Look – we’d all like to spend hundreds of dollars on Mom to attempt to show her how much we love and appreciate her. But it’s just not in many of our budgets.
That’s why I’ve created these Dollar Tree gift ideas for Mom – for you to show your mother how much thought you’ve put into her (which, as a mom, I can tell you means the world to us).
Let's get started
Stumped about what to get Mom for Mother’s Day? For her birthday?
What about for Christmas?
These are very low budget Dollar Tree gift ideas that show mom just how much you appreciate her.
My own mother loves attracting birds to her backyard (and so do I).
This hummingbird feeder (which sells for much more elsewhere) and hummingbird nectar are perfect for that.
Total Cost: $2.50 (plus tax)
You can find a cute warmer, like this one with moon and stars cutout, and gift them these 100% pure essential oil warming oils plus some votive candles.
Total Cost: $3.75 (plus tax)
The Dollar Tree has come out with some super-stylish travel essentials you could gift your mom for an upcoming trip, OR, if she travels in general.
You can find:
Total Cost: $5.00 (plus tax)
There are tons of masks now for lots of different body parts.
You could buy the following, and put a bow around them for Mom:
Total Cost: $5.00 (plus tax)
You can pick up a set of fun car coasters that fit into the bottom of your Mom’s drink holders.
These are helpful because they absorb spills and wetness from drinks (plus then Mom doesn’t have to periodically clean up gunk in the bottom of her drink holders).
Total Cost: $2.50 (plus tax)
I was blown away when our Dollar Tree started selling really cute, reusable snack backs.
Get your mother her own set.
Total Cost: $2.50 (plus tax)
Got just a few more dollars to spend (literally)? Great – go for one of these Dollar Tree Mother’s Day basket ideas.
Hint: they work anytime of year – your mother’s birthday, Christmas, etc.
Nothing but the best for your Mom, right?
Dollar Tree actually sells some gourmet chocolates (they just come in smaller packages).
You can purchase several packages to make a whole gift.
In this one, I used:
Total Cost: $6.25 (plus tax)
I’m sure your Mom could use a flavored water drink as a late-afternoon pick-me-up most days.
And you can help provide that for her.
You can find these BPA-free water bottles in many different colors, not just pink – then pair it with a reusable travel straw (I put it in the inside), plus some flavored drink pouches.
And voilà! You’ve got a gift to make any mom smile.
I took a free class at my church last summer, where I learned a highlighting bible study method.
And let me tell you – it really opened things up for me.
Maybe your mother has just dabbled in the bible, or maybe they carry one with them everywhere (probably, they’re somewhere in-between, like me).
No matter where they fall on their bible-study journey, I can assure you that introducing this bible highlighting method + the tools to use it will help them.
Not to mention, they’ll see how much you care.
Here’s what you want to get:
This is my favorite dollar tree Mother’s Day gift basket ideas.
Total Cost: $11.25 (plus tax)
Psst: doing a bible study together is another great + cheap mother-daughter day activity.
Lots of Moms like salads (I know I do!) OR, would LIKE to like salads…and you’re going to help her with that.
The Dollar Tree has some sweet salad supplies that you can include in an overall gift package.
Here’s why I chose:
Hand her the gift basket, and tell her you’re about to uplevel her salad experience!
Total cost: $5.00 (plus tax)
Grab one of these cute new tins at the Dollar Tree, and fill it with a few foot-pedi supplies your mom can easily use.
I put the following in mine:
Total Cost: $6.25 (plus tax)
A Hygge basket is all about putting together items that will bring a feeling of coziness and comfort to your Mom.
I’ve included the following in mine:
Total Cost: $5.00 (plus tax)
No lie – this teal-colored spatula from Dollar Tree’s kitchen section has changed my kitchen.
They sell them for quite a bit more in other stores, so I never had an interest before. But then I saw them there, and thought “why not try it for $1.25?”
Total Cost: $5.00 (plus tax)
Does your mom have a smartphone?
The Dollar Tree sells some seriously great smartphone accessories that will make it easier for her to use it (plus that look really cool, too).
You can include:
Total Cost: $6.25 (plus tax)
Honoring your mother on the next gift-buying occasion for her now seems totally doable, right? I hope I’ve inspired you with these Dollar Tree gift ideas for mom – and that they help your own mother feel special on her day.
The post 14 Dollar Tree Gift Ideas for Mom (She’ll Never Forget) appeared first on Frugal Confessions - How to Save Money.
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Luckily, content marketing templates can make things easier. These templates can help with design and inspire you as you develop various processes to reach potential and existing customers.
Instead of trying to master how to create every type of content in existence, cut down on stress and inefficiency. Get inspired by our collection of free, customizable content creation templates. Below is a list of each type of content marketing template represented.
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Below, you’ll find several helpful templates to jumpstart your content marketing strategy.
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You’re aware that you need a content marketing strategy in place to support the success of your inbound marketing and sales organizations. But how do you get started? We've created a content mapping template so you can create targeted content for each stage of your target audience's buyer's journey.
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Skip the frustrations and start creating the graphics right away. We've created several pre-designed infographic templates that you can customize in PowerPoint or Adobe Illustrator. Within each template, you’ll get guides to teach you how to use the templates effectively.
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Communication with potential and current customers is how relationships remain valuable. Creating “one-size-fits-all” messages come across as inauthentic and lead to people unsubscribing to newsletters or not reading the emails from your company. Download the templates below to ensure you’re delivering timely, actionable messages to your subscriber base.
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Creating videos that tell compelling stories can offer fresh perspectives about products or services. Setting up the lights and camera demonstrates why consumers should purchase from your company and can reach people all across the world in a matter of seconds.
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Editor's note: This post was originally published in December 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
]]>Owning a house (or two, or three) is an exciting milestone in life, and a quintessential symbol of the American Dream. But selling a house can be particularly daunting, especially when you account for the numerous and vexing tax implications involved.
As if the process of selling a house wasn’t complicated enough, lo and behold Uncle Sam decides to play a mean numerical trick on you when that dreaded tax season rolls around.
After all, the last thing you want after popping the bubbly in celebration of your big home sale is a surprise letter from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Or worse yet, finding out after the chips fall that you lost out on big breaks.
Not to worry; we’re here to help you navigate the rules, regulations and stipulations so you can feel more confident about the taxes you owe—or (better yet) don’t owe.
Selling your house soon? Connect with a top agent near you to get an expert opinion on how much your house will sell for, what to fix before listing, and the latest local housing market trends.
Before we get to the nitty gritty, know that in most cases when you sell your home, you won’t even need to report the sale to the IRS. That’s because there’s a good chance the profit from your home sale is tax-free.
According to the Section 121 exclusion from the IRS, you won’t need to pay taxes on up to $250,000 of your net profit, or up to $500,000 if filing jointly, if you meet 3 basic requirements:
If all 3 apply to your situation and you sell a house in an affordable area where homes typically don’t fetch more than $250,000 (if you’re single) or $500,000 (if you’re married), you most likely won’t need to report the home sale on your taxes because you’re under the exclusion threshold.
However, if all 3 requirements apply to you and you happen to sell a house in a competitive area where homes are worth upwards of $750,000+, you can apply the tax exclusion on up to $250,000 of your home sale profit if you’re single, or $500,000 if you’re married.
As for your leftover profit, expect to pay taxes on that number. The rate is 0%, 15%, or 20% dependent on your tax bracket.
“Right now, with the way the market is, at least here in Las Vegas, we’re seeing such a large increase in the past couple years of sellers making a significant profit on what they paid for the house, in comparison to what they sold it for,” says Craig Tann of Huntington & Ellis, who is in the top 1% of real estate agents in Las Vegas and ranks in the top 250 agents nationally.
When it comes to taxes, Tann reveals the most common question he hears among savvy sellers—before, during and sometimes even after selling (gasp!)—is: “Am I responsible for paying taxes on the sale of my home?”
“I like to address it upfront with them, if they may potentially be responsible for capital gains tax, and if they need to speak with their Certified Public Accountant (CPA) about what that looks like for them. I’d hate to have that question after closing, and then they find out they’re responsible for 20 or 25 percent in capital gains,” he says.
But once you have this question answered, what happens next? We examined some of the major tax implication trends when selling a house, and spoke with Tann on his experiences working with homeowners.
This beginner’s guide will walk you through the basics of real estate taxes—no matter where you live in the U.S.
The answers to these questions will help you determine if you can take advantage of the capital gains tax exclusion. In particular, you’ll better understand:
Depending on where you live or how much your house is worth, you most likely will not have to pay taxes on the profit you made selling your home, unless you made more than $250,000 on the sale (or $500,000 if you’re married and filing a joint tax return).
To qualify for the capital gains exclusion, you have to pass three “tests”:
However, Tann says even if you don’t meet all the requirements, you shouldn’t necessarily delay selling your house just because of the tax implications involved.
“If a seller has to move for relocation purposes or because the payments are not affordable or they’re looking to upgrade, although the tax is relevant it may be irrelevant to their situation,” Tann explains. “They should have a conversation with the CPA so they at least know what that looks like for them. And if it’s an investment property then they may want to consider using a 1031 exchange.”
So what’s a CPA and how can you find one? According to the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy, which has been pushing for effectiveness in the accounting profession for over a century, “a CPA license is a symbol to the public that an accountant has mastered the vital elements of the accounting profession.”
To find a CPA for help with your real estate tax questions and needs, you can start by visiting the Association for International Certified Professional Accountants, choosing “For the Public” and then “Find a CPA.”
Deciding whether to take the capital gains tax exclusion
If you happen to own more than one home (and lucky you!), you may want to think twice about claiming the exclusion if you plan to sell a home within 2 years of another sale. That allows you to “protect” or defer the exclusion for another house.
On the other hand, if you own multiple homes but don’t plan on selling another home within 2 years, you don’t have to worry about whether it’s in your best interest to claim the exclusion.
Reporting the home sale on my tax return
According to this handy tip sheet from the IRS, “reporting the sale of a home on a tax return is required if all or part of the gain is not excludable.” You must also report the sale if:
Figuring out the gain on the sale of a home
Generally, when you sell your house for more than it cost, you guessed it, you have a gain! However, this number doesn’t tell you the original cost of your house, so for tax reasons you must determine your adjusted basis to figure out whether you’ve really gained or lost in the sale. Your accountant can help with this.
According to the IRS, your adjusted basis is “generally your cost in acquiring your home plus the cost of any capital improvements you made.”
As you might imagine, capital improvements increase your basis—or the amount of your capital investment in assets, like property, for tax purposes.
Keep in mind: On the other side of the coin, if you experienced depreciation, casualty losses or theft losses, “your basis decreases if you must subtract amounts that you previously claimed as tax deductions.”
We recommend reviewing page 7 of Publication 551, which provides a hypothetical example, to help you figure out your own adjusted basis.
In a nutshell, the core formula is:
Original cost of asset
plus (+)
Improvements to asset
plus (+)
Repair of damages to asset
minus (-)
Depreciation to asset
minus (-)
Deducted casualty loss to asset
equals (=)
Adjusted basis of asset
From there, based on the resulting adjusted basis number, you can easily determine your gain number.
Determining the adjusted basis of your home
For tax purposes, once you’ve determined your cost basis—which is a combination of the amount you paid for your house, legal fees, utility connection charges, title fees, transfer taxes and recording fees among others—you will then adjust that numerical basis depending on your situation.
According to HomeGuides by SFGate, the established home section of the sister-site of the San Francisco Chronicle, here are some specific scenarios that can increase or decrease your cost basis:
Adjustments that increase cost basis:
Because these adjustments increase your home’s cost basis they can reduce your home sale profit.
Adjustments that decrease cost basis:
(Note: According to the IRS, if some or all of your property is used for business, an income-producing activity or a home office, you should have claimed depreciation—“a tax deduction that allows a taxpayer to recover the cost or other basis of certain property”—against the business use of the property. If this applies to you, you’re required to subtract the depreciation deduction from your basis, whether or not you claimed it on your taxes.)
Consider if any of the above adjustments apply to you, and then add or subtract them from your home’s cost basis. This number is your adjusted basis.
Understanding how postponed gains work under old ‘rollover’ rules
Before May 6, 1997, if you sold your house and used the gain to buy a new one at equal or greater price, you could postpone paying tax on that profit until whenever you sold that new house.
After May 6, 1997—when President Bill Clinton abolished the rollover with the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997—through today, you can no longer defer paying taxes on your home sale gain by buying an equal-priced or more expensive home.
Instead, you now only have two options:
As a homeowner, you likely fall in one of three camps: you purchased your home from someone, you built your home or you inherited your home.
Generally speaking, the original cost of your home is the amount you paid for it. However, depending on the scenario that applies to you, how you acquired the home, what you paid for it, when you paid for it and to whom you paid for it matters.
Here’s a breakdown of the scenarios to help you determine the original cost of your home:
You purchased your home from someone
This one might be obvious, but the price you paid for the house is your purchase price—including settlement or closing costs, your down payment and any debt assumed, according to Publication 530 from the IRS.
You built your home
If you constructed your house—or contracted to have it built on land you own—the amount you paid, including “closing costs paid when you bought the land or settled on your mortgage” is the cost of your home. The ‘basis’ also includes expenses involving: labor and materials, contractor fees, architect fees, building permit charges, utility meter and connection charges, applicable legal fees.
(Note: For those who purchased or built a home: The IRS doesn’t allow you to include the sales taxes as part of your cost basis if you choose to deduct those taxes as itemized deductions on Schedule A (Form 1040).
You inherited your home
According to Turbo Tax, a tax preparation software company trusted since 1993, the cost basis on inherited assets, like property, is the “the fair market value of your home on the date of the previous owner’s death.” But what exactly is fair market value? It’s the price an asset would command in the marketplace. If you don’t sell the house within a year of inheritance, Bankrate, a popular personal finance website, suggests hiring a professional certified appraiser to arrive at the fair market value asking price for you.
You’re converting a second home to a primary home
If you happen to own a second home, whether it’s a vacation bungalow off the coast of California, a rental cottage in Cape Cod or some other dreamy escape, it’s tricky to take advantage of the tax benefit that allows married homeowners to claim up to $500,000 of tax-free gains when they sell their primary house.
To claim the benefit, you need to live in the second home for at least 2 years.
Qualifying for a reduced exclusion
If you don’t qualify for the capital gains tax exclusion, you may qualify for a reduced exclusion if “the living conditions of a qualified individual changes,” according to H&R Block, a global tax services provider founded in 1955.
So who’s considered a qualified individual in this scenario?
In most cases, you can qualify for and claim a reduced exclusion if you sold your house for any of the following reasons:
Initiate a tax conversation with a real estate agent.
If your real estate agent hasn’t brought up real estate taxes and what you might owe after closing on the sale of your house, it’s in your best interest to take charge and initiate that conversation with them, though they will be limited in what they can tell you.
Ideally, you should speak with a CPA as well, so you don’t experience any surprises come tax season.
“I’ve heard stories from agents who didn’t have a conversation with the seller about their tax implications, and they missed a deadline by a week or two weeks or a month. Stories about how the seller didn’t have to specifically sell, and they could have waited another 30 days, but now there’s some sort of tax implication. Agents who didn’t advise the client and who, unfortunately, sold and closed the house before a deadline,” Tann explains.
See a tax advisor
Tax rules and regulations are constantly changing from year to year, decade to decade and even administration to administration.
Tann advocates that one of the best things you can do when selling your home is to see a tax advisor.
“There are so many factors that come into play that the agent should have some sort of basic knowledge [of real estate taxes]. But again, sellers want to go to a tax advisor to get proper advice on what the best course of action for them is.”
Tann explains the importance and sensitivity of the matter with the following example:
If a homeowner occupies a house, and they’re at the 1-year and 10-month mark (and, thus, 2 months away from the two-year threshold described earlier), Tann says they want to do one of two things: either hold off on the 2 months or, if they put the house on the market, work the contract so that the closing takes place after the two-year deadline.
Closing statement
Though it’s uncommon for a real estate agent or broker, Tann says his team at Huntington & Ellis sends every client—who sold or purchased a home in the previous year—a copy of their closing statement in the mail by mid-January or February.
The closing statement includes a letter explaining why they need it, and that they need to provide it to their CPA.
“We noticed—five or six years ago—that clients were calling, or their CPAs were calling, asking us for a copy of their closing statement. So we figured that instead of having them call us we would initiate.”
If you happen to be working with an agent who doesn’t provide that service automatically, you can simply request the closing statement from the agent or the title company that closed out the sale of your house.
1099 Form-S
According to the IRS, Form 1099-S (Proceeds From Real Estate Transactions) is needed “to report the sale or exchange of real estate.”
This form usually comes directly from the title company in the mail by mid-February, so keep your eyes peeled for it then because, as Tann explains, it will help you determine whether you have to pay taxes on the profit you made.
For the sake of your wallet (and sanity), selling your house while oblivious about your tax obligations is a fundamental no-no.
Be proactive throughout the year by making appointments with a tax advisor or CPA, starting tax conversations with your agent and keeping receipts on all your property expenses, like home improvements or remodeling.
Bring these papers with your newfound tax background in tow, so you can feel empowered when you file in the spring—no matter the outcome.
Though the tax implications of selling a house are relatively black-and-white, meaning you will or will not have to pay taxes on the profit you make after closing, the sensitivity of the matter stems from the strict timeframes and thresholds the IRS enforces.
While top real estate agents should have a basic understanding of the financial implications of selling a home, you should talk about most of your tax questions and concerns with a tax advisor. Choose a professional who is equipped with the most up-to-date information for any given year, and who you trust to discuss your situation openly and freely.
We analyze millions of home sales to find real estate agents that sell homes faster and for more money. It takes just two minutes to match you with your personalized recommendations.
Header Image Source: (stevepb/ Pixabay)
]]>I don't think I ever quite recovered from the shock of finding out that eggplant — despite being commonly referred to as a vegetable — is in fact, technically a fruit. It belongs to the nightshade family, which also includes tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers.
Once I got over the initial shock of this discovery, I was intrigued enough to start exploring this fruit. My journey began by reading about the Eggplant Festival held in Italy and naturally progressed to finding out about all the different kinds of ways you can prepare it. Eggplant, with its smooth and creamy texture, offers a delightful canvas for culinary creativity. From classic Mediterranean dishes to innovative fusion creations, eggplant can be prepared in countless ways to satisfy your taste buds. Whether you prefer it grilled, roasted, baked, or sautéed, there's a recipe to suit every palate.
Read on to make an eggplant discovery of your own, as it might just become your new favorite fruit after trying out these recipes.
Check out this savory-sweet recipe that is sure to make even the reluctant eggplant eater on board. I love it since I can do the prep work the night before and not think about what to cook the next day. Easy and simple!
Whether you're a fan of Italian cuisine or simply love indulging in comforting dishes, this Eggplant Parmigiana will not disappoint. Embrace the warmth of Italian flavors: savory tomato sauce, melted cheese, and perfectly cooked eggplant mashed together.
Layer slices of roasted eggplant with a fragrant spiced tomato sauce and a creamy yogurt topping, and you've got yourself a taste of the Middle East in the form of eggplant.
Vegan, gluten-free, and sugar-free, done within 30 minutes! The combination of tamari, vinegar, ginger, garlic, and spices creates a sauce that is reminiscent of the traditional General Tso flavors, while the eggplant takes on a satisfyingly crispy exterior.
It does not matter if you are a fan of Turkish cuisine or simply looking for new ways to make eggplant dishes, Turkish Stuffed Eggplant Karnıyarık is a fantastic healthy, easy-to-make recipe. The combination of traditional Turkish spices, such as cumin, paprika, and cinnamon, infuses the stuffed eggplants with a warm and fragrant essence making it a perfect go-to summer meal.
Ready to taste your mom's cooking? This Eggplant Stew is quick, easy, and ready in just 30 minutes! Savor the deliciousness of this hearty and nourishing dish with every spoonful that makes you feel at home again.
Listen, I don't care how diet-adhering you are; you have to experience fat juicy pizza cravings. For me, it happens often, which is why I decided to opt for trying out this Eggplant Pizza as a substitute and did not regret it. The eggplant's naturally mild flavor pairs beautifully with a variety of toppings, allowing you to customize your pizza to your liking. From classic combinations like tomato sauce, cheese, and pepperoni to more adventurous options like pesto, feta, and roasted vegetables, the possibilities are endless.
Try out this wholesome twist on traditional lasagna. It's quite simple to make, and you can even freeze it. Bonus tip; be sure to buy a large eggplant, as this allows for the slices to be wide and long to mimic the size of lasagna sheets.
The combination of spices adds a rich and aromatic touch that is beautifully complemented by the creamy almond sauce. The addition of coconut milk adds a subtle sweetness and luxurious creaminess to the dish. The chicken, however, is completely optional, and if you are vegetarian or vegan, just simply leave it out.
Most often, eggplant dishes are made with mozzarella or Parmesan, while this recipe incorporates meatballs which makes it extra special. I find it perfect for adding a touch of excitement to outdoor gatherings.
I know what you're thinking - no way am I going through the trouble of making sushi. But hear me out; it's Vegan Unagi Nigiri which means not only was no fish harmed, but you can prepare it in under 30 minutes. Itadakimasu!
Roast tender eggplants and combine them with a medley of fresh herbs, tangy lemon juice, and aromatic spices. This salad becomes a delightful blend of textures and flavors that will transport you to the sunny Mediterranean shores. It is a great side dish or a healthy lunch on its own.
If we are talking about easy meals, it can't get much easier than a sandwich. Before you start judging like my grandma at the mention of a sandwich, prepare to be amazed by its depth of flavors. The combination of herbs, such as basil and oregano, adds a fresh and vibrant touch that perfectly complements the rich tomato sauce and savory eggplant.
Roasted Eggplant and Garlic Soup do require a bit more time to make; however, if we are talking about eggplant dishes, I simply couldn't pass up on sharing this recipe. When roasting tender eggplants and garlic to perfection and blending them with spices and creamy coconut milk, I feel comforted and warm even on a rainy day.
Here is a bonus recipe for making a perfect eggplant dip! Roast tender eggplants and add flavorful herbs and spices. It can be enjoyed with crispy pita chips, fresh vegetables, or spread onto your favorite bread.
Which eggplant recipe are you thinking about adding to your weekly dinners? Let us know in the comments and follow us on Instagram for more quick and tasty treats to try!
Header image by Half Baked Harvest
]]>When we went house hunting almost a decade ago, one of the reasons we chose the home we live in now was because of its big backyard and the potential to make it into an outdoor oasis. While the house itself isn’t very big, over the years, we have transformed the backyard into a complete other room of the home. We built out the deck to two levels, added outdoor furniture and outdoor lighting, a fire table and patio heater, outdoor speakers, and even a TV. Bottom line: you can make both your backyard and garden, or even just a small patio, into a gorgeous space where you spend most of your time during the warmer months.
We use the backyard for entertaining, outdoor games, watching TV, working, having dinner – you name it. How can you enjoy all of these same experiences in your own space, creating your very own summer oasis? Here are 6 product categories that can help make it happen.
We are rarely ever in our backyard without music playing, and while we have a full whole-home audio set-up that includes several outdoor speakers that are permanently placed on the decks and down in the garden (some cleverly hidden rock speakers!), you can achieve this in a much simpler (not to mention more affordable) way through portable Bluetooth speakers. Look for ones that are rugged and ideally waterproof or at least splashproof (especially if you have a pool).
Designed specifically for use outdoors (though you can certainly use these inside, too!), make sure it has long battery life so you don’t have to worry about rushing to recharge or plug in the speaker before the party ends. Some models can be daisy-chained together, which means you can wirelessly connect multiple to play music in sync and place them in different spots throughout the backyard. Our portable Bluetooth speaker buying guide offers great tips to help you make the right selection.
As mentioned, one of the technologies we have in our backyard is an outdoor television. In fact, we use it so much, we upgraded to a larger and newer model this year! While it might initially sound like a silly idea – don’t you want to go outside to get away from sedentary, passive activity? – you’d be surprised how much you’ll use it. Whether it’s watching the big game while enjoying the outdoors or keeping on top of the daily news while barbecuing dinner, outdoor TVs add another element of entertainment to the outdoor experience. We’ll often enjoy Sunday BBQ dinners outside while watching a fun family-friendly show or movie.
Find one that’s a decent size for where you’re going to place it, and that isn’t too big or too small to see from where you’ll be sitting. Our deck, for example, has vertical wooden slats so we were limited in the size based on what would fit between them (we opted for a 43-inch model). Outdoor TVs have covered ports for weatherproofing and you’ll want one with easy access to slot in a flash drive or media streaming stick if you aren’t wiring it for cable. If you can at least connect it to the home’s Wi-Fi, however, and it’s a smart outdoor TV, you should be able to access your favourite streaming services. You could also use an outdoor TV to play back a slideshow of photos during a themed party.
Alternatively, consider a portable projector and projection screen, white blanket, or even just a light-coloured wall and watch movies, sports games, and more outdoors. This set-up is particularly great for making your backyard your own “sit-in” movie theatre once the sun goes down. We usually bring one outside and set up a white projector sheet on the fence once a year for a special movie night under the stars.
Not everyone has the budget nor the space to build a pool in their backyard. What’s more, the upkeep is a lot of work (and money!) as anyone who owns a pool will tell you. But what do you do on those sweltering days when you wish you had somewhere to soak your feet or cool down? There are plenty of affordable above-ground pools, including inflatables, you can consider. Make sure it’s large enough to accommodate everyone in the family, more if you plan to have parties. Determine where you’re going to position it and plan for the time it will take to fill it as well.
Conversely, nothing says “backyard or patio oasis” like a hot tub or sauna. There are inflatable ones that can heat up quickly, and even have bubbling and massaging air jets. It’s the perfect way to cap off a long day of work or physical activity with the kids. We have always talked about potentially getting a hot tub for the backyard, and it might very well be our next major purchase for that space.
Growing up, one of the fun at-home activities we always enjoyed was putting on our bathing suits and running back and forth through the sprinkler. Nowadays, local splash pads are all the rage where kids can effectively do the same thing. Go all out with a full-on inflatable water park that has slides, climbing walls, and more.
One aspect about creating a backyard, patio, or garden oasis that is often overlooked is ensuring that you have a nicely shaded area. There’s nothing worse than going outdoors only to find nowhere to sit that isn’t completely covered in bright sunshine. If your goal is to work on your tan, this might not bother you. But if you want to read a book, get some work done, or just enjoy a cool drink and the lovely warmth, you’ll want some shade.
We have a retractable awning for our upper deck, but on the lower deck and in the garden, we use patio umbrellas. This ensures there’s at least one section or seat that can be shaded for comfort. I love offset umbrellas since they sit completely out of the way and can be adjusted and angled as needed.
You can even find lighted umbrellas that gain light from the sun during the day then flick on when you need them at night for a game of cards, a late-night dinner, or just some good conversation.
The best way to turn your garden, patio, or backyard into a summer oasis is with comfortable and inviting furniture and decor. Our outdoor furniture buying guide and patio makeover buying guide provides everything you need to know about setting up your outdoor space to maximize the fun, entertainment, and relaxation. Start with the right seating, whether it’s an outdoor dining table, conversation set, or both. Then, consider things like smart lighting, side tables, patio umbrellas, decorative cushions, even hammocks and swings. For a smaller patio, you might be fine with a couple of Adirondack chairs or a patio swing.
Start with the biggest pieces of furniture, plot out where everything will go, then go from there. In my backyard, we have a dining table that seats eight on the top level along with a barbecue and two small side tables. On the lower deck, we have an L-shaped conversation set with an offset umbrella. I love modular sets because you can move them around as desired based on what you’re doing and how many people are there. We also have a fire table in the middle, which comes in handy for late-night conversations and drinks outside. It not only provides warmth but also lighting, and can keep the mosquitoes at bay. Speaking of heat, finishing off the set-up on the upper deck, especially for extending the outdoor fun through fall, is a patio heater. I’d also suggest having some foldable outdoor chairs packed away to accommodate extra guests as needed. For kids to play and get their hands dirty with sand, art, and other messy projects, we have a picnic table on the grass where they can go wild!
Who needs an amusement park when you can set up your own outdoor gaming area at home? There’s lots you can do to make your outdoor space super fun for kids and adults, alike. You can pick and choose what you want to play when or set up a number of games for a fun day of family or neighbourly competition. Who can rack up the most points? Maybe the prize is control of the music playlist for an hour, or loser has to refill everyone’s drinks all night.
Choose from classic outdoor party games like croquet and bocce to outdoor discs, aqua golf, basketball, and even tossing games to bring that carnival feel. Along with a small basketball net, we have a cornhole game for the backyard, soccer nets and balls, and an axe throwing game that has become a new family favourite.
Whether you have a small or large backyard, a deck, or even just a tiny patio, there are plenty of ways you can use the space to create a beautiful summer oasis. It might just be a single piece of furniture, like a hammock or conversation set. Maybe it’s just an eye-catching fire table that turns your outdoor space into the perfect room for cool nights.
