I am not a scaredy cat. I love to hike and wade in mountain streams. I love to go to places I’ve never been and see things I’ve never seen. I like to watch documentaries on foods from other countries and want to visit those countries one day. I like to make new recipes! I’ll…
By: Nina Mata,
on 12/30/2011
The highlight of their trip to the city wasn’t the city. It was Balloons!
A work in progress. I feel like its not quite there yet, but I can’t figure out what’s missing. Somethings off, somethings missing, but what? Any suggestions?
HAPPY FRIDAY!!!
and hope everyone has a very safe and
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
See you all in 2012.
It’s going to be a great year.
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When you get to the lampost picture, note that the other lamps aren’t yet on. The sun is setting, and I was able to capture it behind the unlit lamp. FUN! Filed under: writing for children Tagged: birds, jump, photography, sunset
This morning, around five-twenty, I could hardly tell where I was going when I walked our dog. Rascal doesn't like walking in the dark, but today she was in the mood for forging ahead. Wouldn't you know it, we got a few blocks away from the house when I heard a rustling in the trees, followed by rain falling right on mine and Rascal's heads. If there's one thing Rascal hates more than the dark, it's getting wet. Needless to say, we headed back.
Why was it dark today, when it hadn't been a few months ago? Well, I live in Illinois. Friday is the first day of Autumn. The sun now comes up later and sets earlier. Also, with rain in the offing, clouds obscured whatever light we might have had.
What does this have to do with writing? Well, you need to check the visibility ratio for the area and Season you're writing about before you make a flub and say it's dark when it's usually light, or vice versa. People who live in that location would definitely know the difference. You might also want to research whether or not that area is prone to draughts or heavy amounts of rainfall, since clouds can also diminish light.
If you don't have firsthand knowledge, you can ask a friend who lives there, or check the Internet.
Speaking of asking friends, How early does it get light around you these days?
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| Morgan Mandel |
By: Rebecca (Becky) Fjelland Davis,
on 6/27/2011
Yesterday was a strange mixture of joy and trauma.
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By: Susi Galloway,
on 5/26/2011
"The City's Love. For one brief golden moment rare like wine, The gracious city swept across the line; Oblivious of the color of my skin, Forgetting that I was an alien guest, She bent to me, my hostile heart to win, Caught me in passion to her pillowy breast; The great, proud city, seized with a strange love, Bowed down for one flame hour my pride to prove."~ Claude McKay 
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| acylics on canvas This painting was inspired by a sunset after one of these rare storms in Los Angeles. Cards, Prints or posters available below... |
By: Laurel Gaylord,
on 2/23/2011
By: Laurel Gaylord,
on 1/5/2011
By: Stephanie Roth Sisson,
on 12/6/2010
How did it get to be December so quickly! Argh! Okay, well, here is an update: This is one of the best times of the year foe sunsets here. The are has that clean, fresh quality about it right now- with rain coming from time to time. The sunsets so early now, it's making the days feel like they are going by at an accelerated rate...plus the holiday stuff!
By: Laurel Gaylord,
on 11/20/2010
By: Nina Mata,
on 11/19/2010
Every now and then I get to work on a commission that means a whole lot more than meets the eye. I love getting to work on illos knowing that it has so much sentimental value to the recipients..ah love..es strange! Here’s a quick look at some of the progress..
A few of our initial ideas. I personally would have loved to see the third one developed…maybe on my own time.
Just finished the rough color this morning. I was waiting till I finished the actual piece but I wanted to update today. Hopefully I’ll wrap the final up by next week. I can’t wait to see how this turns out. Wee. Here’s to love and forest animals..HAPPY FRIDAY!
By: Paula Becker,
on 6/22/2010
The above is a quick sketch I did while walking on the docks at the yacht club yesterday evening. What a lovely day–weather-wise. Hopefully that’s reflected in the above drawing.
Endless Possibilities
When was the last time you did something out of your comfort zone?
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 2/11/2010
(And may I just say thank you to those of you who stop by this blog and speak to me about the photographs. You give me a reason to take my Sony out into the world. I know, Kristen, very little about photography. I have an intuitive sense for framing and focus, for the way light moves through a day. I would fail any test about F stops. Thanks, all, for giving these photos purpose.)
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 1/13/2010
I don't remember when this day began. Was it with the midnight text message from my son, or the one he sent at 1:08 AM? Was it when I heard him come him an hour later, or when I finally gave up on the possibility of sleep and got up to get client work done? Perhaps we'll call the beginning of this day Zumba at 5:45 AM (or the cha-cha Zumba around 6:10, or the Charleston jive twenty minutes on).
Or let us say, instead, that this day had no beginning.
But look: Just look at its spectacular end.
As if someone were painting the sky just for me.
By: Laurel Gaylord,
on 12/18/2009
By: Laurel Gaylord,
on 11/21/2009
By: Paula Becker,
on 11/16/2009
Waiting in hole-in-the-wall taqueria’s…. …for food like this. That’s a sope. It’s a rare find, even in South Texas! Sunday drives in the country where you see the likes of this… And this: Whimsy on a fence post (No, I left him there)… Down town Corpus Christi at play: Pretty Sunsets:
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 8/13/2009
The day began with a 6:30 AM conference call, ended with five additional interviews, filled two new pads of paper with notes, and featured a stunning, it-had-me downpour.
