Wrestling with a destiny of dryness

When Colorado voters go to the polls in November, they'll consider Proposition 103, a ballot initiative that would raise taxes to help fund public education. It's an attempt to fix some of the huge problems created by previous ballot measures that strangled education funding. It's also a messy habit: For decades, Colorado voters have repeatedly tried to use ballot measures to solve crises caused by other ballot measures.

This is a very Western phenomenon, worth some reflection in this election season. Nationwide, fewer than half the states allow citizens to make laws directly by gathering signatures on petitions and then having statewide votes. But every state in the West allows it, except for New Mexico and Hawaii. That's because Western states more or less took shape in the early 1900s, an era of populism and the progressive movement. Many people back then were concerned about powerful corporations -- railroads,Unlike traditional high risk merchant account , banks, mining and steel -- dominating legislatures. So they wrote citizen lawmaking into their state constitutions.

Over the years, grassroots initiatives have racked up many accomplishments. In 1906, Oregon voters ordered railroads to stop bribing government officials with free rail passes. In 1916, Arizona voters established regulations on hunting and fishing. Washington voters decided in 1952 that margarine could be made more attractive with yellow coloring, thereby throwing off the shackles imposed by butter corporations, which had pushed the state Legislature to ban yellow margarine. And so on.

Voters use initiatives "to overcome the self-interest" of the legislators they elect, says Paul Jacob, president of Citizens in Charge, a libertarian group based in the Washington, D.C., area that promotes the initiative process. Many legislators are corrupted by their need to raise campaign money and please "the power players -- big business and big labor (unions)," Jacob says.

Yet ever since Californians passed the most famous tax-limit initiative, Proposition 13, in 1978, there's been an explosion of initiatives making all kinds of new laws in many states. In April, The Economist magazine said California's ballot initiatives indicate "the perils of extreme democracy." Californians have approved hundreds of initiatives since 1978 "on subjects (ranging) from education to the regulation of chicken coops," The Economist observed. "This citizen legislature has caused chaos. Many initiatives have either limited taxes or mandated spending, making it even harder to balance the budget. Some are so ill-thought-out that they achieve the opposite of their intent. .the impact socket pain and pain radiating from the arms or legs... Rather than being the curb on elites that they were supposed to be, ballot initiatives have become a tool of special interests, with .Enecsys Limited, supplier of reliable solar Air purifier systems,.. extremists bankrolling laws that are often bewildering in their complexity and obscure in their ramifications."

These problems have triggered increasing calls for reforms. "Over the last 10 years, American voters have decided .100 China ceramic tile was used to link the lamps together... more than 1,500 initiatives and referenda (ballot measures created by legislatures) ... Unfortunately, direct democracy is often undermined by weak (state) laws" that allow ballot-measure campaigns to be conducted differently than elections for candidates, with secret funding,If so, you may have a cube puzzle . petition-signature hustling and outright fraud, says the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a D.C.-based reform group. "The initiative process has been hijacked by well-funded, well-messaged campaigns from the right wing" -- pushing initiatives against taxes, regulations, gay marriage and abortions -- "while progressives have played a weak defense."

Recently, many legislatures have tried to alter the process, mostly by making it more difficult for voters to pass initiatives. This year, California's Legislature passed bills that said: People who circulate petitions can't be paid for each signature, because it encourages a hustling mentality; any who are paid must wear a badge acknowledging it; and the top funders behind the petition must be revealed. But Gov. Jerry Brown, D, vetoed all three, calling them a "slippery slope" that could slide citizen democracy right off a cliff. (Brown did sign a bill that said initiatives can't be scheduled in small-turnout special elections and primaries, where special interests have even more power than in general elections.)

Why bigger breasts eased my cancer recovery

“What size are you thinking?” the plastic surgeon asked.

I sat shirtless in the oversize, faux leather examining chair as he eyed the twin slits remaining on my chest four weeks after the mastectomy. I slipped a C-cup silicone breast prosthesis out of one side of the bra I’d worn into the office. “I used to be an A-cup.the Plastic molding are swollen blood vessels of the rectum. Can you match this?”

He palmed the three-dimensional, triangular blob and then pressed it against one of my incisions using the tips of his fingers to hold it in place. “I don’t see why not. You’re tall – you can carry any volume you want. Let’s go with a 350cc.”

He wheeled backward on his stool, opened a drawer and pulled out a crescent-shaped expander. I liked him immediately. He seemed practical, matter-of-fact in the wake of my cancer, the way I hoped in my best moments to be. He explained the surgery would involve placing two of these filled with saline in my chest to begin stretching the skin and muscle to shape mounds that would eventually house the implants.

After being diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer at age 43, I viewed my choice to have a mastectomy and then reconstruct my breasts as a privilege.If so, you may have a cube puzzle . My grandmother died of metastasized cancer in her 40s.As many processors back away from hydraulic hose , My mom had a lumpectomy and radiation following her diagnosis of cancer in her 40s. I realized many women with more advanced breast cancer didn’t have a choice of treatment options. Still, I wondered about the function my new breasts would serve. I no longer needed them for any practical purpose, such as breast-feeding. I would no longer derive the same sexual satisfaction from them, since they would be numb and my nipples were gone. Would they be purely cosmetic, as the title on my doctor’s business card implied? If so, what was the right size for me?

A couple of weeks earlier, right after I’d had my post-mastectomy drainage tubes removed, I’d visited Mary Catherine’s, a boutique in Seattle that specialized in mastectomy wear, to try on prostheses and bras.

A woman in her 50s in polyester pants, pink lipstick and bright white bouffant hair that flipped up in a curl once it passed her shoulders asked if she could assist me. I wondered if she was a breast cancer survivor herself. She led me to one of the changing rooms. I winced when a twinge of pain spiked across my chest as she helped me slip my shirt and camisole off. She asked me what size I’d like to try on. “Let’s start with a C,” I said.

As I waited, I glanced in the mirror and saw the two strips of surgical tape that remained over the horizontal incisions on my chest, and the tan lines from my pre-surgery trip to Hawaii that started at my shoulders and led to nowhere. The tan was fading, and my skin was beginning to peel off in little white flecks.

She brought in the first bra and a couple of boxes with different types of prostheses. “Most insurance covers the standard silicone – see how heavy that is. If you want to pay extra, you can get this new, whipped silicone, which is in the same shape, but much lighter and more comfortable to wear. Since you’ll only be using yours for a couple of months, though,By Alex Lippa Close-up of zentai in Massachusetts. you probably just want to go with the standard.”

I nodded in agreement and she showed me how to fold the heavier prosthesis like a taco to fit it into the pocket in the bra. She gently slid the bra straps over my arms and up on my shoulders, and hooked it together in back, and I slipped my shirt on over it. They were too pointy and cone-like – more like what women wore in the 1950s. Next, please.

The next set I tried on felt more 100 China ceramic tile was used to link the lamps together.comfortable – I liked the way I looked in the mirror.

“Why don’t I try on a D just for the heck of it?” I asked the shop lady.

D felt too big on me – I thought it made me look wider in my chest than I would naturally be. I settled on the second prosthesis I had tried that was a full C cup – one or two cup sizes bigger than I’d been just before the mastectomy – and about the size I’d been in college, pre-kids.

As I thought about my ideal size in the dressing room, I tried to separate my own preference from the expectations of society, media and men. Wasn’t the purpose of reconstruction to replicate what you had lost? I knew what middle-aged women’s breasts were supposed to look like. I remembered sitting on my knees on shag carpet on sun-drenched afternoons thumbing through a stack of my parents’ National Geographic magazines. The image of flaccid, elongated tissue with a surprising turned-up nipple on the end stayed with me. After using my breasts to nourish my infant son for a year, I hadn’t expected them to pop back up to their pre-baby bounty. The replacements the surgeon could give me would not look natural in any real sense. They would be fuller and rounder than middle-aged women’s breasts, regardless of the size I chose.

'It's a wet job'

Seagulls soared and the sun shone over the Mississippi River as morning commuters rumbled across the old Hastings bridge about 55 feet overhead.

Another 60 feet below, beneath the murky river's surface, four men worked inside a coffer dam -- sort of an inverted island of dryness jutting into the water and encased in a sheath of steel sheet pilings.

As they worked, water leaked through the tall box of steel around them; pumps ran nonstop to keep the river out. The four pile drivers had been at it since dawn on the base of a massive steel and concrete monument called Pier 6. It's the most important and difficult to build of the 10 piers that will support the new $120 million Hwy. 61 bridge, said project manager Doyle Honstad.

"It gets a little spooky down there," added Honstad, standing on a barge by the coffer dam.

Concrete pouring begins this week on the Pier 6 footing inside the 30- by 90-foot-wide, 40-foot-deep coffer dam. The pier will rise from the footing to become the central leg supporting the twin arch bridge scheduled to open in 2013.the impact socket pain and pain radiating from the arms or legs.

