The primary difficulty is the scale of change. In the UK and the Netherlands, Europe’s two biggest pensions markets, national authorities have embarked on overhauls of their systems. In the UK, the Government has decided to coerce companies into the paternalistic provision of pensions for all under the auto-enrolment plan, something from which many had been beating a retreat due to the onerous funding regulations.
In the Netherlands, the Dutch authorities have opted to relax funding standards – possibly at the cost of guaranteed benefits – to try to preserve a system acknowledged as one of Europe’s best.
Further east, governments have even begun to view pension funds as a source of capital to plug holes in their own budgets. At a recent conference in Frankfurt, Joanne Segars, chief executive of the UK’s National Association of Pension Funds and recently elected chairman of PensionsEurope, the EU-level trade association, reminded delegates of Hungary’s “effective nationalisation” of €10bn of private pension funds in 2011. Similar moves are now afoot in Russia.
At the same time, central banks have made the lives of pension schemes even more difficult with aggressive monetary easing policies. These are intended to save the wider economy from disaster but come at a cost for pension funds; by keeping bond yields low, monetary easing makes the pension liabilities, calculated using bond yields, appear much larger.
EU authorities are also persisting with efforts to add their own supranational pensions regulation. The European Commission remains publicly committed to the introduction of new funding standards based on the regulation that governs the insurance industry, Solvency II. The Commission is demanding a draft directive within seven months.
The speed of this timetable fills the pensions industries in the UK, the Netherlands and Ireland with dismay: the CBI recently warned the proposed reforms were a “disaster” that would cost the UK economy ￡350bn and 16,000 jobs.
The industry’s trade associations have been fighting battles on multiple fronts. Mike Taylor, chief executive of the ￡4.2bn London Pensions Fund Authority, said: “The trade associations are under-resourced, so pension funds find themselves relying to a large extent on the lobbying efforts of the fund managers.
“Firms such as BlackRock and JP Morgan do a lot putting the buyside’s case to regulators and Insight Investment has been particularly good too on European swaps and derivatives reforms.”
Europe’s biggest pension funds – which include the Dutch megafund ABP, with €240bn under management – have the scale to employ their own public affairs staff and make their own representations to regulators.
Managers certainly have an interest in lobbying on the more technical aspects of financial market reform and they have been involved in EU consultations on everything from new derivatives rules that threaten pension funds’ liability-hedging strategies, to new rules on corporate governance that call for schemes and managers to do more and disclose more of their efforts to hold company managements to account.
Taken together, the increased burdens of funding and governance could threaten the survival of the occupational pensions sector. The insurance industry stands ready to absorb the pension obligations companies no longer want or can afford.
Guy Freeman, co-head of business development at Rothesay Life, the buyout insurance subsidiary of Goldman Sachs, said: “It does create opportunities for us in the sense that corporates are becoming more focussed on settling their pension liabilities because of the complexity – and the gradually increasing scrutiny – they are facing. It reinforces the trend of money moving from the pensions sector to the insurance sector. This is a multi-year and a multi-decade trend.”
Last week, Rothesay struck this year’s biggest pensions buy-in with the Merchant Navy Officers Pension Fund. It is a partial buy-in, Rothesay agreeing to pay pensions only to the funds’ retired members, in return for a portion of the funds’ assets. The insurer is taking on 40,000 retired seafarers and ￡680m of assets.
But lobbying from the UK industry is not all without success. In October, the UK’s National Association of Pension Funds suggested a temporary relaxation of discount rates – the bond-yield-based rates used by funds to estimate their liabilities – and two months later, in his Autumn Statement, the Chancellor George Osborne announced these would be reviewed.
Three major upgrades include the furnace, windows and insulation and draft proofing the attic. The havoc is condensation on the inside of new windows, even when old aluminum framed windows are replaced with vinyl framed windows.
High-efficiency furnace: These no longer takes combustion air from the basement or furnace room area, removing moist air that has settled in the furnace area through the combustion process, thus reducing the moisture in the home. High-efficient furnaces draw combustion air through plastic pipes from the outside directly to the combustion chamber, and have a continual flow furnace fan to maintain a balanced ambient temperature.
Windows: New vinyl windows, if installed properly, are tight and sealed to the house envelop to stop drafts, as well as any excess humidity - or moisture - from being exhausted out around the old frames.
Insulation and draft proofing: Many homeowners have had insulation upgrades in their attics with NO draft proofing. Draft proofing is done before insulation upgrades are complete by caulking and sealing around electrical house wiring coming up through partition and exterior walls of the home, sealing vent stacks, light fixtures, plumbing stacks, chimney stacks and exhaust ventilation ducts. When draft proofing is overlooked, one sign would be dark stains on the underside of roof sheathing in the attic cavity. This movement of air containing moisture is pushed into the attic cavity by the forced air furnace when operating, pressurizing the home and pushing air anywhere there is a weakness .
Taking all three upgrades into consideration, review your home as a system. The question is: What did you do about the humidity building up inside your home if you didn't address the exhaust ventilation in the bathroom, kitchen and any moisture created within the home?
2012年12月16日星期日
Cash business problematic for medical pot dispensaries
Checking accounts and credit-card machines for state-licensed dispensaries have become casualties of a crossfire between state and federal laws. Although Arizona voters approved marijuana in 2010 for certain medical conditions such as chronic pain and cancer, it remains illegal under federal law.
That means banks and credit unions, which are federally insured, steer clear of Arizona's new health buzz, citing federal regulators. Medical-marijuana proponents say banks also won't lend to the marijuana industry out of fear of federal seizures.
The cash-only conundrum is a nightmare for dispensaries, which have to set up safe houses and potentially use armored transport for the cash they collect. Just like any other business, dispensaries have to pay bills and taxes and meet payroll, but that's a lot trickier without a checking account or a revolving line of credit.
It also poses a safety risk for cash-wielding customers, who may become robbery targets. And Arizona's health director said the lack of bank accounts will make annual audits of dispensaries more challenging and potential fraud easier to pull off.
"I have personally been in all of the major banks, and all of the smaller banks, and a fair amount of the credit unions, and they've been told not to do business with us," said Bill Myer, of Arizona Organix in Glendale, which opened earlier this month and is the state's first dispensary.
A second dispensary in Tucson, Southern Arizona Integrated Therapies, is also taking only cash. Rouben Beglarian, president of the dispensary, said he's managed to land a business account with Wells Fargo, but he still can't get a credit-card machine.
"We are a small operation," he said, noting the dispensary is taking patients by appointment only. "We're not going to keep much cash on hand."
Wells Fargo could neither confirm nor discuss whether it had provided a bank account to Southern Arizona Integrated Therapies. But it did issue a statement saying, "Wells Fargo has opted not to bank these businesses.
"While marijuana legalization initiatives were recently approved in Colorado and Washington, and medical marijuana dispensaries are legal in some states, the sale and use of marijuana is illegal under federal law," the statement says.
State dispensaries must be nonprofits, and independent accountants will audit them each year.
Will Humble, director of Arizona's Department of Health Services, said the dispensaries will be regulated in a number of ways to ensure inventory control and that they truly are nonprofits. He said outside auditors will examine staff and board compensation, but he also said having dispensaries operate only in cash does open the door for fraud.
"When you operate a cash business, it certainly makes it easier to shift resources around," he said.
To keep tabs on transactions, dispensaries are required to log each sale on the date it's created.
"You walk in with your card, they verify the validity of your card, discuss how much you need and they sell that to you," he said. "But before you take possession, and you pay for it, they log into our database how much they sold to you."
Dispensaries log volume, not purchase price. It's a way of tracking inventory.
Because all banks are required to have insurance, the FDIC is a primary or secondary regulator, said Paul Hickman, president and chief executive of Arizona Bankers Association. Even state-chartered banks doing business only in Arizona need insurance provided by the FDIC.