Whether an “oasis” to you means a spot that can keep the kids busy for hours or somewhere to relax with your feet up while watching the football game, there’s a way to create the perfect space at home.
Check out plenty of ways to make your backyard or garden summer oasis a reality at Best Buy Online.
The post Make your backyard, garden, or patio into a summer oasis appeared first on Best Buy Blog.
]]>By MICHAEL ALLEN
Humans have been fascinated by Mars probably since the first of the species turned their gaze to the night sky. Space exploration today attests to that continuing fascination.
Since the 1960s, more than 40 missions have tried to reach the Red Planet. As a result, there are currently three rovers active on the Martian surface, plus one lander and one helicopter, while eight orbiters circle the planet.
‘Many of the planets and moons in our solar system are very interesting, but Mars is a little special,’ said François Forget, an atmospheric scientist at Sorbonne University in France. ‘Nowadays, Mars is quite similar to Earth, but in the past – 3 to 4 billion years ago – it was even more similar.’
While the extensive exploration to date has produced a wealth of geological data, plenty remains unknown about the fourth planet from the Sun.
Signs exist of a once vast ocean covering Mars’s northern hemisphere, while elsewhere lie scars carved out by rivers and glaciers.
Yet the climatic processes that shaped the planet observed today remain a mystery.
As far back as 4 billion years ago, when life started to appear on Earth, Mars had rivers and lakes of liquid water. This raises the possibility that life also developed on Mars.
But scientists are also interested in the processes that created the dry, desert planet seen today and what they could reveal about Earth’s climate.
Areas of Mars’s surface are more than 3 billion years old. Such records are unavailable on Earth as it has been fundamentally altered by life, which has erased much of the planet’s early history.
Something else also makes Mars special: it’s a place where astronauts are hoping to go at some point.
The European Space Agency, or ESA, and the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration – NASA – are working towards sending astronauts to Mars.
Forget is the lead researcher on an EU-funded project developing a model of how Mars evolved in a bid to answer some of the questions about the planet’s history.
Called Mars through time, the project began in late 2019 and is due to last into most of 2025.
“
Mars is quite similar to Earth, but in the past – 3 to 4 billion years ago – it was even more similar.
Current climate models for Mars cover only short periods – several years – of its history and simulating the impact of features such as glaciers, rivers and lakes is tricky, particularly over long timeframes, according to Forget.
The project’s model is designed to run for thousands, or even millions, of years, simulating the past evolution of geological features along with the changing atmosphere.
While current climate models require assumptions about where water sat on the planet’s surface, the evolution one for Mars is designed to work out where water would have naturally developed and reached a stable equilibrium, says Forget.
This is done by incorporating more detail into the model such as the effect of microclimates.
For instance, slopes that face a pole on a planet are usually cooler, potentially leading to the formation of ice and glaciers. On warmer slopes facing the equator, liquid water might be more likely.
‘If you wanted to simulate the Earth but you didn’t know anything about it, you would put water in the oceans and then slowly Earth’s evolution model would, for instance, build the Antarctic ice sheets,’ Forget said. ‘You want to be able to do the same on Mars, and of course, the model will create lakes, seas and rivers.’
It also incorporates large-scale changes that occur on longer geological timescales. The tilt of Mars rotational axis, known as obliquity, typically changes every 50 000 years and brings with it large scale climatic changes.
To use the model, the scientists rely on known data from Mars’s past such as geology and topography, the location of rivers, lakes and glaciers and atmospheric composition. They also make some assumptions around missing data.
When the simulation runs, the scientists adjust their assumptions and parameters until the evolution of the model Mars fits with the existing knowledge of the planet in the past and the present.
Once a model matches the geological records, it provides information on the environment, chemistry and atmosphere of the planet and how they changed, according to Forget.
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Having access, without too much difficulty, to water ice on Mars will be very helpful.
So far, the model has confirmed that some strange-looking moraines – debris left behind by glaciers – are likely from ones made of frozen carbon dioxide.
The simulations have also suggested how these CO2 glaciers could have formed and shown that they would have caused dramatic changes in the composition of Mars’s atmosphere.
To test one theory of how liquid water might have existed on the Martian surface, scientists plugged a hydrogen-rich parameter into their model to get a possible hint of how Mars’s climate might have become warm enough to sustain liquid lakes and rivers.
The model showed that, if Mars had had a hydrogen-rich atmosphere in the past, it could have produced a significant greenhouse effect and boosted the planet’s temperature.
At the other end of the temperature spectrum, a better understanding of the formation of glaciers and where frozen water might exist today could help with manned missions to Mars.
‘Having access, without too much difficulty, to water ice on Mars will be very helpful, according to NASA,’ Forget said. ‘They have set up project teams looking at where water ice can be found and the Mars through time project can really contribute.’
The EU research could also provide information on where liquid water might be found. As it happens, these are areas where astronauts don’t want to land.
That’s because of a concept known as planetary protection. The last thing astronauts want to do is contaminate Mars with microorganisms from Earth, particularly in liquid water where they could thrive.
Research in this article was funded via the EU’s European Research Council (ERC). If you liked this article, please consider sharing it on social media.
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This article was originally published in Horizon, the EU Research and Innovation magazine with Creative Commons License
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]]>This before and after kitchen remodel I’m sharing today was one I consulted on as a local, in-person consultation. I went out first for some general questions about their living room and some upgrades they wanted to make there, then later on for the kitchen.
We stayed in touch and they shared a few in-process pics with me, as I featured on my blog in this post.
Since they are almost complete, sans a light fixture for over the sink, I asked if I could come out and snap a few pics myself.
This one turned out well and I am loving the warm wood cabinetry they did with the green island. I especially love when projects defy the trends and turn out looking beautiful and reflective of the homeowner’s style and taste.
Those cherry stained cabinets didn’t work with the look they were after and this color of cabinetry is actually on my list of cabinet colors I would paint these days.
BTW, these weren’t real cherry, just a plain wood stained a dark cherry color.
They have ties to Hawaii and wanted a tropical island type vibe. The owner loves Koa wood which is a warm toned wood. While koa wood is pricey here on the mainland, I liked the idea of a warm wood though for the cabinets.
They were keeping the tile floors too, so wood cabinets would be good to warm up the space work well as a contrast.
They had done some wood paneling on the fireplace wall in this wood tone after my first visit and now we wanted to match up that look in the kitchen on the wall. This warm stained maple cabinetry from Kent Moore was just the perfect look to marry their kitchen with the family room just across the space.
The green makes for a nice color statement and works with other green accents they have in the home. The black counters and pulls add a striking modern touch.
I’m so glad they did their cabinets to the ceiling, it really echoes the paneling that went to the ceiling on the opposite wall. Doesn’t it just look more custom and high end? Whether you use them much or not, I think they are a good investment.
I helped them select warm toned items from their collections for the glass front cabinets at the ceiling. It’s just a nice subtle look that contributes to the overall ambience.
Another part of their upgraded look was the island and how they went from an island with a sheetrock front and sides to an island that is all made of wood in a vibrant green color.
I mentioned that as an item to try and upgrade if you are doing a kitchen remodel in this post. >>> 6 More Outdated Kitchen Design Features Worth Addressing in Your Remodel
I love how the glass tile backsplash and the island are tied together with the green. Having only the wood cabinet finish and then black countertop on the wall would not have been as cohesive or vibrant.
Their new appliances were the Chef Collection from Samsung, black stainless finish. The kept their stainless dishwasher for now as it is in good condition.
I like the black stainless look here. The “fingerprint resistant” black stainless cooktop really blends into the black countertop. This color is more subdued and not as bright and shiny looking as regular stainless. I think both the refrigerator and the wall ovens work well in this kitchen.
(They do have a pop-up vent just behind the cooktop, you can see in the pic above.)
You can see that these are not the warm wood cabinets of yesterday. While maybe a similar color tone, these look current and perfectly on trend. Features like the touches of black, the cabinets to the ceiling, the simple cabinet door style and the bold green accent color give it that more up-to-date vibe.
They did a great job and are happy with their new kitchen. I love the warmth and color here and am so impressed with their DIY skills coordinating everything and doing some work themselves.
I’m proud I could give them direction and help them out with another check-in consult along the way. Hats off to these design-savvy homeowners!
Want to see more Before & Afters from my consultation clients? Here’s a few below!
Pin this image below to Pinterest to save for later and help me share my blog!
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Since so much of today’s communication happens online, it makes sense that we tend to cherish handwritten or handcrafted items—especially when they’re from the people closest to us. The problem? Over the years, sentimental cards and letters can pile up, leaving you more overwhelmed than appreciated. Finding an effective way to store cards is essential.
If you’re not quite sure what to do with old cards and letters, you’re in luck! There are many great opportunities to display, repurpose, and store your favorite notes. Whether you’re looking for creative ways to display love letters, wondering what to do with old birthday cards or anything in between, we’ll walk you through your options.
The first step is simple: sorting through your cards to decide which category each note falls into. Take some time to review your stack, and make one pile for your favorites to display. Then, make another for any that can be repurposed and a third for any you want to keep stored away.
Once that’s done, start exploring the creative organizing tips below!
via Care2
Framing your favorite cards is a tried-and-true solution. Think of it as a longer-term alternative to setting your cards on a bookshelf or pinning them to the fridge. Framing gives your cards a more permanent home, and they’ll look more like intentional décor than a sweet afterthought.
Take inspiration from an art gallery by giving each letter or card its own frame, then hang those frames on one wall for a dramatic impact. Or, if you have keepsakes you want to display with the card, consider putting those items in a shadow box and hanging that on the wall.
How should you decide which cards to display? Experts say it depends on the contents of the note. The more personal and intimate the card, the more likely it should be kept private. “Obviously, a very old love letter from an ex should not be framed, but one from your current partner could be framed and put somewhere discreet where only you might see it,” recommends Apartment Therapy writer Laure Joliet. “It’s a nice way to bring the personal into your home and to help tell the story of your relationship.”
Another option is turning sentimental cards into a scrapbook or special album. Professional organizer Nancy McGivney recommends cards and letters be treated like kids’ artwork. “Keep only the best. Then make a holiday album you store with the seasonal decor to remember great holidays past,” she adds.
With some chipboard, a hole punch, and some rings, you can create an album of cards to flip through anytime. Or, if you want a more secure option, a binder with plastic sleeve inserts also works well.
If you’re hoping for a more creative, dynamic display, choose a few of your favorite cards and arrange them on a photo mat so the images you like the best are highlighted. Use craft glue to secure the cards to the mat, and flip the mat over when it’s dry. Cut away the excess using a razor blade, then insert the mat around a related photo. When you’re done, you’ll have a themed frame that tells a deeper story than the photo itself.
Another way to store cards is to use them as decór inside mason jars. This craft is so easy, you’ll wonder why you didn’t think of it yourself!
Just slide your favorite cards into mason jars, wrap them around the interior surface, then put the lid on. Finish it off with some ribbon or seasonal greenery. When you’re done, you’ll have the perfect tabletop display to set up in your home. Mommy Kat and Kids have the full tutorial, which you can modify with the seasons to keep sentimental cards on display year-round.
Some cards feel like they have sentimental value, but they don’t quite make the cut for display or storage. Whether the card itself just isn’t your style, the message was sweet but nothing special, or you just have too many cards for a particular occasion (or from a particular person), repurposing is a great way to keep the special meaning without keeping the clutter. Here are a few repurposing options to consider.
If you’re like most people, you can never have enough magnets. Luckily, custom magnets are easy to create, and greeting cards make the perfect material.
Start by cutting out your favorite images or notes and glue them to a magnet sheet, then cut the magnet sheet to size. That’s it! Using this technique, you can easily display your special items on your refrigerator for everyone to see.
If any of your cards are for specific holidays, you can also use this process to create themed magnets that make up a set. Motherhood on a Dime used this technique to create a nativity scene for her kids, but you can easily modify the steps in this tutorial and apply it to any cards you might have at home.
via Penina Finger, CC
For those cards that you’re just not sure what to do with, cut out the images and turn them into cute gift tags. It’s a win-win: you’ll always have gift tags when you need them, and your cards get a second life alongside someone else’s gift.
When you look closely at a card, you can find all sorts of shapes that will make great tags. Cut out common images like hearts, stars, cakes, flowers, and other common graphics, and you’ll probably end up with tags for a variety of holidays and occasions.
When you find an image you like, just cut it out and punch a small hole in your tag. Then, string some twine or ribbon through the hole. When you’re done, store your tags in an envelope in the same place as the rest of your gift-wrapping supplies so you can easily find them when you need them.
Many people hang on to items because they fear how the giver might feel if they don’t hold on to them. If you’ve ever thought, “My grandmother would be devastated if I got rid of that!” this one’s for you.
We don’t often consider giving cards back to the sender, but it’s a fun option that also becomes a nostalgic gift. If you want to go this route, just package up all the cards and notes you have from each person, and send them back with a quick note of your own.
The Art of Simple writer Katie Clemons recalls when someone sent a package like this to her grandmother. “It was filled with about 24 letters and Christmas cards that she had written to her closest college friend over the years! Getting those letters back was like receiving a time capsule. It was the first time we got to learn about my dad’s first Christmas.”
Your cards can create a similar feel-good moment for the original sender, so don’t be afraid to send your cards back if they’ve already served their purpose in your home.
Using a circle punch and some twine, you can create your own garland out of notes and cards that you have around your house. Take each circle, fold it in half, and then glue the right sides together. Bobbi Lewin uses five circles to create this design, but you can use however many you want. Let them dry, punch a hole in the center, and then string twine through each one. This is an especially fun way to repurpose holiday cards as a heartfelt holiday decoration!
Another simple way to repurpose your sentimental notes and cards is to create your own postcards. If the inside of the card’s front cover is blank, cut off the front of the card for your new “postcard.”
You can store or display the note that was inside the card, or you can toss it in the recycling bin. Then, using a corner shaper that you can find at your local craft store, round out the corners so they’re nice and smooth. Add a note, an address, and a stamp, and you’re done! Just drop it in the mail like a regular postcard whenever it’s convenient.
via Sarah Parrott, CC
Make a simple bottle of wine even more special by adding your own personalized gift tag. Start by cutting a piece of cardstock into a 3-inch by 7-inch rectangle. Then, use scissors to score the card about 2.5 inches from the top (where you’ll fold it) and use a 1.25-inch hole punch to create a hole large enough for the neck of the bottle. Once your cardstock is cut and ready to go, cut a section of your greeting card to your desired size. Secure the card to the cardstock, then hang the tag on the bottle when the glue is dry. This is a great trick to make a last-minute wine gift feel more thoughtful and put together.
At the end of the day, most people will have some cards that are too special to keep but too personal to display. That’s where effective greeting card storage comes in. For those cards that don’t fall into the other categories, here are a few simple storage options.
If you’re nervous about losing the physical copies of your old notes and greeting cards—or you just won’t interact with them that way—moving your cards to a digital space is a worthwhile project.
You can scan all of your sentimental cards into your computer or find a company that will scan them for you. If you have cards that are three-dimensional or have a look that scanning can’t capture, set up a light box and take photos of your cards. When you’re done, you can transfer all your images into a digital scrapbook.
“Digital Scrapbooking is simply creating a scrapbook layout on the computer. You use paper and elements that are created digitally using graphic design software,” Michele McGraw writes on Scraps of my Geek Life. “There are many different programs available starting from $29 to over $500. If you are just starting out, I recommend you start with a dedicated scrapbooking program because the software will come with some digital kits to give you a head start.”
Storing the actual item is a little more sensitive because cards, letters, and ink can deteriorate over time. “If you would like to store some items in a box, make sure it is waterproof, sealed, and limited in size,” recommends Claire Kurtz. “In order to not grow beyond the chosen size box, maintain a strategy of removing one item before adding a new one.” Make sure to store this box in a climate-controlled storage unit to ensure your valuables won’t be damaged by heat, cold, or moisture.
Finally, if you decide you don’t need to store your sentimental cards (or you’re wondering what to do with old sympathy cards), consider donating them to the Recycled Cards Program offered through St. Jude’s Ranch for Children. They turn your used cards into new all-occasion and holiday cards. The cards they create are then sold, and that money helps support their programs for homeless, neglected, or abused children, young adults, and families.
“The program is beneficial to everyone – customers receive fun, “green” holiday or other occasion cards they can feel good sending to their friends and loved ones,” according to St. Jude’s, “and the children at St. Jude’s Ranch receive payment for their work and learn basic job skills and the importance of recycling.”
Many people struggle with how to store cards and letters, so if you don’t have a system in place, you’re not alone! But when it comes to sentimental items, it’s worth the effort to handle them with care. Take the time to display, repurpose, and store each card and letter to ensure they will last a lifetime. One day, you’ll be glad you did!
Updated on 2/3/16 & 6/27/23 from an article originally published on 5/9/14.
This post How to Display, Repurpose, and Store Sentimental Cards appeared first on Life Storage Blog.
]]>By Emily A. Thomas, PhD
If parents believe they would never forget their child in a hot car, they should think again. It can happen to anyone.
Since 1998, about 950 children have died in hot cars and more than half of them were left behind unknowingly by their caregiver, according to NoHeatStroke.org.
A leading expert in cognitive neuroscience who has studied the role of memory in such tragedies has found that the stresses parents face in everyday life can make these memory lapses more likely.
Forgetting a child is not a negligence problem but a memory problem, says David Diamond, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
“The most common response is that only bad or negligent parents forget kids in cars,” Diamond says. “It’s a matter of circumstances. It can happen to everyone.”
During the summer, many families change their daily routines for vacations or other reasons, and that disruption is a common factor in these tragic incidents, Diamond’s research found.
“The worst thing any parent or caregiver can ever do is to think that something like this could never happen to them or someone in their family,” says Janette Fennell, founder and president of KidsAndCars.org, a group that tracks these incidents.
The tragedies occur at an alarming rate, and they cover a range of circumstances. NoHeatStroke.org reports that the deaths span from 5-day-old babies to 14-year-olds. The earliest heatstroke death in 2023 occurred in February.
KidsAndCars.org’s heatstroke fact sheet (PDF) highlights that caregivers involved in these incidents come from many walks of life. They include teachers, dentists, social workers, law enforcement officers, nurses, clergymen, military officers, and even a rocket scientist. These tragic cases can happen to anyone, regardless of their education or socioeconomic status.
And it’s not just a summertime problem: Even on days with mild temperatures, the heat inside a closed vehicle can reach dangerous levels within an hour, posing major health risks to small children or pets left inside, Consumer Reports’ testing shows.
Diamond says the issue involves two parts of a person’s working memory: prospective and semantic. Prospective memory helps us remember to do something in the future, while semantic allows drivers to make the trip from work to home on “autopilot,” where they arrive without remembering clear details of how they got there.
Prospective and semantic memories work together to help us make changes to our routines; these changes could include things such as “drop off the baby at day care” or “stop for groceries on the way home.” When the working memory fails, such as when we’re distracted or stressed, there can be catastrophic implications, Diamond says. He gave examples of situations where critical safety steps can be overlooked, such as a surgeon leaving tools in a patient, a pilot not setting the wing flaps for landing, and caregivers forgetting that there’s a baby in the car.
“The habit brain system is a great convenience that allows us to go into autopilot,” Diamond says. “The beauty of it is that we don’t have to remember every turn, but the problem is that it’s actually guiding our behavior. When it guides our behavior, it suppresses the other part of the brain that is supposed to remind us of additional information.”
“We have to accept the fact that our brain multitasks. And as a part of that multitasking, the awareness of a child can be lost,” Diamond says. “We have to accept that the human memory is flawed. That includes when loving, attentive parents lose awareness of their children when they are in a car.”
Diamond has studied many heatstroke cases and points to common factors: stress, sleep deprivation, and change in routine.
Many times, when a child died, there had been a change in the day’s routine, Diamond says. For example, a parent who wouldn’t normally be responsible for day-care drop-off might have been given that task that day. Because our brains recognize a pattern for the day, this parent would drive to work as usual, even though the baby was along for the ride. And unless there was an external cue, such as seeing the diaper bag or hearing the baby, the parent’s brain would continue on autopilot and could even create a false memory that the child is safely at day care, Diamond found. Sleep deprivation and stress can also increase the potential for a working-memory failure.
Conflicts between semantic and prospective memory are normal, Diamond says. His research has shown that they happen to everyone—not just parents and caregivers—on almost a daily basis. The added stress, distraction, and sleep deprivation that parents often face can contribute to tragic situations.
The first step to preventing these hot-car tragedies is for parents and caregivers to understand that human memory is faulty and that these memory failures can happen to anyone. The key to avoiding such incidents is for people to use strategies aimed at overcoming memory lapses. “The strategies need to be child-specific,” Diamond says. “When you have a child in the car, do something unique.”
Here are some strategies from the expert team that tests car seats for CR.
“Education is very important, but education alone won’t end these tragedies,” says Fennell at KidsAndCars.org. “It’s going to take education along with technology to help our imperfect brains.”
You can also invest in a vehicle or car seat with integrated reminder technology (see our guide to rear occupant alert systems), or SensorSafe from Goodbaby, the parent company of Evenflo and Cybex. Consumer Reports’ experts have evaluated these technologies and found that integrated systems that default to “on,” rather than needing to be activated by the driver, are the most beneficial. (The concern is that most parents don’t believe a hot-car tragedy could happen to them and therefore might not choose to turn on a protective feature.)
“When my college-aged son was an infant, this almost happened to us,” says Jennifer Stockburger, director of operations at CR’s Auto Test Center. “My husband was responsible for dropping our son at day care one day, which was not his normal routine. He drove far past the day care, and only when our son made some noise did he realize his mistake. Even if you can’t imagine making such an error, I encourage parents to use the tips we provide to safeguard their children.”
Just how hot can the inside of a car get? On the “Consumer 101” TV show, Consumer Reports’ expert Emily Thomas, PhD, shows host Jack Rico how rapidly interior temperatures can rise—and what you can do to protect your kids.
Consumer Reports is an independent, nonprofit organization that works side by side with consumers to create a fairer, safer, and healthier world. CR does not endorse products or services, and does not accept advertising. Copyright © 2023, Consumer Reports, Inc.
]]>Homeschooling: Unleashing the Potential of Kids with Executive Function Challenges ~
Written by Colleen Kessler from Raising Lifelong Learners
We all know that executive function skills are super important for our children’s success in organizing, planning, managing time, and more. But what about those kids who struggle with these skills? Here’s some great news: homeschooling can be a game-changer for them!
There are so many ways homeschooling can benefit children with executive function challenges, giving them the chance to develop and strengthen these skills in a supportive and personalized environment.
Picture this: instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, homeschooling allows us to tailor our teaching to our child’s specific needs. We can create lesson plans that are perfect for them, using teaching strategies that work best for their learning style. Unit studies and project-based learning can be a great motivator for kiddos who love diving down rabbit holes and following their own interests
This individualized attention helps them truly understand and retain what they’re learning, and they can progress at their own pace. We can also meet their asynchronous needs — whatever they are. How awesome is that?
Time management and organization can be tough for kids with executive function challenges. I have one talented kiddo who can lose her sheet music right after her voice teacher gives it to her — before she’s ever left her teacher’s tiny office!
But with homeschooling, we can create flexible schedules that fit our kids’ unique needs. We can design routines that include breaks, time management techniques, and self-regulation strategies. By allowing our kids to set their own pace and adapt their schedules when necessary, we empower them to take charge of their learning and build those crucial executive function skills.
Executive function skills get better with practice, right? Well, homeschooling gives us plenty of opportunities to help our kids develop these skills in real-life situations. We can involve them in household chores, set up projects that require planning and organization, and encourage them to participate in community activities.
Inside our membership community, The Learner’s Lab, we equip families to work on these skills throughout the month by completing multi-age social-emotional and learning challenges together. These experiences allow our children to apply their executive function skills in everyday life, making the learning stick.
Distractions, distractions everywhere! But wait, not in our homeschooling environment! Traditional schools can be overwhelming for kids with executive function challenges due to all the stimuli.
However, homeschooling provides a controlled setting with fewer distractions, allowing our kids to focus better. We can create a peaceful, organized workspace that supports their learning and minimizes external distractions. It’s all about optimizing their ability to tackle tasks that require executive function skills.
Remember, emotional well-being plays a huge role in developing executive function skills. Homeschooling allows us to give our kids the individual emotional support they need. We can create a nurturing and understanding learning environment where they feel safe to grow.
By fostering resilience, teaching stress management, and encouraging effective coping strategies, we set our children up for success. Homeschooling removes the anxiety and pressure that sometimes comes with traditional schooling, letting them focus on their academic and personal growth. It can be a real game-changer for children who struggle with executive function skills.
With personalized learning, flexible schedules, skill-building opportunities, reduced distractions, and emotional support, we can create an environment that caters to our child’s unique needs. Homeschooling empowers our kids to develop those essential executive function skills, equipping them with the tools they need to succeed academically and flourish in their personal lives. With the right support and resources, homeschooling opens up a world of possibilities for our children, giving them the bright future they deserve.
What’s Your Homeschool Mom Personality? Take Jamie’s quiz now and receive a free personality report to help you organize your homeschool based on what your type needs most!
]]>When I visited in August 2022, that company—BeeHex—was just one of the 18 teams selected to compete in the Phase II of the Deep Space Food Challenge, a contest sponsored by NASA and the Canadian Space Agency. The teams’ task: Create foods that will not only feed a crew of astronauts on a deep-space mission to Mars for at least three years but also improve life on Earth.
Innovators from around the globe signed on to design food-production technologies that could potentially earn cash prizes and even enter orbit. When the contest began in 2021, there were 239 teams from 29 countries vying for the opportunity to have their food tech included on a future space mission. And just last month, NASA whittled that figure down even further, to eight winners of Phase II. But before we skip ahead to the winners, it’s important to meet some of these teams and understand why such a contest exists in the first place.
With the successful launch of Artemis I (NASA’s first phase to get astronauts back to the moon, and then Mars) and recent announcement of Artemis II (a crewed lunar flyby test scheduled for 2024), NASA is one step closer to getting a crew to Mars. These expansions into space exploration come with questions about how to feed astronauts around 127.31 million miles away from Earth. Future foods should produce minimal waste, require minimal resources, and be actually tasty—something lacking in current and past space food.
In the 1960s, astronauts such as John Glenn squeezed out meat and applesauce from tubes while sucking their meals through straws and dining on freeze-dried foods. Powdered drinks and freeze-dried foods were also used on Gemini’s Earth-orbit missions. To spice up their bland diets, some astronauts took extreme measures: NASA pilot John Young made history in 1965 when he smuggled an unapproved corned beef sandwich aboard Gemini III.
Space food improved slightly for Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first humans to set foot on the moon in 1969. As dehydrated foods replaced tube foods, Apollo astronauts were able to add water to dried beef and eat it with a spoon. Their meals were edible, but still a poor imitation of those available on Earth.
The 1980s brought about the Tang craze, when civilians bought the orange-powder drink to eat straight from the jar or mixed with water. Contrary to popular belief, NASA did not invent Tang, and astronauts did not love it. In 2013, Buzz Aldrin did not hold back when he told NPR, “Tang sucks.”
In the decades since, menu options, nutrition, and flavor options have improved (astronauts even get to taste-test meals ahead of time), but space food still has lots of room for improvement. To be fair, the food—all of which gets processed at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas—must meet strict criteria for space. Food that produces crumbs, for example, could pose a danger to a shuttle’s system. Loose Cheerios or a cup of coffee could spell disaster in a zero-gravity environment. Bread is nonexistent in space, making a juicy burger served on a bun (or a corned beef sandwich) out of the question. Instead, astronauts rely on soft tortillas for sandwiches.
More work still needs to be done to be Mars ready. The challenge of creating sustainable and palatable food in a limited environment is one that NASA’s contest aims to address.
“We really looked at everything,” says James Hury III, director at the Translational Research Institute for Space Health and the lead judge for Phase II of the competition. “Crickets and insects, and things that may not sound appetizing, but you’re encouraging people to come up with ways to make them an appetizing source of protein.”
Over the course of this competition, I spent 18 months interviewing several teams in the United States and across the globe. They took time to share their knowledge and their dreams for a better future—and sometimes even the inner-workings of their labs or, in one case, their garage. Though each team differed in their approach—plant growth, manufactured foods, bio-culture, and more—they all had a common goal of making a positive difference on Earth and in space. The possibility of astronauts savoring a slice of good pizza or a real sandwich seemed light-years away—until now.
In 1962, The Jetsons debuted. In the cartoon, George Jetson flew a space car and his son, Elroy, could make his own dinner with a press of a few buttons—peanut butter, sardines, liverwurst, baloney, sardines—and, blastoff, a full hoagie shot into little Elroy’s hands.
Today, reality has caught up with science fiction: At BeeHex, a company in Gahanna, Ohio, a similar version of The Jetsons’ sandwich scene is taking place with 3-D printed foods.
