text:
IGNATIUS JOHN XIV BAR SHAY ALLAH was the Patriarch of Antioch, and head of the Syriac Orthodox Church from 1483 until his death in 1493.[1]

Biography

Early life

John was the son of Shay Allah, who was the son of Sad al-Din, also known as Ibn al-Asfar, and his family was originally from Bartulli.[2] He was born in the city of Mardin in 1442,[3] and became a monk at the Monastery of Mor Hananyo.[4] Whilst at the monastery, John received a special education equal to that of Aziz, the nephew of Ignatius Chaleph of Maʿdan, Patriarch of Antioch,[5] and was educated in Syriac literature by the priests Simon of Amid and John of Mardin, as well as the monks Joshua of Basibrina and David bar Qashafo of Qalat al-Imra'a.[6]

Simon of Amid was a priest at the Church of the Forty Martyrs in Mardin, but died during his education of John and was succeeded by John of Mardin who educated him until he was eighteen.[7] David bar Qashafo taught John astronomy and an anonymous tutor from Constantinople educated him in the use of the use of the astrolabe.[8] John also received an education in dialectics, philosophy, and theology in Mardin, Syria and Egypt.[9]

In 1471, according to official church documents, John was ordained Bishop of Amid,[10] however, it has been argued that the ordination took place in 1474.[11] After his ordination as bishop, John became Ignatius Chaleph's companion and adviser, and was put in charge of his financial affairs.[12] John extended his title to Bishop of Amid and Sawro, so named after the village of Sawro near the Monastery of Mor Abay, where he resided.[13] As bishop, John immediately began to restore dilapidated churches and monasteries throughout his diocese,[14] including the Monastery of Mor Abay.[15]

He also restored the monasteries near the village of Qellet and bought and returned land formerly belonging to the monasteries that had been seized by Muslims.[16] As well as this, John built an extension to the Church of the Forty Martyrs in Mardin, and ransomed eight Georgian captives enslaved by Turkish raids.[17] John gifted the Georgians with horses and supplies to help them to return to Georgia.[18] As a result of his building activities, John accumulated large debts to Ibrahim Beg, Emir of Mardin.[19]

Patriarchate

Following the death of Ignatius Chaleph in 1483, the Syriac Orthodox population of Mardin was divided over who would succeed Chaleph, and John and Baselius Aziz, Maphrian of the East, Chaleph's nephew, and heir presumptive, were the two most popular contenders for the patriarchal throne. Certain bishops subsequently attempted to bribe Ibrahim Beg to usurp the patriarchal throne for themselves. John travelled to meet with Ibrahim Beg alongside the priest John bar Badre and Isa, chief layman of Mardin, and secured his aid so that he may secure the patriarchal throne. John's debts apparently influenced Ibrahim Beg to support John and the emir granted him an official seal of approval and a fine garment.[20]

As patriarch, John continued to build and restore churches and monasteries in the regions of Harput, Se'ert, Mardin, Amid, Nisibis and Mosul, such as the Church of Yoldath Aloho (Mother of God) in Harzam. The patriarch set out to restore a Syriac Orthodox church in the town of Nisibis, which had only three or four Syriac Orthodox households and was largely populated by Nestorians, adherents of a rival church known as the Church of the East. He initially excavated the Church of Mor Jacob with the intention of rebuilding it, but abandoned this effort, and rejected a suggestion to restore the Church of Mor Dimet in the outskirts of Nisibis, as it was too far from the centre. John was shown where the Church of Mor Batlo once stood in the town, and, satisfied by its location, had it excavated.[21] Under Islamic rule, Christians were permitted to only rebuild churches, not build new ones, and thus John, having excavated the ruins of the church, gained official permission from the qadis and faqihs (Islamic jurists) to rebuild the church.[22]

The Nestorians sent a delegation to the Emir of Mardin to protest the reconstruction of the Church of Mor Batlo and claimed there had not be a church there in the past, thus breaking Islamic law, and John was summoned to defend himself. John travelled from Nisibis to Mardin to answer the summons and, with the evidence of the foundations of the original church and the official permission of the qadis and faqihs of Nisibis, the allegations were dismissed and he returned to Nisibis. The Church of Mor Batlo was completed and rededicated as the Church of Mor Batlo and Yoldath Aloho following John's return. John cooperated with Baselius Aziz and the two stayed at the church prior to its consecration. Whilst at the church, John received an apparition of Mor Batlo in a dream who indicated the location of his remains and, in the following morning, John and Baselius Aziz dug at the indicated place and discovered the remains of Mor Batlo. John had a chapel built on the location and connected it to the church. He also appointed a bishop of Nisibis to minister to the Syriac Orthodox population of the town.[23] John's efforts in Nisibis were largely symbolic and were seen as the reclamation of their heritage. This is because the town of Nisibis was the diocese of Jacob of Nisibis, a highly venerated saint in the Syriac Orthodox Church, and thus to appoint a Syriac Orthodox bishop was to reclaim the town from the Nestorians.[24]

Baselius Aziz died shortly after the consecration of the Church of Mor Balto and Yoldath Aloho in 1487 and fear of Nestorian attacks in Mosul led John to travel to the city and restore the nearby Monastery of Mor Behnam.[25] John resolved an issue affecting the Monastery of Mor Hananyo whereby the monks faced harassment from Muslims who lived in a nearby orchard. John threatened the Emir of Mardin that himself and all other members of his church would relocate if the issue was not resolved. The emir capitulated and an agreement was reached by which the aforementioned orchard was exchanged for another property.[26] It was alleged that John was poisoned in 1493 by Joshua, Bishop of Sawro, who would later become patriarch in 1509.[27]

[1] Barsoum (2003)

[2]

[3]

[4] Palmer (2007), p. 190

[5]

[6]

[7] Palmer (2007), p. 195

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11] Palmer (2007), p. 192

[12] Palmer (2007), p. 199

[13] Palmer (1990), p. 23

[14] Palmer (2007), p. 193

[15]

[16] Palmer (2007), pp. 199-200

[17] Palmer (2007), p. 200

[18]

[19]

[20] Palmer (2007), p. 197

[21]

[22] Palmer (2007), pp. 200-201

[23] Palmer (2007), p. 201

[24] Palmer (2007), p. 202

[25]

[26] Palmer (2007), pp. 202-203

[27] Palmer (1990), p. 46

title: Ignatius John XIV

question: Summarize the significance of John's post as a patriarch.

answer: As a patriarch, John restored a Syriac Orthodox church as part of his ongoing campaign to restore then throughout the land. He excavated the Church of Mor Jacob. His most significant work as a patriarch lies in excavating churches and determining which to rebuild, as under the contemporary Islamic rules, Christians were only permitted to restore old churches-not build new places of worship. He gained permission from the qadis and the faqihs-Islamic jurists, to do so.

question: Summarize the most productive time period of John's career.

answer: Though most of his legacy lies in the finding and restoration of old churches, John's most frenetic time period was wrought with issues regarding the Monastery of Mor Hananyo where Monks were being harassed by Muslims. John effectively and successfully threatened to relocate himself and the church members should this issue not see a peaceful resolution.

question: Summarize the conditions under which Christian churches could no longer be built.


split: train

text:
ALBERT YUMA MULIMBI (born July 30, 1955) is a Congolese businessman, economist and chairman at the Congolese state-owned mining company Gecamines.[1][2][3] An International Labour Organization dignitary,[4] he is the chairman of the Congolese Employers Federation, Democratic Republic of Congo's biggest business lobby group.

In late April 2019, _Jeune Afrique_ reported that Yuma was recommended by former DRC President Joseph Kabila, whose coalition controls the majority in the Parliament, to the incumbent President Félix Tshisekedi as a potential Prime Minister.[5] His candidacy was rejected in favour of Sylvestre Ilunga.

Early life

Yuma was born on July 30, 1955 in Kongolo, Tanganyika province.[6][7] Having spent much of his childhood in Belgium, he later earned a Master of Applied Economics from the University of Louvain (UCLouvain).[8][9]

Career

Yuma joined UTEXAFRICA, a textile and real estate development company now known as TEXAF, in 1983.[10][11] He serves as its co-managing director[12] and is also a major shareholder, where he derives most of his wealth.[13]

Since late 2010, he has served as the chairman of Congo's parastatal mining enterprise Gécamines.[14][15][16] Under his leadership, he attempted to grow the company in spite of its international competitors.[17] For example, he spearheaded a lawsuit in the International Court of Arbitration against Freeport-McMoRan after Freeport sold its 80% stake in the Tenke Fungurume mine to China Molybdenum, as it had failed to warn Gécamines, which owns 20% of the mine.[18] As of September 2016, he planned to cut costs by reducing the workforce.[19]

Yuma is the chairman of Texico, the manufacturer of police and army uniforms in the DRC, and deputy chairman of Texafrica, the manufacturer of uniforms for infrastructure workers.[20] Additionally, he is the co-owner of Afritex, a wrapper factory in Kinshasa.[21] In 2015, after he had failed to purchase the Orgaman Group from the Damseaux family because their asking price was too high, Yuma also invested in food production.[22] He also serves on the board of directors of the Central Bank of the Congo.[23]

In addition, Yuma serves as the chairman of the Congolese Employers Federation (FEC),[24][25] and as the Vice-President of the International Organisation of Employers.[26] Since 2012, he has also served as the chairman of the Permanent Conference of African and French-Speaking Consular Chambers (CPCCAF), an organization of francophone African chambers of commerce.[27][28][29] Additionally, he serves on the board of directors of the Belgian-Congolese-Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce,[30] and the council of the International Labour Organization.[31]

Awards

-

        Commander of the Order of the Crown[32]

[1] “Gecamines vows to pursue dispute against Freeport” _Financial Times_ November 1, 2016. Retrieved 18 January 2017

[2] “Gecamines woos Chinese investors for Congo mining projects” _Financial Times_ November 23, 2016. Retrieved 18 January 2017

[3] “Congo's Gecamines Shelves Sale of Stake in Glencore Copper Mine”'' The Wall Street Journal'' June 2, 2014. Retrieved 18 January 2017

[4] “Jim Armitage: The boss of the DRC’s state-owned mining operation remains defiant despite uncomfortable questions over its controversial asset sales” _The Independent_ April 19, 2014. Retrieved 18 January 2017

[5] Bujakera Tshiamala, Stanis (April 23, 2019). RDC : Joseph Kabila renonce à imposer Albert Yuma à la primature . _Jeune Afrique_.

