One of ATI’s training partners TrainingEtc has a community service program that ATIcourses wants to publicize. You can read more about their volunteer program at http://www.trainingetc.com/illumanation/

A Wider Circle is one of their selected charities.

Mark Bergel founded A Wider Circle in 2001 and has since emerged as a leader in the fight against poverty, winning multiple awards for his work. In 2010, A Wider Circle was chosen as one of People Magazine and Major League Baseball’s “All Stars Among Us.”  The Catalogue for Philanthropy named his organization “one of the finest small charities Greater Washington has to offer.”

Mark’s passion to see poverty end, along with his compassion for the people he serves, sets him apart. He actually gave up his own bed four years ago with the belief that all children deserve a bed of their own, and until he sees that become a reality, sleeping on the floor or the couch each night serves as a reminder that the fight has not yet been won.

Recently, /training/etc’s Stacie Tippett spent time with Mark at A Wider Circle’s warehouse and had the opportunity to ask him about his mission.
1.Can you tell me what led you to start A Wider Circle?

I couldn’t stand looking at the great needs all around me and not do anything anymore. The cycle of poverty needs to be broken.

I was a teacher at American University, and I asked my students to volunteer. Actually, I required them to volunteer and made it part of their grade. I didn’t want to be hypocritical, so I volunteered with them. I drove a truck delivering meals to families in poverty, and I remember pulling over on the side of Georgia Avenue overwhelmed by the things I saw in those homes. . . it was like a different world. I knew right then and there that I needed to do something to change it. I quit my job and gave myself to all this in 2001, and in 2005 we saw things take off. There’s many long days, and we work seven days a week. We need to be there for the people when they need us. Passion to see this end is what keeps me going.

2.How did you come up with the name A Wider Circle?

There’s a quote by Albert Einstein that says:

….we experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion…

Our name was born out of that idea. We like to think of what we do as compassion on steroids.

3.Can you tell me about the six programs you have?

Our largest program is Neighbor to Neighbor, where we provide the furniture you see in our showroom to families moving out of shelters or who might be living without it now. There’s no income or geographic requirement; these people are referred by different agencies in the area, then they schedule an appointment to pick out the items free of charge. We furnish about 15-20 rooms a day through this program. We have an Adult Education Program, where we teach job training skills, nutrition, financial planning, and other similar classes. We have a Well Mother, Well Baby program where we go into five local schools.  Through education and outreach, we help the mother be empowered to raise her child. We have the O.N.E. Program in which we honor veterans by celebrating four Veteran’s Days per year. We open our showroom on those four days solely for veteran clients. We have a Public Housing Program where we reach out to seniors and provide housing assistance to them. We also have our School Community Outreach program. We’ve adopted a third grade class, where not one student was reading on grade level. We have four to five volunteers working with that class at any given time, mentoring the students and helping them learn to read.

4.What areas specifically do you serve?

We turn no one away. No matter how far they have traveled, we will help them. We serve local families from the greater DC area, the Baltimore area, and Frederick.  We’ve had people come from as far as Delaware and Pennsylvania.

5.How far do you travel to pick up furniture and mattresses?

Every day we have at least three trucks running pickups, so we are all over the place. We normally ride all over Montgomery County, DC and Northern Virginia. We go into Howard County, Baltimore County, and Frederick, as well. We just expanded our area to include an hour travel-time radius, but we’re willing to work with people who live outside that radius, as well. If they have something to donate, we find a way to get it here.

6.Do you plan on expanding into other cities?

We hope to one day. First, we end poverty here, then throughout the nation, and then into the rest of the world.

7.What are your dreams for both the people you serve and for A Wider Circle?

I’d like to see a world without poverty, the end to a world where one person has too much while another person has nothing. There’s such a great disparity of wealth, especially in this area. And most people living in poverty aren’t in it because of anything they did; most were born into it. They were born into an impoverished family, lived as an impoverished child, grew up as an impoverished teen, and live now as an impoverished adult. This poverty causes so many other problems we see in society today, and it’s just not fair. But it doesn’t matter if we simply realize it’s not fair; it only matters what we do about it. We always wonder if we can do things better, and that’s our goal -  to do something.

