#i actually drew this a few weeks ago when it was 1 million degrees out but i digress | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

justforbooks · 11 months

Photo

Three years after it was declared “The Worst Restaurant In NYC Right Now,” Salt Bae’s Manhattan burger joint has closed.

Salt Bae, of course, is the social media tag for the New York celebrity chef and butcher Nusret Gökçe, who became famous for bouncing flakes of salt off his forearm and on to just about anything edible, giving customers varying degrees of salt-shock.

He opened Salt Bae Burger in a city obsessed with finding the best burger possible, and the outlet on Park Avenue had undergone a bumpy ride ever since. It opened in late February 2020 – just before the city went into Covid-19 lockdowns – to accusations of sexism because it had offered a free, appetizer-sized veggie “ladies burger” in pink buns to women only.

“We wanted to compliment the ladies,” its general manager, Al Avci, told Eater, who explained the stunt had gone down well in Dubai. “We weren’t thinking it would be sexist.”

But Salt Bae Burger also drew consternation as the home of the $99, gold-flecked milkshake and the $100 Gold Burger, which was encased in gold foil. Meanwhile, in terms of ambience, Eater critic Robert Sietsema wrote, “it had all the charm of an airplane hangar.”

Scott Lynch, a reviewer for Gothamist, said he’d “had the unfortunate opportunity a few weeks ago to eat several sad servings of hospital food, and everything I had at Salt Bae was worse”. The menu, he wrote, was framed in metal like a tombstone “apparently marking the death of everything pleasurable about eating”.

The inexpensive Wet Burger, he added, was “actually just a meager disc of meat sitting within a soggy, unpleasantly sweet bun. It’s also tiny, but you can’t eat more than a single bite anyway.” Lynch called Salt Bae Burger the city’s worst restaurant.

Gökçe, who would cook in aviator sunglasses and tight white T-shirts, had seen success before. The Turkish restaurant impresario became famous three years earlier, in 2017, when – through his “salt crystals bouncing off arm bent in a swan-like formation” technique – he earned more than 52 million followers on Instagram via a chain of Nusr-Et steakhouses with more than 20 locations worldwide.

But the salting technique also attracted unwanted attention. When Gökçe donned gloves to perform the salting, some wondered if that might be because the technique could otherwise violate health codes.

Also, before Salt Bae Burger opened, the company behind the Nusr-Et restaurants was slapped with legal claims ranging from sexual harassment to wage theft. Gökçe raised eyebrows after bragging about feeding the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, US conservative darling Donald Trump Jr and Leonardo DiCaprio, who is known for his dating life as much as his critically acclaimed film roles.

And the reviews weren’t great, either.

The New York Post called it “Public Rip-off No 1” that cost $521.45 for dinner for two and left the diners “craving a snack”. A $25 salad was composed of “days-old iceberg lettuce and mystery greens with tasteless goat cheese and a few walnuts, raisins, and pomegranate seeds”.

The New York Times critic Pete Wells said he’d experienced more than the theatrical application of salt to his order. “I had a pair of trousers that Salt Bae had seasoned like a steak,” he wrote.

He added: “Mr Gokce has only one move, but he performs it with total confidence, and as anybody who’s ever been on a dance floor knows, that’s enough.”

Still, Gökçe’s fame has been real enough.

“Americans and New Yorkers love me very much,” he told the New York Times. He described how he served most of the meat to customers, saying: “After I cut it, I do the move.

“I go to the same table, sometimes three times. I don’t see myself as a butcher or just a restaurant owner. I view my job as an art because I make art out of meat and the move is like a final touch on this art. It came from within me.”

Nonetheless, Salt Bae Burger closed last month, and the title of New York’s best – and worst – burger is up for grabs.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

#JUST FOR BOOKS #Salt Bae #Nusret Gökçe

17 notes · View notes

professionaldevelopmentdy · 3 years

Text

Week 1 - reading

https://www.creativebloq.com/features/are-design-graduates-industry-ready

Vince provided this article for us to read to get the ball rolling. It discusses whether design graduates are industry ready.

The author Lisa Hassell shares her university experience. She states that she graduated in 2005 with “no more than a heavy A3 portfolio, a hideous overdraft and little idea of what to do next.”

She believes that degree courses have changed considerably over the last 13 years and that today’s grads are a lot more informed than they used to be but poses the question “is it enough?”

The report states that ‘A report by creative branding agency Michon released in April 2018 sought to highlight some of these issues, detailing concerns among the design community that recent graduates are leaving higher education with insufficient real-world skills.’ It is then debated who is responsible, is it studios that need to take a more active role or the universities?

the UK Government has pledged £80 million to help businesses and universities work more closely together, promoting collaborative research and creating highly skilled jobs. - This is an encouraging move but is it time for an industry wide rethink?

Experience vs education

Tensions often arise from employers wanting real-world experience and undervaluing the important fundamentals that a practice-led art education is often structured around, observes Manchester-based designer Craig Oldham.

"I think education can make students more aware of certain practicalities of working life, but to nail it down would be misplaced time. They’d be better placed focusing on creative thinking and expressing that using their skills, [as] opposed to getting laboured down in bureaucratic practicality. "For me I think there’s often an over-reliance from the industry on people being able to do these things, and I think we can often lose sight of the fact that we sell creativity as an industry – so that’s of primary importance to me."

"I hate the bun fight that happens between education and industry, with both sides blaming one another," states Oldham. "It's pointless and futile, and each has to bear responsibility and engage in a meaningful dialogue and relationship. We are crippled now by numerous problems in both education and industry – gender, pay, race, class – and both sides have to take an active role in addressing them."

Fuelling the debate, course leader at Ravensbourne University, Derek Yates, is frustrated with how some institutions are failing to tackle the issue. "Education has been a bit lazy in the way it works with industry," states Yates. "We need to develop our relationships more strategically. I've done a lot of industry projects over the years and the ones that work are where both parties get something out of it. Both parties have to benefit for the relationship to work."

Collaborate to drive change

At Ravensbourne University, Yates has developed approaches to working with the industry. In 2012, he initiated and chaired Alt/Shift, a platform to promote meaningful dialogue and constructive collaboration between the creative industries and design education.

Heading up the BA Hons Advertising & Brand Design course, a major part of his role involves facilitating partnerships between education and contemporary creative practice, and over the last 10 years he has instigated projects with internationally recognised organisations such as the O2, Eye Magazine, LBi, Moving Brands, Mother, National Air Traffic Control, De La Rue and ustwo. Earlier this year he broke new ground with Untitled– a one-day networking event delivered in collaboration with Lecture in Progress.

"Our aim is to empower emerging talent with information and first-hand accounts that demystify the day-to-day workings of the creative world," says Will Hudson, who ran a series of workshops with Ravensbourne students.

"By focusing on the people, projects and places that make the industry thrive, we want to deliver greater visibility to how work unfolds, where it happens and the breadth of roles that exist."

"They didn't want a conference that was just lectures, they didn't want a conference that was delivered by white, middle-class men, and they didn't want a conference delivered by people over 30," reveals Yates.

Yates believes students need to be active participants in the way their education develops.

There's an equally important conversation to be had between students and educators. If you give students more responsibility and ask them what they think they can quickly show you what you can do better. They need to question and discover for themselves and we need to incorporate what they are learning into how their course design develops year on year. We need to trust our students more."

“I think all practitioners have a responsibility to teach, to give back” - Craig Oldham

University degree alternatives

Shillington ensures it is relevant to the creative industry by hiring only practising designers who are personable, eager to mentor and share their knowledge with the next generation. "Their expertise guides our curriculum, and their experience allows us to cultivate an authentic 'studio' classroom," explains UK Director Sarah McHugh. "Intensive courses are definitely shaking up education, and we're proud to be one of the original pioneers."

Eleanor Robertson parted from a career in marketing and publicity to pursue her passion for design, enrolling on the full-time course at Shillington. Within a few months of graduating she secured a junior designer role at branding agency Paul Belford Ltd and hasn’t looked back.

"These different experiences meant that people's responses to the same brief were wildly different, which was very inspiring." - Eleanor Robertson

In today's fast-paced world, it's entirely possible that university and intensive courses can actually work really well together, as McHugh attests: "many of our students have already completed degrees and/or worked in a wide variety of industries. Their previous experience and skills can actually benefit them at Shillington to up-skill or completely change their careers."

Creating opportunities for students

Launching Intern with the goal of making the creative industries more diverse, representative and inclusive, Dudson is passionate about providing opportunities to the next generation of creatives.

"I started the project to provide a place where an open dialogue about creative careers could happen, as I was seeing far too many people either trapped in a cycle of unpaid internships, or locked out of potential careers because they simply couldn’t afford to keep working for free."

Valuing creative ideas

The ethos of our course is 'Ideas that work'.

"Everyone is so driven and committed and their priority is nailing the brief for the client, not because they're forced to but because they love it. It was really inspiring to be part of an environment full of talented and motivated people." - Student on work placement for McCann Manchester

Organised visits to agencies such as Mother, Ogilvy and Wieden+Kennedy are vital to the success of the course. "The best part about these visits is that you get to see inside a real agency and the hustle and bustle of it all," enthuses Bailey. "It inspires us to strive for opportunities; it's now our ultimate dream to work in New York."

"Technical skills are easy to pick up. But thinking of ideas is hard. If you can come up with good ideas on demand, you will always be useful."