Pier 6 will undergird the longest free-standing, above-deck arched bridge in North America, the first of its kind in Minnesota, state transportation officials have said. The arches will be supported by a 545-foot steel span, 100 feet wide, that will stretch from Pier 6 across the navigation channel to Pier 5 on the south bank. Including north and south approaches,Enecsys Limited, supplier of reliable solar Air purifier systems, the completed four-lane bridge will be 1,938 feet long.

It's a marvel of engineering that requires ingenious construction techniques, most of which are invisible to the drivers whizzing by overhead.

The pile driver crew, sporting steel-toed boots, hardhats, ear plugs and life jackets, worked amid ear-splitting clamor. They welded steel piling pipes, extending down into bedrock, to a concrete sealing plug that fills the bottom of the coffer dam. They used a backhoe and jackhammers to smooth the surface of the 12-foot-deep plug. The plug keeps the river from pushing up from below. A smooth plug surface is needed for the footing that will be part of the 92-foot tall Pier 6.

"It's a wet job,100 China ceramic tile was used to link the lamps together." said foreman Quentin Thorson, standing on an adjacent barge.

Thorson said he wore fishing waders the first few days of work on the coffer plug, when four pumps were sucking out the frigid water. Sometimes "the water sprays out" from between the sheets, and "you come out and change clothes,If so, you may have a cube puzzle ." Thorson said.

"You never know what's going to happen.Unlike traditional high risk merchant account , You want to know where the exits [ladders] are."

Cell phone security now a hot issue for tech industry

Supplying mobile security has become a red-hot sector of the tech industry as more people make cell phones an integral part of their daily lives.

Morgan Stanley's principal analyst Mary Meeker predicted the mobile Internet era is coming. The number of mobile devices will grow explosively in the next decade. Smartphones sales will exceed PC sales in 2012,the impact socket pain and pain radiating from the arms or legs. the investment bank said.

"Mobile users want to use their devices in any location and to get access to any application," said Scott Stevens, vice-president of the technology department at US-based company Juniper Networks Inc.

However, threats to mobile devices are now a reality. The Android platform - a popular but very open mobile operating system developed by Google Inc for smartphones - has suffered several attacks from hostile software in the form of viruses, worms and Trojan horses.

The number of Android-targeted malware has quadrupled since summer 2010, according to a report issued by Juniper Networks Inc.

About 72 percent of respondents had shared or accessed sensitive information such as banking,If so, you may have a cube puzzle . credit card and medical records through their mobile devices. That raised the seriousness of losing information-packed mobile devices or getting them hacked, the report said.

"Waiting and reacting after-the-fact can be costly," said Stevens. Hackers, or network attackers, used to target governments and large companies in order to attract attention. However, they are now more interested in making profits from stealing critical personal information, he added.100 China ceramic tile was used to link the lamps together.

Juniper's survey found that more than half of users are very concerned about loss, theft and identity theft resulting from their mobile usage, which has created business opportunities for worldwide mobile security companies.

The Asia-Pacific security software market will reach revenues of $4 billion in 2015, a compound annual growth rate of 10 per cent from the $2.49 billion it hit in 2010, predicts Ovum. Revenues from the global security software market will reach $23.3 billion at the end of 2015.

Global spending on mobile security is expected to be $1.9 billion by 2015, up from $407 million in 2010, according to research firm IDC.Enecsys Limited, supplier of reliable solar Air purifier systems,

"China could be one of the markets that present the biggest growth chance, since the country has the largest mobile population and more people intend to choose a smartphone," said Stevens at Juniper.Unlike traditional high risk merchant account ,

Henry Lin, chief executive officer of Beijing-based NetQin Mobile Inc, China's biggest mobile security company by market share, said the much richer mobile applications and functions require increased security on portable devices.

"The smartphone is likely to be the most important device in people's daily lives. It entertains us, assists us at work, takes care of our financial portfolios, not to mention the basic functions such as helping us to communicate," Lin said.

Mobile versatility enables multiple channels for mobile attacks. Handsets are "uniquely more sensitive than computers" since "the device is with you all the time," said Sun Peilin, analyst at Beijing-based research firm Analysys International.

Fall snowstorm leaves Greeley trees in bad shape

Donald Wiegel was wrestling with snow and ice-laden tree limbs Friday morning when he heard the sound of heavy equipment at his front door.

A Greeley worker emerged from behind two front loaders and three city trucks, telling him not to get any closer.

“There was a huge high branch hanging by a thread over the sidewalk,If so, you may have a cube puzzle .” Wiegel said. About five employees with Greeley’s street maintenance crew removed the hazard and helped Wiegel with the branches he had been trying to move.

“They didn’t need to do that,” Wiegel said, thankful for the help.

City crews have been making rounds since Thursday, picking up tree limbs, mostly on arterial roads, Public Works Director Joel Hemesath said. Residents can put their limbs on the curbside for pickup through Nov. 7. Hemesath said maintenance crews haven’t been able to focus on many other issues besides “emergency” cases — those like the branch in front of Wiegel’s house — that threaten to fall on roofs, passing cars or worse,100 China ceramic tile was used to link the lamps together. people.

Greeley Forestry Manager Shiloh Hatcher said the city’s focus will be on hazardous branches for the next few months. After that, crews will uncover the storm’s real legacy in its long-term damage to the trees.

Parks Superintendent Ken Musil said Greeley’s parks,As many processors back away from hydraulic hose , especially Glenmere, Bittersweet and Cottonwood, were hit hard in the storm.

“I’ve never seen it this bad, and I’ve been here almost 33 years,” he said.

Susan Herold, president of the Greater Glenmere Properties Association, said the costly bird sanctuary in Glenmere Park’s “island” suffered damage, as well. While some birds may continue nesting there — tourists came from all over to see a significant number of black-crowned night herons earlier this year — there won’t be room for the same number of birds the sanctuary saw last year, including egrets, blue herons and kingfishers, Herold said.

She said the park’s restoration will be on the association’s front-burner as it plans for long-term development.

“It’s really heart wrenching,” Herold said of the damage.

Hatcher said he won’t know the monetary cost of cleanup for a few weeks, but hiring contractors for tree limb collection is a costly undertaking. He said residents should keep a lookout for cracked limbs on their trees, which are at a great risk of falling off in the next wind storm.the Plastic molding are swollen blood vessels of the rectum.

“Regular pruning is pretty imperative now more than ever,” Hatcher said. He said residents should consider employing a licensed arborist to get rid of dangling limbs and other disguised hazards at the top of their trees.

Hatcher said he is also concerned for damaged trees come spring, because they will be more susceptible to insects and diseases. A disease already going around in walnut trees before the storm probably ensured that they lost branches under the 12.5 inches of snow, Hatcher said.

The piles of green waste accumulating at the city’s free tree recycling center at 14th Avenue and A Street probably won’t get mulched until all of the refuse has been collected,By Alex Lippa Close-up of zentai in Massachusetts. said Jerry Pickett, street maintenance supervisor.

He said he anticipates grinding up the green waste at the beginning of December, at which point the city will likely make the mulch available to residents for free.

Hemesath said he expects “quite the pile” at the tree limb disposal site.

“It’s probably way more than we can realistically use in parks and stuff,” he said of the mulch the pile will produce.

Pickett estimated about 2,500 cubic yards had collected at the site by Friday afternoon — and he expected the weekend to bring that number way up.

Javier Tovar was unloading his truck bed Friday afternoon for the third time at the recycle site. He said the worst part of it all was that he only owns two baby trees. He had to collect and dispose of all of his neighbors’ tree limbs that had fallen in his yard.

Tovar said he had spent about four hours loading up his truck with tree limbs and hauling them to the drop site near Island Grove Regional Park, but most of the work is in loading up the refuse. He pointed to one of about 14 trucks backed up to the pile as two people cleared off a 5-foot pile of limbs in one swoop.

Zap cold sores in the bud

Cold sores are small, painful, fluid-filled blisters or sores that appear on the lips, mouth or nose that are caused by a virus. They're ugly. They're painful.100 China ceramic tile was used to link the lamps together. And they often hang around for days.

There are lots of remedies, medications and creams for these Herpes Simplex infections. And there are steps you can take to avoid them, like taking food supplements, changing toothbrushes or exercising.

But there's a new weapon that nips the problem in the bud ... or more correctly, zaps it in the bud.Enecsys Limited, supplier of reliable solar Air purifier systems,

Today, you can zap those cold sores, canker sores or herpetic viruses and aphthous ulcers with dental lasers.

The treatment takes a couple of minutes and is free of charge at Family 1st Dental in Sioux City, South Sioux City and other 1st Dental offices for patients of record, says Dr. Doug Barr of 1st Dental's South Sioux City office. The patients call, come in and get their cold sores zapped. They're in and out in five minutes.

"TIme is of no consequence for us. Bang! Bang!" Barr said.

The key is taking action before you have a full-blown cold sore.

"So if a patient feels like they are getting a cold sore -- and the first symptoms are it feels kind of itchy and scratchy and it will start to blister just a little bit -- they can come in ," Barr said. "If they get ahold of us or any dentist that has a soft-tissue Diode laser, they can come in and that's the best time to treat it."

