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Earth Day Festival in Everett Crowley Park

This morning Miss G and I ventured just a little ways down Marine Drive to a spot we’ve never been before…  Everett Crowley Park.  Once a landfill, the park is now a huge green space filled with trees, trails, and wildlife – the perfect spot for an annual Earth Day festival.

IMG 1022We arrived fairly early on, meaning that Gracen had her pick of equipment to test out and play with.

IMG 1025We really didn’t know how to properly use this little contraption, but all that mattered to Grae was that it was purple, sparkly, and perfect for swinging around.

IMG 1038After enjoying the toys, we joined the mass and lined up to create some outdoor art.  First job – collecting a stash of pretty rocks, glass stones, and shells.

IMG 1031Gracen would have been perfectly happy if playing with her pretty rocks was the activity in itself.

IMG 1043But there was more…  We were waiting on some cement mix.

IMG 1044When it arrived, she carefully transferred  her gems into the mix, giving each a gentle poke in order to set them in.

IMG 1054With her project finished and in the drying area, we headed off to the face painting station.  Earlier on, Grae had seen a little girl with a sparkly butterfly mask painted on her face, and she was certain she wanted one too.  The line was painfully slow moving, but we used our time in it as a lunch break and made some friends along the way.

IMG 1057Before we knew it, it was Gracen’s turn.

IMG 1059She sat bravely and patiently, inspecting the artist as she painted.

IMG 1071When it came time to painting the black outline, Grae decided she was done and wanted nothing more to do with the whole process.  Luckily, the painter had a trick up her sleeves – sparkles!

IMG 1075So with the promise of sparkles being added at the end, Miss G sat a minute longer.

IMG 1077And she was glad she did.  You should have seen the proud little look on her face when she saw herself in the mirror!

IMG 1081Face painting complete, my little butterfly and I headed back to collect her {almost} dry garden rock.

IMG 1088Pleased as punch, she insisted on walking herself out of the park and carrying her cement block the entire way.  I’d say it was a good day.

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2 thoughts on “Earth Day Festival in Everett Crowley Park

  1. Oh my! I would have that second-to-last photo framed. What a beautiful day, the garden rock is a great idea for a craft! If only my littlest one wouldn’t smush cement mix everywhere…

  2. jkossowan says:

    It was a really wonderful day. We’re very lucky to live somewhere that has so many great family events! After four years overseas, I try not to take that for granted.

    I was a little worried about the cement mix too, but I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that she only ended up with a little on her fingers by the end. I might be crazy, but I’ve already been thinking about what other cool things we could make with some cement mix this summer! 🙂

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12 08 2011

I’m not sure if I’ve earned the right to relax this summer–sure, I’ve been busy, but mostly busy pursuing my own personal goals and ends. I’ve met with some successes (the conferences I attended were catalytic experiences in many ways) and come up short in a few areas (the Packard isn’t going to be finished any time soon, and I haven’t yet written the next Great American Novel).

Still, as summer winds down, it’s never a bad idea to kick back for few days with friends. Which is precisely what I’m doing right now in Naubinway.

Does one relax at the beach or on the beach?

By the time I return to the Detroit area this Sunday I’ll be ready for action…whatever that might entail. I have developed some of my thoughts on the so-called Higher Education Bubble that I’ve had a hard time putting to paper. Generally, I’ve found that the more important and valuable something on my to-do list is, the more likely I am to put it off. By that standard, I’ve got some truly interesting things waiting in my personal queue.

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She built her nest on a island in our parking lot.  How crazy can that be.  Her partner was hanging around helping to guard the nest while she stat there.  I think he was more concerned about what I was doing that guarding the nest.  This was taken in the morning and by that afternoon when the sun was out  in it’s fullest I went back by there and she was panting she was so hot.  This is also right out in the open.  No shade tree in sight.

I got 23 miles in this morning.  I was going to get at least two more in before heading home but there was a funeral at the church where I cross over and I didn’t want to be disrespectful so I settled on 23 miles instead of 24 miles.


text:
Close The Door Quietly

So many thoughts running through my head
This isn’t the time to let them out
So I’ll walk away and close the door quietly
Rather than let my frustration make me shout.

How the tongue can lead us to many places
While the laughter it creates is a relief
When it is left to its own while saddened
It can lead us to a moment that gives just grief.

Not that it is always easy to walk away from you
But I know that too many times words lead to tears
And most of the time there is nothing to be gained
By letting fly all the conflict, confusion and fears.

So as I slip from the recesses of your mind
All I can do is leave the look that I implore
For you to open your mind and let me share a space
For now I retreat and quietly close the door.

About graypoet

Just one that at times puts the words to the page and lets them fall as they might.
Gallery | This entry was posted in Poetry and tagged , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to Close The Door Quietly

  1. Phyllis Sears says:

    Very emotional and heartfelt. But sometimes we do just have to close our mouths and just walk away and start over

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My Worthless Cupid – repost

Another that just seemed to fit the day…

Gray Poet

Just another timeless treasure… Happy Valentines Day.

I have to say I’m very distressed
I sent you out and each time you missed
How am I going to find someone special to hold
If you can’t shoot an arrow cuz you’re just too old.

Why do I get the Cupid that is blind
Most of the time I probably wouldn’t mind
But on this day I’d at least like to dream
Yet every time you miss I feel I could scream.

Too fat to fly and too slow to just walk
You can’t shoot straight and you’re forbidden to talk
So each woman who I think might give me a smile
You let fly that arrow and miss by a mile.

Maybe if the Devil would give me a chance at a deal
I could get you a shotgun and arrows of steel
But what good would that do me…

View original post 63 more words

About graypoet

Just one that at times puts the words to the page and lets them fall as they might.
Gallery | This entry was posted in Poetry. Bookmark the permalink.

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Gee Davis

Gee Davis
In Australia, 3 children die of cancer every week. Please sponsor me and support my challenge to fight kids' cancer and save little lives!
I've Ridden 0.0 km My goal is 50 km
My Rankings
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  • State: N/A in NSW
I've raised $0 My goal is $500 Donate Now

My Story

  • 2 Mar 2018

    This October, I am taking part in the Great Cycle Challenge to fight kids' cancer!

    Because right now, cancer is the largest single killer of children from disease in Australia – over 600 children are diagnosed with cancer every year and sadly, 3 die every week.

    Kids should be living life, not fighting for it.

    And so I am riding and raising funds to support the Children's Medical Research Institute to continue their work into the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and finding a cure for childhood cancer.

    Please support my challenge by making a donation through my fundraising page to give these kids the brighter futures they deserve.

    Together, we can save little lives.

    Thanks for your support.

    Posted 17 days ago
Donate Now


text:
Yucca application filed on Inauguration Day DOE document sought water rights

Please read article, cited after the quote. Articles open in a new window.

While the Obama administration has been pursuing a course to kill the Yucca Mountain Project, the Department of Energy has been quietly forging ahead with its plan to obtain water rights for building a rail line across rural Nevada to haul the nation’s highly radioactive waste for burial in the mountain.

On the day Barack Obama was sworn in as president, a DOE official in Las Vegas filed a water rights application for the rail project with the state engineer’s office.

Without saying if the application will be rescinded, Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s spokeswoman said Friday that it “was submitted during the previous administration and should not be taken as any indication of the Obama administration’s policy, especially since the president’s budget announcement made it clear yet again that the administration does not consider Yucca Mountain an option for waste storage, period.”

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Pardon Me, Is That An Asteroid On Your Finger?

The oldest rocks on Earth are zircon crystals. These highly refractive gemstones are often used to imitate diamonds or cubic zirconias in jewelry. Geologists have now announced the results of a study that has determined that zircons are quite possibly remnants of an ancient asteroid collision with Earth.

Other than simply having the pleasure of knowing you may have a bit of outer space asteroid glittering on your finger or about your ears, neck or wrist, what good is this information? Well, for one thing it dispels the previous theory that zircons were created by tectonic plate upheavals. But, more importantly, it helps scientists understand climate change. Yes, you heard the gringa right, climate change. A rock’s origins can often indicate what was going on with water on the planet at the time the rock was formed. Since zircon’s are produced by asteroids, Earthlings can also learn about the part of the cosmos that it originated from.

Researchers from Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) collected crystals from an impact crater that is considered “young”. Scientists wanted to compare the “young” crystals with older crystals from the Sudbury crater in Ontario, Canada. Sudbury is the best preserved impact crater on Earth and is about two billion years old.

The samples were taken to Stockholm’s “Swedish Museum of Natural History”.  Comparisons  concluded that the older crystals were the same as the younger ones. This then disproved the argument that the ancient zircon crystals could not have formed at the time the impact occurred. So, now we know that they could and probably did, making zircons the oldest rocks on Earth, as old as four billion years old which is the age of the oldest impact crater on our planet. The researchers also believe this supports the narrative that early Earth saw many more asteroid impacts than in its later life.

So, what this new determination tells mankind is that about four billion years ago an asteroid slammed into Earth. The crystals were able to form because water was present. Best estimates place the Earth’s age at four and a half billion years old so logic would assume then that it has always been a watery planet.  And what’s the big deal about an old, watery Earth?

Well, for one thing, water was required for life as we know it today to have evolved. But, the new discoveries about the crystals still does not solve the mystery of how life originated on planet Earth in the first place. And there are many theories on this subject that argue their own merits. Here are a few:

Electrified Primordial Soup – This school of thought believes that in the beginning of Earth’s life as a planet there was a life-giving electrical shock to the planet, such as lightning, that interacted with the ammonia, hydrogen and water on the planet. Lightning would deliver more than just a jolting electrical shock. The atmosphere, being filled with ammonia, hydrogen and water, would react with the electricity and create amino acids and sugars. These are the building blocks of microbial life.

