Archive for the ‘Word Press’ Category

Chuco Artist Network helps creative types spread the word in El Paso

Think of the Chuco Artist Network as a social media site for artists -- with a distinctly El Paso flavor.

More than 800 artists, musicians and writers, many working outside the mainstream, use chucoartist.com to network and gain recognition beyond their usual circles. About 80 percent of them are from El Paso. The rest are from elsewhere around the country, but many have ties to the city they call El Chuco.

The site's creator -- photographer and metal sculptor Luis Rodriguez -- started Chuco Artist in 2011 with about $200 and a desire to give local painters, photographers, sculptors, musicians, comic book artists, airbrush painters, poets and other writers a place to share stories, promote events, ask questions and showcase

Rodriguez, 34, had grown frustrated with the limited options available to him in El Paso. The local arts and entertainment scene, he said, can be overshadowed by larger competitors from outside the area, such as traveling exhibitions and touring bands.

"I know I've had difficulties knowing what to do in the art scene or where to go or where to get noticed, and the Chuco Artist Network essentially became a platform for every artist to start from the ground up and to build their own thing," Rodriguez said.

The Chuco Artist Network will celebrate its second anniversary in May.

It has quickly gained recognition and members and has drawn interest from former El Paso artists

Among the network's higher-profile members are border reggae band Radio La Chusma, rockabilly group the Hillside Gamblers, painter Gabriel Marquez, sculptor Ho Baron and author and poet Lawrence Welsh.

Welsh may be one of the most celebrated network members outside of El Paso. He has published eight books of poetry and is a winner of the Bardsong Press Celtic Voice Writing Award in Poetry. He won the 2012 New Mexico-Arizona Book award for his newest collection of poetry, "Begging for Vultures: New and Selected Poems 1994-2009." He also has won several journalism awards, including the Society of Professional Journalists' Bill Farr Reporting Award, the Copley Los Angeles Newspapers Award and the Women in Communications Endowment Award.

Welsh was one of the first to join the network in 2011. He uses it as an outlet for his poetry. "It's a real democratic outlet for the artists in town," he said. "I think as writers and artists, anything that will help get the word out there helps."

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Chuco Artist Network helps creative types spread the word in El Paso

The Last Word: Mauricio Cortese critics should admit sinning against far-sighted Southampton saviour

Heres a question for you and an answer you may well dismiss as perfectly ridiculous. But which Premier League chairmen are looking at this Dortmund team, and justifiably thinking: That could be us in five years? Daniel Levy? Possibly. Nicola Cortese? Most definitely.

Of course, we know what they do have in common. This season, both had the temerity to replace a popular English manager with an aloof whizz-kid from Iberian football one who talked down to the press, and another who couldnt talk to them at all. But if very few Spurs fans would now take back Arry, and duly remember their original outrage with quiet shame, then how bewildering must it feel down at Southampton?

Both the aversion and the therapy have been far more extreme at St Marys. When Cortese replaced Nigel Adkins with Mauricio Pochettino in January, he was denounced from every rooftop. Here was the effigy for the bonfire of footballs vanities. The club simmered with mutiny. Even lifelong Saints anticipated relegation with grim relish. Fans of other clubs expressed scandalised fellowship. Just when the team had found its feet, it had been lurched into a tailspin: it was sickening, embarrassing, enough finally to extinguish the last embers of your love for the game.

Only now it turns out to have been a stroke of genius. As their team glides stylishly up the table, taking the scalps of Manchester City and Liverpool and Chelsea, Southampton fans have quickly acknowledged that they owed Cortese more respect. But for the late Markus Liebherr, who entrusted his legacy to the Italian, it seems by no means far-fetched to suggest that Southampton might have shared the doom of their neighbours at Portsmouth. Cortese has not put a foot wrong so far. If he felt that a former Scunthorpe physio might have reached his ceiling, for now, then just conceivably Pochettino had more to recommend him than most people knew. Which, after all, was not saying a great deal.

Pochettino had played for club and country under one of the prophets, Marcelo Bielsa. As manager, he had salvaged Espanyol from relegation before finishing eighth, 11th and 14th; and did all this while routinely obliged to sell his best players and blood kids. There are teams that wait for you, teams that look for you, Pep Guardiola said. Espanyol look for you. I feel very close to their style of football.

So where are you now, all who vilified Cortese? Southampton fans have taken their medicine with the sweetest elixir. But what of those who pronounced upon another foreign owner heedlessly contaminating the soul of our game? How far were you misled by your own ignorance of a broader football culture? Far enough to wonder now if Pochettino might even look at Jrgen Klopp, and decide not simply to wash his hands of unequal financial odds?

Dortmund are hardly an exact parallel in historic terms, but the present team were assembled inexpensively and owe their success primarily to dynamism and an innovative young coach. If Cortese suspected that Adkins considered survival an ample ambition, he was perfectly within his rights to hire someone who sooner aspired to being Swansea, say, if not Dortmund not yet, anyway.

Pochettino never had money at Espanyol but that will change this summer. And if theres another Michu out there, hed seem as likely as anyone to find him (remember, he came within an ace of bringing Coutinho along with him).

But it is remarkable what he has already achieved with the team as it stands, not least because their signature has become relentless pressing hardly something that can be conditioned overnight. Osvaldo, who played under him at Espanyol, says that Pochettino works you like a dog sometimes you feel like killing him. But it works.

