Podcast Ep. 1 – Concussions
This is first episode in a series of Podcasts by Beyond the Playbook, hosted by Ryan Lake.This episode examines the difficult and concerning issue of player concussions in sport and a review of the ongoing consolidated litigation by ex-players against the NHL relating to the long-term effects of concussions and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (“CTE”).
The podcasts are intended to give an overview of some of the most important off-field issues impacting athletes, parents, coaches and athletic associations. Listeners are encouraged to leave comments and participate in debates around the topics raised as well as submitting topics they would like Beyond the Playbook to address.
Links in this Episode:
THE EFFECTS OF FIGHTING IN ICE HOCKEY: AN OVERVIEW OF THE ONGOING NHL CONCUSSION LITIGATION


A very long time ago, in midwinter, when the snowflakes were falling like feathers from heaven, a beautiful queen sat sewing at her window, which had a frame of black ebony. As she worked, she looked sometimes at the falling snow, and it happened that she pricked her finger with her needle, so that three drops of blood fell upon the snow. How pretty the red blood looked upon the dazzling white! The queen said to herself as she looked it, “Ah me! If only I had a dear little child who had skin as white as the snow, lips as rosy as the blood, and hair as black as the ebony window frame.”
Soon afterwards she had a little daughter, with skin white as snow, lips rosy as blood, and hair as black as ebony – and she was therefore called “Little Snow White.”
But alas! When the little one was born, the good queen died.
A year passed by, and the king took another wife. She was a beautiful woman, but proud and haughty, and she could not bear that anyone else should surpass her in beauty. She had a mirror and when she stood in front of it and asked, “Mirror, mirror upon the wall, who is the fairest of us all?”
The mirror answered, “Thou, O Queen, art the fairest of all,” and the queen was contented, because she knew the mirror could speak nothing but the truth.
But as time passed on, Little Snow White grew more and more beautiful. When she was seven years old, she was as lovely as the bright day, and still more lovely than the queen herself, so that when the lady one day asked her mirror, “Mirror, mirror upon the wall, who is the fairest of us all?”
It answered, “O Lady Queen, though fair ye be, Snow White is fairer far to see.”
The queen was shocked, and grew yellow and green with envy, and from that moment envy and pride grew in her heart like rank weeds, so that she had no peace day or night, until one day she called a huntsman and said, “Take the child away into the woods and kill her, for I can no longer bear the sight of her. When you return, bring with you her heart, that I may know you have obeyed my will.”
The huntsman dared not disobey, and he led Snow White out into the woods and placed an arrow in his bow to pierce her innocent heart, but the little girl cried and begged him saying, “Ah dear huntsman, leave me my life! I will run away into the wild forest, and never come home again.”
And as she was so beautiful the huntsman had pity on her and said, “Run away then, you poor child.” While to himself he thought, “The wild beasts will soon have devoured you,” and yet it seemed as if a stone had been rolled from his heart since he no longer had to kill her.
Then as a young wild boar came rushing by, he killed it, took out its heart, and carried it home to the queen. The cook was ordered to prepare this, and the wicked queen ate it, and thought she had eaten the heart of Snow White.
Poor little Snow White was now all alone in the wild wood, and so frightened was she that she trembled at every leaf that rustled. Then she began to run, and ran over sharp stones and through thorns, and the wild beasts ran past her, but did her no harm. She kept on running until she came to a little house, where she went in to rest.
Inside the cottage, everything she saw was tiny, but more dainty and clean than words can tell.
Upon a white-covered table stood seven little plates and upon each plate lay a little spoon, besides which there were seven knives and forks and seven little goblets. Against the wall, and side by side, stood seven little beds covered with perfectly white sheets.
Snow White was so hungry and thirsty that she took a little food from each of the seven plates, and drank a few drops of wine from each goblet, for she did not wish to take everything away from one. Then, because she was so tired, she crept into one of the beds, but it did not suit her, and so she tried the others, but one was too long, another too short, and so on – until she came to the seventh, which suited her exactly. She said her prayers and soon fell fast asleep.
When night fell, the masters of the little house came home. They were seven dwarfs, who worked with a pick axe and spade, searching for copper and gold in the heart of the mountains.
They lit their seven candles and then saw that someone had been to visit them. The first said, “Who has been sitting on my chair?”
The second said, “Who has been eating from my plate?”
The third, “Who has taken a piece of my bread?”
The fourth, “Who has taken some of my vegetables?”
The fifth, “Who has been using my fork?”
The sixth, “Who has been cutting with my knife?”
The seventh, “Who has been drinking out of my goblet?”
The first looked around and saw that his bed was rumpled, so he said, “Who has been getting into my bed?”
Then the others looked round and each one cried, “Someone has been on my bed too!”
But the seventh, when he looked at his bed, saw little Snow White, who was lying asleep there. He called the others, who came running up, and they cried out with astonishment, and brought their seven little candles and let the light fall on little Snow White. “Oh, heavens! Oh, heavens!” Cried they. “What a lovely child!” They were so glad that they did not wake her up, but let her sleep on in the bed. And the seventh dwarf slept with his companions, one hour with each, and so got through the night.
When the sun rose, Snow White awoke, and oh! How frightened she was when she saw the seven little dwarfs. But they were very friendly, and asked what her name was. “My name is Snow White,” she answered.
“And how did you come to get into our house?” Asked the dwarfs.
Then she told them how her cruel stepmother had intended her to be killed, but the huntsman had spared her life and she had run on until she reached the little house. The dwarfs said, “If you will take care of our house; cook for us, make the beds, wash, mend, and knit, and keep everything neat and clean, then you may stay with us and you shall lack for nothing.”
“Yes,” answered Snow White. “With all my heart,” and so she stayed.
She kept the house neat and clean for the dwarfs, who went off early in the morning to search for copper and gold in the mountains, and who expected their meal to be standing ready for them when they returned at night.
All day long Snow White was alone, and the good little dwarfs warned her to be careful to let no one into the house. “For,” said they, “your step mother will soon discover that you are living here.”
The queen, believing, of course, that Snow White was dead, and that she had eaten her heart, and therefore she was again the most beautiful lady in the land, went to her mirror, and said, “Mirror, mirror upon the wall, who is the fairest fair of all?”
Then the mirror answered, “O Lady Queen, though fair ye be, Snow White is fairer far to see. Over the hills and far away, she dwells with seven dwarfs today.”
How angry she was, for she knew that the mirror spoke the truth, and that the huntsman must have deceived her. She thought and thought how she might kill Snow White, for she knew she would have neither rest nor peace until she really was the most beautiful in the land. At length she decided what to do. She painted her face and dressed herself like an old pedlar woman, so that no one could recognise her, and in this disguise she climbed the seven mountains that lay between her and the dwarfs’ house, and knocked at their door and cried, “Pretty things to sell, very cheap, very cheap.”
Snow White peeped from the window and said, “Good day, good wife, and what are your wares?”
“All sorts of pretty things, my dear,” answered the woman. “Silken laces of every colour,” and she held up a brightly coloured one, made of plaited silks.
“Surely I might let this honest old woman come in?” Snow White thought, and unbolted the door and bought the pretty lace.
“Dear, dear, what a sight for sore eyes you are, child,” said the old woman. “Come, let me lace you properly for once.”
Snow White had no suspicious thoughts, so she placed herself in front of the old woman that she might fasten her dress with the new silk lace. Immediately the wicked creature laced her bodice so tightly that she could not breathe, and fell down upon the ground as though she were dead. “Now,” said the queen, “I am once more the most beautiful lady in the land,” and she went away.
When the dwarfs came home they were very grieved to find their dear little Snow White lying upon the ground as though she were dead. They lifted her gently and, seeing that she was too tightly laced, cut the silken cord. She drew a long breath and then gradually came back to life.
When the dwarfs heard all that had happened they said, “The pedlar woman was certainly the wicked queen. Now, take care in future that you open the door to none when we are not with you.”
The wicked queen had no sooner reached home than she went to her mirror, and said, “Mirror, mirror upon the wall, who is the fairest fair of all?”
And the mirror answered as before, “O Lady Queen, though fair ye be, Snow White is fairer far to see. Over the hills and far away, She dwells with seven dwarfs today.”
The blood rushed to her face as she heard these words, for she knew that Snow White must have come to life again.
“But I will manage to put an end to her yet,” she said, and then by using witchcraft, she made a poisonous comb.
Again she disguised herself, climbed the seven mountains, and knocked at the door of the seven dwarfs’ cottage, crying, “Pretty things to sell – very cheap today!”
Snow White looked out of the window and said, “Go away, good woman, for I dare not let you in.”
“Surely you can look at my goods,” answered the woman, and held up the poisonous comb, which pleased Snow White so well that she opened the door and bought it.
“Come, let me comb your hair in the newest way,” said the woman, and the poor unsuspicious child let her have her way, but no sooner did the comb touch her hair than the poison began to work, and she fell fainting to the ground.
“There, you model of beauty,” said the wicked woman, as she went away. “You are done for at last!”
Fortunately it was almost time for the dwarfs to come home, and as soon as they came in and found Snow White lying upon the ground they guessed that her wicked step mother had been there again, and set to work to find out what was wrong.
They soon saw the poisonous comb, and drew it out of her hair, and almost immediately Snow White began to recover, and told them what had happened. Once more they warned her to be on her guard, and to open the door to no one.
When the queen reached home, she went straight to the mirror and said, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest fair of all?”
The mirror answered, “O Lady Queen, though fair ye be, Snow White is fairer far to see. Over the hills and far away, She dwells with seven dwarfs today.”
When the queen heard these words she shook with rage. “Snow White shall die,” she cried, “even if it costs me my own life!”
She went into a secret chamber, where no one else ever entered, and there she made a poisonous apple. She then painted her face and disguised herself as a peasant woman, and climbed the seven mountains and went to the dwarfs’ house. She knocked at the door. Snow White put her head out of the window, and said, “I must not let anyone in; the seven dwarfs have forbidden me to do so.”
“It’s all the same to me,” answered the peasant woman, “I shall soon get rid of these fine apples. But before I go I’ll make you a present of one.”
“Oh! No,” said Snow White, “for I must not take it.”
“Surely you are not afraid of poison?” Said the woman. “See, I will cut one in two; the rosy cheek you shall take, and the white cheek I will eat myself.”
Now, the apple had been so cleverly made that only the rose-cheeked side contained the poison. Snow White longed for the delicious-looking fruit, and when she saw that the woman ate half of it, she thought there could be no danger, and stretched out her hand and took the other part. But no sooner had she tasted it than she fell down dead.
The wicked queen laughed aloud with joy as she gazed at her. “White as snow, red as blood, black as ebony,” she said. “This time the dwarfs cannot awaken you.”
She went straight home and asked her mirror, “Mirror, mirror upon the wall, who is the fairest fair of all?”
At length it answered, “Thou, O Queen, art fairest of all!”
So her envious heart had peace – at least, as much as an envious heart can have peace.
When the little dwarfs came home at night they found Snow White lying upon the ground. No breath came from her parted lips, for she was dead. They lifted her tenderly and sought for some poisonous object which might have caused the mischief, unlaced her frock, combed her hair, and washed her with wine and water, but all in vain – dead she was and dead she remained. They laid her upon a bier, and all seven of them sat round about it, and wept as though their hearts would break, for three whole days.
When the time came that she should be laid in the ground they could not bear to part from her. Her pretty cheeks were still rosy red, and she looked just as though she were still living.
“We cannot hide her away in the dark earth,” said the dwarfs, and so they made a transparent coffin of shining glass, laid her in it, and wrote her name upon it in letters of gold; and that she was a king’s daughter. Then they put the coffin out upon the mountain top, and one of them always stayed by it and watched it. And birds came too and wept for Snow White; first an owl, then a raven, and at last a dove.
For a long, long time little Snow White lay in the coffin, but she did not change; she only looked as though she slept, for she was still as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as ebony.
It chanced that a king’s son came into the wood, and went to the dwarfs’ house, meaning to spend the night there. He saw the coffin upon the mountain top, with little Snow White lying within it, and he read the words that were written upon it in letters of gold.
He said to the dwarfs, “If you will but let me have the coffin, you may ask of me what you will, and I will give it to you.”
But the dwarfs answered, “We would not sell it for all the gold in the world.”
Then said the prince, “Let me have it as a gift, I pray you – for I cannot live without seeing little Snow White, and I will prize your gift as the dearest of my possessions.”
The good little dwarfs pitied him when they heard these words, and so gave him the coffin. The king’s son then bade his servants place it upon their shoulders and carry it away, but as they went they stumbled over the stump of a tree, and the violent shaking shook the piece of poisonous apple which had lodged in Snow White’s throat out again, so that she opened her eyes, raised the lid of the coffin, and sat up, alive once more.
“Where am I?” She cried, and the happy prince answered, “Thou art with me, dearest.”
Then he told her all that had happened, and how he loved her better than the whole world, and begged her to go with him to his father’s palace and be his wife. Snow White agreed and went with him, and the wedding was celebrated with great splendour and magnificence.
Little Snow White’s wicked step mother was invited to the feast, and when she had dressed herself in her most beautiful clothes, she stood before her mirror, and said, “Mirror, mirror upon the wall, who is the fairest fair of all?”
And the mirror answered, “O Lady Queen, though fair ye be, The young queen is fairer to see.”
Oh! How angry the wicked woman was then, and so terrified too, that she scarcely knew what to do. At first she thought she would not go to the wedding at all, but then she felt that she could not rest until she had seen the young queen. No sooner did she enter the palace than she recognised little Snow White, and could not move for terror.
Then a pair of red hot iron shoes was brought into the room with tongs and set before her, and these she was forced to put on and to dance in them until she could dance no longer, but fell down dead, and that was the end of the wicked queen.