Here, Anjan Contractor is creating 3-D printed foods for the Deep Space Food Challenge. Contractor and his team have designed what they’ve dubbed a Universal Food Fabricator (UFF) for missions to Mars. The machine uses a dehydration chamber where vegetables, fruits, and meats are changed to powder form. Then, the foods get stored in air-tight cartridges where they can be kept for years—a necessity for the long mission to Mars.
The UFF system, Contractor says, starts simply enough: It’s based on the same system of dehydrating foods and packaging them in a vacuum seal that NASA has been using since the 1970s. But BeeHex is adding a few tweaks.
“What if besides creating a long shelf life, we could improve the food’s texture using a 3-D printing food system?” Contractor asks.
It’s August 2022 and I’m sitting across from Contractor in BeeHex’s conference room. To illustrate how the process works, he holds up a clear capsule that looks similar to the tubes that come through a bank drive-through window. These cartridges hold powdered food ingredients that are the “printing material” that will create foods like pizza or steak. When the capsule is inserted in the machine, water is added and an extrusion process creates a palatable texture. Contractor says he’s able to create a juicy, meaty-tasting steak with a rich aroma that has the same appearance of steak served at any fine restaurant.
“If we can create foods that are exciting, with texture, taste, and smell, we can change the future of [space food],” Contractor says. “You could choose a 3-D printed steak and broccoli. Or pizza.”
Contractor leads me into a large lab where the atmosphere is buzzing with activity. One group of employees huddle around a screen looking over data, while another group troubleshoots a laser problem, and a few congregate near a kitchen counter lined with pizzas for a quick bite.
Using natural food ingredients, Contractor intends for his 3-D printed food device to be useful for the consumer market as well as outer space. To test the concept, he created a 3-D printed pizza and partnered with Donatos Pizza, a regional chain headquartered in Ohio. BeeHex even shares space with Donatos so they can better collaborate. While there, we walked past a mound of pepperoni about a foot high—part of thickness trials to create the perfect pepperoni slice.
“Pizza was a natural fit to begin with because it’s layer by layer—crust, then sauce, then cheese, and toppings—just like 3-D printing,” says Contractor. “But the market for a 3-D printed pizza is not there.”
Making pizza is not labor intensive, so making 3-D printed pizzas didn’t solve any labor issues. Cake decorating, however, is labor intensive, so BeeHex invented a 3-D Cake Writer that frosts and personalizes cakes. Contractor sells these devices to big-box stores for automated cake decorating to finance his deep space food project. But the dessert decorating doesn’t stop there: Contractor tests his 3-D printer prototype for NASA’s contest with the task of frosting cookies. Toward the back of the lab, the printer’s red laser beam scans across a sheet. After the sensor identifies each cookie’s location, a metal, robotic tube pipes white frosting in lines.
Space-funding skeptics often question if putting money into space exploration makes sense when there are pressing problems here on Earth. To that, Contractor argues that the two are not mutually exclusive. “Space food inventions have and will continue to improve life here on Earth.”
Contractor smiles and talks animatedly when discussing how his 3-D food printer will bring delicious foods with long shelf lives for astronauts. But his dark brown eyes turn serious as he speaks of solving big problems like food waste and food shortages. He believes this technology could be applied to refugee camps, Arctic laboratories, and disaster relief locations before they’re launched into orbit.
Later, he hopes for innovations like his printer to become mainstream to address more widespread issues, like food chain supply problems.
“The years when we have overproduction, the waste that we are creating can be saved for later,” Contractor says. “Even the edible parts of plants that we discard like the leaves, the roots—these can be dehydrated and stored for the long term. We can mix these foods with other 3-D printed foods, and make them palatable.”
To ensure this palatability, Contractor has hired an in-house chef. Just before I leave BeeHex, Contractor and the chef chat about the final details for a 3-D printed fish piccata. They’ve decided to use her classic chicken piccata recipe, but swap the chicken for cod. Their conversation is accompanied by the hum of the red laser scanning across sugar cookies.
Before leaving, I take one final look at the food innovation timeline in the lobby. My eye travels back to the glass panel that reads “Canning in 1795.” A quick internet search reveals that the invention of canning was the result of a French contest created to solve a problem. Napoleon offered a reward of 12,000 francs for the invention of a new food preservation method. Nicolas Appert won Napoleon’s award, changing food production forever. Now a new challenge looms: What obscure food idea of today will help our food landscape and be commonplace years from now?
Like many people stuck at home during COVID-19 lockdowns, Hope Hersh did a lot of baking. But this wasn’t just experiments in sourdough starters; Hersh was developing nutrient-packed bread for outer space.
“I was testing at low temps in my oven for long periods of time. All was going well until my oven broke,” she laughs.
Hersh, the leader of team Space Bread, is a PhD student in plant molecular and cellular biology at the University of Florida. When we speak over Zoom in August 2022, a big smile spreads across her face as she tells me about her longtime dreams of working for NASA. When she learned that the Deep Space Food Challenge would blend her passions for baking, plant science, and space, she jumped at the opportunity.
Safely making bread in space has been previously off limits since crumbs can disrupt sensitive equipment. Bread also lacks essential nutrients and is too large to store on a spacecraft. To address the crumb and nutrient issues, Hersh tinkered with a no-knead recipe known to produce little to no crumbs. She landed on a ciabatta-type bread that uses flour, yeast, and salt, along with edible algae for nutrients. To minimize space, all the ingredients can be stored in a reusable, food-safe plastic bag.
“The idea for the plastic bag came about when my [doctoral] advisor was getting his blood drawn,” Hersh says. “The idea is brilliant because the FEP [Fluorinated Ethylene Propylene] bags can tolerate high and low temperatures, ideal for space.” This means the bread can also be baked inside the bags: Hersh explains that gas flows between the plastic membranes, preserving the cells inside and creating an ideal environment for yeast to rise.
The result is a soft, chewy bread that doesn’t crumble. Hersh also notes that the algae doesn’t impart a swampy aroma or flavor: It looks, tastes, and smells just like home-baked bread, she says.
With its compact size and perfect portability, Hersh notes that Space Bread would also be ideal for disaster relief missions and in military meals. Not only that, but fresh-baked bread would offer something invaluable to anyone far from home, be it a soldier, refugee, or astronaut: warmth and comfort.
“I can’t imagine being gone for five years on Mars and never being able to smell fresh-baked bread,” Hersh says. “Bread is a reminder of home.”
Hersh isn’t alone in her belief in the power of bread. Nearly 1,800 miles from her university lab, another innovator is making great strides in the field of space baking.
On a sunny morning in Boulder, Colorado, several windows shine light into Jim Sears’s garage. “This is my lab,” he says as he walks me through a virtual tour during a Facetime call. “My wife is highly annoyed that we can never park our cars here.”
The garage is tidy with a wooden desk on one side and a section set up with a lathe and milling machines. Another area has a table lined with foods such as a giant box of Rice Krispies cereal, Bisquick baking mix, and pouches of dried potato flakes. Finally, he leads me to an unassuming machine that’s just slightly bigger than a toaster.
“This is where I get to geek-out,” he laughs. This is SATED, a space oven that could be the first oven to safely cook foods in zero gravity.
When I talked with Sears in March, SATED—an acronym for Safe Appliance Tidy Efficient Delicious—had been declared one the Deep Space Food Challenge’s Phase II Finalists, the stage of the competition when NASA judges visit teams on-site and conduct taste tests.
Sears says his small oven is ready for Mars and can brown foods like peach cobbler and pizza to perfection. Inside, food ingredients spin within a cylinder that uses centrifugal force to press them directly against a heated inner wall. With SATED, astronauts would be able to build their own meal by injecting ingredients into a central hole in the end of the cylinder. They can then add a variety of ingredients one at a time while varying the cooking temperature and time accordingly. Ingredients like baking mix, water, dried fruits, cheese, pepperoni, and many others can be sequentially suctioned into the cooking cylinder and baked. And, like magic (well, physics), a cylinder-shaped version of, say, peach cobbler is made in about 12 minutes.
Before Sears’s oven, many safety considerations have stood in the way of cooking in space. Trying to cook in a weightless environment, for one. And the risk of fire and smoke would be catastrophic to a space mission. SATED uses ceramic heating elements, not unlike those used in household ceramic space heaters, that automatically shut down before they ever approach the temperatures that could cause smoke or fire.
After spending years as a hardware systems engineer for a major aerospace company, Sears left to focus on his own entrepreneurial projects and inventions. In 2022, he founded his own company, Ascent Technology, specifically for the challenge.
“SATED is, by far, the most technically exciting and I believe, ultimately the most meaningful project I’ve ever worked on,” Sears says.
When the NASA judges made an on-site visit to test SATED in Sears’s garage, they witnessed how the fire- and smoke-free oven could cleanly bake, fry, and simmer ingredients ranging from dried fruits to dried cheese crisps to fresh vegetables.
“They ended up doing most of the cooking,” Sears says. “There was a thrill of discovery.” The judges made dishes including cranberry cobbler, shepherd's pie, and pizza. The fan favorite was an omelet made from dried egg crystals, bell peppers, and cheese crisps.
Operating the oven is simple: Sears made using SATED as easy as using a microwave. The newest model has just four digital readouts: one for cooking temperature, one for setting artificial gravity, one to activate a fan that sucks dried foods into the cooking rotor, and one for measuring the mass of ingredients in grams.
Sears envisions his oven not only in outer space but for safely cooking in tents, submarines, and other areas where a closed environment and water usage are an issue. But when it comes to space, he sees an advanced, yet easy-to-use kitchen as a crucial aspect of long-distance travel and even potential colonization.
“The ability to cook, serve, and gather around good meals is a necessity of human life that will become essential for sustainably colonizing space,” he says. “Being able to eat a genuine crispy, cheesy, tomatoey piece of pizza on the surface of the moon, or on the way to Mars, means you could actually be inspired to be there.”
In a video about NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge, retired astronaut Scott Kelly reflects on his time growing red lettuce and orange zinnia flowers in space. “Growing, preparing, and eating good food makes you feel connected to home,” he says. “The food on the ISS was sufficient, but there’s always room to grow.”
The Deep Space Food Challenge has a few teams trying to crack the code of farming in microgravity. The Auto Terra Project (formerly known as Arrakis Terrarium) is one such team. When we speak in September 2022, the crew of UMass-Lowell undergrads is hard at work perfecting a third prototype for the contest.
“Essentially, it’s a community garden inside a terrarium enclosure,” team leader Ariel Shramko says. “Inside this terrarium, we can control temperature, humidity, hours of daylight. We’re creating an ideal environment.”
Shramko, an environmental engineering major, says her love of plants and the environment came long before college or contests.
“Creating ecosystems has been a childhood dream of mine,” she says. While other kids were playing hide-and-seek, she was making mini terrariums out of peanut butter jars. “I was a bit of a nerd.”
So far, Shramko and the Auto Terra team have grown tomatoes, celery, spinach, green beans, mushrooms, and potatoes in their enclosures. By making the system almost entirely automatic—with the terrarium self-regulating its humidity, air temperature, hours of daylight, and more—it would free astronauts to focus on other tasks besides the minutiae of farming.
But it’s not just about Mars. Their goal, Shramko says, is as much about space travel as it is about making fresh vegetables accessible for more people on Earth. By keeping the external environment separate from the internal environment, crops can be grown anywhere—from spacecraft to city apartments. The team has already built one version of the terrarium specifically for use in urban food deserts.
The team’s recent prototype design emphasizes this accessibility. “Our goal is to have all the fixtures of the unit available using 3-D printing,” team member Eliot Pirone adds.* In the background on our Zoom call, Pirone’s 3-D printer is spitting out a part for the terrarium from his home office. “We want to make this accessible to as many people as possible,” Pirone says. What can’t be printed can be purchased from a home improvement store.
The result is a printable prototype that is not only compact and portable, but cost-effective and easily replicated for use in lower-income communities. The terrarium’s exterior, for instance, is soft-sided like a canvas and has vertical supports that can be folded flat for easy portability. It’s a big improvement from their original. “Our first one was enormous, and we found out it was a total pain to move,” Pirone laughs. “We needed to have a unit that could fit through a doorway.”
“We’re university students,” Shramko agrees, chuckling. “We don’t have big cars.”
No matter the outcome of the Deep Space Challenge, Shramko notes that the ultimate goal is bringing their terrarium to communities coping with food scarcity.
“While the Mars stuff is cool and all, a huge part of our mission is about getting this to people who actually need it.”
Meanwhile, in an entirely different hemisphere, another team at another university is also looking toward the power of plants.
In Piracicaba, Brazil, Paulo Hercílio Viegas Rodrigues is looking at the Amazon rainforest to provide growth solutions for Mars. When we chat over a Zoom in October 2022, Rodrigues’s enthusiasm pours out through animated hands as he describes the botanical bounty of the region.
“The rich diversity of plants in the Amazon rainforest is a living laboratory for healthy foods found nowhere else,” he says.
One such food is taioba, a tropical plant native to Brazil and parts of Africa. Also known as arrowleaf or elephant ear, the plant’s leaves supply vitamin A, vitamin C, and phosphorus and have a taste akin to spinach.
Rodrigues’s team of agronomists and computer engineers from the University of São Paolo goes by LCTPO, short for the Laboratório de Cultura de Tecidos e Plantas Ornamentais (“Laboratory of Ornamental Plants for Tissue Culture”). Together, they’ve produced a unique farming system that can grow taioba plants that are small and lightweight but also highly concentrated with nutrients.
Since taioba plants typically produce large leaves, Rodrigues and his team use artificial blue light to reduce their metabolism, allowing the crops to grow slowly and limiting their size. “Our laboratory is like a space station,” he laughs, reflecting on how he must shut out Brazil’s bright sunshine and create a dark environment that glows with a soft, light blue.
Since the plants are smaller, however, Rodrigues and his team wanted to ensure they had a high concentration of nutrients. To achieve this, he adds terpenes, compounds known to particularly increase carotenoids. The result is nutrient-packed crops that grow in minimal light, require minimal space, and can be continually produced for three years—perfect for the long journey to Mars. Their space farm also features a space-conscious vertical garden and a tissue culture laboratory to maintain a seed bank.
Like the other teams, Rodrigues sees potential for improving foodways on Earth as well as outer space. If he can figure out a way to make a cost-effective version of the tech, he says, it could be applied to a vast array of different crops in different environments, “providing fresh and high-quality food anywhere on Earth,” from the cold climate of Canada to Middle Eastern deserts.
Rodrigues’s expertise may be plants on terra firma, but he’s had a lifelong fascination with outer space. During our conversation, he shows me a piece of paper. “This is from NASA,” he says, beaming. “I wrote to them when I was ten years old. They mailed this to me.” He’s holding NASA’s official reply with Neil Armstrong’s “one giant leap for mankind” declaration emblazoned on it. “And now I’m 58. I’ve saved it all these years.”
On Friday, May 19, the remaining teams waited anxiously for the big announcement that would announce the winners of Phase II of the challenge. Many teams flew into New York City to hear the results announced at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Others listened to the livestream.
Finally just after noon, NASA declared five American and three international teams the winners that would move ahead to the third and final phase of the competition. While BeeHex, Auto Terra, Space Bread, and LCTPO did not advance, Jim Sears’s SATED did.
“You don’t allow yourself to believe you can win until it actually happens,” Sears says. Sears attended the live event, bringing his invention from Colorado to New York, where he provided samples of fresh-baked space pizza straight from his oven.
Other winners included Florida’s Interstellar Lab, whose closed-loop mini eco-habitat produces microgreens, mushrooms, and insects; Sweden’s Mycorena, which created a system that combines microalgae with fungi to produce protein that “feels and tastes like meat”; and Air Company, a Brooklyn-based team that combines human’s exhaled carbon dioxide with hydrogen gas to produce yeast.
Angie Lee—a Phase II judge who worked for NASA conducting human metabolic research experiments with astronauts before becoming a professional chef—says she found projects like SATED particularly promising.
“The proposals I found most exciting are those that give astronauts the ability to cook in space,” Lee says. “Instead of food packets, they allow astronauts to prepare and cook a meal. This builds morale.”
The winning teams now advance to the third phase of the challenge, which will focus on testing each project’s ability to repeatedly and reliably produce food.
The U.S. teams that advanced to Phase III were awarded $150,000 each. Sears intends to use his financial award for further developing his oven. His plans include adapting technologies to be used in orbit and creating a better way to make space ice cream. “I’ve got cooking down,” he says. “Ice cream is next.”
But big dreams take big funds. Sears hopes to secure more money to experiment with parabolic aircraft flights, which reproduce zero-gravity—a highly expensive endeavor. For now, Sears is taking a moment to relax and celebrate his big win with a peaceful camping trip near his Colorado home. “Then, it’s back to work” and, with time, “onto Mars.”
* As of the publication date, Piorone was no longer on the Auto Terra team.
]]>20150929 A Facebook post showing a teacher’s frustration with a 7-year-old student writing her name on an assignment in cursive went viral, posing the question of whether learning the style reaps benefits or wastes time.
Pixabay
The Atlantic reported that the 2010 Common Core standards began omitting cursive instruction, meaning that many members of Gen Z have never been taught how to read or write cursive. According to The Washington Post, even though this form of handwriting used to be a mainstay of American public education, “for many students, cursive is becoming as foreign as ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.”
With the development and prominence of technology, cursive has become increasingly obsolete, but what impact will this have for the future?
According to The Atlantic, this means, “In the future, cursive will have to be taught to scholars the way Elizabethan secretary hand or paleography is today.” This directly impacts archival work. Many written documents from the 19th century and other early time periods are written in cursive. While it was once taken for granted that American students would know how to read cursive, now that cannot be the case.
Archival work largely depends on a reader’s ability to read hard-to-read texts in shorthand and/or cursive. Will this mean that universities will start having to offer college courses in history programs on how to read cursive? Only time will tell.
Drew Gilpin Faust who wrote in The Atlantic about the loss of cursive told NPR that the loss of cursive means that “the past is presented to us indirectly.”
Using the example of a contract, Faust said to NPR, “I mean, just imagine if you had some kind of contract that you had signed and you couldn’t read it and someone told you, well, this is what’s in the contract. That’s what’s in the contract. And then later you might find that it was something else. So there are limits in your power, in your sense of how the world works and your sense of how the world used to work when you can’t have access to a means of communication.”
Beyond the connection to the past, losing cursive may have other implications, since writing in cursive has some benefits.
“On team cursive, advocates point to the many studies that have shown that learning cursive not only improves retention and comprehension, it engages the brain on a deep level as students learn to join letters in a continuous flow,” Cindy Long said in an article for National Education Association. “It also enhances fine motor dexterity and gives children a better idea of how words work in combination.”
Gen Z or Generation Z consists of everyone born between 1997 and 2012, according to Pew Research.
Now that you know that cursive is falling by the wayside, it may be a good time to revamp your skills. You can find free cursive writing practice sheets online to practice your skills. For example, K5Learning provides free cursive writing practice sheets that you can print and use to relearn your letters.
Who knows? Learning cursive might just be the ticket to archival and historian jobs in the future.
]]>Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s speech is warbling, crackling, scratchy—sort of like Marge Simpson’s. His voice, he told me, is “fucked up.” The official medical diagnosis is spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder that causes involuntary spasms in the larynx. He didn’t always sound this way; his speaking style changed when he was in his 40s. Kennedy has said he suspects an influenza vaccine might have been the catalyst. This idea is not supported by science.
He was telling me about his life with one arm outstretched on the velvet sofa of his suite at the Bowery Hotel in Lower Manhattan. It was the end of May, and a breeze blew in through the open doors leading to a private terrace. Two of his aides sat nearby, typing and eavesdropping. A security guard stood in the hallway.
Kennedy was finishing a plate of room-service risotto, and his navy tie was carefully tucked into his white button-down shirt. He’s taller, tanner, and buffer than the average 69-year-old. He is, after all, a Kennedy. His blue eyes oscillate between piercing and adrift, depending on the topic of discussion.
He told me that he’s surrounded by “integrative medical people”—naturopaths, osteopaths, healers of all sorts. “A lot of them think that they can cure me,” he said. Last year, Kennedy traveled to Japan for surgery to try to fix his voice. “I’ve got these doctors that have given me a formula,” he said. “They’re not even doctors, actually, these guys.”
I asked him what, exactly, he was taking.
“The stuff that they gave me? I don’t know what it is. It’s supposed to reorient your electric energy.” He believes it’s working.
When he was 19, Kennedy jumped off a dock into shallow water, which he says left him nearly paralyzed. For decades, he could hardly turn his head. Seven years ago, at a convention of chiropractors, a healer performed a 30-minute “manipulation of energy”—making chanting noises while holding his hands six inches over Kennedy’s body. The next morning, his neck felt better. “I don’t know if they had anything to do with each other, but, you know, it was weird,” he said.
Though he’s been a member of the premier American political dynasty his whole life and a noted environmentalist for decades, most people are just now discovering the breadth and depth of Kennedy’s belief system. He has promoted a theory that Wi-Fi radiation causes cancer and “leaky brain,” saying it “opens your blood-brain barrier.” He has suggested that antidepressants might have contributed to the rise in mass shootings. He told me he believes that Ukraine is engaged in a “proxy” war and that Russia’s invasion, although “illegal,” would not have taken place if the United States “didn’t want it to.”
Kennedy reached a new level of notoriety in 2021, after the publication of his conspiratorial treatise The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. It has sold more than 1 million copies, according to his publisher, “despite censorship, boycotts from bookstores and libraries, and hit pieces against the author.” The book cemented his status as one of America’s foremost anti-vaxxers. It also helped lay the foundation for his Democratic presidential primary campaign against Joe Biden.
[Read: The 2024 U.S. presidential race: A cheat sheet]
On the campaign trail, he paints a conspiratorial picture of collusion among state, corporate, media, and pharmaceutical powers. If elected, he has said he would gut the Food and Drug Administration and order the Justice Department to investigate medical journals for “lying to the public.” His most ominous message is also his simplest: He feels his country is being taken away from him. It’s a familiar theme, similar to former President Donald Trump’s. But whereas Trump relies heavily on white identity politics, Kennedy is spinning up a more diverse web of supporters: anti-vaxxers, anti-government individuals, Silicon Valley magnates, “freethinking” celebrities, libertarians, Trump-weary Republicans, and Democrats who believe Biden is too old and feeble for a second term.
So far, Kennedy is polling in the double digits against Biden, sometimes as high as 20 percent. What had initially been written off as a stunt has evolved into a complex threat to both Biden and the establishment wing of the Democratic Party. Put another way: Kennedy’s support is real.
He is tapping into something burrowed deep in the national psyche. Large numbers of Americans don’t merely scoff at experts and institutions; they loathe them. Falling down conspiratorial internet rabbit holes has become an entirely normal pastime. Study after study confirms a very real “epidemic of loneliness.” Scores of people are bored and depressed and searching for narratives to help explain their anxiety and isolation. Scroll through social media and count how many times you see the phrase Burn it down.
Even though Kennedy remains a long-shot candidate, his presence in the 2024 race cannot be ignored. “My goal is to do the right thing, and whatever God wants is going to happen,” Kennedy told me. He now earnestly believes that in 12 months, he will be the Democratic nominee for president.
“Every individual, like every nation, has a darker side and a lighter side,” Kennedy told me. “And the easiest thing for a political leader to do is to appeal to all those darker angels.”
He was talking about George Wallace, the segregationist Alabama governor and subject of Kennedy’s senior thesis at Harvard.
“Most populism begins with a core of idealism, and then it’s hijacked,” he said. “Because the easiest way to keep a populist movement together is by appealing—you employ all the alchemies of demagoguery—and appealing to our greed, our anger, our hatred, our fear, our xenophobia, tribal impulses.”
Does Kennedy consider himself a populist? “He considers himself a Democrat,” his communications director, Stefanie Spear, told me in an email. The most charitable spin on Kennedy’s candidacy is that he aims to be the iconoclastic unifier of a polarized country. He looks in the mirror and sees a man fighting for the rights of the poor and the powerless, as his father did when he ran for president more than half a century ago.
Kennedy markets himself as a maverick, someone outside the system. But he’s very much using his lineage—son of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, nephew of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Ted Kennedy—as part of his sales pitch. Now living in Los Angeles with his third wife, the actor Cheryl Hines, he nonetheless launched his campaign in Boston, the center of the Kennedy universe. The phrase I’M A KENNEDY DEMOCRAT is splashed across the center of his campaign website. Visitors can click through a carousel of wistful black-and-white family photos. There he is as a young boy with a gap-toothed smile, offering a salute. There he is visiting his Uncle John in the Oval Office.
[Alan Brinkley: The legacy of John F. Kennedy]
In reality, his relationship with his family is more complicated. Several of his siblings have criticized his anti-vaccine activism around COVID. Last year, at an anti-vaccine rally in Washington, D.C., Kennedy suggested that Jews in Nazi Germany had more freedom than Americans today. In response, his sister Kerry Kennedy tweeted, “Bobby’s lies and fear-mongering yesterday were both sickening and destructive. I strongly condemn him for his hateful rhetoric.” (He later issued an apology.) In 2019, a trio of notable Kennedys wrote an op-ed in Politico pegged to a recent measles outbreak in the United States. RFK Jr., they said, “has helped to spread dangerous misinformation over social media and is complicit in sowing distrust of the science behind vaccines.” Several Kennedys serve in the Biden administration, and others—including RFK Jr.’s younger sister Rory and his first cousin Patrick—are actively supporting Biden’s reelection effort.
Multiple eras of Kennedy’s life have been marked by violence and despair. He was just 14 years old when his father was assassinated. His second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, struggled with mental illness and died by suicide while the couple was estranged and in the process of divorcing. He told me he believes that “almost every American has been exposed, mostly within their own families, to mental illness, depression, drug addiction, alcoholism.” In 1983, Kennedy himself was arrested for heroin possession and entered rehab. He recently told The Washington Post that he still regularly attends 12-step meetings.
Kennedy maintains a mental list of everyone he’s known who has died. He told me that each morning he spends an hour having a quiet conversation with those people, usually while out hiking alone. He asks the deceased to help him be a good person, a good father, a good writer, a good attorney. He prays for his six children. He’s been doing this for 40 years. The list now holds more than 200 names.
I asked him if he felt that his dad or uncle had sent him any messages encouraging him to run for president.
“I don’t really have two-way conversations of that type,” he said. “And I would mistrust anything that I got from those waters, because I know there’s people throughout history who have heard voices.”
He laughed.
“It’s hard to be the arbiter of your own sanity. It’s dangerous.”
The morning before we met, I watched a recent interview Kennedy had given to ABC News in which he said, “I don’t trust authority.” In our conversation, I asked him how he planned to campaign on this message while simultaneously persuading voters to grant him the most consequential authority in the world.
“My intention is to make authority trustworthy,” he said, sounding like a shrewd politician. “People don’t trust authority, because the trusted authorities have been lying to them. The media lies to the public.”
I was recording our conversation on two separate devices. I asked him if the dual recordings, plus the fact that he could see me taking notes, was enough to convince him that whatever I wrote would be accurate.
“Your quotes of mine may be accurate,” he said. “Do I think that they may be twisted? I think that’s highly likely. ”
I wondered why, if that was the case, he had agreed to talk with me at all.
“I’ll talk to anybody,” he said.
That includes some of the most prominent figures in right-wing politics. He told me that he’d met with Trump before he was inaugurated, and that he had once flown on Trump’s private plane. (Later he said he believes Trump could lead America “down the road to darkness.”) He told me how, as a young man, he had spent several weeks in a tent in Kenya with Roger Ailes—they were filming a nature documentary—and how they had remained friends even though Kennedy disapproved of Ailes’s tactics at Fox News. He also brought up Tucker Carlson. I asked if he’d spoken with the former Fox News host since his firing earlier this spring.
“I’ve texted with him,” Kennedy said.
“What’s he up to?” I asked.
“He’s—you know what he’s up to. He’s starting a Twitter … thing. Yeah, I’m going to go on it. They’ve already contacted me.”
Kennedy told me he’s heard the whispers about the nature of his campaign. Some people believe his candidacy is just a stalking-horse bid to help elect Trump, or at least siphon support away from Biden.
One week before Kennedy entered the race, the longtime Trump ally and self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” Roger Stone wrote a curious Substack post titled “What About Bobby?” in which he suggested the idea of a Trump-Kennedy unity ticket. In a text message to me, Stone said his essay was nothing but a “whimsical” piece of writing, noting that the idea had “legal and political” obstacles. A photo of the two men—plus former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, a notable conspiracy theorist—had been circulating on the internet; Stone called it opposition research from Biden’s team. “Contrary to Twitter created mythology, I don’t know Robert Kennedy,” he texted. “I have no role in his campaign, and certainly played no role in his decision to run.”
I asked Kennedy about a recent report that had gotten some attention: Had Steve Bannon encouraged him to enter the race?
