Having a five-year-old “new” reader at my house, I am becoming even more familiar with the ins and outs of early readers than I was as “just” a children’s librarian. My daughter came home from Kindergarten one day and declared she only wanted to read “comics.” I immediately checked out the TOON Books series of graphic novels, thinking the Level 1 would be perfect for her beginning reading level. Little Mouse was a quick favorite, once she got over one little thing. When I first showed them to her she said “Mom! These aren’t comics! They don’t have the little black boxes on each page!” The Level 1 TOON Books only have one box that takes up the whole page, with word bubbles and illustrations. Fear not, Levels 2 and on have that traditional comic look. Luckily, she loved reading about Little Mouse, Chick and Chickie, Silly Lilly, and all of the other characters in the Level 1 TOON books, despite only having one box per page. We have quickly moved on to Level 2 titles now and her favorite characters are Otto (from Otto’s Orange Day and Otto’s Backwards Day) and Benny and Penny (from The Big No-No, Just Pretend, The Toy Breaker, How to Say Goodbye, Lights Out).
Graphic novels are an excellent alternative, or addition, to standard early readers for little ones just learning how to read. New readers benefit from having as many opportunities as possible to find books that they connect with, which will hopefully turn them into lifelong readers. As adults, we know that books are read from left to right. New readers are still learning this. Because of their left to right layout within a left to right layout, graphic novels help to reinforce this in a fun way. Graphic novels are also a great way to pull in reluctant readers because they can seem less intimidating than traditional readers. They also draw those children who might prefer gaming or watching television.
The next few recommendations are actually wordless (or mostly wordless). As a parent, these can sometimes seem pointless in terms of reading practice, however, these are very beneficial to reading comprehension. These types of books help reinforce the idea that the story and the pictures are connected and can be a terrific way to build important literacy skills like vocabulary and comprehension. They also illustrate how stories are built, using a beginning, middle, and end format. A few of our favorites are Little Robot by Ben Hatke. Little Robot is a moving adventure of discovery, friendship, and overcoming fears. And with a robot as a central character, it makes it very popular in this current STEAM climate. Another favorite of this type is Owly by Andy Runton. Owly is a series about a sweet little owl whose stories focus on friendship and helping others.
My five-year-old loves anything related to outer space or animals so Binky the Space Cat by Ashley Spires (and all of the other Binky books in the series) and The Great Pet Escape (and others in the Pets on the Loose series) by Victoria Jamieson have been winners for her (and I’ve enjoyed them, too)!
A few other titles that your new reader might enjoy:
- Sleepless Knight: Adventures in Cartooning by James Sturn
- Hildafolk series by Luke Pearson
- Guinea Pig, Pet Shop Private Eye series by Colleen AF Venable
- The Flying Beaver Brothers series by Maxwell Eaton III
- Pants series by Scott McCormick
- Beep and Bah by James Burks
- Bean Dog and Nugget series Cherise Mericle Harper
- Kung Pow Chicken series by Cyndi Marko
Kara Walker is the Head of Youth Services at the Middlefield Branch of the Geauga County Public Library. She is currently reading The Boxcar Children with her five-almost six-year old daughter.
Available in the following formats:
eBook (Hoopla Overdrive)
Audiobooks, series (Hoopla Overdrive)


In 1895, he went to Cuba as a military observer with the Spanish army in its fight against the independentists. He also reported for the Saturday Review.
The first notable appearance of Winston Churchill was as a war correspondent in the second Anglo-Boer war between Britain and self-proclaimed Afrikaaners in South Africa. He was captured in a Boer ambush of a British Army train convoy, but managed a high profile escape and eventually crossed the South African border to Lourenço Marques (now Maputo in Mozambique).
Churchill used the status achieved to begin a political career which would last a total of sixty-one years, serving as an MP in the House of Commons from 1901 to 1922 and from 1924 to 1964. At first a member of the Conservative Party, he soon 'crossed the floor' to the Liberals and entered the Cabinet in his early thirties. He was one of the political and military engineers of the disastrous Gallipoli landings on the Dardanelles during World War I, which led to his description as "the butcher of Gallipoli". He was a signatory of the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921 which established the Irish Free State. The Liberal Party was now beset by internal division. After losing his seat in the 1922 General Election to Edwin Scrymgeour he rejoined the Conservative Party. Two years later in the General Election of 1924 he
was elected to represent Epping (where there is now a statue of him) as a Conservative. He was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1924 under Stanley Baldwin and was responsible for returning Britain to the Gold Standard. During the General Strike of 1926, Churchill was reported to have suggested that machine guns should be used on the striking miners. Churchill edited the Government's newspaper, the British Gazette, and during the dispute he argued that "either the country will break the General Strike, or the General Strike will break the country.".
A young Churchill
The Conservative government was defeated in the 1929 General Election. When Ramsay MacDonald formed the National Government in 1931 Churchill was not invited to join the Cabinet. He was now at the lowest point in his career in a period known as 'the wilderness years'. He spent much of next few years concentrating on his writing, including the History of the English Speaking Peoples (which was not published until well after WWII). He became most notable for his outspoken opposition towards the granting of independence to India. Soon though, his attention was drawn to the rise of Adolf Hitler and Germany's rearmament. For a time he was a lone voice calling on Britain to re-arm itself and counter the belligerence of Germany. Churchill was a fierce critic of Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler. He was also an outspoken supporter of Edward VIII during the Abdication Crisis leading to some speculation that he might be appointed Prime Minister if the King refused to take Baldwin's advice and consequently the government resigned. However this did not happen and Churchill found himself isolated and in a bruised position for some time after this.
At the outbreak of the Second World War Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty On Chamberlain's resignation in May, 1940, Churchill was appointed Prime Minister and formed an all-party government. He immediately made his friend and confidant, industrialist and newspaper baron, Max Aitken, (Lord Beaverbrook) in charge of aircraft production. It was Aitken's astounding business acumen that allowed Britain to quickly gear up aircraft production and engineering that eventually made the difference in the war.
His speeches at that time were a great inspiration to the embattled United Kingdom. His famous "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat" speech was his first as Prime Minister. He followed that closely, before the Battle of Britain, with "We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."
(It has been suggested that some of Churchill's radio speeches, including "We shall fight on the beaches", were actually spoken by soundalike actors because Churchill was too busy to make them himself, but this has not been conclusively proven.)
His good relationship with U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt secured the United Kingdom vital supplies via the North Atlantic Ocean shipping routes. Churchill initiated the Special Operations Executive (SOE), under Hugh Dalton's Ministry of Economic Warfare, which established, conducted and fostered covert, subversive and partisan operations in occupied territories with notable success; and also the Commandos which establish the pattern for most of the world's current Special Forces. The Russians referred to him as the "British Bulldog".
Churchill was one of the driving forces behind the treaties that would re-draw post-WWII European and Asian boundaries. The boundary between North Korea and South Korea were proposed at the Yalta Conference, as well as the expulsion of Japanese from those countries. Proposals for European boundaries and settlements were discussed as early as 1943 by Roosevelt and Churchill; the settlement was officially agreed to by Truman, Churchill, and Stalin at Potsdam (Article XIII of the Potsdam protocol).
One of these settlements was the boundary between the future East Germany and Poland at the Oder-Neisse line, which was rationalized as compensation for Soviet gains in Ukraine. As part of the settlement was an agreement to continue the expulsion of ethnic Germans from the area. The exact numbers and movement of ethnic populations over the Polish-German and Polish-USSR borders in the period at the end of World War II is vastly difficult to determine. This is not least because, under the Nazi regime, many Poles were replaced in their homes by the conquering Germans in an attempt to consolidate Nazi power. In the case of the post-WWII settlement, Churchill was convinced that the only way to alleviate tensions between the two populations was the expulsion of the Germans, despite the fact that many of these Germans had lived in these areas since the middle ages and had absorbed the native population, which lived there before. As Churchill expounded in the House of Commons in 1944, "Expulsion is the method which, in so far as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble...A clean sweep will be made. I am not alarmed by these transferences, which are more possible in modern conditions..." Even though made in "modern conditions" some 500,000 to 1,500.000 people died in these "transferences". Today these transferences would be named "ethnic cleansing".
Although the importance of Churchill's role in World War II was undeniable, he produced many enemies in his own country. His expressed contempt for ideas such as public health care and for better education for the majority of the population in particular produced much dissatisfaction amongst the population, particularly those who had fought in the war. Immediately following the close of the war in Europe Churchill was heavily defeated at election by Clement Attlee and the Labour Party.
Winston Churchill was an early supporter of the pan-Europism that eventually lead to the formation of the European Common market and later the European Union (for which one of the three main buildings of the European Parliament is named in his honor). Churchill was also instrumental in giving France a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (which he supported in order to have another European power to counter-balance the Soviet Union's permanent seat).
On September 2, 1908, at the socially desirable church of St. Margaret's, Westminster, Churchill married Clementine Ogilvy Hozier (1885-1977), a dazzling but largely penniless beauty. They had five children: Sarah Millicent Hermione Churchill (who became a movie actress of some renown, costarring with Fred Astaire in the film "Royal Wedding"), Randolph Frederick Edward Churchill, Marigold Frances Churchill (who died as a child), Diana Churchill, and Mary Churchill.
Clementine Churchill's mother was Lady (Henrietta) Blanche Ogilvy (1852-1925), the second wife of Sir Henry Montague Hozier and a daughter of the 7th Earl of Airlie. The identity of her father, however, is open to healthy debate. Lady Blanche was well known for sharing her sexual favors and was eventually divorced as a result. She maintained that Clementine's father was Capt. William George "Bay" Middleton, a noted horseman. But Clementine Churchill's biographer Joan Hardwick has surmised that all Lady Blanche's "Hozier" children were actually fathered by her sister Clementine's husband, Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford (1837-1916, better known as a grandfather of the infamous Mitford sisters of the 1920s).
Churchill is believed by several writers to have suffered from bipolar disorder and in his last years, Alzheimer's disease; certainly he suffered from fits of depression that he called his "black dogs", Some researchers also believe that Churchill was dyslexic, based on the difficulties he described himself having at school.
November 1942: Oliver Stanley succeeds Lord Cranborne as Colonial Secretary. Sir Stafford Cripps retires as Lord Privy Seal. His successor is not in the Cabinet.
September 1943: Sir John Anderson succeeds Sir Kingsley Wood as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Clement Attlee succeeds Anderson as Lord President, remaining also Deputy Prime Minister. Attlee's successor as Dominions Secretary is not in the Cabinet.
November 1943: Lord Woolton enters the Cabinet as Minister of Reconstruction.
January 1944: Lord Moyne succeeds Richard Casey as Minister Resident in the Middle East.
November 1944: Edward Grigg succeeds Lord Moyne as Minister Resident in the Middle East
May 1952: Henry Crookshank succeeds Lord Salisbury as Lord Privy Seal. Salisbury remains Commonwealth Relations Secretary. Crookshank's successor as Minister of Health is not in the Cabinet.
November 1952: Lord Woolton becomes Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Lord Salisbury succeeds Lord Woolton as Lord President. Lord Swinton succeeds Lord Salisbury as Commonwealth Relations Secretary.
September 1953: Florence Horsbrugh, the Minister of Education, Sir Thomas Dugdale, the Minister of Agriculture, and Gwilym Lloyd George, the Minister of Food, enter the cabinet. The Ministry for the Co-ordination of Transport, Fuel, and Power, is abolished, and Lord Leathers leaves the Cabinet.
October 1953: Lord Cherwell resigns as Paymaster General. His successor is not in the Cabinet.
July 1954: Alan Lennox-Boyd succeeds Oliver Lyttelton as Colonial Secretary. Derick Heathcoat Amory succeeds Sir Thomas Dugdale as Minister of Agriculture.
October 1954: Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, now Lord Kilmuir, succeeds Lord Simonds as Lord Chancellor. Gwilym Lloyd George succeeds him as Home Secretary. The Food Ministry is merged into the Ministry of Agriculture. Sir David Eccles succeeds Florence Horsbrugh as Minister of Education. Harold Macmillan succeeds Lord Alexander as Minister of Defense. Duncan Sandys succeeds Macmillan as Minister of Housing and Local Government. Osbert Peake, the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance, enters the Cabinet.


