Joy Kogawa BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY: "There is a silence that

Joy Kogawa
"There is a silence that cannot speak. There is a silence that will not speak. . . . The
word is stone": the opening words of the novel Obasan (1981) define the spiritual
quest for the articulation of memory in the work of Joy Kogawa, who became a voice
of the three generations of Japanese Canadians who suffered internment and
persecution during World War II. An award-winning author who became a member of
the Order of Canada in 1986 and of the Order of British Columbia in 2006, Kogawa is
known for her novels, poetry, essays, children's stories, and social activism.
Joy Nozomi Nakayama was born on 6 June 1935 in Vancouver to issei parents. Her
father, Gordon Goichi Nakayama, was an Anglican clergyman, and her mother, Lois
Masui Yao Nakayama, was a kindergarten teacher. In 1942, the year following the
attack on Pearl Harbor and Canada's declaration of war on Japan, some twenty-one
thousand residents of Japanese ancestry living within one hundred miles of the Pacific
Coast, most of whom were Canadian citizens, were moved to labor and detention
camps in the interior of British Columbia. Except for personal belongings, all of their
property was confiscated. The Nakayama family was sent to Slocan. After the end of
the war in 1945, Japanese Canadians were given the choice of returning to Japan or
going into internal exile east of British Columbia. As many of them identified
themselves as Canadians, the latter option was the only acceptable one. The
Nakayamas were relocated to Coaldale, Alberta.
In 1954 Joy Nakayama completed one year of study at the University of Alberta and
took a teaching post at an elementary school in Coaldale. In 1955 she enrolled at the
Anglican Women's Training College and Conservatory of Music in Toronto; the
following year she transferred to a music school in Vancouver. She married David
Kogawa in 1957. The couple had two children: Gordon, born in 1957, and Deidre,
born in 1959. They lived in Vancouver; Grand Forks, British Columbia; Moose Jaw
and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; and Ottawa before divorcing in 1968.
In 1968 Kogawa published her first poetry collection, The Splintered Moon . The
twenty-one poems offer a glimpse into a world of emotional intensity and spiritual
longing underscored by Kogawa's characteristic minimalism. Kogawa's exploration of
memory takes on a personal tone in her love lyric "In Memory," but her resort to the
imagery of stone both as a metaphor of immutability and as a symbol of physicality
and material "realness" of memory anticipate her use of the trope in Obasan. Similarly
significant in view of her later work are her evocations of silence as a vehicle of
memory, wisdom, and knowledge in "muted" sorrow with "no tears" in "Old Woman"
or as a contained despair and emotional angst in "Snowflake." In "I Know Who I Am"
the speaker's reflections on desire, loneliness, and emotional loss are counterbalanced
by her need for freedom and her search for an identity that defies the limitations of the
traditional male-female dichotomy. Kogawa's feminism is evident in her subversive
evocation of traditional fairy-tale imagery in "I Think I Am That Fabled Princess," in
the subtexts of sexuality and sinfulness in the "red dress" image in "Pity My Dress,"
and in her openly revisionist rereading of the tale of the Nutcracker in the poem of
that title. The theme of racial memory and history that is central to most of her work is
addressed for the first time in "We Had Not Seen It," the only prose poem in the
We had not seen it. None of us had seen it. It was not that we were incapable of sight.
But we were shielded from it. Some of us knew--most of us knew--that behind that
shield it was there. Some of us chose to forget. A very few of us . . . tore at the shield,
tore wildly. But none of us fully saw.
A reflection on the process of social awakening, the poem is the collective voice of a
people whose memories of injustice have been silenced for decades.
In 1969 Kogawa traveled to Japan, remaining there for three months. Her second
poetry collection, A Choice of Dreams (1974), resulted in part from that visit. It is
more somber and reflective than her first volume, with meditations on the lessons of
history in "For the Annual Service of Thanks That Kyoto Was Spared the Bomb" and
"Hiroshima Exit." Many poems display themes that resurface in Kogawa's prose
writing, and some sketches are incorporated in Obasan. For example, "Public Bath"
anticipates the scene in Obasan in which the narrator reminisces about taking a bath
with her grandmother: a trivial activity becomes meaningful as a ritual and as an
experience of belonging to and sharing in the Japanese culture. The physicality of
"warm soft body blending" with "neighbours strangers and friends" is transformed
into a feeling of a spiritual communion and becomes a cultural rite of passage.
Cultural memory is further explored in "Zen Graveyard," in which childhood
experiences blend with mythology and mysticism. Retracing her father's "flight
perpetual" and reflecting on her ancestors' graves in "Ancestors' Graves in Kurakawa"
bring out an awareness of her beginnings, although "The hiddenness stretches beyond
my reach." Similarly, her mother's "vaguely remembered girlhood" is associated with
the muteness of aged items in a trunk with mothballs in "Trunk in the Attic." Kogawa
revisits the racial discrimination she experienced in her childhood in "When I Was a
Little Girl" and "What Do I Remember of the Evacuation." In "Chain Necklace" she
explores the generation gap between herself and her mother in their responses to
internment: her mother
wore her chains
Kept her cygnets in the
Ugly barnyard world
Told me constantly to be
Gentle and to wear
The heavy chains with joy
But I . . .
. . . pick and jab my noose
At every chance.
Kogawa's next poetry collection, Jericho Road , appeared in 1977. In "On the Jericho
Road" the notion of silence generating meaning reappears:
Your tongue
was your weapon
I lay silent
on the Jericho Road
Silence is also
a two-edged sword
These words
are my donkey.
The creation of reality and identity through words is the theme of "As Though It Were
the Earth" and "Therapist." Feeling trapped in a relationship and resenting her
manipulated identity, the speaker of "As Those Who Are Too Old" struggles to break
free from the structures of power and control:
he was inventing me
but I cannot say to him
she is not real
even as he held me
he was destroying me
and creating her
he was puzzled when
I walked away.
Finally, stone imagery is revived in "Bread to Stone." Kogawa's attention to detail and
use of the small and the mundane to reveal the universal and the eternal shows her
indebtedness to classical Japanese poetry.
Six Poems (1978) opens with "Offerings," which sets the tone of the collection:
We lift
the barricades
we take the edges
of our transience
we bury the ashes
of our wording
and sift
the silences.
Kogawa's minimalist world manifests a complex interweaving of the particular and
universal, private and social. Six Poems displays a continuity with her previous
collections through the exploration of the speech/silence dichotomy and the
significance of collective memory.
Kogawa moved to Toronto in 1979. In 1981 she published Obasan. The novel, which
includes many autobiographical details, is narrated by Naomi Nakane, a thirty-sixyear-old sansei schoolteacher. Her 1972 trip to the funeral of her uncle, who helped to
raise her, frames an internal journey through her memories, which are fragmented,
elusive, and continuously reinterpreted by the narrator. To counterbalance the
subjectivity of memory, the novel incorporates Naomi's activist aunt Emily Kato's
diaries, correspondence, newspaper clippings, and copies of government documents.
Naomi's narrative is more than a personal account of an individual caught in the
workings of history: it is the voice of three generations lost to the indignities and
displacements of a wartime period. Kogawa rejects postmodernist notions of memory
as an unreliable narrative, a discursive labyrinth, or a game of construed subjectivities.
In Obasan memory is holistic and healing and the only truth that is given to the
narrator: "All our ordinary stories are changed in time, altered as much by the present
as the present is shaped by the past. Potent and pervasive as a prairie dust storm,
memories and dreams seep and mingle through cracks, settling on furniture and into
upholstery." Furthermore, memory is closely related to identity as Naomi tries to
relive the trauma of her displaced childhood. Kogawa observed in a 1990 interview
with Magdalene Redekop that "there is a need for people to feel a sense of strength in
belongingness." Naomi's "belongingness"--to a family, ethnic community, city, or
country--was shaken at an early age. With her separation from her parents and
relocation to an abandoned log hut, "shabby and sagging and overgrown with weeds,"
near Slocan in the interior of British Columbia; with her first exposure to denigrating
newspaper comments on Japanese Canadians; and with the derogatory "Japs" from
her students, the concept of "home," the epitome of "belongingness," was shattered.
Naomi and her older brother, Stephen, have different responses to these childhood
traumas. While Naomi represses her experiences, Stephen expresses his resistance
through anger and violence. Usually gentle and kind, he alienates Naomi by sudden
bouts of cruelty. Releasing his emotions at the sight of their dilapidated hut and
seeking a momentary feeling of control, he leaves "the ground and grasses quivering
with maimed and dismembered butterflies."
Naomi's earliest memories are of being one with her mother in womb-like comfort
and belonging: "I am clinging to my mother's leg, a flesh shaft that grows from the
ground, a tree trunk of which I am an offshoot. . . . Her blood is whispering through
my veins. The shaft of her leg is the shaft of my body and I am her thoughts." The
actual separation from her mother, when her mother and grandmother left for Japan
before the war, never to return, was preceded by the inner alienation Naomi felt after
being sexually abused by their neighbor, Old Man Gower. Keeping the secret from
her mother separated them long before her mother's physical departure; it not only
made her "become other" from the maternal body but also marked her realization of
the otherness of her own body, which no longer belonged to her but was used by
another. This shift in her consciousness is symbolically reflected in her dreams: "My
legs are being sawn in half."
Naomi lives in a dichotomized world of two languages (Japanese and English), two
countries, two nationalities, and being "both the enemy and not the enemy." A key
moment in the process of coming to terms with her identity occurs when she reads
Aunt Emily's diary, which is addressed to Emily's sister--Naomi's mother--in the hope
that the latter will read it someday. To Naomi it feels like "breaking into a private
house only to discover it's my own childhood house filled with corners and rooms I've
never seen." Seeing familiar childhood scenes through Aunt Emily's eyes fills many
gaps in her memories. Emily's unshakable Canadianness at the beginning of her
epistolary diary evolves into a mix of bewilderment, disbelief, and anger at the
segregation of Japanese Canadians. The idea of the redress movement gradually takes
shape in her letters of protest to the government, which are based on the real-life
letters of the Japanese Canadian activist Muriel Kitagawa.
The multiple silences in Obasan create a rich network of meanings and subtexts. On
the most general level there is the decades-long silence of the Japanese Canadians--a
silence that is powerfully broken by the book itself:
covered with mud and spittle. . . . We are sent to Siloam, the pool called "Sent." We
are sent to sending, that we may bring sight. We are the scholarly and the illiterate, the
bush and the forest with our hands, the gardeners tending the soil with our tenderness,
the fishermen who are flung from the sea to flounder in the dust of prairies. We are
future undemanding as dew.
There are also the silence of the child Naomi, who does not comprehend the injustices
she witnesses; the silence of Naomi's mother, who dies in the aftermath of the atomic
bombing of Nagasaki; and the silence of Stephen, who outgrows his childhood anger
and becomes alienated from everything Japanese. There is, finally, Naomi's aunt
Obasan's silence--the most powerful silence in its meaningfulness: it is the silence of
the generation and the community. During Naomi's stay with Obasan for her uncle's
funeral their communication is minimal verbally but rich on other levels. Obasan
speaks through her house, which is frozen in time and full of scraps and leftovers and
historical junk; her memory houses every little detail. Naomi gradually wakes up to
the need to face the past: "I would like to drop the lid of the trunk, go downstairs and
back to bed. But we're trapped, Obasan and I, by our memories of the dead--all our
dead--those who refuse to bury themselves. Like threads of old spiderwebs, still sticky
and hovering, the past waits for us to submit, or depart." For Naomi, her two aunts are
associated with two different strategies of resistance: "One lives in sound, the other in
word warrior."
Christian and Buddhist traditions are woven into the narrative both explicitly and
implicitly. The first epigraph is taken from the Bible and structured by Kogawa as a
To him that overcometh
will I give to eat
of the hidden manna
and will give him
a white stone
and in the stone
a new name written.
The stone imagery evokes connotations of silence, muteness, and stillness. The second
epigraph flows smoothly into the narrative of the novel and reads as part of it:
"Beneath the grass the speaking dreams and beneath the dreams is a sensate sea. The
speech that frees comes forth from that amniotic deep." This epigraph highlights the
difference between Christian and Buddhist treatments of life and death. Naomi
accompanied her uncle on his annual trips to the coulee in the prairie on a full-moon
night to pay respect to their dead and their history; although the younger Naomi did
not comprehend the purpose and meaning of these trips, they gave her a powerful
feeling of belonging: "My fingers tunnel through a tangle of roots till the grass stands
up from my knuckles, making it seem that my fingers are the roots. I am part of this
small forest." The image of the sea-like prairie--"Ripple after ripple of grass shadows,
rhythmical as ocean waves"--is evoked in the allusion in the second epigraph to
ancestral wisdom, knowledge, and spiritual power through "speaking dreams": if the
silence is to be broken and speech is to be set free, it must come from the "amniotic
deep" of the memory of the dead. In Japanese culture silence does not necessarily
have a negative value but is associated with wisdom and revelation, allowing one to
perceive, as Teruyo Ueki notes, the "very essence of a matter hidden behind silence."
Kogawa utilizes both treatments of silence through Obasan's silence of memory,
wisdom, and forgiveness, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, Aunt Emily's
militant words and Naomi's narrative, both of which overcome the silence invoked in
the two epigraphs.
Obasan incorporates a circular narrative structure, moving from Naomi's
reminiscence of visiting the coulee with her uncle as an eighteen-year-old at the
beginning of the first chapter to the older Naomi performing the same ritual in the last
chapter after her uncle's death. The final trip to the coulee is an answer to the
continuous uncomprehending "why?" of the younger Naomi. For Naomi it symbolizes
coming back to the beginning, completing the circle and becoming one with the
ancestral past: "my relatives, my ancestors, we have come to the forest tonight, to the
place where the colors all meet. We have turned and returned to your arms as you turn
to earth. My loved ones, rest in the world of stone."
The novel ends with a postscript that follows the final chapter. It is an excerpt from
