The online course was offered this summer at SHS. Offering the class during the summer had another benefit. With so many students looking to Youth Options and other early post-secondary options, this gave the SHS seniors a chance to get one of their required classes completed early.

The Consumer Education course is usually offered over a full semester as a half-credit course. In the summer course, the students met with teacher Jen Sutton once each week over the six-week run of the class. The students were responsible for classroom work on their own every other weekday.

Sutton said incoming seniors were surveyed for "out-of-the-box" instruction ideas.

"We found kids were really interested," Sutton said of the idea for an online course.

She said students were interested in getting a required class completed, and getting experience with an online course, considering that more and more post-secondary courses are offering online options.

Sutton said 21 students signed up for the course and 19 of them were able to complete all the coursework successfully. She said by meeting once a week, she was able to keep tabs on the progress each student was making. She was also available for any questions from students, allowing the students to work through the new challenges of their first online class.

SHS Principal Shannon Donnelly said Sutton deserves credit for offering a progressive idea to broaden her students' opportunities.

"She was very passionate about trying to find an innovative way for students to master the standards in her class and allow students to experience taking an online class. We discussed the importance of students learning how to manage their time and to experience the autonomy of learning the material on their time, when they are ready to learn it, which fits beautifully with many of the personalized learning philosophies that we are bringing to the Somerset High School," Donnelly said.

This class is also the starting salvo in a restructuring of the approach for summer school.

"The creation of Jen's class also led us to have bigger conversations within the building about how we can reevaluate our summer school programming for our high school students as traditionally that time has only been used for remedial work. Moving forward we will be offering additional credit-bearing classes in the summer so students can open up more time in their schedule during the school year to take more classes (electives, AP classes, College in the Schools, etc.) that many students cannot take now with our current structure," Donnelly said.

Sutton said the Consumer Education course had to be restructured so it would work in the new format, compared to daily meetings with the students. She said she went back to the standards on what needed to be accomplished in the classes. The course ended with each student making a presentation on their results from the class. The course is designed to help students understand the financial responsibilities they will face after they graduate from high school.

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SHS begins offering online courses - Richmond-News

A new biography of James Rose explores his difficult brilliance.

Words! Can we ever untangle them? reads James Roses opening salvo in Pencil Points. Appearing in the definitive journal of modernist design thought, the landscape designers 1939 essay rejects preconceived ideas of formal or informal design and makes the case for an organic and materials-based approachan argument approaching revelation at a time when Beaux-Arts methodologies held sway.

Reading the text today, Roses words cut through the decades, carrying with them equal doses of wit, creativity, and frustration with the status quo. An uncompromising designer from his time in and out of Harvard (he was expelled in 1937, later returned but never graduated) to his death in 1991, Rose is the subject of the latest volume of the Masters of Modern Landscape Design series published in association with the Library of American Landscape History and the University of Georgia Press. Its the first biography dedicated to the landscape architect, who although a prolific writer throughout his career and author of four of his own books, has yet to receive the kind of canonical recognition bestowed on his Harvard classmates Garrett Eckbo and Dan Kiley.

As director of the James Rose Center for Landscape Architectural Research and Designa nonprofit located at Roses Ridgewood, New Jersey, homethe books author, Dean Cardasis, FASLA, is well-placed to untangle the competing forces of Roses career. Few of Roses works survive in their original form, and a spare eight are presented as illustrated case studiesa fraction of the more than 80 projects produced in his lifetime. Much of the book is devoted to advocating for Roses achievements while trying to account for the designers disillusionment with the culture of postwar landscape architecture and his eventual self-imposed exile to suburban New Jersey. Although these two threads are not in opposition, they do place a strain on the narrative, suggesting a portrait of a man whose increasing radicalism over the course of decadesfrom modernism to ad hoc material sensibilities to environmentalismcontributed to his own isolation. He was a rebels rebel from the start, an incisive critic destined to follow his own path, Cardasis says.

Early in the prologue for the book, Cardasis describes his first encounter with a 76-year-old Rose (just a couple years before his death). The passage is clearly loving, but also disconcerting. A disheveled and mismatched Rose steps out of a rusty, egg-yolk-colored 1970s VW van, and Cardasis writes: An incredibly long, almost wizard-like straw hat grazed his shoulders and shaded his face. As he looked up I could see he was wearing glasses, but one frame was empty, and the remaining one held a tinted sunglass lens. In that instant I had my first silent lesson from the iconoclastic modern landscape architect James Rose: Have no preconceptions.

A view nearly without boundaries from inside to out at Roses house in Ridgewood, New Jersey. From Progressive Architecture (1954).

Its from this point that a revolutionary must be nudged into the historical fold. The task isnt easy, though it is most successful early in Roses biography. Cardasis, unpacking Roses interest in modernism, finds parallels in the spare poetry of William Carlos Williams and the easy spatial flow of Rudolph Schindlers Kings Road house, which serves as a precedent for Roses home in Ridgewood. In both projects, the use of outdoor rooms and landscape features illustrates Roses maxim that landscape design falls somewhere between architecture and sculpture.

Indeed, Roses own writings referenced modern artists such as Pablo Picasso and the Russian constructivist Naum Gabo. Rose even wrote that a Georges Braque still life and Kurt Schwitterss Rubbish Construction are interesting suggestions for gardens. The book describes that fascination with collage and assemblage, tracking it through Roses work, where it appears initially in the model Rose made of his future home while in the navy, the materials scavenged from around his military station, or in the scrap metal fountains he improvised in the 1960s and 1970s. The author continues this line of argument to suggest Roses use of recycled railroad ties and asphaltused for the steps and terraces of the Averett Garden and House in Columbus, Georgia (1959)as an example of Roses affinity for found objects.