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Breast screening is a method of identifying breast cancer at an early stage. It is done by performing x-rays of the breast known as mammograms. A mammogram can detect small changes in breast tissue, which may indicate cancers which are too small to be felt either by the woman herself or by a doctor. By the time a lump can be felt, it is likely to have been there for quite some time, and the longer it has been there undetected, the more the chance it has had to grow and spread.
It is an x-ray of the breast which is performed by exposing the breast to a low dose of radiation. During the procedure, the breasts are compressed between two plates for a few seconds. This is not painful but some women may find it slightly uncomfortable. The mammogram is reported by a specialist breast radiologist.
If the mammogram is reported as normal, you need not go for any further tests. However, further tests will be required if the radiologist detects an abnormality. These include a breast ultrasound and in a few cases, a breast MRI. A needle biopsy of the lump may be recommended and this can be done as an outpatient procedure.
Apart from saving vital time, which is crucial in fighting cancer, screening also gives the patient the following advantages:
Though the advantages of screening outweighs the disadvantages, you should still be aware of them:
If you have never had any breast problems and do not have a family history of breast cancer, then your first contact with a breast specialist should be at the age of 40. At BLK, we recommend this should be repeated once in every two years. If you have a family history of breast cancer, you must see a breast specialist as soon as possible. The specialist will then customise your screening tests and its frequency based on the extent of your risk
There are some general precautions you can take to reduce the risk of breast cancer:
Every Indian woman should be aware of the following facts and figures about breast cancer:
Remember, breast screening cannot prevent cancer. It only detects cancer.
Dr. Kapil Kumar answers queries about cancer and its treatment...Read more
Dele Olowu from Nigeria got treated at BLK Hospital by Dr. Kapil Kumar/ Dr. Ashish Goel/ Dr Pankaj Pandey from BLK Cancer CentreRead more View all Testimonials...
Technology facilitates correct diagnosis of various ailments for best and shortest road to recovery. Get a closer glimpse of our cutting-edge-technology in the gallery below.
We have world class specialists from around the globe and facilitates correct diagnosis of various ailments for best and shortest road to recovery. Get a closer glimpse of our cutting-edge-technology in the gallery below.


- Foraging & Reproductive Ecology
- Predator-Prey Dynamics
- Renewable Energy
- Spatial Ecology
- In The News
Short-tailed albatrosses (Phoebastria albatrus) once numbered in the millions before commercial hunting in the early 20th century nearly drove the species to extinction. During the past 60 years the population has steadily increased, but is still less than 1% of its estimated pre-exploitation population size. Of the two major current breeding colonies, one is within an island group, the Senkaku Islands, of disputed ownership between Japan and China. A de-facto refuge, biologists have not been allowed access to conduct population surveys since 2002, however, the Senkakus may contain 20% of the total breeding population of short-tailed albatross.
In 2015, we aim to test whether breeding populations of short-tailed albatross can be estimated using satellite data from DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-2 and WorldView-3 Satellite with ENVI image processing software. Using several albatross species at multiple colonies in Hawaii and Japan will allow us to test species identification accuracy and determine the correction factor(s) needed to ground truth satellite counts of unknown populations on the Senkakus. Based on preliminary imagery work, this method may be helpful scientists and resource managers looking to estimate remote and/or inaccessible areas, or areas at more frequent intervals, especially where human presence impacts ground-based counts or disturbs other species.
Bureau of Land Management
Pacific Rim Conservation
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)-Alaska Region
USFWS-Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge
Yamashina Institute for Ornithology


NIOS Video Featured in Textbook
Our video, “New Immigrants Share their Stories,” will be used for the upcoming Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Literature program for grades 6-12. This is a multi-modal program including digital and print content for instruction and application in classrooms. We are proud our materials will be used in this release and will be seen by many more young people. This video depicts an annual NIOS effort in New York City led by Julie Mann, a teacher at Newcomers High School. This year the project expanded into an even larger project that was filmed and shown and Ellis Island.
NIOS received a donation of “Eracism” erasers from Eracism Erasers in Valencia, CA. Eracism Erasers is a company committed to ending racism through raising racial awareness. They came up with the idea to create and sell erasers with the word “Eracism” as a unique and fun way to educate both adults and children about ending racism. The erasers are a simple idea yet send a powerful message about uniting against racism. The erasers can be used to cultivate a culture of acceptance and tolerance in multiple settings such as classrooms and offices. To win an “Eracism” eraser, enter our Put Yourself on the Map Contest raffle. You can also purchase an eraser here.
6 Reasons to Make Kindness Your Highest Priority
In this blog for Huffington Post, Margaret Paul, Ph.D, lists the reasons why kindness should be a personal priority. This is important advice for adults, especially in regards to bullying. Kindness is sometimes perceived as weakness, so many people believe they must be mean to be powerful and successful. Dr. Paul argues that in order to achieve respect, one must be personally empowered through loving oneself and others. This can especially be valuable information in the workplace, an environment where there is an imbalance of power, success is highly valued, and bullying is prevalent.
End Gun Violence
In response to the Newtown, CT tragedy, California teens have come together to demand a plan for improved gun control in the United States. The participants are leaders in The California Endowment’s Building Healthy Communities initiative, which focuses on improving neighborhood and school environments. In this 60-second video, 33 teens unanimously call for a real plan of action beyond political debates that lead to a gridlock. “Don’t lock down our schools,” one teen pleads. The message is clear: Keep our schools safe without militarizing them.