the memorandum sent by the Co-operative Committee on Japanese Canadians to the
House and Senate of Canada in April 1946 that condemned the internment of
Japanese Canadians as a violation of rights and liberties of Canadian citizens and
demanded official recognition of this fact from the government. This document--the
concluding "voice" in the novel--stands in direct contrast to the poetic and highly
personal attempt at "speech" at the beginning of the narrative. The verbalization of the
experiences of thousands of people in an official document reflects Naomi's personal
evolution toward understanding the necessity of recognition of the past. Obasan won
the Books in Canada First Novel Award in 1981 and the Canadian Authors
Association Book of the Year Award, the Before Columbus Foundation American
Book Award, and the American Library Association Notable Book Award in 1982. It
also brought Kogawa international recognition.
In 1984 Kogawa visited Japan for the second time. The following year she
published Woman in the Woods , which displays a more pronounced feminist voice
than her previous poetry collections. The title of the book emphasizes the importance
of nature as a sphere of freedom where a woman can abandon her socially imposed
chains and return to her primordial roots as an uninhibited natural being. In "She Has
Fled" Kogawa presents an image of a "wild woman" fleeing into a dream-like
mythological landscape:
She (the wife
the nameless one)
has fled
to where the
name tree grows
its leaves
in the breezes
In "Garden Poem" the speaker resents the proprietary chains of the male-female
"Marigolds," he said
rooting her firmly
in his garden bed
"are sacrificial plants
for garden slugs."
In "Autumn" Kogawa experiments with the traditional Japanese tanka lyric form to
capture the tranquility and beauty of a moment:
A wrinkled leaf
has fallen into
the cup of tea.
Instead of drinking
we ponder the shape.
In a short series of six poems titled "Road Building by Pick Axe" Kogawa revisits the
issei and nisei experience in British Columbia. Written in bold style that is close to
journalism, the poems tell of particular people and refer to particular dates and places.
In 1992 Kogawa published Itsuka , a sequel to Obasan. The novel begins in 1983, the
year Japanese Canadians began to petition through the Ad Hoc Committee for
Japanese Canadian Redress, the National Association of Japanese Canadians, and the
National Coalition for an official apology from the government and compensation for
the wartime internments. The Liberal government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau
treated the petition with indifference; Brian Mulroney, the opposition leader, promised
to negotiate a settlement if his party won the upcoming election but failed to deliver
on the promise after the Progressive Conservatives' 1984 victory. In 1988, after years
of lobbying and petitioning, the Mulroney government was forced to offer a formal
apology for "wrongful incarceration" and "disenfranchisement" of thousands of
citizens of Japanese ancestry and a settlement of $21,000 each to the approximately
twelve thousand surviving internees.
These facts provide the background for Itsuka. The title means "someday" in
Japanese; Naomi's memories of her uncle invariably include his semimeditative,
semiprophetic references to "itsuka": "someday things will change, someday, the time
for laughter will come." There is, however, a distinct difference between his use
of itsuka and the connotation of the title of the second novel. Like Obasan's silence,
the uncle's insistence on the coming of "someday" refers to reconciliation: the nisei-Obasan's and the uncle's generation--forgave, and, although they did not forget, they
let the past go. Naomi's itsuka, on the contrary, signals her awakening from the years
of socially enforced amnesia and the beginning of her active contribution to the
community. The death of Obasan is a significant moment in this process. Sitting with
her dying aunt, Naomi feels herself part of the intergenerational connection: "we are
there together, our hands speaking of the kitchen queendom and the past. Our
language is gestures, the nodding and shaking of hands, the shrugging of shoulders."
Naomi moves to Toronto and takes a trip to Japan and Hawaii, the latter of which has
a Japanese diasporic community. Through Aunt Emily she becomes aware of the
redress movement and gradually develops an activist political position.
Naomi is not beautiful and elegant like her mother, who is a symbol for her of the
eternal feminine. She is also single and does not have children, signs of failure in a
woman in both traditional and emancipated societies. Aunt Emily, an eternal rebel,
proudly embraces her unmarried status and defies the "spinster" label: "if we
laundered the term properly she'd put it on, but it's too covered with cultural
accretions for comfort," Naomi says. Naomi, however, lacks the confidence to
disregard social conventions; moreover, when the opportunity arises, she discovers
she cannot maintain a relationship with a man. This inadequacy leads her to go deeper
into her psyche to recover all the forgotten traumas: "Who knows what the
psychogenesis of an illness may be? There are so many mysteries in the past--so many
unknown and forbidden rooms." Her "whole body has been a foot binding all my life,"
she decides; it has been her worst enemy, holding her mind hostage.
On 22 September 1988 key members of the redress movement are invited to
Parliament Hill for the official speech of apology and the signing of the settlement
between the government and the Japanese Canadian community. The prime minister's
speech is a "feast of words," and the ceremony is the beginning of a new life for
Naomi and thousands like her: "I laugh. I am whole. I am as complete as when I was a
very young child. . . . Reconciliation. Liberation. Belongingness. Home." After the
ceremony, Naomi meditates on the hill, which overlooks the Ottawa river; the scene is
reminiscent of her earlier ritual trips with her uncle to the coulee near Granton.
Naomi's silent communion with her uncle and her ability to say that his hopes of
"someday" have finally come true close the circle.
Kogawa received a Ryerson Polytechnical Institute Fellowship and an honorary LL.D.
from the University of Lethbridge in 1991, an honorary Litt.D. from the University of
Guelph in 1992, an honorary LL.D. from Simon Fraser University in 1993, an Urban
Alliance Race Relations Award in 1994, and a Grace MacInnis Visiting Scholar
Award in 1995. In 1995 she published The Rain Ascends , a fictional account of
sexual abuse by an Anglican priest in a small town in Alberta. The novel is narrated
by Millicent, the only daughter of the Reverend Dr. Charles Barnabas Shelby, who is
in his mid eighties. Millicent must deal with the fact that her father was guilty of
sexually molesting an unspecified number of boys, including his own grandson-Millicent's son. She finds it impossible to reconcile the image of her father as she has
known him all her life with the idea of him as a stranger with a terrible secret in the
The wonder of your father has always existed--the warmth, the tenderness. He was a
god. In the beginning he was the one who could do no wrong, the maker and the
keeper of all laws. With the wave of his hand he formed the land. The clinging mist
that surrounded the house could not extinguish the light, the bravely flickering light.
Now, in his old age, it continues to glow through the mist. You move towards it. You
trust it still.
The patriarchal structure of the Shelby family makes it even harder for Millicent to
break down the myth of her father's god-like status. Meekness, obedience, and
unconditional faith in her father, enforced by her mother, were the core of her
upbringing. Her older brother, Charlie, the other male member of the family and
another authority figure, invariably reminded her of her place: "You are asking too
many questions. . . Stop asking questions." Millicent's sister-in-law Eleanor, who in
her rebellious spirit and straightforward character is reminiscent of Aunt Emily
in Obasan andItsuka, forces Millicent to accept the necessity of facing the truth: "If
there's just one thing that history teaches us . . . it's that bystanders and perpetrators
are both on the same side."
Millicent is forced to reevaluate her life as a continuum of fictions: "We construct our
lives out of the tales we tell ourselves, our myths and legends, the grids of
understanding that chart the paths of good and evil, right and wrong." Reminiscing
about her childhood, she realizes that the happy family scenes stored in her memory
are fictional representations and that she has been living "in the house of lies."
Millicent's path to finding peace lies in "slaying the fiction" and finding words to
articulate the unspeakable truth. Kogawa shows, however, that there is not a distinct
line of demarcation between good and evil: though a child molester, Shelby was well
educated, charismatic, generous, and approachable and had a profoundly positive
impact on the community. A surprising voice of support for Shelby comes from
Eleanor's nephew, Martin, who was abused by Shelby. A homosexual, Martin knows
what it is like to be scorned by society for one's sexuality: "You're jealous of our
freedom. All through history it's been good people like you who stone people. You
drown them. You burn them at the stake. You think you have the right to decide who
the deviants are and then you sacrifice them. Now that's what I call abuse. It's abuse of
power." Martin likens the persecution of those who engage in unorthodox sexual
practices to the burning of witches. His refusal to consider himself a victim is thrown
into question, however, when it is revealed that he tried twice to commit suicide. As
Millicent ponders the events that made her reexamine her most sacred values, she
realizes that speaking out for the victims of abuse was at the same time an act of love
and absolution for her father.
Knox College of the University of Toronto bestowed an honorary doctorate of divinity
on Kogawa in 1999. The previous year she had received a request from Kristine
Bogyo, a classical-music performer, to write a narrative on the Lilith myth for a
multimedia performance that would include narrated text, artwork, and music.
Kogawa's first impulse had been to decline: community work was consuming most of
her time, and she was not familiar with the Lilith material. But, she says in the
"Author's Preface" to the published text of the work, when she received the artwork of
Lilian Broca that was to be used in the project, she felt "deluged" with the "rich,
powerful images." Broca also sent Kogawa an outline of her research on Lilith, and
Kogawa was captivated by the beauty of the legend and the strong character of Lilith.
The published version of the collaboration appeared in 2000 as A Song of Lilith.
While some feminist theorists view the legend of Lilith as having prebiblical roots and
providing a clue to women's role in the evolution of social organization, Bible
scholars point to the two different stories of creation in Genesis, which imply that
another woman existed before Eve, as the basis of the myth. In Gen. 1:28 "God
created human beings . . . male and female" and put both of them "in charge" of the
animal world. Here the man and the woman are created independently of each other
and equal. But in chapter 2 God creates Eve out of Adam's rib. According to
feminists, the exclusion of the story from the canon and the later demonization of
Lilith testify to the danger the myth presented to the patriarchal world.
In Kogawa's reinterpretation of the myth Lilith emerges as a powerful, independent,
and intelligent woman who refuses to be subservient to Adam and prefers exclusion
from society to male domination. Kogawa emphasizes that like Adam, Lilith was
created "from dust . . . from earth's crust." The initial idyll ends when the man asserts
his power over her:
The lion finds its prey
The hunter, the hunted;
The bond of equality severed
Is become the whip of domination.
Lilith despairs at first, but then she utters the ineffable name of God and is granted
wings and freedom from Adam's domination. Characteristically for Kogawa, speech
plays a crucial role in securing the character's freedom. Lilith's story is
Not mediated through history
Where she is locked in the turbulence
Of man's memory.
Her story is of her body, her blood
Her wings and wanderings
And her many new beginnings.
One of the important aspects of Lilith's freedom is that she, together with God,
"creates / Names, re-names / Shapes and re-shapes." The word is an act, and she is an
agent and a cocreator.
Adam is unhappy about losing his mate, and in the traditional Christian version of the
myth God sends three angels to talk Lilith back into obedience. Kogawa, however,
refers to the messengers as tempters and demons who try to call Lilith back to the
security of enslavement and to the wifely role of "woman of silence." Lilith's rejection
of both their threats and their lavish promises infuriates the demons, and they exile her
into eternal "Otherness": she is
bound and relegated to the region beyond memory
To the land of legend
Where at the whim of mythmaking man
You are transformed into the needful
Demon of the race.
The curse applies not to Lilith alone but to "every powerful woman" who will come in
the future and represent Lilith in spirit. Kogawa is rewriting the traditional myth of the
demonized Lilith as a product and a means of patriarchal ideology. Further, by
bringing Eve into A Song of LilithKogawa departs from the traditional treatment of the
two figures as archenemies and mutually exclusive symbolic opposites. Eve and Lilith
become united through the solidarity of all women who "walk boldly / Out of the
whirlwind of unspeakable memories / Into the mighty rivers / Of truth telling." These
women regain the language of their own, "knit each tale of grief" through the voice of
their memory and speak "Under the banner / Of our true and original name."
In 2001 Kogawa received a lifetime achievement award from the Association of Asian
American Studies, an honorary Litt.D. from the University of British Columbia, and
the National Association of Japanese Canadians National Award. In 2003 she received
honorary LL.D.s from Queen's University and the University of Windsor. Obasan was
chosen for One Book, One Community in Medicine Hat, Alberta, in 2004. The City of
Vancouver designated 6 November 2004 Joy Kogawa Day; the following
year Obasan was chosen for One Book, One Vancouver and 1 November was
declared Obasan Cherry Tree Day in the city.
In the interview with Redekop, Kogawa said that "life is a matter of being chosen and
choosing at the same time. The primary thing for me is a sense of being aligned to
something that makes me feel at peace." In one of her earlier poems she reflects on
her need to reevaluate the past without hatred and bitterness: "tell me how I may not
live / or write of love." Although Joy Kogawa's contribution to Canadian literature is
diverse, one of the more important aspects of her work is her concern with giving a
hearing to marginalized voices and rethinking the processes of Canadian history,
identity, truth, and memory.
Magdalene Redekop, Other Solitudes: Canadian Multicultural Fictions, edited
by Linda Hutcheon and Marion Richmond (Toronto: Oxford University Press,
1990), pp. 94-101.
Janice Williamson, "In Writing I Keep Living, I Keep Breathing . . . ," in
her Sounding Differences: Conversations with Seventeen Canadian Women
Writers (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), pp. 148-159.
Karlyn Koh, "The Heart-of-the-Matter Questions," in The Other Woman:
Women of Colour in Contemporary Canadian Literature (Toronto: Sister
Vision Press, 1994), pp. 18-41.
Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)
Sywenky, Irene. "Joy Kogawa." Twenty-First-Century Canadian Writers. Ed.
Christian Riegel. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol.
334. Literature Resource Center. Web. 26 Feb. 2015.
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Nepenthes Rajah Eat Huge Fly YouTube