10 December 2016
Durban, South Africa- December 10, 2016, marks twenty years since Nelson Mandela signed into law the South African constitution. The book entitled “Reflections on the Bill of Rights” comes at the perfect time.
Published by the SA parliament, it carries the views and experiences of some of the men and women who penned Chapter 2 of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.
It features contributors including South African State President Jacob Zuma, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, Willie Hofmeyr (Deputy National Director of Public Prosecutions), Dr. Leon Wessels (former Commissioner of the Human Rights Commission), Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor, the late Dene Smuts (the longest serving female MP in SA history) and Higher Education and Training Minister, Dr. Blade Nzimande.
At onset, the book clearly depicts that extraordinary commitment, political vigour, patience, skill and intellect were prerequisites on all participants to undertake the historical task of formulating South Africa’s highest rule of law, regarded as one of the best constitutions in the world.
In it, CEO of the Constitutional Assembly, Hassen Ebrahim noted that the big task was to calm the fears of the minorities and yet found favour with the majority.
Reading the book makes one comprehend that the clearly depicted complex Constitutional negotiation process of 1994-1996 renders it too simplistic to call the negotiators sell-outs.
There clearly could never have been one winner. Compromises had to take place. No lawmaker could claims to have fully satisfied their constituency. The constitution emerged as a compromise and this book provides the reasons why.
It is further revealed that the earlier political negotiations of the 1980s and early 1990s played a great role in guiding the work of the Constitutional negotiators.
Former National Party (NP) MP Shiela Camerer called constitutional negotiation period “frenetic”. The book leaves one to consider the mood in the country at that time, the fact that the majority of ANC lawmakers had no experience of governance and that a sizeable contingent of white MPs were from the National Party. The success in formulating the constitution was, indeed, a ‘miracle’.
Ultimately, the book is a great historical installation. It offers concise but imperative accounts of the action of 1994-1996 directly from key protagonists.
It details how South Africans from all walks of life thrived in jubilation after the promulgation of the constitution. The evil of Apartheid had seemingly been halted. Herein, finally, a document that sought to preserve human dignity, affirm human rights, ensure equality and redress the imbalances imposed by Apartheid.
The book is heavily political in nature. In it, negotiators downplay the failure of the constitution in advancing radical change set to the benefit the previously disadvantaged black section of population.
Baleka Mbethe wastes no time in announcing that the legislation to amend the Expropriation Act is now finalized.
IFP MP, Albert Mncwango, takes a swipe at the ANC about the violence in KwaZulu-Natal.
Blade Nzimande talks about how NSFAS has helped over a million students and how this government remains committed to an inclusive education system.
Not many pages apart, the late Dene Smuts seeks to promote the ‘resilience of liberal democracy.’
The fact is twenty years after the promulgation of the constitution, the democratic transition honeymoon phase has passed. The stagnant economy of the country cannot be divorced from its tumultuous and uncertain political scenery. The demonstration of anger and loss of patience by the people has resulted in South Africa being ranked as the most protest rich country in the world. And well, apart from the addition of a few privileged blacks into the South African elite social and economic circles, society remains untransformed and racist incidents keep on mushrooming everywhere.
The men and women who wrote South Africa’s constitution are very much aware of this. This is evident in the book. Perhaps a great admission emanates from South African Ambassodor to Namibia Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini who concludes on these words:
“very little dialogue has been taking place on the challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment we still face, and on our political differences. We still have to make our Constitution a living document respected by all.”