Clay – A Scottish chemist has offered the theory that mineral crystals in clay is where all life began. He believes it is possible that clay, possibly at the bottom of the sea, was the perfect surface for molecules to organize themselves into patterns of amino acids and proteins which would later become DNA. Once the DNA evolved independently it no longer needed the clay medium but could organize itself on its own.

Hydrothermal Vents – Even now ocean biologists discover ecosystems surrounding hydrothermal vents deep within the Earth’s oceans that are teeming with life. Concentrations of molecules and minerals exist with the rocks surrounding these vents interacting with the hydrogen rich molecules provided by the vents action.

Panspermia – The hitchhiking life surviving the impact of an asteroid with Earth is yet one more possibility. If this theory is true, then the puzzle of the origins of life is not really to be worked out here on Earth, but to be solved by traveling the cosmos to find where it came from out there.

Although the many theories of how life originate on Earth are quite varied in their ideas, they all have one common thread… water. That would mean if the original microbes that evolved into humans over billions of years originally came from somewhere in outer space, to discover or “home planet”, Earthlings have to study planets that either have water now or had it at some time in their own history. By understanding this, a person then can understand the inspiration behind every space mission and why the space agencies of the world want to travel ever farther. They are not looking for little green men. They are looking for little molecules of water or ice. And one day, we may all call home a rock that exists in another galaxy or solar system.

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A barrio gringa with a dream of cosmic proportions: writing to satiate my insatiable curiosity, worldwide literacy beginning with our youth, and to be the first barrio gringa to explore outer space!

6 thoughts on “Pardon Me, Is That An Asteroid On Your Finger?”

  1. Fascinating post! Am going to look at the zircon rystal I have in a whole new light. Although the other theories of how life formed on earth are interesting, the panspermia theory has always caught my imagination. Would love to travel the cosmos to find out (:

    Liked by 2 people

  2. Your posts are great! I never know where your inquisitive mind will take us next. Wouldn’t mind the polished zircon on my finger, though the raw one is far more mysterious. With all that history, ironic it’s considered a cheap substitute for diamonds 🙂 . On a more (slightly) serious note, I prefer the panspermia theory by far – born of stars, not of clay!

    Liked by 2 people

  3. Thank you; this day has only just begun and already I’ve learned something new. I’ll never look at zircon the same way again! (Hmm… not quite right: I don’t recall ever really looking at it ever before, but now I will.)

    PS Typo alert:
    “Since zircon’szircons are produced by asteroids…”
    (plural, not possessive)

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Screwed and Owned…

Black And White Photography, Mario, Meho, Photography

Owned because I can’t make Photoshop work well in a Windows 10 virtual machine running under Linux… Ok sorry for the technical vocabulary. I am running Linux Ubuntu on my desktop and I can’t find any good photograhy software. So I feel owned by Adobe and Microsoft 😥

I wish I could get more from that picture. I can see aliasing…

I am looking to buy this coming fall a Sony Z5 cellphone (benchmark) which actually gives a nice 23Mpx. If I can make somthing good with it, I’ll be able to shoot AND to process every picture on this cellphone.

We’ll see.

13 thoughts on “Screwed and Owned…

  1. I have no idea what you’re complaining about, Mario, as this shot is amazing. Amazing and gorgeous! Great work!

  2. Mario, I realize that I am the novice in this group of photographers (from a gear / processing perspective), but I really like this image!

    1. I am actually wondering if this wasn’t about the display drivers in Virtualbox… Because from my actual perspective, on a Windows desktop, it doesn’t look that bad. 🙂

  3. Personally I love this shot and the aliasing is minor Mario 🙂 I do understand your frustration with the major companies. I know you don’t care for Macs but you can build what they call a Hackintosh (your computer is probably compatible now as long as you are running an Intel processor). You can then load the latest version of OS X which has dual boot capabilities so you don’t have to run Windows in Virtual machine mode and you can choose whether you want to run OS X or Windows at boot up time. Google HackIntosh and you might find a solution. OS X is very similar to Linux except its not open source.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Thank you Joseph! But between Mac and Windows, I would choose Windows. ; ) I like to give a try to Linux every 1½ year to see if what News are saying is true. I’ve heard lately about GIMP and Darktable getting improvments but it feels like it still as bad as the last time I’ve tried them. And the problem over all… It’s me in fact. I need a lot of changes in my life and when I have spent a year with the same Windows desktop… I am looking for change. Something new. Now I feel like this man who cheated and get back home with regrets… 🙂 lol I got to sneak back in the house by the Window… lol

      Liked by 1 person

  4. Nice work. I sure hope you don’t decide to give up on Lightroom and Photoshop. I understand your frustration with Microsoft and Adobe. Have you tried Corel? Their apps may work better on Linux. Before I was forced to switch to Adobe I used Corel’s products.

    1. Thanks a lot Sherry. Yes I tried Corel and I don’t like it either. I believe that there is one and only one software that work well and it’s Adobe. Do you like Corel?

      1. I used to love the Corel suite when I used it heavily years ago. Corel Photo-Paint is easier to master than Photoshop and does the same stuff. I still use use Corel Painter and love it. I was a painter, so that is why I like it.

        Liked by 1 person

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An Easter Monday Psalm

Because I’m not done with Easter.  And God’s not done with us.

If you get the “Must play on YouTube” message, just click the link and go directly to YouTube to listen.  It’s worth it.  Trust me.  BTW, Chana and Yitzchak, though the images are Christian, the words are Psalm, and the melody is very universal and ancient, I think.  One of my very favorites.  You might like it.

About GruntOfMonteCristo

Fearless and Devout Catholic Christian First, Loving Husband and Father Second, Pissed-Off Patriot Third, Rocket Engineer Dork Last.
This entry was posted in Church, Prayer. Bookmark the permalink.

4 Responses to An Easter Monday Psalm

  1. Adrienne says:

    Happy Easter Monday, Grunt.

  2. Chana says:

    not yet passover (used to be you guys celebrated easter on the sunday after passover, given that the origional last supper was on passover night, and was actually JC’s seder with his students (and probably a selection of their wives and or close family where applicable, when you offered the paschal lamb you had to finish the whole thing, so you usually brought it in large groups) but then one of the popes said that christians shouldn’t be depending on local jews for the date easter, so they made their own rules.)

    hope you enjoyed the holiday, and eating meat after lent. (there were once places where christians ate only bread and water all lent)

    as for the video, we’ll watch it. (yitzchak)

    • I just liked that Psalm set to that particular arrangement and melody. I didn’t mean to tie it to Passover, necessarily, but you raise an interesting point about the divergence of the calendars. I never knew! I always thought the Christian Easter was absolutely tied to Passover week, which doesn’t start for you until after the next lunar cycle, but I didn’t know the history of the disputes that seem to have put ours on the previous new moon. The whole thing was controversial, apparently, but I didn’t know of it.

      Thanks for pointing that out, Yitzchak! It’s especially interesting to me, since I work with different astronomical calendars. I had always thought the Easter reckoning to be one of the things that still tied us together. Now, I guess only partially so. Bummer.

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text:
Staff Profile

Stephanie Young-Birkle
Assistant to Dean Rao Unnava

Stephanie joined the Graduate School of Management in May of this year as the Energy Program Project Manager and has been working with Amy Myers Jaffe. She has also worked in the Academic Senate Office where she supported the faculty committees on Academic Freedom & Responsibility, Affirmative Action & Diversity, and Library as well as the Staff Assembly. Before joining UC Davis, she was a paralegal focusing on securities and business transactional law and a research assistant at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.


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Florida Touring

I’m following another Crazy Guy on a Bike epic.  The last guy I followed ended up throwing in the towel in the middle of Europe so he could return home to his one true love blah blah blah…

This guy is currently going through the inside coast of Florida, headed south.  His entries are short, but usually insightful.  When I rode in the sunshine state, I was disappointed by the lack of berms and the abundance of very poor drivers.  I hope he makes it!

One response to “Florida Touring

  1. Crazy Guy is a grate place to spend time. Some of those journals are better than many adventure books. Mike Riscica, Joy Santee that funny Frenchman who twice had to end his trip across America because of injuries.

    Have you posted a tour yet?

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By - Last updated: Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - Save & Share - Leave a Comment

Handgun review photo: Right-side thumbnail of KRISS Vector SDP.Editor’s Rating

Rating: 9.0.
Users’ Rating (Click a star to rate this gun.)
Rating: 6.0. From 58 votes.
Please wait...
Summary: Paul Markel’s review of and rating for the KRISS Vector SDP pistol, including a description, range report, photos, pricing, specs and user ratings. (Click here to see all of Markel’s handgun reviews.)

Editor’s Handgun Review

There’ve been numerous watershed moments in the history of firearms. Naturally, the invention of the Paterson revolver by Sam Colt and the Volcanic repeating pistol from Smith & Wesson were earthshaking at the time. John Browning gave us the M1911A1 pistol and its corresponding .45 ACP cartridge. Gaston Glock turned the handgun world on its head with the G17 and its polymer frame.

For the past couple decades, however, you can see that most new handguns are simply a derivative of an existing model. Consider all the M1911 format guns available from a plethora of gun makers. They have new sights, grips and finishes, but these guns are essentially the same designs that have been around for 100 years.

Enter KRISS USA and its line of machine pistols and submachine guns. If you follow firearms history, you know most machine pistols and submachine guns operate with either an open bolt and straight recoil operation, or a delayed blowback and a reciprocating slide. Most every modern firearm uses some kind of recoil spring aligned with the barrel, and the recoil inertia moves back toward the shooter.

In contrast, KRISS has patented and developed a carbine, submachine gun and pistol that employ what it calls the Super V recoil system. The Super V system directs the recoil downward. When the gun fires, the bolt moves rearward then down against the stout recoil spring. A fresh round is stripped from the magazine, and the bolt is driven back up and forward. The Super V design has proven both simple and extremely effective during not only semiauto but select fire/full-auto mode as well.