But later, as modernism gave way to countercultural influences, it is harder to pin Rose down. Cardasis chronicles the designers withdrawal from mainstream landscape architecture and, more generally, American culture, citing a growing aversion to the impact of postwar suburban development on the existing landscape as the cause. He quotes from Roses 1958 book Creative Gardens as evidence: The recipe is simple: first, spoil the land by slicing it in particles that will bring the most dollars, add any house that has sufficient selling gimmicks to each slice, and garnish with landscaping.

Perhaps as a respite, Rose began traveling regularly to Japan and eventually began practicing Zen Buddhism. He went to Japan in 1960, and that started a love affair with the country that went on for his whole life, Cardasis told me by phone. Rose found inspiration in the Eastern tradition, especially in the attitudes to the natural world.

Rose and a carpenter confer during roof garden construction in 1970. Courtesy James Rose Center.

Given Roses then-radical understanding of landscape architecture as an integration of spatial and natural conditions, the banal blanketing of suburban conventions across the United States would surely account for his retreat; however, Rose was not alone in his critique. Other writers, designers, and artists of the period shared his early environmentalist stirrings, so it is strange to find few references, especially given the wealth of parallels drawn in support of Roses embrace of modernism. The book makes brief and tantalizing allusion to significant countercultural figures: Timothy Leary (Rose apparently dropped LSD with him but wondered what the fuss was all about) and Alan Watts (Rose studied with him but then renounced Wattss teachings). It would seem that his cantankerous personality instigated isolation as much as his ideology.

The biography doesnt hide that Rose was gay, though the narrative doesnt put emphasis on the designers sexuality as an overt source of his outsiderness. As you know, Rose lived in a time when being gay was extremely difficult, and I can only imagine how that influenced his life and work, Cardasis said in an e-mail. Because of this and in deference to his expressed wishes not to belabor the fact, I did not explore the issue further than a simple reference to his sexuality in the book. More (or less), I thought, would be inappropriate. The result of this tact, however, is that the biography seems a bit closetedthe queerness in Roses methods left for others to explore at a later time.

Despite his iconoclasm, there were moments that suggest possible connections between Rose and other practitioners. For the 1960 issue of Progressive Architecture, the editors asked Rose, Lawrence Halprin, and Karl Linnthe environmentalist, activist, and pioneer of urban gardeningto review each others work. Roses Macht Garden and House in Baltimore from 1956 was subject to strong critique by the others for its expressiveness, particularly what was termed the incessant angled terraces. While Cardasis characterizes the grouping of designers as something the magazine cooked up, as if it were a bit of a stunt, there was clearly editorial intent here to make alignments between three landscape architects operating outside the conventional mien, with anticipatory ties to social and ecological movements. As Roses work reenters the canon, more research is needed to better situate it historically.

Eleanore Pettersen, the architect for the Paley house, brought Rose on to design the garden. The site was a rocky, sloping woodland. Drawn by R. Hruby (1994); Courtesy James Rose Center.

Did Rose deliberately push away his contemporaries and potential allies? Its likely. He was never shy about getting into arguments with clients, but he also had his defenders. In the 1970s and 1980s, he collaborated with the architect Eleanore Pettersen on some 30 projects. In addition to sharing his design sensibilities in terms of fluid relationships between inside and outside, she often acted as Roses advocate, especially when he put off clients and building officials. There seems to be more to explore here between the iconoclastic designer and his champion. Pettersen apprenticed with Frank Lloyd Wright and was the first woman architect to start her own practice in New Jersey in the early 1950s. One cant help but wonder why someone who probably had to fight against social norms throughout her career would willingly stand up for the volatile Rose. The answer in the biography points again to Roses possessing an irascible genius, the nature of which compelled others to be forbearing. This was a period of his practice when he would meditate in the morning and then go build improvisationally on site without drawings. Pettersen, interviewed in 1992, is quoted in the biography simply telling clients: It will be worth it.

Justification for that value is elusive and impressionistic. Because of that lack of documentation, the James Rose foundation has a limited record of projects to refer to for backup. Although he published regularly early in his career, writing essays and three books from the 1930s through the 1960s, Roses pace slowed afterward, and he published his last book, The Heavenly Environment: A Landscape Drama in Three Acts with a Backstage Interlude, in 1987. Ultimately, it is Roses own home, now the James Rose Center for Landscape Architectural Research and Design, that serves as an interpretative text for understanding the work: handmade, iterative, and as quixotic as its author, with courtyards, roof gardens, and a Zendo, each in various states of repair.

The biography puts forth a belief that understanding Roses later oeuvre comes mostly through understanding his singular methodology. Words are left behind to untangle. You can feel it when you go to the site, Cardasis says. As you move through, the garden seems as if it could go on forever. There was no plan as an approach; he just moved through, adjusting things to make people aware of their connectedness to things larger than themselves.

Mimi Zeiger is a critic and curator based in Los Angeles.

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TRACES OF SELF-EXILE - Landscape Architecture Magazine

Together with Vlad Tenev, second-generation American Baiju Bhatt founded the stock brokerage service Robinhood, which lets users trade public stocks from their mobile devices without paying a commission or maintaining a minimum balance. Their app has over 2 million users. Baiju started Robinhood, his third company with Vlad, when he was just 27. Heres how he works.

Location: Palo Alto, CACurrent gig: Robinhood Co-Founder and Co-CEOOne word that best describes how you work: Scientifically.Current mobile device: iPhone 6SCurrent computer: A 2013 MacBook Pro that is covered in stickers

Im an only child and the son of two immigrants; my parents moved to the United States when my father was accepted to a PhD program in theoretical physics at University of Huntsville Alabama. I grew up in a small townPoquoson, VAand went to school at Stanford, following in my dads footsteps to study physics. In college, I met Vlad Tenev, who at the time was a long-haired, string-bean kid with a quirky sense of humor and a penchant for late-night games of chess. The two of us would become the best of friends and go on to co-create two companies in New York together before starting Robinhood in California.

My ballpoint pen and my Moleskine notebook.

Its pretty simple: an external monitor and my laptop.