this study revealed the first known mutualism between a carnivorous plant and a mammal the discovery sparked a sudden scientific interest in the giant plants that eat meat

zum hauptinhalt wechseln prime entdecken bücher, some meateating plants like the venus flytrap feel the presence of a buggy snack if an insect brushes twice against trigger hairs on its leaves the flytrap generates an electrical signal that snaps its leaves shut to imprison and digest the morsel, some plants eat insects and other tiny animals these plants are called carnivorous meateating plants they often grow in places where the soil is thin and lacking in nutrients carnivorous plants are divided into two main groups some plants such as the venus flytrap have moving parts that catch their prey other plants have traps which dont need to move these plants attract their victims with a scent then trap them on a sticky surface. You can also save the inspirational image meat eating plants on the website by clicking on the image, then selecting download by size:. Next will open the image link that you want, then please right-click select save as to save it.

Related Video Meat Eating Plants


How I found a job in a new city in less than a month

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I cannot believe I have been in this beautiful city for 7 months and I cannot wait for spring to sprung! Anyway, I moved to Chicago way back in September of 2017, to be with my one true love, David, and endless food options. I was fortunate enough to work for an amazing company that allowed me to work remotely for a couple of months until I found a job. I had started my job search two weeks before moving while I was in Indy and had set up two meetings with recruiters my first week in the city. And with my diligence and not wanting to be unemployed I worked my butt off and landed a job in a month. And yes a month I accepted my offer on 9/27 or 9/28. And started my new job on October 16th! And now to see how I did it! Here are three steps I used to land a job in a month!

