Prior to the uprising of March 2011, school students all over Syria had to study Ba’ath secular ideology as a core module of the broader subject of qaumiyya (‘nationalism’). Before starting a typical school day, students would gather in their schoolyard to salute the Syrian and Ba’ath flags while chanting ‘long live Assad, long live Ba’ath’. Since the uprising, there have been some radical changes made to this practice. Children in the so-called ‘liberated areas’ (areas that are under the control of the opposition) now start the school day by saluting Salafi and Salafi-Jihadi flags and chanting in praise of the Islamic Caliphate and the prophet Mohamed.
This situation is a prime example of the on-going debate between various theorists of identity and nationalism concerning the role of materialist and symbolic elements in crafting identity and in excluding or including members of a particular community. Materialists, like Ernest Gellner, emphasise the significance of factors such as education and the media in constructing identities. On the other hand, ethno-symbolists like Anthony Smith, argue that only symbols (such as those projected by flags and folk tales) can harness the necessary amount of emotional power for shaping identities.
The aim of this article is to analyse the interaction between education and flags in fostering a Salafi and a Salafi-Jihadi identity among school students aged between eight and seventeen years old in the ‘liberated areas’. I argue that the interaction between both variables plays a significant role in drawing the line between ‘us’ and ‘them’ in Syrian society.
I focus on four cases; two concern Salafi groups (Liwa al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham) and two concern Salafi-Jihadi groups (Nusra Front and the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham). The second part of this article focuses on the attempts of Salafi groups to project their identity by using education and flag; the third part examines the Salafi-Jihadi group’s quest to forge a Jihadi identity using these tools. But we begin with a brief summary of the state of the education system throughout the conflict.
UNICEF is providing educational aid in a few of the more accessible areas in Syria, as well as in refugee camps in the neighbouring countries of Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Jordan. Nevertheless, this aid is limited to supplying educational tools and building makeshift schools, rather than managing the educational process per se.
In fact, students at the refugee camps and those studying inside Syria follow different curricula. For example, students at Zaatari refugees’ camp in Jordan study the Jordanian curriculum, and students in Lebanon are enrolled in Lebanese schools. Likewise, makeshift schools at refugee camps in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq teach the Kurdish curriculum. However, schools at refugee camps in Turkey teach the same Syrian curriculum that is being taught in areas controlled by the regime, yet “any lesson or module that talks about the regime and reflects the Ba’ath ideology has been excluded from the curriculum, such as the qaumiyya module and many lessons in the history books”.
In addition, all pictures of the Syrian flag (with two stars) on the schoolbooks have been altered to that of the Syrian revolutionary flag (with three stars). An activist at the Atmeh refugee camp in southern Turkey confirmed that the revolutionary flag is flown in the schoolyard where children gather to “chant freedom slogans and popular revolutionary songs”. Meanwhile, their fellow students at schools in the regime-controlled areas assemble beneath the Syrian flag to chant Ba’athist slogans.
According to a teacher in one makeshift school in the Atmeh refugee camp: “it is impossible to keep the same curriculum which praises and promotes Ba’ath and Assad while these students fled their homes because of the regime’s artillery. It is also impossible to keep using the flag which symbolises the regime…we should raise our children in line with the goals of the revolution, and they should adhere to it… it is a new phase in Syria’s history. Thus, it needs a new education that goes in line with this”.
However, given its many fractures and inherent flaws, the Syrian opposition neither has an appropriate strategy nor the necessary financial support for tailoring the curriculum to suit the ‘new phase’ in Syria’s history. Although the Syrian National Coalition – the main political body representing the opposition – has established an ‘Office for Learning and Higher Education Affairs’, it has failed to develop a clear educational scheme. Nevertheless, Salafi armed groups inside Syria (who possess the necessary military and logistic capabilities to successfully implement an education policy) seem to be primarily interested in indoctrinating the minds of students with their ideology.
The rise of Salafism is a key dimension of the Syrian uprising and Salafis have proved to be a powerful actor capable of crafting a power triangle consisting of arms, money and public support. Salafism is a strict form of Sunni Islam that seeks to revive al-salaf al-salih, which adheres to the way of life as practiced by the first Muslim communities. Salafism rejects secular concepts like nationalism and democracy, and prioritises the regulation of state and society in accordance with Sharia Law. More importantly, it displays a hostile logic towards other Islamic sects, particularly the Shiites.
During the three-year conflict in Syria, the growth of Salafi groups has mushroomed. These groups are now attempting to mobilise their followers and to reconstruct a Salafi identity for Sunni Syrians. This type of Salafi identity excludes all Syrians who hold different religious views. Among these groups, Liwa al-Islam (‘Islam Brigade’) and Ahrar al-Sham (‘Freemen of the Levant’) are the most influential. Each of these groups promotes the Salafi identity by using various tools, of which education and flags are particularly significant.
Sheikh Zahran Alloush, a former prisoner who was given a presidential pardon in June 2011, founded Liwa al-Islam in September 2011. The Brigade comprises some 45,000 fighters and its strongest foothold is in eastern Ghuota in the suburbs of Damascus, where it has established a quasi-state. The Education Committee in Liwa al-Islam is responsible for “managing the educational process” in eastern Ghuota. It comprises various offices such as those for security, censorship and dawa’a (‘proselytism’). This committee instituted 90 schools in which some 20,000 students are enrolled. Iqrà (‘Read’), anwar al-Islam (‘Islam’s Lights’) and shabab al-ghad (‘Tomorrow’s Youth’) are the main organisations working under the umbrella of this committee. However, the Iqrà organisation is the strongest, running around 20 schools and twenty institutions teaching primary, secondary and graduate level students.
The Education Committee has revised the curriculum for all levels. It cut the qaumiyya and history modules while retaining the exact same curriculum for Arabic literature, maths and sciences. However, it altered the Islamic religious module and added more compulsory teaching hours in an effort to educate students regarding Islamic principles. Naturally, these principles were taught from a Salafi perspective. On a video-report uploaded to the Iqrà Facebook page, Mohamed Abu Ziad - the deputy manager of the Iqrà organisation - stresses that the curriculum focuses on religious affairs and attempts to “raise a generation that has a sense of pride in its religion”. In schools, female teachers wear strict Islamic costume: a dark hijab and a long coat.
Another reads: “the gun is the mujahed’s weapon and the pencil [referring to education] is this generation’s weapon”.
A female teacher in a niqab surrounded by young students appears in the same video-report, assuring the camera that “the school day starts with reading Quran and the daily duaa, before beginning tutorial sessions on maths and Arabic literature”. She emphasises that teachers “seek to apply a religious dimension to all teaching modules, as much as they can”. According to her, the school day should end with ‘recreational’ activities, such as the singing of religious songs.
“A dawn shines on our tomorrow… it tells the glory of our civilization…Islam’s flag came back [to us] to restore the glory of our nation…our life will flower through religion…and by education, we shall build the country in a way that satisfies our lord”.
Using a similar rhetoric to that of Liwa al-Islam (albeit in a less organised and more radical manner) Ahrar al-Sham manipulates education and the use of the flag in order to reproduce a Salafi identity. This Salafi armed group comprises between 10,000 to 20,000 fighters, whose main goal is to establish an Islamic state in Syria. Sheikh Hassan Aboud – who was a prison mate of Zahran Alloush, and who currently collaborates with Alloush under the umbrella of the Islamic Front – established Ahrar al-Sham in late 2011 just after his release from prison. Given the vigorous competition for hegemony between the different militias on the ground, Ahrar al-Sham does not have absolute power in any particular town. Rather, its presence is limited to a few villages across the rebel areas in Aleppo, Idlib, Hama, Homs, Al-Raqa and the northern suburbs of Damascus.
Although it has not customised the existing curriculum nor founded an independent educational office, Ahrar al-Sham utilises education to indoctrinate students with Salafi ideology. It has rehabilitated a few schools in northern Aleppo and instituted makeshift schools in many mosques. Largely, their lessons focus on Islamic sciences because, as one teacher emphasises: “[the aim of education is] to raise a new generation that is different from the previous one, a generation that has an inherent Islamic personality”. A televised report uploaded on the Ahrar al-Sham website shows dozens of students gathering at a mosque in Aleppo that has been converted into a school and decorated with massive Salafi flags. The curriculum is “centred on the Quran and Hadith sciences, in addition to maths, Arabic literature, and foreign languages”. All female teachers wear the niqab, and some students wear a Salafi headband while reading from the Quran and chanting Islamic slogans. Another video reveals footage of a makeshift school at a mosque in al-Raqa, where young students gather around a male teacher wearing Islamic costume. Also, Ahrar al-Sham rehabilitated two schools in al-Houla, northern Homs, in which the Salafi flag hangs in each classroom.