Nurturing the next generation

"Agencies need to understand with real sincerity the level of the person they are looking to engage with, what responsibilities they can delegate, and be realistic about how that fits into their working schedule," argues Oldham.

Neil Bennett, strategy director at LOVE, recognises that there are many benefits to the gig economy if you are a creative; "Variety, lifestyle control, chance to work on personal projects and if you are very good it can be lucrative."

“Education and industry are two separate things; nobody graduates from a degree in medicine and goes into surgery on day one." - Will Hudson

Employing a team of 31 full-time staff across It's Nice That, Anyways and Lecture in Progress, the HudsonBec Group offers a number of entry-level 10-week roles across editorial and creative, but admits it had to make changes. "We drew the line about five years ago where we changed the language around internship to junior freelance," says Hudson.

Initially offered at National Minimum Wage, these roles are now paid at London Living Wage, which has led to a number of freelance roles joining the team full time, with around six of the current full-time staff coming through this process. "It has given us the opportunity to bring in a number of people over the years, often right at the start of their careers," reflects Hudson.

"There is obviously a baseline skill level and competency relevant to any role, but we have always maintained we are looking for passionate young people, willing to learn, contribute to conversations, aware of the industry and world around them."

"I think it's important for every person to evaluate as much as they can on the outset of undertaking anything – what they want to get from it as an aim, and what they will definitely get from it as a reality."

Having an idea of what you are doing something for, and why, beyond earning money can save a lot of pain down the line, or equally adds to the joy when things turn out better. "There can always be something you can take from any situation, be that a shit one or a great one", says Oldham.

Designing courses fit for the future

Designer and educator Jenny Theolin creates and delivers learning experiences for individuals, schools and businesses within areas such as technology, design thinking, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Designing a course called The Studio for the Digital Media Creative Programme at Hyper Island, Theolin teaches client relations, building teams and project management.

Like Yates, Theolin recognises the value of aligning courses with industry, to ensure students develop the flexibility and empathy needed to work with people. "Graphic design is a people's business," she continues, "you need to learn people skills and build relationships. The industry is very small, and it is much better to create long-lasting friendships than short-term dates."

Using research to develop

Building connections with studios such as ustwo, Sennep and Moving Brands, all of whom have set up research initiatives to ensure their commercial work is constantly evolving, Ravensbourne is able to feed insights from this into the development of its courses.

Research is a necessary part of how our industry is developing.

Yates suggests this could drive new opportunities for research related specifically to the creative disciplines. "I've always felt education needs to respond to its context," concludes Yates. "It needs to change and keep changing, because the world around it keeps on changing."

0 notes

eremikadefensesquad · 7 years

Text

The Ocean’s Mercy - chapter 1

A/N: It was only a matter of time before I fell down the fanfiction Pharmercy hole lmao

Guess who can’t link her ao3 and ff.net pages to her fanfiction posts anymore and has never written Overwatch fanfiction before and desperately needs the tag visibility for her first Pharmercy fic?? Dis bitch here. So if anyone is interested in reading this fic on my fanfiction account pages (princessfothenight93 on ff.net and Meekahsa on ao3), you’ll have to send me a PM or go to my /fanfiction page. Anywho, this fic is a bit of an art trade with @hanghr , who originally drew art for and came up with the idea. As I write it, she’ll be posting art to go along with it.

Despite her relatively young age, captain Fareeha Amari was an experienced captain with a loyal crew and a family reputation stretching decades. She had seen them safely through any degree of seafaring disasters: storms of all sizes, attacks from hostile pirates, navigation issues, and even a stranding or two. She had thought she had seen all the sea had to throw at her. That was, until, her crew pulled a mermaid onto her deck during what was supposed to be an already-dangerous trip. Fareeha would soon come to learn that the sea still had much to teach her.

Unlike her mother, Fareeha Amari didn't much care to associate herself with Overwatch. She supposed their intentions were noble enough, but the group of justice-orientated mercenaries was very secretive, very exclusive in who they recruited, and even the people they did business with were often left in the dark, given information on a need-to-know basis. That was not how Fareeha preferred to work when her ship was involved with transporting goods from one continent to the other.

For decades, her mother had worked for Overwatch exclusively, transporting goods of all shapes and sizes - most of it contraband that would have gotten her thrown in prison for five lifetimes if she was ever caught trying to bring it into some of the ports she had. To say that it had put a strain on their relationship was a bit of an understatement, especially given the generations of reputation their family had built as peerless sailors. After her mother's untimely death, Fareeha had made it very clear to the higher-ups of Overwatch that she would be involved in no illegal activity, and they largely ignored she existed for years, effectively cutting all their ties with her family. She supposed it was because an organization as big as Overwatch had an obscene amount of resources and could get any random sailor to transport their military-grade weapons from one country to another by throwing enough money at them. It was a loss of client-el that Fareeha did not regret in the slightest.

So, imagine her surprise when she was contacted by Overwatch's leader, a Jack Morrison, while in port in Germany for a few weeks between transport jobs. She had met the stone-faced American man over a few drinks in a pub. The negotiations started off pretty rocky, considering the first thing he brought up was now much he missed her mother's expertise. Fareeha had simply glared at him and given him an equally cold "I'm not my mother" before they began to discuss the details of what he wanted.

Morrison needed an assortment of weapons - perfectly legal ones, he assured her - transported from their base in Eichenwald to a small port in Australia. The sensitive issue was that those seas were plagued by a pirate gang known as the Junkers, and it was incredibly dangerous to traverse. He claimed he didn't want to send someone as inexperienced as his usual transporters to waters that deadly, so he was reaching out to someone who had experience dealing with and avoiding pirates. Namely, her and her crew. That's what he said, at least - though Fareeha personally thought it was more likely he couldn't find anyone stupid enough to cross paths with the Junkers. Fareeha and the crew of her ship, the Raptora, had locked horns with Talon pirates before and came out alive, but pirates were something she would never go out of her way to deal with. She almost told to shove it up his ass, but when he offered her more money than her last five jobs combined, she begrudgingly agreed to it.

That was two weeks ago, and to say they were off course was being generous. Almost immediately after leaving Germany, they hit one of the roughest storms she had seen all year - a sign of things to come, Fareeha was sure. It was nothing she hadn't dealt with a hundred times in the past, but it was enough to set them back several days. From where she was sitting at her desk in her quarters, Fareeha resisted the urge to sigh. Every second she was on this trip, she became more and more doubtful about it. She hadn't wanted to get involved in Overwatch and it's affairs, and even nature itself seen to be telling her that she was making a grave error.

As if reading her thoughts, she could suddenly hear an abnormal amount of activity and commotion on the deck above her. At least a dozen sets of footstep were sounding overhead and a lot of shouting accompanied the frenzy of motion. Deciding it was probably in her best interest to check up on it, Fareeha stood up, throwing her black gold-trimmed captain's coat over the white shirt and tie she was already wearing.

Upon reaching the deck, she could see a gathering of about thirteen deckhands - essentially her entire upper deck staff - standing around something towards the center of the ship. Ignoring how annoyed that made her when they were already far behind schedule, she moved toward them to see what the excitement was about.

As she approached the crowd and they quickly parted ways to allow space for their captain to pass through, Fareeha's eyes widened in shock at what the source of the activity was. Lying in the middle of the deck, tangled in the remnants of a net that a few bold crew members had attempted to cut her out of, was a creature that the young captain had only ever heard stories of. It was a mermaid and a strikingly beautiful one at that. It was like something straight out of a children's book, with long platinum blonde hair that fell to its shoulders in wet tendrils and striking blue eyes the same color as the ocean it had just been pulled from. The tail spread out behind the mermaid was a mix of golden and orange hues that shimmered in the sunlight. The golden scales even ran up the torso a bit, covering the gill slits just below its breasts on both sides of her body. Fins stuck out at various points of the creature's body - most dominantly the large dorsal fin that ran almost the entire length of its back. Identical fins stuck out where its ears would if been if it was a person, and at the elbows.

However, the pretty face and a colorful tail were where the appeal ended, for the mermaid's body language was anything but soft. It was wired, tense, razor-sharp teeth bared as a quiet growl seemed to be coming from the back of its throat. The mermaid's dorsal fin was flared upward, trying to make itself look bigger. It supported its upper body with its hands, glaring at all of the surrounding humans at once, challenging all of them to come anywhere nearby. When Fareeha finally made it closer to the creature, its blue eyes snapped to her own brown eyes, and there was nothing there but aggression. The captain took another step toward the creature, and the growl evolved into a hiss as it seemed to recoil slightly, the bloodlust almost immediately replaced by unease.

In a way, she found the display a bit disappointing - she had heard stories about mermaids, about how they could supposedly communicate with people, how they could be related to and experienced sentience and some degree of self-awareness, but this one in front of her was nothing more than an animal - a scared one, granted, but an animal. And if there was one thing Fareeha had learned with dealing animals, it was to recognize when one was agitated, and this mermaid was miles past that point. She finally tore her gaze away from the defensive glare of the mermaid and back to a group of the men and women standing around.

"So, what exactly were you doing while I was below deck for ten minutes?" Her eyebrow was arched. "You all have much better things to be doing than harassing the local wildlife, don't you think?"

"With all due respect, Captain," one of the men grunted in response, "it is a mermaid."

