Jerpoint Abbey is calling you

To understand the true importance of Jerpoint Abbey, Thomastown, situated after a bend on the road, along the old national primary route to Waterford (N9), you must go back to when it was at the height of its powers before the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1540s.

And you have to walk around the cloister (the square-shaped covered walk) with the ‘Garth’, green area in the centre, and try to imagine the White Monks, their heads bearing the shaved tonsure as they walked in the cloister walkways praying or singing in Gregorian chant. As they passed the beautifully designed and simple structure that have passed down to us, it would have been difficult for them not to be touched by the different images that confronted them as they walked around.

These figures carved in stone include such images as St Anthony of Egypt, the 4th Earl of Ormond, a manticore, a wyvern (legendary winged creature with a dragon’s head, lizard’s body, two legs and a barbed tail), a man with an upset tummy, knights and images of both St Catherine of Alexandria and St Margaret of Antioch. Interestingly both of these female figures are represented three times each in Jerpoint along with a carving of St Mary. These carvings echo some drawings found on medieval manuscripts.

It was very much an all-male, hierarchical system with the under-classed, lay brothers not allowed into the cloister and living in a separate area outside the inner sanctum. And let’s put one thing to rest. St Nicholas (now known as Santa) was not buried here by knights coming back from the Crusades. It’s a lovely, romantic tale but has no basis in truth any there is no written record to support it.

Folklore has it that his remains or a piece of his body or a relic associated with him lie in the abbey but that does not mean to say there is no link to St Nicholas and the area. He is strongly associated with the church named after him, not far from Jerpoint and close to the lost village of Jerpoint which has been lovingly and wonderfully unearthed and brought to life by Joe O’Connell. And it does have a certain aura and who knows the remains of St Nicholas may have ended up there.

The lost town, which grew up beside the abbey and declined dramatically in the 17th Century, is extremely important and greater links between the State-run abbey and the work on the telling the story of that town should be closer, making it an even better experience for visitors.

What should be at the centre of all this history – opening it up to as many people as possible. Brian Keyes wrote extensively in this paper about the lost town of Jerpoint and it is available on the Kilkenny People website.

Jerpoint Abbey still has a huge significance and still has a strong resonance with the surrounding community. Although there have been no funerals in the abbey precincts for the last few years, local families still have plots here and are entitled to be interred here.

The guides at Jerpoint are in possession of a map from early in the 20th Century which shows the various family plots dotted around the abbey and the supervisor, Dr Breda Lynch wouldn’t mind discussing it with anyone who thinks they might be able to name some of the plots.

I think that you have to climb the stairs to the open-air first floor of Jerpoint to really understand the life of the monks. And if there was a higher visitor platform it would make an even greater impression with visitors. If you are from Jerpoint like the retired Bishop of Ossory, Dr Laurence Forristal, you still have great memories of the place and people from here have a great respect and pride in it and maybe that’s why it has lasted so long - the reverence of the community it.

As one commentator has described it: “The dark, biscuit-coloured tower of Jerpoint Abbey, with its battlements, rears above a bend on the road south of Thomastown.”

What an apt description and that colour is in part due to the Dundry stone used in its construction and the fact that it has survived wars and natural calamities to remain relatively intact compared to others is amazing. There are no rich tapestries here, no priceless antiques and no portraits of in-bred toffs with long noses but here you can touch history and appreciate the lifestyle of those who lived and died here.

Receiving a five star tour from one of the most eminent scholars on the Cistercians in Ireland, Dr Breda Lynch, helps your appreciation of Jerpoint and as we walked up the wooden stairs to where the monks dormitory was and because the roof has long since been removed, we can see the Kilkenny-Waterford railway line where, in times past, trains stopped and people got off to view Jerpoint. In the fields below the first floor we can make out the outlines of various outbuildings and defences and the remains of the drainage system which may have included a system of reed beds (eco-friendly monks). But it is the monks and their existence that characterises your visit to their meagre sleeping quarters.

Their day started at two o’clock every morning and they walked down the stairs from the dormitory to the ground floor and into the church where they sang in Gregorian chant the first of the nine prayerful periods. I’m not sure there would be many takers today for the life of a monk in an enclosed order.

These Cistercians, were originally from Citeaux, France and were followers of the Rule of St Benedict which revolved around three basic principles; peace, prayer and work. As stated their day started at 2am and they were allowed a 1lb weight of coarse bread and two dishes of boiled vegetables per day. It gets a little better. They were also allowed eight pints of abbey-made beer every day. This beer was thick and had to be strained before drinking and was lighter than today’s Smithwicks but it was this beer that gave them the energy, we are led to believe, to keep going. They were banned from eating any four legged animal but they could feed on chicken, fowl and fish. However, standing there, Dr Breda explained that in the calefactory in font of us (again without a roof) a fire was lit on All Soul’s Day and quenched on Good Friday. This was the only heat in the entire complex.

Here, four times a year, the poor monks were bled and had up to four pints of blood removed. Yes, 16 pints a year. There was even a special “monastic blood pit” at many monasteries like Jerpoint. In medieval and early modern times it was erroneously thought that “letting blood” was good for all sorts of ailments and was common practice across the medieval world.

An eclectic mix of stimulating art experiences

I’m still in a retrospective state of mind. Maybe it’s winter. When my sense stimulation gets muted, I relish memories of intense experiences that have stimulated my senses and mind.

What unites these very different projects is a strong conceptual framework that lifts the immediate physical experience into something lasting. I hope these examples inspire readers to seek out artistic experiences that may tide you through the winter – and, well, through life.

“The Clock” by Christian Marclay, Lincoln Center, New York City.

This 24-hour video installation is made up of thousands of microsecond samples from Hollywood films. Each scene features a clock or watch that shows the exact minute it is in the real time that viewers are experiencing. So when the clock strikes noon in the video, it’s noon in the theater. The film moves minute-by-minute through a 24-hour cycle. It is mesmerizing, and you recognize lots of films and film stars – for just a few seconds.

“The Murder of Crows” by Janet Cardiff at the Park Avenue Armory, New York City.

In this cavernous space, a historical armory built in the 19th century, this Canadian sound artist created an intriguing environment filled with a sound collage, part suggestive storytelling dreamscape, part soundscape, part musical concert. A hundred speakers were hung from the 100-foot-high ceiling and set on speaker stands throughout the space. A small huddle of folding chairs brought visitors to a central, dimly lit space, where they could sit and listen or wander around the darkened border lands.

To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, For-Site, an organization devoted to art about place, invited 17 artists to respond to the bridge. Their installations were created in the evocative setting of Fort Pointe, a historic fort at the western end of the Golden Gate Bridge, which is painted in its iconic International Orange color.

Closer to home, the Northern Spark Festival in Minneapolis came back for its second year, the brain child of digital artist and arts leader Steve Dietz.

For an entire night in early June, dozens of artists and arts organizations throughout Minneapolis staged outdoor performances – parades, music, film and more – that lit up the entire night, from 8 p.m. until 6 a.m.

Spark encourages art using light. Northern Spark is a fantastic example of how artists enliven our city life and public spaces. Everything is free and fun.

Christine Baeumler, Rooftop Bog, Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Baeumler’s miniature landscape was assembled on the canopy at the main entrance to this art school. Looking like a green roof, the bog features an important ecosystem in Minnesota, the tamarck bog. It draws attention to art as a living system and as a way to enlighten people about environmental issues. The bog remains in place through this summer, changing through all the seasons.

Andy Ducett, “Why We Do This” at The Soap Factory, Minneapolis.

This young artist mounted the most ambitious, multifarious, delightful solo exhibition in the Twin Cities.

Taking three years for preparation, the artist created funky environments throughout the sprawling warehouse spaces of The Soap Factory, located on the north side of the Mississippi River near the Pillsbury A Mill.

The environments ranged from a working thrift store to a row of airplane seats with blue skies seen out the windows to a house where a party is going on inside. The best environment was a small library whose shelves held thousands of National Geographic magazines, making the entire space glow with its signature yellow.

Michael Strand’s installation at Plains Art Museum, “The Misfit Cup Liberation Project,” was a simple idea elegantly executed. Strand offered visitors the opportunity to take one of his beautifully made Japanese ceramic cups, but they had to exchange it with a cup of their own.

These social and material exchanges evoked delight as well as strong emotions from people who attended the opening event. Fargo was the first iteration of Strand’s project, and now he is mounting new versions in Estonia and other U.S. cities.

Marjorie Schlossman: Symphony of Color at Plains Art Museum was sublime in idea, execution and installation. It’s a stirring plunge into this artist’s body of work, as stimulating as a dive into a cool lake at dawn.

Moritz Goetze at The Rourke Art Museum. How invigorating to see the bold work of this German artist in his debut exhibition in the U.S. His fresh take on figurative work was pop art but more elegant, complete with a new installation piece taking off on Emmanuel Leutze’s famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware. Installed throughout the Museum, the Goetze show was a breath of fresh air and a brave move.

Mara Morken and collaborators, Yarn Bombs for Downtown Fargo. Bravo to these generous and intrepid artists who have clothed our lamp posts with inventive, colorful sweaters. Not to be deterred by vandals, they put their work up again after some were damaged, with the help of Fargo Commissioner Mike Williams.

You could just stand there and cry

Like many here in the western Philadelphia suburbs, where downed trees and power outages were the most common vestiges of Hurricane Sandy, Lori Jennings watched the devastation unfold farther east, on the Jersey shore and in New York, on news reports.

For her, though, those images have not faded with the months since the passage of the superstorm. They were refreshed, and made only more vivid and personal, when she and about two dozen other volunteers traveled to three New Jersey communities earlier this month to help with what still seems an almost unimaginably difficult recovery.