In May 2013, the group held a graduation ceremony for its students at a mosque in Madaya town, northwest Damascus. Soldiers, Sheikhs, teachers and students attended this event, in which students competed in a quiz about Islamic principles. In a similar vein is the ma’had ashbbal al-‘akida (‘the [Islamic] doctrine cubs’) institution, which is directed by the Ahrar al-Sham militia in Sahel al-Ghab in the suburbs of Hama. The institution organised a festival to honour students who successfully memorized parts of the Quran. Huge Salafi flags were flown during the event, and 500 Syrian Lira (around GBP 2.50) was given to each student as a prize.
Violence, sectarian polarisation, class conflict, regional and international struggle for hegemony, the failure of Syria’s opposition and the policies of the Syrian regime are the chief factors that have led to the increasing dominance of Jihadism in Syria. Various Jihadi groups have surfaced during the conflict, amongst which the Nusra Front (NF) and the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) are the most solid.
The ISIS and the NF call for the establishment of the Islamic Caliphate and adopt an anti-secular and anti-western agenda. This agenda differs from that of Salafi groups in that it advocates global Jihad. In contrast, Liwa al Islam and Ahrar al-Sham limit their jihad to the Syrian state. NF and ISIS also conduct similar approaches in their attempts to establish footholds in post-Assad Syria.
To this end, they deploy both soft and hard power tactics. On the one hand, they provide people with security and bread; on the other hand, they rule with an iron fist and are remorseless in their hostility towards secular and other Islamist rivals. More importantly, both groups manipulate education and the use of flags in order to construct and project a Jihadi identity.
JN is an al-Qaeda affiliated group that was formed in January 2012. Since then, it has conducted several successful military operations, which has increased its legitimacy in the eyes of some Syrians. As a resident of Idlib puts it: “JN comprises the best fighters, who are always on the frontline”. Although JN has the appropriate capacities and support with which to assert itself, it does not have absolute control over any particular city or town in Syria, unlike the ISIS and Liwa al-Islam. Nevertheless, JN’s fighters are distributed throughout various Syrian cities, specifically in the suburbs of Damascus, Hama, Idlib, Aleppo, Latakia, Homs and Dar’a, where they endeavour to promote Jihadi ideology in their manipulation of education and flags.
In late 2013, for example, JN instituted ma’had ansar al-din (‘partisans of religion’s institution’) in Dar’a, which enrols male students aged between ten and fifteen and teaches them Jihadi ideology, in addition to maths and Arabic literature. In a video-report uploaded to JN’s YouTube channel, dozens of students - some wearing Salafi headbands - chant “our master Mohamed is our leader forever” in a classroom that is decorated with Salafi-Jihadi flags and Islamic posters. The main mission of this school, according to one of its teachers, is to: “counter all attempts by God’s enemies who seek to prevent people in Sham from coming back to the right religion and ideology, and who instituted mixed schools which teach inappropriate curriculums. We are obliged to [counter these attempts] because as Islam’s Shikh Ibn Taimiyya says ‘religion would not flourish without a book that would guide and a sword that would prevail’. So we inaugurated this school to raise the generation in a good way and to teach [students] what they have been deprived of for decades”.
The video shows two teachers in Salafi clothing examining students on religious affairs. It is to be assumed that the teaching of this topic is heavily biased in favour of Jihadism. One teacher stated that entertainment activities include visits to mujahedeen and classes on using weapons. At the end of one school day, students gathered under a Jihadi black flag. One of them shouted, “What is our goal?” In response, the others pointed their index fingers up to the flag and chanted: “It is Jihad, it is Jihad, it is Jihad”.
In the same way, JN establishes schools and runs educational processes at mosques in the suburbs of Idlib, Aleppo and al Raqa. According to a resident of al-Tabaqa, western al-Raqa: “parents send their children to JN schools either because they do not have any other option or because they believe in JN ideology. Given the wide popularity JN enjoys in my area, I suggest the second motive is the most likely”. JN also orchestrates festivals in which students usually take the stage alongside armed fighters. For example, in October 2012 JN organised a ceremony to celebrate Eid in Binish, northwest Idlib. During the ceremony, one of JN’s young students sang to the audience “we are your soldiers, Osama [bin laden], we are martyrdom seekers”, while other cheerful students waved Jihadi flags.
Like the NF, ISIS utilises education and flags in order to encourage young students to adopt a Jihadi identity. ISIS was formed in April 2013, when some fighters defected from JN to expand the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI) – an al-Qaeda affiliate group active in Iraq since 2006 – to include al-Sham, which, in the context of global Jihad, refers to the Levant. ISIS took over al-Raqa only one month after JN and other Islamist groups took control of the city, and ISIS came to be the de facto authority there. Additionally, its fighters are present in the suburbs of Aleppo, Idlib and Deir al-Zour, where they have established schools to teach Jihadi logic.
A school was established in September 2013 in Jrablus town, northern Aleppo, and hundreds of male students were enrolled there. The school teaches Islamic sciences as core modules alongside maths, Arabic literature and English language. However, it excludes any module that focuses on Syria’s history. Another school was inaugurated in northeast Aleppo in late 2013. A video-report of this school shows students gathering around a Jihadi tutor, who is teaching them the Quran. A young student appears in the video declaring his admiration for Jihad: “I wish to become a mujahed when I grow up, in order to fight all tyrants who do not rule according to God’s law”. Dozens of students then hold up large Jihadi flags while chanting fervently: “God is our leader… America is their leader…Allah Akbar”.
In al-Raqa city, ISIS monitor all schools, ban the teaching of history modules, and segregate female and male students in schools. ISIS also seized many churches and transformed them into makeshift schools for teaching Jihadi ideology. According to an activist in al-Raqa: “parents enroll their children at ISIS schools because they fear ISIS fighters, yet some people also believe in ISIS ideology and hence they want their children to be educated at ISIS schools”. Indeed, ISIS attempts to create a personality cult for itself by using banners as visual propaganda, and by spreading fear amongst the people.
A resident of al-Raqa described the all-pervasiveness of the ISIS presence: “You can see ISIS fighters hanging out in the city while wearing explosive belts and holding guns. Banners, flyers and posters that reflect their ideology are everywhere”.
This situation could have many fatal implications for children. In the first place, there is the devastating psychological effect that witnessing violent trauma first-hand would have on children, some of whom are already suffering from different types of trauma. Secondly and more importantly, the presence of the fighters contributes to the styling of the mujahed (by whom they are taught) as heroes and role models. In this light, ISIS attempts to endear itself to children by organising festivals, in which fighters – wearing Islamic clothing and explosive belts – distribute toys and play with children, while black Jihadi flags flutter in the air.
In September 2013, for example, hundreds of children and men gathered in the al-Raqa main square, where ISIS launched a massive festival. In a video report for this festival, children can be seen joyfully chanting Jihadi songs having listened to the story of a Finnish ISIS fighter who decided to join the Jihadis in Syria after he saw the ‘murder’ of his fellow Muslims. The Finnish fighter assures the audience that he came to institute the Islamic Caliphate. In his words, “those who wish to go to hell should choose democracy, while those who wish to go to heaven should be patient and support the establishment of the Islamic Caliphate”.
In their struggle for empowerment and search for a permanent place in post-uprising Syria, Salafi groups on the ground instrumentalise education and flags to construct identities for Syria’s new generation. This identity includes and excludes other Syrians according to its religious principles. By teaching Salafi logic instead of Syrian history, and by waving Salafi flags instead of the Syrian flag, students are more likely to associate themselves with Salafism rather than with Syrian-ism. This surely has potentially fatal implications for Syria’s already fractured national identity.
This new generation that will have to rebuild the war-torn country is being subjected to a relentless process of polarisation; its members are being forced to pledge their allegiance to different flags. How can Syrian students who are used to saluting the revolutionary, Salafi, Salafi-Jihadi or the Syrian flags be made to salute one national flag?
What new curriculums can be taught to a generation that has been indoctrinated with conflicting ideologies (Salafi and Baathist)? A solid strategy to address these questions should be among the top priorities of any future Syrian government if it genuinely wishes to build a strong Syria with a cohesive community.
Ibn Taimiyya is a mediaeval Islamic scholar (d. 1328) who issued a controversial fatwa stating that Alawites and Shi’ites are not Muslims.