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

[12]

[13]

[14]

[15]

[16]

[17]

[18]

[19]

[20]

[21]

[22]

[23]

[24]

[25]

[26]

[27]

[28]

[29]

[30]

[31]

[32]

title: Albert Yuma Mulimbi

question: Who is Albert Yuma Mulimbi?

answer: He is a Congolese businessman, economist, and chairman at the Congolese state-owned mining company Gecamines.

question: Describe Yuma's early life and education.

answer: He was born on July 30, 1955, in Kongolo, Tanganyika province, but spent much of his childhood in Belgium, where he earned a Master of Applied Economics from the University of Louvain (UCLouvain).

question: Where does Yuma derive most of his wealth?

answer: He serves as a co-managing director and is a major shareholder of TEXAF, a textile and real estate development company.

question: Summarize everything relating to other companies Yuma is a part of.

answer:
He is the Chairman of Gécamines, a parastatal mining enterprise.
He is the Chairman of Texico, a manufacturer of police and army uniforms in the DRC.
He is the Deputy Chairman of Texafrica, a manufacturer of uniforms for infrastructure workers.
He is the co-owner of Afritex, a wrapper factory in Kinshasa.

question: Write a ~4 sentence summary.

answer: Albert Yuma Mulimbi is a Congolese businessman, economist, and chairman at the Congolese state-owned mining company Gecamines. He was born in Kongolo, Tanganyika province, and has a Master of Applied Economics from the University of Louvain (UCLouvain). He is a major shareholder of TEXAF and serves as Chairman to several other companies. Yuma also serves as the chairman of the Congolese Employers Federation (FEC), and as the Vice-President of the International Organisation of Employers.


text:
HORACE KENTON WRIGHT (February 21, 1915 - November 14, 1976) was a Bahamian artist and teacher, considered to be one of the “fathers of modern Bahamian art.”[1] In a Third World nation with limited supplies and training, young Bahamian students were limited in their knowledge of art. Wright was able during this period to “give Bahamian children an appreciation for art as a tool in industry, as well as a medium of personal expression.”[2]

Life

He was born in Chicago, Illinois, on February 21, 1915 to Jamaican parents Dr. Joseph and Maud Wright. At the age of two, his family relocated to The Bahamas. In 1931, Wright began his career with the Bahamas Board of Education as a teacher. After travelling to London to pursue studies in Art from 1948 to 1951, Wright became The Bahamas' only art teacher,[3] serving in this post from 1951 to 1960. He was appointed Supervisor of Art for all schools in The Bahamas in 1961, and he then served as Inspector of Schools from 1964 to 1967.

Wright received further training in Europe and Australia, which led to the final phase of his career in the field of education. From 1967 to 1975 he served as Schools Broadcasting Officer and Senior Education Officer (Audio/Visual Aids).

Wright's influence is evident as he was the teacher of some of The Bahamas' finest artistic talents, including James O. Rolle, Hervis Bain, and Stanley and Jackson Burnside.

Although Wright was never officially made a Bahamian citizen, he died believing that he was indeed Bahamian and his extensive contribution to the education of Bahamian children is indeed worthy of recognition. He died in Nassau, Bahamas, on November 14, 1976.

Wright is survived by 1 son Neil Wright, and a host of other family members and friends.

[1]

[2]

[3]

title: Horace Kenton Wright

question: Who was Horace Wright?

answer: Wright was a Bahamian artist and teacher. He is considered to be one of the "fathers of modern Bahamian art".

question: What nationalities are Wright's parents?

answer: They were Jamaicans.

question: What did Wright do after finishing his art studies in London?

answer: He returned to the Bahamas where he was the only art teacher from 1951 to 1960.

question: What did some consider as Wright's legacy?

answer: He is considered to have influenced some of Bahamas' finest artist talents like James O. Rolle, Hervis Bain, and Jackson Burnside.

question: Write a ~4 sentence summary.

answer:
Horace Kenton Wright is a Bahamian artist and teacher. He was born to Jamaican parents and studied art in London. From 1951 to 1960, he was the only art teacher in the entire Bahamas.

Wright later served as a Senior Education Officer and influenced a generation of some of Bahamas' finest artistic talents.


text:
To Hatch From a Broken Egg

I was sitting in the living room with my arms crossed when Grandpa gathered the family around the dining room table. Grandpa was a giant of a man, with thighs like redwoods and hands like plains. I was the last to stand up when I began to walk over to the circle that had formed around the table. “I would like to see,” Grandpa began, with big pauses between each phrase, “someone attempt to balance this egg upright, without using any tools to hold it up.”

The whiteness of the egg stood out in Grandpa’s wrinkled and purple spotted hands. It seemed so small. I studied the egg while my family began to buzz. My older cousin smirked and whispered something in my Dad’s ears that made him laugh. Uncle Joe was doing one of his James Cagney impressions to my brother and cousin. Aunt Anna had walked in the room from cooking and chuckled when she saw my grandpa holding the egg.

I was the only one paying attention, focusing on how you could possibly make a small oval stand. No one else was going to complete this challenge but me. When my Mom put her arms around my chest, and gave me a kiss on the cheek I pushed her away and said, “I can do it!”

My grandpa’s heavy eyes shifted to me and his lips peeled into a grin, revealing yellow stained crooked teeth. His hands, like a giant compared to mine, handed me the egg. I began working right away.

I made quick glances to Grandpa as I tried to balance it, hoping his gray eyes would light up at a correct attempt or that his white eyebrows would raise at a sign of progress, but he remained unemotional and still. I tried to ignore the commentary of my family at first.  Dad said, “oh so close,” several times with a laugh while Uncle David commentated like a sports announcer, “Jake Lacey. Balancing the egg. Can he do it? Ah, keeps missing.”

After several minutes my older cousin said, “Come on, Jake. Give it back to Grandpa.” I ignored him but when my Mom stepped in saying, “Hun, you can try later, it’s fine,” the doubt became harder to ignore.

“Let me just try!” I said, trying not to sound upset.

Eventually my Uncle Joe stopped impersonating James Cagney. My father raised his eye brows and stood up from the table and my brother began to attack me. “Jake you can’t do it.”

“Don’t worry, Jakey. It’s impossible,” someone else said.

I wanted to shut my family up and make them see that I could do it. I wanted them to know that just I could complete a task that was impossible for most. And I did.

I finally stood the egg up right. It wasn’t balancing against anything; it was just standing up on its own. All because of me. I looked up in amazement, hoping to see my family enthusiastic with my accomplishment, but instead, half of them were gone and the other half had already moved on to new conversations. Only my cousin Rachel said, “Wow! Look guys! Jake did it!”

As Rachel began to get my family’s attention I looked to Grandpa who was not grinning but seemed thrown by the egg standing up. As I waited for a response from Grandpa, the whole family began to circle back around the table.

Before they could all see what I had done, Grandpa snagged the egg off the table, smashed it lightly against a plate, leaving the egg’s bottom flat surfaced with a crack, placed the it on the table, and forced a chuckle as everyone watched the egg stand up on its own. He said, “That is how you make an egg stand.”

I quickly looked at my Grandpa, who avoided eye contact with me and laughed deliberately with the older cousins. My head spun to my parents, who had acknowledged Grandpa’s quaint gag but not my success and then it spun back to my Grandpa who was still ignoring me.

I darted out of living room and up to my room. I dove into my bed, grabbed my Teddy and belted a long hard cry into my pillow. No one came up to check on me until after they had lit the candles.

title: Flash Fiction Piece, notes please?

question: Who is the narrator?

answer: A young boy named Jake.

question: Why is Jake upset?

answer: No one paid attention to his efforts to balance the egg.

question: Why did Jake's grandpa ignore him?

answer: Because he was making a gag and didn't expect Jake to accomplish the feat without cheating. His success cheapened his grandpa's joke.

question: Who said "Don't worry, Jakey. It's impossible?"

answer: Doesn't say who.

question: Write a ~4 sentence summary.

answer: The narrator, Jake, is hanging out with his family when his grandfather grabs everyone's attention and challenges them to “attempt to balance this egg upright, without using any tools to hold it up.” Young Jake takes it much too seriously, continuing to try to get it to stay upright long after everyone has grown weary of his efforts. When he suddenly and miraculously succeeds, no one is around anymore. A cousin pulls everyone together, but his grandpa reveals it was a joke by showing them his intended answer: smashing the bottom flat. No one acknowledges Jake's success and storms off to bed to cry.


text:
Curiosity is what drives us, most of us anyway. The way he saw things were different. To him, curiosity was death. To be curious, was to die. He would never leave that old house that was falling apart, the haven that he felt was home. Never experiencing anything because of the fear that he held within with so much pride. Blinded by his own lies and his rejection from himself and life. What was life? To him life was four filthy walls that were impenetrable with a door wide open. In his mind, death stalked the walk ways and hallways. Lurking in the dark, waiting to pounce on him as soon as he dare muster up the courage to face reality. Sitting alone in his room for so long, with no one to keep company. Nothing to look forward to. Nothing to aspire to become. He tries to alleviate the sickness with hymns of the past. The chant of life and the death stillness of his own. Staring at the ceiling, he decides. He dares to be curious. Curious of what?

*Note*
This is my first short story submission, so take it easy on me. Let me know what you think and make sure to leave feedback. If you liked it, I will write up part 2.