"I don't care what the hell it is," she snapped back, "it doesn't belong on my deck." As Fareeha glanced back at the aquatic crypid on the deck mere feet from her, she began to remember the much darker side of the stories she had heard of merfolk: sirens who lured entire ships to their deaths with mirages and beautiful songs, mermaids and mermen who drowned people for pleasure, monsters who resented humanity and would do anything they could to bring death to humans they found on the seas. Hell, even captive mermaids had been known to kill their owners through the power of their voices and their inhuman beauty. There was absolutely no part of her that wanted such a dangerous creature on her ship, let alone in close proximity to almost her entire crew.

"Should we take it to that tank on the lower deck?" another voice asked.

"Absolutely not," Fareeha snapped in response, horrified that he was suggesting they actually keep the mermaid. "I want that thing thrown back in the water where it belongs. We still have several weeks on this trip and I'm not going to keep a dangerous animal we know nothing about on board." The only response the captain got from her crew after that was silence and a very heavy atmosphere that made it all too obvious to her that none of them agreed with the call she was making. "If any of you have something to say, I'm always open to suggestions," she deadpanned.

Finally, one of the women in the group sighed. "Captain, it's just that mermaids are as rare and as valuable as they come. People pay millions for them. We'd be-"

"We have a job to be doing," Fareeha reminded her sharply, as her harsh eyes skimmed over the entire crowd of sailors who were definitely neglecting their duties to stand around gawking at the mermaid. She didn't even want to know how much time had already been wasted by the sheer effort of spotting, netting and hauling the thing on board in the first place. "We don't have time to mess around with something like this," Fareeha continued heatedly. "We're already running behind schedule and you all have duties you are supposed to be performing right now that are far more important than talking about selling a mermaid."

"These things are menaces," another man spoke up. "There's no telling how many sailors have died at the hands of creatures like that one."

Fareeha's eyebrow arched. "And that makes me want it on my ship even less."

"That's why we should take it from the ocean," he persisted. "It's one less killer plaguing the seas. At least in a tank, it won't be hurting anyone."

Pondering over his words, Fareeha looked back at the mermaid once more. It was still staring directly at her, teeth still bared, body still poised like it was prepared to strike her at any second. In fact, the creature was so tense that she was certain that the only reason it hadn't tried to make a break for the edge of the ship was because of the sheer amount of people surrounding it. It had nowhere to go - it was simply cornered, and so was reacting in the only way a cornered animal knew how to. Still...it hadn't actually hurt anyone yet. Of course, the captain was more than aware of the reputation merfolk had, but it was just that: a reputation. Fareeha had never seen any of the attacks herself, she merely heard accounts from far-off sailors and their tales, and nobody really knew where fact ended and fiction began.

And even if they were true, was it fair to hold this one mermaid accountable for the morbid actions of others of its kind? As far as they knew, this one was completely harmless. Even if it was about as intelligent as an animal, it was still wild - it had spent its entire life in the ocean. To take it from something like that, condemning it to a boundary of four glass walls for the rest of its life based on stories and legends, seemed cruel.

Even so, Fareeha wasn't entirely opposed to the idea. It might not have been fair, but she'd be lying to herself if she didn't admit that she was curious about the creature. This would be the only opportunity she'd ever have in her life to see a mermaid, to see how it swims, how it interacts to environments around it, how it feeds. They weren't going to touch land for more than a few hours for a least a month. That was a long time to observe the mermaid in her very limited free time. She looked back to the cryptid's expressive blue eyes, as two of the small fins growing out the side of its tail slapped down against the scales with a tiny smacking sound.

Finally, Fareeha nodded. "Alright. But I don't want anyone going near it for at least a full day. We still have no idea what it's capable of."

It happened so quickly that Fareeha barely processed it. As a deckhand reached for the mermaid's arm to restrain it, it twisted its entire torso with the speed of a snake and sunk its mouth full of razor-sharp teeth into his leg. The man let out a howl of pain and the mermaid, as quickly as it lashed out, recoiled heavily as if he had struck it across the face. It allowed its torso to rest on the wooden deck as it stared at the person it had attacked, blue eyes wide. The dorsal fin was lying flat against the mermaid's back, ears tilted downward as it made its entire body sink lower to the floor. In the next instant, three men had jumped on the creature's back, one of them pushing the mermaid's head down against the hard ground cheek-first while another man grabbed both of its wrists and held them behind its back. The mermaid writhed under them and made a few distressed whimpers from deep within its throat, but had no means to fight back against them.

Fareeha's lips pursed as she watched the struggle unfold, brown eyes slowly shifting from the mermaid to the gaping wound on her sailor's leg, then back to the mermaid again. She no longer had a legitimate argument to make in defense of the animal; it had just sealed its own fate in that small act of violence. It had proven that it was willing to attack a human, and that was all the crew would need to consider it too dangerous to set free. Even if she didn't entirely agree with it, she had to maintain a semblance of reason, and after that, there was no reasonable conclusion she could come to that didn't end with the mermaid being imprisoned. At that point, it wasn't worth getting her crew angry at her.

Two more deckhands stepped forward and between the five of them, they picked the creature up and carried it to a lower deck. Fareeha was silent as she watched the mermaid vanish from her sight, and instead looked to the injured deckhand.

"Damn thing," he grumbled.

"Go see the medic," Fareeha told him. "At the very least, make sure it gets cleaned and dressed." With that, she stepped away from him. He'd be fine; the mermaid hadn't done any serious lasting damage. It was just a blood-drawing bite and she was certain that she'd never heard of a story of merfolk being venomous before.

Despite her hesitation in keeping their new cargo, Fareeha did find herself somewhat curious about the cryptid. She had truly never even seen a merperson before. They were exotic, elusive, exceptionally rare creatures, and their value was something that could hardly be fathomed. They lived exclusively in the mansions and palaces of the wealthiest people in the world, serving as centerpieces of their fortunes and empires. While Fareeha and her crew were certainly not struggling for money, they were a far cry from the people who usually got to lay their eyes on such a luxury. A live wild mermaid hadn't even been seen in well over a decade, much less captured alive. They were reclusive and incredibly aggressive when cornered. And yet there was one of these absurdly rare creatures just a couple decks below her feet. At the very least, she could observe the beast before it was inevitably sold to the tune of millions.

Ignoring the warning bells going off in the back of her head, she moved down the stairs to their lowest deck, where they had a small storage tank. It was there more so as a place to store emergency food in the case they ran through their supplies and needed to resort to catching fish. She could only recall having used it two or three times in her career, but now it was serving a much different purpose. As she pushed the door to the small room open, she stopped.

A couple of crew members who hadn't been on the deck when the mermaid had been pulled out of the water were gathered in the room, but when they saw their captain the immediately straightened up and left the room before she could say anything to them. Fareeha resisted the urge to sigh; the damn mermaid was already making it hard for people to listen to her orders. Maybe that's where they got their reputation as enchantresses from. Finally, she came to a stop directly in front of the wall of glass that took up most of the room. The mermaid was barely visible - it was curled up in a compact ball in the far corner of the square tank, shielding everything but the orange-gold of its tail from prying eyes. As Fareeha sat down on one of the storage crates in the room, watching the mermaid intensely as she rested her arms on her legs, she couldn't help be struck with a strong feeling of pity for the beast. It was just frightened. They had unceremoniously ripped it from its natural habitat, ganged up on it and restrained it, and they stuck it in a cage where it had nowhere to hide. The entire time the mermaid had been in her presence, it had been tense and on-edge; even now, the position it was laying in wasn't natural or relaxed - it was forcing itself into such a small shape as if to cease to exist, shielding itself from the reality of the situation it found itself.

The captain seemed to recall that soft voices and gentle tones could help to calm scared animals. Perhaps that would work with the mermaid.

"My name is Fareeha," she told the creature, her voice even. "Captain Fareeha Amari." For a moment, Fareeha doubted that the mermaid could hear her through the glass, but its tail shifted ever so slightly, allowing a blue eye to stare at her from behind the wall of gold. "Do you have a name?" Unsurprisingly, the mermaid just continued to watch her with the same blank glaze to its eye and she once again tried to ignore the nagging feeling of disappointment. This mermaid was no more sentient than a dog or a cat. It couldn't even understand the words she was speaking to it, much less communicate with her.

"I don't want to call you 'mermaid'. How about I give you a name? Would you like that?" The mermaid just blinked silently. For a long moment, she returned the creature's silence, pondering to herself over what kind of a name would suit a creature she knew nothing about. The only thing she had really seen the mermaid do was bite one of her sailors on the leg and immediately change its mind and show him a tiny bit of mercy by letting go. Fareeha smiled to herself before making eye contact with the mermaid once more. "How about Mercy? It means to show kindness or compassion when you don't have to. Sort of how you decided to not tear one of my deckhand's legs off. That was an act of mercy, right? I think it suits you." The irony of naming a dangerous mermaid Mercy wasn't lost on Fareeha, but she highly doubted that the creature cared in the slightest what she called it.

When she looked at the mermaid's blue eye once more, however, it had changed. Mercy's expression seemed to be a bit harsher and it only stared back at Fareeha's own brown eyes for another moment before the tail covered it's face once more.

