Quotes, URL's, Links And References-by:older Femmes, Butches, Ftms, Mtfs, Queer, Etc. [Archive] - Page 16

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 03:37 PM

:o

:) Have you considered getting a marijuana recommendation but are unsure of the process? Do you qualify? How much does it cost? Where do you go?

The LA Times’ Michael Goldstein did the tough work of running down the details. Here is his story.

From LA Times Magazine:

A License to Chill

By Michael Goldstein

February 11, 2007

Do you medicate? I do.

I’m not talking about Xanax or Prozac or Vicodin or their siblings. I have a “recommendation” (not a prescription, a recommendation) for pot. This puts me in a legally and socially problematic condition. The state of California says I can ingest marijuana for medicinal purposes, but the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration thinks I’m a criminal if I do. Because THC can make you feel good when you’re healthy as well as feel better when you’re sick, people who don’t know me might see me as a big-bong punch line, in a Cheech and Chong kind of way. If you pop Viagra, you’re tough and sexy; if you smoke weed, you’re half-baked. I’ve been an occasional user of pot for 30 years. Only in the past six months have I done so without risking arrest, at least as far as Sacramento is concerned. It was very easy to become a medical user, but it raised a question: Was I better off breaking the law? In Los Angeles County a recommendation can be filled at more than 100 dispensaries, many of which have been raided by the DEA. Proposition 215, the first of its kind in the nation, went into effect in 1996 and prohibits a doctor from being punished for having recommended marijuana to a patient who is “seriously ill.” A 2003 law requires the state Department of Health Services to “establish and maintain a voluntary program for the issuance of identification cards to qualified patients.”

I was aware of these laws long before last summer but hadn’t felt the urge to take advantage of them until someone stuck a flier under my windshield. It was from California Natural Pain Relief on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, and it informed me, misspellings and all, that “Medical cannabis can be recommended for the care and treatment of Cancer, Cronic pain, arthritis, Migraines, Diabetes, Insomnia, Anxiety, Aids Nausea, Epilepsy, Lupus, Depression, Eating Disorders, Menopause, PMS, Asthma, etc.”

When I visited California Natural Pain Relief, the folks there directed me to a doctor at another office. Since I experience occasional but painful attacks of gout, a form of arthritis, as well as other foot and knee pain, I brought a load of medical records and a vial full of Vioxx that I had been too scared to take. The doctor gave me a brief physical exam and a blood pressure test, discussed how marijuana could alleviate the pain and inflammation and wrote and signed an official-looking, green-trimmed recommendation. This included the doctor’s signature, a photocopy of my driver’s license and a key phrase: “approve of the use of cannabis for my patient.” I paid $150 cash.

Armed with my license to chill, I drove back to Ventura Boulevard, smiled at the beefy bodyguard, strolled inside and handed the recommendation to the dispensary operator. There was a faintly agricultural scent in the air. Under a glass countertop were vials labeled Master Kush, Cotton Candy and OG Kush; also on display were variants of cannabis strains known as chronic and ganga. I forked over $50 for an eighth of an ounce and received a small pipe as a new-patient gift.

Later, when I told a friend about my purchase, he laughed and delivered the ultimate insult: “You paid more than street value.”

My solace was that my uncontrolled substance use was sort of legal. L.A. lawyer Allison Margolin, who calls herself “America’s dopest attorney,” explained that my recommendation wasn’t above-board in the eyes of the feds. But could they go after me if they found physician-recommended pot in my house? They could, but “no judge is going to pursue it,” she said.

Margolin represents marijuana growers as part of her criminal defense practice. They are, she told me, “the bigger risk-takers in the system,” because although the DEA might not bother with the likes of me (and hopefully not with people who are terminally ill), it does bother with Californians who cultivate pot destined for dispensaries and with the dispensaries themselves.

It isn’t something many medical marijuana users spend a lot of time worrying about. “People have gotten very comfortable with the level of access in Los Angeles,” said Stephanie Landa, who’s serving a 41-month federal prison term for cultivating marijuana. But they don’t stop to think when they’re consuming their medicinal pot that “it didn’t just fall out of the sky. It had to come from somewhere.”

Speaking of consuming, medicinal weed isn’t only inhaled. There’s a contingent of bakers and candy makers in the alternative pharmacy universe who produce marijuana edibles. I’ve tasted several varieties, including a canna-brownie with crisp vanilla icing from Cotton Mouth Confections, which was delicious and chocolaty, and a baklava that was less enjoyable, the bottom tasting like a mouthful of buds.

With edibles, I never knew how much THC I was actually putting into my system. One evening I ate half a brownie after dinner and couldn’t get to sleep until 2 a.m. I felt anxious and dizzy. I got lost in the darkness, spinning in the corridor between the bedroom and the bathroom. At the movies I downed a My Kushbar (a concoction of dark chocolate, blueberries and crisp rice), and my wife had to poke me as I sat catatonically watching “Dreamgirls.” I shook my head and handed her the car keys.

Then there was the Volcano Vaporizer, a stainless-steel device shaped like an Apollo space capsule. It works like this: You attach a plastic balloon to the capsule, light the device, and the THC goes into the bag. Take the bag off, push on a black valve, and vapor—not harsh smoke—blows into your mouth. There’s little odor and a highly efficient high. So efficient that later at the gym (don’t worry, I walked there) I almost had a Janet Jackson exposure moment as I started to whip off my cargo shorts only to discover I’d forgotten my gym shorts. My trainer muttered, “You’ve convinced me you’re going to have a heart attack,” and threatened to fire me as a client.

Marijuana did help calm my foot-pain problems. Also, my appreciation of everyday beauty was enhanced. At Balboa Park, the end-of-summer foliage and the grass, sky and late-afternoon pollution around the sun appeared in Technicolor sharpness. At the same time, I was anxious and confused. I hadn’t taken so much pot in years. For six months (in the spirit of scientific inquiry) I consumed maybe one gram every two weeks; my previous marijuana purchases had been on the order of a quarter-ounce every two or three years through the usual friend-of-a-friend channels.

When I started smoking pot on the East Coast in the ’70s, I remember the choices being basically Jamaican, Colombian and skunkweed. Today the strains are dizzying in variety and power, and all are available at the dispensaries. It’s a real business: The Los Angeles Journal for the Education of Medical Marijuana, a free monthly, lists doctors, collectives and lawyers and covers events such as the 2006 DOESHA Cup, a tasting event in which California marijuana growers compete. It’s all a bit overwhelming for a boomer.

Is Los Angeles the Amsterdam of America? Not quite. Dispensaries aren’t coffee shops, as they’re called in the Netherlands, where pot is sold and consumed as casually as beer is here. Dispensaries are more like cash-and-carry package stores in states that control liquor sales. Another party stopper: Sharing or reselling a patient’s medical cannabis is illegal.

Some dispensaries try to make it all seem like a party, though. They advertise with slogans such as “KushMart: Where It’s 4:20 Always” (4:20 being shorthand for smoking pot or getting high—and, incidentally, the number of the 2003 state Senate bill). There’s also a maybe-not-so-clever propensity for employing words such as “therapeutic” and “herbal” and “compassion”—so that the initials of dispensaries, including Therapeutic Health Care and Today’s Holistic Caregivers, are THC.

I found one outfit that doesn’t mess with any of that: The Natural Relief Center in Canoga Park, which doesn’t advertise and shuns windshield fliers. Owner Michael Levitt got into the business one year ago. “I was comfortably retired,” he told me, “but my wife didn’t like me around the house so much.” What motivated him were myriad health problems, including diabetes and high blood pressure. “At 51 years old, it doesn’t wear well to deal with street thugs to get medication. I thought I could help people and bring the game up as a businessman.” He described his storefront as “a community spot.” There’s a hairdresser on one side and a newsstand on the other.

In L.A., City Councilman Dennis Zine of the West Valley wants dispensaries to be located in industrial, commercial or business areas, “where they’re not going to have an impact on young people.” I’m all for that. (By the way, the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee voted in January in favor of enacting a moratorium on new dispensaries until the city devises rules governing them.)

I learned a lot during my months as a medical marijuana user and came to three conclusions: My tolerance is low; pot should be legal as a pain reliever; the distribution system in place right now has room for improvement. But it’s like Winston Churchill said about democracy—it’s the worst form of government, except for all the others.

http://www.onmarijuana.com/2007/02/11/how-to-get-medical-marijuana-in-los-angeles/

Related Link:

http://womensbioethics.blogspot.com/2007/02/for-medicinal-purposes-only-roll-joint.html

(y) (y) I am definitely for its medicinal use. (y)

Peace,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 03:48 PM

:| :| :| :|

More about The Secret, Post-Oprah...and The Work of Byron Katie

February 9, 2007

Yesterday's Oprah show, "Discovering The Secret," featured Rhonda Byrne, creator of The Secret DVD, with a panel of personalities from the film. If you've been reading this blog you know I'm no fan of The Secret. However, I respect Oprah and with so many people excited about this film, I wanted to see how she would position it on her show.

Oprah's producers are brilliant; they know that, after all these years of offering good, solid information, their audience won't buy half-baked spiritual junk. So I wasn't that surprised to see how beautifully The Secret was presented on the February 8th show. In fact, this Oprah segment was a lot more substantial than The Secret film itself. With the exception of Byrne and Jack "Chicken Soup for the Soul" Canfield, who both spouted the usual Law of Attraction platitudes, the panelists came off as deeply aware and grounded. They filled in some of the blanks I felt were missing in The Secret DVD around gratitude, opening the mind and present-moment awareness.

Still, "Workie" that I am, I can't help but compare Byron Katie's approach to abundance and happiness to that of The Secret.

From the Oprah website: "Gratitude is one example of the magnetic force of the universe. 'Basically, nothing new can come into your life unless you open yourself up to being grateful [for what you already have],' Michael [Beckwith] says."

Beautifully put...and we already know this. Won't someone please tell us how to tap into gratitude?

Byron Katie says that as a result of inquiry, what you are left with is gratitude. She doesn't say "Be grateful or you won't get what you want." Being gratitude is not an automatic function of the opinionated, unexamined mind. If we are told, "Be grateful" and we find we are not, why aren't we? It's because we have not questioned the stressful beliefs that keep us from recognizing the bounty which is already and always freely given.

From the Oprah website: "Lisa [Nichols] says...too many people who want to make things better focus on what's wrong with the present. 'Instead of wanting to change it, appreciate what's there,' Lisa says. 'Find the things about it that work...and by doing that, you create a space for it to get better.'"

So how do we find out what there is to love about what's there? Again, if it were automatically obvious, wouldn't we just do it?

"For example, Lisa says she would like to lose some weight. But instead of focusing on the negative—that she hasn't dropped the pounds yet—she loves and appreciates the present moment. "I accept it. I love it. I embrace every inch, every pound," she says. In this way, Lisa is creating the space to 'celebrate the now' and then invite better things into her life."

Again, we are not told how to "celebrate the now," only that it's a "positive" experience when we do. Duh. This is why I say of Katie's Work, it's "The Tao. The Now. And finally, the How."

Byron Katie says of "loving what is": "Just when you think it can't possibly get better, it does. It's a law." And she doesn't leave us hanging with that. The way to love what is, is to first realize what is not. As long as we think "I haven't dropped the pounds" is a "negative," we are not truly celebrating the pounds...or the $100 as opposed to $1,000,000...or the spouse we have (or lack thereof) versus the spouse we think we should have.

From the Oprah website: "True forgiveness, James [Ray] says, is when you can say the following to the person who hurt you: 'Thank you for giving me that experience.'"

Byron Katie says, "Forgiveness is when you realize that what you thought happened, didn't." How can we know it did not happen? Through questioning thoughts like, "She hurt me." Is it true? Are we wounded, damaged, destroyed, the worse for wear? "Nobody can hurt me," Katie is famous for saying, "That's my job. I do that."

From the Oprah site: "But how can you forgive when something truly tragic or terrible happens? James [Ray] says you should grieve, but eventually you need to look for a hidden gift. 'Here's what I encourage people to ask themselves: How does this serve me?...If you're really willing to dig, there's a lesson in there,' James says. "And secondly, what can I learn from this situation?'"

Katie says, "Nothing terrible has ever happened," and "The worst that could happen is the best that could happen, but only always." Very reassuring; however, she doesn't expect us to believe this simply because she says so. That is how The Work's four questions and turnaround were born, to give people a way to replicate the "enlightenment" experience for ourselves. And even then, we don't stop with questioning our beliefs and turning them around; we delve deeply: how. specifically, is the worst that could happen actually for our highest good? Without the education of self-inquiry that The Work's four questions provide, we are merely jumping to the turnarounds, which can leave us feeling disconnected. If enlightenment could be experienced through a New Age version of Pollyanna's "glad game," we'd all be self-realized by now.

From Oprah: "In chronic situations with no end in sight, Michael says you should ask yourself another important question: 'If this were to last forever, what quality would I have to grow to have peace of mind? Now, as my attention goes to the quality I have to grow, that quality starts to emerge,' Michael says. 'The issue that I'm resisting and fighting against becomes less and less intense...it begins to dissolve because it doesn't have your attention any longer.'"

Sounds awfully complicated to me.

From Katie: "Who would you be without this thought?" That is a way into what Michael Beckwith hints at. Here's another hint: you don't have to "grow" any qualities. If you can answer Question Four of The Work, those qualities are already yours. The issue may continue to have your attention but you no longer give it any credence. That's when the issue dissolves. Resistance is born of (stressful) belief.

From the Oprah website:"'I'm the first example of how the world is supposed to love me and I have to give them the best example ever,' [Lisa Nichols] says. 'We expect someone to show us our greatness when [instead] I'm supposed to show up understanding my greatness and allowing you to celebrate it with me.'"

Katie says, "Your turnarounds are your prescription for happiness." How will you show up knowing who you are? By questioning what you are not. That leaves the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Willing ourselves to have great self-esteem has never worked.

From the Oprah site: "You can start living the The Secret today by following three simple steps: Ask. Believe. Receive."

Katie asks: "Do you believe everything you think?" If you do, then you believe you are a manifester, more powerful than God. Then if you get what you want, you say "I did it." If you don't get what you want, then "I" did it wrong.

From James Ray on the Oprah site: "'It's not, 'If you build it, they will come,' necessarily. It's, 'If you build it and it provides value, they will come,'...'It's that heart space. Not 'What can I get?' but 'What can I give and how can I serve?' And when you're in that moment, the universe lines up behind you and it's at your command.'"

Katie: "On my knees is my favorite position." Maybe that's the same thing in essence...without the marketing-tinged angle of "adding value." For me it feels more natural and true when I'm the grateful servant rather than to arrogantly dictate to reality that I'm the one in charge. A sense of entitlement implies there is a lack; is that true? Service with motive to gain is not service at all. Serving others as the service to oneself contains everything. I don't expect the universe to line up behind me. Can I line up behind the universe, God, what is? Can I do what I am asking the universe to do? Alignment is not a getting or a doing, it's a being. It is grace. Can I stop wanting, wanting, wanting for a moment and just notice that alignment is here?

So from where I sit, The Secret has not been revealed through this movie, or through the Oprah segment on it...yet. It can be revealed when we ask ourselves to clue us in to what we truly want. I know of only one way to do that which works for me and, thanks to Byron Katie, it is no secret at all. That's my story until it isn't; and I'm open to being proven wrong.

http://soulsurgery.blogspot.com/search/label/Rhonda%20Byrne

:| Any reality-show producer such as Rhonda Byrne (in Australia or anyplace) that strongly hints that the 3,000 people who perished on 9/11 were victim to their own negative thoughts in a nut-job. Seems like I have been running across a couple of these wack job types lately. :|

(y) Thank goodness for a superb attorney, good business friends and clients in Federal law enforcement always willing to do me a favor, as well as newspaper/magazine editors all over the country (and now the Internet) always interested in my "you'd never believe it but all of it is true " stories.....(h)

"Be afraid, be very, very afraid."

(y) I am womyn, watch me roar! Only with wack jobs addicted to drama, that is.... ;)

Lovely Friday evening greetings to my friends,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 03:51 PM

:) :)

Govinda Gallery is pleased to present Punk Love, a selection of photographs by Susie J. Horgan that is both an exceptional contribution to the history of punk as well as a true reflection of punk values. After meeting Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye while she was working at the Häagen-Dazs in Georgetown, Horgan began documenting the birth of the early Washington, D.C., punk movement in 1979. D.C. punk was a different kind of punk. It was hardcore. It was explosive. It was revolutionary. Often misread as a music of hate and anger, punk rock was spiritual and, at its core, the message was about basic values--self-respect and justice. In short, it was punk love.

As a friend and participant on the music scene, rather than as a journalist, Horgan captured iconic and largely unpublished photographs of such hardcore legends as Minor Threat, S.O.A., Teen Idles, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, The Cramps, Untouchables, Youth Brigade, the Germs, and many others.

This exhibition also celebrates the publication of Punk Love (Universe, 2007) featuring contributions by Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye.

http://www.govindagallery.com/pages/exhibitions/current_fr.html

http://www.govindagallery.com/pages/exhibitions/horgan/alec_mackaye.jpg

Artists: http://www.govindagallery.com/pages/art/artists_fr.html

^o) Unusual, I will give it that.

Adieu,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 03:54 PM

(l) (f) (l) (f) (l) (f)

at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Wednesday, January 24, 2007 - Sunday, July 8, 2007

http://www.mfa.org/dynamic/sub/ctr_image_3844.jpg

http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/sub.asp?key=15&subkey=2452

(y) (y)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 03:55 PM

(8) (y) (8) (y) (8) (y) (8)

Lost Highway

http://main.losthighwayrecords.com/product.aspx?ob=disc&src=art&pid=1715

:)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 03:56 PM

(h) 8-| (h) 8-| (h) 8-|

1. http://www.fantasycongress.com/fc/

2. http://www.fantasysurvivor.net/

3. http://www.tabfl.com/index.lasso?page=t3a&pn=home

4. http://www.fantasyfashionleague.com/

(f) (f) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 03:58 PM

(l) (l) (l) (l) (l)

http://www.wolfgangpuck.com/rest/fine/chinoismain/

http://www.wolfgangpuck.com/rest/fine/chinoismain/cuisine_index.html

(l) Wonderful place where I used to eat lunch once a week while living in Venice Beach for a brief spell while working in Santa Monica. Lots of superb restaurants right around that area. (y)

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 04:00 PM

(l) (f) (l) (f) (l)

http://www.glenappcastle.com/

http://www.glenappcastle.com/images/photo_home.jpg

The Gardens and Grounds: http://www.glenappcastle.com/grounds.htm

The Bedrooms at Glenapp Castle: http://www.glenappcastle.com/bedrooms.htm

Places to Visit: http://www.glenappcastle.com/places.htm

(y) Yet another place to add to that growing list of places to visit before I pass on. (f)

(k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 04:02 PM

(l) (ap) (l) (ap) (l)

http://www.visit-chile.org/

http://gosouthamerica.about.com/library/blChilepixStgobellavista.htm

http://www.frommers.com/destinations/santiago/2320026512.html

(f) (f) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 04:03 PM

(f) (f) (f) (f) (f)

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1971/neruda-bio.html

http://www.public.asu.edu/~nielle/neruda.htm

http://almaz.com/nobel/literature/1971a.html

http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/freeman/index.htm

(y) (y) (y) (y) (y) (y) (y) I have all of his great works.

(k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 04:05 PM

(h) (8) (h) (8)

Tango history

by Lori Heikkila.

Tango (the dance with the stop "Baille Con Carte") is one of the most fascinating of all dances. Originating in Spain or Morocco, the Tango was introduced to the New World by the Spanish settlers, eventually coming back to Spain with Black and Creole influences.

In the early 19th Century, the Tango was a solo dance performed by the woman. The Adualisian Tango was later done by one or two couples walking together using castanets. The dance was soon considered immoral with its flirting music!

Ballroom Tango originated in the lower class of Buenos Aires, especially in the "Bario de las Ranas". Clothing was dictated by full skirts for the woman and gauchos with high boots and spurs for the man.

The story of Tango as told is that it started with the gauchos of Argentina. They wore chaps that had hardened from the foam and sweat of the horses body. Hence to gauchos walked with knees flexed. They would go to the crowded night clubs and ask the local girls to dance. Since the gaucho hadn't showered, the lady would dance in the crook of the man's right arm, holding her head back. Her right hand was held low on his left hip, close to his pocket, looking for a payment for dancing with him. The man danced in a curving fashion because the floor was small with round tables, so he danced around and between them.

The dance spread throughout Europe in the 1900's. Originally popularized in New York in the winter of 1910-1911, Rudolph Valentino then made the Tango a hit in 1921.

As time elapsed and the music became more subdued, the dance was finally considered respectable even in Argentina.

Styles vary in Tango: Argentine, French, Gaucho and International. Still, Tango has become one of our American 'Standards' regardless of its origin. The Americanized version is a combination of the best parts of each. The principals involved are the same for any good dancing. First, the dance must fit the music. Second, it must contain the basic characteristic that sets it apart from other dances. Third, it must be comfortable and pleasing to do.

Phrasing is an important part of Tango. Most Tango music phrased to 16 or 32 beats of music. Tango music is like a story. It contains paragraphs (Major phrases); sentences (Minor phrases); and the period at the end of the sentence is the Tango close.

For exhibition dancing, a Tango dancer must develop a strong connection with the music, the dance and the audience. The audience can only feel this connection if the performer feels and projects this feeling. So it is when dancing for your own pleasure -- and your partner's!

"The Tango is the easiest dance. If you make a mistake and get tangled up, you just Tango on." (Al Pacino in "The Scent of a Woman.") Movies that featured Tango dancing include "The Scent of a Woman", Madonna's "Evita" and "True Lies" starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis.

http://www.centralhome.com/ballroomcountry/tango.htm

http://www.artebarrio.com/tango/images/default_r3_c4.jpg

http://www.tango.montreal.qc.ca/imag/econo.jpg

LOVE this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a8/Tango-Show-Buenos-Aires-01.jpg/180px-Tango-Show-Buenos-Aires-01.jpg

http://www.risingstars.com.ua/dancers/pictures/la-latushkin_oleksandr-naliya/sasha-natasha6-500.jpg

http://www.kantuta.co.nz/assets/images/TangoTiempo.jpg

(f) (f) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 04:17 PM

(l) (l) (l) (l) (l) (l) (l)

http://www.deetjens.com/

The Story and the Legend

In the early 1930's, Helmuth Deetjen, hiding out from authorities in his native Norway discovered the secluded and quietly brilliant beauty of Big Sur, on the California coast. In Carmel, he met his future wife, Helen Haight - a woman with a nose for business and the means to buy several acres of land in Castro Canyon (the couple's favorite camping spot in Big Sur), which was to become their future home. The pastoral canyon offered the privacy and isolation they sought.

For a time, Helmuth and Helen lived in a tent on their new property, while Helmuth constructed a redwood barn with used material obtained from canneries along Monterey's Cannery Row. Upon completion, the barn housed a few goats and Deetjens workshop. Today, it is the heart of Deetjens; filled with candlelight and guests enjoying meals, sipping wine and warming themselves by the fire.

The occasional wayward or intrepid traveler who happened upon Big Sur and the Deetjens, were welcomed with hospitality and a spare room to sleep in. Word floated down south and Deetjens became a hot spot for Old Hollywood. Producers sought the secluded spot for trysts, writers for inspiration and glamorous movie stars for its privacy. People could come for weeks to hike, write or sleep undisturbed. Big Sur was a land up for anything as long as no one was being hurt and the doer didn't mind everyone knowing his goings-ons.

With its fresh air, cinnamon-colored redwoods and stunning ocean views, Big Sur also attracted artists and writers such as Henry Miller, who came for a visit and stayed for 18 years, Jack Kerouac, who wrote his novel "Big Sur" and photographers such as Edward Weston and Ansel Adams. Kim Novak and Hollywood couple Orsen Welles and Rita Hayworth also made homes for themselves in the quiet, bohemian enclaves of the Big Sur community.

Over the years, Helmuth Deetjen added rooms built in the style of his native Norway, and gave each of them a unique personality and name to match. With the help of prison labor from the nearby highway project, "Grandpa" Deetjen (as he came to be known) supervised the building of all of the rooms, continuing to use scavenged, locally milled redwood.

Helen, "Grandma" Deetjen became a local celebrity holding court and dispensing amateur group or individual therapy sessions from a special bed placed for her in the Deetjens dining room. A penchant for See's chocolates, fancy French fashion magazines and platters of crab and avocado, contributed to "Grandma's" infamous girth and left her with limited mobility. Locals came to her dining-room bedside for juicy gossip, true as well as concocted.

More of the legend and history: http://www.deetjens.com/story-legend.htm

Deetjens invites you to relax in comfortable, cabin-like rooms nestled among the redwoods of Castro Canyon. Deetjens Big Sur Inn, located on Highway 1, is convenient to hiking, mountain biking trails, and sea kayaking. The surrounding landscape offers white crested waves breaking against the cliffs of Highway 1, the azure blue of the Pacific and the ever changing colors of the sky.

The Deetjens' settled in Big Sur in the 1930's. Almost immediately they began offering hospitality to the adventurous travelers of the brand new Highway 1. The Inn and restaurant have attracted artists, writers, and peace-seekers alike--often bringing together Old Hollywood glamour and the eccentric bohemian Big Sur lifestyle. There's a little something indescribable about a stay at Deetjens.

The inn exists today because when Helmuth Deetjen died in 1972, he left the Inn to be forever enjoyed by transient guests wanting to experience the peace, friendship, and beauty that can be found at the Inn. The Inn is on the National Register of Historic Places by the US Department of the Interior. It is operated on a non-profit basis by the Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn Preservation Foundation.

http://www.deetjens.com/rooms.htm

http://www.deetjens.com/restaurant.htm

http://www.deetjens.com/images/2.07/Deetjens.BigSurInn.jpg

So romantic: http://www.deetjens.com/images/2.07/Fire-Place-Room-Web1.jpg

The restaurant at Deetjens has a long and colorful history. Kent Seavey, the Chairman of Deetjens Inc., the Inns’ leaseholder, describes its beginnings well in his booklet ‘Deetjens’. “As their work progressed on their Castro Canyon property travelers began taking advantage of Deetjen and Helen’s hospitality for food and overnight lodging. Except for Steve Jaeger’s Loma Vista Inn, a gas station and lunchroom built in 1936 on the hillside below the Post Ranch about 2 miles north, theirs was the first light in many miles south of Pfeiffer State Park. At first the boarding and feeding of guests was handled as a very casual business arrangement. Eventually, as increasing numbers of visitors arrived, the couple began to build the place up.

In 1939 Barbara Blake, a refined Englishwoman who had been recently widowed, stumbled onto the place and like so many after her was taken by the natural beauty and spiritual quality of its setting. Mrs. Blake had experience in operating country inns and money to invest in the heart of the Depression. She leased the barn and expanded it with a shed-roofed wing to the south turning the place into a restaurant. Barbara Blake was responsible for the interior decoration of the Inn including purchase of the beautiful old bar, which came from the Smith family ranch at Westmere, and the English patternware table service so long in use at the Inn.”

Fortunately little has changed to alter the quiet ambience of the place she established over sixty years ago. We still serve breakfast and dinner in one of four intimate candlelight rooms accompanied by soft classical music. Or enjoy breakfast on our outside patio as weather permits.

Heaven: http://www.deetjens.com/images/2.07/Wisteria-Chairs-Deetjens.jpg

Romantic, even at Breakfast: http://www.deetjens.com/images/2.07/Porch-Room600.jpg

:) Although I visited here several times in the past with friends and ex-lovers, I would definitely go and stay by myself here - again and again. (l)

(k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 04:18 PM

:o

Sponsored by the Benedictine Sisters of Mt. Angel.

http://www.open.org/~shalom/

:) Isn't this a non-sequitor?

(f)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 04:19 PM

(l) (f)

http://www.earthsanctuary.org/

(k) 's,

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 04:20 PM

;)

http://www.doubledownsaloon.com/

(y) (y)

:)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 04:25 PM

:| :| :|

Emerging world power affects us more each day

Cheryll Barron

Sunday, February 11, 2007

"Everyone in Washington ignores India," wrote veteran geopolitical analyst and State Department watcher Martin Sieff in 1998 after India's second round of nuclear tests. He complained that America, obsessed by small, insignificant countries, was failing to court India and "secure an important ally." Not until November was there a sign of such advice being heeded. The United States agreed to share nuclear technology with the subcontinent, but only after fierce lobbying by rich and prominent Indian Americans, including Bay Area venture capitalists.

America's blind spot about India explains why a $12.2 billion corporate takeover in late January that Europe treated like a scary number on the Richter scale was reported without fanfare and garnered scant comment in U.S. media. Writing in the Independent, the upscale paper of the British left, Hamish McRae -- one of the most sober and respected economics writers for more than 30 years -- said the acquisition signified "a shift of seismic proportions, something far beyond anything that has occurred in our lifetimes."

On Jan. 31, India's Tata group, a conglomerate founded in the 1860s and today controlled by a charitable foundation, bought Corus -- the Anglo-Dutch steelmaker that employs 47,000 people and contains the heart of Industrial Age Britain, the company once known as British Steel. Tata is one-fifth the size of Corus, and the takeover was the biggest foreign purchase ever made by an Indian company. Ratan Tata, the company's chairman and a descendant of a founder who was himself descended from a long line of Parsee priests, said that outbidding a Brazilian rival, Companhia Siderurgica Nacional, had led to "a moment of great fulfillment for India."

Large Indian corporations in industries ranging from pharmaceuticals to software have quietly been growing bolder about snapping up companies in the United States and Europe, and this reflects the steady upward revision of economic forecasts for India, now that its gross domestic product has grown at an average yearly rate of more than 8 percent for four years -- a pace that could reach double figures by the end of this year. The latest projections from Goldman Sachs, the international investment bank, show India's economy overtaking Italy's in size by 2012, France's by 2015 and Britain's by 2016.

Goldman Sachs also expects that while China's economy will be larger than America's by the 2030s, India's could zoom past the United States by 2045. The modest attention that U.S. media paid to Tata and Corus suggests that America only barely acknowledges India's high rank among the fast-rising countries outside the West that were one focus of last month's World Economic Forum in Davos -- "the shifting power equation."

Book publishing trends can be an index of what the educated population of a country considers important.

It has been more than a decade since Indian writers like Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth and Jhumpa Lahiri supplanted Latin American magical realists on U.S. lists of best-selling foreign fiction. Indian cookbooks do well, Bollywood music has for some time been fashionable on university campuses, the Indian-born M. Night Shyamalan has directed Hollywood blockbusters, and yoga is so popular that strains of it are tailored for Americans.

Accelerating in the 1960s, with the New Age philosophizing that came with tie-dyed T-shirts and beads and was just as superficial, the crowd-pleasing Indian cultural exports have satisfied American appetites for aesthetic exoticism. By contrast -- and not only because of an outsourcing boom during a deep recession three years ago -- Indian software companies' ever-greater importance in world trade has caused deep unease as they have graduated from routine coding to systems specification and software architecture.

Recently, The Chronicle reported on a joint UC Berkeley and Duke University study revealing that a quarter of U.S. technology companies created between 1995 and 2004 had at least one foreign founder. But the paper did not record that the study also uncovered an astonishing fact -- that more Indian immigrants were at the helm of U.S. engineering and technology startups over the period than migrants from China, the United Kingdom, Japan and Taiwan combined. Nor did it say that Indian-born entrepreneurs were principal founders of 26 percent of immigrant-led Silicon Valley ventures, just overtaking Chinese and Taiwanese founders, who accounted for 24.4 percent of the total. Yet in the week that these findings were released, The Chronicle splashed across its arts pages a magnificent color spread about the Indian novelist Vikram Chandra and his million-dollar book advance.

Any idea of India as an economic or political power triggers semiconscious prejudices that persist, even though the basis for them has either grown weaker or vanished. Born into the most exalted realization of the Enlightenment ideals of equality and freedom, Americans understandably never quite forget India's centuries-long status as the world's most hierarchical and caste-bound society -- even though modern India, unlike China, has passionately embraced democracy and has struggled for decades to get results from its many versions of affirmative action, making bumpy and slow but still measurable progress.

