Unusually for a theatre company, National Theatre Wales began its life in May 2009 online, presenting its first staged work the following year. It has a core company of 17, its staff expanding with each production as creative, technician and stage management teams are recruited. Turnover similarly fluctuates dependent on the staged work, but on average is £2.8m, of which the most significant source of funding is a core grant from Arts Council Wales of roughly £1.6m, with a further 6% of public funding that is project-specific. Partnership and co-producer contributions bring in roughly 22% of total income, trust and foundations another 7-10%. Kully Thiarai has been artistic director since May 2016, taking over from founding director John E McGrath.
Mission: a focus on people and place
Like any theatre company, NTW seeks “to make extraordinary theatre”. What makes it unusual is the way in which it actively works “across Wales and beyond”. Kully Thiarai unpacks this as: “a commitment to engaging with the broadest range of people, and trying to embed our relationships with community, so that we get to understand them and they understand us and there’s legacy after a piece of work has been and gone”.
All work is made collaboratively, “with artists, audiences and communities, sometimes through long processes and sometimes through interventions that are very quick but are very particular around a theme”. And the work always begins with a conversation. That dialogue was initiated online: “That the company set up a community online before it made its first show was a statement of intent in terms of what it is striving to do. You can make great theatre without dialogue, but it doesn’t have the same resonance if you don’t understand the context and the community that you’re trying to connect with or speaking for or collaborating with.”
It was this dialogue that attracted Thiarai to join the company: it reflected the values she brought to her previous role as artistic director of Cast in Doncaster, which also reflected her training as a social worker. “My time at Cast was really about how that building could be the cultural living room for the town: that takes effort and commitment and a dialogue. You end up thinking about, not what you as an artistic director might want to make, but what is necessary at this moment for this dynamic and this bunch of people? Because why would anyone want to connect with the theatre when you feel that your voice or your story isn’t present?”
A snapshot of activities
Three projects can give a flavour of how NTW operates:
1: The Big Democracy Project
This three-year programme started in 2014 and was “driven by a sense that we wanted to support active citizenship and make people feel that democracy was worth fighting for and being involved in. Communities raised questions about urgent issues that they wanted addressing, and we would find mechanisms by which to use the arts to explore those things.”
The project had a number of outcomes, including a day-long event at the Senedd (the National Assembly for Wales) looking at several of the issues that had emerged, “from disability to education and the austerity agenda”. Participants voted to select the most pressing issue – choosing austerity – and that generated a piece of work in Rhyl, pinpointed because: “We wanted to look at what austerity might mean in places like Rhyl which were once thriving towns. What happens when cuts, or government policy, mean that they feel ignored? There’s also the sense of austerity of the imagination when people are very impoverished or feel abandoned: what does that mean?”
NTW’s extensive online community has a number of focused groups, through which members of the public are invited into a closer relationship with the company. TEAM is “NTW’s community leadership model of engagement, where we rethink what a theatre’s civic responsibility is within the world we now find ourselves, and the role that NTW needs to play within that.” TEAM members – who include artists and community activists – apply to join TEAM panels, who meet every quarter to “look at strategic things they want to try and achieve, and we work together to look at how we can make that happen”. A member of the TEAM panel is also nominated to become a NTW board member. Additionally TEAM members support dialogue and workshops in new communities, and help sustain long-term relationships: for instance, TEAM members in Prestatyn contributed to the work in Rhyl, as facilitators and community associates, roles for which they were paid.
3: NHS: 70
This new project for 2018, “a love letter to the NHS”, will involve dialogue with the entire country, gathering stories of people’s interaction with the health service, but also looking at: “the notion of big ideas coming in times of difficult, and asking: where are the big ideas now? How do we have the big conversations?”
With all of this work, Thiarai is mindful of NTW’s responsibility to support the local economy, “ensuring that, in a country like Wales, where wages and levels of poverty are high, there is public benefit from any work that is being made”. Aside from TEAM members and the online community, NTW doesn’t ask people to volunteer, but instead pays local people to take part in, for instance, ushering.
Primarily, being nomadic presents the company with “a great opportunity: it means that we can be bespoke in our approach depending on where we go. We’re much more porous as an organisation, because we need to have relationships and partnerships in order to succeed.”
It does, however, create challenges in two ways:
1: Always beginning
“Every time we do something, it feels like we’re doing it for absolutely the first time,” says Thiarai. Even choosing where to focus attention is a challenge, and can be warped by simplistic questions of audience reach: “There is an inherent tension in our practice, which is on the one hand to reach as many people as possible, and on the other hand to reach the parts of Wales that other theatres don’t reach, which are quite often hard to get to and may have smaller numbers of people. If we made shows in Cardiff all the time we’d have access to much bigger numbers of people, whereas if we make it in the middle of a mountain, who will come and how do you make it possible for people to come who might have challenges getting there? We need to ask all the time where the work is, how we make it, who are we trying to make it for, why are we trying to make it in this place at this time.”
Working across Wales, it is difficult for NTW to maintain relationships – which is why the online community, and particularly TEAM, are so vital. One of the core values of the company is to be a catalyst, enabling others to develop and grow. NTW’s core staff is too small to stay on in an area once a work is finished, but Thiarai is encouraged by the way in which TEAM members supported a women’s centre in Rhyl in discussions about setting up its own drama group, following the show NTW made there. “If you’ve done your job well, you’ve empowered people to feel confident enough to make things happen for themselves and their community.”
To date, NTW has sought out new communities to visit, and this will continue. But it is also seeking to become embedded more deeply into communities. As part of this approach, the company is returning to communities, beginning with a revisit to Port Talbot, where it staged its early and spectacularly successful Passion in 2011. The aim, says Thiarai, is “ongoing dialogue. Having made some extraordinary theatre experiences, we have an opportunity now to interrogate a bit more rigorously our relationship to people and place, as theatre makers but also as a nation.” She worries about capacity to deliver: the NTW core team is small, and “we get a tiny amount of money in comparison to our national colleagues”. But she also feels supported by the fact that: “We have a Cabinet Secretary [Ken Skates] who is trying to embed culture in every aspect of government, in terms of infrastructure, in terms of educations, in terms of the social fabric. It enables a conversation to begin across all of the government agendas, around economy, around well-being and health, around social infrastructure and questions of isolation, and about having a national voice and an international focus.”


Cable Public Library
- Documentary Feature - CHASING ICE
- Thursday October 17 2013 - Thursday October 17 2013 06:30PM - 08:30PM
- Forest Lodge Library - Cable
The Forest Lodge Library continues its My Favorite Films series on Thursday, October 17th at 6:30 p.m. with a screening of the 2012 documentary feature Chasing Ice. This feature chronicles the work of environmental photographer James Balog as he measures the disappearing Arctic ice.
- Forest Lodge Library
- 13450 Cty Hwy M
The Forest Lodge Library is located in a rustic, 1925-built log cabin building. Located at 13450 County Highway M, it's in the heart of downtown Cable. For more information, give a call at 798-3189.
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2010 is finally here! This year is particularly exciting to us because it’s our 100th year on UGA’s campus. And if you’ve been braving the cold to walk around on campus, you may have noticed these decorations displayed on campus light posts to commemorate our centennial:
But light post adornments aren’t all we have planned to celebrate our 100th year! Our kickoff celebration is January 28 and will include a lecture from the president of the Council of Graduate Schools, Debra Stewart. All graduate and undergraduate students and faculty (and all of your friends!) are invited to attend. We’ll be updating you with more details as the event draws closer.
To commemorate our centennial, we’ve launched this blog to show you, our students, faculty & alumni, how much we love and appreciate your hard work within the Graduate School. We’ll be updating it daily with relevant pictures, videos, news clips and features to highlight Graduate School activities. Additionally, we invite you to comment and tell us why you love the UGA Graduate School. We look forward to hearing from you!


This article is reproduced here with permission from the author,
Sales of Nineteen Eighty-Four have roared in the wake of the coinage “alternative facts” by President Donald Trump’s adviser, Kellyanne Conway. When we suspect that we are living in a dystopia characterized by clumsy propaganda, it’s the book we buy from Amazon.com. (It was the top seller at that site on last week.) There are certain elements of Orwell’s novel that can help us understand how Trump’s administration is already working on our minds.
Like the authorities in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Trump convinces his followers to forget their prior enmities and alliances. Russia has always been our friend, not our enemy. Also, Trump’s obsession with the Mexican-U.S. border echoes Big Brother’s policy of perpetual war. Lying outright to the citizenry is, yes, “Orwellian.”
But there is no Amazon.com in Nineteen Eighty-Four, because it is not a novel about globalized capital. Not even slightly! Nineteen Eighty-Four does not pastiche a world ravaged by capitalism and ruled by celebrities—the kind of world that could lead to the election of someone like Trump. Instead, it depicts suffering inflicted by state control masquerading as socialism.
The language and aesthetic of Winston’s home superstate, Oceania, are lifted directly from Russian communism. Nineteen Eighty-Four came out in 1949. Orwell commented on the world as it was. He wrote out his fears of nuclear war, and the danger of dictatorship in states where much has been destroyed. He pointed to the problems inherent in superstates and the fragile alliances that govern world politics. Mostly, he wrote in cipher about Russia.
The connection between Nineteen Eighty-Four and World War II makes it the wrong dystopia for our times. When Conway cites “alternative facts,” she implicitly admits that there is more than one way to see things—she simply doesn’t care. Trump’s administration doesn’t even try to cover up its lies. Instead, it assumes that ideological divides among the American citizenry will ensure that the lies don’t matter. That is not how the Oceania of Nineteen Eighty-Four works.
Compare our situation, instead, to The Trial. Kafka wrote it in 1914-15, a generation before Orwell. World War I was only just revving up, and much of the nineteenth century’s world order remained (the Austro-Hungarian Empire existed until 1918). In The Trial, Josef K. wakes up on his 30th birthday and is arrested. He cannot really conceive of what is happening: “K. was living in a free country, after all, everywhere was at peace, all laws were decent and were upheld, who dared accost him in his own home?”
This is the horror that Trump subjects us to. His administration retains the shell of the old American brand—the “land of the free”—but secretly danger creeps underneath all the things that seem silly, even funny, about it. Josef K. thinks the arrest must be a joke, at first. New conditions of danger dawn on Josef, who doesn’t otherwise take anything too seriously. Laughter, Kafka says, is worse than nothing. It’s the substance of complicity, what makes us afraid to look ridiculous even as we let oppression slink in through the cracks. Josef K. never does find out what crime he was charged with. But his last words are more frightening than any of my memories of reading Orwell. “Like a dog,” he says, as the knife twists twice.