8.How can people get involved?

People can get involved in so many different ways! We have a wish list of items we are always in need of, including things like furniture, baby clothing, blankets, sheets, towels, small kitchen appliances, healthy, non-perishable food, and personal care items. Mattresses too. We always need mattresses. We give away about 500 beds a month, and we have about 1,000 people on our waiting list, so the need is just so great. You could volunteer as a driver of one of our delivery trucks, support a family on their way out of poverty, or volunteer here at our center answering phones, sorting clothing, or helping families who come in.

9.How do you envision /training/etc’s partnership with A Wider Circle?
We love that you want to get involved. Any way you want to volunteer your time or resources is going to help. We want you to be able to touch, to taste and to feel the need so that your only reaction will be to want to do something about it. You’ll find we are all more fully who we were meant to be when we give of ourselves.

ATI offers Advanced Undersea Warfare, Submarines & Their Combat Systems, and other acoustics and sonar courses.  We thought the article below would be of interest to our visitors.

Details about American submarine special operations aren’t very common. While it is “common knowledge” and “everyone knows” that American submarines conduct special operations off the coasts of foreign countries, especially with the publication of books such as”Blind Man’s Bluff”, operational details are (rightfully) rare.

There are exceptions. There is a little bit of operational detail of one particularly tense, wartime operation at Guardfish.org, a website dedicated to the men who have served on board the USS Guardfish (SSN 612). Entitled The Saga of the 1972 Guardfish Patrol, it is a little bit of Commander David Minton’s account of operations by the USS Guardfish that ranged from the Sea of Japan to the South China Sea in the late spring of 1972.

There are always men on the eyepiece of the other periscope and their stories (in English) are even rarer. In what may be a unique instance, we have the memories of two Cold War submarine captains on opposite sides of the periscope participating in the same events. Commander Minton has his story, as does Admiral Al’fred Simenovich Berzin, who as a Captain First Rank (K1R) commanded Echo II class SSGN K-184, the Guardfish’s target, in 1972 during its transit to Vietnam in response to the failure of the Paris Peace Talks.

This is his side of the story, “Guardfish vs. K-184″

This was a post on the LinkedIn Acoustic Society group page that I thought would have broader interest about low frequency vibrations in a building caused by the heating system air hander unit. David Wright posted this question on the LinkedIn  Acoustical Society of America (ASA)

http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&srchtype=discussedNews&gid=161832&item=190934921&type=member&trk=eml-anet_dig-b_pd-ttl-hdp&ut=0TQ8n-Ubl2BRw1

Vibration ills. What are the metrics

A commercial 4 story “soft” building has occupants complaining of large amounts of vibration which is distracting them from working in their open office areas. Some are saying the floor vibration is making them ill. Sources seem to be walking nearby, but is unknown. Newly constructed poured concrete floors with steel trusses and framework. We are preparing an accelerometer to measure. What metrics would be useful to compare to for human annoyance vibration like this?

David Greenberg • Hi David. What I’m about to say, you know already, but here goes: Let’s say you uncover a vibration annoyance standard. I’ll bet there is one somewhere. Then what? You go about discovering the source(s) and isolating them. You compare the levels before and after with the standard. Even if you succeed in reducing the levels below this standard (from every receiver position of which there may be many), but the laws of subjectivity and issue-driven super-sensitivity, to say nothing of the extreme complexity of vibration energy propagation through structure and sympathetic things sitting on it, you (they) could still be in trouble when some of the occupants say they are still bothered. (The tonal components will likely be the problem.) If our colleagues do come up with a standard for you to use, I suggest you become familiar with it and then shelve it high out of reach. The potential for letting the client know that the standard has been met when they are still being bothered will do nothing for your relationship. Instead, I suggest you use the accelerometer to help locate the offending source(s) (though turning ALL machines off and then back on sequentially would be how I’d do it) and get the building owner to isolate them. But don’t set yourself up for an psycho-acoustic failure.

Edward Veale • David, two things:

* Here in the UK we have a British Standard that is useful, a summary of which follows – often the problem is making useful measurements sub 20Hz:

Structural vibration in buildings can be detected by the occupants and can affect them in many ways; their quality of life can be reduced, as can their working efficiency. BS 6472-1 provides best available information on the application of methods of measuring and evaluating vibration in order to assess the likelihood of adverse comment.