This week on EMU’s Debuts, we’re celebrating the release of STEP RIGHT UP: HOW DOC AND JIM KEY TAUGHT THE WORLD ABOUT KINDNESS, written by fellow EMU, Donna Janell Bowman. In today’s world, there seems to be a need for more kindness, towards fellow humans and animals. Donna’s amazing picture book biography shows how one man and one horse began an entire movement, the humane movement to treat animals with kindness. Please join us in celebrating Donna’s debut picture book!
What inspired you to write about Doc Key and Jim?
Oh, gosh, there was so much to be inspired by! Initially, I was drawn to the story because of the remarkable things the horse Beautiful Jim Key was purportedly able to do: spelling, writing, calculating math problems, filing letters, making change from a cash register, and more. That was all so fascinating! As I researched, I became even more enamored with William “Doc” Key, a formerly-enslaved man—the trainer behind Jim’s remarkable kindness-based “education.” Ultimately, I realized that the deeper significance to the story was the duo’s relationship and how, together, they made a profound difference in the humane movement. In a word, this was a story about kindness—a subject that we need more of these days.
Daniel Minter’s artwork is stunning and a perfect match for your story. What did you think when you first saw the artwork for the book?
It is stunning, isn’t it? When I first saw the art, I oohed, and aahed. I might have gotten a bit misty-eyed, too. It felt a bit like meeting Doc and Jim for the first time. What’s interesting is that I’d had a vision of the characters and setting (mostly photo realistic,) in my head for many years before art was done. But, when I saw Daniel’s lino-cut and acrylic illustrations, with a color palette and style that reflect the period, I couldn’t imagine anyone else in the world bringing Doc and Jim to life. Just as my heart is woven into the text, Daniel’s is etched and painted into the images.
You did a fabulous job of showing Doc Key’s core belief of kindness throughout the story. Can you talk a little bit about that? Was it evident in your research? How did you keep the focus tight as you wrote the story? (I ask because this can be challenging when writing nonfiction picture books)
This is a great, multi-layered question. One of the challenges with writing about a historical subject is finding common threads in documentation that help the writer determine the focus. Kindness was a common thread that appeared in promotional pamphlets, quotes by Doc, and newspaper accounts about Beautiful Jim Key performances—all emphasizing that Jim had only ever been treated with kindness. That was in stark contrast to the way most animals were treated in the 19th century. The theme was solidified when I learned of the sponsorship of humane societies, the creation of new humane societies, donated proceeds, the Jim Key Pledge of Kindness, Doc’s Service to Humanity Award, and Jim’s Living Example Award. I even found a photo of a Jim Key horse ambulance, funded by Jim’s performances. This is simplifying it, of course, but you can see how evidence supported the kindness theme.
The other part of your question about focus…well, that’s the biggest challenge of all when writing a picture book biography. Without a tight angle, writing about a notable man’s entire seventy-three years, in the limited space of a picture book, would require the broadest strokes of exposition. For Step Right Up, I chose to focus tightly on the relationship between Doc and Jim, primarily during their training and performance years.
The Author Sources included at the back of the book is extensive. How long did you research before you actually began writing the first draft?
Oh, if only you could see my full list of sources, which is about three times as long as the select list that landed in the back matter. I researched quite a bit before I wrote my first draft back in 2006, and I never stopped researching, right up til the week the book went to print. It’s been so long since my first draft, but I want to say that I put first crappy words on the page about six months into research. The meatiest research came after that first draft. I donned white gloves to peruse crumbling scrapbooks in state library archives, I squinted through microfilm (I even bought my own microfilm copy,) I read hundreds of 1876-1912 newspaper articles, and I travelled to Tennessee for onsite research. And that doesn’t count the books I read about the humane movement, slavery and reconstruction in Tennessee, and animal behavior. In a way, Doc and Jim prepared me for all other books to come.
You were inspired to launch a fundraising effort in conjunction with your book. Tell us about that.
Yes, I did. What I didn’t mention earlier is that I grew up on a ranch and spent all my free time training for horse shows. I have a deep and abiding love of horses and all animals. They have enriched my life in countless ways. So, with Step Right Up, I saw a way to give back through two efforts. With Lee and Low’s support, I am reviving the original Jim Key Pledge of Kindness, which will be featured later in the week. The second effort is to raise money for an equine humane society. When law enforcement seizes starved, abused, neglected, and stray horses (I’m lumping mules, ponies, donkeys here, too.), they can’t simply take them to the local animal shelter. Large animals are a unique challenge. It can cost from hundreds to thousands of dollars to rehabilitate a horse nutritionally, medically, and with training. My hope is to use Step Right Up as a way to shine a light on the problem of abuse while helping a worthy organization. I’ve set up a Crowdrise account, benefiting Bluebonnet Equine Humane Society. I think Doc would be pleased. Here’s the link: Step Right Up and Help the Rescued Horses of Bluebonnet Equine Humane Society.
I’m going to steal Jason’s final question in Megan Weber Lloyd’s interview, which he stole from Elaine Vickers interview with Pat Zietlow Miller. Finish this sentence: The perfect reader for this book would be…
The perfect reader for this book would be myself at age nine or ten. Seriously, I would have loved learning about Doc and Jim when I was a kid, which is why I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this is my debut picture book. But, your question is about other readers, so I think the perfect reader for this book is any kid or adult who loves animals, inspiring stories about perseverance and overcoming obstacles, and stories about the power of kindness.
Terry writes picture books, easy readers and board books and is whittling away at a middle-grade adventure novel. She lives in the California desert but avoids the summer heat by retreating to Mammoth Lakes every summer to hike, bike, write and dip her head in high mountain sky. She’s a Vermont College of Fine Arts graduate and teaches online children’s writing courses for UCLA Extension (go Bruins!).


According to pediatric anthropologist Meredith Small, author of Our Babies, Ourselves, the US is the only country in the world in which babies routinely sleep in their own beds in their own rooms. Small reports on one study that showed that in 67% of the world’s cultures children sleep in the company of others.
As breastfeeding has increased in recent years, so has room sharing and bed sharing. Data from the National Center for Health Statistics Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) reveals that 67.7% of new US moms sleep with their baby at least some of the time.
ROOM SHARING AND BED SHARING
Most new moms, especially if they breastfeed, learn early on that having the baby nearby means that nights are easier, and experts agree that room sharing is beneficial to infants.
The Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths advises parents that their babies should never sleep, day or night, in a room without an adult present. And, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends room sharing without bed sharing for all babies.
However, research by SIDS expert, Peter Fleming, shows that—in the absence of hazardous sleeping environments, alcohol, drugs or tobacco—bed sharing is not significantly risky. In fact, according to research at both the US Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory and the UK Parent-Infant Sleep Lab, breastfeeding mothers share a bed with their infants in a characteristic manner that provides several safety benefits.
There are a number of different ways to facilitate room sharing. Some families move a crib next to the parent’s bed, while others use a specific “co-sleeper” that attaches to one side of the parents’ bed and is open on that side.
SAFE INFANT SLEEP
Whichever method you use, here are some important safety considerations to keep in mind:
- Babies should be put to sleep on their backs until they are at least six months old. However they can, and should, be placed on their stomachs sometimes while playing.
- Don’t put baby to sleep or sleep with baby on a free-floating waterbed, extremely soft or pliable mattress, or couch.
- Remove all extra bedding, pillows, and stuffed animals from any bed the baby is sleeping in.
- Allow baby’s limbs to be free. Do not swaddle her tightly in blankets while she is sleeping. Do not put a hat on baby’s head during indoor sleep times. Babies should not be overheated while sleeping.
- Do not let baby sleep unsupervised in a carriage or stroller.
- Do not sleep with your baby if you have been drinking alcohol or are under the influence of any drugs or tranquilizing medications.
- Do not encourage other people, such as babysitters, grandparents, or siblings to sleep with a baby younger than nine months.
- Do not sleep with your baby if you smoke and do not allow anyone to smoke in any room where baby sleeps.
Following these basic guidelines will insure that you and your baby can sleep safely, just as millions of parents and babies do, all over the world.
Peggy O’Mara is the editor and publisher of peggyomara.com. She was the editor and publisher of Mothering magazine from 1980 to 2011 and the editor-in-chief of Mothering.com from 1995 to 2012.. The author of Having a Baby Naturally; Natural Family Living; The Way Back Home; and A Quiet Place, Peggy has conducted workshops at Omega Institute, Esalen, La Leche League, and Bioneers. She is the mother of four and grandmother of three.