After that final display, Fareeha knew that there was nothing she could say that would coax the mermaid out of its defensive ball, so rather than waste her time, she stood up. Mercy just needed time to get comfortable, needed to be left alone and given time adjust to its new surroundings. It certainly wasn't going to just sit in that ball for the entire trip, it was only a matter of time before the mermaid calmed down. Before exiting the room, Fareeha looked back at Mercy for a second. The mermaid's tail had moved so that two ocean blue eyes were watching her as she retreated, but they were filled with such a deep sadness that she hesitated in the doorway for several seconds. Finally, Fareeha shook her head and closed the door behind her, sure that she was just imagining it.

#pharmercy #overwatch #mercy #pharah #angela ziegler #fareeha amari #the ocean's mercy #mermaid au

11 notes · View notes

neuroma-neuroses · 7 years

Text

Repeat this three times fast: translabyrinthine resection for an acoustic neuroma

Here’s the bit of this whole brain tumour adventure I was really dreading: actually getting the bloody thing out.

Reuben and I got married two weeks after I was told my tumour wasn’t malignant, an emotional feat in itself. The statistical improbability of a tumour I’d had for at least ten years becoming symptomatic during my wedding is mind-boggling. The neurosurgeons had given me hardcore steroids to reduce the swelling on my brain, but I delayed taking them before the wedding as they could have nasty side-effects. Gargantuan, messy, vain mistake. I spent my wedding night in the emergency room, vomiting up champagne and hors d'oeuvre due to brain swelling. Thankfully, I had the presence of mind to change out of my wedding dress before this adventure.

After a flurry of CT scans and terse conversations with my neurosurgical team, they confirmed my swelling had gotten worse and were unsure about signing me off to travel for my honeymoon. An agreement was eventually reached, whereby I acknowledged the danger of travelling to a far-distant land cast back many decades in medical technology known as ‘New Zealand’. I spent much of my honeymoon guzzling anti-nausea medication, unable to sleep due to the steroids and dreaded the ending of the trip. I knew that as soon as I got back, the cogs would begin to turn and the surgery would be close at hand.

youtube

During our honeymoon, we went to Wanaka’s Puzzling World, which had its own tilted room. As a preface to the room, they had a huge sign saying IF YOU HAVE BALANCE ISSUES, DO NOT ATTEMPT THE TILTED ROOM. Well, I had a tumour on my balance nerve. What transpired was one of the weirdest sensations of my life. It felt like my head was on backwards. Reuben had the foresight to film it.

My mum called me the minute we landed, exalting that we were on Australian, tumour-eradicating soil once more. I steeled myself for the frantic phone call, telling me my surgery date.

Then...nothing.

The insurmountable wait before this huge surgery was harrowing from a mental health perspective, but not for the reason you’d expect. I was told my surgery was category one as the tumour had gotten so big it was pressing on my brainstem, but then faced a solid month with no contact from my medical team. I had cancelled all jobs, so I had nothing to distract me. The wait was excruciating.

I tried to keep myself busy, but by this point my tumour was interfering with my everyday life: I could barely walk, was constantly nauseated and dizzy so was mostly bed bound. As though my physical state wasn’t enough, my anxiety disorder decided life could get a bit spicier too. Anxiety is a physical manifestation of the fear that something bad is lurking off in the distance: sweaty palms, racing heart, shortness of breath, a dark shape moving in the water on the horizon. I knew something bad was around the corner, I just didn’t know when it would strike.

I called the hospital everyday; the admin people got sick of me pretty quickly. ‘No, we’ve not assigned your case yet. WE’LL contact YOU when it happens.’

I just sat at home all day, every day, too sick to move around much, willing that phone to ring with every cell in my body. I just wanted the surgery done and dusted, not as a looming spectral presence on the horizon. The pain of the wait seemed so much more intolerable than what I was about to go through.

Being creative seemed to take all my strength and happiness and I didn’t have any left. My picture book ideas were left half-finished, illustrations half-done. I cried to Reuben every day. I was unsure if the surgery was happening in months or a few short days. The cherry on top was the medication cocktail I had to take. The anti-inflammatory drug I was on, dexamethasone, increases cortisol in the body, so I was in perpetual fight or flight mode, one long, excruciating panic attack.

All of my medications for the acoustic neuroma, artfully placed. I call this piece ‘Having a Brain Tumour: My Pharmacist Now Knows Me By Sight’.

Finally, FINALLY, I got a call to meet the ENT team involved in the procedure.

The consultant was brusque and efficient in the way that people whose time is highly compensated seem to be. ‘Your chance of dying or stroke is 1 in 100,’ he told me point blank.

I had a big, gulpy cry in corridor outside his office, which he happened to walk in on. Reuben later told me that was good, ‘You convinced him you were taking it all seriously’. He was full of these inner workings of the mechanisms of the hospital, which were all highly political and cutthroat.

The cogs were finally in motion. Over next two weeks, I was at the hospital nearly everyday after a month of no contact: MRIs, CT scans, neuro meetings, MDT follow ups, clinic meetings, pre-admission clinic...it was never-ending. I sat in waiting rooms for over 30 hours. Finally, I got given a date: 17th of February.

That morning, I was oddly tranquil. I made a plant watering schedule for Reuben. I dressed in my favourite Gorman dress. My parents met me at the hospital at 6am, having gotten up at 4am to make it from their country house. My dad had died of a head-related cause ten years ago in the same hospital. I had to walk the same steps I had taken then through the hospital atrium, when the doctors had told us he could die at any time and I hadn’t wanted to be in the room for it.

In a waiting room, after barely a minute together with my family, I was saying goodbye to them. I had to change into a hospital gown. My rings were sticky-taped to my fingers. I was calm, joking with the nurse about how I didn’t drink or smoke. The bruque consultant appeared again and drew a big arrow on the right side of my neck, marking out the tumour.

It was only as I was wheeled into a small anteroom and the nurses began to congregate and talk to each other instead of me and I knew it was on. My breathing hitched up. The anesthesiologist misjudged his cannula. My blood was everywhere. He cast about wildly for a common topic to discuss as this all got mopped up.

‘Do you like dogs?’

I felt myself laugh-crying.

The hubbub around me ceased and I realised I was alone in the anteroom. If I were to be praying to a god to spare my life, this is when I’d do it, I thought. But I was too scared even for that.

The anesthesiologists returned and wheeled me into the surgical theatre, chatting about ice-bars. I tried to tell them about the amazing one in Queenstown. The next thing I remember is clasping each of my sisters’ hands as I lay in bed, then being very grumpy that someone had the audacity to take me from my comfy bed into a CT scan. I opened my eyes: everything was skewed 90 degrees anti-clockwise. I slept solidly for two days, finally awakening to be told it took 13 hours, had all gone okay but I’d lost my hearing.

I can barely remember the first fews days after surgery. I recall my mum being by my side always, I recall vomiting a lot (a cut balance nerve will do that to you). On the third day after the surgery, I was sitting up in bed and joking about the hospital food. I was discharged after five days.

Post op two days. So much blood and iodine!

I recuperated remarkably fast. I didn’t have any CSF leaks or major complications apart from them having to leave a portion of the tumour behind. I was particularly worried about the pain associated with the procedure and how wretched I would feel afterwards. Honestly, it was bearable and a lot less horrific than I expected. The wound on my stomach from the fat transfer used to patch the tumour resection has been the most painful surgical site!

My tummy post op week two. SO FLIPPING PAINFUL.

The after effects of the surgery have been more or less what I expected: my dizziness is still persistent like before the operation, but I’ve noticed that I’m not falling over every two steps anymore. Hopefully the dizziness will improve; I’m certainly doing enough physiotherapy! I’m adjusting to the hearing loss slowly, which isn’t helped by the fact that I have raging tinnitus in my dead ear.

I’ve observed the surgical after effects with the detached curiosity of a kid with a science experiment. Oh, I can only taste bitter things on my right side now? Weird! Only the right side of my face is aching like it has been bruised? Strange! I can only cry from one eye now? Cool!

One week post op

Two weeks

Three weeks feat. cat

One month

Five weeks

Apart from intermittent aching which is usually dulled by the painkillers I’m still on, the operation site itself has been numb for five weeks now, which feels very odd. It also feels strangely tight, like they didn’t spare me enough skin when they were stitching me up. I had trouble lifting and lowering my head and mentioned so to one of the ENT surgeons, who cheerfully rejoined that that specific muscle had to be cut the restitched during the surgery. I’d found this to be the most annoying surgical after effect; it feels like I have a painful neck crick if I engage that muscle in the slightest.

The brace that held my head in place for the 13 hours of the operation left painful indentations on my forehead which I’d read about in others’ accounts. In the first few days after the surgery, their pain annoyed me more than anything else. It looks like they may scar now.

One of the brace wounds. Annoying bugger.

I sustained a second degree facial paralysis during the surgery as the tumour was wrapped so tightly around my facial nerve they ended up leaving a bit in there to preserve it. The paralysis has nearly resolved itself! For a few weeks after the operation, my smile was very wonky. Now it’s only noticeable if I’m tired or putting lipstick.

Two weeks post op, wonky smile!

Five weeks post op, somewhat straight smile! Now, I need my dexamethasone chipmunk cheeks to deflate please.

The slow pace of recovery is also very boring to me. I thrive on stress, with a million plates in the air at all times, so having no purpose but to heal has been a very strange experience.Mostly I just feel like I’m recovering from a nasty flu; all wibbly and wonky and fatigued. I’m slowly picking up work again in my fifth week post op, but I’m being kind to myself and not adding too much pressure to get better right away.

