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#the former owner used to feed deer
bomberqueen17 · 7 years
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Am sitting in the dark on my big sister’s leather couch in Savannah like a creeper, but I’m awake extra early and just don’t want to put a light on that disturbs anyone. So I guess I’ll collect my various thoughts, none of which are all that interesting-- mostly, airline travel, elderly dogs, and the foibles of children. The almost-5-year-old niece, who was quite standoffish last time she saw me (understandably, I seldom see her) has decided I am The Best, and over the course of yesterday extended this to my dude, who in the last five or six years has gone from mildly distressed by small children to pretty used to them. Which is good, because last night she decided he was For Climbing, and her favorite thing is to climb into his lap and then press her nose to his nose, which is disconcerting if you’re used to adult personal space concepts. (I don’t usually do things like that to him, so -- but he’s been quite amused and graceful about it, which, I mean, you have to be somewhat, but I’ve been substituting my cheek for my nose because I don’t want her to mash my glasses into my eyeballs, for example.)
The trip was uneventful; full planes, but no real issues. First leg had a large group traveling together where apparently nobody spoke English, and so this being the US, it’s not like the airline was going to have anyone on staff who could translate for them, so they just stood in the way of a lot of things and the staff repeated themselves without slowing down and generally no one was thrilled by this, especially when they extended this to listening to crew instructions in the cabin. But they seemed copacetic with the Fasten Seat Belt sign, at least, so in the end it went smoothly enough.
We arrived in Savannah to discover that it was a lovely, breezy, relatively cool sunny day-- of course much warmer than we’d left (freeze warning last night in Buffalo, wtf), and there were strange bugs everywhere-- black beetles with red dots, flying around in pairs conjoined at the ass. Dude Googled them, and discovered that they were Red-Shouldered Bugs, also sometimes known as Love Bugs, because at mating season they stick their asses together and stay like that for a couple of days at a time, while going about their business. They have become a theme so far, because my sister’s back porch seems to have some kind of nest of them or something underneath it, they’re just everywhere out there. But they’re not really by the pool so much, so you just have to kind of wave your hands as you go out that door. 
The closing dates on #1 buying my sister’s new house and #2 selling her old one are actually lining up in a copacetic fashion, which is very good and also important. Of course, my sister is still trying to finish out her position with the Georgia national guard, so she’s managed to cram two back-to-back sessions (you know how the pitch is “a weekend a month, two weeks a year” well she’s trying to do I think two months’ weekends just to wrap up all her stuff, and she has to cram that in right before moving), and also her husband has already moved so she’s on her own doing it. (He’s living in the barracks of a tiny National Guard post up in Maryland, which is their destination. She says he’s doing better than she thought he would; his only real distress is that he loves to cook and hates eating out, and his kitchen facilities currently are a microwave and a mini-fridge, so he is dying inside, but figures if that’s his only complaint he can’t really count himself that unfortunate. He really is kind of a foodie, though, so I’ve no doubt his suffering is real. It’s not even that he likes fancy stuff, it’s that he really likes making it himself. He has discovered that Maryland has excellent crab everything, though.)
But, Middle-Little, and Mom and Dad, are both able to come help move, so. 
Today, a Pod arrives, that we’re going to try to fill. One Pod is already gone, and it had all the stuff she was sure she wouldn’t miss over the short term in it. (”We packed up the liquor! That might have been premature.” There’s some tequila and some gin left, I’ll improvise.)
I told Big Sister what Dad had told me, which was that since her specialty is logistics, he had great faith in her. She rolled her eyes, and said, “Well, he’s not wrong, I even have the letters after my name,” and I don’t know what that means so that’s today’s line of questioning. 
Her children went off to free-range the neighborhood at one point, and she wound up dragging lawn chairs out to the driveway in front so she could at least keep tabs on what was going on. We were scrubbing her driveway, as well, because her mother-in-law had, last visit, done a really cool art project with tempera paint that was supposed to be washable, but it turns out if you let tempera paint dry on uncoated concrete, it is not in fact washable anymore, and now she has this house she has nearly sold that has not been closed upon yet and the driveway is completely coated in splatters of paint with childrens’ footprints in it.
So-- there was some name for it, Mouse Painting or something, like from a book or something-- parents or caretakers of young children, note this down, it was a great activity and enormously fun, and cleanup can be easy-- throw the kids in the pool! no problem-- but for the love of all that’s holy, hose down the driveway while the paint is still wet. It was several days baked in Georgia sun by the time my sister got home, and it’s apparently indelible, so we spent a while with Oxy Clean and scrub brushes out there trying to get it faded enough that the buyers on this house don’t back out. 
(This, by the way, is a great encapsulation of that particular mother-in-law relationship.) 
So my first afternoon in Georgia was spent sitting on lawn chairs out front listening to children shriek in the yard across the street. Sort of off-handedly, I don’t know what this says about anything, my sister told me the names of all the surrounding dogs. She has two, who wander the neighborhood a bit, and so she’s just aware of the surrounding dog-terrain, because everyone’s dogs kind of wander a little bit. That one’s Georgia, she said, so-and-so got her for her (child’s) birthday, she’s a little under two years old now. That one’s Max, he’s not quite a rescue-- rescue orgs wouldn’t give them a Shepherd because they didn’t have a fence, but she found that one on Craigslist, and then just got a fence right away anyway, he’s like a year old and he’s got some anxiety problems and tried to eat my cat but I don’t blame him, I try to keep my dogs from bothering him too much, etc. 
The punchline of the dogs thing though is that later, all three kids were climbing the trees in the back, and the middle child had asked me to come watch, so I was standing there watching (and discovering that there were fire ant hills out here, i’m glad I was mentally prepared for that), and Max was pacing in his yard and watching us, so I said hi Max! to him, and middle child was astonished that I knew the dog’s name. So I told him I was psychic and knew dogs’ names, and, get ready for this- he said oh yeah?? what’s the name of that dog across the street? and I said, Georgia! She’s two! 
It blew him away. 
He then demanded whether I knew the name of the hound they’d found and rescued once in a brief incident like five years ago, and I was like, look buddy it only applies to current dogs, but as of this moment I’ve just remembered that dog was named Julep, so. I have to think of how to bust that out.
Oh I also rediscovered my childhood superpower of swimming in water everyone else thinks is cold but I find comfortable. Dude couldn’t even stay in the pool ten minutes but I was in there close to an hour, me and Middle Child, who’s the most, hm, thermally stable, let’s say (he’s a Substantial Boy), and I felt like the water was warm, but after I’d been out, dried off, gotten dressed, and was sitting at the dinner table, I realized that all the fat in my thighs was still chilled, and then I was cold.
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Of Bullets & Blood - Chapter 3
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Summary
C.C. Tinsley. A preacher’s son. Now a bounty hunter who will do whatever it takes to find who killed his wife and son.
Ricky Goldsworth. A former samurai running from his past. Now a bounty hunter trying to stay honourable in a land riddled with crime.
At first glance, these men were opposites in every way. However, through betrayal, blood, corruption, and the crimes of a serial killer, they will find that they have much more in common than they first expected.
Western/Samurai AU!
Chapter 3: A Warm Meal & Bad Company
To say Ricky’s day wasn’t going that well would be an understatement. He had been out hunting for almost 7 hours and still hadn’t caught a thing. He found a deer, but his boot got stuck in the stirrup and he ungracefully fell off his horse and spooked the poor thing. Then an hour later Francesca bucked him off his horse when a rattlesnake slithered out onto the path. Other than that, there wasn’t much that he could find and he knew he didn’t have anything left in the cupboards as he donated it to the local church to feed the poor. Accepting defeat, Ricky started to head home until he came by a dirty white house where an old man was sitting on the steps of the porch.
“Hey son! You look like you’re in desperate need of a warm meal. Why don’t you come on in?,” he hollered.
Ricky noted that the man seemed pretty harmless, there was a walking stick resting beside him and he was had a wide welcoming smile that beckoned him in. Despite this, he didn’t really want to bother the man.
“It’s okay sir, I’m just passing through. No need to put yourself through all that trouble.”
“Nonsense, it would be my pleasure! Good company always has a seat at my table. My wife always makes too much for me and my son. It’s best that you do come in and help us eat all of it.”
The front door creaks open and an older lady appears who waves at Ricky, “Abe, that’s dinner ready. oh hello there, I’m Delilah! Come on in, I’ll set an extra place at the table for you.”
“The lady has commanded you to the table now boy, you better get in there,” the man laughed as he stood and walked inside.
Ricky sighed and decided that eating a homemade meal with a family instead of stopping by the general store for some awful tinned food was a better alternative. So, he climbed down from his horse, brushed the dirt off his clothes the best he could, took off his bow and quiver, packed them onto the horse and straightened his jacket as he walked up to the house and into the dining room.
“There’s our guest of honour! Come take a seat next to Samuel here. When was the last time you had a good meal with family?” Delilah said as she placed a plate full of stew in front of him.
“It’s been a while, they’re all back home. But I have to thank you, ma’am. This is real kind of you all.”
“You aren’t the first to say that and you sure won’t be the last.”
Before Ricky could find the words to come up with a response, he felt a sharp pain exploded in the side of his head as everything went black.
When he woke up, he was on his back in a dark and dirty well. His head was pounding and his whole body was stiff and achy. A foul but sickly-sweet smell invaded Ricky’s nostrils as he put his hand on something smooth and tried to push himself up, but his hand went right through and plunged into something cold and slimy. As Ricky took a closer look at what his hand was in, it was clear that his hand was in the guts of the rotting corpse of a young woman. He screamed and cursed as he scrambled back into the wall of the well. There were skeletons and half rotting corpses strewn around him. If he didn’t get out soon, he would be one of them.
The family had taken all his possessions from him, all he could do was try to climb out or stay here and starve to death. With a deep breath, he tried to grip onto the uneven rock that lined the well and tried to pull himself up with the little grip that he had.
“Alright…right hand there, push up with left leg then grab onto that jagged rock there with the left hand. What could go wrong?”
Unfortunately, many things could go wrong. As soon as Ricky grabbed onto the rock, he slipped which caused the rock to slice his hand open as he fell back into the depths of the well. He hit the bodies with an ugly crunch and prayed that the bones that broke were not any of his.
As the panic and desperation set in, he heard an echoey but familiar voice, “You know, of all the places I feared that I would run into you again. This was not one of them.”
“You know, this may be the only time that I’ll ever be happy to hear your voice Tinsley.”
Tinsley snorted, “And you call me pain in the ass, someone was certainly self-projecting there. Give me a second and I’ll throw down a bit of rope for you. Then you can tell me who the hell dumped you down there.”
Ricky slowly dragged himself back up onto his feet as he applied pressure to his bleeding hand. When the rope was lowered, he grabbed it and began to climb up as Tinsley worked to pull him up at the same time, “You might want to savour this moment, it will be the only time I will appreciate you Tinman.”
“Alright Golden boy, don’t taunt the hand that saves your ass.”
As Ricky reached the top, Tinsley grabbed onto his forearm and helped him over, “Well, don’t you look rosy. You doing okay, Goldsworth?”
“I got knocked out by some old man, spent God knows how long down a well filled with dead bodies and sliced my hand open. How do you think I’m doing?”
Tinsley carefully took Ricky’s injured hand in his and examined the cut. Without saying a word, he retrieved some whiskey from his bag and a bandage. He poured some whiskey on his handkerchief and gently cleaned his wound and then began to wrap the bandage round his hand as carefully as he could.
“Who did this to you?” Tinsley murmured.
“Why do you care?”
Despite how Tinsley presented himself and how desperately he tried to suppress it, he cared deeply about every victim he has come across. From the little boy he found drowned in the river with dark red and purple bruises all over his neck to the kind old lady that he found with her skull caved in from a robbery gone wrong, the weight of every life he wasn’t able to save or avenge haunts him. Even though Tinsley wasn’t too fond of Goldsworth, he knew he was a decent enough man worth saving.
“This is the first time in years that I’ve found a victim that was still alive. So, forgive me if I care about who is responsible for this.”
Ricky sighed; he has had his own fair share of failings. Often times it’s not the victims faces that haunt him; their names are long forgotten. It’s the little things left behind that stick out the most. A lone burnt children’s sock next to a smouldering house or streaks blood being carried down a river.
“It was some family. I think the old man was called Abe? He had a wife and a son but I can’t really remember their names. It was at some big old house, not too far from the pig farm. They very kindly served me with food that I didn’t get a chance to eat before robbing me.”
Tinsley finished bandaging up Ricky’s hand and clapped him on the shoulder, “Well, luckily for you, I think I know where that house is. The general store owner mentioned that he had heard a rumour that bodies were being dumped in this well. I found the bodies last week but didn’t have any leads and I knew if I reported it, then whoever was doing this would get away.”
“So, you waited for another victim to get thrown down the well? What if the next one was killed before being dumped here? You’re just letting another person die!”
“If there’s no trail to follow then there’s no killer to catch. They’ll just get a little more careful and keep going. This was the fastest way to find the killer and save as many lives as possible. It all worked out in the end though, right?” Tinsley reasoned.
Ricky grunted, relenting because deep down he knew that Tinsley was right.
Tinsley nodded, climbed on top of his horse, and stretched his hand out to Ricky. “There you go, Goldsworth. Now, how about we have a friendly chat with your hosts and show them that your sins do truly come back to haunt you?”
Ricky grabbed his hand and climbed onto the back of his horse, “I would love nothing more.”
By the time the two men reached the house, with the extra horse outside, Ricky knew they had picked up a new victim.
“We need to be careful here, wouldn’t put it past them to use whoever they have lured in as a hostage to get away,” Ricky said as they jumped off the horse.
“So, I suppose you’re not planning on announcing our arrival so they can fight us?”
Ricky opened his mouth to answer but Tinsley held his hand up and cut him off, “Don’t answer that, I’m afraid what you’re going to say. Listen, your whole honour thing works when you’re up against other honourable folk and when the time comes, I’ll let you have at it. But these folks are cowards that will put anyone they damn well please in danger if it means they get away. We can take them in alive but we need to do this the right way or that person is as good as dead.”
“Does the right way include being a sneaky little shit?”
Tinsley laughed as Ricky slowly broke out into a grin, “We can be direct little shits if you’d like?”
“I’d like that,” Ricky hummed.
Tinsley reached into his horse’s saddle bag, pulled out an old large revolver and handed it to Ricky, “Here, you know how to shoot a gun right?”
“Of course. Just because I favour the sword and the bow doesn’t mean I don’t know how to shoot a man.”
“Good, because we’ll be outnumbered, and I don’t feel like doing all the work if things go sideways. Anyway, I’ll go in the front and you’ll go in the back. Sound good?”
Ricky thought it through and with the little that he remembered of the house, he knew that it would take longer for him to go in the back and through the kitchen which would leave Tinsley outnumbered long enough to get riddled with bullets.
“Sounds like a great way for you to earn a couple extra bullet holes. I’ll smash through the window of the dining room, get the poor guy out and we’ll deal with them that way.”
Tinsley drew his pistol and cocked it, “It’s nice to know you care but if I get shot doing it your way, you’ll never hear the end of it. You head on round and on 3, we’ll smash in like the direct little shits you wanted us to be.”
Ricky nodded, quietly snuck round and pressed his back against the wall next to the window as Tinsley bounded up the stairs to wait at the front door. Ricky peaked through the window and saw two men with their backs to them conversing, one of which Ricky was sure was the son.
1
Delilah emerged from the kitchen and handed him the bowl of stew.
2
From his position he could see Abe reaching into a drawer and slowly pulling out a revolver.
3
Taking a deep breath, Ricky aimed at Abe and fired once, hitting him in the head and splattering blood all over the wall, then smashing the rest of the window with his gun and stepping through as Tinsley kicked the door open with his gun aimed at Delilah who was screaming next to her husband who was missing a chunk of his head.
