Hasta La Gadget!

Prior to sharing the “big news” with my family and friends, I knew that I would either embark on the happiest or the most wretched journey of my life. As many queer people do, I had the option to either feel restricted or to be open, although ridicule may come with openness.

Despite feeling trapped and unable to express myself, I did not want to be liberated at the expense of losing relationships and friendships. As a pre-teenager who watched the news, which featured disownment, harsh treatments, bashings and murders of gay people, I feared for my life. I constantly questioned if honesty to the world was worth being beaten, harassed and possibly killed. Coming out was one of the hardest tasks of my life. Although it has its ups-and-downs, I do not regret being open and honest with myself.

Even though I did not openly state my sexuality until May 2008, I was taunted by classmates for many years, and even more so after I officially came out. In sixth grade, a few classes went to go watch a musical at a local high school. While we were walking into a venue, there was my obnoxious peer who kept saying, “We all know you’re GAY, just admit it!” I tried to ignore her, then she said it again, “You’re GAY right? Just admit it.” Luckily, there was a very sweet boy who defended me by saying, “Shut up! Who cares if he’s gay, it doesn’t make a difference.” After feeling frustrated with the situation and frustrated with being taunted, I yelled, “FINE. I am gay. Leave me alone.” I never understood and I still do not understand why some people feel obligated to know whom I love. The sense of entitlement is egotistical and rude, because if someone is not comfortable sharing this information, we should not stress it. This is the same for queer persons: we should not try to forcefully “out” someone. It is not our prerogative. Curiosity is fine until it turns into aggression.

Cons: For once, I felt happy after sharing this information, but I was not entirely ready for the consequences. Although the girls glamorized me and wanted me to be their “gay best friend” (which I will discuss the offensiveness of in a different post), the majority of the boys in my school hated me. I always felt uncomfortable walking down the halls. I was constantly called “fag” and “homo.” These are just words, but these words had power. Sharing this information also stunted the possibility for me to have friendships with boys; none of them wanted to be around me. I would feel highly uncomfortable walking into the bathrooms or the locker rooms, because they would quickly flee the area as I entered. Fortunately, I never endured physical violence, just verbal harassment and discomfort. My heart goes out to those who are still dealing with these issues, and just remember that there are a ton of resources out there for you.

Pros: Not everything about coming out was negative. Before coming out, I was extremely insecure, timid and defensive. Afterwards, I had a better sense of myself, and I could honestly express my opinions. I did not need to hide my feelings towards equality, because I knew that I deserved to be treated equally. After coming out, I also had an amazing support system. When you can share this information with special people, it can enhance your friendships and it gives you the opportunity to discover who loves you for you and not for an overrated label. With time, a sense of community will grow and you will meet others who share similar values, interests and emotions.

Just remember that it is always your choice if you want to share your personal life with others. Although others may try to make you feel obligated, you do not owe anything to them. Similarly to everything in life, there are pros and cons, and this is the same for coming out. In no way am I saying that everyone’s experiences will be the same, but people can be evil, so be conscious and knowledgeable about how this decision may affect your life. Even if you cannot be honest with others, stay true to yourself at all times.

We are born, we pay taxes and we die, but be yourself should be somewhere in that timeline.

From soft challah bread to sweet pomegranate seeds, every item that appears on the Rosh Hashanah table contains an ancient significance.

The Jewish New Year is celebrated by greeting one another with the words shana tovah u’metukah, Hebrew for “a good and sweet new year!” As a result, the table is very deliberately filled with food that reflects an appetite for happy, prosperous days to come.

The Huffington Post spoke with Naomi Ross, an instructor at the Brooklyn-based Center for Kosher Culinary Arts and founder of Jewish Cooking Concepts, to explain the spiritual significance of the foods that appear on the Rosh Hashanah table.