This Year, Wisconsin Apple Growers Are Feeling the Squeeze
Like so many of us, apple trees are stressed this year too. In July, apple producers warned of a “Honeycrisp crisis” as trees bore little to no fruit during the growing season. Honeycrisp apples are notoriously difficult to grow (which is why they tend to cost more), but these early warnings foretold the widespread challenges across varietals that apple growers would face this season. Early this fall, many orchards limited or cancelled their U-pick options, and apple prices climbed as growers across the state reported crop levels anywhere from 50 percent of normal yield to zero apples. With one of Wisconsin’s quintessential autumn activities put on hold this year, consumers are left wondering: what happened to the apples?
Apple growers around the state are facing one of Wisconsin’s worst harvests in years. The most immediate culprit is the volatile temperatures this past spring, when several late hard frosts during bloom time killed the blossoms that were supposed to become this year’s apple crop. But because apples are perennial crops, they are vulnerable to year-round weather conditions. There’s a much longer line of culpability here, from last summer’s drought, which affected the development of fruiting buds, to the extreme cold snaps this past winter that damaged or destroyed root stalks. A single stressful climatic event can have long term impacts on a tree’s productivity—and in the past few years, we’ve had quite a few.
While Wisconsin is not a major national producer of apples, the state has a rich history of apple cultivation, with orchards in almost every county.1 Most Wisconsin orchards are small—about 75 percent have fewer than five acres—and often these orchards do not rely on apple crop as a major source of income. Still, many commercial orchards in the state are relatively small by agricultural standards and were hit just as hard by these weather events. Considering that orchards of all sizes and markets experienced a bad year, what does climate change mean for the future of Wisconsin’s apples? What does it mean for our local agricultural and food landscapes?
I do not ask this question hypothetically. As a Ph.D. student, I work directly with a local apple cidery and farm-to-table restaurant, the Mount Horeb–based Brix Cider (Brix), in a community-based research project to support local farmers and identify pathways toward resilience in our food system. Through this research we ask what resilience looks like in the context of South Central Wisconsin’s foodscape and what kinds of partnerships and processes drive that change. Brix is well-positioned to help drive these conversations. Matt and Marie Raboin, co-owners of Brix, established their cidery with the underlying mission to source their ingredients as locally as possible. Local sourcing not only bolsters vibrant rural economies, it celebrates the uniqueness of the apples found here in South Central Wisconsin. Because all the ingredients can be sourced directly from small-scale Wisconsin farms, cider offers an opportunity for strengthening connections between farmer, community, and land.
This fall, apples are a stark reminder that climate change is shifting the possibilities of production for local farmers. Although apple growers have always had to adapt to unpredictable weather, the increasing rate of extreme events is creating long-term effects on the trees’ productivity. For example, a drought one year will aggravate a tree and make it more susceptible to stress the following year. But it’s the early frost events that are the biggest single threat to a season’s harvest. As Brix owner Matt Raboin explained to me, “The big picture is that the average bloom time creeps earlier and earlier every year with climate change. But we still get a lot of volatility during the spring, like nighttime temperature crashes. Depending on what stage the apple blossom is at, those crashes can kill the blossoms.”
Apple Shortage of 2012
These extreme weather conditions and subsequent apple shortages are becoming more common for growers. This year’s apple harvest was historically low—second only to 2012, which was the worst year for apple growers on record since 1945. Michelle Miller, an economic anthropologist I chatted with recently, recalled similar weather turbulence in 2012. “We had a weird spring that got super warm and then really cold. The harvest that fall was overall really poor, but not everywhere. In the Driftless [Region], there were some pockets where the harvest was okay.”
Thankfully for apple growers, these temperature fluctuations are not homogeneously devastating across a region or even an orchard. Apple trees planted on northern slopes will likely have a later bloom time, so early spring cold snaps are less likely to inflict crop damage. Trees planted on higher ridgetops, which elevates them from the frost settling in valleys, can also help.
Michelle works with the Eco-Fruit Program, a partnership between University of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Apple Growers Association that encourages apple growers to adopt integrated pest management (IPM) practices and move away from overreliance on potentially harmful synthetic pesticides. Apples are highly susceptible to diseases, and insect pests love apples. Rising average temperatures during the growing season may decrease generation time for some insects, and warmer temperatures combined with increased precipitation can also lead to more fungal disease outbreaks. The Eco-Fruit Program works through farmer-to-farmer networks to share information and best practices related to pest management. As Michelle recalled to me, the impacts of the low 2012 harvest led to growing awareness of the interconnectivity of the entire agroecosystem in which apples grow. “That year, the discussion [within the farmer networks] became, We need to understand the physiology of these plants and how they respond to these weather changes in the context of the whole system,” including the impacts that weather has on pollinators and soil systems.
Solutions for Small Growers
Understanding the situated, interconnected systems in which apples grow is integral to addressing climate impacts. As I learned from Matt, even the location of the tree can impact apple growth because slight variations in microclimates can affect blossom development. Trees growing on northern slopes produced more apples this year because the buds on those slopes blossomed later. But since most apple orchards are just a few acres, and many orchards are generationally passed down, most growers don’t have the luxury of location choice.
As a more immediate step, some orchards turn to technological solutions. For example, trellising systems help control the growth of the apple trees by training them to grow along short trellises. Dwarf apple tree varieties are often used, and the result is a more intensive growing system that improves the costs of labor. The upfront cost of trellising is high, says Matt, but with reduced labor costs and improved harvest, the infrastructure investments typically pay off. Trellising can support other technical solutions as well. Irrigation systems are easier and more cost-effective to set up along trellises, which can dramatically reduce drought risk. Hail nets are also easier to set up along trellises, which can protect not only against hail damage but also sunburn and heat stress.
For small-scale apple orchards, though, these technologies may be out of reach. Technical solutions like trellising and irrigation require bigger upfront investments, which often only commercial-scale orchards can cover. Commercial orchards also design their production around surplus, anticipating that they’ll have more than enough apples in a given season. As a result, it was the commercial orchards that Brix relied on for apples this season. Brix typically purchases most of their supply from small-scale orchards within 50 miles of Mount Horeb, often apples from wild and noncommercial orchards that the Raboins pick themselves. This intentional sourcing underpins their mission of building closer connections to their community and to the land. This year, instead of handpicking most of their apples, “we had to hedge our bets by sourcing from more commercial orchards,” which ultimately changed that personal connection from the supply chain. One of those commercial orchards is Munchkey Apples, for which investments in trellising, irrigation, and frost fans paid off this year with good harvest returns. Another is Seaquist Orchards in Door County, where regional differences in weather have made a big difference.
Building Orchard-to-Orchard Relationships
To be clear, these orchards are still Wisconsin-based, family-owned businesses. Rather than suggesting disconnections for Brix, relying on these orchards represents readjusting what those connections mean. This year, Brix depended on different kinds of relationships in the supply chain.
Michelle also spoke of the importance of producer connections during the 2012 season. “Overall, the harvests were really poor, but it wasn’t poor everywhere. There were some pockets in the Driftless Area where the harvest was okay. And in previous years there were parts of the Great Lakes region that had been hit really hard, and Wisconsin growers sent apples to those regions.” So, in 2012, when Wisconsin orchards needed assistance, it was those long-term relationships between orchards in different areas and regions that facilitated orchard-to-orchard support. “It was a really interesting use of trust and relationships in the supply chain,” Michelle reflected. “You were kind to me in the past so I’ll help you out by giving you apples this year.”
In my research, I ask farmers, business owners, and community members to define resilience. Over and over again, I hear different versions of the sentiment that resilience is about relationships—between farmers; between farmers, businesses, and consumers; and between eaters and food. “In some ways, resilience is about seeing people as humans and having relationships with farmers that are not just transactional,” one respondent reflected.
In light of these conversations, I’m reminded of the “yeoman myth” that persists throughout U.S. agriculture. As Adam Calo recently wrote, this myth paints a portrait of the individualistic, independent (and white/male) farmer who, through grit and determination, achieves a moralistic self-sufficiency. Yet this idealized farmer, who is typically associated with romantic pastoralism and historically rooted in settler colonial agrarianism and state-sponsored legacies of land exclusion and dispossession, has never truly existed. Related is the widespread veneration of the small family farm. Rather than offering a realistic portrayal of agrarianism in the U.S., these ideals subvert alternative farming structures, such as collective ownership or cooperative farming, and the myriad benefits of farmer connectedness.
Which brings me back to my original question: what does climate change mean for small-scale apple growers in Wisconsin as they face intensified climate impacts and some of the lowest harvests in decades? Some researchers speculate that orchards will need to intensify production through technological advancements to contend with climate change. The reflections above, though, lead me to believe that climate change solutions are not single-orchard issues. Technological fixes may mitigate the impacts from extreme weather events on a seasonal basis, but these events are unpredictable and the best practices that growers live by are changing year by year. As Matt noted, “It’s hard to make a new rule of thumb when there’s so much uncertainty.” There’s only so much a grower can do to reduce climate risk within a single orchard, or even within a single region.
Instead, the future for orchards, and businesses like Brix who source from them, might lie in creating a new ideal of a connected farmer who is resilient through their relationships. It might look like a web of connections across orchards and even regions, with supply chains that move through trust and respect. Perhaps Brix reevaluates its list of connections that cider creates: to land, to community, and to the networks of apple growers who work together to face the uncertainties of the future. Maybe these connections extend to consumers too—and not just through the Honeycrisp, but through growing awareness of how the agricultural landscape is changing every year, and how our expectations of what apples in fall mean might change with it.
Featured image: Beth Raboin handpicks apples from a “hidden” orchard near Blanchardville, Wisconsin. Well-maintained but no longer in commercial production, orchards like these have long supported Brix’s local cider production. Photo by Matt Raboin.
Jules Reynolds is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geogrphy and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research focuses on community-engaged resilience and transformation of community food systems in South-Central Wisconsin. Her last contribution to Edge Effects was “There’s More than One World. There’s a Pluriverse” (August 2019). Twitter. Contact.
Michelle Miller, Regina Hirsch, Carol Barford, Tom Green, Brent McCown, and Michael Bell, “Climate change and risk in perennial farming systems: Resiliency planning for perennial fruity production in the Upper Midwest,” grant proposal submitted to USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, 2013. ↩