Jennings, an administrative assistant in the Lower Merion Township Manager’s Office, and her husband, Ronnie, were part of a group from GraceCrossing Community Church in their home town of Phoenixville that spent Jan. 7-9 ripping out water-damaged walls and floors and helping residents move belongings from houses left uninhabitable by the storm, in towns still virtually empty three months later.

Before making the trip, Jennings, a township employee since 2005, said what she knew about conditions in the hard-hit communities of Ortley Beach, Point Pleasant and Brick Township was “what we saw on television.” “Seeing it in person – you could just stand there and cry,” she said.

Hers was actually the second group from the church to work on the recovery. A member of the American Baptist Churches of Pennsylvania and Delaware (ABCOPAD), GraceCrossing worked through that organization with the charity Samaritan’s Purse, which has been engaged in disaster relief efforts around the world. A non-denominational evangelical Christian organization, Samaritan’s Purse coordinates efforts of volunteer teams, in this case identifying homeowners in need and providing site management and tools for the job, Jennings said.

Among her group, some of the volunteers were retired and some, like Jennings and her husband, a technician with Comcast, used vacation time to help out. “I had no idea what they were going to have us do,” she said. “Every day was different.”

Jennings said the group arrived on the Sunday night. Most were housed at the vacant parsonage of a church in Brick Township, while some, including the Jenningses, stayed at the home of their pastor, the Rev. Brent Miller’s, parents. “They were out of power for 10 days, but didn’t have any water damage,” she said, though “a mile down the road” there had been flooding.

Technology consultancy and precision manufacturing specialist Prodrive (Banbury, Oxfordshire, U.K.) reported on Jan. 25 that it has won a major contract to supply components for first-class cabin interiors. The order is Prodrive’s biggest aerospace contract to date, strengthening what it says is its position as one of the premier suppliers of composites to sectors where precision and finish are critical.

“This is a significant win for the company and confirms the aerospace sector’s growing interest in extending the use of high-quality composites in the interior,” says Ian Handscombe, Prodrive’s composites business manager. “The contract is an interesting transfer of the expertise that has made us one of the leaders in precision composite engineering for the automotive industry and demonstrates the opportunities that are opening for companies with exceptional technical capability combined with the high efficiency levels that allow competitive pricing.”

Prodrive’s integrated service includes design and development of the initial tooling through to the fabrication and finishing of each piece using state-of-the-art CNC machines. The company also has the capability to provide design support, using the same engineering team that works with a wide range of customers from Formula 1 to biomedical.

“The key requirement for this program is a very high quality finish. Components that are visible to passengers have a zero-defect allowance,” says Handscombe. “We have strong, long-term relationships with many of Europe’s leading manufacturers of luxury and high-performance cars, which I believe gave our new aerospace customer confidence in our ability to deliver to their demanding standards.”

Petraeus And A New Kind Of War

Central to the story are ideas of counterinsurgency. Kaplan says that while counterinsurgency is not a new kind of warfare, it's a kind of war that Americans do not like to fight.

"We tend to call it irregular warfare even though this kind of warfare is the most common," Kaplan tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies. Kaplan, who writes the War Stories column for Slate, explains that Petraeus and a number of his West Point peers were interested in the writings of counterinsurgency theorists who believed that "insurgencies grow out of something. They don't grow out of a vacuum. ... They respond to people's needs in a country where the government is not satisfying those needs. And so, what you have to do is not merely capture and kill the insurgents, but change the social conditions. ... It was a different kind of warfare that required not just fighting, but what we now call 'nation building' [and] that required cultural sensitivity to the people around them, required living among the people, protecting the population, earning their trust so that they, in turn, will tell us who the bad guys are."

Petraeus implemented these theories with some success in Iraq, but less so in Afghanistan, where he lacked the familiarity with the country he had had in Iraq.

"The problem was, by his own admission, he knew nothing about Afghanistan," says Kaplan. "He'd been in Iraq three times. He knew that place well. He comes in and what's in his mind is Iraq. ... I was told that in a meeting with President Karzai once, Karzai laid out a problem and [Petraeus] said, 'Well, you know, in Baghdad we did it like this ...' to the president of Afghanistan. And the aide who was with Petraeus in the room — who had been both in Afghanistan and Iraq — when they were walking out he said, 'You know, it might be an interesting intellectual experiment for you to not even think about Iraq,' and Petraeus said, 'I'm working on it.' "

"He vetted candidates for an election; he held the election; he opened up the economy; he brought in fuel trucks from Turkey; he opened up the university; he opened up the border to Syria in northern Iraq all on his own initiative. ... There were no orders. So it worked for about a year and he was rotated out and a brigade half the size of his division came in with commanders who had spent the previous three months bashing down doors and killing and arresting people in Tikrit, and that's what they did in Mosul and the operation fell apart for another year or two."

His whole MO and his entire life was that he had overcome the odds. That he had defied expectations. You know, everybody knows the story that at one time when he was an assistant division commander he had been shot in the chest by a fellow solider whose gun accidentally went off in a live-fire exercise. He recovered much more quickly than the doctors said. He jumped out of a plane once, the parachute ripped, he free-fell for 60 feet, broke his pelvis. He recovered. His surge worked in Iraq ... to a degree that nobody had anticipated, and so he went into Afghanistan leery, but thinking that, 'Well, maybe I can pull this off.' "

"He always wanted to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but anybody who knows the military bureaucracy knows that that can be an exceedingly powerful position. ... Petraeus was distrusted by many members of the Obama White House. They thought that he boxed President Obama in on troop options ... in the discussions about Afghanistan. The perception was, this guy was too clever; he was too powerful. You didn't want a powerful general to be given such a powerful position. And so, in December in 2010, Bob Gates comes to Afghanistan, tells Petraeus, 'You're not going to get the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, what would you like [instead]?' and [Petraeus] came up with the idea of CIA director."

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. For 10 years now, Americans have become accustomed to seeing American soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our guest Fred Kaplan says that while America fought those wars, an internal conflict raged within the military about how to fight them.

When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, top commanders knew how to wage a conventional land war with devastating effectiveness. But they discarded long-studied principles of counterinsurgency: How to deal with a conflict in which the enemy lives and fights among the population, when the battle is more for the allegiance of civilians than for territory.

In his new book, Kaplan describes the efforts of civilian strategists and younger officers to turn U.S. military thinking around and pursue a more nuanced approach to the fighting in Iraq. Kaplan says the officers succeeded in selling their strategy, and while it helped in Iraq, it failed in Afghanistan. Fred Kaplan is a veteran national security journalist. He writes the War Stories column for Slate and has written three previous books. His latest is "The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War."

Well, Fred Kaplan, welcome back to FRESH AIR. After the debacle of the Vietnam War, you might think that strategists in the American military would decide that they need to focus on how you engage in limited war, how you fight guerrillas, how to more effectively, you know, engage in one of these limited conflicts. But you write they did almost the opposite.

FRED KAPLAN: Right, the generals decided they would never fight another war like this ever again. By coincidence, at the same time the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union were increasing their conventional armies in Europe, and so they turned their attention to that theater, and it was the kind of theater that they were comfortable with fighting, wars that depended on firepower and amassing men, and machines, and metal and dropping bombs and that sort of thing.

Sun could help donkeys get kids to school

This was one of the ideas the Tshwane University of Technology’s Institute for Advanced Tooling (IAT) discussed with Science and Technology Minister Derek Hanekom.

Solar-powered donkey carts could provide reliable transport to school for pupils and teachers in rural areas, Hanekom said after the event.

“Although more research will have to be done, we should not delay too long in testing the concept to determine whether it is feasible in real life.”

He said donkey carts were a reality in this country, and a major form of transport in some rural areas.

Donkeys were practical, because there were some terrains that could not be reached by car but could be reached by animals, Hanekom said.

A solar-powered donkey cart would be like any other donkey cart. The only difference is that it would be powered by solar energy. Load sensors would be installed to ensure that the donkey only steers the cart and carries none of the load.

“We are just adding a little bit of technology to an ordinary donkey cart,” said Bob Bond, centre manager for IAT, adding that the donkey would only be there to guide the cart through rough terrain.

IAT hopes to partner with the Department of Science and Technology and get this project running as soon as possible.

Hanekom said his department was trying to move away from fossil-based fuels, but the challenge was to make clean energy fashionable and cost-effective.

“We want to be a department which seeks to provide cleaner technological solutions to solve our country’s problems and improve the livelihoods of its citizens, especially at grassroots level. We have to make people want to be environmentally conscious,” he said.

Domestic auto parts manufacturers complain that development of parts through Japanese manufacturers involves very high upfront technology and franchise cost. “The vending industry orders even after increase in imported used car age limit from three to five years are still at previous level,” said Usman Malik, vice chairman of Pakistan Association of Auto Parts and Accessories Manufacturers (Paapam). He said auto part vending industry’s capacities are much higher than the demand of the local car manufacturers.

He said many vending units have closed down, while some of Paapam members diversified their business to make products from the same idle machines that were producing auto parts for the industry. He said some of the auto parts manufacturers are in to packaging field and their revenue from this business has outgrown that they generate from making of auto parts.

He said some vendors have launched their own three wheelers to remain attached with the auto industry. A few have launched motorcycle brands with foreign technology making state of the art motorcycles in above 100 cc segment. All these vendors, he added, were originally auto parts vendors for the original equipment manufacturers.

Another auto vendor Syed Mansoor Abbass said that the local auto vendors are disgruntled that no new car players are entering the local market. He said these vendors facilitated every new entrant that targeted Pakistani market in recent past by absorbing the upfront price of tooling of the auto parts and recovering the cost gradually though supply of auto parts. They provided this facility with the hope that new brands would enhance competition.

He regretted, however, that this hope did not come to fruition as Kia, Hyundai, Nissan and Adams (a Pakistan brand) failed to penetrate into Pakistani market for various reasons. He said the vendors suffered massive losses on tooling of their parts. He said the same practice is in vogue for the top three Japanese car manufacturers for any new part that they want to localise.