Mix deep blue with soft neutrals such as white and taupe. The blue can help make these colors stand out.
Mix rich shades of blue with sharp contrast colors such as yellow or chartreuse.
Map your pops of blue throughout a space. Color mapping is a technique in which one can repeat a color throughout a room. For example, introduce a blue piece of art and then use a rug with blue accents, then add a blue toss pillow.
Be afraid to mix blue with black. Once considered to be taboo, from fashion to home decor realms, dark blue and black are colors that are being displayed together.
Paint a wall a deep blue unless it is an accent wall. Deep blue will likely overly darken a room if used as an overall color.
Dismiss opportunities to introduce blue into your space in interesting ways, such as ocean- or water-inspired art or photography.


"Around? He saw this information around? What, like it was tacked to a bulletin board next to guitar lessons and a picture of a lost cat?"


Alta Jacko is the mother of eight children. She is also an ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Church. Jacko, 81, who earned her master's degree in pastoral studies from Loyola University, a Jesuit Catholic school, says being a priest is what she was called to do.
Officially, of course, the Catholic Church's Canon Law 1024 says that only baptized men can receive holy orders. But there is a movement against the no-women rule; it began eight years ago when a cluster of renegade male clerics (including a European bishop whose identity the female priests won't reveal in order not to risk his excommunication) ordained the first women. Now, in Jacko's hometown of Chicago, three women have entered the priesthood.
Like many other priests, Jacko trained in various parishes before becoming ordained. Unlike many other priests, however, she was not always easily received by her elders. In spring 2009, Jacko approached Father Bob Bossie, who preaches at St. Harold's Catholic Community in Uptown, for help. "She asked me if I would mentor her," recalls Bossie, a member of Chicago's Priests of the Sacred Heart who was ordained in 1975. Bossie acknowledges that the concept of females in the priesthood is difficult for him. He says he literally shudders at the thought, saying that when the image of women in robes once flashed in his mind, it "left me cold."
Yet Bossie assisted Jacko anyway. He wanted to help a friend. While Jacko was training to become a deacon, a mandatory step prior to priesthood, it was Bossie who taught her how to say the liturgy. "I did it because she asked me, because she's very thoughtful," Bossie says. "When someone you like and respect asks you, you try to do it."
Bossie is speaking out publicly for the first time, even though he knows he could lose his job as a priest, his pension and his home. And even though he disagrees intellectually with the notion of women in the priesthood, he says his feelings tend to be more complicated than that. "I'm not going out of my way to support it," Bossie says. "I don't think that's sexist. I am a priest, and this is breaking down the hieratical priesthood ... But if people ask me for help, I feel compelled to help, out of respect and love. If God called me, why wouldn't God call a woman?"
It is a question that more and more members of the flock are asking. Many have begun to publicly challenge the church's stance, especially after the Vatican decreed in July that ordaining female priests was a "grave" crime, on par with pedophilia. Biblical passages refer to female clergy, including an apostle named Junia in Romans 16:7. On Sunday, Sept. 26, thousands of Catholics around the world plan to protest, either by boycotting Mass or by showing up wearing green armbands that say "Ordain Women." "Women are tired of being treated as second-class citizens in the church," says Jennifer Sleeman, an Irish Catholic who turns 81 on Sunday and is helping champion the Sunday Without Women demonstration organized by Women's Ordination Worldwide (WOW).
"We are disobeying an unjust law," says Barbara Zeman, 62, Chicago's first ordained Catholic female priest, who serves as a hospital chaplain at Northwestern Memorial Hospital; she will protest Sunday at St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Evanston, Ill. "Many male priests have told me to go for it and that they can't wait until the church changes its attitude ... It's a movement whose time has come."
The WOW movement was showcased in the recently released documentary Pink Smoke over the Vatican, which aired Sept. 18 at Chicago's Irish American Heritage Center before an audience of hundreds of Catholics, both ordained and lay. The filmmaker, Jules Hart, said she had originally turned down the opportunity to do the documentary  "I'm not even Catholic," she says  but reconsidered after hearing the ordeals of several female Catholic priests, including Jacko.
Jacko, who was featured in the film, was present at the Chicago screening. After the film concluded, she recounted to a reporter her experience of becoming a priest. A portly, balding man walking past paused and told her, "If you don't have any rights, I don't have any rights."
But when asked his name, the man refused to give it, stating he could lose his job in the Catholic Church if he were publicly attributed. It is for that reason that so many men of the cloth who help women into the priesthood do so only in hiding.
A pastoral associate on the north side of Chicago, who also asked for his name to be withheld, has had a hand in elevating two of Chicago's three female priests. He taught Jacko how to break the bread and bless the cup for Mass. They practiced at the altar of the pastor's church in secret, while it was empty, Jacko says. He taught her how to say reconciliation and say a homily and answered her endless questions. "I was talking to him about spiritual things," says Jacko. "I would bounce questions off him."
He also helped train Janine Denomme, another of the city's female priests, who died of cancer in May 2009. He sang at Denomme's priesthood ordination earlier that spring, and he stepped in again to assist with her funeral at the First United Methodist Church in Evanston. The services could not be held in her own church because the Catholic Church did not officially recognize her priesthood, which resulted in her excommunication  something the pastoral associate says still upsets parishioners. "I was determined to be as public as I could. I supported her priesthood," he says. "You are just ignoring a gift when you bury it in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist. We shouldn't just be satisfied with the status quo. The Holy Spirit has sent the priests that we need, but our hierarchy is refusing to recognize them."
And yet in public, the pastoral associate does not dare break ranks. The day after Jacko was ordained  on Oct. 10, 2009, at the Ebenezer Lutheran Church, by the female Catholic bishop Joan Houk (a male priest would have been excommunicated for ordaining a woman)  the pastor met her for coffee. He informed Jacko that now that she was a priest, she could no longer be a lector of the readings or serve Communion in her Catholic church.
"He broke the bad news to me," Jacko said. "We were so close, and it was hard to take. He had walked every step of the way with me."
The Sunday after her ordination, Jacko sat in the front pew of her Catholic church wearing her collar. "I wasn't going to [wear it], but all of my friends said, 'How are we going to know you are woman priest if you don't wear your collar?' " Jacko says. "I thought it made sense."
Jacko says the congregation showed her respect and congratulated her. But then she received an e-mail from the pastor, on behalf of the church, telling Jacko she was "welcome in the church but not with my collar," says Jacko, who now says Mass on a rotating basis at St. Harold's Catholic Community. "I know it was hard for him to do. He had to make a choice, and he chose to tell me that instead of standing by me."
But Jacko adds, "There are a lot of Catholic priests who are helping the women priests. You'd be surprised."


On Thursday, Orange City Council threw a morning tea to thank the city’s army of selfless volunteers for their service. Those volunteers had put in various amounts of time at their respective organisations: some had been there a year or two, some had been there longer. However, two faces in the crowd were into their sixth decade of volunteering with Meals on Wheels in Orange, having been at the very first meeting in 1967 at the Canobolas Hotel. Betty McDonald and Edna Sharp have been part of Meals on Wheels in Orange for its entire operation, and say the demand for the program now is as strong as it ever was. “The need was there in 1967 … people still need the help and the contact with somebody [now] too, that’s very important,” Mrs McDonald said. “The need was taking meals to people who weren’t eating properly, especially on their own.” Originally operating out of Orange Base Hospital and Bloomfield, the pair said the operation ran hot meals around Orange for years before council took over the program and began providing frozen meals. Mrs McDonald explained the organisation was set up by church communities around Orange following a study which showed many people – especially the elderly – weren’t cooking for themselves. “It’s a very worthwhile organisation, and you make nice friends when you deliver meals. The people are all very appreciative of the meals,” she said. Mrs Sharp agreed, saying meeting and helping people, and knowing those they were helping would be thankful for the meal was what kept her going over five decades of volunteering. She also said she thought the need for the program was increasing, although added there were now more organisations stepping into the field to provide help for those in need than there were in the 1960s. Did they expect it would still be running five decades later? “Well we didn’t really have any idea,” Mrs Sharp said. “It’s really flourished,” Mrs McDonald agreed before adding the pair have no plans to stop volunteering any time soon.
On Thursday, Orange City Council threw a morning tea to thank the city’s army of selfless volunteers for their service.
Those volunteers had put in various amounts of time at their respective organisations: some had been there a year or two, some had been there longer.
However, two faces in the crowd were into their sixth decade of volunteering with Meals on Wheels in Orange, having been at the very first meeting in 1967 at the Canobolas Hotel.
Betty McDonald and Edna Sharp have been part of Meals on Wheels in Orange for its entire operation, and say the demand for the program now is as strong as it ever was.
It’s a very worthwhile organisation, and you make nice friends when you deliver meals.
“The need was there in 1967 … people still need the help and the contact with somebody [now] too, that’s very important,” Mrs McDonald said.
Originally operating out of Orange Base Hospital and Bloomfield, the pair said the operation ran hot meals around Orange for years before council took over the program and began providing frozen meals.
Mrs McDonald explained the organisation was set up by church communities around Orange following a study which showed many people – especially the elderly – weren’t cooking for themselves.
“It’s a very worthwhile organisation, and you make nice friends when you deliver meals. The people are all very appreciative of the meals,” she said.
Mrs Sharp agreed, saying meeting and helping people, and knowing those they were helping would be thankful for the meal was what kept her going over five decades of volunteering.
She also said she thought the need for the program was increasing, although added there were now more organisations stepping into the field to provide help for those in need than there were in the 1960s.
Did they expect it would still be running five decades later?
“Well we didn’t really have any idea,” Mrs Sharp said.
“It’s really flourished,” Mrs McDonald agreed before adding the pair have no plans to stop volunteering any time soon.
Discuss "Five decades after helping found it, Betty and Edna are still doing Meals on Wheels"


Buzzer beaters, upsets and Cinderella stories – thy name is March Madness. The NCAA Tournament has become a platform for college basketball players to become legends, while leading their respective teams to a coveted championship. Here's a look at players who made a name for themselves in the Big Dance over the years.


TOKYO (Reuters) - Olympic figure skating champion Alina Zagitova on Friday claimed yet another crown by winning the world title, overcoming an uneven season by soaring to a commanding win with an ambitious program that left the Russian in tears.
Second-place finisher Elizabet Tursynbaeva of Kazakhstan also made history by being the first woman to successfully land a quad jump in senior international competition and the first woman from her nation to claim a world championship medal.
Zagitova, who finished fifth at last year’s edition after a disastrous free skate and then endured a difficult season, struggled to hang onto a few of her jumps in an otherwise dynamic routine that included seven triple jumps.
In first place after the short program, Zagitova wept in the arms of her coaches after coming off the ice from her free skate but was smiling by the time her score was posted, 155.42 for a total of 237.50.
“There were many hard times, but I’d like to thank the audience and everyone else who supported me,” she said at the Saitama Super Arena.
Tursynbaeva claimed silver with a flowing skate that kicked off when she successfully landed a historic quadruple Salchow.
The diminutive Kazakh, 19-years-old and 148cm tall, pumped her fist in the air on completing her routine with a score of 148.80 and a total of 224.76.
“I still cannot believe I won the silver. To tell the truth, during the practice session I was feeling weird,” she said.
Olympic silver medalist Evgenia Medvedeva of Russia took bronze, surmounting a rough transition season after moving to Canada to train with coach Brian Orser, who also coaches top skaters such as double Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu.
The women’s competition threatened to be overshadowed by an incident in practice on Wednesday when American skater Mariah Bell made contact with South Korean rival Lim Eun-soo, leaving her with a cut leg.
But the International Skating Union (ISU) ruled that the accident was unintentional and Korean skating officials said the two might meet later on Friday so Bell could apologize.
In ice dance, reigning world champions Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France took a decisive step toward a fourth ice dancing crown after clinching a strong lead with an elegant tango-themed rhythm dance.
Skating last before a packed house, the Olympic silver medalists — who narrowly missed gold at Pyeongchang after a mishap with Papadakis’s costume in the short program — were awarded 88.42 points for their sultry routine.
“We’re very pleased with this performance, because we skated really well. We love this program, we love the choreography, we love working on it,” Papadakis said.
The worlds conclude on March 23 with the ice dancing final and the keenly-watched men’s final, with American Nathan Chen in the lead after the short program.


According to Rackspace CTO John Engates, the dedicated VMware VCenter Servers will allow customers to migrate VMware workloads from their data centers to Rackspace facilities.
Rackspace on Tuesday rolled out plans to add VMware vCenter Servers to its managed virtualization services. The move, which will allow Rackspace to support single-tenant VMware vCenter Servers, Rackspace adds a key building block for its hybrid cloud push.
The company is aiming to be in position to be the leading hybrid cloud provider. Hybrid clouds are a mix of hosted, public and private flavors in enterprise infrastructure. The reality is most businesses will mix and match cloud varieties.
According to Rackspace CTO John Engates, the dedicated VMware VCenter Servers will allow customers to migrate VMware workloads from their data centers to Rackspace facilities. Tools such as VMware's console will be available with the exception of vCloud Director.
"Previously we could use VMware to create virtual servers, but couldn't expose the VMware environment and console directly," explained Engates. "This will be one of the key pillars for the hybrid cloud."
The VMware news comes a few weeks after Rackspace said it would offer free migration services to the company's hybrid cloud. Rackspace's hosted VMware environment will mirror a customer's data centers and use the same vCenter APIs and tools. Rackspace's portfolio of hybrid cloud services include hosting, dedicated VMware servers and OpenStack cloud services.
Rackspace executives outlined the traction for the hybrid cloud on its second quarter earnings conference call.
Engates said that Rackspace will be focused on connecting its various hybrid cloud services together with more integration and automation via its RackConnect. "We will be bringing these all together, but we have more work to do," said Engates.


