Cliché: An Introduction

Before writing the call for papers for this issue, I conducted an online search for 'cliché in writing.' Predictably, the search produced dozens of pages with tips for writers: '12 Clichés all Writers Should Avoid' (Klems), 'Avoiding Clichés in Writing' (Writer’s Web), and one article brewing dangerously close to a perfect meta-cliché storm: '681 Clichés to Avoid in Your Creative Writing' (Luke). Cautions about clichés extend to both creative and academic communities. This introduction offers thoughts on these academic recommendations and discusses the ab(use) and (un)necessity of clichés

Is there a crisis of participatory planning?

The critical literature on participation warns that a focus on 'consensus' evades the political in planning, preventing citizens from confronting and challenging discourse and prevailing orthodoxy about the way the urban ought to be constituted. These critiques raise important questions about the efficacy of participatory planning and its political formation. Moreover, the extent to which citizen's participation can ever challenge dominant trajectories has reached a point of conceptual 'crisis'. In this article, I explore the different ways in which participation manifests from the politicising participatory moments in planning. Examining a single case study in Melbourne, Australia, I draw upon 15 key informant interviews with community campaigners who mounted a successful campaign to defeat the controversial East West Link road project. By examining the formal and informal political manifestations of participation over a period of 2 years, this article challenges the sentiment that there is a crisis of participatory planning. It shows how decisions to engage the citizenry in prescribed ways induce other manifestations and formations of citizen's participation through politics and how these manifestations garner a pervasive and influential trajectory to reshape participatory planning

Marshall Legacy Institute 2011 Annual Report

This past year has been one of accomplishment and growth for the Marshall Legacy Institute. We provided critically needed assistance to some of the most landmine-affected regions of the world. Our Mine Detection Dog Partnership Program (MDDPP) put 22 lifesaving dogs into service in Afghanistan, Angola, and Sri Lanka. Our Children Against Mines Program (CHAMPS) engaged thousands of American schoolchildren on an important global humanitarian issue and linked them with their peers in mine-affected communities. Dozens of landmine survivors received medical assistance and vocational training through our Survivors’ Assistance programs in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, and Yemen, while at-risk populations in Bosnia-Herzegovina received Mine Risk Education through an innovative partnership with the Fantomi Sitting Volleyball team comprised of inspirational landmine survivors. History has shown that the end of violence cannot be the beginning of peace when chaos, desperation, and fear prevail. Landmines, which may lie hidden beneath the soil for decades, force families to make intolerable decisions. Parents weigh the possibility of injury or death from mines as they tend the land to place food on their tables. Children risk life and limb as they walk to school or play in the fields. While threatening hundreds of thousands daily, landmines also inhibit access to critical resources, prevent the return of the internally displaced, and impede agricultural production and infrastructure development, thereby stifling the economic activity that leads to peace and stability. MLI’s work in war-torn countries offers sustainable solutions that provide hope and empowerment for a brighter future. Through cooperation and partnership with the U.S. Government, international mine-action organizations, indigenous demining groups, and concerned citizens, we continue to help eliminate the humanitarian dangers and destabilizing effects of landmines and other explosive remnants of war. Together, our efforts can replace landmines and fear with opportunity and hope. As we enter 2012, I look forward to continue building upon the generous public and private support that enables MLI to help create a better and safer world free of landmines

Delivering social housing: examining the nexus between social housing and democratic planning

The construction of social housing in gentrifying neighbourhoods can ignite contestation, revealing tensions between economic imperatives, social policy and neighbourhood change. With a view to understanding how the convergence of these agendas preserve unpopular, but socially critical housing infrastructure, the aim of this paper is to explore how the challenges social housing implementation encounters across these agendas intersect with a broader agenda for local democratic planning. Using social housing as our empirical focus and directing attention to the gentrifying local government area of Port Phillip in Victoria, Australia, this paper reveals how a council's main asset to support implementation - its policy frameworks - creates an urban narrative of social inclusivity and diversity. Through this case, we illustrate how elected officials and some residents draw from these policies to interject into episodes of community contestation, which we argue presents opportunities to expose and renew commitments to social housing over space and time

Dist. #110

Information on District 110, which was the same as Rosebud until Rosebud was moved. The school was located one mile west and three miles south of Comstock in Custer County, Nebraska.https://openspaces.unk.edu/schoolbuildings/1038/thumbnail.jp

Ruth Hansen

Oral history interview with Ruth Hansen, in Hastings, Nebraska. Note: this oral history has not yet been transcribed. To request transcription, please contact [email protected]

Helen Hanika

Oral history interview with Helen Hanika, who both attended a country school and went on to be a county superintendent. Interview took place in Falls City, Nebraska. Note: this oral history has not yet been transcribed. To request transcription, please contact [email protected]

Ash Hollow Rock - Dist. #55

Information on Ash Hollow Rock School, also called Clary School, located 5 miles southeast of Lewellen in Garden County, Nebraska.https://openspaces.unk.edu/schoolbuildings/1069/thumbnail.jp

Good Cheer - Dist. #48

Information on Good Cheer School, located 3 1/2 miles north and 1/2 mile east of Madison in Madison County, Nebraska. Includes several student papers documenting the history of the school.https://openspaces.unk.edu/schoolbuildings/1090/thumbnail.jp

Mildred Flodman Et Al

Miriam Flodman, a long time teacher in Polk County, Nebraska, talks about the history of the schools in that area. There is also conversation with other long-time teachers, held at the Polk County Historical Society. Note: this oral history has not yet been transcribed. To request transcription, please contact [email protected]