind it have no jurisdiction over these lands or their wildlife. There is no permit required for development in Non-jurisdictional Uplands that would compel DEM to examine each case and decide the question of unacceptable harm to a threatened species and their habitats. With but few obscure exceptions, such as power generation 40 megawatts and up, jurisdiction over development in these uplands is entirely the responsibility of the local authorities. Our towns, through their Comprehensive Plans and land-use ordinances, do have the power to decide all manner of development questions; and they would be foolish not to use such a substantial, legally powerful tool as that afforded by DEM’s Wildlife Action Plan and its COA map.
Of course, we must move the State in that direction, too. RI DEM should be given permitting authority when it comes to the question of development versus threatened species. In Connecticut, as we learned during the Invenergy hearings, the CT "DEEP" has been given the power to permit or not permit the "taking" of threatened wildlife and their habitats in all land development projects in uplands. That’s what we don’t have but should have for DEM here in Rhode Island because it is too easy for developers to find local politicians who will sell out and permanently alter the environment for the worse. In that regard, in the interest of public information, ecori news might do well to interview the Town of Burrillville’s expert environmental witness in the Invenergy case on this topic. He is a consultant practicing in Connecticut, and under cross examination during the Invenergy hearings he explained the crucial differences between the two states in their approaches to protection of uplands.
is this the same Green Development co that announced a massive suit against Coventry and Exeter that didn’t give them the desired go-ahead? If so, it seems the vulture capitalists are taking advantage of the subsidies and requirements for renewables and the naiveté of the climate movement that likes to proclaim renewable energy as "clean energy." Oh well, we get subsidized fireworks for the loss of woodlands!
Smithfield, Hopkinton, Exeter, Coventry – all of the state’s last wild habitats are being systematically clear-cut in the name of fake "green" energy while acres of commercial roof tops sit vacant. Zoning no longer protects us, and DEM consistently approves wetland development for these companies, putting our drinking water at risk. Gov. Raimondo should be tarred and feathered for setting this devastation in motion. It is truly sickening!
Good point about acres of vacant commercial rooftops statewide. Why are they choosing to clear 200 wooded acres plus the ramifications ? Has the State studied rooftop solar development yet ?
"The consensus, at least of the seven residents sitting at the long rectangular table, is that the town sold out the environment for a concession stand.
In 2018, the Town Council, by a 4-to-1 vote, greenlighted the development of one of the largest ground-mounted solar installations in the state. The arrangement for the developer to build a bathroom and concession stand at the town’s athletic complex was formalized at a council meeting last October."
This article is disingenuous from the first sentence. The idea of a concession stand (with bathrooms) tied to any revenue from this Green Development solar project was not formalized, but first floated in October 2019 (and was well into the approval and permitting process) – when former TC President John Beauregard discussed openly at a NS Town Council meeting that he had a conversation with Mark DePasquale of Green Development around GD constructing bathrooms/concession stand at the Dr. Paul F. Joyce Athletic Complex. And at that time, the value of the initial revenue payment was under $200,000 – considerably less than the value of the bathrooms/concessions. A big win for recreation and residents in town.
Anyone who claims that the Town of NS "sold out the environment for a concession stand" is at a minimum misguided if not deceitful. The article’s author would have been well-served to do his research prior to publishing, rather than listening to a group of residents apparently hellbent on obscuring facts to fit their own narrative. I’ll let you make your own judgement on the veracity of any other commentary herein.
Kathy W, despite the failure of our state legislature last year to pass reasonable solar development regulations after a lengthy, meticulous, and politically inclusive effort by our mainstream environmental advocates such as the Audubon Society, Save the Bay, and the Environmental Council of Rhode Island, our local communities very much do have the legal authority to regulate solar and any other kind of land development within their boundaries.
Ultimately acting through the ballot box, it is up to the voters of each community to ensure that their elected officials get that message. Every town has a volunteer Conservation Commission to advocate for the local environment, a volunteer planning board to draft land-use regulation, and a town council to vet and vote upon such measures. It can be done and it has been done as the aptly tagged "solar land rush" has attracted widespread notoriety—notoriety such as Green Development’s project in North Smithfield. (No doubt, the upcoming local election there will be a lively one.) For example, it has been done in Burrillville where the Wildlife Action Plan and its accompanying Conservation Opportunity Areas map have been incorporated into the Town’s recently revised Comprehensive Plan.
Subordinate to that, a yawning hole brought to light in the North Smithfield case that towns should regulate to prevent is the comically inadequate wildlife survey done for the North Smithfield project by Green Development’s environmental consultants, Natural Resources Services Inc.
You have a project site of over 400 acres, much of it a designated as a DEM "Wildlife Action Plan" Natural Heritage Area, and much of it designated by same as part of an Un-fragmented Forest Block of 500-plus acres—all that 400 acres of the Green Development lot and its various habitats and you have wildlife survey done that would appear to have been conducted in less than a single day. You can read it and re-read it and you just can’t tell for sure, but as written you are led to infer that this is the case. It might have been done on more days, but only in the wetlands; or what data it collected was collected incidental to NRS’s other activities such as marking wetlands—the public and the town officials just can’t tell. (Click the live-link "project site," scroll down. The brief paragraph discussing the survey ) No discussion is made of the methods used in the survey, and the brief text actually admits its inadequacy regarding time of day of the survey.
So, as we read in the table of results provided, NRS Inc purports to catalog, on a site of over 400 acres, 15 species of bird, 7 of mammals, and 3 of amphibians—one of them dead. (No reptiles, apparently. Perhaps St. Patrick once visited and drove them out.)
Next door in Burrillville, in 2017 during the Invenergy saga, the Energy Facilities Siting Board, confronted with a similarly pathetic survey done by that company’s environmental consultants, ordered that a genuinely professional one be done. And on the mere 200 acre surveyed there were found 81 species of birds, 21 of mammals, 8 of amphibians, and 3 of reptiles.
What would be found in the Whortleberry Hill forest if such a survey were done?
But in NRS’s and Green Development’s defense, they are under no such obligation.
To DEM, most of the Whortleberry Hill site is Non-jurisdictional Uplands, a land category where the Department, by absence of law, has no authority to permit development. That could be changed by the State Legislature, though highly unlikely right now. The best prospect is for towns like North Smithfield to assume such authority in their land development regulations. They could require developers of large scale projects in recognized sensitive Upland environments to conduct wildlife surveys to ensure that no rare species are destroyed or displaced.
I was struck by the following comment in the article: “We definitely need to transition to renewable energy. No one argues that point,” Roberts said. “But how we do it matters.”
In fact, many Rhode Islanders do argue the point and oppose all renewable energy. In my town, Hopkinton, 3 of our Town Council members do not accept that there is a climate crisis. That is their right but it does have consequences. The leadership of an active opposition group opposing all solar and wind in Hopkinton refuses to acknowledge a climate crisis. This distorts the playing field. There is little incentive for developers to address the second part of Ms. Roberts statement "But how we do it matters" when the climate deniers oppose everything without considering if it is a good or a lousy project. Therefore, we mostly get lousy projects.
Can’t anyone in any agency put a temporary stay on this project until it is reviewed more thoroughly?
Yes Harvey, the climate change deniers certainly muddy the water. And it means that very little climate science is used when determining the full impacts of any project (solar arrays, Walmarts) that removes large tracts of forest. Has anyone, for example, calculated the amount of carbon sequestration potential that will be lost in the Wortleberry Hill project?
Mature forests (with the emphasis on mature) hold the greatest carbon sequestration potential than any other vegetative cover. In Rhode Island, there are NO mature forests. It’s all second growth, with many decades to go before even nearing maturity, and as these forests grow the amount of carbon sequestered continues to grow. If the goal is to reduce the state’s overall carbon footprint there needs to be a coordinated strategy to address projects that take one step forward (reduce fossil fuel use) and two steps backward (cutting down good carbon sequestering forest).