In Part I of this series, we examined breaking up the too-big-to-fail-or- jail banks, regulating them - especially their massive and risky derivatives trading - and more aggressively enforcing laws and regulations against security fraud.
In Part II, we examine how to remake the Federal Reserve into a transparent, democratic institution that serves the necessities of the people and the economy, not just the bankers; how to develop public banks in every state and many cities throughout the nation; and how people can opt out of Wall Street right now.
In other articles and on our web site, we examine the broader economy and how to remake it by putting in place economic democracy so that people have greater control over their economic lives and more influence over the direction of the economy.
It is worth restating that we do not see the proposals here as final, but more as an opportunity to continue the discussion so Americans can develop a finance system that serves and protects them.
Transform the Federal Reserve
A fundamental question for the new finance system is the role of the Federal Reserve and whether it should remain in private hands. The Federal Reserve is a privately owned US central bank that acts behind closed doors to create money and set interest rates, and it presently puts the interests of the big banks first. The Federal Reserve was originally created by Congress in 1913 and can be altered, nationalized or even dismantled by Congress.
The Fed is a private entity that is controlled by the banks. The 12 Regional Reserve Banks issue shares of stock to its member banks. The Fed is not operated for profit, and the stock may not be sold, traded or pledged as security for a loan. It does pay dividends that are, by law, 6 percent per year. But more importantly, the stock provides banks with votes to elect six of the nine members of the board of governors of the regional banks.
As Leo Panitch told The Real News Network, it is "not just that the banks are too powerful outside the Treasury and Fed. The Treasury and Fed are part of the Wall Street nexus, and they are organized in such a way, and the people who work in them are trained in such a way, as to be reproducing the current system."
There is widespread agreement among economists that there is a need for a central bank to regulate the money supply by setting interest rates and to be a lender of last resort in a financial crisis. However, Bill Black argues that the Fed can be made very small and mechanical in its setting of interest rates, rather than maintaining the current approach, which depends on what members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors decide.
Further, the Fed needs to be made utterly transparent. "There is no reason for anything the Fed does to be opaque" says Black. In 2010, an "audit the Fed" bill passed in Congress despite aggressive opposition by the Fed. It was not the broad, open audit originally proposed by former Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul and Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Florida), but it did provide a snapshot audit of a limited time of Fed activity.
As a result of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit of the Fed, Senate sponsor Bernie Sanders of Vermont said, "We now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world." Among the investigation's key findings was that the Fed unilaterally provided trillions of dollars in financial assistance to foreign banks and corporations from South Korea to Scotland. These decisions were all made without the public, media or elected officials' knowledge, and they would have remained secret without an audit.
In addition, the audit found conflicts of interest. For example, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase served on the New York Fed's board of directors at the same time that his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed. Sanders urged that "No one who works for a firm receiving direct financial assistance from the Fed should be allowed to sit on the Fed's board of directors or be employed by the Fed."
But the fundamental question is: who should control the money supply? The control of the money supply may be one of the most important functions of government, but currently it is controlled by the Federal Reserve. The Fed creates funds digitally and makes them available to private banks at a low interest rate, which the banks can then use as they like to invest, add to their personal reserves and/or make loans of up to ten times the amount of their holdings.
At present, the government can only issue bonds that are sold to the Fed, banks or investors with the funds raised by those bond issues used for federal spending. These bonds are loans that must be repaid with interest by the government. So in effect, the government places itself in a position of debt by borrowing money from the banks, and then taxpayer dollars are used to pay the debt with interest. If the government created its own (debt-free) money instead, taxpayers would get more value for their dollars and the system could be more democratic and transparent, and could function for the public good.
Henry Ford said, "It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." Why? Because, as Thomas Edison pointed out, "If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good, makes the bill good ... It is absurd to say our country can issue $30 million in bonds and not $30 million in currency. Both are promises to pay, but one promise fattens the usurers and the other helps the people."
As part of the economic track of the 2011 Democracy Convention, Greg Coleridge argued that the US Constitution gives the government the power to create money; Article I, Section 8 says: "The Congress shall have power ... to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin." The creation of money is a public function, perhaps more important than any other part of the commons. As Coleridge points out, public money means we create our own money debt-free rather than borrowing from banks and building up debt.
The American Monetary Institute has put forward a thorough model of remaking the finance system to take power from the banks and give it to the people through the government. The institute point to a bill introduced by former Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), HR 2990, which dismantles the Federal Reserve and puts the necessary functions in the Department of Treasury, where a monetary authority is created to prevent inflationary and deflationary impacts. It would prevent banks from creating money through fractional reserve lending. Instead, money would be created by the government, which spends it into circulation for necessary programs - for example, infrastructure, education, health care.
Economist Jack Rasmus also urges that we "democratize" the Fed and require it to function as a national, Bank of North Dakota-like "public banking institution that would provide cost-only loans to the consumer sector (mortgage, auto, student, installment, etcetera), finance public investment corps for alternative energy, lend to community infrastructure projects, and totally remove the private banks from its board of governors and open market committee decision-making process."
Moving the money creation function into the federal government would place it within the US constitutional system of checks and balances to work for the whole society, not only for the bankers and the privileged.Rather than the banker's corporation, the Federal Reserve, creating money, the Fed would be replaced by a US Central Bank operating within the Department of the Treasury (as one option) which would create money.
Further, Coleridge argues, that there is good reason for governments to control the money supply because there are times when more money is needed in the economy and times when the money supply needs be slowed. When money is created by government, it is an asset and not debt to banks. We should be funding necessary projects and paying our debts with debt-free money. Money should be made for the benefit of the entire economy, not for the benefit of bankers.
Under such a system, the creation of money would be used to serve the interests of society. The money would be created and spent into circulation by the federal government for infrastructure, including the human infrastructure of education and health care. For example, the American Society of Civil Engineers grades US infrastructure D+ and sees an urgent need for over $3.6 trillion in spending to bring existing infrastructure to safe levels by 2020. As the federal government spends money on infrastructure and other urgent needs and funds local and state governments, this money is paid out to contractors, who pay their suppliers and laborers, who pay for their living expenses, and, ultimately, that money gets deposited into banks, which are then in a position to make loans.
Some creative thinking is needed to develop a new central banking system. We should open our minds to a wide range of options. For example, in addition to the approach described here, the finance system could be a fourth branch of government, elected directly by the people; or with a combination of elected and appointed governors to represent different parts of society, for example: energy, housing, health care, workers, transportation. The current system is not working and needs rethinking so that it serves the needs of the people and the society, not only the desires of financiers.
Public Banking: A Public Bank in Every State
Ellen Brown, the president of the Public Banking Institute, argues that we need a public bank in every state and major city. The United States has one model for public banking: the bank of North Dakota. When North Dakota farmers were losing farms to Wall Street, they organized a populist movement, and in 1919, set up the bank of North Dakota. The publicly owned bank recycles state revenues into credit for the state. Thus, North Dakotans keep their money in their community.
The result has been an ongoing success. Even during the current economic collapse, North Dakota escaped the credit crisis and has maintained a budget surplus since 2008, low unemployment and no public debt.
Imagine how different California could be if it had public banks. Brown summarizes: "At the end of 2010, it had general obligation and revenue bond debt of $158 billion. Of this, $70 billion, or 44 percent, was owed for interest. If the state had incurred that debt to its own bank - which then returned the profits to the state - California could be $70 billion richer today. Instead of slashing services, selling off public assets, and laying off employees, it could be adding services and repairing its decaying infrastructure."
How does public banking work? All of the revenues of the state go into the state's public bank, which, like other banks, leverages those deposits into credit. The state bank partners with local banks to fund local projects. For example, when there is a flood or other disaster, the bank quickly helps provide funds to rebuild homes and infrastructure. It is a bank focused on serving the public interest and which returns the profits to the public.
According to Brown, there have been two recent studies that show public banks are less corrupt than private banks and that they are more efficient and more profitable. The North Dakota public bank has complete transparency and accountability - including routine audits by several agencies. It does not pay executives exorbitant salaries and bonuses. It does not reward people for churning out risky loans. And it does not engage in casino investing in risky derivatives. It has lower costs because no advertising is necessary; instead, the government guarantees the bank easy access to liquidity.
The most obvious reason for a public bank is to allow a state to use its resources to build the economy of the state by keeping resources in-state and not sending them to Wall Street, but there are other reasons. The events in Cyprus, where depositors were forced to bail out the banks through seizure of their savings, show there needs to be a banking system that protects people. Cyprus-like seizures of accounts can happen in the United States.
In fact, Ellen Brown reports that as part of the "living wills" banks are required to prepare under Dodd-Frank - which describe how they will survive an economic crisis - the banks include "bail-in" provisions. These plans require depositors (who are unsecured creditors, with fewer rights than derivative investors) to bail out the banks by turning their savings into bank stock, which could be worth only pennies on the dollar in a crash.
Marc Armstrong, executive director of the Public Banking Institute, asks of the states: "What is their plan to prevent city, county and state governments from becoming creditors for the too-big-to-fail banks, the next time these banks lose a multi-billion dollar bet? Because of their fiduciary responsibility to the public, we request that our public finance officials answer the question: what is the risk we have in doing business with too-big-to-fail banks that are apparently now able to seize deposits and convert them to capital?"
The living wills of the big banks make them too risky for city, county and state government money, as well as pension funds' money.
Another concern is that at least 1,350 school districts and government agencies across the nation have turned to a controversial form of borrowing called capital appreciation bonds to finance major projects. These bonds allow the government to avoid paying anything now and pass the debt on to future generations, but at a much greater cost. For example, $22 million borrowed now with no payments due for 21 years would cost the taxpayers $154 million, seven times the amount borrowed, when it is repaid in 2049.
This practice raises questions. Armstrong summarizes: "Why are state and local governments, school districts and public hospitals paying Wall Street banks billions of dollars of interest on municipal bond and capital appreciation bond debt, when we could be paying that same interest to ourselves by issuing credit with a public bank?"
Michael Hudson, a former Wall Street economist, sees the private banking system as cannibalizing the economy and supports public banks to fund the needs of the nation. When the banks failed, the FDIC should have taken them over, essentially made them into public banks, says Hudson:
If the government would have taken over Citibank it would not have done the kind of things that Citibank did. The government would not have used depositors' money and borrowed money to gamble. It wouldn't have gone down the casino capitalism route. It wouldn't have played the derivatives market. It wouldn't have made corporate takeover loans. None of these are productive from the vantage point of economic growth and raising productive powers and living standards. They would not be the proper behavior of a public bank.
Hudson points to the differences between public and private banking. Private "[b]anks are supposed to make money. And unfortunately, they can make money most easily ... by being parasitic, not by being productive." On the other hand, a public bank "would make loans for long-term purposes to serve the economy and help the economy grow."
With the risks of Wall Street banks increasing and dislike of their banking practices mounting, the public banking movement is growing. It is also being spurred by the US Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve's refusal to assist states with their budget problems. Brown reports that 20 states are considering public banks, as are a growing number of cities. Brown says, "We need to get more information out there and develop a groundswell of popular support. Populist movements start with a lot of study, learning about the monetary system." One place to do that is at the June 2-4 public banking conference in California.
Brown would like to see states remove the middleman, the private banks that profit from their deposits, by creating a public bank in every state so states could "bring their money back home and leverage it for their own purposes." There is no good reason for states and cities not to develop public banks and many good reasons to do so.
Change Is Already Happening as People Opt Out of Wall Street
There are a variety of vehicles being developed to help people move their money out of Wall Street banks and the current finance system.
The Move Your Money Project encouraged people to move their money from the big banks to community banks and credit unions. The Occupy movement held a Bank Transfer Day on November 5, 2011, as part of this campaign. The campaign was assisted by banks whose corrupt practices became notorious and who had started adding fees, like ATM card fees. Three months after Bank Transfer Day, more than 5.6 million customers had moved their money. The campaign continues at Switch Your Banks, which has a consistently excellent blog on banking. Credit unions, a form of cooperative finance, now have assets of over $1 trillion and are becoming major financial players.
People have also been creating time dollars and time banks. This concept, originated by Edgar S. Cahn, allows people to give time to get time; that is, if someone takes an hour to teach someone to read, they can get an hour for a massage from someone else participating in the time bank, and the masseuse can get an hour from a local participating plumber. This work is conducted outside of the tax system and allows people who have skills, but perhaps are unemployed or underemployed, to use their skills in a dignified way to purchase the skills of other people. TimeBanks.org provides a directory of Time Banks in the United States. If you cannot find one in your community, you can create a time bank.
Another opt-out is local currency. Across the world, 1,900 local communities, including over a hundred in the United States, are now issuing their own currency. Some communities, such as Ithaca, New York, issue paper currency; others in Canada, Australia, the UK or France issue complementary electronic money.
The new Internet currency, Bitcoin, has become popular very quickly. Bitcoin is already bigger than many sovereign currencies and this month broke the $1 billion value mark. Bitcoin is not tied to any particular financial institution and is independent from world governments. Some view Bitcoin as a safe haven for people trying to protect their money from corrupt Wall Street banking, but large investors have begun buying up Bitcoin to avoid taxes. The outcome is uncertain at this time.
More and more questioning has arisen regarding the current debt-based finance system. Occupy Wall Street offshoot Strike Debt isbuilding popular resistance to all forms of debt imposed on us by the banks. They produced the Debt Resistor's Operations Manual, which provides specific information and tactics for understanding and fighting against the debt system. It provides information on how to deal with personal debt, as well as how to work collectively to challenge the way debt undermines communities. Strike Debt also organized a Rolling Jubilee where participants buy debt at pennies on the dollar, as debt collectors do, but rather than collecting the debt, they forgive it. So far, they have raised over $578,000 to abolish over $11.5 million in debt.
People are also examining ways to invest locally rather than on Wall Street. Michael Shuman, in Local Dollars, Local Sense points out that Americans have $30 trillion invested in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, pension funds and life insurance funds, but not even 1 percent of these savings touch local small business. He shows how people can profit by putting money into building their local businesses and creating resilient local and regional economies. Shuman describes many ways to opt out of Wall Street and opt in to local investment, among them investment clubs and networks, local investment funds, community ownership, direct public offerings, local stock exchanges and crowd funding.
Tying It All Together
In his current book, What Then Must We Do?, political economist Gar Alperovitz argues that banking is one of two major areas where game-changing, systemic change might develop (the other is health care). As the Wall Street finance system fails us and places us at great financial risk, people are looking for alternatives and thinking about ways to create a finance system that will serve the people. A lot has been done in this area, and a cohesive set of principles is beginning to be developed. These include:
Investigation and enforcement of the finance system.
Breaking up the big banks and limiting their size so they are not a systemic risk.
Remaking the Fed into a small, transparent, mechanical controller of interest rates.
Transferring the power to create money to the government in a new central bank.
Creating public banks in cities and states throughout the country.
Creating systems outside of the finance system that allow for barter, time banks and other alternatives.
Encouraging community banks and credit unions.
Encouraging local investment in communities instead of Wall Street investment.
This article does not attempt to cover all aspects of finance. For example, the international systems dominated by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund require major transformation, but that topic would require an article of equal length. We also do not deal with the economy beyond finance, where we see worker-self-directed enterprises or worker cooperatives as the foundation of a new democratic economy that spreads wealth and power more equitably among the people and where a progressive tax system would fund the government.
Finance is the center of the US economy. The current system does not function for most people - or for small- and medium-sized businesses. It is a system that is addicted to casino-like investment, is corrupted by unprosecuted security fraud and funnels money to the wealthiest.
The 2008 collapse had devastating consequences, and since the system remains quite opaque, we do not know whether another collapse is near. It is time to develop an alternative system of finance designed to support the needs of the people and the country, not the needs of bankers. We hope this article adds to an ongoing conversation, and we look forward to your comments so the conversation can be advanced further.
You can listen to Big Finance Fraud and Public Banks with Bill Black and Ellen Brown on Clearing the FOG Radio.