Dear Dr. Gott: Have you ever heard of treating an ear infection with Burow's solution? Are you supposed to mix it with vinegar and, if so, what is the proper mixture? Thanks for your help. I love your column.
Dear Reader: Burow's solution is aluminum acetate or acetic acid (vinegar) in water that is used to reduce or relieve inflammatory conditions such as swelling, bruises, insect bites and rash caused by poison ivy or sumac. It is often applied as an eardrop remedy in a 13 percent solution because of antibacterial properties that inhibit the growth of bacteria. Some suppliers offer prepacked gauze compresses that are used in medical settings for stasis ulcers prior to the application of a dry, sterile dressing; however, because the solution is an acid (albeit weak), the time a compress is left on the wound must be adhered to. Solutions for ulcers can be a mixture of one to 20, meaning 50 milliters in a liter of tap water as directed by a skin specialist. The remedy is also available in tablet form. Directions for the tablet-to-water ratio vary. The strength depends on the reason for using the product. One can make Burow's solution with a 1-to-10 ratio of vinegar to water. This is an accepted remedy for otitis externa (swimmer's ear). Be sure to consult your physician before trying this home remedy to be sure that you do not have a more serious condition for which it will not work.
There is another aspect to this product, as well. It should not be administered to pets except under the supervision and guidance of a veterinarian. Yes, you read this correctly. This dual-purpose product is used for pets as well as humans. I guess it is similar to using Bag Balm for cracked fingers and heels, or glucosamine for painful joints. Maybe Rover should really be considered a family member if he isn't already.
Dear Dr. Gott: I am a 54-year-old female in fairly good health. The only medications I take are Buspar and Dexilant.
I would like to know if you could tell me why I smell metal all the time. My husband and son don't, but I do. Do I need to have blood work done to find the cause?
Dear Reader: One of your medications may cause this smell. The Dexilant is commonly used for erosive esophagitis caused by acid reflux. Reflux can cause bad breath and a metallic taste (and possibly scent). The medication itself can also cause breath odor.
Other possibilities include your brain registering a scent that isn't present or becoming more sensitive to odors others don't detect. Further causes include pregnancy, bad breath, migraine, a history of head trauma, exposure to certain chemicals, a side effect of anesthesia or a cold or sinus infection. Depression, anxiety or other psychological disturbances also can cause an altered sense of smell.


Chabad emissary describes 'chaos' after massive - and deadly - earthquake.
One day after a massive earthquake in Ecuador which killed 272 people, the Chabad emissary to Guayaquil spoke about the damage.
"The quake occurred Saturday night, toward the end of the Ma'ariv prayer," Rabbi Uriel Tawil began, in an interview with haredi news outlet Hamevaser. "Suddenly, everything was shaking - and we were shocked, we didn't know what might happen."
"We left the building, gathered the children, and sat on a grass area in the courtyard, where we gather during an emergency," Tawil continued. "We started to recite Tehilim (Psalms), and the children were crying in panic."
"It lasted about two minutes," he added. The average earthquake lasts between 30-40 seconds.
"Everything came crashing down," he continued. "Surveillance footage from inside the synagogue shows that after we went outside, all of the books fell off their shelves; everything was on the floor."
Rabbi Tawil then spoke about the aftermath.
"The situation now is of panic and fear among residents in the streets," he said. "Many buildings have collapsed and [there is] a lot of damaged infrastructure - and, unfortunately, we know that there are 230 dead as of now and there may be a lot more casualties."
He added, however, that as far as he knew, none of the Ecuadorian Jewish community members had been killed - nor the 200+ Israeli tourists currently in Ecuador.
Despite this, "we are trying to help as much as possible," he stressed.
He said as well that many tourists have turned to Chabad for help, as transportation and roads have been shuttered since the quake.
"The city actually has been besieged for many hours, there is no going in or out," he said. "The situation is chaos here - collapsed bridges, collapsed ceilings."
"The situation is really bad - no country is prepared for such an event," he added. "There are areas that remain inaccessible and have no electricity and no communication."
The 7.8 magnitude earthquake was centered some 16 miles south of Muisne, thinly-populated area dominated by fishing ports.
The US Geological Survey recorded at least 36 aftershocks, including some as powerful as 6.0 magnitude.


A teaser trailers for for Steve Shill’s backdoor pilot… errr I mean TV Movie remake/reboot Knight Rider have started to run on NBC. Yes, it is a slow news day week. Watch the first teaser after the jump. And no, I’m not all too interested, although everyone does get just a tad excited about ideas which let you revisit your childhood.
From the official press release: The movie stars Justin Bruening (“Cold Case,” “All My Children”), Deanna Russo (“NCIS,” “The Young and the Restless”), Sydney Tamiia Poitier (“Veronica Mars,” “Grindhouse”) and Bruce Davison (“Breach,” “Close to Home”). In addition, David Hasselhoff (NBC’s “America’s Got Talent”) — who starred in the popular lead role as Michael Knight for four seasons during the original series — returns as the same character in a special guest-star appearance. Will Arnett (NBC’s “30 Rock,” “Blades of Glory”) will provide the voice of KITT.


President Donald Trump threatened to use his power over broadcast licenses Wednesday to retaliate against NBC News for its reporting on his consideration of a dramatic increase of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
"With all of the fake news coming out of NBC and the networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their license?" Trump asked, via Twitter.
The answer of course is never. Presidents don't have any say about how a television network runs its operation. The Federal Communications Commission regulates licenses for individual stations.
Trump doubled down this morning, tweeting, "The fake news is going all out in order to demean and denigrate. Such hatred!"
The New York Times reports that The Weinstein Company knew about Harvey Weinstein's behavior for at least two years before The Times reported on Weinstein's repeated exploitation of women. According toThe Times, interviews and internal company records reveal that the company knew about Weinstein's payoffs to young women so that they would remain quiet about the inappropriate encounters. Former Weinstein attorney David Boies said in an interview that The Weinstein Company had been made aware of confidential settlements with women. Weinstein Company board members did not respond when The Times asked for comments.
The Capital City Development Corporation, Boise's urban renewal agency which owns many of the city's downtown parking garages, is considering a rate hike at garages, with rates at two garages (Capitol and Main, and Ninth and Main) possibly increasing by as much as 30 percent. Other garages could see bumps of 17 percent. KTVB reports that CCDC is holding a public comment session on Monday, Nov. 13, and if the proposal were to be approved, it would go into effect in February 2018.
In the major league baseball playoffs, The New York Yankees came from behind Wednesday night to beat the Cleveland Indians and win the American League Division Series for the first time since 2012. Also on Wednesday, the Washington Nations beat the Chicago Cubs in their National League Division Series, leading to a critical Game 5 to decide the division champ.
Southwest Airlines will soon be flying to Hawaii. The airline made the announcement Wednesday at a gathering of Southwest employees. Company officials said they'll begin ticket sales in 2018, but they're not yet announcing when the flights will take off. Southwest said initial flights will begin on the West Coast. They also indicated that inter-island Hawaiian flights are a possibility.


Incident, which occurred several weeks ago, reexamined after leftist org. initially distanced itself from anti-Semitic remarks.
A researcher for the extreme left group B'Tselem has denied the Holocaust leaving the organization scrambling to clean up its image.
Undercover reporter Tuvia Tenenbom recorded the researcher, Atef Abu-Alrub, saying that the Holocaust is a "lie" that he "doesn't believe" during a tour of Bedouin village Khirbet Al-Makhul in Judea and Samaria.
Tenenbom's book Catch the Jew, which was released last month, documented the incident.
After an expose by Channel 2 on the remarks in September, B'Tselem spokesman Sarit Michaeli claimed that the remarks were "lies" and taken out of context.
The organization's views have apparently changed, however, and on Sunday, a Facebook post by the group pledged to "seriously examine the issue."
"After an [initial] investigation conducted with the researcher, and in a letter sent to our employees, we established that Mr. Abu feels 'unequivocally that the Holocaust is a 'crime,' was a 'threat against the Jewish people,' and that Channel 2 translated the words of another speaker who was present," the organization began.
"[However,] a few days ago a video was posted of the full conversation. Indeed, most of the conversation that was filmed is translation of a third person [present at the interview]," it continued. "But, upon watching the video, we saw that it shows that contrary to the above, the [remarks about the Holocaust] were not translating the words of a third person, but were made directly by Mr. Abu-Alrub."
"In view of this, we seek to fix our response on this matter, which was given in good faith and make it clear that we are disgusted," it concluded. "B'Tselem is careful in maintaining the reliability and accuracy of its work and publications. Therefore, we promise to hold inquiry as soon as possible into the incident and we will publish the decision as soon as it is made."
B'Tselem has been accused in the past of espousing anti-Israel and anti-IDF views, and for publishing stories which obfuscate the facts.
Earlier this year, it became the center of the "David the Nahalawi" scandal, after a group of Palestinian Arab teens - who are encouraged to provoke soldiers and taunt them in front of video cameras to spread false portrayals of "Israeli aggression" - provoked a soldier into cocking his gun after threatening him in Hevron.
The soldier, known as "David the Nahalawi," faced disciplinary action, sparking an immense public backlash over the IDF's policy toward purposeful provocations. David was eventually reinstated to his post.
In another incident, a B'Tselem cameraman actively participated in anti-Israeli riots in June 2013, throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers before claiming he was "just a cameraman" and "was not involved" in the unrest. B'Tselem banned the cameraman from further activities, but also distanced itself from involvement in the case.