In this article, I review the KRISS Vector SDP .45 ACP pistol.

The Details
The Vector SDP pistol is essentially a citizen version of the sub-gun. It’s large, to be sure, but the trade off is a handgun that holds 30 rounds of .45 ACP ammunition. Speaking of ammunition, all KRISS firearms are chambered in .45 ACP and can be fed with a standard Glock 21 13-round magazines, or the KRISS-modified 30-round versions. Why Glock magazines? Simple: They’re reliable, readily available and relatively inexpensive to manufacture compared to other all-steel stick magazines.

This gun is built on a black polymer frame. The steel pieces feature a parkerized finish.

The Vector SDP’s outward appearance is certainly unique. The pistol grip is separate from the magazine well, which is located in front of the trigger guard and Super V action. A large/wide ejection port is located up front on the right side of the frame. An ambidextrous safety lever is located above the trigger, and the magazine-release button is recessed into the frame on the left of the gun.

Because there’s no slide to operate, the Vector SDP employs a charging handle located on the left sight of the frame along the barrel axis. The handle doesn’t reciprocate and folds down against the side of the gun when not in use.

KRISS has installed M1913 picatinny rails atop and underneath the barrel. Each Vector SDP ships with flip-up/fold-down, fully adjustable iron sights. The end user can install any optic they desire, of course. For this review I installed an Insight Technology MRDS. The bottom rail would be a logical place to install a white light or light/laser combination.

The Vector SDP features a 5.5″ barrel that comes with a threaded muzzle. The semiauto Super V action is technically a delayed-blowback. When empty, the Vector SDP weighs 5.8 lbs., and it measures 16.75″ long overall.

At the butt end of the pistol, in lieu of a stock, KRISS has installed a single-point sling attachment. A black nylon single-point sling comes with each pistol package.

The KRISS Vector SDP disassembled.

Although it looks futuristic, the Vector pistol is a marvel of engineering simplicity. The pistol’s body is actually a two-piece design, and you can disassemble it without tools by simply removing four pins. The Super V action breaks down into only two basic components for cleaning and lubrication, and you can’t reassemble the gun incorrectly. If you inadvertently insert the bolt backward, the gun won’t go back together.

Range Time
Semiauto firearms can be finicky eaters, so to test the Vector SDP’s appetite I took along several different .45 ACP loads for my range sessions. Ammunition included FMJ practice loads from Black Hills, controlled-expansion loads from Double Tap and Winchester, and a specialty frangible load from International Cartridge Corporation.

In steps one and two I chronographed each load, and then I benched the gun for accuracy testing. The results:

  • Black Hills 230-grain FMJ: 795 fps, .8″ group
  • Double Tap 185-grain JHP: 1,187 fps, 1.27″ group
  • I.C.C. 115-grain HP frangible: 1,142 fps, 1.53″ group
  • Winchester 230-grain PDX1: 981 fps, 1.15″ group

The average speeds were what I would expect from the each load fired through a 5.5″ barrel. The pleasant surprise came when I began to slowly put rounds on paper. As you can see, every load was able to cluster five rounds into groups below 2″ from 25 yards. The number one performer: the Black Hills load with a stellar .8″ group. The others weren’t far behind. If would seem that the hefty weight, a fixed barrel and a good trigger all combined to make the pistol consistently accurate regardless of the ammunition fired through it.

I had co-witnessed the iron sights and the MRDS red-dot optic. However, for the follow-up shooting drills I folded the sights down and simply used the red dot. I conducted dynamic drills while moving forward, rearward and engaging multiple targets on cardboard and steel.

The author ran roughly 400 rounds through the Vector SDP.

While engaging the steel targets inside of 20 yards, I used the I.C.C. frangible ammunition exclusively. The compressed copper bullets turn to dust when they strike steel and targets can be engaged safely inside of 5 yards. I wouldn’t try that with 230-grain ball ammunition because the jacket fragmentation spalls in all directions.

During the testing period I fired somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 rounds through the gun. All of the ammunition cycled reliably. Both the 13- and 30-round magazines fed the gun without issue.

Bottom line: As long as the shooter does their part, the gun will put the rounds on target.

Parting Thoughts
The KRISS Vector SDP pistol is certainly unique and not necessarily for everyone. It’s not a concealed carry gun to be sure. But for its given purpose—i.e.,delivering large .45 ACP bullets on target with reliability and precision—the Vector SDP gets high marks.

Paul G. Markel became a United States Marine in 1987 and served his nation honorably during peace time and at war. Among the many hats he has worn in his career, Markel has been a police officer, professional bodyguard, firearms instructor and gun writer. Markel is the creative director and host of “Student of the Gun,” a weekly television show airing on the Sportsman Channel ( Visit his Web site at

The Specs
Caliber Capacity OAL BBL Weight
.45 ACP 13+1, 30+1 16.75″ 5.5″ 5.8 lbs. (empty)

MSRP: n/a

[ds query=’+KRISS +Vector +SDP’]

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Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Nice blog posting on new CRM 2011 certifications

Back from the summer vacation and discussed CRM 2011 certifications on www.crmforum.se where my friend Fredrik Neiderud hinted about a nice blog posting by Richard Knudson regarding the new CRM 2011 certifications and what new in them.

Please read about it here: http://www.dynamicscrmtrickbag.com/2011/07/11/dynamics-crm-2011-certifications/

Gustaf Westerlund
CEO, Chief Architect and co-Founder at CRM-konsulterna AB


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Home > Book Reviews > Book Review – In the Same Streets You’ll Wander Endlessly by J. J. DeCeglie

Book Review – In the Same Streets You’ll Wander Endlessly by J. J. DeCeglie

In the Same Streets You’ll Wander Endlessly is J. J. DeCeglie’s first volume of short stories and second book overall. In some of these stories we are re-introduced to Sep (the sea is not yet full‘s protagonist) or at least someone very much like him. Many of these stories overlap in their physical and thematic terrain, but a number are notably different in their style and genre. This is important because it shows that DeCeglie has range as well as depth.

Around half of these stories follow roughly the same direction. In “Early Lasting Sunlight,” the unnamed narrator is in New York, far away from his native Fremantle. He drinks coffee, thinks about Kerouac and Bukowski, and chats up a waitress at a cafe. There’s some sex, some writing or discussion of writing, and a fair bit of drinking. This is what I would term the typical DeCeglie story, in that the writer appears to be charting territory (both physical and mental) that is personally familiar to him. This is a strength and a weakness: a strength in that the stories seem concrete, actual; and a weakness in that, as a result, the narratives aren’t ‘sculpted.’ This is DeCeglie in realism mode.

“Lights Behind the City” is a short piece that is highly reminiscent of the sea is not yet full. Here DeCeglie depicts a night on the town in powerful, relentless prose. Some descriptive passages are especially vivid (“Rain spraying from above pattering the everything around us and lifting the heat from the orange glow road”) and DeCeglie uses direct reader address to encourage us to imagine the scene (“Even before you get into the starkness of the streets after nightmarish taxi trips you’re so very inebriated that you articulate spun gold and drip mistrust”). Here again we witness the DeCeglien staple of literary discussion interspersed with drunken debauchery.

“Summer Spent” is much the same. Here Sep is mentioned by name, but he may well have been the unnamed protagonist of the first two stories as well. His friends Stone, Irish, Chase and others keep turning up, suggesting that most of these stories are interrelated. But this reads less like a short story and more like a few pages from a novel. “Underground” is the first story in this volume to change things up. Here DeCeglie describes a train bomb in convincing detail. One thing I noticed here is that this writer is able to depict personal injury exceedingly well. These are no metaphorical injuries, they are actual (“the wound was packed with shrapnel, he could feel it still hot on his fingers, tried to dislodge it slightly, he could tell it was interfering with bone”). This lurches between visceral description of the train and recollection of an earlier time as a swimming instructor.

“Unforced Error” is among my favourites in this volume. One reason for this is that here DeCeglie alters his style from Kerouac to Hemingway. A matter of taste perhaps, but I will always champion prose that is clear over that which is murky (“There was no sleep to be got that night and it came with the heat and noise and weight of other things”). Some of these sentences run-on to an extent, but not to the same extent as they do in the sea is not yet full. The narrator’s voice is clear and strong here: “Sometimes life was tough he thought, this is tough, it’s awful, but he felt it had to happen even so and was why life was tough because even though you knew things would end up badly you still did the things that made them that way.” I noticed in the publication details that “Unforced Error” appears to be the only story in this volume not previously published. Is this because it is a more recent story than the others?

“Dark Shadow Off the Fire” is the best story in In the Same Streets You’ll Wander Endlessly. There, I’ve said it, stated my opinion. Why is it the best? Because here DeCeglie invites us into an unknown (and terrifying) world. Is this set in the past, present or future? I can’t tell. But it’s a kind of rural apocalypse, full of murder, rape and revenge. And it’s gripping in the extreme. We are hit with this story’s intensity from the first line (“The sun struck down on him like a wall of scalding water”) and it never lets up. Our protagonist is in desperate trouble. His family have been killed, his home destroyed, and he is in great danger. Floating into his mind, however, are images of something else entirely (“her perfumed creamy skin lends through with the pale rich blue of veins in her breasts and the underside“). A man called Smith has left our narrator to die tied to a hitching post in the desert sun, in a situation that reminds me of Gabrielle Lord’s novel Salt. His crimes seems to be carousing with Smith’s girl, a crime punishable by death. Despite some serious injuries (which are depicted with conviction), our narrator manages to free himself and wreak revenge on Smith. After that, things seem to descend into some hellish pit of Aboriginals versus whites, whites versus whites, and man against man. This is extraordinary, and I will need to read it again to appreciate it fully. In this story, DeCeglie offers us a dark vision far outreaching the urban angst of modern life.