If the news media had given Tata's coup the attention it deserved, Americans would have learned that this corporation, India's largest after the buyout, has for decades given workers in its company town subsidized housing and electricity, free purified water, hospital care and schooling for children.

Many Americans have resented Indians' traditional pride in their "ancient and spiritual civilization" and read into it -- accurately or not -- an implication that it is superior to the materialistic New World's. But in the last seven years, the subcontinent has been keener to promote a new image as "shining India," the slogan of one political party that pithily conveys the wish of all dynamic contemporary Indians to be seen as thoroughly future-focused. There are Americans who still cannot forgive India for aligning itself for 30 years with the old Soviet Union, even after that Bolshevik invention fell apart, and even though its rump, Russia, now openly prefers China as an ally.

By some estimates, three years from now China and India will together churn out 12 times as many engineers, mathematicians, scientists and technicians as the United States. True, only a small proportion of these are educated to high standards today, but that will improve. Even without any strategic political incentives for treating India as an honored friend -- such as hoping for help with keeping Chinese expansionism in check -- it is impossible to see the United States holding its own in the knowledge economy taking shape without leaning heavily on Indian as well as Chinese workers of many stripes.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/02/11/INGQ6O1CFN1.DTL

8-) 8-) Somebody...., no make that millions of people here in the U.S. - need to pay attention to and take action to respond to this statistic:

"By some estimates, three years from now China and India will together churn out 12 times as many engineers, mathematicians, scientists and technicians as the United States...... it is impossible to see the United States holding its own in the knowledge economy taking shape without leaning heavily on Indian as well as Chinese workers of many stripes."

:|

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 04:26 PM

:s

http://www.americanexperiment.org/publications/1995/199512hj.php

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/02/05/bush-budget-cuts/

:-# As always, truth is relative.

:)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 04:27 PM

(f) (f)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Evans

http://www.songwritershalloffame.org/exhibit_home_page.asp?exhibitId=218

(f) (f) 's,

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 04:28 PM

(f) (f) (f)

Where would everyone (well, lots of folks) BE without it?

Best known as the "Father of the TV Remote Control," Dr. Robert Adler is responsible for a large number of significant scientific contributions to the electronics industry, including landmark inventions in the field of consumer products and in sophisticated specialized communications equipment. He holds more than 180 patents.

Dr. Adler joined Zenith's research division in 1941, after receiving his Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of Vienna in 1937. He was named associate director in November 1952, vice president in 1959, and vice president and director of research in 1963. He officially retired from Zenith in 1982 but remains active as a technical consultant.

In the consumer electronics field, Dr. Adler developed Zenith's Space Command? ultrasonic remote control for TV sets, the first practical wireless TV remote, which Zenith introduced in 1956. In 1959, he received the 1958 Outstanding Technical Achievement Award of the Institute of Radio Engineers Professional Group on Broadcast and Television Receivers for his "original work on ultrasonic remote controls" for television.

Among Dr. Adler's earlier work is the gated-beam tube which, at the time of its introduction, represented an entirely new concept in the field of vacuum tubes. The use of this tube greatly simplified the sound system in television receivers, markedly improving reception by screening out certain types of sound interference while lowering the cost of the sound channel.

Dr. Adler also was instrumental in originating and developing a synchronizing circuit which permitted demonstrably greater stability in fringe areas of television reception. This invention was in wide use for many years and its principles are still employed today.

The electron beam parametric amplifier, developed in 1958 by Dr. Adler jointly with Dr. Glen Wade, then of Stanford University, was at the time the most sensitive practical amplifier for ultra high frequencies (UHF). It was used by radio astronomers in the U.S. as well as abroad, and by the U.S. Air Force for long-range missile detection.

Dr. Adler's original work in the field of acousto-optical interaction was instrumental in the 1966 public demonstration, by a team of Zenith engineers, of an experimental television display using ultrasonic deflection and modulation of a laser beam to produce a wall-size TV picture without a cathode ray tube.

During World War II, Dr. Adler worked on high frequency magnetostrictive oscillators for use in Armed Forces communications equipment. His early work on electromechanical filters paved the way for the development of the highly compact filters widely used in aircraft receivers after the war. In the mid-60s, he suggested the use of surface acoustic waves in intermediate frequency filters for color television sets, a technology that has since become universal. Acoustic waves also are used in touch screens, employing principles he originated.

In 1951, Dr. Adler became a Fellow of the Institute of Radio Engineers (now the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE), a professional honor which is conferred by the Institute's board of directors solely on the basis of "eminence and distinguished service." He was cited for his "developments of transmission and detection devices for frequency-modulated signals and of electromechanical filter systems."

Dr. Adler received the 1967 Inventor-of-the-Year Award from George Washington University's Patent, Trademark and Copyright Research Institute for his inventions in the field of electronic products, devices and systems used in aircraft communications, radar, TV receivers and FM broadcasting. In 1970, he received the Consumer Electronics Outstanding Achievement Award from the IEEE. This award is made annually to an engineer who has contributed significantly toward the advancement of consumer electronics through engineering achievements.

Dr. Adler also received the 1974 Outstanding Technical Paper Award from the Chicago section of the IEEE for his report on "An Optical Video Disc Player for NTSC Receivers." His other IEEE awards include the Edison Medal in 1980 and the Sonics and Ultrasonics Achievement Award in 1981. The Edison Medal is the principal annual award of the IEEE and is presented for a career of meritorious achievement in electrical science, electrical engineering, or the electrical arts.

In 1998, Dr. Adler joined other Zenith engineers in accepting an engineering Emmy award for "pioneering work in the development of the remote control." In 2000, the Consumer Electronics Association acknowledged Dr. Adler's significant contributions to the industry, inducting him into the Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame.

Also in 2000, Dr. Adler was inducted into the National Academy of Arts and Sciences Chicago/Midwest Chapter's "Silver Circle," which recognizes "outstanding individuals who have devoted a quarter of a century or more to the television industry and have made a significant contribution to Chicago broadcasting."

Dr. Adler is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was born in Vienna, Austria on December 4, 1913.

http://www.zenith.com/sub_about/about_adler.html

http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/adler.html

:) Weekend Update (on Saturday Night Live) reported on this story. They said
that, according to his wishes, Dr. Adler was buried between two giant sofa
cushions.

;)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 04:30 PM

:o

http://www.24hoursoflemons.com/

;)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 04:36 PM

(h) (h) (h) (h) (h) (h) (h)

http://www.colorjack.com/sphere/

Click on one of the choices such as ColorJack or StoryFace.........

(y) (y) F*ing Amazing!! I LOVED it and could spend hours on this web site, playing.

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 04:37 PM

:o

http://www.colorjack.com/blind.php

(y) (y)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 04:40 PM

(f) (f) (f)

http://ericpoulton.blogspot.com/

http://bp0.blogger.com/_fYpsA3iAQDU/ReY8qNBQXhI/AAAAAAAAADU/kK6auRmRexo/s400/Jabba.jpg

http://bp2.blogger.com/_fYpsA3iAQDU/ReAaMNBQXfI/AAAAAAAAADA/ewCPyFh9yOs/s400/HanChewie.jpg

(y) (y)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 04:44 PM

(y) (y)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk

A rocket lands on the moon in Le Voyage dans la Lune, the film adaptation of Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/Voyage_dans_la_lune_%281902%29_still_01.jpg/180px-Voyage_dans_la_lune_%281902%29_still_01.jpg

(y) (y) (y) (y) (y) Very cool stuff. Lots and lots of interesting info.

(k) 's,

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 04:45 PM

8-|

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=99427&start=0

(h) (h)

(k) 's,

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 04:50 PM

:| :|

Ear Scope:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/01/ear-scope-turns-wax-removal-into-primetime-entertainment/

(y) (y) It's basically a cheap fiber optic periscope. (y) (y) Just IMAGINE the applications! ;)

:) 's,

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 04:56 PM

:s :s :s :s :s

Q U O T E D

"Shortly before midnight (CST) on Monday, February 26, a group of republican Second Life users, some sporting 'Bush '08' tags, vandalized the John Edwards Second Life HQ. They plastered the area with Marxist/Leninist posters and slogans, a feces spewing obsenity, and a photoshopped picture of John in blackface, all the while harrassing visitors with right-wing nonsense and obsenity-laden abuse of Democrats in general and John in particular."

-- The Edwards campaign gets the traditional visit from the Second Life Welcome Wagon

http://blog.johnedwards.com/story/2007/2/27/21847/2507

:| Not that I'm an Edwards fan or anything. However, given today's communications' technologies, I am sure a backtrace of the IP addresses, and even more complex "black-ops" tracing methods that Edwards might have access to through powerful connections - just might nail the GOP bastards that did the deeds. (y) (y)

^o) Cyberspace far-right wing-nut gangs. What next?

:) 's,

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-02-2007, 05:09 PM

(l) (l) (l) (l) (l)

http://www.michaelsmithgallery.com/gallery/textiles/textiles_navajo-rugs/

Reminds me of the "pin wheel" in amish signs:

http://www.navajorug.com/images/historic/10.jpg

http://www.featherstontrading.com/navajo_weavinge.htm

Nice: http://www.artssouthwest.com/rugs/b_NavajoRug.jpg

Pretty Blue in this one: http://www.tackrus.com/images/Cotton_32X64_7.JPG

Depicts Tree of Life and Monument Valley:

http://www.penfieldgallery.com/images/treeoflife.jpg

http://www.sagebrushgallery.com/navajo-rugs-for-sale/tj-storm-rug-43x71_thumb.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/Baja/Dunes/2319/art/r780_l.jpg

Lovely: http://www.navajo-coop.org/images/Navajo_rug2_N.jpg

The Holy People -Spider Man & Spider Woman

There is a spire-like rock formation in Canyon de Chelley near Chinle, Arizona on the Navajo Reservation that is named "Spider Rock". A plaque at the view point tells of the traditional legend of Spider Rock and the beginning of weaving among the Navajo people.

"First Man and First Woman were taught how to weave by two of the Holy People. Spider Man told them how to make a loom and Spider Woman told how to weave on it.

The loom's crosspoles were made of sky and earth cords, the warp sticks of the sun rays, the healds of rock crystal and sheet lightening, the batten of sun's halo, and the comb of white shell.

The four spindles were made of zigzag lightning with a cannel coal whorl, flash lightening with a turquoise whorl, sheet lightning with an abalone whorl, and a rain streamer with a white shell whorl."

About Navajo Rugs

Navajo rugs are some of the most valued and sought after pieces of southwestern art. The Navajo began this type of weaving approximately two or three centuries ago.

http://www.navajo-coop.org/AboutNavajoRugs.htm

Gorgeous: http://www.painthorsegallery.com/nav.rugs.jpg

(f) (f) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-03-2007, 10:42 AM

(f) (f)

Big photo for my butch friends: http://www.bartcop.com/rohm.jpg

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/MMPH/251746~Elizabeth-Rohm-Posters.jpg

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0737533/

Photo Gallery (31 photos):

http://www.imdb.com/gallery/granitz/5568/Events/5568/ElisabethR_WireI_11947481_400.jpg?path=pgallery&path_key=R%F6hm,%20Elisabeth

http://www.citycynic.com/2005/01/13/elizabeth-rohm-leaves-law-order/

http://www.elisabethrohm.org/

Gallery: http://www.starpulse.com/Actresses/Rohm,_Elisabeth/Pictures/

:) (h) Brilliantly bright sunny day! It is one of those "sitting on the two seasons' fence" types of days. (y) Seems as if there are endless laundry loads - quilts, throws, fleece blankets, etc.to do since I got back home from my travels yesterday. Wyatt is on prednizone and having "accidents". But the med has stopped the itchy ears, that's for sure. Plus 2,000 :| mg. of Keflex a day. However, his ears are definitely getting and looking better.:) Back to the country vet (and we love that drive, or at least Wyatt's mama does...) in a week and a half.

Already coming up mid-March is my very LAST PhD course Final Paper before I start Comps Exams and Dissertation. Still have a 4.0 after 92 credits (23 courses). This last course is the 24th.

<:o) Hip, hip, horray! <:o)

({)(}) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer

sweetlady

03-03-2007, 10:47 AM

(y) (y)

http://www.newyorkcitytheatre.com/theaters/belascotheater/theater.html

Reviews:

1.

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2007/02/23/theater/reviews/23jour.html?ex=1329886800&en=d38c115b770086d5&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

2. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0fae45a6-c36a-11db-9047-000b5df10621.html

3.

http://www.ctnow.com/stage/reviews/hce-journeyrev.artfeb23,0,6568924.story?coll=hce-headlines-theaterreviews

(i) Do people learn from the past, really? This play was about the "War to End All Wars" and yet the language (and soldiers' experiences) from almost a century ago seems relevant today. This play provoked some thinking for me. (f)

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-03-2007, 10:48 AM

(8) (y) (8) (y) (8)

http://www.calendarlive.com/music/reviews/cl-et-birdbee17jan17,0,1908664.story?coll=cl-albumreviews

http://altmusic.about.com/b/a/000075.htm

(k) 's,

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-03-2007, 10:55 AM

(l) (l) (l) (l) (l)

http://www.tz-vis.hr/

The remote Croatian island of Vis is as impregnable as a Bond villain's lair and as beautiful as Capri before the tourists. Despite its picture postcard Mediterranean beauty, its olive groves and vines, its ancient ruins and deserted beaches, it has virtually no tourists. It seems the only foreigners who have discovered it are those who arrive on the glamorous Italian and Austrian yachts that moor here in the evening.

Gold Mine of Photos: http://www.adria-island.org/en/island_text/croatia/island_vis/island_vis

An island in the central Dalmatian archipelago; area 90.3 sq km (length 17 km, width up to 8 km); population 4,338; the highest peak Hum (587 m). The vast Komiza Bay, with sandy bottom, is situated on the western coast of the island. The southern coast is characterized by several smaller inlets (Travna Vela, Travna Mala, Stiniva, Ruda, Teleska Vela, Ploce, etc.). The town and the port of Vis lie on the northern coast of the island with many cliffs, of which Gradac Cliff is most impressive (100 m). The islets of Ravnik, Budihovac, Parzanj and Greben are situated off the south-eastern shore. The island of Vis is exposed to the north-westerly and south-easterly winds. The average air temperature in July is 24 °C, and in January 8.8 °C; the annual rainfall reaches 557 mm (only around 40 mm in the summer). The island has no fresh water sources, apart from several springs near Komiza. Water is supplied in the summer by ships and kept in cisterns. Limestone crests used to be covered with macchia. Fertile valleys, covered with red soils and interspersed with sand dunes, are cultivated with vines. The main settlements on the island, Vis and Komiza, are connected by a road and ship lines. Apart from viniculture (modern wine production plants) and vegetables (early vegetables), fishing (fish cannery in Komiza) is also important. The island has a palm-tree nursery. Tourism is increasingly gaining on importance.

Vis and other islands: http://www.kroatien-online.com/en/tourism/islands/vis.htm

Beauties of Croatia - island Vis: http://outdoors.webshots.com/album/553327745FkHkCV

http://www.nautic-apartments.com/

(y) (y) (y) (y) (y) I'd go here - but it seems like a terrific place to travel to with someone. Hmmm....I been considering using one of those expensive "Executive Lesbian" dating web sites lately........very, very pricy, but then folks whom I know have received a high ROI. :) As in every one of them found someone who was perfectly matched and all have been together a long time. I am seriously considering making the investment. Afterall, there are no reports of ANY lesbian drama - probably because anyone willing to pay those high fees are more often than not financially secure as well as emotionally stable as well. (y) (y)

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-03-2007, 10:56 AM

(f) (8) (f) (8)

The Crooked Road is Virginia's Heritage Music Trail, a driving route through the Appalachian Mountains from the western slopes of the Blue Ridge to the Coalfields region of the state. The trail connects major heritage music venues in the Appalachian region such as the Blue Ridge Music Center, Birthplace of Country Music Alliance, and the Carter Family Fold. The traditional gospel, bluegrass, and mountain music heard today was passed down from generation to generation and lives on through a wealth of musicians and instrument makers along the trail. Annual festivals, weekly concerts, live radio shows, and informal jam sessions abound throughout the region. In addition, this region is also rich in other cultural and natural assets, particularly crafts and outdoor recreation. A wide variety of traditional handcrafted woodwork, weaving, and pottery can be found along the trail in country stores and small workshops. The lush valleys and rugged mountains offer numerous opportunities for outdoor activities, from hiking and biking to fishing and boating.

http://www.thecrookedroad.org/

(y) (y)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-03-2007, 10:58 AM

(l) (l) (l)

A 400-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 50 in Nevada:

http://www.rockymountainroads.com/nevada.html

U.S. 50 (The Lincoln Highway) is a cross-country route like U.S. 40; however, it manages to get to Sacramento, California, before being absorbed by Interstate 80. Across Nevada, U.S. 50 is famous for being "America's Loneliest Road." It crosses through the Lake Tahoe Basin (where the highway is anything but lonely), then descends into the Carson Valley via a single carriageway, four-lane highway. Once in Carson City, U.S. 50 slowly loses traffic; past Fallon, you'll see road signs like these touting U.S. 50, the nation's loneliest road.

U.S. 50 was commissioned in 1926 as one of the original U.S. routes. As planned in 1926, U.S. 50 traveled almost exactly the same path as it does today. However, between 1929 and 1953, U.S. 50 was rerouted to serve Salt Lake City. During this time, between Ely, Nevada, and Green River, Utah, U.S. 50 followed present day along U.S. 93 and 93A from Ely north to Wendover, then paralleled U.S. 40 east to Salt Lake City. At Salt Lake City, U.S. 50 turned south along U.S. 89-91 to Spanish Fork, then southeast along current U.S. 6 to Green River. In 1953, U.S. 50 was rerouted to its original, 1926 routing. Today U.S. 50 follows along the same route near Great Basin National Park and Delta, Utah.

The routing of U.S. 50 between the Lake Tahoe region and Ely has remained unchanged between 1926 and today, with a few adjustments due to road improvements and minor realignments.

The two main east-west routes across northern Nevada follow Interstate 80 (old U.S. 40) and U.S. 50. For much of the 20th Century, U.S. 40 overshadowed U.S. 50 as the primary route across the state. (For more information on the Victory and Lincoln Highway Associations, go to the U.S. 40 page.) However, U.S. 40 may have too successful, as Interstate 80 replaced U.S. 40 across its former route. Today, U.S. 50 remains as "the Loneliest Road in America."

In 1986, a Life magazine article identified U.S. 50 as a desolate road devoid of many services. The article warned travelers to avoid U.S. 50 entirely. Rich Moreno, the director of public relations for the Nevada Commission on Tourism between 1985 and 1992, used this article to the advantage of advancing state tourism by creating the "I survived Highway 50, the Loneliest Road in America" promotional campaign in July 1986. In May 2004, Mr. Moreno wrote, "That was the same month in which a photo and story appeared in the July 1986 issue of Life magazine that depicted a cowboy on a horse riding across a lonely stretch of U.S. 50 in Nevada. The text to the photo described the 287-mile stretch of U.S. 50 between Ely and Fernley as 'the Loneliest Road in America' and cited an unnamed AAA advisor as saying that a traveler would need 'survival skills' to make the trip.

"The towns along the route were initially upset about the characterization of their region but our office quickly convinced them of the public relations possibilities. In response, we developed a tongue-in-cheek 'Highway 50 Survival Kit,' which contained useful information about the various towns along the route and included a little game travelers could play; they could take a cartoon map with a tear-off card and have the card stamped with 'I Survived' next to the names of the five major towns along that stretch of road. If the traveler returned the card to us, we would send him or her an official 'I Survived Highway 50' certificate signed by the Governor, a pin, and other prizes.

"We (initially) printed 500 of the kits to determine the interest and those were gone in less than a month. To date, the campaign is still going on and more than 40,000 Survival Kits have been sent out by the state. Our office also succeeded in getting the state legislature to officially designate U.S. 50 as the Loneliest Road in America and in having the state highway department erect Loneliest Road signs along the route. During 1986-89, I promoted the heck out of the Loneliest Road, working with CNN, CBS, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, etc. to produce features about America's Loneliest Road. I also worked with local businesses in each town to develop t-shirts, bumper stickers, pins, etc. Since that time, there have been a couple of books about the Loneliest Road, a song (for a BBC play), thousands of newspaper and magazine articles from around the world, and probably lots of other stuff."

Contrary to prior statements made on this page, the original Loneliest Road story appeared in Life magazine, not Trailer Life. Mr. Moreno visited the offices of Trailer Life magazine in Southern California in 1987 to promote the Loneliest Road story, and that magazine followed up with a similarly themed story sometime later that year. However, the Loneliest Road article first appeared in Life magazine.

Now U.S. 50 is seen as a welcome respite from the hustle of trucks and traffic on Interstate 80. The tourism commission's campaign enticed people to take the less traveled road and to visit one of the nation's newer national parks (Great Basin).

U.S. 50 enters Nevada right in the heart of South Lake Tahoe, California. The obligatory casinos stand tall on both sides of the five-lane highway (two lanes each way plus turn lane). During the summer evenings, tourists will flock from all over the south shore of Lake Tahoe to the casinos, resulting in monumental traffic jams and tie ups between the California 89 (the "Y") junction and the casinos. Parking at the casinos can be a breeze, or it could be a nightmare.

Plans are currently on hold for Caltrans and Nevada DOT to construct a U.S. 50 Bypass route, which would likely follow a freeway alignment along Pioneer Trail to the south of South Lake Tahoe right along the base of the mountains. It is very unlikely that a freeway would be built here due to environmental concerns, so traffic typically remains on U.S. 50. Even traffic that uses the Pioneer Trail to bypass the Y junction must still rendezvous with U.S. 50 before entering Nevada and meeting the towering casinos.

Plans from the 1950s, in fact, called for U.S. 50 to be constructed as a full-freeway through the foothills and mountains between Placerville and Carson City. This is very unlikely, given the extremely high cost of literally punching a hole in the mountains around Echo Summit (where U.S. 50 crosses the top of the Sierra Nevada) and routing a freeway down the steep, narrow incline along a sheer cliff. It is very unlikely that another freeway like Interstate 80 would ever be routed across the Sierra Nevada.

U.S. 50 serves as the principal route for Lake Tahoe visitors, as it connects Sacramento and Carson City residents. Heading east away from the casinos, U.S. 50 hugs the shoreline of Lake Tahoe in a northeasterly direction until just before Spooner Junction, which is its connection to Nevada 28. Nevada 28 continues around the lake, while U.S. 50 resumes its trip east to Carson City. Scenic U.S. 50 is now four lanes wide. From one-quarter mile east of Spooner Summit all the way down the hill to one-half mile west of U.S. 395, U.S. 50 is a divided highway (new since 2000). This has reduced accidents along this potentially dangerous and steep highway. As you travel down the highway (approximately a 2,000 to 3,000 foot drop), it is hard to realize that the lowest point of Lake Tahoe is still deeper than the floor of Carson Valley.

Once joining U.S. 395, U.S. 50 enters the state capital of Nevada. Currently, U.S. 50 goes directly through the city. However, the recent TEA-21 legislation has approved money for the future U.S. 395 bypass that will be built east of town. The U.S. 50 designation will be moved to this new bypass, and old U.S. 50 will likely gain a "business" designation. Already, the Nevada DOT considers the joined U.S. 50-395 section to be Nevada 529, and the U.S. 50 section Nevada 530.

Upon leaving the capital area, U.S. 50 quickly loses its extra lanes and is a mere two lanes as it travels away from civilization and into the depths of the Great Basin. Fallon acts as a last outpost prior to the all-encompassing vastness and emptiness between Carson City and Grand Junction, Colorado. U.S. 50, in fact, does not enter another large city for over 500 miles.

U.S. 50 leaves Fallon rather quickly. Some traffic from the west comes in via U.S. 50 Alternate, which is a fast connection between Interstate 80 and the remote communities of central and eastern Nevada. I can list rather easily the remaining "major" towns along U.S. 50 through the rest of Nevada: Austin, Eureka, and Ely. That's it. There are some smaller developments and communities along the way, but none provide all of the main amenities, such as restaurants, stores, lodging, gas stations, and so on. Ely is the only one that has a fast-food chain presence (not that a fast food chain is a good thing, but it does give you an idea of how profitable McDonald's finds the U.S. 50 Corridor).

Austin and Eureka both lie at intersections with state highways that link to Interstate 80. Naturally, those towns along the old U.S. 40 corridor are much larger and well traveled due to their proximity to the freeway. The towns along I-80 have historically done better than those along U.S. 50. First, the transcontinental railroad was constructed along the modern I-80 alignment - the U.S. 50 corridor was deemed to be too hilly. Then, in the early quarter of this century, U.S. 40 (the Victory Highway) was the chosen path for the Lincoln Highway, which was (and is) a major arterial for the automobile. The biggest blow came in the early 1950s, when U.S. 40 was chosen as an Interstate highway corridor over U.S. 50. Perhaps the only saving grace is that U.S. 50 still remains in the rugged West today, while U.S. 40 dies short of reaching Salt Lake City, Utah.

Heading east, Austin is the first small town after Fallon. Along the way, look out for Sand Mountain (below), which is more like a sand dune than a mountain. There are some small motels, gas stations, and homes in the Austin area, but not much else. At night, you can see the cars ascend the switchbacks leading the 7,484 foot Austin Summit. While the summit is within the Toiyabe National Forest, there are many more sagebrush bushes than trees! During the winter, the Austin Summit is notorious for accidents, as westbound cars and trucks don't realize the steep descent into Austin and skid off the road at one of the many switchbacks.

Eureka, the small mining town, is another 120 miles past Austin. Recent development of the Ruby Hill Mine, a project of the Homestake Mining Company, stimulated the economy, but the mine has slowed operations. Mining is a naturally short-term proposition, and locals rightfully fear that the economic boost brought on by the new mine will not translate into long-term growth or into real economic development. New homes that were built for the miners may lie vacant in years to come if another industry does not stimulate growth.

Continuing east, U.S. 50 reaches the first town of any real significance in Ely. Located 120 miles from nearly any other significant town, Ely is an interesting place. U.S. 50 travels through a narrow canyon before entering Ely, and then it goes directly through the town center, meeting Business U.S. 6 (Murry Street) near downtown. Parking meters line the street ? I could not (and still can't) believe that a small town like this would have parking meters! Noticeably missing from Ely are the gaming components that are prevalent in most other Nevada cities and towns.

U.S. 50, now joined with U.S. 6 and U.S. 93, head southeast toward Great Basin National Park. If you are heading westbound, this segment of U.S. 50 seems eternal, since it is nearly 20 miles between the Majors Place (Junction U.S. 6-50-93) and the town center of Ely. The road gradually gains elevation from Majors Place to Ely, making the town invisible until the last few miles of the journey.

Near the junction with U.S. 93, you can see the backside of Wheeler Peak, which is one of the tallest mountains in Nevada. Typically snow-capped, Wheeler Peak is the beacon for travelers crossing the Utah desert toward Nevada. It is protected as part of the Great Basin National Park (formerly Lehman Caves National Monument). Access to the national park from U.S. 6-50 is via Nevada 487 and 488 on the east side of the mountain chain.

Right after the junction with Nevada 487, U.S. 6-50 enter Utah, the Beehive State. U.S. 6-50 remain merged until Delta, Utah, which is the first town of significance since Ely. The trip from Ely to Delta is a relatively short trip when compared to others in the Great Basin. U.S. 6 treks northeast toward Provo (along the Historic routing of U.S. 50), while U.S. 50 heads more directly west to meet Interstate 70. U.S. 6 and U.S. 50 will meet again near Green River, Utah, but don't be surprised at the lack of signing. Both the states of Utah and Colorado are known for their lack of signing U.S. routes along Interstate highways.

Geographically, U.S. 50 begins climbing and descending the various mountain ranges and crests between Fallon and the Utah State Line while traveling great distances through remote valleys. The first major summit along U.S. 50 is at New Pass (6,348 feet), which is about 20 miles west of Austin and 30 miles east of Middlegate (the Nevada 361 junction). Austin Summit lies just east of the town of Austin at 7,484 feet. Just beyond that, still within the Toiyabe National Forest, lies Scott Summit at 7,195 feet. This 12-mile section between Austin and Junction Nevada 376 is very steep and twisty.

Hickison Summit is about 12 miles east of Junction Nevada 376. From here, U.S. 50 remains on a valley floor all the way to Eureka, which is 70 miles east of Austin. Then U.S. 50 rises to four more passes between Eureka and Ely: the Pinto Summit at 7,376 feet, Pancake Summit at 6,521 feet, Little Antelope Summit at 7,438 feet, and Robinson Summit at 7,588 feet. At Ely, U.S. 50 merges with U.S. 6 and 93. Together they climb Connors Pass at 7,722 feet. U.S. 6-50, just east of Majors Place (Junction U.S. 6-50-93), climb Sacramento Pass (7,154 feet) near the towering Wheeler Peak (elevation 13,063 feet).

In all, U.S. 50 traverses nine mountain passes between Fallon and the Utah border. This gives U.S. 50 an elevation range between approximately 4,000 and 7,000 feet with each pass. Keep this in mind if you're traveling U.S. 50 in the winter. The road can be treacherous, if not dangerous.

http://www.rockymountainroads.com/us-050_nv.html

Other States "Back Roads:

http://www.thecrookedroad.org/

(l) (l) (l)

:)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-03-2007, 11:01 AM

(f) (f) (f) (f) (f)

1. PENÉLOPE CRUZ:

http://img2.timeinc.net/people/i/2007/specials/oscars07/bwdressed/penelope_cruz2.jpg

2. CATE BLANCHETT:

http://img2.timeinc.net/people/i/2007/specials/oscars07/show/bwdressed/cate_blanchett200.jpg

3. REESE WITHERSPOON:

http://img2.timeinc.net/people/i/2007/specials/oscars07/show/bwdressed/resse_witherspoon200.jpg

4. KATE WINSLET:

http://img2.timeinc.net/people/i/2007/specials/oscars07/bwdressed/kate_winslet2.jpg

5. GWYNETH PALTROW:

http://img2.timeinc.net/people/i/2007/specials/oscars07/show/bwdressed/gywneth_paltrow200.jpg

6. HELEN MIRREN:

http://img2.timeinc.net/people/i/2007/specials/oscars07/show/bwdressed/helen_mirren200.jpg

7. CAMERON DIAZ:

http://img2.timeinc.net/people/i/2007/specials/oscars07/bwdressed/cameron_diaz2.jpg

8. MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL:

http://img2.timeinc.net/people/i/2007/specials/oscars07/bwdressed/maggie_gyllenhaal.jpg

9. NICOLE KIDMAN:

http://img2.timeinc.net/people/i/2007/specials/oscars07/show/bwdressed/nicole_kidman300.jpg

(y) Enjoy! (c) (o) Time for that second cup soon. And getting out and about to enjoy a ride on some back country roads. :)

Sun Thoughts,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-03-2007, 11:05 AM

8-| 8-| 8-| 8-|

http://www.mediadecor.com/QC%20Series.htm

(y) Cool but way too expensive. I keep my electronics in a beautiful large armoir made by an Amish carpenter back in the early 1990's. Hides all the TV, stereo and media like CDs, DVDs, etc. I noticed that the form factor of consumer electronic has changed so much (flat screens, downloadable music and films, etc. - that I might sell that large piece of furniture before I move.

Adieu,

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-03-2007, 11:07 AM

(y) (y)

1. http://www.farecast.com/

2. http://www.airfarewatchdog.com/

3. http://www.kayak.com/

(ap) (ap) It's always nice to have a virtual travel agent trolling the Internet for the best deals as well as seats. ;) And that search agent then emailing results. Sweet!