Thank you.

title: Curiosity [Part 1]

question: What does the main character equate curiosity to?

answer: Death

question: What is the main character's life like?

answer: He never leaves his house, sitting alone in his filthy room constantly

question: Who is the narrator?

answer: That information can't be found

question: What prompts the main character to suddenly become curious?

answer: That information can't be found

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer: The main character believes to be curious is to die. Terrified of death, he never leaves his house, which is filthy. Then one day he decides to be curious.


text:
I remember when we kissed the world goodbye, toes over the edge of a crumbling skyscraper, watching buildings that once parted the sky slowly crashing into one another and fall. I watched the sun go out in your eyes, buried behind the burning horizon, promising to never shine again. The streets cracked and swayed; chasms split the earth and swallowed mountains of broken concrete and twisted metal. You took my hand and smiled, the world hushed itself briefly, and you softly whispered “maybe forever doesn't last.” We stepped off that concrete ledge and slowly sank into the end.
	We fell for hours in each other's embrace, past collapsing buildings and showers of broken glass, passing through the sparks and flames of civilization slowly dying. Every second ticked away like a lifetime, every passing moment more serene than the last. I'd never seen anything so beautiful, I never wanted to stop falling.
	I remembered the times we spent together in the warm light of the sun, listening to the song of a thousand birds and the wind whispering through the trees. All our nights dancing around fires like lunatics, throwing whiskey from our bottles as we cursed humanity and shouted angrily at whatever gods created those that so arrogantly tried to decide our lives. We were free until our last days, we decided our own fates, we welcomed humanity's death with open arms and tears of joy.
	I looked down and saw the top of the tower growing farther and farther away, felt the wind brush through my hair, and felt your breath against my neck. I could hear music all the way down, a crescendo of cellos swelling with every fragment of debris blasting toward us, growing more intense as we fell further and wrapped our arms tighter around each other. The world was literally falling to pieces around us in a grand ballet of violence, but I was too caught in the serenity of your embrace to see it as anything but pure bliss. Our gaze locked for the last time, and I closed my eyes as we kissed. Every cell in my body sang with joy as I felt the ground below us part my hair, and with my last breath, heard our private orchestra climax and fade away as we were swallowed by darkness.

title: Abyss

question: Describe the narrator.

answer: They are suicidal and have memories of substance abuse and resenting society.

question: Who is the narrator addressing?

answer: Their partner in a suicide pact, with whom they have had a romantic relationship in life.

question: What event is the narrator describing?

answer: A joint suicide in which the two participants jump off a skyscraper together.

question: What is the outcome of the story?

answer: The two characters are 'swallowed by darkness', which could indicate either death or simply loss of consciousness.

question: Write a ~1 sentence summary.

answer: This story is a romanticized description of a couple committing suicide together by  jumping off a skyscraper.


text:
(Last Updated On: October 5, 2019)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Everyone who has ever started an escape room has learned that there was always more that he or she would have done well to know beforehand. Here are ten truisms and forethoughts on what may prove useful, in no particular order of importance.

Everything breaks

Eventually. At Escape Rooms PHX we had a client break a four-number Master combination lock, on only the third group to visit our room! The lock may have been flawed, but we think the client may have been Superman. Anyway, it broke.

Now, one cannot keep a duplicate of everything, so analyze your room. What would shut it down if it broke? Get three of them.

Which brings me to the point about storage. You will not have enough, especially if you are renting by the square foot. You want every square foot to make money, and storage doesn’t. Find a solution, but it must be close at hand.

Which brings us to another point: if you are not good at fixing things, hire someone who is, or get good at it. “Everything breaks” is cast in concrete. Ask any room owner, they’ll say, “Yep.”

Which brings us to how incredibly clever your attendees may become. If there is an unexpected way to do a task, even in your twelfth month, someone will come up with it. Sometimes some will exasperate you. Just remember, they will be gone in an hour. Bite your tongue.

Salespeople want to sell

[escape room business tips]

And they want you to buy. Best advice we had gotten about unsolicited buying opportunities was “DON’T BUY ANYTHING YOU DID NOT SEEK TO BUY.” _(Same goes for contests that come in the mail. You can’t win a contest you did not enter.)_

Everything solicitors will tell you will sound so good and so helpful, but in the long run, it will be costly, and probably will prove unnecessary. As soon as you purchase your web domain _(You did purchase a web domain, right? No? Get it right now!)_ you will begin to receive a whole host of solicitations for creating and maintaining your web.

You will also get a hundred people promising to put you first on Facebook, Google, Peoplewillfindyou.com, whatever. This is a great opportunity to develop your lying skills. _“Sorry, I already have Whackadoodle, LLC doing it for me.”_ If you choose not to lie, tell the raw truth. “I have no place in my budget for that right now.”

Other escape rooms owners are not your enemy

However, you can make enemies quickly if you treat them as such. Before you start, go see one. Or all. Ask them if they would be interested in some kind of referral program.

Sometimes you’re all booked, or you get a request that you cannot fill, such as a room for children under 10. Make a referral, make a friend, and maybe you’ll make a few sales you would not have otherwise had.

Besides gaining that benefit, owning an escape room is lonely. You will feel sometimes cornered, sometimes overwhelmed. Time will arrive when you _have_ to call someone to chat, just to keep yourself sane. Make friends. They’ll become your psychologist and life coach in no time.

Yeah, some owners _are_ your enemy

Ignore them. You are entering the hospitality business, and some owner or manager who badmouths you will eventually show their inhospitality towards the clients, which will turn their customers into yours.

If a client badmouths another room, do not agree, even with so much as a nod! In fact, make it a habit to say, “Hmm, I had not heard that.” Do not agree with them! This will require discipline and contrary motivation but just do it.

Visit the town’s building inspector

Make an appointment, take coffee with the fixings on the side. Have a chat. At Escape Rooms PHX, we learned we were required to have a second bathroom a month _after_ we signed the lease. Very expensive lack of information there. Things to know: how many overhead fire nozzles you must have, and where; Exit signage; ADA compliance; doorway widths, fire extinguishers and their locations.

Safety is not the place to consider curbing expenses. Judge every object, puzzle, obstruction, gizmo or process with the idea in mind that it will eventually kill someone, so figure out how to prevent it. Okay, that’s a stretch. But the point remains.

Beware of sharp screw, nails, corners and lips. A scratch can become a lawsuit faster than it will become infected. Keep pathways clear, steps well lit. In fact, no steps.

Also beware of things that can fall, tumble, slide, cause a slip, or trip. And we’re not just talking about the things you put into place. If a client lacking common sense can toss something on the floor right where he or she has to walk, he or she will. Guaranteed.

Know how to market

Back in the day, like last year, aficionados of escape rooms had kept the modest few locations hopping, but those days are numbered if not over. Some markets are saturated, and there just are not enough fans of escape rooms to go around. Good news: the general population is getting into the game, literally.

But you have to reach them. YELP and Facebook are still great options, but they will not provide the fast income Groupon will. But beware: Groupon, though free, is very expensive. _(A column on Groupon and the Industry is forthcoming in a later issue.)_

Designate at least $400 per month for YELP and Facebook, and if you can, Google. John Wanamaker, a department-store magnate, once said, _“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”_ Remains true a century and a half later. BTW, no matter how savvy one of those marketers may seem, none can overcome that truism, even with algorithms and target data.

As said earlier, you ware entering the hospitality business, so be hospitable. Overwhelmingly kind. No client wants to learn he or she is a problem,  or caused a problem. Treat them like puppies or kittens, whichever is your preferred.

This does not mean you should not toss a drunk or wantonly destructive fool out the door. Retain that right. Just don’t take pleasure from it. Well, not often, anyway.

Don’t sweat bad reviews

[escape room business tips]

Learn from them. They often will provide exactly the solution to a problem you definitely have. _(If you didn’t have a problem, they would not have said you did.)_ Thank the reviewer, acknowledge your intention to improve. DO NOT FIGHT THEM! They took the time to let you know something was rotten, so take the time to listen.

In the beginning, a good review feels like getting a gold mine left to you by a distant uncle. After about thirty great reviews, each will feel like finding a dollar bill on the street does. Still a good thing, but not life-altering.  _(Side note: A bad review will feel like somebody just blew up your baby, but the feeling will pass if you deal with it in a positive manner. And, yeah, some reviewers will just be wrong. Oh well.)_

If on Yelp, respond to them in the most positive manner. Thank them for having consideration for others who may yet enjoy your facility, and assure them that, if applicable, you will address and fix whatever has been called forward.

Of course, there are always [expletive deleted]. You can ignore them, or you could respond, but if you do, refrain from belittling them. Remember, never get in a fight with a pig. You’ll only get mud on you, and the pig likes it.

Rates will come down

Presently, most sell rooms at between $28-$33 per person on average, _(Another effect of Groupon to be discussed later.)_  In a number of discussions with other owners, the consensus is that they may fall to as little as $18-$22. Plan for that.

Understand what the Customer Acquisition Cost is, and how to calculate it.

Click to read: Customer Acquisition Cost: An Escape Room Owner’s Secret Weapon For Making More Money

Big, fast money was made by the early adopters who opened rooms for a song, back in the day. That is not today. The margins will shrink. That’s business.

A good rule of thumb

Room size is best at 30 square feet per person. Will you be planning to attract corporate work? They’ll want to jam as many people into a room as they can, but that means you’ll have rooms more often than not that you will have not-filled-to-capacity events.

Two choices: live with it, or just live with smaller rooms. Sometimes space dictates what you can or cannot have.

Many customers have complained, anecdotally, that they got shoved like sardines into a room. But there is a trade-off to having big rooms: you need more bookings to keep afloat. Plan for your size.

New owners sometimes fail to realize that expansion is not going to be in the cards. Almost all who started with two rooms wish they had gone for three, even four, but also discover they can’t unless they move. Option: open a second place, or move. Both are costly.