Update your LinkedIn account. It saddens me to see so many people under utilizing LinkedIn. You could even say on your profile that you are actively looking for a new position. And if you are moving to a new city update your account to show that you are in that city. I would list all the positions that don't fit on your resume on LinkedIn.  When I reach out to a company, I like to include my LinkedIn link in the emails. I actually would not have my job today without listing that I was looking for a job on Linkedin.

Find a Recruiter. Okay, I honestly wouldn't have gotten my job without my recruiter. I'm not sure if I should mention her name, but I'll just say that she really came through! I would search all the staffing companies and recruiting companies in your city. Chicago has a massive amount of recruiters, here's a list of recruiting companies in Chicago.

Follow up/Send a thank you email. I can not believe the number of people who do not know that this is a key step in the interviewing process. When you follow up to an interview whether it be a phone or in-person interview, you should always send a follow-up email thanking them for their time. Heres 3 things you should include in your thank you email.

  1. Mention a connection you had with the interviewer during the interview, such as, "It was nice meeting a fellow Purdue Alum."

  2. Mention a key skill that will make you a great addition to the company

  3. Mention that you want the job and would love to join the team. Basically, let them know you want the job

I swear to you, interviewers love receiving follow up emails and feel that you are serious and really want the job. I think the point is to remind them of who you are and what you will bring to the company and that you want the job!

That's all the tips I have for today. I know that there are so many things you can do to speed up the job hunt process.

But as a bonus tip, remember to stay organized and on top of your emails. You don't want to miss an email from a recruiter or receive a call from a recruiter and completely forget what job you applied for at the company.

Let's be social


Iron Age Rust

by Keith Moul Issue: Spring 2019

I like to drive around and stop at anything interesting. If there is space at the side of the road, I'll stop (and sometimes on an isolated road in its middle). I process the shot in Photoshop, without ever changing the content, but only to sharpen, contrast and provide maximum saturation (to my eye) depending on subject.

Keith Moul


Moving On After Cancer Caregiving

Kim Johnson

I have learned many lessons from cancer, and I believe that there are many parallels between being a patient and being a caregiver. Chief among them is that when cancer is gone, that doesn't mean that it is over. Much to the contrary, I think it is just the beginning. For me, that beginning was my transition into the field of nursing. I chose the field of nursing – specifically oncology – because of all that my sister went through and all that I saw in the three years cancer played such a prominent role in our lives.

I do not regret my choice, not even for a second. But I am not blind to the fact my career choice keeps me in the thick of the storm. My life is no longer consumed by cancer, but it certainly plays a big role. I watch patients and follow their stories as they move through their own journeys. Sometimes that includes a patient passing away from cancer. So many of us work daily in an effort to find a cure, but in the here and now, cancer continues to steal away so many. Weather you get close to them or not, that part is always the hardest.

I took the role as a contributor to CURE towards the end of her transplant as a way to process all that happened. I have written about things that I didn't talk about while it was happening and shared many things that I never thought I would ever tell anybody else. Of the things that I have talked about, being a caregiver and the impact that it has had on me is one of those things I never used to share.

When I was a caregiver, and even now, people express what a selfless soul I am to have done all that I did. They speak of the amazing strength that it must have taken and how honorable it was to give up my life in an effort to try to save hers. In no way do I think they are being ingenuous when speaking those words. I just don't know if they'll ever truly understand what it is to be caregiver. I am not sure that anybody has the capacity to understand until they themselves do it.

While there is undoubtedly an empathy that can be adequately expressed, being a caregiver unlike anything else. Day in and day out, you take care of another human being who is very sick. You are not a nurse and yet that is, by definition, what you are doing. Caregiving goes above and beyond the physical aspect of helping somebody do their daily activities. It carries a sense of worry that nothing can calm. You talk with care teams, and somewhere along the way, you speak a once-foreign language quite fluently.

As caregivers, it isn't about us, but the person who we are caring for. But that does not mean that our duties don’t affect us. I lost track of how many times I said "I'm fine" when I was anything but. More often than not, I felt that I needed to be doing more, when the truth was that I didn't have time to do anything more than I was already doing.

You give up personal time to sit bedside your loved one when they are hospitalized. You sleep in chairs more often than a bed. You stay awake at night watching them breathe. You memorize everything about their face before leaving, just in case it's the last time you see them. You cry so often that you wonder if tears dry up, but then a bad test comes, and you receive the answer. You try to prepare yourself for the worst and you daydream about both how life used to be and how life will be when cancer is gone.

Even though I longed for the day my sister gained remission, it came as a shock when that day finally came. I think a large part of me didn't even believe that it was true. Having fought so hard and faced so many obstacles, it didn't seem like it was reality. When it was over, I had many emotions. Among them, I felt guilty. I was relieved that my sister was OK, but I thought about the others we had met and lost their battle along the way.

As the days passed, my emotions settled, and I came to understand that how I felt that day. That is a huge driving force as to why I chose the field of nursing. I am fighting for a cure. I am fighting so that countless other people can be as lucky as my sister is to not have cancer be a part of their everyday life anymore. In having that realization, I was able to begin the process of moving on and transitioning from a caregiver back into my own person and place focus on my own future.

Print | cure Printing...


Daily Management Review

China Will Respond 'Resolutely' To US In Trade War: Chinese Minister

China’s finance minister has said that his country would continue to retaliate against the US if the Trump administration decides to impose more tariffs on Chinese imports.
In an interview with the new agency Reuters, the minister said China would respond "resolutely" to the "unreasonable" US measures.
A second round of import tariffs on Chinese goods worth $16 billion was imposed by the US last Thursday and those were retaliated by China in kind.
There was no major headway made in two days of trade talks in Washington between the two countries.
Since the trade spat started, both the countries have imposed 25 per cent tariffs on each other’s goods for a total of $50 billion of each other.
A third round of tariffs have been warned by the Trump administration on Chinese goods worth $200 billion and could be imposed as early as next month. US President Donald Trump has also said could even impose tariffs on the entire of $500 billion of Chinese goods imported into the US.
"China doesn't wish to engage in a trade war, but we will resolutely respond to the unreasonable measures taken by the United States,” Liu said:
"If the United States persists with these measures, we will correspondingly take action to protect our interests."
So far, there has not been any significant impact on the Chinese economy because of the trade tariffs, he said.
China was responding to the US measures in a "precise way", Liu said.
"Of course, the value of US imports of Chinese goods isn't the same as the value of Chinese imports of US goods. We'll take tariff measures in accordance to this situation."
The Chinese authorities are also trying to make sure that the companies that operate from the country are not impacted by the trade spat.
"When we take measures, we try our hardest not to harm the interests of foreign businesses in China. That's why our tariff measures are targeted to avoid affecting them as much as we can."
It was in August 2017 that an order to investigate into the trade practices of China was given by President Trump who has for long been critical of China.
He has said that the aim of imposing the tariffs was to pressurize China into changing its trade practices.
In recent months, some rules have been loosened by China. earlier last week, the Chinese government eliminated limitation on foreign ownership for banks in the country as it had announced last year.
However, the White House has maintained that China's changes have not gone far enough.
There has however not been any major headway in trade talks between China and the US held last week.
The two sides "exchanged views on how to achieve fairness, balance, and reciprocity in the economic relationship", said White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters.
The Chinese delegation had held "constructive and candid" talks on trade issues, said China's Ministry of Commerce in a statement. "Both sides will keep in contact about the future arrangement," it added.

Science & Technology

Apple Patents A ‘Foldable Screen’ For Creating Foldable iPhones

Research Shows Air Pollution Causing Birth Defects

Microsoft tells about operating system of the future

China is developing technology to capture greenhouse gases

IEA: The growth of renewable energy is slowing

Google introduces new smartphone and beta Android Q

World Politics

World & Politics

Iranian Foreign Minister urges other countries to abandon the dollar

The EC recommends starting penalty procedure against Italy

European Breweries To Up Their Brewing Innovation Amid Green Legislations

Facebook’s appeal to stop ECJ data case rejected in Irish Supreme Court

Theresa May to resign on June 7


Night Will Fall

Spring Films Ltd, Angel TV Ltd, Cinephil   |   UK

This is the story of the liberation of the German Concentration Camps. Using remarkable archive footage and testimony from both survivors and liberators, it tells of the efforts made to document the almost unbelievable scenes that the Allies encountered on liberation. The film explores how a team of top filmmakers, including Sidney Bernstein, Richard Crossman and Alfred Hitchcock, came together to make a film to provide undeniable evidence of what the Allies found, but the film was stopped in its tracks by the British Government and only now 70 years on, has it been completed. Each new generation deserves access to this evidence. Night Will Fall not only uses archive film, it shows the fundamental importance of film as witness to history and the crucial role it plays in the understanding of humanity.


Petré Event got the honor to arrange a business event that lasted during three days at Golden Hits in Stockholm. The customer invited their customer and their staff from different places in Sweden to an evening at Golden Hits. The evenings consisted of an three-course dinner and also during the evening it was two different shows that was amazing. It was three successful evenings with rock songs and hits music.


Offshore With-Profits MVAs Explained

Market Value Adjusters Explained

What is a market value adjuster (MVA)?

Why might a market value adjuster be needed?

An investment in a with-profits fund should be viewed as a medium to long-term investment. A with-profits fund is invested partly in equity-type investments, which fluctuate in price over the short term. The Offshore With-Profits Fund aims to provide good, long-term returns to investors by smoothing out the effects of short-term market fluctuations.

Therefore, in order to protect the interests of remaining investors, there will be periods when it is necessary to reduce the amount payable when money is taken out of the with-profits fund. This will be through the use of an MVA, which brings the amount paid more closely in line with the value of the underlying assets.