cl-19-022-1.pdf (4 MB)
Strong health information systems (HIS) can collect, analyze, and use high-quality, timely data to strengthen health service delivery. A functioning HIS gets the right information into the right hands at the right time, enabling policymakers, managers, and individual service providers to make informed choices about everything from patient care to national budgets. Despite a growing emphasis on strengthening HIS and measuring how information systems contribute to improved health outcomes, understanding is limited on what interventions will work to improve HIS in various stages of development.
The HIS Stages of Continuous Improvement (SOCI) Toolkit was collaboratively designed to help countries or organizations holistically assess, plan, and prioritize interventions and investments to strengthen an HIS. The assessment measures current and desired HIS status across five core domains of an HIS, and 39 subcomponents, and maps a path toward improvementthus assisting countries in ensuring the right information is available to the right people at the right time. HIS are essential not only to monitor and improve national and subnational programs, but also to demonstrate country progress on a global level. This tool aligns with World Health Organization efforts to strengthen country HIS and capacities to monitor universal health coverage and health Sustainable Development Goals.
The HIS SOCI Toolkit was jointly developed by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Health Data Collaborative digital health and interoperability working group, and the USAID-funded MEASURE Evaluation project. The toolkit also responds to one of MEASURE EvaluationsLearning Agendaquestions.
The full collection is also available online athttps://www.measureevaluation.org/his-strengthening-resource-center/his-stages-of-continuous-improvement-toolkit