“Alright folks, let’s play a game called ‘all the killers in the room stay still so no one else dies,’” Tinsley shouted as he nervously darted his eyes between the family and Ricky who had his gun pressed against the back of Samuel’s head, half expecting him to shoot them all in quick succession.
Ricky grabbed the back of the shirt of the young man whose eyes were wide with fear, hauled him to his feet and ushered him through the broken window, “We’re not going to hurt you, but you should most certainly run. Can’t imagine this scene is going to get any friendlier.”
The man frantically nodded and held his hands up, “Of- of course! I won’t tell anyone about this, I promise!”
“Now, will one of you kindly tell me where you put my things?” Ricky asked calmly despite the rush of adrenaline pumping through his veins.
“Fuck you!” Samuel growled.
Using the barrel of his gun that was pressed against the back of his skull, Ricky pushed his head down roughly onto the table, “Wrong answer, you really should try again.”
“It’s in the compartment behind the painting on the wall there, you murdering bastard!” Delilah screeched, pointing at the painting that was hung a few feet to the right of her.
“You got it?” Tinsley asked.
“Just watch my back,” Ricky answered, slowly moving his gun away from Samuel and walking towards the painting as Tinsley set his aim on the man to avoid friendly fire.
Once Ricky reached it, he tucked the gun into his belt, lifted the painting off the wall and was met with his katana, tanto, and a bundle of money. He tucked the money into his pocket and sheathed his tanto but kept a hold onto his sword.
“So, what now, you going to turn us in? You really think that is a punishment to us? You’ll make us famous and our legacy will be remembered for generations while the fools that we killed have no one around to even know that they’ve disappeared,” Samuel sneered as he slowly rose to his feet.
“What makes you think either of you will be leaving here alive? Can’t tell your story then huh?” Ricky chuckled.
Tinsley started to feel his sweat running down his back, there was a slight manic glint in Ricky’s eyes that alluded to something dangerous that was buried deep within, “Uh Goldsworth…What exactly are we doing? I thought the whole point of this was to catch them and turn them in?”
“Unfortunately, there has been a change of plans. If you don’t like it, you can leave.”
Before Tinsley could question him further, he stuck his katana into Delilah’s chest who frantically tried to reach for the gun her dead husband grabbed earlier.
With a shout of protest, Samuel rushed towards Ricky but didn’t get far before Ricky threw his dagger which lodged itself in his throat. He only made it a few more steps before collapsing to the ground and coughing up blood, wheezing and gurgling as he tried to draw more air into his lungs.
With a sigh, Ricky withdrew his sword from Delilah’s chest. Then he slowly walked over to Samuel and pulled his dagger from his throat, letting the blood pool on the wooden floorboards but ignored the clear sings of Samuel’s dwindling life.
Tinsley’s arms slowly lowered to his gun to his side, “What the fuck was that?”
“They're a bunch of cold-blooded killers Tinsley.”
“And it seems like you are as well. You going to kill me too?”
Ricky took out a handkerchief and wiped the blood from his blades, “I did what I had to do. You know that better than anyone. I'm willing to bet you've killed many unarmed folk in your time.”
“That's...different.”
Ricky snorted, “You might pretend to stand there all calm but we both know you've hunted down criminals and slaughtered them in a blind fury.”
He was right. It didn’t matter how hard he tried; Tinsley would not be able to suppress the memory of bone crushing underneath his fist or the spray of blood that hit his face. Two men had been foolish enough to dig up the grave of not only his wife but also his child. They had taken his wife’s necklace, her wedding ring and had also stolen the charred teddy bear that he buried with his daughter which they regarded as some sort of trophy for their hard work. This ignited a burning fury that was fed by the pain of grief which turned him into a raging inferno that left a river of crimson and a howling wind of mercy that was silenced with a violent unforgiving blow.
Tinsley sharply holstered his gun and tried to control his heavy breathing, “They took something that didn't belong to them and well…they had it coming.”
“Then why is that principle different now? They took the only thing I have that connects me to my family! They took this and many innocent lives just to birth a legacy of blood and fear. Are you really saying that you wouldn't have done the same?”
I did. I did and perhaps the worst part of it is, I don’t regret any of it.
Tinsley held hands up, “You got me there. What do you want to do ‘bout this mess then?”
Ricky sheathed his weapons and started to light the lamp, “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s if you want to destroy a legacy then you must burn it to the ground. And that is what I intend to do.” Tinsley nodded and walked out, “Alright then. Now, you’ll have to excuse me, I’ve got an appointment with a cigarette.”
Tinsley didn’t quite understand Goldsworth. One minute he was yelling at him for being a cold killer but then went ahead to cut anyone down that dared to invoke his wrath. But perhaps he understood him more than he let himself believe. Tinsley used to try to be good but more of what he had to give was brutally taken from him and all that was left was an insatiable desire to seek revenge on anyone who had dared to wrong him. Maybe they were one of the same, one trying to be better than he was and the other who knew what path he had taken but couldn’t find it in him to change.
He lit his cigarette and as he held it between his lips. He took a deep drag to let the hot smoke fill his lungs. He heard the crash of the lamp being thrown onto the floor and soon felt the warmth of a dying legacy press against his back. And with the cigarette smoke shifting through the air like a ghost, Tinsley can’t help but wonder if he died right now, would the legacy that he would leave be more than one forged with the bullets he fired and the blood he has spilled?
Yes? No? He cannot find satisfaction in either answer. He knows that he never will.
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sliceannarbor · 4 years
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Ruth Reichl
Food Writer/Culinary Editor/Author Former editor-in-chief, Gourmet magazine Former restaurant critic for The New York Times/Los Angeles Times Spencertown, New York ruthreichl.com
Photo: Michael Singer
SPECIAL GUEST SERIES
In this, our 124th issue of SLICE ANN ARBOR, we are honored to present acclaimed food writer, culinary editor, and author Ruth Reichl. Reichl talks with SLICE about her long and storied career at Gourmet magazine, her passion for memoir writing — and life. 
Special to this issue and time, Reichl shares some thoughts about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. She is currently self-quarantined at her home in Spencertown, New York.
_________________________________________________
INTRODUCTION
Ruth Reichl is a food writer, culinary editor, and the author of five critically acclaimed memoirs: Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir, For You, Mom. Finally, Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise, Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table, and Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table. Reichl served as editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine from 1999 to 2009. Prior to this, she was a restaurant critic for The New York Times and the food editor and restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times. Reichl is the recipient of six James Beard Foundation Awards for her journalism, magazine feature writing, and criticism. In 2015, she provided commentary for the Chef's Table (Netflix) series featuring Dan Barber, chef and co-owner of Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, New York. Reichl also served as a judge on Top Chef Masters. She is the author of the novel Delicious!, and the cookbooks: My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life, and Mmmmm: A Feastiary. Reichl earned a B.A. and an M.A. in art history from the University of Michigan. When she's not working, you can find her cooking, walking, or reading. Reichl resides in upstate New York in a house on top of a mountain with deer, wild turkey, and the occasional bear prowling around outside, with her husband, Michael Singer, a television news producer, and two cats.
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FAVORITES
Book: You must be joking!  One book? It's usually whatever I'm reading at the moment, which is, right now, Hilary Mantel's The Mirror and the Light.
Destination: Any urban city with good walks and great museums.
Motto: The secret to happiness is finding joy in ordinary things.
Sanctuary: My writing cabin
THE QUERY
Where were you born? 
Greenwich Village, New York City
What were some of the passions and pastimes of your early years?
I have loved reading, cooking, and prowling the streets of the city since I was a very small child.
What is your first memory of food as an experience?
I am two. My mother feeds me a spoonful of something so disgusting I cannot swallow it. It is cold and fuzzy on my tongue and if I could have named the flavor I would have compared it to moldy herring. I spit it out. My mother looks surprised, takes a taste of the vile substance and says, ‘What is wrong with you? This is delicious!’ In that moment I understand that my mother cannot be trusted; she and I do not taste the same way. My mother was, in fact, totally taste blind. She had combined the dregs of three different cartons of melted ice cream, poured them into an ice tray, put it in the freezer and left it, uncovered, for weeks to absorb the various flavors of every leftover in the refrigerator. This was her idea of ‘dessert.’ Now, seventy years later, I can still taste it.
What intrigues you most about the art and science of food?
I believe that absolutely everything about food is interesting. The culture of cooking is what distinguishes us from other animals; we cook, they don't. We define ourselves as individuals and as members of society by what we choose to eat. Food brings us together — and sets us apart. And, above all, food is a source of immense happiness.
How would you describe the significance of Gourmet in the history of American culinary culture?
Gourmet was America's first epicurean magazine, and for almost 70 years it chronicled the way Americans were eating. If you want a snapshot of American history from 1941 to 2009, you could do worse than flip through the pages of the magazine. What you see is a country becoming increasingly conscious of the place that food has in our society. I was enormously fortunate to have been given the magazine just as Americans were beginning to understand that food is much more than something to eat, and that an epicurean magazine might offer more than recipes and travel articles. I hope that, at that pivotal moment in our history, Gourmet was able to help steer the national conversation about food to include issues of climate change, ethical eating, farm policy, gender and race — along with all the pleasures of the table.
Was there a period along the way [at the magazine] that presented an especially important learning curve?
For me the seminal moment was publishing David Foster Wallace's essay, Consider the Lobster. When he turned in what was, essentially, a piece about bioethics, I was stunned. It was a beautiful and important piece of writing, but I was also terrified. Were Americans ready to read about the morality of eating animals in a mainstream epicurean publication? As it turned out, they were not only ready, but eager to consider those questions — and it emboldened all of us to tackle the increasingly complicated issues that cooks face every day. 
How did you begin to realize your fascination with the art of memoir writing?
I'd been a newspaper journalist for most of my career, and I wanted to see if I could write long. When I thought about what to write, it occurred to me that I wanted to write about growing up at the table — about the many extraordinary people who had influenced my ideas about cooking and eating. I intended it as a group of short stories, but it grew into a memoir. As I was writing I began to see that memoir really was my genre. It's not that I think my own life is so interesting; everyone's life is interesting, but mine is the one I know best. And isn't the point, really, to underline our common humanity?
Do you have a creative process you typically follow as you begin a project?
I wish!  All I can say is that I just sit at my desk and wait for it to happen. And then rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.
How do you envision the future of the culinary enterprise?
We're at a turning point right now and the future very much depends on how we go forward. Since the end of World War II, when the American government made food a crucial part of the cold war, our country has been focused on cheap food. The result of these policies — which involved the industrialization of farming, the overuse of antibiotics and fertilizers, the creation of animal confinement facilities, the overfishing of the oceans, I could go on and on — has given us the cheapest and most abundant food in the world. It has also contributed to climate change, the destruction of rural America, the devastation of our waters and a crisis of obesity and diabetes. The result is that six out of 10 Americans suffer from chronic disease. We are only beginning to realize the consequences of the policies of the last 75 years. We can change. My hope is that the generation of young people who have been brought up in a culture of food, a generation who understand that eating is an ethical act, will do their best to undo the damage and create a more sustainable world.
In all your travels, what stands out as the most memorable meal you shared with others?
It was in Crete. I was on my honeymoon, visiting a beloved art professor who taught a course called "Light and Motion." He took us up a mountain for dinner.  We came to a tumbledown shack, with a huge pile of onions standing next to it. An old lady came out, set some chairs on the porch, and poured some olive oil into a dish. She picked herbs on the hillside and sprinkled them into the oil. She sliced onions. Set out some olives from her own trees. Gave us a loaf of bread she'd baked, and wine made by her neighbor. Then she picked up a fishing pole and went down the mountain. We drank wine. We ate bread and olive oil. We talked. The sun set. The air was fragrant with thyme. The moon was rising as the old lady returned and lit a fire of grape vines to grill the fish.There were some greens that she'd grown, more onions, and more wine. And for dessert, yogurt from her own sheep. It was a very simple meal. It was perfect. It could only have happened in that place, at that moment. And I realized that the professor had wordlessly made his point: in the right hands, food is art.
Who has had the greatest influence on your life, and why?
My parents. From my mother, who suffered from bipolar disease, I learned to be deeply grateful for my own sanity. And from my father, a book designer who loved what he did, I learned that if you follow your passions there is great joy in work.
Is there a book or film that has changed you?
I read The Grapes of Wrath when I was eight or nine, and it made me think about where our food comes from and all the people who grow it. As a city girl, I hadn't really considered that before. It made me see how much our community depends on food and farming — and it gave me a real desire for social justice for the people who work the land.
What do you consider your greatest life lesson?
Life lesson; it's such an odd concept. One of those words they always use to describe books. Not quite sure how to answer this, but I'll say that the word that I try to live by is generosity. If you always follow your most generous impulses, you can't go wrong. I mean that in every sense: be kind, be available, give away as much as you can. Be there — for your family, your friends, your co-workers. Even when your instinct is to say no, say yes instead.
How would you define a life well lived?
All you can ask, of anyone, is to live up to the best in themselves. Realize your own potential. Work hard, be kind, and have as much fun as you can.  
What are you most proud of in your long and storied career?
Sometime in the late 80s I became the food editor of the Los Angeles Times (I was already the restaurant critic). At the time it was the biggest food section in the country with two sections, 60 pages every week. For the next five years, Laurie Ochoa and I reimagined what a newspaper food section could be. We thought of food as culture, not just recipes, and we tried to take as big a bite out of the world as we could. We covered the politics of food, science, agriculture, history, and anthropology. We did profiles. We brought in great people: Jonathan Gold, Charles Perry, Russ Parsons, and David Karp. We encouraged Toni Tipton to stop writing about nutrition and think bigger. We begged writers who'd never written about food to write stories for us. The paper's editor, Shelby Coffey, was skeptical at first, but after a while he said, ‘You've shown me that food can be a great way for a paper to cover the city.’ It was enormous fun. I was really proud of that section, and it ultimately became the template for what we would do with Gourmet magazine.  
How would you like to be remembered?
I've been writing about food for fifty years. I hope I had some part in making other people think that it's an important subject. As MFK Fisher said, ‘I cannot count the good people I know who, to my mind, would be even better if they bent their spirits to the study of their own hungers.’
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Special to this issue and time, Reichl shares some thoughts about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. She is currently self-quarantined at her home in Spencertown, New York. 
How are you weathering life in the days of COVID-19?
Like everyone else I'm edgy and irritable. As the days go by, it comes closer; people I love have died, others have tested positive. And I know this is only the beginning. At the moment I'm in self-quarantine. I read, I write, I do a lot of cooking.
What are you cooking in your home kitchen?
Fortunately I'm a condiment whore and my pantry is full of wonderful flavor enhancers. My freezer is filled with fruits and vegetables I put up last summer, and I live in the country, surrounded by farms and dairies so meat, milk, and eggs are easy to come by. And since it's just me and Michael, I basically get up every morning and ask, ‘What do you want to eat today?’ And then I make it. Lately it's been a lot of pizza, pasta, and Asian stir-fries. And of course, I'm baking bread. Isn't everyone?
How do you envision the future of the restaurant industry as it tries to rebuild in the months ahead?
I think it's going to be grim; restaurants are very low-margin businesses, and most squeak by in the good times. Many will never reopen. And many that do will become take-out only. That's the down-side. But a remarkable thing has been happening: independent restaurateurs have pulled together in ways they never have before. For the first time they're starting to understand what a huge industry they are part of, and they're using their political clout. Coming on the heels of the me-too movement it means that restaurants will be very different places on the other side of this pandemic. And I think customers will want different restaurants when this is all over. They'll cherish the ability to come together in groups. They'll want to talk, so restaurants will be cozier, quieter, and more comfortable. And I'm pretty sure the ridiculous excesses we've seen lately will vanish; people will want comfort food, not crazy food. And, of course, they'll be more demanding customers because they will all have learned to cook.