[From the July/August 2022 issue: American Rasputin]
“No,” he said. “I mean, let me put it this way: I never heard any encouragement from him. And I never spoke to him.” He then offered a clarification: He had been a guest on Bannon’s podcast during the pandemic once or twice, and the two had met a few years before that.
When I asked Bannon if he had urged Kennedy to challenge Biden, he said, “I don’t want to talk about personal conversations.” He told me he believes Kennedy could be a major political figure. “I was pleasantly surprised when he announced,” he said.
“He’s drawing from many of those Trump voters—the two-time Obama, onetime Trump—that are still disaffected, want change, and maybe haven’t found a permanent home in the Trump movement,” Bannon said. “Populist left, populist right—and where that Venn diagram overlaps—he’s talking to those people.” Bannon told me the audience for his podcast, War Room, “loves” Kennedy. “I think Tucker’s seeing it, Rogan’s seeing it, other people—the Tucker-Rogan-Elon-Bannon-combo-platter right, obviously some of us are farther right than others—I think are seeing it. It’s a new nomenclature in politics,” he said.
“And obviously the Democrats are scared to death of it, so they don’t even want to touch it. They want to pretend it doesn’t exist.”
Perhaps more than anyone in politics, Kennedy is the embodiment of the crunchy-to-conspiracist pipeline—the pathway from living a life honoring the natural world to questioning, well, everything you thought you knew. For much of his life, he was a respected attorney and environmentalist. In the 1980s, Kennedy began working with the nonprofit Riverkeeper to preserve New York’s Hudson River, and he later co-founded the Waterkeeper Alliance, which is affiliated with conservation efforts around the world. Like many other environmentalists, he grew distrustful of government, convinced that regulatory agencies had fallen under the thrall of the corporations they were supposed to be supervising.
I asked Kennedy if there was a link between his earlier work and his present-day advocacy against vaccines. “The most direct and concrete nexus is mercury,” he said.
In the 2000s, Kennedy said, he read a report about the presence of mercury in fish. “It struck me then that we were living in a science-fiction nightmare where my children and the children of most Americans could now no longer engage in this seminal primal activity of American youth, which is to go fishing with their father and mother at their local fishing hole and come home and safely eat the fish,” he said.
As an environmentalist, Kennedy traveled around the country giving lectures, and about two decades ago, mercury poisoning became a focal point of these talks. He soon noticed a pattern: Mothers would approach him after his speeches, telling him about their children’s developmental issues, which they were convinced could be traced back to vaccines that contained thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative. “They all had kind of the same story,” Kennedy said. “Which was striking to me, because my inclination would be to dismiss them.”
[Read: Inside the mind of an anti-vaxxer]
He said that one of these women, a Minnesotan named Sarah Bridges, showed up on his front porch with a pile of studies 18 inches deep, telling him, “I’m not leaving here until you read those.” Kennedy read the abstracts, and his beliefs about vaccines began to shift. He went on to become the founder of Children’s Health Defense, a prominent anti-vaccine nonprofit.
When I contacted Bridges, she noted that she is a college friend of Kennedy’s sister-in-law and clarified that she had approached Kennedy while visiting his family’s compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Nevertheless, she confirmed that she gave Kennedy a stack of documents related to thimerosal, and that this likely was the beginning of his anti-vaccine journey.
Bridges’s family story is tragic: One of her children ended up in the hospital after receiving the pertussis vaccine. He now lives with a seizure disorder, developmental delays, and autism—conditions Bridges believes were ultimately caused by his reaction to the vaccine, even though studies have shown that vaccines do not cause autism. Bridges says she received compensation from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, colloquially known as “vaccine court,” for her son’s brain damage.
Bridges doesn’t consider herself an anti-vaxxer. She told me that she still talks with Kennedy once in a while, but that she was surprised to learn he was running for president. She’s a lifelong Democrat, and declined to say whether she would support him in the election. She did tell me that she has received two doses of the COVID vaccine. She views the extremity of her son’s reaction as the exception, not the rule. “I think the American public is smart enough that we can have a nuanced conversation: that vaccines can both be a public good and there can be—and there, I think, is—a subset of people who don’t respond to them,” she said.
Kennedy’s campaign manager, the former Ohio congressman and two-time presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, strongly objects to anyone labeling his candidate “anti-vaxx.” When I used the term to describe Kennedy, Kucinich told me that such a characterization was a “left-handed smear” and “a clipped assessment that has been used for political purposes by the adherents of the pharmaceutical industry who want to engage in a sort of absurd reductionism.” Kennedy, he said, stands for vaccine safety.
I asked Kucinich to specify which vaccines Kennedy supports. He seemed flummoxed.
“No!” he said. “This is … no. We’re not—look, no.”
At one point, Kennedy looked me dead in the eye and asked if I knew where the term conspiracy theory came from. I did not. He informed me that the phrase was coined by the CIA after his uncle’s assassination in 1963 as part of a larger effort to discredit anyone who claimed that the shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald, hadn’t acted alone. This origin story is not true. A recent Associated Press fact-check dates the term’s usage as far back as 1863, and notes that it also appeared in reports after the shooting of President James Garfield in 1881.
JFK’s assassination and Kennedy’s father’s, just five years apart, are two of the defining moments of modern American life. But they are difficult subjects to discuss with surviving family members without feeling exploitative. Kennedy doesn’t shy away from talking about either murder, and embraces conspiracy theories about both.
“I think the evidence that the CIA murdered my uncle is overwhelming, I would say, beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said. “As an attorney, I would be very comfortable arguing that case to a jury. I think that the evidence that the CIA murdered my father is circumstantial but very, very, very persuasive. Or very compelling. Let me put it that way—very compelling. And of course the CIA participation in the cover-up of both those murders is also beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s very well documented.” (In a written statement, a CIA spokesperson said: “The notion that CIA was involved in the deaths of either John F. Kennedy or Robert F. Kennedy is absolutely false.”)
Two years ago, hundreds of QAnon supporters gathered in Dealey Plaza, the site of JFK’s assassination. They were convinced that JFK Jr., who died in a plane crash in 1999, would dramatically reappear and that Donald Trump would be reinstated as president. I asked Kennedy what he made of all this.
“Are you equating them with people who believe that my uncle was killed by the CIA?” he asked. There was pain in his voice. It was the first time in our conversation that he appeared to get upset.
[From the June 2020 issue: The prophecies of Q]
Unlike many conspiracists, Kennedy will actually listen to and respond to your questions. He’s personable, and does not come off as a jerk. But he gets essential facts wrong, and remains prone to statements that can leave you dumbfounded. Recently, the Fox News host Neil Cavuto had to correct him on air after he claimed that “we”—as in the United States—had “killed 350,000 Ukrainian kids.”
I brought up the QAnon adherents who’d flocked to Dallas because I wanted to know how he felt about the fact that so many disparate conspiracies in America were blending together. I asked him what he would say to Alex Jones, the conspiracist who spent years lying about the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
“There’s only so many discussions that you can have, and only so many areas where you can actually, you know, examine the evidence,” Kennedy said. “I’d say, ‘Show me the evidence of what you’re saying, and let’s look at it, and let’s look at whether it is conceivably real.’” He told me he didn’t know exactly what Jones had said about the tragedy. When I explained that Jones had claimed the whole thing was a hoax—and that he had lost a landmark defamation suit—Kennedy said he thought that was an appropriate outcome. “If somebody says something’s wrong, sue them.”
“I mean,” he said, “I know people whose children were killed at Sandy Hook.”
Who will vote for Kennedy?
He was recently endorsed by the Clueless star Alicia Silverstone. Earlier this month, Jack Dorsey, the hippie billionaire and a Twitter co-founder, shared a Fox News clip of Kennedy saying he could beat Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis in 2024. “He can and will,” Dorsey tweeted. Another tech mogul, David Sacks, recently co-hosted a fundraiser for Kennedy, as well as a Twitter Spaces event with him alongside his “PayPal mafia” ally Elon Musk. Sacks, whose Twitter header photo features a banner that reads FREE SPEECH, has an eclectic history of political donations: Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, and DeSantis, to name a few.
Kennedy continues to win praise from right-wing activists, influencers, and media outlets. While some of this support feels earnest, like a fawning multithousand-word ode from National Review, others feel like a wink. The New York Post covered his campaign-kickoff event under the headline “‘Never Seen So Many Hot MILFs’: Inside RFK Jr’s White House Bid Launch.”
So far, Kennedy hasn’t staged many rallies. He favors long, winding media appearances. (He’s said that he believes 2024 “will be decided by podcasts.”) He recently talked COVID and 5G conspiracy theories with Joe Rogan, and his conversation with Jordan Peterson was removed from YouTube because of what the company deemed COVID misinformation. The day we met, Kennedy told me that he had just recorded a podcast with the journalist Matt Taibbi.
I asked Taibbi, who wrote for me when I was an editor at Rolling Stone and who now publishes independently on Substack, if he could see himself voting for Kennedy next year.
“Yeah, it’s possible,” Taibbi said. “I didn’t vote for anybody last time, because it was …” He trailed off, stifling laughter. “I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. So if he manages to get the nomination, I would certainly consider it.”
Years ago, in a long Rolling Stone article, Kennedy falsely asserted that the 2004 election had been stolen. The article has since been deleted from the magazine’s online archive.
“I’ve never been a fan of electoral-theft stories,” Taibbi said. “But I don’t have to agree with RFK about everything,” he added. “He’s certainly farther along on his beliefs about the vaccine than I am. But I think he is tapping into something that I definitely feel is legitimate, which is this frustration with the kind of establishment reporting, and this feeling of a lack of choice, and the frustration over issues like Ukraine—you know, that kind of stuff. I totally get his candidacy from that standpoint.”
Kennedy’s campaign operation is lean. He told Sacks and Musk that he has only about 50 people on the payroll. He’s beginning to spend more time in the early-voting state of New Hampshire. I asked Kucinich about Kennedy’s plans for summer: large-scale rallies? A visit to the Iowa State Fair? He could offer no concrete details, and told me to stay tuned.
[Read: The case for a primary challenge to Joe Biden]
Despite the buzz and early attention, Kennedy does not have a clear path to the nomination. No incumbent president in modern history has been defeated in a primary. (Kennedy’s uncle Ted came close during his primary challenge to Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election.) Following decades of precedent, the Democratic National Committee won’t hold primary debates against a sitting president.
“We’re not spending much time right now thinking about the DNC,” he said. “We’re organizing our own campaign.”
Spokespeople for the DNC, the Biden campaign, and the White House did not offer comment for this article.
“Democrats know RFK Jr. isn’t actually a Democrat,” Jim Messina, who led Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign and is in close touch with the Biden 2024 team, said in a statement. “He is not a legitimate candidate in the Democratic primary and shouldn’t be treated like one. His offensive ideas align him with Trump and the other GOP candidates running for president, and are repellent to what Democrats and swing voters are looking for.”
I asked Kennedy what he thought would be more harmful to the country: four more years of Biden or another term for Trump.
“I can’t answer that,” he said.
He paused for a long beat. He shook his head, then pivoted the conversation to Russia.
“I think that either one of them is, you know, I mean, I can conceive of Biden getting us into a nuclear war right now.”
Kennedy’s 2024 campaign, like Trump’s, has an epic We are engaged in a final showdown tenor to it. But maybe this sentiment runs deeper than his current candidacy. These are the opening lines of Kennedy’s 2018 memoir, American Values:
From my youngest days I always had the feeling that we were all involved in some great crusade, that the world was a battleground for good and evil, and that our lives would be consumed in that conflict. It would be my good fortune if I could play an important or heroic role.
Since meeting Kennedy, I’ve thought about what he said about populism—how it emerges, how it’s exploited and weaponized. He seems to believe that he is doing the right thing by running for president, that history has finally found him, as it found his uncle and father. That he is the man—the Kennedy—to lead America through an era of unrelenting chaos. But I don’t know how to believe his message when it’s enveloped in exaggeration, conspiracy, and falsehoods.
The United States has grown only more conspiratorial in the half century since the publication of Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” There are those who refuse to get the COVID vaccine because of the slim potential of adverse side effects, and then there are those who earnestly fear that these innoculations are a way for the federal government to implant microchips in the bodies of citizens. The line between fact and fantasy has blurred, and fewer and fewer Americans are tethered to something larger or more meaningful than themselves.
Kennedy was raised in the Catholic Church and regularly attended Mass for most of his life. These days, he told me, his belief system is drawn from a wide array of sources.
“The first line of the Tao is something to the effect that ‘If it can be said, then it’s not truth’—that the path that is prescribed to you is never the true path, that basically we all have to find our own path to God, and to enlightenment, or nirvana, or whatever you call it,” he said.
He’s now walking his family’s path, determined to prevail in the battle of good against evil. He’s said he’s running under the premise of telling people the truth.
But as with so many of the stories he tells, it’s hard to square Kennedy’s truth with reality.
]]>By making them easily accessible, you help provide a clean and safe environment for all. There are many different types of machines ranging from simple surface mount units to more complex automatic rigs. The key is finding a suitable paper towel dispenser to do the job for you.
This article contains a list of different commercial paper towel dispensers you can buy on Amazon. Check out our picks for the best commercial paper towel dispensers for businesses:
Features | Top Pick: SofPull Large High-Capacity Centerpull Paper Towel Dispenser | Runner Up: Oasis Creations Touchless Paper Towel dispenser | Best Value: Mind Reader Multi-Fold Paper Towel Dispenser |
---|---|---|---|
Dispensing Mechanism | Manual, center-pull. | Touchless. | Manual, for c-fold and m-fold towels. |
Capacity | Accommodates up to 560 large center-pull towels. | Not specified. | Not specified. |
Installation and Versatility | Can be mounted or hung sideways, upside down, and right side up. | Comes with necessary hardware for installation. | Can be mounted using screws or 3M tape. |
Material & Design | Weighs 2.7 pounds, 12.13 x 11.31 x 11 inches. | Lock design protects the product inside. | Made of ABS plastic, 3.75 x 10.5 x 14 inches. |
Special Features | Reduces waste and cross-contamination. | Minimizes the risk of cross-contamination. | Clear window to monitor fill level. |
Security | Not specified. | Comes with two keys to secure the dispenser. | Locking mechanism to prevent tampering/vandalism. |
Price Point | Premium price, high capacity and versatile mounting options. | Moderate price, touchless and secure. | Budget-friendly, compact and versatile design. |
Top Pick: Georgia-Pacific’s manual wall-mounted paper towel dispenser accommodates up to 560 large center-pull towels.
The large capacity means less time refilling the dispenser, weighing just 2.7 pounds and coming in at 12.13 x 11.31 x 11 inches. It dispenses them one at a time, helping to reduce waste and cross-contamination. The center-pull dispensing mechanism is ideal for high-traffic restrooms.
It can be mounted or hung sideways, upside down, and right side up to accommodate different spaces.
Runner Up: This paper towel dispenser offers a touchless solution to minimize the risk of cross-contamination.
A lock design also protects the product inside from pilferage while reducing waste. The dispenser comes with the necessary hardware for installation along with two keys.
Oasis Creations Touchless Paper Towel dispenser
Best Value: This wallpaper towel dispenser can accommodate both c-fold and m-fold paper towels.
Made of ABS plastic, it comes with a clear window on the front so users can conveniently monitor the fill level and gauge when a refill is needed. The unit’s locking mechanism helps prevent tampering, vandalism, and dust from getting inside the towel dispenser.
The compact design (3.75 x 10.5 x 14 inches and weighing 1.3 pounds) allows you to mount it on walls either by using screws or by simply using a 3M tape.
Mind Reader Multi-Fold Paper Towel Dispenser, Paper Towel Holder
Pacific Blue’s automated paper towel dispenser accommodates 1,150 feet of towel. You can choose between 14- or 11-inches towel lengths per dispense. It is motion-activated and touch-free, made from plastic, and runs on 4 D batteries.
It works with both 3-roll and 6-roll refill cases. It is equipped with a small window on the dispenser, so you can easily monitor the level of product inside. The unit is 16.56 x 13.44 x 10 inches and weighs in at 7.5 pounds. Made by Georgia Pacific Pro, it is backed by a 5-year warranty.
Pacific Blue Ultra 8″ High-Capacity Automated Touchless Paper Towel Dispenser by GP PRO
Sometimes a wall-mounted dispenser is not an option. In that case, the Tork 1 Xpress hand towel dispenser will do the job. Made from stainless steel, it uses a spring-loaded mechanism to dispense one paper towel at a time from the top.
It is compact and sturdy enough to stay in place at 14.9 x 7 x 10.9 inches and 5 pounds using the anti-slip pads in the bottom.
Tork 1 Xpress Countertop Multifold Hand Towel Dispenser, Stainless Steel
Kimberly-Clark’s towel dispenser offers hands-free pull dispensing for improved hygiene using touchless technology. The unit is made with micro ban technology that provides built-in anti-microbial protection against the most common stain and odor-causing bacteria.
This dispenser automatically advances and cuts 12 inches of the towel when activated by pulling the exposed towel. It can use 6-roll and 12-roll Scott Essential hard roll towels.
Coming in at 10.38 x 13.06 x 16.94 inches, it weighs 7.5 pounds and doesn’t need batteries to run.
Kimberly-Clark Professional Sanitouch Hard Roll Towel Dispenser
Storing an 800-foot 8-inch roll towel, the San Jamar dispenser is a high-capacity unit that doesn’t require frequent refills. It uses an ergonomic lever to dispense the towel. And best of all, it has a universal roll capacity, meaning you can use any core, including coreless, solid, and center-pull.
At 11 x 11 x 10 inches and 2.65 pounds, the company says it has a 33% smaller footprint than standard paper towel dispensers.
San Jamar Element Lever Roll Towel Dispenser, Classic, Transparent Black Pearl
This is an automatic toughness paper towels dispenser from EnMotion. This one comes in translucent smoke color. It is mounted and weighs 6 Pounds. This black hygienic system requires that the user only touches paper, which helps to improve hygiene.
It is built to handle heavy usage, and it is backed by a 5-year warranty with an attractive dispenser design that coordinates with other Pacific Blue dispensers. It is also easy to refill because the dispenser is designed with an easy-access front cover that opens 180 degrees. It also has such a high capacity that 1150-ft towel rolls last longer, enabling less maintenance and a minimized refill frequency.
GP enMotion Automatic Touchless Dispenser
This is the perfect paper towel dispenser for a ‘restroom.’ It is a contemporary wall-mounted paper towel dispenser that fits perfectly into a variety of market segments. This durable commercial paper towel dispenser provides consistent performance for peace of mind.
It has a clear window that allows you to see if it’s time to change the roll. It also requires no batteries or electricity being a manual paper towel dispenser. The bodice of this commercial paper towel dispenser is a durable black plastic material.
Georgia-Pacific Push Paddle Roll Paper Towel Dispenser
This is the perfect paper towel dispenser for an office. This multifold tissue holder requires two installation modes and it’s drilling-free.
The installation method does not damage the internal decoration, and it’s suitable for smooth surfaces such as ceramic tiles, marble, and stainless steel. The screw-punching installation method uses a four-corner drilling installation, that is stable. The curved outlet design dispenses the paper evenly and smoothly, with no paper jam.
The wall-mounted tissue box is made of ABS materials, and the use of tissues can be viewed through the visual window, and the paper can be changed quickly with the one-button switch.
Paper towel dispensers such as this one are very suitable for families, star hotels, office buildings, offices, restaurants, hotels, schools, and hospitals.
It has a large capacity; the size of the tissue box (10.7inch*8.07inch*4inch), the paper outlet (8.07inch)
TOBEFORT Touchless Paper Towel Dispenser Wall Mount
This multifold paper towel dispenser by GP PRO (Georgia-Pacific) offers an economical and versatile approach to towel dispensing. It comes in a black translucent smoke-colored material and holds up to 400 C-Fold, 600 multifold, or one pack BigFold paper towels.
This commercial paper towel dispenser is a covered key-lock design that protects against waste and pilferage while making refilling towels quick and easy. It is also compatible with Georgia-Pacific 21000, 23000, 20603, or 23304 folded towels (sold separately).
It is useful in restrooms, kitchens, offices, and public halls.
C-Fold/Multi-Fold Paper Towel Dispenser by GP PRO
The Alpine industries Paper Towel Dispensers can accommodate up to 290 C-fold or 380 multi-fold towels at once. It’s equipped with a sight window on the front, allowing you to monitor the paper level inside and refill when necessary.
It is built to last. Durably constructed using 304 stainless steel, this product is made to provide long-lasting strength and use for years to come. It also features a lock on top to help prevent tampering and vandalism.
It is clean with a sleek appearance. This dispenser features a brushed finish, adding a clean, modern look that will brighten any restroom. A slanted top adds a stylish aesthetic style, while also preventing it from being used as a shelf to ensure long-term use. Perfect for high-traffic restrooms in both commercial and public entities, this towel dispenser is an ideal accessory in break rooms, food service facilities, hospitals, healthcare facilities, schools, and other locations.
It is easy to use. Additionally, the wide slot on the bottom of the dispenser allows easy access to the towels, designed to efficiently dispense one towel at a time to reduce waste. Hardware is also included for easy installation on any internal decoration.
Alpine Industries C-Fold/Multifold Paper Towel Dispenser
Selecting the perfect commercial paper towel dispenser for your establishment is a balance between efficiency, aesthetics, and cost. A well-chosen dispenser can make your workplace more hygienic and user-friendly. In addition to the important factors already mentioned, consider the following as well:
Ease of Use: How simple it is for people to use the dispenser matters. Some models dispense towels more easily than others. Hands-free options can reduce the spread of germs, making them a solid choice for healthcare facilities or food preparation areas.
Capacity and Traffic: Consider the amount of traffic your bathroom sees daily. High-traffic restrooms will benefit from larger capacity dispensers to reduce refill frequency.
Durability: Choose a dispenser designed to stand the test of time, especially in high-use areas. While initial costs may be higher, a durable model can save you money over time.
Reliability: Check reviews to see if the model you’re considering is prone to jamming or other operational issues. A reliable dispenser will reduce maintenance time and improve overall user satisfaction.
The perfect commercial paper towel dispenser should consider:
The combination of these factors should lead you to a dispenser that enhances the function and form of your commercial space. Always remember, the best choice often balances initial costs with longer-term savings and benefits.
Commercial Paper Towel Dispensers are available in three types including the automatic or manual, wall-mounted or countertops, and the center-pull dispensers.
There are discussed briefly below;
Handle-operated towel dispensers require the users to pull a lever to dispense. And they may pull the lever until they have received the number of towels they need.
These types of dispensers may be best for use in low-traffic commercial washrooms.
Unlike a manual device, automatic dispensers have a motion sensor that automatically gives out towels whenever it detects motion in range. This can really help to encourage a sanitary environment in the kitchen or bathroom because you don’t have to physically touch anything.
Automatic dispensers add an additional tier of safety, but there is also mechanical failure.
The following are the differences:
Depending on the available space, you have a choice in terms of paper towel dispensers. However, wall-mounted have an edge as they help you save precious counter space and provide convenient access to towels right by the sink.
If there isn’t much room in your bathroom or kitchen, then a surface-mounted or recessed paper towel dispenser would be the best fit. By mounting the equipment up, you save precious counter space and provide convenient access to towels right by the sink.
The sleek design of the device is perfect for tight bathrooms and kitchens where it is best to avoid bulky or cumbersome paper towel dispensers. Both surface-mounted and recessed dispensers are ideal for dispenser/trash can combinations.
A countertop unit is always an option if you don’t have space to mount a dispenser. But they don’t offer the same practicality as a wall mount unit. Countertop paper towel dispensers work well for more spacious bathrooms. With the freedom to pick up countertop dispensers and move them around your hotel or office bathroom, your options are virtually limitless.
Once you have determined a location for your paper towel dispenser, as well as the best mounting style for your space, there are a variety of styles to choose from.
Center-pull dispensers are a cost-effective and sanitary option. Their large roll accommodates high-traffic environments, while the pull-down method ensures that each paper towel remains clean and unused until each person dispenses it. And unlike an automatic dispenser, you never have to worry about it breaking down.
A center-pull dispenser makes for a hygienic business environment. It allows customers and employees to pull a single paper towel straight down from the center of the unit.
Featuring a large capacity barrel, this dispenser is ideal for high traffic environments.
A paper towel dispenser is an essential element in any sanitary restaurant kitchen or office restroom.
There are several things to consider when getting a paper towel dispenser for your business and they include:
The location of the dispenser in your business premises will affect its design and installation type. Consider traffic patterns, ease of access, and space limitations. Whether it’s mounted on the wall, placed on the countertop, or freestanding, it should be in a convenient location for users.
Your type of business significantly influences the kind of dispenser that will best suit your needs. For instance, healthcare facilities might opt for hands-free dispensers to minimize germ spread, while quick-service restaurants might favor high-capacity models to accommodate higher traffic. Ensure your choice enhances the guest experience and aligns with your business image.
The type of towel you intend to use will dictate the dispenser model. Whether you prefer standard rolls, center-pull rolls, perforated rolls, or folded towels, ensure the dispenser is compatible.
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This article, "Commercial Paper Towel Dispenser: Great Picks For Your Business" was first published on Small Business Trends
]]>As I mentioned in my last post about the “Other Relationships” feature at FamilySearch, I’ve been updating the FamilySearch Family Tree with my conclusions about my husband’s 3rd-great-grandmother, Barsheba (Tharp) Dyer (1813-1899), and her ancestral line. I had written a proof argument and a couple research reports that I wanted to upload to the memories and sources sections of the relevant ancestors. I also wanted to attach important sources. When I got to Barsheba Tharp’s mother’s father, John West, whom I had researched extensively last fall, I found that his profile was merged with several other men named John West and had extra wives, children, and parents that were mixed with his actual family members. At first, the prospect of untangling the dates, sources, and relationships was daunting. However, I decided that since I had already researched my John West extensively, I just needed to research the other John Wests enough to have an idea of where they lived, their relationships, and some sources.
Unmerging the profiles and updating them with sources took several hours of work. In the end, I was very satisfied and felt the effort was worthwhile. I use the FamilySearch Family Tree for many purposes, and it’s important to me that it’s correct. You may feel the same, if you like to search within the FamilySearch Family Tree for end of line ancestors in your DNA matches’ trees, find cousins to collaborate with, and preserve your research for generations to come.
In this post I will share what I learned about unmerging and restoring the profiles of the multiple John Wests. These are the steps I took:
Now I’ll walk through these steps in more detail.
Open the change log for the profile that has several people of the same name merged together. On the person page, you’ll see a sidebar on the right side of the page. Look for the heading “Latest Changes.” At the bottom of that box, you’ll see “show all.” Click that to open the full change log.
Scroll to the bottom of the change log to continue to load older changes. Scroll all the way to the bottom when there are no more changes to load.
After scrolling to the bottom of the change log, you will be able to see the original details about the person with this ID number. In the screenshot above, you can see that the profile for John West with ID LJ5P-SFM was originally created in 2014 by a particular user and that he had a child named Henry and a wife named Sarah Broadwater. Over time, his profile was merged with at least 2 other different John Wests, and many more duplicate profiles for those 3 main John Wests.
List all the same named individuals who were deleted as a result of a merge along with their ID numbers in a document. You will do this by scrolling from the bottom of the change log upward until you find the first merge. You will see a “deleted person” and a “surviving person,” each with unique IDs. Click on the deleted person’s name and open the deleted profile in a new tab.
This deleted person’s profile will have a label at the top that says “deleted.”
In order to keep track of each deleted profile and the relevant details, create a document. I made a table to easily compare vital facts and relationships. I started by listing the current (bloated) profile that included four wives and 13 children. I knew there were at least two men merged together, maybe more. Then I started listing the deleted individuals’ names and ID numbers.
Next, I listed in my document the vital information for each deleted individual. To more easily accomplish this, open the profiles of each deleted person in separate tabs. From here you can review their birth and death dates. Deleted individual’s profiles do not show any familial relationships or sources – just vital information, memories, and change log.
Fortunately, you can open the deleted person’s change log to see who their parents, spouses, and children were before the merge. Relationship information is important for identifying unique individuals. In the screenshot below, this deleted profile for John West who married Sarah Broadwater was a true duplicate that needed to be merged. Often a duplicate is created when someone creates a parent for their ancestor, then realizes that parent is already in the tree. The profile below included John West and Sarah Broadwater with supposed daughter Matilda Anne Broadwater West. I later found that this daughter actually belonged to this John West’s second wife. This John West who married Sarah Broadwater seemed to be the main profile that was separate from my John West. It included parents that didn’t belong to my John West.
As you go through the change log and note relationships, dates, places, and sources in your document, you should have a pretty good idea of which individuals are unique and need to be restored.
One of the deleted profiles I found in the change log belonged to my John West of Fauquier County, who I had researched extensively and prepared a research report about. He was married to Bathsheba Arnold first, and Sarah Webb second. I noticed that the user who added him believed his name was John Thomas West Sr. and that he had a son named John Thomas West Jr. I thought this was interesting since I had found over 30 sources for John West of Fauquier County, Virginia, and Hawkins County, Tennessee, and none of them included a middle initial or middle name. However from the wives and children, it was clear this was the profile I needed to restore for my John West.