Round Challah Bread

A festive Jewish meal wouldn’t be complete without having bread on the table, according to Naomi Ross. This is why challah, a braided egg bread, makes an appearance at every Shabbat dinner. The chef considers the table to be like an altar and the bread almost like a sacrifice. Traditionally, Ross says sacrifices were dipped in salt. During the month of Tishrei, which begins with Rosh Hashanah, the bread is dipped in honey to symbolize a prayer for sweet things to come in the new year. Challah is round on Rosh Hashanah, recalling the cyclical nature of the year. It is also symbolic of a crown, alluding to the desire to crown G-d as king.
Recipes:
The Ultimate Challah Bread
Mimi Wilhem’s Challah Recipe

Apples With Honey

Ross says many Jews consider apples to be a perfect fruit–beautiful to the eye, the smell, and delicious to eat. “Apples are mesmerizing to all the senses,” Ross explains. The Midrash, a commentary on the Hebrew Scriptures, describes the Garden of Eden as having the sweet scent of an apple orchard. When Isaac greets his son Jacob, he exclaims:

“See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the LORD hath blessed.” Genesis 27:27

The biblical commentator Rashi explained that Isaac was referring to a field of apples.
The apples are dipped in honey during Rosh Hashanah for added sweetness.
Recipes:
The Best Apple And Honey Pairings
Butter Apple Cake
Rosh Hashanah Honey Cake

Fish Head

Both the body and head of a fish are symbolic for Rosh Hashanah. Fish swim in schools and breed in plenty, and as a result, have been traditionally been seen as representations of abundance, Ross says. During the meal, participants take a piece of fish and say a prayer asking G-d to make them fruitful like the fish. The fish head is prized over its tail, used to symbolize diving into the new year with strength and not with weakness.

“And the LORD will make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if thou shalt hearken unto the commandments of the LORD thy G-d, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them.” Deuteronomy 28:13

While gefilte fish is traditional, Ross says any kosher fish that is readily available is a “must have” at the New Year table.
Recipes:
Fish Balls in Tomato Sauce
Gefilte Fish

Carrots, Leeks, And More

Some foods are treasured because they are a play on words, meaning the word for the food sounds like something else you’d want to wish for in the new year. In Hebrew, the word for carrots is gezer, which sounds similar to the word for decree, which is gazar. “We use that as a supplication that any evil decree against the Jewish people will be torn up and that our good merits will be pronounced before G-d,” Ross said. In a similar vein, some eat leeks, or karsi, at the dinner table. Karsi sounds like the word kares, which means to cut off or destroy. The prayers is that any enemies will be destroyed. Depending on the language spoken around the dinner table, other foods based on word associations may come into play–like fenugreek, gourds, beets, or fresh dates.
Recipes:
Honey Roasted Carrots With Thyme
Carrot, Parsnip, Beet And Sweet Potato Tzimmes
Caramelized Squash & Pomegranate Salad with Creamy Apple Vinaigrette

New Fruits

New fruits appear on the table during the second night of Rosh Hashanah, so that families can hear the shehecheyanu blessing.

Blessed are You, L-rd our G-d, King of the Universe, who has granted us life, sustained us and enabled us to reach this occasion.

This particular blessing is typically said in appreciation for new things, ranging from a valuable new dress for the holidays to a new child in the family. Since the prayer was already said on the first night of Rosh Hashanah, new fruits allow families to recite the prayer on the second night. The blessing can only be said on ripe fruits, not dried ones, according to Chabad.
The global market has made it easier for people to purchase tropical fruits, so chefs are always on the hunt for the next big thing. “People are looking for exotic fruit they haven’t had before,” Naomi Ross said. Some families are now choosing starfruit, lychee, longan, rambutan, or passionfruit, while others just search for fruits that have newly come into season in their region.

Pomegranates

Pomegranates are a popular “new fruit,” even though they were well-known throughout the Mediterranean region during Biblical times. The pomegranate designs decorated the High Priest’s robes in Exodus 28:33–34, as well as columns in King Solomon’s temple.

“Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy mouth is comely; thy temples are like a pomegranate split open behind thy veil.” Song of Songs 4:3

The hope is that the participants’ merits will increase just like the pomegranate seeds. “There’s actually an idea that there are 613 seeds in a pomegranate to correlate with the 613 commandments of the Torah,” Ross said. “I don’t know if that’s numerically accurate, but the multitude of the pomegranate seeds represents the good deeds of the commandments.”
Recipes:
Seasonal Salad With Pomegranate Vinaigrette Pomegranate Carrots With Leeks Kale-Pomegranate Salad with Almond Halva Dressing

Shana tova!

Eric Frein, the suspected cop killer who has managed to elude authorities for nearly two weeks, is likely hunkered down for the long haul, according to a survival expert.

“There is really not much of a limit to how long he could potentially hide away,” Creek Stewart told The Huffington Post.