(f)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-03-2007, 11:09 AM

(l) (l) (l) (l) (l)

1. http://www.ladyprimrose.com/

Royal Extract Bathing Gel: Sweet golden honey harmoniously blended with healing Royal Jelly creates a rich medley of natural moisturizers and cleansers. This luscious bathing gel smells and feels divine.

https://www.ladyprimrose.com/images/products/13-01066.jpg

https://www.ladyprimrose.com/index2.php

2. http://www.blissworld.com/

Steep Clean Body Polish: This body smoother is a formidable formula that combines self-heating technology with smooth-skin minerals, a type of superactive, pac-man-like super-zyme™ and exclusive new smartscrub™ beeswax beads that dissolve when they’ve been through what you might call ‘sufficient’ friction, so you know when you’ve buffed enough. It also functions as a five to ten-minute 'facial' for the body, to help you dump bothersome bumps.

http://www.blissworld.com/products/m/BLISS-250.jpg

http://www.blissworld.com/shop/detail/BLISS-250/

3. Amore Pacific Time Response Intensive Hand Renewal Creme

http://www.neimanmarcus.com/store/catalog/prod.jhtml?cmCat=search&srcText=AmorePacific+Time+Response+Intensive+Hand+ Renewal+Creme&numResults=0&pageNum=0&cmCat=search&itemId=prod37220001

"A luxuriously textured, global anti-aging creme to correct, protect, and renew the hands."

http://www.neimanmarcus.com/products/mn/NMC07JU_mn.jpg

(l) (f) (l) (f) (l) (f) (l)

Carpe diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-03-2007, 11:14 AM

(f) (f) (f) (f) (f) (f)

11 Days Till Baghdad

Crucial to the President's New Strategy for Iraq, A Commander and His Soldiers Head Into War

By David Finkel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 25, 2007; A01

FORT RILEY, Kan. -- Their camouflage on, their wives carrying infants, their older children carrying flags, the soldiers of George W. Bush's surge crowded into a gymnasium for their brigade deployment ceremony, a last public viewing before they disappeared into Iraq.

Baghdad, long an abstraction, was now imminent. Of the 21,500 additional troops President Bush decided to send to Iraq in the coming months, about 3,500 were coming from here. "Are you frightened?" a TV reporter called out. "I'm confident," one of those soldiers replied. An enormous American flag hung on the back wall. A military band lined up in formation. "Ready to go," another soldier said.

Outside, snow was coming toward this isolated place. Inside, as the bleachers filled and the doors swung closed against the cold, a 41-year-old soldier near the middle of the floor began clapping his hands in anticipation.

And now waved at his wife and children.

And now took his position in front of the soldiers he would soon be leading into combat.

This was Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, the commander of an Army battalion called the 2-16 -- the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division. The unit has 800 soldiers, most in their late teens and deploying to Iraq for the first time under the command of a man who, in this gymnasium filled with believers, was among the biggest believers of all.

"We are America," is how Kauzlarich would describe his belief a few days later, just before boarding a plane that would take him and his soldiers for a year's deployment into the center of an increasingly unpopular war. "This nation can do anything that it wants to do."

Down the hill, in another part of Fort Riley, a different ceremony was underway. That one, a private memorial service, was for a 21-year-old sergeant from a different battalion who five days before was traveling through northern Iraq when a makeshift bomb detonated near his vehicle, making him one of 25 American troops to die that day in the war.

The ceremony in the gym was a celebration, however, and now, from the band, came a stirring series of notes from a trumpet, followed by a moment of quiet, interrupted by a single boom of a bass drum so sudden and explosive it caused people to flinch, including some of the soldiers.

Ralph Kauzlarich, who perhaps would be an American hero a year from now, or perhaps would be an American tragedy, didn't flinch, though. Instead, just for a moment, he smiled.

***

What is it like to be a soldier in an unpopular war? To be part of a troop increase that the American public is overwhelmingly against, and to lead 800 soldiers into a war being described as "barbaric" and a "meat grinder" and the result of a "failed policy" and down to "the last chance" and "lost"?

"What we're about to do is going to change every one of our lives," Kauzlarich told his command staff at a meeting the day after the ceremony, which had concluded with handshakes from people who would grab onto him and lock onto his eyes, as if they were already trying to remember the last time they saw Ralph Kauzlarich. "And it'll all be okay," he continued, "as long as we win."

So fiercely does Kauzlarich believe this -- that the war can be won and that it will be won -- it can seem as if he is the one grabbing onto something, in this case the idea that victory is a matter not only of strategy and tactics, but of sheer willpower as well. A true believer's certainty: This is Kauzlarich's, who at 8 years old announced to his family that when he grew up he wanted to be "a leader of men," became the youngest Eagle Scout ever in his home state of Montana, attended West Point, became an Army Ranger, served in Desert Storm, served in Afghanistan, played a controversial role in the Army review of the friendly-fire death of Cpl. Pat Tillman, served a special-operations tour in Iraq, has climbed steadily through the officer ranks, and has yet to experience military failure.

As one of his soldiers said: "He's the kind of guy you follow to hell and back. He's that kind of leader."

He has never lost a soldier under his command. "No, I have not had to contend with that yet," he said. He has never had a soldier of his even get hurt, has never loaded a wounded soldier of his onto a stretcher, or treated a bleeding soldier of his on a battlefield, or notified a family that their beloved child, or husband, or father, had died. "I've talked to families that have lost sons in combat," he said, but those conversations were well after the fact and didn't involve soldiers who were directly his.

That, he imagines, will change. "Statistically, there's probably a pretty good chance I'm going to lose men," he said, and like so many things that would happen in the 11 days between the deployment ceremony on Jan. 25 and his actual departure on Feb. 5, the statement seemed both factual and heartbreaking. Ironies and bittersweet juxtapositions are inescapable in wartime, and these days weren't any exception.

One day came news that two soldiers and 250 insurgents had died during all-day gun battles that were unusually fierce, even by the standards of Iraq; that was the day Kauzlarich, his wife and three children all put on matching outfits of blue jeans and white shirts and went to Sears for a family portrait.

Another day: "I looked at Ralph's body armor today, and picked it up, and felt it," Kauzlarich's father -- who had flown in with his wife to say goodbye, and had gone to his son's office, and had hoisted the armor, and had heard medics boast that they could get a wounded soldier to a hospital from anywhere in Baghdad in 15 minutes max, and had been spared the detail that snipers had begun aiming at soldiers' thighs in order to pierce the femoral artery -- said at dinner. There was ham. There were twice-baked potatoes. There was a Betty Crocker cookbook open on the counter. There was an apple crisp in the oven.

Earlier, out of his son's earshot, the father, whose name is also Ralph Kauzlarich, said: "I have feelings. I have fears. I know he could get injured. I know he could not get back. But I know what he feels, too. He believes this."

His eyes had gotten a little wet as he said this, but now, eyes back to dry, merely nodding, he ate ham and potatoes and listened as his son described the first time he had come under fire in Desert Storm, how he had thought he might die, how he hadn't.

"Okay, there's a reason I'm here," Kauzlarich said he decided that day, as his parents listened, and his wife, Stephanie, went to get the apple crisp out of the oven, and his 7-year-old daughter, Allie, climbed onto his lap for a hug, and his son Jacob, who was born just after Sept. 11, 2001, slid laughing across the floor on his belly. "I wasn't afraid of anything from that point on."

Later:

"That's all you want to be buried with?" Stephanie asked.

Kauzlarich was filling out something called the Family Contingency Workbook.

I want to be buried, cremated: Buried.

Location of Cemetery: West Point.

Personal effects I want buried with me: Wedding Band.

Yes, he told Stephanie, whom he had met when they were students at West Point and who hadn't exactly been seduced by his first words to her, which were: "You can call me The Kauz." That was all he wanted to be buried with.

Type of head stone: Military.

Scripture you want read: Psalm 23.

Music you want played: Something upbeat.

"Ralph, upbeat music?" Stephanie asked.

"I don't want people to be sad at my funeral," Kauzlarich said.

***

His soldiers -- average age 19, the oldest 46, the youngest 17 -- were filling out forms, too. Getting their wills in order. Designating powers of attorney. Working down final medical checklists: teeth, hearing, heart, blood pressure, blood type.

As part of a battalion that has been in almost every American conflict since the Civil War, these newest soldiers of the 2-16 had been training for a year for some type of mission, though they didn't know any details. When their deployment to Iraq became official in late 2006, they were told they would be protecting fuel convoys coming into the country from Jordan. But then Bush's troop increase was announced, along with a strategy shift toward counterinsurgency warfare, and now the soldiers were hearing that their mission would involve patrols somewhere in Baghdad.

Where exactly, and what exactly, were still a mystery to them. Kauzlarich knew. So did his top commanders. Every day, they would disappear for a while into a secure room at battalion headquarters to learn more about the area they would be trying to bring under control. "A mean and nasty little place," Kauzlarich said when he emerged one day, and meanwhile his soldiers continued to prepare for whatever.

"What in the hell?" asked Command Sgt. Maj. Michael McCoy, the battalion's top enlisted man, as he inspected lines of soldiers who stood at attention in the parking lot in their body armor, acting as if the wind wasn't making the temperature feel barely above zero. Straps weren't tight enough, ceramic plates intended to stop bullets were an inch off, medical kits containing compression bandages and tourniquets were attached to the left side instead of the right. "Consistency," McCoy reminded them. What if it was dark? What if in that dark another soldier was trying to find your medical kit, and you couldn't help him because you were too busy bleeding, and you couldn't direct him because you were too busy screaming?

They had briefings on health risks. Wash your hands. Don't smoke. Drink bottled water. Wear ear protection. Wear cotton underwear. Watch out for rats. "From what I hear, the forward operating base we're going to is right next to a sewage plant," said one of the briefers. And then came a chaplain who began: "All right. Stress management. Suicide prevention. Let's go." And on he went. "This is important. If you are not ready to die, you need to get there. If you are not ready to die, you need to be. If you are not ready to see your friends die, you need to be."

They had battle training, too, one day mounting up in mockups of Humvees that were surrounded by video screens showing all kinds of hellish scenarios. They were trying to maneuver to a downed helicopter. That was the exercise. There was an explosion, a suicide bomber, an ambush. One of the Humvees was hit. Two soldiers were dead. Three were alive. "You're talking about somebody who's on fire," came the directions to soldiers in one of the other Humvees, who were on their way to attempt a rescue. "You're talking about someone whose fingers are burning off. They can't reach over and unbuckle their seatbelt. You've got to get them out . . ." and meanwhile one of the "wounded" soldiers began crying theatrically, "I want to live! I want to live!"

This was Spec. Ryan Nyhus, 19, of whom Kauzlarich said: "The kid's heart is as big as a basketball. He's a superstar." A superstar now, but a year and a half ago he was a high school wrestler in Wisconsin who didn't get the college scholarship he'd hoped for, and so was open to a suggestion from a friend that they join the Army together. Nyhus was sworn in first. Then came the friend's turn, and as he raised his hand, someone noticed that he had signed his name on the enrollment form in the wrong place, and as Nyhus tells it the friend took it as a sign from God "and walked out. Went home. Now he's really big into photography."

Eight hundred soldiers, 800 stories.

McCoy's: Age 44, wife, two children, career Army. "My job is not to die for my country," he said. "It's to see how many of those bastards I can kill for their country."

Staff Sgt. Frank Gietz, 41: two Iraq tours already, the last one doing convoy escorts in which 18 of 132 soldiers in his company were killed, now in charge of a platoon of 32, one of whom asked him just before Christmas how to deal with having to kill somebody. "Yeah, it worried me," Gietz said. "That's why I talked to him for two hours." And said? "Put it in a dark place while you're there."

Pvt. Mario Luna, 17: He asked Gietz the question. He asked it because a girl he had been talking to asked it of him. "And that got me all wound up," Luna said, so Gietz told him to look at the thing he was about to shoot at "as a target, not as a person, and that got me back in the game."

Eight hundred -- and every one was now the responsibility of Kauzlarich, who kept disappearing into the secure room and reappearing with adjustments and refinements.

"I am right now vetting an initiative in which all of us grow mustaches," he told his command staff at one of their daily meetings. Maybe it would foster trust when they moved along the streets of Baghdad, he explained, because Iraqis regard a man with facial hair as a man and a man without facial hair as a boy. "Any advantage we can get," he said, and then he looked at the men he was talking to and wondered aloud: "Can you grow mustaches? I look at you. You've all got such baby faces."

The meeting continued, and meanwhile, outside Kauzlarich's office, Staff Sgt. Jeremy Hodges, 27, one of those baby faces, his with a round scar in a cheek that led to another scar on the back of his neck, told the story of what it was like to get shot in Iraq on July 21, 2006.

"Everything went dark," he said.

And: "I remember the moaning. I remember the gurgling sound in my throat."

And: "I thought it was my last breath of air that day, until I realized the pain was going to last forever."

And: "Hey sir," he wrote during his recuperation, in an e-mail to an officer he had met a few years before who had told him "what a great soldier I was" and "how much confidence he had in me," and who had been "kind of like a father figure to me," and had said Hodges would always be welcome in his command and had single-handedly persuaded him to reenlist.

"I asked him if he still wanted me," Hodges said. "I told him I was broken."

"I don't care," Kauzlarich wrote back. "I'll take care of you. When can I expect you?"

And here Hodges was, one of the 800, ready to tell any of the other 799 what it is like to get shot. Not that they'd asked. "They just kind of stare at me and wonder," Hodges said. But if they did ask, "I'd tell them it hurts."

***

They packed ammunition and photographs and first-aid kits and candy. They went into town and in a few cases drank too much, and in a few other cases went AWOL. Five days before departure, Kauzlarich studied a list of soldiers who wouldn't be able to go. Seven needed some sort of surgery. Two were about to have babies. One had an infant in intensive care. Two were in jail. Two (including Luna) would have to stay back until they turned 18. Nine were, for various reasons, "mentally incapable of doing what we're about to do."

But most could do what they were about to do, were eager to, impatient even, and said so in no uncertain terms.

"You ready?" McCoy asked soldier after soldier during another body armor inspection.

"Roger, Sergeant Major!"

"You sure?"

"Roger, Sergeant Major!"

"It's the decisive point of the fight," one soldier explained later, foot tapping, head nodding, practically vibrating. "This is the chance to win it."

Belief, then. Kauzlarich remembers the day he realized how strong a force it could be. He was in Fort Benning, Ga., for advanced coursework, and at the end of an exercise, as he and other soldiers waited outside for a ride, a visiting soldier from Sierra Leone explained how he had survived that country's various wars.

"In my country, we put on a blouse. It is a magic blouse. When I wear it, I know bullets cannot harm me," Kauzlarich recalls him saying. The soldier then rolled up a sleeve of his magic blouse. "Let me show you," he said. "Give me a knife." Someone gave him a knife. "Watch," he said, and Kauzlarich watched incredulously as the soldier swung the knife, which had a four-inch, razor-sharp blade, down on his soft inner forearm. It went easily through the skin. It went through veins. It went through muscle. It went all the way down to the bone, and for one belief-filled moment everyone waited for the healing to begin -- and then the soldier collapsed.

"That's a form of belief," Kauzlarich said of what he learned that day. "That's also a form of jackassery."

What about Iraq's believers, though? The ones for whom a briefing about suicide would focus on how to do it in order to kill as many American soldiers as possible, rather than on how to prevent it? The ones who believe as surely as Kauzlarich believes, and who are presumably waiting for him?

"Who will win?" he said, rephrasing the questions. "I will win."

He thought about his answer.

"Is that belief or confidence?" he asked. "Is it confidence, or is it overconfidence? Those are questions I have to ask myself. Because if it's overconfidence, it's arrogance."

He thought some more.

"I will win," he said again.

Three days until departure now. Kauzlarich wanted his soldiers to have these last days off to be with their families, who had come here from a dozen states and filled every hotel room in town, but first he gathered them on a field behind battalion headquarters to tell them the details of what they were about to do. It had snowed, and it was cold, and the sun was going down as he said that they soon would be on the edge of Sadr City, Baghdad's infamous and violent slum. The soldiers ringed him and pressed closer to hear, and as he raised his voice, his words about "initiative" and "paranoia" and "emotion" echoed off the ice and the surrounding buildings, making this place feel even chillier than it was.

"Now it's not a game, guys," he said. "You are going to see some horrific things in the next year. You are going to see some things you are not going to understand. . . .

"It's down to nut-cutting time, and we're going to get some, but we're going to do it in a disciplined manner, like we do everything. . . .

"I am absolutely confident in your abilities, absolutely confident. . . .

"The bottom line is this weekend's your last, okay? So call your parents, love your families, stay focused on them for this weekend. Not later than Tuesday night, as soon as you get on that airplane and that airplane takes off, your sole focus is going to be winning our nation's war."

There was a pause, just long enough for the word "war" to echo and evaporate, and then the soldiers began to cheer, loudly and for a while, and then they left the field and headed inside the battalion building, filling room after room not with a soldier's bloodlust, which would come soon enough, but with the wintry smell of boys who have been out in the snow.

***

And then it was departure day, and in the Kauzlarich house a phone call came at 8:30 a.m. saying there had been a death.

The family, by then, was wide awake. The children were running around with stuffed animals purchased over the weekend, each with a memory chip containing a quick recorded message from their father for them to play over the coming year. "Hi Jacob. I love you." "Hi Garrett. I sure do love you." "I love you, Allie-gator."

And so came one more juxtaposition: "Sir, there's been a casualty forward," the caller said.

The dead soldier, who in coming days would be identified as the 3,100th U.S. fatality of the war, wasn't in Kauzlarich's battalion, but his brother was, and that's why Kauzlarich was being called. The parents didn't know yet. They were somewhere in the area visiting their son who was about to deploy, and a search for them was underway. Did Kauzlarich happen to know where they were saying goodbye to one son, so they could be informed that their other son had died?

He hung up. He pictured the soldier -- not the dead one, whom he didn't know, but the one in his battalion, who of course would now not be going to Iraq, at least not right away. He made some calls. No luck. More calls.

The morning continued. Seven-year-old Allie wanted his attention; the night before, after saying she had a headache, and then saying she might have a fever, she had said, "I don't want you to leave," and when he told her, "I'll be okay, and if I'm not okay, you'll be okay because I'll be checking on you," she had said, "Then I'll kill myself so I can be with you." The boys, too young for such sensitivities, ran around the house clobbering each other as usual, while Stephanie had her own images to contend with.

"Gray. Dismal. A very sad place to live," is how she would picture the place her husband was going when she would close her eyes. She had done her time in the Army after graduating from West Point, and she had a soldier's guarded sense of sentimentality, but now came a new image, that of a freshly dead soldier. She had been keeping any doubts about the mission to herself. "He believes in this," she had explained one day. But this day was different. "You better come back," she now said.

Belief vs. uncertainty: Such was the subtext in 800 places that morning as the Army continued its search for two parents and a son. The soldiers would be leaving in two groups over the next 24 hours. The first group was due at battalion headquarters at 1 p.m., and at 12:42 the first hug was underway in the parking lot, a tangle of moving arms that was still going strong at 12:43. By 12:45, tears had begun in several places, including inside a car where a woman sat motionless against the door, head in her hands, and so it continued as the afternoon progressed.

The soldiers smoked. They got their guns. They lined up their body armor. They waited, checking their watches, with wives, girlfriends, children, parents, grandparents. "I seen 'em off in World War II," said the grandfather of a private named Ricky Andrus. "I had a brother who was killed. A pilot on a B-24. He went down in the Mediterranean. He was 20 years old." Which was one year younger than Andrus, who was loading the family car with things he wouldn't be taking, including a pair of cowboy boots whose top halves had been dyed a beautiful blue.

A sergeant named Johnathan Pritchett, meanwhile, was kissing a young woman who was up on her tiptoes, while Gietz told his platoon to start wrapping up the goodbyes already, while Nyhus stood alone on a loading dock and recounted the advice he'd gotten the night before during a call with his friend the photographer. "Keep your head down," the friend had said.

Three p.m. now, and Kauzlarich arrived with Stephanie and the children. "This day sucks," he said. The soldier and his parents still hadn't been found, but it was only a matter of time now, and Kauzlarich understood there would be ripples as word began seeping out, first through the soldier's squad, then his platoon, then the battalion. Blood through a magic blouse; that's what the effect of this death would be. "There's nothing good about it," Kauzlarich said, and when he began saying goodbye to his family and Allie started to cry, something she hadn't done all the other times he had left, that only made things worse.

He said goodbye to his family in his office. He said goodbye again when he put them in the car. He said goodbye again when they didn't leave right away, just stayed in the car, and then he went back into his office and into the final hours.

Computer: packed. BlackBerry: packed. Extra tourniquet: packed. Extra compression bandage: packed. Family photo: packed. Lights: off. He shut the door to his office. He ducked into another office when Jeremy Hodges, who would be staying behind to recuperate, called to him. "Thank you. I will," Kauzlarich said, and walked on. "Jeremy Hodges. Great American," he said, and then he made his way to a nearby gymnasium for one last ceremony, this one with no TV cameras, no trumpets, no drum. Just soldiers sitting on bleachers, eating cookies and waiting to be bused to a plane and listening to one last speech.

"This is going to be hard. Probably the hardest thing you've ever done," the speech began. "But it's going to be okay."

It was the same thing Kauzlarich had said a few days before to his command staff, but this time it was a general talking while Kauzlarich stood to the side, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet and looking at row after row of soldiers, every one of them his.

What if they die?

And what if he dies?

Would such a death, in such a war as this war has become, be worthwhile?

"It's worthwhile if we win," Kauzlarich said. "But to sacrifice, there's got to be a purpose. And if we don't win, then our sacrifices are going to be in vain."

"Good luck and Godspeed," the general said, ending his speech, and then it was time to go.

Out went the soldiers, funneling into single file to get through the exit doors. They had learned in training to avoid such a formation. Too easy for the enemy to get them. "The fatal funnel," it was called. But here, there was no enemy, only Kauzlarich, the man who had yet to fail, clapping them on their backs as they moved past.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Yessir."

"Good?"

"Yessir."

"Ready to be a hero?"

"Yessir."

Out they went, one by one, hundreds of them, until there was only one soldier left for Kauzlarich to speak to.

"Are we ready for war?" he asked himself, and then out he went, too, onto a bus, onto a plane, into Kuwait to regroup with his soldiers, and as of this week, into the heart of Baghdad, where any moment now their surge will begin for real.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/24/AR2007022401422.html

(y) (y) This one really got my attention. (As well as thinking about what an idiot Dubya still is....) :|

(f) Prayers and good thoughts about staying safe to these and all people in Iraq including 135,000 American troops and 120,000 civilian contractors according to the Associated Press. (Many jobs formerly done by soldiers such as food service and other support functions have been outsourced.)

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-03-2007, 11:27 AM

:)

YouTube may not be getting much love from the U.S. entertainment establishment (Viacom's claiming a big traffic jump to its own sites since YouTube removed its content), but it's found a new partner across the pond. In a deal announced today, the BBC will create three channels on the Google-owned video site: one that's all program promos and no ads, one with archival content and some pre-roll ads (which Brits won't see because they pay license fees to avoid such things), and a news site that will rotate through about 30 clips a day and include ads.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/d9b8b1f6-c7f2-11db-b0dc-000b5df10621.html

http://splashcastmedia.com/the-bbc-decides-to-youtube

Former BBC employee Ben Metcalfe is none too impressed. "I actually don't think this was very good deal, and the BBC should have taken notice that most of the other big broadcasters have turned their nose up at this and previous YouTube deals," he writes. "Most of the bluechip broadcasters have avoided putting their clips up on YouTube as even a non-exclusive license dilutes their own efforts to market and display such clips on their own sites."

http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/index.php/2007/03/02/my-reactions-to-the-bbc-deal-with-googleyoutube/

Indeed, in terms of name recognition, the BBC signing stands out among a host of smaller deals. According to the New York Times, YouTube now has more than 1,000 partnerships with content owners ranging from the Sundance Channel to small independent video producers and is adding others at the rate of 200 a quarter. Analysts say this could be fertile ground. "Smaller guys want mass distribution and are willing to face the risk of copyright infringement for access to this huge audience," said Allen Weiner, an analyst at Gartner. "It is a relatively low-risk deal for them." And at TechCrunch, Mike Arrington is just waiting for the dam to break: "Lots of posturing by the networks, and Google hasn't helped things by putting offers on the table and then pulling them, frustrating Viacom and the other networks. Ultimately everyone wants to get a deal done, and most of these announcements are tactical moves to grab more of the advertising pie. Once one networks breaks from the pack and starts to provide full length programs on YouTube in exchange for a share of advertising revenue, I expect the rest to fall in short order."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/technology/02google.html?ei=5088&en=0022647a0e470b64&ex=1330491600&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1172853638-ynhJSpSwCxg5JZkuPdBO3Q

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/02/good-news-bad-news-at-gootube/

^o) ^o) ^o)

;) 's,

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-03-2007, 11:33 AM

(l) (l) (l) (l)

http://www.pfha.org/

The Paso Fino horse reflects its Spanish heritage through its proud carriage, grace and elegance. With its lively but controlled spirit, natural gait and presence, and responsive attitude, the Paso Fino is indeed, a rare and desirable equine partner.

(l) (p) (l) :

http://www.pfha.org/includes/html/gallery/index.asp?title=Paso_Finos_Picture_Gallery

Beautiful! http://www.pfha.org/images/sidebar/3.jpg

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-03-2007, 11:39 AM

(l) (l) (l) (l) (l)

Kentucky's native gaited Mountain Horses have become favorites across the country for their beauty, athleticism, and smooth, four-beat gait. The Rocky Mountain Horses, Kentucky Mountain Saddle, and Mountain Pleasure horses have a distinct personality, with a calm, willing temperament that makes the mountain gaited horses some of the most trainable and pleasurable for training and for horse shows.

United Mountain Horse, Inc was formed in September 2000 by members of the existing breed associations who were interested in having an organization especially dedicated to promoting and exhibiting the horses registered Rocky Mountain, Mountain Pleasure and Kentucky Mountain, and providing support for all Mountain Horse breeders exhibitiors and enthusiasts.

UMH now operates or sanctions the vast majority of all Mountain Horse shows, with both nationally and regionally sanctioned High Point circuits across the country. A Regional promotional program was established in 2002 with 7 regions. As of 2006 11 Regions with Regional Representatives are working to promote the Rocky Mountain, Kentucky Mountain and the Mountain Pleasure Horse.

The American Gaited Mountain Horse Association was formed as an inclusive promotional service encompassing the various existing Mountain Horses that are registered with Rocky Mountain, Mountain Pleasure, Kentucky Mountain and Kentucky Natural Gaited and notes the breed orgins, significant show winnings, and Merit Awards of the horse on its cetificate.

The promotions and merits available through UMH/AGMH offers the Mountain Horses unification for the growing Mountain Horse industry.

http://www.unitedmountainhorse.org/

(l) Magnificent!! http://www.emdeemountainhorses.com/images/Furyenhanced.jpg

(l) Awesome: http://www.fairwindsmthorses.com/Resources/stormwarning4.jpeg

http://www.fairwindsmthorses.com/photogallery.html

(l) Superlative Web site!! http://www.silvercreekmountainhorses.com/hallofchamp.htm

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-03-2007, 03:56 PM

:) ;) :) ;)

February 25, 2007

The Face

Tales From the Powder Room

By SANDRA BALLENTINE

1. With her delicate bone structure, luminous skin and great smile, the makeup artist Gucci Westman could easily pass for one of the leading ladies she prettifies on a regular basis. Not only is she the go-to beauty expert for the likes of Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore, but as the artistic director of Lancôme, she’s also charged with injecting the French beauty company’s product line with a dose of runway glamour.

(l) (l) 2. Most makeup artists worth their concealer will tell you that the key to a glowing visage is hydration. “You want to look as fresh and dewy as possible,” Westman says. Since your own dew tends to dry up over the years (or after a lot of late nights), a good moisturizer is crucial. Westman slathers on själ’s cela intuif ($245 for two ounces at Barneys New York). “It’s light, has a great texture and smells really clean.”

3. Another weapon in her glow-making arsenal is Giorgio Armani Cosmetics’ Fluid Sheer in Zero ($55 at Saks Fifth Avenue). She dabs it on cheekbones, the bridge of the nose and the cupid’s bow over the upper lip. She also mixes the reflective complexion enhancer with moisturizer and uses it on her subjects’ collarbones and upper arms.

4. A self-professed “girly girl,” Westman loves clothes and accessories almost as much as makeup. This season she’s head over heels for Chanel’s “lipstick-colored” Mary Janes, $595, at Chanel boutiques.

5. Inspired by “cool surfer girls, Stephen Sprouse and Molly Ringwald,” she created the perfect pink lipstick for Proenza Schouler’s spring fashion show: Lancôme’s Le Rouge Absolu in Proenza Pink will be available next month for $25 at Bergdorf Goodman and at www.lancome-usa com.

6. She calls Lancôme’s Magique Blush mousse “the most user-friendly blush — both texture- and color-wise — that I’ve ever used.” It’s $29 at www.lancome-usa.com.

7. Westman and her husband, David Neville, a co-designer of Rag & Bone, were married last year in Cordes-sur-Ciel, a tiny medieval town in southwest France. The bride turned to the Los Angeles-based designer Claire Pettibone for her frothy brushed-cotton-and-tulle confection. Says Westman, “I wanted to look like I was walking on clouds!” Pettibone also makes sexy lingerie to go under her gowns. Go to www.clairepettibone.com..

8.Aside from her engagement and wedding rings, the makeup artist is pretty minimal when it comes to jewelry. She does, however, confess a weakness for all things Cartier and has her eye on the house’s gold-and-peridot Panther Head ring ($14,600), which she describes as “a bit gaudy, but so fantastic!”

9. Westman swears by the rejuvenating effects of Brush Day Spa’s Lotus Touch Body Treatment ($195 for 90 minutes). “They use this incredible homemade scrub with coffee beans and brown sugar,” she enthuses, “and they have the best manicures and pedicures. Ask for Sachiko or Jun.” (350 Bleecker Street; 212-989-0670.)

10. Like the models and starlets they work with, sought-after makeup artists spend a lot of time in the air. Westman combats jet lag with açaí, a Brazilian berry that’s high in antioxidants. She keeps Sambazon’s Açaí Energy elixir in her freezer ($4.39 at Lifethyme Natural Market, 410 Avenue of the Americas).

11. When their schedules permit, she and her husband check into their favorite romantic hideaway, the Pitcher Inn, in Warren, Vt., for some much-needed R & R. “It’s this little haven that Arthur Elgort told me about,” she says. “All the rooms are different. We love School and Stable” (the latter is shown here). Go to www.pitcherinn.com.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/style/tmagazine/25tpowder.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/02/22/style/tmagazine/25powder.1901.jpg

(y) (l) Lots of enjoyable web sites to visit. I had fun. :) I loved and have been practicing the the suggestions about hydration! (l) And look about ten years younger! :D

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-03-2007, 04:06 PM

:| :| :|

http://www.reviveskincare.com/

:| I don't need surgery......maybe someday - 15 years from now. ;)

(k) 's

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-03-2007, 04:23 PM

(l) (ap) (l) (ap)

February 25, 2007
The Talk
Two in the Bush
By JANINE DI GIOVANNI

Safari is the Swahili word for journey, but it also vaguely means that you are unobtainable. It means your cellphone does not work. Your watch is in your backpack. You wear the same clothes several days in a row. Your eyes become accustomed to darkness at night, and your ears become attuned to individual birdcalls. After a while, you begin to speak a different language.

It is this interpretation that interests the clothing designer Anna Trzebinski. Last month she and her husband, Loyaban Lemarti — a Samburu warrior she met on a walk in the Kenyan bush — opened Rites of Passage, a series of three wilderness camps on Samburu land in the country’s remote central highlands, a vast and relatively virgin territory that sees few outsiders. The few other tourist operations nearby are on private land, while Anna and Lemarti, as he’s called, lease their 7,500-acre parcel from the local people on a long-term basis, paying the community and employing its members to work at the camps. When you are Anna and Lemarti’s guest, you are therefore a guest of the Samburu. You might happen to see an elephant or a zebra, but checking animals off a list is not the point. The camps offer immersion into an Africa that few travelers experience: you may happen upon weddings, tribal dances, ritual ceremonies. “It’s more organic,” Anna says of the approach. “Most of the guests are sophisticated people who want to know the fiber of the land and the people in an authentic way.”