See what's new and noteworthy this month!
October Features & New Arrivals
Fall into some new favorites!
Embrace the essence of exquisite taste with T. Edward's October Features & New Arrivals. Explore the adventurous world of Vichingo, a wine born from friendship and a journey across the globe, offering unique and delectable blends from Tuscany’s Maremma to California’s Redwood Valley. Traverse the rich legacy of Domaine Bellegard, a testament to a family’s enduring passion for exceptional wine-making, reflecting the finesse and nobility of Jurançon wines.
Venture into the realm of spirits with the innovative Philbert Brothers, who redefine cognac production with their harmonious approach to nature and raw materials. Experience the longstanding tradition of excellence with GELSTON’S Irish whiskeys, representing a rich history and a spectrum of innovative cask finishes. Relish the sustainable and local essence captured in every bottle of Isolation Proof gin, crafted in the heart of New York’s Western Catskills.
Lastly, immerse yourself in the world of Churchill's, a family-operated port and Douro wine producer upholding a commitment to independence, sustainability, and unpretentious, approachable wines. This October, let T. Edward's new arrivals and featured producers guide you on a voyage of unparalleled taste and discovery, celebrating the diverse world of wines and spirits.


At 11:38 AM on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger lifted off from its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. Seventy-four seconds later, it was ten miles high and rising. Then it blew up. The launch was televised, so news of the accident spread quickly. Eight minutes after the explosion, the first story hit the Dow Jones News Wire.
The stock market did not pause to mourn. Within minutes, investors started dumping the stocks of the four major contractors who had participated in the Challenger launch: Rockwell International, which built the shuttle and its main engines; Lockheed, which managed ground support; Martin Marietta, which manufactured the ship's external fuel tank; and Morton Thiokol, which built the solid-fuel booster rocket. Twenty-one minutes after the explosion, Lockheed's stock was down 5 percent, Martin Marietta's was down 3 percent, and Rockwell was down 6 percent.
Morton Thiokol's stock was hit hardest of all. As the finance professors Michael T. Maloney and J. Harold Mulherin report in their fascinating study of the market's reaction to the Challenger disaster, so many investors were trying to sell Thiokol stock and so few people were interested in buying it that a trading halt was called almost immediately. When the stock started trading again, almost an hour after the explosion, it was down 6 percent. By the end of the day, its decline had almost doubled, so that at market close, Thiokol's stock was down nearly 12 percent. By contrast, the stocks of the three other firms started to creep back up, and by the end of the day their value had fallen only around 3 percent.
What this means is that the stock market had, almost immediately, labeled Morton Thiokol as the company that was responsible for the Challenger disaster. The stock market is, at least in theory, a machine for calculating the present value of all the "free cash flow" a company will earn in the future. (Free cash flow is the money that's left over after a company has paid all its bills and its taxes, has accounted for depreciation, and has invested in the business. It's the money you'd get to take home and put in the bank if you were the sole owner of the company.) The steep decline in Thiokol's stock price—especially compared with the slight declines in the stock prices of its competitors—was an unmistakable sign that investors believed that Thiokol was responsible, and that the consequences for its bottom line would be severe.
As Maloney and Mulherin point out, though, on the day of the disaster there were no public comments singling out Thiokol as the guilty party. While the New York Times article on the disaster that appeared the next morning did mention two rumors that had been making the rounds, neither of the rumors implicated Thiokol, and the Times declared, "There are no clues to the cause of the accident."
Regardless, the market was right. Six months after the explosion, the Presidential Commission on the Challenger revealed that the O-ring seals on the booster rockets made by Thiokol—seals that were supposed to prevent hot exhaust gases from escaping—became less resilient in cold weather, creating gaps that allowed the gases to leak out. (The physicist Richard Feynman famously demonstrated this at a congressional hearing by dropping an O-ring in a glass of ice water. When he pulled it out, the drop in temperature had made it brittle.) In the case of the Challenger, the hot gases had escaped and burned into the main fuel tank, causing the cataclysmic explosion. Thiokol was held liable for the accident. The other companies were exonerated.
In other words, within a half hour of the shuttle blowing up, the stock market knew what company was responsible. To be sure, this was a single event, and it's possible that the market's singling out of Thiokol was just luck. Or perhaps the company's business seemed especially susceptible to a downturn in the space program. Possibly the trading halt had sent a signal to investors to be wary. These all are important cautions, but there is still something eerie about what the market did. That's especially true because in this case the stock market was working as a pure weighing machine, undistorted by the factors—media speculation, momentum trading, and Wall Street hype—that make it a peculiarly erratic mechanism for aggregating the collective wisdom of investors. That day, it was just buyers and sellers trying to figure out what happened and getting it right.
How did they get it right? That's the question that Maloney and Mulherin found so vexing. First, they looked at the records of insider trades to see if Thiokol executives, who might have known that their company was responsible, had dumped stock on January 28. They hadn't. Nor had executives at Thiokol's competitors, who might have heard about the O-rings and sold Thiokol's stock short. There was no evidence that anyone had dumped Thiokol stock while buying the stocks of the other three contractors (which would have been the logical trade for someone with inside information). Savvy insiders alone did not cause that first-day drop in Thiokol's price. It was all those investors—most of them relatively uninformed—who simply refused to buy the stock.
But why did they not want Thiokol's stock? Maloney and Mulherin were finally unable to come up with a convincing answer to that question. In the end, they assumed that insider information was responsible for the fall in Thiokol's price, but they could not explain how. Tellingly, they quoted the Cornell economist Maureen O'Hara, who has said, "While markets appear to work in practice, we are not sure how they work in theory."
Maybe. But it depends on what you mean by "theory." If you strip the story down to its basics, after all, what happened that January day was this: a large group of individuals (the actual and potential shareholders of Thiokol's stock, and the stocks of its competitors) was asked a question—"How much less are these four companies worth now that the Challenger has exploded?"—that had an objectively correct answer. Those are conditions under which a crowd's average estimate—which is, dollar weighted, what a stock price is—is likely to be accurate. Perhaps someone did, in fact, have inside knowledge of what had happened to the O-rings. But even if no one did, it's plausible that once you aggregated all the bits of information about the explosion that all the traders in the marker had in their heads that day, it added up to something close to the truth. As was true of those who helped John Craven find the Scorpion, even if none of the traders was sure that Thiokol was responsible, collectively they were certain it was.
The market was smart that day because it satisfied the four conditions that characterize wise crowds: diversity of opinion (each person should have some private information, even if it's just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts), independence (people's opinions are not determined by the opinions of those around them), decentralization (people are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge), and aggregation (some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision). If a group satisfies those conditions, its judgement is likely to be accurate. Why? At heart, the answer rests on a mathematical truism. If you ask a large enough group of diverse, independent people to make a prediction or estimate a probability, and then average those estimates, the errors each of them makes in coming up with an answer will cancel themselves out. Each person's guess, you might say, has two components: information and error. Subtract the error, and you're left with the information.
Now, even with the errors canceled out, it's possible that a group 's judgement will be bad. For the group to be smart, there has to be at least some information in the "information" part of the "information minus error" equation. (If you'd asked a large group of children to buy and sell stocks in the wake of the Challenger disaster, it's unlikely they would have picked out Thiokol as the culprit.) What is striking, though—and what makes a phrase like "the wisdom of crowds" meaningful—is just how much information a group's collective verdict so often contains. In cases like Francis Galton's experiment or the Challenger explosion, the crowd is holding a nearly complete picture of the world in its collective brain.
Perhaps this isn't surprising. After all, we are the products of evolution, and presumably we have been equipped to make sense of the world around us. But who knew that, given the chance, we can collectively make so much sense of the world. After all, think about what happens if you ask a hundred people to run a 100-meter race, and then average their times. The average time will not be better than the time of the fastest runners. It will be worse. It will be a mediocre time. But ask a hundred people to answer a question or solve a problem, and the average answer will often be at least as good as the answer of the smartest member. With most things, the average is mediocrity. With decision making, it's often excellence. You could say it's as if we've been programmed to be collectively smart.