Stewart is founder of Willow Haven Outdoor, an Indiana school that offers survival and disaster preparedness classes. He is also the survival expert utilized in The Weather Channel’s new TV series “Fat Guys in the Woods.”

FREIN MANHUNT: CLICK HERE FOR LIVE UPDATES

Frein is the lone suspect in the Sept. 12 shooting at the Blooming Grove state police barracks in northeastern Pennsylvania, which left one state trooper dead and another seriously wounded.

Frein’s car was found not far from the crime scene. The 31-year-old from Canadensis is now on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.

Authorities maintain that Frein is still in the heavily wooded area near his home. For the past 11 days, authorities — federal, state and local law enforcement officers — have combed the area, on foot and in heavily armored vehicles. Aerial searches have been equally aggressive, with the help of thermal imaging cameras.

The dense forest, a hindrance to law enforcement, is the only ally Frein needs.

“You only need four things to stay alive — shelter, water, fire and food — and that area is incredibly rich with all of those,” Stewart said.

“He is probably very well camouflaged and is underground or, at a bare minimum, taking shelter under some type of rock outcropping, which would completely block thermal imaging,” Stewart added.

For a survivalist in hiding, movement is not only risky by sight, but also by scent.

“A [tracking dog’s] sense of smell is astronomically more powerful from ours,” he said. “There is nothing you can do to cover up scent from a dog. Yes, you can travel through a waterway, but it’s unrealistic to think he is only traveling in waterways.”

Stewart said his opinions are based on the theory that Frein, who authorities say is a trained marksman and self-taught survivalist, made preparations to “bug-out” — something Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens confirmed during a recent press conference.

“We know that Frein has prepared and planned extensively for months, and maybe years,” Bivens said.

Survival Expert Creek Stewart

The pre-planning would likely have involved Frein making extensive preparations for a long stay in the wilderness.

“I doubt he is foraging for wild edibles or hunting wild game,” Stewart said. “I suspect he hid a series of supply caches of food that does not require preparation — canned goods or things with a long shelf life that are hopped with calories.”

While temperatures have dropped in Pennsylvania and winter is fast approaching, those changes will likely be more of a challenge for searchers than they are for Frein.

“If I had pre-planned a time of year when I knew I would be out in woods, it would absolutely be now,” said Stewart. “Surviving in the middle of the woods in the dead heat of summer is absolutely miserable. Bugs, ticks and mosquitoes make your life a living hell. So even though the temperatures are getting cooler, a couple layers of clothing and a decent sleeping bag and you’re completely avoiding all the natural nuisances of the woods.”

As for whether Frein still remains in the area, the survival expert said he would find it unlikely for him to have left.

“My hunch is he is staying in areas he knows very well and that is probably his number one advantage,” Stewart said. “He knows all the nooks and crannies and hiding places.”

However, Stewart added, “if he gets out of his comfort zone, that’s when he runs a risk of getting caught.”

Follow HuffPost’s Live Updates On Day 12 Of The Manhunt:

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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NEW YORK (AP) — The Fox network isn’t responding to suggestions that it edit its upcoming crossover episode of “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy” to remove a joke where the punch line is “your sister’s being raped.”

The line appears in Sunday’s much-awaited special where Bart Simpson and his family hang around with Stewie and the rest of the “Family Guy” crew, and has already circulated in a trailer for the episode that Fox released online over the summer. It punctuates a scene in which the incorrigible Bart is instructing Stewie Griffin in the art of the prank phone call. Bart dials the owner of Moe’s Tavern and asks whether there is anyone there with the last name Keybum, first name Lee. When Moe calls out to his patrons, asking for a “leaky bum,” everyone gets a laugh.

Stewie thinks that’s cool, and asks to make his own prank call.

“Hello, Moe?” he says. “Your sister’s being raped.”

Tim Winter, president of the advocacy group Parents Television Council, said he’s a longtime fan of Matt Groening, creator of “The Simpsons,” and sought out the trailer when it was released.

“I was blown out of my shoes when I saw the scene with the rape joke in it,” Winter said. “It really troubled me.”

He said he found it particularly offensive in the context of stories about sexual assaults on college campuses and, most recently, talk about abusive treatment of women by some players in the National Football League. He said when rape is accepted as a punch line for a joke in entertainment, “it becomes less outrageous in real life.”

Winter said he wrote to Groening, “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane and Fox in August, asking that the joke be removed when the episode is shown on television. He said he received no reply.