Anna was born in Germany but came to live in Africa as an infant. Her mother, Dodo, married the English aristocrat Michael Cunningham Reid, whose family had deep ties to Kenya and was immortalized in the book “White Mischief.” Anna is a muzungu, a white person, but she is African to her bones. Her elaborate pashmina shawls are fringed with ostrich feathers and her suede dresses are bordered with Masai beading. When I see Anna in Europe, even at chic parties or when she is in town to meet private clients like Princess Caroline, I always think of her as an African, as I have over our 10-year friendship.

“Africa humbles you,” she once told me. “It makes you confront yourself.”

But the flip side to Africa’s tranquillity is its violence. Six years ago, Anna’s then husband, the painter Tonio Trzebinski, was murdered as he sat in his car with takeaway sushi in the back seat. The murder was never solved, and while Anna believes it was a carjacking gone terribly wrong, it stirred up controversy in the white Nairobi community.

After Tonio died, Anna often sought sanctuary on the Ewaso Ngiro River, where she has gone since she was 18. Sympathetic to her loss, the Samburu people offered to rent her a piece of land on the bend of the river. They saw her as a sister. “They wanted me to have a safe, happy environment to recover, to heal and to call home,” she says. “I guess it’s hard to believe.

It’s hard for me to believe, even now.” In 2002 she met Lemarti, who is 10 years younger than she, and in 2005 the two decided to start the camps as a way of combining their worlds: Anna lives in Nairobi while Lemarti lives a transient existence, often staying in the bush. He does not like to be parted from his land.

The camps are not easy to reach, but the best places never are. Samburu territory is just above the Equator, where the foothills of Mount Kenya merge into the northern desert, just south of Lake Turkana. When I arrive at the landing strip in Koija, on a single-propeller plane from Wilson Airport in Nairobi, Lemarti is waiting for me with three of his friends and his little brother, whose name I find unpronounceable.

The Samburu, who are related to the Masai, are the aristocrats of nomadic tribes. “Honor is the most important thing to them,” Anna shouts from the back of the Land Cruiser after Lemarti loads up our stuff. “They are not interested in money, the way the Masai are.” The warriors, or morani, are frequently bare-chested and wear red shukas that look like togas. I read somewhere that these were modeled after ancient Roman soldiers who occupied this land, and when I mention this to Lemarti, he laughs. Young men become warriors after their circumcision ceremony, usually when they are teenagers, and remain so — “roaming the land, eating meat and enjoying women,” one of Lemarti’s friends tells me — until they marry. At 31, Lemarti is now a young elder.

Each of the three separate camps has five tents offering varying levels of comfort, from a glorified pup tent pitched by the river to a canopy covering a hardwood floor and four-poster bed. We spend the first night in the most basic one, a mobile unit called the Stargazing Camp. It’s near the Kirisia Hills, where Lemarti grew up hunting buffalo and climbing the sand-colored boulders. He takes us there for a picnic of tiny bananas, mangoes, litchi juice and Kenyan-style tea (boiled with milk and sugar).

The next day, as we head to the main camp, Lemarti looks for a goat to catch. “You look hungry, darling. Should we stop and get a goat?” Anna had asked. We see lots of goats, as well as elephant, gazelle and zebra. When we stop at a waterfall on the Seiya River overlooking the Ngukon Hills, he tells us that he learned from his father, who recently died at 88 or 90 (he didn’t know his exact age), “how

to throw a spear, how to carry a knife, how to kill a buffalo, the best way to catch a goat.” He says Samburu sometimes hunt for honey by sticking their bare hands into a beehive.

The main camp, Ngabolo Namunyak, or Blessed Fig, is the most luxurious. It is set in a palm grove on the river, beneath the branches of a huge fig tree that Anna believes “blesses everyone who comes under it.” The place is earthy but chic, like early Ralph Lauren: sofas covered in toffee crème suede, piles of photography books, sheepskin rugs, brass lanterns, velvet blankets to curl up in. “I love going on safari, but I got tired of sleeping bags and washing in plastic bowls,” she says. Still, there is no electricity; everything is lighted by lanterns and candles. The bathrooms are built into little huts, and the loo is made from elephant jawbones.

One day, we go to a wedding of one of the warriors. The bride claims to be 18 but looks 14. Her mother has dressed her in her ocher robes and a beaded necklace. The groom is tall and skinny, the guests are friendly. They laugh hysterically at my jeans and sunglasses.

The warriors dance by, spears in hand, hopping like kangaroos and making low, ghostlike moans. It feels like a National Geographic documentary, and this, I realize, is the point Anna and Lemarti are trying to make: to get as close to the land and the culture as you can, without the intrusion of the modern world. It’s real, not corny or canned.

One of the few departures from Samburu tradition here is dinner. Every night Rose, who works with Anna in Nairobi, brings out platters of comfort food, like night-mushroom risotto or roast chicken with creamy bread sauce and cranberry jelly. I ask Lemarti about the Samburu diet — for years, he has eaten only milk, meat and blood — and wonder aloud about its lack of vegetables. Anna interjects: “Have you ever seen healthier people?”

But I am still amazed by the clash of cultures. What happens when Lemarti goes to places like Manhattan with Anna? Does he bring his spear? Several, he tells me gravely. (He collects and sells them.) “He shrinks when he is away from the bush,” Anna adds.

Lemarti shudders when I mention New York but tells me he loves Paris, loves dancing in clubs and taking walks along the Seine. Once, when he and Anna went to a trendy restaurant, he was approached by a model agent.

Every night, after dinner, we have a routine. We move to the fire, and Lemarti pulls out a guitar he made from bicycle brake cables and begins to sing. He passes the guitar around the circle, and the warriors take turns. The melodies are haunting, the lyrics improvised, usually about nature or Mother Earth.

Lemarti tries to translate. “This one is about my wife and my baby and friends,” he says. The next one, sung by Boniface, who is one of my favorite warriors — he has a high, squeaky voice and says “yes-no” or “no-yes” when asked a question (the second word is always the correct one, he explains) — is about a bumblebee.

By the third night, I forget that I ever lived in cities. I forget that I am usually afraid of the dark and of spiders. I forget that I need to update my iPod and do my taxes. The air is so pure that I cannot remember exhaust fumes.

On my last night, we drive a few kilometers to the Nomadic Camp. It has Oriental rugs and wooden furniture but no four-poster beds. At dusk, a group of warriors emerge from a bend in the river and are met by maidens wearing white and holding candles. The girls sing with high, melodic voices. The warriors get closer, and their voices meld together. It is a traditional dance, hypnotic, almost trancelike.

Later, we walk along the river and see a family of baboons sleeping high up in the trees, each on its own branch. I fall asleep in my tent under a goose-down duvet listening to an impala across the river and the faint hum of the warriors still singing by the fire.

For more information, contact Journeys by Design: www.journeysbydesign.co.uk

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/style/tmagazine/25tbush.html

(y) Nice to read about. Not in a hurry to visit, but I liked reading this article very much. (y)

Have a lovely Saturday evening. (f)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-03-2007, 04:33 PM

(f) (f) (f)

http://www.shanghaitang.com/shanghaitang/index.jsp

http://www.shanghaitang.com/shanghaitang/catalog.jsp?catID=1&subcatID=5&pg=1

http://www.shanghaitang.com/shanghaitang/catalog.jsp?catID=1&subcatID=7&pg=1

(l): http://www.shanghaitang.com/shanghaitang/catalog.jsp?catID=1&subcatID=34&pg=1

China Goes Luxury:

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/nov2005/id20051130_575911.htm

(f) (f) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-03-2007, 04:40 PM

(f) (f)

http://www.eileenfisher.com/scripts/ecatalogisapi.dll/group?group=137038&Template=9990000001048050

http://www.eileenfisher.com/scripts/ecatalogisapi.dll/group?group=137155&Template=9990000001048050

(x) (z) or (x) (x) :

http://www.eileenfisher.com/scripts/ecatalogisapi.dll/group?group=137232&Template=9990000001048050

Great Philosophy!

http://www.eileenfisher.com/scripts/ecatalogisapi.dll/group?group=68615&Template=9990000001048050

(y) (y)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-03-2007, 04:55 PM

(l) (l)

"When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest."

- Henry David Thoreau

"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm."

- Winston Churchill

"Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation."

- Brian Tracy

"To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice."

- Confucius

"The collapse of character begins with compromise."

- Unknown

(l) "Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds." (l) (y)

- Albert Einstein

(l) I really love this one:

"Reach for the moon, even if you miss you'll be among the stars."

- Unknown

"Action is the antidote to despair."

-- Joan Baez

"It is better to live one day as a lion, than a thousand days as a lamb."

-- Roman Proverb

"To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet."

- Charles Caleb Colton

"Some succeed because they are destined to. But most succeed because they are determined to."

- Unknown

(l) (l) Another one I have always LOVED:

(l) "Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace." (l)

- Amelia Earhart

:) Have a delightful evening. (f)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-04-2007, 08:14 PM

:D :D

Who's on first...? ;)

ABBOTT: Ultimate SuperDuper Computer Store. Can I help you?

COSTELLO: Thanks. I'm setting up a home office in the den, and I'm thinking
of buying a computer.

ABBOTT: Mac?

COSTELLO: No, the name is Lou.

ABBOTT: Your computer?

COSTELLO: I don't own a computer. I want to buy one.

ABBOTT: Mac?

COSTELLO: I told you, my name is Lou.

ABBOTT: What about Windows?

COSTELLO: Why? Does it get stuffy?

ABBOTT: Do you want a computer with Windows?

COSTELLO: I don't know. What do I see when I look out the windows?

ABBOTT: Wallpaper.

COSTELLO: Never mind the windows. I need a computer and software.

ABBOTT: Software that runs on Windows?

COSTELLO: No, on the computer! I need something I can use to write
proposals, track expenses. You know, run a business. What have you got?

ABBOTT: Office.

COSTELLO: Yeah, for my office. Can you recommend anything?

ABBOTT: I just did.

COSTELLO: You just did what?

ABBOTT: Recommended something.

COSTELLO: You recommended something?

ABBOTT: Yes.

COSTELLO: For my office?

ABBOTT: Yes.

COSTELLO: Okay, what did you recommend for my office?

ABBOTT: Office.

COSTELLO: Yes, for my office.

ABBOTT: Office for Windows.

COSTELLO: I already have an office and it already has windows! Let's say I'm
sitting at my computer, and I want to type a proposal. What do I need?

ABBOTT: Word.

COSTELLO: If I'm writing a proposal, I'm going to need lots of words. But
what program do I load?

ABBOTT: Word.

COSTELLO: What word?

ABBOTT: The Word in Office.

COSTELLO: The only word in office is office.

ABBOTT: The Word in Office for Windows.

COSTELLO: Which word in "office for windows?"

ABBOTT: The Word you get when you click the blue W.

COSTELLO: I'm going to click your big W if you don't give me a straight
answer. Let's forget about words for a minute. What do I need if I want to
watch a movie over the Internet?

ABBOTT: RealOne.

COSTELLO: Maybe a real movie, maybe a cartoon. What I watch is none of your
business. But what do I need to watch it?

ABBOTT: RealOne.

COSTELLO: If it's a long movie I'll also want to watch reels two, three and
four. Can I watch reel four?

ABBOTT: Of course.

COSTELLO: Great! With what?

ABBOTT: RealOne.

COSTELLO: Okay, so I'm sitting at my computer and I want to watch a movie.
What do I do?

ABBOTT: You click the blue 1.

COSTELLO: I click the blue one what?

ABBOTT: The blue 1.

COSTELLO: Is that different from the blue W?

ABBOTT: Of course it is. The blue 1 is RealOne. The blue W is Word.

COSTELLO: What word?

ABBOTT: The Word in Office for Windows.

COSTELLO: But there's three words in "office for windows!"

ABBOTT: No, just one. But it's the most popular Word in the world.

COSTELLO: It is?

ABBOTT: Yes, although to be fair there aren't many other Words left. It
pretty much wiped out all the other Words.

COSTELLO: And that word is the real one?

ABBOTT: No. RealOne has nothing to do with Word. RealOne isn't even part of
Office.

COSTELLO: Never mind; I don't want to get started with that again. But I
also need something for bank accounts, loans, and so on. What do you have to
help me track my money?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: That's right. What do you have?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: I need money to track my money?

ABBOTT: No, not really. It comes bundled with your computer.

COSTELLO: What comes bundled with my computer?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: Money comes bundled with my computer?

ABBOTT: Exactly. No extra charge.

COSTELLO: I get a bundle of money with my computer at no extra charge? How
much money do I get?

ABBOTT: Just one copy.

COSTELLO: I get a copy of money. Isn't that illegal?>

ABBOTT: No. We have a license from Microsoft to make copies of Money.

COSTELLO: Microsoft can license you to make money?

ABBOTT: Why not? They own it.

COSTELLO: Well, it's great that I'm going to get free money, but I'll still
need to track it. Do you have anything for managing your money?

ABBOTT: Managing Your Money? That program disappeared years ago.

COSTELLO: Well, what do you sell in its place?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: You sell money?

ABBOTT: Of course. But if you buy a computer from us, you get it for free.

COSTELLO: That's all very wonderful, but I'll be running a business. Do you
have any software for, you know, accounting?

ABBOTT: Simply Accounting.

COSTELLO: Probably, but it might get a little complicated.

ABBOTT: If you don't want Simply Accounting, you might try M.Y.O.B.

COSTELLO: M.Y.O.B.? What does that stand for?

ABBOTT: Mind Your Own Business.

COSTELLO: I beg your pardon?

ABBOTT: No, that would be I.B.Y.P. I said M.Y.O.B.

COSTELLO: Look, I just need to do some accounting for my home business. You
know--accounting? You do it with money.

ABBOTT: Of course you can do accounting with Money. But you may need more.

COSTELLO: More money?

ABBOTT: More than Money. Money can't do everything.

COSTELLO: I don't need a sermon! Okay, let's forget about money for the
moment. I'm worried that my computer might...what's the word? Crash. And if
my computer crashes, what can I use to restore my data?

ABBOTT: GoBack.

COSTELLO: Okay. I'm worried about my computer smashing and I need something
to restore my data. What do you recommend?

ABBOTT: GoBack.

COSTELLO: How many times do I have to repeat myself?

ABBOTT: I've never asked you to repeat yourself. All I said was GoBack.

COSTELLO: How can I go back if I haven't even been anywhere? Okay, I'll go
back. What do I need to write a proposal?

ABBOTT: Word.

COSTELLO: But I'll need lots of words to write a proposal.

ABBOTT: No, you only need one Word-the Word in Office for Windows.

COSTELLO: But there's three words in...Oh, never mind.

ABBOTT: Hello? Hello? Customers! Why do they always hang up on me? Oh, well.
Ultimate SuperDuper Computer Store. Can I help you?

(y) These two make me laugh every time!

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-04-2007, 08:15 PM

:D :D :D

An older woman gets pulled over for speeding...

Older Woman: Is there a problem, Officer?

Officer: Ma'am, you were speeding.

Older Woman: Oh, I see.

Officer: Can I see your license please?

Older Woman: I'd give it to you but I don't have one.

Officer: Don't have one?

Older Woman: Lost it, 4 years ago for drunk driving.

Officer: I see... Can I see your vehicle registration please.

Older Woman: I can't do that.

Officer: Why not?

Older Woman: I stole this car.

Officer: Stole it?

Older Woman: Yes, and I killed and hacked up the owner.

Officer: You what?

Older Woman: His body parts are in plastic bags in the trunk if you want to
see.

The Officer looks at the woman and slowly backs away to his car and calls
for back up. Within minutes 5 police cars circle the car. A senior officer
slowly approaches the car, clasping his half drawn gun.

Officer 2: Ma'am, could you step out of your vehicle please!

The woman steps out of her vehicle.

Older woman: Is there a problem sir?

Officer 2: One of my officers told me that you have stolen this car and
murdered the owner.

Older Woman: Murdered the owner?

Officer 2: Yes, could you open the trunk of your car, please.

The woman opens the trunk, revealing nothing but an empty trunk.

Officer 2: Is this your car, ma'am?

Older Woman: Yes, here are the registration papers.

The officer is quite stunned.

Officer 2: One of my officers claims that you do not have a driver's license.

The woman digs into her handbag and pulls out a clutch purse and hands it
to the officer.

The officer examines the license. He looks quite puzzled.

Officer 2: Thank you ma'am, one of my officers told me you didn't have a
license, that you stole this car, and that you murdered and hacked up the
owner.

Older Woman: Bet the liar told you I was speeding, too.

:D :D :D :D

;)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-04-2007, 08:19 PM

:) :)

One night George W. Bush is awakened in the White House by George Washington's ghost. Bush asks, "George, what is the best thing I could do to help the country?" "Set an honest and honorable example just as I did," Washington advises.

The next night the ghost of Thomas Jefferson appears. "Tom," W. asks, "what is the best thing I could do to help the country?" "Cut taxes and reduce the size of government," Jefferson advises.

Bush isn't sleeping well the next night, and sees another figure moving in the shadows. It's Abraham Lincoln's ghost. "Abe, what is the best thing I could do to help the country?" Bush asks. Abe answers, "Go see a play."

:D But if he only *would take someone's advice - that positively impacts all Americans. Okay, better yet? How about taking advice that would truly help those Americans who are suffering under "King George's" rule? :|

Brrr! It's cold out there. Stay warm and have a relaxed Sunday evening.

(k) 's,

SWeetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-04-2007, 08:21 PM

(f) (f) (f)

"We have not succeeded in answering all our problems.

The answers we have found only serve to raise a whole set of new questions.

In some ways we feel we are as confused as ever, but we believe we are confused on a higher level, and about more important things."

- Bernt Øksendal, Stochastic Differential Equations: An Introduction with Applications

(f) (f)

SL & WTB (l) (&)

sweetlady

03-04-2007, 08:23 PM

(f) (f) (f) (f) (f) (f) (f)

Soul Keeping Company

The hours between washing and the well
Of burial are the soul's most troubled time.

I sat with her in keeping company
All through the affliction of the night, keeping

Soul constant, a second self. Earth is heavy
And I made no wish, save being

Merely magical. I am magical
No more. This, I well remember well.

In the sweet thereafter the impress
Of the senses will be tattooed to

The whole world ravelling in the clemency
Of an autumn of Octobers, all that bounty

Bountiful and the oaks specifically
Afire as everything dies off, inclining

To the merciful. I would have made of my body
A body to protect her, anything to keep

Her well & here in the soul's suite
Before five tons of earth will bear

On her, stay here
Soul, in the good night of my company.

(f) (f)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-04-2007, 08:25 PM

:) :)

NEAR THE ENTRANCE TO THE CHAPEL OF THE HOLY CROSS, SEDONA, ARIZ., Jan. 20, 2007:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/04/travel/why_650.jpg

"We saw several cactuses with snow on them. And, you know, you just don’t ever see cactuses and snow in the same picture."

(y) (l) (y) (l) (y) (l) (y)

(k) 's,

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-04-2007, 08:28 PM

(l) (l) (l) (l)

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/04/travel/patagonia_600.jpg

March 4, 2007

Patagonia in a New Light

By EDWARD WONG

THE end of the world is wet and cold and covered in mud. Not the kind of mud in which children like to play or the kind that signals a renewal of the earth after a rainfall. This is mud that sucks you into a mire, drags you into the ground, threatening to devour your body while forcing you to slog onward, foot over foot, simply to escape.

“I can't do it,” my friend Tini yelled through the rainstorm as she took another step on the trail — and promptly sank to her thighs in black sludge. “I can't go on.”

We were only an hour into the fourth day of our trek along the rugged Torres del Paine circuit in southern Chile, at the heart of the once mythical corner of the world called Patagonia.

The borders of Patagonia are difficult to define, but the name generally refers to the glacier-studded, cone-shaped land mass that straddles Chile and Argentina at the tip of South America and tapers down to Cape Horn. For three days, we had been walking counterclockwise around the Paine Massif, circling around the rear of the imposing towers of granite at the center of Chile's premier national park, 30-pound packs on our backs.

We had planned to spend nine days trekking the entire circuit last winter — the Southern Hemisphere summer — with side trips up the Valle Frances and Valle Ascencio, two valleys with some of the best views on the route. It all added up to more than 60 miles.

This day, the fourth, turned out to be the toughest by far. Nothing in the trek's early stages had prepared us for the long slog up to the John Gardner Pass, where we would cross from the more remote and treacherous eastern-northern half of the circuit to the western and southern sides, where there were large campsites and lodges with bars, restaurants and, if we wanted, catamarans providing a waterborne exit from the trekking route.

The pass, at 4,072 feet, wasn't high, and altitude sickness was not a concern, unlike in the northern Andes. Just eight months earlier, Tini and I had trudged to the summit of the highest mountain in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro, at 19,340 feet. But the rain — nonstop all night and morning — had transformed the terrain into Mordor.

So should this be read as a warning to those considering slipping on a backpack laden with a tent, stove and sleeping bag and hopping a flight to these southern reaches?

Not at all. I have been trekking all over the world, from the High Sierras to the Himalayas, and no place I've been has, at such a low altitude, the jaw-dropping mountain scenery of Patagonia, whether in Torres del Paine National Park in Chile, Los Glaciares National Park in Argentina or any number of other wilderness preserves.

More and more people are discovering this. Patagonia is no longer the far-flung destination it once was, only for the dedicated trekker or mountaineer. Tourism in Torres del Paine (pronounced PIE-nay) has boomed in recent years, with North Americans, Europeans and wealthy Latin Americans flooding the park in the high season, December to April. In 2005, more than 107,000 people visited the park, a 51 percent increase from 2000 and two and a half times as many as in 1995, according to statistics from the Chilean government.

But with the crowds have come environmental pressures. In all my backcountry travels, I had never seen as many tents as there were pitched at one popular campsite on the northern shore of Lake Pehoé, south of the Paine Massif. I counted scores. Trekkers jostled for space in a cooking hut.

The Chilean forest service, Conaf, has not placed a limit yet on the number of visitors. But park officials are doing a study to measure the ideal visitor numbers in areas of high use, said Pablo Retamal, the director of tourism at the Chilean embassy in Washington. That study, along with annual research into environmental impact, will help the government decide “what actions will be taken to prevent and mitigate environmental impacts,” Mr. Retamal said.

Still, for those intending to go to the park, there is a strong argument to be made for making that trip now. Nowhere else are glaciers as accessible as they are in Patagonia. But glaciers there, as in many parts of the world, are retreating at what many scientists consider an alarming rate, because of global warming, they say.

TINI and I circumnavigated the Paine Massif the hard way, carrying all our own gear and provisions. But people with less masochistic tendencies can see all the highlights of the park from the relative comfort of lodges, eating meals cooked for them at the end of a long day's hike and downing bottles of robust Chilean red wine. A friend recently spent a week in Torres del Paine at the Hotel Salto Chico, run by a company called Explora, where a customer could pay over $5,500 a week for a package with guided activities like horse riding, birding trips and nature walks.

Yet Patagonia, which encompasses a territory equal to the combined surface areas of Texas and California, remains a lonely place, populated by ranchers whose families have raised livestock for generations. The land is consecrated not to humanity's achievements but to those of nature. Its Andean peaks are among the most glaciated in the entire range, supplying water for ecosystems across the vast, arid plains.

It has always been a land of legend. After the explorer Ferdinand Magellan passed through on his circumnavigation of the globe, his chronicler Antonio Pigafetta wrote of a race of giants that inhabited the area. The author may have been referring to an indigenous people known as the Tehuelche. In any case, the territory soon acquired the name Patagonia, which my Moon Handbook to Patagonia said was possibly derived from a Spanish romance “in which a giant named Patagon inhabits an island of fur-wearing hunter-gatherers.”

From the airport in Punta Arenas, we climbed aboard a bus that took us on a three-hour ride up to Puerto Natales, the gateway town to Torres del Paine. Ranchers on horses galloped across rolling grasslands dotted with pink and purple wildflowers. The light had an intense clarity, as if a winter storm had just passed through. But it was the height of summer, which meant that darkness did not settle across the land until well after 10 p.m., leaving trekkers plenty of time to make it to their campsites each day.

Puerto Natales surprised me. In the United States, towns at the edges of national parks are often chockablock with tacky souvenir shops, the kind that are lined with shelves of buffalo figurines. Puerto Natales felt much more down to earth, and poorer. Pickup trucks rolled through the town's few streets, and many houses had walls of tin sheeting. But the town, situated on the west coast, had stunning views over Last Hope Sound, with snow peaks rising from islands across the water.

A large part of the romance of this part of the world is attributed to the popularity of “In Patagonia,” a classic 1977 novelistic travelogue by the British writer Bruce Chatwin. He passed through Puerto Natales while researching the book, and described how, during World War I, the English had built slaughterhouses along a four-mile stretch of the bay, complete with a railroad to transport workers here.

“The Chilotes had their first taste of mechanized slaughter at the killing season,” Mr. Chatwin wrote. “It was something like their idea of Hell: so much blood and the floor red and steaming; so many animals kicking and then stiff; so many white-skinned carcasses and spilled-out guts, the tripes, brains, hearts, lungs, livers, tongues. It drove the men a little mad.”

Tini and I spent a day stocking up on food for the trek, then caught a bus in the morning to the park. As we approached, I glimpsed guanacos, or wild llamas, springing through scrubland. A cowboy drove a herd of horses before him, mountains looming in the distance. The familiarity of these scenes, reproduced so often in postcards and coffee table books, did not diminish their impact.

We got off the bus, registered at the park entrance and filled our water bottles. Then off we went, following a dirt road past Laguna Amarga and deeper into the park.

From the entrance, we should have been able to see the three sheer granite peaks that form the central Paine Massif, possibly the most singular and breathtaking sight in all of Patagonia. But the weather spoiled it for us. Gray clouds cloaked the top halves of those mountains.

I wondered about the chances of rain — nothing ruins a trek more quickly than a downpour, no matter how much weatherproof gear you're packing.

It took us a few hours to get used to walking with our packs. The trail was gentle this first day, meandering past an estancia where horses grazed by the path before dropping into a valley carpeted with white daisies. We walked into this valley in the last hour of our trek, when we were exhausted, and at a rest stop we almost literally fell asleep in a bed of daisies.

The campsite had a flush toilet, hot-shower stall and a dining hall where cooks prepared hot food. And this was supposed to be one of the more spartan sites on the circuit. If this was roughing it, I was more than ready to handle a week of this, I thought as I curled up in my sleeping bag. Tini was already sound asleep.

The next day's walk took us above expansive Lago Paine and up along the side of a valley where we could see the white sawtoothed Andean peaks dividing Chile and Argentina. We passed through a deformed forest of lenga trees, many blackened and twisted by a recent fire. But they were regenerating.

That was the thing you learned after spending time in the mountains — there was never any true destruction when nature was left to its own devices; everything was reborn somehow.

We ended the day at a campsite by another lake, one with views across the water to an enormous patch of snow and ice called the Ventisquero Dickson. It was the tip of one of the largest icecaps in the Southern Hemisphere, the Hielo del Sur. If the many scientists who assert that these enormous icecaps are fading at an unnatural rate are right, their disappearance will not only rob nature enthusiasts of awe-inspiring views, but also entire ecosystems of fresh water needed for survival.

For now, the glaciers are still in abundance. I had never seen anything like them outside Patagonia. Not in Tibet, not in Nepal, not even in northern Pakistan, where glaciers tumble to the very edge of one of the highest roads in the world, the Karakoram Highway.

The next day, we walked up a small glacial moraine — a mound of gray dirt and rubble pushed together by glacial movement — and stared down into a turquoise lake with icebergs floating across the surface. The icebergs had broken off from the tip of a glacier that flowed right into the lake.

That was when it got nasty. I mean really nasty. A fierce wind started up, and we had to partly shut our eyes just to keep out the dirt particles. The sky darkened. We hiked quickly into camp and set up our tent just as the first drops of rain began falling.

It poured for the rest of the afternoon and did not let up at all during the night. It was quite possibly the heaviest rainfall I have experienced on any trek.

The weather in Patagonia is temperamental even at the best of times, and people preparing for a trip there spend lots of energy figuring out what gear will keep them dry. I had just bought a new tent that was much lighter than my old one; it was untested, and I was worried whether it would keep out the water.

It held up better than I expected. I had pitched the tent atop a small depression, so we found ourselves floating in a small pond when we awoke. But none of the water had leaked in.

UNFORTUNATELY, the rain didn't let up in the morning, the day we were supposed to cross the John Gardner Pass. We took our time eating breakfast, hoping the rain would stop, but finally decided to start out at 11 a.m.

We stumbled through the mud, steadily following the path as it climbed through a forest. Tini sank to her thighs twice. She gritted her teeth and pulled herself up with her wooden walking stick.

Once we emerged above the tree line, icefalls appeared on mountainsides all around us. The final stretch to the pass involved a scramble over a steep incline of wet rocks.

Even in the rain, with clouds hovering over much of the landscape, the top of the pass afforded the most spectacular view we had come across yet — a sweeping panorama of Grey Glacier, an 11-mile-long sweep of snow and ice that stretched to the horizon.

The trail leading down on the other side of the pass was so steep and slippery that park workers had fixed ropes along trees so trekkers would have something to hold on to. We still fell on our backsides more than once.

The crossing of the pass brought us to the easier half of the circuit. The western and southern sides have their share of long-distance trekkers, but are also thronged with day hikers bedding down in expensive lodges like Explora's.

Some of the park's most spectacular mountain vistas lie on this side — the massive rock formations of the Cuernos del Paine at the edge of Lago Pehoé, the amphitheater in the French Valley, the three peaks of the Torres del Paine. From a lookout near the Lago Grey campsite, we watched chunks of ice the size of small apartment buildings tumble off Grey Glacier into the lake's turquoise waters.

We decided to take it easy for the rest of the trek, waking up late and walking slowly along the crowded trails. On Day 6, we ran into Mai and Jaime, a couple whose wedding we attended in Santiago before our trek and who had come south on their honeymoon. It was a pleasant surprise.

We hung out that night at the new Refugio Lago Pehoé, on the edge of the lake, eating a dinner of chicken, rice and red wine in the restaurant, the Cuernos looming right outside the windows.

The dinner was a welcome break from the instant noodles I had been cooking every night on my stove. Afterward, we played dominoes and Jenga in an upstairs lounge.

The lodge was warm, so was the wine. Outside, trekkers scrambled into their tents as a fierce wind swept in from the lake.

VISITOR INFORMATION

GETTING THERE

My trip to Torres del Paine started with flights from New York to Santiago, Chile. A recent Web search found round-trip fares for that route in mid-March starting at $835 on Avianca via Bogota, Colombia.

From Santiago, I flew on LAN Chile (www.lan.com) to Punta Arenas, at the southern tip of Chile. A round-trip ticket in mid-March runs about $650.

Travelers can catch a bus directly from the airport in Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales, the gateway town for Torres del Paine. The ride is three hours and costs 4,000 pesos one way, 7,000 round trip — about $7.25 and $12.75, at 550 pesos to the dollar. Buses from Puerto Natales to Torres del Paine take two hours and cost 7,000 pesos one way and 12,000 round trip.

The entrance fee for Torres del Paine National Park is 15,000 pesos in high season (October to April), 10,000 other times.

WHERE TO STAY

In Puerto Natales, we stayed at Hospedaje Teresa Ruiz (56-61-410-472), a warm, friendly bed-and-breakfast where the owner, Teresa, has five spacious rooms upstairs with shared bathrooms. The rates are 4,000 pesos a person for a shared bedroom or 4,500 in a private room.

Perhaps the most upscale place in town is the 74-room Hotel Costa Australis, right on the bay (Pedro Montt 262; 56-61-412-000; www.hoteles-australis.com). In high season, double rooms with an ocean view cost $250, others $205.