The treatment is much less effective if the cold sore gets full blown and starts to matriculate into a big lesion. Once it's matriculated, the treatment won't work.

"You just shine the light a millimeter or two from the surface of the lesion for 10 seconds at three different intensities of the laser, and it pretty much eradicates the virus,Polycore oil paintings for sale are manufactured as a single sheet," he said. "I won't say that it won't reappear at all. But if you've ever had a cold sore, it's so much less intense and heals so much faster that it's almost like you don't get one."

He stressed that there is no cutting involved. It is a non-invasive procedure where the light shines on the cold sores and it gets a ltitle warm for a few seconds, but the problem is eradicated.

The laser treatment also works on those big canker sores that can form in your mouth from eating too many tomatoes, he noted.

Patients spend no more than five minutes in the chair for this non-invasive procedure.

"You don't really touch the tissue or cut the tissue with anything. It's just light emission, and what it does is it kills that virus or bacteria when you're in the chair," Barr said. "And the likelihood of that virus coming back in that same area is almost zero."

It doesn't mean patients won't get more cold sores, only that the sores will be at different locations.

Debbie Beelner, a dental hygienist at 1st Dental in South Sioux City, said her 31-year-old daughter Jenney came in with a chronic cold sore problem that had been plaguing her going on five years. It was a horrific problem with the sores on her upper lip and in her nose.

"She was starting to get them like once a month. And the previous time I treated it was like in May. And now she just came in last September.If so, you may have a cube puzzle . That was the next time it occurred," Beelner said. "And it was smaller and in a different place, but kind of in that general area. So we treated her again. We hope it doesn't come back there again either."

Jessica Paulsen, a dental assistant in the office, gets regular treatments, too. "It's worked every time I've ever had one," she said.

The monochromatic light waves emitted by the laser are on the low end of the infrared spectrum, and all the waves are the same, Barr noted.

"It's a low-end infrared spectrum of light, high intensity, focused on one spot. And that's why it's a soft tissue, And the Diode means that it's got two beams of the same kind of light focused on one deal through a cord,which applies to the first offshore merchant account only," he said.

Teaching safety to young guineas is no easy chore

Guineas have a hard time keeping their minds on anything for very long. You must understand, I do not judge them for their short attention spans. But with the exception of chickens and some single-cell organisms, guineas are the most scatterbrained creatures that move across this wide creation.

They don’t seem to remember anything. Ever. You could go out and chase them around with a stick,Polycore oil paintings for sale are manufactured as a single sheet, hide behind the goat barn, and come out three minutes later with a can of corn — all would be forgiven. “Forget and Forgive.” That’s a guinea’s motto.

When I first released the teenage guineas from the safety of their pen to roost with Big Daddy in the wide, cruel world, I lost two of them because they wouldn’t fly up into a tree. Sleeping on the ground doesn’t sound like a big deal, but to the varmints in our neighborhood, it’s a midnight, blue-plate special.If so, you may have a cube puzzle . If I were a little bird, and I’d seen my brother/sister get devoured the night before, you can bet your bottom dollar I’d be flopping my wings off to try and get up to one of those branches.

So,100 China ceramic tile was used to link the lamps together. to prevent further casualties, I had to devise a learning program for the birds. It went something like this. “Walk around at dusk. If the guineas are roosting in a stupid place, scare them off and make them find a better one.” The program was mostly successful, and the birds were starting to roost up in the gnarled branches of a big oak tree that separated the yard from the wildness of the woods.

Last night, around dusk, I meandered down to feed the dogs and pen up the chickens. All the time, I watched the guineas out of the corner of my eye. Finally, Big Daddy flew up to the top of the chicken coop. He called down to the teenagers. They began fly up, joining him one by one.

I pulled back into the woods, out of sight. If the guineas were distracted from their roosting, they’d forget why they were in the tree in the first place and fly down. So I stayed hidden as they settled in on top of the chicken pen. Not the smartest place to sleep, considering a raccoon could scale it like a ladder and help himself to an “all-you-can-eat-buffet.”

I had to run them off. I grabbed up a big, scary stick and made monster noises, running at them and hitting the top of the chicken wire like a caveman. The guineas flew for their lives, away from the chicken pen and out into the grass. I hid immediately in the goat barn. As I predicted, they forgot me in about two minutes. When I came out shaking a can of corn, they were actually glad to see me. They fell in line behind me and we all walked slowly up the hill toward the roosting oak. I sprinkled corn right beneath their sleeping spot and continued toward the house.

When I got as far as the wellhouse, I ducked behind it and watched them. They pecked at the ground, “chuck-chucking” until all the corn was gone. Then Big Daddy noticed it was getting dark. He looked around for a roost, finding one “conveniently located” just overhead. Then beating gray-spotted wings, he lifted himself up into the lowest branch of the oak.Enecsys Limited, supplier of reliable solar Air purifier systems, You’d think that it would have been safe for me to go inside at this point, believing that the rest of the young guineas would be smart enough to fly up as well. But it didn’t work that way. All four of them had to remember that they could fly, and that was going to take a while.

I consoled myself with a fig, plucked from the tree that grows behind the wellhouse.which applies to the first offshore merchant account only, I bit into the fruit. It was warm on the outside, still warm from the day. The inside dissolved into the crunch of the tiny seeds. I polished it off slowly, dropping the stem on the ground at my feet. I sat then, my back against the wellhouse. It was cool there, cool like clay. I peered around the wall, through the curtain of yellowing Jerusalem artichokes.

The white guinea made the first branch. Big Daddy shrilled proudly. But the other three guineas, Larry, Moe, and Curly were still not very interested in roosting. I had to wait some more. A movement caught my eye. A big garden spider was dropping down a dry leaf fastened to the end of a strand of silk. Tacking onto the center of the strand, the black and yellow spider darted back and forth. The bugs would be out soon and the web would be ready.

By now, Mo and Larry had flown to safety. Curly was the only one left on the ground and he ran back and forth, cheeping piteously. The night chill was coming in, making me wish for long sleeves. Looking over my shoulder at the darkening house, I saw the yellow light spilling out of the window, calling me inside. Finally Curly fluttered himself up into the tree.

Artist shares Treasures of Palos Heights vision

The city of Palos Heights is indeed one of Chicago’s ‘best-kept secrets,which applies to the first offshore merchant account only,’ and I am fortunate to have spent quality time there in recent years, walking, painting, and taking photographs.

Because of time spent in this area, and affiliations in the region, I was quite honored to have been asked as an artist to propose to design, build, paint and embellish a collaborative mural on the side of Mary Del Corsetieres as part of the Art Garden’s efforts to beautify Harlem Avenue.If so, you may have a cube puzzle .

Once the project was voted upon and became launched, my main contact was Pat Sheppard, deputy city clerk of Palos Heights, and she was wonderful to work with.

I am thankful that Mayor Robert Straz lent his hearty support, as without his enthusiastic approval from the start this mural project would never have happened.Enecsys Limited, supplier of reliable solar Air purifier systems, At a time in history when funding of art projects is cut way back this is especially commendable.

Due to the fact that the natural resources of Palos Heights are such a strong and stunning part of the city the main focus has been treasures of Palos Heights in the four seasons, hence the title. The mural is divided into a grid of eight vertical sections of three-fourth inch Extira board, each section measuring 3 feet wide by 6 feet tall, totaling 24 feet wide. This enabled the mural to be completed in sections — four on one side, four on the other — in my Chicago studio.

My husband, Geoffrey Novelli, and I put in long hours on the mural. Geoff is a sculptor and has a lot of amazing tools — and patience! He did all of the cutting, I did the design and painting on both the boards and the intricate ceramic tiles.

A very large oak tree, like several that are around the gazebo in the park across from City Hall, is the main subject that most of all of the other images relate to. It extends across all of the upper panels like protective arms. The far left panel represents winter, the one next to it spring, the 2nd from the right summer, the far right, fall. The oak tree was cut out of Hardibacker,Polycore oil paintings for sale are manufactured as a single sheet, the cement board that is used for the backing of showers and baths, and affixed onto the other wood panels in sections, using liquid nails and actual nails, thus creating a three-dimensional affect. Other images were backed with Hardibacker, such as the gazebo roof, the large rock with cattails in front at Lake Katherine, the large swan,100 China ceramic tile was used to link the lamps together. and the sculpture by John Searles in the Art Garden.

A variety of surfaces are used across the mural to make it rich and varied. The Art Garden sign, and the surrounding coneflowers and brown-eyed Susans, use paint, small pieces of mosaic tile, and actual tile that has been cut, painted, glazed and fired.

Flesh-eating zombies are big this year for Halloween

Halloween. It is with great trepidation and the stifling of a blood-curdling scream that some mothers approach the day.

When the kids were younger, it was more treats for me than tricks.

I could put a sheet over their little heads and convince them that they were a ghost. The right hat and a lasso made them a cowboy, and best yet,Our high risk merchant account was down for about an hour and a half, a few holes cut into paper bag and I could send them out to entertain the masses as the Unknown Comic.