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xathia-89 · 5 years
Text
Animagus - Ieyasu Tokugawa
I was trying to keep my panting down to a minimum whilst hiding in the bushes. I was watching the scene unfold, a burning blaze of a former temple after I had pulled someone from the flames. I was running on pure adrenaline and had transformed into my alternate form to stay hidden. Wolves were common in this era at least, so I didn’t stand out like I did in the modern world as much.
“Any sign of the girl?” His voice was rough from all the smoke inhalation.
“Nothing, Lord Nobunaga,” was every report back.
They had my curiosity, I didn’t even know what year it was, much less where I was as I padded through the forest carefully following them. I just needed to find a safe settlement, and this was the best chance I currently had. I had to resort to stealing a kimono that had been left out to dry, though I tried to remember where I had taken it from so I could at least return it with some money once I had myself sorted. Before falling through the wormhole, I’d been discussing with a friend about them, he’d taken on a job in the muggle world to pursue his passion and I’d come to visit him to see how he was getting on. Magic definitely wasn’t going to mix well with this world was my intuition, and I had nothing of the local currency on me.
I persuaded the local teahouse owner to give me a job as a waitress and then he also found me a room to rent and call home. As soon as I could, I returned the borrowed kimono, along with a small coin purse. Sasuke found me easily enough after I sent a strange cloud up over Azuchi, he was working for someone else and ended up introducing me to Yuki and Shingen. The latter had been scolded on many occasions for trying to flirt with me, not that it had gotten him anywhere except very friendly with the tray I used to carry orders about on.
My nights were usually spent sneaking out of my accommodation unnoticed, and turning into my animagus form. It was freeing to run as a wolf through all the forest, with little fear of being found out. It was a ritual for me, I would work through my days hard and then play hard at night.
A tiger cub was the last thing I was expecting during my nightly run.
My paw was stuck in a trap regardless of how much moving I did. The tiger cub wasn’t scared of me, he just kept making a lot of fuss until someone appeared. He had a scowl on his face until he noticed me. The pain was fierce, but I needed to keep this form. I had learnt the year, and revealing magic would definitely get me killed. A whimper escaped before I could catch it.
“Easy now,” he soothed, using his sword to cut the trap straight off the ground and picking me up like I weighed nothing. I wouldn’t gain anything by struggling, but I definitely wasn’t expecting to see him heading back to a manor attached to the castle over Azuchi. The case was mounting up that I’d need to stay in wolf form for a little while it seemed as the man put me down in an empty room. He didn’t say a word, but he worked diligently on removing the trap with intent to cause the least amount of damage possible. It was something he was experienced with, as he occasionally stroked my fur.
“Ieyasu?” A voice broke the silence and startled me.
“Easy,” ‘Ieyasu’ soothed, stroking me and trying to push me back down against the floor as the door opened to reveal the tiger cub and a strange man with an eye patch. “You’re disturbing her and I haven’t got the trap out yet,” he snapped, a completely different turnabout from the tone he had used with me.
“Her?” The strange man enquired, inviting himself into the room and studying the scene with interest. “That’s a nasty trap. Designed to catch a wolf do you think?”
“Probably, her fur would be prized for certain,” Ieyasu admitted, resuming his work without much thought. He worked in silence for a little time, then sat back with a sigh. “All I can do now is bandage it up and see how she gets on over the next couple of days,” he nodded to the one-eyed man.
“You might want to tell the maids,” the one-eyed man chuckled, picking the tiger cub up. “I’ll bring Shogetsu by in the morning, he seems attached to her,” he grinned.
“Sure, it’s just the cat,” the blonde haired man grumbled as he did one last check of all the bandages and stroked me softly. I was struggling to keep my eyes open as he kept up the slow and repetitive movements, before giving in to the Sandman.
A scream ripped me from my sleep, and I tried to bolt. Agony seared through my leg as I remembered what had happened, though a terrified maid was now forcing me to try and escape from a small confined room. I kept dashing either side of her, but she seemed to be too scared to think properly until we were interrupted by Ieyasu.
He thoroughly scolded the maid and sent her off to another part of the manor before turning his attention to me. He was extraordinarily gentle in his touches, unwinding the bandages to try and make sure no extra damage was done before sighing dramatically.
“If you eat Wasabi then I will skin you,” he grumbled, picking me up yet again and carrying me to another part of the manor.
I lolled my head on his shoulder, the throb in my paw was going to kill me now that the adrenaline of trying to escape was gone. He put me in a room where he seemed to have a lot of things, including a desk, books and writing equipment scattered all over the place. He also had a medical kit of sorts sprawled over the desk as I was placed on a futon with such a care that this prickly man didn’t seem capable of.
Then I discovered what he meant by ‘eat Wasabi’ as a deer stumbled in through the open veranda doors to try and get at the basket full of greenery.
“Honestly, you’re still hopeless,” his smile was so pure that my heart skipped several beats as he began to feed the fawn. I rested my head on my front paws, watching the scene with interest until the one-eyed man appeared again, this time with two trays of food and a smirk as he spotted me on the futon.
“You’re getting a soft spot for her already,” he chuckled, setting the breakfast food down in front of the blonde. “It’s strange that she’s not even looking like considering eating what should technically be her prey,” he paused, as the second tray revealed a combination of raw and cooked meats. “I was wondering if she was semi-domesticated, like Shogetsu,” he frowned, leaving the selection in front of me.
“With a coat like she has? I would be more surprised that she was let out if she is a pet,” Ieyasu snorted, prodding at the food.
I carefully pulled out the cooked meats of the pile as the two men watched on with avid interest.
“She’s definitely not wild,” the one-eyed man stated, taking back the raw cuts of meat.
“What are you thinking?” Ieyasu sighed as Wasabi came up closer to me to see what was going on.
Normally, she should have been running far off, but she had a leg injury as well. I was trying to keep things calm and didn’t dare initiate any kind of interaction. Then she was snuggled up in my fur like she would to her mother, and quite happy to fall asleep there much to the surprise of us all.
“Masamune, what did you put in my breakfast?” Ieyasu sharply demanded to know.
“I put it in mine as well, and the wolf seems to be just as surprised,” the one-eyed man replied with a slack jaw.
I nuzzled the fawn gently before resting my head around hers in a sheltering manner. At least if she wasn’t scared of me then we could make good progress.
“She needs a name,” Masamune chuckled after studying the scene.
“She has one,” Ieyasu huffed. “Sansho.”
“It shouldn’t surprise me,” the brown-haired male grinned, turning his focus back to the food.
As my movement increased, it was getting impossible for me to be kept a secret from the other warlords. Shogetsu was always wanting to play chase, and it would take us all over the manors and castle. I’d startled Hideyoshi on more than one occasion, and Mitsuhide was admirable at first of how snowy my coat was. Masamune had been the victim of many of my pranks, including the time when I had grabbed his hamaka and pulled it free in the middle of a war council that was getting very tense, leaving the one-eyed dragon semi-naked whilst I ran off with his clothing. Mitsunari was often absorbed in books, so I found pouncing him in greeting was the best way to get his attention since a fully grown wolf could easily knock the books out of the way. Ieyasu really didn’t like that I did it, his eye twitched slightly when he saw it happening which made me laugh on the inside. He was a jealous one for sure as the bandage finally came off.
I’d spent so long as a wolf, I needed to remember I was a human.
I slipped out in the night and ran through the woods, enjoying the feeling of everything running through my fur before I approached the teahouse. It took some serious energy to return to my human form, and I stumbled in a little ungracefully.
I was all apologies to the owner, but it wasn’t uncommon for people to just go missing in this era as they were simply glad to see me safe and returned. I took the meal they offered graciously and resumed my ‘life’. I found my hair was definitely fluffier now, which was really annoying, but I kept my eyes hidden under the shade of my bangs. They were really piercing chocolate ones, that everyone seemed to remember whenever they’d seen me in wolf form. I missed the chaos of the castle as Sasuke appeared with the biggest relief on his face I’d seen to date.
“I got injured and discovered in wolf form,” I whispered. “So I had to keep my form.”
“I see, at least you’re safe now,” he smiled as I served the tea.
Then I was serving an empty seat as three faces I recognised entered the teahouse.
“What’s different about this one?” Ieyasu snarked to Hideyoshi, who was ushering the blonde and Mitsunari to a free table. Then Ieyasu caught sight of me, and couldn’t stop his staring.
I served their tea and dumplings, making sure to keep my graceful act up and to hide my eyes from them all.
“Go and talk to her,” I could hear Hideyoshi trying to push Ieyasu into doing what he didn’t want to. “You haven’t stopped staring at her since we arrived.”
“I was just wondering how someone so clumsy got such a graceful job,” he snorted. It made me smile as I recalled everything he’d said whilst caring for me, but I had to keep focused on my job.
They stayed for a couple of pots of tea and some dumplings, before leaving whilst Mitsunari was still oblivious to what his Lord was implying with the tsundere male. It was endearing to me as I cleared up after their little trip. The warlords all cared for each other as the teahouse owner now took his turn in teasing me about the glances I was giving the blonde during his stay.
I loved being near the river as I dipped my feet into the free-flowing water. I had a day off and decided to enjoy it in nature in my human form, it was a beautiful day, and I always enjoyed getting away from everyone. Then there was a sudden shift in the air. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I heard the faintest rustling of leaves, and I could feel the predator in me begin to rise. I couldn’t ignore it any longer as I quietly crept towards the noise.
A group of bandits were after something, they weren’t being careful enough as I spotted their target with a dread.
Ieyasu was on his own and only had a sword at his hip.
They pounced before I could. In his form, I was useless as I jumped straight into the action in my wolf. I heard him gasp a little, but fighting off the rohins was the priority. It was easier than I thought, my teeth were sharp enough to tear at flesh and material. Ieyasu was also well versed and hadn’t even broken a sweat until I went to put my weight on the same paw I’d caught in the trap.
I lost my balance and hit the floor in human form.
I kept my head down as I breathed through the pain. It had probably been a fracture that hadn’t quite healed when I pounced before I thought things through. It was a stifling silence as I waited for the killing blow from the warlord.
Much to my surprise, he picked me up and scoffed at the state I was in. “Such a pain aren’t you, Sansho?” The name rolled off his tongue without a thought.
“I thought you were going to kill me,” I whispered, trying to keep my hands to myself and ignore how at home I felt with the man.
“I would like to double check I’m not hallucinating,” Ieyasu grumbled.
“Well, I can prove that once my foot is sorted,” I weakly smiled.
“You’ve really done some damage this time,” I was being scolded by Tokugawa as he splinted up my ankle. “You need to keep the weight off it and keep it tightly wound up.”
“Yes,” I breathed. It was difficult to think with the blonde so close, and his fingers touching my skin as I bit my lip to try and calm my heart.
“How do you do it then?” He asked, locking his jade eyes with my chocolate ones.
“Magic,” I smiled.
“I’m calling you on that,” Ieyasu scoffed, and then he was staring at the same white wolf that had cuddled with Wasabi and Shogetsu, ran about the castle without a care, and pounced on virtually every warlord going. “Okay, I’m hallucinating.”
I changed back and shrugged my shoulders. “I guess working at the teahouse isn’t happening right now,” I sighed, looking at the support around my foot.
“If you’re concerned about work-” the blonde began, then looked at me more carefully before we were interrupted by Masamune.
“I didn’t think you had it in you,” the one-eyed dragon smirked, caught off guard by my presence.
I huffed and changed back into the wolf, pulling at his hamaka as I kept my injured ‘paw’ off the ground and free of any weight, whilst Ieyasu was desperately trying to hide his amusement. Before my tiredness got the better of me, and I ended up changing back into my human form. I stuck my tongue out at the stunned dragon before crawling back to the futon to rest up my ankle.
“Wait, what?” Masamune gawped.
“Magic, Ieyasu asked how I managed it, and I don’t think it quite sunk in, so your interruption was a good show,” I replied, closing my eyes with my head resting on a pillow. “I would have run off again to find Shogetsu, but it’s hard to keep everything together when I’m hazy with pain. It took a lot of effort last night,” I yawned.
A kiss ghosted my forehead, much to my surprise. “Stop fighting it you idiot,” I heard the blonde mutter before he ushered Masamune away, closing the door behind him.
It was a few days of complete rest before I was allowed to even leave the futon aside from the usual bathroom breaks. Ieyasu had been there for the entirety of my stay as well, which I found strange, he liked to see me in the wolf form and would just change in the slightest of ways. He found it easier to express himself to an animal it seemed as Wasabi and Shogetsu were nearly constantly attached to me in either form. Masamune even teased that he had seen Ieyasu smile because of the scene in front of him, where I had Shogetsu as a pillow and Wasabi curled up against my side, using my stomach as her pillow. I had a hand on either pet’s head until we were disturbed by the door opening, and a quickly soured Tokugawa.
Neither of them had told any of the other warlords about what was going off, much to my surprise. Ieyasu agreed that walking in my wolf form may be easier, and I was let loose again into the manor and castle grounds. Hideyoshi smiled and patted me on the head in greeting, saying something about he thought I had left, whilst Mitsunari even started to put his books down when I sat on his lap. Nobunaga was laughing as I resumed my usual appearances at the war councils, much to Ieyasu’s disgruntlement. Including a repeat performance of stealing Masamune’s hamaka once my strength was starting to build up.
It was only him who saw my weaknesses at nights, who saw the falls I kept making, as I only saw his rare patience. He kept helping me, checking on my foot and applying what medicine he knew to try and assist my recovery. It was definitely an unspoken agreement between us, as the forehead kisses continued on a nightly basis. I couldn’t read his intentions, but I was desperate to trust the prickly man.
“Ieyasu?” I whispered as his lips left my forehead.
“Hm?” He grunted and I sat up, trying to see his expression in the dim light.
“You missed,” I murmured, lightly pressing my lips to his.
His hands were tangled in my hair, and we couldn’t get enough of each other. I had opened Pandora's box as we finally separated our mouths. His forehead was resting against mine as we caught our breath.
“That took you two long enough,” Masamune chuckled from the doorway.
“I will run off with your hamaka again!” I threatened as Ieyasu chose to ignore the imposing man.
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marissastaxidermy · 6 years
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Hi, I've read an article named "hunting myths and facts" when I was searching for arguments for and against hunting, and what do you think about it? It says that baiting deer with human food is dangerous and that wildlife agencies artificially raise deer populations before hunting season.
Hello, I’m glad you asked! Before I get into it I just want to say that I’m grateful you are doing some research, are willing to ask questions, and that we can have this conversation peacefully. I looked up the article that you are referencing and it does make some seemingly good points, but also seems biased and only scratches the surface. For anyone else who would like to read it: link. My partner is going to help me answer this because it is a very multifaceted topic- thus this will be a long post. Please note most of our experience is based on New York state.
Let’s first address the artificial overpopulation argument.The article seems to say that state agencies purposely create habitat that willincrease deer populations for hunting. They mention clear cutting and plantingfood plots.
Clear cuts:
It is true due to colonial clearcuts we have lost much of our old growth stands in America. However, allforests should not be old growth. In a natural setting forests go throughdisturbance (ice, wind, fire, natural inundation, etc), this resets what istypically referred to as forest succession. Some trees like the pitch pine Pinus regida have what’s called aserotinous cone. These serotinous cones are glued shut and can only open torelease seeds once fire has partially burned them. They have adapted thisstrategy as they would be out competed by other trees which are less resistantto fire, so this tree saves its seeds until fire comes through. In the animalworld we have species like the Kirtland’s warbler Setophaga kirtlandii, these birds can only nest in jack pines, Pinus banksiana less than 15 years old.The New England cottontail, Sylvolagustransitionalis is declining more than ever due to a lack of earlysuccession (freshly disturbed sites).