Each year, the Newport Mansions put on a festive celebration to usher in the holiday season. Christmas trees and lavish decorations festoon the mansions, once homes to prominent families of Newport, Rhode Island. You’ll find Nutcracker performances, dinner parties, and music events that lead right up to New Year’s Eve.
Through the holiday season, four mansions are open daily to visitors: The Breakers, Rosecliff, The Elms, and Marble House. Each was once a private residence for the well-to-do, including famous families like the Vanderbilts, who retreated to the mansions’ grandeur along the cool shores of Rhode Island for summer months. Read more


I’m so excited to announce I will be shooting the wedding of Ace Young & Diana DeGarmo of American Idol fame (among many things) this summer here in Los Angeles! I was introduced to Ace & Diana a few months ago through my very dear friend Renee Strauss, the amazing host of Brides of Beverly Hills on TLC and all around incredible woman. Renee couldn’t say enough wonderful things about these two and thought we’d be a great match for their big day, she definitely wasn’t exaggerating. Ace & Diana’s enthusiasm, generous nature, and youthful personalities were an instant click with me and I was so excited when they asked me to shoot their wedding. This past week the three of us headed up to Laurel Canyon to shoot their engagement photos and I’m pleased to present some of our favorites from their session here. If you dig these, definitely feel free to join me on my Facebook Page, Instagram, & Twitter to see more :) Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoy Ace & Diana’s engagement session!


In this wide-ranging and remarkable book, Deirdre Mask looks at the fate of streets named after Martin Luther King Jr., the wayfinding means of ancient Romans, and how Nazis haunt the streets of modern Germany. The flipside of having an address is not having one, and we also see what that means for millions of people today, including those who live in the slums of Kolkata and on the streets of London. Filled with fascinating people and histories,The Address Book illuminates the complex and sometimes hidden stories behind street names and their power to name, to hide, to decide who counts, who doesn’t—and why.
“An impressive examination of the origins of street names around the world….It’s a damning look at the intersection of place, power and identity, tied together through Mask’s absorbing and thoughtful voice.”
―Time, “100 Must-Read Books of 2020”
Deirdre Mask graduated from Harvard College summa cum laude, and attended University of Oxford before returning to Harvard for law school, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. She completed a master’s in writing at the National University of Ireland.
The author ofThe Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power, Deirdre's writing has appeared inThe New York Times, The Atlantic,andThe Guardian. Originally from North Carolina, she has taught at Harvard and the London School of Economics. She lives with her husband and daughters in London.
"An entertaining quest to trace the origins and implications of the names of the roads on which we reside."
—Sarah Vowell,The New York Times Book Review


Apple Touch ID Fingerprint Sensor
Apple's new flagship phone, the iPhone 5s, has a lot going for it. Experts and consumers are raving about the new 64-bit processor, the advanced camera, and the high-speed GPU. Despite all that, most of the buzz has been around Apple's Touch ID, its fingerprint sensor that enables users to unlock their phones using their fingerprint.
Most important of all is the fact that it actively encourages users to lock their phones. People rarely use passcodes and PINs to lock their phones these days. Touch ID seems like an easy, efficient way of unlocking phones without compromising on security.
This brings up an interesting point: Android had tried biometrics before. In fact, Motorola was the first manufacturer to try out fingerprint scanning in its 2011 Atrix model. The phone read fingers as they were swiped across its back. Although it was a good idea because the gesture felt natural, the execution was anything but. The system was embarrassingly inaccurate and prone to errors. Android has also tried unlocking phones through facial recognition. In fact, this became a standard feature in the latest versions of the operating system. However, it could be easily fooled using photographs, among other methods.
So far Apple appears to have gotten it right. It is using the ubiquitous home button, which users are extremely familiar with, and using it as a way of letting users unlock their phones. There's the security factor, too: fingerprints are very difficult to spoof, so even if someone cracks the phone's encryption or security chip, gaining access to a locked phone would still be extremely difficult.
On top of that, Apple hopes to ensure further security by having users create a passcode as a backup. If the phone has not been rebooted or unlocked in two days, users will need to use the passcode to unlock the phone. This is being done to deter hackers who may be stalling for time to find a way to get around the fingerprint sensor.
What's Not to Like about Touch ID
There is one major gripe that privacy hawks have with Apple's Touch ID: fingerprint data. Now that users know that NSA monitors their online activities — including encrypted conversations — they are wary about handing over their fingerprint data. To that end, Apple has responded by saying that the data is stored locally and never transmitted to Apple's or any other company's servers. The data, Apple says, will remain encrypted within the iPhone 5s processor, which will turn it into a digital signature to unlock itself or make purchases in the App Store.
Having said that, Apple is also not giving third-party developers any access to the fingerprint sensor. Since developers are being walled off from this feature, there will not be any apps designed around this new hardware. Although this makes sense from a security perspective, it is disappointing to note that developers and consumers are both going to miss out on some interesting — perhaps revolutionary! — ideas from being executed.
This brings up the final point: enterprises are going to hate Touch ID. Since it is being walled off from third-party developers, enterprises will not be able to incorporate the fingerprint sensor feature into their systems. This means that employees who wish to use the iPhone 5s at work will not be able to use single sign-on features of iOS7 or meet the standards-based cloud and enterprise IAM systems. Therefore, enterprises get no tangible benefits from this new hardware that is simply not friendly to openness and standards.
As it stands right now, Apple's Touch ID is an interesting proposition. It is yet to be seen just how effective it is at security; also, it remains to be seen just how receptive people are going to be towards it. Previous efforts at biometrics had not been executed well enough, but Apple has a history of pulling things off quite brilliantly. The future, at least right now, looks to be a more secure one.


- Treat a woman with equality.
- Give them rights equivalent to men.
- Stop making discriminatory statements against them.
- They are no less than men.
- There is a woman behind every successful man.
- Women can reach the moon and the stars.
- There is nothing a woman can’t do, that a man can.
How many times have you heard these ‘feminist’ statements? How many times have you seen media rushing and gushing with international stars putting butter over bread with quotes and talks on feminism? Who knows how much of these are even being followed or believed in? Or are they randomly moving caricatures wearing masks of feminism?
My idea of this article is not to induce feminist thoughts in you. My idea is not even to lecture you about what a woman is or what she should be in today’s world. We all have enough people out there throwing light in abundance on these ‘societal issues’. I am just a 25 year old trying to convey a few thoughts about what women these days silently go through. Stepping aside from the clichés of women empowerment and ‘beti-bachao-beti-padhao’; female objectification and women’s safety, I am here to tell you the silent killers that exist in our so call ‘society’ with which a girl, a woman fights in pin drop silence.
I am a very strong headed woman and I do not apologize for being one. Being strong headed means being stubborn and self-centered and filled with fuming anger. Or does it?
Let me try and explain what being strong headed really means. A strong headed woman is someone who is a full circle. She knows the difference between wants and needs. She has the ability to pick up the little broken pieces of her heart and carve it into a masterpiece of a kind. She is someone who never regrets her failed decisions, as a matter of fact treats them as a bunch of life lessons to tag along with.
The former ‘definition’ of a headstrong woman is what the society has tricked our minds into believing. And we poor little innocent people have fallen into the trap and accepted these societal definitions of such terms.
Coming to the point, what I am trying to pen down here is the fact that, it’s time for us all to understand that ‘Society’ is the silent killer in all our lives (or your own lives for that matter men/women).
There are a few questions I would like for you all to ask and find answers to if you can.
Why is it that so many boundaries have been created for women at every turn of their lives? “Oh you got your period? Let’s inform everyone we know that our little one has grown up.” “Oh you ARE on your period? Don’t keep the napkin leftovers in the bathroom. The men of the family might run into the embarrassment.” “Oh she goes to parties wearing those clothes? (Are bhai, samhaal ke rakho apni ladki ko, lag raha hai haath se fisal rahi hai).”
Why is it that they are given the freedom to live their lives and meet new people, but when it comes to making important decisions they are tagged as ‘not-being-fit’ to take big calls? “Dear family, I want to introduce you to someone I love = what the hell? You LOVE someone? How could you even? How dare you even? You are not old enough to make such important decisions of your life.”
Why is it that even when we give our women the freedom to speak, their words aren’t heard? “I wish to work after marriage. Not because it’s added income, but because I want to be independent.”
Why is it that some people only listen for the heck of listening and answering back, but not for understanding? “I don’t want to have children of my own which is why I am considering adoption = what the hell? Is there a problem with either of you? If not, then why don’t you want to give birth? Why adopt? It’s so disgusting.”
I mean, how dare anyone have the authority to judge other’s choices? Who gave the right for anyone to judge someone else’s priorities and way of living? And most important of all- why are women the center of societal pressure and boundaries. Let them work if they want to; let them bare children if they want to, let them be if they don’t want to; let them travel if they want to; let them climb that goddamn mountain if they want to. Let her be her own calming and uplifting ritual. Just having breasts and a monthly period cycle doesn’t mean they are any less capable. The society has injected dirt in our heads with respect to a moving body with breasts and no penis. That is what I term as ‘objectifying’ women. They have stereotyped such moving individuals to being within four boundaries and obeying the principles laid down by the society. And god forbid, if you turn out to be one of those women who stands up for what is right, who believes in no-nonsense, who is a living example of ‘go-get-it-if-you-want-it’ and who has the courage to stand by her mistakes and accept her fate as it comes, the society will look at you with frowning, untoward and disrespecting eyes.
A woman’s body is more than just the dimensions of her physical assets. She, in herself is much more than the shade of her lipstick or her above-knee skirts, the brand of the watch she wears or the color of her skin. If only the society knew how to read between the lines of what a woman speaks, if only they knew how to understand without being judgmental, if only they knew how she could turn the universe upside down, they would never doubt her intentions or chain her to the boundaries that this so-called ‘society’ has created for no logical reason.
It ache’s me to speak these words, but the harsh truth is, we among ourselves make the society and I guarantee each of you reading this right now, know of at least one individual in our very own personal circle who behaves like a hypocrite. I know of so many myself, and I write this article, not because it’s international woman’s day today, but because I walk by these invisible silent killers every day and because I want people to talk about this. I know it might not sound like some big-shot social issue, but ask any and every girl each of you know, how far would they agree to what has been written above? I am sure every girl would have gone through something similar or might go through these issues in the near future. It abominates me to abide by such ill arrangements. Why can’t they just let her be? She knows her strengths and her weaknesses and she will use both to weave an independent and pleasant life for herself. Don’t shackle her to impossible dreams of youth and worldly expectations.
My point is:
“Why break her wings when she can take you along and fly?
Why take her down when she can show you a world from bird’s eye?
The women whom I love and admire
for their strength and grace
did not get that way because shit worked out.
They got that way because
shit went wrong and they handled it.
they handled it in a thousand different ways
on a thousand different days,
But they handled it.
Those women are my superheroes.
Be the father who trusts his daughter at every turn of life.
Be the brother who has his sisters back no matter what the world has to say.
Be the husband who encourages his wife to go for the leap; if nothing else, he will always be the one to hold her ground.
Be the best friend who brings his friend back to her truest self.
And be the society who understands the wonderful soul of a woman and the lengths to which she can shield the world with her armour.
Hope and love in abundance,
YES! This made me so happy- best thing I’ve read all week!
Yayyy. I am Gladd??