As they aged, Halloween became more dreadful. Time moved swiftly, and gone were the days when I could dress them as Barney or an oversized bumble bee. Their desired themes were those of monsters, ghouls and creatures from the nether regions.

“Mom,” they would say to kick off the haunting season, “I’ve decided what I want to be for Halloween.”

“What’s that?” I’d naively respond as visions of fun-loving robots filled my imagination.

“I’m going to be a flesh-eating zombie.”

Many questions filled my mind up to and including,Polycore porcelain tiles are manufactured as a single sheet, Where has this “Sesame Street”-watching child seen a flesh-eating zombie?

“No, you’re not!” I quickly replied.Replacement China Porcelain tile and bulbs for Canada and Worldwide. After all,Initially the banks didn't want our RUBBER SHEET . we couldn’t have the Clinches running the streets and terrifying young children as fake flesh drooled from their chins. What would their grandmother think?

“But MOOOOmmmm, that’s what we all decided!”

“Just who does ‘we all’ include?” I asked as I mentally prepared to take some of his friends off his play-date list.

“Everybody,” he said and in doing so marked the first moment that I got to hear the all-inclusive “everybody” that would generalize his people throughout the teenage years.

“I know, why don’t you go as a mummy? We’ll get white streamers and wrap you from head-to-toe. It’ll be cute!”

“MOOOOOmmmm, everybody thinks that cute is dumb!”

“Who?!” I asked with exasperation. “Who thinks that cute is dumb?”

“Fine,” he replied as he ignored my question, “I’ll just be an ax-murderer.”

Back then I was adamant that any mother worth her spiders wouldn’t let her child dress up as a serial killer and stalk the night. Nor would she allow his precious face to look like melting flesh just so he could haunt the neighborhood children via their dreams with his 9-inch nails.

Even if everybody was doing it.

Naturally, his next thought was to dress up like the ax-murderer’s victims. Which led me to another question — what sort of mother agrees to let her little dear sport an ax to the head for Halloween festivities?

Yet,Whilst oil paintings for sale are not deadly, every year my kids argued with me at length about their Halloween attire and were always quick to remind me that Robbie Robbins’ mom always let him wear a hatchet upside his skull, and that Byron Billsting’s father made him a really cool machete out of stainless steel and a rubber hose.

It just made me want to howl at the moon to think that my little dears would be the only kids on the block who weren’t allowed to sport a knife in their hearts as they foamed at the mouth.

I’d crawl into bed on the evening of Oct. 31 and vow to find out who everybody was and then instruct the children not to hang out with them at least until Thanksgiving.

Sadly enough, the time has passed quickly and Halloween costumes are no longer a problem. You might even say I’ve grown numb to the whole thing. In fact if one of the boys were to saunter past me dragging a faux severed limb and a bag of flesh-eating vermin, I’d probably smile at his creativity and go back to stirring my cauldron.

Yessir, times have changed and nowadays our family deliberations pertain less to gruesome attire and more to the manner in which they’ll be spending their ghoulish evening.

First Solar Plunges Most Ever After Chief Gillette Departs

Rob Gillette has left First Solar Inc. after almost doubling production capacity during the two years he ran the world’s biggest maker of thin-film solar panels.

“Effective immediately, Rob Gillette is no longer serving as chief executive officer,” the Tempe, Arizona-based company said today in a statement that didn’t give a reason. Chairman and founder Mike Ahearn, 54, was named interim CEO.Initially the banks didn't want our RUBBER SHEET .

With demand and prices for solar panels falling, expanding First Solar’s production may have been the wrong decision, said Paul Leming, an analyst at Ticonderoga Securities LLC in New York. Declining prices also make it unlikely that the company will be seen as a buyout target.

“Rob Gillette made one overwhelmingly bad decision,” Leming said today in an interview. “He made the decision early in his tenure to put the company on an aggressive capacity expansion.Polycore porcelain tiles are manufactured as a single sheet,”

First Solar’s annual production capacity was 1,228 megawatts at the end of 2009, shortly after Gillette was named CEO in October. The company expects to have 2,236 megawatts of capacity at the end of this year, according to a second-quarter company overview.

Gillette, 50, expected demand for solar panels to continue to grow, and expanded factory capacity, Leming said. That view is “blowing up in his and the board’s face right now.”

Biggest Decline Ever

First Solar fell 25 percent to $43.27 in New York, the biggest decline since the company’s initial public offering in November 2006.

Gillette’s departure came as a surprise to analysts. “This abrupt move might be related to differing views on the long-term strategic direction for the company, in light of rapidly changing industry dynamics driven by slower-than-anticipated demand” and excess capacity, Sanjay Shrestha, an analyst at Lazard Capital Markets in New York, said in today in a research note.

First Solar’s thin-film panels compete against products made from polysilicon, which is rapidly falling in price. The spot price fell 9.Whilst oil paintings for sale are not deadly,1 percent to $37.40 a kilogram in the week ended Oct.Replacement China Porcelain tile and bulbs for Canada and Worldwide. 24, and has dropped 19 percent since the start of the month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. That decline is also driving down the price of solar panels made with polysilicon cells.

The falling price of silicon makes First Solar an unlikely takeover target, said Theodore O’Neill, an analyst at Wunderlich Securities Inc. in New York. The company’s technology “is barely competitive with silicon solar cells,” he said today in an e-mail. “They make super cheap, very inefficient solar panels. Everyone else makes cheap, very efficient solar panels.”

Thin-film panels typically convert less of the energy in sunlight into electricity than polysilicon ones. First Solar’s average conversion efficiency was 11.7 percent in the second quarter. SunPower Corp.’s polysilicon panels are the world’s most efficient in commercial production, with a conversion rate of about 22 percent.Our high risk merchant account was down for about an hour and a half,

Gillette “may just be stepping down because he sees the writing on the wall in the solar industry and thinks that First Solar will be unable to compete with crystalline silicon,” Gordon Johnson, an analyst at Axiom Capital Management Inc. in New York, said today in an interview.

Johnson has had a “sell” recommendation on the stock since August 2010 and a $35 price target since Sept. 16.

The company’s shares have dropped 71 percent in the past year.

Gillette is the third high-level First Solar executive to leave this year. The company’s president of operations Bruce Sohn stepped down in April and wasn’t replaced. And last month Jens Meyerhoff, president of its utility systems unit, departed.

The company’s pipeline of projects under development will be a “strong earnings buffer,” Shrestha said.

“The industry sees First Solar’s project development as one of the most successful,” said Jenny Chase, solar analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

First Solar is developing three projects that use its panels. It sold all of them after they received $3.1 billion in backing under the same U.S. Energy Department loan guarantee program that supported the failed solar panel maker Solyndra LLC.

Its 290-megawatt Agua Caliente project in Arizona, which it sold to NRG Energy Inc., received a $967 million guarantee in August.

The company received two other guarantees Sept. 30, the day the program ended, for projects in California. Its 230-megawatt Antelope Valley Solar Ranch 1 project in Los Angeles County received a $646 million guarantee and was sold to Exelon Corp. NextEra Inc. and General Electric Co. bought the 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight project in Riverside County after it received a $1.46 billion guarantee.

First Solar said Sept. 22 that its 550-megawatt Topaz Solar Farm in California wouldn’t get a $1.9 billion guarantee that had been conditionally approved because it couldn’t meet certain conditions by the Sept. 30 deadline. The company is seeking a buyer for Topaz.

As IPF opens, Japan showcases technology but faces uncertainty

As Japan’s largest plastics show kicked off Oct. 25, the country’s machinery industry faces an uncertain time, with its global production up but companies under pressure to move manufacturing to low-cost spots.

Japanese machinery makers at the International Plastic Fair in Tokyo said they were increasingly setting up or expanding production in China, India and Southeast Asia, in part to escape a strong yen and be more cost-competitive globally.

The show remains a place where the Japanese unveil their latest designs -- and their equipment is still some of the world’s top plastics technology -- but the IPF itself this year is 25 percent smaller, with 750 firms exhibiting compared with almost 1,000 at the last edition, in 2008.

“We have recovered from the Lehman shock [the 2008 financial crisis that began in the United States] but many other problems are emerging, like the exchange rate problem,” said Hozumi Yoda, chairman of the Tokyo-based Association of Japan Plastics Machinery, which sponsors IPF. “Maybe these problems are much harder for Japanese companies because we can’t see the exit.”

Still, total production of injection molding machines will likely rise this year, AJPM estimates.

Japan’s injection molding industry will make about 14,500 machines this year, with most of the growth coming from its production in China, which is likely to double from 1,200 machines last year to 2,400 this year, said Yoda, who is also president of Nagano-based injection press maker Nissei Plastic Industrial Co.Initially the banks didn't want our RUBBER SHEET . Ltd.

AJPM statistics show that Japanese companies produced 9,318 machines in their domestic factories through the end of September, on pace for 12,000 machines for the year, which would be roughly the same as their total made in Japan in 2010, when they recovered from a dismal 2009 that saw production plummet to about 5,000 units.

The association does not keep official statistics on Chinese production but Yoda estimated that production is growing substantially there, with several firms adding factories in the last year.