Winner of the International Ski History Association’s SKADE Award
for “outstanding book on regional ski history”
An Epic Tale from Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows
In the rugged High Sierra at the north end of Lake Tahoe, California, two adjacent valleys lie protected by high peaks to the west and separated by a massive ridge. The story of how these two remote valleys became two (now one) of the best-known ski areas in North America, begins with their discoveries by two visionaries: Wayne Poulsen, a young ski competitor from Reno, who first saw the potential in Squaw Valley while fishing there as a boy in 1931, and John Reily, a Los Angeles businessman who came to Squaw Valley in 1955, and saw from the top of the KT22 ski lift a pristine valley to the south.
By 1960, Squaw Valley, having hosted the Winter Olympics, had become a world-class ski resort, with extensive facilities and a lively community of permanent and part-time residents. Meanwhile, Alpine Meadows’ investors and homeowners shunned commercial development, and prided themselves on being a “family area—owned and operated by real skiers.”
How these two valleys—so close geographically yet so distant philosophically—survived avalanches, fires, floods, lift accidents, economic ups and downs, ski trends, public opinion, good and bad management; and how the corporatization of both sides of the mountain inevitably joined them as one, is a story about the people who lived, worked and survived all of the above in both valleys.
Squaw Valley & Alpine Meadows: Tales from Two Valleys 70th Anniversary Edition
Available for Pre-Order | Publication Date: October 7, 2019
Nestled amid California’s High Sierra Peaks, two valleys have captured the imaginations of skiers and mountain explorers year after year.
Squaw Valley made a name for itself on the world stage as the host of the 1960 Winter Olympics. Meanwhile, just over a high ridge, Alpine Meadows was developed by devoted local skiers and Bay Area families. Discover the stories of Wayne Poulsen, John Reily and Alex Cushing as they battle avalanches, fires, floods, public opinion and the whims of mountain weather. This revised edition celebrates these two North Lake Tahoe locales, now united and looking to the future.
Local award-winning author and ski historian Eddy Ancinas shares the history of these two valleys as no one has done before.
Available for Pre-Order from the Publisher
If you would like to schedule an interview, author event or a chat with your book club, group or organization (in-person or via Skype), please contact Eddy HERE.
ISBN: 978-1-4671-4405-6 • Paperback • 160 pages • $21.99 • October 7, 2019
Pre-order today from the Publisher.
Publication Date: October 7, 2019


Astronaut Scott Carpenter explains a phase of his Aurora 7 flight to Astronaut John Glenn on May 24, 1962. Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth and Carpenter was the second. Glenn and Carpenter are the last surviving members of Mercury Seven, the first group of American astronauts. This photograph was submitted to the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences.
Photograph of Astronaut Scott Carpenter explaining Phases of his Flight to Astronaut John Glenn, 5/24/1962, Records of the U.S. Senate
June 11, 1963: President John F. Kennedy Delivers Civil Rights Address
On this day in 1963, President John F. Kennedy urged the nation to be a “land of the free” for all citizens in a televised address supporting a comprehensive Civil Rights Bill that would become the 1964 Civil Rights Act: “It ought to be possible, in short, for every American to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race or his color…”
Revisit this and other defining moments of the Civil Rights Movement with PBS Black Culture Connection.
Photo Credit: Abbie Rowe. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.


The texts in this article were partly composed with the help of artificial intelligence and corrected and revised by us. The following services were used for the generation:
In this article, we will show you how to implement dynamic imports with Alpine.js, load them with a delay using the Intersection Observer API and thus improve the accessibility of your own site and content.
SetupDownload Astro Boilerplate
If our boilerplate isn’t right for you, that’s no problem. The steps for implementing dynamic imports work in any project with Alpine.js.
In the following steps, we will install the dependencies required for the subsequent implementation of dynamic imports.
npm install alpinejs @alpinejs/intersect
To demonstrate the dynamic import, we use Chart.js,
a simple library for the visualization of charts via the
npm install chart.js
After successfully installing all dependencies, we can start our development
environment – in the example of our Astro Boilerplate with
npm run dev:
npm run dev
Preparation of the HTML
To visualize Chart.js in the frontend and to be able to understand our
implementation later, we place a
<canvas> element with the following
Implementation of Chart.js
In our demonstration, we follow the example of the Getting Started
guide of Chart.js and implement a simple bar chart within our
chart(), we register the asynchronous method
which we have already referenced in our
once() we import
registerables asynchronously from the
chart.js package and register all required modules of Chart.js
Finally, the bar chart is implemented with a rudimentary data set. Further information on the functionality of Chart.js can be found in the corresponding documentation.
Configuration of Alpine.js
For reasons of clarity, we have moved the
chart() method to a separate file,
which we must now reference when initializing Alpine.
However, before we can reference our method in Alpine, we have to initialize
intersect plugin. With
Alpine.plugin(intersect) the imported plugin can
be initialized and made available via Alpine.
Finally, we add the directive
Alpine.data("chart", chart) to the
We first presented our pattern for development with Alpine.js in our article Temporary and persistent state management with Alpine.js.
Once we have made all the adjustments, we can verify our desired results with the network analysis of the browser dev tools.
In our scenario, the Chart.js library is only loaded via
once() when the
<canvas> element enters the viewport for the first time.
Assuming that we need the entire library for our project, we have reduced the initial transfer by ~70 kB (gzip) with this implementation.
The implementation of Chart.js is just one of many examples in which dynamic imports help to reduce the initial transfer of a website and make content accessible more quickly.
This function is not limited to libraries. It can also be used for more complex components or larger data sets with little additional effort.
In a further step, the loading of this content can be bridged with a loading animation that is controlled via a data object in Alpine.
In this article, we demonstrated how to use Alpine.js and the Intersection Observer API to delay the loading of libraries like Chart.js until they are needed, improving load time and user experience.


hax11 is a hackbrary to Hook and Augment X11 protocol calls.
I initially created hax11 to work around poor MST support in Linux GPU drivers; however, its use outgrew its initial purpose. hax11 was initially based on kislotniq’s simple dell4khack library, however it no longer shares any code with its ancestor, and now uses a different approach (intercepting the X11 socket connection instead of library calls).
hax11 attempts to fix game and full-screen application issues on Linux, such as:
- starting on the wrong monitor
- spanning too many monitors
- spanning one half of a tiled (MST) monitor (such as some 4K/5K/8K monitors)
- refusing to allow selecting a desired resolution
It can also work around some common annoyances:
- exclusively grabbing the mouse or keyboard
- forcefully pausing the game when the window loses focus
- not restricting the mouse cursor to its window/monitor
- messing with the X PRIMARY selection
More information on the project’s GitHub page.
Note: this article is back-dated, and was originally written on 2018-11-06.


Here is a beautiful Penguin Classics edition of the timeless Odyssey by Homer. There always is a good reason to (re)read this eternal classic. The flawless and poetic language, the Greek culture, the avant-gardiste women’s role, and of course the cultural impact on our modern literature – from Margaret Atwood and James Joyce to Jean Giraudoux and André Gide.
Everyone knows the Odyssey. It is one of the most important foundational works of Western literature; the title has become a common noun. Even if you haven’t read the Odyssey itself, you have a sense of what an odyssey is. The homeward wanderer, the giants and witches that threaten to prevent his return, his faithful wife, his battle to reclaim his house. The Odyssey endures partly because it is a brilliantly told, highly engaging story, and partly because it addresses themes that people can still identify with. Although the world of Homer is vastly different from our own, and the heroic and supernatural elements of the tale place it firmly outside the naturalistic realm, the psychology of the characters still rings true, and fabulous events are easily interpreted as metaphors for the more mundane trials experienced by every human being.
The notion of life as a journey fraught with intrigue, temptation, romance and peril is so familiar that it has become a cliché, but it still has rich potential for original elaboration, and the Odyssey has inspired countless works which use elements of Homer’s tale for their own purposes. Some are retellings of the whole epic, ranging from simple adaptations, designed to make it briefer and more accessible without altering it in any important way, to radical up-datings. Some recount the story from another point of view, giving us a fresh perspective on the events. Some take a minor incident as the basis for a new, fully imagined story, one that overlaps only slightly with Homer’s Odyssey; some deviate from Homer’s account of events, proposing new outcomes. The most ambitious are grand re-imaginings that use the Odyssey as a framework on which to construct a new fully developed fictional world. Each of these derivitive works has its own integrity, like any work of literature, each also responds to the aesthetic standards of its period: constantly shifting notions of what a work of literature should sound like, and what function it should serve.