Puerto Natales is a good town in which to stock up on food and gear before heading into the park. There are two main supermarkets and several gear shops. Rooms in popular guesthouses and hotels in Puerto Natales are often booked far in advance for the high season.

On the Torres del Paine circuit, we stayed at campsites every night. Their costs vary, but average about 4,000 pesos a night to pitch your own tent.

Many sites also have comfortable but basic wooden huts called refugios that charge $16 to $24 a person for a bunk bed and shower. The ones run by a private company called Fantástico Sur (56-61-710-050; www.lastorres.com/lodges) are reputedly better than those run by Conaf, Chile's national forestry agency (www.torresdelpaine.com). Some sites rent out camping gear like tents and sleeping bags.

Trekkers aiming to walk the entire circuit should plan on carrying their own tents, sleeping bags and cooking gear. Trekkers who do not want to carry all that equipment will have to plan their itinerary carefully.

The sites on the western-southern half of the circuit are better equipped than those on the less-trodden eastern half. The most upscale lodging in the park is at Hotel Salto Chico, widely known as Explora, on the south side of Lago Pehoé. Four nights run $2,170 to $3,110 a person, double occupancy, including all meals and guided activities like horse riding, birding trips and nature walks.

WHERE TO EAT

Pub Concepto Indigo, on Ladrilleros at the corner of Bories (56-61-413-609), is one of the better restaurants in Puerto Natales. Main courses are about 6,000 pesos, and I vividly recall a crab ravioli dish I had for lunch there.

El Maritimo (Pedro Montt 214; 56-61-414-994) is a decent seafood restaurant with stunning views of the bay and snow-capped peaks across the water.

In the park, I cooked almost every night but splurged twice by eating at refugios. Meals at the refugios cost from 3,600 to 7,500 pesos. Backpackers can buy foodstuffs at some campsites.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/travel/04patagonia.html

(l) I have been thinking about visiting this end-of-the-world place for several years. Although there are other, easier-to-access geographical locations to visit, this place seems almost surreal. (y) Certainly would have more privacy and solitude there than here! ;)

Warm ({)(}) 's to my friends,

SWeetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-04-2007, 08:34 PM

(h) (p) (h)(p)

Patagonia is no longer the far-flung destination it once was, only for the dedicated trekker or mountaineer. Chile's Torres del Paine National Park is one of the destinations that draws trekkers to Patagonia.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/04/travel/TorresdelPaine04_650.jpg

Tourism in Torres del Paine (pronounced PIE-nay) has boomed in recent years, with North Americans, Europeans and wealthy Latin Americans flooding the park in the high season, December to April. A tour group from the Explora lodge in the park.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/04/travel/TorresdelPaine29_650.jpg

Hikers being transferred to a boat on Lago Grey for a closer look at Grey Glacier. Nowhere else are glaciers as accessible as they are in Patagonia.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/04/travel/TorresdelPaine34_650.jpg

Guanacos in Torres del Paine National Park.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/04/travel/TorresdelPaine14_650.jpg

In 2005, more than 107,000 people visited the park.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/04/travel/TorresdelPaine28_650.jpg

A variation of a lady's slipper on the trail. Annual research is conducted studying the environmental impact of visitors to the park.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/04/travel/TorresdelPaine25_650.jpg

Though it has many visitors, Patagonia, which encompasses a territory equal to the combined surface areas of Texas and California, remains a lonely place.

Breathtaking!

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/04/travel/TorresdelPaine05_650.jpg

(y) (y) So many places to visit, so little time. Definitely need to make a prioritized list and get off my ass and go. Even if I go alone. I'm friendly and can (and have couintless times in the past) start up conversations with fellow travelers. :) Ah, the wanderlust of travel and the bonds travelers share with each other. (l) It is truly a warm, supportive club where people share stories, a sweater or jacket; even a ride.

(f) (f) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-04-2007, 08:35 PM

;)

The Colorado State Department of Fish and Wildlife is
advising hikers, hunters, fishermen, and golfers to take
extra precautions and be on the alert for bears
while in the Dillon, Breckenridge, and Keystone
area. They advise people to wear noise-producing
devices such as little bells on their clothing to alert but
not startle the bears unexpectedly. They also advise
you to carry pepper spray in case of an encounter
with a bear.

It is also a good idea to watch for signs of bear
activity. People should be able to recognize the difference
between black bear and grizzly bear droppings.
Black bear droppings are smaller and contain
berries and possibly squirrel fur. Grizzly bear droppings
have bells in them and smell like pepper spray.

:D

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-04-2007, 08:38 PM

(l) (l) (l) (l) (l) (l) (l) (l) (l)

Slide Show:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/03/02/travel/escapes/20070302_ALASKA_SLIDESHOW_1.html

North central Alaska may seem like an improbable winter destination, but tourists do come — especially the Japanese. Ayumi Momma of Sapporo, Japan, in warm waters and frigid air at Chena Hot Springs Resort. It is possible to have a warm body and frozen hair at the same time.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/02/travel/steamlake_650.jpg

The area around Fairbanks is a jumping-off point for Japanese winter tourism in the state because it affords the best chance for viewing the northern lights.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/02/travel/lights_650.jpg

I LOVE THIS! A cabin at Chena Hot Springs beside a warm stream.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/02/travel/hut_650.jpg

The ice bar at the Ice Hotel, where patrons can sip icy drinks in ice glasses.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/02/travel/ice_bar_650.jpg

Some sculptures in the Ice Museum and the hotel have a medieval theme.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/02/travel/sculpture_650.jpg

Aurora Ice Hotel (Fairbanks) Polar Bear Bed! http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/02/travel/blueglobes_650.jpg

Fairbanks is possibly the world’s most accessible destination for aurora followers.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/02/travel/town_650.jpg

Women stay warm as they wait for the lights to appear.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/02/travel/womenjackets_650.jpg

Japanese tourists watch the aurora borealis.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/02/travel/lights_twomen_650.jpg

(l) (l) I am going this Summer - here as well as several other places up there and in northern Canada. (y)

:)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-04-2007, 08:39 PM

(l) (l)

March 2, 2007

The Cold Show in Fairbanks, Alaska

By JERRY GARRETT

IT was nearly midnight. The air temperature was below zero. But a few tourists and I were outside, soaking in soothing natural hot springs — close to 115 degrees. Our skin was a comfortably warm bubblegum pink, even as our damp hair was frozen to our heads.

The black, starry sky was barely visible through the billowing clouds of steam. But then it appeared: an eerie, neon-green cloud, rolling silently across the eastern sky. It seemed to pause directly overhead. Huskies up and down the narrow valley began to bark and bay at the apparition.

It was an electrical storm, charged by the sun and driven by solar winds: the aurora borealis. At this latitude — in Chena Hot Springs, Fairbanks — the aurora appears an estimated 200 nights a year. This night, it broke into three parallel streams and flowed across the sky like a river for two hours. Then it evaporated.

Seeing the northern lights is why I'm here, braving winter's bleakest hours. But I am not alone. Those tourists in the hot springs with me are from Japan. In fact, Japanese visitors pack this whole resort, even though it's located down a dark and icy two-lane road, miles from the nearest town.

“The aurora is a natural phenomenon, but very mysterious,” said Fumiko Ohashi, a vacationing office worker from Nagoya. “It moved surprisingly fast and kept changing shapes. Wow!”

Futaba Inota, on a tour with a group from Tokyo, said: “I am so impressed by the scale of nature. You can't see the aurora in Japan — it's something I wanted to experience at least once in my life.”

North central Alaska may seem like an improbable winter destination, given its frigid weather, almost round-the-clock darkness and summertime attractions that are shuttered this time of year. But tourists do come — especially the Japanese.

Last year, Miho Kataoka of Finland to see the aurora, only to miss out because of bad weather. This year, she decided to try Fairbanks instead.

“Here, the aurora was all over the sky — amazing!” she said.

The area around Fairbanks is a jumping-off point for Japanese winter tourism in the state because it affords the best chance for viewing the northern lights. It enjoys clearer weather and less precipitation than cities farther south, like those on the Panhandle or in the Anchorage area. And with its recently upgraded facilities for air travelers, Fairbanks is possibly the world's most accessible destination for aurora followers.

At least 10 chartered 350-passenger Japanese Air Lines 747s are expected to arrive at Fairbanks International Airport this winter season, carrying groups from Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya. Another 3,500 or so Japanese tourists are forecast to arrive this season on weekly commercial flights

Fairbanks also offers a popular winter carnival that includes ice carving, ice fishing, snowmobiling and dog races like the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest between Fairbanks and Whitehorse, in the Yukon Territory. Winter tourism doesn't peak until late March.

Japanese wintertime tourism in Alaska first gained popularity in the 1990s, after a Tokyo television crew broadcast live pictures of particularly intense and colorful auroras caused by a major solar disturbance. After 9/11, Japanese tourism in the Fairbanks area “dropped to zero,” according to local tourism officials. But this year, they said, promises to be the first in which Japanese tourism returns to pre-9/11 levels.

Since Christmas, Japanese tourists have helped fill the inns, hotels and bed-and-breakfast lodgings in and around Fairbanks. They play outside, so bundled up they look like the Michelin Man. The mood is festive, despite the fact that skies can be dark nearly 20 hours a day. Ice and snow covers everything: the ground, the roads, the buildings, the cars, the trees.

In summer, hundreds of thousands of tourists from the Lower 48 circulate around central Alaska like patrons of a giant amusement park — rafting, fishing, hiking, biking. In winter, they vanish. (A spokesman for Gray Line of Alaska, which organizes hundreds of summer tours, said the company was “intrigued” by the possibilities of four-season touring in the Fairbanks area, but currently senses insufficient demand to expand its offerings.)

But the Alaskan winter — recent overnight lows ranged from 25 below to 45 below zero — is high season for the Japanese. Somehow, that has given rise to some fanciful notions about why they come to Alaska.

“I've heard lots of stories,” said Kristin Fischer, a guide at the Alaska Public Lands Visitor Center, in Fairbanks. “One explanation says they want to conceive under the northern lights, so they're more likely to have a boy. Another version was for a gifted child. There's also supposed to be a belief the child will be well off.”

She added: “I've also heard it's a complete hoax.”

Debbie Eberhardt, the proprietor of A Taste of Alaska Lodge, a few miles north of town, called the rumors about Japanese fertility beliefs “a crock” and said, “The Japanese come to Fairbanks in the winter because they love the extreme cold, not to make babies.

“They do things like throw boiling water in the air and watch it freeze like marbles before it hits the ground. They blow soap bubbles, which freeze solid and roll around on the ground like Christmas ornaments. They put bananas outside to freeze and then use them as hammers to pound nails into two-by-fours.”

Most popular, however, is anything to do with aurora watching, Ms. Eberhardt said.

“They'll sit out all night, around a roaring fire, and watch the sky,” she said. “We taught them how to make s'mores last year, over the campfire. They loved that. I saw them the next morning with chocolate and marshmallow dripped all down their jackets, because they were trying to eat them while looking up.”

A typical charter group will spend four or five nights in the area. Their activities include aurora watching atop the Mount Aurora ski hill near town, attending aurora seminars at University of Alaska Fairbanks and the internationally known Geophysical Institute there, or soaking in Chena or one of the other area geothermal springs.

The Chena Hot Springs Resort also features the adjacent Aurora Ice Hotel — the only one of the half-dozen in the world that stays open all year.

Any of the Aurora Ice Hotel's four rooms rents for $575 a night (or $878 for two nights) and includes “survival gear” like quilted bedding, passes to the nearby hot springs and a backup room in the resort's 82-room Moose Lodge. Since the ice hotel reopened year-round in 2004 after an unexpected meltdown, only about 200 hardy guests have booked rooms there, said Kaylene Nuss, the resort's marketing person. “Only a handful stayed all night,” she added.

The ice hotel, which is a balmy 20 degrees inside, also doubles as a museum and “ice bar” serving $15 apple martinis in glasses made of ice (tours, $15; $7.50 for children). It features medieval and erotic ice sculptures, popular with tourists, particularly the Japanese.

“But the Japanese don't start arriving in force until winter really hits, and the temperature plunges to, like, 50 below,” said Ms. Nuss about the post-Christmas-period cold snaps, worthy of a Robert W. Service poem. “The colder, the better for them.”

The tour groups are mainly composed of single students, well-to-do older couples or retirees, said a spokesman for Dai Ichi International, a Portland, Ore., travel agency that is a packager of Japanese aurora-viewing tours. Baby making is not on their to-do list.

Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu, the recently retired director of the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, which operates a Web site predicting nightly auroral activity (www.gedds.alaska.edu/auroraforecast), calls the procreation story a “joke.”

“It was started by ‘Northern Exposure,' ” he said.

The 1992 episode in question of “Northern Exposure,” a popular TV series of the era, was written by Jeff Vlaming, a screenwriter now living in Pasadena, Calif. Reached by phone, Mr. Vlaming said he didn't invent the baby-making rumor.

“I picked up a copy of Alaska magazine, and there was this quarter-page article in there about some ancient belief that was held by the Japanese that if you conceived a child under the northern lights, it would be a gifted child,” he said, referring to an article in the November 1991 issue of the magazine. “I thought, ‘This is great — exactly the colorful type of thing I'm looking for.' So I put it in the script, and ‘Northern Exposure' bought it. It was one of their best episodes ever, I think.”

Mr. Vlaming still receives residual checks for reruns of that episode. He is also certain that since the rumor has now had 15 years to germinate, grow and spread worldwide, some Japanese have come to believe it.

That is possible. “In early December we did have a Japanese honeymoon couple, who said they came for the aurora,” said Ms. Eberhardt, the skeptical innkeeper. The couple did not speak much English, she said, but she was able to tell that the reason for their honeymoon visit was to “be here” for the aurora.

Not just to see it.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/travel/escapes/02Alaska.html?ref=travel

(y) (y)

(k) 's,

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-04-2007, 08:40 PM

(l) (f) (l)

Slide Show:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/03/04/travel/20070304_TOKYO_SLIDESHOW_1.html

(y) (y)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-04-2007, 08:45 PM

:s :s

:|

March 4, 2007

In Transit

Ex-Astronaut Will Be Among First on the Grand Canyon Walkway

By JENNIFER CONLIN

On March 20, the second man on the Moon, Buzz Aldrin, will lead the first walk across Skywalk, the cantilevered glass semicircular walkway that juts out 70 feet over the Grand Canyon and 4,000 feet above the Colorado River in Arizona.

The walkway, which will open to the public on March 28, is made of two million pounds of glass and steel and cost more than $30 million to construct. It is the centerpiece of a development plan called Grand Canyon West. The group behind the project — which will include a 6,000-square-foot visitors center, with a museum, a movie theater, a gift shop and several restaurants — is the Hualapai Indian tribe, which also has a reservation on the million acres of land they own on the western rim of the canyon.

The reservation, 242 miles east of Grand Canyon National Park, which has 4.1 million visitors a year, had fewer than 300,000 visitors last year, 90 percent of them from helicopter and airplane package tours and ground tours.

“Most people didn’t even know this area existed,” said Allison Raskansky, director of marketing for Grand Canyon West. She also said that the tribe would continue to operate the only one-day whitewater-rafting trip through the canyon.

Although the project is expected to bring more tourists and revenue to the small reservation, which has only 2,000 residents and unemployment that reaches 70 percent in the off-season, environmentalists worry that it will be a blemish on the natural beauty of the canyon.

“Our position on all development in the canyon is to keep it away,” said Sandy Bahr, a spokeswoman for the Grand Canyon Chapter of the Sierra Club. “The Hualapai tribe owns the land and can do what they want, but we prefer to let the canyon speak for itself.”

Besides the skywalk, visitors will also be able to visit Grand Canyon West’s Indian Village, with authentic dwellings built by five tribes; the Hualapai Market, where local artisans demonstrate their crafts; and the Ranch, a Western town with wagon and horseback rides along the canyon’s rim.

Sheri Yellowhawk, chief executive of the Grand Canyon Resort Corporation, which is owned by the Hualapai tribe, of which she is a member, said: “It is not like we are building a ride. The tourist center is made of materials that match the canyon and will look like rock. It is also in a side canyon, out of view.”

The Skywalk will be open from dawn to dusk with a maximum of 120 people allowed on it at any one time. Tickets will cost $25 a person in addition to a Grand Canyon West entry fee. Reservations are recommended; www.destinationgrandcanyon.com.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/travel/04transcanyon.html

(n) (n) I don't think I like that this was built in such a beautiful place. (n) (n) After visiting the South Rim nine times over the past 26 years, I just cannot imagine this construction known as the Skywalk adding to the sense of awe and jaw-dropping, astounding rapturous joy one feels as they gaze out from the many places to stop along the canyon rim.

:(

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-04-2007, 08:46 PM

:o :o

March 4, 2007

Practical Traveler | Trekking In Nepal

As Political Unrest Eases, Travel Picks Up

By MICHELLE HIGGINS

WITH political stability returning to Nepal, so too are adventure-oriented travel companies, many of which had discontinued their trips to the country over the last few years.

For the first time since 2002, Country Walkers, based in Waterbury, Vt., is returning to the Himalayan nation of Nepal with special tours in the fall, said to be the ideal time for trekking in the region.

Other outfitters, like Mountain Travel Sobek of Emeryville, Calif., and Wilderness Travel of Berkeley, Calif. — which had halted all trips but those to the Khumba or Everest regions in the northeast — are now offering trips to the Annapurna region in central Nepal. Mountain Travel Sobek is also starting treks to the remote Dolpo and Humla regions in the northwest, which they deemed off limits because of the political unrest.

After more than 10 years of bitter conflict, the Nepalese government signed a peace deal with Maoist rebels in November. A new temporary constitution is now in effect and an interim Parliament has been formed. The United Nations Security Council voted in January to set up a mission to oversee a disarmament and cease-fire accord between the government and the rebels and to plan elections of a constitutional assembly in June.

Despite such developments, the State Department has continued to post travel warnings for Nepal on its Web site, www.state.gov/travel, urging Americans thinking of visiting the country to obtain updated security information before they travel and to be prepared to change their plans on short notice.

An Australian government advisory, which can be found at www.smartraveller.gov.au, recommends exercising a “high degree of caution” when traveling to Nepal. “While considerable progress has been made in negotiating a formal end to the decade-long Maoist insurgency,” the report states, “the longer-term security situation in Nepal remains unpredictable and could deteriorate.”

Butterfield & Robinson, based in Toronto, which stopped running trips to Nepal in 2001, is taking a wait-and-see approach, sending its regional director for periodic visits to check on both the political situation and the ease of travel through the region. “We do feel it will open up, and we are looking at it,” said Brad Crockett, a trip planner for the company. But he said, “nothing is confirmed yet.”

The luxury tour operators Travcoa in Newport Beach, Calif., and TCS Expeditions in Seattle both plan to return to the country with escorted tours, but not until 2008 and 2009 respectively. Custom Journeys to Nepal by Travcoa have always been available, and can be arranged this year.

Travel companies going back to Nepal this year say they would not take travelers there if conditions weren’t safe. “We feel very confident our guests would not be put in harm’s way,” said Tricia Dowhan, senior manager at Country Walkers. She added that the company had been closely monitoring the political situation and that the 11-day $3,398 Annapurna Trek and Seti River Excursion it was planning for the fall had been carefully planned to avoid any possible disruptions or unrest.

Michael Steigerwald, director of the Himalayan region for Geographic Expeditions in San Francisco, who just returned from a February scouting trip to Nepal, said roadblocks that had doubled travel time along the road from Pokhara to Kathmandu — a key tourist route — were gone. And Maoists have stopped collecting money from tourists along trekking routes.

While there were demonstrations in Biratnagar, a city near the southeastern border with India, Mr. Steigerwald said that the company’s tours did not include visits to the city. “I didn’t really feel any threats or disruptions,” he said.

GEOGRAPHIC EXPEDITIONS, which continued to operate trips to Nepal during the unrest but only to the Kathmandu region, is planning two new excursions. One, a rigorous 27-day trek through the Kingdom of the Mustang in the spring and fall, starts at $4,695 a person for a group of eight people. Another 31-day trek, Around Manaslu, to be offered in the fall, starts at $4,995 a person for eight people.

There are some added benefits to being among the first tourists to return to Nepal. “For the moment,” said Mr. Steigerwald, “it’s really a treat to be there without crowds.”

Many hotels have slashed their rates to lure back trekkers. And most travel companies that have only just decided to go back to Nepal were not able to advertise the trips in their 2007 brochures. Instead they are offering their excursions online and through newsletters to clients who have traveled with them before.

Despite their quieter introduction, the new Nepal trips are already quickly filling up. Wilderness Travel’s two new departures for its 15-day trip into the Annapurna Sanctuary in October and November are more than half full; prices start at $3,495 a person for a group of six people. Country Walkers said it was planning a second departure this fall because its November trek was booked up with a waiting list.

If you decide to take a trip to Nepal, consider using an established outfitter, like the ones mentioned above, that has local contacts in Nepal and can quickly arrange to pull out of the region if signs of unrest reappear. Avoid demonstrations and large gatherings throughout Nepal, as they could turn violent.

A list of planned demonstrations can be found at the Web site of the United States Embassy in Nepal, nepal.usembassy.gov. And it’s best to stay away from the southeastern Terai region, where violent demonstrations in January and February resulted in deaths and injuries.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/travel/04prac.html

(y) (y) Bravo!

Carpe Diem,

SWeetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-04-2007, 08:52 PM

:| :s :| :s :|

Pvt. Resha Kane, 18, says goodbye to her father in Mohave Valley, Ariz., before leaving to catch a flight to Fort Hood, Tex.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/03/us/04land.xlarge1x0.jpg

March 4, 2007

This Land

A Teenage Soldier’s Goodbyes on the Road to Over There

By DAN BARRY

MOHAVE VALLEY, Ariz.

It is time. The fresh young soldier has a plane to catch.

People file out of the dimness of V.F.W. Post 404 and into the morning light. They chat and smoke and mill about on the parking lot gravel, then come together to form a ragged circle of support.

The dozen motorcyclists among them finalize plans to escort the soldier for most of the two-hour ride to the airport in Las Vegas. Just before raising voices and fists to a recording of the country-western anthem “God Bless the U.S.A.,” the crowd bows its collective head and asks God for another favor: to keep safe this soldier, just 10 months removed from her senior prom.

That night she wore a gown the color of valentines; this morning she wears fatigues the color of mud. The uniform has a name patch, KANE, for Pvt. Resha Kane. Eighteen years old and five feet tall. Of Needles High School, Class of 2006, and, lately, of the United States Army, Fourth Infantry Division.

Earlier this morning, Private Kane walked out of her family home in Needles, a small railroad city in California just across the Colorado River. Before her, the family van, packed with two Army duffel bags. Behind her, a living room decorated with family portraits and a large mock check from her current employer.

“Reserved in the name of Resha Kane,” the check reads, $37,200 from the Army College Fund and the Montgomery G.I. Bill. It represents her partial compensation for enlisting for three years and 22 weeks. She plans to study biochemistry someday.

At the moment, though, she stands outside this club for veterans of foreign wars, where a bar sign advertises Sunday bloody marys, a buck apiece, 10 to noon. Former soldiers tell her to keep her nose clean over there. Her father, Wesley Kane, has to leave soon for his job as a car dealership’s lot manager, but he holds her tight and asks, again and again, do you know how to clean your weapon?

“Yes, Daddy,” she says.

The motorcyclists, including some from a group called the Patriot Guard Riders, mount their bikes. Among them is Rich Poliska, a gray-bearded Air Force veteran who lives nearby, in Bullhead City. A Route 66 earring dangles from his left earlobe.

Several months ago Mr. Poliska and his daughter, Heather Ching, heard about a local soldier who had returned from Iraq to no welcome home. They decided to form the Bullhead Patriots, dedicated to honoring soldiers going off to war, or returning from it. This is the group’s first deployment effort, he says. “But I’ve done six funerals and two homecomings.”

The Bullhead Patriots had heard of Private Kane’s imminent deployment from a veteran who knows a woman who works at the Family Dollar store with the soldier’s mother, Patricia Kane. First a surprise potluck supper — the soldier left church on Sunday to find a limousine waiting to whisk her away to the V.F.W. — and now this: an escort to the airport.

Bike engines growl, signaling that it is time. Private Kane climbs into the family van, which features rear-window decals for Jesus and for the Army (“My Daughter Is Serving”). She sits in the back, surrounded by her three younger siblings and a sister’s boyfriend. Her quiet mother takes the driver’s seat.

Soon the caravan is crossing the Colorado River. It passes a man sitting on the back of a parked pickup, his fist raised in the air: the soldier’s father.

This mobile honor guard continues on, heading north on Highway 95, into a desolate, arid stretch of southern Nevada. Motorcycles in front, motorcycles behind, and in the middle, a white van containing a young soldier with just-polished fingernails.

She took care of her siblings while her parents worked, and learned to make a mean baked chicken. She graduated in the upper ranks in a class of about 60. She was honored for her grades and for her abstract artwork of flowers and butterflies. She has yet to learn to drive.

She enlisted in April, the same month as her prom, because she saw the military as a way to further her education. Right after graduation she went through boot camp and some extra training, before coming home a couple of weeks ago to talk up the Army at her alma mater. “Hometown recruiting,” the Army calls it.

“Everyone knows me there,” Private Kane says of Needles High School, home of the Mustangs.

Now, riding in the midst of this caravan of protection and respect, she is bound for Fort Hood in Texas to await deployment — probably to Iraq, she says.

“Nobody wants to go, but it’s our job,” she said the other day, her tone all business. “That’s what we’re trained for. We’ll go over, do our job and come back.”

The motorcade stops briefly in the old gold-mining town of Searchlight, and a few bikers say goodbye. Then it continues on, across the nothingness, through spits of rain, before stopping again in Railroad Pass, about 20 miles south of the airport. The Bullhead Patriots say farewell to Private Kane.

“Best of luck to you,” Mr. Poliska says.

A lone biker continues to lead the Kanes toward Las Vegas, a large American flag flapping from the rear of his motorcycle. He rumbles into the city of gamblers, past drivers oblivious to the now-common moment of a wartime soldier leaving home.

At the last moment the biker peels off. And the white family van follows the signs that say Departures.

Slide Show:

http://select.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/03/03/us/20070304_LAND_SLIDESHOW_1.html

Private Kane climbs into the family’s van, surrounded by her three younger siblings and a sister’s boyfriend. Her quiet mother takes the driver’s seat.

Soon the caravan is crossing the Colorado River and then heading north on Highway 95.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/03/us/kane.slide10.jpg

(l) (l) The color photo of this young womyn with her dad really caught my attention. When I read where she was from, I realized that I have driven through (and even spent the night a few times while traveling) in Needles. This story made me feel sad.

(f) Please protect her and keep her safe. (f)

(f)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-04-2007, 08:58 PM

:o :o :o :o :o

March 1, 2007, 5:04 pm

China Is Near

Sometimes you only need to see the parody; you can infer the source. This
thing here is almost perfect, and it so cleanly busts the anti-Asian
xenophobic hysteria at the center of all gee-whiz globalization
propaganda that you really, really don’t need to see the propaganda.

http://www.scottmcleod.org/didyouknow.mov

Virginia Heffernan is a television critic for The Times.

(y) (y) And time is marching on. (o) Math and sciences need to be promoted more, especially for grrls. IMHO.

(co) (co) + (t) (t) communications' and other disruptive technologies - grrls need to get into these fields.

This URL was most definitely an eye-opener and worth the time it took to watch and read. (y)

8-| (x) 8-| (x)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-04-2007, 09:07 PM

:o :o :o

March 4, 2007

Digital Domain

What Starbucks Can Learn From the Movie Palace

By RANDALL STROSS

WI-FI service is quickly becoming the air-conditioning of the Internet age, enticing customers into restaurants and other public spaces in the same way that cold “advertising air” deliberately blasted out the open doors of air-conditioned theaters in the early 20th century to help sell tickets.

Today, hotspots are the new cold spots.

Starbucks became the most visible Wi-Fi-equipped national chain when it began offering the service in 2002. Now, at more than 5,100 stores, Starbucks offers Internet access “from the comfort of your favorite cozy chair.”

Before you pop open your laptop, however, you need to pull out your credit card. Starbucks and its partner, T-Mobile, charge $6 an hour for the “pay as you go” plan. Day passes or monthly subscriptions are available but can be used only at Starbucks stores and other T-Mobile partners like Borders bookstores.

McDonald’s offers Wi-Fi in more than 8,000 of its 13,700 stores in the United States, giving it wider reach than even Starbucks, and it also charges for access. McDonald’s doesn’t charge as much: it asks $2.95 for two hours. You can’t apply your T-Mobile subscription there, however, because McDonald’s works with other partners.

Metering and charging for a service, of course, is the prerogative of any business owner in a free market. One will always find entrepreneurs willing to try new ways to profit by erecting tollbooths in front of facilities that had been freely accessible.

In the past, this took the form of coin-operated locks on bathroom stalls. (You may have first encountered these at a moment when you were least ready to praise the inventor’s ingenuity.)

Today, the outer frontier of pricing innovation can be found at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, where some electrical outlets are accompanied by a small sign: “To Activate Pay $2 at Kiosk.” This is an experimental service, “Power Up My Portable,” which provides chairs and outlets for laptops; $2 buys 20 minutes of juice.

But what about the many other wall outlets scattered around the terminals and originally installed for vacuum cleaners? Zenola Campbell, the airport vice president who oversees concessions, demurred last week when asked whether travelers could always count on having free access to those outlets. “I can’t tell you where we’re going to be in the future,” she said.

When Starbucks and McDonald’s decided to exact a toll from their customers as they set up their in-store Wi-Fi networks, they created a confusion of conflicting signals: how welcome can one feel when staring at a meter that is running?

The restaurants’ predecessors, the movie theater owners of almost a century ago, understood that not every amenity, every service, every offering must have a separate price tag attached. The owners and the architects sought to give theatergoers an environment that was pleasing in all aspects. Marcus Loew, the head of a nationwide chain, once said, “We sell tickets to theaters, not movies.”

Panera Bread, which has more than 900 Wi-Fi-equipped sandwich and bakery stores, has set itself apart from its contemporaries by upholding the old-fashioned spirit of those bygone theater owners who never stinted in their efforts to make public space inviting.

The grand movie palaces did not have to show the revenue-enhancing potential of an ornamental gold cornice or plaster pilaster. So, too, at Panera Bread, where its fireplaces do not have to demonstrate a monetary payback to justify their place in the stores.

Neither does Wi-Fi. Neil Yanofsky, Panera’s president, said that no cost accounting had been done on its service, which is free. The rationale relates to ambience: “We want our customers to stay and linger.”

A Panera cafe does half of its business at lunchtime — there is little lingering then. But before and after the lunch rush, the restaurant addresses what it refers to internally as “the chill-out business,” which constitutes a not-insignificant 15 to 20 percent of its revenue.

Panera has no interest in rushing these customers out — the longer they stay, the greater the likelihood that resistance to the aroma of freshly baked muffins will crumble. Free, unmetered Wi-Fi is one way the restaurant sends an unambiguous signal: Stay as long as you like.

Of course, Mr. Yanofsky is the first to point out that he is in a position to be much more welcoming than the competition across the street at Starbucks. The average Panera store has 120 seats and does about two and a half times as much business as the average Starbucks store.

Mr. Yanofsky said he could not see why Starbucks, given its more limited seating, would drop access charges so that it could match Panera’s Wi-Fi offering. “Why make it free?” he said. “They’re already full.”

Each Panera cafe averages 220 connect hours a week; Starbucks and McDonald’s declined to provide similar information about the use of their services.

In the 1920s, when air-conditioning began to be installed in movie theaters, owners had to spend a sizable sum — $50,000 (roughly equivalent to $570,000 today) — to transform the property into a “cold spot.” But it was worth it. Before the “refrigeratory process” came along, theaters could not draw customers during the summer because of the unbearable heat in confined space. With air-conditioning, patronage increased so sharply that even the largest investments were quickly repaid.