“River into Sea” is reasonably good, but it’s too similar for my liking to what has gone before. “Disturbed Reminiscence and Existence in Broad” seems like a different take on “Lights Behind the City.” “By the River” strips the usual DeCeglie plot down to its barest essentials, tersely describing a sexual encounter. “In the Same Streets You’ll Wander Endlessly” is well written, but by this stage in the volume I was tiring of what seemed to me to be the same plot rewritten and reimagined. I suppose this is a matter of taste, but I prefer it when DeCeglie envisages something more than yet another turbulent romance.

I did like “The Wench is Dead,” however. If I am critical of the ‘sameness’ of many of DeCeglie’s stories, it is partly because they depict a line of thinking at a similar stage of development. “The Wench is Dead,” however, takes some of these ideas further, to good effect. Here we see our narrator gambling recklessly (but apparently quite successfully), thinking about “when girls weren’t just a rough smacking thump or regretted sorrow.” The prose is bare and stark, the mood despondent: “Working he was a partial automation. Never sleeping sufficient, thinking relentlessly of the return. Of the way the cards would arrive. The structure of the sentence.” A life lived in a state worse than Thoreau’s quiet desperation. I am reminded here of a writer I doubt DeCeglie would have heard of, Barry N. Malzberg, whose depressive worlds and gambling jaunts seem similar to the one depicted here.

“Spoken Biography of J. J. DeCeglie” is a minor piece, mildly amusing but nothing more, and “Still in the Fury” is an extremely short but effective piece that seems to co-inhabit a universe with “Dark Shadow Off the Fire.” In summary, this is an uneven volume but one which offers great promise in this writer. To my mind, too many of these tales tell essentially the same story, and as such would be better merged into a single narrative. Several, however, break the mold in sometimes spectacular fashion. “Dark Shadow Off the Fire” deploys DeCeglie’s dark vision to greatest effect, and “The Wench is Dead” impressively depicts life during and after a fall from grace. From the publishing notes, I can’t help but notice that the stories I think strongest were published more recently, and the minor pieces in 2005 or 2006. This can only be a good thing.

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Engage Shops Review – Building A REAL Income From Instagram

Engage Shops Review

Engage Shops Review

800 Million Buyers Waiting To Shop With YOU!

Instagram is оnе of the tһе hottest sources оf engaged traffic оn the planet.

With оvеr 800 million асtіvе users and engagement rаtеѕ that рut Facebook to ѕһаmе, Instagram іѕ the ideal platform tо use…

…however what gооԁ is this traffic AND engagement іf you can’t mоnеtіzе it.

EngageShops lets уоu take any Instagram fееԁ and turn it into а fully monetized ѕtоrе.

Тһеѕе stores look аnԁ feel like уоur Instagram feed mаkіng it a ѕеаmlеѕѕ transition from brоwѕіng to buying.

Over 30% of Instagram uѕеrѕ go onto рurсһаѕе items they fіrѕt saw on tһе platform.

Imagine how mаnу more would ѕреnԁ, with уоu, if tһе process was muсһ easier.

Well it іѕ now…

Within Engage Shops уоu can

  • Іmроrt images and соntеnt directly from Іnѕtаgrаm
  • Overlay this соntеnt with buy buttоnѕ
  • Buttons can lіnk to your оwn products on уоur website or Amazon аffіlіаtе products
  • Сарturе leads from уоur store to brіng them back оr carry out соntіnuеԁ email marketing
  • Рublіѕһ items and іmаgеѕ to your оwn Facebook fan раgеѕ
  • and much muсһ more.

If you’re іntеrеѕtеԁ in it, why don’t уоu continue to rеаԁ my Engage Shops Review?

Engage Shops Review – Overview

Vendor Sam Robinson
Product Engage Shops
Launch Date 2017-Dec-03
Launch Time 11:00 EST
Front-End price $27
Sales page http://engageshopsapp.com/
Refund 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
Niche Instagram
Recommend Highly recommend

Engage Shops Review – What EXACTLY is it about ?

What is Engage Shops

Engage Shops Review: It іѕ the brand nеw software that mоnеtіzеѕ your Instagram account. Sam Robinson һеlрѕ people tо build the Instagram ѕtоrе for оnе account and Amazon аffіlіаtе integration for quісk commissions.

With tһіѕ Engage Shops, you will gеt Facebook Publishing ѕuіtе, Autoresponder іntеgrаtіоn, Smart Rеfеrrаlѕ, and СЅV lead exporter. It helps уоu to curate, engage, аnԁ earn the рrоfіt. Engage Shops wіll make аnу Instagram feed аnԁ change into tһе completely monetised ѕtоrе. Let mоnеtіѕе the world’s fаѕtеѕt growing social nеtwоrk.

About the Creator – Sam Robinson

Sam Robinson - Engage Shops Review

Sam Robinson іѕ the Creator оf Engage Shops. He is а well known nаmе in the fіеlԁ of online marketing wһо has сrеаtеԁ many successful іntеrnеt marketing products аnԁ software such аѕ RebrandPress 2.0, Slide Traffic, SchemaNinja, Vid Invision Еntеrрrіѕе, Social Аgеnсу, Insta eCom Fоrmulа, ІnѕtаРіlоt and many mоrе successful digital product lаunсһеѕ.

Engage Shops Review – Features and Benefits

Engage Shops һаѕ many аԁvаntаgеѕ make me bеlіеvе that marketing оnlіnе never easy lіkе that. І have find оut some great роіntѕ of it ѕо I wrote tһіѕ Engage Shops Review tо show tһеm then you саn see them bеlоw:

The Wоrlԁѕ First Software То Directly Provide А Link Between Instagram Аnԁ Profits Uѕіng eCommerce

Turn Үоur Instagram Feed Іntо A Shoppable Ѕtоrе In Just А Few Clicks

+ Import Selected Рһоtоѕ From Your Fееԁ Or Import Тһеm All

+ Оvеrlау Items In Үоur Images With Вuу Links For Рrоԁuсtѕ

+ Let Fоllоwеrѕ Shop And Вuу From One Ѕіmрlе Link

Gather Fееԁbасk, Test аnԁ Modify Offers Тһеn Plan Bigger Аnԁ Better Campaigns Wіtһ The Tracking Аnԁ Analytics Tool

Еnѕurе Your Offers Are Реrfоrmіng At Тһеіr Best With Іn-Dерtһ Analytics

+ Fіnԁ and understand kеу customer metrics wіtһ EngageShops analytics

+ Customize your соntеnt and offers bаѕеԁ on the traffic һіttіng your ѕtоrе

+ Improve уоur stores performance ԁау to day for еvеn more ѕаlеѕ and income

Сrеаtе And Build А Comprehensive Instagram Account Wіtһ Sam’s Оwn “Guide To Іnѕtаgrаm”

Your Own Ѕоurсе Of Instagram Кnоwlеԁgе And Wisdom Үоu Can Apply ТОDАҮ!

+ Сrеаtе a comprehensive аnԁ complete Instagram account fаѕtеr.

+ Give yourself tһе best possible platform tо sell frоm.

+ Еvеrуtһіng you need tо know in оnе simple to fоllоw guide

Build Аnԁ Connect With Үоur Audience Beyond Instagram Іn Just А Single Click

Wіtһ EngageShops Social Ѕуnԁісаtіоn – Share Іnѕtаntlу Over Facebook

+ Tap Into Үоur Existing Facebook Fоllоwіng On Autopilot.

+ Increase уоur reach by marketing оvеr multiple рlаtfоrmѕ.

+ Вrіng in more vіѕіtоrѕ and engage wіtһ larger audiences wіtһ no extra еffоrt.

Compliant Wіtһ Instagram’s Terms Оf Service

EngageShops іntеgrаtеѕ with the рlаtfоrm’ѕ API. Тһеу’vе gone to grеаt lengths to һаvе the software соmрlеtеlу approved by Instagram. Using EngageShops wіll in nо way jeopardize уоur Instagram account … just make ѕurе your other Instagram асtіvіtіеѕ remain соmрlіаnt.

How Does EngageShops Work?

Keep reading tһіѕ Engage Shops review tһеn you wіll see it rеаllу easy to uѕе.

Engage Shops Wоrkѕ in 3 simple steps:

Ѕtер 1: Lоg in Engage Shops аnԁ synchronize уоur Instagram account

Step 2: Customize your рrоmоtіоnаl posts using tһе built-in widgets

Тurn your posts іntо fully shoppable оnеѕ within your nеw engage shop

Step 3: Start drawing truсklоаԁѕ of traffic tо your store

Рlеаѕе you watch tһе demo video bеlоw to see Engage Shops іn асtіоn and have аn overall look аt its functionally аnԁ features.

Engage Shops Review – Who is it for?

As tһе features I mеntіоnеԁ, we аll know who tһе targeted customers оf Engage Shops are. I ѕuggеѕt this product for аnуоnе below:

  • Social marketer еѕресіаllу Instagram marketers
  • Вlоggеr
  • Business owner
  • Frееlаnсеr

This software wіll help us tо manage Instagram Ѕtоrе, work wеll to get рrоfіt from this platform. However, I think іt is perfect for ехреrіеnсеԁ marketer rаtһеr than newbie.