When will an MVA not be applied?

Your policy may guarantee that in certain circumstances, for instance at the end of a specified policy term or on earlier death, an MVA will not be applied. There may be other circumstances depending on the type of policy: please refer to your original policy literature.

What factors can influence the decision to apply an MVA?

MVAs are applied when there are opportunities for some investors to take money out of the Offshore With-Profits Fund gaining an advantage against remaining investors.

In addition, the amount taken from an Offshore With-Profits Fund in respect of your policy, including amounts withdrawn in the previous 12 months, may be considered.


The above 5KVA capacity UPS system will break the lead of the below 5KVA segment by 2020 in value terms:

Inconsistent power cuts, rising use of backup solutions in various industries, growth in the usage of high end electronic gadgets in the residential sector and safety from data losses in various SOHO, SME’s and data centers are some of the factors that will drive the UPS market in India.
According to recently published report of Stats and Reports “India UPS Market Outlook, 2021” the small UPS segment comprising of less than 5kVA UPS system have been accounting for more than 50% of the revenues in the total India UPS market. But with the increasing commercial establishments, government promoting the schools and other institutions to go digital for teaching and the increasing use of electronic gadgets will drive the above 5kVA segment of the UPS market to generate revenues with a higher CAGR. Government is working towards diminishing the demand supply gap by going green in many products. But still the quality of power provided is not up to the market. Fluctuating power damages the high end electronic products. So the UPS market is still expected to be
UPS is a product that provides emergency power to a load when the input power source, typically the utility mains, fails. Online UPS dominate the Indian UPS market. The increasing load requirements in the residential and the commercial sector will make the consumers to go for UPS system with higher capacity than to have an individual system for each of the product. People nowadays are not patient. They need luxury and with the increasing purchasing power the above 5kVA segment of UPS system will make a huge leap in the market. The commercial segment and the industries are also major applicants of the UPS market which need continuous flow of power which can be obtained by UPS system and the increasing load in these segments also demand for above 5kVA segment of UPS system.
The UPS market is highly fragmented and is highly competitive. The Indian UPS market has been largely dependent on the below 5kVA range of UPS systems in the past. Improvement in power quality in some regions or cities curtails the demand for UPS systems for non-critical loads. This has had a minor impact on the UPS market for the less than 5kVA range typically serving the home, SOHO, and SME/SMB. But still continued power outages mean that home-owners are buying UPS for power backup of computers, lights, fans, TVs and refrigerators. There is also an emerging trend of home-owners buying line-interactive UPS to protect high-end electronics like large screen LED/LCD TVs. Still, the overall line-interactive sub-1kVA UPS has seen a drop in the market size. Thus it is expected that the above 5kVA segment comprising of the medium UPS (5 to 30kVA) and the large UPS (above 30kVA) will account for more revenues that that of the currently dominating below 5kVA segment by 2020.


Although vessels transporting petroleum are responsible for any release or spill on water, Trans Mountain is committed to working with spill responders and the ship owners to help minimize impacts to the environment and people.

If an oil spill occurs in the marine environment, multiple organizations quickly take a coordinated approach to mitigate public and environmental impacts. We have extensive emergency response plans ready to activate in case of a spill. To review the Westridge Marine Terminal Emergency Response Plan please click here.

Pursuant to subsection 168.(1) of the Canada Shipping Act, 2011, Trans Mountain has an arrangement with a certified response organization known as Western Canada Marine Response Corporation (WCMRC). WCMRC is composed of a team of spill response professionals trained specifically in the response to and recovery of water-based oil spills. WCMRC is funded through a tariff charged to every vessel transporting petroleum to or from ports of the West Coast of Canada. Their ability to effectively manage and direct spill response procedures within the first few hours after response activation significantly reduces the negative impacts oil can have on the Environment and people surrounding environment.

In the event of a spill, WCMRC personnel immediately respond with carefully designed geographic response strategies and counter measures. WCMRC maintains various response-oriented warehouses and equipment caches that can be activated such as containment booms, skimmers and vessels.


Ether Knott

Area:Lake District - Central Fells
Classification:sub HuMP
(also Synge and Tump)
Maps:OL4(S) Explorer or 89, 90 Landranger
Grid Ref:NY268171         Hills nearby: 5km 10km 20km
Summit:grass on rock
Notes:ground 2m E is slightly lower
Daylight:dawn 03:40, sunrise 04:35, sunset 21:49, dusk 22:45

view on a bigger map

If you need accommodation we have details of 14 properties offering rooms near Ether Knott. Here are some examples:

4 AA Assessed
£200-500 per night
1.7km (1.1 miles) away
3 Sykes Cottages Assessed Cottage
£509-2370 per week
2.5km (1.5 miles) away, sleeps 6
4 Sykes Cottages Assessed Cottage
£610-2266 per week
1.4km (0.8 miles) away, sleeps 6


The LM61460 is a general-purpose synchronous step-down buck converter providing adjustable output voltage and 0 to 6 A DC load current from a supply voltage ranging from 3.0 V to 36 V. The LM61460 is designed to achieve high efficiency and high performance. Auto-mode enables frequency foldback when operating with light loads, allowing an unloaded current consumption of only 8 µA (typical) and high efficiency with light loads. Together with very low MOSFET ON resistances and optional external bias input, exceptional efficiency is achieved over entire load range. It also targets minimal EMI by adjustable SW node rise time and VQFN-HR package featuring low ringing and optimal-layout-friendly pinout. Switching frequency can be set or synchronized between 200 kHz and 2.2 MHz to avoid noise sensitive frequency bands, and for improved efficiency at low operating frequency or smaller solution size at high frequency. The device also provides an open-drain PGood output and comprehensive protection features. Electrical characteristics are specified over a junction temperature range of –40°C to +150°C.

NVE Corp/Sensor Products

NVE Corp/Sensor...

AG930-07E嵌入式解决方案评估板 - 传感器tmr angle sensor eval board


Press Release 14/2018 28.05.2018

Excellent news arrives from the Romagna racetrack where Autorlando-Sport confirms itself as an important presence in the championship by Giordano Giovannini, ASD Italia Corse.

Week-end characterized by a summer sun and the truck festival that surrounded the Italian stage of the European Truck Series.

Max Pigoli obtains two absolute victories and class at the wheel of his orange and gray 997 CUP while Alessandro Nervi wins a third and a second place.

During the qualifying on Saturday Pigoli won an absolute pole and Alessandro who managed to qualify for eighth overall but also first class (GT1).

3 Porsche in the GT2 class to fight against Max (# 34) and three other Stuttgart cars to contend the positions that count to Nervi in the GT1 class.

The race on Sunday morning sees Max shoot well from the pole and run away despite the two safety cars that instead “compromise” the car led by Alessandro. At the second restart, in fact, a doubled driver misleads the driver from Bergamo who will lose a couple of positions during the lap and finish third.

At 2:20 pm it was scheduled to race-2 that saw Max still do hare and Alessandro find a better pace taking home a 2nd place class defending himself very well from attacks brought in the final of the Porsche driven by Cagliani.

Next meeting in 3 weeks at the Magione motor-racing circuit in the province of Magione, the championship comes alive, the opponents increase but confident that the drivers and the team will be able to defend themselves to the fullest.

Info and results on the organization’s website:


Path to Redemption Tells a Powerful True Story

Path to Redemption brings to life the rest of Louis Zamperini’s powerful real-life story of forgiveness, redemption, and amazing grace.

When the war ended, his battle began. Based on Laura Hillenbrand’s bestselling book, UNBROKEN: PATH TO REDEMPTION begins where the hit movie Unbroken concludes, sharing the next amazing chapter of the unbelievable true story of Olympian and World War II hero Louis Zamperini. Haunted by nightmares of his torment, Louie sees himself as anything but a hero. Then, he meets Cynthia, a young woman who captures his eye—and his heart.

Louie’s wrathful quest for revenge drives him deeper into despair, putting the couple on the brink of divorce. Until Cynthia experiences Billy Graham’s 1949 Los Angeles Crusade where she finds faith in God and a renewed commitment to her marriage and her husband. Now, her most fervent prayer is for God to help Louie find the peace and forgiveness he so desperately needs.

In theaters September 14th.


An ideal pose for stretching out your hips, lower back, glutes, hips, and knees, it also can help to relieve sciatica. Start on your back with your knees bent, and your feet hip-width apart and flat on the floor. Raise your right foot and rest it on top of your left thigh above your knee. Thread your right hand between your legs and grip the back of your left thigh, bringing your left hand to meet it. Pull both legs toward your chest as far as you can. Take 8-10 breaths, and then release. Switch legs, and repeat.
Your hip flexors and psoas muscles help drive your legs up when you are running. To stretch these muscles, kneel on the floor and then step out forward with your left leg so that your left foot is on the floor. With your back straight, lean forward so that your weight is on the front foot and you feel a stretch in the hip of the back leg. Perform the stretch on both sides.
Lumbosacral plexopathy, more commonly called diabetic lumbosacral plexopathy is a condition caused by advanced diabetes, in which patients begin suffering with debilitating pain in the hips, thighs, and legs. With lumbosacral plexopathy there is typically a wasting of the leg muscles asymmetrically. This condition can affect individuals who have both type I or II diabetes. Treatment includes controlling blood glucose levels, and chronic neuropathic pain management achieved through anticonvulsant medications (such as gabapentin for back pain) and selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (such as duloxetine).
Spartacus is worthwhile, but the sex and violence is over-the-top: there’s no sugar-coating it. Definitely not a family drama. But the dramatic quality is excellent. After a couple of campy, awkward episodes at the start, the first season quickly gets quite good: distinctive film craft, interesting writing, and solid acting from nearly the whole cast. Andy Whitfield’s Spartacus is idealistic, earnest, and easy to like. I found it downright upsetting when I learned that he had passed away — as did many, many other fans I’m sure. See my personal blog for a little bit more of a review of Spartacus. BACK TO TEXT
How to do it: Put a 20- to 36-inch box behind you. With your feet hip-width apart, lift your leg and place the instep of your rear foot on the bench. Lower your hips toward the floor so your rear knee comes close to the floor, keeping your back straight. As you descend, make sure you don’t bend the torso excessively forward and your front knee does not pass your front toes. Pause when your rear knee is close to the floor and your front quad is parallel with the floor, then drive through your front heel to return to the start position. Repeat this movement, alternating sides each time.