But Ryan Hurley, an attorney with Rose Law Group in Scottsdale, Ariz., said banks could provide merchant services. The hangup is really over lending, he said. Banks are wary of lending to marijuana dispensaries because of the threat of federal seizures.
"It doesn't come down to the fact that they are FDIC insured," he said. "They have potentially legitimate concerns that the federal government might come in and seize that property, in which case their loan is worthless."
Branding also plays a role, said Lance Ott, of Washington-based Guardian Data Systems, which provides merchant services, particularly to businesses that might have stigmas.
No bank wants to be identified as a lender for a dispensary that the federal government has shut down.
For dispensaries, short of changes to federal law, there is no clear way around an all-cash business.
Ott has helped create a PayPal-like system for dispensaries to avoid doing business in cash. But he said the system — known as PaySafe Solutions — has been slow to catch on with dispensaries. Many dispensary owners would prefer to wait it out and eventually link with Visa or MasterCard.
Ben Myer, of Arizona Organix and Bill Myer's son, said the dispensary has bought safes and security equipment from a now-closed bank branch. He wouldn't provide details about how the cash will be transported or where it will be stored, but he has looked at how it's been done outside Arizona.
"We have in a sense modeled after different dispensaries back in Colorado and figured out what you do and how you operate," he said. "It's created a lot of hurdles. But people are determined in this industry, and we just find ways to make it work."
However, DoD officials say the successful sale of NMDC shares last week, in which foreign institutional investors bid for half the shares on offer, was proof that issues priced attractively will do well.
The DoD set a floor price of Rs 147 a share in the NMDC auction, going against views that wanted it higher at Rs 150 per share. "Had we fixed the floor at Rs 150, the issue would have failed, but at Rs 147, the demand was twice the size of the issue and finally the government got about Rs 149 per share," one DoD official said.
"The intent behind having a lower floor price is not to sell cheap, but to discover the genuine price," the official said, adding a realistic pricing helps convince more investors to participate and greater participation helps improve the final price. "Forthcoming divestments would not be dependent on government-owned financial institutions such as Life Insurance Corporation."
Additionally, officials and bankers said, the department has also sought the views of merchant banks on fixing the incentives for them at between 0.25 per cent and 0.5 per cent of the sale proceeds to encourage them to attract foreign investors. Banks currently charge as little as Re 1 as fees, partly because of the prestige of being identified with disinvestment mandates and also on account of peculiarities in the selection rules.
In the selection of merchant bankers, some 70 per cent weightage is given to technical qualifications and the rest to financial bids. This has resulted in banks quoting Re 1 as fees because it helps them score full marks on the financial criterion. "We cannot change the selection process, but we will fix the incentives so that bankers work hard to make the process successful," said the DoD official.
For managing initial public offerings of private sector firms, banks charge 1-2 per cent of the proceeds, even though managing IPOs and disinvestments, which are primarily executed through offers of sale (OFS) of shares, may not be strictly comparable.
That means banks and credit unions, which are federally insured, steer clear of Arizona's new health buzz, citing federal regulators. Medical-marijuana proponents say banks also won't lend to the marijuana industry out of fear of federal seizures.
The cash-only conundrum is a nightmare for dispensaries, which have to set up safe houses and potentially use armored transport for the cash they collect. Just like any other business, dispensaries have to pay bills and taxes and meet payroll, but that's a lot trickier without a checking account or a revolving line of credit.
It also poses a safety risk for cash-wielding customers, who may become robbery targets. And Arizona's health director said the lack of bank accounts will make annual audits of dispensaries more challenging and potential fraud easier to pull off.
"I have personally been in all of the major banks, and all of the smaller banks, and a fair amount of the credit unions, and they've been told not to do business with us," said Bill Myer, of Arizona Organix in Glendale, which opened earlier this month and is the state's first dispensary.
A second dispensary in Tucson, Southern Arizona Integrated Therapies, is also taking only cash. Rouben Beglarian, president of the dispensary, said he's managed to land a business account with Wells Fargo, but he still can't get a credit-card machine.
"We are a small operation," he said, noting the dispensary is taking patients by appointment only. "We're not going to keep much cash on hand."
Wells Fargo could neither confirm nor discuss whether it had provided a bank account to Southern Arizona Integrated Therapies. But it did issue a statement saying, "Wells Fargo has opted not to bank these businesses.
"While marijuana legalization initiatives were recently approved in Colorado and Washington, and medical marijuana dispensaries are legal in some states, the sale and use of marijuana is illegal under federal law," the statement says.
State dispensaries must be nonprofits, and independent accountants will audit them each year.
Will Humble, director of Arizona's Department of Health Services, said the dispensaries will be regulated in a number of ways to ensure inventory control and that they truly are nonprofits. He said outside auditors will examine staff and board compensation, but he also said having dispensaries operate only in cash does open the door for fraud.
"When you operate a cash business, it certainly makes it easier to shift resources around," he said.
To keep tabs on transactions, dispensaries are required to log each sale on the date it's created.
"You walk in with your card, they verify the validity of your card, discuss how much you need and they sell that to you," he said. "But before you take possession, and you pay for it, they log into our database how much they sold to you."
Dispensaries log volume, not purchase price. It's a way of tracking inventory.
Because all banks are required to have insurance, the FDIC is a primary or secondary regulator, said Paul Hickman, president and chief executive of Arizona Bankers Association. Even state-chartered banks doing business only in Arizona need insurance provided by the FDIC.
But Ryan Hurley, an attorney with Rose Law Group in Scottsdale, Ariz., said banks could provide merchant services. The hangup is really over lending, he said. Banks are wary of lending to marijuana dispensaries because of the threat of federal seizures.
"It doesn't come down to the fact that they are FDIC insured," he said. "They have potentially legitimate concerns that the federal government might come in and seize that property, in which case their loan is worthless."
Branding also plays a role, said Lance Ott, of Washington-based Guardian Data Systems, which provides merchant services, particularly to businesses that might have stigmas.
No bank wants to be identified as a lender for a dispensary that the federal government has shut down.
For dispensaries, short of changes to federal law, there is no clear way around an all-cash business.
Ott has helped create a PayPal-like system for dispensaries to avoid doing business in cash. But he said the system — known as PaySafe Solutions — has been slow to catch on with dispensaries. Many dispensary owners would prefer to wait it out and eventually link with Visa or MasterCard.
Ben Myer, of Arizona Organix and Bill Myer's son, said the dispensary has bought safes and security equipment from a now-closed bank branch. He wouldn't provide details about how the cash will be transported or where it will be stored, but he has looked at how it's been done outside Arizona.
"We have in a sense modeled after different dispensaries back in Colorado and figured out what you do and how you operate," he said. "It's created a lot of hurdles. But people are determined in this industry, and we just find ways to make it work."
However, DoD officials say the successful sale of NMDC shares last week, in which foreign institutional investors bid for half the shares on offer, was proof that issues priced attractively will do well.
The DoD set a floor price of Rs 147 a share in the NMDC auction, going against views that wanted it higher at Rs 150 per share. "Had we fixed the floor at Rs 150, the issue would have failed, but at Rs 147, the demand was twice the size of the issue and finally the government got about Rs 149 per share," one DoD official said.
"The intent behind having a lower floor price is not to sell cheap, but to discover the genuine price," the official said, adding a realistic pricing helps convince more investors to participate and greater participation helps improve the final price. "Forthcoming divestments would not be dependent on government-owned financial institutions such as Life Insurance Corporation."
Additionally, officials and bankers said, the department has also sought the views of merchant banks on fixing the incentives for them at between 0.25 per cent and 0.5 per cent of the sale proceeds to encourage them to attract foreign investors. Banks currently charge as little as Re 1 as fees, partly because of the prestige of being identified with disinvestment mandates and also on account of peculiarities in the selection rules.