Proforestation. It is a word you will be hearing more about. Google it. It’s what serious climate scientists are promoting to realize the full potential of mature (maturing) forests in sequestering carbon. It’s a simple idea. Let forests grow. And it is not just preventing the destruction of forest on private land for ill-conceived solar arrays or shopping malls. It means a new strategy for State management areas and other protected forests where the goal is to achieve the full potential of forests to provide the ecosystem services we desperately need in this time of climate crisis. It means stopping the indiscriminate cutting of forests under the guise of providing more habitat for hunted species, a strategy based on commodity over community, a strategy that says it’s OK for us to cut forests because we’re doing it to provide a "resource". As long as this strategy persists, any attempts by the state to limit forest removal for other purposes will be viewed as hypocritical.
In this time of climate crisis everyone is being asked to make sacrifices. State government can not suggest making any sacrifices unless they are willing to make them as well. The loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services at Wortleberry Hill will be staggering, no amount of cookie cutter pollinator patches will make up for it. The State will remain oblivious to these losses because they have no authority over nonjurisdictional uplands, and there will certainly be no attempts made by the State to rectify this situation. No attempts that is by this administration which, to be succinct, is just not giving the climate crisis the serious attention it demands.
Rather than clear-cut valuable Trees, why can’t the solar energy company work with the huge Empty spaces created by the closing of so many businesses with huge empty parking lots all over RI?
What is with all the mad dash for solar power anyway, I thought there was no need for power in the state of rhode island, i.e. the recent denial of the power plant within the town of burrillville where it was alledgedly determined that there was no need for power anywhere in his state.
I counter, “We definitely need to transition to renewable energy. No one argues that point…But how we do it matters” with the Bill Mckibben quote "winning slowly on climate change is the same thing as loosing". The pace of deployment of renewable energy needs to double if we are to hit the insufficient goals set in Paris. The coming climate crisis should exempt all renewable energy development from the NIMBY tyranny of the local planning board
They should definitely include tennis courts at Whortleberry Hill’s athletic complex; I’ve never been to Rhode Island as a tourist, but it seems like this stop would be interesting for me.


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Nary a negative word was said regarding the outlook for B.C. housing activity over the next two years at Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.’s (CMHC) annual housing outlook conference on November 4.
CMHC analysts were more tortoise-like than bullish, so far as they heralded a steady market over the next 24 months, disturbed only by the potential of interest rate hikes in late 2015 and the impact affordability – or its lack – could have on transactions.
“Housing demand will remain strong,” opined Bob Dugan, CMHC’s chief economist, in an overview of national activity.
“Housing starts will follow resale activity,” Carol Frketich, B.C. regional economist, said of the provincial situation.
“What we’re seeing is a very balanced housing market,” concluded Robyn Adamache, senior market analyst for Vancouver with CMHC.
Housing starts in metropolitan Vancouver are expected to hit 18,700 in 2015, down from a forecast of 18,900 for 2014. Projections peg them to reach 19,250 in 2016.
Veteran condo marketer Bob Rennie was the keynote speaker at the CMHC housing outlook conference, and he dished his own take on Vancouver’s residential market as well as the state of discourse regarding housing issues in advance of civic elections on November 15.
“‘I am pro-affordability, and I am anti-development.’ I think that will get you elected today, and they don’t make sense – the two can’t go together,” he said.
Sizing up the main contenders for Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson’s job, Rennie dissed – without naming names – Non-Partisan Association mayoral candidate Kirk LaPointe for shying away from meeting with developers.
“He doesn’t live in Vancouver, vote in Vancouver or pay taxes in Vancouver and has never held political office,” Rennie said. “Not meeting with developers says to me, if elected as mayor, he will stay out of touch.”
Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) contender Meena Wong also came under fire for proposals such as a duty on vacant homes that would interfere with property rights.
“If we have a problem with vacant west-side homes, let’s deal with it as a community improvement issue, not the colour of someone’s skin,” Rennie said.
Rennie also pushed back against developers critical of burdensome community amenity contributions, which are assessed to fund community amenities. Reducing them could leave municipalities passing costs onto taxpayers, Rennie said, creating the politically unpalatable and divisive situation Melbourne faces.
“We are not going to solve homelessness, affordable rental or family housing without taking the planning and political risks,” he summarized. “We really need parental guidance out there, is my view. The city of Vancouver and every city and municipality is going to need to champion some form of development.”
Whatever worries plague the Vancouver housing market, at least there’s housing here to worry about.
That’s not always the case in other countries, where having a roof over your head (let alone four walls around you) is a greater concern. Without stable housing – as advocates in Vancouver know – multiple other basic needs risk not being met.
Providing stable housing in some of the world’s poorest communities is the goal of Vancouver-based World Housing community contribution company, a social enterprise launched last year that seeks partnerships with developers to build a unit of housing in less developed communities for each unit developed elsewhere.
Its first partner is Westbank Properties Corp., which is supporting the development of one unit of housing in Stung Meanchey, Cambodia, for each unit sold at Vancouver House – the 52-storey collaboration between Westbank and Danish architect Bjarke Ingels.
Sales to date of units in the 378-unit tower have resulted in gifts of 120 homes, while an additional 70 homes are built and awaiting donation.
The homes are 132 square feet each and elevated six feet off the ground. The cost of approximately $2,500 apiece includes a common washroom for every six dwellings.
Occupancy is overseen through the Cambodian Children’s Fund (CCF), which has secured leases of up to 20 years for the home sites.
Recipients are typically the families or guardians of schoolchildren. Children must attend school and be well cared for – not abused – for the families to be eligible.
“It makes a massive difference. It’s one of the many motivators to get the child into school on a regular basis,” said Scott Neeson, CCF founder and executive director.
World Housing expects to announce a second project in Taiwan later this month and is discussing partnerships with Canada and U.S. developers active in the San Diego, San Francisco and Waikiki markets.

domain: news


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On tonight’s edition of AEW Rampage, a major new match was introduced for next week’s Grand Slam edition of AEW Rampage.
While it was announced earlier in the show that the Grand Slam edition of AEW Rampage on September 23 was going to be a two-hour long affair, the match card has already begun to fill out.
Blending real world backstage drama and in-ring action, Sammy Guevara is set to face off against Eddie Kingston in a major grudge match.
Now announced, a Golden Ticket Battle Royal by which the winner will earn a “Golden Ticket” which ensures them a future AEW World Championship title opportunity.
With MJF already holding a chip from the All Out Casino Battle Royal which he can similarly cash in for a World Championship match, the golden ticket has a very particular caveat.
Announced on AEW Rampage, the stipulation within the special match is that the golden ticket winner will win a future AEW World Championship title opportunity at an assigned date and time.
Many other matches were announced for next week which you can keep up with by following WrestleTalk on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram!
Check out WrestleShop.com for all your favorite WrestleTalk merch, the WrestleTalk Magazine, wrestling shirts for grown-ups, and more!
- PHOTO: First Look At Vince McMahon’s ‘Creepy Mustache’
- Update On Major WWE Return Rumored For WrestleMania 39
- WWE Main Roster Star Causes Major Title Change At NXT Stand & Deliver
- WrestleMania 39 Night One Main Event Revealed
- Big Spoiler On Plans For Rey Mysterio Vs. Dominik Mysterio At WrestleMania 39
- Confirmation On Bobby Lashley’s WrestleMania 39 Status?
- WWE Star Thinks Bobby Lashley WrestleMania 39 Situation Is ‘Inexcusable’
- Tony Khan Says Former WWE Star In ROH Is ‘Never Going To Happen’
- Top WWE Star ‘Not Comfortable’ With Cody Rhodes Backstage Fight Story
- Injury Update On Dante Martin After ROH Supercard Of Honor

domain: sports


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Freedom of Speech throughout United States HistoryIt’s Champions and Challenges National Constitution Day
The Alien and Sedition Acts • Specifically the Sedition Act (passed in July, 1798 with an expiration date of March 3, 1801) • Made it a crime to publish false, scandalous, and malicious writing against the United States government. • Designed to protect the new government against the undermining capability of criticism from foreign powers; it became a domestic political tool. While never reviewed by the Supreme Court, subsequent references intimate it’s unconstitutionality in light of the 1st Amendment.