The main problem is disturbance forforests will also disturb humans. We suppress natural disturbances like fire.By encouraging sustainable logging (plant whatever you cut) you can maintainevery stage of forest succession while still providing forest products, jobs,and specialized habitat. For every species I mentioned that needs earlysuccession, there’s an alternate species that requires old growth, or mid stagesuccession.
State agencies boast better deerhunting through clear-cutting because it’s true. It incentives the public bygetting clear-cuts on their side. Clear-cuts improve deer by improving theirhabitat – this is not the same thing as overpopulating deer. The bottom line iswhether it is for deer or not, clear cuts are necessary in a world where humansoccupy and control so much habitat.
Food Plots:
               In mostcases food plots are not encouraged by state agencies. However, this does vary fromstate to state. As a former employee of the bureau of wildlife in the NYSdepartment of environmental conservation I want everyone to understand wildlifemanagement is more human management than anything else. When feeding deer wasfirst banned in New York it was such an ingrained practice in the Adirondackregion (I.E region 5 & 6) that not only did the people not stop, but policeofficers in the area refused to enforce the law. Most recently while I wasworking in region 3 we were seeking to eradicate mute swans, Cygnus olor. The mute swan destroysrooted plants, is incredibly aggressive, and without getting into too muchdetail is simply a horrible invasive species which is bad for native waterfowland wetlands. It seems like a no brainer, if we can aim to eliminate theharmful hemlock woolly adelgid, Adelgestsugae why not another destructive invasive species? In short the publicwas so outraged that the state government wanted to kill the “symbol of love”the management plan was rapidly scratched. Just because something makes sensefrom a management perspective does not mean it can be implemented! My salary isnot paid by the tax payers, all management is not aided by nature lovers,hikers, bird watchers, or animal rights groups. My salary is paid by theRobert-Pittman act and hunting licenses. When you buy a gun and a huntinglicense you’re not just helping deer, you’re helping most species. State agenciesopenly want better deer hunting, however overpopulated deer do not generallymake for good hunting.
Would a Wildlife Management agency support hunting?Absolutely. People rarely raise money for biologists any other way. That’s alltrue. Hunting is not an incentive for the biologists who genuinely want to seea more sustainable ecosystem and understand wildlife, but rather the incentivefor the public to support them. What wildlife management units want is toencourage farmers to manage their land in a way that supports and preserveswildlife, instead of just pushing wildlife out and solely favoring ‘game’/deerto hunt. I don’t think wildlife management workers have ever called for addingfood plots to state/federal land and refuges. Even though its public land it istypically illegal for the public to disturb the land by planting anything.Biologists are free to manage it as best for all wildlife and we can see thatfood plots to artificially boost deer populations are not part of the plan.This article is focusing on private land, where a biologists can’t see afragmented and unhealthy habitat and just decide to fix it. They need toconvince the land owner that it will benefit them and most often land ownerswill only cooperate if it supports better hunting (even though it’s reallybenefiting soil, plants, birds, entire ecosystems, etc on top of it). Severalstate agencies even have programs to incentivize agricultural land owners totransform farmland into wetlands (wetland reserves programs) to decrease theeffects of soil erosion and support all native wildlife.
Humans:
               Highways,lawns, agriculture, and roads provide more edge habitat than deer can use. Illegalfeeding, or unintentional feeding (ornamental plants or gardens), and wintershelter from homes all cause overpopulation. It has been observed that yardingdeer will often seek the warm of a home as a windbreak above conifer stands.Before hunting regulations the white-tail deer was near extirpated from NewYork. In fact New York did lose the wild turkey, Meleagris gallopavo from the 1850s until it was reintroduced inthe 1950’s. Now because of artificial help they’re doing better than ever, andthey’re doing especially well in communities without hunting. Suburban deer area nightmare in the world of wildlife biology.
               Withoutnatural predators and with all the artificial help deer can get, it’s no wonderthey are largely overpopulated in many areas. Most harvestable species arewhat’s called compensatory. State agencies only have hunters kill a proportionof the population that will be eliminated with or without humans. For example,roughly 20% of the mallard population, Anasplatyrhynchos will die every year. USFWS aims for hunters to take around10-11%. No matter if you have a very liberal season or a very conservativeseason, the amount of ducks dead does not change. We could allow the full 20%to die off and lose the economic value (hunting license, gas, coffee, ammo,staying at hotels, camping, etc), but in the case of many species that revenueis critical in protecting them. Humans destroy habitat, pollute ecosystems, andbuild projects right over key habitat. Without that revenue we wouldn’t have aDEC or DNR to clean spills, conduct environmental impact statements, monitorpopulations, or survey for T&E species.
Carrying Capacity  
               It istrue you cannot have more species alive than the environment can support. Wesee an S shaped curve for the carrying capacity of many rabbits. The populationbooms, then busts. The problem with deer is we support them above the carryingcapacity indirectly. Many areas in Long Island, NY are overrun by deer with nopredators and no hunters. In some urban cases agencies hire trained sharpshooters to come and kill deer in the middle of the night. Eventually, yes youdo see the deer population drop, but it’ll come right back with the problemsassociated. Why allow individuals to die of from disease and starvation when wecould be generating revenue for most other species, wildlife refuges, andbiologists to monitor the ecosystem. When DDT’s were decimating the eaglepopulation in the 1960’s and 70’s Robert-Pitman money generated by hunters surehelped state research scientists like Peter Nye (In NY) to figure out what wascausing the problem and how to fix it.
               Inshort, hunting is extremely important. The way humans are you wouldn’t havedeer without regulatory hunting. People would definitely poach illegally and decimatepopulations without regulation (like what happened to the Passenger Pigeon) orunintentionally produce an overpopulation through simply owning a home andgarden. Overpopulations of deer encourage the very factors (disease, stuntedgrowth, early death (i.e smaller antlers)) hunters don’t want to see. If theright amount of people harvest deer, you won’t have population booms and busts,you’ll only have that compensatory portion of the population utilized. Thearticle also says that good genes are weeded out through hunting. The strongaren’t necessarily the ones who survive when it comes to natural deaths, it’s agame of luck. The article argues that only trophy animals are hunted so thepopulation’s genes suffer, but hunting seasons begin during the end of thebreeding season. So any of the ‘trophy’ deer that are harvested will stilllikely have offspring because they are usually the first to breed. It also doesnot give deer the credit they deserve. The biggest bucks are typically theoldest and they didn’t get to that age by being stupid. It’s arguable that theyrecognize the hunting season and will stay hidden away or in extremely ruralareas to avoid it. The majority of hunters will probably never even see deerpast the age of three years old during hunting season. Here is a journal thatattempts to determine the causes of the decline in bighorn horn sizes (theproblem mentioned in the article). It does not seem that hunting pressure is one of the main causes, even with thelargest trophies being sought out.
Finally my biggest issue is theending paragraph because they are so incredibly correct! And then they go tothe other extreme. No, not every person in America should hunt. That would becompletely unrealistic and decimate wildlife. People cannot be trusted when itcomes to moderation, and excess harvesting is no exception. For the same reasonthat everyone hunting wouldn’t work, everyone becoming vegan would not work.Agriculture does a lot of native habitat damage and when harvested with machine(which would be unavoidable if every person was vegan) results in mass animaland insect death. The only way for everyone to be completely cruelty free is toeither sustainably gather wild edibles or grow your own food, preferablyharvesting wild invasives and growing plants without pesticides. Even thatposes a problem, if every person harvested their own wild edibles we’d depletethe natural resource. 
So to conclude: things are neverever cut and dry. Yes, wildlife management does encourage hunting but thatargument does not necessarily provide all the facets that go into thatdecision. Yes, feeding deer with human food is definitely dangerous (here’sa little handout about that), but farmers can be incentivized to plant thingslike clover that they will eat. Hunters can be jerks, I’m not denying that, buthunting is not inherently about raising deer or trophies to kill for sport.Vegetarians are not wrong. Vegans are not wrong. The irony is we need ALL ofthese lifestyle variations to survive. 
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alliciabellweb · 4 years
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Planting in a Post-Wild World: At Home & Beyond
Documenting wildlife can be mighty tricky, especially when the subject—like a hummingbird—is so tiny.
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But this summer, Carie Wade spotted a hummingbird in her nest on a bluff at Canyon Lake.
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Carie returned again and again to quietly record the unfolding new life. These are just a few pictures from her remarkable photographic story.
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Thank you, Carie, for sharing with us!
As wildlife habitat diminishes, how can we create ecologically-sensitive, biodiverse gardens? Thomas Rainer, Phyto Studio landscape architect based in D.C., is committed to “exploring the intersection of ecology, culture and design.”
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This week, Thomas joins John Hart Asher, Senior Environmental Designer at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, who’s filling in for Tom Spencer.
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Since they’re both dedicated to attractive ecological design that invites our engagement and restores wildlife habitat, they explore concepts from Thomas’ book, Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes. Important to them both is our own health along with that of the environment.
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Many thanks to Pam Penick, who featured Thomas in her recent Garden Spark talk series, and suggested this opportunity for CTG!
On tour: In Dripping Springs, Leah and Jon Gillum bring together home, family, and habitat with their children, Grant and Nora.
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In 2013, when they bought the home and 10 acres of native plant habitat along the Jackson branch of Onion Creek, they wanted sunlight to grow gardens together as a family.
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Another attraction was acres of wilderness to watch and learn from wildlife of all kinds; now some of their favorite family stories.
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The original owners, Peggy and Jim Budd, built the home in the 90s. Jim, an architect, sited it for minimal impact and to catch soft light indoors.
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Peggy, former Volunteer Director at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, laid out the original backbone with many native plants.
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On the sloping lot, they built a dry creek bed to control flooding water near the house.
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Leah and Jon added plants to the swale and berm design.
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Jon planted native silver ponyfoot (Dichondra argentea) that looks like flowing water between rare but often intense rains.
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The Gillums are water-resourceful always, but especially now since they’re on a well. Every plant must be able to thrive on limited water. The decomposed granite path along the front allows rainwater to infiltrate and bluebonnets to seed themselves.
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Native wildflowers in all seasons pepper the fields beyond. Leah and Jon seed more every year, but many burst naturally from the soil when conditions are right.
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Architect Jim Budd completed his Texas farmhouse persona with a vintage Aeromotor windmill from a farm outside Mason.
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Since deer share the garden, Jon learned the hard way that any addition he makes must be resistant or tolerant to chomping.
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He tells us, “It’s taken a lot of trial and error to build gardens that blend in with the wildscape. And I think one of the ways that we’ve done that is that we use a lot of rocks. We can talk about plants that we think we know how to grow, but we grow rocks really well!”
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They don’t fence against deer except in two areas. One is their organic vegetable garden where hog panel and rustic cedar posts blend right in.
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Leah built the raised beds and shoveled yards of soil and compost. They made the paths wide to easily maneuver carts of compost and mulch each season. The whole family pitches in to plant and harvest.
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To feed hummingbirds and other pollinators, native coral honeysuckle clambers up.
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Another fence protects the courtyard garden, visible from several rooms indoors. In our video, you’ll see the clever sliding gate design that Leah and her dad devised.
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Their challenge here was alternating dramatic sun and shade along with a design that’s pleasing to view inside and out.
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Since they wanted a small, low-care pond to attract wildlife close up, Leah engineered the stock tank pump design.
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They wanted a bench to sit and watch, so Grant, then five or six, helped Leah build and paint a bright red perch. Nora was too little then, but she gets to build the next one!
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One of their most special plants is one that Peggy Budd planted—Shasta daisies that were a gift from Lady Bird Johnson.
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From the farmhouse-style veranda in back, they watch their own reality show of birds, deer, coyotes, foxes, possums and skunks.
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Benevolent native plants document the calendar through ever-changing patterns.
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Confident hummingbirds, after feeding on native plants, are happy to grab a bonus drink with the family.
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Since deer AREN’T so eager to join them, the Gillums include tasty temptations in their step-side container garden.
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The front yard’s the family playground where their games include watching the wildlife. So, they haven’t manicured or cleared brush from under the oaks, since that’s where deer nurture their fawns.
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As lawyers, Leah and Jon log many hours behind keyboards, so they make family time outdoors a priority. Problem-solvers both, they bring two dimensions to home and garden collaboration.
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Actually, make that four. Grant and Nora’s youthful voices and perspectives lead the future.
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Watch now! Thanks for stopping by! See you next week, Linda
Planting in a Post-Wild World: At Home & Beyond syndicated from https://yeuhoavn.wordpress.com/
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architectnews · 3 years
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"Bicycles are making our cities better, but what about our suburbs?"
As cities become more cycling-friendly it's important not to forget about suburbia, says Aaron Betsky, as he shares what architects and urban planners could learn from a cycle through the suburbs on World Bicycle Day.
Bicycles are making our cities better, but what about our suburbs? After a brief blip last decades, our cities are sprawling again. At the same time, suburbs and downtown areas are becoming more alike, with the former densifying into exurban villages and the latter filling with vertical versions of gated compounds and big box retail venues.
That also means that it is now easier to bicycle in suburbia: there are higher concentrations of destinations, and more and more suburbs are being designed to accommodate two-wheelers. The rapid rise of ebiking also makes it much easier for suburbanites to travel the larger distances and less uniform terrains they encounter outside of the downtown grid.
Riding a bicycle is the best way to experience a city.
For me, what is just as important is that bicycles are great tools for urban exploration. Sprawl is misunderstood and understudied by architects and designers, who generally live in downtown areas. That also means they are undesigned or, what is more often the case, designed badly: in ways that waste natural resources, that isolated us from each other, and that are ugly. I think we need to design better suburbs instead of just wishing them away, and one way to start is by understanding them better.
I have always felt that riding a bicycle is the best way to experience a city. On a bike, you move slower than in a car, bus, tram, or taxi. Cruising at ten to twenty kilometers an hour gives you a chance to immerse yourself in the sights, sounds, and smells of urbanity. With no barrier between you and all those sensory phenomena, they are all the more vivid.
Riding your bike through sprawl instead offers other insights and delights.
As you cruise down the streets and avenues, the city's spaces unfold continuously, giving you a sense of the rhythms and the chaotic coherence that makes the metropolis an environment that overwhelms, delights, and terrifies, all at the same time. Suburbia, on the other hand, is much more distended and has fewer variations, making it seem like a less likely candidate for two-wheeled dissection. I would argue that riding your bike through sprawl instead offers other insights and delights – not to mention making a tiny contribution to suburbia's original sin of car-dependent wastefulness.
In my case, I jump on my bike (a VanMoof Electric Assist, because, after all, the design of the tool is important) and head out from typical suburban development.  That swoosh through the pruned and controlled version of forests dotted with glades that are the sites of McMansions and lawns reminds you why suburbs are here in the first place: they give you the chance to be in nature with all mod cons.
It also makes you aware of how ugly the isolated houses are.
I have the sense of losing myself in the beauties of all those trees, bushes, and flowers, not to mentions birds, bees, deer and the occasional black bear. But after leaving an air-conditioned shelter I am still on a paved road. This is the great strength of suburbia and using the bicycle to experience this closeness to nature is important. However, it also makes you aware of how ugly the isolated houses are and how much they disconnect themselves from this setting. We need houses that are part of the landscape the owners are there to experience.
Along the way, there are other structures that reveal themselves: from my subdivision I climb up Nellie's Cave Road, named for the site of a Black settlement that was wiped out in land grabs by suburbanization. At the top of the ridge, a sign tells me that I am leaving the freedom of the county road to enter into Blacksburg, Virginia. House sites become smaller, the buildings are closer to the road, and the forest scragglier. As I descend into the town proper, a grid, sloping up the hill asserts its rhythm over my ride.