I run outside almost every day of the week. Ill usually step out during lunch for an hour-long jog around the neighborhoods of Palo Alto and through Stanford campus. It helps me clear my head and put all the things Ive been thinking about back together in creative ways. Also, by the time I get back, Im energetic and generally feeling awesome.

I use the Notes Mac app. Its simple and gets the job done!

I have always had strong willpower. Over the years, Ive overcome challenges when Ive set my mind to them, which has proven especially relevant as Ive created Robinhood and grown as a leader.

A personal but very important example comes from my childhood. As a kid, I had always struggled with being overweight. When I was a sophomore in high school, I decided I wanted to change that once and for all. That spring, I started exercising every single day, and by the time I started junior year, I had lost nearly 70 pounds. I looked and felt like a completely different person.

Lately Ive really liked the new Arcade Fire tracks, Everything Now and Creature Comfort. Im usually listening to music while I work, though mostly instrumental stuff since its difficult for me to hear lyrics and write or read at the same time. A few albums on heavy rotation are Moon Safari by Air & Selected Ambient Works 85-92 by Aphex Twin. Oh, and for a fun fact: In college I played guitar in a jazz/funk band and I DJed under the moniker Thelonious Moustache.

Last week I read a graphic novel called Head Lopper which just has awesome artwork. Last month I took a trip to Japan and read The Way of Zen by Alan Watts. That was fantastic too.

I spend so much of my time either using technology or thinking about building technology, so I like to spend my free time on old-fashioned, analog activities. Two of my favorite ways to recharge include going for long walks in the forests behind Stanford and playing cards with my friends.

Im usually out of bed by 7AM. I like beating the Bay Area traffic by getting into the office early, plus I get at least an hour most mornings to work on personal projects before Im pulled into meetings.

Alexander Hamilton

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you havent found it yet, keep looking. Dont settle. As with all matters of the heart, youll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Dont settle. Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

The How I Work series asks heroes, experts, and flat-out productive people to share their shortcuts, workspaces, routines, and more. Have someone you want to see featured, or questions you think we should ask? Email Nick.

Read more:
I'm Baiju Bhatt, Robinhood CEO, and This Is How I Work - Lifehacker

The last thousand people who live on Houston's streets are the hardest to help. Franccessa Osho shows why

By Hunter Atkins

In June, just outside Minute Maid Park, Oluwabusayo Franccessca Osho lived in a tent.

In June, just outside Minute Maid Park, Oluwabusayo Franccessca...

Inside her tent, she looked into a mirror and saw a superstar. She turned her face, pursed her lips and narrowed her stare. Oluwabusayo Franccessa Osho shimmied with delight.

Outside, at the corner of Preston and Hamilton, across from Minute Maid Park, thousands of baseball fans glanced at the gray tent. Then they kept walking.

Most never saw the small, lithe woman with Bantu knots and onyx skin.

Osho immigrated to the United States from Nigeria, leaving behind a stable family. In Nigeria, she had earned a college degree in international studies, and in Maryland, she studied nursing. But she also had visions of becoming a supermodel posing for magazines, promoting global brands and entertaining television audiences.

Instead, she wound up in Houston, homeless for the better part of two years. In recent months, as the city implemented ordinances that banned panhandling and prohibited tents like hers, she repeatedly declined offers from outreach groups that hoped to help her off the streets.

Houston has nearly 60 percent fewer homeless people than it did five years ago, thanks to an expansion of emergency housing. But the estimated 1,000 who remain on the city's streets are the most difficult to help.

There in her tent, Osho kept a modeling career on her mind and a roll of toilet paper atop a Bible. She embodied the problem the city faces: What to do with someone who needs assistance but refuses to accept it?

She was fed up with outreach services. Basic housing was not enough. She wanted the glamorous life that she had envisioned when she came to this country.

"I don't have to give up on my dreams," Osho said.

They were bound up in a man she referred to as her fianc, Jonathan. She said she did not need help because Jonathan would be getting them a place soon.

"He will take care of me."

Thousands of Astros fans have walked past Osho's tent.

Thousands of Astros fans have walked past Osho's tent.

'Always watches me'

From the other side of Preston, a crosswalk camera shaped like a pupil kept an eye on Osho's tent. The heightened security around the ballpark was one of the reasons she had settled by Minute Maid Park in December.

She did not care for baseball, but the fanfare could raise her spirits.

"It's nice," she said. "It's good to win something."

Once the season started in April, ballgame crowds trundled past her. Sometimes drivers, pedestrians and ballpark security guards gave her things.

She was comfortable in her tent. Her tiny world. Everything within reach. A blanket patterned with peace symbols. Mountain Dew. Ramen. A pink backpack of clothes, including slim dresses.

She rigged a mirror over a small foldout chair like a makeshift vanity and filled soda bottles with lotion. She used baby wipes to stay clean.

Cutouts of natural landscapes and hair models decorated the tent walls. "I look at a beautiful model because I want to be the face of something," she said.

When feeling trustful, Osho showed her bright intellect and spirit. She cackled, giggled and squeaked like a dolphin at play. Court records list her as 5 feet tall, 90 pounds and 29 years old.

She said she is 31, but she looked half that age. Often she acted like a teenager, too. She said she wanted a phone because "I just want to update my profile picture."

Later, after she got a phone, she kept the mesh tent flap zipped shut and her earbuds in. She listened to Ariana Grande songs about love.

Those songs reminded her of Jonathan. She said he texted her, checked on her, sent her money and promoted her modeling portfolio.

He was romantic, she said. She reached into her backpack for a red candy apple. In her reedy fingers, it looked the size of a grapefruit. Jonathan gave it to her, she said, because it symbolized her beauty.

She made him gifts, too. She filled a heart-shaped notepad with love notes. She designed tank tops with messages for him, breaking apart bracelets, removing the stitches from clothes and cutting out letters from a fuzzy scarf to get the materials. She set aside one special tank top to wear for him on June 20, her birthday.