Fox’s entertainment division, through a spokeswoman, said it would not comment on the criticism or whether there are any second thoughts about the joke.

Katherine Hull Fliflet, spokeswoman for the Washington-based Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, said she did not find the line offensive.

“I think the show is making it clear that rape is not funny by how they are positioning the joke,” Fliflet said. “It’s my hope that would be the viewers’ take-away.”

RAINN, which says it is the nation’s largest anti-sexual assault organization and operates a rape hotline, works with creators in Hollywood to help them depict sexual assault realistically. The group lists actress Christina Ricci as a national spokesperson.

The National Organization for Women didn’t respond to requests for comment on the Fox comedies.

MacFarlane brought up the line during a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, predicting he will get attacked for it in the media. “But in context,” he said, “it’s pretty funny.”

Winter said he didn’t think the subject was worth joking about, and said he was particularly concerned about its exposure to younger viewers who may be fans of “The Simpsons,” but are not familiar with the “Family Guy” style of comedy.

“We don’t mock certain groups because we realize that it is highly insensitive and morally wrong,” he said. “Why wouldn’t we do the same thing about sexual assault?”

___

David Bauder can be reached at dbauder@ap.org or on Twitter@dbauder. His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/david-bauder.

I was doing some research for an article I was working on for BestRide.com, and came across Ward’s Top 100 MegaDealers ranking for 2014, which comes out every March. The first thing I noticed when I scrolled down the list of dealer principals is they’re almost exclusively men. Just five women stand out on that list of 100 in 2014. You can argue that most businesses aren’t friendly to women in leadership positions, but there are half as many women leading Ward’s Top 100 as there are in the top 100 companies on the Fortune 1000 list.

That’s just the start. From dealer principal right on down to the lowest position on the sales floor, women simply are missing in action. According to CNW Marketing Research, women only hold 13.4 percent of all sales positions at any given car dealership.

RELATED: In Scotland, Women Ran An Entire Car Company

You have to pick “Major League Baseball Team Owner” to find a category less populated by females. Even when you factor administrative positions into the mix, women occupy only 21.4 percent of all positions in an auto dealership.

It’s not like women don’t own cars, and it’s not like they aren’t actively involved in their purchase. Women now have more drivers’ licenses than men, according to a study by Frost & Sullivan. An NBCUniversal poll suggested that women were the primary purchasers of 60 percent of all new cars, 53 percent of all used cars, and have at least some influence on 85 percent of all auto purchases.

And it’s not like women can’t sell big ticket items. At the retail level, women make up 43 percent of the real estate industry (though they’re underrepresented in leadership positions in that industry, as well.)

And it’s also not like they feel more comfortable buying cars from men. In 2010, CNW Market Research asked women if they were more comfortable buying cars from women or men; 47.3 percent of women suggested that they’d be much happier buying a car from someone of the same gender.

RELATED: Mary Barra’s Appearance Before Congress

At least on the surface, a career in retail auto sales seems like it would be a good fit for women, who often need the flexibility in their schedules that auto sales can offer.

Stephanie Holland thinks its partly because the industry as a whole is just starting to recognize the power of women in the car market. “Until women are included in the top-level decisions, chances are good that the new cars and messages will continue to be off-base,” she says. On her She-Conomy blog, she made mention of the fact that at auto shows around the country, cars are usually flanked by women in less-than-professional dress. “If you are charged with effectively connecting with the female market, consider putting female marketers in charge – not short dresses. While this might be appealing to men, the majority of women will assume your car cannot stand on it’s own. That you need gimmicks to attain their attention. Quit trying to market to women through male lenses.”

The OEM side of the automotive business seems to at least be trying. Since 2001, General Motors has run a dealership development program specifically for women. Ford and Toyota have followed suit. Of course, GM has also placed Mary Barra at the very top of the org chart. But more than a dozen years later, the fact remains that automotive dealerships are almost exclusively staffed by men.

The only way an automotive retail career becomes more attractive for women is that leaders in those dealerships actively encourage women to work there. In an article entitled “Closing the High Tech Gender Gap” for the MIT Technology Review, Sangeeta N. Bhatia — winner of the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize for technology wrote, “It’s worth noting that the people in my life who have seen more for me than I saw for myself, who believed in me and promoted me, were mostly men.”

That’s exactly how the gender mix changes at the retail automotive level: By encouraging women to take part, and promoting them when they succeed.