Since joining Facebook in 2007, Rishi Dastidar has catalogued each of his status updates in a succession of notebooks. containing over one thousand entries, spread across twenty-odd volumes. This compendium has been reinterpreted as a series of individual postcards, each a facsimile of an individual entry., punctuated by the ever- changing prompts of Facebook.
Visitors are actively encouraged to remove a postcard, leaving with a unique portrait of Rishi freed from the confines of social networking. Presenting them in such a public manner both reinforces the radical transparency inherent in the network, and also removes any suggestion of selectiveness or privacy, concepts that are claimed to be part of the idea of ‘friendship’ on Facebook.
MBWhen we first talked about this I remember you mentioning that you wanted to get something out of facebook, rather than just being a passive producer of content.
RDYes. It’s very easy to put stuff into it. But it’s much, much harder to get something ‘physical’ out of it.
MBWe’ve been talking about the triangular relationship between designer, producer and consumer, which facebook is moving away from to a certain extent — users produce content that is farmed by anonymous algorithms, then sold back to them in the form of targeted advertising.
RD And I think what we’re suggesting here helps to highlight the fact that, in facebook’s case, how that triangle has broken.
RDI mean, at one level, we’re showing how hard it is to physically manifest something back out of the platform.
MBYes. Facebook is very protective about the data they collect — if you read their developer policy you’re only allowed to cache users’ information in order to process it for your application, and although your all your status updates are stored indefinitely on their servers you have no way of searching or accessing them, short of downloading the data as a pseudo-wall, ten miles long.
RD Which no one will do, right?
MB Right. So putting your archive of updates to use, the notebooks of content, then giving them away, each as an individual object, rather than them ending up as anonymised, aggregated data, there’s something nice about that.
RDOK, that’s something interesting — a way of jacking the system, almost — reclaiming what’s yours, trying to put some grit in there. Born from the network, but then drawing attention to something outside of it.
MBSomething like that, yes. It reminded me of one of our earlier conversations, when you talked about forgetting something that had been said/done.
RDYes; how it shows that actually neither Facebook nor the creator has a perfect memory. Which actually means that our governing assumption about this new world should be about its ephemerality, and how, if any, using an old technology like paper, changes that assumption.


The 60th Annual Survey of Profit-Sharing and 401(k) Plans was recently released by the Plan Sponsor Council of America. This particular survey outlines increases noted with regard to key retirement plan trends. The following are worth a closer look.
1. Large plans favor automatic enrollment.
As one of the most celebrated plan design features, 401(k) automatic enrollment, is nearly as old as the 401(k) itself. While it wasn’t always popular and had the moniker “negative election,” the concept has been extraordinarily effective at not only getting, but keeping, workers participating in their workplace retirement plans. Adoption of the feature surged after the passage of the Pension Protection Act.
Only about a third of PSCA survey respondents offered automatic enrollment 10 years ago (35.6 percent). Today, more than half (60 percent) of respondents said they offer it, which is an increase to 70 percent among plans with more than 5,000 participants. That being said, only a third of plans with fewer than 50 workers offer automatic enrollment.
Listen To unsuitable on Rea Radio: Episode 92: How To Avoid Common Mistakes & Design The Ideal Retirement Plan
2. The auto escalation is escalating.
Of those plans that offer automatic enrollment, an astounding three-quarters auto-escalate the deferral rate over time. A decade ago, less than half (49.7 percent) of the plans utilized this feature. However, only one-third of the plans offer auto escalation for all participants; and only one in eight offer this for under-contributing participants. Another third of the plans offer auto escalation only if the participant so elects.
3. The default remains the same.
While default contribution rates vary, the most common rate remains at 3 percent (with 36.4 percent of companies opting to use this particular rate). This rate originally was chosen because of its size – it’s is small enough that participants won’t be willing to go in and opt out. Not to be overlooked is the second most common default of 6 percent, which is gaining popularity and is reportedly used by 22.2 percent of all respondents.
4. Rise of the Roth.
Almost two-thirds of plan sponsors now provide a Roth 401(k) option compared to 2007 when only 30 percent did. The pre-tax treatment has been the norm for 401(k) plans since their inception in the early 1980s. The Roth 401(k) wasn’t introduced until the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, which didn’t become effective until 2006. The option was originally slated to sunset in 2010. However, participation that was in the single digits a few years ago is now in the 15-20 percent range.
5. There’s still a “what goes in is what matters” mentality.
It’s said that “what’s measured is what matters.” However, despite the growing interest of financial wellness, and an emphasis on outcomes, the way people benchmark success in this survey is by participation.
Nearly 89.6 percent of plans cite participation rate as a benchmark to determine plan success — and even more (93.2 percent) of the largest plans rely on that gauge. Deferral rates were a distant second (72.6 percent), and average account balances ranked third (55 percent). But, what about outcomes? Well, according to the survey, only a quarter of plans overall used “outcomes” as a benchmark, though about a third of the largest plans (33.8 percent) did.
Surveys such as this with a broad range of plan types, providers and perspective provide a great overview of where your company has been and where it needs to be with regard to your retirement plan. Email Rea & Associates to speak with a member of our retirement plan administration services team to find out what trends might benefit your company and employees. Or you can call me directly at 614.923.6573.
By Andrea McLane, QKA (Dublin office)


Militant Secularisation Threat to Religion
14 February 2012 London, United Kingdom [BBC News] Britain is under threat from a rising tide of "militant secularisation", Baroness Warsi and a conservative cabinet minister wrote in an article for the Daily Telegraph. Religion is being "sidelined, marginalised and downgraded in the public sphere... Europe needed to become 'more confident and more comfortable in its Christianity". She will also highlight the issue in a speech at the Vatican on Wednesday. "I will be arguing that to create a more just society, people need to feel stronger in their religious identities and more confident in their creeds," she wrote in the Telegraph. "In practice this means individuals not diluting their faiths and nations not denying their religious heritages."
Baroness Warsi, who is Britain's first female Muslim cabinet minister, went on to write: "You cannot and should not extract these Christian foundations from the evolution of our nations any more than you can or should erase the spires from our landscapes."
To read the full article please click here. [tedNEWS]
tedNEWS is an information bulletin issued by the communication department of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Trans-European Division.
You are free to re-print any portion of the bulletin without need for special permission. However, we kindly request that you identify tedNEWS whenever you publish these materials.


Welcome to the March edition of Ocean News. Bringing you all the updates on all things ocean policy.
2022 is set to be a big year for Ocean Conservation. We have already seen 175 countries come together to agree a Global Plastics Resolution. Domestically the government have consulted on extending single use bans, the Environment Audit Committee have launched their Water Quality Inquiry Report and the Environment Act target setting consultation is well underway. Over the next few months we will see even more action with the consultation on the Governments Storm Overflow Action Plan set to be launched soon.
A Global Plastics Treaty
At the start of the month an historic resolution was agreed by 175 countries to end plastic pollution. This is the most important international environment pact since the Paris climate agreement in 2015.
The resolution sets out the broad terms for a global treaty on plastic pollution and was agreed at the United Nations Environment Assembly.
Critically, they agreed the treaty should address the full lifecycle of plastics – this means the production and design of plastics are covered, not just waste management. This offers the potential to cap the production of plastic. The agreement also covers plastic pollution in all environments, not just marine plastics. The treaty will also be legally binding rather than voluntary, which is vital to ensure action is taken and that polluters are held to account.
The UK government has just finished consulting on plans to ban a new list of the most commonly littered single use plastic items, including cutlery and food containers.
These proposals have been welcomed by the Environment Sector, however environmental organisations have called for these plans to sit within broader policies to reduce resource consumption and promote reuse within a circular economy.
Bathing River Designations
Surfers Against Sewage have launched a petition calling on governments to designate 200 inland bathing rivers by 2030. Official designation has already helped to clean up coastal water quality, and can do the same for our rivers. Through monitoring rivers for harmful bacteria and virus polluters will be made to take action.
We have pulled together a briefing note with more information about the role inland waters can play in improving river and coastal water quality.
Environment Audit Committee Report
The EAC launched the findings of their inquiry into Water Quality in Rivers in January. The committee, which includes many APPG members, found a ‘chemical cocktail’ of sewage, slurry and plastic polluting English rivers, putting public health and nature at risk. It includes many strong recommendations such as:
- An urgent review of water companies’ self-monitoring.
- Ministers and the Environment Agency should set challenging improvement targets and timetables for this progressive reduction
- Each Water Company should designate at least one river as a bathing water by 2025.
Government Storm Overflow Plan
As per the Environment Act, officials are currently working away to draft the governments Storm Overflow Plan which must be laid before parliament by September. We expect parliamentarians and the wider public to be consulted on the draft plan in April. Keep an eye on @oceanappg for the latest updates.
To be effective we will be looking for the plan to include bold and stretching targets to reduce discharges.
Target Setting Consultation
New long-term environmental targets have been announced by the government. The proposed targets are a key part of the governments Environment Act and will help drive action by this and future governments to protect and enhance the environment.
The consultation includes targets to improve Marine Protected Areas, reduce residual waste and nutrient pollution of rivers. Whilst the targets have been welcomed broadly by the environment sector, there are concerns that proposed targets do not go far enough to improve overall ocean health, reduce the overconsumption of materials, such as plastics, nor do they aim to reduce untreated sewage discharges.
Three Actions to Take
- 1. Support designation of your local river – Reach out to your local swimming, canoeing or river action group to support applications for river bathing status.
- 2. Read the EAC Rivers report recommendations – This is the most thorough report on the issue of sewage pollution and includes well researched and thought out recommendations.
- 3. Follow us on twitter – For the latest news and commentary all things ocean conservation follow us @OceanAPPG