Although you might have ideas about who is who after this step, stop and go slow! Before you make assumptions about which relationships are correct, it’s important to do your own research and validate the information.
Before restoring the unique individuals who were incorrectly merged into one profile, it’s important to fact-check the vital information and relationships and find sources to support or refute the conclusions.
I had already researched my John West of Fauquier County, so I needed to research the other John Wests and more fully identify them through their residences and relationships.
As I performed research about the various John Wests, at first I wasn’t sure which information belonged to who. I began saving links to the sources I located at the end of my notes document. Some of the sources were authored, and others were original. Before believing the authored sources, I tried to validate them with original records created near the time of the person’s life.
I found an index of marriages in Ancestry that was based on family group sheets, which are authored. I didn’t feel the source was high-quality, but it was all I could find at first for the marriage of John West to Sarah Broadwater:
I found the will of a John West written in 1806 and recorded the same year in Fairfax County, Virginia, whose widow was named Elizabeth. She was named as a guardian for John West’s youngest two children. A different guardian was appointed for John’s older daughter. He also had two older children who didn’t need guardians. As I transcribed his will, I had a strong feeling that this John was married to a woman before his widow, Elizabeth, and I suspected it was Sarah Broadwater. The guardianship records and will, all recorded in the Fairfax County will books, were invaluable for piecing this family together.
Ultimately, I didn’t find any original record showing Sarah Broadwater and John West’s marriage. However, I found a few additional authored sources who had come to the same conclusion I did – that John West who died in 1806 in Fairfax County, Virginia, was married first to Sarah Broadwater and second to Elizabeth, and had five children, all of whom were mentioned in his will.
Another one of the unique John Wests was named John Bakeman West, who had a son named John Bakeman West Jr. and two other children. This family appears to have started in Virginia, then migrated to Kentucky and Tennessee. Since the names were pretty different, it was easier to differentiate this family.
With sources ready, it’s time to restore and update profiles to reflect each unique John West. I decided that the original merged profile would be for the John West of Fairfax County, Virginia. I would restore the deleted profiles for John Bakeman West Sr. and John West of Fauquier County, Virginia. The other deleted profiles were true duplicates that I would not restore.
To restore a person, you simply click the “restore person” button on the deleted individual’s profile.
After you have restored the deleted person, it’s time to edit each new profile to include vital facts, places, correct relationships, and sources. This involved removing incorrect dates, places, and sources from the original merged profile, then adding them to the correct individual. I then uploaded my report about John West of Fauquier County, Virginia to the profile I restored. I also determined that some of the child relationships were incorrect. John West of Fairfax had a couple extra children that didn’t belong to him or any of the other two John West. I detached them and included reason statements like “this individual lived in North Carolina and wasn’t listed in John West’s 1806 Fairfax County, Virginia, will.”
John West of Fairfax County’s profile had several sources and facts that belonged to my John West. For example, he had a residence in Fauquier County, so I deleted that. All the sources from the merged profiles were attached to John West of Fairfax County’s profile, and most belonged to my John West. I detached all of those and reattached them to John West of Fauquier County.
I then created several new sources for the will and guardianship records that I located for John West of Fairfax County. Some of these sources were authored, and some were original, but hopefully they will be enough to discourage further incorrect merges.
Although exact dates and places aren’t always available for individuals living in the 1700s in Virginia, it is possible to estimate these things. This is important to do because the FamilySearch merging algorithm will suggest merging individuals with similar birth and death dates and places. If you leave the birth place blank or as something general, like Virginia, you may have a suggested merge that ends up being incorrect. My goal was to add enough unique information to each of these three profiles so that no more incorrect merges would be suggested. If you unmerge profiles like this, but don’t update and fix each profile, you will probably see that they are suggested as a merge again later.
To estimate John West of Fairfax County’s birth information, I consulted one of the authored sources that listed his parents. His parents resided in Fairfax County, Virginia, at the estimated year of his birth, so I added that specific location to his birth and added a reason statement that said, “John West was probably born in Fairfax County, where his parents resided at the time of his birth.”
The birth place of my John West of Fauquier County is still under question, so I opted to leave his birthplace blank. One hypothesis is that he was born in Virginia, but another strong possibility exists that he was born in England. The 1880 census of his first daughter states that she was born in England, so it’s an interesting clue. The report I wrote focused on determining his parents and came up with no strong leads – but I did eliminate several candidates who lived in Virginia as his parents.
I was able to estimate the year of birth for John West of Fauquier. In my report, I discussed the tax records and censuses he appeared on and how I narrowed the range of his birth to 1761-1767. I copied and pasted the reasoning from my report into the reason statement for his birth year, which was already set to 1764:
Determining John West’s birth year range can be done by correlating land and tax records with Virginia legal context. John West’s first taxation in Fauquier County was in 1787. To be taxed, he must have been at least 16 years old, therefore born before 1771. Also, most people did not buy and sell land until they were no longer an infant (under age 21 according to common law), because infants making land transactions could revoke the agreement when they came of age. If John West was age 21 when he purchased land from Humphrey Arnold in 1788, he was born before 1767. The 1830 and 1840 censuses for John West help narrow down his birth year range even further. John was likely the oldest male in his 1830 household, age 60-69, thus born 1761-1770. He was age 70-79 in 1840, providing the same birth year range. Therefore, a hypothesis for John West’s birth range is 1761-1767. The date currently listed in John West’s profile here is within that range, so I am not adjusting it.
Next, I used the citations in my report to add several sources to my John West of Fauquier County. My method was to go to the sources page for his profile, click “new source,” then paste the citation in the citation field. I then used various parts of the pasted citation for the other fields – date, title, URL, etc. I also pasted details from my report taken from the source into the “notes” field. Most of the sources I added were unindexed deed and court images from FamilySearch.
I didn’t add every source from the report, since I was also uploading the report itself as a source. I also added it as a document in the memories section. I chose important sources that provided evidence for relationships. This particular source, above, provided the important clue that John West witnessed a deed in Fauquier as early as April 1787. That was the first time he was mentioned in Fauquier County, Virginia, records.
To add a document like a research report as a memory and a source, I found that the simplest way to do it is to upload a PDF of the report to the memories section first. Then, go to the sources section and click “add source,” then “add new memory source.” This will allow you to select the PDF that you already added as a source as well.
After creating a new source, it was automatically saved to my source box. Then later, it was easy to add these sources to additional people’s profiles. The source above is a deed from Humphrey Arnold to Gustavus Horner, witnessed by John West. I originally created it for John West’s profile, but then I went to his father-in-law’s profile, Humphrey Arnold, and attached the same deed to Humphrey’s list of sources. To attach a source from your source box, go to the additional person’s sources, click “add source,” then “attach from source box.”
After updating each unique individual’s profile to contain only facts, sources, and relationships that truly belong to them, as determined to the best of your ability, you will want to add an alert note. An “alert note” lets other users know that important research has been done about this individual. It stays at the top of the person’s profile. When they click through to the alert note, they can read whatever you wrote in the note.
The alert note that I wrote for John West of Fauquier County and John West of Fairfax County included the same basic information – that there were several men named John West living in Virginia at this time, and please do not merge them unless you’ve reviewed all the vital information, relationships, and sources very carefully.
To add an alert note, look for the notes section in the right sidebar. Click “add note,” then check the box that says “alert note.”
My final step was to update my notes document with information about the John West profiles I restored and updated.
Although the process was quite involved, I was happy with the result. If you have done extensive research about an individual, like I had with my John West, the process will be a lot easier. Merging and unmerging individuals who you don’t know much about is challenging.
Good luck as you separate merged individuals in the FamilySearch Family Tree!
]]>To make my Butternut Puree for babies you will need:
Below are illustrated step-by-step instructions to make my Butternut Puree, if you prefer just the written instructions then head straight to the printable recipe card below.
Prep: Remove the skin/peel and the seeds from the butternut, and cut into cubes.
Step one: Place the cubed butternut in a saucepan with water.
Step two: Cover, with a lid, bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for 10 minutes until the butternut is tender.
Step three: Drain, reserving the liquid.
Step four: Blend your butternut (with spices) if you are using it until a smooth texture is achieved, add liquid as needed to reach a velvety smooth consistency. You can use either a blender or a food processor for this step. If you are making this for your baby stop at this step.
Step five: If you are adding butter add cubed butter to the smooth puree and blend until it is well mixed.
Step six: Taste and salt as needed for a family meal.
Enjoy!
Here is how you can make this Butternut Puree perfectly every time!
500 grams or 1 pound of butternut squash flesh will yield approximately 1 cup of puree.
Store your butternut squash puree in a clean airtight container or jar in the refrigerator for up to 4 days, or freeze for up to four months.
The post Butternut Squash Puree appeared first on My Kids Lick The Bowl.
]]>But to properly understand the pace and force of what’s to come, we should instead focus on organisms too small to be seen with the naked eye. These single-celled microbes are both the watchkeepers and arch-agitators of the Arctic’s demise.
Scientists like me who study them have become forensic pathologists, processing crime scenes in our Arctic field sites. We don the same white anti-contamination suits, photograph each sampling site, and bag our samples for DNA analysis. In some areas, red-coloured microbes even create an effect known as “blood snow”.
In this complex criminal investigation, however, the invisible witnesses are also responsible for the damage being done. Microbes testify to the vulnerability of their Arctic habitats to the changes that humans have caused. But they also create powerful climate feedback loops that are doing ever-more damage both to the Arctic, and the planet as a whole.
My first visit to the Arctic was also nearly my last. As a PhD student in my early 20s in 2006, I had set out with colleagues to sample microbes growing on a glacier in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard – the planet’s northernmost year-round settlement, about 760 miles from the North Pole.
Our treacherous commute took us high above the glacier, traversing an icy scree slope to approach its flank before crossing a river at the ice’s margin. It was a route we had navigated recently – yet this day I mis-stepped. Time slowed as I slid towards the stream swollen with ice melt, my axe bouncing uselessly off the glassy ice. I was zipping headlong into icy oblivion.
In that near-death calm, two things bothered me. The water would carry me deep into the glacier, so it would be decades before my remains were returned to my family. And the ear-worm of that field season meant I would die to the theme tune to Indiana Jones.
This article is part of Conversation Insights
The Insights team generates long-form journalism derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.
Thankfully, the scree slowed my slide – I lived and learned, quickly, that dead scientists don’t get to write up their papers. And I’m still learning about the tiny organisms that populate every habitat there: from seawater in the Arctic Ocean to ice crystals buried deep in the Greenland ice sheet.
These micro-managers of all manner of planetary processes are acutely sensitive to the temperatures of their habitats. The slightest change above freezing can transform an Arctic landscape from a frozen waste devoid of liquid water to one where microbes get busy reproducing in nutrient-rich water, transforming themselves in ways that further amplify the effects of climate warming.
The Svalbard region is now warming seven times faster than the global average. While much of the world continues its efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, in the Arctic, that battle was lost long ago.
It’s 2011, and Nozomu Takeuchi is visiting Svalbard from Japan. It has been a difficult year back home, following the earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima nuclear incident, but Nozomu – a glacier ecologist and professor at Chiba University – is unrelenting in his quest to measure the effects of climate change.
Just hours after he stepped off a plane in the August midnight sun at Longyearbyen airport, we are marching up the nearest glacier. Above us, snow-capped mountain sides loom out of the swirling mist.
Since the 1990s, Nozomu has been collecting samples and measurements from glaciers all over the world. When we reach our goal near the snowline, he opens his rucksack to reveal a bento box full of sampling kit – stainless steel scoops, test tubes, sample bags, all arranged for efficiency. As he scurries around with practised efficiency, I think of offering help but fear I would only slow him down.
In truth, Nozomu is decades ahead of us all. Years ago, he made the link between the future of life and the death of ice, and these melting Svalbard glaciers are adding yet more points to his graphs.
Just as we apply oodles of factor 50 to protect ourselves from the Sun, so the billions of microbes sandwiched between the sky and surface of the glacier protect themselves by accumulating sunscreen-like pigments. And if enough of these pigments rest in one place under the Sun, this area of “biological darkening” absorbs the heat of the Sun much more effectively than reflective white snow and ice – so it melts faster.
Nozomu scoops up some of the so-called blood snow, heavily laden with algae. Under the microscope, their cells are indeed reminiscent of red blood cells. But rather than haemoglobin, these cells are laden with carotenoids – pigments also found in vegetables that protect the algae from overheating. Other patches of the glacier are verdant green, rich in algae that are busy photosynthesising light into chemical energy in this 24-hour daylight world.
Further down the glacier, the professor crushes some “dirty” ice into a bag. A different kind of algae lives here that, depending on your point-of-view, is either black, brown or purple (perhaps it depends on the tint of your sunglasses). The pigment created is like the compounds that colour tea, and the algae keep it in layers like parasols above the photosynthetic factories within their cells – ensuring they have just enough sunlight to photosynthesise, but not enough to burn.
Open Google Earth and as you zoom in on the Arctic, you may spot the large dark stripe that scars the western margin of the Greenland ice sheet. This is the “dark zone”, but it’s not caused by dark dust or soot. It’s alive, laden with algae – and it has been darkening, and growing, as Greenland warms.
Between 2000 and 2014, the dark zone’s area grew by 14%. At 279,075 km² in 2012, it was already more than twice the size of England than bare ice.
Next morning, I am woken by the smell of chemicals, having slept beneath a coffee table. Nozomu is busy processing his samples: bags of melting ice pinned to a clothesline by bulldog clips. They resemble bunting around the crowded room, but this is no time for celebration. The tint of each bag adds a measurement which quantifies the link between these algae, their pigments, and the death of their icy home.
By the summer of 2014, glaciologists all over the world have started to listen to the warnings of pioneering ecologists such as Nozomu. The glaciers are dying even as life blossoms on their darkening surfaces. The case has become urgent.
I am in a helicopter, flying with colleagues to a camp in the dark zone on the Greenland ice sheet – the largest mass of glacial ice in the northern hemisphere. Covering 1.7 million km², its ice holds the equivalent of the water required to raise global sea levels by 7.7 metres.
As we warm our climate, the rate of water flowing from this reservoir increases, with each degree Celsius added to global temperatures opening the drainage valve even wider. Feedback processes such as biological darkening have the potential to multiply the number of drainage valves that are open, hastening dramatically the rate at which sea levels rise.
To monitor this effect, every day Karen Cameron, the leader of our camp this summer, walks to undisturbed patches of ice carrying a £100,000 backpack which contains a spectrometer to measure the darkness of the ice, capturing how it absorbs the solar energy that causes melting. The glaciologists are desperate for ground truth, and their models need data.
Up to this point, none of their predictions of how the Greenland ice sheet would respond to our warming climate have included biological darkening. Even if the effect were modest, it could still topple the ice sheet from a predictable, straightline response to climate warming.
All the time we are in Greenland, the only lifeforms we encounter are the flies that hatch from the fresh fruit and peppers in our food rations. These and the few types of glacier algae and several hundred kinds of bacteria that are biologically darkening the ice: a living scum scarring the surface of the ice sheet.
My work focuses on how these tiny organisms adapt to their icy habitat, but the implications of their behaviour are now of global concern. A filmmaker at the camp is weaving a thread between the ice melt in Greenland and its consequences for people living in coastal communities all over the world – from villages near my home on the west coast of Wales, to huge metropolises like Manhattan, Amsterdam and Mumbai, and even entire low-lying island nations in the Pacific.
As smaller glaciers fade, and the larger ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica start to respond with full force to our warming climate, it is these communities, capitals and countries that will bear the brunt of the flooding, inundation and erosion that comes with rising sea levels.
Before heading home, our helicopter takes us on a detour, high over the ice sheet. We fly over the brown-black-purple algae to brighter, higher elevations where the palette shrinks to the blue and white of water and ice, then snow and sky. Greenland makes its own weather and, in these higher elevations, we expect the ice to be frozen all year round. When we land and begin to collect snow samples and a small ice core, however, we find we are digging into slush. The ice has started to melt up here, too.
We heave up our ice corer, and meltwater dribbles out from its bottom. In periods of extreme warming, much of the surface of the ice sheet can experience melting episodes, disturbing the slumbering microbes stored within the otherwise permanently frozen surface. It’s a sobering moment for us all.
Flying back to camp, I watch the streams become rivers and lakes as we head back over the dark zone, where melt and microbes dominate the icescape. I contemplate how much water, once locked in the ice, will become free to flow into the sea and into millions of homes by the end of the century.
The frozen lands of eight nations encircle the Arctic. Their soils store vast quantities of carbon: a third of the planet’s entire quantity of soil carbon resides in this frozen ground.
The carbon is a legacy of soils formed in past climates and preserved for millennia. However, human-induced climate change is reheating this leftover carbon, providing a luxuriant food source for microbes resident within the tundra, which then emit it as greenhouse gases.
This is known as the permafrost carbon feedback loop. When even modest quantities of this vast carbon store reach the atmosphere, warming accelerates – resulting in faster thawing of the tundra and the release of yet more greenhouse gases.
Furthermore, not all greenhouse gases are equal in their impact. While carbon dioxide is relatively abundant and stable for centuries in the atmosphere, methane is less abundant and shorter-lived, but remarkably powerful as a greenhouse gas – nearly 30 times more damaging to the climate than carbon dioxide, for the same volume.
For more than three decades, Andy Hodson has worked at the frontier where microbes, carbon and the Arctic landscape meet. In 2018, we join him on a brisk spring day in Svalbard. It’s -26°C but the snowmobile commute is thankfully brief – then we work quickly against the cold.
Hodson’s plan is to “pop” one of the many pingos that populate the floor of this wide open valley. Think of pingos as the acne of the Arctic: they form as permafrost compresses unfrozen wet sediments, erupting as small hills blistering the skin of the tundra.
The story of these microbes’ lives is complicated. They only live beyond the reach of oxygen – where oxygen is more prevalent, methane-consuming microbes thrive instead, quenching the belches of methane from below. Similarly, should mineral sources of iron or sulphide be nearby, then microbes that use them outcompete the methanogens.
It all adds up to one of the greatest uncertainties for our civilisation: the extent and composition of greenhouse gases escaping from Arctic lands. Estimates of the economic impacts from this permafrost carbon feedback tally in the tens of trillions of dollars to the global economy. We know it is bad news, but exactly how bad depends on the microbes in their microscopic mosaic.
Hodson’s field work shows that, during the Arctic winter, this pingo is probably the only source of methane in the immediate area, its chimney enabling the gas to escape from the depths of the ice before methane-consuming microbes can catch it. Annually, tens of kilograms of methane and more than a ton of carbon dioxide will escape from this pingo alone - one of more than 10,000 scattered across the Arctic, in addition to its other methane-producing hotspots.
Arctic lands are a patchwork of permafrost carbon feedbacks, and our future depends on the uncertain fate of the microbes within.
While the ice melt enhances the growth of microbes in the short term, if it continues to the point of erasing habitats then the microbes will be lost with them. We recognise this danger for polar bears and walruses, but not the invisible biodiversity of the Arctic. Small does not mean insignificant though.
To appreciate this, we can head back to the dark zone on Greenland’s ice sheet and join Joseph Cook during our summer 2014 field season. He’s lying on a mat improvised from a bath towel and a binbag wrapped in duct tape, peering into a dark, pothole-like depression in the ice. It’s a cryoconite hole, and millions of them are dotted over the edges of the ice sheet. Where pingos contribute to climate warming by emitting methane, cryoconite is a good sink of greenhouse gases, but this creates its own problems.
The earliest estimate of its ability to store carbon dioxide from the air on the ice surface of the world’s glaciers exceeded Finland’s total carbon emissions in the same year. Every cryoconite hole is a near-perfect ecosystem – with a singular flaw. Its inhabitants must melt ice to live. But the very act of melting the ice hastens the demise of their glacier habitat.
Despite being found in some of the harshest locations on Earth, cryoconite is home for thousands of different types of bacteria (including the all-important photosynthetic cyanobacteria), fungi, and protozoa. Even tardigrades thrive in cryoconite.
Cook is professionally besotted with the perfection of this near-frozen “microscopic rainforest”. Its inhabitants are shielded and nourished at just the right depth and in the right shape for a busy ecosystem to be engineered by the interaction of sunlight with cyanobacteria, dust and ice to the benefit of all its inhabitants. The cyanobacteria use sunshine to capture carbon dioxide from the air and convert it into the slimy cement that builds each granule of cryoconite
However, with vast numbers of cryoconite holes dotted across the ice surface, “swarms” of these holes help shape and darken the ice surface. This in turn influences the melting rate, as the surface is sculpted under the sun of 24-hour daylight.
Writing in the scientific journal Nature in 1883, Swedish polar explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskjöld, who discovered cryoconite, thanked the organisms within cryoconite for melting away the ancient ice that once covered Norway and Sweden:
In spite of their insignificance, [they] play a very important part in nature’s economy, from the fact that their dark colour far more readily absorbs the Sun’s heat than the bluish-white ice, and thereby they contribute to the destruction of the ice sheet, and prevent its extension. Undoubtedly we have, in no small degree, to thank these organisms for the melting away of the layer of ice which once covered the Scandinavian peninsula.
We return to Greenland in winter 2018 to explore cryoconite’s singular flaw. Cook and I are joined by Melanie Hay, then a PhD student in Arctic bioinformatics.
Hay and I are taking DNA analysis to strange new places to learn more about the evolution and biology of cryoconite. Powerful advances in genomics are changing our view of the microbial world, but large DNA-sequencing instruments fare best in sophisticated labs.
Instead, we are using a stapler-sized nanopore sequencer hooked up to the USB port of a winterised laptop. Outside the tent, it is –20°C – but the DNA sequencer must run at body temperature. The only sustainable source of warmth is body heat, so I have snuggled up with the sequencer in my sleeping bag every night and in my clothes all day.
That evening, we are caught in a storm of hurricane force. Becoming disorientated while moving between tents would be lethal, so we crawl in a human chain through the whiteout to our sleeping tents. Hay reaches her tent but Cook’s is lost, so we squeeze into my one-person tent. Somehow I sleep soundly, while Cook is exposed to the full force of the night’s terror.
In the morning, we excavate Hay, whose snow-laden tent had collapsed in the night. The sequencing is complete, but storm damage to our generator means the camp is losing power, so she must work quickly. She identifies the cyanobacteria building the cryoconite – it’s a short list dominated by one species: Phormidesmis priestleyi.
This species, found in cryoconite throughout the Arctic, seems to be the ecosystem engineer of cryoconite – a microscopic beaver building a dam of dust. But the flaw is the darkness of the near-perfect cryoconite ecosystems it creates. Like the neighbouring glacier algae we met earlier, Phormidesmis priestleyi is biologically darkening Arctic ice, and eventually hastening the demise of the thousands of different types of organism contained in cryoconite holes.
And so, this work shows us ever more clearly that the loss of the planet’s glaciers is as much a component of the global biodiversity crisis as it is a headline impact of climate change.
The loss of the Arctic’s microbial biodiversity matters in other ways too. Hay and Aliyah Debbonaire are both reformed biomedical scientists seeking cures from the Arctic in the form of new antibiotics. In the summer of 2018, we are in Svalbard looking for clues.
The world is running out of effective antibiotics, and the Arctic’s frontiers may be our last line of defence in this antibiotic resistance crisis. Countless species of microbes have evolved to live within its harsh habitats using all the tricks in the book, including making antibiotics as chemical weapons to kill off competitors. This means they may be sources of new antibiotics.
And this is not their only application. From cheeses to eco-friendly biological washing powders, entire shopping aisles of products have been derived from cold-adapted microbes. As climate warming threatens to disrupt entire Arctic habitats, our opportunity to use, learn from, and protect this biodiversity may be lost forever.
As our tiny plane returns to the nearest town, Longyearbyen, we fly low over the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which contains the fruits of more than 12,000 years of agriculture in the form of seeds from a million different varieties of crop. Nearby, a similar facility inside a disused coal mine stores essential computer programmes on microfilm – the ultimate backup for our data-addicted world.
Within a snowy kilometre, you can walk between the the alpha and omega of human innovation in civilisation. Both facilities have chosen the fastest-warming town on the planet as the safest place to store these treasures of humanity. Yet no such facility is dedicated to the microbial biodiversity of the Arctic, despite its critical importance to the future of the world’s biotech and medical sectors.
Instead, it falls to microbiologists such as Debbonaire, racing against time to identify, nurture and screen the microbes of the melting Arctic. Her painstaking work accumulates towers of Petri dishes, each a temporary refuge for a different Arctic microbe.
Eventually, they will be stored in ultra-freezers in laboratories scattered across the world. Such work is unglamorous to funders, so it is done piecemeal on the edges of other projects. Yet it represents our only attempt to save the microbes of the Arctic.
Most of all, the Arctic matters because it is the fastest-warming part of the planet, and its microbes are responding first. What happens there carries implications for everyone. It is the harbinger of change for everywhere.
Another Arctic microbiologist could strike plangent notes regarding permafrost or sea ice, but as an ecologist of glaciers I am drawn to glacial ice.
Over the first fifth of this century, Earth’s glaciers have discharged some ten quadrillion (ten to the power 25) tablespoons of melt a year – and within each tablespoon, the tens of thousands of bacteria and viruses that were once stored within that ice.
What’s to come is sadly predictable. Even the most modest warming scenario of 1.5°C above the pre-industrial era will lead to the extinction of at least half the Earth’s 200,000 glaciers by the end of the century.
Depending on the urgency and effectiveness of our actions as a civilisation, this century could also represent the “peak melt” in our history. Yet the battle to save many of these precious icy habitats is already lost. Instead, for scientists like me, our field work is now largely a question of documenting these “crime scenes” – so at least the knowledge of life within ice can be preserved, before it melts away forever.
For you: more from our Insights series:
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Arwyn Edwards receives funding from UK Research & Innovation - Natural Environment Research Council, as well as the Research Council of Norway, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Royal Geographical Society.
]]>So it goes again. The latest major revelation in this line emerged this week. Taken at face value, it’s extraordinary: Ben Hu, a high-level researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and two colleagues, Yu Ping and Yan Zhu, could have been the first people on the planet to be infected with SARS-CoV-2, according to anonymous sources cited first in the newsletter Public and then in The Wall Street Journal. These proposed patient SARS-CoV-zeros aren’t merely employees of the virology institute; they’re central figures in the very sort of research that lab-leak investigators have been scrutinizing since the start of the pandemic. Their names appear on crucial papers related to the discovery of new, SARS-related coronaviruses in bats, and subsequent experimentation on those viruses. (The Journal reached out to the three researchers, but they did not respond.)
Is this the “smoking gun,” at last, as many now insist? Has the Case of the Missing COVID Origin finally been solved? If it’s true these were the very first infected people, then their professional activities mean they almost certainly caught the virus in the lab, not a market stall full of marmots and raccoon dogs. The origins debate has from the start revolved around a pair of dueling “coincidences.” The fact that the pandemic just happened to take off at a wet market suggests that the virus spilled over into humans from animals for sale there. But the fact that it also just happened to take off not too far away from one of the world’s leading bat-coronavirus labs suggests the opposite. This week’s information seems to tip the balance very heavily toward the latter interpretation.
[Read: If the lab-leak theory is right, what’s next?]
The only problem is, we don’t know whether the latest revelations can be trusted, or to what extent. The newly reported facts appear to stem from a single item of intelligence, furnished by a foreign source, that has bounced around inside the U.S. government since sometime in 2020. Over the past two and a half years, the full description of the sickened workers in Wuhan has been revealed with excruciating slowness, in sedimenting clauses, through well-timed leaks. This glacial striptease has finally reached its end, but is the underlying information even true? Until that question can be answered (which could be never), the origins debate will be stuck exactly where it’s been for many months: always moving forward, never quite arriving.
The story of these sickened workers has been in the public domain, one way or another, since the start of 2021. Officials in the Trump administration’s State Department, reportedly determined to go public with their findings, put out a fact sheet about various events and circumstances at the Wuhan Institute of Virology around the beginning of the pandemic. Included was a quick description of alleged illnesses among the staff. The fact sheet didn’t name the sickened scientists or what they did inside the lab, or when exactly their illnesses occurred. It didn’t specify their symptoms, nor did it say how many scientists had gotten sick. If you boiled it down, the fact sheet’s revelations could be paraphrased like this:
Several researchers at WIV became ill with respiratory symptoms in autumn 2019.
That vague stub did little to budge consensus views. The lab-leak theory had been preemptively “debunked” in early 2020, and broad disregard of the idea—contempt of it, really—hadn’t yet abated. The day before the State Department fact sheet was released, a team of 17 international experts dispatched by the World Health Organization arrived in Wuhan to conduct (with the help of Chinese scientists) a comprehensive study of the pandemic’s origins. By the time of their return in February 2021, they’d come out with their conclusions: The lab-leak theory was “extremely unlikely” to be true, they said.