Sojourner Truth “Ain’t I a Woman - 1851 • That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man — when I could get it — and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman? Then they talk about this thing in the head; wha’'s this they call it? [member of audience whispers, “intellect”] That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s rights or negroes’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?
Highlighting the complexity of being an African-American woman at a time when rights for both groups were at different points of progress; her intimations and ability to express those thoughts are emblematic of our 1st Amendment Rights • What challenges could she have faced by speaking out in 1851? • What large event in American History hadn’t yet occurred?
Tinker et al. v. Des Moines Independent Community School District et al. (1969) • This case established the 1st Amendment Rights of students. • In this case, the student act of wearing armbands to protest the Vietnam War was upheld by the Supreme Court.
Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier (1988) • The Supreme Court found that school newspapers that aren’t established as a forum for student opinion have a lower protection of 1st Amendment rights. Schools, can, therefore, censor elements of the newspapers if there is an educational purpose. (subsequently, states have passed laws that protect free press in schools more firmly)
Free Speech Zones • Designed to protect both attendee and protester, 1st Amendment zones have been established at various places and events. (2004 Democratic National Convention as an example)
Contemporary Issues: • Are there any issues in the United States or the World that champion of challenge Free Speech/ Press/ Expression? • How have these events altered your definition of free speech and its importance?

domain: law


Latest ‘Wimpy Kid’ film is definitely a long haul
From 2010 to 2012, a trilogy of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” films were released in rapid succession, starring Zachary Gordon, Devon Bostick, Rachael Harris and Steve Zahn. Adapted from the web comic turned kids novels by Jeff Kinney, the films featured the kinds of embarrassments and toilet humor that tend to make up most middle school lore. Five years later, a fourth film, “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul,” is hitting theaters, with a completely new cast making up the Heffley family. Director David Bowers, who helmed the “Rodrick Rules” and “Dog Days” installments of the franchise, returns to wrangle this particular out-of-control-minivan down the freeway.
This story of a family vacation gone wrong could have just been subtitled “Road Trip,” but it turns out “The Long Haul” is an ironically apt descriptor for this film. One hesitates to refer to it as a “comedy,” as the jokes are few and far between. No, “horror” was the word that popped into mind frequently during these grim 90 minutes.
“Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul” is a deft exploration of the horrors of modern life in the tech-obsessed, neoliberal, advanced capitalist 21st century America; a world where social media rules our brains and behavior, and constant connectedness means constant work. This family’s road trip illustrates how America has become a polarized nation obsessed with nostalgia, gripping tight to the construct of a “real” America in light of rapid cultural change. Some fun.
It’s also a terrifying cautionary tale about distracted driving — adults in the audience may cower every time one of the Heffley parents behind the wheel takes their eyes off the road or uses their phone while shepherding a teen, tween, toddler, spouse, piglet and boat trailer behind the cursed minivan. Belly laughs? More like stomach lurches. It’s truly more harrowing than “Fate of the Furious” at times, and more frustrating, since Vin Diesel never texts while driving, and doesn’t bring a brood in the backseat.
Fittingly, the central conflict of the film is about technology and screen time. Mom Susan (Alicia Silverstone) confiscates all electronic devices so the family can enjoy real face time on their road trip — but dad Frank (Tom Everett Scott) hasn’t taken the days off work, while titular wimpy kid Greg (Jason Drucker) and metalhead brother Rodrick (Charlie Wright) are scheming to get to a video game convention. Greg’s determined to clean up his online reputation after he becomes the star of an embarrassing meme, and thinks a video with his hero, star gamer Mac Digby (Joshua Hoover) will do the trick. Their juvenile and selfish meddling takes the family trip from bad to apocalyptic.
The film seems to be aware of the terrors it inflicts on its audience in the name of a good time (or some kind of time… the intended effect is not clear). There are several direct references to Hitchcock’s most iconic horror films, “Pyscho” and “The Birds,” for some inexplicable reason. Though ostensibly presented as an hour and a half of raucous family adventure — a “Vacation” for the PG crowd — “Wimpy Kid” is instead a dirge of unfunny scatological material, techno-anxiety and child endangerment masquerading as familial bonding. Settle in for the “Long Haul,” because this is one bumpy, miserable ride.
"Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul"
Starring: Jason Drucker, Charlie Wright, Alicia Silverstone, Tom Everett Scott
Rating: PG for some rude humor
Running time: 1:30


text:
Hit me baby one more time.Glu Mobile hopes that its new Britney Spears: American Dream game will follow in the footsteps of Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, a mobile gaming sensation which has generated something like $80 million for Kardashian alone since in debuted in 2014.San Francisco-based Glu has struck celebrity mobile game deals with stars who collectively have more than a billion social followers.Glu has to pay these celebrities royalties, but the strategy is a way to avoid spending a ton of money on advertising a game, as it relies on the cachet of celebrities and social media to spread awareness of the game.As with the Kardashian game, the Britney Spears game is aspirational.You also have to fend off rival singers to reach the top, perform at venues from the local Starbeans to international stadiums, and try to get your own stage at Planet Hollywood, the big casino in Las Vegas where the real Britney Spears performs.For Spears, the game represents an opportunity to expand her entertainment empire, as mobile gaming has become a very lucrative endeavor for Kardashian.Glu learned the hard way that fans didn t like its rendition of Katy Perry when it launched a game last fall.Glu is also working with other celebrities including chef Gordon Ramsay and performer Taylor Swift.Niccolo De Masi, CEO of Glu, said in an interview with GamesBeat that the game has tested well and he has high hopes for it.This is a partnership with a woman who has been around as a performer for 17 years.
But almost as soon as Icahn took over in March, he wavered on investing the full $100 million, spooked by the prospect of two new casinos in the northern part of the state.Icahn will wait until the referendum to commit to spending that much money on a casino that could be at an even worse competitive position with new in-state rivals.Less visible repairs include fixing leaks in a roof.Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner who has received some help from Icahn courting political donors, lost majority control to bondholders in the casino's 2004 bankruptcy filing.The Taj Mahal took $180 million from gamblers last year, ranking it 7th out of Atlantic City's eight casinos.Should Icahn agree to go all-in on upgrades to the Taj Mahal, Rodio envisions new nightclubs, branded restaurants and other attractions to fill the vast empty spaces that exist in numerous areas of the sprawling casino complex.
Brazil, Mexico and the United States have the most competitive markets for apps in the world, based on a study of nine major regions analyzed in the 2016 App Olympics report by Cheetah Ad Platform.The Cheetah Ad Platform, owned by Cheetah Mobile, analyzed data from 52 million Android smartphone users to see how users engage with their mobile devices and apps across the globe.Thousands are being introduced every day.The app scorecard by country looks at stats such as the average app usage per user per month, and engagement, or the average times apps are opened per user per month.The average user spanning the entire world uses an average of 27 apps and engages with 39 apps per month.Brazil, Mexico, and the U.S. have the most competitive app markets, while Brazil has the highest user engagement and app competition, Cheetah said.Brazilian consumers use an average of 29.23 apps and engage with 53.62 average apps per month.Nine countries were monitored, each with high engagement in gaming app categories, including education, action, trivia, simulation, sports, strategy, casino, word, and lifestyle app categories, which include productivity, shopping, social, and personalization.The study notes app categories with low competition, which represent opportunities for app developers to break in, as well as those with high competition, showcasing which apps are in demand for these specific countries.The study showed that communication and social apps are used three to 10 times more than other apps.In Mexico, communications apps are used most.France has the lowest average app usage compared to other countries at 24.56 apps per person.India has a very strong gaming category, and Canada is most active with board game apps.The U.S. favors communication apps, with 2.52 communication apps per person.