By the way, locating near a joint that can at least supply a pizza party will go a long way with corporate ventures. If they can offer a menu-driven buffet, great! Work out a collaboration. Whether you capture a percentage of the food cost will depend on your market. Might just be worthwhile to have the association.

Themes are important

[escape room business tips]

Be aware, however, that people do not always cross themes, which will have an impact on your returning customer rate. For most escape rooms, comebacks are mythical.

SciFi and gizmo crowds are not often into Zombies. Puzzle masters are not into seek-and-find. This will impact your returns. However, if you have the best Zombie room, it will attract other Zombies.

Eventually, rooms will be just another hi-tech toy room for hi-tech toy junkies. They will have a place, but it need not be your place. A hunger for analog experiences will always be there. Exploit it. It’s cheaper.

Finally

By no stretch of the imagination are these all the topics to be considered. If we were to offer an eleventh piece of advice, it would be _“Get a friend in the business.”_

If you do not want a local mentor, drive across the state and visit at least one. Strike up a conversation with whomever you encounter, owner’s best, onsite managers second, ex-Escape Room owners not so much. _(Still, they will be helpful.)_

You’d be amazed at how much people want to talk about themselves. After all, most get into escape rooms because they love escape rooms, so it stands to reason they’ll want to talk more about what they love than what they don’t.

But owners are busy. Do not be a pest. You’ll soon learn that sleep is no more, that even the necessary will not get done, and that everything breaks.

Although these ideas and topics are geared for newbies, people long in the business would do well to reconsider them. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in chasing our tails, we forget why we are in business. It’s because Escape Rooms are cool!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

About the Author

Charles Bechtel is at present the owner and operator of Escape Rooms PHX in Mesa, AZ. He is 65, married to Manuela Mary Bechtel, with two grown daughters and three granddaughters.

Professionally, Charles has been a published author of numerous books, both fiction and nonfiction, owned and operated his own publishing & consulting firms, and even had owned a charter fishing operation out of Cape May, New Jersey. Click here to check out some of the books authored by Charles.

During his consulting days, he specialized in developing new products for the newspaper industry and developing what had then been the industry-altering desktop publishing replacement for many composition firms.

He has years of marketing experience, wearing many hats on both the production and administrative sides of publishing.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

question: What is this article expressing?

answer: It is expressing the knowledge of events that can happen in an escape room, such as something breaking in the room, sales people stealing ideas, or even just knowing how to market the escape rooms.

question: After someone read this article, do you think they could be prepared to start their own escape room?

answer: This article explains in great detail what someone needs to know about starting an escape room and what they need to look out for, so in this case yes, this article can prep someone to start their own escape room.

question: How important are themes for escape rooms?

answer: Themes are the most important for escape rooms and they determine the marketing and sales of the room, as well as the creation and set-up of the room. The more unique themes, the more people will want to come to your escape room.


text:
The dust stung my eyes before I could close them.   Sediment and sand singed my retinas and invaded my mouth, twisting and turning on my tongue and sticking to my throat.  My hands flew up to my eyes instinctively, deserting the wheel, and the car span out of control.  There was nothing I could do.  It was beautiful and calming, the feeling of losing control, the knowledge that no matter what I tried to do the outcome would not change. They would find me dead in the desert ravaged and torn in a stolen jacket, mangled and smashed in the ruins of a stolen car.   I lay at peace amidst the chaos and readied myself for oblivion.   The car whimpered to a halt.  Turning my head from the baking sun I saw the package sprawled on the back seat, trying pointlessly and pitifully to block the gloom that was breaking through with the realisation that I was still alive.  Rolling the window up, immediately I remembered why I’d put it down in the first place; It was hot as hell in the desert.

I am a delivery man of the ghastliest kind. I deliver bad things to bad people and I don’t ask questions and I do what they tell me.  This particular delivery was a package, to be taken to a contact of a boss of mines in the city.   I don’t exist, they don’t want me to, and I’m perfectly happy with that, but sometimes the evil and the sickness that I’m a part of makes my bones quiver and my skin shiver with an incontrollable surge of disgust that consumes me and urges me to wash the dirt away, clean out all the evil of the tiny holes and gaps its filled like mould and put things right.    But I had a package to deliver by dawn, and all I wanted was to get out of the desert.
Dawn was enveloping the towers and buildings of the city which were like tall shadows in the half-light of early morning, the solitude and emptiness of the desert became a distant dream.  I stopped on a street close to the destination of the package.  It would be an hour or more before the city crept into life, cars crawling and people trudging along in different directions but sharing the same soulless existence.
I was glad I would miss the whole depressing spectacle.  I looked at my watch.  Thirty minutes.

At first I assumed the thuds were the noisy epilogue of a dream I was having, but the car was shaking now at irregular intervals, like an impatient child kicking a broken toy, again and again my own private earthquake. Something was in the trunk.

My body leapt and I was out of the car.  I walked round to the left hand side of the car, stood in front of the trunk and looked around.  No one, nothing, except a solitary car in the distance turning left out of sight.  Decisively, I lifted the trunk and was smacked in the face with the smell and the sight of the creature that lay tied up and twisted before me.  He was gagged, beaten and bloodied, a distorted version of a human being, terrified and helpless.  It was so gruesome I couldn’t draw my eyes away.
I tore the tape from his mouth, unwittingly ripping away pieces of parched skin in the process.  Droplets of blood flowed softly from his gasping lips and he began to gasp languidly like a runner who’d ran the length of the world without stopping.
“Don’t……”
The sounds were compressed and squeezed.
“Don’t kill me.”
Standing in stunned silence I imagined myself through the man’s eyes, his captor, tormentor and now his killer, an evil man.   But I was his saviour.    In that moment, with the sun rising and stinging his wounds and with me standing over his broken body like a brute, there seemed no amount of words capable of conveying to the man that I was the antithesis of everything he thought I was, the man who’d saved him from oblivion rather than plunge him into it, regardless of whether I meant to or not.
There was no point in speaking.  I lifted him from the trunk and laid him on the passenger seat.  His injuries were not as desperate as I first thought, both eyes were blackened like wastelands of ash, his nose crooked and bent, yet nothing life- threatening.   His breathing was erratic and broken; he was dehydrated, mumbling with parched lips famished for liquid.    I snatched a bottle of water from the back seat and poured clumsily onto the man.
“I have something I have to do.  I’ll try to be back soon and I will take you to a hospital, or….. something.”
The man drank frantically then stared at me with his trodden eyes which were like gruesome slits, confused as to whether to be terrified or thankful.
“This…. I’m not the person that did this, this isn’t my car, I took….. I stole this car from someone, I never knew….”
The man was newly energised and vitalised, and began to understand.
“I know.  It’s my car.  They put me in the trunk of my own damn car.”
I stood in the heat of the morning unsure of what to do next.
“Just wait here”

Before long, I was out of the building and into the street, walking speedily to the alleyway.   I turned left and there lay emptiness where I had left the car.  The adrenaline of confusion had caused me to forget the keys to the car.  The man’s words echoed around like a curse in the back of my head.
“In my own car. They put me in the trunk of my own damn car.”
It was his car, and now he’d taken it, just like I’d stolen it from a man who’d stolen it from him.  It was logical.  The bad guy never wins, and now the good guy had what was his and was driving into the sunset.  What does that make me?  Can there be a midway point where good and evil meet?    I looked at the swarms of people beginning to buzz around as the morning rush hour grabbed hold of the city, the event I’d ached to miss.    I asked myself a question.  Am I really a bad man?  They swarmed like ants around me, going to offices, restaurants, going home, going away, going somewhere.
I’ve been watching life through a rear view mirror.  I felt the gun in my belt and massaged its cold lips.

He answered the door again, like the same as last time, his floppy hair still greasy and unkempt, his housecoat still flung recklessly around his thin and wiry frame.
“What?”
“Have you ever heard of Noah’s ark?” I stood cold and still, hand on my belt.
“Look, man, I’ve given you your money, don’t start all this pyscho-psuedo crap with me, we’ve…”
I cut him off swiftly.
“Just…..listen”

He sighed and flung his hands to his waist and stood swaying and fidgeting waiting excitedly to slam the door in my face.  I started speaking, composed and hard.

“God told Noah that human life was going to be destroyed by a great flood, and told him to build a boat that would save him, a righteous man, his family, and two types of every animal.  Do you know why God sent this flood to destroy civilisation?”
“Why?” He was impatient, sarcastic, enjoying the display of madness and breakdown he thought he was witnessing, a smirk etching itself across his face.
 “Because civilisation had grown corrupt, evil, unfit to live.”  I felt the gun for the last time, seducing me. It was my ark.
“And?”
“I am the flood.”

title: A story I wrote last year for an exam.

question: What is the likely gender of the narrator?

answer: It may be implied that the narrator is a man.

question: What else could have been in the trunk?

answer: It may be implied that since there was a man in the trunk, the other possibility would have been that the man would be dead, hence a dead body.

question: What sector does the narrator work in?

answer: The narrator is a delivery man, hence he is in the transportation sector.

question: What must the car owner have felt when he got out of the trunk?

answer: It may be implied that the man must have felt a mix of anger and fear. Anger towards the narrator who opened the trunk and fear for what the narrator may do to him.


text:
[Senator Dianne Feinstein, center, has tried to beat back criticism of the drone program.]

Credit...J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

-   April 25, 2015
-

WASHINGTON — About once a month, staff members of the congressional intelligence committees drive across the Potomac River to C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., and watch videos of people being blown up.

As part of the macabre ritual the staff members look at the footage of drone strikes in Pakistan and other countries and a sampling of the intelligence buttressing each strike, but not the internal C.I.A. cables discussing the attacks and their aftermath. The screenings have provided a veneer of congressional oversight and have led lawmakers to claim that the targeted killing program is subject to rigorous review, to defend it vigorously in public and to authorize its sizable budget each year.