Air University http://www.au.af.mil/ located at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, with numerous subordinate schools and colleges.
Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) http://call.army.mil/ Operated at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. Fully searchable website of newsletters, reports, and guidebooks relating to operational lessons learned from Army and Joint operations, exercises, and contingencies. A think tank of the Air University, the website includes the full-text archive of Airpower, the Air Force’s premier scholarly journal, as well as discussion threads relating to articles in the journal.
Naval Postgraduate School http://www.nps.edu/ “Located in Monterey, California. Naval and Joint higher education institution with excellent resources in the fields of naval sciences; command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence (C4I), information warfare, and space systems.
Military Education Research Library Network (MERLN) Combined online catalogs of eight of the largest Defense Department academic and institutional libraries.
Air University Library Located at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, the largest Defense Department library and largest federal government library outside of Washington. The Air University Bibliographies, compiled by librarians at the library, are increasingly online, and contain subject references to Internet resources and citations to books, documents, and journal articles. The Air University Index of Military Periodicals, also online, contains bibliographic references to the specialized military periodical literature from 1990 to the present.
Navy Department Library Excellent and well organized homepage for the combined resources of the (modest) Navy Library in Washington, DC and extensive resources.
Redstone Scientific Information Center Located at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, a comprehensive scientific and technical library with abstracts of over 300,000 books and technical reports concentrating on ordnance, missiles, and weapon systems. The Redstone Arsenal Historical Information website is perhaps one of the finest multi-media official military collections online, with historical documents, photographs, and videos chronicling Cold War Army missile developments.
Armed Forces Publication Repositories
Washington Headquarters Services Directives and Records Branch Online library of Defense Department official directives and instructions.
Air Force Material Command (AFMC) Publishing Distribution Library Online library of Air Force and AFMC publications and regulations, as well as the gateway to other DOD publishing libraries. Air Force Technology Area Plans (TAPS), prepared annually by AFMC, are projections of the state of technological developments in a dozen areas, and are available for downloading. Repository of Army regulations, orders, and pamphlets.
Army Training Digital Library The Army’s “electronic library without walls” contains a growing online full-text library of Field Manuals (FMs), training plans, training circulars, Mission Training Plans, Soldier’s Manuals, and other training, informational, doctrinal and reference publications of the Army. Links are also provided to publications of the other military services such as the Marine Corps as well as Joint Publications.
Joint Electronic Library (JEL) Online library of the full-text of unclassified joint doctrinal-related publications, selected service doctrine publications, and related papers and studies.
Marine Corps Combat Development Command (CDC) Domino
Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology (“ACQWeb”) The main weapons and systems starting point for DOD-wide research, development, test, and acquisition programs. Includes the LabLINK homepage of military and federal research laboratory resources, the Acquisition Reform Homepage, and other acquisition-related websites, such as the DOD Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR).
Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) The DOD Comptroller website has the full documentation of the Defense Department budget request to Congress online.
Research and Development Descriptive Summaries Searchable depository of Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) Programs and Program Elements (PE Numbers) justification material for Fiscal Years 1995 to the present, as presented to Congress.
Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Acquisition) (“Air Force Acquisition Homepage”) Searchable site dealing with all aspects of acquisition policy, contracting, and program management. The site is a gateway to Air Force contracting and business opportunities.
Assistant Secretary of the Army, Financial Management and Comptroller (“Army Financial Management WWW”) Army budgets and supporting documentation in detail from fiscal years 1995 to the present.
Navy Budget Page Navy and Marine Corps budget justification materials as submitted to Congress.
Navy long-range Acquisition Estimates Fully-searchable site.
Hanscom Electronic RFP Bulletin Board (HERBB) The model for a command-level electronic commerce and procurement website, in this case for the Electronics Systems Center at Hanscom AFB, Massachusetts.
Armed Forces Service, Base and Command Sites
European Command (EUCOM) The best of the unified command websites.
U.S. Forces Korea/Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) Well-organized site with the excellent Publications Distribution Library (mentioned above).
Air Force Personnel Center
Human Systems Center
U.S. Air Force Museum
U.S. Air Forces In Europe (USAFE) http://www.usafe.af.mil/
Army Air Defense Artillery Center and School http://bliss-www.army.mil
Army Corps of Engineers http://www.usace.army.mil/ Another model for a well-organized, fully-searchable, fact-filled website.
Army Forces Command (FORSCOM) http://www.forscom.army.mil
Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) http://www-tradoc.army.mil/
Naval Research Laboratory http://www.nrl.navy.mil/ The website covers basic research issues concerning the naval environment.
Naval Sea Systems Command http://www.navsea.navy.mil
Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division http://www.crane.navy.mil
Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division http://www.nswc.navy.mil
U.S. Pacific Fleet http://www.cpf.navy.mil/
Marine Corps Combat Development Command http://184.108.40.206
Marine Corps Systems Command http://www.marcorsyscom.usmc.mil
Special Subject Armed Forces Sites
Air Combat Command Center for Lessons Learned http://redwood.do.langley.af.mil
Center of Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance http://coe.tamc.amedd.army.mil/ Located at Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii, and operated by Pacific Command (PACOM), this site covers all aspects of humanitarian assistance and disaster response and preparedness.
Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence and Electronic Warfare Project Book http://cecom5.monmouth.army.mil/intranet/prjbk98.nsf Alphabetical, nomenclature, and system/equipment name index and database of descriptions of Army C4I-related projects and programs.
DOD Base Closure and Community Reinvestment http://www.acq.osd.mil/iai/bccr.htm
GulfLINK The Persian Gulf War Veterans Illnesses Task Force initiated in 1995, contains background information and up-to-date research and analysis relating to the Gulf War, including a searchable index of full-text declassified documents.
Inspector General of the Department of Defense
Navstar Global Positioning System (GPS) Joint Program Office
Navy Base Closures Staff
Test and Evaluation (T&E) Community Network (TECNET) Homepage of the DOD test and evaluation community, with references, news, and numerous bulletin boards.
Other Resources of Interest to Military Members and Families


Location: Cincinnati, OH Construction Schedule: 8 months Type of Project: Masonry Customer: Messer Construction The Price Hill Library was the first branch to receive renovations as part of the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library Facility Master Plan. Due to the historic nature of the building and a large masonry scope, there was no better partner for this project than SSRG. Check out another recent historic restoration by our team. Constructed in 1909, this branch provided the Price Hill Community with literature and a place to gather for more than a century. The brick structure is one of the first of nine area libraries built by the Andrew Carnegie Foundation. A roof collapse in 2018 caused the library to close its doors. But in the darkness, they found the light. The team at Fishbech, Thompson & Huber, Inc. developed a design that created a modern look while honoring the many historic features of the space. Its historic features include a roof with tin deck and slate slopes, fleur-de-lis grids over the doors, and bird head door handles. The SSRG masonry team brought the design to life, preserving and expanding the French Renaissance-style brick and limestone building. Explore another project involving extensive historic masonry work. After creating new door openings in the original structure and filling in some of the existing openings, our team began the addition. The new construction more than doubled the original square footage. The new building is 100% masonry construction. Wall construction involved 5,600 SF of concrete block The exterior required 3,313 SF of brick veneer—2,500 SF of utility brick veneer, and 813 SF of modular brick veneer. The library officially re-opened in April of 2021 and is a well-loved part of the community.


In the wake of the Coronavirus Pandemic where the very essence of styles of worship have changed, and new habits have sprung up, many Christians have been filled with questions regarding how they ought to worship, how they ought to receive the sacraments, and so on. I’ve specifically been asked frequently by Catholics about the “how” of the sacrament of reconciliation at this time, with particular reference to those who are quarantined and can’t receive any physical pastoral care.
There’s good news!
In a new book compiled by the Dicastery of Communications of the Holy See, Pope Francis has extended Plenary Indulgence to Catholic faithful who are “suffering from Coronavirus, who are subject to quarantine by order of the health authority in hospitals or in their own homes if, with a spirit detached from any sin, they unite spiritually through the media to the celebration of Holy Mass, the recitation of the Holy Rosary, to the pious prac-tice of the Way of the Cross or other forms of devotion, or if at least they will recite the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and a pious invocation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, offering this trial in a spirit of faith in God and charity towards their brothers and sisters, with the will to fulfil the usual conditions (sacramental confession, Eucharistic commun-ion and prayer according to the Holy Father’s intentions), as soon as possible.”
The Association for Catholic Information in Africa reports that “The 192-page book is available for download on the website of the Vatican’s publishing house, the Libreria Editrice Vaticana…The book, which is called “Strong in the Face of Tribulation: The Church in Communion – a Sure Support in Time of Trial” and has an image of the Archangel Michael on its cover, is divided into three parts.
The first part contains prayers, rituals and supplications, including prayers for the sick and for liberation from evil. The second explains how Catholics can continue to practice the faith without the support of the Sacraments. The third section gathers together Pope Francis’ reflections since the pandemic struck.
The Vatican has promised that the PDF copy will be updated from time to time with free copies of the updated versions always available for Download.
Stay safe! God bless you greatly!
God bless the Pope and the Most Holy Roman Catholic Church.