The tooling expense is incorporated in new auto part and withdrawn when the cost is recovered. He said the local vendors after bad experience refused tooling any part for a new manufacturer that completely stopped the induction of new brands in the country.

He said it was after this that the domestic stakeholders in auto sector recommended the Engineering Development Board to allow new entrants at zero deletion with the condition that they would reach the local deletion level in three years. It was made mandatory for the new entrant to provide a viable deletion program to the satisfaction of local vendors.

He said Chinese auto manufacturers have taken advantage of this offer and their three year deletion program is acceptable to the vendors. He said a leading Chinese manufacturer has already launched it truck, loader and van in the market. The acceptability of the vehicles, he added, is encouraging and the prices are very competitive. He hoped that such entrants would enlarge the car market in the country and the prices would decline appreciably.

The chief executive officer of the Chinese auto brand FAW said initially the response of the consumers was highly encouraging. “We are committed to bring the deletion level to the national level in three years,” he said adding that the localisation level in 6-8 seat Euro IV compliant van has already reached 20 percent. He said the 1000 cc van is priced at Rs799,000, which is 1/3rd the price of a similar Japanese van in the country. He said the assembly plant in Karachi is operating in full gear rolling out trucks, buses and vans at most competitive rates.

The Dream of the Peruvian

Mario Vargas Llosa must be one of the few great writers ever to have argued that society should place less trust in great writers. “The mandarin writer no longer has a place in today’s world,” he has observed. “Figures like Sartre in France or Ortega y Gasset and Unamuno in their time, or Octavio Paz, served as guides and teachers on all the important issues and filled a void that only the ‘great writer’ seemed capable of filling, whether because few others participated in public life, because democracy was nonexistent, or because literature had a mythical prestige.” But today, “in a free society, the influence that a writer exerts—sometimes profitably—over submissive societies is useless.”

The irony, of course, is that Vargas Llosa has had a higher public profile than almost any writer of his time. He has been famous ever since emerging in the 1960s as a leading figure of the movement called the Latin American Boom, and in 2010, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. At the same time, he has been a vocal participant in the politics of his native Peru, even mounting a serious campaign for president in 1990. Though he lost the second round of the election to the future dictator Alberto Fujimori, Vargas Llosa established himself as one of the world’s most eloquent spokesmen for democracy and free markets—a position that puts him directly at odds with most Latin American intellectuals of his generation, who are likelier to share the dogmatic leftism of his contemporary Gabriel García Márquez. Yet even as Vargas Llosa insists on the need for reason and freedom in politics, his fiction has continued to explore the imaginative realms of unreason and obsession, primitivism and violence.

These themes are on ample display in one of Vargas Llosa’s best books, The Storyteller (1987), in which he imagines his way out of modern Western civilization and into the mind of a nomadic Amazonian people, the Machiguenga. The novel’s narrator is a man who, in all outward respects, is Vargas Llosa himself—a Peruvian writer and expatriate who thinks back to his Latin American upbringing while living in Florence. As a university student, the narrator relates, he had a good friend, Saul Zuratas, who was doubly cut off from ordinary Peruvian society: he was a Jew, and he was born with a disfiguring birthmark. To compensate for this otherness, Saul embraced the even greater otherness of the Machiguenga, becoming obsessed with this small, struggling people’s nomadic way of life and bizarre cosmology. Saul ultimately managed the impossible: he became a member of the tribe, and what’s more, a storyteller, or hablador, responsible for preserving and sharing the Machiguengas’ history. Alternating chapters of the novel are told in a voice that we gradually realize is Saul’s, as he coaxes the reader into an utterly alien worldview.

The Machiguengas call themselves “people who walk,” and the first premise of their metaphysics is that they must be constantly on the move. If they stop, disaster will befall them; in fact, the universe itself will die. They are kept to this principle by their memories of the darkest period in their history, “the time of the tree-bleeding.” This was the rubber boom of the late nineteenth century, in which Peruvian speculators kidnapped large numbers of Indians and forced them to work on rubber plantations. Vargas Llosa imagines this period as a kind of Machiguenga holocaust, in which vast numbers of people died and the traditional culture was almost snuffed out. “Before, there were many men who walk; after, very few,” says the storyteller. “When things like that happen, they don’t disappear. . . . They linger on in one of the four worlds. . . . Those who see them come back heart-stricken, it seems, their teeth chattering with sickened disgust.”

In 1911, at the height of “the time of the tree-bleeding,” the world was awakened to the horrors going on in the Amazonian jungles of Peru by Sir Roger Casement, the greatest humanitarian investigator of his age. Casement, Irish Protestant by birth, was already world-famous, thanks to his scathing report on the abuses that King Leopold’s regime had committed in the Belgian Congo, where millions of people were killed and starved to death—again, in the pursuit of rubber. This made Casement a natural choice when the British government decided to investigate rumors of atrocities against Peru’s Putumayo Indians.

For many in Britain and around the world, Casement represented the best of Western civilization, just as King Leopold represented the worst. Indeed, Casement’s career brings into sharp focus the contradictions of European imperialism. On the one hand, it was the government of the British Empire that ordered Casement to explore the “heart of darkness” that was the Congo (indeed, Joseph Conrad was personally acquainted with and influenced by Casement). British public opinion, horrified by Casement’s revelations, drove an international movement that insisted on reforms in Africa and Peru. Yet it was the presence of Europeans in Africa, and of European capital in Peru, that unleashed those horrors in the first place. Which was the true face of Britain and the West: the exploiter or the humanitarian, Leopold or Casement?

To Casement himself, the answer finally became clear: Britain was a force for evil that one had to resist at any price. As an Irishman, he began to identify with the wretched of the earth, the victims of colonialism. Even as he became a British knight, he grew increasingly active in Irish nationalist and independence movements. At last, during World War I, he decided that the cause of Irish freedom even justified collaboration with Germany. He traveled to Germany to try to enlist Irish prisoners of war in an Irish legion to fight against Britain and also to procure German weapons for use in an Irish revolt. After being smuggled back to Ireland in a submarine in 1916, Casement was captured by the British and put on trial for treason.

But one more twist was in store for this already unlikely life. Eager to discredit a man with a worldwide reputation for probity, the British government circulated what it claimed to be Casement’s private diaries, full of graphic details of his homosexuality. The use of sex to discredit Irish leaders was an old tactic—a generation earlier, Charles Stewart Parnell had been exposed as an adulterer—and many people believed (as some still believe) that the “Black Diaries” purported to be Casement’s were frauds. Still, by the time Casement was hanged for treason in August 1916, his reputation was in ruins, and he became an untouchable figure in Irish politics for several generations.

There could hardly be a richer subject for a novelist than Casement, especially in the twenty-first century, when the attitudes of 100 years ago toward sex, race, and imperialism have changed so dramatically. Above all, Casement offers a perfect case study in the conflict between liberalism and radicalism. As a humanitarian and an anti-imperialist, Casement was a liberal hero, recalling Western civilization to its own highest ideals; as a revolutionary and nationalist, he was a radical, convinced that British ideals were a sham that had to be overthrown by violence. Which phase of Casement’s career ought we to admire, and which condemn? And if you had to name the novelist best equipped to explore just these problems, the answer would surely be Vargas Llosa. No one has written about the conflict between classical liberalism and radicalism, between freedom and utopianism, more fully than he has. He has lived that conflict himself, evolving from the conventional leftism of his Latin American generation into an exponent of political and economic freedom.

Obama says now is the time to act on gay rights

Turning the page on years of war and recession, President Barack Obama summoned a divided nation Monday to act with "passion and dedication" to broaden equality and prosperity at home, nurture democracy around the world and combat global warming as he embarked on a second term before a vast and cheering crowd that spilled down the historic National Mall.

"America's possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands," the 44th president declared in a second inaugural address that broke new ground by assigning gay rights a prominent place in the wider struggle for equality for all.

In a unity plea to politicians and the nation at large, he called for "collective action" to confront challenges and said, "Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time — but it does require us to act in our time."

Elected four years ago as America's first black president, Obama spoke from specially constructed flag-bedecked stands outside the Capitol after reciting oath of office that all presidents have uttered since the nation's founding.

The events highlighted a day replete with all the fanfare that a security-minded capital could muster — from white-gloved Marine trumpeters who heralded the arrival of dignitaries on the inaugural stands to the mid-winter orange flowers that graced the tables at a traditional lunch with lawmakers inside the Capitol.

The weather was relatively warm, in the mid-40s, and while the crowd was not as large as on Inauguration Day four years ago, it was estimated at up to 1 million.

Big enough that he turned around as he was leaving the inaugural stands to savor the view one final time.

"I'm not going to see this again," said the man whose political career has been meteoric — from the Illinois Legislature to the U.S. Senate and the White House before marking his 48th birthday.

On a day of renewal for democracy, everyone seemed to have an opinion, and many seemed eager to share it.

"I'm just thankful that we've got another four years of democracy that everyone can grow in," said Wilbur Cole, 52, a postman from suburban Memphis, Tenn., who spent part of the day visiting the civil rights museum there at the site where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.

The inauguration this year shared the day with King's birthday holiday, and the president used a Bible that had belonged to the civil rights leader for the swearing-in, along with a second one that been Abraham Lincoln's. The president also paused inside the Capitol Rotunda to gaze at a dark bronze statue of King.

Others watching at a distance were less upbeat than Cole. Frank Pinto, 62, and an unemployed construction contractor, took in the inaugural events on television at a bar in Hartford, Conn. He said because of the president's policies, "My grandkids will be in debt and their kids will be in debt."

The tone was less overtly political in the nation's capital, where bipartisanship was on the menu in the speechmaking and at the congressional lunch.

"Congratulations and Godspeed," House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, said to Obama and Vice President Joe Biden as he presented them with flags that had flown atop the Capitol.