REUTERS/Erik De CastroMANILA Reuters - More than three months have passed since $81 million was stolen in a brazen cyber-heist from Bangladesh's central bank and sent to Manila – yet authorities in the Philippines appear no closer to nabbing those who laundered most of the money through a bank and casinos here.Several official and private investigators said they had hoped to make headway by following the money trail in the Philippines, but they told Reuters it has gone cold.Nearly half the high-end gamblers there are ethnic Chinese, from mainland China or other parts of the region.The AMLC has filed criminal complaints against the manager of the RCBC branch that received the funds, the owners of relevant bank accounts at the branch and the owners of the remittance agency that it says was a "cleaning house" for the money.Senator Panfilo Lacson, a former national police chief, has told Reuters that Wong is "a friend of mine".The focus of the Senate committee's report is likely to be on drawing up legislation that can strengthen anti-money laundering laws and ease bank secrecy laws, rather than identifying who was behind the laundering.
It s no wonder that software development kits SDKs are making mobile game and app developers weary.Herzliya, Israel-based SafeDK released the report today as part of an effort to educate mobile app and game publishers and developers about the trends that they should pay attention to on a macro level.The report analyzes SDK trends in the Android market based on deep analysis of tens of thousands of free Android apps and hundreds of SDKs.The first report looks at data from April 2016 that draws from more than 30,000 Android apps, including popular free apps that are regularly at the top of the charts.It also looks at hundreds of SDKs that are used by big and small companies around the world.The report addresses facts like how many SDKs, on average, are integrated into mobile apps and how this number changes based on the app category and number of downloads.2 at 27.5 percent, followed by Facebook Audience Network at 22.5 percent, UnityAds at 19.5 percent, and Mopub at 19.2 percent.In mobile apps, the average number of SDKs used in games is 17.5, followed by sports apps at 16.5, shopping at 15.1, news and magazines at 14.9, and weather at 14.4.Within mobile games, casino games lead the way with an average of 18.7 SDKs per app, followed by 18.4 for action games, 18.1 for role-playing games, and 17.9 for strategy games.The chart below shows the most popular categories for types of SDKs.And this chart shows the top makers of SDKs.
Catena Media, which has the mission to channel players to various casino sites on the web, has been significantly boost growth. In the first quarter, revenue grew 69 million compared to 18 million at the same period last year. This represents a revenue increase of just over 280 percent. Follow the course here. Growth during the first quarter of 2016 compared with the fourth quarter of 2015 consisted largely of organic growth, although it should be noted that at the end of this quarter, two acquisitions, writes Catena's CEO Robert Andersson. The company has high profit margins, although they declined slightly in the first quarter landed the profit before tax of 35.6 million compared with 11 million at the same time last year.
PodcastIt's our weekly tech-cast - hosted by Sarah Vela, Ed Saipetch and Ben Kepes.This week, the threesome discuss Cloud Foundry, scale-model space shuttles, platforms and tricky windows.Our special guest this week is Mark Twomey aka Storagezilla of EMC.1:00 Ben and Ed from the cult of Cloud Foundry 5:28 Pivotal misses CF Summit 6:50 Curry run: India launches mini space shuttle 11:50 Windows gets tricky 13:50 Cisco bets big on subscriptions 17:28 Battle of the bots 21:00 Google bets on Caesars casino exec as its new president of enterprise sales 22:09 Flashback: Reach out and touch someone 22:39 Zilla is back 25:49 Google Home and the Star Trek future 32:27 Siri is a bag of bricks 36:30 Tim Cook, visionary?41:50 Disney kills Infinity 45:13 PaaS, Pivotal and Cloud Foundry hypeListen with the Reg player below, or download here.Podcast Subscriber LinksFeed URL for other podcast tools â€ Juice, Zune, et cetera: http://nekkidtech.libsyn.com/rss
Las Vegas is about to get a piece of Manhattan glitz, as Irving Azoff, the chairman and CEO of Azoff Madison Square Garden Entertainment, looks to bring a brand new, non-sporting arena to America s raunchy desert playground.The builders are billing their new 400,000-square-foot space, which will be located on Sands Avenue on property owned by the casino group, as the world s largest venue built specifically for music and entertainment.For reference, Madison Square Garden itself, with chairs on all four sides, seats just over 18,000.Because it won t be designed to serve the needs of sporting crowds, each and every seat will be in front of the stage, providing optimal views and audio for the audience.I don t worry about the other four arenas , Azoff said, I just know we re going to build the greatest place in the world for acts, they are going to want to play there.Because of permitting and construction, the new venue is still several years away.
My goal is to get down to 1-1 communication with our consumer, says Jason John, the company s CMO.That means, he says, that all your platforms, tools, and technology have to talk to each other in a clear and cohesive manner, and data must be clean, filtered, and fully integrated.That s easier said than done, he admits, but the core component of making it successful is how good your data is, how clean it is, and then auctioning off it is more palatable.John will be joined be an expert of pros including Casino del Sol s Steve Neely, Allen & Gerritsen s Tim Parcell, and VB analyst Jon Cifuentes.To learn more about how marketing automation can help you achieve the holy grail of ROI — engagement, retention, and lifetime value — register today for free.In this VB Live event, you ll learn:Exactly what marketing automation can and can t doHow to frame the marketing automation question for the C-suiteHow to maximize ROI by using automation tactics that work bestSpeakers:Jason John, CMO, Publisher s Clearing HouseSteve Neely, CMO, Casino del SolTim Parcell, VP Experience Planning, Allen & GerritsenJon Cifuentes, VB Insight analyst, VentureBeatModerator:Wendy Schuchart, Analyst, VentureBeatThis webinar is sponsored by IBM.
Bill 74 has passed almost without notice the casino industry being the notable exception and will see the government agency in charge of lotteries in the province, Loto-Québec, draw up a list of online gambling sites that they will then send to ISPs.Incredibly, the ban does not apply to all gambling sites – just those that Loto-Québec doesn't like – and legislators were quite open about the fact that a goal of the law is to increase revenue to the local, officially approved gambling service Espacejeux.Officially the idea behind the law is to protect the citizens of Quebec – "especially young people" – from sites that do not promote "responsible gaming rules."Another legal argument to be put forward is that the law attempts to usurp federal telecommunications law.The passage of the law was recently raised in the House of Commons of Canada, with one minister pointing out that such a law would violate the country's net neutrality position.Despite Quebec's size and importance, its government is not the most Net-savvy or even consistent.
The last six years he has been a consultant in the lucrative market for gambling online. In parallel, Edward Ihre file on, and sought financing, Codeta - a new Swedish network-based gaming company with the ambition to become a global major player. The question must be asked directly: why do we need yet another gaming company? We have found a position that is completely vacant, said Edward Ihre confidently. Edward's brother, Christian Ihre who founded the brand agency LynxEye, is co-founder of Codeta together with the business developer Yrsa Thunholm. With the shareholder list is also Willem De Geer, former CEO of technology company panopticon sold to US Data Watch for SEK 300 million, and Max Kållberg and Karl Samuelsson, with a past sports rights giant IEC in Sports.
Image caption Microsoft's email spam filters stopped working on TuesdayMicrosoft has tackled a problem with its email filters that had prevented them from properly screening out spam.It first acknowledged the problem with Outlook and Hotmail on Tuesday evening."Some users may be receiving excessive spam mail," a service page update stated.The company later said it had managed to put in place two sets of fixes to protect users' inboxes and its own infrastructure."Look at all of these great deals I've been missing out on for years," Peck Ed wrote."Now if you chaps will excuse me, I'm off to become a... millionaire getting a great deal on my car insurance with my new Russian bride at the Casino with my free bets."
And the San Francisco company is doubling down on the talent it has in that category.GamesBeat has learned that Zynga has hired Monty Kerr, a cofounder of rival social casino gamemaker PlayStudios, as a senior vice president at Zynga.Kerr will also oversee Zynga Poker, which is the social game company s flagship game, alongside general manager Eddie LeBreton.The moves are part of the latest tactical decisions by Frank Gibeau, Zynga s new chief executive.They reinforce Zynga s focus on social casino games.Slots, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory Slots, and Black Diamond Casino.Kerr has founded a number of game companies.He cofounded PlayStudios in 2011.Details of the transaction aren t available.In the most recent quarter ended March 31, Zynga said that its mobile bookings for social slots games were up 77 percent over the prior year and up 13 percent from the previous quarter.