Exceptional Performances Bring Single Mother’s Struggles to Life
Full Time (À plein temps)
Year Released: 2021, 2023 Music Box Films streaming and DVD
Runtime: 1h 28m
Director(s): Éric Gravel
Writer(s): Éric Gravel
Cast: Laure Calamy, Anne Suarez, Geneviève Mnich, Nolan Arizmendi, Sasha Lemaitre Cremaschi, Cyril Gueï, Lucie Gallo, Agathe Dronne, Mathilde Weil, Dana Fiaque, Mareme N'Diaye
Language: French with English subtitles
Where To Watch: now available on DVD and digital https://www.musicboxfilms.com/film/full-time/
RAVING REVIEW: Prepare yourself for an equally entertaining and thought-provoking cinematic journey. Éric Gravel's FULL TIME takes us through the ups and downs of the life of Julie Roy; a character brilliantly brought to life by Laure Calamy. This film celebrates the resilience of the human spirit as we follow Julie's everyday struggles as a single mother.
FULL TIME delivers a powerful narrative that keeps viewers satiated. Calamy's performance beautifully complements Gravel's keen direction, while Irène Drésel's electrifying score further intensifies the film. We explore universally relatable themes, dissecting societal challenges, the government's responsibility in supporting its citizens, and the pursuit of stability in a chaotic world. The movie's ability to provoke introspection and self-reflection in viewers showcases the power of its storytelling.
Set in the backdrop of Paris, Julie, a hotel maid and single mother, contends with many challenges, from her ex-husband's debts and low wages to her children's nanny quitting and strikes jeopardizing her punctuality at work. Gravel's directorial finesse captures the ever-present tension, creating an atmosphere that resonates with viewers.
A notable aspect of FULL TIME is Julie's sense of isolation, this is done through various ways throughout the film, but arguably the most potent form is showing how Julie just doesn’t have time for others—underscoring the harsh realities of modern life, making Julie's story all the more poignant and relevant.
As a recipient of the Best Director and Best Actress Horizons (Orizzonti) awards at the Venice Film Festival, FULL TIME stands as a testament to the skill and dedication of its cast and crew. The film dodges clichés and melodrama, providing an enjoyable experience while delivering a meaningful message, a rare feat for any movie. Instead, offering a fresh perspective on human nature's heroic and imperfect aspects.
In conclusion, FULL TIME is a riveting and thought-provoking film that skillfully showcases the challenges faced by a single mother in an accessible and engaging way. With exceptional performances, a directorial style that accentuates the gritty realism of life's trials, and a unique blend of genres, FULL TIME is a must-watch for everyone, not just movie buffs.
For more reviews, please visit - https://linktr.ee/Overlyhonestmoviereviews for more info.
Follow me on Letterboxd, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Find my social media accounts on most platforms simply by searching Overly Honest Movie Reviews.
I’m always happy to hear from my readers; please say hi or send me any questions about movies.
[photo courtesy of MUSIC BOX FILMS]


The Akashic records (akasha is a Sanskrit word meaning “sky”, “space” or “aether”) is a term used in theosophy (and Anthroposophy) to describe a compendium of mystical knowledge encoded in a non-physical plane of existence. These records are described as containing all knowledge of human experience and the history of the cosmos. They are metaphorically described as a library; other analogies commonly found in discourse on the subject include a “universal supercomputer” and the “Mind of God”. People who describe the records assert that they are constantly updated automatically and that they can be accessed through astral projection or when someone is placed under deep hypnosis. The concept was popularized in the theosophical movements of the 19th century and is derived from Hindu philosophy of Samkhya. It is promulgated in the Samkhya philosophy that the Akashic records are automatically recorded in the atoms of akasha (the equivalent of what Aristotle called “aether”), one of the five types of atoms visualized as existing in the atomic theory of Ancient India, called Mahabhuta. In Buddhism it is taught one reason that people knew Gautama Buddha had attained enlightenment as a Buddha was because he was able to remember all of the details of all of his past lives by accessing them on the akashic records. The term akashic records is frequently used in New Age discourse.


Today, Richard Wilson and I launched a petition, with the help of a few other great people. Knowing the wealth of knowledge that is stored in the archives of the ICTY, we are concerned that insufficient attention is paid to its preservation.
Within hours, the petition was endorsed by renown experts in international law and many others who care about the region. The petition will be online for a while at http://ictylegacy.org and can be found below
Open the Archives of the Yugoslavia Tribunal!
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia holds a repository of over ten million unique items of immense value. It is of utmost importance that its preservation and accessibility are guaranteed.
The establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 1993 was a milestone in the international community’s pursuit of global justice. While violence was raging in the former Yugoslav states of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, the UN Security Council made a commitment to punish those responsible for the atrocities committed by all parties to the conflict. Today, twenty-two years after its founding, it has completed 147 highly complex cases. Trials against four final high-profile suspects – including Bosnian Serb President Karadžić and Bosnian Serb Army General Mladić – are expected to be completed in the coming year. When the Tribunal closes its doors in 2017 its contribution to international justice will be undeniable.
The international prosecution of war criminals has relied on evidence found in official documents from political and military units, personal diaries and note books of the accused, meeting transcripts and witness statements. Further, the prosecution has made use of photographs, films, radio recordings and numerous other sources. All these unique materials are currently stored in the repository of the Tribunal’s Office of the Prosecutor. They form the key to understanding the dark pages of the region’s history that left over 100,000 people dead.
With the imminent closure of the Tribunal, it is essential that its guarantors commit to the development of this vast and unique collection of materials into a consolidated and easily accessible archive. There are three important reasons why this commitment should form a priority in the Tribunal’s completion strategy, all three related to the establishment of a historical record of the wars that tore apart the former Yugoslavia.
First of all, the repository contains information that could help victims’ relatives find out what happened to their loved ones. While most victims of the wars have been identified and buried, many relatives still search for information on the exact circumstances under which deaths have occurred. They deserve to have access to the Tribunal’s sources that could provide the answers they need to cope with their losses. That archives can provide such support to survivors is proven by the German Holocaust archive in Bad Arolsen, which performs a similar function for Holocaust survivors. More than 70 years after the end of the Second World War, the archive still responds to thousands of requests from victim-relatives every year.
Secondly, the materials represent an unrivalled source to historians of the region’s violent past, who attempt to establish the causes of the crimes. Establishing a baseline of historical truth about the violence is essential to learn the lessons of the past and prevent recurrence in the future. But the scientific value of the materials goes far beyond the particular region where the crimes occurred. Social scientific research on mass violence has increased our understanding of armed conflict and is gives us vital insights into identifying the political, societal, cultural and psychological factors that lead to these atrocious crimes.
Finally, the creation of an accessible archive is a matter of integrity and fulfilling institutional promises. When the Dayton Agreement put a formal end to the war in November 1995, the Tribunal’s then President Antonio Cassese stated that “justice is an indispensable ingredient of the process of national reconciliation.” Indeed, while the Dayton agreement brought peace in the strictest terms – the end of military confrontation – war-torn societies require a long-term process of reconciliation and healing in order to create peace in a broader and more sustainable sense. Reconciliation is aided by the type of historical records created through the Tribunal’s proceedings, which prevents denial of the atrocities committed and provides counter-balance to any attempt at political manipulation of history. To live up to its commitment to long-term peace through reconciliation, it only makes sense that the Tribunal makes its records available to support this process.
The records of the Tribunal thus carry major potential value to survivors of the wars, scientists concerned with understanding its causes and to the credibility of the Tribunal itself. In particular, the repository of the Prosecutor’s Office contains a vast amount of invaluable material, most of which has not even been fully utilized in the Tribunal’s many trials. To fulfill this potential, the repository needs to be structured into a full-fledged archive. Given that most of the materials have already been digitized, this should be a relatively straightforward and low-cost process. We fully respect the need to maintain confidentiality and are not seeking access to confidential items such as witness statements. Further, a rational mechanism must be developed to allow access to its sources, while respecting the confidentiality and sensitivity of documents. To do this successfully, the Tribunal will need to call in experts from existing archives that perform comparable functions, such as the aforementioned German Holocaust archive.
As the Tribunal prepares to close its doors and transfer its records to the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in the next year, there is urgency to these tasks, as employees with valuable knowledge of the repository’s content are leaving the Tribunal. While a team of competent archivists is currently processing the archives, a well-articulated policy must still be developed to ensure the accessibility of the full archives for posterity. There is also a need to develop a user-friendly and powerful software interface to allow detailed and thorough searches of the electronic material. We recommend that the Tribunal call in experts from existing archives that perform comparable functions, such as the aforementioned German Holocaust archive. Further, we recommend the establishment of an external advisory committee made up of renowned archivists and ICTY research experts that would support the Tribunal in the development of its policies for the archive.
With the establishment of the Tribunal twenty two years ago the international community altered the course of history by making an unprecedented commitment to global justice. Now, it is time to make sure that the Tribunal’s legacy is preserved so that its history lives on.
- Dr. Saskia Baas, Lecturer, Universiteit van Amsterdam
- Prof. dr. Richard Ashby Wilson, Gladstein Chair of Human Rights, Professor of Law and Anthropology, University of Connecticut