Outside, the Inaugural Parade took shape, a reflection of American musicality and diversity that featured military units, bands, floats, the Chinese American Community Center Folk Dance Troupe from Hockessin, Del., and the Isiserettes Drill & Drum Corps from Des Moines, Iowa.

The crowds were several rows deep along parts of the route, and security was intense. More than a dozen vehicles flanked the president's limousine as it rolled down Pennsylvania Avenue, and several agents walked alongside on foot.

As recent predecessors have, the president emerged from his car and walked several blocks on foot. His wife, Michelle, was with him, and the two held hands while acknowledging the cheers from well-wishers during two separate strolls along the route.

A short time later, accompanied by their children and the vice president and his family, the first couple settled in to view the parade from a reviewing stand built in front of the White House.

A pair of nighttime inaugural balls completed the official proceedings, with a guest line running into the tens of thousands.

In his brief, 18-minute speech, Obama did not dwell on the most pressing challenges of the past four years. He barely mentioned the struggle to reduce the federal deficit, a fight that has occupied much of his and Congress' time and promises the same in months to come.

He spoke up for the poor — "Our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it" — and for those on the next-higher rung — "We believe that America's prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class." The second reference echoed his calls from the presidential campaign that catapulted him to re-election

"A decade of war is now ending. An economic recovery has begun," said the president who presided over the end to the U.S. combat role in Iraq, set a timetable for doing the same in Afghanistan and took office when the worst recession in decades was still deepening.

"We will support democracy from Asia to Africa, from the Americas to the Middle East, because our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom," he said in a relatively brief reference to foreign policy.

The former community organizer made it clear he views government as an engine of progress. While that was far from surprising for a Democrat, his emphasis on the need to combat global climate change was unexpected, as was his firm new declaration of support for full gay rights.

In a jab at climate-change doubters, he said, "Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and more powerful storms." He said America must lead in the transition to sustainable energy resources.

He likened the struggle for gay rights to earlier crusades for women's suffrage and racial equality.

"Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law — for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well," said the president, who waited until his campaign for re-election last year to announce his support for gay marriage.

His speech hinted only barely at issues likely to spark opposition from Republicans who hold power in the House.

He defended Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security as programs that "do not make us a nation of takers; they free is to take the risks that made this country great."

He referred briefly to making "the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit," a rhetorical bow to a looming debate in which Republicans are seeking spending cuts in health care programs to slow the rise in a $16.4 trillion national debt.

Keeping the Internet free

Internet freedom is not something to be taken lightly, as anyone who has tried to gain access to forbidden sites in China will tell you. The countries that would like to censor Internet content, including Russia, China, Iran and others, were eager to see their authority to do so etched into a United Nations treaty debated at a conference last month in Dubai. The United States and other nations committed to a free and open Internet refused to sign the treaty. It was a largely symbolic protest but the right thing to do.

The World Conference on International Telecommunications brought together 193 nations to consider revisions to principles last modified in the pre-Internet days of 1988. The principles govern the largely technical work of a specialized U.N. agency, the International Telecommunications Union. Much of the conference debate turned on whether the principles should be expanded to give national governments and the agency more voice in regulating the Internet.

Those governments that hunger for more control are not paragons of freedom. China, which already maintains the world's most pervasive Internet censorship machine, tightened its controls at year's end, requiring users of social media to disclose their identities. Russia has been moving toward selective eavesdropping to tamp down dissent. The treaty debated in Dubai may not change anything they are already doing but could provide a veneer of political cover.

The United States objected to a resolution appended to the treaty saying that "all governments should have an equal role and responsibility for international Internet governance." Translation: Let national governments get their hands on it. The United States has maintained that Internet governance should rest, as it does now, with a loose group of organizations, including the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which manages domain names and addresses under contract with the U.S. Commerce Department. There are suspicions aplenty in the rest of the world that this is the equivalent of U.S. control — suspicions that should not be ignored. While the Internet cannot fall into the hands of those who would censor and restrict it, the United States should put more effort into remaking the current model so that it can serve what has become a global infrastructure.

Ambassador Terry Kramer, who headed the U.S. delegation in Dubai, was clear that a power grab by the repressive countries was a non-starter. "No single organization or government can or should attempt to control the Internet or dictate its future development," Mr. Kramer insisted.

The conference did serve to highlight broad, opposing camps over Internet freedom. After the United States pulled out, 89 nations signed the agreement, including Russia, China, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela. The blank screen of the Internet censor is not likely to disappear soon. A long and fateful battle looms for digital freedom.

The Niles Public Library has begun a $5.5 million renovation that will add study and meeting space, use technology to check in and keep track of books and improve energy efficiency.

The last renovations were 13 years ago, and trustees have been putting money aside each year since, meaning no referendum measure to raise the funds was needed, said Sue Wilsey, head of marketing and public relations. The work is expected to be completed near the end of the year.

"We're definitely going to have additional study room space and meeting spaces, which is what the public needs," Wilsey said. "We're going to have a computer training lab and a brand new board room. We're going to renovate to make the entry more energy efficient," providing a warm place for those waiting for the Niles Free Bus.

Also new will be a tracking wand to help locate mis-shelved books and those that are checked out. Automatic check-in terminals will be installed.

"It's really going to streamline things," Wilsey said. "There will still be people available in the lobby, but they're going to be transformed into more of a concierge individual."

What now houses fiction in the basement will be transformed into a computer area and a teen center. The first floor common area will have comfortable seats and easy access to popular materials, so people can hang out with a vending cafeteria that will sell coffee and drinks. It will also contain a space for pre-teens where they can play video games, and a toddlers' area called an Early Literacy Space where there will be lots of hands-on and learning activities.

The second floor will contain fiction, audio-visual material, DVD's and audio books. The third floor will contain a gas fireplace with chairs in the turret of the building.

"It's going to look cozy when people drive by," said Wilsey. "It's going to be so filled with bright light that people will want to come and sit and get a magazine or on a computer."

It seems pretty inevitable for a mobile app to go cross-platform, especially since it was created by former Googlers. But Ian Mendiola, co-founder and CEO at Umano-maker SoThree, said he realized that Android should be a priority after a marketing stunt where team members boarded Caltrain (that’s the commuter rail running between San Jose, Silicon Valley, and San Francisco) with fliers promoting the app, and they saw that many of the interested users owned Android phones.

The content is the same in both versions of the app, with about 20 articles selected each day by the Umano team and read by voice actors (so it sounds like a real news broadcast, not a robotic text-to-speech translator). It’s divided into six categories: Entertaining, Must Know, Geeky, Entrepreneurial, Inspirational, and Scientific — Mendiola said he was particularly impressed by the popularity of self-help content. The company doesn’t have a relationship with any of the publishers, he added, but it hasn’t received any complaints, and “if content owners would like their content taken down we’re happy to work with them.”

The Android app includes some platform-specific features, including Google+ integration and rich notifications, allowing users to access playback controls directly within their app notifications. There are, however, some features that haven’t made the transition to Android yet, including the ability to create playlists (so you can create a list at the beginning of your commute, then just let it run as you drive) and download content for offline listening — adding those features to Android is the company’s next goal, Mendiola said.

The team has bigger goals too. Mendiola said he wants to add more personalization to the app, so that it can create an automatic playlist based on your interests and the length of your commute. He also wants to “open up more of a voice actor marketplace,” so actors could visit the site and upload their own recordings, rather than waiting for an assignment from Umano.

69-Year-Old Northville Woman Robbed in Driveway

According to a press release from the Novthville City Police, at approximately 11 a.m. Wednesday, a 69-year-old woman had just returned from the Northville Community Center to her home on Lake Street in Northville. She had put her car in her garage and was walking down her driveway when a male carrying a burgundy portfolio approached her and asked if she would take part in a survey. The woman questioned the type of survey and noticed that the person did not have any type of identification, such as a lanyard with an identification card or badge, so she asked to see some I.D. This is the last thing that she remembered, according to the press release. When she awoke she managed to get into her home and call a friend who took her to Providence Park Hospital in Novi.

The woman suffered a fractured jaw and a severe head injury. She has been admitted to the hospital and is listed in stable condition, according to the press releae.

The woman’s purse was taken, which contained her cell phone, credit cards and identification. The cell phone has been recovered in Farmington Hills. The vehicle used by the man is described as a light-colored, possibly tan, sedan. The woman described the man as an African American male in his 30s with a medium build, wearing a dark, three-quarter-length cloth coat.

Officers are currently working with neighboring jurisdictions, which may have had similar incidents. The Farmington Hills Police Department received a report of a similar incident involving a woman being attacked after arriving home in her vehicle just before 11 p.m. Wednesday.

According to a Farmington Hills Police press release, a 42-year-old resident of Village Green Apartments, at Eight Mile and Grand River, suffered serious injuries when she was attacked at around 10:45 p.m., while inside the entrance to her building. Her assailant used a "club-type instrument", according to the release. The woman was treated at the scene by Farmington Hills Fire Dept. medics, then transported to an area hospital.

Farmington Hills Police Commander Matt Koehn said police have not been able to talk with the woman and so have few details about the crime. He also did not have information about the extent of her injuries.

In Talladega County, EMA director Debra Gaither said most of the groundwork had been done Wednesday. “We readjusted everyone’s schedules to make sure we’ve got someone here throughout the night. We’ve been posting updates on Twitter and Facebook, we’ve contacted all of our first responders via 800 megahertz radio, and we’ve got information from the National Weather Service in Birmingham via 800 megahertz. The main thing is for people to stay off the roads after dark as much as possible, and to check before they leave in the morning.”

Sylacauga city schools administrative assistant Terri Bentley said the system would make the decision about whether to delay or cancel school today by late Thursday night or early Friday morning. If there is any delay, students and parents will be notified via the SchoolCast system, and the information should also be posted online at www.sylacauag.k12.al.us.