In the selection of merchant bankers, some 70 per cent weightage is given to technical qualifications and the rest to financial bids. This has resulted in banks quoting Re 1 as fees because it helps them score full marks on the financial criterion. "We cannot change the selection process, but we will fix the incentives so that bankers work hard to make the process successful," said the DoD official.
For managing initial public offerings of private sector firms, banks charge 1-2 per cent of the proceeds, even though managing IPOs and disinvestments, which are primarily executed through offers of sale (OFS) of shares, may not be strictly comparable.
2012年12月12日星期三
Nature that goes beyond its course
The easiest way to describe this exhibition is "The meeting of two Mets," with the Metropolitan Museum of Art Tokyo serving as a venue for 133 works from its much more renowned New York version, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, known simply as "The Met."
But despite all its fame and grandeur, and the copiousness of a collection that includes more than 2 million works, the New York institution shares the major defect of American culture, namely an all-embracing universalism that works against a unique and easily marketable cultural identity.
Exhibitions drawn from the collections of the Louvre, Prado, or Tretyakov, instantly evoke their countries' rich cultural histories. This is much less true of the Met, where the global clearly eclipses the national.
In order to give this exhibition a more characteristic and appealing identity, it has therefore been themed around the idea of nature, with the rather unwieldy portmanteau title of "Earth, Sea, and Sky: Nature in Western Art: Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art."
This straggling name suggests two thingsthat at least two separate committees had to sign off on it,they wanted a theme that would allow almost anything to be slotted into the exhibition.
The broadness of the theme is stretched even wider by interpreting "nature" in the loosest possible terms. For example, the word apparently includes cityscapes, as we are treated to two rather lovely views of Venice, one by J. M. W. Turner, the other by Canaletto. There is also a close-up of a pelvic bone painted by Georgia O'Keeffe.
By these standards anything with a bit of sky or water in it, or any organic matter at all, can be considered "nature." This then raises the question of which 1 percent of all paintings are not connected to nature. This may sound like quibbling, but the fact is the show lacks a clear identity and will be liable to fade from visitor's memories.
The main problem is that there is so much unconnected variety. Most visitors seemed to be reduced to staggering from one uncomprehending encounter to another. As an example of this, opening the catalogue randomly at three different pages produces the following: a silver Art Nouveau punch bowl with anthropomorphic figures of Night and Morning from 1901; a bull's head ornament from ancient Mesopotamia, and a Dutch landscape, "Grainfields", by Jacob van Ruisdael.
While it seeks to encompass most of human history, the exhibition invariably leaves massive gaps. If the mental gear changes and amplitude of background knowledge required to fully appreciate each consecutive object are taken into account, then diversity is certainly not this exhibition's strength.
But the curators have not been entirely negligent. One point of mild interest is the echoes of composition and subject matter that exist between various pairs of works. The most obvious is Paul Gauguin's "Tahitian Women Bathing" and Pierre-Auguste Renoir's "Figures on a Beach" (1890), which both feature standing and sitting women in a coastal setting. This similarity throws their stylistic divergence into sharp relief. Renoir's feathery brush strokes capture the breezy atmosphere of the French beach. This contrasts with Gauguin's fat blocks of color that serve to focus our attention on the exotic nudity of his figures.
These occasional "visual chimes" however are not enough to bring coherence to the exhibition. To counter the note of bewildering randomness that prevails, the visitors are forced to thread together their own narratives. The most intriguing one for me was that concerning American artists. They are comparatively few, but there are enough of them and they are spread widely enough throughout the exhibition to tell a continuous story.
As essentially a European colony, America has historically had a cultural inferiority complex. This means that American art usually falls into three categories — art that defers to Europe, art that rejects Europe, and art that does neither and therefore expresses a true American spirit. Most "serious" American art is included in the first two categories, while the third category is dominated by naive and folk art.
The Met started out as an institute that enshrined this inferiority complex, striving to acquire the best European masters. The magic of Claude Monet's seascape "The Manneporte"and Vincent van Gogh's "Cypresses" demonstrate the power of the best European artworks. These then served as models for aspiring American artists. Most of the American artists represented here fall into this deferential category. For example Thomas Cole's landscape "View of the Catskills: Early Autumn" transposes Claude Lorrain's idyllic Arcadianism to upstate New York.
Edward Hopper's "The Lighthouse at Two Lights" by contrast has an atmosphere of self-consciously trying to be "American." The composition, clean surfaces, functional shapes and clear sky infuse the painting with a brash, breezy, almost puritanical Americanism. Set defiantly atop its windswept ridge, the lighthouse seems to tilt its hat and snub its nose at Europe, far, far away across the water.
But despite all its fame and grandeur, and the copiousness of a collection that includes more than 2 million works, the New York institution shares the major defect of American culture, namely an all-embracing universalism that works against a unique and easily marketable cultural identity.
Exhibitions drawn from the collections of the Louvre, Prado, or Tretyakov, instantly evoke their countries' rich cultural histories. This is much less true of the Met, where the global clearly eclipses the national.
In order to give this exhibition a more characteristic and appealing identity, it has therefore been themed around the idea of nature, with the rather unwieldy portmanteau title of "Earth, Sea, and Sky: Nature in Western Art: Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art."
This straggling name suggests two thingsthat at least two separate committees had to sign off on it,they wanted a theme that would allow almost anything to be slotted into the exhibition.
The broadness of the theme is stretched even wider by interpreting "nature" in the loosest possible terms. For example, the word apparently includes cityscapes, as we are treated to two rather lovely views of Venice, one by J. M. W. Turner, the other by Canaletto. There is also a close-up of a pelvic bone painted by Georgia O'Keeffe.
By these standards anything with a bit of sky or water in it, or any organic matter at all, can be considered "nature." This then raises the question of which 1 percent of all paintings are not connected to nature. This may sound like quibbling, but the fact is the show lacks a clear identity and will be liable to fade from visitor's memories.
The main problem is that there is so much unconnected variety. Most visitors seemed to be reduced to staggering from one uncomprehending encounter to another. As an example of this, opening the catalogue randomly at three different pages produces the following: a silver Art Nouveau punch bowl with anthropomorphic figures of Night and Morning from 1901; a bull's head ornament from ancient Mesopotamia, and a Dutch landscape, "Grainfields", by Jacob van Ruisdael.
While it seeks to encompass most of human history, the exhibition invariably leaves massive gaps. If the mental gear changes and amplitude of background knowledge required to fully appreciate each consecutive object are taken into account, then diversity is certainly not this exhibition's strength.
But the curators have not been entirely negligent. One point of mild interest is the echoes of composition and subject matter that exist between various pairs of works. The most obvious is Paul Gauguin's "Tahitian Women Bathing" and Pierre-Auguste Renoir's "Figures on a Beach" (1890), which both feature standing and sitting women in a coastal setting. This similarity throws their stylistic divergence into sharp relief. Renoir's feathery brush strokes capture the breezy atmosphere of the French beach. This contrasts with Gauguin's fat blocks of color that serve to focus our attention on the exotic nudity of his figures.
These occasional "visual chimes" however are not enough to bring coherence to the exhibition. To counter the note of bewildering randomness that prevails, the visitors are forced to thread together their own narratives. The most intriguing one for me was that concerning American artists. They are comparatively few, but there are enough of them and they are spread widely enough throughout the exhibition to tell a continuous story.
As essentially a European colony, America has historically had a cultural inferiority complex. This means that American art usually falls into three categories — art that defers to Europe, art that rejects Europe, and art that does neither and therefore expresses a true American spirit. Most "serious" American art is included in the first two categories, while the third category is dominated by naive and folk art.
The Met started out as an institute that enshrined this inferiority complex, striving to acquire the best European masters. The magic of Claude Monet's seascape "The Manneporte"and Vincent van Gogh's "Cypresses" demonstrate the power of the best European artworks. These then served as models for aspiring American artists. Most of the American artists represented here fall into this deferential category. For example Thomas Cole's landscape "View of the Catskills: Early Autumn" transposes Claude Lorrain's idyllic Arcadianism to upstate New York.