SIU has many academic resources to help you succeed, including: free/discounted software, computer labs, technology enhanced classrooms, scholarships and study abroad programs. To see all SIU academic resources and services scroll down this page. Click the red button or activate the Chatbot to get additional help.
Start entering a word to find help or resources.
Call 911 if you need immediate medical attention or have a medical emergency.
Morris Library has 3-D printers which allows users to create physical objects from digital models. All members of the university community and public are encouraged to make use of this new technology. To get started, fill out and submit a request form.
The academic calendar includes important information about holiday closures, final exams, and intersession dates. The School of Law has academic calendars that may differ slightly from the Registrar's. If you are in the School of Law, please refer to their academic calendars for information.
The Office of the Registrar regularly updates their list of academic deadlines including graduation, registration, and billing deadlines. View their website to stay up-to-date on important information.
SIU’s academic advisers are here to teach, guide, and support students. Advisers will help you navigate degree requirements, development opportunities, and campus resources. Every college has unique advisement information; refer to their individual websites.
Stuck on a research paper? Need help finding a book? Start a live chat with a Morris librarian. They will help you find whatever you need, from wherever you are.
BigDawg is a 34.7 TereFLOP supercomputer with computing speeds comparable to the fastest academic supercomputers in the world. It is available to students at no cost for intensive research activities. If you can imagine it, you can do it with BigDawg! If you’re not sure what to do with the supercomputer, there are also project ideas to get you started.
There are many academic computer labs and technology-enabled classrooms throughout campus. Some labs are Mac or PC only, while others may have a mixture of devices. All labs include software and tools to help you succeed!
The Computer Learning Centers (CLC’s) are the computer labs managed by the Office of Information Technology. As with the departmental computer labs, the CLC’s offer a mixture of devices and all include software and tools to help you succeed. The CLC’s also have printer access.
The Dean of Students (and the Dean’s office) actively partner with the campus community to provide transformational, holistic programs and services that challenge and empower students to learn, serve, and succeed. The Dean of Students also actively assists students with academic or university concerns.
Degree Works is a web-based tool that helps students and academic advisors monitor a student’s progress toward degree completion. It provides an easy-to-read worksheet that shows students how courses they have taken at SIU (or transferred) count towards degree requirements.
Disability Support Services (DSS) provides academic and programmatic support services to students with permanent or temporary disabilities. These services range from alternate format textbooks and closed captioning to transportation and housing assessments. To contact DSS, visit Woody Hall B104 or call (618) 453-5738.
D2L (also referred to as MyCourses) is the online location for all your course information and materials. Depending on the course, D2L may be used by your instructors for group discussions, quizzes, exams, and/or assignment submission.
FAFSA is a financial aid application meant to assist students with paying for their academic career. Your eligibility for grants and student loans will be determined by the information provided in your application. There are many other financial aid options, information, and tools available for students. To learn more, view our Financial Resource page.
Morris Library offers a family-friend study room for parents to utilize. Room 320D has a variety of toys, books, and movies for children to use while their parent studies.
The Office of Information Technology offers a variety of free and discounted software to students. Students must submit a request for the software and will usually receive a response within 24-48 business hours. Not sure what software is available? View a list of software that you can request.
Get information about SIU’s grading system, auditing a class, your scholastic standing, or calculating your current GPA.
Graduate students can file an academic grievance if some member of the university community has caused the student to suffer specific harm related to a matter within the authority of the Dean of the Graduate School.
The University Honors Program (UHP) is a university-wide undergraduate program intended to reward SIU's best students for their high academic achievements. The program offers a variety of stimulating classes that satisfy University Core Curriculum, as well as the student's major requirements.
Interlibrary Loan allows you to request books from libraries across the United States and around the world if Morris Library doesn’t have them. The books will be sent to SIU for you to check out, use, and return – all at no cost to you.
Morris Library has laptops available for students to checkout for four-hour time periods while studying in the library.
Morris Library offers course-related instruction, and online materials designed to help students develop and complete their assignments. Students may request one-on-one sessions with a librarian. Every session is customized to assist with your specific topic, assignment, or need.
Morris Library has a variety of study rooms available for reservation. These rooms are ideal for students that are looking for an undisturbed location to study, or for groups looking for a centralized location to work together. Room sizes, furniture, and setup will vary.
MyCourses (also referred to as D2L) is the online location for all your course information and materials. Depending on the class, MyCourses may be used by your instructor for group discussions, quizzes, exams, and/or assignment submission.
SalukiTech Campus-Wide Printing Services (CWPS) provides and maintains printers for students to use. These printers are conveniently located in more than 30 locations across campus — including Computer Learning Centers, Morris Library, and campus housing.
You can add or drop classes, as well as view your concise student schedule, your week at a glance, or your past registration history. Students are encouraged to meet with and discuss any changes with their academic advisors.
Students with questions or concerns regarding registration should contact their academic advisors first. Registration problems that advisors cannot handle should be referred to Tamara Workman, registrar, at the Registrar’s Office, Student Services Building, Room 251, (618) 453-2963 or email@example.com.
Saluki Cares offers students a supportive and encouraging partnership by linking them with the appropriate resources. They will assist you with academic or financial concerns, among a variety of other issues.
SalukiNet is a single sign-on web portal that connects students to important services and tools. It is an easy way for students to find class registration, bursar bills, financial aid, course information, and much more – all in one centralized location.
Many scholarship opportunities are available to students throughout the year. Learn about the scholarships that are currently available and how you can apply for them.
View your student records, request a copy of your transcript and find out if you have any active holds on your account.
SIU offers study abroad programs to many diverse countries that range from two weeks to an academic year. There are options for every student’s interest.
The Center for Learning Support Services makes tutoring available to all on-campus students. We provide tutoring primarily for 100 and 200 level Core Curriculum courses and select upper level courses.
The University Bookstore sells textbooks, apparel, accessories, gifts and collectibles, supplies, and technology such as laptops and phones. Textbook rental is also available. If you find a textbook somewhere else at a lower cost, we will also price match!
The Writing Center provides free writing assistance that helps all students, including undergraduates and graduates from any department, develop their writing skills and become more aware and confident writers. Whether in-person or online, tutors will work with students at any stage of the writing process and discuss with them how to focus the meeting on the students' individual writing concerns.


Over the last 24+ years, I’ve had the privilege of working with over 100 organizations in industries spanning education, healthcare, automotive, non-profit, government, and more, ranging from Fortune 500s to startups.Non-profit Education For-profit Government
Web and Mobile App UX/UI
Lead the award-winning user experience work for Truth For Life's website and mobile app.
Lead human-centered design thinking sessions that align goals with user needs.
Responsive Web App UX
Lead the user experience work for the first major integrations of outside publishing resources.
Establish the user journey and workflow for desktop and mobile experiences.
Lead persona development, journey maps, workflows, UX & UI for a complex digital experience.
Award Winning UX/UI
Develope wireframes and workflows for the university's multi-campus library system.
Deliver a revamped information architecture and user experience.
Design the first-of-a-kind gamification strategy for campaign advancement.
Lead the industry recognized UX and UI work for all digital properties.


Jeffrey Wolf está buscando reunir fondos para realizar un documental sobre la vida y obra de Bill Traylor. Para colaborar y mayor información, este enlace en Kickstarter:
A documentary film about a man born into slavery who became one of the most important artists of the 20th century
Bill Traylor was many things: a slave, a sharecropper, a father, and one of the most significant American artists of the 20th century. He lived in Alabama through the most chaotic and violent period in our history when everything in society and nature conspired to drag powerless people like Traylor under.
But, instead of disappearing, Bill Traylor soared.
Near the end of his long life, Traylor sat down, by the corner of Monroe Street, in the heart of Montgomery’s black business district and drew. It was between 1939-1942, working with astonishing patience and focus, that Traylor created over 1000 works of singular genius that today still bear witness to his ordinary, extraordinary life and times.
If ever there was a story about the redemptive power of art and transcendence of the human spirit, this is it.
Who was Bill Traylor?
Bill Traylor was born in 1853 on an Alabama cotton plantation owned by John Traylor in Dallas County, Alabama. Born into slavery, Traylor was about twelve years old when the Civil War ended, ending his legal servitude but not the basics of his way of life: he continued to live near his birthplace for another six decades, working as a farm laborer and contract farmer for the Traylor family until the late 1920s. Aging and alone, he moved to Montgomery and worked odd jobs in the segregated black neighborhood.
A decade later, in his late eighties, too weak to work, Traylor became homeless and started to draw and paint, both past memories from plantation days and current scenes of a radically changing culture in which black people had their own businesses, schools, churches, clothing and hair styles, music, food-ways and more. Traylor witnessed profound social and political change. Raised by parents who had lived their whole lives as slaves, Traylor came of age with the first generation of African American citizens.
His life ultimately spanned slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, segregation and the Great Migration—which led most of his children away from the South. Traylor’s generation had little and struggled inestimably; yet they stood together, persisted, and laid the groundwork for the coming era of Civil Rights.
Traylor’s story is the ultimate American story. Having never learned to read or write, Traylor created his own visual language as a means to communicate and record the stories of his life. Traylor had an amazing way with color and is often compared to jazz and the blues; he translated an oral culture into something original, powerful, culturally rooted and entirely personal.
But music and folktales were much better at surviving than physical objects that demanded care, and Traylor’s art is the sole body of work made by a black artist of his era to survive. He made over a thousand drawings and paintings on discarded cardboard between 1939 and 1942; this body of work is truly a national treasure.
My introduction to artist Bill Traylor came with the 1982 watershed exhibit “Black Folk Art in America” at the Smithsonian Corcoran Museum of Art. I had applied for a small grant to film the opening and interview a number of the living artists who were able to attend, e.g. Blues musician and sculptor James ‘Son Ford’ Thomas, South Carolina artist Sam Doyle, Alabama’s Mose Tolliver, and woodcarver Elijah Pierce, to name a few.
Through the years I’ve made short films using that footage, always thinking about how to document Bill Traylor in a feature-length film. Over the more than three decades since that first encounter, my interest in Traylor continued to intensify with a desire to unravel and delve deeper into his art through the context of Southern culture and the complexities of the Jim Crow South.
Today, Bill Traylor is one of the most celebrated self-taught artists, with one of the most remarkable and unlikely biographies. Now, coming full circle, my documentary film Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts will premiere at the opening of a retrospective of his work at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, organized by curator of Folk and Self-Taught Art Leslie Umberger.
Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts offers a unique perspective on a turbulent and often misunderstood century of Southern history, and on the experience of ordinary black people in extraordinary times; it also offers an inspiring lesson on the stubborn persistence of the human spirit, and the transcendent power of human creativity.
Using animation, new interviews, archival photography, musical and dance performances, dramatic readings, and, most importantly, Traylor’s striking drawings and paintings, Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts is a 90-minute documentary designed to bring the spirit of his unforgettable work to life onscreen, and to introduce one of America’s most important and famous artists you’ve never heard of.
The film prominently features Traylor’s enigmatic drawings and paintings, whose genius resides in their ability to tell their own stories. We will use them as Traylor drew them—as a way to conjure up the world that lived in his memory of a vanished rural past, and to respond to what he saw from the margins of an early 20th century Southern city.
As a seasoned filmmaker and finding a collaborating partner in writer/producer Fred Barron, we have mined the archives, explored Traylor’s plantation life and Montgomery migration, researched the context of Southern black culture and history, interviewed authorities in these fields, and compiled a resource of Traylor’s known pieces of art.