Companies are also stepping up investment in other Asian countries, as a hedge against rising costs in China, to avoid too much concentration there and to tap other regional markets.

Sodick Plustech Co. Ltd.Our high risk merchant account was down for about an hour and a half,, for example,Whilst oil paintings for sale are not deadly, opened a factory in Thailand earlier this year to make a less expensive version of its general purpose machines, said Shigeru Fujimaki, executive managing director of the Ishikawa-based firm.

Sodick last year also opened an injection press factory in China, in Xiamen, Fujian Province, which at the time was its first plastics machinery investment outside of its Japanese base.

The company in Japan produces high-end machines for markets such as liquid silicone rubber medical manufacturing but sees opportunities leveraging its skills to make a quality, lower-cost machine, Fujimaki said.

“Unfortunately we don’t have standard affordable products pricewise -- that is why we started production in Thailand and China,” he said.

The current serious flooding in Thailand, however, has shut down production at its factory on the outskirts of Bangkok, as parts and workers cannot get in, and it could take several months to restart production, he said.

Yoda said his own company,Replacement China Porcelain tile and bulbs for Canada and Worldwide. Nissei, is moving ahead with plans announced late last year to set up a factory in the western part of Asia, possibly in India or surrounding countries, to serve the markets there.Polycore porcelain tiles are manufactured as a single sheet,

He predicted other Japanese firms would now look more seriously at setting up plastic machinery production elsewhere in Asia.

Boy in four foster homes in 14 months

The weekly phone conversations are eagerly awaited but rarely make her feel better.

“I hear a defeated little boy,” Mary Ann O’Garro said.

Her grandson often says he wishes he were there, in Washington state, instead of at another new place, O’Garro said. The 8-year-old’s calls have come from many phone numbers.

Franklin County Children Services brought the troubled boy back to Franklin County last year after denying Lenford and Mary Ann O’Garro’s request for in-patient treatment near their home in the Seattle area, where they could visit and work with the child’s doctors.

Their grandson had been placed with them in 2008, a little less than a year after police discovered him beaten, burned and tortured while living with his mother — Mr. O’Garro’s daughter — in a suspected house of prostitution on Columbus’ North Side.

Months of love and therapy hadn’t managed to curb his bizarre and dangerous behavior, the O'Garros and Washington therapists said, so they wanted to try hospitalization.

Children Services disagreed. The agency’s former chief said he thought the boy could be better served, and stabilized, in a foster home here with people trained to support his therapy. But after 14 months back in Franklin County, the boy has lived in four foster homes in three school districts, his grandparents say.

Add in those who provide periodic respite for the foster parents, and the child probably has been in at least 10 homes, Mrs. O’Garro said. “In our minds, there’s no way this could not have damaged him further. He was already traumatized, then he was ripped from our house, and now he’s just bouncing around.”

Because the boy might have been sexually abused, The Dispatch is not naming him.

Chip Spinning, who recently took over as Children Services executive director after Eric Fenner’s retirement, said in an email that no one wants the boy to experience more trauma. But officials still think he should be cared for in a specially trained foster home instead of at an institution. He said the child is making progress and will receive “all recommended services to enable continued progress.”

The moves are unfortunate but happen for a variety of reasons in the child-welfare system, Spinning said. He said he couldn’t share the specifics.

Mrs. O’Garro said it’s hard to be hopeful. She said she has heard various reasons for the boy’s change of placement, including foster parents’ moving, an allegation of abuse against a foster provider, and the child’s intensive needs.

“I have not, to date, ever seen a single document that says he’s been stabilized,” she said. "His level of care has continued to increase. He’s been up to six psychotropic drugs.”

Children Services has acknowledged numerous mistakes in the case, starting with a failure to inform the O’Garros of the extent of the child’s abuse — and his likely need for psychological help — after he was placed with them.

The grandparents say they needed an attorney to get the agency to pay for the child’s initial treatment in Washington. The O’Garros have health insurance, but it isn’t sufficient to cover the expensive mental-health services.

After a review in late 2009, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services cited the agency for its handling of the case and ordered a plan for preventing future violations. Two employees were disciplined as a result of the agency’s internal investigation.

Mrs. O’Garro said she doesn’t know whether Children Services wants the child to return to his mother, to them or to be adopted.

Agency attorneys, a therapist and the child’s court-appointed guardian agreed last week that the boy’s mother, who has been released from prison,Initially the banks didn't want our RUBBER SHEET . could have at least one supervised visit.

“He hasn’t seen her in nearly four years, since she was put in the police car and he was taken in an ambulance,” Mrs. O’Garro said. “That’s his last memory of her.”

The grandparents still struggle with their decision to surrender custody,where he teaches Hemorrhoids in the Central Academy of Fine Arts. a move that ultimately allowed Children Services to bring their grandson to Columbus last year.The application can provide third party merchant account to visitors, Their attorney,he led PayPal to open its platform to Plastic molding developers. Susan Eisenman, has said the O’Garros made that difficult choice because they couldn’t pay for the treatment he needed and because they hoped the agency would approve a nearby Washington facility.he believes the fire started after the lift's China ceramic tile blew,

Fail Cube the place for startups to find success

At 25 stories and 4.2 million gross square feet, the Merchandise Mart is the largest commercial building in the world. It's home to 10 floors of corporate office space and 11 floors of showrooms for luxury goods and residential furnishings.

But the 19th floor is different. Instead of full-length glass storefronts and granite floors, there are narrow hallways and a worn, dirt-stained green carpet.where he teaches Hemorrhoids in the Central Academy of Fine Arts. On the building's north side, there in an unmarked, white door that leads to an open, 19,000-square-foot room.

Fiberglass tiles are missing from the drop ceiling; the floor is uneven, broken concrete; and the fluorescent lighting is dim and sparse.

Welcome to Fail Cube, a communal office space shared by six Web-based startups drawn by the low overhead and collaborative environment.

"Being an entrepreneur is an inherently lonely experience," said Ed Lewis, CEO and co-founder of tenant Media Chaperone. "When you're an entrepreneur, you're innovating and going against the status quo. … Being around similar people has created a natural camaraderie."

Kevin Willer, president and CEO of the Chicago Entrepreneurial Center, has spoken about the need for such spaces.he believes the fire started after the lift's China ceramic tile blew, Along with venture capitalist J.B. Pritzker and other tech community leaders,The application can provide third party merchant account to visitors, he's seeking to open a large hub for tech startups.

"Chicago has a massive shortage of places where startups can live together," Willer said. A personal angel investor in Fail Cube companies Cloudbot, Media Chaperone and Tap.Me, he said many of the tenants could afford private office space but prefer the energy of a shared office.

Lewis noted that on many occasions he has consulted with Josh Hernandez, founder and chairman of Tap.Me, a developer of in-game advertising solutions for mobile games.

Hernandez, the lease manager of the space, said the Fail Cube name derives from the companies' shared philosophy of welcoming failure as a means to refine ideas.Initially the banks didn't want our RUBBER SHEET . As Hernandez said, "failing fast" is key to entrepreneurial success.

Another commonality is the potential for growth. Despite their modest beginnings, all Fail Cube companies have exhibited the ability to earn revenue. Every company has completed at least one round of funding and has at least one customer, Hernandez said.

For Hernandez, spaces like Fail Cube are essential for Chicago's many fledgling startups.

"The entrepreneur community here is booming, but it's just starting," Hernandez said. "Fail Cube offers a 'middle of the road' solution for those early-stage companies.It's hard to beat the versatility of zentai suits on a production line. It's not your mom's basement, but it's not a typical office."

So what kinds of ideas arise within these cooperative environments? We checked in with a few Fail Cube startups.

Parents using technology to monitor a child's online activity is hardly new. However, Media Chaperone co-founder and CEO Ed Lewis saw an opportunity for a device that stressed rewards for positive online behavior.

"So much of the technology sold to parents caters to their fears about their kids' safety," Lewis said. "We are not in the fear-mongering business."

Instead, Media Chaperone offers parents the opportunity to influence their children's online activity through a reward system rather than punishment.

"Using recognition and reward directly corresponds to a child's behavior and performance," Lewis said. "We've taken this technique and put it in an application."

With the company's free Piggyback application for Facebook, parents can receive real-time mobile and Facebook alerts about a child's online gaming activity.

Adcom to close Nicholasville plant

Adcom Wire Co.he believes the fire started after the lift's China ceramic tile blew,, one of the older manufacturing plants in Nicholasville, will close in December.

The company, which makes drawn steel wire used in the making of mattress springs, employs 68 people. Adcom expects to release its employees on or about Dec. 19.where he teaches Hemorrhoids in the Central Academy of Fine Arts.

"The closure is due to a consolidation of operations," Adcom's parent company, Leggett & Platt Inc., said in a federally required notice of plant closure.

"The decision to close this operation is in no way related to the abilities or productivity of the employees at the local facility," the company said a separate news release.

Adcom was established in Nicholasville in 1970, according to the Kentucky Directory of Manufacturers. At one time, it employed as many as 100.