Edward Hopper's "The Lighthouse at Two Lights" by contrast has an atmosphere of self-consciously trying to be "American." The composition, clean surfaces, functional shapes and clear sky infuse the painting with a brash, breezy, almost puritanical Americanism. Set defiantly atop its windswept ridge, the lighthouse seems to tilt its hat and snub its nose at Europe, far, far away across the water.
2012年12月9日星期日
Sir Alex Ferguson needs to figure out that two into one won't go
The Outsider, by Jonathan Wilson, is a forensic study of the position, the people who have played there and the intricacies of the role. The chapter about Thomas Nkono and Joseph-Antoine Bell, "Tommy and JoJo", may be of particular interest to Ferguson at a time when the Manchester United manager appears to be suffering from an unusual lack of clarity.
Nkono and Bell were rivals in the Cameroon team for almost two decades, and are probably the best African goalkeepers there have ever been. In different circumstances they would have been undisputed number ones in their own right. It was just their misfortune to come up against one another at the same time. Just as David de Gea and Anders Lindegaard are doing at United, they shared the role. Both men came to think it did nothing but confuse the team's defence.
Peter Shilton and Ray Clemence used to think the same when Ron Greenwood was alternating them. On one occasion – England's 4-3 defeat in Austria in 1979 – Greenwood selected Shilton for the first half and Clemence for the second. Yet the policy did not take into account that a defence needs an understanding with its goalkeeper, and vice versa, and that for this position – perhaps more than any other on the pitch – there is clear sense in nominating a regular first-choice and sticking with him. The bottom line is, goalkeeper rotation does not work. It probably speaks for itself that there are so few other examples (César Sánchez and the young Iker Casillas is one, though Real Madrid's coach, Vicente del Bosque, soon realised "San Iker" was the better option) at a time when Ferguson continues to swap around De Gea and Lindegaard while complaining he can barely remember United being so vulnerable defensively.
There are not many times when Ferguson can be accused of sustained indecision, but this is one of them and the longer it goes on the more confusing it gets.
De Gea played the first two games of the season but was dropped because of a mistake against Fulham. Lindegaard came in for the next two and then they took turns, one after the other, for the following four games. De Gea was back for the next five, then Lindegaard for one, and then De Gea played three in a row before needing a wisdom tooth removing.
Lindegaard kept his place for five games until De Gea was recalled for the match against Cluj on Wednesday. United, meanwhile, have conceded 33 goals in the various competitions and been derided by their manager for Cartoon Cavalcade defending. It is not an exact science, but it is difficult not to think the two things are linked.
The lesson of history is fairly clear. Of Ferguson's 12 titles, Peter Schmeichel played every game in 1992?93, missed two in 1993-94, 1995-96 and 1996?97, and four in 1998-99. Post?Schmeichel, United struggled to fill the position, but Mark Bosnich still played 23 of the 38 league fixtures in 1999-2000, the year of Massimo Taibi. Fabien Barthez played 32 times the next season and 30 in 2002-03. Edwin van der Sar made 32, 29, 33 and 33 appearances in his title-winning seasons.
This is the pattern of just about every successful team. Petr Cech played in all but 11 games during three championships with Chelsea. Joe Hart did not miss a single match for Manchester City last season.
How Ferguson must wish he had paid the ￡100,000 that Shrewsbury Town wanted for Hart a few years back. "We all make mistakes," he says.
That is not to say Hart has been flawless this season. In fact, broadening the argument, it has been a pretty undistinguished campaign so far for goalkeeping in the Premier League. Rob Green, Pepe Reina, Shay Given and Adam Federici have all, at one point of another, lost their places because of mistakes. If Southampton are trying to work out why they have been in the relegation zone, the performances of Kelvin Davis, Artur Boruc and Paulo Gazzaniga represent Exhibit A. For Arsenal, Wojciech Szczesny and Vito Mannone have taken turns making supporters pine for the security of David Seaman. Tim Howard, Jussi Jaaskelainen, Mark Schwarzer, Simon Mignolet and Ali al-Habsi have all let in soft goals. It is a long list.
Yet Ferguson is currently the only manager unable to decide on a first-choice and it is rare to see him this indecisive. Just as perplexing, there is little consistency. At the start of last season, when De Gea genuinely looked a danger to his own team, Ferguson persisted with him until a particularly bad run at Christmas. This season, one mistake and the Spaniard was out.
The problem for Ferguson is that neither De Gea nor Lindegaard have an exceptional case. A few days ago I asked a former pro – a striker who studied goalkeepers for potential weaknesses – who he would choose. "Neither," he replied. "They're not good enough for Manchester United."
Gary Neville seems unenthused, too, noting the goals his old club have conceded from set pieces and the absence of a goalkeeper dominating the penalty area. Neville knows what he is talking about. "The defenders will be nervous about what's behind them," he says.
So who should it be? At a push, I'd say De Gea would edge the kind of vote London's now defunct Evening News held in 1978, when it asked 22 players whom they would choose for England: Shilton or Clemence? Nine voted for Shilton and two for Clemence, one being his Liverpool team-mate David Johnson. Eleven could not decide.
De Gea has, after all, shown flashes of brilliance and, though far from perfect, who would expect him to be, just a month after he turned 22? His potential is considerable and it would be a poor judge who could not see it. It is just that it is the manager after Ferguson – or maybe even further down the line – who will probably see it realised on a more consistent basis. For now, De Gea has been lucky United have had enough firepower over the past couple of seasons to ensure the goals conceded from his mistakes have not cost the team more points.
Equally, however, it was always going to be the case that a new player, in a new country, would make errors. Overall, he has done about as well as could be expected since that bruising crash-course two autumns ago. It is easy, in fact, to feel a little sorry for him. It cannot be helping his confidence that his manager keeps playing football's equivalent of musical chairs.
More than anything, it disrupts the team. Goalkeepers are different. This is the point Bell and Nkono make. Nkono, for example, always wanted a man on each post at set pieces, whereas Bell left them free. Bell liked to sweep up behind his defence, allowing them to play a higher line. With Nkono, the back four had to drop deeper.
It was the same for Shilton and Clemence. Shilton hung back, Clemence moved forward. Shilton always wanted the area in front of him to be free, whereas Clemence liked the defenders nearer to him. Subtle yet important differences.
De Gea, talented yet erratic, and Lindegaard, steady but not a man for the outstanding save, have their own styles. Together, they have been part of a team that are top of the league. Ultimately, though, the policy isn't working. Just look at United's goals-against column, 10 worse than City's.
What is most surprising is that a manager of Ferguson's normally clear judgment is involved. He says it is because he has confidence in both goalkeepers. The impression it actually leaves is that he does not have total confidence in either.
Nkono and Bell were rivals in the Cameroon team for almost two decades, and are probably the best African goalkeepers there have ever been. In different circumstances they would have been undisputed number ones in their own right. It was just their misfortune to come up against one another at the same time. Just as David de Gea and Anders Lindegaard are doing at United, they shared the role. Both men came to think it did nothing but confuse the team's defence.
Peter Shilton and Ray Clemence used to think the same when Ron Greenwood was alternating them. On one occasion – England's 4-3 defeat in Austria in 1979 – Greenwood selected Shilton for the first half and Clemence for the second. Yet the policy did not take into account that a defence needs an understanding with its goalkeeper, and vice versa, and that for this position – perhaps more than any other on the pitch – there is clear sense in nominating a regular first-choice and sticking with him. The bottom line is, goalkeeper rotation does not work. It probably speaks for itself that there are so few other examples (César Sánchez and the young Iker Casillas is one, though Real Madrid's coach, Vicente del Bosque, soon realised "San Iker" was the better option) at a time when Ferguson continues to swap around De Gea and Lindegaard while complaining he can barely remember United being so vulnerable defensively.