That unwavering support from Capitol Hill is but one reason the C.I.A.’s killing missions are embedded in American warfare and unlikely to change significantly despite President Obama’s announcement on Thursday that a drone strike accidentally killed two innocent hostages, an American and an Italian. The program is under fire like never before, but the White House continues to champion it, and C.I.A. officers who built the program more than a decade ago — some of whom also led the C.I.A. detention program that used torture in secret prisons — have ascended to the agency’s powerful senior ranks.

Although lawmakers insist that there is great accountability to the program, interviews with administration and congressional officials show that Congress holds the program to less careful scrutiny than many members assert. Top C.I.A. officials, who learned the importance of cultivating Congress after the resistance they ran into on the detention program, have dug in to protect the agency’s drone operations, frustrating a pledge by Mr. Obama two years ago to overhaul the program and pull it from the shadows.

Perhaps no single C.I.A. officer has been more central to the effort than Michael D’Andrea, a gaunt, chain-smoking convert to Islam who was chief of operations during the birth of the agency’s detention and interrogation program and then, as head of the C.I.A. Counterterrorism Center, became an architect of the targeted killing program. Until last month, when Mr. D’Andrea was quietly shifted to another job, he presided over the growth of C.I.A. drone operations and hundreds of strikes in Pakistan and Yemen during nine years in the position.

In secret meetings on Capitol Hill, Mr. D’Andrea was a forceful advocate for the drone program and won supporters among both Republicans and Democrats. Congressional staff members said that he was particularly effective in winning the support of Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who was chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee until January, when Republicans assumed control of the chamber.

Ms. Feinstein for years has tried to beat back criticism of the program from some liberal Democrats and human rights groups who have raised questions about civilian casualties. C.I.A. officials have assured her, she has said, that there are hardly any civilian deaths in the strikes.

“The figures we have obtained from the executive branch, which we have done our utmost to verify, confirm that the number of civilian casualties that have resulted from such strikes each year has typically been in the single digits,” Ms. Feinstein said in 2013.

But the recent accidental deaths of the hostages are only the latest example of how difficult it is for the C.I.A. to know exactly whom it is killing. The White House provided a public accounting of the deaths only because the victims were Westerners. The government has never offered a detailed explanation of attacks that witnesses say killed women and children.

The confidence Ms. Feinstein and other Democrats express about the drone program, which by most accounts has been effective in killing hundreds of Qaeda operatives and members of other militant groups over the years, stands in sharp contrast to the criticism among lawmakers of the now defunct C.I.A. program to capture and interrogate Qaeda suspects in secret prisons.

But both programs were led by some of the same people. The C.I.A. asked that Mr. D’Andrea’s name and the names of some other top agency officials be withheld from this article, but The New York Times is publishing them because they have leadership roles in one of the government’s most significant paramilitary programs and their roles are known to foreign governments and many others.

When Ms. Feinstein was asked in a meeting with reporters in 2013 why she was so sure she was getting the truth about the drone program while she accused the C.I.A. of lying to her about torture, she seemed surprised.

“That’s a good question, actually,” she said.

Mr. D’Andrea was a senior official in the Counterterrorism Center when the agency opened the Salt Pit, a notorious facility in Afghanistan where prisoners were tortured. His counterterrorism officers oversaw the interrogation and waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. His actions are described in the withering Senate Intelligence Committee report about torture that was released late last year, although he was not identified publicly.

The drone program has been largely immune from the criticism in Congress that other C.I.A. programs have attracted. In 2009, for example, when it became public that the agency had once hired the private security firm Blackwater to hunt and kill suspected terrorists, a member of Congress called Mr. D’Andrea a “murderer” during a private briefing, even though the Blackwater program had never carried out any lethal operations. Mr. D’Andrea was furious about his treatment, a former colleague recalled. But he received no similar personal attacks for his leadership of the drone program.

It was two years ago that Mr. Obama gave a speech pledging to pull the targeted killing program from the shadows, and White House officials said they wanted to shift the bulk of drone operations from the C.I.A. to the Pentagon, with the stated intent of making the program somewhat more transparent. But the intelligence committees have resisted the plan, in part because Mr. D’Andrea and other top agency officials have convinced lawmakers that the C.I.A. strikes are more precise than those conducted by the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command.

As part of a bureaucratic reshuffling last month by John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director, Mr. D’Andrea has been replaced as head of the drone program by Chris Wood. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Mr. Wood held leadership roles in Alec Station, the group that led the hunt for Qaeda suspects and was central to the interrogation program. He ultimately was in charge of that unit and would later serve as station chief in Kabul. Most recently, he supervised all operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mr. Wood now runs a targeted killing program that is the subject of multiple investigations that Mr. Obama announced last week.

And yet the president has given no indication that he intends to shut down the drone program, and both he and his aides continue to praise it as a method of warfare that offers the White House an alternative to messy wars of occupation like in Iraq and Afghanistan. A leitmotif of Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012 was his administration’s success in killing high-ranking Qaeda operatives in Pakistan — even if it was never mentioned that the C.I.A. was doing the killing.

Image

Credit...Justin Lane/European Pressphoto Agency
[]

Despite the drone program reforms that Mr. Obama announced in May 2013, White House officials have shown little enthusiasm for ensuring that many of them are adopted. It is the C.I.A., not the Pentagon, that continues to carry out of all of the drone strikes in Pakistan and most of those in Yemen. An internal administration proposal to create a counterterrorism center at the Pentagon, modeled after the C.I.A. unit that runs the drone strikes, was quietly scrapped.

When Mr. Brennan, a former top White House counterterrorism adviser who remains close to Mr. Obama, became C.I.A. director in late 2013, he announced an intention to dial back the paramilitary operations that have transformed the agency since the Sept. 11 attacks. His goal, he said during his confirmation hearings, was to refocus the agency on the traditional work of intelligence collection and espionage that had sometimes been neglected.

But that effort too is slow going, and Mr. Brennan has not pushed forcefully for moving drone operations away from the C.I.A., something he advocated when he was in the White House during Mr. Obama’s first term. In a sign of the continued prominence of military operations inside the agency, Mr. Brennan recently named Greg Vogel, a former agency paramilitary officer, to take over the C.I.A.’s vaunted Directorate of Operations. That position has traditionally gone to C.I.A. officers who ascended the ranks because of their success in traditional espionage work.

Mr. Vogel, identified in news accounts as “Spider” and in a memoir by the former C.I.A. Director George J. Tenet as “Greg V.,” was one of the first C.I.A. officers to enter Afghanistan when the war began in 2001. He was credited during that time with saving the life of Hamid Karzai, the future Afghan president, during a bomb strike. He later served as the C.I.A. station chief in Kabul and eventually became the head of the agency’s Special Activities Division, which runs many paramilitary operations.

The C.I.A. launched its first drone strike in Pakistan in 2004, at a time of growing concern in the government about abuses inside the agency’s detention and interrogation program. Many in Congress expressed horror at the grim details of torture carried out in the secret C.I.A. prisons, even if some senior lawmakers had been briefed about many of the interrogation methods during the birth of the program in 2002.

Operatives in the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center drew a lesson from this experience. They have given regular briefings to the intelligence committees about the drone strikes and made sure to have both committee members and their staffs visit the C.I.A. to watch the drone videos.

Sometimes, lawmakers have used the briefings to ask questions about why specific terrorism suspects have not yet been killed, and to express their dismay that the C.I.A. is not being aggressive enough in its killing operations. One such instance was in 2013, when senior Republicans on the House and Senate intelligence committees were furious after they heard that the C.I.A. had not yet killed Mohanad Mahmoud Al Farekh, an American citizen who had become a top Qaeda operations officer and was hiding in Pakistan.

At the time, there was a debate in the government about whether Mr. Obama should authorize another drone strike against an American citizen — the first since the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2011 — and whether it might be possible to capture, rather than kill, Mr. Farekh.

The Republican lawmakers, Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina and Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, said during the closed sessions that the administration was being timid, and urged that Mr. Farekh be hunted and killed.

He was eventually arrested by Pakistani security forces the next year, and is on trial in Brooklyn.

question: What is described as the "macabre ritual"?

answer: Once a month, staff members of the congressional intelligence committees drive to C.I.A. headquarters, and watch videos of people being blown up.

question: Why is Michael D'Andrea one of the most central C.I.A. officers to the effort?

answer: He presided over the growth of C.I.A. drone operations during 9 years as the head of the C.I.A. Counterterrorism Center. He was also a forceful advocate for the drone program in secret meetings on Capitol Hill.

question: What is the effort described in "more central to the effort than Michael D’Andrea"?

answer: The effort is maintaining the the drone and targeted killing program as it faces opposition.

question: What are the figures that have been obtained from the executive branch?

answer: The figures are those of the number of civilian casualties that have resulted from drone strikes each year.

question: Who is Ms.Feinstein?

answer: Diane Feinstein is a Democratic California Senator who was chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee until January of the time of this document.

question: Is violence mentioned in this document?

answer: There is violence mentioned throughout this document.

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: The document discusses criticism and support of C.I.A. drone and targeted killing programs during the Obama administration.


text:
"It's finally open!" Joseph shouted as he flipped through the pages of an old tome.

"What's this?" He then said in disgust, "Is this whole thing empty?"

"Wait!" His partner shouted, "I saw something at the beginning."

"impossible." Pouted Joseph "The beginning was the first..."

Joseph never finished that sentence, despite ample time, as he was far too shocked by what he witnessed in the book. With a cautious tone he says,

 "Philip... have I gone mad?"

"I don't think so sir." responded Philip

"So you see it? Writing?"

"Every word sir."

"How can a book write itself?" Joseph said dumbfounded. "I'm more worried that it new your name sir." Philip responded wisely.

There was a short pause.

"Well it seems to like you Philip." Joseph said with undertones of frustration.

"That's great sir! The favor of an old book. I shall treasure it always sir." Philip was chuckling as he said this, but it was met with a sudden realization, which he then announced: "It said you were frustrated Joseph. Why are you frustrated? We got the book..."