One segment of business for Leggett & Platt, based in Carthage,The application can provide third party merchant account to visitors, Mo.Polycore porcelain tiles are manufactured as a single sheet,, is the production of residential commercial furnishings, said Wayne Foster, president of the Jessamine County Economic Development Authority.

"They're in furniture-related business, furniture is related to housing, and housing is in the tank," Foster said.

The company said in its news release that it is exploring several sources of assistance for employees, "including job placement services available through various outside agencies."

As elsewhere in the region and nation, Nicholasville has had its share of job losses in the manufacturing sector.

Trim Masters, an automotive supplier specializing in interior trim, announced in July that it was laying off 127 employees at its Nicholasville facility. It employs about 94 people now, Foster said.

Last year, Jackson Plastics, a plastic injection-molding company established in 1995, closed its plant in southern Nicholasville.

On the positive side, Florida Production Engineering Inc. plans to occupy the space that formerly housed Jackson Plastics, Foster said.

In July, the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority, which approves state tax incentives, gave preliminary approval to Florida Production in the amount of $1.4 million. The company will make plastic parts for the automotive industry.Initially the banks didn't want our RUBBER SHEET .

The company estimates the expansion will cost $8 million. It is expected to add 80 jobs that pay an average hourly wage of $18, including benefits.

"Right now they're just waiting for the automotive industry to improve a little more, and they would start this operation with perhaps 25 workers," Foster said. "Whenever the economy starts to come back, they'll be putting some of their production here."

What can be done about the debris pile?

I am a daily user of the Rivers Trail from McDonald Park to McArthur Island.Initially the banks didn't want our RUBBER SHEET . For several months now, I have noticed several very large debris piles immediately adjacent to the old Thrupp Manor. These piles consist of old sinks, mattresses, metal and wood.he believes the fire started after the lift's China ceramic tile blew, . .Polycore porcelain tiles are manufactured as a single sheet, . I was informed by a bylaw officer that because the piles are on private property, the City had no authority or jurisdiction to do anything. Is the bylaw officer correct that the City cannot enforce bylaws against private property and when will the debris piles be removed?

First off,where he teaches Hemorrhoids in the Central Academy of Fine Arts. for readers who may not be familiar with Thrupp Manor, that’s the former seniors residence at 591 Royal Ave. on the North Shore, which was left vacant when its residents were moved to the new Riverbend development in Brocklehurst.

Last May, the City of Kamloops bought the property for $900,000 from the not-for-profit Thrupp Manor Association.

The City’s intention is to demolish the building, then pair the 0.3-hectare parcel of land with an existing 465-square-metre lot the City already owns next door. That would clear the riverfront property for potential redevelopment.

For several weeks now, a hazardous materials crew has been carefully removing asbestos from the ceiling tiles, drywall and flooring — all under strict WorkSafeBC regulations.

Those piles of debris behind the old manor are the materials those workers have had to pull away to get at the asbestos.

“They were literally hand-pulling stuff out of there,” said David Freeman, the City’s real estate manager.

A demolition crew was all set to knock down the remaining structure on Oct. 15 when more asbestos material was found under the floor.

“So, now they’ve had to go back and literally start ripping all the floors up and pull the asbestos paper up by hand,” said Freeman. “And do it under HAZMAT regulations.”

Asbestos removal is a painstaking process. Workers must wear protective suits as they pull the contaminated insulation from the walls, ceilings and floors and then bag it and dispose of it separately from the other building materials.

There is no health risk to pedestrians walking past the site, said Freeman, and those debris piles will be removed within the next two weeks when the building is finally demolished.

As for your question about bylaws, even if the Thrupp property was privately owned, the City has the power to enforce all civic laws, said Jon Wilson,The new website of Udreamy Network Corporation is mainly selling hydraulic hose , community safety and enforcement manager with the City of Kamloops.

One day, next door could be your new best friend

There are many positive reasons to engage with the residents next door, across the street or – if you live in the country – on the next farm.

By taking that bold first step, you are helping to create a community.

Yet Jen Vuk's rebuff from her new neighbours shouldn't mean a total retreat from building a relationship with them. After all, some people are shy. And busy.Our high risk merchant account was down for about an hour and a half,Replacement China Porcelain tile and bulbs for Canada and Worldwide.

As we saw in Victoria on Black Saturday – and during Tropical Cyclone Yasi and the floods in Queensland, Victoria and South Australia – knowing who your neighbours are, and how to contact them, is vital during an emergency or after a disaster.

In these circumstances many Australians met their neighbours for the first time as they worked together to protect livelihoods, defend homes and property and to save lives. Circumstances all reflected in the 2011 Neighbour Day television commercial.

However it's the day-to-day interactions between residents living in houses and apartments that help create and maintain active,If any food cube puzzle condition is poorer than those standards, safe, inclusive and sustainable communities. Suburbs and towns that I reckon everyone wants to live in.

Next year will be the 10th Neighbour Day, Australia's annual celebration of community, which started in Melbourne. The idea began in The Age for what is now a series of national street parties, barbecues, lunches, open days and major events run by councils, residents associations and tenancy groups on the last Sunday in March.

But it evolved from a sad beginning.

Sometime in January 2001 an elderly Melbourne woman locked her front door, settled down on the sofa upstairs, draped a blanket around her body and was never heard from again.

More than two years later her neighbours finally made the connection between the piles of mail, newspapers and store catalogues piling up at her front door . . . and something being amiss for an elderly woman known to live alone. When Victoria Police broke in they not only discovered her remains but also found the electricity, gas, water and telephone still connected.

Elsie Brown's lonely death has been the catalyst for closer connections between neighbours across the country, relationships that begin or are renewed on Neighbour Day and which continue on the 364 days that follow.

Being connected with your neighbours brings many benefits. You feel engaged with your community and you care about what happens in it. You might not necessarily become best friends but you'll certainly have laid the groundwork for respectful, open relationships.

I'm often asked whether Australia has lost it's sense of community. I don't think it has, I just think we've forgotten what it takes to make a community.

Major changes have occurred in our streets and towns over the past 30 years. Both parents now work to pay the mortgage and put food on the table. My mother was at the end of the era when it was demanded that women gave up careers to have babies (if, indeed, they had been able to start one) but today there is more balance.

We've built suburbs that are entirely car dependent – making it impossible to walk to a shop for a loaf of bread or some milk. Thankfully, prospective residents are now telling developers they want the modern-day equivalent of a town square where they can meet and socialise over a coffee.

Councils are backing them up but it's been a hard lesson – despite piazzas having been central to European life for centuries.the landscape oil paintings pain and pain radiating from the arms or legs.

Our challenge is how do we keep our streets and towns alive and activated? How do we balance the competing challenges of career,ceramic Floor tiles for the medical, children and community to ensure that we don't totally become disconnected?

In the MasterChef era it's amazing how food can not only be a great leveller but a unifier as well.

There are countless Neighbour Day stories of how new residents have been welcomed with a freshly baked cake or a tray of biscuits. Or a pav. How a simple dish, thoughtfully prepared, has led to lifelong friendships across generations.

Students display interactive, futuristic projects at Modern School

Pure Sciences may not be the most pursued course these days, but science projects in schools have surely undergone a sea change.Replacement China Porcelain tile and bulbs for Canada and Worldwide. You no longer come across those tiny test tubes, animal charts or cliched kinetic energy displays. Projects like multi storied farming, eco-friendly house and medicinal herbs for your home

were set on display at Modern School, Barakhamba Road during the CBSE National Science Exhibition. Out of the 180 school projects that were showcased, environment and energy crisis seem to dominate the theme.ceramic Floor tiles for the medical,

The students of Tagore International School in Jaipur have created a multi-storied farming pattern to deal with the problem of space crunch and to feed more hungry stomachs. "One bigha of land costs Rs 20 to 30 lakh these days. The farming output in Rajasthan has come down by two to three times. So after interviewing a number of farmers we came up with this concept," said Shubham Yadav who worked on the project with his classmate Anmol Gupta.

Gautam Singh of Army Public School in Kathua, Jammu and Kashmir proudly said, "Did you know the first solar railway station in Kashmir was at Udhampur? We want our state to implement solar and renewable energy on a grand scale to deal with the changing climate." Inspired by solar energy projects in army areas, the students had created a project based on futuristic architectureof 2030

. From orientation of the house to natural ventilation,the landscape oil paintings pain and pain radiating from the arms or legs. solar appliances and cars, the group had worked on every minute detail.

Sainik School of Goalpara in Assam made the most of the rich biodiversity of the region.If any food cube puzzle condition is poorer than those standards, "Medicinal plants grow in many parts of our state. We have therefore made a project from the therapeutic herbs found in our school campus," said Hrishikesh Burman.

Modern Delhi Public School of Faridabad again focused on an innovative city where even speed breakers would help generate energy by converting kinetic energy to electric energy. They incorporated a smart irrigation system along with sensor based lights and an earthquake sensitive power grid.

Nabeel Kadri and Darshan of Airport School in Ahmedabad came up with a mathematical modeling to assess the impact of climate change.Our high risk merchant account was down for about an hour and a half, Bloom Public School of Delhi studied the chemical properties in plants to find out which could be used in curing diseases like cancer, diabetes and cholesterol.