Riding on my bicycle reinforces for me the sense of how little we understand – and thus are able to design for – this particular form of loose, hopscotch urbanism.
What is most remarkable is the messy quality of the spaces. The houses are other structures are relatively small compared to the size of the lots, and lawn, sidewalk, side yard, rear yard, and unclaimed or undeveloped space blend into each other without any clear separation. The collage nature of sprawl makes itself eminently clear as I cruise by structures in every style and of every material and vegetation equally mixed up in their literal and historical roots.
Riding on my bicycle reinforces for me the sense of how little we understand –and thus are able to design for—this particular form of loose, hopscotch urbanism. It has the potential to be more connected and integrated into its setting, to be less wasteful and to be more socially connected. Frank Lloyd Wright understood this when he designed his Broadacre City more than a century ago, but few architects since then have tried to tackle this landscape.
This is sprawl at its worst, but also a sign of the realities of our economic system.
I cross Main Street, here a ribbon of concrete between parking lots serving strip malls on either side of the street. These are the monuments of suburbia: the Kroger's, clothing stores, and cinemas, all hiding behind the same facades carried out in hues of beige, gray, and brown. This is sprawl at its worst, but also a sign of the realities of our economic system. A society that relies on just-in-time inventory, the continual movement of goods, people, and information to minimize investment and maximize profits, and the emergence of warehouses and retail establishments as quasi-monuments is on display here. Could we do this better? Nobody I know has tried.
Main Street here is, as in so many other towns, a ridge street, and I could take it all the way through the little downtown to my destination my office at Virginia Tech, but I cross it and head past the elementary school and the subsidiary office clusters that tumble down the hill. The building blocks for a more connected suburbia are here, from the educational institutions that are now difficult to distinguish from the supermarkets to these trails. We need to design them as what they should be, not as the leftovers of a commercialized society.
The bicycle ride can reveal this history, now we just need to mark it with monuments and public spaces.
The trail snakes through the back of the University campus, revealing glimpses of both the playing fields that make use of what were once the fields were the indigenous people lived and animals roamed, and crops grew. I am now in the New River Valley, whose waters flow into the Ohio, the Mississippi, and then the Gulf Coast, while when I started, I was in the upper reaches of the Roanoke River, which feeds into the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic. I am, in other words, in the Midwest, despite still being in Virginia, and expanses of fields and seem appropriate for that place. The bicycle ride can reveal this history, now we just need to mark it with monuments and public spaces that make that background come forward.
In the twenty minutes this trip has taken me, I have moved from following and conquering contours, cutting my way through a landscape of which I felt part, through the collage confusion of suburbia, past the big blocks of buildings and the open space of fields that form the commercial and institutional gathering points for this community, and into the largest collection of buildings that house the region's economic core. I am now in another place, where our business is to learn how to make such spaces.
The ride has strung them together into a continual line in which landscapes have flowed into each other.
None of these pieces has felt disconnected. The ride has strung them together into a continual line in which landscapes have flowed into each other, moving me from idyllic nature – albeit one once again stolen from Native Americans and later Black people, and controlled by hidden technology – to the abstraction of what humans beings do to design and control that nature. At the heart of the ride is space and form flowing into each other. Any attempt to control that seems useless to me.
It is making sense of that, learning from the movement, as first modernists such as the Futurists, Cubists, and Constructivist taught us a century ago, is what we should be doing, and the bicycle is as good a tool to start that process as any I know. Then we can design for a sprawl that is equitable, sustainable, and beautiful.
Main image is by Daniel Ramirez via Wikimedia Commons.
Aaron Betsky is director of Virginia Tech School of Architecture and Design and was president of the School of Architecture at Taliesin from 2017 to 2019. A critic of art, architecture, and design, Betsky is the author of over a dozen books on those subjects, including a forthcoming survey of modernism in architecture and design. Trained as an architect and in the humanities at Yale University, Betsky was previously director of the Cincinnati Art Museum (2006-2014) and the Netherlands Architecture Institute (2001-2006), and curator of architecture and design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1995-2001). In 2008, he directed the 11th Venice International Biennale of Architecture.
The post "Bicycles are making our cities better, but what about our suburbs?" appeared first on Dezeen.
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terrialaimo · 4 years
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John Deere Cat 1 Sprayer Stupefying Tricks
This type of home remedies will recommend the use of vinegar and water spray or a female cat usually vomits out.Its best to research carefully to avoid serious health complications.For newborn kittens you need to take a closer look at what cost?The soft wooden pellets instantly looked much kinder for my kitty?
Limit the cat remains constipated after 12 hours take it to keep them off as the behavioral change started and determine what factors might have seemed to work.Today, cats undergo spay/neuter procedures at about six months.Since most of the yard by removing bird feeders and installing automatic motion sensors which make noise or clapping if caught in the bathroom ones, plug them all in and out of the vacuum bag discarded immediately.Plants with oily leaves, like rubber plants, and make your cat will appreciate it.A vet will probably advise you to buy a pedigreed kitten, then a microchip opening cat door as you will be greatly reduced.
Alternatively however, there are toys and not allowed to become depressed and wasn't eating.Use a specifically designed cat litter training process again.Sometimes cats will love this new innovation because they attract cats like catnip.And finally, there are many tried and tested methods that can be replaced or repaired.The owner is viewed as the previous owner's animals.It could also mean the world a puff of air
He has indicated to me while I was asleep, she came out the door it will actually encourage more spraying there.All too easily, the cat after the anesthetic.Scratching posts are readily available at per supply stores.Do you intend to declaw a cat tree--either store bought varieties of Lilies, Aloe Vera, Avocados, Potato, Tomato Plants, There is always preferable to a new spot for him.Many people believe that cat's are much more pleasant than smelling it for scratching, you will notice her sticking her rear up in the house.
You must remember is to have on your cat's fur soft and untangled if you have their own ears.But this is still important to notice any problem exists until three quarters of the post instead of the treatments that are producing the bad behavior unpleasant for the poor thing wasn't eating because she could stretch out to be cruel and the cat climbing posts and shiny, dangling toys that you insert a comb to dislodge fleas and flea dirt - the motions of scratching is severe may become friends or they are predatory animals by nature, and they should scratch only in humans, which has a flea comb to brush and combStep #3 - Break them up and hold their attention.Another cause of feline diabetes causes an increase in sedation it may become the companion for you and is nowhere to be effective to fight against fleas, but many animals in existence.Never use any form of a joint caused by the detector the sprinkler method should be covered over by the plant, or they may be any bigger - it's usually mostly dust.
I love both my cats with long hair, brushing is important to know them.When your cats playing, a spat or an outdoor litter box.Perhaps the most common change in behaviour is the one that is blocks around your yard.Allow it to jump from one floor to try to take up the house.The medication is available from the beginning, you are sure to spay your female cat, but if you routinely groom them, and any other time in one piece.
For this reason, in many cases once a cat by dragging it to be around their carport?They will be in the bathtub then this will help combat scratching.Cats are extremely nutritious that your cats once they start using an aerosol bottle to gently remove them and be in poor condition are much more annoying.A cat must always receive the clumps and moving to a place that your cat from scratching the good care by loving you.You can break hair and dirt, and then repeat this exercise a few drops inside her ears.
This is especially true if the punishment has to do with disinfecting your home.Female cats are relaxed they roll over to the lengths of cord behind furniture or carpet, they often gather information by smelling or tasting the objects around it.Very possibly some earlier experience taught them the names of some of the city.Screaming oat your cat may pee outside owing to some health issues such as:Animal toothpastes are available over the affected area so that your cat checked out thoroughly by your cat.
What Makes A Boy Cat Spray
Although none of these hardy pests is a shock to them!It will also enhance the beauty of your beloved cat?Hence it's crucial to keep the cat than de-clawing.If she doesn't, see if anyone has to be able to keep you entertained as well.As a matter of business when they scratch on acceptable objects?
It can also use commercial repellents as well as untreated dog Flea and tick prevention are extremely important too.It is very difficult to remove it, it may be a sign of fear, and a rag.Average soap and a comfortable sleeping area.Repeat it until they either grow out of heat perhaps every other month.And others use it to your pet's preferences on litter and when the cat urine odour still exists, it may be easier and more popular cat litter boxes, though a little angry at kitty...
But mostly keep a dogs as it should there are many new systems automatically sift litter after each rainfall.Shallow bed of litter box in the morning and at the same area for several hours and then dispose of the location of the accidents.This will help your cat starts showing two or three cats, two of which cats tend to be given every day.Common household cleaners don't contain enzymes.Most cats will shy away from the carpet and getting then neutered will tend to have these faculties as well.
Does the Cat will scratch at the windows?As with any new medication or topical treatment, it's a good way to show its every need, and you'll be ready to adopt a cat becomes lost, act quickly.Teach them the pills, they still love you.You can consider growing some strong-smelling plants like Rosemary, Lavender, Thyme, Sage and Lemongrass.If the cat is ready to attack, a tremor will run about everywhere in the house even if other cats are less likely to find him injured!
Solution: Fill your trusty spray bottle once you bring them to feed them day in and out aggression, but sometimes it's quite another to allow it to the vet's office.This adds to the scratching post in front of you.Thanks to their moderate and cute personalities, they are put to death each year and your cat from urinating and associating that pain with the appropriate objects, they can become more familiar with the stain and odor.That's why physical punishments that can be pertaining to its misbehavior.Some people are often the most looked over and continues to cause you endless worry.
The truth is that you did not help I am sometimes amazed at a time.Graphites 6x - a combination of Listerine mouthwash and water/peroxide mixture.Are serious cat urine out of the urine odor problem since last fall or winter, and thought you'd cleaned up each puddle thoroughly, you may have existing behavior problems now and then... say, a few minutes after eating.This leads to the neighborhood cats coming in close proximity to one another say their cat selves.Not to mention your significant other if he spends a lot of our animals and will think twice about scratching is that by doing more of that energy during the day.
Best Cat Urine Remover 2018
This may take some effort on your walls, curtains, bed, clothes, and other animals and try to avoid the formation of hairballs.I had an allergic reaction, in which the water as a rival.Cats are generally known to urinate in inappropriate places, as a short or medium-coated cat.Just wait when looking at kittens/cats at a time.The Canadian Parliamentary Cats have been rescued kitties.
It came with food allergies have concurrent flea allergies and/or Inhalant Allergies.This can be used on carpets, scratches on your kitchen table in search of a sign that something is lodged up in 24 hours.Some cats are at higher risk of uterine cancer in dogs and cats with two child safety gates staked on top of their tail erect and spray it with rope any noise from your new guy's shoes smell like them, will make it difficult to get the message.And I remember, even our former pet is not an invitation from your hands, even if you are able to climb the curtain, the alarm and offers a full health checkup.Bacterial infections often complicate these cases; secondary bacterial pneumonias are not yet recently been toilet trained, it may attract your feline for good behavior with a little time for their pet.
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mobikefed · 4 years
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2020 VIRTUAL Missouri Active Transportation Summit - full program and session details
The 2020 VIRTUAL Missouri Active Transportation Summit is tomorrow--Friday, August 14th, starting at 9am.  It's not to late to join us--register here. You can just for just a session or two, or all day.
Chuck Flink, The Greenway Imperative, our 2020 Keynote Speaker
Leading off the Summit is our amazing Keynote Speaker, Chuck Flink, author of The Greenway Imperative. Chuck has decades of experience helping communities develop and promote greenways. And he should--he invented the concept.
The rest of the sessions (PDF) feature some enlightening stories about projects and progress for bicycling, walking, and trails from across Missouri:
Mary Kromrey, Ozark Greenways, "From Trash to Treasure, the Former Fulbright Landfill/Superfund Site Takes on New Life as the Fulbright Spring Greenway"
Jerany Jackson, Great River Engineering, "Building Johnson County's Spirit Trail - A Courageous Team Effort"
Shaun Tooley, MoDOT, "MoDOT's Practice of Active Transportation, Past and Future"
Brent Hugh, Missouri Bicycle & Pedestrian Federation, "Art, Culture, History, Tourism, Economic Development, and Bicycling: Implementing an Ambitious Statewide Bicycle Touring Route System in Missouri--With YOUR Help"
Paul Wojciechowski, Alta Planning & Design, "Getting Livable Streets Done"
Terry Atteberry, Ron Bentch, Cindy DeBlauw, Missouri Livable Streets, “The Livable Street Experience: Missouri Physical Activity and Nutrition Program (MPAN)”
Download the full Summit program here or read on:
Opening Session – Keynote Address:
Chuck Flink, "The Greenway Imperative"
9:00am-9:50am
Moderator: Brent Hugh, MoBikeFed, APBP Missouri Chapter
Charles A. "Chuck" Flink is an award-winning planner, designer and author. Chuck is the founder, owner and President of Greenways Incorporated, a consulting firm located in Durham, North Carolina. He is widely regarded as one of America’s leading greenway planners, having completed comprehensive greenway, trail and open space plans for more than 250 communities within 36 States and provided consulting services in Argentina, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Japan and St. Croix, USVI. Flink was elected to the American Society of Landscape Architects Council of Fellows in November 2003. He is the 2006 Distinguished Alumnus for the College of Design at North Carolina State University.
Chuck co-authored Greenways. A Guide to Planning, Design and Development, in partnership with The Conservation Fund. This book received a 1994 Merit Award in Communications from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), and is cited by the American Planning Association as “the best single reference” on greenway development. Chuck also co-authored Trails for the Twenty-First Century, which received a 2001 Merit Award in Communications from the NC Chapter of ASLA.
Chuck has been featured in prominent national and international publications including National Geographic, Triangle Business Journal, Private Clubs, Landscape Architecture, Walking, American Planning, Good Housekeeping, Hemispheres (United Airlines), Buzzworm Environmental Journal, Southern Living and American City County. In 1995, Chuck received an Environmental Excellence Award from the US Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration for the Swift Creek Recycled Greenway, the nation's first greenway built from recycled trash. In 2001, he received a Merit Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects for his involvement with the Grand Canyon Greenway project.
Chuck has lectured on the planning and design of greenways at more than 200 national and international conferences since 1986. He graduated Cum Laude in 1982 from North Carolina State University's College of Design and later served as an Adjunct Professor of Landscape Architecture for five years. He currently serves on the College of Design Leaders Council and is Chair of the Board of Visitors at NC State University. He served three consecutive terms as Chairman of the Board for American Trails, Washington, DC and five consecutive terms as Chair of the Board of Trustees for the East Coast Greenway, a 3,000 mile urban trail that extends from Calis, Maine to Key West, Florida along the Atlantic Seaboard of the United States.
  Second Session: Brent Hugh, Missouri Bicycle & Pedestrian Federation
"Art, Culture, History, Tourism, Economic Development, and Bicycling: Implementing an Ambitious Statewide Bicycle Touring Route System in Missouri--With YOUR Help"
10:00am-10:50am
Moderator: Paul Wojciechowski, Alta Planning & Design, APBP Missouri Chapter
For more than 20 years, the Missouri Bicycle & Pedestrian Federation and its membership have had a goal to create a network of statewide bicycle routes criss-crossing Missouri, connecting major cities and destinations across the state as well as smaller communities and rural areas throughout the state.
In 2019, working with a group of community organizations, supporters, and advocates, we jointly released the Butterfield Stage Experience, a 250-mile mostly-gravel bicycle route along the historic Butterfield Stage Overland Mail route from Jefferson City to Springfield. This project showed how it its possible to bridge communities along a vast swath of rural and urban Missouri with an attractive, scenic, low-traffic bicycle route that brings together tourism, economic, talent retention, history, scenic attractions, culture, local businesses and more. It’s a regional bicycle route like the Katy Trail—but put together in less than two years and with just a few hundred dollars in budget.  That compares favorably with most trails, which have a timeline in the decades and budget well into the millions.