Have you ever been asked to give your pain rating on a scale of 0 – 10 (where 0 = no pain at all and 10 = most extreme pain you can imagine)? Have you ever tried to work out whether today’s pain is worse than yesterdays? What does a pain rating tell us?
I’ve struggled to work out how “bad” my pain is many times, is it the pain intensity that makes it troublesome? Or, in the case of a migraine, is it the quality of the pain that makes it bad (or the nausea?). Health professionals often ask people to summarise their pain experience into a form that (hopefully) we can all understand – but just what does a pain that’s around 4/10 on a VAS actually mean?
Why do we use rating scales?
We know that pain is subjective, just like taste and colour. While we might be able to agree that both of us are tasting something we call “banana”, we don’t know whether the banana taste I experience is the same as the banana taste you experience. We can see that both of us are eating the same fruit, but we don’t know how our body/brain processes that experience. Instead we assume, or infer, that we’re experiencing it in a similar way because of the similarities in context.
With pain, the situation is even more complex: we can’t determine whether the pain I feel is similar to the pain another person feels, and we don’t even have the benefit of similar “tissue damage” in the case of a migraine headache.
So, we have to infer something about the experience through some sort of common mechanism. Mostly that’s language. We hope that someone can understand that a higher number means greater pain. We hope the person can recognise what “no pain” feels like and where it might be represented on a scale. We ask the person to remember their current pain intensity, translate it into a number that in turn represents to us some kind of common understanding of what pain given that number might feel like.
Of course, there are problems with numbers on a scale. For a child who doesn’t understand the association between numbers on a scale and intensity, we use the “Faces” scale. For a person with cognitive problems (brain injury, stroke, dementia), we observe their behaviour (and hope we can translate well enough). For a person who doesn’t speak the same language as us, we might try a sliding scale with green at the bottom and red at the top, to represent increasing intensity – appealing, perhaps, to a common understanding that green = OK and red = not OK.
Worse than the difficulty translating from experience to a number is the common misunderstanding that pain severity alone represents the “what it is like” to experience pain. We know personally that it doesn’t – after all, who has had a toothache that represents “Oh no, I need a root canal and that’s going to cost a bomb!”, or “Ouch! That lemon juice in the paper cut on my finger is really annoying”, or “I feel so sick, this migraine is horrible”.
Hopefully most health professionals are taught that to use just one measure of pain is not enough. It’s important to also include other aspects of pain such as quality, how it affects function (interference), how confident we are to deal with life despite the pain (self efficacy).
So we use rating scales as a shorthand way to get to understand a tiny bit of what it is like to have pain. But the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) is used many times to estimate whether “this person’s pain is so bad they need medication”, or “this person’s pain means we can’t expect her to help move herself from the ambulance trolley to the wheelchair”. The VAS can be used in many ways it shouldn’t be.
Studying the relationship between VAS pain intensity and disability (SF36)
The study by Boonstra, Schiphorst Preuper, Balk & Stewart (in press) aimed to identify cut-off points on the VAS to establish “mild”, “moderate” and “severe” using three different statistical approaches. They measured pain using a Verbal Rating Scale (mild, moderate and severe), the VAS, and used several scales from the SF36 (a measure of general health quality) to establish interference from pain.
What they found was that while “mild” pain was fairly equally determined (less than or equal to 3.5), and correlated with both severity and function, when it came to “moderate” and “severe” pain, there was far less agreement. In fact, this group found that individuals could verbally rate their pain as “moderate” but at the same time report severe levels of interference. This means verbal descriptors under-represent the impact of pain on performance.
They also found that the cut-off point between “mild” and “moderate” pain in terms of interference with activity ranged between 2.5 – 4.5, and for moderate to severe pain between 4.5 – 7.4. The associations between pain intensity and disability or interference were low to moderate and as a result these authors argue that it is “questionable” to translate VAS scores into verbal descriptors, because the different instruments measure different things.
What does this tell us?
It should be easy by now to tell that although we use numbers as a shorthand for “how bad is your pain?” in reality, they don’t directly translate the “what it is like” to have pain. Neither does the VAS correlate well with measures of disability or interference from pain. While people with mild pain might be also experiencing only a little disability, when the numbers go up the relationship between intensity and function disappear.
I think we might be trying to quantify an experience as a quick way to make clinical decisions. Really, when we ask “how bad is your pain”, depending on the context, we may be asking “do you need pain relief?”, “do you need help to move?”, “did my treatment help?” or any myriad other questions. The trouble is in research, we can’t do statistics nearly as easily on a “yes” or “really bad” or “it didn’t change much” answer. But how many of us work routinely in research settings?
I wonder whether it’s worth asking ourselves: do I need to ask for a pain rating, or should I ask a more useful question? And take the time to listen to the answer.
Anne M. Boonstra, Henrica R. Schiphorst Preuper, Gerlof A. Balk, & Roy E.Stewart (2014). Cut-off points for mild, moderate and severe pain on the VAS for pain for patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain Pain DOI: http://dx..org/10.1016/j.pain.2014.09.014


Most newbies want to go full throttle when they first begin investing. Surprisingly, most of these people are not very successful in the long run. They should have done more research before they began to make investments. The art of investing involves a great amount of finesse. You must be knowledgeable about investing. For beginners, sometimes this is not the easiest thing to accomplish.
You aren't expected to know everything about investing in the very beginning. But on the other hand, you should have enough discipline to not make rushed decisions. After all, you are handling money and nothing is guaranteed. Remember, there is a huge possibility that you might lose a lot of money. Wouldn't it make sense to know what you are doing before you make investment mistakes?
Determine Your Goals
Before you decide to go full throttle, maybe you should do some research before you begin investing. Devise a plan about how and what you will invest. In addition, create a few sound investment goals. Are you thinking about retiring and want to make sure that you will have enough money to retire on? Will these future investments be your main plan for funding your child's college education? Or, do you just want to have extra money in the bank? Before you invest large sums of money, know exactly what you wish to achieve. This will help you to make smarter choices when it comes to your investments.
Don't Expect Overnight Success
When they first begin investing, a lot of people think that investing money will make them immediate millionaires. This might happen to some, but the chances of it happening to the average Joe Blow is not a sure thing. Start investing with the goal of making money gradually. If you have this mindset, chances are your investment goals will be more manageable. Don't expect to get rich overnight. This is not a realistic goal.
Talk to a Professional
Before you begin investing, you should also talk to a financial planner. You know what your financial goals are, but maybe you need professional help to reach them. Instead of investing blindly, talk to a pro. He can show you how to reach your goals realistically. However, don't rely totally on someone else to help you reach your financial goals.
Research and learn everything thing that you can before you begin investing your money. Take responsibility for your own future. This should be the most important part of your investment plan. Before you begin investing, think things through, make wise investment decisions and most importantly, slow down and create realistic investment goals. You'll find that this will make you a much more successful investor.