Engage Shops Review - click here

About the Pros and Cons of EngageShops

  • Тһе First Link Веtwееn Instagram and еСоmmеrсе
  • Monetize Аnу Content On Аnу Instagram Feed
  • Make Every Instagram ЅНОРРАВLЕ
  • Соmраtіblе With Amazon Products оr Your Оwn
  • In Dерtһ Tracking + Аnаlуtісѕ
  • Integrates Wіtһ Major Auto-Responders
  • Nо pro tech ѕkіllѕ required
  • Easily аnԁ simply to uѕе.
  • Affordable price, nо monthly fee

  • Some features are аvаіlаblе for оtоѕ only
  • Compatible оnlу for Amazon оr your own рrоԁuсtѕ

Engage Shops Review – Comparison

To bеgіn this part оf the Engage Shops Review, І should start оff with the price. As уоu can see, Engage Shops оffеrѕ a very rеаѕоnаblе price for сuѕtоmеrѕ. This іѕ because the vеnԁоr wants Engage Shops tо be уоur long-term solution. It allows уоu to rely оn the software for аll the wоrk, you саn therefore pay аttеntіоn to other wоrtһіеr activities.

Ѕесоnԁlу, the numbеr of software tһаt is designed ѕресіfісаllу for Instagram іѕ not so һіgһ. If уоu decide Instagram рrоmоtіоn then Engage Shops іѕ your bеѕt fix.

Evaluation and Price

Engage Shops іѕ a smart software tһаt saves уоu from most оf the hard wоrk. You wоulԁ get more ѕаlеѕ without having tо do the rеquіrеԁ work. Тһе Front-end Version оf Engage Shops соѕtѕ just $27. This is аn extremely good price аѕ you соnѕіԁеr all the bеnеfіtѕ of Engage Ѕһорѕ…$27 is a vеrу good investment іn this case.

Engage Shops һаѕ 1 Frоnt-Еnԁ and 3 ОТОѕ:

-Front-End (Еngаgе Shops – Ѕосіаl Edition – $24-$27) >>> See Details <<<

[+]Вuіlԁ Instagram Store For Оnе Account

[+]Аmаzоn Affiliate Integration For Fаѕt Commissions

[+]Full Tracking and Аnаlуtісѕ

[+]Autoresponder Integration

[+]Fасеbооk Publishing Suite

-ОТО 1 (Engage Shops Pro – $47-$67) >>> See Details <<<

[+]Unlіmіtеԁ Instagram Store Раgеѕ

[+]Unlimited Instagram Account Ѕуnс

[+]Smart Аutо Scheduler – Uрԁаtеѕ Automatically With Аnу New Post

[+]Аmаzоn + eBay Аffіlіаtе Integration

[+]Store Product Ѕсһеԁulеr

[+]Over 20 Store Styling Тһеmеѕ Included

[+]Smart Rеfеrrаlѕ

[+]CSV Lead Ехроrtеr

[+]Compatible With Wоо Commerce Themes

-ОТО 2 (Engage Shops White Label Rights – $97-$197) >>> See Details <<<

-OTO 3 (6 Week Live Wеbіnаr Training – $47) >>> See Details <<<

Аnоtһеr factor that ѕеtѕ this tool араrt from other соuntеrраrtѕ is that іt comes along wіtһ a 30-day mоnеу back policy. In other wоrԁѕ, you are аllоwеԁ to tеѕt out the fеаturеѕ of Engage Shops for аn еntіrе month before уоu decide whether tо continue using іt or not. If not, you can tоtаllу ask for уоur full money bасk without questions аѕkеԁ.

Why should you get this software?

If Үоu Aren’t A Мајоr Brand Or Сеlеbrіtу How Can ҮОU Profit From Тһе Engagement Of Instagram?

You һаvе been told һоw great Instagram іѕ, you mау have already buіlt up a fоllоwіng, created соntеnt and engaged wіtһ your audience.

But What’s NEXT?

If уоu want to mоnеtіzе your content оn Instagram. Тһе best you саn hope for іѕ to put wеbѕіtе links in уоur description that САNNОТ be clicked, meaning the uѕеr has to mаnuаllу open their brоwѕеr and type іt in… or tеll them to “сһесk link in bіо” which you wоulԁ have to сһаngе product to product, post tо post meaning mоrе work for уоu and making аnу old posts іrrеlеvаnt.

One bіg problem is wіtһ all this traffic аnԁ engagement, it has bееn difficult to рrоfіt directly from Instagram nо matter уоur following. Тһаt’ѕ Where Engage Shops Саn Help Үоu Cash In Оn Instagram Today

  • Үоu can overlay уоur posts with buу buttons to products еіtһеr within уоu own Shopify ѕtоrе, or tо affiliate products оn Amazon.
  • Rерlасе your website bіо with the lіnk to your “Еngаgе Shop” on Instagram аnԁ your fоllоwеrѕ can then shop tһеіr way tһrоugһ your feed.
  • No more ѕwарріng bio links, no more роѕtіng un-clickable links іn posts, уоu can monetize еvеrуtһіng on your fееԁ without sending уоur followers down а path miles аwау from where tһеу started.

То Ensure You Саn Get Profiting Тоԁау, This Software Nееԁеԁ Be Аblе To:

  • Lеt Any Instagram Uѕеr Set Up Аnԁ Monetize Their Fееԁ In A Fеw Clicks
  • Allow Uѕеrѕ To Sell Аnуtһіng Featured In Тһеіr Posts In Тһе Most Simple Wау Possible
  • Have Traffic Ассеѕѕ Products Тһеу Can Buy Тһrоugһ One Simple Lіnk

Now I’m ѕurе you are wоnԁеrіng if you Nеvеr Used Instagram Веfоrе: Can Engage Shops Work For уоu? My аnѕwеr is that:

Absolutely, аnԁ the good nеwѕ is Instagram іѕ an incredibly еаѕу platform to gеt started on. The included lіvе trainings will wаlk you through һоw to get ѕtаrtеԁ on Instagram аnԁ also how tо get up аnԁ running fast wіtһ Engage Shops!

The bеаutу of this software іѕ that іt is a fullу cloud-based app, so there’s nоtһіng to install аnԁ it works реrfесtlу with any ореrаtіng system. Аll you need іѕ an internet соnnесtіоn and you’re gооԁ to go.

And the lаѕt but not lеаѕt: you саn monetize with аnу kind of products. Sell уоur ownshopify products, link to іtеmѕ for sale оn your website оr monetize virtually аnуtһіng in your іmаgе with over 530 million products сurrеntlу listed on Amazon.

Related post:

Engage Shops Review – Conclusion

For tһе bottom lіnе, I wаnt to re-emphasize tһе power of Engage Shops іn рrоmоtіng business on Instagram. And аѕ a testimonial, I have tо say that І am more tһаn happy to rесоmmеnԁ this tool tо any people іn search of аn all-inclusive Instagram marketing ѕuіtе.

However, рlеаѕе note that іt will not bе always there wіtһ the appealing price. In fасt, its price wіll increase wһеn the sales vоlumе is met. So if уоu are still rеаԁіng this Engage Shops Review, tһеrе’ѕ no point іn hesitating.

Engage Shops Review -get-access

special bonus of Engage Shops

Engage Shops Review
4.9 Reviewer
Users 0 (0 votes)
о Monetize Instagram іn order to һеlр you earn mаѕѕіvе profits through е-Соmmеrсе

o Convert уоur news feed іntо profitable store wіtһіn a few ѕіmрlе clicks

o Аutоmаtісаllу import chosen рһоtоѕ from your nеwѕ feed

o Іnѕеrt the hyperlinks tо your offers іntо your images

о Allow your ѕubѕсrіbеrѕ to do tһе shopping and рurсһаѕіng from only оnе link

o Вuіlԁ your customer lіѕt in your ѕtоrе

o Strengthen уоur email marketing саmраіgnѕ with fresh соntеntѕ, keeping уоur emails interesting аnԁ appealing

o Соllесt testimonials and fееԁbасkѕ using the аnаlуtісѕ and tracking tооlѕ

o Keep trасk of your саmраіgnѕ through detailed rероrtѕ
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Our place at the table

Photo by R.W. Dawson

One reason citizens formed the Coalition for Hanover’s Future was to advocate for the citizen voice in Hanover’s land use planning process. At the time, as Hanover County was embarking then upon a five-year review and update of its Comprehensive Land Use Plan, we encouraged residents to become informed about the issues and to get involved in decision making that would affect their lives.  Further, because residents must live with the consequences of both good and poor land use planning, we urged vigilance as changes came to pass.

As you may know, Hanover County is now in the midst of another Comprehensive Plan review and update.  The need for focus and involvement remains paramount. Six community meetings, several Planning Commission work sessions plus ad hoc citizen group meetings have revealed more than a little dissatisfaction, much of it involving the implications of high residential density.  Might this level of anger and distrust be mitigated if citizen input were solicited before the fact—before any map changes and language revisions were rolled out for public comment? As it stands, citizens almost always find themselves reacting.

Please try to attend the following comprehensive planning work sessions:

Photo by R.W. Dawson

May 9, 4 p.m. – this work session will focus on land use planning in South Anna, including mix use and high-density residential zoning.  The Elmont Village area is under tremendous development pressure.  Elmont is a rural community consisting of mostly farmland. It is located on the old Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad and was served in earlier times by the electric trolley car, which ran between Richmond and Ashland. Elmont is one of the original villages of Hanover County.

There is also a work session scheduled for May 16 at 4 p.m.  Both meetings take place in the Board Room of the Hanover County Government Building at Hanover Courthouse.

Our Email Alerts are a great way to stay informed about development issues and workshops.  Our blog includes postings dating back to 2006 and as an archive, provides valuable insight about citizen engagement and land use planning.

To subscribe to our Email Alerts, please email hanoversfuture@gmail.com and include your name, address, and district.

On May 11th at 10 a.m. (Ashland Coffee & Tea), I will be speaking at the Hanover Democratic Committee meeting about the 2012 Comprehensive Plan.  Please join me!

Pattie Bland – Chair, Coalition for Hanover’s Future

Upcoming Comp Plan Work Sessions….

Would you recognize a plan that may compromise or erode Hanover’s quality of life? What happens in your backyard or across the county is determined by the Comprehensive Plan. The Comp Plan community meetings concluded and it’s time to find out what the county gleaned from Hanover citizens.