"I'm not frustrated!" Joseph responded angrily

"Now it says you're angry sir."

"I bloody am now!" Joseph shouted in resentment of the book held in his hands. "Darn right I'm resentful! What good could come of you?" Joseph asks the thin sheets of tree fiber bound in very dead, but decorated, cow skin.

"So you're saying I won't get an answer?" Joseph asks rhetorically.

"And I didn't say 'darn!' Stop making my words better!"

"Hey," Philip interjects "You didn't actually say anything about it making your words better just now right sir?"

"Of course not!" Joseph shouts again, "It's not even recording the truth!" he states in an insulting manner.

"Well sir, what are we going to do with it?" Philip asks honestly

"Burn it." Joseph responded foolishly. At this time, Joseph was entirely unaware that his fate had been bound like in the bindings of a book. However, some day, near or far, Joseph would realize that should the book burn, than he will share its fate.

"And when, exactly, was I going to learn that tidbit?" Joseph asked. By this point in time, Joseph had taken a great fondness in asking questions with clear and obvious answers. It is rumored that this is derived from an unbearable fear of being wrong, likely because he was often wrong about things as a child.

"You fasting bunt!" Joseph shouted for a third time. Presumably at the tome.

"Do you think it's lying to you sir? You know? To save its own skin?" Philip asks, innocently believing that an inanimate object may have a sense of self preservation.

Then, at great risk of exposing his illiteracy, Joseph announced his latest realization: "That word! 'Inanimate' I bet if we can find what it means, we'll know what this book's up to."

"Hey!" Joseph shouts a fourth time, "I'm not illiterate you bunt." Upon saying this, our cunning and delinquent rogue proceeded ill fortuitously to extrude from his cerebral cortex fundamentals which may then collate the pages of his understanding into a cognitive explanation of the mysterious object held in his finer appendages.

"It said you were cunning!" Philip announced innocently.

"Stop calling me innocent." Philip pouted.

Ignoring Philip, Joseph issued his first logical shout, "I will not be taunted by a fasting dead tree!" At this Joseph shook the book violently, likely wishing it had a neck.

.

.

.

Joseph shuts the book.

 At this time, Joseph believes that the book cannot write if it is shut. What Joseph does not realize, is that not only can the book write, but his curiosity will not allow him to leave it closed for long. In the mean time, Joseph continues to sit there with Philip, not saying a word.

 The two of them had recently burgled a basement. But not just any basement, the basement of a wise and powerful being.

Joseph gives in to his desire for knowledge and opens the book once more.

"It still wrote?" Joseph asked rhetorically.

"And it was about to talk about the wizard!" Philip says with a small chuckle.

.

.

.

Sadly, the adventures of Philip and Joseph then came to an abrupt end. Our hero's did not have the cunning to realize they had remained in the basement for far too long to go unnoticed. They likely did not expect that the wizard's prized book, was perhaps safer if left in its magical chamber. A magical chamber which, no doubt, the wizard will promptly return it to...

title: "What treasured lies within" -First submission, wrote mostly out of curiosity for a new style of thinking.

question: Summarize the events of the story.

answer: Two thieves, Joseph and Philip, burgle into the basement of a wizard. There, they find an enchanted tome which writes itself, making commentary about Joseph and Philip. Distracted by the book, the thieves forget to leave the basement. The wizard thus catches them on the act.

question: Which is more clever, the book or the thieves?

answer: The book, certainly.

question: What is the new style of thinking mentioned in the title?

answer: The story is a meta-narrative, where the book found by the thieves writes itself to commentate about them. The story itself is the book's version.


text:
_Crazy Rich Asians_ doesn't hit the theaters until August 2018, but the movie is making waves with its casting for all the right reasons. The Warner Bros. project reportedly cast an all-Asian principal cast for the film, based on the book of the same name by Kevin Kwan. The _Crazy Rich Asians_ book was a bestseller and spawned two sequels: _China Rich Girlfriend_ and _Rich People Problems_.

It seems pretty logical that a story about an Asian couple and an Asian family would cast Asian actors for these roles. Unfortunately, Hollywood has a history of whitewashing. Meaning, the placement of a white-passing actor in a role that was originally written for a character of color. Some egregious examples include Scarlett Johansson as Major in _Ghost in the Shell_. The studio of that movie later admitted that casting Johansson was a mistake. Major was Japanese in the original manga and anime versions of the story.

Jon M. Chu, who directed _Crazy Rich Asians_, told _Entertainment Weekly_ that he stands by his decision to keep the cast entirely Asian. This casting shouldn't be controversial, but the practice still occurs with upsetting regularity in Hollywood. During the casting process, Chu was also able to compile a list of Asian actors who are ready and willing to work. "I think we now have the deepest database of Asian actors that speak English in the world. It was worth it. The best thing we ever did on this movie was cast this cast," he told _EW_.

The author of the story, Kevin Kwan, reportedly felt pressure to whitewash his characters. _EW_ writes that "during one early meeting with one potential producer who wanted to adapt the novel, Kwan says he was even asked to reimagine his protagonist as a white woman. “I was like, ‘Well, you’ve missed the point completely,’ ” he recalls. “I said, ‘No, thank you.’ ”

Ultimately, the movie may be about Asian people, but its themes are universal. Chu says that "it’s just such a beautiful story, to show an Asian-American immigrant going back to Asia and finding the things that overlap and connect us all, things like family, things like love."

question: How many novels are in the series?

answer: Three: Crazy Rich Asians, China Rich Girlfriend, and Rich People Problems.

question: What is "whitewashing" in the film industry?

answer: The placement of white-passing actors in a role originally intended for a character of color.

question: What's an example of pressure to whitewash his characters that Kwan experienced?

answer: In an early meeting with a potential producer, they asked him to consider reimagining the protagonist as a white woman.

question: What's an example of Hollywood whitewashing a film?

answer: "Ghost in the Shell" starring Scarlett Johansson which was originally intended for a Japanese woman.

question: Write a ~5 sentence summary.

answer: "Crazy Rich Asians" is a film starring an all Asian cast. It's one of few examples of films that stuck to their original source material when it comes to casting people of color. They compiled a comprehensive list of Asian actors who speak English who were willing to work. They pushed back on efforts to whitewash the film adhering to an all Asian cast as intended in the source material. It's a film about Asian people, but its themes are universal.


text:
[]

  -------------------------------------
  CONTACT:
  DR. ASHISH AGARWAL
  Room: 128B, Main Building
  CSIR – NPL, Dr. K. S. Krishnan Marg
  New Delhi – 110012
  Email: ashish@nplindia.org
  Ph: +91 4560 8384
  Fax: +91 4560 9240
  -------------------------------------

Rubidium Atomic Clock for Space

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CSIR-NPL has developed and transferred the critical technology of Rubidium atomic clock for space applications to ISRO. A model has been developed at CSIR-NPL and is undergoing further developments at Satellite Applications Center before being integrated in the payload of the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite system.

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Further critical process for development of glass technology of Rubidium bulbs and cells is under development at CSIR-NPL for making the indigenization of space clocks complete.

question: Who is the contact mentioned?

answer: Dr. Ashish Agarwal

question: What city is the contact located in?

answer: New Delhi, India

question: What methods of contact are included in the article?

answer: An email address, phone number, and fax number are included.

question: What has CSIP-NPL developed?

answer: The critical technology of Rubidium atomic clock for space.

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: The article includes the contact information for Dr. Ashish Agarwal, who is located in New Delhi, India. The author introduces information about the Rubidium atomic clock for space.


text:
I’m sitting in the second-to-last row of the school bus, looking for someone to notice how quiet I’m being.
I’ve had a lot of days like these recently. The headache starts around noon, and by the time I get on the bus, my head is pounding and I feel like I’m going to be sick. I never do, but I kind of wish I would.
So every time, I’m stuck. Sitting here. I can’t do anything because it hurts. Doing nothing hurts too. The stringy brown leather of the seats is hot and I hate it.

I’m supposed to want everyone to be quiet. Anyway, my head stings when they’re loud. So when they start yelling too much I glare at them. They feel bad and look away. It doesn’t help.
The first few times they feel bad for you. They try to talk to you and ask you what’s wrong and how it feels and what they should do. But too many times and it’s not interesting.

I turn around behind me where the only other 5th grader is talking loudly, proud that he’s gotten the back seat. Just for today, I think. Every day we race for the back seat. I know it doesn’t seem important but it is. On days like this, though, I walk. I walked slowly here instead of the usual sprinting and shoving, and he still thinks he’s won something. Well today doesn’t count.

Finally I find myself wandering off the bus and exaggeratedly stumbling across the street. The bus rolls away with an aching hiss and I’m just standing there. I don’t want to walk home, but I can’t think of anything better. I walk a few steps and sit down. Everything is spinning and I’m really wishing I could cry. Suddenly there’s a familiar yapping. It should be annoying, but I’m so glad for the distraction that I sit and soak it in for a while before looking. I knew what it was but I looked anyway. I shouldn’t have. It’s bright out. Oh yeah, so the yapping belongs to a neighbor’s dog. There he is.

We talk about this neighbor a lot. Today he’s wearing a floral pink dress and red high heels that he’s clearly just mowed the lawn in. Oh wait, I said he. Maybe I should have said she? I don’t care. My head hurts.
He’s still just sitting there on his porch, just like every day. Well except some days. Some days he’s not there. I think I should be creeped about. I pretend to play with the grass because I still can’t get up. He’s might be looking at me. I wonder what he’s thinking. I wonder if he gets headaches too.

My migraine drops intensity for a few seconds and I need to take advantage of it. I jump up and pretend I’m fine. I walk forward, faster and faster. I make it past two houses until it all comes back, even worse to make up for the time I had.  I plop down on the curb.