Ocean pools have for several centuries served to attract visitors to particular stretches of recreational surf coasts.
In the nineteenth century, some surfside communities in Britain, Ireland, the Cape Colony and the Australian colonies viewed ocean pools as desirable, if not always affordable, developments offering safe bathing, beauty spots, visitor attractions and sometimes serving as sporting venues. In the Australian colony of New South Wales, tourist literature and promotions often made reference to ocean pools.
On the coast of early twentieth-century New South Wales, ocean pools became desirable and affordable developments offering safe bathing, beauty spots, a visitor attractions and valued sporting venues. Twentieth century tourist literature and promotions often made reference to ocean pools. Ocean pools were, however, no longer automatically considered affordable, beautiful or visitor attractions even on the New South Wales coast by the 1960s. Twenty-first century tourist literature and promotions continues nevertheless, to feature ocean pools. Heritage listing has further enhanced the visitor appeal of some ocean pools.
In present-day South Africa, where most of the population still lacks swimming skills and remains concerned about the risk of shark attacks, ocean pools add to the appeal of surf beaches.


This self inflicted disease riddling planet Earth lies in the household of nearly all Australians .Globally 160,000 plastic bags are used a second and put one after another they would go around the world 7 covering an area twice the size of France!. (Jaw drop)
So given that less than 1% are recycled and have a usage life of about 12 minutes that equals 1000 years of environmental impact what are we doing to curb the problem in Australia?
In Australia, plastic bag bans exist in South Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the ACT, while NSW, Queensland and Victoria remain in a deadlock over the issue, committed to the cause, but not yet ready to act.
We should be embarrassed. It’s a disgrace, that third-world countries moved to ban plastic bags before Australia it is a sad reflection on our society. However, last week there was a flicker of hope when television show The Project ganged up on state ministers to #BanTheBag which resulted in hundreds of thousands of people signing the Change.org petition.
But is it this very attitude of online social proof that stands in the way of real action? How many of those people who signed the petition vowed to give up plastic bags or marched down to city hall to make a point? Have we become disillusioned that clicking likes and shares equates to real action.
Stop using plastic straws, even in restaurants. If a straw is a must, purchase a reusable stainless steel or glass straw
Use a reusable produce bag. A single plastic bag can take 1,000 years to degrade. Purchase or make your own reusable produce bag and be sure to wash them often!
Stop buying plastic bottles!
Purchase food, like cereal, pasta, and rice from bulk bins and fill a reusable bag or container. You save money and unnecessary packaging.
Use a reusable bottle or mug for your beverages, even when ordering from a to-go shop
The EPA estimates that 7.6 billion pounds of disposable diapers are discarded in the US each year. Use cloth diapers to reduce your baby’s carbon footprint and save money.


Deposition of air pollutants around the North Sea and the North-East Atlantic in 2016
This report presents the results of monitoring undertaken by OSPAR Contracting Parties for the Comprehensive Atmospheric Monitoring Programme (CAMP) during 2016. Under the CAMP, OSPAR Contracting Parties are committed to monitoring, on a mandatory basis, the concentrations of a range of metals, organic compounds and nutrients in precipitation and air. The CAMP also encourages OSPAR Contracting Parties to monitor, on a voluntary basis, additional compounds (such as certain persistent organic pollutants). The report gives detailed information on observed atmospheric inputs of selected contaminants to the OSPAR maritime area and its regions during 2016.
Region II, the Greater North Sea, remains the most intensely observed sub-region. Sub-regional coasts that are most under-represented are the Irish Sea (Region III), the Bay of Biscay (Region IV), and the far north-east (Region I).
All Contracting Parties reported data for 2016. For most Parties some elements are missing to comply completely with the monitoring obligation defined by CAMP.
The regional distribution of the various pollutants show in general elevated levels closest to main source areas, though there is some variability with a few sites, which may be more influenced by local or nearby sources.
Time trends show decrease in nitrogen, heavy metals and g-HCH in accordance to the general emission reductions done in Europe the last decades.
Table 2.1 and Figure 2.1: Monitoring sites reporting, reduced and oxidised nitrogen compounds, heavy metals (HM), mercury and persistent organic pollutants (POPs) to CAMP in 2016.


- What was the most serious mistake of reconstruction?
- What was the greatest success of reconstruction?
- How did the 15th Amendment impact life in the United States?
- What is the16th Amendment?
- Was the 15th Amendment successful?
- Why do we need the 15th Amendment?
- Why did the South won reconstruction?
- Who opposed the 15th Amendment?
- What were the successes and failures of reconstruction?
- Why was reconstruction a failure Yahoo?
- How did the 14th and 15th Amendment change society?
- Why was reconstruction a failure essay?
- Was reconstruction a success or failure Dbq?
- What was the real result of the 15th Amendment?
- What problems did reconstruction resolve?
- Why did the 14th amendment fail?
- What changes were created after the 15th Amendment was passed?
- What did the 15th amendment fail accomplish?
What was the most serious mistake of reconstruction?
The chief mistake of Reconstruction was conferring the right to vote on African-Americans, who, it was said, were incapable of exercising it intelligently..
What was the greatest success of reconstruction?
Reconstruction was a success in that it restored the United States as a unified nation: by 1877, all of the former Confederate states had drafted new constitutions, acknowledged the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and pledged their loyalty to the U.S. government.
How did the 15th Amendment impact life in the United States?
The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that the “right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Although ratified on …
What is the16th Amendment?
16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Federal Income Tax (1913) … Passed by Congress on July 2, 1909, and ratified February 3, 1913, the 16th amendment established Congress’s right to impose a Federal income tax.
Was the 15th Amendment successful?
After the Civil War, during the period known as Reconstruction (1865–77), the amendment was successful in encouraging African Americans to vote. Many African Americans were even elected to public office during the 1880s in the states that formerly had constituted the Confederate States of America.
Why do we need the 15th Amendment?
The Fifteenth Amendment granted voting rights to African American men, providing the most important key to participation in the American democratic process to millions of formerly enslaved, and politically excluded, people.
Why did the South won reconstruction?
The Reconstruction came to an end when President Haya signed the Compromise of 1877 and pulled troops out of South. … It was said that the South won the Reconstruction because after several years of trying to rebuild the system of South, the North failed to change it.
Who opposed the 15th Amendment?
Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who opposed the amendment, and the American Woman Suffrage Association of Lucy Stone and Henry Browne Blackwell, who supported it. The two groups remained divided until the 1890s.
What were the successes and failures of reconstruction?
The Successes of Reconstruction President Lincoln’s original goal in the Civil War was to hold the nation together. And in this, the war and Reconstruction were a success. The Confederacy was destroyed for good, and every state that had seceded was readmitted to the Union.
Why was reconstruction a failure Yahoo?
Reconstruction was a failure because it didn’t rebuild the Southern economy or create lasting improvements in the social, political, and economic opportunities available to former slaves. Reconstruction was forcibly imposed on the Southern states by the government, a fact which many white Southerners deeply resented.
How did the 14th and 15th Amendment change society?
The 14th Amendment (1868) guaranteed African Americans citizenship rights and promised that the federal government would enforce “equal protection of the laws.” The 15th Amendment (1870) stated that no one could be denied the right to vote based on “race, color or previous condition of servitude.” These amendments …
Why was reconstruction a failure essay?
There was lack of vision in the north concern the state of south after the civil war, there were intense disputes that existed among the Congress and Presidency with respect to the lines of authority and the fact the southern whites were not willing to offer blacks a significant power position are major indicators of …
Was reconstruction a success or failure Dbq?
Reconstruction was a success. power of the 14th and 15th Amendments. Amendments, which helped African Americans to attain full civil rights in the 20th century. Despite the loss of ground that followed Reconstruction, African Americans succeeded in carving out a measure of independence within Southern society.
What was the real result of the 15th Amendment?
Passed by Congress February 26, 1869, and ratified February 3, 1870, the 15th amendment granted African American men the right to vote. … For more than 50 years, the overwhelming majority of African American citizens were reduced to second-class citizenship under the “Jim Crow” segregation system.
What problems did reconstruction resolve?
Reconstruction solved problems like job oppertunities for newly freed slaves, provided an education and a role in the government. The Fifteenth Amendment changed the U.S. Constitution by… Prohibiting racial qualifications for voting.
Why did the 14th amendment fail?
Not only did the 14th amendment fail to extend the Bill of Rights to the states; it also failed to protect the rights of black citizens. One legacy of Reconstruction was the determined struggle of black and white citizens to make the promise of the 14th amendment a reality.
What changes were created after the 15th Amendment was passed?
Following its ratification by the requisite three-fourths of the states, the 15th Amendment, granting African American men the right to vote, is formally adopted into the U.S. Constitution.
What did the 15th amendment fail accomplish?
Less than a year later, when Congress proposed the 15th Amendment, its text banned discrimination in voting, but only based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Despite some valiant efforts by activists, “sex” was left out, reaffirming the fact that women lacked a constitutional right to vote.