A basic bodyweight glute bridge is one of Lefkowith's favorites. Want to try it? Lie on the ground with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor, and push your hips up toward the sky, squeezing your glutes at the top. This will not only help get your glutes in the game, but it also gives your hip flexors a chance to stretch out. (Try these five hip openers, too.)
In this study, one patient with sciatica was sent for ten MRIs, which produced 49 distinct “findings,” 16 of them unique, none of which occurred in all ten reports. On average, each radiologist made about a dozen errors, seeing one or two things that weren’t there and missing about ten things that were. Yikes. Read a more detailed and informal description of this study.

The pain of back pain almost always makes it seem worse than it is. The most worrisome causes of back pain rarely cause severe pain, and many common problems (like slipped discs) are usually much less serious than people fear. Only about 1% of back pain is ominous, and even then it’s often still treatable. Most of the 1% are due to cancer, autoimmune disease, or spinal cord damage.

Because you won’t stop stretching them. Many people who have consistent hip flexor tightness would be a lot better off if they just stopped stretching them. This often provides only a temporary relief, giving just a small window of comfort. And guess what? The more you stretch them, the shorter that window of relief becomes, until you’re at the point where you’re stretching them multiple times a day for a long duration just to feel good! That’s no way to live!


And a BIG Solar plant in California is about to start construction

Bright Source Energy are on the verge of getting approval for the development of a nearly 400MW power plant in the Mojave Desert in California. Using a ‘Power Tower’ technology, where mirrors focus the sun onto a central tower that then uses the heat to generate power, the power plant will be the largest solar plant in the world.


If your device isn't working properly, you can try several solutions to solve the problem.
In most cases you can solve the problem by following these guidelines:

If you've used many applications on your device, it may get slow because the applications keep running in the background.

Solution: End running applications.


What logical term or concept ought to be more widely known?

Various What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known? Edge, 2017.

As against others on:

(This is as far as I’ve got.)

I’ve grouped the contributions according to whether or not I think they give due weight to the notion of uncertainty as expressed in my blog. Interestingly Steven Pinker seems not to give due weight in his article, whereas he is credited by Nicholas G. Carr with some profound insights (in the first of the second batch). So maybe I am not reading them right.

My own suggestion would be Turing’s theory of ‘Morphogenesis’. The particular predictions seem to have been confirmed ‘scientifically’, but it is essentially a logical / mathematical theory. If, as the introduction suggests, science is “reliable methods for obtaining knowledge” then it seems to me that logic and mathematics are more reliable than empirical methods, and deserve some special recognition. Although, I must concede that it may be hard to tell logic from pseudo-logic, and that unless you can do so my distinction is potentially dangerous.

The second law of thermodynamics, and much common sense rationality,  assumes a situation in which the law of large numbers applies. But Turing adds to the second law’s notion of random dissipation a notion of relative structuring (as in gravity) to show that ‘critical instabilities’ are inevitable. These are inconsistent with the law of large numbers, so the assumptions of the second law of thermodynamics (and much else) cannot be true. The universe cannot be ‘closed’ in its sense.

If the assumptions of the second law seem to leave no room for free will and hence no reason to believe in our agency and hence no point in any of the contributions to Edge: they are what they are and we do what we do. But Pinker does not go so far: he simply notes that if things inevitably degrade we do not need to beat ourselves up, or look for scape-goats when things go wrong. But this can be true even if the second law does not apply. If we take Turing seriously then a seeming permanent status quo can contain the reasons for its own destruction, so that turning a blind eye and doing nothing can mean sleep-walking to disaster. Where Pinker concludes:

[An] underappreciation of the Second Law lures people into seeing every unsolved social problem as a sign that their country is being driven off a cliff. It’s in the very nature of the universe that life has problems. But it’s better to figure out how to solve them—to apply information and energy to expand our refuge of beneficial order—than to start a conflagration and hope for the best.

This would seem to follow more clearly from the theory of morphogenesis than the second law. Turing’s theory also goes some way to suggesting or even explaining the items in the second batch. So, I commend it.

Dave Marsay

Probability as a guide to life

Probability is the very guide to life.’

Cicero may have been right, but ‘probability’ means something quite different nowadays to what it did millennia ago. So what kind of probability is a suitable guide to life, and when?

Suppose that we are told that ‘P(X) = p’. Often there is some implied real or virtual population, P, a proportion ‘p’ of which has the property ‘X’. To interpret such a probability statement we need to know what the relevant population is. Such statements are then normally reliable. More controversial are conditional probabilities, such as ‘P(X|Y) = p’. If you satisfy Y, does P(X)=p ‘for you’?

Suppose that:

  1. All the properties of interest (such as X and Y) can be expressed as union of some disjoint basis, B.
  2. For all such basis properties, B, P(X|B) is known.
  3. That the conditional probabilities of interest are derived from the basis properties in the usual way. (E..g. P(X|B1ÈB2) = P(B1).P(X|B1)+P(B2).P(X|B2)/P(B1ÈB2).)

The conditional probabilities constructed in this way are meaningful, but if we are interested in some other set, Z, the conditional probability P(X|Z) could take a range of values. But then we need to reconsider decision making. Instead of maximising a probability (or utility), the following heuristics that may apply:

  • If the range makes significant difference, try to get more precise data. This may be by taking more samples, or by refining the properties considered.
  • Consider the best outcome for the worst-case probabilities.
  • If the above is not acceptable, make some reasonable assumptions until there is an acceptable result possible.

For example, suppose that some urn, each contain a mix of balls, some of which are white. We can choose an urn and then pick a ball at random. We want white balls. What should we do. The conventional rule consists of assessing the proportion of white balls in each, and picking an urn with the most. This is uncontroversial if our assessments are reliable. But suppose we are faced with an urn with an unknown mix? Conventionally our assessment should not depend on whether we want to obtain or avoid a white ball. But if we want white balls the worst-case proportion is no white balls, and we avoid this urn, whereas if we want to avoid white balls the worst-case proportion is all white balls, and we again avoid this urn.

If our assessments are not biased then we would expect to do better with the conventional rule most of the time and in the long-run. For example, if the non-white balls are black, and urns are equally likely to be filled with black as white balls, then assessing that an urn with unknown contents has half white balls is justified. But in other cases we just don’t know, and choosing this urn we could do consistently badly. There is a difference between an urn whose contents are unknown, but for which you have good grounds for estimating proportion, and an urn where you have no grounds for assessing proportion.

If precise probabilities are to be the very guide to life, it had better be a dull life. For more interesting lives imprecise probabilities can be used to reduce the possibilities. It is often informative to identify worst-case options, but one can be left with genuine choices. Conventional rationality is the only way to reduce living to a formula: but is it such a good idea?

Dave Marsay

Uncertainty is not just probability

Dave Marsay

Instrumental Probabilities

Reflecting on my recent contribution to the economics ejournal special issue on uncertainty (comments invited), I realised that from a purely mathematical point of view, the current mainstream mathematical view, as expressed by Dawid, could be seen as a very much more accessible version of Keynes’. But there is a difference in expression that can be crucial.

In Keynes’ view ‘probability’ is a very general term, so that it always legitimate to ask about the probability of something. The challenge is to determine the probability, and in particular whether it is just a number. In some usages, as in Kolmogorov, the term probability is reserved for those cases where certain axioms hold. In such cases the answer to a request for a probability might be to say that there isn’t one. This seems safe even if it conflicts with the questioner’s presuppositions about the universality of probabilities. In the instrumentalist view of Dawid, however, suggests that probabilistic methods are tools that can always be used. Thus the probability may exist even if it does not have the significance that one might think and, in particular, it is not appropriate to use it for ‘rational decision making’.

I have often come across seemingly sensible people who use ‘sophisticated mathematics’ in strange ways. I think perhaps they take an instrumentalist view of mathematics as a whole, and not just probability theory. This instrumentalist mathematics reminds me of Keynes’ ‘pseudo-mathematics’. But the key difference is that mathematicians, such as Dawid, know that the usage is only instrumentalist and that there are other questions to be asked. The problem is not the instrumentalist view as such, but the dogma (of at last some) that it is heretical to question widely used instruments.

The financial crises of 2007/8 were partly attributed by Lord Turner to the use of ‘sophisticated mathematics’. From Keynes’ perspective it was the use of pseudo-mathematics. My view is that if it is all you have then even pseudo-mathematics can be quite informative, and hence worthwhile. One just has to remember that it is not ‘proper’ mathematics. In Dawid’s terminology  the problem seems to be that the instrumental use of mathematics without any obvious concern for its empirical validity. Indeed, since his notion of validity concerns limiting frequencies, one might say that the problem was the use of an instrument that was stunningly inappropriate to the question at issue.

It has long seemed  to me that a similar issue arises with many miscarriages of justice, intelligence blunders and significant policy mis-steps. In Keynes’ terms people are relying on a theory that simply does not apply. In Dawid’s terms one can put it blunter: Decision-takers were relying on the fact that something had a very high probability when they ought to have been paying more attention to the evidence in the actual situation, which showed that the probability was – in Dawid’s terms – empirically invalid. It could even be that the thing with a high instrumental probability was very unlikely, all things considered.