March Meet Up (Honeyland Movie Showing)
It portrays the life of Hatidže Muratova, a wild beekeeper in the remote mountainous village of Bekirlija, North Macedonia and follows her lifestyle and the changes therein after the arrival of a nomad family in the neighbouring house. Originally intended as a government-supported documentary short about the region surrounding river Bregalnica in the central region of the country, the documentary’s area of focus changed course upon the encounter between the filming team and Muratova. Honeyland received its world premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival on 28 January.
Filming of Honeyland lasted for three years, with the directors collecting a total of four hundred hours of footage. Several environmental topics are explored in the documentary such as climate change, biodiversity loss and exploitation of natural resources. Two different ideologies are contrasted with the documentary’s main protagonists, namely humanity’s balance with the ecosystem portrayed through Muratova and consumerism and resource depletion portrayed through her neighbours. The main focus of the directors when filming were the visuals and during the editing process, the audio track was not used. As such, Honeyland contains elements of several documentary styles, including fly on the wall, direct cinema and cinéma vérité. The documentary also portrays the protagonist’s relationship with her bed-ridden mother and her neighbors.
Honeyland received widespread and universal critical acclaim from film critics who praised the directors’ attention to visual details and the universal message of nature conservation. The documentary also received numerous prizes at award shows in Europe and the United States. It was the only film to win three different awards at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. It was nominated for the Best International Feature Film as an entry from North Macedonia, and for the Best Documentary Feature at the 92nd Academy Awards, making it the first documentary in history to receive a nomination in both categories. It marks the country’s second nomination at the Oscars since Before the Rain (1994). As of February 2020, the documentary’s worldwide gross is US$847,595.


By Devon VanHouten-Maldonado
The exhibition makes two main proposals: First, that young people deserve to be treated as kids, not criminals. In doing so we as a society must afford them the innocence and grace that all children deserve, especially when they make mistakes. Unfortunately, young Black and Brown people in poor communities are never afforded an innocent childhood. In Can you see me? we want to rescue a small part of this innocence by examining the topic of youth incarceration through the lens of freedom and innocence.
Second, we propose that the artwork by the incarcerated youth in SkyART’s Just US program and projects by other system-impacted youth in similar programs is just as meaningful, just as valuable and just as important as artworks by celebrated contemporary artists. Ebony G. Patterson, Cheryl Pope, Jim Duignan and Scheherazade Tillet share gallery space with youth who have been told by society that their lives are not important. All of the artists together create hope in the context of the criminalization and victimization of youth through a take on incarceration that isn’t illustrative but rather aspirational.
In the poem that inspired the exhibition's title, a Just-Us participant writes, “Can you save me from this damage that I can’t erase? I ain’t never felt this way before, until I put you in my arms. Can you see me?” The poem and the exhibition asks us to see young people affected by incarceration as children who have been failed by a system that all too often traumatizes Black and Brown youth who are already affected by an average of six Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), which negatively affect brian development and can cause increased addiction, criminality and mental health challenges. Across the three exhibitions, artworks explore the subtle and evident ways the juvenile justice system impacts Black and Brown youth whose lived experiences are often scaffolded by carcerality — from their early school experiences to their interactions with government.
Themes of healing, imagining, flying, ascending, freedom, play and innocence create nuanced and pluralistic portrayals of juvenile offenders. With a restorative justice lens, the exhibition aims to highlight youths’ humanity and voice, while exploring the impact of incarceration on our communities and questioning who has access to contemporary art spaces. The exhibition also aims to connect three communities on Chicago’s South and North sides across distinct spaces that are in dialogue with each other.
Through programs like SkyART’s Just-Us, Circles & Ciphers and A Long Walk Home, young artists affected by incarceration and violence create a space where they can collaborate, explore their identities and free their minds, if only for a short time. In the same way, Can you see me? aims to bring people together around art to have restorative and healing conversations, in order to imagine a future where all children are innocent, free and valued. We hope this exhibition will provide a small example of the world we can create together, where young people are elevated as experts in their own experiences alongside contemporary artists and practitioners; where people who may disagree can find common ground and where the justice system rights historic wrongs instead of perpetuating the trauma, oppression and systemic racism reflected in prisons and jails throughout the United States.
Can you see me? is curated by Devon VanHouten-Maldonado, Kasia Houlihan, Director of Weinberg/Newton Gallery and Rikki Byrd, Curatorial Advisor and Ph.D. Candidate in Northwestern University’s Department of African American Studies.


Tool of North America are doing some very cool things with interactive video, like their new Touching Stories iPad app.
By touching, shaking and turning your iPad, you can navigate, unlock and reveal unexpected variations in each of these four “Touching Stories.” Shot by five different directors—and contained in one single app—these interactive, live-action, short stories evolve storytelling in ways that have never been done before on the iPad.
The iPad’s big touch screen is a much more intuitive medium for a hypervideo interactive story than a mouse or trackpad.
When the iPhone 4 hit the shops last week, I was at the Cannes advertising festival, doing some mobile filmmaking to promote the Nokia N86. So it seemed like it’d be bad form to blog about the new iPhone’s HD video camera and built in iMovie editor – especially as I’ve been moaning for 2 years about Nokia’s decision to kill their excellent in-phone editor.
My mobile videoblog Twittervlog.tv started out in 2007 with videos that were shot, cut and posted straight from my N93. It frustrated me that over the years, Nokia had resigned their considerable lead in this area, and let Apple overtake them – despite Apple’s repeated reluctance to introduce video & in-phone editing.
It may seem like a geek sport at first glance, but mobile filmmaking excites me because it’s all about the ease & immediacy of having a complete filmmaking tool in your pocket – for personal & holiday videos, reporting live events and creative storytelling. Capturing, editing and posting without having to mess about with transferring to a computer, filing, converting, exporting, uploading, etc. I was excited about the quality & ease of the iPhone, and now even happier that Nokia are still pushing the boundaries too.
I just read on Nokia’s N Series Blog about an organisation called the World Film Collective – which has given old Nokia N85 video phones to 48 South Africans, and trained them with mobile filmmaking & citizen journalism skills, so that they can give their perspectives on what the World Cup means to their local communities.
I’ve done some of this work with marginalized communities here in the UK – and next week I’ll be doing it with rich kids, reporting from Cannes, where young creative teams will be making adverts with N86s – but it’s always awesome to read about phones (particularly superseded models) are being used for creative and empowering video journalism in Africa.
Makes me think we should start collecting all our old N95s and N85s, which once cost us $500, and using them to do some good… If you have an old phone you’d like to creatively recycle, let me know.
I’ve transcribed the voiceover from this video, below. Apart from the hype, it gives a pretty good introduction to what internet/TV convergence will start to look like.
I’ve been banging on about this for so long that you’ll have to forgive my teenage excitement about it. I was expecting this kind of device to have arrived in a big way by 2007/8. Most of it is not much more advanced than your TiVo, Sky+ or Microsoft system – but instead of their horrible clunky interfaces, this looks well thought out, with full search and web access, and a properly integrated browser. If only Apple had made their AppleTV more like this three years ago. I’m still not sure why they didn’t.
It’s long been my opinion that the way people really want to experience entertainment is on their couch, rather than on their laptops and at their desk. But I’ve found, when enthusing about this stuff over the years, that some people have had trouble imagining using the web on their TV from their couch – particularly because they’re confused about how they’ll control it. With a keyboard and mouse? A really big remote control? A Wii wand?
No doubt we’ll have to wait another pointlessly long time before internet TV systems start using the new motion-sensing videogame control systems.