Admittedly, Atari isn t the entertainment powerhouse it once was.The company has spent the last few years digging attempting to reinvent itself after declaring bankruptcy in 2013, focusing largely on mobile gaming plays and casino deals.Now the one-time gaming juggernaut is lending its legendary name to a line of connected home devices.It s not exactly a new console, sadly, but the iconic brand will grace a wide range of new Atari products created by French wireless networking company, Sigfox.There s not a lot in the way of details surrounding what appears to largely be a licensing deal, but the initial products will include low priced home, pet, lifestyle and safety devices, featuring Sigfox s low-energy technology.The products are said to be targeted toward both at mass-market consumers and charity organizations.
From left: Paradox ceo and co-founder Fredrik Wester, tricycle Zbee from Clean Motion and the holding company Optimizer Invest at Catena Media's ipo.But it has not prevented teknikbolagens ipos from the to surpass all expectations by far.the Company is engaged in the internet of things and has climbed closer to 80 per cent on the subscription price of sek 22 since the listing on First North at the end of may. The company, whose market capitalisation amounts to eur 104 Million, will help giants like Ericsson and Nokia to plan, build and operate telecom networks.First, in third place pops a miljardbolag up.Leovegas is despite its jumboplacering one of the list's second-largest company with a market capitalisation of nearly sek 3.5 billion.Read more: Comment: Illröda warning lights on techhimlenBolagVerksamhetNoteringTeckningskursUppgångBörsvärdeClean MotionElectric vehiclesmay 26, 20168 sek94%206 MTalkpoolInternet of thingsmay 24, 201622 sek79%104 MCatena MediaCasinoteknikFebruary 11, 201633 sek75%2919 MParadox Interactivegame Developmentmay 31, 201633 sek70%5755 MNepa ABDigital studiesapril 26, 201645,5 kr34%443 MCleantech Investthe Accelerator for the cleantechbolagapril 6, 20169,3 sek11%213 MLeovegasCasino gamesmarch 17, 201632 sek9%3489 Mthe increase is estimated at 10, Tuesday 7 June, compared with the listing price.
One Twitch troll paid the price – literally TwitchA prankster who donated A$50,000 £25, 690, $37,400 to Twitch streamers with the intention of cancelling the payments at the last minute found the joke turned on him, after PayPal reportedly refused to pay the money back.Over the past few months, a number video streamers on Twitch have found themselves on the receiving end of some substantial donations from one particular user, often running into the thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars.These donations were coming from a user going by the name of iNexus Ninja, apparently without any explanation for the apparent generosity.For Twitch users watching the money pour in, it probably seemed too good to be true and indeed it was: it eventually transpired that iNexus Ninja was a Twitch troll who planned to wait a month before cancelling the transactions through PayPal.In a turning of the tables, PayPal is said to have denied his request for a refund, despite Archer making multiple attempts to get his money back.Judging by his boasts of expensive tech purchases, casino wins and expensive dining habits on his Twitter account, it appears that money is a plentiful commodity for the young man, and Archer doesn't seem particularly fazed by this turn of events.
I am the marketing coordinator for a nightclub at a casino which it's demographic travels roughly from a radius of 25 miles away.Friday's seem to be the struggle with overall volume.On the plus side; we do attract a very high ratio of woman on Friday's, but the overall attendance is lacking.While dealing with the summer months and interests are emphasized on the lake, camping, outdoor venues etc...We could look into celebrity appearances and what not, but until numbers consistently increase i'd rather not risk the capitol.What are some marketing techniques or ideas that i can do to improve overall revenue and attendance.
Mr. Green-founder Michael Pawlo and Bredbandsbolaget's founder Mattias Söderhielm invests millions to build the app Red Flag, to make life as an entrepreneur easier and more enjoyable. When I first heard rumors that the entrepreneur Michael Pawlo, as in business circles is primarily known as the man behind the online casino Mr Green and Mattias Söderhielm, founder of including Bredbandsbolaget and city train, pulled a startup together, I was naturally curious. We speak unwillingly on projects prior to launch, but now we had no choice after all when you sniffed it out, says Mikael Pawlo. Exactly how much money the duo has pumped into the project, which is mainly aimed at small business owners, want Pawlo not reveal. According to information Breakit duo in spring pitched his idea to investors, with the aim to bring in more than 15- 20 million kronor in funding. Exactly how the business model will be developed remains to be seen.
The sale is hosted by the Bittrex exchange, one of the largest and most reputable cryptocurrency exchanges in the world.A total of 6,627,494 Breakout Coins BRK will be offered for Bitcoin at a base price of no lower than 0.00022222 BTC about 14.4 cents at current bitcoin exchange rates , which along with a prior sale and tokens for incentivising players and gaming sites, will bring the total number of BRK to ever be in existence to 19,500,000, according to co-founder Paul Kim.Breakout Coin is part of the Breakout Chain blockchain for gaming, created by lead developer James Stroud, PhD, a co-founder of CryptoCertify, the cryptocurrency auditing and certification company; Randy Kim, a professional poker player with 20 years' experience in Los Angeles casino management; Paul Kim, with 25 years of experience in IT, computer science and gaming; and Gian Perroni, an iGaming executive with over 18 years of online gaming experience."The online gaming world has been waiting for a solution like this for many years," said Perroni."Breakout Coin will be used to denominate many of our gaming properties, and will be accepted at all of them, including our soon-to-launch eSports platform and our full digital game download store."Miners who are responsible for the processing of BRK transactions also earn another type of token called SisterCoin SIS .
I think people should be horrified about the possibilities of people nameless and unidentified, beyond oceans…behind veils of anonymity, being able to…direct huge amounts of money to people to whom it doesn t belong…that is a huge problem, and a huge threat to our financial system, Manhattan s top federal prosecutor, Preet Bharara said at a Wall Street Journal conference here on Tuesday.Asked whether people should have confidence in Swift, the global bank messaging service used to carry out the theft, Mr. Bharara replied: I don t think there is any reason for people not to have confidence in any particular institution.Mr. Bharara s office and the FBI in New York are investigating the suspected theft by computer hackers, who tried to steal nearly $1 billion through extensive penetration of Bangladesh Bank s computers, dozens of orders on the official interbank fund-transfer network, and a money trail that ran through the Philippines murky casino business.Several other hacking incidents at banks in Vietnam and Ecuador that stole money via Swift have raised questions about the system s vulnerability.Separately in the WSJ interview, Mr. Bharara criticized an appeals court that last month overturned a marquee case stemming from the financial crisis that his office had brought against Bank of America.Respectfully, we disagree with it…we think it s wrong, Mr. Bharara said of the appeals court decision, which he said underscored difficulties in prosecuting cases tied to the 2008 crisis.


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Varied and numerous are the effects of lightning strike upon the person.
Among the more extraordinary we must include Martin Luther’s sudden decision, in rejection of the marriage arranged by his father, to join the Augustinian hermits at an Erfurt monastery following that electrical fulmination, on the second day of July 1505, which threw him to the ground in the woods close to Stotternheim.
(Lightning, it is said, lies at the origin of all life. Lashing primordial rock through volcanic gas, the initial abiogenetic spark, synthesising in one small transgressive leap across the line dividing the inorganic from what-may-be: the possibility of all life on earth. By curious chance, the Indo-European cultures make correct identification as a result: their thunder god the king of all gods.)
Consider then this low hill, on a midnight, beside the dark hulk of the decommissioned water tower, at the heart of an East Anglian town, here: an upward streamer, a pretty capillary of purple fire, reaching up from the head of him. From the swagging belly of the cloud a jagged line of light cast down through the storm, angling this way and that, branching off into lesser channels, zagging over the rain-soaked town, following the path best prepared for it by the ionizing air; this stepped leader choosing at the final moment not the lightning rod of the tower but the streamer – the man – until the two meet in a kiss of opposites, and the great cloud discharges itself deep into the earth through him, and the air around the jagged channel superheated to the temperature of the sun explodes in celebration.