#Acoustic Neuroma #Acoustic Schwannoma

17 notes · View notes

meraenthusiast · 4 years

Text

The Grant Cardone 10X Rule Summary

Grant Cardone 10X

Whether you love him or not, Grant Cardone is one of the most influential people today. I recently stumbled across him online and was amazed that I’d never heard of him considering his huge online following. (As of this writing, he has over 1.2 million YouTube subscribers.)

A couple reasons I connected with him was:

#1 He’s also is a Louisiana boy.

#2 He loves real estate investing, especially syndications.

As an avid reader, his book, The 10X Rule, intrigued me as the headline states:

“The Only Difference Between Success And Failure.”

The book shows you how to:

reach all of your goals possible

overcome all of your fears

move into action to achieve exactly what you want

If you’re crunched for time, here’s a brief overview of the book:

youtube

What Is The 10X Rule?

I love it when people give back, especially to students. I came across this video of Grant addressing a group of high school students.

In it, he goes over the highlights of his book to inspire them to achieve success.

youtube

You maybe asking yourself, “What exactly is the Grant Cardone 10X rule?”

It’s based on understanding how much effort and thought are required to get ANYTHING done successfully.

It can work in literally every area of your life including:

spiritual

financial

emotional

physical

mental

He states that looking back over the course of his life, the one thing that was consistent with any of the success he achieved was that he always put forth 10 times the amount of work as others.

For instance, when he was in sales, he made ten more calls and presentations than anyone else. When looking for real estate deals, he’ll look at ten more properties than others will.

I agree with him that you can’t get to the next level in anything without changing your mindset first.

Related article: How To Think About Money

10X Rule Focus

The 10X rule focus is that you must set targets that are 10 times what you think you want and then do 10 times what you think it will take to accomplish those targets.

Massive thoughts MUST be followed by massive action. This is nothing more than the pure domination mentality.

Look at the great footballs teams: LSU (Geaux Tigers!), Alabama, Patriots, Saints. I can guarantee you that their coaches focus their time on how they are going to dominate their competition and not how they’re only going to compete.

What Is Success?

Cardone talks a lot about success in the book, specifically he states that “success is your duty and obligation.” He stresses this point to the high school students in the above video multiple times.

There’s No Shortage

Unlike the negativity we constantly hear in the media, there’s no shortage of success. If you watch the news or read a newspaper, you’ll be led to believe that there are shortages of jobs, money, opportunities and time.

How often do you hear someone state, “there’s not enough time in the day to get things done“?

You’ll never attain success if you continue listening to what’s put out in the media and if you don’t believe that success is important.

Cardone claims that it’s our responsibility in life to live up to our true potential, becoming the person that we were meant to be. He states that we owe this to all of those that are depending on us such as family members, colleagues, employees, etc.

Becoming successful shouldn’t be an option but an obligation that you have to honor.

4 Degrees Of Action

You’ve read the headlines before:

“The #1 Secret To Success”

“The Only Investment You’ll Ever Need”

“The Shortcut To Wealth…”

It’s not surprising that everyone is looking for a secret shortcut to whatever they want in life. But if you’re going to follow the Grant Cardone 10X Rule, you’ll learn very quickly that there are NO shortcuts.

He says we should focus more action on getting what we want more than anything else including our concept, idea, invention or business plan. Action is that important.

He breaks down the degrees of action into four choices:

1) Do nothing: This is exactly what it sounds like. I can’t tell you how many times I used to read books, listen to podcasts and research real estate investing but….I never took action.

If you want to hear about someone that learned about passive investing on their own and took MASSIVE action, read about how Lue Chen retired doing just that at 38!

2) Retreat: People that retreat are those that take action in reverse. More than likely they do so to avoid any negative experiences that they imagine will come as a result of taking action. They personify the “fear-of-success” phenomenon.

3) Take normal levels of action: This group is probably the most prevalent in our society today. On the surface, they appear to be taking the necessary action for success. Essentially, they’re doing what everyone else is doing. This level of action creates the middle class and is the most dangerous because it’s considered acceptable. They are good with being “average.”

4)Take massive action: Whenever someone is taking massive action, they aren’t thinking about being normal. They don’t want to be average. They want to stand out from the crowd and dominate their competition.

Why Average Is Failing

Cardone feels that the world is full of “average” people. He claims that this “addiction to average” can kill the possibility of making your dreams a reality.

Here’s an example:

The average worker reads less than one book a year and works an average of 37.5 hours per week. This same person makes 319 times LESS MONEY than the top U.S. CEO who read more than 60 books a year.

Too many of us often fail to appreciate what these types of successful people have done to get to where they are today.

I can guarantee you that if you follow Drew Brees, Tom Brady or any other top athlete around on the off-season, they’re working 10 times more than the average NFL player.

Average NEVER yields anything more than average and usually much less. Average thinking and actions will only guarantee you misery, uncertainty, and failure.

Cardone recommends that you rid yourself of everything that is average including the advice you get and friends you keep.

Instead, surround yourself with exceptional thinkers and doers.

Proverbs 13:20: “Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm.”

10X Goals

Remember, the Grant Cardone 10X states that you must set targets for yourself that are 10X more than what you think you want and then 10X the action you think is required to get there.

Here are 4 mistakes that most people encounter while goal setting:

1) Failure to set goal high enough from the beginning

2) Underestimating how much action is really needed to accomplish goals

3) Spending too much time competing and not enough time dominating (doing what everyone else is doing – being average)

4) Underestimating the amount of adversity they will have to overcome

To maintain your enthusiasm, you have to set your goals high enough that they keep your attention. If your goals are so small that you don’t even need to consider them on a daily basis, then you’re going to lose interest.

An example of this was when I started setting monthly investment goals for myself a few years ago. I, like everyone else, set them too low. I wasn’t focused on it daily and I knew I could do better.

In my opinion, you have to set goals so high that it hurts trying to accomplish them. Because it wasn’t “hurting” and my checking balance stayed what it normally is each month, I ramped up the investing until I started really noticing a difference.

Once that money started leaving the checking account on a monthly basis in a BIG way, I really started paying more attention.

I agree with Cardone, if your goals are so small that you don’t consider them on a daily basis, they you’re going to lose interest and not accomplish them.

10X Goal Setting

In order to set your goals the 10X way, Cardone recommends you do the following:

Set 10X targets

Align them with your other purposes

Write them down daily – when you wake up and before going to sleep.

Fear

In the book, it states that sooner or later, you’ll experience fear when you start taking massive action towards your goals. I know I did once I started increasing the amount I was saving.

It made me uncomfortable having a large amount of money removed from my account each month to go into savings.

Fear is actually a sign that you’re doing what’s needed to move in the right direction.

So, if you’re not experiencing fear, then you’re not taking enough new actions and growing in life.

Successful Or Unsuccessful?

Cardone uses an entire chapter to discuss a list of ways we should act in order to be successful which is based on what he’s personally discovered about other successful people and the way they do things.

In other words, here’s a list of how successful people live to be successful:

1. Have a “Can Do” Attitude

2. Believe That “I Will Figure It Out”

3. Focus on Opportunity (problems = opportunity)

4. Love Challenges

5. Seek To Solve Problems (be a problem solver)

6. Persist Until Successful

7. Take Risks

8. Be Unreasonable

9. Be Dangerous

10. Create Wealth

11. Readily Take Action

12. Always Say “Yes”

13. Habitually Commit

14. Go All The Way

15. Focus on “Now”

16. Demonstrate Courage

17. Embrace Change

18. Determine and Take the Right Approach

19. Break Traditional Ideas

20. Be Goal-Oriented

21. Be on a Mission

22. Have a High Level of Motivation

23. Be Interested in Results

24. Have Big Goals and Dreams

25. Create Your Own Reality

26. Commit First – Figure Out Later

27. Be Highly Ethical

28. Be Interested in the Group

29. Be Dedicated to Continuous Learning

30. Be Uncomfortable

31. “Reach Up” in Relationships

32. Be Disciplined

I realize that some of these you currently are doing and some you’re not. I’d encourage you to go through this list to identify which you need to work on to become even more successful.

The Magic Of Thinking Big

After reading the Grant Cardone 10X Rule, I was reminded of a book that’s in our “Recommended” section called “The Magic Of Thinking Big” by David Schwartz which makes a great complement to Cardone’s book.

Many of Schwartz’s ideas and concepts line up perfectly with The 10X Rule. An example can be found on the first page regarding success. He states that success and achievement are the goals of life. Every human being wants success and the best life can deliver.

Nobody likes living in mediocrity. When you believe you can do something and have an “I can do it” attitude then the “how to do it” develops.

Applying The 10X Rule

I’ll admit, looking back over my life, I haven’t lived by the 10X rule. The main reason is that I’ve failed to set big enough goals initially. I think many of us do the same thing.

Here’s how we can get started applying The 10X Rule to our lives:

1) Set bigger goals. Why settle for saving $10,000 month? Go for $100,000 a month! Focusing on setting bigger goals in all aspects of your life including income, savings, workout, time spent with family and more.

2) Take massive action. In only makes sense that in order to reach your 10X goals, you’re going to have to take 10X action to fulfill your true potential. Remember, you will run into obstacles along the way, don’t let them set you back.

3) Change your mindset. Don’t keep limiting yourself. You have to belief and therefore change your mindset that 10X’ing your life is possible.

The post The Grant Cardone 10X Rule Summary appeared first on Debt Free Dr..

from Debt Free Dr. https://ift.tt/2OkPh3M via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Debt Free Dr.