To launch Kenya's new nation brand, also created by Grayling, something truly unique and ground-breaking was required.
We needed to establish the ‘Make It Kenya’ campaign through ground breaking activations with global appeal. We leveraged Kenya’s breadth of tourism offering across all media, we identified a partner (Herd Tracker) to give us instant traction and another partner (Periscope) that implemented an innovative platform to get people’s attention. Our activations included #MARALIVE and #KENYALIVE which brought incredible wildlife and adventure footage to the world which included the world’s first live web broadcast of the GREAT Wildebeest Migration. Another hit was Kenya’s Tourism Minister skydiving into the campaign and ‘Turtlecam’ which viewed the rehabilitation of turtle’s release back into the ocean.
- 115,00+ views
- 50K hearts (likes) and questions on periscope
- 12,000+ views on twitter
- 10,000+ engagements on facebook
- 300+ media enquiries
- 700+ articles published print and online by global leading titles
- 2 live cnn broadcasts
- 900,000,000+ people reached worldwide via all media activity
- 10% brand awareness from 0 brand awareness in the UK and US according to independent research in only 3 months.


Clinical Assistant Professor
Director, Online MA Strategic Communication
Research Associate, NaPDI
Faculty Advisor, PRSSA
Office: CADD 205
Phone: (509) 335-3911
Rebecca L. Cooney, M.S. is a professional communicator with more than 22 years of strategic communication experience in conceptual design, implementation, monitoring and metrics of comprehensive integrated projects and campaigns for traditional media and digital platform initiatives. In addition to her ongoing activities in industry, she is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Strategic Communication with an emphasis in public relations and digital media and serves as the Director of the Online M.A. Strategic Communication program for The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University (WSU). She is a Research Associate with a collaborative natural product and drug interaction grant sponsored by the Natural Institutes of Health in partnerships with the pharmaceutical colleges at the University of Washington and WSU called NaPDI – Center for Natural Product-Drug Interaction Brand Materials. She also serves as faculty advisor for the Public Relations Student Society of America chapter at WSU overseeing a six-person student leadership team and membership base of more than 60 students.
Rebecca joined the Murrow faculty in 2012 and teaches a full load of undergraduate and graduate courses. She holds a BA in communications from California State University Sacramento and a MS degree in communications from Eastern Washington University. In 2014 she was awarded a fellowship through the Plank Center Educators Fellows program and was partnered with Harley Davidson Motor Company corporate communications division for a two-week immersion experience. In 2015 she was awarded a Scripps Howard and Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) Visiting Professor in Social Media externship and was partnered with The Sacramento Bee for two weeks in the summer.
Rebecca teaches courses focused on integrated communications, writing for public relations, digital marketing campaigns, brand and consumer insights, employee communications and advertising. She regularly guest lectures, leads webinars and pursues research partnerships opportunities with peer research faculty in the areas of health communication and human behavior. She serves on the Academic Integrity Taskforce – Digital Team at WSU and is co-author of the five-year strategic plan for Murrow College. She serves on the Murrow leadership team for the Online MA Strategic Communication program and as a representative of clinical faculty interests.
Before WSU she spent more than 10 years in higher education administration in leadership roles for marketing and university relations, business development, website coordination and regional communication initiatives. She also worked in corporate as director of marketing for an international educational travel company and served as an adjunct professor at two universities. She started her career at a full service ad agency and continues to grow in the areas of strategic communications, integrated communications, public relations, brand and message platforms and digital communications.
Rebecca is married and lives in Pullman with her four children. She considers herself a lifelong learner and finds experiential learning opportunities to be the most beneficial and applicable to everything she does.
Clinical Assistant Professor
Faculty Advisor, PRSA Bateman Competition
Office: 207 MURR
Chris Cooney joined The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Communication and the Director of Digital Initiatives. Cooney has more than 23 years of professional experience to the college, with a focus on strategic marketing, communication, advertising and cross-platform content creation. He is a proven leader, team builder, innovator and creative professional.
Cooney served as the Senior Director of Marketing and Communication at the University of Idaho from October 2008 to July 2014. He led a team of more than 50 professionals – producing award-winning integrated marketing campaigns and university-wide communication, public and media relations, marketing, publications and creative services. He also provided leadership for the university brand strategy and its integrated marketing and communication plan.
Cooney was the Director of Web Communications for UI from August 2006 – September 2008, during which he led a redesign of the institutional Web presence, established a unified content management system and secured permanent funding for 11 Web coordinator positions. Previously he served as a manager on the strategic communications team for Argonne National Laboratory where he led the redesign of the lab’s website and produced a quarterly multimedia publication for print and online. As a manager on Motorola’s Global Web team, Cooney led the interface design and usability for a corporate-wide redesign of the company’s Web presence. He has also been a producer, project manager and art director for a number of creative firms and publications.
Cooney’s work earned awards from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), the Higher Ed Marketing Report and the Idaho Advertising Federation. He is a teacher and presenter on a broad range of topics including communication, content strategy, media training, brand platform development and best practices, marketing, Web communication and design.
Cooney received an MBA from the University of Idaho and a B.B.A in Advertising and Promotion from Western Michigan University.


It's time for sleep now
It's the podcast that transforms bedtime into a magical journey to the land of dreams. Each episode is a carefully crafted adventure, weaving together soothing narratives with soft, tranquil melodies designed to lull children into a peaceful slumber.
From enchanted forests to starlit seas, hot-air balloon rides and trips to the moon, our stories are filled with gentle characters, comforting settings, and kind-hearted lessons that not only entertain but also instil values of kindness, friendship, courage and empathy. The calming voice of our narrator acts as a guide, leading young listeners through the winding paths of imagination, away from the worries of the day, and safely into the arms of sleep.
Perfect for children of all ages, this series helps to create a restful environment, easing the transition from wakefulness to rest.
Don't forget to subscribe and share, as we release new episodes regularly.


Just a few weeks ago I was delighted to have received an invitation in my inbox for this workshop run by the Network for Oratory and Politics. As postgraduate students of the University of Glasgow, we are very fortunate to be invited to many events allowing us to share in the wisdom of many high-profile academics and professionals, but this one stood out for me – as a postgraduate student of Political Communication, and someone hoping to secure funding as PhD candidate in the same field, with a huge personal interest in the quality of communication between political leaders and the public – you could say this really was my ‘cup of tea’. I responded immediately and was extremely pleased to receive confirmation of my place.
In preparation for the workshop we were sent, in advance, two speeches to familiarise ourselves with:
1) JK Rowling’s Commencement Speech, Harvard University: ‘The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination’
2) President Obama’s Selma Marches Anniversary Speech
Both very rousing and inspirational speeches and, on reflection, a solid indicator of what we should expect from the day.
Thinking about the workshop itself, the session was structured logically and professionally. The first speaker, Sara Lodge – a former speechwriter for Kofi Anan, now Senior Lecturer in English at St Andrews University – introduced us to the importance of preparation. She explained how what sets a speech apart from a talk or a sales pitch was the challenge of involving the audience. She stressed how successful speeches work by joining together the audience and the speaker. Something she said that stuck in my head was that: ‘We read as individuals, but we hear as one.” – very true, and thought-provoking. Sara’s analogies of speech structure as a musical concerto, building with intensity until it reaches the crescendo really resonated with me. It became very clear to me that the use of language in this manner – to celebrate or commemorate, signify a moment of change, or in Sara’s words: “to invoke the sublime, the ever-enduring possibilities of the human spirit” – demonstrates just how poetic, inspiring and powerful speeches have the potential to be. She suggested that a professional speechwriter may spend up to one hour researching for each minute of the speech they are writing, ensuring they are confident with the historical context of the occasion as well as the people involved. To know the audience means that a connection can be made, bridges can be built by recognising shared values and experiences, and by being consistent and confident throughout the speech. She formulated it as winning the audience by acknowledgement, reassuring them, and arousing their interest. What I took away from Sara’s presentation was that structure in a successful speech is key, and that together with genuine audience involvement – where the orator speaks with, and for, the audience, not at them – contributes to a sincere collective expression of togetherness, in other words the ideal speech conditions.
After Sara’s presentation we split into groups of two and were given a practical task. We had a choice of five scenarios for which to write a brief speech for. We spent half an hour working on this before the second presentation, this time from Rob Goodman, a visiting PhD candidate from Columbia University, but also an experienced political speechwriter having worked in the recent past for US Representative and House of Representatives Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and former US Senator Chris Dodd. Drawing upon his personal experience Rob introduced the concept of the rhetorical commonplace. He explained that commonplaces exist in cultural vocabulary, and that what sets them apart from clichés, which tend to stop thinking, is that commonplaces link pre-existing beliefs to new purposes and goals. The art of rhetorical persuasion channels what the audience already believes but takes them on a journey building upon those beliefs via persuasion. Connection can be achieved by conjuring up concrete images in the minds of the audience. He made reference to Aristotle’s notion of ethos, and how by presenting oneself in a consistent light the speaker may carry out the task displaying comfort, ease and confidence which, in turn, gives the audience the same comfort and confidence in the speaker’s words. Reinforcing exactly what Sara had said about how crucial audience involvement is.
The last speaker was Rodger Evans, an award-winning speechwriter for the Scottish Parliament and former music journalist. Rodger gave us tips for delivery including ‘the power of the pause’, when to raise and lower our voices to emphasise certain points and also how speech can be considered an art-form alongside music and poetry. Much aware of time-constraints we were then given a further half an hour to work on our practical exercises, my group’s task being to introduce Muhammad Ali to a college audience in light of his sacrifices of reputation and career in protest against the Vietnam War and fight for civil rights, which led to his conviction for draft evasion. When working on this task you could feel the enthusiasm and creativity in the room, for me it was the most enjoyable part of the day.
The final part of the session saw each pair present their speech to the group, applying the skills we had learnt that day in a practical, meaningful way. All of the speeches were of a surprisingly high standard and the feedback received on each from our team of workshop leaders highlighted how well every group had done at grasping the core elements of what makes a successful speech in terms of both design and delivery.
What I take away from this workshop is an appreciation of how speechwriting skills are crucial across disciplines, there was student representation not only from Politics, but also Law and Criminology at both Masters and PhD level. I believe that I can speak on behalf of all the workshop delegates to say how grateful we are to the Network of Oratory and Politics, and the funders, The Royal Society of Edinburgh, for making this workshop possible, especially considering that many of us in attendance would not have been in a position to finance such training ourselves. This workshop has changed my perceptions about the art of speechwriting and delivery, at a time when most of us are deep in theory writing assignments, a break to engage in something so practical and meaningful was very welcome. I’ve come away full of hope about how we, as humans, in what may seem an isolated world at times can come together and connect with our emotions, share our hopes for the future and engage in purposeful political involvement. My new awareness of how much the speechwriter and speaker have considered their audience as the integral component in the design of their speech gives me hope for the future of democratic involvement and popular empowerment, and the more people that understand this, the more accessible politics can be for all. Thank you very much.
Postgraduate student MSc Political Communication
University of Glasgow