Varied and numerous are the effects of lightning strike upon the person, none perhaps so unusual as the sudden acquisition, by the man struck, of such a power of memory as might be capable of the formation of entire cultures, though he lie as good as dead in the street this night.
Then came the rising of the sun seeking out the edges of things. Redeeming the town of its nightstorm: the mazy light. The grey dawn stirring into retreat, cat-like withdrawing round the many corners of the town; day-made angles emerging. The town draped over the hill, and the sun building shadows in its streets. The buildings making shape in the clarifying air. The hill and the wet lowland meadow beyond and the river dividing it. The shadows forming, creeping down the buildings; the streets now still, and the river running its course. The streetlights switching off; the windings of the town declaring the day.
There, emerging out of the dawn-grey light, visible for miles around, the shallow apex of the water tower; high within it, two men.
From that morning on, the hermit tends to his unconscious patient. Unwrapping the linen cloth, he cleans and reapplies unguents to the wounds, binds on fresh bandages and boils the old in a great copper kettle. Pale the body he washes as if an alabaster Christ, or the Christ Himself, for he values the life of the patient inordinately. In whispers he tells of what they will achieve, though he has yet to learn his name. Urging his patient on to recovery through three days and nights he administers a light broth to his unmoving lips. Words of his grand orations drift through the large iron chamber in which he makes his home, no less fragmentary than the shards of experience which the patient’s unconscious mind places before itself; each of these latter tumbling, turning through free space, as if the ur-matter of an unmade personality; similar, one to another, only in the aimlessness and sourcelessness of their drifting predicament – the lightning strike re-making him.
The third night. The patient wakes into a delirium of smashed memories, of auditory and optical hallucinations. Phantom shocks travel down his limbs to his peripheries, where they fizz and sputter and eventually spend themselves. Like clouds before the sun, memories come and go. At times there is her face and nothing else, the green eyes, beautiful in the way an ocelot’s face is beautiful; or else not her, but instead a pale yellow corn field rustling all around him in waves and the sense of love somewhere amorphous inside and waiting to be brought out by some as yet unmet particular. A child and adult at once, he dwells in all times concurrent. He travels through innumerable moments, and feels repeated again and again the great vertiginous rush of being born into himself, a surging up into the present moment, though not yet into consciousness. Delirious moans echo all night from his mouth through the dark space as the hermit his carer works at the desk under lamplight, parsing the great discourses of the West until they collapse, the words falling down soundless as autumn leaves.
It was on the morning of the fourth day that Isaiah Olm came out of his fever. The fear within subsided, and dawn brought gradually a soft grey light into the strange room through the small aperture above his head.
He opened his eyes: an iron chamber, perhaps forty feet in length and breadth, with a spiral stairwell opening up at its centre like a navel. The only light came through the jagged hole in the ceiling close to one of the walls above his head; the walls themselves not so much walls as a ribcage: great sheets of iron, attached with huge domed rivets one to another, and at each junction, every few feet, triangular iron ties running from the ceiling down to the floor. The metal sent reverberations popping and creaking through the broad shallow chamber as it heated gradually in the growing morning. He attempted to move, but could not.
Isaiah closed his eyes and let his head fall back. The beads of sweat standing on his forehead quivered; the wet hair at the nape of his neck he felt vividly cold. Every sense experience was involuted with pain – as if pain was the sole index of livingness.
From some unseen place in the dull far reaches of the cell he heard some- one mutter to himself, the voice familiar though unplaceable. Indistinct words reverberated through the chamber and drained down the stairwell.
Again, Isaiah forced open his eyes. The ancient paint lay thick around every joint and sheet and rivet, or else flaked off in great rusted crusts to reveal the strata of many repeated paintings. A bed of sorts lay rumpled towards the centre of the cell. Deep into his flank – a jab of pain.
Again, mutterings came from the dark side of the room; something fell, and great acoustic disturbance ensued, running round the cell, amplified by the vast metal soundbox he appeared to be in.
Again, Isaiah attempted to move. He managed to turn his head a little as the crashing continued unabated, and look into the gloom. Upon the triangular metal ties which supported the walls of the chamber had been contrived a makeshift system of shelving; this ran all along the walls, some of it an advanced state of collapse, though managing still to bear up an assembly of every imaginable object: vessels of infinite variety as to shape and size; instruments both mechanical and musical; books of every dimension, as well, perhaps, as of every subject; assorted haberdashery, bibelots, trinkets, knick-knacks, bric-a-brac and what-have-you, all of manifest inutility; scraps of broken machinery which thrust teeth and claws into the air as if through the portal of some bestial mausoleum; offcuts of metals, plastics, rubbers, woods, fabrics; canisters of gas and liquid, many leaking, and forming with the substances contained putrefied cumuli of filthy spume; pipes and cables coiled sinuously into precariously nesting mounds of disorder; tools of menacing design and proportion. The light of the morning flowed through the ragged hole in the roof, though could not penetrate to the far reaches of the cell, such were its proportions and the intricate tangle of matter within. Dust coated thickly every surface upwardly aspectant.
There came a shout from the far reaches of the cell, and the com- motion finally ended.
A slithering sound, and slow steps towards Isaiah, until:
This figure emerged out of the farther darkness:
Donald J. Waswill.
He carried a pocket knife in one hand and dragged a frayed duffel bag over the ribbed iron floor in the other. A thin old man, still muttering to himself; Isaiah looked him up, and looked him down. Was it a man?
—So you are awake! he said to Isaiah. I wonder if you know my face.
He brought this part of his body close to the eyes of his patient for inspection.
Isaiah answered with a barely perceptible shake of his head. What lines it had upon it! Ancient, and narrow like a knackered old ass’s; a long face of the driest paper, or of leather, as to the books and their covers which he lived amongst as hermit. The eyes an extraordinary yellow.
—But your voice, said Isaiah. The sounds——
—It is as the blackbird’s, is it not?
Not knowing what to say to this, Isaiah said nothing at all.
—Anyway, said Don. I will introduce myself to you. I am Don Waswill.
And before I even know your name, I can tell what you are thinking: you are thinking that there is no possibility that this bag is big enough to hold all that we need to carry.
He held the shabby duffel bag up for inspection. Isaiah lay there immobile, hearing every word this man said play back in his mind in a scrambled mass of repetitions. What had happened? Can a mind become so disorganised as to disengage from time? Concentrating with effort, he wondered which was the judicious and which the injudicious word of reply. In the end, he said simply his name.
—But people call me Is. Where am I?
—Ha! replied Don, and, throwing the duffel bag on to the floor, he sat on a low stool beside Is’s makeshift bed and began cleaning the blade of his pocketknife.
Is listened as the old man’s exclamation echoed in the interior of his listening mind. Time was all rucked up, grit in the gears, something very wrong. For a distraction he looked around the room again. Where was he? What kind of a place had such walls, floor, ceiling. It was the belly of an iron whale! He turned back to this Don, who cleaned and sharpened and cleaned again his pocket knife with whetstone, oil and rag, smiling or frowning at the inward weather of his thoughts. A reposeful silence filled the room, save for the occasional clang of the expanding iron and the faint hush of passing traffic which found its way over the Roman wall of the town, up through the gently rustling trees, and into the hole high in the roof, full of sibilants like the push and drag of a distant sea over shingle.
—You kept calling out Ruth last night, said Don. What is Ruth?
At the mention of her name, the habitual bright openness of Is’s face turned in upon itself, shrank back, fled like a frighted mollusc, and then ingloriously expired, as if in a cloud of its own ink. O sorrow.
Don wiped a streak of black oil on to his rag and tested the edge of his knife with a thumb.
—What is Ruth? he repeated.
A great sigh emanated from his patient’s mouth as the question echoed through the crystalline chambers of his now-vivid memory. O time.
—She is – was – my wife.
—Ah, said Don.
—She kicked me out.
—When? asked Don, hastily adding afterwards: (Not that the past has any reality to it).
—The day I— He faltered.
—The last day I remember. The day of the storm. She says I’m not a man.
—Ha! said Don again, this time with genuine joy. Ruth, or perhaps Ruthless.