One of the data companies Facebook is planning to remove from its ad-targeting program has come out swinging.
Acxiom CEO Scott Howe told Business Insider that Facebook is deliberately cutting off third-party data vendors to distract from its botched handling of the Cambridge Analytica mess.
''We are getting thrown under the bus,' Howe said. "This was a masterful political manipulation."
A lot of people are not happy with Facebook right now. Add Scott Howe to the list.
Howe is the president and CEO of Acxiom, which collects consumer data from a wide variety of sources - data that has been employed by marketers for decades. It's also one of the companies that Facebook said it plans to stop working with for ad targeting.
Late Wednesday, Facebook announced plans to wind down a program that enabled advertisers to use data from third-party companies — ranging from Oracle to Acxiom — to target its users with specific ads.
Facebook has positioned that move as being aimed at better protecting consumer privacy in light of the ongoing fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which came to light when The New York Times and The Guardian reported that it had improperly obtained user data on as many as 50 million Facebook users.
Howe said that Facebook didn't give Acxiom a heads up regarding the decision. Beyond that slight, Howe believes that Facebook is using Acxiom and its other data partners as scapegoats to distract from its own problems.
"We are getting thrown under the bus," Howe told Business Insider. "This was a masterful political manipulation."
Howe is livid that Facebook has moved to push out data partners, even though the Cambridge Analytica controversy didn't directly have anything to do with them. "The trouble was in Facebook managing its own data," he said. "And this doesn't actually offer individuals any more protection."
Acxiom pulls data from a wide variety of sources, including public records, consumer surveys, retail records, and other vehicles to help brands tap into profiles of consumers. Howe's argument is that his company's sole focus is on protecting consumer data.
"So to blame us is hypocritical," he said. "Their statements are also so inconsistent. This is really about their walled garden. They are forcing advertisers to be reliant on Facebook reporting only. It helps them consolidate more power."
"That is awful for advertisers."


In the landmark 400th issue of Doctor Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme finally discovers the real price of his powerful magic. For decades, Strange has protected the Marvel Universe, but it turns out the sorcerer has seemingly overlooked the price that comes with casting spells.
Marvel's "Fresh Start" initiative relaunched several of Marvel's titles, including Doctor Strange. Written by Mark Waid, the new series sent Doctor Strange on a journey into outer space. Shortly after taking back the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme from Loki, Strange lost all of his magical powers and was desperate to get them back. While traveling in space, Strange found a way to regain his abilities and became even more powerful than ever. Strange returned to Earth, resumed his role as Sorcerer Supreme... and it seemed all had returned to the way it was.
Marvel Comics has reached a milestone with this week's release of Doctor Strange #10, which in legacy numbering is the comic's 400th issue. In Doctor Strange #10, Strange's friends are captured by a mysterious man who admits to being the one who took away Strange's magic. He reminds Strange of the number one rule of magic: that every time he chants the name of a magical entity, he borrows power from it. This means that every time Strange says "By the Flames of the Faltine" or "Wand of Watomb", he uses a fraction of someone else's power. When reminded, Strange understands that anything borrowed must be paid back in some way.
What Strange didn't realize was just how much magical "debt" he had accumulated over the years. Strange is told that his powers were taken away to pay his debts, but this was undone when Strange restored his magical abilities. One entity that he owed a great deal to, the Faltine, was so angry that it demanded the Earth as payment. Strange's friends were used as collateral for Earth, and by the issue's end even Doctor Strange accepts that the Earth has been thrown into a fight it can't possibly win. Strange's archenemy, the dark lord Dormammu is just one of the Faltine, which is a indication of just how much danger the Earth is in right now.
Doctor Strange has just discovered that the cost of magic is even steeper than he once thought, and it will be interesting to see how he plans on paying back his debts. The price of using magic was explored in the Doctor Strange movie, and the events in the comics could allow Doctor Strange 2 to dig even deeper into the price one must pay for casting spells. Especially with so many rumors suggesting the next phase of the MCU will be introducing new, mystical realms of reality itself.
Doctor Strange #10 is on sale now from Marvel Comics.


He and wife Amal quietly took in the refugee from Iraq in a house they maintain in Kentucky.
George and Amal Clooney have quietly taken in a Yazidi refugee from Iraq.
In The Hollywood Reporter's cover story, Clooney reveals that he and his wife are boarding the man in a house the actor-director maintains in Augusta, Ky.
"He was on this bus to Mosul, and ISIS shot the two bus drivers and said, 'Anybody who wants to go to college, we will shoot them,' " says Clooney. "He survived and came to America. He got through all the checks, and once he got through those, it was like, 'Listen, we got your back. You want to get an education? You want to move your life forward? This is something that we can do.' "
The refugee is now a student at the University of Chicago.
Clooney has been praised for his philanthropic work, including in Sudan, a cause he picked up after reading 12 years ago about a program of ethnic cleansing that the government was carrying out in its western region, Darfur.
Since then, along with his ongoing commitment to Darfur, Clooney has raised millions of dollars to back South Sudan's independence, finally won from Sudan in 2011. But to his dismay, things have only soured. The new country's president and vice president have waged war for control of the land and its rich oil resources, decimating their country and its people. "Within a year, it had devolved into the two being at war with each other," Clooney said. "It's a man-made disaster of epic, epic proportions."
Now Clooney is taking a new approach. He's begun to track the politicians' and military leaders' personal revenue, hiring forensic accountants formerly with the FBI, who have already unearthed some $4 billion in misappropriated funds. He's also contacted the heads of several major banks to warn them against supporting South Sudan's leadership and believes he has had some success in persuading them, though he won't name names.
Meanwhile, Clooney, along with his Casamigos Tequila partners Rande Gerber and Mike Meldman, recently sold their company to beverage giant Diageo for $700 million, with the possibility of another $300 million down the pike. Clooney's share was about $200 million.
He's planning to use some of that money to support causes they hold most dear. For starters, Clooney and his wife, Amal, recently announced a $1 million grant to the Southern Poverty Law Center. They're also planning "take $20 million and put it directly into our foundation [the Clooney Foundation for Justice]," he said. "It will go toward educating refugees, it will go toward housing, it will go to all the things that we want to work on."
That includes aid for the settlement of refugees in the U.S., building schools where refugees are based and creating a trial watch to monitor courts that advance governmental repression.
Next up: Clooney is promoting his new film, Suburbicon, a drama set in the late 1950s that he directed and co-wrote with Grant Heslov. The Paramount release, starring Matt Damon and Julianne Moore, debuted Saturday at the Venice Film Festival.
Read more about Clooney's plans in THR's cover story.


The model talks Lena Dunham, her personal style, and memories of her famous aunt.
Given her title, given that her father currently lives on a 13,000-acre estate, and given that she is Princess Diana’s niece, it would be fair to assume Lady Kitty Spencer would, in conversation, have the air of, well, a royal—overly cautious with his or her words, perhaps somewhat disconnected from reality. Spencer is the oldest of the four children Princess Diana’s brother Charles Spencer, the Ninth Earl Spencer, had with Victoria Lockwood, a British former fashion model. (Charles Spencer has re-married twice, since his split from Lockwood, and has had three additional children.) When Charles dies, the Althorp estate where he currently lives will pass on to Kitty’s younger brother, Louis, due to the British primogeniture bylaws that mandate the property be bequeathed to a male heir (yes, this triggered flashbacks to high-school Jane Austen reading for us, as well).
But, in fact, when actually chatting with Kitty Spencer, the conversation is less focused on society charity balls and countryside polo matches, and instead on . . . more conventional 25-year-old pursuits. It feels almost like conversing with a co-worker’s cheery friend, whom you might end up sitting next to at a birthday dinner. She loves Lena Dunham (she read Not That Kind of Girl in one day), and says she is “blown away by her honest attitude to everything”; she thinks she knows “every word to every episode of Friends”: and she is a major House of Cards fan. She’s currently planning a trip to Barcelona with some friends to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And she greatly enjoys Instagram (“I always find it a very positive thing,” she says), posting regularly—a mixture of memes, scenic shots, and amusing glimpses into her daily life (you’re as likely to see a fascinator as you are a familiar croissant-and-coffee shot).
A few days after our interview, I see a meme in my Instagram feed of Bill and Hillary Clinton gleefully playing with the balloons at the D.N.C. convention (“I just want someone who looks at me the same way Bill & Hillary look at balloons,” it reads). I double-tap impulsively, assuming it was posted by a college friend or co-worker; I scroll back up to learn the meme was, in fact, posted by Lady Kitty Spencer, daughter of the Earl Spencer, and niece of the Princess of Wales.
Here we have Diana, 20 years old at the time, at a photo call with Charles on the Balmoral Estate. While you would not necessarily think the separate components of this outfit—prominent rainboots, green pants, semi-cacophonous pink sweater—would harmonize, Diana pulls it off with ease.
Sheep! This sweater is covered in sheep and it’s made of wool . . . which is like if pieces of bacon were cut out in the shape of pigs, sort of? Same idea? Regardless, this is an almost hypnotically strong look.
A sporty and patriotic princess. Perhaps Kate will be inspired to wear something similar when she makes her inaugural visit to New York next month.
Immediately rendering any workout outfit you’ve ever attempted silly and overwrought.
Here, in 1988, with William, Diana makes the tricky sports-jacket/baseball-hat/jeans look, favored by try-hard dads worldwide, look positively elegant.
A koala sweater has never looked—and will likely never look again—so dorm-room-poster–esque.
Here she is arriving at an airport with William and Harry—dressed identically, it should be noted—in 1986. Wait, we’re sorry, this sweater is great, but William and Harry are dressed identically (also, Harry’s expression merits an 100 on the VanityFair.com Adorability Index).
To look this chic while fishing!!! Can you even imagine?!
With Harry on her back in 1987. This looks like the kind of sweater you find in your closet when you’re an adult and you can’t quite remember where or when you got it, but you just know you’ve always had it, and that you always will have it.
This look renders us near speechless. That perfectly placed belt! That feathered hair! That zany-yet-somehow-sophisticated sweater pattern! On point.