The next month, while the WHO team was preparing to release its final report, further details of the sick-researchers story began to trickle out. In a panel discussion of COVID origins and then in an interview with the Daily Mail, David Asher, a former State Department investigator who’s now a senior fellow at a conservative think tank, filled in a few more specifics, including that the researchers had been working in a coronavirus laboratory and that the wife of one of them later died. The intel had arrived from a foreign government, he said. Now the facts that were revealed could be summarized like so:
Three coronavirus researchers at WIV became severely ill with respiratory symptoms in the second week of November 2019.
Pressure for a more serious appraisal of the lab-leak theory grew throughout that spring. In May 2021, more than a dozen prominent virologists and biosafety experts published a letter in the journal Science calling for “a proper investigation” of the matter. A week later, The Wall Street Journal published a leak from anonymous current and former U.S. officials: According to a “previously undisclosed US intelligence report,” the paper said, the sickened researchers had been treated for their sickness at a hospital. In other words, they probably weren’t suffering from common colds. This new aspect of the narrative was making headlines now, like this:
Three coronavirus researchers at WIV became severely ill with respiratory symptoms in the second week of November 2019 and sought hospital care.
After all of this publicity, President Joe Biden ordered the intelligence community to redouble efforts to analyze the evidence. While that work was going on, the leaks kept coming. In a 12,000-word story for Vanity Fair, the investigative journalist Katherine Eban gave some backstory on the sick-research intelligence, claiming that it had been gathered in 2020 and then inexplicably file-drawered until State Department investigators rediscovered it. (One former senior official described this as a “holy shit” moment in an interview with Eban.) Her article contained another seemingly important detail, too: The sickened researchers were doing not simply coronavirus research, her sources told her, but the very sort of research that could produce amped-up versions of a pathogen—an approach known as “gain of function.” Later in the summer, Josh Rogin, a Washington Post columnist, added that, according to his unnamed sources, the sickened researchers had lost their sense of smell and developed ground-glass opacities in their lungs. By this point, in the middle of 2021, the expanded piece of intel amounted to the following:
Three gain-of-function coronavirus researchers at WIV became severely ill with COVID-like symptoms in the second week of November 2019 and sought hospital care.
The latest revelations are coming at just the moment when Republicans are lambasting the Biden administration for failing to declassify COVID-origins intelligence in accordance with a law that the president signed. The Sunday Times quoted an anonymous former State Department investigator who said they were “rock-solid confident” that the three sick researchers had been sick with COVID, because people as young as the researchers would rarely be hit so hard by a mere seasonal illness. A few days later, someone spilled the researchers’ names to Public. On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal matched the scoop, and it seemed that every detail of the once-secret information was now exposed:
Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu, three gain-of-function coronavirus researchers at WIV, became severely ill with COVID-like symptoms in the second week of November 2019 and sought hospital care.
However vivid this may sound, its credibility remains unknown. Did Hu, Ping, and Zhu really get sick, as the intel claims? If so, was it really COVID? Two years ago, the Journal cited two anonymous sources on this question: One, the Journal wrote, called the intelligence “potentially significant but still in need of further investigation and corroboration”; the other said it was “of exquisite quality” and “very precise.” Just this week, anonymous officials in the Biden administration told The New York Times that intelligence analysts had already “dismissed the evidence,” by August 2022, about the sickened workers at WIV for lack of relevance. Which secret source should be trusted to explain the significance of this secret intelligence? Readers are left to sort that out themselves.
[Read: Don’t fall for these lab-leak traps]
In the meantime, over the past two years, even as the sickened-worker intel was revealed, a very different sort of evidence was mounting, too. A new research paper, published just days after Eban’s feature in Vanity Fair, revealed that live wild animals, including raccoon dogs, had been for sale at the Huanan market in Wuhan shortly before the pandemic started. In early 2022, scientists put out two detailed analyses of early case patterns and viral genome data, which argued in favor of the animal-spillover theory. Another study involving many of the same researchers came out this past spring, noting the presence of genetic material from raccoon dogs in early samples from the market; its authors described their findings as providing strong evidence for an animal origin. But other scientists were quick to challenge the study’s importance. A further study of the same data by Chinese scientists made a point of not ruling out the hypothesis that the pandemic had started with a case of tainted frozen seafood; yet another study, released in May, argued that the original work provided no useful information whatsoever on the question of COVID’s origins.
So it goes with the animal-spillover theory. The evidence in favor has always been highly esoteric, knotted with data and interpretation. Scientific points are made—a particular run of viral nucleotides is a “smoking gun” for genetic engineering, one famous scholar said in 2021—and then they are re-argued and occasionally walked back. Long-hidden sample data from the market suddenly appear, and their meaning is subjected to vituperative, technical debate. If the evidence for a lab leak tends to come from messy human stuff, the evidence for animal spillover emerges from messy data. Simple-seeming claims are draped across a sprawl of numbers.
In this way, the origins question has broken down into a pair of rival theories that don’t—and can’t—ever fully interact. They’re based on different sorts of evidence, with different standards for evaluation and debate. Each story may be accruing new details—fresh intelligence about the goings-on at WIV, for example, or fresh genomic data from the market—but these are only filling out a picture that will never be complete. The two narratives have been moving forward on different tracks. Neither one is getting to its destination.
]]>I have 20 reasons why we need aluminum foil, this would be the minimum number of reasons why I store it. I think I take my boxes of foil for granted. I panic when I’m down to my last box in the pantry. We all know we use aluminum foil for different things around the house, camping, and in the garage. I buy the smaller boxes as well as the larger heavy-duty aluminum foil boxes. Please send me your reasons why you store foil and I will add them to my list. Thank you in advance.
Here’s the deal, we can do so many things with those boxes whether large or small. It’s a fairly inexpensive item to store, but is so versatile I can’t be without it! Aluminum Foil Heavy-Duty and Regular Aluminum Foil.
I’m updating this post from August 2016, how time flies! I like to share old posts when I have improved the quality of information. Thank for you following my blog all these years. We have a great community of people.
1. I use it to cover casseroles. We all know some recipes call for a cover whereas others, say to bake uncovered.
2. If I wrap my baking pan with foil and spray vegetable oil to bake fish in the oven, the clean-up is so much easier.
3. We love to make “foil dinners” (meat, onions, potatoes, and garlic) for the oven, barbecue, or fire pit. Do you love the smell of the barbecue baking your individual meals? I sure do!
4. Foil works great in a Dutch Oven with those sticky meals that are hard to clean out Lodge Camp Dutch Oven, 6 Qt. Make a “covering” of foil in the shape of the Dutch Oven.
5. Those tin foil rabbit ears STILL work. Yes, we laugh about it, but they still work if you don’t have cable.
6. Foil makes a perfect drop cloth for craft painting and then toss it. The throw-away cloth ones are great but if I just need a small piece of aluminum foil, why waste money on a piece of fabric that’s made to be used for painting?
7. Make a makeshift pan for a fire pit from a few layers of heavy-duty foil in a pan shape, and use large sticks or hot dog sticks covered with foil as handles.
8. Perfect to place a piece of foil below those cherry or other fruit pies baking in the oven to catch any drips.
9. Kids love to make different shapes by molding the foil (after a disaster this would be a great diversion for kids).
10. Sharpen scissors by folding several pieces together and start cutting.
11. Line your barbecue grease drip drawer and replace it often to avoid fire flare-ups. Sometimes people forget to clean out that BBQ drawer and then have flareups that can burn your house down. Please check those often to keep your barbecue safe to use.
12. Line the paint roller trays and remove by gathering the corners and toss when dry-no need to buy the expensive throwaway paint trays.
13. Pie crust protector-no more burnt crust edges. If you have a pair of scissors available, cut a few pieces to keep the pie edges from overbaking.
14. Makes a great makeshift funnel.
15. Scrub your pots at the campfire with a wad of aluminum foil, it really does work and it’s disposable.
16. Cover the doorknobs while painting a door to protect them from paint drips.
17. Makeshift pan for a grill.
18. If you do not have waterproof matches, cover the ones you have with foil and protect them from a rainstorm or other moisture.
19. Makeshift reflector to catch the sunshine for photographs.
20. Fireplace-place a large sheet or two of foil on the floor of the fireplace to gather up the ashes after they cool and are ready to discard. I used to have a log holder that kept the burning logs off the foil.
The next time you see aluminum foil, grab an extra box…large or small, you’ll be glad you did!
I hope you enjoyed my post today on 20 reasons we need aluminum foil. It’s the simple things in life that make our life easier. May God Bless this world, Linda
The post 20 Reasons Why We Need Aluminum Foil appeared first on Food Storage Moms.
]]>Without a doubt, the biggest change you’ll notice immediately after the move is the more limited space inside the new place. And this alone may be a bitter pill to swallow for you, especially when you’ve lived in a big house with a spacious garden outside until that moment.
Also, you will need time – sometimes much more time that you are willing to spare – to adapt properly to the new lifestyle changes that apartment living offers. Hopefully, you will be a highly-adaptable person and you won’t be bothered too much during the post-move adaptation period.
Pay attention to these 7 practical tips for moving from a house to an apartment to make the house-apartment transition much smoother and less stressful for you and your family, including any pets you’re taking with you.
The most important thing you need to understand when you’re moving to an apartment from a house is that space management in the new place should be treated as a serious business simply because it is just that.
In the majority of cases, the living space AND the storage space in the new apartment will be (much) more limited, so you have to be very careful about how much stuff you bring into the new home.
So, what’s the very first step when moving into an apartment from a house? Reduce drastically the number of belongings you intend to move, of course.
How to Get Rid of Stuff Before Moving
Again, the major challenge when moving from a spacious house into an apartment will be the restricted living space in the destination place.
And yes, decluttering your things prior to the move will boost effective space management but you’re also strongly advised to create a detailed floor plan of the new apartment – something that will aid you tremendously in making the right decisions throughout the relocation.
How will a floor plan of the new apartment help you out in your mission to make the house-apartment transition as painless as possible?
A detailed floor plan will help you
SEVEN (7) Tips for Moving into a Studio Apartment
The importance of reading and understanding the terms and conditions of your apartment lease cannot be stressed enough.
Keep in mind that there are several key points you should look for and understand fully before you sign the apartment lease.
Lease Term. This is the duration of the lease – usually, it is one year but it can be more or less in your case.
Proper budgeting for the move will help enable you to avoid spending more money than you absolutely must and to cut packing and moving costs whenever possible.
When you’re following a detailed MOVING CHECKLIST, like you should, you will know that the all-important task of creating a moving budget has to be completed at the very beginning of your pre-move preparations.
But what to budget for when moving from a house to an apartment?
Additionally, you should be well aware of the costs associated with apartment living. Create a separate budget for the immediate post-move expenses you are expected to cover when moving into an apartment:
What to Budget for When Moving Out
When moving from a house to an apartment, one of your top priorities should be to keep your moving expenses to their absolute minimum. Thus said, one excellent way to save money on your local or long-distance move is to pack up your things by yourself to the best of your abilities.
Professional packing is the most expensive add-on service you can request from a moving company so whenever possible, you should try to protect and box up your belongings to cut packing and moving expenses.
Hopefully, you will have inventoried and pared down your things by now, so the only thing left for you is to follow a good PACKING TIMELINE – a detailed to-do checklist that’s been prepared especially for the tough task of packing for a move.
Moving into an apartment from a house presents a few extra challenges, especially if you happen to be moving into a high-rise apartment in another part of the country.
The first obstacle is the STAIRS. Having to carry heavy furniture pieces and boxes up the stairs is a job that’s better left to experienced apartment movers. As an extra challenge, the elevator in the building may not be out of order at that moment or you may be moving into an apartment building with no elevator at all.
The second possible hurdle may be the ELEVATOR. While it does sound convenient to be able to use an operating building when moving into an apartment, the building elevator will first have to be reserved and then properly padded with furniture blankets for extra protection.
Experienced apartment movers will make your move so much easier by taking care of the most stressful tasks for you, including the dreaded task of packing if you don’t have enough time or you just don’t feel confident enough to complete it on your own.
But above all, they will handle the heavy lifting on the day of the move so that you and your family can breathe a sigh of relief that you’ll stay 100% safe from any possible injuries. As a bonus, you won’t need to ask your friends for a big favor either.
Use our Moving Cost Calculator to get in touch with the best apartment movers in your area.
Your personal moving checklist will guide you well while you’re getting ready to move into an apartment from a house. Nevertheless, keep in mind that two of the most important pre-move tasks you will have to tackle prior to the move are to change your address and transfer the house utilities.
Technically speaking, you could initiate the change of address (COA) procedure after you move into the apartment. However, it’s better to do it before you move out of the house to ensure that you continue to receive your important pieces of mail without any problematic interruptions.
Luckily, it’s easy to change your address before you move out of the house – you’ve got 4 options to do it as soon as you find some free time in your moving calendar:
How to Do a Change of Address When Moving
The second super important task that you should remember to take care of is to change your house utilities. Soon enough, you won’t live in the house anymore, so you wouldn’t want to continue to pay for services you won’t use, would you?
If you’re moving into the new apartment as an owner, then you must change the utilities to your name. On the other hand, if you’re moving into an apartment as a renter, then it’s likely that you won’t have to do anything except work out the details in the apartment lease with your landlord or property manager.
Either way, you will definitely need to disconnect the current house utilities before you move out of the house. Follow the link below to learn the best way to do it.
How to Change Utilities When Moving House
For better or worse, you’re moving from a house to an apartment and there’s no going back now. Fortunately, apartment living after a house offers a number of benefits, so it’s time for you to focus on all the positive aspects of apartment living.
The major benefits of apartment living are:
Moving Into an Apartment for the First Time: Checklist and Tips
The post 7 Tips for Moving From a House to an Apartment appeared first on The Moving Blog.
]]>Ugh. I know…lice, yuck. My 13-year-old daughter had lice a couple of months ago. And as you can probably guess, it didn’t end there. I found lice in my hair and two of my boys. Yep, I wanted to cry!
Thankfully, I was able to come up with a natural lice treatment at home that worked really well with no chemicals. All we used was common household supplies and essential oils.
There are a ton of natural lice treatment ideas out there. Some people say they work while others don’t have good luck. The option I’m sharing today is what worked well for us.
I’m not saying this is the ONLY option or even the best option, but this is what worked for my family. It was simple, inexpensive, and less scary than dousing my child’s head full of chemicals!
First, let’s address some common misconceptions and questions about lice. I learned a lot about these little critters and am only happy to pass along any info I have in hopes that it’s helpful and enlightening.
The best way I can describe what lice look like is to show you a picture (sorry!). This is an adult louse:
Nits, aka baby lice eggs, are smaller, oval, and generally a tannish-brown color. Like this:
The most common way lice are spread is through head-to-head contact. If your child is a hugger (like mine is), that is probably how they ended up with lice in the first place.
While it is possible to spread lice by sharing hats, hairbrushes, hair accessories, etc., they’re actually far less likely to spread that way than through head-to-head contact, despite popular belief.
That’s not to say that you don’t have to worry at all about inanimate objects spreading lice, but it’s not as common as most people think.
This is because lice MUST stay on a head to survive. They only lay eggs ON a head and cannot survive elsewhere.
Additionally, lice also do not jump or fly like other pests (fleas, bedbugs, etc). Instead, they move by using their claws to crawl into another piece of hair. Yes, it’s gross! But so much less gross than the thought of them jumping freely all over!
Think about how much your child loves to cuddle, snuggle, hug you, lay their head on you, put his/her head together with a friend or sibling while looking at a device, etc. All those are opportunities to share lice.
No, lice won’t detach from one child’s head in water and float to your child’s head. There is a slight risk of spreading lice from rubbing heads with the same towel though, so if you think someone has lice, don’t share towels at the pool.
Lice can live for up to 30 days on someone’s head but no more than 24-48 hours OFF their host’s head. See the cleaning tips below for more info!
No, lice are human-only pests; they cannot survive on dogs, cats, or other pets.
Think you might have an infestation? Don’t panic! First things first – before you do a lice treatment at home, confirm that you are actually dealing with lice.
Doing this is fairly simple. Make sure you do this in an area with good lighting – I recommend a bright bathroom or next to a bright sunny window.
You will also need a good lice comb – this is the one we use and recommend. It’s inexpensive and works really well. I personally bought this comb about 3 years ago and never needed it other than for occasional checks up until a couple of months ago when my daughter DID have lice.
I was thankful to have it in the house already and didn’t have to run out and buy one!
You will also want to have white paper towels.
Lice are VERY good at hiding, so you will want to take some time to carefully comb through your child’s hair.
The most important thing in a natural lice treatment is to comb your child’s head carefully and then comb it again – you do not want to rush through “nit picking.” (This brings a whole new meaning to the term nit-picking!)
Unfortunately, this does take time, and you cannot skip or rush this step.
My daughter was pretty sure she had lice (she said she had one fall onto her book – YUCK!), and it still took me about 20 minutes of combing before I had a definite louse on the comb.
Comb carefully, starting at the scalp, and comb all the way down the hair shaft. Wipe the comb on the paper towel. Lice are tricky to see in hair, and it can be even trickier to spot eggs (also called nits).
If your child has long hair, use hair clips or ties to section off the hair as you slowly go through section by section.
The most common places to find nits are near and above the ears and at the base of the neck. So be sure to pay extra attention to those areas.
If your child has dandruff, it can be even trickier. (Yep, my daughter has dandruff too.) How do you tell what’s dandruff and what’s the icky bugs?
This is where the paper towel comes in handy.
Dandruff is white, and lice and eggs are a more tan color. They may look white in the hair, but when you wipe them onto a paper towel, you can see them if you look closely, while any dandruff flakes will blend right into the paper towel.
Dandruff will also flake off the scalp and hair easily. Lice eggs will be firmly stuck onto the hair shaft, usually just above the scalp.
Here are some photos to help you compare:
If you’re not sure, use a magnifying glass to look more closely, or take a picture with your phone and zoom in.
When we were first getting started with our natural lice treatment at home in our family, I relied on the picture method to help me confirm lice many times as they are really small to see by eye.
You hope it’s not lice, and sometimes it’s so nice to see that that little piece of something was actually just a tiny bit of fuzz… but once you magnify or zoom in, you will see little feet, and you can’t miss that it is definitely lice. GROSS!
This process does take time.
For my boys, who have very short buzzed hair, it took me about 45-60 minutes to comb through each boy’s head.
My daughter, again with long, very, very thick hair, took me about 4 hours to comb through every section.
And when I found lice in my own hair, my husband helped me painstakingly comb through my hair the first time (now that’s love!), and I think it took 4-5 hours.
I wish there was a magic way to make this process go faster, but there isn’t.
As I said, it brings new meaning to the term nit-picking!
There are many MANY opinions for getting rid of lice. I’ve had some friends share that the traditional chemicals did a ‘decent’ job (though maybe not getting all the lice), while others had good luck with other natural ways of doing a lice treatment at home.
The truth is I don’t think there is ANY lice treatment that will kill 100% of all lice and eggs in one go.
The best way to get rid of lice is to spend the time nitpicking and combing through with a good lice comb.
But it does help make your life easier to do a couple of at-home ways to kill as many lice as you can.
We used the mayonnaise and apple cider vinegar method.
You will need:
I have heard some people reporting that regular white distilled vinegar worked well too. We had apple cider vinegar in the house already, so I used that. You can try either and see what works.
Yup, mayonnaise is a welcome alley in the battle against lice. Here’s how to use it as part of your natural lice treatment.
How much depends on how much hair your child has. My daughter has very thick, medium-length hair, and we used a good 2 cups of mayo or more for each mayo treatment.
I added 5 drops each of tea tree oil, rosemary, and peppermint essential oils and stirred them in.
You’ll need to make sure to cover every bit of the scalp.
Two hours is better, but one seemed to work well for us too. Do not leave it on overnight, as the mayo will begin to melt and would probably make a terrible, smelly mess!
Wash out the mayo mixture, then allow your child’s hair to dry a little bit before going on to the next step.
The reason this step is important is that vinegar helps to soak in and kill the eggs. On the other hand, mayonnaise helps to smother and kill young and adult lice.
Neither will kill all stages of lice, which is why both are important.
The vinegar is acidic, and from what I’ve read, the acidity is what can help dissolve the shell of the egg. As an added bonus, it helps loosen the eggs and makes combing through easier and less painful all around.
Pour apple cider vinegar into a spray bottle and spray over your child’s hair at the roots. You want it to saturate your child’s scalp as much as possible, paying extra attention to make sure you soak hair at the base of the neck and near the ears (the most common places for nits.)
You may want to lay a towel over your child’s shoulder to prevent them from getting all wet.
I will say my daughter did complain a couple of times that it ‘stung’ a little, but it wasn’t so terrible we had to stop. I’m not sure if it was the vinegar itself or more that her scalp was sore from the combing I did while I was first checking for lice.
If your child complains, you can try diluting the apple cider vinegar to a more tolerable level.
DO NOT get the vinegar in your child’s eyes, as it WILL STING! So BE careful! I had my kids hold a washcloth over their eyes.
Allow the vinegar to sit on their head for 30-60 minutes under the shower cap. Do NOT rinse yet.
Again, take your time. Section off the hair and comb small 1” sections so you don’t miss anything.
It’s best to go over each section multiple times as part of your natural lice treatment. If you find an egg or a louse, keep combing that section until you can comb it several times without finding anything. Use a paper towel to wipe off anything you find from the comb.
Make sure you comb extra in areas where nits are most likely to be found – near the ears and at the neck.
If you run into tangles, use a conditioner to help work through them.
When you are finally done, wash the hair again well.
You might need to go through the whole mayonnaise and vinegar process a couple more times.
For my daughter, I found 0 live lice after the mayonnaise and vinegar treatment the first time. We did a second treatment the second day to be safe (it was thankfully the weekend.)
I combed out her hair again a few days later and found 1 live lice. We went through the mayo and vinegar treatment again.
A few days later and she was clean. The next week she was still clean.
For myself and my boys, I managed to kill everything with 2 treatments in 2 days. We checked every few days for several weeks and, thankfully, were clear.
The key is taking the time – as difficult and frustrating as it is – to comb through every strand of hair carefully. It is the cornerstone to this (or any) natural lice treatment! Put on your child’s favorite TV show and watch it together, or watch a movie to help pass the time.
I have read that some people try to use flat irons or hair dryers to kill lice. I personally do not think hair dryers are a safe or effective way to kill lice and nits. It would need to be too hot for far too long in order to completely kill lice and their eggs. The same for flat irons.
I do use a flat iron for my hair, but I can’t say that it helped kill any eggs or nits. Hopefully, we had already gotten everything out of my hair by combing, and I think we did.
Because I had 3 kids with lice, I tried a couple of different methods. For my youngest son, I coated his hair in olive oil for several hours, then combed it out.
I do not think it works as well as mayonnaise because I picked out 2 LIVE lice after the olive oil treatment, whereas we found 0 lice the 3 times we used mayonnaise.
I suspect it’s because olive oil is thinner and runs more easily, making it less likely to fully coat and stick to each lice. Mayonnaise is thicker and stays in place better.
So your child has lice. It’s not fun, but don’t panic. You will get through it with this simple lice treatment at home!
First, let’s address cleaning:
You may have heard horror stories about people throwing away their children’s belongings, including favorite stuffed animals, because of lice.
Let me calm your fears. You do not have to throw everything away or sterilize your home from top to bottom.
Remember: lice cannot survive for more than 2 days off a human head. It’s actually in their best interest to stay ON the head as much as possible, so they will not be burrowing into your child’s pillow and infesting his/her bed, your couch, etc.
You can actually do fairly minimal cleaning. It is far more important that you spend time nitpicking lice and eggs from your child’s head than cleaning. Many people spend more time cleaning their house/vacuuming/washing bedding etc., and not as much on their child’s head, only to have continued lice issues for long periods of time.
For my family, 4 of the 6 of us had lice (yes, including myself.) We did very minimal cleaning while I spent HOURS combing hair and applying our lice treatment at home. We were 100% clear of lice within 2 weeks.
Here is what I recommend you focus on for cleaning with lice:
What about hair brushes and combs? First, remove as many hairs as you can from the brush. Then you can do one of these options:
Personally, I put my daughter’s brush in a bag for a few days and used simple combs only for a few days.
For combs and cleaning the lice comb, I would put not-quite-boiling water in our 2-cup measuring glass and soak the combs in that for a few minutes to kill any possible nits or lice. Same for some of the hair clips.
I threw away a few hair ties I knew my daughter had used while her hair was ‘contaminated,’ but most hair ties, I didn’t worry about because they were unused for long enough that any possible live lice would have long since died.
If you feel more comfortable doing more thorough cleaning, go for it. Just know that you really don’t HAVE to.
Again, for a natural lice treatment, it is more important that you spend time combing out your child’s hair.
The best way to deal with lice is to prevent them in the first place. Lice dislike certain smells and that’s where a simple lice prevention spray can come in handy.
If your child’s hair smells bad to lice, they are much less likely to want to crawl on over in the first place. Try my simple lice prevention spray here.
And there you have it – the natural way to get rid of lice at home. You’ve got this!
Pin it below to find the instructions later!
The post How to Get Rid of Lice Without Chemicals (Natural Lice Treatment) appeared first on Living Well Mom.
]]>
I’m your replacement (I’m his backup plan)
they call me Nobody’s Girl
I’m not loved by anyone
I’m at the center of nobody’s world
I am the apple of nobody’s eye
the sunshine of nobody’s life
my legacy never extends the night
and one day I will be nobody’s wife.
what’s it like to be the only one?
how does it feel to be the one and only?
I’ve only been one of many
lost in the harem, I am part of plenty
I’m always caught up in the rivalry
between who they want and where I wanna be
creating pedestal after pedestal
for men who only settle for me
devalued and degraded
priceless when I’m naked
in the sheets, I’m fucking famous
but just when I think I’ve “made it”
once we get back up I’m nameless
I knew better so they’re blameless
but I believe in people changing
I believe in fate and destinations
yet the more I keep my patience
the more they keep me waiting
what happened to the dedication?
where is the appreciation?
why is it so complicated?
to get my love language translated?
where is my love song?
where are my flowers?
where has the time gone?
I can’t get back any of these hours.
what about the poetry?
that nobody wrote for me?
what about the promise ring?
for a future no one’s planning with me?
they keep telling me it’s gonna happen
I keep hearing “one day” and “you’ll see”
someday love is gonna love you back
but — fuck it.
now I don’t even want to be.
About Me — Linda Sharp
The writer who has to write in order to stay alive — I am not kidding.
medium.com
© Linda Sharp 2023. All Rights Reserved.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Did You Know J.Crew Is Made For Masc Lesbians?
]]>Black music is American music.
We generally understand this fact to be true—after all, Black people are innovators of sound and music—creating genres, like jazz, blues and hip-hop, which have influenced culture in our nation and the world. And while we often celebrate the artistry and ingenuity of Black music (which is absolutely worthy of the praise), much less frequently do we discuss the muscle behind the music. The business of music.
Historically, record labels have been instrumental in an artists’ success. To be frank, the labels are companies that sell their artists. At one point they were kingmakers. With the right amount of talent, labels could create celebrities overnight. The role of these companies has changed much as streaming is more and more prevalent. But, record labels still provide value to the artist and thus maintain their relevance in the industry.
During a time when white record labels would sign few, if any, Black artists, Black musical empires (the first emerging in the 1920s) highlighted Black talent—they provided Black artists with a platform. Black record labels bolstered the careers of Black musicians, but there were certainly times when they took advantage of their artists, too.
It’s Black Music Month, and ESSENCE we’re going to explore a handful of historic Black-owned record labels, the respective moguls behind them and their fate. Afterall, before there was Badboy or Roc-A-Fella Records, there was Swan Records.
Black Swan Records
With its slogan stating, “The Only Records Using Exclusively Negro Voices and Musicians,” Black Swan Records was the first Black-owned record label in the United States.
Founded in 1921 by Harry H. Pace, a Black entrepreneur, attorney and activist; the founder’s story remains largely unknown. According to NPR, Pace’s mentor was W.E.B. DuBois, and upon graduation from college “Helped form the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP and served as its first president.”
Pace and his business partner, W.C. Handy moved to New York City, launching a company that published sheet music by Black artists. It was called Pace & Handy Music Co. Years later Harry Pace would go on to launch Black Swan Records. The label’s first ‘breakout’ record was “Down Home Blues,” by Ethel Waters, released in 1921. Quite notably, Pace also produced the first recording of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” in 1923. The founder wanted to use his label as an opportunity to defy what the world understood about Black music, recording Broadway tunes and classical composers, as well.
Black Swan was only in existence for three years, but its story is still fascinating, nonetheless.
Motown Records
Motown Records is one of the best-known and highly regarded Black record labels in the United States.
