Highlights of the Olympic games in Vancouver

"Faster, higher, stronger!"

Thrilling, exciting, amazing, wonderful, unforgettable, reckless and even hair-raising and nail-biting at times...All this we can say about the Olympic games held in Vancouver. Our newspaper's observer has been  keeping  a close watch on the situation there during 2 weeks in order to inform our readers as soon as it is possible. 
It goes without saying that  The 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver has thrilled millions of people across the whole world. We've made a survey and  managed to know that coverage from Vancouver reached nearly every corner of the globe, and demonstrated the power of digital media in sharing the Olympic values. We conviced that this breakthrough of The  Games will be remembered as a landmark event in the emergence of mobile phones as a multi-media platform. 
It must be mentiones that the seven winter Olympic sports that have been  on show in Vancouver were luge, skiing, skating, ice hockey, biathlon, bobsleigh and curling.
A real sensation has become the victory of 20  Canadian  hockey players. Some may call hockey the sport of Canada’s men, but these female players  who fought their way to Olympic gold proved that hockey belongs just as much to the women. This news has just hit headlines world-wide and has become the-front page event in all newspapers but reading our newspaper you learn everything earlier as we try to keep our readers abreast of the latest events.
The forth day of the Olympic the men's downhill has taken place. United States skier Bode Miller had taken an early lead with a blisteringly quick time of 1:54.40, before Norway’s Aksel Lund Svindal moved into the gold medal position, pipping Miller’s time by just 0.02 seconds,  but both were eclipsed by 32-year-old Swiss skier Defago, who hurtled down the Dave Murray Run in a spectacular time of 1:54.31. It was really a landslide victory. Our congratulations!
Another remarkable event has been on 27 February. Thtat day saw Canada and the USA produce a gold medal game in the men’s ice hockey that will go down in history from our point of view , as the hosts grabbed a dramatic overtime win thanks to star player Sidney Crosby.
Summing up, the Olympic 2010 has been really sensation and has become the main item of the news being the front-page headline far and wide. 
This was our review on the current events. We'll keep you always informes as the news develops in the near future.

Designed by time, shaped by life..

The main item of news today is the world's first moving skyscraper. A building which actually moves, changes shape and yet manages to stay erect. Isn't it incredible and unbelievable?  This news has hit the headlines and  has become a sensation that attracts attention of people all over the world. Our reporter keeps a close watch on the situation. We have just interviewed the visionary architect and creator of the Dynamic Tower who has launched this extraordinary project and outlined us the situation:

"It's the first building that rotates, moves, and changes shape," said  David Fisher  at a news conference in New York.
"This building never looks the same, not once in a lifetime," he added. The 420-metre (1,378-foot) building's apartments would spin a full 360 degrees, at voice command, around a central column by means of 79 giant power-generating wind turbines located between each floor. 

Without doubt, it contributes to the development of  brand- new high technologies and it's really the  new era of architecture.

We shall keep you informed as the news about this project develops. Stay with us!

Emily Dickinson

"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else".

Emily Dickinson

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. She became known for her penchant for white clothing and her 
reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most of her friendships were therefore carried out by correspondence. Dickinson's poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends
 She was born at the family's homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts, on December 10, 1830, into a prominent, but not wealthy, family.By all accounts, young Emily was a well-behaved girl. On an extended visit to Monson when she was two, Emily's Aunt Lavinia described Emily as "perfectly well & contented—She is a very good child & but little trouble." Emily's aunt also noted the girl's affinity for music and her particular talent for the piano, which she called "the moosic".Dickinson attended primary school in a two-story building on Pleasant Street.Her education was "ambitiously classical for a Victorian girl". Her father wanted his children well-educated and he followed their progress even while away on business. When Emily was seven, he wrote home, reminding his children to "keep school, and learn, so as to tell me, when I come home, how many new things you have learned.