Jonathan had multiple jobs, she explained. He was a musician. He also worked surveillance for the police.

If she wanted something from Jonathan, she stared into the camera across the street and shouted for it. "Jonathan, he always watches me on camera," she said.

Why would Jonathan let her sleep on a sidewalk?

Osho said he was saving up to buy them an apartment.

"Just a young couple trying to make it," she said.

Using scrap materials, Osho made a special tank top to celebrate her birthday.

Using scrap materials, Osho made a special tank top to celebrate...

"No one can stop me"

To read this article in one of Houston's most-spoken languages, click on the button below.

"I came from a good home," Osho said.

She grew up with two sisters in a dusty, motorbike-buzzing city in Osun State, more than three hours north of Lagos. Her parents divorced when she was 9, and she gravitated toward her father, Chief Samson, who works for the postal service.

She fell in love with American entertainment. She watched "E! News," "The Ellen Degeneres Show" and anything with models. She listened to Top 40 country.

She said she applied for a visa in 2008 and won the green-card lottery in 2011. Her father had relatives who lived in Waldorf, Md., so he paid for Osho's plane ticket there. He supported her goals, however lofty, with the expectation that she would earn a nursing degree at the College of Southern Maryland.

"Nigeria isn't really enough for me to show the world the talent that I have," she said. "In America, they won't take you for granted."

Waldorf is not exactly Hollywood: Her first job was at Taco Bell.

It was no place for a supermodel, and her manager recognized that. She lasted six weeks.

On campus, she glided around in elaborate outfits. Wigs and weaves of all colors and styles. Glistening eye shadow lacquered on and accentuated by eyeliner wings. Butterfly earrings larger than her hands. Furs.

On her birthdays, she wore a tiara and pearls with pink clothes to match the icing on cookie cakes that she bought for herself. In a photo, she posed with a cake and made a look of surprise.

"I practically was her only friend," said Raquel Ortiz.

After Osho's first semester, her focus on academics waned, but her dreams of modeling remained.

"She wanted me to take pictures of her everywhere," Ortiz said.

In 2014, Osho parted with the school and broke off from her relatives. She moved into a shelter.

After a year there, she said, she wanted a change of scenery. "I just decided that no matter how, even if I didn't have money, to come to Texas," Osho said. "No one can stop me."

Perhaps not coincidentally, in August 2015, Maryland police had a warrant out for her arrest on trespassing charges.

Supporters at a church bought her a Greyhound ticket. After two days on the bus, Osho exited at Houston's Main Street.

She did not have a plan. But she did know one thing about the city.

On Tuesday nights in Maryland, she had watched Houston's Lakewood Church on TV. The megachurch's sermons and choir reminded her of the services in Nigeria.

In September, after a month in Houston, Osho asked a good Samaritan to take her to a Sunday service at Lakewood. There, she spotted Jonathan in the front row. She was four rows back. He turned, she said, and looked her way.

She attended Sunday services for a few more weeks, moving one row closer and then another. Jonathan made eye contact with her, she said.

Later, anyone who got to know Osho would hear her speak about Jonathan, the fianc she said watched out for her. But she almost never mentioned his full name: Jonathan Osteen.

As in, the son of Lakewood's multi-millionaire televangelist pastor Joel Osteen.

Jonathan Osteen, the recent University of Texas grad. Jonathan Osteen, the teen heartthrob who leads Lakewood Church's band.

Inside the tent.

Inside the tent.

'Glimmer of lucidity'

The events that landed Osho in a tent by the ballpark in December 2016 included a brief stay with the good Samaritan, a longer stretch at the Star of Hope shelter for women, two attacks by homeless men and two misdemeanors for trespassing, one of which led to 38 days in Harris County Jail.

She liked jail. She got to shower there.

"I always think that jail is horrible, disgusting, scary, but when I get to jail, I'm like, oh my God, so much better than sleeping outside," she said. "They even have TV!"

She addressed her violent encounters with more gravity. She said she was throttled while sleeping by the Theater Center and left bleeding from a punch to the forehead. In another tussle, a drunk at a bus stop split open her lip, leaving a scar on her gums.

She said she fought off both men rabidly. She aimed for their eyes and genitals.

Trauma and homelessness go together, experts say. Each can cause the other.Chronic homelessness tends to hardwire effects of the trauma.

When Osho checked into the Star of Hope, no one expected her to change overnight. The shelter recommends committing 18 months to its long-term facility for rehabilitation and job placement.

"It's not easy to restore mental stability when you're living on the streets," said Eva Thibaudeau, the director of programs at Coalition for the Homeless.

But Osho chafed at Star of Hope. She complained about the food. She hated the mats she was given for sleeping on the crowded shelter's floor. She left after six weeks.

She considered the chance to live freely worth braving the risks under U.S. 59. She did not feel vulnerable, she said: Jonathan looked after her. He was a protector and provider. She said he gave her the tent.

For months after Osho cozied up on the corner, various homeless organizations and the Houston Police Department's Homeless Outreach Team talked with her consistently. They were hoping for a "glimmer of lucidity," Thibaudeau said - a moment when Osho might be persuaded to leave the streets.

Jonathan complicated that. Osho refused services because, she said, she had him.

"She has these moments of great lucidity," said Sgt. Steve Wick, who works on the Homeless Outreach Team. "But then whenever it gets to really progressing with her, it gets difficult."

The police Homeless Outreach Team had "dozens" of engagements with Osho, Wick said. Kenneth Eakins, a Star of Hope case manager, estimated he met with her 65 times, sometimes four or five times in one day.

"It's like, 'Where's Jonathan?'" Eakins said, with his palms raised.

"He is real," Osho said.

But a call to Lakewood Church confirmed what outreach workers had long suspected.

Jonathan Osteen has never met Osho, said Andre Davis, a church spokesperson. Jonathan Osteen does not recall seeing Osho at services and does not know anything about her.

In May, Osho bought a cell phone.

In May, Osho bought a cell phone.