Pell City Schools Superintendent Dr. Bobby Hathcock said Thursday that it was still too early to determine if officials will delay the opening of schools this morning.

“We could look at a delay of a couple of hours,” Hathcock said, adding that school officials will have to look at the big picture Friday morning. “It may be fine here in town, but it could be bad on the bus routes. We have to look at the bus situation.”

Talladega County Sheriff’s Department Chief Deputy Jimmy Kilgore was in the process Thursday of rounding up every available four-wheel drive vehicle, and making sure they were all fueled up. “We’ll be available to help transport anyone who needs us,” he said.

Talladega city manager Brian Muenger said he was still evaluating the situation, and would meet again with the department heads before everyone went home.

“Public Works has already been out and cleaned up some roadside ponding, since our primary concern is ice in the morning. It’s supposed to be up to 40 degrees by 10 a.m. Friday, so everything will depend on how long the snow lasts.”

The Public Works Department will be kept on standby through the night, spreader trucks and sand, he added. “The police will be monitoring any problem areas, and we’ll make sure the hospital hill area stays clear. We may open city offices a little later in the morning if we need to.”

Talladega County Road Department Director Tim Markert said his crews normally go home at 3 p.m., but 10 people stayed on. “They’re out riding the roads,” he said. “We’ve got the sand trucks and spreaders all gassed up and ready to go, we’ve got the chainsaws ready. The guys that stayed on will be out until 7 p.m., and then we’ll have another crew on after that.”

EPOA Holds Town Hall Meeting

Dennis C. Donnelly, who has served on the Garden City Board of Trustees for four years, is seeking another two-year term and was unanimously selected by the EPOA’s nominating committee. Garden City resident Francine Ryan has successfully issued a challenge through the petition process.

“I am running for re-election because I believe that my experience, both in government and professional, my voting record as a trustee of fiscal restraint...and my demonstrated commitment to the residents of Garden City over my 10 years of service to them, I believe it makes me the best candidate for trustee,” Donnelly said.

Ryan said professionally she has managed budgets, come up with strategic solutions and has looked for new ways to solve problems which never previously existed and has been instrumental in generating millions of dollars in revenue for her clients. As a working mother of three children, who are now adults, she has much experience with financial and time management.

Both candidates spent more than two hours answering questions posed by residents on a wide range of topics including business development, the future of the St. Paul’s School, the leasing of the St. Paul’s cottages to the Cathedral Nursery School, and ways to increase revenue and improve communication between the Village and residents.

Candidates were asked what they believe to be the single most important issue facing the Village. Ryan cited the unmanning of the satellite fire houses in the evening. Donnelly used his time to defend the Board’s decision to unman the satellite stations.

He told The Garden City News after the meeting that he believes the biggest issue facing the Village is how to manage the budget given all of the state mandates, especially concerning health care and pensions. He said he will work to keep the level of service residents are accustomed to with attempts to hold the line on taxes.

On the topic of business development, Donnelly claimed the business district is very healthy and he is focusing his efforts on resident’s concerns such as trash collection and keeping the streets clean. Ryan said the Village should solicit the help of residents to develop a marketing plan. She also suggested the possibility of closing Seventh Street to vehicular traffic, although Donnelly said local businesses were generally against that idea.

Both candidates spoke briefly on ways to generate revenue for the Village. Ryan said the Board should look at the recommendations contained in a report issued by the Citizens’ Budget Review and Advisory Committee. Donnelly said the Board has “looked very long and hard” for revenue sources but they are limited.

Ryan shared her thoughts on several ways the Village could save money. She said one way the Village could save money is by combining cleaner positions or outsourcing the job of cleaning Village Hall and the Garden City Public Library. Ryan also said that only Village employees who need to travel for their job should be permitted to use a Village-owned vehicle. According to Ryan, a possible way to save money is to utilize the Nassau County Police Department instead of a private police force. She also said the Village should study ways to save money through green initiatives.

Ryan also said the Village should set up a task force to try to find an interested person or group who would rent St. Paul’s. Her suggestion to install parking meters in the Village was met with concern from the audience. After hearing the audience, Donnelly was quick to add that he was not in favor of parking meters.

Ryan questioned why the Village turned down a grant several years ago to help staff the fire department. Donnelly explained that the grant required that a Village keep the same staff two years beyond the grant for a total of four years. He said the Village would have received money to pay for two firefighters for a department which he believes is already overstaffed.

As for the topic of St. Paul’s, Donnelly said he would like to save the building. However, he added that the plan submitted by The Committee to Save St. Paul’s (CSSP) which calls for public use only, is not viable and “will never happen.” He said he is interested in looking at the alternatives discussed in the Erwin report such as constructing a building behind the front fa?ade.

As for the topic of the leasing of the St. Paul’s cottages to the Cathedral Nursery School, Ryan said they should be offered a long-term lease so administrators do not have to worry if they will be evicted. She also said the Village did not communicate effectively with administrators. Donnelly said the Village has asked Senator Kemp Hannon to introduce legislation which would alienate the portion of the property with the cottages so it will no longer be considered parkland. Then, the Village will be able to offer the school a long-term lease.

Both candidates agreed that the Village’s communication with residents after Hurricane Sandy should have been better and needs to be improved. Ryan said the Village could utilize smart phones to communicate. She suggested streaming Board meetings live on the internet so residents who cannot attend will be able to still observe and perhaps interact via Twitter.

She asked if the Village has an emergency management plan, and cited an article in The Garden City News from May which discussed Village Clerk Brian Ridgway’s efforts. Ridgway confirmed to The Garden City News on Wednesday that the plan has been revised.

“The Village has always had an Emergency Management Plan in place,” he said via email. “My comments at the May meeting should have stated that the existing plan was going to be reviewed and adjusted if needed following the events raised by our past tropical storm. In addition, such a review would confirm the ‘contact information’ for other outside agencies that the Village might have to contact in the event of an emergency (i.e. Red Cross, LIPA, Nassau County Emergency Management contracts). Also, the review will allow the Village to get updated copies of various plans for our school district and Adelphi, to name a few, that are included in our Village plan.”

Donnelly said the Village is now asking residents to update information in the Swiftreach emergency notification system, which can send alerts to phone numbers and deliver text messages and e-mails. Residents are asked to visit the Village’s Web site to update their information.

Both candidates were given time to make closing statements. “We are the shining star of Villages on Long Island,” Donnelly said. “I want to keep and maintain our quality of life while keeping our taxes as low as possible.”

New York enacts gun-control law, first since Newtown attack

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday signed into law one of the nation’s toughest gun-control measures and the first to be enacted since the mass shooting last month at an elementary school in neighboring Connecticut.

The bill passed the Democratic-led Assembly on Tuesday afternoon, a day after sweeping through the Republican-majority Senate.

The bill expands the state’s ban on assault weapons, puts limits on ammunition capacity and has new measures to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.

Cuomo pressed for passage of the bill after a gunman killed 20 students and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, just over one month ago.

The measure also mandates a life sentence without parole for anyone who murders a first responder. Just two weeks after the massacre in Connecticut, an arsonist gunman ambushed and killed two firefighters responding to a fire he had set near Rochester.

At a signing ceremony in Albany, Cuomo said provisions of the bill, such as limiting gun clips to seven rounds and mental health screening for weapons purchases, were essential to making New Yorkers safer.

“People who are mentally ill should not have access to guns, that’s common sense,” Cuomo said. “That’s probably the hallmark of this bill, coming up with a system that allows for mental-health screens.”

“Seven bullets in a gun, why? Because the high-capacity magazines that give you the capacity to kill a large number of human beings in a very short period of time is nonsensical to a civil society,” Cuomo said.

Police have said the gunman in Newtown, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, carried numerous high-capacity magazines and that he changed gun clips several times, allowing him to unleash at least 150 rounds in his 10-minute assault on the elementary school. Some victims were shot as many as 11 times.

Gun rights advocates lashed out at Cuomo and New York’s law, decrying the speed at which the legislation moved through New York’s statehouse. The state’s lawmakers have been back at work for less than a week.

“The National Rifle Association and our New York members are outraged at the draconian gun control bill that was rushed through the process late Monday evening,” the NRA, the nation’s most powerful gun rights lobby group, said in a statement.

“These gun control schemes have failed in the past and will have no impact on public safety and crime,” the NRA said. “Sadly, the New York Legislature gave no consideration to that reality.”

Also on Tuesday in Danbury, Connecticut, not far from Newtown, gun control advocates gathered for a rally outside a Walmart store to demand Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the nation’s largest gun retailer, stop selling assault weapons.

Among those at the rally were Lori Haas, whose daughter was injured in the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech, and Pam Simon, who was wounded in the 2011 shooting in Tucson, Arizona, that also critically injured former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

The Newtown killings plunged the rural New England town of 27,000 into grief along with much of the nation and prompted President Barack Obama to form a task force headed by Vice President Joe Biden to find ways to curb gun violence. Obama is scheduled to unveil the recommendations on Wednesday.

In a White House news conference on Monday, Obama signaled he will ask Congress to ban military-style assault weapons, require stronger background checks for gun buyers and put tighter controls on high-capacity magazine clips.

Of the two new apps, I had an easier time adjusting to SwiftKey 3, which uses a traditional on-screen keyboard and guesses what you'll type next by using a predictive language algorithm. It also incorporates touch gestures, like a right-to-left swipe across the keyboard to delete the last word and left-to-right swipe from the period button to insert a question mark.

Snapkeys Si was a tougher adjustment: It abandons the traditional keyboard altogether, forcing users to type on just four squares that hold 12 letters; all other letters are produced by tapping in the blank space between these four squares. Like SwiftKey 3, it uses some swipe gestures, like a right-side diagonal swipe down to create a period. Snapkeys Si aims to solve fat-finger syndrome, giving people's fingers bigger targets and guessing the words they mean to type.

