All posts tagged: proposal

Not that Kind of Proposal by Victoria Lavine

Not that Kind of Proposal by Victoria Lavine

Published by Jenni Sidey

There is a particular ache in building perfect love stories for other people while your own keeps collapsing. Victoria Lavine sets her second novel, Not that Kind of Proposal, right on top of that ache, then buries it under cake tastings, cat-nail trims, and one gloriously meddlesome grandmother. What comes out is a romantic comedy with a lump in its throat, and it mostly earns both the laughing and the crying. The Premise, Kept Spoiler-Free Gracie Holland plans weddings at Larkwood, an ivy-smothered Rhode Island estate where she also happens to live, folded into a tiny guest cottage and still nursing a breakup she has not quite survived. When Larkwood’s beloved owner dies, the property passes to her grandson, Jude, a divorce lawyer who has built an entire personality around distrusting the very institution Gracie sells for a living. He wants the estate sold before summer’s end. She wants it saved. So she pitches the kind of bargain only a hopeless romantic would dream up: let her plan a wedding for her own ex, right …

What to know about California’s new ‘Zone Zero’ fire-safety proposal

What to know about California’s new ‘Zone Zero’ fire-safety proposal

Published by Sam Flores

After years of heated debates among fire officials, scientists and local advocates, California’s Board of Forestry and Fire Protection released new proposed landscaping rules for fire-prone areas Friday that outline what residents can and can’t do within the first five feet of their homes. Many of these proposed rules — designed to reduce the risk of a home burning down amid a wildfire — have wide support (or at least acceptance); however, the most contentious by far has been whether the state would allow healthy plants in the zone. Many fire officials and safety advocates have essentially argued anything that can burn, will burn and have supported removing virtually anything capable of combustion from this zone within five feet of houses, dubbed “Zone Zero.” They point to the string of devastating urban wildfires in recent years as reason to move quickly. Yet, researchers who study the array of benefits shade and extra foliage can bring to neighborhoods — and local advocates who are worried about the money and labor needed to comply with the regulations …

Puppy love: why asking my boyfriend to coparent Basil the greyhound was the most important proposal of all

Puppy love: why asking my boyfriend to coparent Basil the greyhound was the most important proposal of all

Published by Sam Flores

Recently I got down on one knee and presented my boyfriend with some jewellery, and asked if he would commit to caring for a very long, cute, stinky boy. While this is an apt description of me, I was not asking him to marry me and I was not presenting a ring – I was asking him an even more important question: would he consent to having his phone number engraved next to mine on my long stinky dog’s collar, complete with a cute little heart tag featuring our digits? He said yes! I’ve been thinking a lot about relationship milestones recently because they’re a delicate alchemy – rush things too soon in that early romance fever and you could end up sharing a mortgage with someone getting “really into” close-up magic and considering it “could be a whole career”. There really should be some kind of law forbidding you from making big life decisions or operating forklifts when you’re in those early lovestruck days. When is the right time to meet parents, or move …

Melania’s robotic ‘modest proposal’

Melania’s robotic ‘modest proposal’

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — This week the White House debuted a humanoid robot that walks and talks, and — according to Melania Trump, who introduced the machine — is a prototype for a “teacher” named Plato who will always be “patient and available” in offering the entire corpus of human knowledge in the comfort of your own home. Three hundred years ago, Jonathan Swift satirized such chimerical and anti-humanistic applications of human knowledge in “Gulliver’s Travels.” Among the places Gulliver visits is a scientific academy where a giant machine containing the inventor’s entire vocabulary is spun and turned to create phrases and sentences: basically a large language model for its time. Elsewhere in the book, Gulliver witnesses the uses of instruments that kill, rather than heal, their subjects, and encounters a race of creatures who achieve the foolish human goal of immortality, to disastrous results. An Anglo-Irish clergyman, dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and author of volumes of wry poetry, political pamphlets and witty satire, Swift wasn’t only a satirist, but one whose ends and means were …

Between the Proposal and the Protest

Between the Proposal and the Protest

Published by Sam Flores

This semester, as I teach an online writing course at a Southern California community college, I keep asking: How do you truly engage students in a digital classroom? There are 26 students on my roster right now, one more than the cap, but I know from experience that by the time March rolls around, that number will have thinned out to the high teens. The class is asynchronous. I record lectures, post them, and students do their work whenever they can find time. We never see each other. Not really. Unless a student asks for a conference, which is rare in a way that, if I think too long about, makes me a bit sad. The first big assignment for this course is a 1,200 word op-ed. I let them pick their own topics, which doesn’t always make things easier, depending on the student. They read opinion pieces from The San Diego Union-Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times (I grew up in New Jersey, after all). I sprinkle …

Less-than-perfect organs for transplant list recipients is Medicare’s latest proposal

Less-than-perfect organs for transplant list recipients is Medicare’s latest proposal

Published by Daniella Wilson

New regulations for the United States’ organ transplant system have been proposed, aiming to boost the utilisation of “less-than-perfect” organs and introduce enhanced safety standards for donor organizations. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced on Wednesday that the proposed rules would significantly strengthen its oversight of Organ Procurement Organizations (OPOs), the entities responsible for retrieving organs from deceased donors. With over 100,000 individuals currently on the US transplant waiting list – the vast majority seeking a kidney – thousands tragically die each year awaiting a new organ. This move forms part of an ongoing overhaul of the intricate transplant system, which commenced during a previous administration. The announcement follows a concerning trend: deceased organ donations saw a decline last year for the first time in over a decade, raising fears of eroding public trust in the system. While the total number of organ transplants did rise to just over 49,000 last year, compared with 48,150 the year prior, the rate of this year-over-year increase has notably slowed. Dr Mehmet Oz, CMS Administrator, …