Facebook fantasies

From 6,500 miles away, Osho's family kept track of her through Facebook.

She posted images of wedding outfits and babies. By 2016, she showed off a fianc to complete the picture. She put up his music videos. She called him the "love of my life."

Her Facebook world went dormant in October 2016, a couple of months before she began living in her tent outside Minute Maid Park.

"I don't want to be telling my parents that I'm homeless," Osho said. "When I get back on my feet, and I have a house, they will see my beautiful house on Skype."

She could not bear explaining the truth. She slept in a tent that leaked during frequent storms and baked in the Texas heat. She urinated in Tupperware and defecated in shopping bags. When motivated to get up, she disposed of her waste in a trash can. Other times she just reached out and flung it into a sewer drain.

Her father thought she was engaged to be married.

"Initially she was with my cousin," he said over the phone, "but she left to be on her own."

According to Osho's younger sister, Victoria, Osho did not choose to leave their relative's house in Maryland, but he kicked her out at his wife's behest.

Regardless of what made Osho homeless, her family in Nigeria could not find a way to help, and they stopped trying when she said she rebounded in Houston. They were oblivious to her destitution.

"She's totally in sound mind while in Nigeria," said Victoria, when informed of her sister's whereabouts. "I guess (the) constant disappointment made her lose it."

After a stint in housing, Osho has returned to the same spot outside Minute Maid. But she's discarded her tent and sleeps unsheltered now.

After a stint in housing, Osho has returned to the same spot...

Not hopeless

Read more from the original source:
The woman who sleeps across from Minute Maid Park - Houston Chronicle

Denise Sautters CantonRep.com staff writer

Ida Mae Graves of Canton, 94, is on the move.

It isn't always easy for the woman who uses a walker to get around, but Mark Jones is making it easier for her.

"My mother raised us to keep moving," she said. "I don't know why, but I keep doing it, and it is working for me. I feel good."

Her method of movement nowadays is chair yoga, a practice of modified yoga poses with participants seated in a chair instead of on a mat.

"This practice is about balance," said Mark Jones of Canton, who specializes in both mat and chair practices. "It is good for people with specific conditions such as multiple sclerosis, vertigo really, it is for everybody, but primarily for those who have a lack or mobility, balance or ability to stand for any length of time. Like mat yoga, chair yoga provides participants with core strength, good stretch, improved muscle tone, better breathing habits, stress relief and a sense of well-being."

Angela Caster, 70, and Jean Flitcraft, 82, both of Canton, can attest to the benefits of chair yoga.

"I can bend over without falling," said Flitcraft. "I was getting to be a couch potato before I started taking chair yoga. But, now, my balance is so much better, and my body feels so much better now and I have only been doing this not even a year yet."

Caster said she is much more relaxed now, and her knees no longer hurt like they did before.

"I've taken the class for the past four years and I feel so much better than I did before," she said, noting that because of the benefits she's able to work part time at the Meyers Lake YMCA, where she takes her classes.

Flitcraft also takes classes at the Meyers Lake Y, taught by Krysten Neal of Canton. Graves follows Jones at The Regency, where she is a resident.

"We've taught chair yoga here for the past 4 years," said Neal, explaining the program was certified by Silver Sneakers, a fitness program for those 65 and older that is available through numerous insurance companies. "This is a modified yoga program, seated and standing, for older adults who are basically either fit or sedentary that have had some rehabilitation and want to start back into exercise. It is also good for their mental and emotional state, if they are having trouble sleeping or with stress and anxiety."

Neal, 52, is a fan of mat yoga for herself, but really is not a student of the discipline. Most of her yoga education has been through the Silver Sneakers program.

"I've done it on my own here and there but never have been a real student of yoga," she said. "I do like mat yoga, but I do this to help my students breathe better and get their balance."

Jones' parents got him to the mat.

"When I was 42, I began the practice of yoga immediately upon seeing my then-77-year-old mother who had been practicing yoga for more than 30 years swoop easily into a full forward bend to pick up a kitten. I remember committing at that moment to whatever it would take to earn such gracefulness at 77. That was 14 years ago. Today, I have a whole new respect for the practice."

He received his 500-hour level of Brahmrishi Yoga Teacher Training Certification in 2016 and is registered with Yoga Alliance, a nonprofit organization that promotes and supports the teaching of yoga.

He teaches yoga full time now, at numerous locations, including The Regency, Mercy Medical Center and The Danbury.

"The brain runs the show, " he said. "Every movement comes from the brain, so we are using the body to access and quiet the brain. Basically, yoga maintains the body."

Reach Denise at 330-580-8321 or denise.sautters@cantonrep.com. On Twitter:@dsauttersREP

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Chair yoga helps Stark County seniors increase mobility, stability - Massillon Independent

When I was growing up there were certain things that boys did and other things reserved for girls. Boy sports included boxing, basketball, and football. Girl sportsWell, girls werent encouraged to engage in sports at all. They were the pretty cheer leaders who did back flips when we scored a touchdown. They were the ones we hoped to score with after the game if we were good enough, strong, enough, fast enough, tall enough, and handsome enough.

But, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, The times are a changing, big time. Now women are doing all the sports that were once reserved for men. In addition to female basketball players and footballers, we now have women boxers like Laila Ali, daughter of Muhammad Ali, and Regina Halmich, who popularized female boxing in Europe. We have mixed-martial artists like Amanda Nunez, Holly Holm and Ronda Rousey.

While women have been breaking through the barriers that have kept them out, men are slower to break through the barriers that have kept them from enjoying and benefitting from healthy activities such as Zumba and Yoga, which in my town, continue to be predominantly practiced by women.

I go to Zumba classes twice a week. I love the Latin music and I get a great workout that keeps me fit. There are additional benefits as I wrote inSix Sex Trends From My Zumba Class.I also go to Yoga classes, which I also enjoy and get great benefit from attending. My wife, Carlin, has taught Yoga classes for many years. It took me awhile to try them out. I had accepted the stereotype that men go to the gym. Women do yoga.