Artificial Intelligence?

Dave Marsay

Traffic bunching

Dave Marsay

Who thinks probability is just a number? A plea.

Many people think – perhaps they were taught it – that it is meaningful to talk about the unconditional probability of ‘Heads’ (I.e. P(Heads)) for a real coin, and even that there are logical or mathematical arguments to this effect. I have been collecting and commenting on works which have been – too widely – interpreted in this way, and quoting their authors in contradiction. De Finetti seemed to be the only example of a respected person who seemed to think that he had provided such an argument. But a friendly economist has just forwarded a link to a recent work that debunks this notion, based on wider  reading of his work.

So, am I done? Does anyone have any seeming mathematical sources for the view that ‘probability is just a number’ for me to consider?

I have already covered:

There are some more modern authors who make strong claims about probability, but – unless you know different – they rely on the above, and hence do not need to be addressed separately. I do also opine on a few less well known sources: you can search my blog to check.

Dave Marsay


Kepler-62e (Artist Concept)

The artist's concept depicts Kepler-62e, a super-Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a star smaller and cooler than the sun, located about 1,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra.

Kepler-62e orbits it's host star every 122 days and is roughly 60 percent larger than Earth in size. Scientists do not know if Kepler-62e is a waterworld or if it has a solid surface, but its discovery signals another step closer to finding a world similar to Earth.

NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., manages Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. JPL managed the Kepler mission's development.

For more information about the Kepler mission, visit:


Jabari Mason AKA Diamond Axe was born

img-jabari (1)

Jabari Mason AKA Diamond Axe was born Stanley C. Mason, in Johnston, PA. He has evolved to, Jabari (meaning brave). He is the President of Facemadics and a Creative Businessman selling items such as note cards, earrings and tee shirts.The Innovae images you will get the pleasure of veiwing are all images of original paintings,paper collages,drawings and photographs created by him. He is also an active force in the community as an activist and is a core member of Kuumba. His true passion is for the up-liftment of African Americans and all oppressed people world wide.


HRHHID in Basic March and ASEC

Does HRHHID remain the same within a household across the Basic March survey and the ASEC? It seems like there are some values of HRHHID which are in the Basic March sample but not in the ASEC sample. Does HRHHID get generated separately in the ASEC?

The HRHHID variable is part of the original CPS household ID variable provided by the Census Bureau. The other part of the household ID is HRHHID2. These values should be consistent for the same household between the March sample and the ASEC sample. However, do note that the CPSID and CPSIDP variables are generally much easier household and person identification variables to use with IPUMS CPS.


Filing a Lawsuit in Rocky Mount, North Carolina

Find the right Litigation attorney in Rocky Mount, NC

Litigation Lawyers in Rocky Mount

If you are in Rocky Mount, North Carolina and believe that some type of legal wrong has been committed against you, and decide that seeking legal redress will be worth the time and expense involved, you may wish to file a lawsuit.

If you're considering filing a lawsuit, there are numerous things you need to consider, and it is not a decision to be made lightly. You should not file a lawsuit without seeking the advice of a Rocky Mount, North Carolina civil litigation attorney first.

Your Rocky Mount, North Carolina civil litigation attorney will be able to advise you on whether or not you have a legitimate case, and, if so, your best options on how to proceed. The attorney will also discuss with you the fees for their services, and whether he or she can represent you on a contingency basis.

Steps for Filing a Lawsuit in Rocky Mount, North Carolina

Consultation with your attorney: Before you proceed with any legal action in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, you should seek the advice and counsel of a knowledgeable Rocky Mount, North Carolina attorney. He or she will be indispensable in helping you succeed in your lawsuit.

Drafting The Complaint: Once you decide that pursuing a lawsuit in Rocky Mount, North Carolina civil court is worth your time and effort, you need to file a complaint. The complaint can set the tone, and frame the issues, for the rest of the litigation process, which can drag on for months, or even years (and decades, in some cases). This is because the complaint lays out all the allegations against the defendant. It also typically asks the court for specific relief, should it rule in the plaintiff's favor.

Serving The Defendant: Once you, or your lawyer, have drafted a complaint, the defendant must be served with it, so they have notice that they're being sued, and are given time to prepare a defense. Rocky Mount, North Carolina has particular rules governing how a complaint must be served, for the service to be valid. Personal service (having someone give the documents directly to the defendant) is preferred. However, some courts will also accept service by mail in limited circumstances, or service upon an adult member of the defendant's household.

Await Defendant's Response: In Rocky Mount, North Carolina, the law gives civil defendants a fairly long period of time (a month or two typically) to respond to a lawsuit against them. The most prevalent response is either an answer (where they address the factual allegations against them, typically denying most or all of the allegations) or a motion to dismiss (where the contend that, even if everything alleged in the complaint is true, those facts would not establish liability). If the defendant does nothing, and fails to respond, they run the risk of having a default judgment entered against them. This typically means that the court automatically rules against them, treating the plaintiff as if they won the lawsuit. This gives the plaintiff a judgment against the defendant, which they can seek to collect using all legal means.

How Can A Rocky Mount, North Carolina Tort Lawyer Help?

This article gives you a basic picture of what is required to file a lawsuit in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. However, it should not, under any circumstances, be read as a complete guide to the litigation process.

Therefore, if you want to file a lawsuit against someone in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, you should not hesitate to speak with an attorney, who will be able to advise you on the best way to proceed.

Talk to a Law Attorney now!

Life in Rocky Mount

Rocky Mount is located along the coastal plains of North Carolina. It was formally incorporated on February 28, 1867. The 2010 census reported the city's population as 57477 people.

The city is a huge arts center. with a growing arts community, a Children's Museum Science Center, a Community Theater at the Imperial Centre for Arts Science, and the overall reputation of being the huge art hub in North Carolina.

Major corporations that have established a presence in the city are Raleigh, Rocky Mount Instruments, 368x Electra Piano Harpsichord, Hardee's, Boddie-Noell, and Texas Steakhouse Saloon.

Famous residents include J.J. Arrington, Anthony Avent, Roy A. Cooper, Earle Hyman, Julius Peppers, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

There are also many law firms and law offices in Rocky Mount. Therefore, residents and local businesses have ample resources to turn to when needing legal services.

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Faith, Friends, and Donald Miller

I’ve been through a lot of painful things: depression, suicidal thoughts, debilitating insecurity, abuse, rejection, heartbreak, and more grief than anyone my age should ever have to face. Most of my young life, I was rooted in false doctrine: I am inadequate, underserving, unseen, unloved, unworthy, and it will always be this way. Believe me, I know where you have been or may still be…I’ve been there too. I also know I would never have been healed without my faith in Jesus Christ, a little perspective shift from Donald Miller, and the unconditional love of a few good friends.

Faith, Friends, and Donald Miller2018-12-04T10:41:41-05:00

Rejection At Its Best

Rejection, at its best, makes us question every part of ourselves. It challenges the way we present ourselves, the trueness that shines, and the false self we project out of fear and angst. Rejection, however, is inevitable. So, I dare say I want to make it a propellant into something positive, something empowering. I want to own rejection, instead of letting it own me as it typically has done. I want rejection to awake and shake me, but in the least harmful way possible.

Rejection At Its Best2018-12-04T10:41:48-05:00

10 Reflections on Relationships

Relationships are complex and often hard to navigate. As Christians we are called to be in community, but sometimes it’s difficult to decipher what that looks like. We are so thankful for the wisdom of beautiful Mercy graduate Catharine, who shares some of the lessons she’s learned about relationships in a season of relocation!

10 Reflections on Relationships2018-12-04T10:41:54-05:00


Prime destination for succulent lovers

Browsing: Kumara

Kumara is a genus of 2 species of flowering plants in the family Asphodelaceae, native to the Western Cape Province of South Africa. Phylogenetic studies indicated that 2 species that were traditionally classed as members of the genus Aloe were genetically distinct and comprised an entirely separate clade. The species were accordingly split off as a separate genus, given the name that it had previously held, Kumara.

Back to Browse Succulents by Genus.


Hybris Marketing – personalisation for marketing success

7 December 2017

Justyna Tarkowska

Justyna Tarkowska

In today’s markets, the quick identification of customer needs often translates to increased sales. This presents a challenge to commercial organisations; how do they react quickly enough, whilst making sure that the customer experience is personalised?

For a better understanding of these challenges, I examined recent academic research of Wind and Rangaswamy’s  2017 market analytics trends to identify the priorities in personalisation. So, what did I discover? Mainly that personalised recommendations are essential to business success: E-commerce marketers are adopting machine learning engines like Hybris Marketing to tailor recommendations to users’ behaviour, product popularity, and situational context. Yet, many companies still struggle to deliver relevant recommendations to their customers due to organisational complexity and an abundance of algorithm choices.

Everyone’s talking about personalised recommendations…

Findings from the 2001 paper prove that, among all possible advantages offered by E-commerce to retailers, the capacity to deliver a flexible and personalised customer experience is one of the most important. This year, a report published by Econsultancy on digital intelligence states that product recommendation and personalisation are still the priority that sits atop marketers’ list (Econsultancy).

Where’s the proof?

Amazon has reported that its well-designed recommendations have increased conversion rates by 900%. The level of personalisation used in Amazon’s recommendation strategy varies from basic geo-targeting, recommendations based on past purchase behaviour to advanced segmentation. It facilitates the division of a market of potential customers into groups that lets you isolate and analyse those subsets of data.

This enables analysts to examine and respond to the component trends in the business. To fully understand the buying patterns, the website registers customers’ interactions with products to discover underlying patterns. This collection of data insights is a top priority for businesses - almost three-quarters of organisations made it a strategic goal to collect these data insights (Gartner).