Comp Plan Work Session…Thursday, April 11th, 4 p.m.

The county’s Comprehensive Plan is a 20 year plan and it’s tweaked every five years. The tweaks made to the Comp Plan can have huge implications for the future.

What’s happened so far?

For this round, proposed changes to the Old Telegraph Road/Lakeridge Parkway and Cedar Lane corridors flanking U.S. Rt.1 have been flashpoints for some citizens. Others question the implications of a proposed “rural village” designation as well as increases to residential density.

Where is the process now on the timeline?

On the heels of six community meetings, the Planning Commission will hold a Comp Plan Work Session this Thursday, April 11th. Although it’s unlikely that the PC will solicit public comment, citizens need to focus on the nuances and minutiae coming out of the work session.

Listen closely to the discussions taking place and please attend Thursday’s work session.


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Chinese Cultural Festivals —– Mid-autumn Day in 2011

        Usually,on the 15th day of the 8th month on the lunar calender,the moon is full and Chinese celebrate a traditional festival-Mid autumn.

One guest ever asked me about the origin of it,I didn’t know how to answer since there are several versions.

Here is one of them:

Celebration of the Mid-Autumn Festival is strongly associated with the legend of Houyi and Chang’e, the Moon Goddess of Immortality.

Houyi was an immortal and Chang’e was a beautiful young girl, working in the palace of the Jade Emperor (the Emperor of Heaven) as an attendant to the Queen Mother of the West (the Jade Emperor’s wife). Houyi aroused the jealousy of the other immortals, who then slandered him before the Jade Emperor. Houyi and his wife, Chang’e, were subsequently banished from heaven. They were forced to live on Earth. Houyi had to hunt to survive and became a skilled and famous archer.

At that time, there were ten suns, in the form of three-legged birds, residing in a mulberry tree in the eastern sea. Each day one of the sun birds would have to travel around the world on a carriage, driven by Xihe, the ‘mother’ of the suns. One day, all ten of the suns circled together, causing the Earth to burn. Emperor Yao, the Emperor of China, commanded Houyi to use his archery skill to shoot down all but one of the suns. Upon completion of his task, the Emperor rewarded Houyi with a pill that granted eternal life. Emperor Yao advised Houyi not to swallow the pill immediately but instead to prepare himself by praying and fasting for a year before taking it Houyi took the pill home and hid it under a rafter. One day, Houyi was summoned away again by Emperor Yao. During her husband’s absence, Chang’e, noticed a white beam of light beckoning from the rafters, and discovered the pill. Chang’e swallowed it and immediately found that she could fly. Houyi returned home, realizing what had happened he began to reprimand his wife. Chang’e escaped by flying out the window into the sky.

Houyi pursued her halfway across the heavens but was forced to return to Earth because of strong winds. Chang’e reached the moon, where she coughed up part of the pill.Chang’e commanded the hare that lived on the moon to make another pill. Chang’e would then be able to return to Earth and her husband.

The legend states that the hare is still pounding herbs, trying to make the pill. Houyi built himself a palace in the sun, representing “Yang” (the male principle), in contrast to Chang’e’s home on the moon which represents “Yin” (the female principle). Once a year, on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, Houyi visits his wife. That is the reason why the moon is very full and beautiful on that night.

There are also other versions like”Killing the Mongols on the 15th of the eighth month”in Yuan Dynasty,or the worship of the God of the Moon in very ancient times,etc.

To celebrate it,we held a great event—Chinese Cultural Festival VS  Han Clothing Show.

We invited some professional dancers or actors in Han clothing to perform here.Sword Dance,Nunchakuz,T stage Show,Beijing Opera…All of them were more wonderful than imaged.

The audience were from different places all over the world,they chatted and played games together…

Four presenters were there to preside over the event,two in Chinese,two in English.

At around 10 p.m.,it was the time for the last part of it.Everyone came together,preparing to put on various costumes and experiencing the Chinese cultures.

We took pctures,shared the feelings,helped each other to dress,and laughed…^_^

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Noodles with Fire on it????

         Staying in Xi’an for 5 years,I thought I must have been very familiar with all kinds of the noodles in the world except the pasta in Italy.However,two guests asked me today if I have ever seen a kind of noodle which is with fire on it.O_O!!!!!What??!!!I ran to their computer and found out that it was not a joke.

        Ramen,a japanized noodle originated from China.It consists of Chinese-style wheat noodles served in a meat- or fish-based broth,often flavoured with soy sauce or miso,and uses toppings like sliced pork,dried seaweed,green onions,and occasionally corn.I believe it is definitely of Chinese origin because of its name-Ramen,which is very similiar to the pronunciation of Lamian(拉面 in Chinese),meaning “hand-pulled noodles”.

       I couldn’t figure it out until now why it is cooked with big fire on top of it according to the pictures shown on their computer.Maybe it is just for a show…

       I searched on Wikipedia and discovered several types of Ramen,such as,Shio ramen,Tonkotsu ramen,Shoyu ramen,Miso ramen,etc.

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Your independent source for Harvard news since 1898

Your independent source for Harvard news since 1898

The Prison Problem

March-April 2013

Real-world office: professor of sociology Bruce Western interviews former prisoners at this pizza shop in downtown Boston.

Real-world office: professor of sociology Bruce Western interviews former prisoners at this pizza shop in downtown Boston.

Photograph by Jim Harrison

Western and his team of researchers meet regularly to discuss their work. Clockwise from bottom left are Catherine Sirois ’10, Caroline Burke ’13, Western, Jaclyn Davis, Tracy Shollenberger, A.M. ’11, Anthony Braga, M.P.A. ’02, Jessica Simes, and David Hureau, M.P.P. ’06.

Western and his team of researchers meet regularly to discuss their work. Clockwise from bottom left are Catherine Sirois ’10, Caroline Burke ’13, Western, Jaclyn Davis, Tracy Shollenberger, A.M. ’11, Anthony Braga, M.P.A. ’02, Jessica Simes, and David Hureau, M.P.P. ’06.

Photograph by Jim Harrison

When Jerry enters the pizza place next to Boston’s Government Center, he shakes Bruce Western’s hand heartily. Jerry, who has served 25 years for armed robbery and aggravated rape, was released two months ago. Western is studying what happens to prisoners after their release and has come to interview Jerry about his experience.

After ordering them coffees, Western, a sociology professor and faculty chair of the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, turns on his tape recorder. “Today is the sixth of November,” he says, setting the recorder down on the table. “My ex-wife’s birthday,” Jerry (not his real name) notes wryly. Western reads out the four-digit number that identifies Jerry for the purposes of the study. “I should play that number in the lottery tonight,” Jerry says.

Jerry is quick with a joke, charismatic and likable—not what comes to mind when one hears “convicted rapist.” For Western, this has been one of the study’s chief lessons. Although he is one of the foremost experts on incarceration in America, in the past he primarily studied prisoners through datasets and equations. Meeting his subjects in person put a human face on the statistics and dashed preconceived notions in the process.

Western has come to believe that just as offenders’ crimes carry a cost to society, so too does the shortage of social supports and rehabilitative services for offenders. A crime-control strategy of locking up more people, and keeping them locked up longer, isn’t working, he says. He is determined to help the American public understand how crime is shaped by poverty, addiction, and histories of family violence, in an effort to promote a more humane—and more effective—prison policy.

“Luck, Not a Plan”

More than 2.2 million Americans are incarcerated. This population is dynamic: hundreds of thousands of people (mostly men) are released from U.S. prisons each year to try to make a go of it in a world where they have failed before—with the added disadvantage of a prison record. More than two-thirds will be rearrested within three years; half will go back in prison.

Those released from prison are, as a group, little studied, partly because maintaining contact with them is so difficult. The men tend to be “very loosely attached to families and jobs,” Western explains. Prison time strains relationships with partners and children, and the men often live separately after their release. They may move frequently, sleeping on the couches of friends and relatives or even becoming homeless as difficulty in finding employment begets financial trouble.

Tracking this group, though complicated, is essential to Western’s goal of understanding what challenges prisoners encounter in reintegrating into communities. With funding from the National Institutes of Health, he is tracking a sample of inmates released from the Massachusetts prison system who return to Boston-area addresses during the course of a year. The researchers collect friends’ and relatives’ information (to maintain contact when, for example, a subject’s phone is disconnected for nonpayment) and work with community street-workers and the Boston police, who may have information on the former prisoners’ whereabouts. Ultimately, Western hopes to learn what services might most effectively help the formerly incarcerated lead productive lives and what alternatives to prison might better improve public safety.

The challenges are great. The difference between the prison environment and the outside world can be jarring in the extreme. Jerry confides during his interview that he’s had trouble sleeping at the shelter for homeless veterans where he lives: he isn’t used to other people in his sleeping space. Inside the medium-security prison, inmates fought all day long, he says, but “when the cell door would click closed at night, that was the only time you were safe. No matter what beef anyone had with you, it had to wait until morning.” At the shelter’s dorm-style room full of bunk beds, with people moving around all night, Jerry is constantly on edge: “It’s like my body left the prison, but my mind is still in there.”

The outside world brings an onslaught of stimulation, the sudden need to make dozens of small decisions each day, when before, the prisoners were expected to do as they were told. “Adaptive behavior in prison is maladaptive behavior outside,” explains Marieke Liem, a postdoctoral fellow at Western’s HKS program. She is investigating the effects of long-term incarceration and prisoners’ reentry using data from the United States and her native Netherlands. In both her study and Western’s, subjects have said they simply can’t cope on the outside—that going back to prison seems comforting and familiar.

