Ever since the original release of the Harry Potter books, people of all
ages have been dreaming about having the opportunity to get a real
wizard education. Bits and pieces of the Hogwart’s experience have been
offered in places like Disney World or King’s Cross Station in London,
England. But those attractions just aren’t enough for true Potter
devotees, but now they can fulfill their dreams.
I don’t know if 2014 was a good year for movies but I do know that 2014 was a damn good year for movie trailers (this could be said for most years, actually). And here are clips of all those movie trailers mashed up into one awesome sequence.
Notice anything new with Slingshot recently? Well, if you haven’t used it in awhile, Facebook’s ephemeral photo app has gotten an overhaul. The outfit says that refining isn’t about what you add to something, but what you remove. In this update’s cas…
I stopped by my favorite flower shop on the Upper East Side the other day.
I wanted to bring flowers to a consultant who has served me well for the past year or so.
She is moving on to another place and I felt the desire to let her know that she was special to me
and I was comfortable that this florist would create an artful arrangement
that would deliver the perfect sentiment.
I explained to him that although she is a consultant,
she is also more than that,
in an indefinable way.
Spiros got it.
He immediately began gathering roses and greens
and other beautiful budding things that I can’t pronounce
and suddenly I became enthralled watching this man dancing around his shop
creating his art before my eyes,
all the time carrying on a conversation with me about Greece.
“Hey Spiro, I just noticed the difference between you and me.
The Waltz of the Flowers
I’m watching you create a perfectly appropriate work of art for a dear one
and I just realized that no one can watch me create,
even if we’re in the same room.”
Then I began to think of those who create art in the moment
and their audience of one or thousands can experience it
as it is coming to life.
And I’m thinking visually here…
A make up artist,
A hair dresser.
Even some visual artists,
like Jackson Pollack,
would paint before an audience .
The point was driven home.
I create in a solitary place.
My offerings must be read or heard and experienced
after the fact through an additional medium,
as you are doing right now as you read or listen.
I love these moments when a special light
creates an awareness
that wasn’t there a moment ago.
Don’t you?
Thank you Spiros.
As I am creating this in a room alone, The Waltz of the Flowers
I am thinking of your dance around your shop,
collecting your media and creating your art before my eyes.
The Waltz of the Flowers.
How do you feel right now?
If this piece has brightened you, perhaps you’ll share it with someone who is dear to you.
So until next week,
Love to all
Thomas
Tommy
Thom
T
If you’d like for me to read this to you, click here
click here
To hear Tim Sparks play the complete
“Waltz of the Flowers” on guitar.
The masses arrive at ski resorts during the holiday week between Christmas and New Year’s. Serious skiers and boarders often can’t wait that long, but they also want a significant amount of available open terrain.
Early December can be a good time to find good, early-season conditions before the crowds arrive. Each season’s weather patterns are different, but here are 11 ski areas (going from West to East) that are typically good bets for early season visits.
Whistler Blackcomb
This huge Canadian resort in British Columbia draws on a huge source of moisture — the Pacific Ocean. Blackcomb Mountain has a vertical drop of 5,280 feet, so even if the lower mountain isn’t skiable in the early season, there may be plenty of snow up top. Skiers and boarders simply download at the end of the day. View lift tickets.
PHOTO: Whistler Blackcomb
Mt. Baker
This Washington ski area doesn’t receive many destination travelers, but it is a king of snowfall. In the past four seasons, Mt. Baker has averaged 752 inches of snow. In most years, more than 100 inches falls in November. View lift tickets.
PHOTO: Mt Baker
Mammoth Mountain
Again, the proximity to the Pacific Ocean means that the Sierras tend to receive snow in big doses, measured in feet. Mammoth has a relatively high base elevation of 7,953 feet, giving it an additional early-season advantage. View lift tickets.
PHOTO: Mammoth Mountain
Alta
This skiers-only area in Little Cottonwood Canyon near Salt Lake City is known for lots of natural snow. Alta averages 29 inches of snowfall in October, 77 inches in November, and 92 inches in December. Utah’s dry snow isn’t ideal for building a base of good coverage on rocky expert slopes. However, Alta is still able to open the vast majority of its terrain in December. View lift tickets.