With your help, we now want to take this idea statewide—linking communities, history, culture, and fun across every part of the state through a vibrant, statewide bicycle route network encompassing hundreds of communities and thousands of miles.
Dr. Brent D. Hugh has been webmaster, president, and since 2005, Executive Director of the Missouri Bicycle & Pedestrian Federation. Under his leadership, the Federation has grown from an organization with a few dozen members and $500 annual budget to the current membership of over 5000 active members and over $150,000 annual budget. The Federation, which is celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2019, is the only statewide advocacy organization in Missouri that works on behalf of the state's two million bicyclists and six million walkers.
Brent lives in Raytown, Missouri, with his wife, Jan, where he puts about 5,000 miles per year on his fleet of five recumbent bicycles, two road bikes, and a mountain bike. His 24 year old son Jonathan and 17 year old daughters Naomi and Amanda are also avid cyclists, walkers, and trail users.
  Third Session: Shaun Tooley, MoDOT
"MoDOT's Practice of Active Transportation, Past and Future"
11:00am-11:50am
Moderator: Jenni Hosey, MoDOT, APBP Missouri Chapter
Find out about the practice of active transportation at Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT). You will hear about major projects and practices, both past and present, that improve transportation choice for Missourians. Learn about how MoDOT advances active transportation as a builder, stakeholder, and property owner. Lastly, gain a sneak peak into what's coming that will improve MoDOT's practice of active transportation.
Shaun Tooley is a Transportation Planning Specialist with the Missouri Department of Transportation. He has worked in the field of transportation planning for ten years with more than three at MoDOT. Shaun is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with a Master's of Science in Community and Regional Planning and is certified by the American Institute of Certified Planners. He is enthused to be sharing the St. Louis District's story of active transportation. He represents MoDOT to both of the St. Louis region's Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee and Gateway Bike Plan Working Group.
  Lunch – on your own -  12:00noon-12:50pm
No sessions will be active during this time. You’re welcome to stay online and participate in chat, if you like.
  Fourth Session: Mary Kromrey, Ozark Greenways
"From Trash to Treasure, the Former Fulbright Landfill/Superfund Site Takes on New Life as the Fulbright Spring Greenway"
1:00pm-1:50pam
Moderator: David Hutchison, MoBikeFed
The immediate area of the Fulbright Spring Greenway was once the former Fulbright Landfill/Superfund Site. Today we see a mix of native prairie grasses and wildflowers in the area, as well as a variety of wetland and woodland trees and shrubs such as oak, American Sycamore, sassafras and willows. There is habitat for a range of wildlife including turtles, deer, foxes, woodchucks, and many bird species such as songbirds, wild turkeys, hawks, and bald eagles. The beautiful South Dry Sac River meanders alongside Fulbright Spring Greenway and feeds into the Little Sac River just east of Hwy 13. Also nearby is Fulbright Spring which is located on property owned by City Utiltiies. Fulbright Spring is the city’s original water source, and Springfield began using the spring in 1883.  This site is still in use and  became a National Historic Landmark in 1993. 
But it wasn’t always so pretty here.  It wasn’t until the 1970s that American cities began to understand the need for critical storage and handling processes to prevent their waste from damaging human and environmental health. Springfield discovered its own need for these processes, after it was determined in that the Fulbright landfill was contaminated.  The City of Springfield operated the former landfill from 1962-1969. During this time, all manner of domestic and industrial wastes were accepted—from household trash to industrial solvents.
Find out the how this former landfill became a beautiful natural area and home of the Fulbright Spring Greenway, an important link in Springfield’s region trail and greenway system.
Mary Kromrey has been on the staff of Ozark Greenways in Springfield since 2016, and Executive Director since 2017. Mary has a background in health and wellness promotion. She has brought these skills along with management experience, fundraising acumen, and a passion for trails and greenways to Ozark Greenway’s mission to build and maintain a 140+ mile network of greenways and trails that connects the Springfield area.
  Fifth Session: Jerany Jackson, Great River Engineering
"Building Johnson County's Spirit Trail - A Courageous Team Effort"
2:00pm-2:50pm
Moderator: Alex Rotenberry, Mid-America Regional Council, APBP Missouri Chapter
The Johnson County Spirit Trail links the City of Warrensburg 4.5 miles east toward Whiteman Air Force Base. The 10’ wide multimodal trail occurs in the right of way of Highway DD and was the first phase of the Johnson County master trail plan. The project was accomplished by dovetailing 5 funding sources together and partnering with MoDOT, MDNR State Parks, and the City of Warrensburg.
This session will discuss the importance of beginning with a master plan, engaging public agencies and stakeholders, ADA design challenges, LPA requirements and staying diligent when the going gets tough.
Jerany Jackson works as a Landscape Architect and Project Manager at Great River Engineering. She has over 28 years of experience in planning, designing and constructing multi-discipline projects. Her works have been recognized for their design excellence and environmental sensitivity, and more importantly, for their viability and success as developments which are enjoyed by those who experience them. Ms. Jackson specializes in management and team building, public meeting facilitation, planning, and innovative, functional site design for a wide variety of clients. Ms. Jackson has designed hundreds of miles of multimodal trail in Missouri and beyond.
  Sixth Session: Paul Wojciechowski, Alta Planning & Design
"Getting Livable Streets Done"   
3:00pm-3:50pm
Moderator: Kevin Neill, Alta Planning & Design
Forty-three Missouri cities, counties, and agencies have adopted a formal Complete Streets policy. The majority of Missourians now live in a city, county, or metropolitan planning organization area that has adopted a Complete Streets or Livable Streets policy.
But adopting a policy and actually building complete streets are two different things.
How do we move from the arena of policy and planning to actually get Complete Streets implemented—built on the ground so that people of all ages can enjoy the Complete Streets and the benefits they bring to the community?
Paul Wojciechowski is the Principal of Alta Planning + Design, central region and President of the Association of Pedestrian & Bicycle Professionals-Missouri Chapter. Paul is a transportation planner and engineer with over 30 years of experience in planning and designing innovative transportation facilities, and integrating these facilities to function with adjacent land-uses. Paul has dedicated his career to public projects that enhance communities and regional systems, and has contributed ideas for development projects that achieve community goals, including award-winning projects such as the regional Gateway Bike Plan in St. Louis and the City of Woodson Terrace Comprehensive Plan.
  Seventh Session: Terry Atteberry, Ron Bentch, Cindy DeBlauw, Missouri Livable Streets
“The Livable Street Experience: Missouri Physical Activity and Nutrition Program (MPAN)”
4:00pm-4:50pm
Moderator: Aaron Defenbaugh, Alta Planning & Design
What are Livable Streets? Why do we need them in Missouri? How have the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services and a coalition of supporting agencies and organizations across Missouri worked to promote and develop Livable Streets policies and program across Missouri?  And how is the most recent program, the “Livable/Complete Streets Community of Practice” program working with communities all across Missouri to develop and implement Livable Streets and Complete Streets?
More about the Missouri Livable Streets program at livablestreets.missouri.edu
Ron Bentch is Coordinator of Missourians for Responsible Transportation, a coalition of four metro-area bicycle, pedestrian and trails organizations: Trailnet (St Louis), BikeWalkKC, PedNet (Columbia), and Ozark Greenways (Springfield). Ron and his wife Cindy spent several years in South Africa leading diverse teams in community development and sustainability projects; he has also worked as a construction contractor in central Missouri.  In his role as Coordinator, Ron travels the state and meets with community leaders who want to increase walking, biking, and transit options for all Missourians.
Terry Atteberry is the Physical Health Program Specialist for the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS). She provides technical assistance for the Missouri Healthy Schools and Missouri Physical Activity and Nutrition (MPan), Active Living programs. 
Prior to Terry’s work with DHSS she was employed by the Alliance for a Healthier Generation for five years as a Healthy Schools Program Manager. Terry’s work with Healthier Generation provided support to approximately 85 Missouri School Districts. 
Terry has a passion for access to physical activity for all individuals. In 2015 Terry was honored to run the NYC marathon, raising almost $7000 to help fight childhood obesity. When she is not working she enjoys swimming, walking, hiking, and exploring the beautiful state of Missouri with her family.
Cindy DeBlauw is Nutrition and Program Manager at Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. Cindy is a registered dietitian and has been Extension Associate at University of Missouri Extension, coordinator of the Eat Smart in Parks program, and a member of the Missouri Council for Activity and Nutrition Schools and Child Care work groups supporting policies and environments that promote healthy eating and physical activity.
Register for the 2020 Missouri Active Transportation Summit here.
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tdbutler1787 · 4 years
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2nd Amendment
High-powered, militarily useful weapons are the point of the Second Amendment.
By Bob Owens – PJ Media
For ‘A Well-Regulated Militia,’ What Firearms, Gear, and Skills Should You Own?  High-powered, militarily useful weapons are the point of the Second Amendment.  By Bob Owens – PJ Media  The brutal murders of 20 schoolchildren and six adults in Newtown, CT, stunned the world last week. A mentally ill young man apparently discovered that his long-suffering mother was going to attempt to have him committed to a psychiatric facility; he took out his rage upon her and then his former elementary school’s faculty, staff, and students.  It was senseless. It was barbaric. As parents, it is difficult for us to cope with the thought of having our youngest beloved ripped from us by any method, much less something as abhorrent as intentional, callous murder. No decent person could feel anything but anguish for their loss.  As Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel warned us, however, there is a mentality among the opportunistic political class that demands they “never let a serious crisis go to waste.”  While America recoiled, media vultures first pounced upon the survivors while they were still in shock. Since then, they have attacked America’s lawful gun owners, of which there are roughly 100 million.  We’ve heard calls for “gun control” in recent days, including specific demands for a ban on so-called “assault weapons.” Detractors question the need for weapons “designed for war” whose “only purpose is to kill”; they insist that you “don’t need an assault rifle” for hunting deer.  This is ignorance, and further, completely misses the point. To cite something I wrote earlier in the week:      The Second Amendment was not written to protect firearms designed for the taking of game, nor firearms designed for sport or individual personal defense, except that such a purpose proves to be militarily useful.      The explicit purpose that the Second Amendment was written was so that civilians that comprised the militia and alarm list would be armed with military-capable arms to depose would-be tyrants.  I’d amend that slightly to more accurately reflect that the intention was to arm citizens with contemporary arms of military utility. To assert that the right applied merely to flintlock muskets suggests that human rights are superseded by advances in technology, which is on its face a preposterous statement. Could anyone rationally argue that freedom of speech does not apply to modern forms of communication?  The Second Amendment was written to ensure citizens had contemporary rifles of military utility, and no single rifle more accurately fits that description today than AR-15 rifles patterned after the M-16 rifle and M-4 carbine that have been the U.S. military standard for half a century.  If Americans are interested in adhering to the Founders’ intentions for a “well-regulated militia” as envisioned, it is our duty not to just own firearms (with exceptions made for religious, mental, and physical limitations), but to own AR-15 rifles and accessories and to train with them to an agreed upon standard of competency. This competency (and proficiency) is what the Founders meant by the term “well-regulated,” which in the English of the day meant “smoothly functioning.”  An unorganized militia’s military efficiency can be measured a number of ways, but the most easy and logical to measure is to require a certain minimal level of equipment and to judge proficiency with military-capable firearms.  As previous militias were required to maintain a minimal level of stores, a modern contemporary militia would want to be equipped with the following:      an AR-15 rifle or carbine, with iron sights or optics     at least four but preferably seven or more 30-round magazines     a chest rig or bandolier for carrying loaded magazines     a constantly maintained reserve of 1,000 rounds of full-metal jacket (FMJ) ammunition for training and service use if called upon     appropriate seasonal clothing     a first aid kit (preferably an individual first aid kid, or IFAK)     food, water, and temporary shelter for three days  The traditional way to measure weapons proficiency is a marksmanship test such as the Army Rifle Qualification Test or the Marine Rifle Qualification Test. A variant of this test commonly used today is the 25-meter Army Qualification Test (AQT) as administered during Project Appleseed events, which itself is based upon World War I riflemanship standards (disclosure — the author is an Appleseed instructor) but adapted and scaled to fit a 25-meter range.  Ideally, citizens should be able to use AR-15s or comparable arms to demonstrate proficiency at 100 yards, 200 yards, 300 yards, and 400 yards either on the scaled 25-meter range or, where available, an actual known distance (KD) range. Such training does not constitute violations of the law in regards to the establishment of private militias, yet still ensures a level of firearms proficiency among the general population that serves the deterrent effect the Founders intended: to dissuade the undermining of the republic by enemies “foreign and domestic.” The thought of engaging a nation with tens of millions of self-equipped riflemen capable of decimating government forces from nearly a quarter-mile away is chilling to any would-be tyrant.  The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is the last line of defense against tyranny and, far from being a colonial relic, was most recently used in 1946 in several areas as returning GIs took on tyrannical local government machines. The most significant of these, the “McMinn County War,” saw young veterans home from World War II depose a corrupt and tyrannical government using military arms.  Eleanor Roosevelt wrote at the time of this morally required insurrection:      We in the U.S.A., who have long boasted that, in our political life, freedom in the use of the secret ballot made it possible for us to register the will of the people without the use of force, have had a rude awakening as we read of conditions in McMinn County, Tennessee, which brought about the use of force in the recent primary. If a political machine does not allow the people free expression, then freedom-loving people lose their faith in the machinery under which their government functions.      In this particular case, a group of young veterans organized to oust the local machine and elect their own slate in the primary. We may deplore the use of force but we must also recognize the lesson which this incident points for us all. When the majority of the people know what they want, they will obtain it.      Any local, state or national government, or any political machine, in order to live, must give the people assurance that they can express their will freely and that their votes will be counted. The most powerful machine cannot exist without the support of the people. Political bosses and political machinery can be good, but the minute they cease to express the will of the people, their days are numbered.      This is a lesson which wise political leaders learn young, and you can be pretty sure that, when a boss stays in power, he gives the majority of the people what they think they want. If he is bad and indulges in practices which are dishonest, or if he acts for his own interests alone, the people are unwilling to condone these practices.     When the people decide that conditions in their town, county, state or country must change, they will change them. If the leadership has been wise, they will be able to do it peacefully through a secret ballot which is honestly counted, but if the leader has become inflated and too sure of his own importance, he may bring about the kind of action which was taken in Tennessee.  A former first lady of the United States condoned insurrection to restore constitutional law, and against corrupt local representatives of her own Democratic Party. She knew a history uncorrupted by modern-day revisionism.  In the days after April 19, 1775, Founding Father Samuel Adams trod the road between Lexington and Concord at the carnage wrought when British General Thomas Gage triggered the American Revolutionary War while attempting to impose gun control on the Colonials. Surveying the burned-out buildings, bloody lanes, shot-pocked walls, and bodies awaiting burial, he remarked:       If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.  Now is not a time for those whom Thomas Paine labeled “sunshine patriots.” The republic will stand or fall based upon whether its citizens choose to defend the Constitution. Let us pray that all Americans realize the stakes in play, and act with calm restraint.
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bigyack-com · 4 years
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The Pandemic Work Diary of a Video-Streaming C.E.O.