There are not many times when Ferguson can be accused of sustained indecision, but this is one of them and the longer it goes on the more confusing it gets.
De Gea played the first two games of the season but was dropped because of a mistake against Fulham. Lindegaard came in for the next two and then they took turns, one after the other, for the following four games. De Gea was back for the next five, then Lindegaard for one, and then De Gea played three in a row before needing a wisdom tooth removing.
Lindegaard kept his place for five games until De Gea was recalled for the match against Cluj on Wednesday. United, meanwhile, have conceded 33 goals in the various competitions and been derided by their manager for Cartoon Cavalcade defending. It is not an exact science, but it is difficult not to think the two things are linked.
The lesson of history is fairly clear. Of Ferguson's 12 titles, Peter Schmeichel played every game in 1992?93, missed two in 1993-94, 1995-96 and 1996?97, and four in 1998-99. Post?Schmeichel, United struggled to fill the position, but Mark Bosnich still played 23 of the 38 league fixtures in 1999-2000, the year of Massimo Taibi. Fabien Barthez played 32 times the next season and 30 in 2002-03. Edwin van der Sar made 32, 29, 33 and 33 appearances in his title-winning seasons.
This is the pattern of just about every successful team. Petr Cech played in all but 11 games during three championships with Chelsea. Joe Hart did not miss a single match for Manchester City last season.
How Ferguson must wish he had paid the ￡100,000 that Shrewsbury Town wanted for Hart a few years back. "We all make mistakes," he says.
That is not to say Hart has been flawless this season. In fact, broadening the argument, it has been a pretty undistinguished campaign so far for goalkeeping in the Premier League. Rob Green, Pepe Reina, Shay Given and Adam Federici have all, at one point of another, lost their places because of mistakes. If Southampton are trying to work out why they have been in the relegation zone, the performances of Kelvin Davis, Artur Boruc and Paulo Gazzaniga represent Exhibit A. For Arsenal, Wojciech Szczesny and Vito Mannone have taken turns making supporters pine for the security of David Seaman. Tim Howard, Jussi Jaaskelainen, Mark Schwarzer, Simon Mignolet and Ali al-Habsi have all let in soft goals. It is a long list.
Yet Ferguson is currently the only manager unable to decide on a first-choice and it is rare to see him this indecisive. Just as perplexing, there is little consistency. At the start of last season, when De Gea genuinely looked a danger to his own team, Ferguson persisted with him until a particularly bad run at Christmas. This season, one mistake and the Spaniard was out.
The problem for Ferguson is that neither De Gea nor Lindegaard have an exceptional case. A few days ago I asked a former pro – a striker who studied goalkeepers for potential weaknesses – who he would choose. "Neither," he replied. "They're not good enough for Manchester United."
Gary Neville seems unenthused, too, noting the goals his old club have conceded from set pieces and the absence of a goalkeeper dominating the penalty area. Neville knows what he is talking about. "The defenders will be nervous about what's behind them," he says.
So who should it be? At a push, I'd say De Gea would edge the kind of vote London's now defunct Evening News held in 1978, when it asked 22 players whom they would choose for England: Shilton or Clemence? Nine voted for Shilton and two for Clemence, one being his Liverpool team-mate David Johnson. Eleven could not decide.
De Gea has, after all, shown flashes of brilliance and, though far from perfect, who would expect him to be, just a month after he turned 22? His potential is considerable and it would be a poor judge who could not see it. It is just that it is the manager after Ferguson – or maybe even further down the line – who will probably see it realised on a more consistent basis. For now, De Gea has been lucky United have had enough firepower over the past couple of seasons to ensure the goals conceded from his mistakes have not cost the team more points.
Equally, however, it was always going to be the case that a new player, in a new country, would make errors. Overall, he has done about as well as could be expected since that bruising crash-course two autumns ago. It is easy, in fact, to feel a little sorry for him. It cannot be helping his confidence that his manager keeps playing football's equivalent of musical chairs.
More than anything, it disrupts the team. Goalkeepers are different. This is the point Bell and Nkono make. Nkono, for example, always wanted a man on each post at set pieces, whereas Bell left them free. Bell liked to sweep up behind his defence, allowing them to play a higher line. With Nkono, the back four had to drop deeper.
It was the same for Shilton and Clemence. Shilton hung back, Clemence moved forward. Shilton always wanted the area in front of him to be free, whereas Clemence liked the defenders nearer to him. Subtle yet important differences.
De Gea, talented yet erratic, and Lindegaard, steady but not a man for the outstanding save, have their own styles. Together, they have been part of a team that are top of the league. Ultimately, though, the policy isn't working. Just look at United's goals-against column, 10 worse than City's.
What is most surprising is that a manager of Ferguson's normally clear judgment is involved. He says it is because he has confidence in both goalkeepers. The impression it actually leaves is that he does not have total confidence in either.
2012年12月5日星期三
The NZ iSchool
iPads and other portable computing devices are integrating into New Zealand schools. I talked to deputy principal Lenva Shearing, an Apple Distinguished Educator, at Bucklands Beach Intermediate about how the iPad is working out for education.
Bucklands Beach Intermediate, with a roll of 850, has a long association with computers, having started with BBCs back in the early 1990s.
As for devices, BBI experimented with iPods a few years ago but found them too small, from a pure readability viewpoint, to be useful.
Bucklands Beach is an Apple-using school, but is finding the distinction blurring between that and other platforms thanks to increased usability, compatibility, cloud services and wireless networks. Also, Bucklands Beach has iPads, with 50 available for whoever books them.
After those initial BBC computers, the school changed to Apple on the basis of ease of use for younger students and for its graphics capabilities. Almost two decades on, "Out of our four main contributing Primary Schools, two are Mac and two are PC, and the college most of our students go to is PC."
Looming on the horizon is Google Chromebook laptops - for reasons of usability, portability and, possibly most of all, price, many New Zealand schools are considering them, especially since many are already using Google Docs as their document creation, sharing and scheduling platforms.
Another reason, of course, is platform independence. All the docs are housed by Google's servers - the school only locally backs up its own office requirements. The student's work is always accessible, therefore, password protected, from Google.
"All the computers we buy are Macs, from desktops to laptops and iPads. But options are open on the Chromebook for next year. We'll get a few and have a look, since all we need to do with them is get online for Google Apps.
"But the Macs and iPads have a different role, for creating, using GarageBand and iMovie. You wouldn't use things like that on Chromebooks - they'd be just for uploading content.
"GarageBand is amazing, and our music teacher has an awesome education program with GarageBand. And iMovie is probably one of the most powerful apps we could have - even little kids can become very good editors with iMovie. And the pathway to Final Cut is excellent - I only learnt some Final Cut this year for the first time and I couldn't believe how easy it was, after iMovie. So students have access to really sophisticated tools at a young age.
"For school-bought equipment, we only have Apple. So far. For student-owned, we do have a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) scheme. And 53 per cent of students bring their own. But we don't allow physical connections to our systems if they have PCs, as we don't want viruses on our school system. If they want to print something out, they have to use a school machine. But the high percentage of the students bring Apple laptops or iPads; probably only a quarter of those students bring non-Apple."
The school's 50 iPads were bought for portability and wireless connectivity. "Students can film directly on the iPads and then edit them on them and upload them, all from the same iPad. We have high access to the internet thanks to the reliance on Google Docs. Wirelessly, we can have half the school online all at the same time."
Lenva has found the Bucklands Beach Intermediate students leave with effective technology skill sets. "Going from here to [PC-based] Macleans College, the change of platform doesn't seem to matter that much. Students these days, especially teenagers, know what they want to do, they are very adept at working it out and just doing it. They have enough skills to do that."