—She is both.
—Well, you needn’t worry about any of that any more, said Don, inspecting the curve of his knife’s blade first one way then the other against the silhouetting light of the improvised window above.
—But what about my children? If I become a man, perhaps she will take me back.
Don gave late echo to the earlier sigh of his patient.
—I am ill-equipped to advise you on the subject of women. Rumour has it that the touch of a woman is akin to the chrism, though I have long been an heretic of love both conjugal and passionate, as will my excommunication here to this solitude you find me in attest.
Don cast his eyes about the lowly den as if in confirmation of his words – words which piled up in the convalescent’s mind like pebbles hushed up against the shore by a gentle wave. There was most certainly something gone wrong in his brain.
—I wonder, Don continued with mischief in his eyes, how it is that you plan on becoming more of a man. You would need to know what constituted a man in the first place.
Isaiah shrugged with only the muscles of his face.
—Aren’t there an infinite number of ways of obliging her? You could be indolent, hateful, cowardly, spiteful, warring, drunk. Where is the model for a man in this day? In any day? Isn’t the whole history of man suffering from a surfeit of, well, men. But don’t talk to me of history, that disgusting imposter. Perhaps Wife Ruthless meant that you should be less of a man, and thereby more of a mensch.
—I’ve never really known what she meant about anything, said Is.
—Such is the nature of words, said Don, as well as of marriage. But not for much longer! Fame beckons! And there will be time enough to discover how to be less or more of a man, whichever way your fancy takes you, for we shall be some weeks at our task (not that weeks have any real existence). We must prepare ourselves!
—For our adventuring!
Is looked at the man before him in perplexity, who had risen and picked up the duffel bag again.
—I want to go home, said Is, and he struggled and failed to move. Don looked imperiously down at his patient.
—You have nowhere to go, no time to be there, and, owing to your injuries, no means of transit. You should cease struggling, for it will benefit you naught, unless you enjoy pain.
—I want to go home, said Is again, and he struggled and failed again.
—You have no home, said Don in a violent outburst, dropping the heavy whetstone which he had used as an instrument of gesticulative emphasis on to the iron floor and causing a thunderous boom to travel round the chamber. Is stopped immediately: the admonitory words travelled also round the chamber of his mind. When would this distortion to time clear?
—Your place is at my side, adventuring with me, to the salvation of Being! said Don. It is decided that you will attend me, and be my servant, unto our very great glory. The lightning has proclaimed it!
Is looked into the striated face of his host – which peered aloofly down upon him, suffused, as it seemed, with some obscure notion of its possessor’s unique grace – and began crying. Don again dropped the duffel bag and leapt to Is’s side.
—What in the name of St. Isidore of Seville is happening to your eyes! he said. They are melting!
—You are mad, said Is, whose tears flowed unabated.
—I will appear mad to you, and so I will be accounted by everyone else from the point of view of the rat-hole of our civilization, an insult to rats as it happens. But I am not the one with the melty eyes!
As Don fussed about him, Is allowed the tears to flow down his cheeks; and in fact even if he had wanted to, he could not have stopped them, so complete was his grief, and so completely was he unable to move. Don settled beside the man he would call his friend, reached out to the rivulet upon his cheek, and touched it. A droplet formed upon the tip of his finger; he tasted.
—Please tell me where I am, said Is in a voice so plaintive that Don took pity on him, though not without the following preamble, as necessary as it is informative.
—Neither duration of Time nor extension in Space have any real existence, and so your question is nonsensical. But as you were not to know that, and as there is salt coming out of your eyes, and as you are an injured thing, I will formulate a reply according to common parlance: you are in the tank of a water tower.
Is’s tears ceased.
—Jumbo? he said.
—If by Jumbo you mean Colchester’s decommissioned water tower, then that is precisely where most people would take you to be (though I can only reiterate that they would be in error, for the reasons outlined earlier).
Is stared up at the iron ribs of the room without listening to Don. Jumbo! He was actually within its tank! The building he had looked at across the town of his birth every day; every day witnessing the shallow apex of its coppergreen roof atop the red brick arches – a lovely meeting of colours – appearing to move about the town as he made passage through it, as if a ship moving across an expanse of sea, nearer, then farther, then nearer again, continually rotating its planes into new orders; but no, not a ship, more of a harbour, for this, the water tower, was the image that intoned home to his sentimental heart.
—Jumbo, he said again.
—It is not a bad place to make one’s home, said Don.
Indeed it was not. Is felt calmed by the notion that he was up in the sky above the town inside Jumbo; the pain that resided in every joint of his body lessened a little.
—Have your eyes stopped melting now? said Don. Is nodded.
—Then I hope you don’t mind if we discuss what needs discussing: packing.
Once more he reached down and picked up the enormous duffel bag.
—Packing? said Is.
—Packing for our adventure. Even though there is no such thing as the future, it pays to be prepared. And as my servant, you will feel the want of the necessary equipment more than me.
—Yes, servant. But protest not; I saved your life. And you’ll be ten times the man that even Aristotle was when we’ve achieved our aim, and Wife Ruthless will curl up on your lap like a cat.
Is made visible articulation of scepticism through the use of the muscles of his face.
—You are welcome to go grovelling back to Wife Ruthless in your current state, said Don. Though even if she takes pity on you she’ll undoubtedly spurn you before the next time the moon comes laughing round to you for having pleaded pity in the first place. Serve me, attain fame, and then you should have the pick of all the Ruths of the world. Again the weight of that word hit Is deep in the chest. The line of his thought was beleaguered with images, words, textures, colours. Ah, Ruth. Worse by far than the pain at his side, whichever chemical it is which confers sorrow to the human heart again spurted deep into his tender interior.
—How much more or less of a man do I need to be? said Is.
—I cannot know. It is only upon concluding our adventuring that all things shall become knowable in the twinkling of an eye. Understand this: if you serve me, you will be ameliorated, and thereby cease to be the abortive specimen of mankind which you – along with everyone else – currently are. Wife Ruthless will witness your transformation, and she would be a fool indeed not to turn to you as if you were the sun.
—But Ruth hates the sun.
—And she a sunflower, Isaiah! Did not the inward folds of my rhetoric imply the heliotrope? Good Christ, it seems everything must be spelled out to you.
—Spelling wouldn’t help; I can’t read. Don looked deep into Is’s eyes.
—You, he said, are a miracle of perfect ignorance. It is this which makes you indispensable; the lightning chose well. Now say you will attend and serve me – the busy bee has no time for sorrow.
Is looked back into the yellow eyes of the peculiar man before him. It was true that he had no home – the echo from the door she had slammed ran down the street like a thunderclap. Faces appeared in the windows of the terrace to observe him in his shame. Love was, love was – no different to this physical suffering, except in its exquisiteness.
—I will do it, he said.
The yellow eyes flashed with pleasure.
—But why me? said Is.
His newly acquired master stood up and began moving about the chamber, gathering items from its recesses and throwing them into the duffel bag he dragged behind him.
—Tell me why it has to be me? repeated Is. Don continued to move about the room.
Don stopped fussing at his desk, leaned heavily on it with both hands, and turned.
—I cannot tell you.
A blank look on the servant’s face. I cannot tell you. I cannot tell you. I cannot tell you. These repetitions were a nuisance, that was for certain.
Don scratched the grey whiskers of one gaunt jowl.
—This is no good at all, he muttered to himself. I cannot keep break- ing my oath.
—What oath? asked Is. Or I won’t come.
Silence filled the iron chamber as Don engaged in internal contention. He turned back to his desk and the shelves above it where thirteen large books of identical proportion and design stood in a line. He raised a hand and let it travel down their spines.
—You are a devious one, Isaiah. Know that this is the very final time I will break my oath: the solemn covenant between myself and my blessed Science, and the compact between my bride Time and I that forevermore I foreswear the notion that past and future have any reality. But before I go on and tell you this I wish to establish a covenant or compact between ourselves that you will serve me unto the ends of the earth.
—Okay, said Is.
Don looked at the wall for a time and mumbled sceptically to himself.