Grand Targhee
This Wyoming ski area on the west side of the Tetons may be North America’s safest bet for snow cover in the early season. Grand Targhee’s generally modest pitch and lack of extremely rocky, rugged ground combine with consistent natural snowfall for reliable results. In the 2013-14 ski season for instance, Grand Targhee had 100 percent of its terrain open by November 22. View lift tickets.
PHOTO: Grand Targhee Ski Area
Copper Mountain
The high elevation of Summit County, Colorado, makes the region a solid choice for December skiing. Copper Mountain is able to take advantage of the colder temperatures of its elevation for snowmaking. The resort can cover 331 acres with its snowmaking operation. View lift tickets.
Arapahoe Basin
Another lofty Colorado ski area with a base elevation of 10,780 feet, Arapahoe Basin is known for its October openings. With that head start, A-Basin is usually in great shape by December. View lift tickets.
Winter Park
Among Colorado’s destination resorts, Winter Park has one of the best records for consistent natural snowfall. Just in case the 330 inches of annual natural snow is late in arriving, the resort can cover 313 acres with snowmaking. View lift tickets.
PHOTO: Winter Park
Killington
Dubbed the Beast of the East, Killington is known for being among the first, if not THE first, to open in the East each season. The Vermont resort’s average snowfall of 250 inches each winter, coupled with a sophisticated snowmaking system that has the capacity to cover 80 acres with 12 inches of fresh snow in an hour’s time, has allowed the resort to offer one of the longest skiing seasons in eastern North America (typically lasting from October to May). View lift tickets.
PHOTO: Killington
Sunday River
Maine is a great place to start for skiers and boarders in the East wanting to stay close to home in the early-season. The state’s cold temperatures and Sunday River’s extensive infrastructure have made the resort famous for its snowmaking operations. Sunday River spends about $2.5 million every year covering 552 acres that amount to 95 percent of its non-gladed terrain. View lift tickets.
PHOTO: Sunday River
Sugarloaf
The largest ski area east of the Rockies, Sugarloaf can cover 618 of its 1,056 skiable acres with manmade snow. Its relatively high elevation and location in Maine virtually guarantee the low temperatures needed for snowmaking. View lift tickets.
PHOTO: Sugarloaf
PHOENIX (AP) — The deadly shooting of a black, unarmed drug suspect by a white Phoenix police officer who mistook a pill bottle for a gun demonstrates the challenges law enforcement agencies face at a time of unrest over police tactics.
Phoenix police say the officer feared the suspect was armed during their struggle, but some critics say the officer went too far. Despite the department’s efforts to be transparent with information, protesters planned a vigil and march Thursday night against the fatal shooting of 34-year-old Rumain Brisbon. The police chief and top prosecutor in metro Phoenix met with the president of the NAACP’s Maricopa County Branch and other civil rights leaders in the hours after the incident, which came as emotions are running high in New York, Missouri and elsewhere over what protesters call heavy-handed law enforcement efforts.
The NAACP official, the Rev. Oscar Tillman, said friends and family members of Brisbon are devastated. He cautioned them about channeling their anger as the investigation into the shooting unfolds.
“I told them not to be openly explosive or whatever because the fact is … as you can see what happened to Michael Brown’s (stepfather) now. They’re talking about going after him. I said ‘just be very careful,'” Tillman said.
According to Sgt. Trent Crump, the officer responded Tuesday to reports of someone selling drugs out of a Cadillac SUV. Upon locating the SUV, he ordered Brisbon, the sole occupant, to show his hands.
Authorities say Brisbon ran inside an apartment building and then got into a struggle with the officer. Brisbon put his hand in his pocket, and when the officer grabbed the hand, he thought he felt the handle of a gun through Brisbon’s pants, police said.
Police say the officer repeatedly told Brisbon to keep his hand in his pocket, then shot him twice when he didn’t.
Brisbon, an ex-convict, was hit in the torso and later pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators recovered a semi-automatic handgun and a jar of marijuana from his SUV.