Lenva herself is a long term computer user. With iPads, she thinks the touch-interface of iPads and other tablets has removed a barrier to computing. "Particularly younger students thrive on the direct tactile connectivity to the applications they can use and things they can do."
The school iPads are bookable from a central place. Teachers book them online, via Google scheduling, for whatever they need for any tasks.
BBI works with New Era for their Apple needs, one of the entities that arose once Renaissance ended its Education Division (RED). New Era also arranges Apple packages for parents to buy or lease as BYOD if they want: laptop, backpack, hard case and Apple Care.
For educative issues, Lenva also deals directly with Apple representatives, which she really appreciates.
Which brings up damage and care. "We've had a few problems, like cracked screens. We've had some laptops damaged from people tripping over power cables - the Apple ones pop out (thanks to their MagSafe connectors) but the PC ones don't, so they can get dragged onto the floor." But theft and deliberate damage to devices haven't been issues in the school.
The cultural diversity of the school seems to have posed no problems to device use and take-up. Every ethnic group seems happy with the way things are used, although the school isn't as diverse as some, with the largest ethnic minority being Chinese.
For the most part, there seems to be no problems with the spend required for BYOD.
Parents can access their children's e-portfolios online, directly in Google Docs. "We like the parents being able to directly interact with the e-portfolios, and this is encouraged, but there's also a Google Share function if students don't want to tell parents their passwords."
With the teachers, Microsoft Word is still very popular, although many have made the switch from PowerPoint to Keynote for presentations. But Lenva only uses Google Docs herself, as she moves between three computer and an iPad.
Lenva believes the intermediate couldn't do what the school needs to do if it wasn't for devices and Google Docs. "It's extremely successful. We want each of our students to have an e-portfolio they can work on from school and from home, and preferably almost every day. And we want parents to be involved in it." With BYOD and Google Docs, the school doesn't have to supply hardware for every student.
This mode effectively blurs the distinction between school time and home time, which she sees as very a positive change compared to former perceptions of school versus home.
On the future for these students, Lenva says it's all bright. "The world's their oyster. Next year we are starting a Media course like Unitec's - they'll be filming, editing, producing and hopefully, showing their work in the local theatre. Creativity is now at everyone's fingertips.
"The students have got incredible problem solving skills, and they seem to be able to solve everything."
Bucklands Beach Intermediate, with a roll of 850, has a long association with computers, having started with BBCs back in the early 1990s.
As for devices, BBI experimented with iPods a few years ago but found them too small, from a pure readability viewpoint, to be useful.
Bucklands Beach is an Apple-using school, but is finding the distinction blurring between that and other platforms thanks to increased usability, compatibility, cloud services and wireless networks. Also, Bucklands Beach has iPads, with 50 available for whoever books them.
After those initial BBC computers, the school changed to Apple on the basis of ease of use for younger students and for its graphics capabilities. Almost two decades on, "Out of our four main contributing Primary Schools, two are Mac and two are PC, and the college most of our students go to is PC."
Looming on the horizon is Google Chromebook laptops - for reasons of usability, portability and, possibly most of all, price, many New Zealand schools are considering them, especially since many are already using Google Docs as their document creation, sharing and scheduling platforms.
Another reason, of course, is platform independence. All the docs are housed by Google's servers - the school only locally backs up its own office requirements. The student's work is always accessible, therefore, password protected, from Google.
"All the computers we buy are Macs, from desktops to laptops and iPads. But options are open on the Chromebook for next year. We'll get a few and have a look, since all we need to do with them is get online for Google Apps.
"But the Macs and iPads have a different role, for creating, using GarageBand and iMovie. You wouldn't use things like that on Chromebooks - they'd be just for uploading content.
"GarageBand is amazing, and our music teacher has an awesome education program with GarageBand. And iMovie is probably one of the most powerful apps we could have - even little kids can become very good editors with iMovie. And the pathway to Final Cut is excellent - I only learnt some Final Cut this year for the first time and I couldn't believe how easy it was, after iMovie. So students have access to really sophisticated tools at a young age.
"For school-bought equipment, we only have Apple. So far. For student-owned, we do have a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) scheme. And 53 per cent of students bring their own. But we don't allow physical connections to our systems if they have PCs, as we don't want viruses on our school system. If they want to print something out, they have to use a school machine. But the high percentage of the students bring Apple laptops or iPads; probably only a quarter of those students bring non-Apple."
The school's 50 iPads were bought for portability and wireless connectivity. "Students can film directly on the iPads and then edit them on them and upload them, all from the same iPad. We have high access to the internet thanks to the reliance on Google Docs. Wirelessly, we can have half the school online all at the same time."
Lenva has found the Bucklands Beach Intermediate students leave with effective technology skill sets. "Going from here to [PC-based] Macleans College, the change of platform doesn't seem to matter that much. Students these days, especially teenagers, know what they want to do, they are very adept at working it out and just doing it. They have enough skills to do that."
Lenva herself is a long term computer user. With iPads, she thinks the touch-interface of iPads and other tablets has removed a barrier to computing. "Particularly younger students thrive on the direct tactile connectivity to the applications they can use and things they can do."
The school iPads are bookable from a central place. Teachers book them online, via Google scheduling, for whatever they need for any tasks.
BBI works with New Era for their Apple needs, one of the entities that arose once Renaissance ended its Education Division (RED). New Era also arranges Apple packages for parents to buy or lease as BYOD if they want: laptop, backpack, hard case and Apple Care.
For educative issues, Lenva also deals directly with Apple representatives, which she really appreciates.
Which brings up damage and care. "We've had a few problems, like cracked screens. We've had some laptops damaged from people tripping over power cables - the Apple ones pop out (thanks to their MagSafe connectors) but the PC ones don't, so they can get dragged onto the floor." But theft and deliberate damage to devices haven't been issues in the school.
The cultural diversity of the school seems to have posed no problems to device use and take-up. Every ethnic group seems happy with the way things are used, although the school isn't as diverse as some, with the largest ethnic minority being Chinese.
For the most part, there seems to be no problems with the spend required for BYOD.
Parents can access their children's e-portfolios online, directly in Google Docs. "We like the parents being able to directly interact with the e-portfolios, and this is encouraged, but there's also a Google Share function if students don't want to tell parents their passwords."
With the teachers, Microsoft Word is still very popular, although many have made the switch from PowerPoint to Keynote for presentations. But Lenva only uses Google Docs herself, as she moves between three computer and an iPad.
Lenva believes the intermediate couldn't do what the school needs to do if it wasn't for devices and Google Docs. "It's extremely successful. We want each of our students to have an e-portfolio they can work on from school and from home, and preferably almost every day. And we want parents to be involved in it." With BYOD and Google Docs, the school doesn't have to supply hardware for every student.
This mode effectively blurs the distinction between school time and home time, which she sees as very a positive change compared to former perceptions of school versus home.
On the future for these students, Lenva says it's all bright. "The world's their oyster. Next year we are starting a Media course like Unitec's - they'll be filming, editing, producing and hopefully, showing their work in the local theatre. Creativity is now at everyone's fingertips.
"The students have got incredible problem solving skills, and they seem to be able to solve everything."
2012年12月2日星期日
Creation House ready for homeless family
The Holy Bible tells believers that the Creation took six days and heavenly angels were involved.
Creation House near Littlestown has taken more than a year and a half - but this creation was done by a multitude of volunteer "angels" who were earth-bound and working in their spare time.
The dedication ceremony of the newly refurbished Creation House just east of the Christ Church United Church of Christ near Littlestown was held recently, said church board president Dale Arentz.
Prior to renovations, the structure was deserted for years and deteriorating to the point of ruin, Arentz said. Many years ago the home had been the church sexton's house. Later it was used as a rental home, but then stood empty for more than a decade.
The idea of Creation House began more than 10 years ago when Pastor Doug Mummert, of Bethel Assembly of God in Littlestown, had a vision of developing a home where a whole family could live for several months while working through financial and personal crisis.