The BlackBerry 10 is scheduled to be launched on Jan. 30. I got some hands-on time with its on-screen keyboard, and was impressed by its suggested words, which users can swipe up to throw into sentences. This is designed to make the device easy to use with one hand. The BlackBerry 10 keyboard also reads and learns exactly where a user taps each key to better predict which letter to type, so clumsy fingers make fewer mistakes.

SwiftKey 3 for Android is an app that has a healthy understanding of how language is used in everyday conversation, and supports 54 languages, including variations like American, British and Australian English. Creator TouchType scraped Internet language data from around the world to understand how people speak in real-life situations—not by studying a dictionary. It then used this knowledge to create a predictive algorithm that guesses what you're likely to type next, suggesting three options above the keyboard as you go.

This app can also detect where you meant to add a space, automatically adding it in for you. I found this feature to be a handy time saver as I typed since I could just keep going rather than stopping to tap the space key after each word.

During setup, SwiftKey 3 users can opt to give the app access to their Gmail, Facebook Twitter and SMS interactions so that it can study a user's language to further understand how the person talks. For example, if someone always preferred to spell "thanks" as "thx," SwiftKey 3 would learn this behavior and add "thx" in as a word rather than continuously trying to correct it. A TouchType spokesman says later this year the company may add a feature allowing users to customize the app to write out complete words when they type abbreviations, like typing "abt" to get "about."

For privacy purposes, the app only stores this data locally on your phone rather than sending it back to the company for making improvements. And you can erase the app's personalized data at any time in Settings, Personalization, Clear Language Data.

SwiftKey 3 is free for the first month, and then costs $3.99 to continue using it. The app will remember all of your custom language settings when you upgrade, so you don't have to reteach it.

Aaron Swartz Case 'Snowballed Out Of MIT's Hands'

Aaron Swartz and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology seemed to hold similar beliefs about open access on the Internet.

Swartz, a well-known Internet activist, believed that copyrighted information should be made freely available online. MIT was one of the first universities to grant access to its course materials and professors' scholarly articles without charge to anyone with an Internet connection.

But when Swartz was caught using MIT's network to download academic journals and share them online, the university contacted law enforcement -- which led to the involvement of the Secret Service -- and helped federal authorities build their case against him.

Privately, several MIT officials expressed concerns that prosecutors were "overreaching" by charging Swartz with federal crimes that carried a sentence of up to 35 years in prison, according to a MIT employee familiar with the investigation.

But by then, it was too late. "By the time this thing snowballed out of MIT's hands, it was gone," said the employee, who asked not to be named because he still works at the university. "When the federal government chooses to prosecute, you don’t get to say no."

On Friday, Swartz, 26, was found dead in his apartment of an apparent suicide. He was facing trial in April for allegedly stealing millions of scholarly journal articles from the digital archive JSTOR using MIT's network. Before his death, federal prosecutors told Swartz and his attorney that he could spend six months behind bars and plead guilty to 13 federal crimes, but they rejected the offer, believing they could win at trial, his attorney told the Boston Globe.

Swartz suffered from depression, and his reasons for taking his own life remain unclear. But his supporters say that his looming federal trial was a contributing factor in his death and they blame prosecutors and MIT for pursuing the case.

On Tuesday, mourners paid tribute to Swartz during an emotional funeral service in his hometown of Highland Park, Ill. During the service, Swartz's father was quoted as saying his son "was killed by the government, and MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."

MIT is planning an investigation of its involvement with the federal case against Swartz. Professor Hal Abelson, who is leading the internal investigation, declined to comment Tuesday about MIT's role in the case, saying he had not yet begun his inquiry. "Right now, people need time to think about Aaron," Abelson said.

The university's decision to contact law enforcement in Swartz's case appeared to run counter to its history of embracing computer hackers and open access to information on the Internet. In 2009, MIT faculty voted unanimously to make their scholarly articles available for free online. The decision emphasized MIT's "commitment to disseminating the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible," according to a university press release.

"The vote is a signal to the world that we speak in a unified voice; that what we value is the free flow of ideas," MIT faculty chair Bish Sinyal said at the time.

Abelson said the university had, at times, struggled to create policies that were consistent with those values. "At MIT there's always been an appreciation of the value of hacking and being more flexible," he said in an interview. "But there are always hard decisions about how that works out in terms of policy."

At the time of his alleged offenses, Swartz was a fellow at Harvard University, not a student at MIT, but his lawyers argued that MIT's Internet policy allowed unfettered use of its network. Unlike other universities, MIT did not require a password or any affiliation with the school to access servers and digital libraries, Swartz's lawyers said in court filings.

MIT's network lacked "even basic controls to prevent abuse," such as preventing users from downloading too many PDFs or utilizing too much bandwidth, said Alex Stamos, a computer security researcher who planned to testify as an expert witness on Swartz's behalf during his upcoming trial.

"In fact, in my 12 years of professional security work I have never seen a network this open," Stamos said of MIT in a blog post over the weekend.

In late 2010, MIT staff was notified three times by JSTOR that a user on the university's network had been abusing its subscription to the archive by downloading thousands of articles. After the third notice, MIT employees traced the IP address to a laptop in a basement wiring closet on campus. The laptop belonged to Swartz.

According to the source close to the investigation, when MIT employees found the laptop, they contacted MIT police, who called Cambridge police, where the call was then routed to a detective assigned to the New England Electronic Crimes Task Force. That detective contacted another member of the task force, Michael Pickett, a special agent with the U.S. Secret Service, who helped lead the investigation.

After contacting law enforcement, MIT helped federal authorities gather evidence to build their case against Swartz, his attorneys said in court filing. MIT officials, for example, installed video surveillance to catch Swartz returning for his laptop, according to filings.

MIT employees also captured network traffic from Swartz's laptop and turned that data over to the Secret Service without requiring a warrant or subpoena. MIT disclosed that data to law enforcement with permission from the university's general counsel’s office, Swartz's attorney wrote in an October court filing.

Jay Wilcoxson, who works in the university's office of general counsel, declined to comment through a university spokeswoman.

Some say the university could have handled Swartz's case internally. "The lesson learned is MIT needs a clear policy on when to talk to outside law enforcement because the case became a fiasco," the MIT source said. "Once federal prosecutors were on the case, there was no going back."

Because of People Like Larry Pratt

Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, surprised Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace on Sunday by claiming that universal background checks on gun purchases are a waste of time and provides a "‘false"’ sense of security. He proposed, instead saying that legislators should focus on eliminating gun-free zones in schools and other areas.

Wallace was visibly surprised, pointing out that approximately 40% of gun sales happen without any screening. While federally licensed gun dealers are required to conduct background checks on gun purchasers to prevent dangerous persons, such as felons and the mentally ill, from gaining access to firearms. More than 6 million gun sales are unscreened – those from gun transfers, "“private"” sellers, and purchases at gun shows or made online do not fall under the requirement, a hole in the law often referred to as the "“Gun Show Loophole."

"It is false security to think somehow we'll spot problems when there's really no way to spot these problems. Some of the most horrendous of the mass murders that have occurred recently including the one in Newtown would not have been stopped by a background check … And, so, to assume that this is going to be our firewall against …"

"I don't think anybody is saying that it is a firewall. What is wrong with the idea, if you get a gun whether you buy from a registered dealer or a private sale, that you have to go through background checks just in case, to find out whether somebody has one or has a mental health problem?"

"We are wasting our time and going in that direction when we should be talking about doing away with the gun-free zones which have been so convenient, such a magnet to those who would come and slaughter lots of people knowing no one will be legally able to defend themselves in these zones."

Of course background checks are not a waste of time. That is why 94% of police chiefs, 87% of Americans, and 74% of NRA members support requiring a criminal background check of anyone purchasing a gun.

And, of course, this debate is supposedly about the safety of our students from rampage killers. So why not ask them? A staggering 92% of high school students support criminal background checks.

Finally, Pratt's position – to increase the number of guns in circulation – makes no sense without a plan to make sure the guns being provided are well-regulated and not being placed in the hands of criminals, people with severe mental health problems, undocumented persons, drug addicts or anyone else who shouldn't have access to a gun. His proposals only make sense in the context of swelling gun sales.

Background checks are supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans, including gun owners. There are plenty of indications that some Republicans also support them. See Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), rated A+ by the NRA, who commented Friday that he was open to revisions of background check laws. "You know, you're buying a used weapon from somebody and then basically no background check," he said, noting that with current technology it would not be hard to run such a check using a smartphone.

As Pratt takes a hard-line position on background checks, he should be wary not to discredit himself or the gun lobby. Other gun advocates have tread on risky territory lately; on Friday, Tactical Response CEO James Yeager showed no tact in his response to proposed gun control measures by yelling, "if it goes one inch further, I'm going to start killing people." Gun Appreciation Day chairman Larry Ward suggested on Friday's CNN Newsroom that if African Americans were armed, "perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history." And finally, talk show host and conspiracist Alex Jones "hysterically screamed at and patronizingly mocked" pro-gun-control CNN host Piers Morgan, possibly damaging the gun rights lobby.

 The story of Albuquerque 11-year-old Alyssa Gutierrez turned out differently. Three teenage burglars broke into her home, but they fled after she merely grabbed her mother's rifle. No one was hurt, but the criminals were caught.

But sometimes innocents do get shot. Such was the case with an 11-year-old Palmview boy in 2010. At home with his mother, he got his hands on a .22-caliber rifle. And after the two armed and masked illegal aliens who had broken into their home shot through their bedroom door after the mother refused to open it, hitting the boy in the hip, he returned fire. He struck one of the criminals in the neck, causing them both to flee. They were apprehended when the wounded miscreant showed up at a local hospital.

These were children who lived in places called Bryan County, Albuquerque, and Palmview. Thank God, they still live in those places. And that's what can happen when kids and guns mix.