Eventually, he relented.
—For many, many years, he began, I have lived and worked in the tank of this water tower at a single enterprise, and have sustained myself with rainwater and by catching the birds of the air for my food with snares. In just two weeks more I shall have been working on my Encyclopaedia for precisely Twenty-One years, which concludes its period of writing, this being the hallowed number at the very heart of my project. The book, when completed, will furnish the reader with the necessary knowledge to reject all falsity and live in truth. I will then put into action its teachings to the end that all Being shall be redeemed!
—It is absolutely true, continued Don, that there is no such thing as the past or the future, and that the myth of Cause and Effect which underlies all human reasoning, discourse and science is the greatest delusion in the history of the universe (though it is equally true that history cannot and does not have any real existence). Humanity has enslaved himself within the furrow of his reasoning, and now finds himself squeezed and squeezed by these self-imposed limits, though he enjoys being thus swaddled, for it makes him feel safe, and he calls it by the name Progress. By contrast, the true nature of the interaction of all entities in the universe is founded upon Chance. There is no preceding and proceeding; there is no chain, golden or otherwise. O Chance, thou very great Thing! And so at the conclusion of the writing of my great Encyclopaedia, whose progress has been mediated by Chance over a period of Twenty-One years of unerring work, we shall depart, and Chance shall attend us like some tutelary spirit, directing us to the means by which all Being may be redeemed!
Is looked with weary-eyed perplexity at Don following the completion of this speech.
—Now here’s where you come in, Don continued. By long meditation I have trained the mechanics of my eye and the chemistry of my visual cortex to process the percepts it gathers from the phenomena of the world at a speed far in excess of the capability of the starling or house-fly. This capability allowed me to witness from the walkway at the top of this water tower the number of times a cloud passed its electrical contents through you to the earth.
—Lightning! said Is.
—Know that a single bolt of lightning is the visible manifestation of numerous electrical discharges, and that you were struck not twice, but twice Twenty-One times.
—Isaiah, I would ask that you refer to the hallowed number as Twenty-One rather than twenty-one in future.
—And call me sir. It is fitting.
—Okay. Why Twenty-One, sir?
—Because it is the length in centimetres of the spectral line of the hyperfine transition of hydrogen, of course! It is an irrefutable fact that the number Twenty-One is in some way the key to the restitution of all Being. You were struck by lightning twice Twenty-One times, though this enormous water tower with solid copper lightning conductor running its full length, from the pachydermous wind vane at its tip, deep down into the water table below, stood beside you. What are the chances of that happening? But Chance it was that chose you for me! In addition to this, I have become aware in but a few brief interlocutions with you that your ignorance is so entire that you are as similar as an adult of our time can be to mankind before he invented the means of constructing his infernal written record, and thereby that abortive offspring History. Now, as I already mentioned, it will be precisely Twenty-One years since I first realised the significance of the hyperfine transition of hydrogen for the restitution of Being in fifteen days (not that I believe that days have any real existence; ‘day’ being merely a convenient way of referring to one rotation of the earth upon its axis – which, itself, is in actual fact an impossibility, owing to the non-existence of numerous non-entities to which the common mind bows its too-malleable credence). And so, in short, fifteen days time is when we shall depart. Until then, you should rest while I continue working, and we’ll be primed and prepared when the ‘day’ comes.
—Will I be okay then, sir?
—You will mend, said Don. There is some severe burning to your wrist where the lightning vaporized your watch – witness the dangers of a belief in the reality of linear time! – and a nasty hole in your side. But I have been administering an unguent of pork fat, thornapple, elder and primrose twice daily to your burns. Soon you will be healed. And very soon afterwards, you will have the very great honour of carrying the work itself, my Encyclopaedia of Being, Synthesised in Accordance with the Eternal Verities Delineated by the Spectral Line of the Hyperfine Transition of Hydrogen.
Here, Don gestured in a proud sweep before his bookshelf at the thirteen large volumes arranged there.
—That’s right. These thirteen books began their existence as the 1928–33 edition, with Supplement, of the New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, a most pernicious work in its definitions, though it be a valuable storehouse of historical forms. As everything which is wrong with the world can be reduced to what is wrong with words, I have taken the 440,000 words within these volumes and merely corrected each entry with an encyclopaedic account based on the eternal lesson offered by the hyperfine transition of hydrogen. In short, my work is written tinily in the margins of these books. You should guard them well when you are their custodian.
All of a sudden the whole iron chamber became filled with the impossibly loud sound of a ringing bell. It clanged in a panic, and then settled into a gentle peal; a faint whooping sound came from without.
—Ha! said Don, and he went from his desk over to the wall beyond, where he stilled the bell – pulling slack the cord threaded through its cannons – and then drew it down, to the end that as if by magic there was delivered through a pipe in the roof tethered by its foot a fat and healthy wood pigeon. Its wings woofed hollowly at the air, stilled, and then woofed again in quick grey thrusts with the panic of the bird.
—Luncheon! said Don.
And the word rang through Is’s mind to infinite iteration.
Paul's NOVEL forbidden line WAS PUBLISHED BY GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS IN november 2016. TO ORDER YOUR OWN COPY SIMPLY HEAD HERE.

domain: literature


A restaurant with a “sushi robot” is on board to join a mixed-use, student-housing building across from the University of Central Florida and Valencia College’s developing downtown campus.
That robot will prepare and maintain rice at Vera Asian, which has signed a lease for a 1,800-square-foot space on the ground floor of the 15-story building dubbed UnionWest, according to a news release. The building is slated to open in late August at Terry Avenue and Livingston Street in the 68-acre Creative Village, and the restaurant is pushing to open for the fall semester this year.
The campus is being developed in the area of the former Amway Arena and will be on 15 acres bordered by Livingston Street to the north, the train tracks to the south, Parramore Avenue to the west and Hughey Avenue to the east.
In addition to sushi, Vera Asian will serve up made-to-order wok dishes as well as breakfast items and grab-and-go items. In business since 2014, it is based in Longwood and has a Lake Mary location.
The UnionWest building is expected to house 640 students and will have 105,000 square feet of space leased to UCF and Valencia. Valencia’s culinary institute, the Walt Disney Center for Culinary Arts and Hospitality, will be relocated to the building.
Other retail tenants in the building will include Subway, Dunkin’, Qdoba and Addition Financial.
“We’re excited not only to join UnionWest, but also to become a member of the Creative Village community, which embodies our people-first approach to serving the neighborhood,” Vera Asian owner Kim Nguyen said in a news release.
Contact the reporter at firstname.lastname@example.org or 407-420-5664; Twitter @afullerreporter


text:
What do you get when you put several songwriters in a room at the same time? A celebration of music. And that is exactly what happened in Allen at the public library auditorium last week.
The event was sponsored by Texas Roadhouse of McKinney and
Bach to Books. It featured Austin Cunningham, Zane Williams, Kylie Rae Harris, Brad Allen and Michael Prysock.
As a special treat, Bette Winkler Hodges, daughter of the late songwriter Ray Winkler, discussed her father’s collaboration with the late Jim Reeves to compose the hit “Welcome to My World.”
Prysock’s songs reflected his Arkansas upbringing, focusing on the importance of family. Allen’s entertaining stage presence contributed to his popularity to the capacity crowd. He was introduced as a cross between Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie.
The highlights of the evening came from the last three performers. From her first guitar strum, the 22-year-old Harris captivated the audience with her strong vocals and well-crafted lyrics. She also joined Williams to provide beautiful backup vocals on one of his songs, “Pablo and Maria.” And Williams kept everyone entertained, especially with his popular version of “99 Bottles of Beer.”
Cunningham was the headliner, and was fantastic. Not only were his songs incredible, but his banter with the audience kept everyone laughing. He told everyone he was selling CDs out front for $2,500 each. His goal was to sell one!
Cunningham’s songs included “Mother’s Day,”
a song he has yet to record, but is dedicated to his mother. Others were “Made to Last” and “Juan’s Drunk Again.”
Posted by: Sam Moore
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domain: entertainment