Machine learning for better recommendations

By choosing a recommendation strategy based on the signals received from each customer, retailers can apply a more targeted approach to their recommendations and realise the best return on investment. Advertisers and E-commerce businesses have the most to gain from machine-learning, because of the ease of measurement and instant feedback needed to train and improve machine-learning algorithms. A fantastic example of personalisation include recommendations that are shown dynamically on a web page depending on shopper’s interests at a given moment in time. An alternative method is the use of popularity-based algorithms - ‘Most Popular’, ‘Recently Viewed’ or ‘Also Viewed Items’.

These recommendation modules show the most popular items based on sales volumes, recent views, and complimentary products respectively. This ability to scale marketing and sales activities into a single pool of insightful data is done best by cloud platforms, i.e. SAP Analytics Hub, that are predicted to become the most profitable investment in the next five years:

“By 2020, 50% of cloud implementations will follow a multivendor postmodern ERP approach” (Gartner).

Despite this emerging awareness, widespread adoption of quality personalised insight and content are currently absent across the Internet.

Struggling to adopt a relevant recommendation technique?

There are two factors driving the lack of adoption of personalisation:
  1. Complexity of a product recommendation engine
  2. A belief that effective product personalisation method is already in place
The complex nature of a product recommendation engine may be the result of data and organisational silos. Since last year, however, there is a growing confidence with using and handling data, fuelled by the continued dominance of customer experience.

Retailers appear to be making great traction in individual product recommendations, while many industries, such as banking, are yet to consider effective personalisation. Banks are often cautious with technology due to security and risk management. This cautious approach could have an impact on their ability to recommend products in a responsive way. Often, recommendations represent ‘approved’ banking products, rather than results that are based on customer needs and behaviour.

The solution?

Banks should be using Artificial Intelligence to identify what the customer wants at a specific moment in time to make a sale. A well-constructed web-page with integrated recommendation algorithms has the power to retain customer engagement, therefore making a sale more likely. So, how does it work? Through the integration of OData protocol, for querying and updating data within Hybris Marketing, the web page recalls the shopper’s browsing history as recorded on their previous visit and shows content that is relevant to their interest.

Therefore, when visitor selects a personalised product recommendation and makes a purchase, the proportion of site revenue from product recommendations grows significantly. And, as reported by JD Sports in 2014, it accounts for nearly one-fifth of all sales (Barilliance).

How can Hybris Marketing help?

Given that personalisation is one of the top marketing trends in 2017, SAP Hybris Marketing is an advisable solution to commercial businesses struggling to achieve their sales goals. Hybris marketing not only facilitates the identification of customer needs but also links customer transactions to build a full customer profile. It helps discover patterns in the data (both marketing and financial) and uses inbuilt algorithms to address two problems.

First, it is easy to use and delivers intelligent recommendations with a self-learning solution that reads customer interactions. Second, it challenges already existing personalisation by offering targeted campaigns to win back clients who abandon their shopping cart – and then converts them to a sale.

Want to find out more about how you can personalise your efforts with Hybris Marketing. Drop us a line here.

About the author

Justyna Tarkowska


How to work with the String.xml File in our Android Environment

If we are creating an Android application we need to write text on it. Labels, application information, fields, hints… lots of text and sentences are needed. How can we deal with this? We can do it in two ways: The wrong way and the Android way.

The wrong way is just putting the text “statically”, in the element we need. For example, in an xml TextView attribute:

android:Text=”Text Without using string.xml”

or in a TextView object in Android code:

textViewObject.setText(“Text without using string.xml”)

Well, we can think that this way of inserting text is not bad at all, but let’s analyze it a bit deeper.

Imagine that the person you are working with/for doesn’t like the text you have written, and wants to change all of it. Now, you have to check, line by line, file by file, in xml and in .java files all the text you have inserted and replace all of it. Interesting work, eh?… if we were monkeys, but we are programmers, so let’s do it in a right way.

Android gives us a very useful way to use text and sentences in our application. This is implemented by using the string.xml file inside the Resources folder. Here, all the strings are stored so they can be retrieved in the application. What happens if the boss-person want us to change all texts? Just go to this file and replace them. More easy, quick and effectively.

Let’s see how this string.xml file is composed.

<string name="text1">Text</string>

<string name="sentence2">This is a Sentence</string>

For every String we want to put in our application, just add a line. In the “name” attribute, put the identifier of the string, something easy to remember and easily organizable, at the beginning of the application, maybe you have 10 or 20 strings…but if the app grows, you can easily have thousands of strings…so it’s important that you have the criteria to put in the name. Inside the <string> tags, just put the string you want to use.

Now…how do you use this from the application?

We can use the strings we have created in the string.xml file, from two different places: From a layout defined in xml or from the Android code. Let’s go a bit further.

Strings in xml

This is the common way to use the strings, in our Resources, layout code. Let’s explain it with an easy example.

It’s that easy!! To reference a string from string.xml file we just need to use “@string/identifier_of_the_string” inside our “android:text” attribute. The next section delves into this use.

Strings in android code

As I wrote in the article How to create Android UI in Java Code, we learned that we can create a UI using Java code, so…to how do we add a text to a TextView object from the string.xml file?

The most important piece of code here is “this.getString(R.string.text1)”, the “this” statement is used when we are inside an Activity. If not, we need to use a “Context” object. Context is an “Interface to global information about an application environment” (via Google Android Page).

Want more?

We will examine the “Context” aspect, in a following article, because Context is something we are going to use in all of our applications, therefore it’s important to know what it is and how to use it.

Have any questions about strings? Feel free to ask your questions in our comments section.

This post is part of the series: More Android Elements!!

More information about Android and its programing environment.
  1. Working with Strings in Android Development
  2. Customizing Views with ListViews or ListActivities
  3. How To Create Screen Size Independent Android Applications
  4. How To Configure New Android SDK Manager
  5. Learn To Save and Load External Images in Google Android


Employees Forest City YMCA

Heritage Club

We invite you to become a member of our Heritage Club! The Heritage Club was established in 2012 to ensure that the Forest City Y remains in the community for generations to come. Heritage Club members are those who have made contributions to an endowment fund or who have made provisions in their estate plan for future contributions. The Forest City Y has two established funds, the Forest City Family YMCA Endowment Fund made possible by John K. and Luise V. Hanson and the Hanson Foundation; and the Oleson Family Scholarship Fund, given by the family of the late Merrill G. Oleson, former Executive Director of the Y. Or, donors can name their own fund.

Heritage Club

Donate your time

Volunteers are the heart and soul of any YMCA. George Williams, the founder of the YMCA in 1844, was a community volunteer who saw a need and created the YMCA to fill it. The time and talent contributed by the men and women who volunteer at the YMCA enables us to meet the needs of the many people we serve. Coach a youth sports team, be a positive role model for our kids or tell the story of how the Y has positively impacted your life.

Support the Y

The value of Y membership is often thought of in terms of how often we use the equipment or facilities. In reality, it is much more than that! Y staff and volunteers are hard at work each day improving each other’s sense of worth, teaching basic values and serving as role models. We need your help to provide funding for programs that require a subsidy to cover their operating costs. Many important Y programs, such as youth sports, swim lessons, and before & after school care cannot be sustained through fees alone. Another important mission of the Y is to ensure that membership is available to all regardless of their ability to pay. The Y is a place where social status, personal income levels, race, gender and religion have not a say in the services received.

Annual campaign

To carry out the mission of the Y, we conduct an annual support campaign in the Spring of each year. The primary purpose of the campaign to ensure that Y membership is available to all regardless of their ability to pay. All gifts to the Y are fully tax deductible according to your financial advisor due to the Y’s 501(c)(3) recognition by the IRS.

Various levels of support are available for the annual campaign. Friends of the Y assist in telling stories of how the Y has positively impacted their life. To recognize annual support donors, the Y uses vinyl recognition banners that hang in our gymnasium.

In-kind donations

The Y is in need of many things and appreciates in-kind donations. Please talk to the Executive Director if you desire to make an in-kind contribution.

Is my contribution tax deductible?

Yes, the Y is a non-profit 501(c)(3) classified organization. Check with your financial advisor for specific information.

Can my donation be given over a period of time?

Yes, contributions can be made over a three month period.

Will the YMCA accept an in-kind donation?

Yes, the Y is in need of many things and services. The fair market value of an in-kind gift is tax deductible. Please contact your financial advisor for specific information.

How much of what is contributed stays with the Forest City Y?

All of it! Although Y’s pay 2% of all earned income to the YMCA of the USA for services and assistance, all charitable contributions are exempt from this fee.

Who decided how contributions are to be used?

Volunteer Board members, people who live and work in our service area, approve and regularly monitor revenues and expenses over the course of a fiscal year.

Doesn’t the Y have an Endowment Fund to help support programs?

Yes, the Y does have a fund that generates interest to help with operating costs. The fund is permanently restricted and only the interest earned can be used. The percentage of the operating costs covered by the endowment interest has failed to keep pace with the growing budget. We want to continue to keep membership rates low, offer high-quality youth programs and provide financial assistance to those in need.

I’m already a member and pay my dues. Why should I give more?

The dues of our member’s cover the costs associated with staffing, occupancy, supplies, equipment repair and routing maintenance of our facility. Many Y programs that target youth are not self-supporting. It is only through the generosity of people who believe that youth programs and providing financial assistance to those in need that we can continue to offer these important services.

How does the financial assistance program work?

Financial assistance is offered to those who make their needs known. We work with local school officials and state agency workers who indicate to us that a family could benefit from being connected to the YMCA. Each applicant is asked to contribute a token amount towards membership fees. Over the last few years, the Y has provided $25,000-$40,000 to hundreds of individuals in need of financial assistance. We see a trend for this type of needed assistance to continue to grow.