But now I find they are a super good work out. The classes I attend still have mostly women in them, but hey, hanging out with a lot of hot, sweaty women, isnt too bad. I mean, someone has to do it.

Here are some great reasons to do Yoga:

Staying flexible is good at any age, but as I get older, its become increasingly important. A lot of my men friends are stiff and move like old men. I like the feeling of ease I receive.

We all want to keep breathing and insure our hearts are healthy. The American Heart Association recommends Yoga. Hand in hand with leading a heart-healthy lifestyle, it really is possible for a yoga-based model to help prevent or reverse heart disease, saysM. Mala Cunningham, Ph.D.,counseling psychologist and founder of Cardiac Yoga.

I love to play racquetball and my buddy, Ian, is a golfer. With those activities, the spine tends to consistently turn in one direction. Yoga helps balance us out, using postures that keep the spine supple.

In a study by theJournal of Alternative Medicine, overweight men who practiced yogalost four pounds in 10 days.Yoga lowers levels of cortisol, the stress hormone that prompts your body to collect belly fat.

Theres nothing more miserable than back pain and nothing that will ruin your sex life faster. Like most guys I know, I spend a lot of time sitting on my butt in front of a computer. Muscles get tight and shorten and chronic back pain is the result. Yoga not only alleviates lower back pain but also helps with fibromyalgia, osteoporosis, and other kinds of chronic pain.

Yoga uses a combination of physical poses, controlled breathing, and relaxation techniques that have been shown to lower blood pressure and heart rate, both of which help modulate the stress response. Its been proven that yoga can also help withanxietyanddepression.

Ill admit it. Ill try anything that can improve my sex life. Both increased libido and improved sexual performance have been linked to regular yoga practice. In a 2010 study of men ages 24 to 60, yoga was shown toimprove all domains of sexual function in men. The breathing techniques and concentration taught in yoga can help men better channel their sexual energy.

Meet the Men Dedicated to Helping Guys Become Healthier, Happier, and Sexier

Louis dOrigny loved mathematics, but the immense pressures of university life, were stressing him out. He turned to yoga to help improve his physical and emotional strength. After graduating in 2013, he followed the well-trodden path of his predecessors and went to work in banking. But he continued to practice yoga and found it a massive support in becoming a success in the business world.

But he became increasingly disillusioned with the finance world:

I wanted to create something to inspire men to embrace their individuality and be the best that they could be.

During a yoga class in London in September 2014, Louis had the idea that he could create better yoga clothes for men than the offerings currently on the market. Diving in, head first, Louis put all of his time and energy into building OHMME. Whats the deal with the name? I asked. I mixed the yoga mantra sound AUM with the French word for man HOMME to make a brand which is yoga focused and solely for men.

Starting a business alone is very hard, and 18-hour days are not uncommon. Louis uses yoga as a way to calm his mind and maintain focus on the important issues in the business. He also partnered with a fellow yoga enthusiast named Jonty.

Jonty Hikmet was a shy boy growing up in North West London. I had all the usual allergies and ailments as everyone else; Colds in the winter, hay fever in the summer and stomach issues as well, he told me. But in my early 20s I started to align myself more with health. He earned a degree in Business Management, but instead of going to work in an accountancy firm, Jonty moved to Buenos Aires to teach English. Not being able to resist a new experience, he discovered yoga. He later returned to London.

Louis and Jonty met through an Ashtanga yoga class that they both regularly attended in Central London. Here they noticed they were the only guys in the class, and they bonded over wanting to be able encourage guys to get involved in yoga practice. They shared a passion for yoga, business, and helping men break through the stereotypes that have kept men from being all that they can be.

They explained:

We are currently theonlymens yoga brand, created to make men feel that its normal and O.K. to do yoga. This is the only business designed by guys that do yoga,for guys that do not, to encourage them to take up the practice, for their health, fitness and wellness.

Ive been trying out their yoga pants and shorts and I love them for all kinds of movement activities. Theyre extremely well made and super comfortable.

Louis and Jonty take seriously author Sam Keens challenge that The radical vision of the future rests on the belief that the logic that determines either our survival or our destruction is simple:

We use Bluesign fabrics, they told me, which means all of our clothes reduce our collective carbon footprint as much as possible. We use the best fabric technology like recycled plastic bottles which uses 35-55% less energy than making new polyester.

If all that wasnt a reason to check out OHMME, they are offering my readers a 10% discount valid until August 31st2017 with the code M3NALIV3, to use at checkout! Cometake a lookand check them out. Ive been wearing theWarrior I Yoga ShortsandDharma Graphite Pants(which are super well-made and comfortable) depending on what Im doing. But check out their whole line of great clotheshere, take advantage of their special offer today, and let us know what you think.

Be healthy, happy, and sexy, my friends.

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This article originally appeared on Men Alive

Photo credit: Getty Images

The rest is here:
7 Reasons Men Should Do Yoga - The Good Men Project (blog)

TROY, N.Y.>> Every summer lots of locals start their Sundays with a stretch on the Troy riverfront for Fitness in the Park.

This popular program, now in its fourth year, is put on by the Downtown Troy Business Improvement District and sponsored by CDPHP.

Depending on weather, the free weekly outdoor event typically draws about 250 people at 9 a.m. each Sunday to Riverfront Park.

This year the program is exclusively offering yoga sessions, which proved to be a favorite with attendees previous summers. Classes are taught by instructors from three downtown yoga studios: Heartspace Yoga & Healing Arts, The Balance Loft and Lotus Wellness Studio.

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Regulars like Nina T. Stark and Shirley Buel, both Troy residents, aim to make it out every weekend.

I think this is such a wonderful opportunity for people, said Buel, noting that likes trying out different styles of yoga with different instructors. It reallys gives you a good opportunity to see all different kinds of yoga, she said.

I think that yoga is one of the best things that people of any age can do, just in terms of good health, Buel continued.