Thousands of Chinese teens and young adults work 15 hours a day at 65 cents per hour, prohibited from talking or listening to music, in abysmal conditions at the KYE Systems factory where they assemble Microsoft hardware that is exported to the United States, Europe and Japan.
So reports the National Labor Committee, which on Tuesday released the culmination of three years of incognito interviews and photography inside the infamous Dongguan, China, gadget factories. Though Microsoft is not the only company to outsource manufacturing to KYE, it accounts for about 30 percent of the factory’s work, the NLC said.
The workers – mostly women aged 18 to 25 – work from 7:45 a.m. to 10:55 p.m. They eat horrid meals from the factory cafeterias. They have no bathroom breaks during their shifts, and must clean the toilets as discipline, according to the NLC.
They sleep in factory dormitories, 14 workers to a room. They must buy their own mattresses and bedding, or else sleep on 28-inch-wide plywood boards. They “shower” with a sponge and a bucket. And many of the workers, because they’re young women, are regularly sexually harassed, the NLC alleges.
Young workers rest during a rare 10-minute break while manufacturing Microsoft mice at a KYE Systems factory in Dongguan, China.
During work hours, 1,000 workers could be crammed into one 105-foot by 105-foot room. Inside the factory, to which Microsoft has outsourced since at least 2003, workers assembled such Microsoft products as the LifeCam VX-7000, Basic Optical Mouse and Wireless Notebook Laser Mouse 6000, according to the NLC.
Companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, Foxconn, Acer, Logitech and Asus also outsource production to KYE Systems.
“And in what must be the best of both worlds for U.S. companies like Microsoft, the workers give the U.S. companies a pass,” the NLC’s report states. “The young workers never think or talk about the foreign companies and put all the blame on the factory. No one has told them how wealthy and powerful Microsoft and the other companies really are.
The National Labor Committee’s report includes a narrative from one KYE factory worker whose jobs consisted entirely of sticking self-adhesive rubber feet to the bottom of Microsoft computer mice. Peel, place, repeat.
But the monotony of sitting (or standing) for 12 hours, applying foot after foot to mouse after mouse, was not the worst of the worker’s testimony. It was the militaristic management and sleep deprivation that affected the worker most, according to the NLC’s report.
“I know that I can choose not to work overtime, but if I don’t work overtime, then I am stuck with only 770 (Chinese yuan, or $112.67, per month) in base wages,” the worker said, as reported by the NLC. “This is not nearly enough to support a family. My parents are farmers without jobs. They also do not have pensions. I also need to worry about getting married, which requires a lot of money.
Microsoft is committed to the fair treatment and safety of workers employed by our vendors. Microsoft has invested heavily in a vendor accountability program and robust independent third-party auditing program to ensure conformance to the Microsoft Vendor Code of Conduct.
We are aware of the NLC report and we have commenced an investigation. We take these claims seriously, and we will take appropriate remedial measures in regard to any findings of vendor misconduct.
Actions for non-compliance with our requirements may include corrective action plans, remedial training, certification requirements, cessation of further business awards until corrective actions are instituted, and termination of the business relationship. We unequivocally support taking immediate actions to address non compliant activities.
Microsoft did not answer specific questions about operations at the KYE factory, such as whether it has quality-control monitors there or whether it regularly sends representatives there to check conditions.
The NLC said the KYE factory offers a work-study program, recruiting workers from high schools across southern China. According to the NLC, many of these young workers were on the clock 15 hours a day, seven days a week – even though Chinese law limits workers under 18 to eight hours a day.
Though many factories are known for sweatshop-like conditions, Microsoft may not be entirely knowledgeable about the alleged environment at KYE Systems.
“Corporate audits of the KYE factory by Microsoft and other high-tech companies have also failed miserably over the last several years,” the NLC’s report states. “At the KYE factory the process of preparing for monitoring visits is somewhat subtle. Management instructs the workers to ‘answer the clients’ questions very carefully.’ They should say they never work more than 12 hours a day and overtime is less than 36 hours a month.
Luckily, most workers can put up with the job for only about six months – then they go find another job. As such, there’s a high turnover rate at KYE, and the factory is always hiring, the NLC said.
KYE Systems did not respond to a seattlepi.com request for comment. Read the National Labor Committee’s full report here.
Update 4 p.m., April 15: Microsoft said it will send labor inspectors to KYE to perform an audit. Read seattlepi.com’s report here.


When Rich Francis attended the Stratford Chef School in Stratford, Ont., one of his assignments was to come up with a bistro concept.
Francis spent his early years in the traditional Indigenous community of Fort McPherson in the Northwest Territories, and he was in the midst of rediscovering his roots through food. The idea he came up with — a destination restaurant on a reserve serving modern Indigenous dishes—reflected his new passion.
If you didn’t know Francis’ name, you will soon. His reality show Red Chef Revival, which is part cooking series and part historical documentary, is set to debut in early 2019. His cookbook, Cooking for Truth and Reconciliation, featuring Indigenous recipes, is due in the spring.
Francis has become an important voice in the conversation about honouring Canada’s culinary history, which goes back a lot further than 150 years.
Now 42, Francis moved back to Six Nations last year.
In his early thirties, he was living in London, Ont., raising a family and earning a living as an ironworker while watching a lot of Iron Chef in his off hours.
Francis enrolled in cooking school, graduated at the top of his class, and went on to hone his skills under some of Canada’s top culinary superstars, including David Lee and Victor Barry at Toronto’s fine dining restaurant Splendido.
Francis auditioned for the fourth season of Top Chef Canada in 2013. By then, his interest in traditional Indigenous cuisine had grown stronger. He finished third, but he sees it as a win. “Being on that show opened a lot of doors,” Francis says.
It also started a conversation about Indigenous culture, he adds, and it’s one he wants to continue. Francis considers food an accessible entry point into Canada’s relationship with Indigenous people as well as issues such as diabetes, obesity and food sovereignty. He wants diners to know that Canada’s culinary history is more dynamic and delicious than plain old bannock.
Since 2014, Francis’ catering company, 7th Fire, has been hosting pop up “Reconciliation dinners” across the country, where a mix of the First Nations and the foodies crowds enjoy modernized Indigenous plates like seal tartare and moose nose with wild rice and arugula. He says he hopes to one day serve those same dishes at a full-service restaurant on the Six Nations reservation. For now, Francis is pleased that the culinary cool kids are taking an interest in what he’s up to, but the diners he is most seeking approval from are the ones that came before him.
For Francis, that’s part of the goal.


Eight military policewomen stationed at West Point have been discharged from the Army for what officials said were homosexual activities, the United States Military Academy said today.
The women, who were not cadets, were ''administratively discharged at various times during the summer,'' as investigations were completed, according to Col. John P. Yeagley, a West Point spokesman.
''The investigation included witnesses and other evidence,'' Colonel Yeagley said, and was not just a case of individual interviews. The women lived in barracks on the academy grounds and were the first, he said, to have been discharged under those circumstances.
There are about 800 soldiers at West Point, providing logistical and administrative requirements of the military academy. The military police company had 153 members, 35 of them women, before the eight accused were forced to leave.
The women were discharged under chapter 15 of Army regulation 635-200, which deals with separation as a result of homosexual activity. They were given general discharges under honorable conditions, which fall short of honorable discharges.
Army officials declined to provide details of the investigation, which was conducted by a contingent of the Army's Criminal Investigation Division stationed at West Point. A battallion commander, Lieut. Col. Morgan Roseborough, reviewed the evidence and decided on the separations.
He said the accused women can appeal the decisions to the Army Board for Correction of Military Records, where panels of civilian lawyers working in the office of the Secretary of the Army consider the cases. The next stage of appeal is the Federal District Court and the civilian judicial system.


San Francisco: A major bug in Twitter's hashing process has exposed the password of over 330 million of its users. The company has now asked all of its users to change their passwords immediately.
The hashing process masks the passwords by replacing them with a random string of characters. However, because of the bug, the passwords were exposed in plain text.
Twitter claims that it discovered the bug on its own and removed the passwords, The Verge reports.
While there has been no breach or misuse of the unmasked passwords, Twitter is recommending all of its users to change their password, including for third-party apps such as TweetDeck and Twitterrific.


Why is metro New Orleans sinking? Video NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune Home and Garden Editor Susan Langenhennig talks with Tulane University geographer Richard Campanella and Civil engineer Kevin Vanderbrook about the effect of soil subsidence in the New Orleans metro area.
Tulane University geography professor and NOLA.com Cityscapes columnist, Richard Campanella's recent column on soil subsidence generated a lot of questions from readers about why the metro New Orleans area is sinking and what that means to homeowners. The column generated such a vibrant online conversation, I decided it was worth exploring the topic in a little more depth.
Campanella joined me and civil engineer Kevin Vanderbrook of VECO Consulting Engineers in the newsroom studio on Thursday to discuss the serious issue of subsidence -- and what, if anything, homeowners can do about it.
The video is about 26 minutes long, but it's full of information, both on the macro level -- why is subsidence an issue we should all be concerned about? -- and the micro level -- is it a good idea for homeowners to pump sand under a house slab that's experiencing subsidence and do rain gardens make any difference at all?
The video is the first in a series of home and garden discussions with experts. If you have a topic you'd like to see explored in more detail, add it to the comment stream below.