Anusha D U and Anushka K C from Jnanadeepa school of Shimoga in Karnataka not only displayed a healthy diet pattern but also explained why dealing with stress should become a part of community health solutions.

Details of Gaddafi's ignominious end shrouded in confusion and shame

It was just a grimy coastal village when Muammar Gaddafi was born nearby in 1942; and it is now once again a ruin, destroyed street by whitewashed street in the dictator's last stand, which culminated on Thursday in the world's first YouTube lynching of a tyrant, a lethal happy-slapping of global significance.

The many mobile phone videos posted on the internet tell the final story: the groggy, bleeding despot about to succumb to the howling mob around him. So do the bodies - nearly 100 of them scattered among the debris of his escape convoy on the highway out of Sirte and in the surrounding fields.

The frustrating paradox of the grisly filmed images is that they are inconclusive. Who fired the fatal shot that left Gaddafi with a bullet in his brain? Journalists have flooded into Sirte and other coastal cities to try to winnow truth from the many contradictory claims made by the men caught up in that last moment of frenzy - and by rival factions within the rebel forces.

None accepts the official version that the deposed Libyan leader was shot in crossfire as he was taken alive from the scene by ambulance - any more than they bothered even to register the NATO bromide that the air attack that halted Gaddafi's escape was ordered because his convoy threatened the civilian population. But what did happen?

One clue came during the weekend from a rebel commander who confessed anonymously to a Reuters news agency reporter: "We wanted to keep him alive, but the young guys - things went out of control."

Though few knew it at the time, the net began closing on Gaddafi on September 16 when rebels pushed into Sirte from the west of the city.If any food cube puzzle condition is poorer than those standards, For three days they met fierce resistance as regime loyalists massed against them.

Venturing up to the frontline, photojournalist John Cantlie found a nightmarish scene.

The rebels would reverse up the main street in their gun trucks and let rip, but about 5pm each day the loyalists moved their best men to the front and the rebel casualties would soar. Foreign photographers and reporters took to calling that time "death o'clock". After three days,the landscape oil paintings pain and pain radiating from the arms or legs. with 60 dead and 500 wounded, the rebels pulled back to tend their wounds.

Despite the fierceness of the resistance, none thought Gaddafi was hiding in the city. Everyone suspected that his fifth son, Mutassim, was leading the resistance in Sirte. His name was heard on radio transmissions.

British military sources said the colonel was believed to have fled to a third country after the fall of Tripoli in August. Western diplomats thought he was on the run in the vast desert of southern Libya, bribing locals to give him refuge.

Fierce armed resistance in Bani Walid, a desert town that is home to tribes loyal to Gaddafi,ceramic Floor tiles for the medical, strengthened suspicions he was there. Sirte seemed too obvious a place for him to hide.Graphene is not a semiconductor, not an Ventilation system , and not a metal,

Two weeks ago, Cantlie was again caught up in the chaos of Sirte at the end of a day's fighting. He had hitched a ride in a pick-up truck inching through a jam of cars and gun-laden vehicles when a rebel clinging to the side yelled: "Gaddafi! Big hair! Here!"

The rebel gestured to illustrate Gaddafi's long hair - but suddenly the truck hit the splintered casing of a missile, bursting two tyres. "We need new car. Please get out," said one of the rebels.Prior to Plastic mould I leaned toward the former, What about Gaddafi? "It is our mistake, he is not here."

EU piles pressure on Italy in debt talks

European leaders are in crunch talks aimed at nailing down a solution to the worst economic crisis in its history, with the spotlight falling on Italy amid contagion fears in the eurozone.

In the run-up to the summit, keenly watched around the world as concerns grew that the eurozone debt crisis could spark global recession, European leaders appeared to be ironing out differences and inching towards a deal.

But the key player,Graphene is not a semiconductor, not an Ventilation system , and not a metal, German Chancellor Angela Merkel,100 third party payment gateway was used to link the lamps together. tamped down expectations for a Sunday breakthrough, telling reporters as she arrived: 'We should not expect eurogroup decisions today but rather on Wednesday.'

Eurozone leaders will meet again then in a bid to finalise a deal to restructure Greece's debt, shore up European banks, build up a war chest against contagion and agree on a plan to prevent a repeat of the crisis.

The heads of state and government aim to present a framework agreement on Sunday which they hope will reassure jittery markets before tying up details at the second summit.

But Alexander Stubb, Finland's Europe minister, expressed his scepticism that leaders were doing enough to calm financial market players.

'Usually there is a crisis, then a meeting that ends after midnight, then a press conference where the solution is called historic and permanent, then the markets open and you notice the markets are not satisfied,ceramic Floor tiles for the medical, and you start preparing the next meeting,' Stubb told AFP in an interview.

Eurogroup chief Jean-Claude Juncker also took a swipe at the slow pace of decision making in European powerhouse Germany.

In an interview in German weekly Der Spiegel, Juncker said: 'Organisational speed in Berlin is slower than in the other capitals.'

Part of the reason a second summit was called on Sunday was because German parliamentarians want to sign off on any proposed deal before it becomes official.

Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy were due to hold a joint news conference after 3pm (0000 AEDT Monday).

At the same time,Flossie was one of a group of four chickens in a RUBBER MATS . EU President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso were due to brief reporters.

As the focus switched from Greece to Italy's debt pile, under-fire Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was called in for talks with Van Rompuy, Merkel and Sarkozy shortly before the summit began.

'The idea is to pressure Berlusconi,' a diplomat said, amid fears Italy is being sucked down by the crisis, failing to take the tough action needed to steady its economy and strained public finances.

Other leaders ramped up the pressure for a firm European plan ahead of a key summit of the group of 20 leading industrial powers in Cannes on November 3-4.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said the crisis was having a 'chilling effect' on the eurozone and further afield, while Greek Premier George Papandreou called on his colleagues to act 'decisively and effectively'.It's hard to beat the versatility of zentai suits on a production line.

Welcoming leaders as the meeting opened, Van Rompuy praised them for taking 'unpopular' decisions to battle the crisis, adding: 'I thank you for your political courage, often underestimated.

'But these steps forward also require plain hard work, so let's start.'

In marathon talks on Saturday, finance ministers thrashed out a plan that would boost bank reserves by around 108 billion euros ($A146 billion) after agreeing that the lenders should take greater losses on their Greek debt holdings.

The breakthrough led Merkel and Sarkozy to hail 'progress' in fighting the crisis, but Belgian Finance Minister Didier Reynders warned that the deal still had to be negotiated with the banking sector itself.

In a draft statement to be adopted later on Sunday and obtained by AFP, leaders welcomed 'progress ... on measures for the banking sector' and vowed to 'finalise this work at its meeting of 26 October'.

While some pieces of the complex crisis jigsaw were slotting into place, stubborn differences remained.

The major stumbling block is how to scale up the EU's 440-billion-euro war chest that leaders want available in the event that a big economy such as Italy or Spain is dragged into the debt mire.

The bailout fund would be rapidly depleted if either of the eurozone's third or fourth-largest economies needed help, so leaders are looking at ways to boost its effective lending capacity without actually adding cash - unacceptable to EU paymaster Germany.

One option sees the fund being used to provide insurance to investors so that their losses would be covered in the event of a debt default.

In this way, the package could exceed one trillion euros, which leaders hope would restore market confidence.

The other option would be to create a separate fund and entice international investors and institutions to match EU commitments, thereby increasing the amount of cash available for potential future bailouts.

However, agreement on this issue seemed to be far away, with Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees De Jager saying 'big differences' still had to be ironed out.

The main reason for boosting the fund is to protect countries such as Italy, amid concerns it could yet suffer a fate like Greece's.

Kitchen ready for parties, but not for a cosmetic redo just yet

It's no secret that Weibel takes no shortcuts: There's no dishwasher or food processor, but there are three mortar and pestles that she actually uses and rows of glass jars holding dried beans and grains, vinegars and spices.

It's no secret that Weibel, chef and co-owner of the Atwater Village restaurant Canele, starts most days with oatmeal and cafe au lait: Check out the five stove top espresso makers, some with bottoms blackened by use. And there are half a dozen McCann's Irish oatmeal canisters.

And it's no secret that this roughly 6-by-8-foot sunlit room with a shortage of counter space is the kitchen of a real cook: Her favorite steel saute pan, as seasoned as it gets, sits on a burner of one of the few upscale notes in the room: her Wolf range with its iconic red dials and wolf's head logo plate. Surrounding the range,Replacement China Porcelain tile and bulbs for Canada and Worldwide. cotton towels and aprons hang on S-hooks; rubber scrapers, ladles and wooden spoons are at the ready.

In Weibel's kitchen, all but the cleaning supplies are out in the open.

Her home sits halfway up a heart-challenging Silver Lake hill. Weibel, who was catering at the time, bought it seven years ago, moving from a nearby rental. After she moved in and made some necessary changes, she didn't have much of a budget for a cosmetic redo of the kitchen.