Eco District Summit
Earlier in October, I headed to Minneapolis - St. Paul for the Eco Districts Summit to explore how district-scale innovation can help us address some of the most critical issues facing city-makers today.
The conference brought people to the forefront of sustainability, stressing that,"... important though 'environmental' aspects of sustainability are. A truly sustainable society is one where wider questions of social needs and welfare, and economic opportunity are integrally related to environmental limits imposed by supporting ecosystems." Because when it comes down to it, it's really not about the infrastructure itself (although still very important), it's about the life that takes on a space after the infrastructure is there.
Imagine living in a city that made you feel at home simply by design. Where a mix of cultures felt inspired to come together to share their stories of triumph and shame, of pain and pride, regardless of their background, age, sex or abilities. This, as stated by many at the summit, is the key to creating more vibrant communities here on Vancouver Island.
But the question arose - "What does belonging look like when none of your culture is displayed on public lands? How can you and your people feel like you belong?"
The prevailing answer is through art.
Art and creativity, even if only temporary, can help us ask different questions and find different solutions to our problems. Art can empower people to come together and use it as an outlet, humanizing our experiences to help heal and connect us. Many examples were given that better-connected people are happier, less lonely, more productive and have greater success.
So what does this all mean for FED? Moving forward, we are thinking about what we can do at the design stage (really every stage) so that equity, resilience and climate protection are all part of the framework of our vision for the future. By focusing on the things that connect us, rather than drive us apart, I believe we can find more solutions to increase climate action on Vancouver Island and reside in more prepared and inclusive communities.
Photograph: McNamara Alumni Center by Dan Anderson


A proud Sri Lankan-American from the Bay Area, Taliya Peiris is a recent high school graduate. She will be attending Santa Clara University in the fall, where she will be majoring in Management Information Systems in the college of Business. She aspires to combine her passions for business and pop culture to become a business analyst for an entertainment company. She has already started to make her mark in the industry as the owner of TAP Media, her very own social media marketing company, helping small businesses in her community with their digital marketing and social media campaigns.
Growing up as a dancer and piano player, and now currently learning how to DJ, Taliya has always enjoyed expressing herself through the performing arts and encourages others to pursue and support creative careers. She started her social media movement III Creatives (Inspiring Imagination and Inclusivity) to bring to light the importance of representation in the entertainment industry and accessibility to visual and performing arts resources for all to learn and enjoy. She aims to expand this platform by continuing her Instagram Live series “Creative Convos with Taliya Peiris”, where she interviews up-and-coming artists in the industry, as well as by creating a scholarship to allow deserving student artists the opportunity to pursue higher education in their respective fields.
In her free time, Taliya enjoys all things music related, from going to concerts to collecting her favorite albums on vinyls. She loves rooting for her favorite Bay Area sports teams with her dad, trying new restaurants with her friends, and traveling the world with her family, having been to 16 states and 11 countries so far!


Click on a tab to explore the day's events at sea!
- Karen's Daily Blog
- Extreme Blogger
- Photo & Video Gallery
Karen's Daily Blog
Greetings from R/V Atlantis, DSV Alvin,
and the Extreme 2008 research cruise!
I’m Karen Romano Young, the education coordinator for this cruise. I’ve been explaining to scientists, the Alvin group, and the ship's crew that I’m going to be taking their pictures until they’re sick of it, asking a million questions, quoting them and writing about them and putting up their pictures on the Web site. You can imagine the response: some of them step softly behind another person and try to slip away. Others square their shoulders and say “Cheese!”
And then there are the ones you can’t say “cheese” to just now, because they’ll turn a little green at the thought. Yes, it’s the first day of the Extreme cruise, and we’re all making the necessary adjustments. Shy and bold. Salty or seasick. Science, sub, or ship. We’re in this together for the next three weeks. Even though some of the people aboard this ship may be shy, they are all enthusiastic about the Web site and about the idea that so many eyes are going to be on them and their work for the next few weeks. And I’m here to promise that the education team here on Atlantis and back at the “beach” at the University of Delaware (home of the Blue Hens) are going to try to capture it all for people on shore.
Today there’s extra excitement aboard, because NBC’s Today Show broadcast a special feature about the voyage their reporter, Ann Curry, made during Atlantis’s last cruise. It’s an enormous thrill to watch the Alvin Group and the ship’s crew of Atlantis receive their deserved share of the limelight, since they’ve made such a big contribution to our understanding of the oceans. And now Extreme 2008 will bring this cruise’s two destinations, 21 days at sea, 14 planned dives, and combined crew of 55 people into homes and schools worldwide.
Our Extreme Classrooms number 350, with the eyes of 20,858 students and teachers on our work on the microbial life –including the tiniest things yet discovered – living at the hydrothermal vents along the East Pacific Rise and Guaymas Basin. Extreme schools this year include the United States, Aruba, Australia (Tasmania), Canada, Costa Rica, Great Britain, and New Zealand.
Ordinary Seaman Kevin Threadgold tells me that Atlantis frequently visits Costa Rica, as well as Canada and the U.S., and Alvin engineer Jon Howland says that Jason, a remote-operated vehicle that is deployed by the University of Washington ship R/V Thompson, has studied deep coral reefs off the coast of Tasmania. And Kiwis can keep an eye out for scientists Conrad Pilditch and Craig Cary.
Our science crew includes two Mexican scientists, Ruth Villanueva Estrada and Fanny Reisman Moussan, who will act as Extreme Bloggers in Spanish on two days of the cruise. Busca el Extreme Blog de Ruth, el 15 de Noviembre.
Yes, there’s so much going on that it practically makes my head spin. During this first day of the cruise, the ship has been passing lots of turtles swimming along. “Do they swim with their heads up?” I asked Able-Bodied Seaman Jim McGill, who was pointing them out to me from the bridge. “No,” he said. “They pick their heads up when we come by, like they’re saying, ‘What’s THAT?’”
That’s Atlantis, our home at sea. Much more to come!
Today's Extreme Blogger:
I’m a fourth year Ph.D. student, and this will be my first cruise to a hydrothermal vent. I’m so excited to finally see these things up close! But first we have to travel 700 miles off the coast of Costa Rica, so we all have to wait for two days until we get out there. The scientists aboard this ship come from many different institutions in the U.S., New Zealand, and Mexico, so we will spend these two days getting to know each other, making sure our experiments are set up, learning about the safety features of the ship and trying not to get seasick! So far, I’ve gotten to see some of the experimental setups people will be using to collect samples from the hydrothermal vents. These include special spring-loaded syringes that can collect water samples right up next to the hydrothermal vent chimneys, while simultaneously measuring the water temperature. Since hydrothermally heated water will be swirling all around the vent site, this piece of equipment will allow members of Craig Cary’s lab to have precise control over where their samples are taken.
I have the added excitement of being able to go on the cruise that follows ours. At the end of Extreme 2008, we will land in Guaymas, clean up the ship, pack up our samples, and then the rest of the science crew will go back home to work on their exciting new data. I, however, will stay with the ship, and meet the rest of the members of my home lab, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for another three weeks in Guaymas Basin. Because I have back-to-back cruises, I will be able to place experiments at the seafloor during the first cruise and then come back a few weeks later to pick them up. This means we can leave things like glass microscope slides in the sediments near the vents. In a couple of weeks, we can use the submersible Alvin to find them again, pick them up, and analyze the microbes that grew on them. This might give us a better idea of what types of microbes start growing when hydrothermal vent fluid reaches a new area.
I have been interested in studying hydrothermal vents since I first heard about them when I was a student at Swarthmore College. After getting my bachelor’s degree in biochemistry, I wanted to start working on hydrothermal vents, but I didn’t know who to contact! So, I just sent my resume to different researchers until I found Andreas Teske at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who wanted to hire me as a technician. I’ve now been working on samples that other people have taken from vents for the past six years, and, now as a Ph.D. student, I feel lucky to finally go and see the real things!
Tie everything down, and then we're ready to go!
University of Southern California (alumnus)
Funding for this educational program was provided by the National Science Foundation to the University of Delaware as part of “Extreme 2008: A Deep-Sea Adventure” — the latest in the University of Delaware’s award-winning series of online expeditions to engage students and the public in cutting-edge research and the process of scientific discovery. This program was produced by the University of Delaware Office of Communications & Marketing.