Established by music mogul Berry Gordy in 1959 (Gordy first founded Tamla Records in January 1959, and would add the Motown label to his repertoire later that year), Motown Records is single handedly responsible for defining the sound of an era. If Black artists wanted to make it big during the 1960s and 1970s, then they had to go through Berry Gordy (though there was the rare exception to this rule, including Jimi Hendrix and Sly and the Family Stone). And Berry put the artists to work– in the studio and on tour. When the artists weren’t recording, they were likely in a finishing school, led by Maxine Powell, owner of the Maxine Powell Finishing and Modeling School. Gordy wanted his artists to have “mass appeal” (read: he wanted them to be more refined) and his tactics worked, as reflected in his record sales.
Motown is the label responsible for iconic Black songs, like “My Girl” by the Temptations, “What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye and “I Want You Back” by the Jackson Five. Though Gordy sold Motown Records to the Music Corporation of America (MCA) in 1988 for $61 million, the label has forever changed the music industry.
If you’re not familiar with the term, “Hitsville U.S.A.,” then you don’t truly know Black music.
Sussex Records
Sussex Records was the brainchild of music executive Clarence Alexander Avant, who got his start in the industry managing artists. Founded in 1969 the record label was home to artists like Bill Withers, who sang the chart-topping hit, “Lean on Me.” Unfortunately, the company folded in 1975. Though Sussex records went under, Avant later launched one of the first Black-owned radio stations in the Los Angeles area (which also went under in the 1970s). The exec also founded Tabu Records in 1975, working with artists such as Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.
Notably, Avant was also the subject of a 2019 Netflix documentary called “The Black Godfather.”
The post These 3 Black-Owned Record Labels Changed Music History appeared first on Essence.
]]>Proper end-of-financial-year planning can make a significant difference in optimizing financial outcomes and setting the stage for future success. From maximizing tax benefits to evaluating financial performance, careful planning and strategic decision-making are key.
In this week’s edition of Let’s Talk, we will explore valuable insights and expert advice to help you make the most of your year-end planning efforts.
Whether you are a business owner, a financial professional, or an individual looking to secure your financial position, these strategies will provide you with actionable steps to ensure a successful transition into the new financial year.
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“Nine out of ten businesses still use spreadsheets for end-of-financial-year planning, and while spreadsheets are familiar and low-cost, they are often siloed and incongruent, limiting teams’ ability to collaborate on planning, budgeting and forecasting. For end-of-financial-year planning, companies can benefit from breaking free of the rigid 12-month planning cycle, replacing outdated processes like spreadsheets, and drawing on real-time internal and external data. This allows for seamless integration of data from disparate sources across the organisation into one centralised location.
“Given the current market volatility, finance teams need a way to forecast potential scenarios and make better decisions faster. By manipulating data in response to economic conditions and adjusting accordingly, this empowers finance leaders to adjust scenarios quickly to changing business decisions, without needing to rely on IT support. To avoid FP&A teams being bogged down in checking (and rechecking) information this year, a multidimensional and agile approach is needed to reduce the risk of human error and allow for more data-informed decisions.”
“Dividing EOFY planning into three categories will help businesses streamline cumbersome processes, and set themselves up for success in the new financial year:
“Every business this year is being forced to do more with less as inflation surges and economic conditions remain uncertain. With this in mind, the tech stack is a big area in which business leaders are looking to make changes as the end of the financial year arrives.
“Tech stack spending can quickly grow out of control, with many businesses using an amalgamation of different services. In people management, for example, it’s not uncommon for a company to have ten or more tools to manage payroll, compliance and onboarding.
“But we’ve seen businesses that have successfully consolidated solutions and costs. For example, payroll teams can now cover staff in multiple countries with a single solution rather than having to rely on local payroll solution providers in individual countries. The savings from such consolidation can add up from both a financial and productivity standpoint, which is why it’s well worth considering as part of EOFY planning.”
“As rising interest rates and cost of living continue to weigh on the Australian small businesses across all sectors, we can expect the focus of this EOFY to be cautious growth projections and spending. However, as business leaders scrutinise operational expenditures for the year ahead, they should consider the changing cybersecurity regulatory environment, along with cyber resilience. Arcserve research found 57% of Australian mid-sized companies have experienced data loss in the last five years. A key challenge for small businesses will be to balance spiraling costs—while simultaneously trying to keep their data safe.
“Some strategies include:
“As you prepare your business for tax, reporting, and financial obligations, don’t forget to review your current financial tools in June. Use this time to assess what’s working and what’s not when it comes to your business banking and financial services. Consider upgrading your financial tools starting July 1 to improve your operations in the coming year.
“Begin by evaluating your existing financial technology stack, including payment solutions, transaction accounts, debit cards, and accounting software. Ask yourself important questions: Are your current tools still suitable for your needs? Are they cost-effective? Do they align with your business model? Do they provide a comprehensive view of your financial position, or do you have to piece together information from different systems?
“Many business owners that utilise Zeller use July 1 as a milestone to upgrade their financial technology stack. By switching to a new Zeller Account, they find a more affordable solution to manage and store money, track expenses, and accept payments in-person and online. Zeller also consolidates all business cash inflows, spending, and expenses in one place, simplifying tax obligations and financial reporting at the end of each fiscal year.
“Be proactive in your end-of-financial-year planning by reviewing and ensuring that the tools you use will support another successful year.”
“Empower Your EOFY Planning: Unleash Success with Effective Strategies and Clear Vision.
“Take charge of your end-of-year financial year planning with impactful strategies tailored for success. Establish a clear system, stay focused on ambitious goals, and learn from both triumphs and setbacks to shape a prosperous future.
“Don’t overlook the importance of a reliable system for tracking transactions. Opt for a method that’s simple, like reference or account numbers, serving as helpful clues for recall.
“With these dynamic strategies, you’ll reap rewards.”
“As the EOFY approaches, one of the key strategies we have employed at DataStax is to invest in our staff. With Australia in the middle of a skills crisis, and tech workers being amongst the most in demand, it makes sense to do everything you can to hold onto the great employees you already have. For this reason, it’s worth ensuring your people have got the learning, development, and resources they need to take their careers (and your business) to the next level. And as artificial intelligence and automation begins to make an impact on Australian organisations, developing your people so they can make the most of their innate creativity, strategic thinking and problem solving – all things AI can’t do – will help them find a place as your business is transformed by technology innovation.”
“Tax time can often feel overwhelming for small businesses. However, by leveraging technology to work more efficiently, and by working closely with your accountant or bookkeeper, you can help alleviate some of the stress. Here are three tips to navigate end-of-financial-year planning:
“EOFY tends to arrive more quickly than anticipated, so planning ahead is essential. Ideally, you don’t want to take the focus off business operations if you’re rushing to finalise accounts, as many of your customers will expect business as usual.
“Using enterprise resource planning (ERP) software helps your business move forward by managing your operations, consolidating data and generating real-time reports about your company’s performance throughout the year, ultimately making tax time easier and avoiding surprises. Getting immediate insights is much more valuable than only finding out on 1st July that there are stock issues or a particular channel is underperforming.
“EOFY is also a good time to stay informed about regulatory changes, from tax laws to privacy and cyber security regulations. An ERP platform can help ensure you stay up to date and keep your data – and sensitive customer and client data – fully protected.”
“I urge all businesses to do two things. One; review the year that’s been. Two; take time to set yourself up for the year ahead. It’s of course an overly simplistic answer to what can be a stressful time for many business owners.
“In the year that’s been, one area that many will be considering is the marketing plan. Utilise the end-of-financial-year as an opportunity to conduct an audit on the tools in your arsenal. This will re-familiarise you on how to best leverage them, show where processes can be automated or scaled, and highlight what is no longer supporting your objectives.
“Then, with a refreshed understanding of where your spend and resources are being deployed, map out a strategy to optimise your approach – which activities and channels are showing the strongest or poorest ROI? What should you ‘switch off’ and where can you dial up spend to drive better performance and efficiency? Owned channels are the centre of gravity of your brand – now more than ever. And with budgets strained, marketers cannot afford to ignore the efficiency of owned channels such as websites, email, text messaging, and mobile apps to keep customers engaged.
“Amid recent uncertainty and shifting priorities, ensuring your focus lies in understanding and exceeding your customers’ expectations is key to success.”
“At the end of the financial year (EOFY), it’s important for small businesses to review their financial statements and ensure everything is accurate so you can identify potential issues and make any necessary adjustments.
“Ensure you’re claiming all the deductions you’re entitled to, including expenses such as equipment, office supplies, and travel. It’s worth considering purchasing new assets before EOFY to claim depreciation on the assets in the current financial year. Also, if you plan to make super contributions for your employees, do so before EOFY so you can claim them as a deduction too.
“Staying up-to-date with changes to tax laws and Government programs will ensure you are complying with all relevant regulations and receiving support measures. The Federal Budget in May introduced energy price relief, instant asset write-off, and a cash flow boost that will benefit 2.1 million small businesses around Australia, so don’t miss out!
“You can also use EOFY to take stock of your business policies and risks. By reviewing your insurance policies to ensure that you have adequate coverage for your business, you can protect your assets and mitigate risks. Finally, SwiftCheck reports can help protect your business from potential risk by highlighting warning signs a customer may be in financial difficulty, such as defaults registered against the company, recorded legal action and delayed payments.”
“Hasn’t this year flown by? It’s hard to believe that the new financial year is just around the corner.
“But with a new financial year looming can come a lot of stress on small business owners. If you’re one of the many that struggle to combine paper receipts, frantically search for invoices or spend your nights data-entering your BAS, then you’re definitely feeling the EOFY crunch.
“Some strategies to help ease the load at the end of the financial year could be to look at a digital solution such as automation to streamline your paperwork. Making use of digital tools and software will help small business owners keep track of all transactions and payments and will increase efficiency and improve accuracy.
“Another strategy could be to review your business plan at this time of year which can help you assess whether your existing strategies are working, and help you identify changes and opportunities that can improve your bottom line for the upcoming year.
“Adopting any of these strategies will make sure you’re spending your time wisely at this busy time of year.”
“With the end of financial year fast approaching, now is the perfect time for small businesses to reflect on the past 12 months, recharge as a team, and recalibrate for the future.
“I know running a small business can be challenging, especially as we continue to face economic imbalances and uncertainty. While I will not discount this, I do want to remind small businesses that the EOFY period presents a unique opportunity to assess their progress, undertake strategic planning and make informed decisions for the upcoming year.
“To navigate this time successfully and strategically, small businesses can take various steps. These include evaluating financial performance, establishing realistic objectives, examining budgets and cash flow, and adapting where required, exploring financing alternatives, and optimising business operations. Additionally, fostering strong customer relationships, diversifying revenue streams, seeking expert guidance, learning from other like-minded businesses and staying updated on economic trends will further bolster a business’ ability to thrive even in uncertain times.
“Armed with this knowledge, small businesses can dedicate the next 12 months to investigating new possibilities, putting infrastructure and technologies in place, and assessing the feasibility of their goals and objectives to instil resilience and sustainability.
“Take Poolwerx for example, we conducted our annual Revitalise Tour earlier this year, with our senior leadership team visiting Franchise Partners (FP) across Australia. This tour is an important initiative to continue building engagement and relationships across our network to share our business strategy for the upcoming year. The feedback we received from FPs was overwhelmingly positive, as many resonated with our vision and purpose of creating backyard memories for our clients. By taking steps early and proactively engaging with our FPs, we were able to hear firsthand from our frontline teams ahead of the EOFY and take their feedback on board in order to set ourselves up for future success.”
“The phrase “EOFY reporting” can make even the most organised SME owners sweat. But with good planning and a solid checklist – it doesn’t have to. 83 per cent of SMEs anticipating growth in the next year, maximising their tax deduction benefits will be critical to setting them on the right track for FY24. Here are some tips to start the process strong:
“In the lead up to the financial year end, businesses should keep abreast of the tax changes and consider the long-term impacts. For example, the temporary full expensing provisions will be ending on 30 June 2023 – currently, most businesses can claim the full cost of depreciation assets (e.g., plant and equipment) without any cost thresholds. To claim the full cost in 2022-23, it’s important to purchase these assets and have them delivered and installed ready to use by 30 June 2023. From 1 July 2023, only small businesses with an aggregated turnover of less than $10 million will have access to the instant asset write off subject to a $20,000 threshold on the purchase of eligible assets. Any assets purchased costing more than $20,000 will be subject to the small business depreciation measures.
“Employers will need to make their finalisation declarations on single touch payroll by the required date and if a business hires contractors, they may have additional reporting requirements depending on the industry they operate in. It would also be prudent to consider guidance released over the last year by the ATO highlighting their position in relation to professional firm profits, employee vs independent contractor issues and the ATO’s position on s100A (anti avoidance provisions impacting family trust distributions) which may impact year end planning.
“Most importantly, speak to your advisor to see what else you need to consider prior to 30 June.”
“The end of financial year is a good time to direct remaining budgets towards activities that will set a business up for success in the new financial year.
“This includes investing in strategic planning workshops which help leaders set expectations early in the new financial year, encourage collaboration and productivity, while also motivating people to make a strong start.
“Bringing teams together early in the financial year energises and focuses them, sets expectations and allows those who will be working on implementing the strategy to contribute early and feel heard.
“Another good strategy is to use the end of financial year to cherry pick important areas for development, including the common weak spot of effective communications.
“By mid-year, many people have fallen into the habit of using highly technical language that few people understand. So training is a good way to address this skill gap and give people the tools to achieve better outcomes.
“Given the economic outlook, many people feel their budgets will be squeezed throughout the next year and investing now gives them the chance to set the agenda for a productive financial year, while also taking advantage of tax deductions.”
“Stretch your money further by reducing tax and maximise tax refunds. Then put those funds towards debt/emergency fund/investments – (think donations, WFH expenses, industry-specific deductions and education). Check for leakage such as loyalty tax – revisit your home loan, some banks are offering cash backs to switch, challenge your bills providers? Smart strategies and advice – should you be putting more money into super, or your spouse’s super, or super splitting – can you get some Centrelink by having round pegs in round holes? Prepare for next year – it may be tough. Ensure you have an emergency fund, and have three “spending and investment plans”,
“To navigate this crucial period, first and foremost, it's essential to review your financial records and ensure everything is accurate and up to date. Take the time to reconcile your accounts, review your profit and loss statements and assess your overall financial health. This will give you a clear picture of your business's performance and help you identify areas that need attention.
“If you’re looking to sell your business, end-of-financial-year planning takes on even greater significance. Potential buyers will scrutinise your financials, so it's crucial to have accurate and up-to-date records. Clean up any discrepancies, organise your financial statements and have a clear understanding of your business's financial performance. Not only will this instill confidence in potential buyers and help you negotiate a favourable deal, but it will also speed up the selling process.
“You’ll also want to focus on maximising your business’s value. Identify areas where you can enhance profitability and reduce costs. Consider whether there are opportunities to diversify revenue streams, strengthen customer relationships or optimise operations. Demonstrating growth potential and a solid foundation will make your business more attractive to potential buyers.
“Engaging the expertise of professionals experienced in business sales can help guide you through the process. The right choice can help simplify the entire journey of selling your business, guiding you through the process with ease by providing expertise in business sales, preparing your business for sale, finding qualified buyers and negotiating the best deal.”
“Accountants are your friend and one of the most valuable resources for a small business. Book a time with your accountant to discuss your marketing budget. Many small businesses do marketing like a cross-your-fingers-and-hope-for-the-best; this is not a strategy. Marketing is a vital investment in business growth and bringing in new customers/clients. Working with your accountant to map out a marketing budget gives marketing priority and should be a line item in a business’ budget.
“However, with the cost of living soaring, many small businesses are making a strategic mistake in marketing. In an effort to save money on their bottom line, businesses are pulling back on their marketing budget. Now is the time to invest in visibility.
“To ensure money is well spent, it is a good idea to review all marketing activities for what works and what doesn’t. This way, the business can track and measure what is getting cut through, and budget accordingly.”
“There are three key tips I recommend business owners consider as part of their end-of-financial year planning this year. They are all related to helping navigate the upcoming changes and optimising your financial position:
“By focusing on these three aspects, it will allow you to navigate the upcoming financial year more confidently and ensure the long-term success of your business.”
“These are the strategies we are advising our small business clients to consider for their end-of-financial-year planning:
“End of financial year is the perfect time to take stock of business performance and set budgets and goals for FY24. A detailed budget and cash flow forecast will highlight your key areas of focus and will help guide your business through the challenges of the coming financial year.”
“Firstly, consider taking advantage of the temporary full expensing of assets. With the temporary full expensing of assets up to $150,000 ending on June 30, it is crucial to identify any equipment your business requires and ensure it is installed and ready to use by the end of the financial year. This opportunity applies to both new and second-hand assets, whether purchased locally or from overseas.
“Ensure you assess and manage trade debtors. It is essential to review your business debtors and consider writing off any trade debtors that are deemed unrecoverable. By doing so, you can reduce the amount of taxable income. Properly managing your trade debtors will help improve your cash flow and provide a more accurate representation of your business’s financial position.
“Always evaluate income received close to the end of the financial year and consider delaying invoicing. If payment has been received in advance for services or work that will be provided in the following year, you may be able to defer the recognition of that income to the next financial year. If cash flow allows, consider delaying invoicing until after June 30 to shift the taxable income to the following financial year.”
Capitalising on Tax-Deferred Investment Techniques
With tax-deferred investments, individuals can defer the taxation on investment gains until a future date, usually when the investment is liquidated or matures. This category encompasses specific managed funds, annuities, and certain government bonds. By holding off tax dues, one can relish the magic of compound interest on investment returns and could diminish the overall tax burden in the extended run. Thoughtful consideration of investment objectives and risk appetite is vital when employing tax-deferred investment approaches.”
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]]>Deep cuts to public spending helped Britain to tackle the Covid-19 outbreak, former chancellor George Osborne told a public inquiry on Tuesday.
Osborne was accused of performing a “dance of denial” by the British Medical Association (BMA) after suggesting austerity gave the UK the “fiscal space to deal with the coronavirus pandemic”.
The austerity programme, overseen by Osborne, was criticised by a UN investigation in 2018 for inflicting “unnecessary misery in one of the richest countries in the world”.
The wide-ranging Covid inquiry will look into the UK’s preparedness for the coronavirus pandemic, how the government responded and what lessons can be learned for the future.
The UK had one of the highest Covid-19 death tolls in Europe, with the virus recorded as a cause of death for almost 227,000 people.
Asked by inquiry barrister Kate Blackwell KC whether he agreed the “consequences of austerity were a depleted health and social care capacity and rising inequality in the UK” by the time Covid-19 hit, Osborne replied: “Most certainly not, I completely reject that.”
Giving evidence under oath, Osborne added: “If we had not had a clear plan to put the public finances on a sustainable path then Britain might have experienced a fiscal crisis, we would not have had the fiscal space to deal with the coronavirus pandemic when it hit.”
“Do you agree, Mr Osborne, that by the time Covid-19 hit the consequences of austerity were a depleted health & social care capacity & rising
— Aamer Anwar✊🏾🏳️🌈#BlackLivesMatter (@AamerAnwar) June 20, 2023
inequality in the UK? Most certainly not I completely reject that” George Osborne Day 6 @covidinquiryukpic.twitter.com/diJr05c772
"For him to say there is 'no connection whatsoever between austerity and the unequal impact of the pandemic on disadvantaged communities’ is quite staggering". Our President @martinmckee responding to George Osborne's appearance today at the Covid Inquiry. https://t.co/RNBc9HkaEZ
— The BMA (@TheBMA) June 20, 2023
But his comments faced immediate pushback.
Professor Martin McKee, BMA president, said: “The Covid Inquiry deserved better than George Osborne’s dance of denial today.
“For him to say there is ‘no connection whatsoever between austerity and the unequal impact of the pandemic on disadvantaged communities’ is quite staggering. The removal of the social safety net, the cutting and reallocating of public health budgets, the underfunding of public services – all of this had its greatest impact on the most disadvantaged.
“Tens of thousands of excess deaths in the poorest areas were attributed to austerity policies even before the pandemic hit, with ill health among the key causes. Austerity left the poorest exposed to the worst of this catastrophe. In the decade after 2010 life expectancy in the UK hardly improved at all, lagging ever further behind all other high income countries except the US.”
He added: “The NHS saw almost no capital investment in our health service for a decade alongside a lack of funding for a properly-staffed NHS. When the pandemic came we had a quarter of the ICU beds per patient that Germany had, a quarter of the hospital beds per person, and a quarter fewer doctors per person.
“Mr Osborne justified all this by saying austerity was about ‘fixing the roof’ while the sun shone, that the UK’s balance sheet allowed us to respond fiscally when the pandemic came. But numbers on a spreadsheet are no substitute for a healthy population and a robust NHS and public health system. Mr Osborne had a chance to reflect on that today and it is to his great discredit he did not take that chance.”
Others were critical on social media.
Osborne and Cameron both argue austerity helped the economy. It didn’t. They gradually abandoned it because it didn’t work. It was a political ploy to convince electorate to reject labour. It cost UK dear when the pandemic arrived. https://t.co/HaeK8ACUPJ
— Charlie Falconer (@LordCFalconer) June 20, 2023
Osborne: “We prioritised health.”
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) June 20, 2023
Maybe the Covid inquiry lawyer could have used this chart to counter that. pic.twitter.com/fkgFMDQGFc
]]>(From an economic/logical perspective, Osborne's argument is really no different from saying the best way to prepare for war isn't to build tanks or train soldiers but to ensure you have the "fiscal space" to spend money when your country is invaded!)
— Jonathan Portes (@jdportes) June 20, 2023
On the day she heard God tell her to buy a mountain, Tami Barthen already sensed that her life was on a spiritual upswing. She’d recently divorced and remarried, an improvement she attributed to following the voice of God. She’d quit traditional church and enrolled in a course on supernatural ministry, learning to attune herself to what she believed to be heavenly signs. During one worship service, a pastor had even singled her out in a prophecy: “There’s a double door opening for you,” he’d said.
But it was not until two years later, in June of 2017, that she began to understand what that could mean, a moment that came as she and her husband were trying to buy land for a retirement cabin in northwestern Pennsylvania. They’d just learned that the small piece they wanted was part of a far larger parcel—a former camp for delinquent boys comprising 350 acres of forest rising 2,000 feet high and sloping all the way down to the Allegheny River. As Tami was complaining to herself that she didn’t want a whole mountain, a thought came into her head that seemed so alien, so grandiose, that she was certain it was the voice of God.
“Yes, but I do,” the voice said.
She decided this must be the beginning of her divine assignment. She would use $950,000 of her divorce settlement to buy the mountain. She would advance the Kingdom of God in the most literal of ways, and await further instructions.
What happened next is the story of one woman’s journey into the fastest-growing segment of Christianity in the country—a movement that helped propel Donald Trump to the White House, that fueled his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, and that is becoming a radicalizing force within the more familiar Christian right.
It is called the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, a sprawling ecosystem of leaders who call themselves apostles and prophets and claim to receive direct revelations from God. Its congregations can be found in cities and towns across the country—on landscaped campuses, in old supermarkets, in the shells of defunct churches. It has global prayer networks, streaming broadcasts, books, podcasts, apps, social-media influencers, and revival tours. It has academies, including a new one where a fatigues-wearing prophet says he is training “warriors” for spiritual battle against demonic forces, which he and other leaders are identifying as people and groups associated with liberal politics. Its most prominent leaders include a Korean American apostle who spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally prior to the January 6 insurrection and a Honduran American apostle whose megachurch was key to Trump’s evangelical outreach. Besides Trump, its political allies include school-board members, county commissioners, judges, and state legislators such as Doug Mastriano, a retired Army intelligence officer whose outsider campaign for Pennsylvania governor last year was widely ridiculed, even as he won the GOP nomination and 42 percent of the general-election vote.
The movement is seeking political power as a means to achieving a more transcendent goal: to bring under biblical authority every sphere of life, including government, schools, and culture itself, establishing not just a Christian nation, as the traditional religious right has advocated, but an actual, earthly Kingdom of God.
For that purpose, the movement has followers, each expected to play their part in a rolling end-times drama, and that is what Tami Barthen, who is 62, was trying to do.
I called her recently and explained that I was in Pennsylvania trying to understand where the movement was headed, and had found her on Facebook, where she follows several prominent prophets. She said that she was willing to meet but that I should first do three things.
One was to go see a film called Jesus Revolution, and this I did that afternoon, the 2 o’clock showing at an AMC Classic outside Harrisburg. As the lights dimmed, scenes of early-1970s California washed over the screen. What followed was the story of a real-life pastor named Chuck Smith, who opened his church to bands of drugged-out hippies who became known as “Jesus freaks,” a transformation depicted in scenes of love-dazed catharsis and sunrise ocean baptisms—young people rejecting relativism for the warm certainty of God’s one truth. The film, a full-on Hollywood production starring Kelsey Grammer and produced by an outfit called Kingdom Story Company, has earned $52 million so far.
The second thing was to visit a church in Harrisburg called Life Center, whose senior pastor had been among the original California Jesus freaks and now held the title of apostle. I arrived at a glass-and-cement former office building for the midweek evening service. In the lobby, screens showed videos of blue ocean waves. The books on display included Now Is the Time: Seven Converging Signs of the Emerging Great Awakening and It’s Our Turn Now: God’s Plan to Restore America Is Within Our Reach. The apostle was out of town, so another pastor showed visitors into the sanctuary, a 1,600-seat auditorium with no images of Jesus, no stained-glass parables, no worn hymnals, no reminders of the 2,000 years of Christian history before this. Instead, six huge screens glowed with images of spinning stars. On a stage, a praise band was blasting emotional, surging songs vaguely reminiscent of Coldplay. Rows of spotlights were shining on people who stood, hands raised, and sang mantra-like choruses about surrender, then listened to a sermon about submitting to God.
The last thing was to attend a touring event called KEY Fellowship, which stands for “Kingdom Empowering You.” So I headed to a small church in State College, Pennsylvania, the 44th city on the tour so far. On a Saturday morning, 100 or so attendees were arriving, a crowd that was mostly white but also Black, Latino, and Korean-American. They all filed through a door marked by a white flag stamped with a green pine tree and the words An Appeal to Heaven—a Revolutionary War–era banner of the sort that rioters carried into the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. “We thank you, Father, that you have chosen us,” said the woman who’d organized the event, explaining that its purpose was to “release spiritual authority” over the region. And then the releasing began. The band. The singing. The shouting: “Lord, have your dominion.” Several men stood and blew shofars, hollowed-out ram’s horns used in traditional Jewish worship, and meant in this context to warn demons and herald the gathering of a modern-day army of God. Out came maracas and tambourines. Out came long wooden staffs that people pounded against the floor. Others waved American flags, Israeli flags, more pine-tree flags. The point, I learned, was to call the Holy Spirit through the prefabricated walls of the church and into the sanctuary, all of this leading up to the moment when a local pastor, a member of the Ojibwe-Cree Nation, came to the stage.
She was there to declare the restoration of the nation’s covenant with Native American people, which, in the movement’s intricate end-times narrative, is a precondition for the establishment of the Kingdom. A sacred drum pounded. “Father, we pray for a holy experiment!” someone shouted. A white man cried. Then people began marching in circles around the room—flags, tambourines, maracas, staffs—as a final song played. “Possess the land,” the chorus went. “We will take it by force. Take it, take it.”
Once I had seen all of this, Tami said I could come.
The road to the mountain runs through the small town of Franklin, an hour or so north of Pittsburgh, then winds uphill and through the woods before branching off to a narrower road marked private. At the entrance is a Mastriano sign, left over from when Tami served as his Venango County coordinator.
“We don’t really do politics,” she was saying, riding onto the property with her husband, Kevin. “But then we heard God say, ‘You need to do this.’”
She had raised and homeschooled three children, been the dutiful wife of a wealthy Pennsylvania entrepreneur who traded metals, but as I came to learn over the next few weeks, so many new things had been happening since she started following the voice of God.
“All this is ours,” Kevin said, passing old cabins, a run-down trailer, and other buildings from the property’s former life.
“And right up here is where it all happened,” Tami said.
They parked and went over to a wooden footbridge, part of the only public path through the property. This is where they’d been walking when Tami had first seen the spot for their retirement cabin, at which point she had looked down and seen three blue interlocking circles stenciled onto the bridge, some sort of graffiti that she took as a sign.
“I said, ‘Kevin, we’re at the point of convergence,’” she recalled.
Convergence. Spiritual warfare. Demonic strongholds. These were the kinds of terms that Tami tossed off easily, and knew could make the movement seem loopy to outsiders. But they were part of a vocabulary that added up to a whole way of seeing the world, one traceable not so much to ancient times but rather to 1971.