Publication Release – Inward Outward 2021
On October 13–15, 2021, the second edition of the Inward Outward symposium took place online. Initiated between the KITLV and Sound & Vision, and with special support from the RCMC, Inward Outward brought together archival practitioners, artists, academics, and researchers to explore the status of moving image and sound archives as they intertwine with questions of coloniality, identity and race, focusing specifically around the theme of Emotion in the Archive.
Today, we’re proud to release the second Inward Outward publication Emotion in the Archive: A Publication of the 2021 Inward Outward Symposium.
Conceived as a way to further discussions that surfaced during the symposium, this digital publication collects different contributions from the speakers of Inward Outward. Across this publication 12 individual texts unfold, interrogating the interrelation of emotion and archival practices as they intersect with coloniality: Where do we encounter emotions, affects and feelings in the archive? How are these captured in both sounds and moving images and in the practices used to organise the archive? And, most pressingly, how do these emotions inspire us to unlearn and undo the dominant imperial practices and discourses that have determined our work so far?
The publication begins with an abridged version of the symposium’s opening conversation, “Anger and Defiance and the Archive”, in which Amal Alhaag and Teresa Cisneros reflected on feeling everything from rage to boredom to amusement as they work in colonial archives, and what actions they take in response to those emotions.
Inspired by their talk, Stevie Nolten shares a series of questions that probe the nature and detail of “Anger in the Archive”.
Wigbertson Julian Isenia explores transnational dialogues between Black, LGBTQI+ intellectuals in “Love and Compassion amid Many Adversities: On Black, Queer Archival Practices”. In doing so, Julian embraces the often, but not always, contradictory relationships between love, critique and personal and institutional change.
Eliza Steinbock offers contemplations of discomfort by encouraging white readers in particular to lean into difficult emotions in “White Affect Caught in the Colonial Act: The Cultural Archive of Shame and Guilt”.
Mary Huelsbeck shares a description of the Wendy Clark Collection’s Love Tapes, a video art installation, and explores the unique contribution of audio and visual archives to the discussion of emotion.
Centring the body in a dialogue between present and past, Cécile Accilien examines her own body as “a record of practices [and] values that date back centuries” and help her navigate her individual connections to collective history in “My Hair Is My Archive”.
In “Algerian Letters: The Jewellers of the Oumah”, keynote speaker Ariella Aïsha Azoulay ponders whether, when one’s ancestors have been doubly disappeared from colonial archives, it is possible to trace their experiences and existences through their craft and the objects they created.
In “Item Cannot be Displayed: Refusal as a Modality of Care”, Carine Zaayman reflects on the significance of objects and their curation in light of her recent experience of the Jagger Library fire at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. She shows us how these reflections on loss and care resulted in a different kind of intervention during a workshop she facilitated at the symposium, where participants decided not to share the objects they had brought with them to the workshop.
Taking the question of objects from the material to the digital plane, Daniela Agostinho first contemplates her discomfort with being involved in the digitisation process in “Encounters with the Danish Colonial Archive: Affect, Labour and Spaces of Care”; she then seeks insight and inspiration from artist Jeannete Ehlers’s installation Black Is a Beautiful Word. I & I (Encountering the Danish Colonial Archive) which creates context for and dialogue with what had been a static, colonial image.
Imara Limon and Inez van der Scheer explore the reframing of colonially implicated material in an adaptation of their presentation which explored curatorial practice at the Amsterdam Museum and how shame and guilt are connected to a research project and exhibition about the Golden Coach. To think beyond museum collections as they currently exist, they also speak to the museum’s collaborations with artists, asking how critical art practices can interact with museum practices and their collections, while also complicating such relationships.
In “The Museum Visits a Therapist”, visual artists Mirjam Linschooten and Sameer Farooq share images and descriptions of their film of the same name, which explores the similarities and connections between symptoms of and treatment for trauma and the processes by which workers restore colonial-era objects at the Tropenmuseum, the Netherlands’ largest ethnographic museum.
Finally, in “How to Hold an Image”, Jue Yang shares her process of “interrupting the colonial gaze” by contextualising images produced for the Dutch colonial project and juxtaposing them with images of their creators and traces of herself.
We welcome you to download the publication.
If you have any thoughts or reflections in reading this publication we invite you to get in touch with us at: firstname.lastname@example.org


Lusaka City Libraries
Lusaka City Council offers library services in the city in three locations; in the Central Business District (CBD), Chilenje, Matero and Mtendere suburbs.
We offer a variety of research and reading materials including education books, research papers, archives and magazines. The libraries also stock periodicals and daily newspapers including Times of Zambia, Zambia Daily Mail and The Post.
The Internet cafe is available for those who want to surf the web or bring along your laptop and use our Wi-Fi. This service is available at the Main City Library in the CBD.
The exhibition hall is available where embassies, international organizations and business houses use for cultural and commercial exhibitions from time to time. Our children section carters for young readers by providing suitable materials for them.
Membership is open to all those who visit, work or in Lusaka city. We have five categories of membership which includes: Temporary, Juvenile (Children at Primary School) , Adult Membership and Special Memberships.
Type of Membership & Charges


This tutorial explores the advantages on using high-order meshes for finite-element modeling of solids using continuum formulations.
In this video, I take you on a behind-the-scenes tour of my custom-built cluster, designed specifically for high-performance parallel computing using OpenSees.
Another tutorial on leveraging the power of OpenSeesPy with gmsh and my library gmsh2opensees. In this one we also look into performing transient analysis in OpenSeesPy with a simple model.
In this tutorial, I teach you how to create wonderful continuum FE models in OpenSeesPy using gmsh as pre and post-processor. We'll be using my new module gmsh2opensees.


"We highly recommend Joe McCabe's WW2 history presentation and display to all schools. We were delighted to welcome Joe to Maryfield College and to experience the fantastic variety of WW2 artefacts he brought to show the students. The girls were fascinated and very engaged in the whole process. This presentation and exhibit of WW2 primary history sources is suitable for all year groups from 1st to 6th year and particularly for History and English classes and equally for Transition Year. It surprised us to learn we were the first all girl's school to experience this as we believe this historical topic and associated artefacts are important for everyone in Irish society." - Finola Ryan, Guidance Counsellor and TY Coordinator, Maryfield College, Dublin.
The WW2 and Ireland history talk and exhibition are amazing. The primary historical sources are ideally suited to Junior and Senior History where Irish and European History interface. Highly recommended!
—Gerry Hand. Former Principal, Castleblayney College, Castleblayney, Co. Monaghan
We highly recommend Joe’s World War 2 and Ireland History Talk and Exhibition to other care homes as an educational and entertaining activity. Uniquely performed to residents with a variety of conditions including visual impairments, dementia, special needs, hearing impairments etc. this presentation is ideal for the purposes of reminiscence, entertainment and education in the nursing home setting. Joe captivates everyone in his audience and brings enormous energy to his presentation. His interaction, understanding and compassion is second to none in what can be a complex setting.
–Naomi McElwaine , Activities Director, Esker Lodge Nursing Home, Cavan.
Many, many thanks for the wonderful talk you gave fifth and sixth class this week. It was interesting and informative. The boys were really focused and engaged well with the material. They were also very impressed by the amount of World War 2 and 'Emergency' artefacts which they could handle. Your presentation was excellent. The delivery was fantastic and we will definitely have you back. Well done and thanks again.
–Jennifer O'Carroll, Deputy Principal Harold Boys' N.S., Dalkey, Co. Dublin.
I would highly recommend this talk and exhibition to any school. The amount of genuine sourced WW2 artifacts on show were just incredible. The children refer to it as “The Best History Lesson Ever” and “Amazing”. Joe’s depth of knowledge is fantastic and he relates it all back to what was happening in Ireland in the years leading up to and during World War 2. His energy and enthusiasm would entice the most reluctant child to learn about WW2 History.
—Catríona Donohue, Principal, St Michael’s N.S, Stradone, Co Cavan.
A fantastic educational experience for the class. Very well presented and engaging for pupils with extensive use of both visual and interactive resources throughout. An inspiring look into our past and the people involved – the boys in my class are still talking about it!
—Mark Hanratty, Teacher, Scoil Mhuire Boys' N.S. Castleblayney, Co Monaghan.
A big thank you to Joe for his excellent presentation to the senior classes in our school on World War 2 history. His wide range of personal knowledge of World War Two and how it affected Ireland during ‘The Emergency’ really held the children's attention. They also really enjoyed the 'hands-on' aspect with the circulation of the many fantastic original artifacts throughout the talk. A great way to bring history to life for children and to give them the opportunity to learn in a different way. Highly recommended!
—Beryl Trenier, Principal, Fairgreen NS, Belturbet, Co. Cavan.