Especially as people age, the women said, yoga is a good way to maintain flexibility, core strength, balance and mindfulness.

There are so many health reasons, medical reasons, that yoga is really good, said Stark, who didnt start practicing yoga until she was older. Now, she regularly attends the downtown Heartspace Yoga studio. I think its helping, she said.

Buel also noted that there were children in the crowd at Sundays class. For those youngsters, Its kind of a nice introduction to yoga, she said.

These Troy yogis and many others are happy to have the classes offered for free in their community.

Likewise, residents from around the region flock to Riverfront Park on Sunday mornings to participate as well.

I love that it brings people into the city, said Erica Rock of Troy.

Rock also loves being part of it, herself. I think its a great way to start your day, she said after class on Sunday. I love that were outdoors. You can feel the sun on you. I think that its very relaxing and its just a nice, quiet time.

Katie Hammon, executive director of the Downtown Troy Business Improvement District, said Fitness in the Park shows off a different side of Troy. As part of our mission, were working to improve the lifestyle of downtown. So this is kind of a come down, enjoy your surroundings and experience what Troy has to offer - in a different way, she said. We obviously run lots of larger events, but this is a different style event.

Fitness in the Park will continue from 9 to 10 a.m. on Sundays in Riverfront Park through the end of August. The next three sessions are scheduled to be taught by instructors from new downtown business Lotus Wellness Studio.

More information about Fitness in the Park and other Downtown Troy Business Improvement District events is available online at DowntownTroy.org.

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Fitness in the Park brings yoga to Riverfront - Troy Record

VANCOUVER, Wash. Molly McAllister took a deep breath and prepared to go into the downward dog pose. She spread her hands apart, tucked her toes and lifted her knees off the ground. She lowered her head and eased into the yoga pose, stretching her hamstrings.

Then she noticed Jacks diaper needed changing.

The Ridgefield mom quickly broke from the pose and pulled 5-month-old Jack onto a portable changing pad spread out over her yoga mat. She talked to Jack as she quickly swapped out the wet diaper for a dry one.

Meanwhile, the five other women in the yoga class moved on. They shifted into the sitting position and began pelvic floor exercises.

Thats when 9-month-old Izebella decided she was ready to eat. Mom Garri Hiles cradled the infant and began nursing her daughter while continuing with pelvic muscle exercises.

Changing dirty diapers. Breastfeeding hungry babies. Soothing fussy babies. Its all OK encouraged, even in Daniele Strawmyres Mommy and Me Yoga class.

There are no rules in Mommy and Me Yoga, Strawmyre tells the moms before the class begins.

Strawmyre, a 43-year-old mother of two young children, began offering the postpartum yoga classes this spring. The class is open to women who are at least four to six weeks postpartum and their babies.

During the hourlong class, moms perform yoga moves and take breaks to tend to their babies as needed. Sometimes babies are incorporated into the class, such as walking on their rear ends and lifting baby while singing The Grand Old Duke of York or stretching down to blow raspberries on babys tummy.

For McAllister, the class offered an opportunity for the new mom to get back into yoga after the birth of her son.

I like doing yoga, and I dont normally have anyone to watch him while I do yoga, she said.

For Hiles, the class was a chance to try something new.

I really enjoyed it, she said. It was my first time doing yoga, even.

Izebella stayed entertained during the class by playing with cellphone cases and chewing on the top of a water bottle. But once shes mobile, Izebella and Hiles will have outgrown the Mommy and Me class.

Once babies are crawling, Strawmyre moves the moms to a different class: Multitasking Mama Yoga, which is for moms with kids younger than 4. That class, Strawmyre says, is a little more chaotic.

The multitasking class really is a free for all, she said.

Some of the kids want to do the yoga poses, others just want to play. All of it is OK, Strawmyre said. While the class may get interrupted, the goal is still the same as the Mommy and Me class: to let moms do something for themselves.

Self-care is really important to being a good mom, Strawmyre said.

Strawmyre was a professional dancer in Philadelphia and taught dance and yoga. After teaching yoga for 10 years, she decided to get her instructor certification.

At the time she began the intensive coursework, she was 6 months pregnant with her son. As part of her training, Strawmyre had an apprenticeship with an instructor who taught mommy and me yoga classes.

I just got so inspired by teaching pregnant women and new moms because the environment is just magical, Strawmyre said.

Strawmyre took courses in prenatal and postpartum yoga, as well as postpartum doula, childbirth and breastfeeding trainings. She offered some yoga classes to new and expecting moms while in Philadelphia and formed a bond with the women in her class. She leaned on them when her son experienced health issues and when her mother died from cancer.

I had created this tribe of other moms and other women, she said. When we moved out here, I was inspired and wanted to do something similar here.

I havent been this inspired. I feel like I can be of service and help others.

More Northwest articles

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Yoga class helps new moms get their move on - The Register-Guard

NEW DELHI: The capital will witness the maiden edition of Enter the Cube, an annual calendar of films organised under the aegis of the Delhi-based Lightcube Film Society, a collective of film programmers, designers, writers, critics and curators. Commencing from August 13, the festival will hold nearly 50 theme-based film screenings in Delhi-NCR. On Day 1, Iranian film Offside (2006) and Senegalese film City of Contrasts (1968) will be staged at Essel Tower club in Gurgaon.

Its founders Anuj Malhotra and Suraj Prasad explore the idea of psycho-geography in cinema by taking films out of conventional auditoria. For many, it might be okay to hold on to the romantic idea of the big screen, but with the proliferation of the digital space, image consumption goes beyond a dark theatre. We explore how the experience of a film changes according to the space you are in, says 28-year-old Malhotra.

Films will be screened in locations outside theatres. Italian horror film Suspiria will be shown in the Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts & Communication hostel. In the coming months, screenings are expected at an abandoned factory, a dilapidated house, a courtroom, Sanjay Van, a girls hostel and in the ruins of a Mughal monument in Delhi.