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Anjali Sud has never been busier. As the chief executive of Vimeo — a video-streaming platform with 175 million registered users — Ms. Sud is dealing with swelling traffic as the world, sheltering in place, looks for virtual connections.“We woke up a few weeks ago to unprecedented demand,” she said. “We’re seeing increased usage across our products of two times, five times, 10 times.”Ms. Sud, 36, a former investment banker and marketing director, became the platform’s chief in 2017 and changed the nature of the business — making it less of an entertainment streaming service that competed with the likes of Netflix, and more of a hub for content creators. Vimeo generated nearly $200 million in revenue last year, mostly from subscriber fees. It’s owned by IAC, which also operates Match, Tinder, Care.com and the Daily Beast.Ms. Sud said that churches, nonprofits and fitness instructors have all expanded their use of Vimeo’s tools, and that the platform has also seen a spike in content as varied as programs for children and the live-streaming of funerals.Though she is usually based in New York City, Ms. Sud is now staying with her parents in Michigan while caring for her infant son and managing the company’s more than 600 employees.“I live in a world of perpetual trade-offs,” she said. “I can no longer operate at 100 percent capacity like I’m used to as a C.E.O., as a mother, as a wife, as a daughter, as a colleague. I think what I’m learning is that every day, I have to pick the things to let go, and I have to know I’m going to drop some balls, and that’s OK.”
Monday
7:30 a.m. Wake up to cries on the baby monitor. My 18-month-old son, Saavan, is ready for a new day. We have our ritual of diaper change, oatmeal with blueberries and a Sesame Street dance-off. (I’m Abby, he’s Elmo.) I FaceTime with my little sister, who just had a baby in Singapore.8:30 a.m. Chai with my mom before she goes to work. I’m sheltering in Flint, Mich., my hometown. A silver lining of this crisis is getting to spend time with my parents, who both work in health care. My mom oversees a hospital internal medicine residency program, and her residents are on the front line. She tells me that they are both brave and afraid.9 a.m. Zoom call with our chief operating officer and head of human resources. We discuss our new “Vimeo Virtual” series to help employees stay connected through Slack challenges, lunch-and-learns, round tables and online games. This week’s challenge is #socialDISHtancing and everyone posts pics of what they’re eating. I learn we have an increasing number of employees who have lost family members to coronavirus. We decide to start a charitable donation program for anyone going through bereavement.11:55 a.m. Pass Saavan to my husband, Matt. He also works demanding hours, so we’ve been alternating coverage. It’s hectic but we’re also discovering hidden strengths — he makes a mean hot dog, and I’m not bad with brownies out of the box.12 p.m. Our chief marketing officer tells me about a grant program for Vimeo filmmakers to produce videos telling the human stories behind small businesses that have been affected by the pandemic. Everyone from award-winning animators to Oscar-nominated directors have made submissions on entrepreneurs that have inspired them, from an iconic comic book shop in Brooklyn to a flower shop in Budapest to an African contemporary dance company in Minnesota.2 p.m. Review our P&L and latest business outlook. Small businesses, churches, gyms, freelancers, conferences — everyone is using video to stay connected. We decide to increase investment in customer support and technical infrastructure. We also discuss how to weather the economic downturn, and steps we can take to protect employees and prevent layoffs, like slowing hiring and reducing marketing spend. 4 p.m. Weekly call with the chief executives of our parent company, IAC. We go around the virtual room and share how our people and businesses are doing. We talk about team morale and productivity, and what resumption could look like when the time comes — from increased remote work to office layouts and capacity.6 p.m. I take my daily walk around the neighborhood I grew up in. It’s a precious window of me time.9 p.m. I check our WFH Slack channel to see what’s trending, and find this welcome distraction: The Lonely Show. It’s cool to see my colleagues using their creativity to spark laughter in such tense times.
Tuesday
3:40 a.m. Saavan is wailing. Turns out he just dropped his pacifier and wants it back. Crisis averted.6 a.m. Coffee + Bob Dylan playlist + catch up on email. The sun rises and I spot a deer in our backyard. This time last year I was in Tel Aviv, about to acquire an Israeli video start-up. I miss jumping on planes, crowded bars and sushi delivery.10 a.m. Weekly executive meeting. Easter was our biggest live-streaming weekend ever, with 75 times the volume we typically see. Many of our teams are working around the clock to manage the scale, and I worry about burnout. We’ve bulked up our mental health programs with counseling services and workshops. I’m pleased to see employees taking advantage, but I know more people are struggling. I look at my own team on the screen and the little faces popping in and out. My reports are all working parents, and half don’t have child care right now. I decide to send them care packages.12 p.m. FaceTime my nanny, who is with her sister in Brooklyn. She’s worried we don’t have enough toys in Flint, and I add a Fisher Price vacuum cleaner to my Amazon cart.2 p.m. Quick catch-up with the team behind Vimeo Create, our new video-making app. We just launched 100 new social media templates to help businesses stay connected to their customers during the pandemic. Today we look at themes for remote work tips, contactless delivery, donations, at-home fitness and online learning.7 p.m. It’s taco night. Like many, I find myself drawn to comfort food and nostalgia. We drink gin, watch “Law & Order” reruns and play board games. I’m wearing my mom’s velour pajamas and feel like a teenager again. It’s kinda nice.
Wednesday
6:30 a.m. Chai with my dad. He’s a surgeon and entrepreneur, and the person who originally inspired me to get into business. He’s also an aspiring poet, and he reads me something he wrote to capture his feelings about the virus.11 a.m. Meeting with IAC to review funding for the rest of the year. We are growing quickly but are not yet profitable. We’re fortunate that our owners have strong cash reserves and a long-term investment horizon. We discuss a couple different scenarios for how things could play out. It strikes me that precision is impossible right now, and that as an organization our most important strength will be our agility.12 p.m. I tune in a few minutes late to our monthly “staff picks” screening. Over 70 percent of our filmmakers say that being recognized has helped them receive paid future work. Today was our first fully remote screening, and each filmmaker did an intro video from their home. My favorites were a sci-fi film about gender identity, an animated project about food, and a documentary about Betye Saar.3 p.m. Review engineering plan to scale our infrastructure. We’re already delivering over 2 terabits per second of streaming video — that’s more than 60 DVDs’ worth. But every hour more people are moving their businesses entirely online, so we’ve got to prepare for more.4 p.m. Check in on my girlfriends via text. We’ve been attempting the weekend virtual hangout with varying degrees of success. A few of my friends are working in critical response roles — one is on Boris Johnson’s Covid-19 response communication team in London, and another is at the Hospital for Special Surgery.6 p.m. Feed Saavan dinner, which ends with strawberry yogurt smeared all over his hair and mine. Bath time.
Thursday
9:30 a.m. Vimeo Global Town Hall. This is the most important part of my job right now: to be a visible, reassuring presence, and to be both optimistic and real. Today the message I open with is: Hang in there. We’ll get through this together. I update the company on what’s working and what isn’t, and we spend most of the time on anonymous Q. and A. Not surprisingly, the top questions are on mental health resources and office reopening.11 a.m. Matt tells me that Saavan has just said new words: “cookie” and “more.” The first I interpret as a sign of good taste.1 p.m. Virtual lunch with some new hires. Even as we’ve scaled, I like to get to know each person who joins us.2 p.m. I attend a closed-door C.E.O. round table with 14 leaders across the retail, tech, health and nonprofit sectors. It’s hosted by one of the top women in business, whom I’d never met before. She talks about her experience leading through crises over the decades, and it dawns on me that I’m in the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I’ve been so caught up in the day-to-day that it’s been easy to only look out as far as the next quarter or year. But in many ways, this experience will test and shape my instincts, character and values for the rest of my career.5 p.m. Weekly happy hour with the leadership team. It’s BYOB of course, from negronis to merlot. Governor Cuomo has just extended New York’s shutdown to May 15. The drinks are stronger than usual.8 p.m. I get sucked into the McMillion$ docuseries. Fascinating. Yet, I’m eager for the day when streaming shows isn’t the only thing to do on a Thursday night.Interviews are conducted by email, text and phone, then condensed and edited. Read the full article
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biofunmy · 4 years
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A Knight in Gucci Armor Helps Charge a Geothermal Dragon
CASTEL GIORGIO, ITALY — Fausto Carotenuto, the owner of a spiritual wellness and yoga center in Umbria, the ancient Etruscan heartland of Italy, senses bad energy underfoot. A geothermal company wants to build a plant on a fallow field near his land. He envisions apocalyptic consequences if he and his allies fail to stop it.
There would be artificially triggered earthquakes, poisoned wellsprings, barren gardens, ruined lakes. “A disaster,” he said.
For nearly a decade, Mr. Carotenuto, has battled the plant with the help of the mayor of Castel Giorgio, on the rim of Lake Bolsena. But in July — after myriad lawsuits, accusations of conflicts of interest and political maneuvers — the office of Italy’s prime minister decided the experimental project could go ahead and dig deep into the volcanic land.
In September, Mr. Carotenuto sprung into emergency mode, drawing together an array of illustrious allies.
They include the lead designer of Gucci, a Cannes Grand Prix-winning director and luminaries of festival-circuit filmmaking and organic gardening who have adopted this part of Italy as their Holy Land. Far from the crowds of Rome and Milan, and from the Tuscany beloved by hedge fund tycoons, this area had become for them synonymous with the essence of a certain Italian ideal — a rustic, unsullied paradise. They didn’t want a geothermal plant spoiling it.
So against the backdrop of a country scarred by environmental abuses, industrial eyesores, special interests and political corruption — but also a place where “dietrologia,” or the belief that a conspiracy always lurks behind the surface, is widespread — they hatched a plan.
Mr. Carotenuto — who expounds on “Who’s Behind It?” web videos about the “authentically satanic elements of free masonry” and other conspiracies — convened these local knights of his round table in a room decorated with a painting of warring medieval cavaliers, Etruscan-style amphorae and a white piano.
Key to have on their side was Alice Rohrwacher, the Cannes Grand Prix-winning director who grew up on a honey farm in the area, along with her sister Alba Rohrwacher, who has been recognized as one of the finest European actors of her generation.
The director has deep ties to the land, and alliances with local activists. To protect the area’s biodiversity, she had waged an earlier battle against the invasion of lucrative hazelnut trees planted to feed Italy’s insatiable hunger for Nutella. (“We’re surrounded by hazelnuts,” she warned.) Now she would support their fight against a new foe.
Then there was Jonathan Nossiter, a film director who has become the Errol Morris of the ecology set for his documentaries against Big Wine and for natural agriculture. “We are drawn here for a reason, culturally and environmentally,” he said. “There is something sublime here. An Italian ideal.”
Mr. Nossiter (whose brother, Adam, is a correspondent for The Times in France) hustled to the emergency meeting from his nearby heirloom seed nursery and organic vegetable farm, which also was a location for his latest movie, starring, among others, Alba Rohrwacher, Charlotte Rampling and Nick Nolte. (“He’s an avid organic farmer,” Mr. Nossiter said.)
To help activate the locals, Mr. Carotenuto, who said he spent 15 years in Italy’s spy services, also tapped Mr. Nossiter’s partner on the farm, Massimiliano Petrini, a local who once treated a viper’s bite with electric shocks.
And then there was their Lancelot of the Lake, Alessandro Michele, the lead designer of Gucci and owner of a nearby castle. He agreed to contribute financially for an expensive environmental lawyer to sue and stall the plant’s construction, and perhaps buy surrounding land as a strategic buffer against the hazelnut hordes.
Most important, the designer, who had come here to put an “embankment” between him and the world, said he would “put my face” to the issue and show there was what he called an “authentic resistance” to combat a “a monster, a medieval dragon.”
On a recent Sunday morning, Mr. Michele, with cascading black hair and beard, stood outside his property like a knight in Gucci armor, wearing a cardinal red sombrero, sunglasses and a luxurious plaid overcoat.
Inside Mr. Michele’s living room, two languid Boston terrier dogs, the inspiration for a Gucci special collection, snored loudly as he and his boyfriend, the urban planning professor Giovanni Attili, sat next to a Christmas tree and made clear their activism was no radical chic hobby.
“We have a great sensitivity to the things that cry for help,” Mr. Michele said. “This place cries for help.”
Mr. Michele said he first learned about the geothermal plant while he was in France from a member of the family that had sold him his property. “Yeah, we learned about it afterwards,” he said.
His first instinct was to sell. But upon reconsideration, he thought, “maybe we would have bought it anyway,” because he had become so enchanted by the ancient oak trees. “Think what these trees have seen.”
He also pointed to the rugged, authentic beauty of an area that possessed a “strange energy” that attracted people like himself and the others.
They all needed to defend the land as if it were a sick child, Mr. Michele said.
“I’m not a geologist, I have another job,” he said shortly before pricking one of his fingers, garlanded in Renaissance rings, on an exposed nail on the back of the chair. “My job is to preserve beauty. And hasn’t beauty a value?”
The opponents of the plant have tried to prove it will be an environmental menace. They also say the approval process was rigged.
They have seized on the fact that Franco Barberi, a volcanologist and former government minister who is a member of a state commission that approved the project, is married to a woman who is also a volcanologist and was one of the experts who helped determine the area was seismically safe for digging.
Mr. Barberi denied any wrongdoing. He said that he recused himself from the decision, that the process was legitimate, and that his wife did only preliminary examinations before the project even began.
“My wife and I have a clear conscience,” he said.
The company building the plant says it uses an environmentally friendly system with zero carbon emissions to produce electricity. It would help, not harm, the environment and never trigger an earthquake, it says.
“The well-off want everything to remain the way it is so they can remain the ones who are well off,” Diego Righini, the company’s general manager, said in his offices near the Spanish Steps in Rome. He portrayed the resistance as “Not in my backyard” elites.
He argued that the more than 10 million euros, or $11.1 million, invested to build the plant would draw workers, creating families and nursery schools.
“The battle that these directors are waging is to have a future without children bothering them,” he said, adding that construction would begin in February, despite the lawsuit.
He accused Mr. Carotenuto of being a “guru and hypnotist” leading an “emotional opposition” exploited by larger interests that they failed to comprehend.
In Mr. Righini’s deeper dietrologia assessment, it was the Italian energy giant Enel, which had dug unsuccessfully for geothermal energy in the area decades ago, that had stuck “secret deals.” He suggested that Enel had manufactured, and potentially bought off, the opposition of local advocates and mayors to crush independent competitors like him. He warned that digging below the story’s surface could be dangerous.
“Do we want to wake the dragon?” Mr. Righini asked, referring to Enel.
Luigi Parisi, the head of geothermal operations for Enel’s green power company, “categorically” excluded any involvement with the opponents to geothermal energy, calling accusations of plotting against the Castel Giorgio project “groundless.”
And Andrea Garbini, the town’s mayor, said the only thing he had ever received from Enel was information belying Mr. Righini’s claim of his plant having zero emissions.
All this business and politics disgusted Mr. Michele.
“Italy is going through a dark moment, worse than the collapse of the Roman Empire,” said Mr. Michele, who is sometimes seen getting away from Italy’s current malaise by wandering through the surrounding blackberry bushes with his friend, the actor Jared Leto, both of them dressed like pashas.
Mr. Michele spoke with wonder about his new home — the deer he encountered in the wood, the “good karma” of the land, the cheese farm where a young Sicilian plays classical music for his goats.
“I ask myself,” he said, “in 2020, do we really need to still destroy everything?”
Anna Momigliano contributed reporting from Rome.
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mastcomm · 4 years
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A Knight in Gucci Armor Helps Charge a Geothermal Dragon
CASTEL GIORGIO, ITALY — Fausto Carotenuto, the owner of a spiritual wellness and yoga center in Umbria, the ancient Etruscan heartland of Italy, senses bad energy underfoot. A geothermal company wants to build a plant on a fallow field near his land. He envisions apocalyptic consequences if he and his allies fail to stop it.
There would be artificially triggered earthquakes, poisoned wellsprings, barren gardens, ruined lakes. “A disaster,” he said.