0 notes

zipgrowth · 5 years

Text

‘Homeschooling with Jetpacks’: Inside a First-of-Its-Kind Co-Learning Community

BETHEL, Conn. — Henry was not thriving in his public elementary school. His grades were high, but apart from that, little else seemed to be going right for him.

“He wasn’t excelling, and everybody knew it,” his mother, Margaret Genden, explains. “And there were behavioral problems because of it. He wasn't acting out, but he didn't fit in.”

When Henry was in third and fourth grade, he would come home from school anxious, unhappy and complaining of migraines. His mother, growing increasingly concerned, felt it was time for a change.

First, Genden enrolled Henry in a private school, but the problems persisted. After having him go through a few education evaluations, Genden learned that her son had a processing gap, which specialists said he would eventually outgrow. In the interim, she decided to try homeschooling Henry, but she wanted him to be in an environment where he was stimulated and interacting with other kids. That’s how she found out about Workspace.

If traditional schools were too much and homeschooling alone was not enough, Workspace presented itself to the Gendens as the Goldilocks educational opportunity.

Nearly two years ago, in April 2017, Genden and her son approached a 32,000-square-foot building with a facade resembling a big red barn.

“We were 60 feet in the door and Henry turned around to me and said, ‘I'm coming here,’” Genden recalls. “And by the time we finished the tour, I was completely on board.”

The front view of the Workspace facility in Bethel, Conn. (Image credit: Alex Weber)

Founded in January 2017 in the small town of Bethel, Conn., Workspace Education is distinct from perhaps any other place of learning. The expansive building contains rooms themed around seemingly every pastime and passion imaginable: Theater? Check. Recording studio? Check. Wood shop? Check. Makerspace? Community garden? Costume shop? Virtual reality suite? Fitness center? Science lab? Industrial kitchen? Space station? Robotics room? Check, check, check and more checks.

“It’s like homeschooling with jetpacks,” says Catherine Fraise, founder and executive director of Workspace. “I tried to think of every single way a human expresses themselves creatively, because I want every child to find themselves here.”

Fraise refers to Workspace as a “co-learning community.” Similar to how WeWork is equipped with all the bells and whistles of a modern office environment—save for the employees—Workspace provides all the tools necessary for learning—save for the students. First and foremost, it’s a place for families that homeschool their children to come and engage with others, supplement their learning and dive deeply into a wider range of topics than most parents are equipped to teach themselves.

“It’s about using the space as a tool for collaboration,” Fraise explains.

For example, a Workspace parent who is skilled in mathematics may volunteer to teach classes on algebra I and pre-calculus to Workspace kids. Or families who want their children to learn Spanish may pool their financial resources to hire a language specialist for a year.

Most courses are taught by parents, but at the request of the families, Fraise has hired a handful of certified educators, including Tom Curley, director of programming and master teacher at Workspace, to teach core subjects.

In a lot of ways, Workspace sounds like a school, says Curley, but that’s not quite right. Though it provides a space and resources where kids can learn, it does not issue transcripts or high school diplomas. The kids are legally considered homeschoolers, and their families are responsible for creating a curriculum and helping them fulfill graduation requirements.

“It’s a hybrid that I have not seen the likes of anywhere else,” Curley says. “We are unprecedented.”

Two years in, Workspace serves around 80 learners from 60 families—about half who came from homeschooling, and another half who came from traditional public or private schools. The latter tend to find their way to Workspace when traditional schools are unable to accommodate their needs, be they cognitive delays, social struggles, behavioral issues or other learner differences. Students who come from traditional schools typically require a few months to get acclimated to Workspace, Fraise says, as they start off more timid and formal than their homeschooled peers.

The sweet spot, Fraise estimates, is 125 families. At that point, there will be enough variety and overlap in the families for Workspace to reach its full potential.

She explains: “If you want to start a band, you need to have enough people that make music, so until we get to that [optimal] number, you're not going to see the full vibrancy.”

Growing a Co-Learning Community

Fraise had been toying with the idea of starting Workspace for years, but it wasn’t until she saw a need in her own children that she became serious about it.

Catherine Fraise, founder and executive director of Workspace Education

She had been a high school teacher in her home country of Australia before moving to the U.S. and starting a family. It was after the move that she learned about Maria Montessori, who designed an eponymous pedagogical approach that values collaboration and hands-on learning for children’s development. Fraise fell in love with the Montessori method and went back to school to pursue a master’s degree in it.

When her kids were of age, she put them in a Montessori school in the U.S., but due to their own sets of health and learning needs, which required additional attention, it wasn’t a great fit. When they were 4 and 9 years old, Fraise pulled them out and spent the next 10 years homeschooling them using a project-based approach that drew on her experience with the Montessori method.

But still, her children needed more than what she could offer them at home. They were two very different people with unique passions and strengths, and she wanted to give them an environment that would support and celebrate their individuality.

A few years ago, when she had the financial support she needed to start Workspace (her husband ran his own money management company and was able to provide capital for the facility), she got to work creating a “Google-like, incubative environment” that would help her kids and others find their niche.

However, Workspace does not just attract kids from the local area. In fact, few families who use the facility actually live in town. Parents and children drive in from all over the state—and some all the way from New York City, about 70 miles away—to get there. Fraise estimates that a quarter drive over an hour each way to Workspace.

But the existing space—formerly home to a bicycle company—was for sale in 2016 for about $1.7 million, nearly one-fifth the cost of building something from scratch, and as Fraise puts it, “people will drive to have this kind of experience.”

Courses at Workspace are often project-based, and the fundamental design is rife with what Fraise calls “authentic creative self-expression.”

“The most important part here is that we're creating children who are confident to manifest their own ideas,” she says. “So whatever idea they have, or anything that's in their head, I want them to be able to get it out into the world somehow.”

According to Fraise, the appropriate starting age at Workspace is around 9 or 10 years old, but she’s currently negotiating a purchase for two acres of nearby land, on which she plans to build another big red barn—this one for children ages 0 to 9.

Workspace is designed to be a hybrid between homeschool and private school. Compared to the average cost of private K-12 schools in Connecticut, which is nearly $25,000 per year, Fraise considers her model to be affordable and equitable. The basic membership plan for a family, which includes parents and one child, is $3,500 per year. Each additional child is $3,000.

Though Workspace tuition may be more affordable than most private school alternatives in the state, the expectation that parents be present with their children every day creates an obvious barrier to entry for many families.

On top of membership, many of the courses offered at Workspace come with an additional fee, usually to cover the price of materials. For instance, a marine science course taught on Mondays by one of the parents has free tuition but requires another $100 per “session” to cover materials, with an option of taking up to five sessions in a year (each session spans a seven- or eight-week period, and in this case marine science is offered 36 Mondays out of the year). That fee does not cover the price of field trips taken during the course.

Workspace has developed a course map that displays and breaks down each course offered throughout the year to help learners and families make sense of their options. No two children have the same schedule.

The course options available on Mondays at Workspace. Click image to see full schedule.

Using the course map, families can see that marine science is best suited for ages 12 and older, that it does not assign homework or record grades and that it takes place from 1-3 p.m. on Mondays.

Alternatively, families interested in Curley’s “Foundations of Western Civilization” course can see that the class is held twice a week and that each session comes with a $17 materials fee. It includes homework, grades and is marked as “rigorous.”

There is an expectation that parents will contribute to the Workspace community and teach a few classes themselves, Fraise says. It’s how they reciprocate all the time and attention other families invest in their own children.

For example, Henry’s mother Margaret Genden leads a multimedia art class and a geography class this year. Last year, she taught a writing and storytelling course for younger learners (she has a background in English literature). Fraise herself teaches courses on sewing and recycling, among others. The day EdSurge visited Workspace, she was talking about starting a Japanese-language class.

For now, Workspace does not provide enough course options for children to begin and end their learning in the facility. Families can come to Workspace for as few or as many hours a week as they choose, but most spend a day or two each week at home, during which time they’ll continue with other work, including online classes.

And if there’s something families want that isn’t currently offered at Workspace—say, an introductory journalism course—they can go to the “dream director” (yes, that’s her official title) and put in their request.

The sky-is-the-limit approach has worked well for many Workspace learners, including Henry, who is now 12 and is enrolled in more than a dozen different classes this year.

“He doesn’t want to be sick. He doesn’t want to be out. He wants to be here,” his mother says.

“The difference is absolutely life-altering,” she adds. “[Workspace] changed everything that we did, even as a family, in a positive way. All of a sudden, Henry was learning, he was thriving and [now] he’s doing things he would never have had the opportunity to do elsewhere.”

‘Homeschooling with Jetpacks’: Inside a First-of-Its-Kind Co-Learning Community published first on https://medium.com/@GetNewDLBusiness

0 notes

itsworn · 6 years

Text

Family Affair

If you live in Southern California and run in car enthusiast circles, you might’ve run across the name Marconi. Dick, the patriarch of the family moved to California in the 1950s to start a family, was extremely successful in the health supplements field, and in his not-quite-retirement gave back to the community, founding the Marconi Automotive Museum & Foundation for Kids in Tustin��, California, in 1997. Along the way he backed his son’s racing activities with John enjoying a large degree of success in Can-Am, Trans-Am, Formula Ford, Formula Atlantic, Formula 5000, Indy lights, and in sports racers — including as a Ferrari factory driver — winning the 348 US Challenge, and second in the 348 World Championship. Several of John’s race cars are on display in the museum.