Reading UK’s Death Metal maestros have announced the release date for their new album, “The Grim Awakening”. The following quote has been taken from their official Facebook page:
“The wait is finally over, we have toiled in the studio and laboured to bring you the best death metal we could and we are extremely proud to announce to that it will be release on Siege of Amida Records on 15/08/2011.
In the meantime check out the newly uploaded “The Scorn of Dead Men” which is the final studio master with production courtesy of Hertz Studio, who did an amazing job. You can also view the cover art in our photos, courtesy of Tony Koehl who was very accommodating in our requests for a larger volcano.
We just want to thank all of you for your continued support and greatly look forward to the release date itself!
Nariman / Alex / Webb / Dave”
“The Scorn of Dead Men” can be heard on the Reverbnation player below:


The field of contenders for Ronda Rousey’s UFC women’s bantamweight championship is running dry.
Outside unlikely scenarios such as Cristiane Justino cutting to 135 pounds or a return to the sport by Gina Carano, UFC officials seem to be in a situation in which they’re choosing between contenders Bethe Correia (9-0 MMA, 3-0 UFC) and Jessica Eye (11-2 MMA, 1-1 UFC) – or giving an immediate rematch to Cat Zingano (9-1 MMA, 2-1 UFC). Zingano just lost to Rousey (11-0 MMA, 5-0 UFC) in 14 seconds, leaving the possibility of a new contender as a more appealing option in the eyes of many.
For Eye, the choice is clear, as she explained in a recent interview.
“I know that I’m going to get the fight over Bethe with Ronda Rousey,” Eye said. “I think that the UFC is much smarter than the average fan, or much more smarter than Bethe. Not to insult her by any means, but she hasn’t earned it. Just because you fought her teammates and you made her mad personally doesn’t necessarily mean you get the fight. I think she’s smart.
“She’s doing like what Ronda did. She’s doing like what Ronda did to Miesha to get her shot and to get her title right away in this sport, and I don’t blame her. But, listen: There’s a much more skillful person, and that’s me.”
Eye is coming off a TKO victory over Leslie Smith at UFC 180, a victory that represents her first official win inside the octagon. Eye took a split decision over Sarah Kaufman in her UFC debut, but the result was overturned when Eye failed a drug test due to marijuana metabolites. She dropped a split decision to Alexis Davis at UFC 170 in her next fight.
Despite her mixed success, Eye believes she has a gameplan that will throw off Rousey and allow her to take the belt.
“Ronda’s an interesting person because she strives on chaos,” Eye said. “She’s an interesting person in that way. And, that’s how she won in judo, and understanding that judo is only two-minute rounds. She likes the fast pace. I’m curious to see someone slow down the fight for her and move and kind of take a different kind of fight to her.
“It was actually in a meme the other day. It was like, ‘Ronda Rousey seven title defenses, this many minutes.” I think when we broke mine down I had over 300 hours in the cage, under the lights between decisions. So, I feel like my experience comes with me. And especially in this last year, I’m more comfortable in the UFC. They bring me to shows, and I feel like I found my own there. I don’t feel a weird tingle anymore.”
One of the more impressive things Rousey has managed to do in the sport is convince some observers she could contend in the men’s bantamweight division, along with managing to crack into many different pound-for-pound rankings.
However, Eye isn’t on board with ranking women in a pound-for-pound ranking list that includes their male counterparts.
“No, I am 100 percent sold on the fact that this sport – as a female, I don’t ever want to try to do it without the men,” Eye said. “I don’t ever want the men to feel like we’re in competition with them. I feel like it’s kind of a hard situation when you ask those pound-for-pounds. I don’t think the women should be in the pound-for-pound. I really don’t. I think we should be in our own division for pound-for-pound.”
Eye expanded on that further when asked if she buys into the talk that Rousey could beat 135-pound men – or if Eye, herself, would be able to compete in the men’s bantamweight division.
“I can train with them and compete with them,” Eye said. “But, no, man. They’re men. Come on. Let’s not screw up what we know already. Men have testosterone. I go with these 125ers, and these guys are fast. And, if they really wanted to put it on me, they would put it on us. I think that they are kind of losing sight of what we already know. They’re men. They have testosterone. We’re women. We have estrogen. There’s that difference. If the guys want to put it on us and beat us up, they can. I mean, come on now. Who we kidding?”
For more on the UFC’s upcoming schedule, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.


Before we get into the article, I want to share that an article I wrote was published on The Rebelution yesterday! It’s called The Importance of How We Spend Our Free Time, and you can read it here.
You might remember the post Interview With a Public-Schooled Christian: Claire Brandenburg from a couple of weeks ago. Well now, Claire is back with more wonderful advice for us. Enjoy!
We all know that going to school comes with challenges. Those challenges are even bigger for those of us who are called to be set apart from the world. Human beings were designed to desire community and connection, and when the people around us at school act in a way that we don’t agree with, fitting in can seem like a huge problem.
Putting ourselves out there as ‘the Christian’ can seem petrifying, but we need to ask ourselves, “What is the reason I am scared to be different?” In Luke 9:26, Jesus says, “Whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when He comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.”
Most of the reason we’re scared of being different is that we worry about what others will think of us. Think about it: why are so many people scared of public speaking? It’s not because something horrible is going to happen to them if they mess up—when most people speak in front of a crowd, how they perform is not going to make or break them. We fear public speaking because we fear what others will think of us. Humans fear others’ opinions and make things seem more intimidating than they actually are.
What bad thing will happen if we start a conversation about Jesus? People are not going to storm out of the room. Maybe they will have an encouraging response and want to discuss Christianity or maybe they will try to change the subject, but the worst that usually happens is a couple of seconds of awkwardness. Talking to people about Jesus will not be as bad as our minds make it out to be.
My advice for fitting in is to not fit in. We will never feel completely like we belong in any other setting than the body of Christ. Find other Christians in your school and hang out with them or start a Christian club. Don’t disregard unbelievers in the school, because they too need Jesus in their lives and we can make good friendships with these people. However, we shouldn’t expect them to become our very best friends. That title is left to our friends who are seeking God.
Also, when we share the gospel, we shouldn’t expect to see a quick change in our lost friends. Our job is to point people to Christ, which can take years of being someone’s friend and building a relationship with them. It’s the Holy Spirit’s job to transform people, but we need to be faithful in showing them what Jesus is like.
We shouldn’t be surprised that our lost friends act in foolish ways. Lost people do lost things, and we need to understand that. Unbelievers don’t understand life’s meaning or their purpose. Their model of what is right and wrong is different than ours. And if their definition of right and wrong is based on cultural standards, those standards will change with culture. The song Me Without You by Toby Mac perfectly illustrates how different life is without Christ:
“I’d be packin’ my bags when I need to stay,
I’d be chasin’ every breeze that blows my way,
I’d be building my kingdom just to watch it fade away.”
Where the unbelievers in our school are is exactly where we would be if not for Jesus. But we represent Jesus and show Jesus to them through our actions, words, and lifestyles. This fact can be overwhelming, but we have something that the world doesn’t have: a loving God who will help us follow Him every step of the way. I will be praying that the people around you see such a difference in how you act compared to what they are used to that they can’t help but be drawn to Jesus’ light in you.
My go-to verse for being a Christian in a public school is John 13:34, which says, “A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”
If this verse seems too vague, look up the definition of love. But don’t look up the world’s shallow definition on the internet. Look it up in your Bible, where we have been shown what true, unchanging, unconditional love looks like.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8 says, “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”
My sibling in Christ, know that our Father has everything under control. 🙂
Thank you, Claire, for writing this and sharing your wisdom with us!
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Teams of Rebuilding Hope volunteers assisted with cleanup in Elm City on Sept. 20 following a tornado spawned by Hurricane Florence and in Warsaw on Sept. 22 with cleanup from the hurricane.
In another disaster relief effort, RHI called for donations of cleaning supplies, paper products, nonperishable foods, and other essentials for hurricane victims. On Sept. 22, the supplies were delivered to the Core City FWB Church in Craven County, a collection site for Craven and Jones County victims.
“The response,” says RHI coordinator Randolph Wilson, “enabled us to nearly fill one of our trucks. We met people in dire need of help, and they’re going to need help for a long time to come.”
To further assist victims, RHI is working on plans to assist repairing homes. A partnership would be with either North Carolina Baptist Men or a local church in eastern North Carolina.
RHI began preparing to offer assistance to hurricane victims as the path of the hurricane was announced.
Within days, two tool trailers were outfitted with chain saws, generators, ladders, ropes and chains, safety equipment and a variety of tools. A tractor and skid steer loader were serviced and readied for use.
As the path of the storm veered away from local communities, volunteers looked toward helping storm-ravaged communities in other parts of the state and waited for a call.
Gearing up for this kind of mission is a first for Rebuilding Hope.
“We have the equipment, and volunteers are eager to help,” RHI coordinator Randolph Wilson says.
“We can’t do much where the hurricane hit until the water recedes,” he says. “Then we’ll connect with others at operation centers.”
RHI’s mission is always Christ-centered. “When we serve, we want victims to know that we come in the name of and with the love of Jesus,” Randolph says.


Beyond the basics
Radio and television broadcasting concern the material fixation of a program, which can be either wired or wireless, such as, cable or satellite transmission.
Cable transmission of programs is made on the basis of individual or collective agreements between, on the one part, the program creators and the beneficiaries of neighbouring rights and, on the other part, the cable network exploitation enterprises.
Copyright over a program comprises of the exclusive right to:
- recording or reproducing and retransmitting all or substantial part thereof;
- transmitting or retransmitting it to the public in an area where entry is permitted upon a fee payment;
- material fixation of the program;
- leasing and lending of material fixations of the program;
- distribution of material fixations of the program;
- taking photographs of the programme.