BS 6472-1:2008 provides guidance on predicting human response to vibration in buildings over the frequency range 0.5 Hz to 80 Hz. Frequency weighting curves for human beings exposed to whole-body vibration are included, together with advice on measurement methods to be employed. Methods of assessing continuous, intermittent and impulsive vibration are presented.

BS 6472-1:2008 describes how to determine the vibration dose value, VDV, from frequency-weighted vibration measurements. The vibration dose value is used to estimate the probability of adverse comment which might be expected from human beings experiencing vibration in buildings. Consideration is given to the time of day and use made of occupied space in buildings, whether residential, office or workshop.

BS 6472-1 offers guidance on how people inside buildings respond to building vibration: the judgement criteria are more stringent at higher frequencies than in the superseded standard due to changes in the vertical frequency weighting.

* Anti-vibration systems fail if not designed and implemented correctly – as appears to be the case you are describing. You may find the following links useful reading but, as is often the case, many assume the base against which the vibrating mass acts against through the mount has infinite mass and, as in the case you describe, this is not so. As a “rule of thumb” guide, the area of the static mass beneath and covered the mount needs to be at least ten times that of the imposed moving mass at 20Hz and double that for every halving of the frequency.

http://www.rostainc.com/pdfs/applications/Rosta_Catalogues/Antivibration%20Mountings.pdfhttp://www.farrat.com/pdf/DTD-AV-Mount-Theory-Selection-10a.pdf

I think a lot of our blog visitors would be interested in the article below written by Bob Socci.

A half minute earlier, Army head coach Rich Ellerson took the one timeout he’d left his team for the waning seconds of the 113th football encounter of West Point Cadets and Navy Midshipmen.

If only to delay the inevitable.  And for half of the 69,607 at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field, prolong the misery.  During the stoppage, the stadium’s massive video boards featured a close-up of the Commander-In-Chief’s Trophy, which for the 16th straight year would belong to someone else.

When the break ended, Navy quarterback Keenan Reynolds, who was about to be named most valuable player, took the game’s penultimate snap.  There was need for merely one more kneel-down to seal the Mids’ 11th consecutive win in the series.

In that moment, as the final seconds elapsed, Ellerson’s counterpart, Ken Niumatalolo, was compelled to do two things.  The first involved one of his veteran leaders.  The second, one of Army’s.

As a sophomore, John Howell caught the longest pass in Army-Navy history, running the last of his 77 yards toward the same south end of The Linc where the Mids now aligned in victory formation.  Howell had shredded the ligaments stabilizing his right knee in late September, suffering an injury sure to be career-ending.  For weeks, he rehabbed from surgery mindful of a single goal: to recover enough to run out of the locker room with his Academy brothers one last time, in time for Army-Navy.

Howell made it.  He was at the head of the line forming in the stadium tunnel, carrying a Marine Corps flag.  Emerging into the open air of South Philly, Howell jogged — as his teammates charged — along the Mids’ sideline.

That remained his vantage point for the football theatre ongoing into early evening.  Howell had watched Navy rally for a late 17-13 lead, before seeing Army threaten to eclipse that advantage.

But 14 yards from possibly stopping their skid against the Mids and recapturing the CIC title for the first time since 1996, the Black Knights fumbled their chance away.  In the sudden change of circumstances, Niumatalolo saw an opportunity to give Howell more than he could ever wish for.

Reynolds knelt twice, before and after Ellerson’s last timeout.  Then, for the final act of Army-Navy: Episode 113, Niumatalolo sent Howell onto center stage to stand over Reynolds’ right shoulder.

In the third line of fine print in the game summary, as part of the Mids’ participation report, “33-Howell, John” will always mark the time Niumatalolo helped a senior re-define the end of his playing career.

To the surprise of no one who knows him, it was a classy gesture by Niumatalolo.  So was his next.  Once Reynolds’ knee dropped to the ground, Niumatalolo sought out Ellerson and went searching for Trent Steelman.