If you're unacquainted with my work, you perhaps didn't expect this piece to take the turn it did. You perhaps didn't hear these stories; the mainstream media doesn't report such things much. But now that you have, ponder this question: do you wish these children hadn't had access to firearms? Because they won't if the gun-control crowd gets its way.

Of course, the above real-life stories are just that: anecdotes. Some will say they're rare and not statistically significant. And I suppose they are rare; most people will never face such evil and have the ability to thwart it. Yet they're not nearly as rare as a Sandy Hook or Virginia Tech: your chance of dying in a school shooting approximates that of being struck by lightning. In contrast, Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck estimates that 2.5 million Americans each year use guns for self-defense and that 400,000 of them say they would have been killed if they hadn't been armed. That's 400,000 a year.

Do I believe they all would have been murdered? No. People have a penchant for the dramatic, and fear and stress can corrupt judgment. But even if only one half of one percent of them are correct, that's 2000 innocent lives saved with guns every year. This is approximately 76 times as many as were killed at Sandy Hook and considerably more than were lost in all American gun massacres during the last 40 years. And if five percent of them are right, it amounts to 20,000 innocent lives saved — far more than the number murdered with guns in America every year.

Ah, "that big ‘if,'" some will say. Woulda', coulda', maybe, perhaps, I suppose. Of course, we could also mention that those 2.5 million annual defensive gun uses represent rapes, robberies, and assaults thwarted — usually without firing a shot. And that's part of the problem. It's a headline when a gun goes off; it can be head to the next story when a criminal is merely scared off.

As for hypotheticals, they aren't as emotionally compelling as a school shooting, where you see victims' pictures, grieving relatives, and emergency vehicles dominating your TV. Perhaps it would be different if we, as in a science-fiction movie, could somehow get a glimpse into alternate gun-free futures, where the world's Kendras and Alyssas and millions of other good citizens couldn't defend themselves. Maybe if the citizenry saw in living color how many of these people, while now safe, would have been left brutalized, killed, and lying in a pool of their own blood, we could compete for emotional impact. Thus we should remember, to use a play on a Frederic Bastiat saying, that a bad policy-maker observes only what can be seen; a good policy-maker observes what can be seen — and what must be foreseen. Dead innocents killed with guns can be seen; the innocents who would be killed were it not for guns must be foreseen.

Yet even what can be seen, such as the stories I opened with, won't usually be because they don't fit the anti-gun mainstream-media narrative. Instead we hear about how 13 children a day are killed with firearms, with no mention that this "‘statistic' includes ‘children' up to age 19 or 24, depending on the source [most of these incidents involve teenage gang members shooting each other]," writes Guy Smith at Gun Facts. Or we're asked questions such as "Why does anyone need an AR-15?" Perhaps we should ask the then 15-year-old Houston boy who used that very weapon to defend himself and his younger sister against two burglars in 2010.

Here's what you might learn: being a light gun (seven pounds) with little recoil, it's an ideal firearm for youngsters and women. A lady I knew once fired a shouldered shotgun when she was a girl, and the kick knocked her on her backside; an AR won't do this. This is partially because its high-tech mechanism absorbs much of the recoil energy, but also because it is not nearly as powerful as even many hunting rifles.

How can this be? Isn't this "scary black gun" a "killing machine," as Piers Morgan put it? As explained and illustrated in this video, this class of weapons is designed to wound a 170-lb. man, while a high-powered hunting rifle's purpose is to kill a 300 to 800-lb. deer or moose. In fact, in some states and countries it is illegal to hunt large game with an AR-caliber round (.223) for fear that its relative ineffectiveness will leave a wounded and suffering animal wandering the forest. As to this, note that the AR-wielding 15-year-old Houston boy shot one of the intruders at least 3 times — and the man lived. It might have been a different story had the teen used a 30.06 deer rifle, and a very different one with a buckshot-loaded shotgun.

A 50-year duel

The 1980 Mariel Boatlift saw U.S. watercraft packed with more than 100,000 Cubans fleeing the island. The rafter crisis of 1994 saw tens of thousands more braving the 90-mile voyage across the Florida Straits on inner tubes, Styrofoam vessels and cars converted into floating barges.

Starting Monday, a new kind of migration commences as the communist government eliminates a long-standing restriction on Cubans' ability to leave the country, with its population of more than 11 million. And this time, instead of pushing out to sea and riding the Gulf Stream, the route to the U.S. could take Cubans on a meandering tour of foreign airports, visa offices and difficult land crossings.

Yoani Sanchez, a popular blogger in Havana, said most Cubans have been eagerly awaiting this day since the government announced the change in October. She said people on the island are positioned like runners crouched into the starting blocks on a track.

The change could significantly alter the complicated relationship between the governments of the United States and Cuba, a half-century-old feud that nearly ignited a nuclear war and has even outlived the Cold War that spawned the standoff.

Americans have long called on Cuba to grant more freedoms to its people, so the new rules could prompt Washington to rethink its 50-year-old embargo on the island and restrictions on most Americans from traveling there. If the new rules lead to another mass migration, President Obama and Congress may need to alter the policy granting most Cubans legal status once they touch U.S. soil.

Cuba experts want to see whether all Cubans will truly be free to travel before having those discussions, because they fear that the changes could just be a ploy by Cuban President Raúl Castro to win more concessions from an Obama administration that has already eased restrictions for Americans traveling to Cuba.

"They're not doing this because the Castro brothers became nice guys all of a sudden," Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., whose family fled Cuba, said of Raúl Castro and his brother, Fidel Castro, who ran the country for five decades before falling ill and stepping down in 2008.

In the October announcement — where they revealed that Cubans no longer need to obtain an elusive exit visa to make any trip off the island — officials made clear that the government could still deny travel to Cubans for reasons of defense, national security and "other reasons of public interest." The new rules specifically forbid people involved in "economic development," scientists and people facing criminal charges to leave. Cubans must also have a valid Cuban passport, so applying for and renewing one could prove another obstacle.

During a meeting two weeks ago with Health Minister Roberto Morales, the nation's health care professionals were told that they would benefit from the new travel rules, according to the Associated Press. But most Cubans won't know until they try to leave.

"Whenever they make a decision like this, you never know what's behind it, what the motivations are," said Mario Soler, 46, a Cuban now living in South Florida with nearly 1 million other Cuban Americans. "They're the only ones who know how this is going to work."

If Cubans are allowed to leave in droves, and many find their way to U.S. soil, it will provide a dramatic test of America's policy toward Cuban immigrants and pave the way for the first significant shift in U.S.-Cuban relations in nearly a half-century.

Under the so-called "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy unique to citizens of Cuba, any Cuban caught at sea is returned to the island, while those who touch U.S. soil are generally granted legal residence. From 2000 to 2010, more than 30,000 Cubans a year became legal U.S. residents.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government severely restricts travel to Cuba. Only Americans with relatives on the island and those going on educational, religious or artistic licenses can legally travel there.

"It's a political move on the part of Raúl Castro to put pressure on the United States," said Jaime Suchlicki, director of the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies. "Now Raúl can get up and say, 'I'm allowing my people to travel, why don't you let Americans travel to Cuba?' That's what it's going to be — a pressure point."

The influential Cuban-American community in Florida, a key voting bloc in the massive swing state, has long pressured Washington to maintain an economic embargo on the island. But Obama has done well in his two elections among Cuban Americans, signaling that younger Cubans may be more open to easing travel rules.

The changes in travel restrictions could also be viewed as the latest in a series of steps that Raúl Castro has undertaken to remove what he called "excessive prohibitions" on Cubans and a state-controlled economic system that has long been languishing.

Since he assumed power, Castro has allowed Cubans more access to cellphones and computers, let them stay in tourist hotels previously off-limits to them, granted more licenses to open private businesses and, for the first time in the history of the revolution, let Cubans buy and sell their cars, apartments and houses.

Philip Peters, vice president of the Arlington-based Lexington Institute, said Castro understands that many Cubans will permanently flee the island when given permission to travel. But he said that Cuban officials also see the economic benefit of letting people travel more freely, where they can make more money and, hopefully, send it home.

"I think they decided to take the leap, and they're making a bet that they're going to be stronger for this," Peters said. "Cubans who have been involved in the deliberations — economists who have studied migration — they talk about circularity. If they allow Cubans to travel freely, they're going to be better off."

Christopher Sabatini, senior policy director at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, agrees that the Cubans see this as a money-making venture. But he said there are other motivations involved.

"There is a palpable concern among some government officials about this process of reform getting a little out of control, that it's slipping out of their hands," Sabatini said.

Allowing some Cubans to travel more freely, he said, provides a "distraction" from the still-languishing economy and a "safety valve" to release some of the steam building up in the dissident community.

FBI Documents Shine Light on Clandestine Cellphone Tracking Tool

The FBI calls it a “sensitive investigative technique” that it wants to keep secret. But newly released documents that shed light on the bureau’s use of a controversial cellphone tracking technology called the “Stingray” have prompted fresh questions over the legality of the spy tool.

Functioning as a so-called “cell-site simulator,” the Stingray is a sophisticated portable surveillance device. The equipment is designed to send out a powerful signal that covertly dupes phones within a specific area into hopping onto a fake network. The feds say they use them to target specific groups or individuals and help track the movements of suspects in real time, not to intercept communications. But by design Stingrays, sometimes called “IMSI catchers,” collaterally gather data from innocent bystanders’ phones and can interrupt phone users’ service—which critics say violates a federal communications law.

The FBI has maintained that its legal footing here is firm. Now, though, internal documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil liberties group, reveal the bureau appears well aware its use of the snooping gear is in dubious territory. Two heavily redacted sets of files released last month show internal Justice Department guidance that relates to the use of the cell tracking equipment, with repeated references to a crucial section of the Communications Act which outlines how “interference” with communication signals is prohibited.

