Thomas Alan Waits is an American singer, musician and actor. His music is characterized by lyrics focusing on the underside of society, delivered in his distinctively deep, gravelly voice. During the 1970s, he worked in jazz, but since the 1980s his music has reflected greater influence from blues and experimental genres. Waits was raised in a middle-class family in Pomona, California. Inspired by the work of Bob Dylan and the Beat Generation, he began singing on the San Diego folk music circuit as a teenager, relocating to Los Angeles in 1972, he worked there as a songwriter before signing a recording contract with Asylum Records. His first albums were the jazz-oriented Closing Time and The Heart of Saturday Night, which reflected his lyrical interest in nightlife and criminality, he toured the United States and Japan, attracted greater critical recognition and commercial success with Small Change, Blue Valentine, Heartattack and Vine. He produced the soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola's 1981 film One from the Heart, subsequently made cameo appearances in several Coppola films.

In 1980, Waits married Kathleen Brennan, split from his manager and record label, moved to New York City. Under his wife's encouragement, he pursued a more experimental and eclectic musical aesthetic influenced by the work of Harry Partch and Captain Beefheart; this was reflected in a series of albums released by Island Records, including Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs, Franks Wild Years. He continued appearing in films, taking a leading role in Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law, made theatrical appearances. With theatre director Robert Wilson he produced two musicals, The Black Rider and Alice, first performed in Hamburg. Having returned to California in the 1990s, Waits' albums Bone Machine, The Black Rider, Mule Variations earned him increasing critical acclaim and various Grammy Awards. In the late 1990s, he switched to the record label Anti-, which released Blood Money, Real Gone, Bad as Me. Despite little commercial success domestically, Waits influenced many musicians and has captured an international cult following.

In 2011, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and included in the 2015 Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time. Several biographies have been written about him. Thomas Alan Waits was born on December 1949, in Pomona, California, he has one younger sister. His father, Jesse Frank Waits, was a Texas native of Scots-Irish descent, while his mother, Alma Fern, hailed from Oregon and had Norwegian ancestry. Alma was regular church-goer. Jesse was an alcoholic; the family lived at 318 North Pickering Avenue in California. He described having a "very middle-class" upbringing and "a pretty normal childhood", he attended Jordan Elementary School. There, he learned to play the guitar, while his father taught him to play the ukulele. During the summers, he visited maternal relatives in Marysville, he recalled that it was an uncle's raspy, gravelly voice that inspired the manner in which he sang. In 1959, his parents separated and his father moved away from the family home, a traumatic experience for 10-year-old Waits.

Alma relocated to Chula Vista, a middle-class suburb of San Diego. Jesse visited the family there. In Chula Vista, Waits attended O'Farrell Community School, where he fronted a school band, the Systems describing the group as "white kids trying to get that Motown sound", he developed a love of R&B and soul singers like Ray Charles, James Brown, Wilson Pickett, as well as country music and Roy Orbison. Bob Dylan became a strong influence, with Waits placing transcriptions of Dylan's lyrics on his bedroom walls, he was an avid watcher of The Twilight Zone. By the time he was studying at Hilltop High School, he related, he was "kind of an amateur juvenile delinquent", interested in "malicious mischief" and breaking the law, he described himself as a "rebel against the rebels", for he eschewed the hippie subculture, growing in popularity and was instead inspired by the 1950s Beat generation, having a love of Beat writers like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs. In 1968, at age 18, he dropped out of high school.

Waits worked at Napoleone's pizza restaurant in National City and both there and at a local diner developed an interest in the lives of the patrons, writing down phrases and snippets of dialogue he overheard. He has claimed that he worked in the forestry service as a fireman for three years. For a time, he served with the Coast Guard, he enrolled at Chula Vista's Southwestern Community College to study photography, for a time considering a career in the field. He continued taking piano lessons, he began frequenting folk music venues around San Diego, becoming drawn into the city's folk music scene. In 1969, he gained employment as an occasional doorman for the Heritage coffeehouse, which held regular performances from folk musicians, he began to sing at the Heritage. In time, he performed his own material as well parodies of country songs or bittersweet ballads influenced by his relationships with girlfriends.

The 2011 NECBL playoffs is the postseason tournament of the New England Collegiate Baseball League for the 2011 season. It consists of eight teams competing in three rounds of best-of-three series. In the championship round, the West Division Keene Swamp Bats defeated the East Division Laconia Muskrats 2 games to 0; the 2011 NECBL playoffs consists of three rounds, a Division Semifinal, Division Final, Championship Series. Competing teams consist of the four best-record teams from both the West Division and the East Division; these teams are seeded #1 through #4 according to their regular season record. In each division, the #1 seed plays the #4 seed and the #2 seed plays the #3 seed in the Division Semifinal round; the two winners of these series will advance to the Division Finals. The winner of the round captures the Division Championship, one for both the East and West divisions; the two division champions will face each other in the Championship Series to decide the NECBL champion. All rounds consist of a best-of-three series in which the first game and third game of each series are played at the higher seed's home field and the second game was played at the lower seed's home field.

If identically seeded teams from opposite divisions met in the Championship Series the NECBL tiebreaker rules would be utilized. The Division Semifinals, the first playoff round, consisted of matchups between each division's #1 and #4 seeds and #2 and #3 seeds. In the West Division, the Division Semifinal matchups were as follows: #1 Keene versus #4 Danbury, #2 Holyoke versus #3 Vermont. Keene wins series 2-1. Holyoke wins series 2-0. In the East Division, the Division Semifinal matchups were the same as last year: #1 Newport versus #4 Laconia, #2 North Shore versus #3 Sanford. Laconia wins series 2-0. Sanford wins series 2-1. In the West Division, the Divisional Championship match up was as follows: #1 Keene versus #2 Holyoke, Keene wins series 2-1 In the East Division, the Divisional Championship match up was as follows: #3 Sanford versus #4 Laconia, Laconia wins series 2-0 The NECBL Championship Series, the final playoff round, consists of a matchup of the West Division's #1 seed Keene against the East Division's #4 seed Laconia Keene wins championship 2-0 NECBL website

The Scapular of St. Benedict is a Christian devotional scapular; this scapular is worn most by the votarists and oblates belonging to the Order of Saint Benedict, who most come from the Anglican, Catholic and Methodist Churches. Others associated with the Order of Saint Benedict may be invested with it; the front has a picture of St. Benedict, but no picture is necessary; the confraternity and the scapular were endowed with indulgences in 1882 and 1883. Since 1950, oblates of the Order of Saint Benedict who reside in warmer climates may wear the Medal of St. Benedict in lieu of the Scapular of St. Benedict, although the latter is still preferred. Cross necklace Rosary and scapular Catholic Encyclopedia