Now he’s behind me, the only person outside on the whole street. I force myself to shift on the curb just enough so I can look at him, but pretend not to. Suddenly I realize how stupid I must look, and feel like I need an excuse. Dang it, if only I could cry. Instead I guess I’ll have to smile. I actually manage a sincere grin, sort of like I’m laughing at myself. I pretend he smiles back and maybe even gives me a nod, but I’m too far away and the street is blurry.

It’s time to go. I take a few deep breaths until I get one right, and then I stand up. I’m dizzy but I walk until I reach my front door. No one’s home. I walk in, collapse on the couch, and cry.

title: I'm new here, I've never written a short story in my life, and I'm really nervous. I'm sure this is awful, but could you give me some honest feedback?

question: What is the narrator suffering from?

answer: From severe headaches and migraines.

question: Who is wearing a floral pink dress and red high heels?

answer: The narrator's neighbor mowing the lawn.

question: Explain why the narrator plops down on the curb.

answer: The narrator's migraine had dropped in intensity but then gets worse forcing him to sit.

question: What causes the 5th grader to feel proud?

answer: That he has won the race to the back seat of the bus.

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: The author's first short story is about a boy who suffers from a migraine as he takes the school bus home. He attempts to walk the last stretch home but the headaches get so severe that it causes him to sit.


text:
I don’t know if I want to write to my mother or about my mother.

I don’t know if I want to visit her for the last time while she is in coma or stay here thousands of miles away and write.

I don’t know if I feel sick to my stomach knowing that the person who gave life to me is at the end of her life or rather, I feel nothing.

I don’t know if I will regret for the rest of my life my decision not to see her before she dies or if this decision will fade away into the thick fabric of my life.

I don’t know if I love my mother or not, if I forgave her or not, if now, as she is laying in a hospital bed for the last four months, she is stubbornly waiting for me, her only daughter, to come and tell her that I forgave her.  Or rather, she is fighting the inevitable like she always does; bitter, alone, and fueled by anger.

The name my mother gave me is Revital Siach-bar. I shed bits of my name while discarding parts of myself.

For a long time I didn't know who I was and who I was becoming. What I’m dropping and what I’m keeping.

I am able to write these words because they are not thought and written in my mother’s tongue.
That tongue nourished in mother’s milk now spoiled, and reluctant to yield a thought.
My mother is a package of qualities and sensibilities I don't want to have. I fear that by being close to her, like a contagious disease, I will contract it.

If now I was with her at Herzog hospital in Jerusalem on the last floor before the basement, known as minus four floor, I would look outside the window and watch the heavy rain fall on the city I barely recognize.

It’s a city I left behind with seductive sunsets reflecting on shiny gold and silver domes as the muezzins’ voices are woven in with church bells and the prayers of Arvit raising up from synagogues.  Now, heavy and gray she is dressed in layers of concrete, security checkpoints blocking the flow of life, special lanes are dedicated to police and ambulances speeding with full sirens on.  A city that rigidly divides good from bad, us from them, the sacred from the profane.
If I was in the hospital with my mom I would call her Ima and touch her white hair, comb it back away from her eyes. I would do it gently — very gently.  Smiling to a fading memory of how harshly she braided my hair till silent tears would emerge from the corners of my eyes — smiling as if I let go, as if this two dimensional memory, this black and white image can be cast away in a dusty cigar box of old photos.

Perhaps, if I was with my mother now, I would go to the top floor of the hospital, plus four where the cafeteria and take a break.

I will watch the traffic coming up at the entrance to Jerusalem from above. I would try to guess how angry or fearful people are from the way they drive and honk their horns, gauge how many police and army vehicles are on the road taking the temperature of the coming intifada. Evaluate the situation for myself rather than listen to the news  — they way you do when you live there.
I might go back to her room look at her, hold her hand, pretend I am fearless.  What can she do to me now? I will ask over and over — she is in a coma, I would say over and over.
If I was there at the hospital I would wait for the nurses and doctors to clear, hold her veiny frail hand and I would talk to her, aloud and in hebrew.

I don’t know what I would tell her.  I might say I love you ima, I know you did the best you could, I can let go now and you can too.

Or maybe, I would tell her for the first time how hard it was to walk with her day after day after school to my dad’s grave. To hear her talking to him, whispering, crying, sometimes blaming him for leaving her behind with three kids, sometimes telling him she is going to kill herself also just like he did.

I would tell her how I wished she would look at me, touch me, smile, thank me for cleaning once again the head stone, ask me what do I do day after day for hours there at the grave site.  I wanted to tell her how I memorized the names of all the dead soldiers, their age and their place of death.  How I liked some more then others. How I decided who was handsome and who was not by the sound of their names and who I would have liked to marry if they came back.
How I wished to tell her about the election in my class, for the first time in fourth grade when I was elected to be the president.  How I was worried they chose me because they felt pity for me. They voted for me because of what I didn't have not because of who I was. I would tell her that I can go on for days if she was interested, that I kept all these memories, recounting them for her to know.

Perhaps I would just leave her room abruptly, despondent and gloomy like a teenager who realizes for the first time the smallness of their parents and go to Har Herzel, walking distance from Herzog hospital and visit my dad. Maybe wash the head stone once again and leave another stone on the edge of the grave, wishing I had asked someone years ago why adults do that.
I might go to see the house where I was born and grew up with the poor immigrants from Morocco, Iraq and Egypt. The house she sold one day without telling me.  I would tell her how bitter and disorienting it was to come back from a school trip to a new house never able to say goodbye to him and to the house. I would have to evaluate taking the bus, risking a suicide bomber or drive on unfamiliar new roads navigating through angry traffic. I would go knowing I wouldn't be able to find the little house with the unpaved trail and the lemon tree we planted right after he died.

Maybe I will come back to the hospital and tell her how the house disappeared among big high houses, that Madam Ades is no longer there, that Mr. Cohen and his family disappeared and that my grandmother’s house adjacent to our house is now a villa for the well off new generation of Israelis who park their shiny cars in a garage where we used to hang the laundry.
I will go back there to minus four floor again to check on her, I would try one more time, like I always do.

Or, not go at all, stay here and write.

title: [RF] My Mother

question: Summarize the narrator's internal conflict.

answer: The narrator, Revital Siach-bar, is conflicted about putting to paper the bleak reality of their mother's current condition. The woman who gave birth to them lies in a coma near but not at death's door. Revital ruminates over whether writing about this will make the situation more unbearably real, or perhaps even hasten their mother's death. Also, making things more complicated is the notion Revital has that their mother either wants their forgiveness or she rebukes it.

question: Summarize Revital's relationship with their mother.

answer: Their relationship is a complicated, rich, but embittered one. Revital has respect for the mother who raised them following the untimely and unjust death of their father, for the mother who kept them fed of food but not of dreams in their home in Jerusalem. Revital reflects on how she did the best she could, but how they are not sure that they love her, and they also cannot forget the times she threatened to kill herself-like their father had.

question: Explain why the narrator's father committed suicide.

question: Summarize what the story has to say about family bonds.

answer: This short story provides a brief glimpse into the complex life of relationships within a family. It shows how a child can develop a distaste for and even an outright anger toward a parent if they see that the parent has failed to care for them properly. The author believes that their mother did so in the way of not providing the sort of emotional support one might expect; she was selfish in her anger over their life, and in her grief after her husband and the father of her children committed suicide. The author's mother had to make very difficult decisions, and the author seems to conclude that she did so with the best intentions she could possibly have given the unfair hand fate or God or the universe had dealt her. However, as the author reckons with the deluge of feelings courted by grief, they also come to believe that their mother was often selfish and unwieldy with her love, and as such the author is not convinced that they love her, or that they are equipped to wish her a safe passage from this life to whatever happens next.


text:
Is your antihistamine bad news for your brain? Regularly taking a certain class of over-the-counter or prescription drugs might increase your risk for developing dementia down the line, finds a new study from the University of Washington, Seattle.

In the study, people who popped anticholinergic meds—including some kinds of antihistamines, cold medicine, sleep aids, and antidepressants—daily for over 3 years were 10 percent more likely to receive a dementia diagnosis during the follow up of 7-plus years than those who didn’t use the pills.

Anticholinergic meds block a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine—which has been linked to cognitive processing—from binding to its receptors in the brain. That’s how it causes the short-term fuzzy-mind effects, like impaired memory and attention. But the researchers aren’t sure how this actually contributes to the long-term dementia risk.

“It’s possible that long-term use of these medications leads to changes in the brain similar to those seen with Alzheimer’s disease, such as neuritic plaques and neurofibrillary tangles,” says study coauthor Sascha Dublin, M.D., Ph.D.

(How you snooze might spike your risk, too. Do you have THE SLEEP PROBLEM THAT CAN HURT YOUR BRAIN?)

Ask your doctor or pharmacist whether the medications you take are anticholinergic. The findings of this study—along with prior supporting research—are strong enough to suggest that you should talk to your doc about stopping these meds, Dr. Dublin says.

Of course, you should never stop taking a drug suddenly. But it might be a good idea to discuss your concerns with your doctor, and ask if there are any alternatives that you could be taking that aren’t part of the anticholinergic class of meds.

For example, antihistamines used for allergies such as diphenhydramine (Benadryl) and chlorpheniramine (Chlor-Tabs) are anticholinergic medications. But newer antihistamines such as loratadine (Claritin) and cetirizine (Zyrtec) can treat allergy symptoms without anticholinergic effects, she adds.

(Plus, this pill might be THE PROMISING ALTERNATIVE TO ALLERGY SHOTS.)

RELATED VIDEO:

Paige Fowler Paige Fowler is a health writer living in Chicago.