The HomePod isn't a large device, but it's heavy. Which makes sense given the audio components crammed into the cylinder. It's got a single, circular woofer to deliver bass tones and seven tweeters for the midrange and high-frequency sounds.
First released in February, the smart speaker didn't come to Canada until June 18. It's available for $449 in either Space Grey or White, and although that price might seem high, it's actually reasonable when you look at the cost of competitors.
The Sonos Play:3 is $329 and the Google Max is $499. Amazon's larger Echo is only $130 regularly priced, but I'm not even sure the Echo is in the same category as the HomePod.
Apple decided long ago to focus on the experience of music as a driver of its products. And while the HomePod was a bit slow in coming to the smart-speaker category, it delivers on that experience.
The HomePod delivers the best sound of them all. To my ears, Sonos speakers come close, but the Amazon Echo and Google Home speakers are inferior.
Apple has played up the "spatial awareness" of the HomePod, which refers to the speaker's ability to adjust its output depending on which room—and where in the room—it is placed.
I tested this by moving it around my home, and whether it was in the corner of a bedroom, along the wall of the living room, or on the counter of the kitchen, the sound was always clear and crisp.
If you're a committed Google user, though, there's little that the HomePod can do that is going to get you to switch.
Amazon Echo users, though, may be convinced. Alexa is further ahead in the digital-assistant functionality, but the HomePod can be used as a speakerphone and delivers superior sound quality, not to mention having the better music service with Apple Music.
If you've already got Sonos speakers at home, you'll find that the HomePod works nicely with them now that AirPlay 2 has been released.
And if you're in the Apple ecosystem, you can throw audio to HomePod from any of your other Apple devices, including iPads, iPods, computers, and even Apple TV.
The HomePod is also a way of collecting and controlling the myriad home-automation devices you might have. You can use simple voice commands to have Siri control everything from connected lightbulbs and thermostats to doorbells and door locks.
In a sense, HomePod isn't anything special because it's simply giving you access to the range of productivity tools and apps that Apple has built into it's ecosystem.
You can add and modify notes, reminders, and calendar bookings. You can send messages and use it as a speakerphone to make calls.
The only thing that HomePod can't do, yet, is fully understand Canadian French. Support for that language is coming "later this year".


More than a year in the making — first at VMware(s vmw) and then at Pivotal — Pivotal’s commercial distribution of the Cloud Foundry PaaS will be generally available on November 15. As we have heard, Pivotal has grand ambitions to make this cross-cloud platform a for-real application layer for enterprise use. Of course, broad cross-cloud adoption has always been the strategy for Cloud Foundry — what Pivotal has done is layer data analytics and other services atop the PaaS.
Pivotal CF “is our big enterprise product launch. Now you can have your own Cloud Foundry on the cloud of your choice running on vSphere behind the firewall or on OpenStack or AWS,” said Scott Yara, senior vice president of products and platform for Pivotal, the company spun out of EMC and VMware last year to pursue this goal using bits and pieces of technology from the parent companies.
There are two basic components — first the Pivotal CF commercial distribution and second a set of services to run atop that platform, including: Pivotal HD, which IT pros can use to build and manage Hadoop as a native service; Pivotal AX analytics; Pivotal RabbitMQ message broker; and MySQL Dev Service for provisioning MySQL databases atop the platform.
Pricing was not available, but Pivotal said those details will be available on the PivotalOne web site.
This is an ambitious undertaking and one meant to bring PaaS fully into the realm of enterprise users. Towards that end, Pivotal got General Electric — as enterprisey as you can get — aboard as an investor and user.
The problem with PaaS to date is that, while developers love to build and deploy applications easily on rentable infrastructure, most companies still opt to bring those applications in-house when they’re complete.
Pivotal aims to change that in part by abstracting out the differences of underlying infrastructure so once the application is built, businesses are not locked into any single cloud provider — although of course there is dependency on Cloud Foundry itself. There are other Cloud Foundry PaaSes on the market now, coming from third parties including CenturyLink/Savvis, ActiveState, Tier 3 and other providers.
“Enterprises want an application and data platform similar in scale and automation to what Google(s goog) and others have built for themselves,” said Yara (pictured above).
The news comes at an interesting time. A sometimes heated debate erupted in recent weeks about whether OpenStack — one of Cloud Foundry’s supported cloud infrastructures — is rushing to add PaaS-like functionality to its infrastructure and by doing so is alienating its partner ecosystem trying to build services atop OpenStack.
Yara said the controversy stems from a misunderstanding of what a PaaS aims to do.
“We see a number of clouds — OpenStack is certainly one — that people will want to use. AWS isn’t going away, Google has and will continue to have meaningful scale; Microsoft will be there and VMware has aggressive plans. If you think of all those cloud platforms as the modern hardware, you just want to write apps that run on all of them. PaaS should provide portability between clouds and provide binding to a bunch of services,” he said.
By that definition, he continued, a PaaS cannot be singly bound to OpenStack.
To reinforce the cross-cloud nature of Pivotal CF, the company will run advertisements today touting support from companies including OpenStack backers IBM(s ibm), Canonical and others. Verizon(s vz) Enterprise Services is also now aboard the Cloud Foundry advisory board and is working with Pivotal on a Cloud Foundry instance to run on its Verizon Cloud which should be available next year.
Pivotal CEO Paul Maritz, Yara and Pivotal head of products James Watters will talk about the Cloud Foundry on a webcast slated for 10 a.m. PST.


An Indian Border Security Force (BSF) soldier keeps guard at the Chakri post on the India-Pakistan border.
NEW DELHI -- The latest dispute between archrivals India and Pakistan centers on whether the Indian Army took out several suspected terror camps just across the volatile border in Kashmir.
While India claims its special forces carried out pre-emptive “surgical strikes” last week, Islamabad is adamant they did not cross the line of control into Pakistan.
The truth may be hard to ascertain in the remote Himalayan region where the two armies have long faced off and where bouts of heavy cross-border firing are not unusual.
What is certain is that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has signaled a more assertive approach in dealing with Pakistan. The move follows an attack on an Indian Army post in Kashmir that killed 20 soldiers on September 18, an attack that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based militants.
Officials say in the coming days and weeks India will explore more diplomatic and economic measures to put pressure on its neighbor and rival whom it has long accused of supporting cross-border attacks by Islamic militant groups.
Analysts warn the tougher line carries the risk of an escalation of hostilities as it takes the South Asian rivals into uncharted waters.
The head of the strategic studies program at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, Harsh Pant, said the fundamental shift in India’s approach follows the failure of past policies after multiple terror attacks.
Analysts say the army’s “surgical strikes” were a signal that India can retaliate. That is a reversal from its restraint in the past, when fear of hostilities turning nuclear held India back. “The issue was India was losing its credibility in its conventional deterrent,” Pant said.
Pakistan denies the Indian allegations of supporting militant groups mounting attacks in India and says the real problem is alleged human rights violations by Indian security forces in Indian Kashmir that have triggered unrest in the region.
But by blaming Pakistan-based groups for fomenting unrest, India has said, it will isolate Pakistan diplomatically.
The first casualty has been a South Asian summit that Islamabad canceled after five out of eight nations in the group, led by India, pulled out citing concerns about cross-border terrorism.
There have been several calls for India, South Asia’s largest country, to explore the possibility of forging a regional forum that could exclude Pakistan.
However, security analyst Bharat Karnad at New Delhi’s Center for Policy Research underlines the risk of such a strategy.
India is also looking at economic measures aimed at Pakistan. The prime minister is due to review the Most Favored Nation status that New Delhi granted Pakistan in 1996. That is unlikely to hurt Islamabad as direct trade between the two countries is small and most of the trade is in India’s favor.
The bigger pressure point is a 1960 Indus Water treaty that awarded most of the waters from three Himalayan rivers to Pakistan. India says it will explore all options including building hydroelectric dams along these rivers so that it can utilize its share, something that could potentially reduce the flow into Pakistan.
That may not happen anytime soon as it would take years to build dams. But it has raised alarm in Islamabad, which says scrapping the treaty would be an act of war.
While India says it has no intention of ending the treaty, which has survived two wars and decades of bitter relations, analysts say the message New Delhi wants to send out is that it might now be willing to use tools never contemplated in the past.
The closer strategic ties that Prime Minister Modi has cultivated with the United States since taking office two years ago have also given India the confidence to contemplate tougher measures, according to analysts.
“He [Modi] recognized the fact that having good relations with America allows India greater strategic space to pursue certain policies vis-a-vis Pakistan,” Pant said.
Tensions have spiraled along the Kashmir border in recent days. Indian officials reported another attack on an Indian Army camp Sunday night by six militants in north Kashmir. One border guard died, and another was wounded. India has evacuated hundreds of border villages on its side, and cross-border firing continues.
But in a signal that both sides want to reduce tensions, the National Security Advisers of the two countries spoke to each other on October 3 for the first time since tensions spiked in the past two weeks.


A bill prohibiting cities from charging higher building permit fees in their extra-territorial areas will get a legislative hearing in Bismarck Thursday.
Rep. Dan Ruby, R-Minot, is the sponsor of House Bill 1471, which states cities cannot charge more for permit fees in extra-territorial areas than in the corporate city limits. Cities also cannot impose more restrictive regulations in extra-territorial areas under the bill.
The House Political Subdivisions Committee will take public testimony Thursday at 9 a.m. in the Capitol.
The issue arose in Minot last year when a resident outside city limits asked the council to equalize fees, which are doubled in the extra-territorial area. The Minot City Council had passed a resolution in July 1986 that provided for doubled fees.
The city upheld the fees last fall. According to the city, the surcharge is meant to recover the added costs of staff time and resources used to perform the duties outside of city limits and to discourage sprawl from adding to the costs of developing municipal infrastructure in and around rural subdivisions. The city reported nearly half of the costs of the Planning, Building and Inspection Departments are subsidized by property taxes. The surcharge is meant to offset the costs for services provided beyond city taxing boundaries.
Proponents for equalizing fees in Minot stated last fall they were unaware of any other cities that impose higher fees in extra-territorial areas.