Now dinner is in the oven, and the sun is out and sinking, and I am thinking how grateful I am for that slipping-away moment, earlier today, when I went to the gym to dance Zumba. Sure, I didn't have time for it, but I went out and off anyway, for sometimes the only way that I can succeed in a jam-packed-think-day is to dance my head free of all the thoughts my head has (without my permission) previously accumulated.
I interview others for a living. Later, I write what they have said. I stand on the outside of others' expertise and story-it-up, thread it with language. The older I get the greater the need to make my brain bigger (wider, deeper) for others.
Dance is my method. What is yours?
By: Rebecca,
on 8/11/2009
Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and
author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he looks at reconciliation. See his previous OUPblogs here.
There is a lot of hushed talk about using the Reconciliation procedure to pass health-care reform in the Congress these days, so Americans need to know something about this obscure parliamentary procedure, and what is at stake.
Reconciliation is an optional, deficit-reducing procedure that was created in the 1974 Congressional Budget Act. The Reconciliation process is a two-stage process. First, Reconciliation directives must be included in the annual Budget Resolution (as they were in the 2010 Budget Resolution passed on April 29). These directives instruct the relevant Congressional committees to develop (in this case, health-care) legislation by a specific date (in this case, October 15) to meet certain spending or revenue targets. The instructed committees then send their legislative recommendations to their respective Budget Committees, who then package all recommendations into one omnibus Reconciliation bill. Enter Stage 2, when this bill is then considered on the floor of both chambers of Congress under expedited procedures; of greatest political note is the 20-hour limit on debate on any Reconciliation measure, which effectively strips the minority party of the filibustering option in the Senate. That means the Democrats can pass health-care reform with a simple majority.
But there is an attendant cost to the majority party for using Reconciliation. The Byrd rule, passed in 1985, sets out the rules for what Reconciliation can and cannot be used for. In particular, it specifies that Senators will be allowed to raise a point of order against “extraneous” provisions in a Reconciliation bill which, among other things, “would increase the deficit for a fiscal year beyond those covered by the reconciliation measure.” Critically, cloture must be invoked to overcome a point of order. So the filibuster power is back.
Here’s the bottom line. Since the Budget Act states that the Reconciliation measure covers the next ten years, the Byrd Rule had the effect of allowing a point of order to be raised against any spending increase (or tax cut) that does not contain a ten-year sunset provision. That’s why the Bush tax cuts, passed via the Reconciliation route in 2001, 2003, and 2005, had sunset provisions written into them. If Democrats use Reconciliation, they will get a health-care bill, but it will expire.
Now let’s talk politics. There’s a debate within the debate that only seasoned politicos know about. Since the actual benefits of Reconciliation are mixed - a health-care bill can be passed with a simple majority in the Senate but it must have a sunset provision - the real power of Reconciliation is not in its actual usage, but in the mere threat of its usage.
The benefits of issuing the threat of going the Reconciliation route are akin to the threat of a presidential veto. The threat of a presidential veto sets the boundaries of permissible legislative action; it lets Congress know what is out-of-the-question and therefore powerfully guides legislative outcomes in the direction of the president’s preferences. By letting it be known that they will resort to Reconciliation if they had to, Democrats in Congress are incentivizing Republicans to be part of the making of a bi-partisan bill rather than be shut out of a purely partisan one. In making the threat, Democrats are specifying the costs of Republican non-compliance to the tune of: “if we let you stay in the kitchen, at least you can determine some of the ingredients in the cake. Make us shut you out and you won’t have even the slightest say.”
Like the presidential veto, the power of Reconciliation is maximal at the level of a threat. For between the time a threat is issued and the time when a bill is passed (via Reconciliation or not), there is a powerful incentive for Republican Senators to come back to the bargaining table because there is the distinct possibility that they could be shut out. Reconciliation is the Democratic antidote to the Republican Party becoming the “Party of ‘No’” For if Republicans keep saying “No,” then they box themselves into the plea of Nolo Contendere.
That is why different spokespersons for the Democratic Party are keeping the Republicans guessing and making sporadic and cryptic references to the Reconciliation possibility. And Republicans are trying to minimize the power of the threat by characterizing it as a no-go “nuclear option.” Unfortunately for Republicans, theirs is an empty threat because there is no Mutually Assured Destruction in this asymmetric power situation, and it is both a legal and political fact that, as the White House says, the Reconciliation option “is out there.” It is a win-win situation for Democrats to issue the threat, for if Republicans are unmoved by the threat, Democrats could materialize the threat and get what they wanted having known that an effort at bipartisanship had failed anyway.
What is missed in the debate out there now is that the effect of Reconciliation is already underway, for its power lies in its threat.
By: Paula Becker,
on 7/22/2009
I took a short walk through the PC Village yesterday evening. I had wanted to go to the concert in the park in Beaconsfield but I thought it looked like rain and convinced myself they would have moved it indoors. I had no desire to bicycle to the park to make sure and then have [...]
By: Laurel Gaylord,
on 5/22/2009
By: Laurel Gaylord,
on 5/15/2009
By: Laurel Gaylord,
on 4/17/2009
By: Laurel Gaylord,
on 1/23/2009
Love this post, Donna! And I love that you pray for me when the world seems scary. :)
Donna, My book “Slave to Slave Master” should be printed in November. Blessings, Jan
And I love that you pray for me! *hugs*
Congratulations, Jan!