Mummert is the founder and director of that church's Homeless Christian Outreach, which takes its ministry to offer food, clothing and financial assistance for homeless men, women and children in areas stretching from Adams County to Baltimore.
"The Lord showed me a house where whole families could be together while working through their problems," Mummert said. "There are shelters for homeless men, and homeless woman and their children, but there are very few places which will take whole families so that they can stay together."
Although stalled for several years due to the lack of a location, the vision began to take on the look of reality in 2010 when Christ Church United Church of Christ, Christ Church Road, Littlestown graciously offered to provide their two-story farmhouse for the project, Mummert said.
With the blessings of his congregation, Senior Pastor Craig Arentz of Christ Church United approached Mummert to offer the house to be used for the homeless ministry.
The three-bedroom farm-type house is back a long lane, has a huge yard and space for a garden with several outbuildings. It is located off Route 194 between Littlestown and Hanover just south of the church at 65 Christ Church Road.
Dozens upon dozens of volunteers spent the last year and one-half tearing out old drywall, floors, wiring, plumbing, the heating system and even chimneys to create a wonderful "new" home for a family in need, Mummert said.
"We had to do a whole lot more renovating than we originally anticipated," he said. "But it's all been good. We are glad we went the extra mile."
The volunteer angels lining up to give their time to the project included members of many other area churches, community organizations, businesses, individuals, and entire families, Mummert said.
In addition to the "army of angels" volunteering their leisure time to work on the home, a bevy of angelic business owners also came forward with donations of everything from concrete and blocks - to kitchen cabinets and bathroom fixtures - to household appliances and furnishings, Mummert said.
Everything was done completely by free-will contributions, he said, with absolutely no local, state, or federal grants, or loans involved.
"It's incredible. It's done and it's all paid for - Hallelujah!" he exclaimed. "It took time, but if we hadn't had a partnership with everyone working together to one goal it would not have been possible."
Because everything was done by donation, there has not been a tally of exactly what the final cost would have been if it would have needed to be paid out of a treasury, Mummert said.
David Lawrence, a member the board for Creation House and the contractor overseeing the renovations project, estimated the project would have cost in the range of $70,000.
Now that it is finished it will be "rented" out for periods of three to six months, or even longer if necessary, said Mummert, to one family at a time that is currently homeless.
"We want to help people that are trying to help themselves," said Pastor Arentz. "They have to want to work and while they are there it will be required that they regularly attend church - any church.
"Our intentions aren't to uproot them from their roots but to reinstate them into society," the pastor continued. "No one knows what put these people in this position - but our concern is to get them back on their feet and rebuild their relationship with the Lord."
While the family "renting" the home will be expected to participate in religious services somewhere, said Pastor Arentz, Creation House participants will also learn such things as money management, get help finding jobs, and be directed to area programs such as AA that can help with personal problems.
Once the adult members of the family have jobs they will be expected to begin paying some bills, such as the electric bill, said Pastor Arentz, so that they can learn to once again become self-sufficient.
After the family has pulled themselves together, the Creation House board will also try to help them find another home where the adults will completely pay their own way - so the next homeless family can be helped.
"We want them to know that they are not alone," said Pastor Arentz. "A church can't have tunnel vision. We must always be looking beyond our walls to please the Lord. The real ministry is going on outside of the churches."
Creation House near Littlestown has taken more than a year and a half - but this creation was done by a multitude of volunteer "angels" who were earth-bound and working in their spare time.
The dedication ceremony of the newly refurbished Creation House just east of the Christ Church United Church of Christ near Littlestown was held recently, said church board president Dale Arentz.
Prior to renovations, the structure was deserted for years and deteriorating to the point of ruin, Arentz said. Many years ago the home had been the church sexton's house. Later it was used as a rental home, but then stood empty for more than a decade.
The idea of Creation House began more than 10 years ago when Pastor Doug Mummert, of Bethel Assembly of God in Littlestown, had a vision of developing a home where a whole family could live for several months while working through financial and personal crisis.
Mummert is the founder and director of that church's Homeless Christian Outreach, which takes its ministry to offer food, clothing and financial assistance for homeless men, women and children in areas stretching from Adams County to Baltimore.
"The Lord showed me a house where whole families could be together while working through their problems," Mummert said. "There are shelters for homeless men, and homeless woman and their children, but there are very few places which will take whole families so that they can stay together."
Although stalled for several years due to the lack of a location, the vision began to take on the look of reality in 2010 when Christ Church United Church of Christ, Christ Church Road, Littlestown graciously offered to provide their two-story farmhouse for the project, Mummert said.
With the blessings of his congregation, Senior Pastor Craig Arentz of Christ Church United approached Mummert to offer the house to be used for the homeless ministry.
The three-bedroom farm-type house is back a long lane, has a huge yard and space for a garden with several outbuildings. It is located off Route 194 between Littlestown and Hanover just south of the church at 65 Christ Church Road.
Dozens upon dozens of volunteers spent the last year and one-half tearing out old drywall, floors, wiring, plumbing, the heating system and even chimneys to create a wonderful "new" home for a family in need, Mummert said.
"We had to do a whole lot more renovating than we originally anticipated," he said. "But it's all been good. We are glad we went the extra mile."
The volunteer angels lining up to give their time to the project included members of many other area churches, community organizations, businesses, individuals, and entire families, Mummert said.
In addition to the "army of angels" volunteering their leisure time to work on the home, a bevy of angelic business owners also came forward with donations of everything from concrete and blocks - to kitchen cabinets and bathroom fixtures - to household appliances and furnishings, Mummert said.
Everything was done completely by free-will contributions, he said, with absolutely no local, state, or federal grants, or loans involved.
"It's incredible. It's done and it's all paid for - Hallelujah!" he exclaimed. "It took time, but if we hadn't had a partnership with everyone working together to one goal it would not have been possible."
Because everything was done by donation, there has not been a tally of exactly what the final cost would have been if it would have needed to be paid out of a treasury, Mummert said.
David Lawrence, a member the board for Creation House and the contractor overseeing the renovations project, estimated the project would have cost in the range of $70,000.
Now that it is finished it will be "rented" out for periods of three to six months, or even longer if necessary, said Mummert, to one family at a time that is currently homeless.
"We want to help people that are trying to help themselves," said Pastor Arentz. "They have to want to work and while they are there it will be required that they regularly attend church - any church.
"Our intentions aren't to uproot them from their roots but to reinstate them into society," the pastor continued. "No one knows what put these people in this position - but our concern is to get them back on their feet and rebuild their relationship with the Lord."
While the family "renting" the home will be expected to participate in religious services somewhere, said Pastor Arentz, Creation House participants will also learn such things as money management, get help finding jobs, and be directed to area programs such as AA that can help with personal problems.
Once the adult members of the family have jobs they will be expected to begin paying some bills, such as the electric bill, said Pastor Arentz, so that they can learn to once again become self-sufficient.
After the family has pulled themselves together, the Creation House board will also try to help them find another home where the adults will completely pay their own way - so the next homeless family can be helped.
"We want them to know that they are not alone," said Pastor Arentz. "A church can't have tunnel vision. We must always be looking beyond our walls to please the Lord. The real ministry is going on outside of the churches."
2012年11月25日星期日
After Sandy's deluge, mold and dust are the threats
From his perch on top of his father’s house in Breezy Point, N.Y., Ken Court can see an array of health disasters in the making.
“There are asbestos roofs that have collapsed near the ocean,” says Court, a 52-year-old roofer. “There is a lot of dust. You see people walking around with masks on. You use the hand cleaners all day long.”
Breezy Point sits at the tip of the peninsula jutting into the waters south of Brooklyn where Jamaica Bay, New York Bay and the Atlantic Ocean come together. Much of the close-knit, blue-collar neighborhood was destroyed when Superstorm Sandy hit three weeks ago – swamped in the storm surge, roofs ripped by flailing winds or burned to the ground in a six-alarm fire that took out block after block of homes.