In three full seasons there, Pochettino raised the average number of tackles and interceptions per game from 19 apiece to 23 and 28 respectively. Under Adkins, meanwhile, Cortese cannot have felt he was getting 7m worth out of Jay Rodriguez. Now the pundits are suddenly talking him up for England.

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The Last Word: Mauricio Cortese critics should admit sinning against far-sighted Southampton saviour

What is causing me to lose my Microsoft Word files?

I have been trying to write my life story for my children and grandchildren using Microsoft Word. Unfortunately I keep losing the document whilst typing and not watching the screen. I thought it might be a problem with my Vista PC. A good friend who works with computers helped me retrieve lost documents, and lent me one of his computers, which uses Windows 7. At first it worked fine, but I recently managed to lose a document on his machine. All I am doing is typing normally, what I am doing wrong? Ken Glasby, by email

You have to be fairly determined to permanently lose a document, unless Word or the PC crashes. Even if you try to exit Word it will display a dialogue box asking you to Save your open documents, so dont ignore it. I suspect that you are either accidentally highlighting the whole document by inadvertently pressing Ctrl + A, or triple-clicking the far left side of the page, and the next key press deletes the lot. The next time your document vanishes use the undo function Ctrl + Z to reverse your last actions. As a further precaution check that the Auto Recover function (Tools > Options > Save or in Word 2007 onwards, Office Button > Word Options > Save) is enabled and set it to intervals of 5 minutes or less, and get into the habit of manually saving every few minutes or after each new paragraph, for example.

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What is causing me to lose my Microsoft Word files?

Is the Philadelphia Union's Amobi Okugo the future of the US national team defense? | The Word

"The Word" is MLSsoccer.com's weekly long-form series. This week, Philadelphia Union beat writer Dave Zeitlin looks at rising star Amobi Okugo, who has found his footing after a position change in 2012 and become of the one of the most promising center backs in the league. Can he find his way to success with the US national team, and a shot in the 2018 World Cup?

Amobi Okugo strolls into a Philadelphia restaurant, orders a mango pomegranate lemonade and settles into a window table. The popular Philadelphia Union player is dressed casually in a black t-shirt, jeans and sneakers. A single bead of sweat, perhaps a remnant of the training session that just wrapped up, hangs precariously beneath a new faded haircut.

Outside on Chestnut Street, a group of schoolchildren holds hands and crosses the street in front of a horse-drawn carriage. These are common sights in the area of Philadelphia known as Old City. Just down the block is Independence Hall, the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Across the street from that is the Liberty Bell, one of Americas most iconic symbols. A few blocks away is Elfreths Alley, the countrys oldest residential street, where Okugo recently toured.

It took me a year to finally realize how historic this area is, says Okugo, whos lived in the heart of Old City since first arriving in Philadelphia a little more than three years ago.

But Okugo isnt here to talk about the past. Hes here to talk about the future. A future that looked gloomy just 10 months ago but has now never looked so bright. A future in which Okugo and the Union could return to the MLS playoffs after a disastrous 2012 campaign. A future in which Okugo might very well become the first Philadelphia player to ever earn a cap with the US senior national team while on the Union roster.

And it all started with a roll of the dice by the coach that knows him best.

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OKUGO KNOWS THE QUESTIONis coming and smiles when he hears it.

Its funny but Im used to it, he says. Im sure you guys are getting tired of asking it more than Im getting tired of answering it.

The question that reporters have been asking him for the past 10 months: Which position does he prefer between center back and defensive midfield?

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Is the Philadelphia Union's Amobi Okugo the future of the US national team defense? | The Word

Relatives 'should not have the last word on organ donation'

The practice of organ donation should be changed to ensure that relatives cannot over-ride the wishes of individuals who have elected to become donors before their death, the head of a Government taskforce said.

The number of deceased donors reached 1,212 in 2012/13, and their organs transformed the lives of 3,100 recipients, according to NHS Blood and Transplant. "The progress made has been phenomenal," said Elizabeth Buggins, chair of the UK Organ Donation Taskforce.

But 125 families over-ruled the wishes of their relatives in 2011-12 and refused to allow the donation, despite their names appearing on the NHS Organ Donor register.

Ms Buggins said that it should be mandatory on doctors to refer a potential donor to the NHS Transplant service if their name appeared on the NHS Organ Donor register, the list of individuals who have volunteered to donate their organs after death.

While the law does not give relatives the power to prevent a donation, in practice doctors are reluctant to press the issue in the face of a grieving family who are opposed.

Ms Buggins was speaking as NHS Blood and Transplant announced that it had achieved a 50 per cent increase in deceased organ donors, matching the target set by the task force in 2008.

Ms Buggins said the need for organs continued to outstrip the supply. "People are still suffering and dying waiting for a transplant. Organ donation has yet to become a routine and accepted part of UK society."

The proposed change in the handling of relatives opposed to donation is among 40 recommendations aimed at boosting the supply of organs, including changes to the hospital tariff to "reward best practice" and the withholding of merit awards from consultants who fail to refer potential organ donors.

Ms Buggins said: "Health professionals are very reluctant to do anything that upsets people, particularly when there is a bereavement. They have always supported the family to make the decision that is right for them but they have not done enough to honour the wishes of the person who has died. "

She said that during focus groups held by the task force round the country, members of the public had expressed outrage at the idea that relatives could over-ride the wishes of individuals when they were not in a position to insist.

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Relatives 'should not have the last word on organ donation'