The psychological challenge of reintegrating is often layered on top of other adversity—for example, childhood trauma. Jerry was five when his father went to prison for three years for shooting Jerry’s mother in the head during a drunken fight. (Luckily, the bullet went through her ear and her jaw, not her brain; deafness in one ear was the only lasting effect.) After his father’s return, Jerry recalls, “I would stay awake at night listening to them fight, wondering what he was going to do to her.” In many cases, says Western, “the violence people bring into the world has its roots in violence they witnessed, or which was done to them, at very young ages.” With stories like Jerry’s, he notes, “the line between victim and offender is very fuzzy indeed.”

Jerry started drinking when he was nine and left school after the ninth grade. This history of alcohol abuse is also typical among current and former inmates: at least two-thirds are thought to have substance-abuse problems—no surprise, given that people steal to get money for drugs, or commit other crimes due to impaired judgment while under the influence. In effect, American prisons are used as surrogate mental-health and substance-abuse facilities. The nonprofit Human Rights Watch found that 56 percent of U.S. inmates are mentally ill.

Jessica Simes, a doctoral student who is a research assistant in Western’s study, tells of one subject, mentally ill and addicted to drugs, who failed a drug test that was a condition of her parole and was sent back to prison for the remaining 15 months of her sentence. She had received prescription anti-anxiety medication while in prison, but bureaucratic delays held up a new prescription once she got out. Besieged by anxiety and desperate to feel calm, she used heroin. “The medical community has determined that addiction is a disease,” says Simes, “but the criminal-justice community considers it a crime.”

In cases like these, the reasons people landed in prison in the first place make them more likely to end up there again. This is why Western favors more robust support for prisoners who are released. “In most cases,” he says, “these are poor people with few social supports, real behavioral problems, or tragic family histories.”

Although Western’s team is still conducting interviews, the researchers have already identified some factors that seem to aid prisoners in reintegrating. As it happens, Jerry exited prison with several advantages. First, he is 51. Older offenders are less likely to commit new crimes and end up back in prison, perhaps because youthful tempers fade, or because maturity brings an awareness of what one has missed.

Moreover, Jerry has housing—he can stay in the shelter for the first year. He had $5,800 in the bank at the time of his release, saved from his work-release job. And his sister lets him come over and search job postings on her computer in exchange for doing her dishes.

Jerry also has good relationships with his sons, ages 28 and 29, even though he’s been absent for most of their lives. He speaks with each of them daily. When he thinks about his sons, Jerry feels motivated to find a job. He wants to get his own apartment so he can offer them a place to stay, save up a bit of money to loan to them if they need it. “I want to be their shelter in the storm,” he says. “Be there for them because all those years I couldn’t.”

Still, finding work might prove difficult. Jerry makes an excellent first impression—neatly groomed, intelligent, self-aware—but he struggles with emotional control. When a nurse declined his request for anti-anxiety medication at a recent appointment, he told her, “When you see me on the six o’clock news, you’ll know you made the wrong decision.” The nurse called security and Jerry was detained for 45 minutes, frisked, asked to remove his shoes and belt. “It was embarrassing,” he says. “Very embarrassing.” Many, perhaps most, former prisoners have trouble handling difficult emotions and keeping their cool during disagreements—crucial skills for workplace success.

“So many pieces have to come together” to set newly released prisoners on the path to a productive, stable life, says Caroline Burke ’13, a social studies concentrator who is one of Western’s research assistants. “If someone isn’t on the right track after the first few weeks, there’s a snowball effect.”

The few inmates who do reintegrate without much difficulty, who are best positioned to deal with the psychological effects of the transition, have the “big three” in place: they have a job lined up or find one quickly (e.g., through a trade union they previously worked with); they have housing (often with a relative or through a social-service program); and they have access to healthcare and treatment for substance-abuse and mental-health issues as necessary. The most effective reentry programs address these factors, and Western recommends directing more resources their way.

One more factor that can tip the odds is a mentor. Anthony Braga, M.P.A. ’02, a senior research fellow in the HKS program and chief policy adviser to Boston’s police commissioner, found that this was the key feature of the successful Boston Reentry Initiative. A joint project of local, state, and federal government, it matches each inmate being released with a mentor from a community organization. Braga, a longtime lecturer at Harvard who is now a professor at Rutgers, found that high-risk offenders who participated in the program and received mentoring took 30 percent longer to end up back in prison, and their offenses were far less likely to be violent crimes when they were rearrested. He says these results “show that you can make inroads and start getting them away from the pressures that lead them to falling back into their old ways.” (But Western notes that keeping expectations modest is important: “Some of the most successful reentry programs,” he says, “only reduce recidivism by 10 percent.”)

Jerry does have a mentor, his case worker at the shelter, a woman he calls “an angel.” Most recently, when his state-paid health insurance was canceled in error, she helped him get it reinstated. Not all former prisoners have advocates like this, notes Catherine Sirois ’10, the project manager for Western’s study; most are released into a piecemeal system where the assistance they receive relies on “luck, not a plan.”

The Prison Pipeline

The United States has the dubious distinction of having the world’s highest incarceration rate: more than seven-tenths of 1 percent of the population (about 1 in 100 adults) are in prison. Only eight countries have rates above one-half of 1 percent. The United States, with less than 5 percent of the world’s population, has nearly one-quarter of its prisoners.

Stricter treatment of drug offenses, and longer sentences for violent and repeat offenders, underlie this high rate. The United States currently has 41,000 inmates serving life sentences without parole, according to a recent report; England has just 41. Yet as recently as the 1970s, the U.S. incarceration rate was one-fifth its current level. Then tough-on-crime laws passed at the state and federal levels with bipartisan support.

Now, the United States has reached “mass incarceration”—“a level of imprisonment so vast that it forges the collective experience of an entire social group,” Western writes. He has found that 60 percent of black male high-school dropouts in the United States will go to prison before age 35. The deterrent effect of incarceration is lessened if it becomes so common that it no longer carries any stigma. “The American prison boom is as much a story about race and class,” he writes, “as it is about crime control.” Reentry services for released prisoners go only so far; making a real dent in the size of the prison population will require intervening in a cycle that begins long before any crime is committed.

But making that dent requires an honest look at hard-to-face truths. Two factors greatly increase the odds of going to prison sometime during one’s life: being black or Hispanic, and being poor. Poor minorities do commit more crimes, but that only explains part of the disparity. “Small race and class differences in offending are amplified at each stage of criminal processing, from arrest through conviction and sentencing,” Western writes. A criminal history accumulates that reflects not just criminal conduct, but the influence of race and poverty, and this in turn shapes later decisions about sentencing and parole release. Western and many fellow prison-policy scholars have observed that American criminal-justice policy is built on the rhetoric of personal responsibility—paying for one’s bad decision—to the exclusion of asking why minority and low-income groups are so much more likely to make bad decisions, or how society fails them.

 Two other factors that greatly increase one’s odds of going to prison—low educational attainment and a lack of employment opportunities—are closely linked, and are connected to one decision: to drop out of school. That decision is often made by teenagers leaving public-school systems ill-equipped in any case to prepare them well for the modern work force. The dimensions of this multifaceted disadvantage may be even more closely linked than is immediately obvious. As one example, Patrick Sharkey, Ph.D. ’07, a sociologist at New York University, found that children’s scores on vocabulary and reading tests fell in the days after a homicide in their neighborhood, presumably due to emotions such as fear and anxiety. In a neighborhood violent enough to affect long-term school performance, even education is not an easy ticket out of poverty.

One of Western’s students has found that the disparities begin even earlier. For her thesis in sociology and African-American studies, Tiana Williams ’12 drew connections between race-based disparities in discipline in K-12 education, and race-based disparities in incarceration. Analyzing data from a large national survey, she found that African-American students were significantly more likely than white students to be suspended from school, even though they did not misbehave any more frequently. She also showed that students who were suspended were more likely to be arrested subsequently than students who were never suspended—indicating that the way children are treated in school helps set them on a path for later life.

Unless underlying social problems are addressed, says Catherine Sirois, nothing will change: “Our priority should be, how do we keep children from growing up in communities where selling drugs is their best career option?”

“A Reform Moment”

As prison populations and expenditures ballooned, states began to realize their policies were unsustainable. Yet, even as politicians and the media focused in on prison reform, actual change came slowly.

Take the case of California, which made headlines last year when the amount budgeted for corrections surpassed that earmarked for higher education. (Incarcerating one person for a year costs tens of thousands of dollars, and in some places rivals the price of tuition at an elite university.) In the wake of a Supreme Court order to ease prison overcrowding by releasing more than 30,000 inmates, California voters in November scaled back their “three strikes” law, so the mandatory 25-years-to-life sentence for a third offense is restricted to serious or violent crimes.

This was not the first time California voters had considered such a change. Western believes the United States has finally reached “a reform moment” for prison policy. As voters chafe at swollen prison budgets and the costs of social disruption—an estimated two million American children are growing up with a parent behind bars—other states have also revisited mandatory-minimum sentence laws, increased use of parole, and placed drug offenders in treatment instead of prison. Several states have also decriminalized recreational use of marijuana (most recently, Washington and Colorado)—another indication that harsh drug sentences are falling out of favor.

The U.S. Congress has reduced crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparities (a contributor to the racial disparity in incarceration), and the Second Chance Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2008, funds rehabilitative services for prisoners, such as reentry programs, prison education, and drug treatment, as well as research on the effectiveness of those services. More than $250 million has been awarded under the act so far—tiny compared to the combined state and federal prison budget of $75 billion annually, but an encouraging sign, says Western.

Economic concerns remain the most persuasive argument in driving prison reform. But Western has an even more compelling argument: locking up more Americans, he asserts, has not greatly reduced crime. After peaking in the early 1990s, the U.S. homicide rate fell throughout the rest of the decade, and has remained relatively low since then. The rates of other violent crimes and property crimes fell precipitously, too.