Now it’s one of the last places left without power or clean water, with no ETA on when either will be restored. And as Court works day in and day out to clean up the mess, he sees long-term trouble wherever he looks.
"You should really wear masks. I remember that everyone in 9/11, when they went there to help, they got sick,” Court told NBCNews in a telephone interview.
Asbestos and other chemicals from the collapsed World Trade Centers created a pall of dust that persisted in lower Manhattan for months after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Firefighters, police and other rescue workers are eligible for federal compensation for the illnesses they have developed since the cleanup – most recently 50 different types of cancer.
People who were in the area have higher death rates in general than similar populations, and were especially likely to develop respiratory diseases and asthma. Asbestos can cause a rare type of lung cancer called mesothelioma.
While the dust caused by the Sandy cleanup isn’t nearly as bad, Court isn't taking chances. Asbestos is only a problem if it is kicked up in dust and breathed in – but he’s seeing plenty of dust being generated as wrecking crews pile up and remove the debris. "Those corrugated roofs on the houses down by the ocean – they’re all asbestos,” he said.
The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene advises on its website that "While Sandy has not caused problems with outdoor air quality, indoor dust, mold, fumes from temporary heating sources and the use of strong cleaning products can be irritating to the eyes, throat, and lungs. Dust can also be produced by repair and debris removal. In addition, debris removal and repair work can lead to injuries of various types.”
What concerns Court most, however, is mold. His 79-year-old father, Rod, has emphysema and needs supplemental oxygen. “We got a foot of water up into the first floor. We are just ripping everything out and starting fresh,” said Court, who grew up in Breezy Point and who now lives in Port Jefferson Station on Long Island.
“Right now I have men ripping out the tile. We can’t take a chance with mold with my dad,” Court added. “Now that we took up the tile floor, it’s all wet under there and it’s black.”
Health officials say Court’s doing the right thing. Anything that might turn moldy should be removed or cleaned with a bleach solution. Mold spores can cause allergic reactions or asthma in people who are sensitive to them.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has done many studies on the health dangers that linger after hurricanes, but the CDC's parent agency, the Health and Human Services Department, is not making federal officials available to talk about Sandy's aftermath.
Despite the flooding that swamped water treatment plants, poured into subway tunnels and flushed raw sewage into rivers, most of New York City’s tapwater supply remained clean. But Breezy Point’s water pipes were damaged so badly that the water still isn’t safe to drink, according to local authorities.
“Breezy Point Cooperative is in the process of re-establishing its internal drinking water system and the City will meet with the Breezy Point Cooperative to ensure that it can safely and reliably provide potable water to its residents," the New York health department said in a statement.
“We measure Enterococcus,” he said. It’s found in the guts of warm-blooded animals, including people. “If you find it in the environment, you know it was recently in the body of a warm-blooded animal.” While enterococci are not themselves a big threat to health, if they’re in the water, so are other germs. These include anything that the people and animals in the area contribute to sewage, from hepatitis to parasites such as Cryptosporidium and Giardia lamblia that may cause diarrhea and stomach cramps.
One thing that people may fear is cholera, but cholera isn’t commonly found in New Yorkers, and so it’s very unlikely to be in the sewage or water.
“The most common illness that people get is gastrointestinal problems,” Juhl says. “They get nausea, diarrhea, cramping, skin rashes, eye infections -- that kind of thing.”
You don’t have to drink the water to get ill – people who touch the water can touch their eyes, mouths and noses and become infected. Juhl’s team sampled flooded basements in Queens and found the water was teeming with bacteria commonly found in sewage. They also found germs all over dried-out storm debris.
“There are asbestos roofs that have collapsed near the ocean,” says Court, a 52-year-old roofer. “There is a lot of dust. You see people walking around with masks on. You use the hand cleaners all day long.”
Breezy Point sits at the tip of the peninsula jutting into the waters south of Brooklyn where Jamaica Bay, New York Bay and the Atlantic Ocean come together. Much of the close-knit, blue-collar neighborhood was destroyed when Superstorm Sandy hit three weeks ago – swamped in the storm surge, roofs ripped by flailing winds or burned to the ground in a six-alarm fire that took out block after block of homes.
Now it’s one of the last places left without power or clean water, with no ETA on when either will be restored. And as Court works day in and day out to clean up the mess, he sees long-term trouble wherever he looks.
"You should really wear masks. I remember that everyone in 9/11, when they went there to help, they got sick,” Court told NBCNews in a telephone interview.
Asbestos and other chemicals from the collapsed World Trade Centers created a pall of dust that persisted in lower Manhattan for months after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Firefighters, police and other rescue workers are eligible for federal compensation for the illnesses they have developed since the cleanup – most recently 50 different types of cancer.
People who were in the area have higher death rates in general than similar populations, and were especially likely to develop respiratory diseases and asthma. Asbestos can cause a rare type of lung cancer called mesothelioma.
While the dust caused by the Sandy cleanup isn’t nearly as bad, Court isn't taking chances. Asbestos is only a problem if it is kicked up in dust and breathed in – but he’s seeing plenty of dust being generated as wrecking crews pile up and remove the debris. "Those corrugated roofs on the houses down by the ocean – they’re all asbestos,” he said.
The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene advises on its website that "While Sandy has not caused problems with outdoor air quality, indoor dust, mold, fumes from temporary heating sources and the use of strong cleaning products can be irritating to the eyes, throat, and lungs. Dust can also be produced by repair and debris removal. In addition, debris removal and repair work can lead to injuries of various types.”
What concerns Court most, however, is mold. His 79-year-old father, Rod, has emphysema and needs supplemental oxygen. “We got a foot of water up into the first floor. We are just ripping everything out and starting fresh,” said Court, who grew up in Breezy Point and who now lives in Port Jefferson Station on Long Island.
“Right now I have men ripping out the tile. We can’t take a chance with mold with my dad,” Court added. “Now that we took up the tile floor, it’s all wet under there and it’s black.”
Health officials say Court’s doing the right thing. Anything that might turn moldy should be removed or cleaned with a bleach solution. Mold spores can cause allergic reactions or asthma in people who are sensitive to them.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has done many studies on the health dangers that linger after hurricanes, but the CDC's parent agency, the Health and Human Services Department, is not making federal officials available to talk about Sandy's aftermath.
Despite the flooding that swamped water treatment plants, poured into subway tunnels and flushed raw sewage into rivers, most of New York City’s tapwater supply remained clean. But Breezy Point’s water pipes were damaged so badly that the water still isn’t safe to drink, according to local authorities.
“Breezy Point Cooperative is in the process of re-establishing its internal drinking water system and the City will meet with the Breezy Point Cooperative to ensure that it can safely and reliably provide potable water to its residents," the New York health department said in a statement.
“We measure Enterococcus,” he said. It’s found in the guts of warm-blooded animals, including people. “If you find it in the environment, you know it was recently in the body of a warm-blooded animal.” While enterococci are not themselves a big threat to health, if they’re in the water, so are other germs. These include anything that the people and animals in the area contribute to sewage, from hepatitis to parasites such as Cryptosporidium and Giardia lamblia that may cause diarrhea and stomach cramps.
One thing that people may fear is cholera, but cholera isn’t commonly found in New Yorkers, and so it’s very unlikely to be in the sewage or water.
“The most common illness that people get is gastrointestinal problems,” Juhl says. “They get nausea, diarrhea, cramping, skin rashes, eye infections -- that kind of thing.”
You don’t have to drink the water to get ill – people who touch the water can touch their eyes, mouths and noses and become infected. Juhl’s team sampled flooded basements in Queens and found the water was teeming with bacteria commonly found in sewage. They also found germs all over dried-out storm debris.
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