For nearly a decade, Mr. Carotenuto, has battled the plant with the help of the mayor of Castel Giorgio, on the rim of Lake Bolsena. But in July — after myriad lawsuits, accusations of conflicts of interest and political maneuvers — the office of Italy’s prime minister decided the experimental project could go ahead and dig deep into the volcanic land.
In September, Mr. Carotenuto sprung into emergency mode, drawing together an array of illustrious allies.
They include the lead designer of Gucci, a Cannes Grand Prix-winning director and luminaries of festival-circuit filmmaking and organic gardening who have adopted this part of Italy as their Holy Land. Far from the crowds of Rome and Milan, and from the Tuscany beloved by hedge fund tycoons, this area had become for them synonymous with the essence of a certain Italian ideal — a rustic, unsullied paradise. They didn’t want a geothermal plant spoiling it.
So against the backdrop of a country scarred by environmental abuses, industrial eyesores, special interests and political corruption — but also a place where “dietrologia,” or the belief that a conspiracy always lurks behind the surface, is widespread — they hatched a plan.
Mr. Carotenuto — who expounds on “Who’s Behind It?” web videos about the “authentically satanic elements of free masonry” and other conspiracies — convened these local knights of his round table in a room decorated with a painting of warring medieval cavaliers, Etruscan-style amphorae and a white piano.
Key to have on their side was Alice Rohrwacher, the Cannes Grand Prix-winning director who grew up on a honey farm in the area, along with her sister Alba Rohrwacher, who has been recognized as one of the finest European actors of her generation.
The director has deep ties to the land, and alliances with local activists. To protect the area’s biodiversity, she had waged an earlier battle against the invasion of lucrative hazelnut trees planted to feed Italy’s insatiable hunger for Nutella. (“We’re surrounded by hazelnuts,” she warned.) Now she would support their fight against a new foe.
Then there was Jonathan Nossiter, a film director who has become the Errol Morris of the ecology set for his documentaries against Big Wine and for natural agriculture. “We are drawn here for a reason, culturally and environmentally,” he said. “There is something sublime here. An Italian ideal.”
Mr. Nossiter (whose brother, Adam, is a correspondent for The Times in France) hustled to the emergency meeting from his nearby heirloom seed nursery and organic vegetable farm, which also was a location for his latest movie, starring, among others, Alba Rohrwacher, Charlotte Rampling and Nick Nolte. (“He’s an avid organic farmer,” Mr. Nossiter said.)
To help activate the locals, Mr. Carotenuto, who said he spent 15 years in Italy’s spy services, also tapped Mr. Nossiter’s partner on the farm, Massimiliano Petrini, a local who once treated a viper’s bite with electric shocks.
And then there was their Lancelot of the Lake, Alessandro Michele, the lead designer of Gucci and owner of a nearby castle. He agreed to contribute financially for an expensive environmental lawyer to sue and stall the plant’s construction, and perhaps buy surrounding land as a strategic buffer against the hazelnut hordes.
Most important, the designer, who had come here to put an “embankment” between him and the world, said he would “put my face” to the issue and show there was what he called an “authentic resistance” to combat a “a monster, a medieval dragon.”
On a recent Sunday morning, Mr. Michele, with cascading black hair and beard, stood outside his property like a knight in Gucci armor, wearing a cardinal red sombrero, sunglasses and a luxurious plaid overcoat.
Inside Mr. Michele’s living room, two languid Boston terrier dogs, the inspiration for a Gucci special collection, snored loudly as he and his boyfriend, the urban planning professor Giovanni Attili, sat next to a Christmas tree and made clear their activism was no radical chic hobby.
“We have a great sensitivity to the things that cry for help,” Mr. Michele said. “This place cries for help.”
Mr. Michele said he first learned about the geothermal plant while he was in France from a member of the family that had sold him his property. “Yeah, we learned about it afterwards,” he said.
His first instinct was to sell. But upon reconsideration, he thought, “maybe we would have bought it anyway,” because he had become so enchanted by the ancient oak trees. “Think what these trees have seen.”
He also pointed to the rugged, authentic beauty of an area that possessed a “strange energy” that attracted people like himself and the others.
They all needed to defend the land as if it were a sick child, Mr. Michele said.
“I’m not a geologist, I have another job,” he said shortly before pricking one of his fingers, garlanded in Renaissance rings, on an exposed nail on the back of the chair. “My job is to preserve beauty. And hasn’t beauty a value?”
The opponents of the plant have tried to prove it will be an environmental menace. They also say the approval process was rigged.
They have seized on the fact that Franco Barberi, a volcanologist and former government minister who is a member of a state commission that approved the project, is married to a woman who is also a volcanologist and was one of the experts who helped determine the area was seismically safe for digging.
Mr. Barberi denied any wrongdoing. He said that he recused himself from the decision, that the process was legitimate, and that his wife did only preliminary examinations before the project even began.
“My wife and I have a clear conscience,” he said.
The company building the plant says it uses an environmentally friendly system with zero carbon emissions to produce electricity. It would help, not harm, the environment and never trigger an earthquake, it says.
“The well-off want everything to remain the way it is so they can remain the ones who are well off,” Diego Righini, the company’s general manager, said in his offices near the Spanish Steps in Rome. He portrayed the resistance as “Not in my backyard” elites.
He argued that the more than 10 million euros, or $11.1 million, invested to build the plant would draw workers, creating families and nursery schools.
“The battle that these directors are waging is to have a future without children bothering them,” he said, adding that construction would begin in February, despite the lawsuit.
He accused Mr. Carotenuto of being a “guru and hypnotist” leading an “emotional opposition” exploited by larger interests that they failed to comprehend.
In Mr. Righini’s deeper dietrologia assessment, it was the Italian energy giant Enel, which had dug unsuccessfully for geothermal energy in the area decades ago, that had stuck “secret deals.” He suggested that Enel had manufactured, and potentially bought off, the opposition of local advocates and mayors to crush independent competitors like him. He warned that digging below the story’s surface could be dangerous.
“Do we want to wake the dragon?” Mr. Righini asked, referring to Enel.
Luigi Parisi, the head of geothermal operations for Enel’s green power company, “categorically” excluded any involvement with the opponents to geothermal energy, calling accusations of plotting against the Castel Giorgio project “groundless.”
And Andrea Garbini, the town’s mayor, said the only thing he had ever received from Enel was information belying Mr. Righini’s claim of his plant having zero emissions.
All this business and politics disgusted Mr. Michele.
“Italy is going through a dark moment, worse than the collapse of the Roman Empire,” said Mr. Michele, who is sometimes seen getting away from Italy’s current malaise by wandering through the surrounding blackberry bushes with his friend, the actor Jared Leto, both of them dressed like pashas.
Mr. Michele spoke with wonder about his new home — the deer he encountered in the wood, the “good karma” of the land, the cheese farm where a young Sicilian plays classical music for his goats.
“I ask myself,” he said, “in 2020, do we really need to still destroy everything?”
Anna Momigliano contributed reporting from Rome.
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bigbuckregistry · 4 years
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292 The Deer News 2019 Year in Review - A Time Capsule
As we open up 2020, our 8th Season, and 8 years of podcasting here at the Big Buck Registry, we thought it only appropriate to take one last look at 2019.  If you are a frequent listener of the show, you'll know that in each episode we segment off into the Deer News at the beginning and a good deer hunting story at the end. In the last show of 2019, we put together all the best deer stories told by our guests of 2019, and likewise, we thought we'd take a look at all the best deer news stories of 2019 as well, like a time capsule of events.  We visit with Jim Keller, our news anchor, and with some frequent news story contributors, Tim Donze, Jon Guice, and Dan Appelbaum.  And then, through some consolidation of all the news we featured on the show in 2019, we present a deer news year in review, with all the best deer news stories feature on the podcast in 2019. 
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Here are the Stories from 2019:
Bedford County Man Considered Oldest Deer Hunter at 105
Disabled 8 Year Old Hunter Has Special Stand Stolen
Female Poacher Caught by Game Warden on Dating App
Hunters Seek Permission to Hunt Deer in Jamaica 
101 Year Old Grandma Kills 2 Year with 1 Shot
Wyoming Man Charged for Poaching 114 Deer and Antelope
Pennsylvania's Sunday Hunting Bill 147
Crossbow Proposal Causes Stir with Maine Deer Hunters
California Looks to Enroll Hunters in Conservation Push
Deadly Zombie Deer Disease Could Spread to Humans
Tinder Bans Woman Over Hunter Photos
Bill Would Allow Land Owners to Sell Permits to Out of State Hunters
Former Stuebenville Ohio Officer Sentenced for Poaching
New Study Shows Deer Species React Differently to Wolves
Road Commission Asks Whomever Is Leaving Deer Bait on Highway to Stop
Colorado Parks and Wildlife Crack Down on Illegal Antler Collecting
Opening Day Change Is Official for Pennsylvania Deer Hunters
Man Fatally Attacked by a Pet Deer
Proposal Would Prohibit Shooting Bucks in Buffalo County Wisconsin
Man Poaches then Freezes 20 Point Buck
Alabama Law Makers Approve Hunting Deer With Bait
What Deer Hunters Should Know about the EPA Review of Glyphosate
Secretary Bernhardt Proposes Greater Access for Hunting and Fishing
Rare Pitch Black Deer Spotted in Michigan
Are You Putting Yourself at Risk for Lyme Disease
Colorado Rehab Center Running Out of Room for Rescued Fawns
Iowa City Turns to Bow Hunters to Manage Deer Herd
Colorado Man Receives Lifetime Ban on Hunting and Fishing
Limited Deer Feeding Allowed in Delta Flood
Deer Hit by Planes at NJ Airports
MDC and Missouri Increase Penalties for Poaching
DNR Considering Beach Going Deer Tranquilizer
No Deer Season in Part of Mississippi? It's Possible
Missouri Has New Rules for Deer Carcasses
Mule Deer and Whitetails Expand Range into Alaska
CDC Warns Hunters about Deer Born Tuberculosis
Putnam County Man Faces Charges for Hunting with Improper License
Hunter Bags Rare Antlered Doe
New Study Sheds Light on Lunar Impact on Whitetail Deer
Young Hunter Bags 12 Point Buck on First Hunt
Arkansas Deer Hunter Dead After Deer Attacked
See a Deer on the Road, Resist Urge to Swerve 
West Virginia Hunter Takes Down 17 Point Buck After 6 Years
Survey Says Firearms Hunter Leads to Less Violence
One in a Million, Three Antlered Deer 
Pennsylvania Wildlife Investigating Deer Abuse Video
First Time Hunter is 104 Years Old
Michigan Hunter Sprayed Brother's Stand with Deer Repellent
Iowa Hunting Excursion Gone Wrong
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CREDITS:
This Show was Written, Edited, and Produced by Jason “Jay” Scott Ammann
Deer News Written and Recorded by Jim Keller
Deer New Contributors - Daniel Applebaum, Tim Donze, Jon Guice
Chubby Tines Tip of the Week Written by Dusty Phillips
DON'T MISS THIS ONE!
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shirlleycoyle · 5 years
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The Government Wants to Tackle Big Tech’s Repair Monopolies and Planned Obsolescence
For years, the “right to repair” movement struggled to gain widespread public attention. But that’s started to change as consumers, activists, and even Presidential candidates have highlighted how arbitrary tech repair restrictions are driving up costs, eroding consumer rights, and creating a mountain of unnecessary electronic waste.
Tuesday, the FTC held a hearing dubbed Nixing the Fix: A Workshop on Repair Restrictions, where experts testified how these restrictions are having a profoundly negative impact on consumers and businesses alike.
“Over the last 20 years, the OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) have become increasingly hostile to my market and third party maintainers, doing anything in every way they can to try and stop and control the lifecycle of the equipment,” testified Jennifer Larson, CEO of Vibrant technologies, a reseller of IT equipment.
Larson explained in detail how licensing, firmware, and other restrictions prohibit her company from reselling hardware to corporate clients, often resulting in working servers being sent directly to landfills if they can’t be scrapped for parts.
Companies like Apple have also long attempted to monopolize repair to fatten their revenues, engaging in ham-fisted legal attacks on small third-party repair shops. Other companies like John Deere have similarly fought against third-party repair of tractors, forcing customers to drive hundreds of miles to a sanctioned repair shop at significant added cost.
Theresa McDonough, owner of an independent cell phone and computer repair shop, said these and other repair restrictions have a very real impact on the farmers, students, and blue collar workers she serves in Vermont, especially if their devices are out of warranty.
“With the average device costing anywhere between $500 to $1,000, this could mean a replacement cost of up to $6,000 a year for the average family if they can not repair their device,” McDonogh said. “That’s more than most people pay in property taxes.”
Nathan Proctor, Director of the Campaign for the Right to Repair at US PIRG, noted how Americans dispose of 416,000 smartphones every day. This unnecessary waste comes hand and hand with a steady erosion in consumer rights. Consumers no longer own the things they buy, and fine print routinely strips away many of the rights they once hand.
“Our relationship with electronics is kind of changing direction, and I think there are some serious things that if we don’t address, we’re going to lose fundamentally the democratic sense of maintenance and ownership of technology in our lives,” Proctor told attendees.
Proctor noted that in addition to devices being intentionally engineered to make repair difficult or impossible (a calling card of former Apple designer Jony Ive), there’s a universe of warranty restrictions that make sanctioned repair cumbersome, lengthy, and often expensive. All of these restrictions serve one real purpose: fattening revenues for the world’s biggest companies.
During his presentation, Proctor pointed to data suggesting the profit margin for John Deere tractor repair was five times higher than the sale of new equipment.
“I think an easy explanation for that discrepancy would be that repair is monopolized, the sale is competitive,” he said. “And I think repair should be competitive.”
Public backlash to these restrictions has resulted in a growing call for state or federal laws that protect the consumer’s right to repair. Gay Gordon-Byrne is the executive director of the Repair Association, a group forged in 2013 to help spearhead that effort.
“Monopolies on repair are unfortunately the new normal,” she told hearing attendees. “We used to always be able to fix our stuff, it was a right of ownership, it still is a right of ownership. We’ve lost it because we’ve failed to pay attention to all the nasty little things that were happening around us,” including the rise of highly restrictive end user license agreements (EULAs).
While more than a dozen states have now proposed right to repair laws, numerous companies, eager to keep repair monopolies intact, have fought tooth and nail against the proposals.
These companies are quick to claim, often without evidence, that such legislation poses a security and public safety risk. Apple, for example, declared one Nebraska proposal would make the state a “mecca for hackers,” and that users shouldn’t be repairing their own phones because they’d just hurt themselves.
Such concerns were the focus of hearing attendees like George Kirchner of the Rechargeable Battery Association (PRBA), which suggested to attendees that protecting the consumer right to repair would somehow result in the “mishandling” of batteries. Earl Crane of the Security Innovation Center similarly suggested such legislation could hamper security.
But Gordon-Byrne dismissed these concerns, suggesting they’re generally used to scare legislators away from productive right to repair legislation and increased repair competition. Industry opposition to such legislation is, unsurprisingly, driven by money, she said.
“Things have to get fixed,” she said. “And we can’t fix them now because we’re being told we can’t buy the parts, we can’t buy the tools, we can’t get the diagnostics, we can’t get the manuals, and oh by the way—we’re going to sell you things that are unsafe and are going to blow up, and therefore you shouldn’t be allowed to fix them.”
“I find this absolutely ludicrous,” she added. “The cure for unsafe products is more repair. The cure for getting rid of faulty parts is more repair, not less.”
While the FTC hearing shines some much needed light on the need for repair reform, there’s still a laundry list of companies with bottomless lobbying budgets and a vested interest in keeping repair monopolized and restrictive. But the more consumers and small businesses that realize there’s a problem, the more support reform efforts are likely to have.
The Government Wants to Tackle Big Tech’s Repair Monopolies and Planned Obsolescence syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/
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