An internal investigation is already underway, Crump said Thursday. The Maricopa County attorney’s office will determine whether the officer will face criminal charges. Police did not identify the 30-year-old officer but said he is a seven-year veteran of the department.
Marci Kratter, an attorney representing Brisbon’s family, said she was unable to immediately comment when reached Thursday.
The Phoenix shooting occurred the day before a grand jury in New York City decided not to indict a white police officer in the chokehold death of a black man. Video shows Eric Garner repeatedly gasped “I can’t breathe” while Officer Daniel Pantaleo detained him in a chokehold. Dozens of protesters were arrested on New York streets Wednesday, police said.
A grand jury decided Nov. 24 not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of unarmed teenager Brown. The decision sparked violent protests, lootings and the destruction of several businesses.
Gerald Richard, an assistant to the Phoenix police chief who oversees police-community relations, said he began reaching out to community leaders after Brisbon was killed, but not because of the events in Missouri, he said.
“It is better for individuals to know the facts as opposed to be going off of rumors and hunches,” Richard said. “I sincerely believe that type of communication is vital.”
Tillman said he was appreciative that he was able to get a meeting with Chief Daniel Garcia as well as a call from County Attorney Bill Montgomery.
“That says something in a community when you’re able to, bright and early less than 12 hours after it happened, sit down with the police chief and his top staff and communicate with the county attorney.”
However, he called on the Phoenix mayor, city manager and other officials to also start a dialogue with black community members. He said he is hoping to speak with witnesses to decide whether he thinks the shooting was justified.
“That’s what needs to be done, because the fact is, as we can see across this country, if we don’t deal with it, we’re going to keep dealing with it,” Tillman said.
It goes without saying that the last couple of weeks have been tough for black folks in America.
As I sat in my office yesterday, awaiting the decision of the Staten Island grand jury in the Eric Garner case, I was neither waiting with bated breath nor waiting with any sense of hope that the cop who was caught on video choking Eric Garner to death would have to face a jury of his peers.
I instead waited with a perverse sense of assurance that Eric Garner’s family, like Michael Brown’s family days before, would be disappointed with and disenfranchised by the justice system.
This feeling, though unsurprising, was still disheartening given my profession. As a young attorney of color, only two years into practice, I looked at the landscape that lies before me with despair and a deep lack of faith in the power of the people to truly move our country forward to a place where people of color in general, and black men and women in particular, finally achieve some measure of equity, not just equality, under the law.
This feeling in the pit of my stomach was devastating; it was so different from the feelings I had in 2010, when I was entering law school.
My classmates and I rode into law school with three of the most prominent Americans in the country — President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and Attorney General Eric Holder — being black attorneys.
Many of us black law students came from inner-city communities and therefore came with a deep desire to use our time in law school and in practice to address the plight of our communities.
We dedicated ourselves to leadership positions in our local and regional associations of black law students. We served as judges for the Boston Debate League, a program that gives high-school students of color the skills to debate both sides of an issue. For our peers we put on programming about the school-to-prison pipeline. We organized a caravan to the Supreme Court to attend the oral arguments in the Fisher affirmative-action case. We organized a demonstration following the death of Trayvon Martin.
We did all of this because, as law students of color and future attorneys of color, we felt a duty to use our newly acquired power to speak and act on issues that are impacting our communities.
Now, as a licensed attorney, I question whether or not the power we sought actually exists, and whether I was perhaps naïve or just unrealistic.
When the seemingly inevitable failure to indict in the Garner case was made public yesterday, I sat at my desk at the firm where I work, paralyzed.
I could no longer truly concentrate on the tasks before me. I needed to talk or plan or organize. I needed to take action.
But I couldn’t.
There are very few of me — black male attorneys, that is — in any setting. As a result, I oftentimes tread lightly so as not to offend or say something objectionable, just as I was instructed to do during a pre-law-school training put on by the Council on Legal Education Opportunity (CLEO).
Just days prior, I had written and published a blog post titled “Young, Black, and Powerful.” Yet when I asked my friends — who are all young black professionals with many credentials, the kind who are, or should at least feel, young, black, and powerful — if I should share the piece with my coworkers, they uniformly counseled me not to do so.