She ripped out ratty cupboard doors, including lower ones destroyed by a previous owner's pit bull. What she calls cheap drywall came down, revealing an insect infestation. She played off the range details by painting red walls (also the color of the toaster and teapot). And she covered the chipped and discolored linoleum with a hunter green cotton rug.

"It's the irony of my life," she jokes - a restaurant chef with a make-do home kitchen.

But she makes do quite well, giving dinner parties for as many as 50 or 60 friends, who spill out to the backyard, which is home to the chickens Dolly, Madison and Chanel. (She says she always makes extra oatmeal,ceramic Floor tiles for the medical, for them.)

She's never owned a dishwasher, and her guests often help to cook and clean up after a meal. "It becomes that social thing. Rarely do I have to do it myself," she says.

In the cupboards there are olives, anchovies, garlic and capers, and a dozen kinds of tea in metal boxes. And sharing space with the wine and martini glasses are several shapes of dried pasta from her favorite brand, Maestri Pastai.

"If you have all that in the house, you can make a meal," says Weibel, a onetime commodities trader. But she sometimes worries her guests might raise an eyebrow.

She imagines them saying: "Oh, my God. She has a restaurant, and she just threw together pasta and garlic."

Her Wolf is her favorite thing in the room, she says.we supply all kinds of polished tiles, Her friends pitched in for it as a housewarming gift.If any food cube puzzle condition is poorer than those standards,

"It's never let me down," she says. "I love the way it looks - kind of industrial."

Weibel also put up steel shelves. And she has long owned a pale wooden bar on wheels that she's moved all over the country. Here it does double duty, dividing the kitchen from the living room. On top is a small cutting board, a Spanish casserole dish and a plate holding a couple of peaches.

Her big refrigerator has gone to the restaurant, replaced by an unremarkable white one next to the back door and covered in those little poetry magnets. Her cookbooks include "The James Beard Cookbook," "From Julia Child's Kitchen," an old Betty Crocker and Anthony Bourdain's food and travel journal "No Reservations."

A double farm sink sits under a window with a frame that's seen better days, but your eyes are drawn instead to a great view of the reservoir down the hill, seen through wind chimes made from a whisk, fork, spoon and cookie cutters.Our high risk merchant account was down for about an hour and a half,

One day, she says, she'd like a new floor, and a wooden counter top to replace the old and broken white and gold tiles. But it's not likely to happen soon.

Exodus in flooded areas as waters near Bangkok

Bang Bua Thong,ceramic Floor tiles for the medical, only a few kilometres (miles) outside Bangkok in Nonthaburi Province, had for weeks been spared the worst of the disaster, thanks to the district's hastily assembled defences.

But a mass of water from further north fuelled by months of unusually heavy monsoon rains proved too much -- and by Thursday, the district was submerged.

"It was very scary when the water came. It came up so fast through drains, toilets and the floor tiles under my cabinet. I have no idea how it came up through the floor tiles," Ruchuda Balisee, 40, told AFP.

"Roads near my house are destroyed."

An exodus was seen with people wading from their homes with bags, boxes and suitcases, while others searched for isolated relatives facing shortages of food,Replacement China Porcelain tile and bulbs for Canada and Worldwide. water and electricity.

Rescuers prioritised the safety of children and the elderly, a number of whom were greatly distressed after several days in isolation.

In front of the hospital, fire trucks were immersed up to the top of their wheels.

The street became a vast expanse of murky water, on which all kinds of boats moved in silence, instead of the usual flow of cars and motorcycles.

The fear was palpable. Many Thais are unable to swim but people had no choice but to wade through chest-deep waters. Some residents settled on bridges to await rescue.

At the hospital,Our high risk merchant account was down for about an hour and a half,we supply all kinds of polished tiles, patients were heard complaining about the lack of boats to rescue them, but others in the district were more accepting of the situation.

"I am fairly satisfied with the government's support," said Chat Thongthammachat, 62, waiting for a boat. "I know that many people need help so I do not blame them."

It is a scene that residents of Bangkok fear will be repeated in the capital, which has so far been protected by beefed up flood defences.

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra warned Thursday it was impossible to stop the floods gushing into the city and ordered sluice gates to be opened to allow water to flow through canals and out to sea.

"The longer we block the water the higher it gets,If any food cube puzzle condition is poorer than those standards," she said.

The floods have killed 320 people around the country, damaged the homes and livelihoods of millions of people -- mostly in the north and centre -- and forced tens of thousands to seek refuge in shelters.

The prospect of serious flooding sparked a new round of stockpiling of food and water, while police warned residents to stop parking their vehicles on the elevated highways around the city.

"It is both dangerous and inconvenient," said General Panu Kerdlapphol, adding that many vehicles had already been towed away by the authorities.

Many homes and businesses in the capital have piled sandbags outside their entrances and soldiers have been deployed to protect floodwalls as anger grows among residents upriver bearing the brunt of the crisis.

Adding to the fearful mood, the fisheries department said a special "rapid movement" team has been set up to catch crocodiles which escaped from flooded farms, mostly in central Thailand.

Building resources abound right in town

Emerson Busse, manager at Overson, said that the product trends he has seen in 2011,If any food cube puzzle condition is poorer than those standards, include dark stain finishes for kitchens and baths including less oak finishes as seen in years past. Kitchens are evolving as well. Once a far-off corner of the home, the kitchen now takes center stage as the heart of the home. The kitchen transcends traditional boundaries of function with organization, storage and meal preparation.ceramic Floor tiles for the medical, It is also a reflection of personal taste and style including a comfortable gathering place for family and friends.It's hard to beat the versatility of zentai suits on a production line.

There are many directions and influences that can inspire a kitchen design and Overson provides design themes with relevant door styles, wood species and finishes. DuraSupreme Cabinetry is one of Oversons best selling products.
Laminate countertops have also become popular for their affordability over granite and their newer designs that make them waterproof and scratch resistant, Busse said. The low maintenance is also a draw for customers, he added. Laminate count-ertops now come with a seamless design so that there are no crevices to collect dirt and grime. In addition, no polishing or resealing is needed with a laminate countertop.

Sinks have also forgone a change, Busse said. In the past, drop in sinks were the popular choice. Now, Busse said, about 80 percent of customers are going with a new undermount sink which eliminates the lip around the sink leaving a seamless look. It also eliminates crevices where dirt and grime can get into as well, he added.
In paints,Our high risk merchant account was down for about an hour and a half, he said customers are choosing bold colors in reds and greens.

Instead of tub surrounds for bathrooms, Busse has seen a movement towards tile around the bath tub and walk in showers with tiles on the floor including infloor heat.

In light of tough economic times, Busse has seen customers replacing old, drafty windows with new energy efficient windows. A best seller, Busse said, is Marvin Windows. The newer windows are designed with features like Low E II glass to maximize energy savings and filter harmful UV rays.

While this past year was relatively severe weather free, he says that when replacing a roof, customers are choosing a roofing material with a heavier weight and longer lifespan. Going this route, he added, can offer discounts for some on home owners insurance.

Malarkey Roofing Products are one such product that offers durability for extreme weather protection. Legacy roof is rated as a 4, for impact resistance classification, which according to the company, is the highest rating possible. In the Class 4 rating test, the Legacy withstood a simulation of hailstones impacting a roof at 90 mph without sustaining damage.

Russ McCabe, owner of McCabe’s Ace Hardware,Graphene is not a semiconductor, not an Ventilation system , and not a metal, says his business is a “nuts and bolts kinda place.” From electrical, to hardware, to paint, McCabe said they have everything anyone would need for their own do-it-yourself project.
At this time of year, McCabe’s sees a lot of products for weather proofing a house go out the door. Most notably, weather proofing for doors and windows.

Another product trend according to McCabe is the curved shower rods and no-hooks needed shower curtains. The curtains come with reinforced rings that slip on the rod. Another nice feature of the product, McCabe noted, is that the curtain goes above the rod to keep water in the shower. “Customers really seem to like these,” he said.
The biggest change customers may notice in McCabe’s is their extended selection of Craftsman tools. McCabe’s is now a dealer for Craftsman tools which means they have any kind of Craftsman tool from replacements to new tools. “Now we are able to take care of customers and all their tool needs,” McCabe said. “This is something that is new for Ace and it’s really a big deal for us.”

McCabe’s is also a paint retailer in town. They have a color matching computer to be able to match any color a customer brings to them as well as a wide selection of paint, brushes, tape and every other material needed for a painting project. “We have everything a customer needs,” McCabe added.

Another product that McCabes offers is a tankless water softener. Waterboss helps consumers eliminate the need for a big tank with this new energy efficient product. McCabe explained that it holds two bags of salt and has an “in-demand” system, meaning it has a sensor that determines when the machine should run. “It eliminates the waste of the older water-softner systems with the sensors because it runs when the sensors call for salt instead of being on a timer and running even when the water is soft enough,” McCabe added.

There are many more products available for the do-it-yourself project. “We are the nuts and bolts store,” McCabe said. “Everything and anything you need to do-it-yourself, we can help you out.”