It’s a small but significant detail. Why? Because it demonstrates that “there are clearly concerns, even within the agency, that the use of Stingray technology might be inconsistent with current regulations,” says EPIC attorney Alan Butler. “I don't know how the DOJ justifies the use of Stingrays given the limitations of the Communications Act prohibition.”

The FBI declined a request to comment on specific questions related to the legality of Stingrays, as it says the matter remains in litigation. Spokesman Christopher Allen told me by email that “in general the FBI cautions against drawing conclusions from redacted FOIA documents.”

A potential legal conflict, however, is not all the documents draw attention to. They disclose that the feds have procedures in place for loaning electronic surveillance devices (like the Stingray) to state police. This suggests the technology may have been used in cases across the United States, in line with a stellar investigation by LA Weekly last year, which reported that state cops in California, Florida, Texas, and Arizona had obtained Stingrays. More still, the trove offers a rare hint at the circumstances in which Stingrays are deployed. “Violent Gang Safe Street Task Forces Legal Issues" is the title of one newly released set of FBI presentation slides related to tracking tactics.

It’s likely that in the months ahead, a few more interesting nuggets of information will emerge. The FBI has told EPIC that it holds a mammoth 25,000 pages of documents that relate to Stingray tools, about 6,000 of which are classified. The Feds have been drip-releasing the documents month by month, and so far there have been four batches containing between 27 and 184 pages each. Though most of the contents—even paragraphs showing how the FBI is interpreting the law—have been heavy-handedly redacted, several eyebrow-raising details have made it through the cut. As I reported back in October, a previous release revealed the Feds have an internal manual called “GSM cellphone tracking for dummies.”

Any business model functions in a chain of activities. Each job function or process is a link in a chain playing a critical role in adding value to the previous function. It, in turn, passes on value to the next function. If there is a weak link in your chain of operations, it will eventually break, causing your operation and customer experience to suffer.

Let’s use the purchase process as an example. Suppose a customer wishes to special-order a table. She reviews all the details with her salesperson who writes up a sales order. The sales order is given to the purchasing manager who keys in the PO and specifies a flat black finish. The merchandise arrives, the delivery is scheduled and delivered. When the customer sees her table, she is dismayed. She wanted gloss black finish and asks for a refund.

This is just one example of hundreds of breaks that occur in the chain of operations. If this business had a stronger link between the salesperson and the purchasing process, this kind of problem could have been avoided.

The first link in your business chain is obvious. It is the role of marketing. There is no business without customers. Whatever your media and networking combination, its purpose is to obtain relevant sales leads. If your product is high-end luxury contemporary merchandise for example, you probably don’t want high school kids visiting you. You would much prefer a high income, style conscious customer, right? So, that’s where your marketing focus should be. Know your customer and target your efforts directly to that audience. Businesses with a strong first link will get more selling opportunities. Businesses with a broken first link don’t produce enough leads and have a difficult time growing their operations.

The only purpose of a lead is to follow up on it. If there is no system to follow-up on leads, most will die a quick death. CRM encourages this follow-up. Customers who give you their information deserve to be contacted. To increase your chance of getting through, contact them with a relevant communication in a media that they prefer. If they signed up for your VIP list, send them a monthly email with a discount or drawing opportunity. If they got a quote, call and email them a product update with information to help them make their decision. You will find that the top salespeople in the world have a talent for follow-up. UPerfect control of daily cash in your system is required. Forget manual day sheets unless you are committed to being a pen and paper operation. Every retail software system includes a report to review daily cash receipts. At the end of each day or following morning, run a cash report for the cash, checks, credit cards, and finance payments received into your system. Compare it against the physical cash, checks, and credit card totals collected. If there is a discrepancy, either someone made a mistake entering a receipt, the money never came in, or it is somewhere else. Rectify all issues immediately. This process should take under 20 minutes per day for even large operations.se a CRM system to help your average salespeople become great salespeople. These systems generate information so the follow up can be executed and managed. Customers are not forgotten.

New Bus Fleet Features Card Readers

This fall, University Parking and Transportation Services began the roll-out of 19 new buses, updating its shuttle fleet that serves University of Rochester students, faculty, and staff. The fleet upgrade will be completely in place by early-January, with each new bus equipped with features that add efficiencies and safety to the shuttle service.

University ID card readers are being introduced on all buses. Beginning Jan. 14, riders will need to have their UR ID card ready to swipe upon boarding all buses. If a passenger does not have their ID card, the driver will need to log the information manually.

The card swipe will provide location and time data needed to assess routes and ridership. This information will be shared with the University's Transportation Advisory Committee (TAC), which includes representatives from all the academic units, students from SA government and the Graduate Organizing Group, along with representatives from the Medical Center and Parking and Transportation. TAC assists in monitoring and evaluating shuttle services and routes to maximize efficiency in University transportation.

The survival rates for patients receiving liver transplants at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center (MEDVAMC) exceed national averages at statistically significant levels according to the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients.

"The Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center’s program for the treatment of liver disease is among the most advanced in the country,” Samir S. Awad, M.D., Operative Care Line executive and an associate professor in the Michael E. DeBakey Department of Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine, said. “Given that we provide excellent care for Veterans with end-stage liver disease preoperatively and postoperatively, the ability to meet their transplantation surgical needs is a tremendous advantage.”

According to the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients, the MEDVAMC Liver Transplant Program’s one-year patient survival rate is 97.06 percent, compared to an expected survival rate of 90.30 percent and the national hospital average of 89.53 percent. The program’s three-year patient survival rate is 83.33 percent, compared to an expected survival rate of 73.93 percent and the national hospital average of 79.85 percent. The expected survival rate reflects the health condition of the program’s transplant patients.

Besides being the busiest surgery program in the Department of Veterans Affairs, MEDVAMC is well-known for tackling the most complex surgical cases, with patients usually older and in poorer health than other hospitals. Featuring advanced robotic surgery technology, the hospital’s surgery department was the first VA to use a computerized, operating room real-time location system to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of day-of-surgery operations by directly coordinating and supporting surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, patients, family members, and related support personnel and activities.

“We see these patients first, and they are sicker than you can imagine,” Blase A. Carabello, M.D., Medical Care Line executive and the Moncrief Professor of Medicine and vice chairman in the Department of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said. “Our extraordinary team of doctors, nurses, and support personnel truly give these patients a second chance at life.”

“Our outstanding surgery program, our talented, top-notch staff, and our successful Liver Transplant Program were three of the reasons the DeBakey VA was recently approved by the Department of Veterans Affairs to establish a Kidney Transplant Center,” J. Kalavar, M.D., Medical Center chief of staff, said. “We constantly strive to provide Veterans the best health care anywhere.”

The MEDVAMC Liver Transplant Program began in 2007 and performed its 50th procedure on Nov. 19, 2012. Transplants are the most advanced treatment for patients with severe, end-stage disease with no other effective, available medical or surgical treatments, according to clinicians.

 Harold Gage slowly backs his semitrailer up next to the fence at his Rozet home. His friend, Tyler Hippen, trails behind, making fresh footprints in the snow. As the sun sinks, the temperature falls steadily toward zero. Gage’s girlfriend, Lisa Winjum, runs inside the house to put on warmer clothes, but she’s right back outside as soon as her coveralls are buckled.

Gage steps down from the cab, and he, Winjum, Hippen and two others get to work loosening the tight straps that hold 13 round bales of hay to the trailer. One by one, they pull the straps off and stow them under the cab.

Gage and Hippen then hoist the skinnier of the other two men up onto the truck. He leans back on one of the round bales and gets ready to push with his legs. Winjum calls her dogs away from the truck, and on the count of three the men kick and push the first hay bale off the rig. Once one falls off, the rest is easy.

They all jump up on the trailer, and after a few minutes of grunting and shoving, the remainder of the load is off. The round bales weigh between 1,700 and 1,800 pounds. They fall to the ground with a thud, and they don’t bounce. These bales are solid, fresh hay wrapped up tight, with no mold in the middle.

With such a bad drought this season, seeing more than a few bales of hay spread out on one property is uncommon in Campbell County. Hay is so tough to come by that many ranchers have had to downsize their cattle herds, selling cows and giving away horses they cannot afford to feed.

But Gage and Winjum have worked out a system. Three or four times a week, the couple or a hired driver travels 430 miles up to Wild Rose, N.D., to pick up 26 bales of hay, a full truckload on Gage’s semi. Once they get the hay loaded and securely strapped down — at least a two-hour process — the pair turns around and drives the 430 miles back.

While the two own 26 horses, they don’t need that much hay for themselves. They know the livestock community is hurting, so they sell what they can at a fair price — $165 per bale, to be exact.

Winjum said some hay in the area is going for $250 to $300 per ton, up from the typical price of around $100 per ton last year. She said they’d sell their bales for cheaper, but they need to take transportation costs into consideration.

“We figured out how much it would cost to get Harold’s semi up and running again, and licensing, permits in each state, insurance, tires, fuel, truck driver pay and maintenance,” Winjum said.

As soon as she posted an Internet ad around Thanksgiving, they started getting calls. The couple delivers to a few regular customers, but they hear from someone new almost every day.

“It seems like most of the people are new people,” Gage said. “They’re just in dire need of hay, and they need it now.”

Janet and Bill Woodworth are regular customers who heard about Gage and Winjum through word of mouth. Janet Woodworth has been raising cows all her life.

“We’ve always had hay, and we’ve always been able to have some carry-over hay,” Woodworth said. “There was only one year we had to buy a little bit, and that was probably 15 years ago.”

Not only has Woodworth had to buy numerous bales of hay this year, she has already had to sell six head of cattle in order to be able to afford to feed the rest.

“It’s a sad year,” Woodworth said. “All this beautiful weather this fall and winter is not good for us. It’s getting scary for next year.”

This is the first year Gage and Winjum have done something so drastic to be able to feed their animals, but they may have to keep it up if Wyoming doesn’t get more precipitation.