Harry Drew & Joseph Hann
Following official approval of the transfer of the application and claim for a lease, the Paynes sold ‘Coolort’ Station to Harry Drew for 90 pounds. Drew did not hold the property for long and in February, 1854, he wrote to the Chief Commissioner, Crown Lands, requesting that his application and claim for lease be made over to Joseph Hann.
Little is known about Harry Drew, although he is mentioned in a history of the Preston region as one of the first horse-drawn cabbies in the original Preston settlement in the 1860s.
The history of Joseph Hann and his family is much better documented and their presence in the area is remembered by such local names as Hann Inlet, site of the RAN Naval Establishment, and Hann Creek Reserve.
Joseph Hann, a farm labourer, and his family arrived in Australia from Wiltshire in 1851, aboard the ship John Know. The family consisted of Joseph, his wife Elizabeth, four sons – William, James, John and Frank, and a daughter Caroline. They settled at ‘Coolort’ in 1853 and in 1854 were granted pre-emptive right of 640 acres (259 ha) in the southwest corner of Drew’s original Coolart.
However the Hanns were dissatisfied with their land. Despite good rainfall, the bush and scrub and poor native grasses – apart from dingoes and aborigines – prevented effective use of the land. In 1858 the stock assessment for “Coolart” was – 100 horses, 330 cattle, 20 acres cultivated, 620 acres uncultivated, 8000 acres Crown land.
In 1861, the Hanns decided to move to Queensland and Joseph with his sons William and Frank, went north seeking new land. In conjunction with Richard Daintree and other investors, they established Bluff Downs, Maryvale and Lolworth Stations on the Burdekin River, north of Charters Towers.
In 1864 Joseph was drowned in the great Burdekin flood of January 1864. His sons struggled with hostile Aboriginals, speargrass, dingoes and falling wool prices and in 1870 William had to overland their last 19,000 sheep back to Victoria; Lolworth and Bluff Downs were surrendered. William and Frank Hann both went onto to explore large sections of Queensland and Western Australia.


Converge with Matthew N. Hammonds: A Beacon of Hope in the Fight Against Osteosarcoma
Matthew N. Hammonds, a name that symbolizes resilience, hope, and unwavering dedication in the battle against osteosarcoma, is a remarkable author who has dedicated his life to advocating for those affected by this rare bone cancer. His journey is a testament to the transformative power of courage, an innate passion for raising awareness, and a profound belief in the potential to make a difference in the lives of those touched by osteosarcoma. For those who frequent the “Because of Daniel” website, Matthew’s name embodies inspiration, expertise, and a deep affection for the world of cancer awareness and support.
Born in the United States, Matthew’s early life was marked by a sense of compassion, a deep understanding of the human spirit, and a genuine reverence for the strength displayed by individuals battling cancer. Growing up in a society that recognizes the significance of unity in facing health challenges, he developed a deep understanding of the transformative power of support and awareness.
Matthew’s academic journey was heavily influenced by his early immersion in the world of healthcare, patient advocacy, and the dynamics of coping with cancer. He recognized that his life’s calling was to advocate for individuals affected by osteosarcoma, to provide support, and to use his expertise to raise awareness about this rare and challenging form of cancer. As he pursued his education, his fascination with the complexities of cancer care deepened, and his mission to make a difference in the lives of osteosarcoma patients became clear.
Matthew’s journey as an author and advocate for osteosarcoma awareness began when he embarked on his professional career. His passion for supporting cancer patients and his commitment to raising awareness led him to explore various roles in the field. His early experiences as a healthcare worker, cancer awareness advocate, and support group facilitator laid the foundation for his profound understanding of the dynamic world of cancer care.
Over the years, Matthew’s career continued to evolve, marked by a series of accomplishments and an unwavering dedication to the osteosarcoma community. He ventured into the realms of patient advocacy, awareness campaigns, and the creation of resources and initiatives to support patients and their families.
Matthew’s most significant contributions were his tireless efforts to raise awareness about osteosarcoma and to provide support to individuals battling this rare bone cancer. He understood the power of empathy, the importance of information, and the role of a strong support network in the journey of healing. His work involved not only raising awareness but also creating platforms for individuals to share their stories, connect with others, and find solace in knowing they are not alone in their fight.
One of Matthew’s notable accomplishments was his involvement in the creation of the “Because of Daniel” website, a platform dedicated to sharing stories of hope and resilience in the battle against osteosarcoma. Recognizing his expertise and commitment, Matthew became a central contributor to the platform.
As an author and contributor to the “Because of Daniel” website, Matthew N. Hammonds has played an instrumental role in advancing discussions on osteosarcoma awareness, cancer support, and the power of unity in the face of this challenging disease. His articles, patient stories, and insights into the world of cancer care have become invaluable resources for individuals affected by osteosarcoma, their families, and anyone passionate about raising awareness and providing support. Matthew’s ability to convey the emotions and experiences of patients and their families in a relatable and empathetic manner has made him an essential author on the platform.
Matthew’s writings encompass a wide range of topics, from sharing the stories of osteosarcoma patients and their families to providing information on treatment options and coping strategies. His work is not only informative but deeply inspiring, offering readers a profound connection to the transformative power of support and hope in the face of adversity.
Beyond his contributions to the website, Matthew actively engages with his readers and fellow cancer awareness advocates, offering guidance, encouragement, and a sense of community to those passionate about making a difference in the lives of osteosarcoma patients. He understands the importance of providing support, sharing stories of hope, and fostering a sense of unity in the fight against this rare bone cancer.
Matthew’s commitment to osteosarcoma awareness goes beyond his professional life. He actively participates in cancer awareness events, support groups, and initiatives aimed at raising funds for research and providing resources for osteosarcoma patients and their families. His dedication extends to collaborations with oncologists, researchers, and cancer support organizations that share his passion for increasing awareness and support for those affected by osteosarcoma.
In addition to his work in osteosarcoma awareness, Matthew is a strong advocate for pediatric cancer research, healthcare equity, and the importance of empathy in patient care. He believes in the power of community support, awareness, and hope to create a more compassionate and understanding world for individuals battling cancer. His efforts in this realm are a testament to his unwavering commitment to improving the lives of osteosarcoma patients and their families and his belief in the transformative power of support and unity.
As Matthew N. Hammonds continues to converge with the dynamic world of osteosarcoma awareness, patient support, and the power of hope, his name remains a symbol of inspiration, expertise, and a deep love for making a difference in the lives of those affected by this rare bone cancer.
As he continues to explore the world of cancer awareness, advocate for osteosarcoma patients, and promote the importance of providing support and raising awareness, Matthew N. Hammonds remains an inspirational figure for individuals affected by osteosarcoma, their families, and anyone passionate about the transformative power of empathy, hope, and support in the face of cancer. His life story is a testament to the power of dedication, patient advocacy, and the potential to make a meaningful difference in the lives of those fighting this challenging disease.


DSLR Photography In Plain English is Andrew Goodall’s 100-page, comprehensive and fully illustrated guide to DSLR Photography. It explains the three major settings of the exposure triangle – Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO – and how to combine them in Aperture Priority (AV) Shutter Priority (TV) and Manual Modes. See how Manual mode gives you maximum control of your exposures, and discover just how easy it is when it’s all explained in PLAIN ENGLISH.
The e-book also answers all your other questions about White Balance, Shooting RAW, Autofocus, and how to get the best out of your wide-angle and telephoto lenses.
This is the e-book Andrew gives to students of his Photography Essentials workshop. If you can’t make it to a weekend workshop in Maleny, “DSLR Photography In Plain English” is the next best thing!