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question: What do taking antihistamines do to you?

answer: The study suggests they may cause dementia.

question: What neurotransmitter are blocked by anticholinergic medicines?

answer: Acetylcholine.

question: What does the article recommend readers do?

answer: Ask their doctors if the drugs they are taking are anticholinergic.

question: Where was this study done?

answer: The University of Washington in Seattle.

question: Write a ~1 sentence summary.

answer: A new study by the University of Washington links antihistamines to anticholinergics and a loss of acetylcholine in the brain, perhaps leading to dementia.


text:
CAMP LOT A NOISE TROPICALS

[orchids]

THE ONCIDIUM ALLIANCE

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HISTORY

     From Greek _onkos_. tumor or swelling -refers to warty callus of the lip.v The genus was established by Olaf Swartz in 1800. Swartz used _O. variegatum_ as the type species for the genus. His original description, of the genus, was published in KUNGLIGA SVENSKA VETENSKAPSAKADEMIENS AVHANDLINGAR, STOCKHOLM..

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     _Oncidium_ is a very popular genus among orchid hobbyists. With hundreds of species, and thousands of hybrids, available, the Oncidium Alliance has something to satisfy all orchid tastes. In fact, most orchid collections have at least one Oncidium Alliance plant in them. The genus, and members of the alliance, are epiphytic, terrestial, or lithophytic. They have psuedobulbs and are sympodial in growth, with each new growth arising from the previous growth. Plants of this genus range from the diminutive equitants to very large plants. Leaves are distichous (alternating in two opposite ranks), flat and keeled on back side (strap leave), or terete (pencil shaped). The strap leaves vary from very thin ribbon like leaves to the very hard, fleshy leaves. The flowers of most _Oncidium_ species, are generally yellow and brown, although there are a few species with red or maroon. The genus, and members of the Alliance, can be found from the tip of Florida, into the Bahamas, through the Caribbean Islands, and south through Mexico, Central and South America, into Argentina. As can be imagined this wide range leads to a diversity of vegetative and floral form, as well as cultural requirements.

     Besides _Oncidium_, species and hybrids of the following genera are considered to be members of the Oncidium Alliance: _Aspasia, Brassia, Gomesa, Maxillaria, Miltonia, Ornithocephalus, Psychopsis, Psygmorchis, Rodriguezia, Tolumnia,_ and _Zygopetalum_. Extensive hybridizing among members of the Alliance has produced a number of man made genera.
LIGHT

     Oncidium Alliance genera grow well in moderate ( Cattleya) light intensity. Direct morning sun is best, until about noon. Observation of the leaf structure can be your best guide to the correct light conditions for which a type is particularly suited. The terete ( ie;"rat-tail" oncidiums _Onc.ascedens_), or the heavy, fleshy "mule-ears"( _Onc. luridum_) will tolerate a lot more sun than the ribbony, grass like foliage ( _Onc. flexuosum_). Light to lime green colored foliage is an indication of proper light. Dark green foliage, while very attractive, is not conducive to the plant reaching it's full blooming potential. Yellow colored foliage indicates too much light. The "mule-ear" Oncidiums will develop a purplish tint to their leaves in higher light, instead of the lime green coloring. The purplish tint indicates proper lighting for these types. Most members of this alliance can be successfully grown, and flowered, under lights. In very mild climates, most members of this alliance can be grown out of doors, with protection from the hot summer sun, and the colder nights of winter.
TEMPERATURE

      The ideal annual temperature range for most members of the Oncidium Alliance are 75°-85°F. (24°-3O° Celsius) during the day and 55°-6O°F. (13°-16° Celsius) at night. Plants will tolerate temperatures to 45°F (10°Celsius) and up to 100°F ( 38° Celsius) for short periods. At higher temperatures, air circulation and humidity must be increased or damage can occur
WATER

     Oncidium Alliance enjoy frequent watering, during their growing period, but will not tolerate wet feet for extended periods. However, when growth is completed, a two or three week rest period should follow to allow the growths to mature. Generally speaking, the growing season extends from March to October. The frequency of watering is relative to the container, the temperature, air circulation, and the amount of water retained in medium in the container. Watering should be done, so the roots are approaching dryness, before re watering . In the warmer periods, several waterings a week can be done, without worry, if the roots can dry quickly. The roots are sensitive to fertilizer salt build up, so clear water flushes are necessary for good growth.
FERTILIZER

     Oncidium Alliance plants should be fed consistently, when in full growth. During the Spring through early Fall, fertilizing every seven days, with several clear waterings in between, will make your Oncidium Alliance plants happy. In the late Fall through Winter, a light feeding once a month will suffice.      The fertilizer formula should match the potting medium. We recommend non-urea based fertilizers Better Gro fertilizers or Grow Mor fertilizers for tree fern, charcoal, coconut mixes, or various inorganic aggregates medias. Both also have micro nutrients, to provide strength for the new growth, as well as support for the flowers. Non urea fertilizers provide 100% immediately available nitrogen, which urea based fertilizers do not.      For bark media, use 30-10-10 , which is urea based. The extra urea nitrogen feeds the microbes, which are breaking down the bark. Thereby, not depriving the plant of nitrogen.       Whichever formula is selected, we recommend half strength at each application. As with most Orchids, Oncidium roots are sensitive to fertilizer salt build up. Oncidiums are particularly fond of organic fertilizers, such as fish emulsion and manure teas. The organic fertilizers eliminate concern of salt build up in the medium.
POTTING

      Oncidium Alliance do not resent being disturbed, so re potting should be undertaken whenever necessary. The best time is after all flowering has ceased and new growth is just beginning. To minimize root damage, a warm water soak for 10 minutes, will make most roots very pliable and easier to remove from the container.      While most oncidiums will do well in clay or plastic pots. Some large-growing types such as _altissimum, sphacelatum_ are best grown in a wire or wooden basket.The baskets allow free air flow over the roots, and eliminate over watering problems. Others, such as the equitant ( now _Tolumnia_) type species and hybrids, and the"rat tail" _oncidiums_, may be successfully grown on cork bark or tree fern plaques. The equitant also grow well in small clay pot, with out any medium.
     The potting medium must be well-drained, i.e. coarse fir bark, coconut mixes , various inorganic aggregates, tree fern fibers, hardwood charcoal chunks, or pieces of broken pottery, etc. so that the roots can be wet, but then dry quickly. The media supplies only support for the orchid, nothing of a subsistance nature, so anything can be used, as long as it dries quickly. Slow drying media supports fungal infections, such as root rots. Ocassional use of broad based fungicides, such as Dithane M45 or Captan 50% WP helps prevent fungal infections, particularly in fluctuating weather periods, such as fall and spring.

     When dividing Oncidium Alliance plants, always divide into parts with at least four (4) psuedobulbs. Cut into divisions, with very hot shears or knife, then place a dab of fungicide (Dithane M45 or Captan 50% WP ) paste over the cut areas of each division. Add drops of water to the fungicide powder to make a paste, or use a first aid cream for wounds. Remove any dead roots from the divisions, then lay the divisions aside until new root growth begins. Spray with a fungicide solution over the plant and particularly the root area. At that time, usually a week or so, repot the divisions in their new pots. Now the plants can be watered and fertilized as usual, without worrying about rotting them, because they retained no roots in the division. Newly repotted plants should be placed in slightly lower light for several weeks

TIPS

     When you purchase a new plant, always place it where you can watch it for a couple of weeks until it is acclimated to your area. Initially, water the plant thoroughly and place it in a bright location with good humidity.      A preventative spraying of Orthene 75%, wettable powder or in aerosol, on maturing flower buds will prevent thirp damage, as well as aphids and ants. If insects are found on the open flowers, the same chemical can be used to eradicate the infestation, without damaging the flowers. Other insecticides WILL damage the flowers and should not be used. Use Orthene spray as recommended on the label. If using the aerosol, spray from at least a foot away from the flowers. In addition, Orthene 75% does not leave any unsightly residue.       Examine your plants on a regular basis. Always remove the dried sheathing from psuedobulbs to prevent buildup of moisture, and as a hiding place for insects. In nature, the breezes remove the sheath. In captivity, you must remove the sheath. The removal of the sheath also provides more surface for photosynthesis activity. Insects, particularly scale insects, find Oncidium Alliance plants attractive. Also slugs and snails will dine on these plants. Following the label recommendations on your favorite insecticide will usually solve any insect problem. Neem Oil is a safe alternative to insecticide, and has a pleasant citrus smell. It can be used on Oncidiums in side, or 70% isopropyl alcohol and dish soap make a good alternative insecticide for small outbreaks.      The Butterfly Orchids, now known as _Psychopsis_ such as _Onc. papilo_, are successive bloomers. They will continue to bloom from the same inflorescence for several years. At the same time, the Butterfly Orchids will mature additional inflorescences, so do not remove the flowering stem after flowering is completed.
RECOMMENDED READING

-   THE PICTORIAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ONCIDIUM by Mark W Chase
-   HOME ORCHID GROWING, 5TH ED by Rebecca Northen
-   THE ILLUSTRATED ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ORCHIDS, by Alec Pridgeon
-   THE MANUAL OF CULTIVATED ORCHID SPECIES, by Bechtel, et al
-   ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CULTIVATED ORCHIDS, by Alex D. Hawkes
-   ALL ABOUT ORCHIDS, by Charles Marden Fitch
-   GROWING ORCHIDS - BOOK TWO, by J. N. Rentoul
-   GROWING ORCHIDS, American Orchid Society
-   ORCHID OF BRAZIL by Jim and Barbara McQueen
-   THE ORCHIDS OF JAMAICA, by A. Gloudon and C. Tobisch

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CLAN Tropicals (Maintained by Orchids ' R ' Us, Inc.)

question: What's a very popular genus among orchid hobbyists?

answer: Oncidium

question: Where can oncidium be found?

answer: Florida, into the Bahamas, through the Caribbean Islands, and south through Mexico, Central and South America, into Argentina.

question: What type of light is best for Oncidium?

answer: Direct morning sun until noon.

question: Is repotting bad for the Oncidium?

answer: No- they are not easily disturbed.

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer: Oncidium refers to the a genus commonly referenced as "orchid". They tend to grow naturally in tropical climates throughout Central and South America. These plants like early morning direct sunlight, to be fed seven days a week, and don't mind being repotted.