On September 7, 1840, Dickinson and her sister Lavinia started together at Amherst Academy. Dickinson spent seven years at the Academy, taking classes in English and classical literature, Latin, botany, geology, history, "mental philosophy," and arithmetic. She had a few terms off due to illness: the longest absence was in 1845–1846, when she was only enrolled for eleven weeks.
Dickinson was troubled from a young age by the "deepening menace" of death, especially the deaths of those who were close to her. When Sophia Holland, her second cousin and a close friend, grew ill from typhus and died in April, 1844, Emily was traumatized.Recalling the incident two years later, Emily wrote that "it seemed to me I should die too if I could not be permitted to watch over her or even look at her face." She became so melancholic that her parents sent her to stay with family in Boston to recover. With her health and spirits restored, she soon returned to Amherst Academy to continue her studies.During this
period, she first met people who were to become lifelong friends and correspondents, such as Abiah Root, Abby Wood, Jane Humphrey, and Susan Huntington Gilbert (who later married Emily's brother Austin)
When she was eighteen, Dickinson's family befriended a young attorney by the name of Benjamin Franklin Newton. According to a letter written by Dickinson after Newton's death, he had been "with my Father two years, before going to Worcester – in pursuing his studies, and was much in our family." Although their relationship was probably not romantic, Newton was a formative influence and would become the second in a series of older men (after Humphrey) that Dickinson referred to, variously, as her tutor, preceptor or master
From the mid-1850s, Emily's mother became effectively bedridden with various chronic illnesses until her death in 1882. Writing to a friend in summer 1858, Emily said that she would visit if she could leave "home, or mother. I do not go out at all, lest father will come and miss me, or miss some little act, which I might forget, should I run away – Mother is much as usual. I Know not what to hope of her". As her mother continued to decline, Dickinson's domestic responsibilities weighed more heavily upon her and she confined herself within the Homestead. Forty years later, Lavinia stated that because their mother was chronically ill, one of the daughters had to remain always with her.Emily took this role as her own, and "finding the life with her books and nature so congenial, continued to live it
Withdrawing more and more from the outside world, Emily began in the summer of 1858 what would be her lasting legacy. Reviewing poems she had written previously, she began making clean copies of her work, assembling carefully pieced-together manuscript books. The forty fascicles she created from 1858 through 1865 eventually held nearly eight hundred poems. No one was aware of the existence of these books until after her death.
The first half of the 1860s, after she had largely withdrawn from social life, proved to be Dickinson's most productive writing period. Modern scholars and researchers are divided as to the cause for Dickinson's withdrawal and extreme seclusion. While she was diagnosed as having "nervous prostration" by a physician during her lifetime,  some today believe she may have suffered from diseases as various as agoraphobia and epilepsy
In direct opposition to the immense productivity that she displayed in the early 1860s, Dickinson wrote fewer poems in 1866.Beset with personal loss as well as loss of domestic help, it is possible that Dickinson was too overcome to keep up her previous level of writing.Carlo died during this time after providing sixteen years of companionship; Dickinson never owned another dog. Although the household servant of nine years had married and left the Homestead that same year, it was not until 1869 that her family brought in a permanent household servant to replace the old one. Emily once again was responsible for chores, including the baking, at which she excelled.
On June 16, 1874, while in Boston, Edward Dickinson suffered a stroke and died. When the simple funeral was held in the Homestead's entrance hall, Emily stayed in her room with the door cracked open. Neither did she attend the memorial service on June 28.She wrote to Higginson that her father's "Heart was pure and terrible and I think no other like it exists." A year later, on June 15, 1875, Emily's mother also suffered a stroke, which produced a partial lateral paralysis and impaired memory. Lamenting her mother's increasing physical as well as mental demands, Emily wrote that "Home is so far from Home".
Although she continued to write in her last years, Dickinson stopped editing and organizing her poems. She also exacted a promise from her sister Lavinia to burn her papers.Lavinia, who also never married, remained at the Homestead until her own death in 1899.

 In the fall of 1884, she wrote that "The Dyings have been too deep for me, and before I could raise my Heart from one, another has come." That summer she had seen "a great darkness coming" and fainted while baking in the kitchen. She remained unconscious late into the night and weeks of ill health followed. On November 30, 1885, her feebleness and other symptoms were so worrying that Austin canceled a trip to Boston.She was confined to her bed for a few months, but managed to send a final burst of letters in the spring. What is thought to be her last letter was sent to her cousins, Louise and Frances Norcross, and simply read: "Little Cousins, Called Back. Emily". On May 15, 1886, after several days of worsening symptoms, Emily Dickinson died at the age of 55. Austin wrote in his diary that "the day was awful ... she ceased to breathe that terrible breathing just before the [afternoon] whistle sounded for six."Dickinson's chief physician gave the cause of death as Bright's disease and its duration as two and a half years.
Dickinson was buried, laid in a white coffin with vanilla-scented heliotrope, a Lady's Slipper orchid, and a "knot of blue field violets" placed about it.The funeral service, held in the Homestead's library, was simple and short; Higginson, who had only met her twice, read "No Coward Soul Is Mine", a poem by Emily Brontë that had been a favorite of Dickinson's. At Dickinson's request, her "coffin [was] not driven but carried through fields of buttercups" for burial in the family plot at West Cemetery on Triangle Street.

THE ANGEL OF JANUARY

The angel of January teaches us to look within, to take stock of ourselves and our lives. And I think, it's really a nice idea to take advantage of this moment during the month.

The January angel keeps us company as we ponder over those long, cold winter nights, helping us to be honest with ourselves and to be patient at the same time. Conveying the wisdom of an elder, the January angel takes our hand as we seek to glean understanding from our lessons from the past year. With support such as this, we can give ourselves both recognition and admonition in their turn. With this help, we are able to chart a new course or alter our present one. We seek and recieve the companionship of the angel of January to warm us through the winter of our introspection.

Knitted graffiti

I want to introduce you a new direction in the knitting created by a woman from Texas who was unsatisfyed with urban sceneries  and as a result has decorated her city by means of  the knitted graffiti. It's really creative, incredible and unbelievable. When I first saw it I was really stricken.
 Have you ever seen a sweater for tank or for trees? If you haven't done it then look at these amazing pictures of so-called urban graffiti or yarnbombing:) Imagine if our trees and lamp posts would be "dressed" in such  pretty clothes. By the way, it's  a nice idea, isn't it?

Winter has come!

I want to congratulate everyone on the first snow!! It has encouraged me to put this wonderful and entertaining poem about winter there.  I am sure that winter should be winter with soft, deep snow and snowdrifts everywhere! However, it 's a  real rarity in our surroundings as we usually have so-called green winter with no snow. Nevertheless, this quite childish poem makes us dream of  such a fairytale in winter:)

THE ANGEL OF DECEMBER

The angel of December is the angel of generosity.


The December angel celebrates with us this time of giving gifts to all the wild creatures and to all God's children. The angel of December leads us to join hands with people of all races and relogions, recognizing that we are children of the same creator, and we share the responsibility of bringing joy and health upon the earth. 
Inspired by December's angel, we can celebrate this season of brotherhood by doing one act of kidness everyday, going out of our way to bring warmth, light and happiness into another's life.