And while John was racing, in 1988, he married the love of his life, Michelle, and together they raised three exceptional kids, Vincent, Monique, and Colt. Vincent especially, inherited the “car guy” gene from his dad, buying, building, and restoring his first car over a two-year period before he could legally drive, a ’69 Dodge Dart Swinger. Ten years ago, while a high school senior, it landing on a magazine cover.

Once he graduated, instead of taking the road to college, Vincent took a detour and that’s where the story on this Sassy Grass Green ’71 Plymouth Cuda 340 really begins. Mopar fans consider the ’70-’74 E-Bodies as the Holy Grail of Mopar muscle. We know that the rarest ’71 Hemi-powered cars have sold for $3 million or more. But might the best-balanced of the John Herlitz–designed Barracudas actually be those powered by the small-block 340s? While it’s often said “there’s no replacement for displacement,” that’s not always the case when the weight of a big-block 426 or 440 is stacked on top of the front axles. While straight-line is fun it’s also about the handling!

As John Marconi explains, this car was acquired in 2009 about two weeks before Christmas. “Vincent, myself, Julius and Dave Mickelson were buying and selling Mopars and having a good time doing it. David and Julius had done the basics on this car. They asked Vincent to finish up the car because they were swamped. The car was in our shop being worked on. Michelle had come down from the house to ask Vincent a couple of questions and saw this beautiful Sassy Grass Green ’71 340 ’Cuda. Her comment was, ‘Oh my goodness, it’s beautiful.’ Understand Michelle has seen a lot of cars — she’s been around racing most of her life. For her to say something like that, it caught our attention.”

John continues, “Later on that evening she made a couple of comments about it that she thought it was really a nice car. This was around December 9. Vince and I met up the next day and thought it would be really cool to buy it for Michelle. We contacted David and Julius and negotiated a deal to purchase the car. The car stayed at the house with Vincent doing work on it, getting it ready for the big reveal on Christmas Day. When we did a compression check on the motor, it was pretty obvious it had some burnt valves due to unleaded fuel. The car had about 75,000 miles on its matching-numbers motor. So like muscle car guys do, we ordered up a 400hp 360 Mopar roller crate motor. That was the task — trying to get the motor in our shop without Michelle seeing it.”

“The plan was to pull the stock motor and install the new crate motor before Christmas. However, there was a hitch in the giddy-up. We had two cars in restoration at that time and didn’t have the room to do the engine swap. Between the ninth and Christmas Day, Michelle made several trips to the shop to see how Vincent was doing on the car, still thinking that he was working on it for David, and Julius getting it prepared so they can sell it. Christmas morning arrived. Once all the festivities up in the house were done, the family walked Michelle down to the back with her eyes closed for the big reveal. We tied a big red bow around the roof of the car and one around her 400hp crate motor sitting on an engine stand next to the car. When she opened her eyes there were tears, at first we weren’t sure whether it was tears of joy, because we bought her the car or she was going to kill Vince and I for spending the money. Thank goodness it wasn’t the latter. We then became a three ’Cuda family.”

The Marconi’s three E-Bodies include Michelle’s 340 Sassy Grass Green ’71 ’Cuda; the second ’Cuda, often driven to shows by the then 18-year-old Vincent, was a ’73 440 Six-Pack restomod; and John’s “daily driver,” a ’71 Hemi ’Cuda four-speed. John recalls that Christmas morning almost like it was yesterday. “Of course, the first thing she wanted to do is go out for a drive, so we pulled it out of the driveway. She took off for what we thought was going to be an around-the-block excursion. A half-hour later she brought the car back said, ‘This thing is a dog! She wasn’t kidding. It had five burnt valves. Vince and I did what any good Mopar family would do on Christmas Day, we backed it into the garage and started tearing out the engine. Our mission was to install her new crate motor on Christmas Day. Remember, at this time it was 11 a.m. Out came the power tools and out came the tired 340. We got the new motor installed and running just before dark.” (It doesn’t hurt to have a well-equipped home garage with three lifts.)

As the sun was setting on Christmas Day, Michelle took it for a second spin that day. “The motor has a very serious cam in it and backed up by two-chamber Flowmasters — nothing sounds sweeter than a Mopar with proper exhaust. Coming up to the intersection some neighborhood kids spotted her on their bikes; they requested a burnout. That’s exactly what she did as she lit it up across the intersection. Life was perfect around the house. Over the next couple weeks Vincent continued tidying up the engine compartment to make it driveable. Vincent took the car over to Superior Automotive for a couple of hours of intense dyno work. The mission was to build Michelle a fast grocery getter that she could have fun with, take to car shows periodically, and yes, go get groceries. One thing about all our cars is while we like going to car shows, we prefer driving our cars. They’re not trailer queens.”

Michelle, who by nature is somewhat shy, did relate that over the years, she’s taken her ‘Cuda to go grocery shopping. “We have a Stater Brothers supermarket close by and on occasion I would take ‘Sassy Fish’ for a grocery run. Not because it was convenient to do so given where it was parked in the driveway, but because I wanted to. And it never failed to attract attention. With its color, it’s not a car for someone who is introverted. This is a bit of a contradiction for me, but I simply love the color.”

John didn’t expect the reaction a few weeks later, when attending their first show. “What people did not anticipate was a beautiful 5-foot 9-inch natural blonde in a ponytail to roll in with a ’71 Sassy Grass Green ’Cuda. I will admit that it drew attention completely away from the two big-block cars in red. It’s amazing to watch her pull into the shows, and the other two ’Cudas literally disappear into the background. That Sassy Grass Green car is a showstopper. Michelle loves frogs, especially red-eyed tree frogs so Vince painted the intake plates on the rally hood in red. Now she’s got a very fast, very angry, red-eyed ’Cuda.”

When the car was first built back in 2009 and 2010, it was built with the stroker crate motor with a larger pulley on the alternator. With a 6,500-rpm redline, and because John and Vince didn’t want to see wife and mom grenade the alternator, Vincent installed a 2,500-stall speed torque converter. Next was a vacuum pump on the brakes. With the lift and overlap of the cam, it didn’t build much vacuum for the brake booster. Vincent rebuilt the entire suspension, installing a 1 1/8-inch front sway bar with a 3/4-inch rear sway bar. To stiffen up the front suspension, a set of 1-inch Hemi torsion bars and heavy-duty shocks were installed along with a rebuilt steering box. There were some small rust holes in the trunk, which were repaired. LED lights upgraded the otherwise stock-looking interior. Michelle wanted to keep the car stock-looking, so the factory Rallye road wheels were retained up front, but in a Marconi-trademark modification, 9-inch wide custom Rallye road wheels were installed in back. These modifications, combined with the modern rubber, give this vintage E-Body handling characteristics similar to a contemporary Dodge Challenger SRT8.

Recently, Michelle, John, and Vincent decided to reinstall the original engine. Rather than Vincent rebuilding it himself, the trio decided to send it out to Mopar motor guru Julius Steuer in Chatsworth, California. The reason? Not enough time, as John is busy with his various businesses and Vincent is turning wrenches under the watchful eye of master mechanic Bill Gojkov at Enzo Motors as a master Ferrari technician.

About the paint. Originally when it left the factory, this 340 ’Cuda rolled off the assembly line finished in Snow White. As far as Vincent knows, it got the Sassy Grass Green paint at some point in the late 1990s. In Vincent’s words, after his careful attention it’s a good driver-quality paintjob. As the photos clearly show, with his attention to detail, it’s much more than that. But it’s not too nice for when his mom takes it for groceries. About being a three E-Body family, here’s what Vincent has to say. “As for owning three E-Bodies, it’s pretty amazing when you take them all out for a drive. It really draws in attention, or if you tell someone you have three ’Cudas they usually don’t believe you. But now we’re down to two. Unfortunately, we’re down to two. I sold my 440 Six-Pack ’73 ’Cuda. But it was fun while it lasted.”

Over time, since our first studio shoot in 2010, the family has branched out, but on two wheels rather than four, taking over the operation of The Cyclist, a bike shop in Costa Mesa. Michelle and Colt are fixtures at the shop. And John has relaunched the line of American Flyer bikes, a leader in the motorized eBike category, building a nationwide network of dealers. And it shouldn’t surprise anyone that John follows in his father’s philanthropic footsteps and his mantra, “learn, earn, and return,” as the shop and American Flyer donates bikes for kids at risk and in need.

But at their core, the Marconis are a dyed-in-the-wool Mopar family like few others. And rather than just restoring and displaying their cars, when they walk down to the garage, they’d much rather take the covers off of one of their ’Cudas and hit the road. Given that we live in California, almost any day is good for that.