Wi-Fi does not address a similar problem of seasonal attendance. Nor will it produce a multifold increase in patronage. But, then again, it’s not nearly as costly to introduce as the cooling plants of the 1920s.

The access charges assessed at Starbucks and McDonald’s suggest that behind the scenes, their service providers have had to make huge infrastructure investments and carry burdensome operational costs. But if the stores already have business-class broadband connections for their own operations, the addition of a Wi-Fi access point is trivial.

Schlotzsky’s Deli, which offers free Wi-Fi in 82 of its restaurants, uses Internet connections that were already in place, just as Panera Bread did. And Val King, Schlotzsky’s director of information technology, said the technical demands of remotely overseeing a wireless network were minimal. “It doesn’t take rocket science to run these things,” he said.

Customers need feel no shame, however, if they need help configuring their laptops, and sandwich makers and baristas are not necessarily the ones who can solve their technical problems quickly.

A Starbucks spokeswoman, Sonja Gould, explained that her company’s Wi-Fi customers receive, in exchange for their access fees, “excellent customer service help from T-Mobile.” It should be added that businesses offering free Wi-Fi also contract with tech-support companies to help customers. One such company, HotPoint Wireless, says its network now handles five times as many sessions originating from businesses offering free access as those that charge fees.

Getting connected is one thing, but keeping one’s e-mail private is another. Wi-Fi signals, by their nature, are notoriously susceptible to electronic eavesdropping. Wi-Fi services you pay for are no better protected than free services. As T-Mobile informs customers on its support Web page, all wireless service is “inherently insecure.”

Its recommendation should be heeded by users of Wi-Fi hotspots everywhere: use a virtual private network, which provides secure industrial-strength encryption. If your employer does not provide a V.P.N. server, consider using a commercial service, like JiWire, which charges $30 a year for a V.P.N., personal firewall and other services, including a hotspot directory that can be used offline.

STARBUCKS, which has rolled out a plenitude of stores, follows the same design concept that is behind the modern multiplex: for interior space, small is beautiful. It’s unfortunate that the grand architecture of early movie theaters no longer exists to put today’s microscale retail architecture to shame.

Gail Cooper, a professor of history at Lehigh University who has written about the introduction of air-conditioning, said: “In the movie palaces, one-third of the space was devoted to the lobby so people could come and ‘promenade’ — today we would say ‘hang out.’ Welcome was built into the space, and air-conditioning was one part.”

The movie palaces are long gone, and so, too, is the novelty of air-conditioning. We now step into public space less to be chilled than to chill. The palace’s spiritual successor is the cafe that sends out a welcoming blast of free, unlimited Wi-Fi.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/business/yourmoney/04digi.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

:| 13,000 Starbucks retail locations? I don't think Wi-Fi is going to replace the personal touch and warm ambiance of the original Starbucks, do you? Maybe those mom and pop types of coffee houses will make a comeback - especially the ones inside of used book and new book stores.Or placed within a vintage clothing shop.

:o Avoiding the Big Box Store experience, many folks prefer to shop at stores where they know the owner. At least, I do. (y)

(o) (o) Time for the L Word! Showtime has it on back to back at 10:00 and 11:00 p.m. (y)

(S) Pleasant dreams tonight and an enjoyable start of your week, wherever you are in the world. (f)

(f)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-04-2007, 11:53 PM

:| :| :| :| :|

:o :o :o

Parent-Friendly? Ming Vandenberg, editor of H Bomb, Harvard's high-minded sex magazine.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/02/27/magazine/04campus600.1.jpg

User-Friendly? Alecia Oleyourryk, a founder of the unblushingly lewd and "sex positive" Boink.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/02/27/magazine/04campus190.2.jpg

March 4, 2007

Campus Exposure

By ALEXANDRA JACOBS

Aaron Foster, a junior majoring in history at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, was browsing Craigslist one day in 2005 when he saw an ad for nude models. It had been posted by Boink, a glossy new sex magazine by and about college students founded by Alecia Oleyourryk, then a senior at nearby Boston University, and Christopher Anderson, a software consultant in his 30s moonlighting as a photographer. “You’re going to pay me $200, and all I have to do is pretend to be with a chick — you’re going to pay me to do that?” was how Foster, now 24, a slim, dark-haired former marine with pierced nipples and tattoos of raking animal claws on his back, described his reaction.

Soon he found himself standing behind closed Venetian blinds in Oleyourryk’s off-campus apartment, clutching the denim-clad buttocks of a redheaded, similarly nipple-pierced young woman named Jessica as Anderson’s camera clicked away. It wasn’t long before the jeans came off, and the underwear. The impromptu couple then repaired to a queen-size bed, where they simulated intercourse and then lay as if in blissful postcoital repose. The session resulted in a cover shot and an eight-page layout in the third issue of Boink. “It was fun, being nude and being photographed,” Foster told me months afterward. “A good experience. All my friends thought it was pretty cool. Especially if I have a party, the first thing my friends will do is bust out my porn. I think they get a kick out of it.”

It wasn’t so long ago that the male collegians of America hid their copies of Playboy deep inside their sock drawers, and the naked women tucked therein were glamorous, unknowable princesses from a media empire far, far away. These days, when anyone can run a virtual media empire out of a dorm room, student-generated sex magazines, some with the imprimatur of university financing and faculty advisers, are becoming a fact of campus life. Their subjects and contributors are the gals — and guys — down the hall; their target audience is male, female, straight, gay and everything in between. Not all are as overtly titillating as Boink. The grande dame of the group is Squirm, a “magazine of smut and sensibility,” which has been circulating since 2000 at Vassar, once the inspiration for the awkward lunges and contraceptive pessaries of Mary McCarthy’s 1963 novel “The Group.” Topics considered within its pages have included bondage and sadomasochism, the history of the condom and the fluidity of gender. At Yale, there is the earnest, instructive SWAY, whose title is an acronym for Sex Week at Yale, a student-run symposium held biennially there since 2002, with administrative blessing and a corporate sponsor, Pure Romance, a company whose representatives sell sexual aids for women at Tupperware-like “parties.” The premiere edition included a slightly breathless interview with the porn star Jesse Jane along with an essay by the conservative Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D., a former Yale economics lecturer, which concluded: “Marriage is for lovers. Hooking up is for losers.” In 2004, H Bomb arrived at Harvard with slightly loftier intellectual aspirations: its founders, Katharina Cieplak-von Baldegg and Camilla Hrdy, positioned it as a “literary arts magazine about sex and sexual issues.” Vita Excolatur followed shortly after at the University of Chicago (its title a truncated version of the university’s motto, translates roughly as “Life Enriched”), proclaiming itself “eager to engage all interested parties, from Republican pro-choicers to pro-Foucauldians.” And Columbia now has, simply, Outlet, whose second issue, published online in December 2006, includes a review of eight vibrators and an article on “vaginal personality” — shades of Dr. Betty Dodson, the masturbation instructress — subtitled “How snarky is your punani?”

To middle-aged parents who still remember parietal rules, these projects might seem shocking. True, Playboy has been publishing a feature called “Girls of the Ivy League” since 1979. (Later came “Girls of the Big 12” and “Girls of the Top 10 Party Schools.”) But it could be argued that the co-eds depicted (in a far more decorous mode than their Playmate counterparts) represented only a very small percentage of the student population. College-based sex magazines suggest that the students willing to bare it all may not be so exceptional after all. And while these publications may be less common than the sex columns — usually written by women and often explicitly confessional — that have popped up like little red-light disctricts within the respectable black-and-white confines of established school newspapers, they have taken hold at some of the country’s most prestigious campuses.

In an era when the educated elite seems wholly comfortable with overt sexual imagery (Nerve.com depicts highbrow group gropes; Fleshbot.com and others archly parse the nether parts of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears), maybe it’s not so strange that students are confronting their own sex lives so graphically and publicly. But there’s more to the phenomenon. Considering that a smorgasbord of Internet porn is but a mouse click away for most college students, there’s something valiant, even quaint, about the attempt to organize and consider sex in a printed magazine. It’s as if, though curious to explore the possibly frightening boundlessness of adult eroticism, they also wish to keep it at arm’s length, contained within the safety of the campus. The students involved display a host of contradictory qualities: cheekiness and earnestness, progressive politics and retro sensibilities, salacity and sensitivity. They aren’t so much answering the question of what is and what isn’t porn — or what those categories might even mean today — as artfully, disarmingly and sometimes deliberately skirting it.

Despite the sex magazines’ brash names and general air of exuberance, a scrim of protectiveness, even primness hangs over many of them — a vestige, perhaps, of a not-so-distant past when topics like date rape, sexual harassment and AIDS were dominating the national discourse. Seminars addressing these issues are still a part of most freshman orientations, though mention of the infamous Antioch sex code of the early 1990s — which postulated that students should secure their partner’s verbal consent, button by button, before each stage of lovemaking — tends to evoke blank stares and giggles from the undergraduates of 2007. Still, though personal online pages on Web sites like MySpace or home videos on YouTube often reveal as much as students do in these magazines, Squirm’s release form specifies that the magazine is intended solely for on-campus distribution and that students retain the copyright to their contributions. “We try to limit unwanted exposure as much as we can,” wrote its current editor, Sarah Fraser, in an e-mail message. “It’s one thing to know you’re posing nude or writing erotica for an insulated campus, and understandably quite another to know it’s being disseminated widely.” After a brief initial flurry of publicity, Kimi Traube, one of Outlet’s founders, began declining interviews from noncampus press. “We’re flattered by all the attention but have decided it’s best for the magazine to focus our energies on the Columbia community,” she said, also via e-mail. The current editor of H Bomb, Ming Vandenberg, is especially concerned about the security of the magazine’s content on the Web. “I am trying to design a foolproof plan to prevent any negative externalities,” she said, adding with a note of horror, “There could be a photo of a clothed Harvard student that someone goes into, chops the head off and puts it on an unclothed body.”

These publications vary in tone and content, but while all strive to be provocative after a fashion, they generally eschew the term “pornographic,” hurling it as an insult with the good-natured mutual contempt of varsity football teams. “Outlet ... is not intended to be porn,” sniffs a December letter from Traube to readers, saucily addressed “Dear Hotbottoms.” “They do a very good job of that over at Harvard.” On their Web site, Harvard staff members retort: “If you aren’t mature enough to tell the difference between playful nudity and pornography you probably shouldn’t be reading H Bomb.”

The exception is Boink, which Oleyourryk calls “user-friendly porn”: an unblushing assortment of bared private parts, lewd prose and graphic caricatures. With its panoply of contributors — about 50 percent of whom are enrolled at B.U., most of the rest at other colleges — Boink is the most independent and commercially ambitious of the pack, and at first glance the least interested in critical thought. It retails for $7.95 at Newbury Comics and other stores in the Boston area, has a print run of 10,000 and, atypically for a college publication, pays its contributors. Boink has also sponsored a number of parties, some shut down by the police for under-age drinking. Recalling one of these events, Aaron Foster said enthusiastically: “Girls walk around with their tops off. But it’s just a party. My buddy was convinced there was some secret orgy room. I was like, Dude, there is no secret orgy room!”

The absence of a secret sex dungeon was not enough to endear Boink to Boston University’s administrators. Before the first issue even appeared, it was denounced by Kenneth Elmore, the dean of students. It did, however, attract the attention of Howard Stern, a B.U. alumnus, who promptly booked Oleyourryk on his radio talk show. Ben Greenberg, a young editor at Warner Books, was alerted to the broadcast by a friend. “I was like, Wow, I can’t believe someone would do that — what would their parents think?” he says. But the shock wore off quickly. Harvard’s sex magazine might have been more obvious fodder for a book, but “the general consensus was that the H Bomb one was kind of tame,” Greenberg says. “It didn’t want to consider itself in any way porn. The Boink people were willing to embrace that and run with it and turn it into something sex-positive rather than something that was dirty and smut.” Warner, which has published anthologies by Penthouse and Vice magazines, eventually offered Anderson and Oleyourryk a six-figure advance to compile “Boink: The Book,” a collection of erotic writings and photographs from college students around the country; it is scheduled for publication in 2008, to coincide with spring break.

Oleyourryk, now 23, graduated in 2005 with a journalism degree and is working part time as a bartender. She herself gamely disrobed for the debut issue of Boink. “I was very comfortable with it,” she said on a chilly autumn afternoon at Charley’s, a pub on Newbury Street. Blond and slender, with professionally arched eyebrows, she was wearing a glittery paisley shirt and big gold-medallion earrings and furiously biting her nails. Anderson sat across from her: a dark, calm, slightly portly fellow in a green fleece pullover with a faint sheen of perspiration on his upper lip.

The two met after Oleyourryk, then in her sophomore year, paused at a water fountain during a run and looked up to see a flier Anderson had posted seeking nude models with athletic builds. He was hoping to augment his portfolio of black-and-white art photos, which he sells at www.light-sculptor.com. (Cited influences include Edward Weston and Rodin.) “It was about, Can I do this?” Oleyourryk said. Photographer and subject struck up a friendship, and after Anderson did some work for the first issue of H Bomb, he called to see if Oleyourryk wanted to collaborate on a magazine. “We thought it would be fun,” he said.

“People couldn’t understand that we were just doing it to do it,” Oleyourryk said. “So many people were looking for justifications — like: ‘Oh, there are going to be articles, right? There are going to be articles about S.T.D.’s and contraception and about this and about that?’ Nobody could accept that it was for entertainment value. Why is that not O.K.? It’s just so unsettling, it seems, for people, that it’s just like, Oh, it’s porn for porn, enjoy it, masturbate to it, whatever.”

Oleyourryk said that for her and her peers, the question is not why pose nude, but why not? After all, they grew up watching Madonna (“All she was was naked all the time”), parsing the finer points of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and flipping through Calvin Klein ads: sexual imagery was the very wallpaper of their lives, undergirded by a new frankness about how to protect oneself from pregnancy and disease. “Condoms. They’ve been rammed down our throats ... since we were old enough to start contemplating training bras,” wrote a Boink contributor in an essay called “Fall Fornication Must-Haves,” which apparently included crotchless bikinis and a Swarovski-crystal-encrusted dildo called the Minx.

Sex is “everywhere, and it’s always been everywhere for this generation,” Oleyourryk said. “A body is a body is a body, and I’m proud of my body, and why not show my body? It’s not going to keep me from having a job. Maybe it sticks to people, but it doesn’t have that negative connotation like, I’m going to have to carry around this baggage. Maybe it’s like, I’m going to carry this around and be proud of it and say: Look how I looked then! My boobs weren’t on the ground. I wasn’t 45 pounds overweight. How hot was I? It’s not, like, ‘The Scarlet Letter’ anymore. It’s a little badge of honor.”

Of course, posing naked for a sex magazine is not exactly like making Phi Beta Kappa or playing the lead in the school play. For one thing, it’s generally not something you write home about, though Oleyourryk insists that her parents have been supportive of her venture. (“As much as they could be,” she said. “I was raised very Catholic, but they live in today’s world.”) For another, it’s something pretty much anyone with sufficient moxie can achieve; Boink models are fit and fresh-faced but hardly all homecoming kings and queens. “We’re looking for diversity,” Anderson said.

Indeed, the most recent issue — Boink’s quarterly publication schedule has been suspended while its editors work on their book — is, in a way, a triumphant marriage of the prurient and the politically correct. There is a 10-page layout devoted to the cover model, a fetching blonde named Eve; 7 more pages of Sarah, a buxom brunette, stripping for the shower; and 9 of Crystal and Lexi photographed together in a tangle of pearls and pierced body parts. But a customer buying the magazine to get glimpses of such nubile female flesh might be startled to encounter compact, mop-topped Zach (“I’m planning to get my Ph.D. in mathematics, just for fun”), followed by dark-eyed Costa (“Some of my friends call me Super Greek”) masturbating to orgasm clad in nothing but a silver cross around his neck. “We have different sexualities represented, which commercially has been a hindrance,” Anderson said with a shrug. The practice, however, has won Boink grudging approval in at least one unlikely quarter: the Boston University Women’s Center, the college’s resident feminist organization. “What really stood out is that there were male students in it,” Heather Foley, 21, now president of B.U.W.C., which devoted a meeting to discussing the issue, said in a phone interview. “Because there were men in it, and gay men, under the same cover, it was sort of alternative. It kind of equalized it: gay men could look at it, women could look at it, and that was great. Women as objects, men as objects.”

Foley, a senior majoring in political science, acknowledged that equal-opportunity objectification might represent a dubious sort of progress. “I believe Andrea Dworkin, that porn perpetuates violence against women,” she said. “Most pornography is just women. Boink is different in that way, but because porn does feed into that system, I tend to be against it in general, and I don’t think just because we’re putting men in it that makes it O.K. But it’s a step forward that men are being put in it.” In some way her confusion seems to mirror the awkward pas de deux of college sex magazines and their audiences, a tug of war between pornographic conventions and subverting those conventions, between private and public: Look at me! Don’t look at me! Protect me! Set me free!

For all Boink’s raunchiness, its founders profess a certain idealism and purity of purpose. Back at Charley’s, Anderson told me that he and Oleyourryk have turned down lucrative offers to do reality-television shows and for joint deals with what they disdainfully call “the industry,” with all its implications of hairy middle-aged predators, silicone implants and tacky trade shows in the San Fernando Valley. Oleyourryk stressed the authenticity of Boink’s subjects in a Botoxed, surgically altered world. “We want to be proud of the fact that this is what’s going on in sex and in college right now, and these are real people, and you’re more relatable if you’re a real person,” she said. “We don’t put makeup on them, we don’t do their hair, we don’t Photoshop them. We aim for honesty and truth.”

Over at Harvard, students are pursuing a different kind of sexual veritas. In contrast to Boink, H Bomb was approved by the university’s Committee on College Life and somewhat controversially granted $2,000 in start-up costs by the Undergraduate Council. Sex magazines apparently create strange bedfellows: writing in The Crimson, Travis Kavulla, publisher of the conservative journal The Harvard Salient, suggested with unlikely indignation that this grant shortchanged the Take Back the Night rally, sponsored by the Coalition Against Sexual Violence, an event historically ridiculed by campus conservatives.

Unlike Boink, H Bomb has a faculty adviser and adult champion: Marc Hauser, a professor of psychology and evolutionary biology, who is a friend of Sarah Hrdy, the anthropologist and mother of Camilla, one of the magazine’s founders. But Hauser pronounced himself somewhat disappointed with

H Bomb’s maiden efforts. “It hit the ground with all this big fanfare, but it didn’t really do its thing,” he said. “Stylistically it succeeded, but everyone” — citizen critics gathered breathlessly during the long ramp-up to the magazine’s debut — “felt that it didn’t really succeed in terms of content, that’s where it fell flat.” He would like to see the magazine take a more belletristic bent, reviewing controversial books, perhaps — “You think of ‘Lolita,’ ” he said — and examining what might be called sexistential questions. “Nowadays, what constitutes porn?” Hauser mused. “What does a 21-year-old think porn is? I, as a parent of an 18-year-old, would like to hear that view.”

H Bomb initially shared at least some of Boink’s exhibitionism, if not quite the full-frontal erections. In the spring 2005 issue, undergraduates posed in various states of undress, using only their first names and responding to the question “How’d you lose it?” One young man was depicted with a bare light bulb shining on his flaccid member, his face obscured by shadow. Vandenberg, who inherited the magazine after Hrdy graduated and Katharina Cieplak-von Baldegg grew preoccupied with her thesis, plans to take things in a more modest direction (and curtail all the budding Anaïs Nins experimenting with free verse — “I hate the poems,” she said).

“Now that I’m in charge, it’s not the kind of thing that you have a problem with your parents seeing,” the new editor said over homemade oxtail soup in the capacious penthouse apartment she shares with her boyfriend in Boston. “I would prefer if all nude photos were anonymous,” she said. “But people want everyone else to know. People want to stand out.”

On a laptop computer, Vandenberg, 20, showed a few of the pictures she is planning to publish in the next edition of H Bomb, which will be online only for financial reasons. “Quite tame,” she said. In one, female Harvard science majors peered earnestly at test tubes, wearing lab coats opened to expose black lacy bras and panties, as in the old Maidenform advertisements. It was intended, she said, as a comment on the brouhaha that ensued after Lawrence Summers, Harvard’s former president, publicly remarked that genetics might account for why women are still a minority in the sciences. “I really don’t think he said much wrong,” said Vandenberg, who is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in biological anthropology. “I’m not a feminist. Feminism has this premise that men and women are equal, and I have a more biological view of things. I don’t think men and women are equal at all. I think we’re different, and what’s wrong with that?”

She spoke disparagingly of the prose submissions — H Bomb publishes both essays and fiction — sent in by Harvard women. “They’re sent in as fiction, but they’re always barely disguised personal confessions, or not even confessions, outpourings of angst: I entered Harvard and I thought to myself, I’m going to rebel against my sheltered upbringing, I’m going to have sex with whomever I want to — that’s the opening of the piece, and then the body will be Subject A: I led him on and then I felt bad, because I really liked him. Subject B: I thought I was leading him on, but actually he dumped me first. Conclusion: I’m so frustrated, I’ve ruined my reputation and now no one wants to have a serious relationship with me. They realized that they’re not fulfilled by casual sex, and yet they can’t find someone they connect with.”

More photos clicked past: a daytime re-enactment of Primal Scream, a Harvard tradition during which students streak naked across the Yard the last night before final exams begin; a montage of young vacationers frolicking in the Hawaii surf — “like Abercrombie & Fitch,” Vandenberg said, referring to the clothing company’s popular ad campaign; and a young man photographed in the dressing room of a sex-toy store, wearing handcuffs and a feather boa. “This was about making bondage, which is a scary sort of thing, more palatable,” she said.

Sleek and attractive, with a low-key volubility, Vandenberg was a freshman when she walked into a crowded H Bomb meeting in Harvard’s Loker Commons, thinking it was for the film-society magazine. She stayed because there were free T-shirts. “They wanted me to be a model, and I was incredibly scandalized by this,” she said. Hrdy learned that Vandenberg had done some travel photography and offered to provide her with human subjects. “I thought, Well, this would be interesting,” Vandenberg said. “I’ve never taken nude photos before — why not?” Among her efforts was a series of black-and-white shots of a fellow female student sitting on a toilet with her legs crossed, naked but for a pair of pumps, her head turned to the side and mostly obscured, and another of a woman covered in red rose petals, “American Beauty”-style. “I thought it was great fun,” Vandenberg said. “It was a great, controversial thing to say, Oh, I’m a photographer for H Bomb.” Miss Rose Petals, a sophomore named Fiona, returned the compliment, saying on the phone later that she was “honored” by the opportunity. “It’s sort of a document of my time at Harvard,” she said. “My friends were very accepting. Those who saw my pictures thought they were very beautiful.”

You might expect that the staffs of campus sex magazines would convene in some sort of Dionysian, orgiastic formation — multiple bare limbs splayed over a king-size bed — but in fact the publications are just as likely to be produced in digital solitude, submissions beamed over the Internet, no one so much as touching hands. “Right now it’s a dictatorship,” Vandenberg said. “I’m the meeting. I really hate meetings, actually. I really just like to communicate online. It’s very inconvenient to meet physically.”

The exploration of sexuality on college campuses has often had a political, communitarian component. Forty years ago, love-ins and slogans like “Make Love Not War” linked anti-war sentiment with feminist rejections of traditional roles. In 1990, students at Radcliffe — then still a separate institution from Harvard — began publishing a magazine called Lighthouse, after the Virginia Woolf novel “To the Lighthouse.” Considered a “safe space” for women to express themselves, it also contained intensely personal anonymous female sexual confessionals, dropped furtively into a cardboard box in Lamont Library. It died a quiet death in the late 90s, around the time that Radcliffe definitively merged with Harvard. In H Bomb and many of the other new breed of publications, any tolerance for emotional vulnerability appears to have evaporated, replaced by an uneasy, fleshy bombast.

Vandenberg described a social landscape changed irrevocably by the rise of networking Web sites. After meeting someone, it’s now de rigueur to check out his or her profile — a collage of pictures (often risqué) and preferences — on MySpace or Facebook.com. “I have a BlackBerry — so immediately,” Vandenberg said. “You might run into someone at a party, and then you Facebook them: what are their interests? Are they crazy-religious, is their favorite quote from the Bible? Everyone takes great pains over presenting themselves. It’s like an embodiment of your personality.” Except for the die-hard holdouts who refuse to participate in these networks — “They’re treated like pariahs, people will just harass them until they join,” Vandenberg said — to attend college now means to participate in a culture of constant two-dimensional preening, for males and females alike. In this context, posing for a sex magazine can seem like just another, more formalized level of display.

At one of Boink’s parties, Aaron Foster, the cover model from the third issue, met a female model, Anna Lee, signing copies of the second issue of the magazine, in which she appeared wearing only body paint. They connected again on MySpace and had what he described as “a whirlwind thing,” but then he stopped calling her. “It was a weird situation,” he said. “She’s a porn girl, so ... I dunno. I assumed she wasn’t really looking for much from me. I’m a guy. There’s a lot less stigma attached to it. A chick, people think ‘slutty,’ whereas a dude gets associated with male bravado.”

Now a junior, Lee became audibly distressed when asked about her relationship with Foster. “That’s not why he told me he broke up with me,” she said. “The reason we split up is because Aaron was in a time in his life when he didn’t want to have a relationship.” As for her being a “porn girl,” Lee said: “It was a mutual thing. I didn’t know what to think of him either.” About her dealings with Boink, she expressed equally mixed feelings. “It really just started out as a joke. I think it’s good to be proud of your body, especially when you’re younger and stuff, as long as it’s tasteful. Just something to add to the résumé. I thought the body-painting spread was really creative. I wanted people to say, ‘That’s really cool and artistic and different.’ ” But she wasn’t pleased that her image was associated with some other, more explicit shots. “In my issue there’s this guy who posed, and he’s masturbating in the picture. It’s really awkward. I’m like: Wow. That was pretty disgusting.”

Lee, who is 20, was also upset because, she said, Boink had marketed a poster featuring a picture from her shoot — one without body paint — without her consent.

Anderson later told me that he had contemplated making posters of Lee and another model (the release form Boink models sign gives the magazine complete sovereignty over their images, he said), but there was no consumer interest and they were never printed.

“I think this was a case of being in the spotlight and then out of the spotlight,” he said of her complaints. “An attention-getting thing.”

:) Part 2 in the next post........

(S) Restful sleep.

Sweetlady & wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-04-2007, 11:57 PM

:o :o

It was a windy Sunday, a model search for the Boink book at a local nightclub had been canceled after the club’s manager was fired and Anderson and Oleyourryk were having a subdued meeting in the living room of the latter’s apartment in South Boston. They were discussing a Web site she had discovered that featured faces — only faces — of people experiencing orgasm, one that a writer for Outlet would also later cover. A cat paced back and forth on a white shag rug, eyeing the birds on the swaying boughs outside. In one corner of the room was Oleyourryk’s discarded Halloween costume, a low-cut green garment with glittery scales. “I was a dragon,” she said. “Girls totally find Halloween a chance to be slutty. Not slutty in a negative way, but — sexy.”

“We’ve had a surprising number of people, writers who have told us they’re virgins, which just seems unusual to me,” Anderson said.

“Why are there so many virgins?” Oleyourryk wondered.

“Might be a lack of opportunity,” Anderson said. “College is supposed to be a time of experimentation, but a lot of people get freaked out by it too. They have all this opportunity, and they don’t really know what to do. Too much choice.”

The duo were sitting on a couch, a bottle of Diet Coke at Oleyourryk’s side, sifting through printouts of essay submissions. “I would guess that if you were watching J. K. Rowling write a book, it would be a bit more stimulating,” Anderson said, passing over a sheaf of papers. Our sex is the Mass, read a piece by a Dartmouth student. You kneel down in the doorway of my chapel. ...

“We get so many female submissions,” he said. “Everyone wants to be Carrie Bradshaw.”

“All girls want to be sexy and have a lot of sex, but they want to do it in an environment that’s safe for them,” Oleyourryk said. “So they’re doing the Carrie Bradshaw thing or dressing up for Halloween.”

Anderson tilted his laptop to show a picture of a blond woman standing in a black bikini in a road, then clicked over to a head shot of a light-skinned African-American woman. “I like her lips,” Oleyourryk said, stretching and getting up. Her cellphone bleated urgently. “Oh, Christ, I will call you back in a minute,” she said, batting crossly at it.

They seemed a bit overwhelmed, to lack zest for the task at hand. Where were the eager freshmen to help? “Who in college doesn’t want to get involved in a magazine like this?” Anderson said. “And then their interest lasts about five minutes once they find out that they’re not going to be surrounded by naked girls. People have a very skewed view of what it’s all about. They think it’s going to be the Playboy mansion 24-7.”

“Wait, wait,” Oleyourryk said in sarcastic imitation. “We’re not going to have an orgy?” Rising from the couch, getting ready to leave for her evening bartending shift, she sounded like any other recent college graduate facing the world. “Oh, lordy, lordy,” she said. “I do not want to go to work.”

Alexandra Jacobs is an editor at The New York Observer. This is her first article for the magazine.

(co) (co) Call me old fashioned, but I prefer online training and learning environments to the f2f classrooms for undergrad as well as graduate work. Saves dry cleaning, gas, parking, just to name but a few - not to mention personal safety at night. Although I must admit, with multiple closets full of really nice clothes, boots, high heels and other shoes - I once in awhile day dream about maybe, just maybe playing the professor for a couple of f2f "classroom" classes - but for older adults.

^o) However, I don't think that I have any patience at all for young people who aren't absolutely passionate about learning.

;) I thought this article (and the grrls in it) was silly. :| Potential employers and/or clients after graduation will be *so* impressed with their extracurricular sex activities, I'm sure.

(n) Not.

Warm thoughts on a chilly evening,

SWeetlady & wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-05-2007, 12:03 AM

(y) (y) (y)

http://www.georgecarlin.com

He writes a monthly "inspirational" column there called "That Time of the Month."

(f) Enjoy! I think he and Robin Williams are still really funny. I rremember the first time I saw Carlin was at the Syria Mosque (a concert venue) on/near the campus. Hilarious.

|-) |-) Wish I felt like this smiley....;) What a night person I am. 8-) 8-)

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-06-2007, 12:20 AM

(f) (f) (f) (f) (f)

Media

Air America Radio - New Progressive Talk Radio

Air America Radio

Alternative News Network
www.alternet.org

Eric Blumrich - Great Anti-War videos
www.ericblumrich.com

Buzz Flash - The news you won't hear in the corporate media
www.buzzflash.com

The Cat's Dream Film: XXI Century "American Voices Against Bush"
www.thecatsdream.com

Counter Punch - Daily Headlines and Breaking News
www.counterpunch.org

Independent Media Center
www.IndyMedia.org

Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com

The Nation Magazine - Unconventional Wisdom Since 1865
www.thenation.com

THIRD WORLD TRAVELER
www.thirdworldtraveler.com

Peter Werbe
www.peterwerbe.com

Peace & Disarmament
Americans For Peace Now
www.peacenow.org

Antiwar.com - Antiwar news, viewpoints, and activities
www.antiwar.com

Center for Defense Information (CDI)
www.cdi.org/index.cfm

Committee for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)
http://www.cnduk.org/index.html

Council for a Livable World
www.clw.org

Cost of War
www.costofwar.com

Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)
www.zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en

Iraq Body Count
www.iraqbodycount.net

Jonah House
www.jonahhouse.org/index.htm

U.S. Military Deaths
www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/USfatalities.html

Veterans For Peace
Veterans Working Together for Peace & Justice Through Non-violence.
www.veteransforpeace.org

Nonviolence.org
www.nonviolence.org

Pax Christi USA - The National Catholic Peace Movement
www.paxchristiusa.org

Peace Action
www.peace-action.org

Peace North-Wisconsin
www.peacenorth.org

War Resisters League
www.warresisters.org

Civil Rights & Justice
Amnesty International - Working to Protect Human Rights Worldwide
http://www.amnesty.org

American Civil Liberties Union - Defending the Bill of Rights
http://www.aclu.org

The Bill of Rights Defense Committee
www.bordc.org

Human Rights Watch -Defending Human Rights Worldwide
www.hrw.org

United for Peace & Justice
www.unitedforpeace.org

Grass Roots Organizing

MoveOn.Org - Democracy in Action
www.moveon.org

Global Exchange - Promoting people-to-people ties
www.globalexchange.org

Rainforest Action Network
www.Ran.org

Vote to Impeach
www.votetoimpeach.org

Working for Change - Offers opinion, news and action opportunities
www.workingforchange.com

(f) From: http://www.peacebuttons.info/link.htm

http://www.peacebuttons.info/link.htm

(y) (y) Lots of web sites, not enough time. ;)

Have a lovely evening and Tuesday. Stay warm or cool, depending on geographical location! ;)

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-06-2007, 12:21 AM

(&) (l) (&) (l) (&) (l)

www.pets4peace.org

(y) Definitely cute!