You see, we are not yet young, black and powerful. We are young, black, and playing it safe in uncharted territory, as the firsts in our families to have achieved this level of education, in professional sectors where we are anomalies.
Lofty ideals of changing those sectors and the world in which those sectors exist take a back seat to paying dues and the hope of perhaps being able to change the system from within. And therein lies the problem.
This is troubling when the dues being paid are within a system that has, since its inception, fundamentally failed black people.
I was paralyzed when the Eric Garner decision came down, and I was equally perplexed as to how anyone in my job could continue working as if nothing had happened.
As the only black employee at my job, perhaps I am oversensitive. Perhaps other people were just unaware of what was happening or too busy to give it their attention. Either way, I still cannot understand.
The inability, or even the perceived inability, to safely have a conversation on these topics or share a relevant piece I have written is the opposite of the safe zone I had as a member of the Black Law Students Association. It is also in direct contradiction to the revolutionary vision that drove me to law school, with tales of Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund speaking, writing, and working for change for black people in America.
This is the paradox of the black attorney. There are too few of us to feel safe. There are too few places where we can be outspoken, and there is too much work to be done for us to be silent.
As I watched on Twitter as young activists organized actions in response to the Garner decision, I desperately wanted to participate.
After all, I was an activist and an organizer before I was an attorney. It was that work that inspired me to apply to law school.
But now I am an attorney — “was an activist and organizer” is the operative phrase.
I wonder if I gained power or if I traded it in.
I was young, black, and powerful.
Now I am young, black, and professional.
A cop is not being charged for the videotaped execution of a man, and I am nervous about speaking out, let alone engaging in an act of civil disobedience that could potentially result in my arrest.
My status in a relatively conservative profession almost forces me to uphold the status quo, even if it’s the very thing I came here to fight against.
My grandmother used to always quote Matthew 16:26: “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?”
Good question, right?
Thousands gathered in New York Thursday for a second day of protests after a grand jury announced its decision not to indict the police officer involved in the death of 43-year-old Eric Garner.
Massive crowds of protesters demonstrated in Foley Square, in Lower Manhattan, as well as in major cities, including Chicago, Pittsburgh, Boston and Washington.
The Garner decision came nine days after a grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, chose not to indict police Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown. Both of the officers were white, while those who were killed were black, heightening tensions between the black community and police.
Garner, who died on July 17, was placed in what appeared to be a prohibited chokehold by NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo before he was heard, on camera, repeatedly telling officers, “I can’t breathe.”
Protesters chanted Garner’s last words as they took to New York’s streets Thursday night in an attempt to address policing issues that have plagued the city for years.
“Our voices have to be heard, because there’s been injustice twice in one week,” Jasmine Taylor, an African-American woman from Harlem, told The Huffington Post. “”Enough is enough.”
The grand jury decision sends a message that “it’s okay for cops to shoots us, as long as they’re cops,” Taylor said.
The protests in New York were generally peaceful. Cops did not directly interfere and instead trailed behind protesters in cars. However, a line of police in riot gear protected the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, where protesters blocked traffic after last week’s decision in Ferguson.
Adu Matory, a black, 19-year-old who lives in Brooklyn, said he came to Thursday’s protest “in light of recent events.”
Matory said it seems like there’s been a “snowballing” of injustice. He said he wasn’t surprised at the decision in Garner’s case, but added: “There’s always a little bit of hope.”
Take a look at some of the protests — in New York and nationwide — as demonstrations continue to unfold:
A high-profile clash of Republican senators erupted Thursday after Sen. Rand Paul made a surprise, last-minute effort to force a vote on a declaration of war against the Islamic State.
The battle pitted Paul, a likely presidential contender who is wary of foreign entanglements, against Sen. John McCain, a past Republican White House nominee who remains his party’s highest-profile defense hawk. The dispute between the upstart and the Old Bull was as much about respect for Senate procedure and tradition as it was about the deep foreign policy differences that divide the two men.
The hack at Sony Pictures Entertainment revealed far more personal information than previously believed, including the Social Security numbers of more than 47,000 current and former employees along with Hollywood celebrities like Sylvester Stallone.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