ENGINE Type: Chrysler 340ci V-8 Bore x stroke: 4.04 x 3.31 inches Block: Reinforced with thicker bulkheads and higher main bearing caps Rotating assembly: Original Cylinder heads: high-performance single-casting Chrysler J-type heads Compression: 10.5:1 Valves: 2.02-inch intake, 1.60-inch exhaust Crankshaft: Chrysler Crankshaft: Forged steel Cam: Chrysler-forged hydraulic roller, .430-/.445-inch lift, 268/276 degrees Valvetrain: 2.02-inch intake, 1.60 exhaust valves Induction: Original Chrysler 340 four-barrel intake manifold Oiling system: original Fuel system: four-barrel Carter AVS Exhaust: stock exhaust manifolds with dual 2.5-inch Flowmaster mufflers Ignition: original Cooling: original Fuel: premium Output: 275 gross horsepower at 5,000 rpm, 305 lb-ft at 2,800 rpm Engine built by: Julius Steuer

DRIVETRAIN Transmission: TorqueFlite 727 three-speed automatic Converter: 2,500-stall speed torque converter Shifter: original Steering: original power steering Front brakes: original power disc brakes Rear brakes: original power drum brakes Rollbar/chassis: none

WHEELS & TIRES Wheels: 15×7 (front) and 15×9 (rear) Plymouth Rallye wheels Tires: P245/60R15 (front) and P275/60R15 (rear) BFGoodrich radial T/A

INTERIOR Seats: stock Plymouth vinyl bucket seats Instruments: stock Plymouth instruments with LED illumination upgrade Wiring: stock Plymouth OEM harness

The post Family Affair appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

from Hot Rod Network http://www.hotrod.com/articles/family-affair/ via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Hot Rod Network

0 notes

andrewromanoyahoo · 6 years

Text

With key GOPers retiring, could Orange County lead the way to a Democratic wave?

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. and Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images, Getty Images (2))

LOS ANGELES — If you’re wondering whether a Democratic wave could wash away the current GOP-controlled Congress in November, check out what’s happened so far this week in the traditional Republican stronghold of Orange County, Calif.

Two short days ago, the situation was stable. Four congressional districts overlap with the O.C.; Republicans represent all four. Each of these Republicans (Ed Royce in CA-39, Darrell Issa in CA-49, Dana Rohrabacher in CA-48, Mimi Walters in CA-45) was considered vulnerable to some degree, in part because in 2016 Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump in their districts — a first for a Democratic presidential candidate. But thanks to the power of incumbency, and a few big war chests, the Washington consensus said that only Rohrabacher’s race was a toss-up. The rest still leaned Republican.

What a difference 48 hours makes.

On Tuesday morning, Royce, the powerful chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, stunned the political world by announcing his retirement. “In this final year of my Foreign Affairs Committee chairmanship, I want to focus fully on the urgent threats facing our nation,” Royce said in a statement. “With this in mind, and with the support of my wife Marie, I have decided not to seek reelection in November.

Then, one day later, Issa followed Royce’s out the door. “Throughout my service, I worked hard and never lost sight of the people our government is supposed to serve,” Issa said in a statement. “Yet with the support of my family, I have decided that I will not seek reelection in California’s 49th District.”

In response, the authoritative handicappers at the Cook Political Report flipped both seats from Lean Republican to Lean Democrat, improving the Dems’ odds of picking up the 24 seats they need to take back the House.

Democrats, of course, rejoiced. “The Republican agenda in Washington has been a direct attack on Californians,” crowed Drew Godinich, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “California Republicans clearly see the writing on the wall and realize that their party and its priorities are toxic to their reelection chances in 2018.”

But beyond the predictable partisan messaging, what does this week’s sudden upending of some the most important House contests in the country actually say about the looming 2018 midterms?

First, the DCCC may have a point. “Toxic” is too strong a word, but there has been a real conflict between the priorities of the GOP leadership in Washington — both on Capitol Hill and in the White House — and the electoral interests of blue-state Republicans.

Take 2017’s two defining legislative efforts: Obamacare repeal and tax cuts. The former, which never passed the Senate, was wildly unpopular in California, where residents have flocked to the state-run health-insurance exchange. Yet both Royce and Issa felt compelled to vote for it, despite near-constant protests from activists in their districts.

Demonstrator protest against U.S. President Donald Trump and Republican congressman Darrell Issa (R-Vista) outside Issa’s office in Vista, California in 2017. (Photo: Mike Blake/Reuters)

The Trump tax cuts, meanwhile, inspired even more Golden State outrage, largely because they slashed deductions for mortgage interest and for state and local taxes, which disproportionately benefit Californians. Both Royce and Issa publicly struggled to get to yes on the bill; eventually, Royce did, and Issa — gun-shy after securing reelection in 2016 by a mere 1,600 votes — did not. But their constituents know that what really matters is which party controls the House, and the national GOP agenda isn’t working to the advantage of most Republicans in California — or high-tax states such as New York and New Jersey, either.

This tension has, in turn, underscored the deeper Trump Era challenges facing Royce, Issa and their ilk. Clinton won Orange County — a place that had been the heart of the conservative movement, fueling the campaigns of Barry Goldwater and, later, Ronald Reagan — for two reasons (as I’ve written in the past).

The first is that Orange County is changing. In 1980, roughly 285,000 Latinos lived in the O.C. (about 15 percent of the total population). As of 2014, that number had grown to more than 1 million (or 34 percent of the total population), and Latinos are expected to surpass non-Latino whites as the county’s largest group by 2027.

In recent years, the local Asian population has surged as well. The result is a region that’s much more diverse, and much more reliant on immigrants, than it was in Reagan’s day.

At the same time, the white voters who still make up a plurality of Orange County’s electorate are, for the most part, a particular breed: wealthier and more educated than average.

Which brings us to the second force at work here: Trump. In 2016, the New York developer underperformed among white college graduates, and lost college women to Clinton by 7 percentage points. Combine that weakness with Trump’s widespread unpopularity among Latinos and other minorities, and you start to see why Trump lost Orange County by 9 percentage points only four years after Mitt Romney won there by 6. He was a particularly bad fit for its evolving electorate — and now that he’s president, his 39 percent approval rating and anti-blue-state policies probably aren’t helping matters. (The Trump administration’s decision to allow oil companies to resume offshore drilling — and then to exempt Florida, but not California — angered Californians who may still remember disastrous spills off their beaches.)

All of which has conspired to make reelection more of a slog for Issa, Royce and other suburban and/or blue-state Republicans nationwide — and to make retirement sound more appealing. The numbers tell the tale. As NPR’s Jessica Taylor has noted, there are now “31 Republicans who will not seek re-election in November: 19 who are retiring outright and another 12 who are running for higher office.”

The last time either party had nearly that many members vacate their seats during a midterm year was 1994. Twenty-eight Democrats departed that cycle — and the GOP eventually took control of Congress, gaining a staggering 54 House seats in what was billed, at the time, as a “Republican Revolution.”

So yes, the back-to-back retirements of Royce and Issa are symptomatic of something larger: an electoral landscape that is rapidly shifting in the Democrats’ favor.

This sort of momentum wouldn’t matter much if the Dems weren’t prepared to capitalize on it. But so far, they seem to be.

Six Democratic candidates are already running for Royce’s seat, including Mai-Khanh Tran, a Vietnam-War-refugee-turned-pediatrician-turned-two-time-cancer-survivor; Andy Thorburn, a teacher-turned-union-leader-turned-millionaire-businessman; and Gil Cisneros, a Navy veteran and former shipping manager who became a philanthropist after winning a $266 million lottery prize in 2010.

And four Democrats are gunning for Issa’s job: environmental activist Mike Levin, who’s raked in more than a million dollars since announcing his candidacy in March; Sara Jacobs, a former Obama administration official endorsed by EMILY’s List; Paul Kerr, a real estate investor who outraised Issa last quarter; and Doug Applegate, a Marine veteran and attorney who nearly defeated Issa in 2016 in that cycle’s closest Congressional contest.

Doug Applegate speaks in Hollywood, California in 2016. (Photo: Tara Ziemba/Getty Images)

In other words, these are not the gadflies, vanity candidates and sacrificial lambs that have tended to run against Royce & Co. in previous elections.

But before Democrats get too excited, a note of caution. This cycle’s unprecedented glut of Trump-resisting recruits could be a mixed blessing — particularly in California, and particularly in contests without a GOP incumbent on the ballot.

The Golden State, you’ll recall, has a nonpartisan primary system: Democrats, Republicans and independents all compete against each other in the primary, and the top two finishers proceed to the general election regardless of party affiliation.

Here, the risk is that splitting the Democratic vote four or six ways in a historically conservative area could allow two Republican candidates to come out on top — a result that becomes more likely when a GOP incumbent is no longer monopolizing the Republican vote and a couple of serious Republicans step in to replace him or her.

Which is probably what will happen now that Royce and Issa are gone. Though the California GOP has been decimated statewide, the party’s infrastructure remains strong in Orange County. Well-known candidates are already volunteering to run in Royce’s place, including former assemblywoman and longtime former Royce aide Young Kim, whom Royce immediately endorsed. Also in the mix are former state Senate Minority Leader Bob Huff and Orange County Supervisor Shawn Nelson.

New Republican candidates are expected to announce soon in Issa’s district, where top names include state Assemblyman Bill Brough, who has said he’s “considering running”; Diane Harkey, chair of the California Board of Equalization, which administers taxes and fees; and Scott Baugh, a former Orange County GOP chairman.

None of these Republicans will have incumbent-level name ID — or cash. But they also won’t have congressional voting records, which means they’ll be able to put more space between themselves and the national GOP (and Trump) than any incumbent.

The bottom line is that by announcing their retirements in quick succession, Royce and Issa have emphasized how everything is set to break the Democrats’ way in 2018. But riding a wave to victory next November will require skill and strategy and maybe a bit of luck — and now more than ever, Orange County is the place to watch to find out if the Democratic Party can pull it off.

_____