(f)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-06-2007, 12:24 AM

(h) (h) (h) (h) (h)

http://www.talkbacktees.com/

(l) (l) I have several of their t-shirts, as well as have bought for friends. And the folks at this company in Oregon are GREAT people! They just added some new sayings in a number of categories. (y) (y)

One of my favorites is still: "So Many Christians, So Few Lions" ;) ;)

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-06-2007, 12:26 AM

(y) (~) (y) (~) (y)

I tried adding to my netflix.com list and got the following:

A prize winner at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, director Philip Groening's study of the Grande Chartreuse monastery introduces a world of austere beauty, following the daily activities of the resident monks, whose silence is broken only by prayer and song. With no other sound save the natural rhythms of age-old routines being carried out, the film captures the simplicity -- and profundity -- of lives lived with absolute purpose and presence.

Release date is unknown; availability is not guaranteed.

Sensational Web Site about this film! http://www.diegrossestille.de/english/

(~) Reviews:

I saw this film in June 2006 at the Seattle International Film Festival. I truly enjoyed the experience of watching it. Believe the synopsis, the film is mostly silent and it is long. To fully appreciate the movie, you must surrender yourself to the movie's pace. Approach it as a meditation on another way to live. It may be about a religious order and their devotion to God, but it is also about solitude and the individual's relationship with themself.

I just saw this at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. It is very quiet and very long. It was rather a shock toward the end when the monks were out for a walk and ended up skiing down a hill and laughing loudly. Also moving were the very old monks giving their views of life and death. The audience was a metaphor for the monastic life. Not many showed up, and many of those who did left well before the end. It's a very special film, but many will be put off by the silence. Try it anyway. You may be one of those who need something like this even if you don't know it.

This is a stunning visual work and well worth the three or so hours. I saw this film at sundance and got to hear the director speak. Something he mentioned was that he had to wait around ten years to even be let into this monastery to shoot! What a story. But it was worth the wait because this is a one of a kind film that anyone who is interested in the "language of cinema" or just the possibilities of the medium itself. Must SEE!!

:) :) Zen-like experiences are always a welcome respite, providing balance and harmony.

(f) (f)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-06-2007, 12:28 AM

(f) (f)

The Grande Chartreuse, the mother house of the legendary Carthusian Order, is based in the French Alps. “Into Great Silence” will be the first film ever about life inside the Grande Chartreuse.

Silence. Repitition. Rhythm. The film is an austere, next to silent meditation on monastic life in a very pure form. No music except the chants in the monastery, no interviews, no commentaries, no extra material.

Changing of time, seasons, and the ever repeated elements of the day, of the prayer. A film to become a monastery, rather than depict one. A film about awareness, absolute presence, and the life of men who devoted their lifetimes to god in the purest form.

Contemplation.

An object in time.

http://www.diegrossestille.de/english/

Nestled deep in the postcard-perfect French Alps, the Grande Chartreuse is considered one of the world’s most ascetic monasteries. In 1984, German filmmaker Philip Gröning wrote to the Carthusian order for permission to make a documentary about them. They said they would get back to him. Sixteen years later, they were ready. Gröning, sans crew or artificial lighting, lived in the monks’ quarters for six months—filming their daily prayers, tasks, rituals and rare outdoor excursions. This transcendent, closely observed film seeks to embody a monastery, rather than simply depict one—it has no score, no voiceover and no archival footage. What remains is stunningly elemental: time, space and light. One of the most mesmerizing and poetic chronicles of spirituality ever created, INTO GREAT SILENCE dissolves the border between screen and audience with a total immersion into the hush of monastic life. More meditation than documentary, it’s a rare, transformative theatrical experience for all.

German website (in English) www.diegrossestille.de

For more information about Carthusian monks, viewers may also be interested in Nancy Klein Maguire's book An Infinity of Little Hours.

(f) (f)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-06-2007, 12:36 AM

:| :| :|

editorial | posted February 22, 2007 (March 12, 2007 issue) The NATION

Home Truths

Congratulations: Children in the United States do not have the worst quality of life in the developed world. That honor is held by Britain--with the United States a close second. America's infant mortality rate is exceeded only by Hungary's; New Zealand is the only country where more people under 19 meet violent deaths each year. On teenage motherhood, we're way ahead: forty-six births for every 1,000 girls between 15 and 19. The closest challenger (New Zealand again) can manage only thirty. Children born in the richest nation on earth are also the most likely to be noticeably poorer than their neighbors: 21.7 percent of America's children live in households whose income is less than half the national median. Britain, at 16.2 percent, comes second in the inequality sweepstakes.

The statistics come from a new Unicef report, Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries, which has been largely ignored in the United States. The report assesses children's lives in twenty-one wealthy nations under a range of headings, from material well-being to family and peer relationships. Like all such studies, this one has its flaws, some of them self-acknowledged. But there is no mistaking the underlying pattern or the weight of suffering and injustice it represents.

The study shows that the two countries with the greatest economic inequality are also failing their children in less tangible ways. British children reported the worst family and peer relationships and the highest incidence overall of risky behavior (smoking, drinking and unprotected sex); American children ranked third from the bottom (above Britain and Poland) in terms of their personal feelings of well-being. Sure, American adolescents drink and smoke less than kids in some other countries. But the cost of the right's attempt to meet teenage sexuality with moralizing and repression rather than education is obvious in the teenage pregnancy rates. The country that came out best overall in the study was the Netherlands, known for its traditions of openness and tolerance.

The areas where American children fare worse than most--infant mortality, low birth weight, early childbearing, family instability and child poverty--are all directly related to the status of women. As Ruth Rosen writes in this issue, American women are still underpaid; still working double shifts; still shouldering on their own the burden of care for children and the elderly; still denied the right to control their fertility; still seen as a "special interest group" rather than half the nation. It is incredible that these things still need saying more than a generation after the rebirth of the women's movement. If the other half can't be made to see that women's rights are vital for the whole community, the effects of gender inequality on children of both sexes might at least offer a compelling argument.

That the two countries deemed to do the least for their own children are those that have led the war in Iraq is obvious. The reasons are less easy to pin down. One can talk about military as opposed to social spending; about pro-business, oil-driven economies; about the distractions of patriotism and the culture of aggression; about valuing the imperatives of power above the duty of care. But however one chooses to name it, the deep, intractable connection between military adventurism abroad and the neglect of needs at home has never been more starkly evident. The pity is that it's so difficult to fight the problem, so hard to focus on a pregnant teenager too scared to ask for help or a child hungry at school when the casualty figures from Baghdad demand our attention. The fog of war may be most blinding for the folks back home.

(y) (y) (y) Well-written and succinctly communicated! It seems more and more that America was "IT" in terms of either a major player or THE ONLY PLAYER globally in the 20th century. With China and India's global impacts so huge and growing in the 21st century (mentioned in an earlier post) - I think American democracy is/has been way off in the weeds from what the founding Fathers had in mind. :|

<sigh>

:o The wind has been howling all day. I can hear it picking up the last few hours as the cold front moves in. Snow forecast for Wed., and lots of bitter cold for most of the week. Wyatt has one of his Fido Fleece coats on since he had the chills last night. He seems fine and is sleeping right now.(S)

Peace,

SWeetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (S) (l) (&) (l) (S)

sweetlady

03-06-2007, 12:38 AM

:o :o

comment | posted February 22, 2007 (March 12, 2007 issue) The NATION

Bloggers on the Trail

Ari Melber

Bill Donohue is not known for respectful rhetoric. As president of the Catholic League, Donohue has complained that "Hollywood likes anal sex," "Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity," John Kerry is an "idiot" and Catholics "cooperate in evil" by voting for him. Yet it is Bill Donohue who led the first politically correct purge of the 2008 presidential campaign.

It all started when John Edwards hired two Internet staffers who write for the liberal blogs Pandagon and Shakespeare's Sister. They had previously written entries mocking religion, using obscenities and slamming George W. Bush's "Christofascist base." Citing eight entries, Donohue assailed them as "anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots" and demanded they be fired, in a strident press release covered by the New York Times. Liberal bloggers fought back, pressing the campaign to defend its own team against politically motivated attacks from one hypocritical opponent. Edwards said he would keep the staffers, who expressed regret at causing offense; the blogosphere rejoiced and Donohue sulked. The skirmish could have ended there. But it did not, largely because the bloggers kept blogging and Donohue kept attacking.

The following weekend one of the Edwards staffers, Amanda Marcotte, wrote a personal blog entry referring to sexist depictions of Jesus' birth. Donohue pounced, and after another media circus, both staffers voluntarily resigned. Marcotte says the entry was a "naïve mistake" that gave ammunition to Edwards's detractors, but she was new to "bullet dodging in politics."

So the flap is over, for now, and everyone is trying to make sense of what happened. There is a big risk of drawing the wrong conclusions.

The fight was not so much about religion or online obscenity as power. The netroots are the most aggressive, ascendant force in progressive politics, wielding more members, money and media impact than most liberal organizations. In the 2006 election cycle, MoveOn alone spent more than every other liberal political action committee except the prochoice EMILY's List. According to the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, online donors gave Kerry $82 million in 2004, and Democrats expect much more in 2008. (Bush pulled only $14 million from the web.) And now top bloggers--like Jerome Armstrong, Markos Moulitsas and Glenn Greenwald--have hundreds of thousands of readers, successful books and a bully pulpit in print and broadcast media.

Republicans cannot stop the donations or pressure the media into ignoring liberal bloggers. Instead, the GOP has tried to drive a wedge between Democratic leaders and the netroots by attacking bloggers--and their readers--as an extreme vitriolic embarrassment. During the midterms, the Republican National Committee repeatedly attacked Democratic candidates for accepting netroots donations and working with bloggers, even distributing a six-page "research" brief maligning Moulitsas, the founder of Daily Kos. Conservative operatives recently floated smears of anti-Semitism at MoveOn [see Eric Alterman, "No Comment," October 30, 2006], Republican donor Bob Perry sank $1 million into a new group devoted to battling MoveOn and Bill O'Reilly regularly denounces the "far left websites." The strategy is to scare Democratic politicians away from tapping their motivated base.

Some Democrats are falling into the trap. Reviewing the Edwards affair, a former aide to Joe Lieberman advised the party to refuse bloggers access and "deny them jobs that confer party approval." Somewhere, Bill Donohue was smiling. As it turned out, the netroots were not upset with Edwards, but plenty of Democrats were upset with the netroots.

Of course, the staffers' blog entries were uncivil. Donohue used them precisely because they were offensive to disinterested people. But the same goes for Donohue's past slurs, or Vice President Cheney dropping f-bombs on the Senate floor. Political debates are fierce, online and off.

"On our blogs, we all say things that might offend someone. Truth is, in life--in bars, in restaurants, in offices, on the phone--we all do that, only now there is...a permanent record," wrote Jeff Jarvis, director of CUNY's interactive journalism program, about the Edwards affair. When campaigns hire bloggers, he explained, they empower people who talk "without the veils of spin and PR and plastic discretion that politicians must learn." Yet the very skills that make a good blogger--provoking people with passionate, authentic opinions--are considered a handicap on the campaign trail. John Edwards took a bold step by hiring and standing by two liberal feminist firebrands, but he was not prepared for their written words to compete with his campaign message.

The best political blogs thrive on a discourse built in opposition to the mainstream; people gather to commune in ways not permitted by media and political gatekeepers. The vigorous dialogue is probably closer to voters' real conversations than politicians' sanitized talking points or the breathless speculation that passes for news today, from premature presidential polls to Anna Nicole Smith's death. In the end, campaigns prefer discipline over authenticity, and many bloggers do not. So Democrats should focus on tapping bloggers' energy while managing their passion--and disregard the self-serving complaints of their opponents.

(y) (y) (y) (y) (y)

(f) (f)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-06-2007, 12:39 AM

(y) (y) (y)

comment | posted February 27, 2007 (March 12, 2007 issue) The NATION

Lincoln's Antiwar Record

Eric Foner

An old marketing adage states that no product exists whose sales cannot be improved by associating it with Abraham Lincoln. The same seems to be true in politics. As Congress debated resolutions condemning the escalation of the Iraq War, the remaining supporters of George W. Bush's Iraq policy invoked Lincoln to tar the war's opponents with the brush of treason. But this reflects a complete misunderstanding of Lincoln's record.

The latest example of the misuse of Lincoln came in a February 13 article in the Washington Times by conservative writer Frank Gaffney. Gaffney quoted Lincoln as declaring that wartime Congressmen who "damage morale and undermine the military" should be "exiled or hanged." Glenn Greenwald, on Salon, quickly pointed out that the "quote," which has circulated for the past few years in conservative circles, is a fabrication. (Conservative use of invented Lincoln statements is nothing new--Ronald Reagan used a series of them in a speech to the 1992 Republican National Convention. But today, when Lincoln's entire works are online and easily searchable, there is no possible excuse for invoking fraudulent quotations.)

Greenwald did not point out that Lincoln's record as a member of Congress during the Mexican War utterly refutes the conservative effort to appropriate his legacy. Lincoln was elected to the House of Representatives in 1846, shortly after President James Polk invaded Mexico when that country refused his demand to sell California to the United States. Polk falsely claimed that he was responding to a Mexican invasion.

Shortly before Lincoln's term in Congress began, he attended a speech in Lexington, Kentucky, by his political idol Senator Henry Clay. "This is no war of defense," Clay declared in a blistering attack on Polk, "but one of unnecessary and offensive aggression." A month later, Lincoln introduced a set of resolutions challenging Polk's contention that Mexico had shed American blood on American soil and voted for a statement, approved by the House, that declared the war "unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President."

Clay and Lincoln objected as strenuously as any member of Congress today to a war launched by a President on fabricated grounds. When Lincoln's law partner, William Herndon, defended the President's right to invade another country if he considered it threatening, Lincoln sent a devastating reply. Herndon, he claimed, would allow a President "to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect.... If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him?" The Constitution, he went on, gave the "war-making power" to Congress precisely to prevent Presidents from starting wars while "pretending...that the good of the people was the object."

Like Bush, Lincoln spoke of the United States as a beacon of liberty, an example to the world of the virtues of democracy. But he rejected the idea of American aggression in the name of freedom. He included in an 1859 speech a biting satire of "Young America," a group of writers and politicians who glorified territorial aggrandizement. Young America, he remarked, "owns a large part of the world, by right of possessing it; and all the rest by right of wanting it, and intending to have it.... He is a great friend of humanity; and his desire for land is not selfish, but merely an impulse to extend the area of freedom. He is very anxious to fight for the liberation of enslaved nations and colonies, provided, always, they have land." Substitute "oil" for "land" and the statement seems eerily relevant in the early twenty-first century.

Conservatives should think twice before invoking Lincoln's words, real or invented, in the cause of the Iraq War and before equating condemnations of Bush's policies and usurpations with treason.

(y) (y) (y) (y) (y)

(f) (f)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-06-2007, 12:43 AM

:| :| :| :| :| :| :|

BLOG | Posted 03/03/2007 @ 3:18pm

Faggot Feud

Richard Kim The NATION

So Ann Coulter called John Edwards a "faggot." All this proves is that the woman's gaydar is seriously on the fritz. Last year she diagnosed Bill Clinton as a "latent homosexual" whose "promiscuity" is "reminiscent of a bathhouse." Then on Hardball she called Al Gore a "total fag." Meanwhile, Ted Haggard and Mark Foley stage 120 Days of Sodom right under her nose, and all she can say when confronted with the goods is "who knew Congressman Foley was a closeted Democrat?"

Ann Coulter couldn't find a homosexual at a Barbra Streisand concert, in San Francisco, on gay pride, if Elton John bitch slapped her in the face. I shudder to think what would become of her on Gay, Straight or Taken?

What really has me peeved though is not Coulter's misfiring gaydar, but the histrionic response from Democrats and gay leaders alike. Here's HRC head honcho Joe Solmonese:

"To interject this word into American political discourse is a vile and disgusting way to sink the debate to a new, all-time low. Make no doubt about it, these remarks go directly against what our Founding Fathers intended and have no place on the schoolyard, much less our country's political arena."

Likewise, DNC chief Howard Dean called Coulter's remarks "hate-filled and bigoted." "This kind of vile rhetoric is out of bounds," said Dean while calling on Republican presidential candidates to denounce Coulter's remarks.

Howie, Joe, listen, don't get your panties all in knot over this Coulter-faggot business. What's so "vile," "disgusting," and "low" about being (called) a faggot in the first place?

Let's ponder the possible meanings behind our village idiot's latest ramblings. Surely not even Coulter can believe that Edwards is actually gay (unless she's knows something we don't -- an unlikely scenario). So perhaps she intends to tar Edwards with a patently false but nonetheless toxic slur. This is puerile name-calling to be sure. In Coulter's twisted little mind, "faggot" is an insult, not necessarily because it's true, but because "faggot" is so radioactive that even to be called one is damaging.

But this homophobic logic is exactly what Dean and Solmonese recapitulate in their over-zealous response. One can only believe that being called a faggot is "vile," "digusting" and "low" if one believes, as Coulter might, that being a faggot is vile, disgusting and low. Do Howard Dean and Joe Solmonese believe that?

It's also clear that Coulter's hopelessly confused "Democrats" and "Gays." (Freebie for Ann: Democrats tax and spend; fags just spend!) Why would Coulter cross the two? Because Democrats like Edwards care about poverty, healthcare and inequality? Because they're not ready to go all Dr. Strangelove on Iran? Because they don't shoot quails and buddies like manly man Cheney? What's so "vile," "disgusting" and "low" about that?

Fags like myself have been trying to rehabilitate faggotry for years, and it's time we're joined by our liberal friends. Edwards hasn't responded to Coulter yet, but when he does, he should step up to the plate. After all, there is something gay-ish about him. He's pretty. He's passionate. He spends a lot of time on his hair. And what's wrong with that? He should toss his Nancy Boy locks back at Coulter and say, "Faggot? I own that word."

Then maybe one day, as Toni Morrison once honored Bill Clinton by calling him our first black president, I can bestow upon Edwards the title of First Fag.

(y) (y) (y) I agree that Coulter needs some assistance in doing a180 on her vile, poisonous venom directed at so many people. A good kick in the ass might help as well. ;)

:) :)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-06-2007, 12:46 AM

:o

Poll | posted February 27, 2007 (web only)

What's Hillary Clinton's greatest weakness as a presidential candidate?

Her refusal to apologize for her vote to authorize the Iraq invasion
(1107) 18%

Her association with the anti-progressive Democratic Leadership Council
(1165) 19%

Her rigid, poll-driven political style
(2137) 35%

Her tendency to stomp all over her critics
(161) 2%

The baggage Hill and Bill carry from their sojourn in the White House
(959) 15%

She has no significant negatives: This woman is going to win.
(491) 8%

http://www.thenation.com/poll/hillary0227?showresult=1

8-) Hmmm. 8-) I certainly do not plan on voting for her. 8-)

:)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-06-2007, 12:47 AM

(f) (f)

http://www.antiwar.com/

(f) (f)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-06-2007, 12:51 AM

:o :o

How one year's digital output would fill 161bn iPods

· Survey shows worldwide explosion in information
· Images and consumers are fuelling content boom

Richard Wray, communications editor

Tuesday March 6, 2007

The Guardian (U.K.)

Last year enough digital information - from emails and blogs to mobile phone calls, photos and TV signals - was generated to fill a dozen stacks of hardback books stretching from the earth to the sun, according to research published today.

The proliferation of digital cameras and mobile phones that can take pictures, coupled with the popularity of online video services such as YouTube and BitTorrent, has caused an explosion of images. This pushed the world's total digital content last year to 161bn gigabytes. That is the equivalent of 161bn iPod Shuffles or 161 of so-called exabytes.

The sheer amount of data that has been created by the digital age becomes clear when comparing it with the spoken word. Experts estimate that all human language since the dawn of time would take up about 5 exabytes if stored in digital form. In comparison, last year's email traffic accounted for 6 exabytes.

The survey, conducted by the technology consultancy IDC and sponsored by the IT firm EMC, shows that growth in the digital universe is being driven by the switch to digital imagery; the move from traditional phone calls to digital telephony such as mobile and voice over the internet calls, and the rise of digital TV.

Roughly a quarter of the digital universe is original - such as pictures or emails or even phone calls - while the other three-quarters is replicated material including forwarded emails, movies on DVD and pirated music.

Much of this digital information is being produced by individuals. YouTube, for instance, hosts about 100m daily video streams, while more than a billion songs are shared over the internet every day.

IDC estimates that by 2010, more than 70% of all the digital information in the world will have been created by consumers.

But companies and organisations are also creating a wealth of digital content: London's 200 traffic surveillance cameras, for instance, generate roughly 8m gigabytes every day.

Stephen Minton, IDC vice-president, admitted he was surprised by the amount being produced, but that having the world's knowledge in digital form should make it easier to handle and utilise. "There has always been a lot of information but in the past it was stored on paper in books," he said. "The real opportunity represented by digital information is that it can be used more efficiently, we now have the opportunity to analyse the heck out of it."

But to analyse this data it needs to be stored and already the UK is creating more digital content than can be hosted on available devices - such as networks or computers. The US is expected to reach this "tipping point" next year.

The US and Europe account for almost three-quarters of the digital content generated last year but there is likely to be a shift in the coming years as consumers in the Asia-Pacific region get online and use more gadgets such as camera phones. "The US is expected to continue to have pretty explosive growth," said Mr Minton.

"But then you have regions like Asia-Pacific, that are currently small producers relative to the US and western Europe, where we expect very strong growth because so many people will be coming online in China and India over the next few years."

IDC expects the data added annually to the digital universe to rise more than sixfold to 988 exabytes within three years.

The rise of broadband internet usage has paved the way for people across the world to start sending and sharing large amounts of data such as pictures. Worldwide there were more than a billion internet users last year and that is expected to increase to 1.6 billion in 2010.

But while video and photo sharing are considered part of the second wave of internet services - known as web 2.0 - one of the applications that gave many people their first taste of the web is still going strong. In 1998 there were 253m email mailboxes. Last year there were nearly 1.6bn and the number of emails sent is growing three times faster than the number of mailboxes being opened.

Instant messaging is also expected to grow, with IDC predicting there will be 250m IM accounts by 2010.

Byte size

Computers calculate using the binary system of zeros and ones, just like an on/off switch. A bit is merely a zero or a one. A byte is eight bits. The term was invented in the 1950s by Werner Buchholz of IBM and originally stood for the smallest amount of data from which a computer could make a calculation. Bytes are arranged in multiples of a thousand as kilobytes.

1,000 bytes = 1 kilobyte (KB)

2KB is the approximate amount of data on a typewritten page

1,000 KB = 1 megabyte (MB)

1,000 MB = 1 gigabyte (GB)

1 GB is a unit well known to owners of iPods and other digital music players: a 1GB iPod will store about 240 songs

1,000 GB = 1 terabyte (TB)

1,000 TB = 1 petabyte (PB)

1,000 PB = 1 exabyte (EB)

A claim often made is that all the words ever spoken by humanity could be represented by roughly 5 exabytes of data

1000 EB = 1 zettabyte (ZB)

1 ZB = 1,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000 bytes. In data terms that is roughly half a million times the collections of all the academic libraries in the United States. No computer on earth is capable of storing this much data.

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2027327,00.html

(h) 8-| (h) 8-| (h) 8-| I LOVE this stuff! Technology gets me all excited. ;)

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-06-2007, 12:52 AM

:o :o

So now we've finally got our very own 'white trash'

The demonisation of 'chavs' as a way of writing off those at the bottom of the social ladder has reached epidemic levels

John Harris

Tuesday March 6, 2007

The Guardian

For 20-odd years my mum has taught chemistry at a Catholic sixth-form college in Manchester. I did my A-levels at the same place: Loreto, a state-funded institution with a multiracial, multifaith roll, in inner-city Hulme. Since the early 90s, the area has been outwardly transformed, though its social indicators still speak volumes: at the last count, 65% of Hulme's residents lived in rented social housing. Set against that backdrop, Loreto is a beacon of Tony Blair's beloved opportunity society - two years ago, it was awarded the Queen's anniversary prize for higher and further education, thanks to "Educational provision in an urban context [and] raising achievement and aspiration".

It seemed a good a place to do an experiment: getting my mum to write "chav" on the whiteboard, and seeing what came back - from GCSE retake students, and a class taking its weekly dose of A-level general studies. And out it all came: many preferred the specifically north-western epithet "scally", though the distinguishing features of both archetypes were apparently the same - clothing brands Nike TN, Rockport, Paul & Shark, and racial profile (the unanimous answer came back in a flash) white. Chavs, the students said, are in the habit of "causing trouble, hanging round the streets, drinking and taking drugs". They are "working class, they live in council houses". Their parents "don't care, and they don't work".

"Some might change and go to uni," said one girl. "But not many. They're the exception." So how might they go up in the world? The only options were "theft, robbery, drug money or the lottery". In terms of background, these kids seemed as diverse as any opinion-poller could wish for - but what was fascinating was a shared indifference to the people they were talking about: neither threatening nor deserving of sympathy, chavs and scallies were simply a distant other.

Here, then, is a modern folk devil maligned just about everywhere, from schoolyards to the offices of upscale newspapers. The Daily Telegraph's venerable Simon Heffer, for example, almost exactly echoed the students' responses back in January: "Our underclass has been allowed to get out of control ... They and their children regard school as optional. Drug dealing and theft are the main careers, nicely supplementing the old staple of benefit fraud." He might loudly harrumph; millions crystallise the same sentiments in the habitual use of a single word.

Just lately, it's become unfashionable to worry about all this. A spurt of unease last year momentarily recast chav baiting as "nu-snobbery". This year hand-wringing about the bullying on Celebrity Big Brother - led, of course, by "queen chav" Jade Goody - found even the Sun appearing to call time on the term.

A couple of months on, the issue lies somewhere between passe and closed down, but scan the news wires, and the continued ubiquity of the chav is revealed. The Sun still uses the word with glee ("the transformation of Coleen McLoughlin from chip shop chav to catwalk queen has amazed critics," it marvelled last week). Elsewhere, the references pile up: "Bar bans 'chav' clothes," reports Blackpool Today; " 'Chav culture' crooks jailed," says the York Press; "A storm is raging this week, over claims made on a website that Burnham is a 'chav' town," reckons the Burnham and Highbridge Weekly News. The concept seems so ingrained as to be immovable.

What that says about modern Britain seems pretty straightforward. How else to understand it than as more evidence of our embrace of an increasingly American social model, in which there is opportunity for all - apart from the undeserving rump too feckless to seize it? In short, we've finally acquired our own equivalent of that dread term "white trash". As Lynsey Hanley's superb book Estates - superficially about council housing, but actually addressing much more - points out, at the bottom of the social ladder, class has been supplanted by caste, thanks to a con trick whereby successive governments have "hived off poorer working-class people from affluent society ... when, all the while, they have claimed that we are progressing inexorably towards a state of classlessness".

Given that Alan Milburn has again crashlanded in the news, this may be an apposite moment to recall one of his key contributions to the last election campaign: a call to allow "more people the opportunity to join the middle class" - such are the affectedly aspirational politics, running across all three main parties, that start out well intentioned but end up looking hopelessly crass; and there is something particularly depressing about leading members of the Labour party presenting the essential solution to poverty as individual escape. But that argument is for another time. What's relevant here is the way that the rhetoric dovetails with the "c" word, and where the latter sits in the culture: as a signifier used by millions for some of the unfortunates who have absolutely no chance of making that imagined leap.

As proved by the views of those young Mancunians, they're occasionally prodded and demonised, but largely left alone. The rest of us - in theory, anyway - can join the meritocracy and acquire the trappings of at least modest success; to paraphrase George Orwell's 1984, chavs and animals are free.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2027432,00.html

:o :o

Adieu,

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-06-2007, 12:55 AM

(y) (y) (y)

Mobiles: exeunt after St Petersburg theatre installs jammers

Luke Harding in Moscow

Tuesday March 6, 2007

The Guardian

Fed up with the constant trilling from the stalls, Russia's oldest theatre has come up with a novel solution to the ubiquitous problem of mobile phones going off - jam the signal.

The Alexandrinsky theatre in St Petersburg last month became the first theatre company in the world to instal jamming equipment, after previous attempts to get patrons to switch off their phones failed.

The theatre said it was forced to introduce the measure after a ringing mobile phone wrecked a recent performance of Leo Tolstoy's The Living Corpse. The central character, Fedor Protasov, decides to kill himself after his wife accidentally marries someone else.

"It was towards the end. Just as the hero was about to shoot himself someone's mobile phone started to ring," Yekaterina Slepishkova, a spokeswoman for the theatre - founded in 1756 - told the Guardian yesterday. "It was awful. We ask people to turn their phones off before every performance. But they simply don't listen.

"We turn the system on just before the performance. We switch it off during the interval and on again for the second half. So far it's been a resounding success."

During Soviet times, theatre and concert performances were received in reverent silence. Tickets were also cheap. But in recent years, Russia's traditional intelligentsia has found itself priced out of many cultural attractions, both in Moscow and St Petersburg, where tickets can cost £50 or more.

Instead it is newly affluent Russians who these days occupy the best seats in the house. Regular theatregoers complain that these moneyed newcomers are not cultured. They talk on their mobile phones, and often clap in the wrong place, they add bitterly.

"Although the technology is rather expensive our theatre accepted the costs in order to protect the artists from unpleasant surprises," director Alexander Chepurov explained.

One exasperated actor was even forced to declare: "Turn it off. I'm doing my soliloquy," he recalled

The jamming system cost £1,000. It is effective within a range of 50 metres - scrambling all mobile phone calls in the auditorium, but allowing the stage manager to communicate with actors on the green room by walkie-talkie.

So far, there have been no complaints, staff said. A second St Petersburg theatre, the Maly Drama theatre, has also introduced jamming after its attempts to get theatregoers to switch off their phones similarly failed.

"We expect our idea to be imitated elsewhere," Sergei Dmitryiv, the Alexandrinsky theatre's technical director, said. "I've had colleagues in Moscow asking how we did it. It's easy. You can buy the equipment on the internet."

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/theatre/news/story/0,,2027498,00.html

(y) (y) They should start doing this in many more places! I keep my own off unless I'm driving someplace. My mobile telephone is almost always turned off. I can always check for messages. Courtesy - yea, yea - that's the ticket. VERY cool technology to provide a peaceful theater (or other) experience. (y)

:)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-06-2007, 07:12 PM

(l) (l) (l)

Well designed and gorgeous web site: http://www.tellurideluxuryproperties.com/

Canyon Creek Ranch: A rare slice of the American West, this spectacular ranch offers a remarkable assemblage of natural beauty, rich history, tremendous privacy and unparalleled recreational opportunities for generations to come.

Set amongst three spectacular mountain ranges, the property is located just 28 minutes from the Town of Telluride on well-maintained county roads. The ranch's substantial holdings consist of over 2,400 subdividable, deeded acres, which share a border of over three miles with the Uncompahgre National Forest - a fabled area for elk hunters spanning all the way to Utah.