Under the Degrees of Separation theme, the idea is to manifest how Gurgaon has now become a mechanism that perpetuates class divide and segregation. The Notes from Purgatory theme will contemplate on Delhis colonialist legacy and how it manifests as a trauma that lingers on in the city. Under the Modern Forest theme, a series of films will explore how Noida teeters on the boundary between a modern future and a primitive past.

For Prasad, his village Dhenuki in Bihar existed as a mysterious object in the noon of his memory. I witnessed startling revelations on my return to village. The villagers had never watched films. Besides recreation, I felt that the language of cinema could help them in introspecting their lives, says the 29-year-old.

A cinema-based outreach and education project, The Dhenuki Cinema Project enables the inhabitants to run a local mobile film club and institute an archive of local narratives chronicling their day-to-day lives. The screenings include commercial potboilers and films of Satyajit Ray, Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Bimal Roy, among others. Over the past five years, pilot projects have been conducted in Bihar, Assam and Chhattisgarh. With the first phase ending in three months in Dhenuki and Nagalands Kiphire, the founders plan to take the project to 10 villages in coming months.

The village is a black canvas with no electricity, just shining stars and glittering fireflies. But my passion for films and the hinterland has made me come here, says Sagar Chaudhary, a cine-activist in Bihar who is mapping Dhenuki and setting up a DIY antenna network broadcasts from Dhenuki. For member ship of the annual calendar, visit http://lightcube.in/.

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Coming to a park near you - The New Indian Express

They tapped on Rajeshs shoulder as he was picking up a packet of milk from a local shop, as he always did on his way home from Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sanghs evening shakha or gathering.

By the time he was taken to the hospital in Thiruvananthapuram, his body had 89 cuts, and one of his hands was chopped off. He was not alive for long, but long enough to identify his killers, allegedly Left workers.

Earlier in July, RSS volunteer Kartik Ghosh was repeatedly stabbed to death by a mob after riots broke out in Basirhat over a teenagers Facebook post on Islam. Thiruvananthapuram is 2,500km from Basirhat, but torrents of history have converged to create a uniquely bloody conflict in two states which have a lot in common.

Historys twins

Bengal and Kerala take pride in their intellectual achievements, love football, and have a long and successful history of Leftist politics. Kerala is still ruled by the Left Front. While Mamata Banerjees TMC has decimated the Left in Bengal, her politics in many ways mirrors the enemy she fought for decades to overthrow.

Both regimes use cadres to establish a complete stranglehold on society. Both states have seen the most brutal, gratuitous violence as a widely used political tool. In these seemingly impregnable forts enters the BJP.

After storming to power at the Centre and winning in state after state, Kerala and Bengal remain the last frontiers of Modis BJP and its ideological mentor, the RSS. The entry in both states is hardly going to be easy or bloodless, as we are already witnessing.

Modi and Amit Shahs BJP is a different animal. It doesnt give up.

But Modi and Amit Shahs BJP is a different animal. It doesnt give up.

Bengal spread

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) in Bengal started an online membership drive 10 days ago on http://www.vhpbengal.org and on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. To its utter surprise, it has already got more than 3,200 membership requests.

Of those, 1,200 of them have specifically asked to join the more aggressive Bajrang Dal, while 400 women have sought membership of the Durga Vahini. Interestingly, a large number of the new memberships are coming from border districts like South and North 24 Paraganas, Nadia and Murshidabad.

These are places where there has been mass-scale illegal immigration from Bangladesh, the demography has changed and Muslims are in majority or could surpass Hindu populations in the future.

The VHP and Bajrang Dal are planning massive Janmasthami celebrations in each block. They will also launch their campaign to ban cow slaughter in Bengal on the occasion and culminate it during Durga Puja in October.

Sangh plans to rekindle the great Hindu spiritual traditions in Bengal and Kerala, pushed underground by decades of Communist onslaught. While Bengal is the land of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Bama Khepa, Ramkrishna Paramhans, Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo, Kerala has been enriched by some of our greatest saints like Adi Shankaracharya, Sri Narayana Guru, Sri Chattambi Swamikal and Swami Chinmayananda.

Kerala surge

There have been 14 murders of RSS workers in the last 13 months. The Lefts nervousness and desperation is not unfounded. Saffron forces have been gaining mainly at the cost of the Left, especially in the south Kerala belt stretching from Kochi to Ernakulam to Trivandrum.

Although Guru Golwalkars programme was attacked in 1948 and the first political murder of a Sangh worker dates back to 1969, the migration from the Left to the RSS started in rural Kerala 1977 onwards. Many in the CPI(M) cadre, disappointed with the partys stand on Emergency, started changing camps.

This also triggered one of the most violent phases, with the Left deciding to stop these desertions at any cost. Kerala, interestingly, has the highest number of RSS shakhas in India: 5,500. But this didnt translate into votes so far.

Since the Congress is seen as a Christian-Muslim party, the Sangh cadre tactically voted for the Left in the elections. However, that is changing.

In the last Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in the state, the BJPs vote share has gone up from 7-9 per cent traditionally to 16 per cent. Left, which was also the voice of the Hindus in the state, has decided to strengthen its Muslim base. Today, the SFI secretary to the Kannur district president is Muslim.

Out of 74 youths arrested nationwide by NIA for ISIS links, the highest, 24, is from Kerala. They have been arrested from the Lefts "party villages", Stalinist townships where every resident is a cadre, and even the police fear to venture inside to arrest criminals.

Ironically, this has created tremendous unrest among the Lefts traditional votebank and the saffron camp is gaining. While the BJP-RSS is showing a fair bit of deftness in making inroads, the battles for Bengal and Kerala are going to be long, violent ones.

In both places, blood begins where political finesse ends.

(Courtesy: Mail Today.)

Also read: How the Right-biased media is trying to paint Kerala as a communal warzone

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Why BJP's final frontiers Bengal and Kerala will be a long, bloody battle - DailyO