Steelman was Army’s four-year quarterback and career touchdown leader.  And in the eyes of the rival coach, an all-time competitor.  When Niumatalolo finally got to Steelman, he said as much.

“To be honest, I don’t really remember much, I was pretty torn up,” an understandably emotional Steelman told reporters.  “I think he said that I was one of the toughest players he’s ever seen and just a great player, and I respect him for that.  He’s a great coach.”

“We should all be proud as Americans that that guy is going to go protect our country,” Niumatalolo explained in his own press conference.  “They don’t get any tougher than Trent Steelman.  Four years starting at West Point, a military service academy.  I know everyone in our locker room has nothing but respect for that young man.”

This was Niumatalolo’s 15th Army-Navy game.  His first two ended as Steelman’s last two, in absolute anguish over an excruciatingly close outcome.

In 1995, he was an assistant to Charlie Weatherbie, who eschewed a late chip-shot field-goal try that could have separated the rivals by two scores.  The Black Knights mounted a goal-line stand and marched 99 yards to a 14-13 triumph.

The following season, again with Niumatalolo assisting Weatherbie, the Mids relinquished an 18-point lead and failed to score on two late, deep drives.  They fell by a 28-24 final.

Fifteen years later, Niumatalolo’s fourth Army-Navy experience as head coach ended with a six-point victory, thanks to a pair of fourth-quarter field goals in Landover.  After his fifth, last Saturday, he expressed the kind of bittersweet emotions evoked only when Cadets compete with Midshipmen.

Brother of an Army colonel, Niumatalolo understands that while other rivalries are fueled by differences, this one is defined by commonality.  He preaches humility and respect, for the competition and the game itself.  As do his players.

“It’s amazing because we have the utmost respect for those guys,” senior linebacker Keegan Wetzel said, as a member of the eighth straight class of Mids to record a career sweep of their mirror images.  “I tell them when I pick them up, ‘I love you brother,’ and I don’t even know them.

“You can see it in their eyes that they go through the same things that we do.  They are from the same backgrounds, the same families and they fight and claw the same way that we do.  To beat those guys is a privilege and an honor.  Nobody out there is going to give anybody an inch.”

Per usual, Wetzel, an Academic All-American, is correct.  Army earned every one of the more than 14,400 inches amounting to its 400-plus yards of total offense, including 203 more rushing yards than Navy.  And the Mids earned what they got against a high-pressure defense, despite being frustrating into six punts and a fumble that led to the Black Knights’ lone lead.

Navy also earned the win.  It made more plays and fewer mistakes.  In the end, performance equaled precedent.

The precocious Reynolds rallied his offense, exactly as he’d done at Air Force in early October.  He prolonged the go-ahead drive with a throw to Geoffrey Whiteside — freshman to sophomore — converting a 3rd-and-8.  Two plays later, he deked a pair of pass-rushers to escape up the right sideline for 11 yards.  He then dropped a perfect pass onto the sure hands ofBrandon Turner.

The 49-yard strike set up one more Reynolds run, from eight yards out, with 4:41 to go.  He slipped a hit and beat an Army cornerback to the pylon, angling right toward the Brigade of Midshipmen in the stadium’s northeast corner.

On the ensuing drive, the Mids lived up to their defensive credo, to make `em snap it again.  Freshman cornerback Kwazel Bertrand made the first of two touchdown saving tackles.  SeniorTra’ves Bush delivered the other.

Bertrand slipped in pass coverage, yet lunged from all fours to trip receiver Chevaughn Lawrence at the Navy 40.  Further downfield, at the Mids` 19-yard line, Bush reached out for a one-handed takedown of Raymond Maples.  For the umpteenth time in his Navy career, he was the right man in the right spot.

After Bush’s stop, the Black Knights had to snap it again, and again.  The gritty Steelman picked up a first down at the 14-yard line.  But on the next play, the 11th of the series and Army’s 72nd of the contest, the Cadets dropped the ball.

Steelman and fullback Larry Dixon mishandled the mesh.  The football squirted loose.  And Barry Dabney, in his only rep of the day, got his hands around it, to help the Mids hold on.  Army was undone again by a fumble.

It was the Black Knights’ fifth of the game and third recovered by Navy.  It was their eighth lost this season inside the opposition’s 20-yard line.