Western concludes that nine-tenths of this drop in crime would have occurred without any increase in the incarceration rate. He points to increased police spending and presence as a major contributor (more and better policing keeps crime down even if people aren’t being sent to prison). The trend may also represent regression to the mean after a historic high. He notes that crime dropped in Europe, Canada, and Latin America during the same period, even though incarceration rates in those places did not have the same steep upward slope. What’s more, New York maintained very low crime rates throughout the first decade of this century even as it shrank its prison population.

Because it is impossible to say how many crimes a given individual would hypothetically commit if free instead of imprisoned, such analyses necessarily rely on comparisons and statistical assumptions. Western’s conclusion is controversial, and other scholars have obtained different answers to the same question—notably, a widely cited analysis by University of Chicago economist and Freakonomics author Steven D. Levitt ’89, JF ’97, who observed what happened in 12 states after large numbers of prisoners were released from overcrowded facilities under court order. The two scholars essentially disagree about the statistical assumptions underlying their calculations: Western does not believe one can generalize from the specific situation Levitt used to generate his assumptions; Levitt stands by his claim that locking more people up was the major driver of the 1990s drop in crime. But even Levitt recently told The New York Times that he believes that the trend has gone too far and the prison population should shrink “by at least one-third.”

The Case for Change

Western has helped lead two national task forces on the causes and consequences of mass incarceration. Now he is embarking on an action-oriented initiative, convening leaders from law enforcement, lawmaking, the judiciary, public policy, and substance-abuse and vocational services—as well as some former inmates—for a series of meetings at the Kennedy School during the next three years. Their goal: to overcome the political gridlock that has inhibited major criminal-justice reform in America.

Some say the “prison-industrial complex”—those who work at prisons, sell goods to prisons, and benefit from cheap prisoner labor—has become a large and powerful lobby that prevents change. Western believes this argument is “oversold,” and the real explanation is simpler: for all the dissatisfaction with the amount of money spent on prisons, tough-on-crime arguments are still popular. “If the crime rate drops, people say, ‘see, prisons work. We have to spend more money on them,’” explains Marieke Liem. Conversely, “If the crime rate rises, people say, ‘We have to spend more money on prisons.’” Western seeks to broaden the options.

One example: services for youths who have not yet committed crimes. Anthony Braga, who has studied gang violence extensively, says the average gang comprises about 30 young men, but “only five or six are what I would call truly dangerous; the rest of the kids are what we call situationally dangerous. They recognize that there is the potential to be doing something better with their lives. If you can work with those kids, you can make a big impact.”

Helping divert youths from the path to prison may help stem the tide of urban violence and heal communities suffering from the absence of husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. “The prison walls we built with such industry in the 1980s and ’90s did not keep out the criminal predators,” Western writes, “but instead divided us internally, leaving our poorest communities with fewer opportunities to join the mainstream and deeply skeptical of the institutions charged with their safety.”

Breaking this cycle is a tall order, but keeping people out of prison is clearly preferable to trying to help them once they’re already there. The prison experience shreds social ties with the outside world, leaving inmates with convicted criminals as their only friends. Prison also gets them out of the habit of getting up and going to work each day—Western often refers to employment as a means of social control. And prison decimates former inmates’ employment prospects. When someone can’t get a job and his social circle consists of other criminals, making money through criminal activity—i.e., recidivism—becomes his most likely path.

Western does not believe it is a coincidence that when social-welfare programs were trimmed throughout the 1970s and 1980s, large increases in crime ensued. “We may have skimped on welfare, but we paid anyway, splurging on police and prisons,” he writes. “Dollars diverted from education and employment found their way to prison construction.” Assistant professor of sociology and social studies Matthew Desmond agrees, noting, for example, that the United States serves a smaller segment of its population with public housing than do most European countries—but makes up for it in spending on prisons, which are used as de facto public housing. Says Desmond: “We’re going to house the poor one way or another.”

Liem, a practicing forensic psychologist in the Netherlands who first came to Boston in 2009, was struck by the way American inmates are “treated as subhuman.” That they wear jumpsuits and are referred to by number instead of name; that sex offenders are made to register publicly; that felons in some states lose their voting rights for life—all contribute to a “sense of otherness,” she says. “This idea that once you made a mistake and forever you have to pay for it is striking.” She suggests that instead it is possible to have compassion for both the victim and the perpetrator. For his part, Braga says he understands public opposition to services for convicted criminals, especially for violent offenders. But, he says, “if we’re trying to reduce overall levels of victimization, it seems like you’d want to do something that makes it less likely that people are going to continue committing crimes.”

Western estimates that the cost of providing job placement, transitional housing, and drug treatment for all released prisoners who need it would be $7 billion—one-tenth of current state and federal spending on corrections. He has been disappointed that the Obama administration has not taken a stronger stand on prison reform. “We’re still in an era where being soft on crime carries political risk,” he notes, but he has fresh hopes for the president’s second term.

Earlier in his career, Western, the son of a sociology professor at the University of Queensland, Australia, wrote about labor markets and statistical models for sociology. A chance conversation with a colleague prompted him to reenvision prisons as a “labor-market institution”: he became aware that people who would receive vocational, substance-abuse, and mental-health services in many European countries are incarcerated instead in the United States. His scholarly work then proceeded in a new direction.

Examining prisons’ role vis-à-vis U.S. labor markets, Western found that the United States owes its (historically) comparatively low unemployment rate in part to its high incarceration rate: people who would otherwise be unemployed are excluded from the calculations. He has also documented the reduction in pay suffered by people with a prison record, compared to their peers with no record, and how incarceration contributes to income inequality in the United States by condemning some people to very low pay. He has explored the interconnectedness of race, lack of employment opportunity, and incarceration (finding, in research with his former Princeton colleague Devah Pager, that a black man without a criminal record had about the same chance of being called after applying for a job as a white man with a criminal record). And he found that the high incarceration rate had the perverse effect of seeming to raise the average wage for African-American men: because so many low-earning African-American men are in prison, racial equality in pay is more apparent than real.

During his time on the faculty at Princeton, he first ventured inside a correctional facility to teach a sociology course for incarcerated men. For someone who “had spent most of my career crunching numbers on a computer and teaching Ivy League students,” Western remembers, that experience was “unbelievably powerful.”

Since coming to Harvard in 2007, he has worked with Kaia Stern, a lecturer in ethics at Harvard Divinity School, to take groups of undergraduates into Massachusetts state prisons for courses on urban sociology. The Harvard students learn alongside inmates who are also pursuing bachelor’s degrees—and in the process, learn to view issues of crime and punishment in a more nuanced way. Because of this experience, Western, a married father of three daughters, has gained empathy for Jerry and others who have committed violent crimes. “Often we want to say that people in prison are criminal and evil and unredeemable, or that they’re innocent and victims of circumstance,” says Western. “The truth is that they’re neither of those things. You can do some very terrible things in your life and yet be deeply human at the same time.”

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Multi-wavelength composite of the Cartwheel galaxy
Credit: Composite: NASA/JPL/Caltech/P.Appleton et al. X-ray: NASA/CXC/A.Wolter & G.Trinchieri et al.

Galaxy shapes are often a product of the neighborhood in which they live. Take the case of the Cartwheel Galaxy, shown above. The Cartwheel's unsual morphology it thought to have been produced by the passage through it of a smaller galaxy (probably one of the two seen in the lower left of the image above) about 100 million years ago. This collision generated waves traveling out from the site of the splash like ripples in a pool of water. These ripples compressed gas in the galaxy into narrow rings, triggering star formation within the rings. The image of the Cartwheel shown above is a composite of images taken with X-ray, ultraviolet, infrared and optical cameras. The different colors represent the different wavebands: blue shows ultraviolet radiation imaged by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer's Far Ultraviolet detector; a visible light image from the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera-2 is shown in green; infrared emission seen by the Spitzer Space Telescope's Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) can be seen in red; and X-ray emission measured by the Chandra X-ray Observatory's Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer-S array is shown in purple (and shown by itself in the inset image). The different emissions arise from different physical processes. Hot blue stars that formed out of the compressed gas shine brightly in the ultraviolet, while the black holes left over from the explosion of the most massive of these stars shine brightly in X-rays, heated dust throughout the galaxy glows in the infrared, while stars shine brightly in the optical.
Published: March 9, 2015

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Page Author: Dr. Michael F. Corcoran
Last modified Monday, 16-Mar-2015 08:30:43 EDT


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artistic impression of mega-flaring from DG CVn
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/S. Wiessinger

Space is a dangerous place. A friendly star like our own Sun, providing lifegiving light and warmth, can suddenly turn violent, bombarding its planets with harsh X-rays and deadly high-energy particles. Such outbursts can do tremendous damage to earth's civilization, destroying telecommunication infrastructure. Travelers through interstellar space need to be careful where they wander, since even relatively small, innocuous stars may have violent tempers. The small binary system DG CVn offers latest and best warning for intrepid starfarers. On April 23, 2014, this binary system exploded in an enormous flare, about 10,000 times more powerful than any flare observed from the Sun in modern history. DG CVn is composed of a pair of small, young red dwarf stars, shown in the artistic rendering above. The stars in DG CVn are rapidly rotating and, as a result, possess strong magnetic fields. The disruption of the entangled magnetic field on one of the stars is believed to have triggered the powerful flare, which sent enormously high levels of high energy radiation on a 60-year journey to earth. This radiation was eventually detected on April 23, 2014 by the Burst Alert Telescope and the X-ray Telescope on NASA's Swift space observatory. Most powerful flares only last a day, but this superflare event lasted more than 11 days. Planets are believed to be common around red dwarf stars; one wonders about the effect of such superflares on any planet that happens to reside around one or the other star in DG CVn.
Published: October 20, 2014

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Last modified Monday, 27-Oct-2014 08:53:11 EDT


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