That was when an evangelical missionary named C. Peter Wagner returned to California after spending more than a decade in Bolivia, where he had noticed churches growing explosively and where he claimed to have seen signs and wonders, healings and prophecies. A professor at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Wagner began studying what he believed were similar forces at work in the underground house-church movement in China and certain independent Christian churches in African countries, as well as Pentecostal churches in the U.S. He eventually concluded that a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit was under way across the globe—a supernatural force that would erase denominational differences, banish demonic spirits, and restore the offices of the first-century Christian Church as part of a great end-times battle. By the mid-1990s, Wagner and others were describing all of this as the New Apostolic Reformation, detailing the particulars in dozens of books.
The reformation meant recognizing new apostles—men and women believed to have God-given spiritual authority as leaders. It meant modern-day prophets—people believed to be chosen by God to receive revelations through dreams and visions and signs. It meant spiritual warfare, which was not intended to be taken metaphorically, but actually demanded the battling of demons that could possess people and territories and were so real that they could be diagrammed on maps. It meant portals: specific openings where demonic or angelic forces could enter—eyes or mouths, for instance, or geographic locations such as Azusa Street in Los Angeles, scene of a seminal early-20th-century revival. It meant the rise of the Manifest Sons of God, an elite force that would be endowed with supernatural powers for spiritual and perhaps actual warfare. Most significant, the new reformation required not just personal salvation but action to transform all of society. Christians were to reclaim the fallen Earth from Satan and advance the Kingdom of God, and this idea was not metaphorical either. The Kingdom would be a social pyramid, at the top of which was a government of godly leaders dispensing biblical laws and at the bottom of which was the full manifestation of heaven on Earth, a glorious world with no poverty, no racism, no crime, no abortion, no homosexuality, two genders, one kind of marriage, and one God: theirs.
Wagner helped convene the International Coalition of Apostles in 2000. It became the model for what remains the loosely networked structure of a movement that is both decentralized and inherently authoritarian. Apostles would lead their own ministries and churches, sometimes with the counsel of other influential apostles. The movement grew rapidly, creating its own superstars whose power came from the following they cultivated, and who were constantly adding prophecies that sought to explain how current events fit into the great end-times narrative.
Broad-brush terms like Christian nationalism and white evangelicals have tended to obscure these intricacies. NAR’s growth has also gone largely undetected in conventional surveys of American religiosity, with their old categories such as Southern Baptist and Presbyterian. It is most clearly reflected in the rise of nondenominational churches—the only category of churches that is growing in this country—though not fully, because many followers do not attend church. A recent survey by Paul Djupe of Denison University hints at its scope, finding that roughly one-quarter of Americans believe in modern-day prophets and prophecies. Those who have tracked and studied the movement for years often say it is “hiding in plain sight.”
Yet Trump-allied political strategists, such as Roger Stone, understand the power of a movement that offers the GOP a largely untapped well of new voters who are not just old and white and Bible-clinging, but also young and brown, urban and suburban, and primed to hear what the prophets have to say. Recently, Stone told one interviewer that he saw a “demonic portal” swirling over Joe Biden’s White House. “There’s a live cam where you can actually see, in real time,” Stone said. “It’s like a smudge in the sky, almost looks like a cloud that doesn’t move.”
Like Many in the movement, Tami doesn’t use the phrase New Apostolic Reformation, but she first encountered its kind of Christianity in 2015, when a friend gave her a book called Song of Songs: Divine Romance. It is part of a series called The Passion Translation, described by its author, a pastor named Brian Simmons, as a “heart-level” version of the Bible.
At the time, Tami had just extracted herself from what she described as a long and difficult marriage. She had left the traditional evangelical church she’d attended for years, where she said the pastor tended to side with her wealthy husband. She was estranged from some of her family. She was alone and at a vulnerable point in her life when she opened Simmons’s book and began reading passages such as “I am overshadowed by his love, growing in the valley,” and “Let him smother me with kisses—his Spirit-kiss divine,” and “So kind are your caresses, I drink them in like the sweetest wine!”
She had never felt so loved in her life, and she wanted more. The friend who’d given her the book attended Life Center, and Tami signed up for a conference at the church called “Open the Heavens,” where she learned more about prophecy, spiritual warfare, and the idea that she herself had a role to play in advancing the Kingdom of God, if she could discern what it was.
Among the speakers she heard was a rising apostle named Lance Wallnau, a former corporate marketer whose social-media following had grown to 2 million people after he prophesied that Donald Trump was anointed by God. Tami had voted for Trump in 2016, but her interest in Wallnau at this point had more to do with what he’d branded as “the Seven Mountains mandate,” or 7M, the imperative for Christians to build the Kingdom by taking dominion over the seven spheres of society—government, business, education, media, entertainment, family, and religion. Wallnau gives 7M courses and holds 7M conferences, and that is how Tami learned about convergence: the notion that there are moments in life when events come together to reveal one’s Kingdom mission, as Wallnau writes, “like a vortex that sucks into itself uncanny coincidences and ‘divine appointments.’”
That was exactly how Tami felt as she considered buying the mountain. Divine appointments everywhere. At Life Center, a man told her that he’d had a vision of God “pouring onto the mountain” everything she would need. Someone else shared a vision of Tami as a princess riding a horse, which she found ridiculous but also, as a woman who’d always felt under the thumb of some man, compelling. And then she herself heard the voice of God telling her what to do.
“See that?” she said now, back in the car, passing a rusted oil tank where someone had spray-painted what appeared to be a yellow Z.
“I’ll explain that later,” Tami said.
She and Kevin drove to the former camp director’s home where they now lived. Inside was a piano with a shofar and two swords on top, which Tami had bought to remind herself that she is a triumphant warrior for Christ. On a wall hung a portrait she had commissioned, which depicted her clad in medieval armor. An Appeal to Heaven flag was draped over a chair. She opened a sliding-glass door to a deck overlooking the Allegheny River, and explained what happened after she and Kevin had closed on the mountain: how they began to envision building a “Seven Mountains training center.” How that led to someone from Life Center introducing her to an apostle from the nearby city of New Castle, who visited the mountain and wrote Tami a prophecy—that what was happening was “bigger than whatever you could dream or imagine.” How he introduced her to a group of five men who claimed to be connected to anonymous Kingdom funders, and how, not long after that, the group came to the mountain, where Tami, full of nerves, presented a plan that included a lodge, a conference center, an outdoor stage, and some yurts along the river.
“The main thing they asked is whether we were Kingdom,” Tami said.
She told them that she and Kevin were Kingdom all the way; they told her that God wanted her to double the size of the project, and then told her to “add everything you can possibly dream of,” Tami recalled.
So they did—adding plans for an outdoor pistol range, an indoor pistol range, a tactical pistol range, and a rifle range, along with a paintball course, a zip line, and other recreational facilities. They printed brochures for the Allegheny River Retreat Center, which, Tami said, was now a $120 million project.
As they waited and waited for funding, the 2020 presidential election arrived. Tami again voted for Trump, this time in concert with prophets who said he was an instrument of God. She soon began listening to an influential South Carolina apostle named Dutch Sheets, who had for years advocated an end to Church-state separation and co-authored something called the “Watchman Decree,” a kind of pledge of allegiance that included the phrase “we, the Church, are God’s governing Body on the earth.” Sheets was among a core group of apostles and prophets spreading the narrative that the election had been stolen not just from Trump, but from God. He began promoting daily 15-minute YouTube prayers and decrees, which were like commandments to those in the Kingdom. He branded them “Give Him 15,” or GH15, and at their peak, some videos were getting hundreds of thousands of views.
Tami began reading Sheets’s decrees aloud at sunrise every morning, videotaping herself on the deck overlooking the Allegheny River and posting her videos to Facebook.
“Lord, we will not stop praying for the full exposure of voter fraud in the 2020 elections,” she read on November 12.
“We refuse to take our cue or instructions from the media, political parties, or other individuals,” she read on November 17. “We believe you placed President Trump in office, and we believe you promised two terms. We stand on this.”
She started receiving lots of friend requests and was getting recognized around town. She bought an Appeal to Heaven flag, which Sheets had popularized as a symbol of holy revolution. She kept seeing signs that made her wonder whether the mountain might have a specific purpose in what she was coming to see as a global spiritual battle.
One day the sign was a dove flying across the sky as she read the morning decree, and the dove feathers she found on her doorstep after that. Another day, two women who’d seen her videos showed up at her door with bottles of water from Israel, saying they needed to pour it in “strategic” places along her riverfront that God had revealed to them. Another day, Sheets himself announced that he was holding a prayer rally at the headwaters of the Allegheny River—two hours north of Tami—part of a swing-state prophecy tour as Trump challenged election results.
Tami went. And when Sheets and other apostles and prophets urged followers to convene at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, she felt God telling her to go there, too. So she and Kevin boarded a bus that a friend had chartered to Washington, D.C., where she read the daily decree, the Washington Monument in the background, as Kevin held the Appeal to Heaven flag.
“Let the battle for America’s future be turned today, in Jesus’s name,” she said. From what she described as her vantage point outside the Capitol, the big story of the day was not that a violent insurrection had occurred but rather that a movement of God was under way, another Jesus Revolution. “It was one of the best days of my life,” Tami said.
When she got back to the mountain, she kept recording the daily decrees from her deck, in front of a pink flower pot with an American flag.
“We refuse to allow hope deferred and discouragement to cripple the growth of your people in their true identity—the army you intended them to be,” she read after Joe Biden took office.
She flew to Tampa, Florida, for a stop on the “ReAwaken America” tour. She drove to another one a few hours away from her home, then watched others online, events featuring a roster of prophets alongside the headliner, retired General Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national-security adviser, who was now declaring the nation to be in a state of “spiritual war.” She always came home with a cellphone full of new contacts. She began introducing herself as “Tami Barthen, the one who bought a mountain for God.”
Occasionally she said this with a note of sarcasm, because the Kingdom funding had yet to come through, and at times she was not sure where all the signs were ultimately pointing. In those moments, she sought more prophecies.
She messaged a prophet who’d appeared on a Dutch Sheets broadcast, asking him what God might tell him about her project. “This is what I hear the Lord saying,” he wrote back. “God says this came forth from His heart and He has already orchestrated the completion.”
At a Kingdom-building conference in Oregon, she asked Nathan French, a prominent prophet, what God was telling him and recorded the answer on her iPhone: “I feel like that mountain is like Zion, and I feel like God is even saying you can name it Mount Zion … I see the Shekinah coming,” he said, using the Hebrew term for God’s presence, “the shock and awe.”
Tami had rolled her eyes at this grand new prediction, but when she got home, another sign appeared.
“The Z on the oil tank,” she said now, sitting on her porch.
It was spring. She took the Zion prophecy, which she had transcribed and printed on thick paper, and slipped it into a binder, where she archived the most meaningful ones in protective plastic covers. She was trying to figure out what it was all adding up to.
“Why was Dutch Sheets at the headwaters of the Allegheny? Why is there a Z on the oil tank? Why am I meeting all these people? There are all these pieces to the puzzle, but I don’t know what it’s supposed to be yet,” Tami said.
A new piece of the puzzle was that Trump had been indicted in New York on charges of falsifying business records related to payoffs to the adult-film actor Stormy Daniels. Tami had watched coverage on an online show called FlashPoint, which has a cable-news format, except that the news bulletins come from prophets.
“This is not just a battle against us; this is a battle against the purposes of God,” one had said about the indictment, and Tami understood this to be an escalation. A few days later, an apostle named Gary Sorensen called. He was an engineer who had been among the group claiming to represent the Kingdom funders. He was calling to invite Tami on a private spiritual-heritage tour of the Pennsylvania capitol, which was being led by one of the most powerful apostles in the state.
Tami took it as another sign, and she and Kevin drove to Harrisburg.
She was slightly nervous. The apostle was a woman named Abby Abildness, who heads a state prayer network that was part of the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, a fixture of the religious right. During the legislative session, she convened weekly prayer meetings with state legislators along with business and religious leaders. She had a ministry called Healing Tree International, which claimed representatives in 115 countries, and focused on what she described as “restoring the God-given destinies of people and nations.” She was just back from Kurdistan, where she had met with a top general in the Peshmerga, the Kurdish military. To Tami, Abildness was like a high-ranking Kingdom diplomat.
“So,” Abildness began. “The tour I do is about William Penn’s vision for what this colony would be. And it starts—if you look up, we have the words he spoke on the rotunda.”
Tami looked up at the gilded words beneath a fresco of ascending angels.
“There may be room there for such a Holy Experiment,” Abildness read. “And my God will make it the seed of a nation.”
“Wow,” Tami said.
They were the kind of words and images found in statehouses all over the country, but which Abildness understood not as historical artifacts but as divine instructions for the here and now.
They headed down a marbled hallway to the governor’s reception room.
“So this is William Penn,” Abildness said, pointing to a panel depicting Penn as a student at Oxford, before he joined the Quaker movement. “He’s sitting in his library and a light comes into the room, and he knows something supernatural is happening.”
They moved on to the Senate chamber.
“Here you are going to see a vision of what society could be if the fullness of what Penn planted came into being—a vision of society where all are recognizing the sovereign God,” Abildness said as they walked inside.
Tami looked around at scenes of kings bowing before Christ, and quotes from the Book of Revelation about mountains.
“You see here, angels are bringing messages of God down to those who would write the laws,” Abildness said.
They moved on to the House chamber.
“This is The Apotheosis,” Abildness said, referring to an epic painting that included a couple of Founding Fathers, and then she pointed to a smaller, adjacent painting, depicting Penn making a peace treaty with the Lenape people.
Tami listened as Abildness explained her interpretation: God had granted Native Americans original spiritual authority over the land; the treaty meant sharing that spiritual authority with Penn; later generations broke the covenant through their genocidal campaign against the Native Americans, and now the covenant needed to be restored in order to fulfill Penn’s original vision for a Holy Experiment. Nothing less than the entire Kingdom of God was riding on Pennsylvania.
Tami listened, thinking of something she’d always wondered about, a sacred Native American site across the river, visible from her deck, known as Indian God Rock. It is a large boulder carved with figures that academic experts believe have religious meaning. As the tour ended, she kept thinking about what it all could mean.
“People I hang with think we’re moving from a church age to a Kingdom age,” Sorensen was saying.
“It’s like, what are all these signs saying?” Tami said.
Sorensen was involved in various organizations devoted to funding and developing Kingdom projects. There was Reborne Global Trust, and New Kingdom Global, and Abundance Research Institute, among others. He told Tami not to worry about her benefactors coming through. He said $120 million was peanuts to them. He said one funder was an Australian private-wealth manager. He said others were “international benefactors,” as well as “sovereigns,” people he described as “publicly known royal and ruling families of well-known countries.”
“We are looking into establishing a Kingdom treasury,” he said, elaborating that some of the funders were setting up offshore banking accounts. “Outside the central banking system—so we can’t get cut off if we’re not voting right.”
Everything would be coming together soon, he told her.
Driving back to the mountain, Tami and Kevin listened to ElijahStreams, an online platform that launched after the 2020 election. It hosts daily shows from dozens of prominent and up-and-coming prophets, and claims more than 1 million followers.
There were so many apostles and prophets these days—the old standards like Dutch Sheets, and so many younger ones who had podcasts, apps, shows on Rumble. By now Tami followed at least a dozen of them closely, and what she had noticed was how politically involved they had become since the 2020 election and how in recent months, their visions had been getting darker.
Lance Wallnau, whom Tami thought of as fairly moderate, had spoken on Easter Sunday about hearing prophecies of “sudden deaths,” and he himself predicted that “the disciplinary hand of God” would be coming down.
Now, as she and Kevin were winding through the woods, she was listening to a young prophet from Texas named Andrew Whalen, who was being promoted on popular shows lately. He described himself as “close friends” with Dutch Sheets, and on his website, characterized the moment as a “context of war,” when “a new generation is preparing to cross over into ‘lands of inheritance’—places that Christ has given us authority to conquer.”
“I’m boiling on the inside,” he was saying, describing a dream in which he saw the angelic realm working with “earthly governments and militaries.” He continued, “I just say even today, let Operation Fury commence, God. We say let the fury of God’s wrath break forth against every evil work, against systems of demonic and satanic structure.”
Tami listened. And in the coming weeks, she kept listening as Operation Fury became a page on Whalen’s website where people could sign up to help “overthrow jezebel’s influence from our lives.” She kept listening as Trump was indicted a second time, for mishandling classified documents, and a prophet on FlashPoint described the moment as a “battle between good versus evil.”
She sometimes felt afraid when she imagined what was coming.
“It’s going to get bad. It’s going to get worse,” she said. “It’s spiritual warfare, and it’s going to come into the physical. What it’s going to look like? I don’t know. God said to show up at Jericho, and the walls came down. But there are other stories where David killed many people. All I can say is if you believe in God, you’ve got to trust him. If you’re God-fearing, you’ll be protected.”
The morning after her tour in Harrisburg, Tami went out on her deck and recorded the daily decree.
“We use the sword of our mouths just as you instructed,” she read. “The king’s decree and the decrees of the king are hereby law in this land.”
After that, she went to her office.
On her desk were bills she had to pay. On a table were towers of books she’d read about spiritual warfare, demon mapping, the seven mountains. In a file were all the prophecies she’d tried to follow, all the signs.
She thought about Operation Fury, and what Abby Abildness had said about Pennsylvania, and Indian God Rock, and as she began putting all the signs together, she had a thought that filled her with dread.
“I don’t want this job,” she said. “What if I mess up? Why me?”
She pulled out a 259-page book called The Seed of a Nation, about what William Penn envisioned as a “Holy Experiment” in the colony of Pennsylvania, opening it to the last page she had highlighted and underlined.
“See?” she said. “I only got to page 47.”
She thought that maybe the funding was not coming through because she had missed a sign. Maybe she had not been obedient enough. Maybe she, Tami Barthen, was the one delaying the whole Kingdom, and now instead of listening to the voice of God, she was listening to her own voice saying something back: “I’m sorry.”
She thought for a moment about what would happen if she let it all go, if instead of being a Christian warrior on a mountain essential to bringing about the Kingdom of God, she went back to being Tami, who had wanted the peace of a retirement cabin by the river.
“I can’t think of a Plan B,” she said, so she reminded herself of how she had gotten here.
She had been living her life, trying to pull herself out of a dark period, when she felt the love of God save her, and then heard the voice of God tell her to buy a mountain. And who was she to refuse the wishes of God?
So she had bought a mountain, 350 acres redeemed for the Kingdom. Now she would wait for word from the prophets. She reminded herself of a favorite Bible verse.
“He says, ‘Occupy until I come,’” Tami said. “Like the Bible says, ‘Thy kingdom come.’”
]]>Late last year, the Reserve Bank gave 1,000 Australians diaries and asked them to record every payment they made over the course of a week. Of the 13,000 payments, only 17 were with cheques.
It’s been an astounding collapse. Back in 1980 at the start of the credit card era, 85% of non-cash payments were made with cheques. Today it’s less than 0.1%.
Earlier this month, the government announced it was following New Zealand, Denmark, the Netherlands and others, closing our cheque system down by 2030.
Meanwhile, New Zealand is already on to the next thing. Having phased out cheques, it’s now looking at winding down the use of cash.
So how close is Australia now to becoming a cash-free nation?
Cheques are horrendously expensive to process. The average cost of everything that had to happen to process a cheque exceeds $5 per payment, mostly borne by banks.
But cash is expensive in its own way. The average cost of creating, sorting and trucking all those sheets of plastic and coins exceeds 50 cents per payment, mostly passed on to banks and retailers, and it is soaring as the number of payments plummets.
As recently as 2007, the vast bulk of consumer payments – 69% – were in cash. By 2019 only 27% were in cash. By 2022, after two years of COVID, it was only 13%.
At this rate, it’s hard to be certain how long cash will last.
For those who’ve never had to write one, cheques are bank-issued pieces of paper on which the owner writes the name of the person they want the bank to pay and the amount. They they hand it to that person, who then hands it to their bank, which then tries to get the money from the payer’s bank.
Behind the scenes, until recently when the electronic transmission of digital images changed things, each bank would collect all the cheques that had been presented to its branches each day and sort them into bags, one for each originating bank.
Then, late at night, its “bag man” would travel to a nondescript city location with a bag for each bank, hand the correct one to each of the other bagmen, and be given bags in return, which the bagman would take back to the bank for signature checking.
When each bank worked out what it owed the other bank, they would usually discover the flows largely cancelled each other out, and then make net payments which would be reflected in the cheque-writer’s account, up to five business days later.
Always expensive, the cost per cheque grew and grew as the number of Australians paying with cheques dwindled to a fraction of what it had been.
It’s the same sort of story with cash. Although we don’t often think about it, cash costs an awful lot to move, sort and restock.
Printing the notes still makes money – it costs about 32 cents to make each note, whether it’s worth $5 or $100, although making some coins now does lose money.
The real expense is in moving notes and coins around, keeping them nearby and restocking banks and cash registers. Aside from payments the Reserve Bank makes to banks for returning damaged notes, the banks (and, through them, the retailers) are expected to pay for the lot.
Read more: The Mint and Note Printing Australia make billions for Australia – but it could be at risk
Until recently that gave the two firms that dominate the business (Linfox Armaguard, and Prosegur, which owns Chubb Security) a pretty good deal.
Except that the volume of cash they’ve carried has dived 47% over the past ten years, 30% of it during COVID.
Both firms say their money-moving arms are incurring “heavy financial losses” and that if they increase their prices much more, retailers might move even further away from cash, pushing their costs even higher.
Last week, the Competition and Consumer Commission allowed them to merge on the condition that they limit their price increases to the consumer index plus 7.5% per year. That increase is so steep as to suggest a death spiral: the more they charge, the less retailers will use cash, the more they’ll have to charge.
The only way out, unless they can make really big efficiencies, or unless the decline in the use of cash stops, would be for the government to return to subsidising the use of cash. It’s hard to see how it could make the case to do that when there are cheaper emerging technologies.
Bank transfers cost a mere fraction of using cash, and pretty soon we’ll be able to use them for everything, via things such as QR codes.
A previous federal government has already tried to eliminate the use of cash for transactions worth more than $10,000, as part of its attack on the black economy.
Announced in 2016 by the Turnbull Coalition government, the ban was due to come into force in 2019. But in 2020, the Morrison-led Coalition government backed down.
If Australia wants to ban cash (and ban it for small transactions too – cash is now used less than electronic methods for transactions of all sizes) the easiest solution might be simply to wait.
Cards are now the dominant means of exchanging money, and direct transfers are growing from a small base.
Pure extrapolation would suggest cash has less than a decade to go, but it will probably hang around for longer as an (expensive, little-used) backup that maintains privacy.
Like cheques, cash will probably die gradually, then suddenly. By the time it does, there will be few users left who care.
Peter Martin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
]]>On the chaotic day after Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, a company of women in military uniforms reported for duty at the Redlands City Hall.
The members of the Redlands unit of the Women’s Ambulance and Defense Corps were called to serve on Dec. 8, helping officials get the city on a war footing. And they weren’t there to make coffee.
The WADC members were not members of the military but rather a civilian group of women trained in advance to deal with emergencies or for a war which would take away many men with skills needed to keep a city running as normal. Numerous companies were formed in Inland Empire cities from Barstow to Riverside and Beaumont to San Dimas during the months before and after the start of the war.
The passage of time has been unkind to the many hundreds of Inland Empire women who stood up to help during the war. Their work has been forgotten.
I first heard about them as part of an inventory team at the San Bernardino County Museum in Redlands after a box was opened containing a 6-foot-long multi-colored satin banner. On it were “Women’s Ambulance and Defense Corps. San Bernardino Unit,” a name that was a mystery to us.
Some research soon made it obvious here was a story of local women who kept the homefront safe and operating during the war. They were already in full operation in most local cities well before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Members wore military-type uniforms and held various ranks. They not only received first aid and drilling instruction, but were trained in communications, radio sending and receiving, driving ambulances and heavy vehicles, mechanical repair, pistols and rifles, gas mask use, fire warden duties and map reading.
The war for the U.S. was still more than a year away in November 1940 when Lt. Col. John W. Colbert, a retired Army surgeon, concluded women should be available and trained to assist in the event of war or any emergency. He organized the first unit of the Women’s Ambulance and Defense Corps in Los Angeles.
Other companies were quickly organized, and five months before Pearl Harbor, there were 3,800 women in Southern California training for all types of duties, according to the Los Angeles Times, July 4, 1941.
Another group but with the same goals, the Women’s Ambulance Safety Patrol, began in Rockford, Illinois in 1940. Pomona was the only local city associated with that effort, forming July 22, 1940, with eight charter members. Their slogan: “Safety in Time of Peace – Service in Time of Disaster.”
With a sense of urgency about an uncertain future, a company of 80 to 90 women – ages 18 to 45 – was enlisted for the WADC during recruitment activities at the Mission Inn in Riverside, reported the Daily Press on June 11, 1941. There was no fee but women had to purchase their own uniforms.
By January 1942, volunteers had grown to 30,000 women in 50 WADC units throughout Southern California. They stood prepared for any emergency, especially in the early weeks of the war when a Japanese invasion of the West Coast seemed very real, reported the Sun newspaper, Jan. 6.
The women took their roles seriously. A surprise mobilization on Sunday, Jan. 4, 1942, was ordered for the Redlands company with 50 officers and troopers quickly assembling in full gear at 10 a.m.
“When called, the trooper must don her complete uniform immediately and racing toward the front door snatch up her first aid kit en route,” wrote the Sun on Jan 6. “The latter, rolled in a blanket and tied with 10 feet of rope, must be kept at all times where she can put her hands on it at a moment’s notice.”
The idea was for each woman to be trained to handle whatever problem confronted them. The Pomona unit went to stables at Los Serranos Country Club in today’s Chino Hills to learn how to handle a horse – a skill needed if motor vehicles weren’t available during an emergency, reported the Pomona Progress-Bulletin on July 15, 1941.
Colton members attended a motor mechanics course at a garage in their city’s downtown on April 30, 1942. In Pomona, a similar course was given by a local mechanic two weeks later focusing on what to do if a tire blows or the engine stops while driving an ambulance.
And the training was not easy. Fontana’s company was visited by an Army drill sergeant who led them in a full hour of military drill, the Sun reported April 1.
The Sun on July 5 showed a photograph of three members of the San Bernardino battalion marching and wearing gas masks, part of the preparation for a gas attack. The paper mentioned in its caption the women were “three young and decidedly attractive members” of the WADC, perhaps making them feel less threatening than they appeared in the photo.
In Arlington, the local unit undertook first aid training in “artificial respiration.” It was also seeking donations of old sheets and pillowcases for bandages and old blankets for stretchers, reported the Daily Press on July 18. That same day, the unit planned a dance to raise money for equipment for its first aid station in the community.
The WADC was asked to help in surveying homes in the Riverside area to recruit women willing to volunteer to relieve the “dangerously depleted ranks of agricultural workers,” the Daily Press reported Sept. 26, 1942. Needed were women willing to help harvest grapes, tomatoes and walnuts.
And they trained for every eventuality. The Arlington unit was given instruction in the maintenance and use of a rifle, though all they had to shoot was an air rifle, reported the Daily Press on Oct. 8.
As the threat of an attack on the West Coast diminished, the women’s units continued training but turned to other tasks. The San Bernardino unit on Jan. 22, 1943, announced it had sold $18,310 in war bonds and stamps for the war effort.
That unit also began recruiting one of the first junior units – 60 girls aged 14 to 18 to learn first aid, help in communication during emergencies and sell war bonds.
San Bernardino WADC was also one of two groups that made quilts from scraps of cloth for nursery schools, which cared for local kids while their mothers were working, the Sun reported Oct. 24, 1943.
Members would also go to the U.S. Naval Hospital in Norco to assist the wounded being treated there.
By the end of the second year of the war, training by the women’s units declined with so many of the members working at defense jobs and industrial plants.
On Jan. 9, 1944, the WADC units of San Bernardino and Riverside counties were reduced to reserve status. Weekly meetings were changed to a monthly basis, in part to save gasoline which was still in short supply for civilians.
Two months later, Pomona’s Women’s Ambulance Safety Patrol was disbanded, with members voting to donate the balance of the patrol’s funds to Casa Colina medical center.
In the nearly 80 years that have passed, the incalculable hours these women gave on behalf of their communities have been lost in history.
I suppose, in the traditional sense, the women trained by the WADC weren’t actually the “Rosie the Riveters” who performed heavy industrial jobs in factories later during the war. But it’s not a stretch to think they certainly may have been Rosie’s older sisters.
Car show
The 12th annual Cucamonga Classic Car Show originally scheduled for this Saturday will instead be held on July 15 at the Sycamore Inn, 8318 Foothill Blvd., Rancho Cucamonga, by the Route 66 Inland Empire California Association.
A scheduling problem required the change of date. The show, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., raises funds for the restoration of the garage at the group’s historic Cucamonga Service Station. Details: www.facebook.com/Route66IECA/
Joe Blackstock writes on Inland Empire history. He can be reached at joe.blackstock@gmail.com or Twitter @JoeBlackstock. Check out some of our columns of the past at Inland Empire Stories on Facebook at www.facebook.com/IEHistory.
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