In the past 24 hours, Palestinian terrorists have killed two Israelis, fired rockets and mortar rounds at Jewish communities in Gaza, opened fire on Israeli soldiers in Atzmona, and sent a suicide bomber to blow up Soroka Hospital in Beersheba (thankfully, she was caught on the way).
So how exactly is Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reacting to this renewed onslaught of Palestinian violence?
Why – by hosting Palestinian leader Abu Mazen, of course!
Sharon and Abu Mazen will be holding a mini-summit today to discuss coordinating the proposed Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria that is slated to take place in August.
In other words, even though Abu Mazen continues to allow Palestinian terror groups to attack Jews with impunity, Sharon seems to have no qualms about greeting him in Jerusalem or discussing the transfer of territory to his control.
This is not just a matter of national pride or even diplomatic niceties – it is a dangerous act that signifies weakness and frailty, for it sends a message to the Palestinians that they need not pay any “price” for their continued acts of terror against the Jewish state.
Instead of welcoming Abu Mazen to his home, Sharon should instead consider arresting him – by refusing to crack down on terror and by allowing terrorist groups to operate with impunity from territory he controls, Abu Mazen is responsible for the acts of violence which they perpetrate.
Abu Mazen belongs in a jail cell, not in a tete-a-tete with high-level Israeli officials. As US President George W. Bush has said time and again, those who harbor terrorists should be held to account. It is time Israel began applying that principle to its Palestinian neighbors, too.


The president's subdued remarks Tuesday at an event marking the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. were a marked contrast in tone to his remarks on social media earlier in the morning.
WASHINGTON — A somber-sounding President Donald Trump recalled "a moment when America fought back" in remarks commemorating the passengers and crew who stormed the cockpit of United Airlines Flight 93, forcing hijackers to crash the plane in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist assault on the U.S.
Speaking Tuesday at the Flight 93 memorial, Trump mixed promises to defend America from terrorism with praise for those who foiled the prong of al Qaeda's attack that planners said was intended to strike the U.S. Capitol and sympathetic sentiments for and about their survivors. Specifically, he told the heart-wrenching story of Dorothy Garcia, who asked investigators to retrieve her husband Andrew's wedding ring from the field — a speck-in-the-wreckage mission — and miraculously received it two months later. The telltale inscription: "All my love, 8-2-69" — their wedding date.
It was a notably subdued Trump who spoke 17 years after the terrorist attacks that felled the twin towers of the World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon and claimed nearly 3,000 American lives. His mien was markedly different from his tone on Twitter Tuesday morning, when he sent messages suggesting the Justice Department has unfairly targeted him with its Russia probe and is not doing enough to go after officials he believes acted against him during the 2016 election.
The passengers and crew members of Flight 93 "rose up, defied the enemy, took control of their destiny and changed the course of history," Trump said. "A band of brave patriots turned the tide on our nation’s enemies and joined the immortal ranks of our nation’s heroes."
Just before 9:30 a.m. on that day, passengers and crew members used airfones to report that their plane had been hijacked and found out about the attacks in New York and Washington. They voted to try to overtake the hijackers and pushed their way into the cockpit. Rather than lose control of the plane, the hijacker pilot downed it, killing all 44 people aboard, including the terrorists.
"They attacked the enemy, they fought until the very end, and they stopped the forces of terror and defeated this wicked, horrible, evil plan," Trump said.
His remarks were all but devoid of politics, though he promised to "never flinch in the face of evil and to do whatever it takes to keep America safe," emphasizing the final three words, which he and his aides often used in describing the intent of a travel ban policy that critics said was aimed at limiting the ability of Muslims to enter the U.S.


It’s hard being English in Los Angeles. People keep trying to talk to you. You can’t avoid it. They ask questions, all the time. There was the supermarket checkout girl who quizzed me at length about my salad dressing (yup, it was zero-fat). And the barman who wanted to know why the Queen had been alive for so long (no, nothing to do with ashtanga yoga). They are chatty and inquisitive and go nuts for an English accent. And yes, they are a tiny bit exhausting.
Better, perhaps, to tackle it one piece at a time, and Santa Monica sounded like a good place to start – hippyish, laid-back, and you can’t argue with miles of golden beaches. I decided against a hotel. Rent an apartment, I figured, and I could pretend I actually lived here, pretend I was a local.
Living like a local meant talking to locals – what better way to get to know a place? And boy, do Angelenos like to talk. It started before we even left home, in the form of emails, lots of them, from Paul, my Santa Monica landlord. What did I need? Where did I want to go? Did I want advice on what to see? Links to supermarkets? Yes, please, and it meant that we arrived with a list of insider tips that I wouldn’t have found in a guidebook or on a website. What’s more, I was able to stock our fridge with basics through a local online shop in advance. How civilised not to have to mess around with room service after an 11-hour flight, and with two overtired children in tow.
A talker on paper, Paul turned out to be quieter in person. “Text me if you need anything,” he murmured as he let us into our airy, white-and-blue two-storey town house, tucked on a quiet jacaranda-lined street a short drive from the beach. Lots of calm space, and we didn’t have to share any of it. No bunfights at breakfast or territorial towel laying here. We barely even shared the communal driveway with our neighbours (locals, all of them, but curiously invisible. We hardly saw another soul on our block during our stay). The house was beautifully stocked – fancy coffee machine, fluffy towels and nice toiletries, but also several types of laundry detergent, six different herbal teas and a bottle of complimentary, rather nice Californian merlot. It was tempting just to stay put, lounging on our patio and gazing up at the swaying LA palms.
But we needed supplies, and the great thing about renting is that it forces you out, forces you to explore. Paul’s list was a gem, less about ticking off sites and museums and more about just hanging out. Top of his list was Main Street, a drag of quirky boutiques and cafés, where owners leant in doorways chatting to regulars. It seemed made for hanging out. Our first meal was at the Omelette Parlor. No tourists here, just families and lone locals hugging mugs of coffee and reading the local rag. The owner, a wiry bird of a woman who has been serving up fluffy omelettes for more than 35 years, handed out lollies to the children while I eavesdropped on the gossip. A mountain lion had been shot in someone’s front yard. “Yep, Santa Monica’s wilder than you think,” chirped the owner. This was what I’d hoped for: a proper slice of local life, wild or otherwise.
Children shouted, stallholders yelled, parents chattered and scolded. They don’t shop quietly, the Americans. At the larger Main Street market, a loud marimba band got the shoppers so excited that they plopped their shopping bags on the ground and danced around them. Britons would need to be drunk to behave like that; here, they were high on sunshine and wheatgrass juice.
Renting can be excellent value compared with staying in a hotel, especially if you take up all the beds and split the cost. When researching a house or apartment online, check what is included in the price (most landlords will include all linens, towels, wireless etc in the rental price – but some will charge extra).
Be sure to check the address on Google Maps before you book. Descriptions can be misleading and distances unclear, especially in LA – a few blocks from the beach or the supermarket, for example, is unlikely to mean that you can walk to either.
Start an email conversation with your host before you arrive (assuming he or she is willing) to learn as much as you can about what to do and see and where to eat and drink in the surrounding area.
By the time they had parked and reached the beach, the locals were friendly again. Miles of golden, groomed sand and glittering Pacific would put anyone in a good mood. We joined them, with the sunshade and cool box we found in our house, every afternoon beneath the pale-blue lifeguard towers, next to noisy Mexican families handing around roasted corn, salt-dusted surfers chatting up bikinied babes, old couples mumbling in deckchairs. An endless stream of power walkers and cyclists zapped along the path behind, jabbering into mobile phones. We loved it all – the people, the sea, the spectacle of it. So much more rewarding, and relaxing, than zooming around ticking off tourist attractions.
Most evenings we’d head home, drowsy from too much sun and conversation, glad to withdraw to our patio for a quiet barbecue. On our last night, though, we diverged from Paul’s list – for a very unlocal walk along tourist-thronged Santa Monica Pier, strolling past the gilded 100-year-old carousel, past cheerily gaudy sweet stalls, lone anglers, fortune-tellers, street artists and a man with parrots flapping on his bike’s handlebars.
It was packed and noisy, and no one paid us any attention. No one talked to us, or asked questions. At the end of the pier, a weathered hippie sat in frayed cut-offs strumming Hotel California on his battered guitar. We stood, nibbling on cotton candy and staring out over the shimmering Pacific, as the tune drifted out on the warm wind, swallowed up by the crash of the waves below. Living like a tourist wasn’t half bad either.
British Airways (0844 493 0787; ba.com) offers return flights on the A380 from Heathrow to Los Angeles from £616 per person, including all taxes and charges.
Seven nights’ accommodation in a two-bedroom town house in Santa Monica (reference 922276), sleeping six, costs from £1,401 per property, accommodation only. Available through Homeaway.co.uk (001 323 697 0484).
yummy.com is a useful online grocery shop, letting you order food before your arrival; whycookla.com offers online menus and orders from a range of local restaurants.
For more information, see santamonica.com.
Our expert Lucie Young introduces a comprehensive guide to Los Angeles with all the necessary information on why, how and when to travel.


She is known for her signature bohemian style.
And Teresa Palmer cut an angelic figure in a floaty frock as she attended the British Academy Awards held in her new hometown of Wales on Sunday.
Wearing a gorgeous Prada white dress, the 31-year-old attended the exclusive event with her husband Mark Webber.
The mum-of-two teamed her outfit with a pair of black suede platform shoes.
She wore her blonde locks out and kept her makeup flawless with a smokey eye and bright red lip.
Mark looked dapper in a burgundy jacket teamed with a white shirt, grey bow tie and black pants.
She wrote in a blog post on Your Zen Mama: 'We have always been a travelling circus but this time it came with a few added challenges.
She also discussed juggling her busy career with motherhood on her blog.
The actress shares two boys with husband Mark Webber and is stepmother to Mark's son Isaac, who he shares with ex-partner actress Frankie Shaw.
Teresa and Mark have a three-year-old son Bodhi Rain and a nine-month-old baby Forest Sage.
Moving to Wales with husband Mark and sons Bodhi and Forest for six months, she said this will be the longest the family has gone without seeing nine-year-old Isaac.
'It's always an adjustment after Isaac leaves and also an adjustment when he comes back,' she said.
'I was really emotional, feeling anxious about being so far away from each other and starting all over again in a new house, in a new job and with Bodhi starting a new school,' the Hacksaw Ridge star added.
Teresa has moved into a 'big old farm house in the country' while filming A Discovery Of Witches, where she plays heroine Diana Bishop.