Not long after, with little time to stop the tears that flowed from such a heart-wrenching end to his career, Steelman asked the press to pin the turnover on him.  Dixon did the same.  Filling the unenviable duty of answering for the indescribable, each `manned up’ to spare the other of fault.

Then, you expect nothing less of a Cadet or Midshipman.

And what of Ellerson?  In his post-game presser, he was succinct.

“It was a mesh fumble,” he said.  “It was a quarterback-fullback mesh; it’s fundamental.”

To a subsequent query about the Reynolds throw and Turner catch, Ellerson replied with his unhappy recap of what, in his view, decided the outcome.

“That wasn’t the difference,” Ellerson asserted. “The difference is the kicking game and turnovers.  Those are the things that correlate with success; those are the things that are fundamental to the game.  The scoreboard will reflect those things.  It will reflect the kicking game; it’ll reflect turnovers.”

And it will reflect the fact that Navy ensured itself at least eight wins for the ninth time in 10 years and claimed its eighth CIC title in that same span.  Already, the Mids had earned a ninth bowl bid in those 10 seasons.

It will also reflect a 2-10 finish to the Cadets’ 12th season of four or fewer victories in the last 15 years.  They are now 17-32 overall under Ellerson; 5-19 since posting their only winning record of the past 16 seasons (7-6 in 2010).

Yet in the weeks before, and minutes after the scoreboard went final, there was scant acknowledgement by Ellerson of what Navy’s accomplished, remarkably, for so long.  Already, as evidenced by pre-game comments Niumatalolo made to a radio audience, the Mids sensed a disrespect uncharacteristic of Army-Navy.

Shortly after Ellerson returned to his locker-room office, he gave them their first bulletin board pin-up for 2013.  Speaking to reporter Sal Interdonato of the Middletown, N.Y. Times-Herald Record, here is some of what Ellerson had to say:

• “Give (Reynolds) some credit. He made some good plays and he’s hard to tackle.  But, he’s not that hard to tackle…We were there.  We have people in position to make plays in that game.  If we do those things that are fundamental, we beat them by three touchdowns.  We’re better than that bunch. We lose the turnover by two.
• “We are playing a good football team.  We have them right by the throat.  We could have put them away in the first half.  We didn’t have to wait until the end…They are better than Air Force, but they are a touchdown better than Air Force.  We are better than they are.  It’s (expletive).  It’s (expletive).”

You can be the judge of whether Ellerson’s implications are an indictment of others, but not himself.  On CBS, analyst Gary Danielson found Army’s play-calling “questionable” on two crucial drives, when it appeared Ellerson was willing to put the onus solely on a placekicker in only his second start.

Ellerson’s been steeped in Army-Navy his whole life.  His father and two older brothers were West Point grads; one of them the captain of the ’62 Cadets.  He’s also experienced it from the other side, as a Naval Academy plebe.

He’s obviously a bright coach, good enough to go 56-34 in his prior stint at Cal Poly and smart enough to understand the fallacy inherent when comparing results.  He should also beware of the hypocrisy of such analysis.

The Mids who faced Air Force on the road were 1-3, had yet to launch the Reynolds era and had to defend 200-yard-a-game Cody Getz on two healthy ankles.  As for Army’s win over the Falcons, the Black Knights have every right to relish every bit of their 20-point triumph — even if, to borrow an Ellerson phrase — Air Force lost the turnover by five.

Thirty years ago, Ellerson was an assistant coach at his alma mater, the University of Hawaii, when he helped recruit a quarterback by the name of Ken Niumatalolo from Honolulu’s Radford High.  Ellerson had wound up playing for the Warriors, after transferring from the Academy.

Asked why he left Annapolis by New York Times writer Joe Drape for his book, Citizen Soldiers, Ellerson replied: “I was nineteen — I had no excuse, sir.”

Assuming he returns for the 114th Army-Navy game, Ellerson will do well to remember that phrase.  He’d do better to emulate the kid he once coached, and the young men he now coaches.

One points to himself in defeat, while thinking first of the players in victory.  The others, as one of their own might say, fight and claw, never giving an inch.

And should they come up short, offer no excuse, sir.