(l) Beautiful horse:

http://www.tellurideluxuryproperties.com/images/properties/1167406507.jpg

http://www.tellurideluxuryproperties.com/images/properties/1167406528.jpg

http://www.tellurideluxuryproperties.com/images/properties/1167406549.jpg

http://www.tellurideluxuryproperties.com/images/properties/1167406574.jpg

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Gorgeous Interior Photo:

http://www.tellurideluxuryproperties.com/images/properties/1167406678.jpg

Whole Gallery of Property Photos:

http://www.tellurideluxuryproperties.com/photos.php?property_ID=119

(y) (y) Definitely a gorgeous property! (l)

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-06-2007, 07:15 PM

(l) (l) (l) (l) (l)

http://www.tellurideluxuryproperties.com/currentlistings.php

Only $1.5M: http://www.tellurideluxuryproperties.com/images/properties/1153173822.jpg

(p) (p) Another property photos:

http://www.tellurideluxuryproperties.com/photos.php?property_ID=90

(p) (l) (l) THESE is the kind of interiors I Love for my own place:

http://www.tellurideluxuryproperties.com/images/properties/1158022748.jpg

AND

http://www.tellurideluxuryproperties.com/images/properties/1158022766.jpg

(l) (l) (l) THIS is secluded:

http://www.tellurideluxuryproperties.com/images/properties/1158022866.jpg

(l) Sigh. :)

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-06-2007, 07:20 PM

(l) (l) (l) (l)

http://www.aspenlandandhomes.com/

This magnificent ranch is remote and secluded yet just 45 minutes from Aspen and 20 minutes from Gypsum in the summer!

http://www.agsidx.com/idx/pics/ags95476.jpg (Only $7.9M...)

Woody Creek
(Lots/Land - Single Fm Lot) http://www.agsidx.com/idx/pics/ags92525.jpg

$5,250,000

Two contiguous residential development sites on 11 acres bordered on the south by the Roaring Fork River and on the north by Hwy 82. Woody Creek river frontage at its best. Private flat building envelope for amazing new house, old vet clinic buildings and Victorian house to be sold together. Fantastic fishing and river frontage.

Ski Out Your Front Door:

http://www.aspenlandandhomes.com/sitepages/pid48.php?mls=97153&host=aspenlandandhomes.com

http://www.agsidx.com/idx/pics/ags97153.jpg

(f) (f) Enjoy! I certainly did this evening. Snow tomorrow afternoon - so "they" say. No worries about snow removal since the temps will be near 50 on Friday. ;) As I have done the past two bad snow/ice/sleet/rain storms? Let it melt.....;)

:) And wear those snow cleats while walking Wyatt while waiting.....:)

Have a warm, relaxing Tuesday night.

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-06-2007, 07:22 PM

(p) (l) (p) (l) (p) (l)

Redwood Hot Tub: http://www.rhtubs.com/images/hottubs/hottub6.jpg

http://www.snorkel.com/images/hot-tubs.jpg

http://www.energyhawk.com/snaps/appliances-d.jpg

http://www.allspas.com.au/images/gallery/Installed_3.JPG

Look at ALL that snow:

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http://www.wineriesofsanluisobispo.com/Sycamo4.jpg

LOVE this and it's in the UK: http://www.whitewaters.co.uk/images/img_faq8.jpg

Enclosed 7 Person Hot Tubs (Too Crowded): http://www.nvrpa.org/images/jacuzzi.jpg

(f) Photos for the butches: http://www.greekhotel.com/cyclades/santorin/fira/dana/11.jpg

AND

http://www.greekhotel.com/cyclades/santorin/fira/dana/13.jpg

WOW! http://www.descent.co.uk/images/small/septieme-hottub-2005.jpg

AND

http://cache.marriott.com/propertyimages/b/bkkth/phototour/bkkth_phototour11.jpg

(l) Wouldn't you like to have this as your master bedroom patio?

http://www.stayz.com.au/property/image/01/55/08/img_15508_003959_max800x600.jpg

THIS is a private jacuzzi! http://th.r24.org/677295/chawengbayview_06.jpg

Beautiful Adobe Look:

http://www.interdynamic.net/common2/photos/hotels/4109/viliviview.jpg

(f) (f)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-06-2007, 07:28 PM

(f) (f)

February 25, 2007

We Are Not a Muse

By WILLIAM SHAW

In some, middle age breeds a new kind of fury. Francesca von Habsburg is one such. In fewer than five years, in a flurry of collecting and curating, she has transformed herself from a minor society-page attraction into one of the most influential players in contemporary art. Maybe she needed to kick off the dust of her antiquated past. Von Habsburg is the 48-year-old daughter of the late billionaire-industrialist Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza. If that weren’t enough, in 1993 she married Karl von Habsburg, otherwise known as Archduke Karl of Austria, Prince Royal of Hungary and Bohemia, and the couple set up home in Salzburg, producing two archduchesses and an archduke. But after 10 years, bored with the cultural stuffiness of Salzburg, she separated — amicably — from Karl; around the same time, her father died. The baron had married five times, ensuring a lively legal battle over his prodigious estate, which included the second-largest private art collection in Europe — surpassed only by the Queen of England’s. Thus, free and wealthy, von Habsburg got the bug. Her urge to collect, as with much that she does, started on an impulse.

On the day I met her in Vienna in December, she was sitting in her apartment on the top floor of an 18th-century building, her legs tucked up underneath her on the sofa. When not dressed formally, her style is jet-set hippie: she has a single red thread around her wrist and a genial look on her soft-featured face. The walls are crammed with a tiny portion of the artwork that she has recently amassed. There is a photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe; another by Olafur Eliasson. The kitchen tiles are by the Los Angeles-based Cuban artist Jorge Pardo. Just to get to the toilet you have to negotiate a giant silver pendulum by the Swiss artist Sylvie Fleury and then pass through a flickering projection by the actor Dennis Hopper, who has filmed himself naked, trying to ignite the circle of gunpowder that surrounds him.

The first piece she fell impulsively in love with was a work by the Canadian Janet Cardiff, an artist who makes sound installations that often use triggered voices. Von Habsburg offered to buy it. To her surprise, Cardiff refused on the grounds that she would not sell the piece to an individual. To a woman who had grown up surrounded by her father’s massive private collection, passing the Francis Bacon outside the guest toilet without even wondering who had painted it, such idealism came as a shock.

“Do you have a foundation?” Cardiff demanded when von Habsburg tracked the artist down in Berlin.

“Of course,” von Habsburg lied and immediately got on the phone to her lawyer to set one up. And so Thyssen-Bornmisza Art Contemporary, or T-B A21, came into being.

By the opening of the Venice Biennale in June 2005, von Habsburg was no longer flying under the art world’s radar. She wasn’t just buying art; she was commissioning and curating. Bringing together the Danish artist Olafur Eliasson with the British architect David Adjaye, she created an unusual opportunity for them to work on the quiet monastery island of San Lazzaro, removed from the rest of the art-world tea party. Eliasson’s light piece, “Your Black Horizon,” housed in a self-contained space Adjaye designed for it, was the first of a series of T-B A21 “pavilions” that she has planned worldwide.

Since then her ambitions have only grown. Last year she sent a hulking industrial barge up the Danube as part of a work called “Küba, Journey Against the Current,” which featured an audiovisual installation by the Turkish artist Kutlug Ataman. For each country the barge passed through, von Habsburg added another newly commissioned work.

In case, at this point, you are inclined to dismiss her spendthrift passion as the grande folie of a rich heiress, it’s worth remembering another art-crazy heiress who after half a lifetime of not amounting to much developed a passion for avant-garde art and bought it out of a sense of public service to the artists who made it. In Peggy Guggenheim’s case, they were Braque, Picasso and Ernst.

Two floors below von Habsburg’s apartment, down a wide stone staircase, is the gallery she initially set up to display the art she had begun buying. Today, a trickle of visitors arrive to examine the works of Jim Lambie, Sarah Lucas and others. But this is a minor outpost. Merely exhibiting art on the walls of old buildings like the T-B A21 gallery is, she says, limiting. So this June, she plans to open a second pavilion in Croatia on the small monastery island of Lopud. “It’s a pilot project to see if people will go the extra mile to see art,” she says. A third pavilion is tentatively planned for a remote spot in Iceland. Von Habsburg ultimately wants the public’s encounter with art to go beyond a mere museum visit and become more like a pilgrimage.

If she reflects a trend, it is in looking away from art’s old centers of power. She has recently returned from collecting trips to China and India. She finds the European art world sometimes too parochial. (Recently she told the London gallerist Jay Jopling that he should expand his horizons from British art stars like Damien Hirst and the Chapman brothers and take a more global view. Jopling was not amused by her upstart advice, she recalls.)

With her 9-year-old son, Ferdinand, in tow, von Habsburg sweeps through the streets of Vienna to call on her old friend, the video artist Candice Breitz. Breitz is particularly interested in rock music and von Habsburg commissioned her to make a piece called “Legend,” in which 30 Bob Marley fans, each on an individual video screen, sing a cappella to Marley’s “Legend” album.

Tonight Breitz has an opening at the Bawag gallery. Her new work is an installation that features John Lennon fans singing to his album “John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.” It is called “Working Class Hero” and is a curiously moving work about the strangely redemptive power of fandom. Young Ferdinand lies on the floor, bored, kicking off his shoes as his mother chats with the artist.

Von Habsburg is familiar with the concept of fandom. At 18 she enrolled in Central St. Martins College of Art and Design in London, where she saw the Sex Pistols play. “I was a groupie for 10 years,” she says, rather too proudly. She appeared on the British “Top of the Pops” TV show as a backup singer in her close friend Steve Strange’s new romantic band, Visage. Her house became a rock-star flop pad. Former members of the notoriously narcotic New York Dolls stayed over. Her unlikely protector was Iggy Pop. “He was my bouncer,” she says. “If he caught anyone doing heroin around my house, he’d throw them out the door.” One memento, perhaps, from her rock-chick days: deafness in one ear.

On the way out of the gallery, von Habsburg enthusiastically throws her arms around Breitz. “Darling,” she says, “a working-class hero is something to be.

“Of course,” she adds, sotto voce, “I wouldn’t know.”

Starting out in her father’s private gallery as a young woman — registering pictures, filing paperwork and helping with exhibitions — von Habsburg says she was usually pretty bored. So when it came to starting her own collection, she was initially ambivalent, not wishing to burden her children with responsibility the way her father and her grandfather had. “My father’s collection became all about property, ownership, money, wheeling and dealing,” she says. “It left such a bad taste in my mouth.” Accordingly, it seems, her newer commissions are ephemeral: they exist only in a specific time and place. In some ways, she is collecting the artists as much as she is collecting the art. She takes their details and types them in to her ever-present BlackBerry, and when the time is right she pulls their names up. “My earliest talent was introducing people from whatever walks of life,” she says. “And I still do that.”

She gets a kick from being a creative matchmaker, introducing artist A to ethnographer B or musician C to video maker D. And when they hit it off, as they often do, she commissions them to create something for her collection. At any one time, there are dozens of collaborations in the T-B A21 pipeline. She recently introduced the Japanese artist Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba to some free divers she knows in Jamaica. Together they are now creating an artwork on the Jamaican sea floor: Nguyen-Hatsushiba is filming the divers as they “attempt” to dig a hole to the other side of the planet.

“Every project has its own set of collaborations,” she explains. “I want to be in the place where artists come when they haven’t quite figured out how to do it.” This is a period in which the boundaries of art are loosening, she says: artists are jumping the rails. The old model of a museum of modern art, with its white walls and bureaucratic interdepartmental processes, no longer functions. Von Habsburg, meanwhile, just picks up her ever-present BlackBerry and scrolls.

On Sunday, the effusive stage director Peter Sellars comes for lunch at her apartment; he had asked for the meeting. A patron has supplicants; von Habsburg knows that he wants something. She is just not sure what.

Sellars has been in Vienna directing a festival to mark the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth. Little of Sellars’s program appears to have anything remotely to do with Mozart; one event he planned was simply to provide all the schoolchildren of the city with organic lunches. “If people ask what does that have to do with Mozart?” the director says over scallops, “I just say, ‘What hasn’t it to do with Mozart?’ ”

Von Habsburg laughs loudly. It is not until dessert that she finally asks him, plainly, what it is he wants. Sellars explains: One of the events on his program is the building of a garden facility on the roof of a Viennese youth center for refugees. He tears up as he talks of the lives of these young people, often thrust across borders without papers by desperate parents. He shows her the plans for the facility; she examines the architecture. She asks about costs. After a few minutes she says simply, “O.K., I will give you some money.” Polite conversation continues. After a minute or two she asks, “How much of your own money are you putting in?”

“A hundred and fifty thousand.”

“O.K.,” she says, simply. “I’ll match that.”

Von Habsburg says later: “I usually avoid throwing numbers around. But I thought it was fair to match his grant.” She will help Sellars to try to raise additional moneys. “I use what money I have to attract other money,” she says, “and what I have is a lot less than people think.”

In Croatia, she has been fighting a tough battle for support for her pavilion on Lopud. She says that such projects will succeed only with local input, especially if they are to contribute local development. But the Croatian government has been very unresponsive. “I proposed this whole project to the minister of culture over a one-and-a-half-hour lunch,” she sighs. “And at the end of it he turned round and said, ‘Why don’t you do this in Zagreb?’ ”

For Christmas von Habsburg retreats to Jamaica, where, somewhere offshore, divers are preparing to dig their hole. The band Third World arrives to play for New Year’s Eve and stays for two days. “The singer’s a friend,” von Habsburg explains. A week later she is in Brazil, the guest of honor at the dinner table of the newly elected governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro. It is his first function at his official residence, the opulent Laranjeiras Palace.

“Look,” says the director of Brazil’s Museum of Modern Art, leading her by the elbow to a 17th-century oil painting. “This is a Frans Post.”

“Yes,” she returns airily. “We have some of those in our family collection.”

Brazil is a brand-new venture for von Habsburg, yet another project. She has big plans for 2007. She is seated at a magnificent oval table, the governor at her left, ministers and secretaries dotted here and there. They talk lovingly of her old masters. She tells them she collects contemporary art. “Do you know much about Brazilian works?” they ask. “Did you see that painting by Beatriz Milhazes at the biennale?”

“Yes,” von Habsburg says. “I loaned your government that one.”

If God played the snare drum, the rim shot would have come right there. Having thus won the floor, she explains that she has come here to involve artists, both local and international, in her plan to set up what she calls a Global Institute for Sustainable Development. She has already secured a huge empty monastery high on a forested hill in the middle of the city. (What she neglects to mention is that less than 48 hours before she had only a half-formed notion of what had brought her to Brazil in the first place.) She envisions a two-way exchange between development and art. What do they think?

Of course, von Habsburg doesn’t really need their approval, but it is better to have it than not. She leaves, pleased, typing away on her BlackBerry again. Later she will visit the local art school, spot a talented student named Gláucia Leme who makes art out of appliquéd fabrics on canvas and buy every piece of her work on the spot.

“I always go into a place thinking something special will happen,” she says, “something magical.”

And usually, it does.

(y) (y) Wouldn't it be fun (and I am sure a burden at times) to be able to buy artwork as well as commission collaborative efforts between and among artists in widely diverse arenas? How exciting! And pretty cool. (y)

(ap) Those serious thoughts about changing my PhD specialization as well as changing graduate school might be translating into some action soon......(ap) I'll have to check some opportunities out and do some serious mulling. Pensive, yea, that's it, be pensive ;)

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-06-2007, 07:32 PM

(h) (h) (h) (h)

Displaying computer-generated maps in which nations are sized in relation to a specific topic, from military spending to commuting time; very revealing.

http://www.worldmapper.org/display.php?selected=141

http://www.worldmapper.org/images/largepng/141.png

(y) Very cool web site.......:)

Sun Thoughts,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-06-2007, 07:37 PM

:o :o :o

http://aving.net/usa/news/default.asp?mode=read&c_num=37423&C_Code=05&SP_Num=62&mn_name_sub=mostpop

:D I prefer the redwood hot tub or redwood deck with jacuzzi outside my bedroom turned up a wee bit hotter so that on really cold, clear night like this evening? I can get naked and watch the stars in warm comfort. (Okay, I'd probably wear my long hair up and put a fleece hat on........;)

:o Poor Wyatt would have to watch his mama from behind the sliding glass doors of the warm bedroom. Way too cold outside for short-haired canine angels like Boxers. (l) (&) (l)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-08-2007, 10:30 PM

:D :D :D

Table Talk Threepenny Review, Summer 2006

Charlie Haas

Before I got mixed up in the movie business I got mixed up in the music business, spending my first two years out of college working at Warner Bros. Records in Burbank. (I had the hair but not the guitar. I wrote liner notes.) One morning I got a phone call from Jonathan Kaplan, the only movie director I knew then, who was on the Warners movie lot next door. He was making a picture called Truck Turner, starring Isaac Hayes, who'd also composed the score. There was to be a recording session that afternoon, with Mr. Hayes conducting, and did I want to come watch?

It sounded like fun and turned out to be thrilling. An orchestra the size of some Biggest Little City's symphony sat on the scoring stage, surrounding Mr. Hayes, who in recent years had killed the people with the theme from Shaft and an emotionally pummeling cover of "Walk On By." The session was like a normal recording date at the record company except for the movie screen on the wall, where clips from the Truck Turner work print were shown so that the music could be timed to them. "Bassoons," said the Barry White/no spamming of other sites/trouncing bass voice that had moaned its way through Hot Buttered Soul, "you need to be out when the car door closes. Again."

Again, baby! The car door on the screen closed several more times, the bassoons at last caught up with it, Mr. Hayes went on to the next cue, and I was in heaven. The only thing that could have made it better was if, instead of natty casual clothes, he'd been wearing the getup with the chains from the Black Moses album cover. This being Hollywood, I soon started remembering it that way. As a bonus, the route to the scoring stage took me down Warners' New York Street, a beautifully detailed block of fake Manhattan, complete with little staircases leading down from the street to basement apartment entrances. As I walked back to work, it occurred to me that some of the inspiration for Disneyland must have come from Walt's seeing the delight of civilians taking their first walk down a back lot's ersatz avenues.

Later, as I say, I got mixed up in the movie business, so mixed up that I sometimes took it seriously. Like the showbiz columnist Army Archerd's fictional studio correspondent Onda Lotalot, I was on the lot a lot. I walked from my car to the office through a dusty village that was Cuzco one week and China the next. I ate at the commissary. I bought discounted Warner-Reprise CDs at the studio store. I wrote monster movies.

I would say that I became intimately familiar with the New York Street during that period, but in fact I was intimately familiar with it before I ever set foot there. Everyone is. It's the setting of a million crime pictures, musicals, TV episodes, and commercials. It's basically 1940s, but with a little signage and some show cars its age can be pushed back or pulled forward by decades. Gangsters tommy-gunned one another from running boards there, and dozens of young strivers burst simultaneously out of their below-grade apartments to do dance numbers about hope up and down the fire escapes. The car chases on New York Street accounted for half the crime in the Valley. It was no place to own a fruit stand.

Years after my first visit, my wife and I went to the Warners lot one night for a screening. "The lots are full," the guard at the gate said. "Park on New York Street." We got the last available space. As we got out of the car my wife said, "We're by a hydrant."

"No, no," I said, "that's not a real hydrant." My wife is brilliant and all, but she's never been in show business. If our marriage had been announced in Variety, the item would have listed one or two of my monster movies and, despite all her achievements, added, "Wife is a non-pro." If Curly from the Three Stooges had married Marie Curie, she would have gotten "Wife is a non-pro" too.

Nothing on the New York Street was real, I explained. The apartment house façades looked like gritty real life took place inside, but there was nothing behind them. Gritty real life happened on soundstages, a hundred yards away. I closed the car door, without bassoons, and said, "We'll be late."

When we got back from the screening, there was a ticket on the windshield for parking by the quite real hydrant. I was mortified and didn't know what to do with the ticket, or even who had issued it-studio security? the Burbank police? Karl Malden in The Wrong Man?

I showed it to the guard at the gate. "You can't park by a hydrant," he said. "What if there was a fire?" I nodded, cringing at the thought of years of America's memories going up in flames like an over-insured furniture store because some idiot, me, had blocked the fireplug, and with a rented Cavalier at that. "I'm really sorry," I said. "How do I pay it?"

"Pay it?" He took the ticket from me and dropped it in the trash. "No, no. That's not a real ticket."

http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/haas_su06.html

(y) (y) I loved the ending!

ANCORA IMPARO, ("I Am Still Learning.")

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-08-2007, 10:31 PM

(y) (y) (y)

Workers and Managers

David Mamet

The Threepenny Review, Summer 2006

I had despaired, these past five years, of that entity I described to myself as "The American People." This people, to my mind, had elected, re-elected, and suffered the depredations of an unprincipled, ungovernable band of thugs.

These had cheapened the dollar, enrolled us in an absurd war, alienated immemorial allies, abrogated rational treaties, drowned the country in debt, and knew neither remorse nor obligation.

How, I wondered, could "The American People" abide this monstrous perversion by the few of the laws and comforts established for all?

These ruminations took place in my accustomed solitude. I am a writer, and spend the whole of almost every working day sitting alone and brooding.

Last week I got out of the office.

The best entertainment I know is a film set, and once in a while I am privileged to leave my hermetic environment and work with others.

Film workers are the salt of the earth. They work very hard, and have a great pride in their workmanship—the industrial norm is to do the job quickly, correctly, and with spirit and humor, in a manner reflecting honor not only upon the individual's performance, but upon his particular craft: lighting, designing, props, makeup, and so on.

After a day on the set, I recognized that I had been thinking of "The American People" in the unhappy abstract—I had unconsciously cast them as something foreign, other-than-myself. The film set reminded me that the actual people of whom I despaired were those same workers I'd known all my life, and of whose life and community I'd always been a part until I became a solitary writer.

These people, the film workers, cabdrivers, merchant mariners, factory workers, union workers, were the American People I'd always known and loved—smart, funny, responsible, honorable, and creative. They were and are the people I came from, and for whom I'd always written.

To the half of our people who voted for Bush, I would like to say this:

I am confused by politics. I, perhaps like you, am capable of being both enthused and seduced by slogans. In a contest whose essence is divisiveness, I, like you, will find entertainment in taking sides.

I believe the Democrats and Republicans are, as individuals, generally people of good will, and, as groups, capable of many and varied enormities.

Each side has some truth and some utility in its position; and it's probably a good idea that the country tires periodically of one side's operations, and replaces it with an inefficiency of a different complexion.

I do not think either side or any individual has a monopoly on truth.

I believe that Bush and the members of his clique must go.

My party, the Democratic Party, has done little beyond sputtering these last six years; and I expect, sadly, little better from them in the days to come. So I make this appeal to the Republicans—not as a Democrat, but as a fellow worker.

The triumph of Orange County/ Reagan Republicanism has been in convincing the working people to vote against their own best interest.

The Democrats have been, traditionally, the party of labor, and, as such, that necessary force which kept the party of capital in check.

Our country is now largely de-industrialized. In the waning days of the industrial state, big business—which is to say, the Republicans—broke the labor movement by threatening to take jobs elsewhere, should the unions continue to demand legitimate wages.

The Republican Party turned the workers, the vast bulk of Americans, against labor, and in so doing they divided and conquered. Big business gladly accepted the gifts the now-nonunionized worker gave them, and, when the American worker could give no more, big business took the jobs out of the country, which they had intended all along.

To my Republican friends and fellow workers, I suggest this:

If you look on the actions of the Bush administration not as those of politicians, but as those of management, you will recognize them instantly for what they are.

Management will use any tool necessary to extract more labor from its workers.

Management always attempts to pit the massed power of capital against the supposedly powerless individual.

Management always wants to oppose or break the union, for the union is the only flimsy shield between the worker and that which I do not believe I over-characterize as wage-slavery.

Management will coo: "You don't need a union, we will treat you better than any union—give us your pension funds; invest in our company." Which is what Bush has attempted in his fraudulent grab at Social Security. But we, as workers, know that if and when we give management our pensions, it is damn near inevitable that they will plunder the pension, and/or go broke, and leave the long-serving worker with nothing. (It is an anomaly of American law that the corporation has all of the rights but none of the responsibilities of the individual: the corporation may go broke, and the management which made the decisions leading to bankruptcy may—short of and often including absolute larceny—go free.)

Management will always outsource if possible, for this lowers costs. Lower costs may be turned into corporate profits (in which the workers do not participate), and thus into increased management salaries and perks (of which the workers cannot even dream).

The Bush Administration is in the process of outsourcing the Armed Forces.

The war in Iraq, an elective adventure of the Bush Administration, is being waged for the Bush Administration's gain.

How can we know? No-bid contracts have been given to these corporations which, in effect, are the Bush Administration.

And while the Bush Administration has curtailed veterans' benefits, it has increased the use of commercial security contractors in Iraq.

This is the ancient ploy of management. If there is free work to be had, it turns to the underpaid worker and asks a favor ("How'd you like to stop by on Sunday and paint my house?"—to the soldier: "How'd you like to do your country a service and go to Iraq?").

When there is money to be made, however, the contract goes not to the obliging worker, but to the boss's nephew (the Halliburton corporation). Management wants to do away with the worker's benefits: lunchroom, infirmary, day-care; and, indeed, the Bush Administration, through the evisceration of OSHA, etcetera, works to give even these few pennies back to management.

Management has no interest in safety. Plant infrastructure is allowed to deteriorate, as capital expenditure will look bad on the balance sheet; so FEMA was shelved, the administration of this gutted agency given as a plum to a Bush crony, and New Orleans was washed away.

And management always wants to turn the workers against each other.

Historically, it pitted the native Protestants against that which it called the Irish Plague ("No Irish Need Apply"); it put white against black, denying African-Americans equal work for equal pay, and, in so doing, lowering the consciousness, the morality, and, correspondingly, the wages of the white worker. Whenever management can pit worker against worker, wages and conditions suffer, for it hides from the worker the identity of his true antagonist: the corporation.

And note that the Bush Administration has succeeded in setting the workers against each other and calling it "family values."

The issues of abortion, gay marriage, stem cell research, and so forth are difficult. But I ask you, as fellow workers, to consider this: who benefits from the insistence that these issues be resolved in an atmosphere of antagonism? The management, which has again succeeded in turning the workers against each other.

Now, the issues confronting our country are serious, but they are all resolvable, and resolvable in an atmosphere of cooperation. How do I know? Because I've seen it, and you've seen it, at work.

We have been conditioned to huff and puff ourselves about political questions, and characterize those who disagree as fools—but we may discuss these same questions with our fellow workers, around the water cooler, at lunch, over a drink, and in that discussion we find that, rather than proclaiming our own view, we want to know what the other fellow thinks, and, after listening, may find some possibility of consensus. Why? Because we are looking for consensus. At work we recognize that we are going to have to live with those who disagree, and that therefore there must and will be some accommodation.

We know this at work—why do we forget it in politics?

Because it is in the interest of management to keep the workers divided.

I am not a Marxist. I do not believe that the corporation is, per se, bad. I do not believe that capital is, per se, bad. I believe that the corporation, like any powerful entity, will, unchecked, progress toward tyranny, and that it must be kept in check.

The force which kept it honest was the American labor movement.

The labor movement, like any agglomeration of power, may itself have had and may again have its excesses. We've also seen this on the shop floor.

Management will scream about labor corruption, of course-but I ask you to review the excesses of an unfortunately weak union official against those of his stripe in the boardroom.

The Bush Administration is the American corporation run wild.

Management has broken the union (the union, here, is the electorate), and the workers, as happens periodically, have got to sit down, do the math, and recognize that our health, safety, and finances can only be protected through collective action.

Let's find our mutual interests—we know from our day at work that we have them—keep our eyes on the ball, and look to the bottom line, as do our friends in management. Their methods are not magic. Management relies on the considered application of blunt power against the worker. The union movement was and is only the employment of the exact same tool. It worked before and it will work again.

We, the "muddle-headed Democrats" and the "wrong-headed Repub-licans," have got to stop letting the bosses divide us. It's time to band together (under whatever party or coalition) as the strong, inventive, and honorable people that we are. Now, and in the midterm elections, let's remember that we are not only the workers in this corporation, but the vast majority of its stockholders. Let's review the board's record over the last five years, vote them out, and get back to work.

David Mamet is a playwright, director, novelist, and screenwriter. His scripts include Glengarry Glen Ross and Wag the Dog.

http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/mamet_su06.html

(y) (y) Stellar!!

ANCORA IMPARO,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-08-2007, 10:36 PM

(f) (f) (f) (f)

Language, Loss, and Metaphor

Ellen Hawley

The Threepenny Review, Summer, 2006

My mother died in June 2005 at the age of ninety-three. For some time —and it's hard to say how long because I can't draw a line and say it began here—a series of small strokes had been chipping away at who she'd once been. I called her one day, six months or a year before she died, and the woman who took care of her told me she hadn't gotten out of bed for two days. Maybe I could convince her to.

I doubted it, but when my mother took the phone I asked why she wouldn't get out of bed.

"I can't explain it," she said, meaning not that it was beyond the reach of my understanding and not necessarily that she didn't understand it herself but that she had no words for it anymore. They were gone, dissolved, out of reach. I'm reaching for metaphors here because I have no other way to express what was happening, but none of them bring me any closer to understanding the way language had unraveled inside her head. I'm writing about the loss of language and what do I have to work with other than language? I can't know what it was like for her and she couldn't tell me. It's as fitting as it is ironic that I'm pushed toward metaphor—that rarefied literary game—because as words became harder for her to get hold of she occasionally spoke in unwilling metaphors.

I taught writing for some years, and when I talked to my students about metaphor I tried to present it not as a literary device—some arcane trick they had to master if they hoped to pass in literary society—but as something the human brain creates naturally. When I look back on what I said, I don't think I was wrong, but that doesn't mean I knew the first thing about it either. All I had in mind was the power that objects and processes can take on when our emotions overflow their ordinary channels, the way saying something relatively safe can open the possibility of communicating something unsafe, the way one thought can enlarge another thought that seems to be unrelated until suddenly and stunningly it doesn't. I was thinking, in other words, of the undamaged brain. If I talked at all about saying the unsayable-and I can't remember whether I actually used that phrase—I meant it (in the weakest sense of the word) metaphorically. I had never spent twelve seconds of my life wrestling with what unsayable means in its literal and most physical sense: not what we're afraid to say, not what we're forbidden to say, not even what we haven't yet put words to and so allowed ourselves to think about clearly, but the physical impossibility of putting something into words and communicating it to another human being.

When my mother was younger, she was a tenant organizer in New York and a fine public speaker. Someone who worked with her told me once, with only minor exaggeration, that if you woke her up in the middle of the night, stuck a microphone in her hand, and told her to make a speech, she could not only do it but do it well. She was one of only two people in New York that the real estate mogul Harry Helmsley refused to debate on a radio program.

And now she couldn't explain why she wouldn't get out of bed.

"Are you in pain?" I asked.

No, she wasn't in pain.

"Discouraged?"

The word I wanted was depressed but I couldn't get myself to say it.

"I don't understand," she said.

I should have tried synonyms but I was only too happy to run away from the question.

"Tired?"

She said something I couldn't make out, something longer than yes or no.

I was fairly sure I should keep offering words but I didn't. The question-and-answer format felt condescending—to me, if not to her—and, short of ending the conversation, I couldn't see a way to change that. I told her that if we were voting I voted for her to get out of bed. She said something else I couldn't catch, then said she loved me. I said I loved her. We said this to each other a lot as words became less useful and our conversations narrowed down. Almost everything that made my life interesting had become too complicated to tell her about. So many things had moved out of bounds that I might as well have been leading a secret life. To keep her on the line an extra few seconds, I'd sometimes tell her that it was raining, it was snowing, the weather had been gorgeous all week and the crabapple tree was in bloom. My partner was fine, I was fine, the dogs and the cats were fine. Every so often I got lonely enough to admit that one of us was sick, although when she'd been fully herself I kept that sort of information to myself if I could. She and my father worried about us out of all proportion to whatever passing illnesses we had. But with conversation hard to sustain, a head cold gave us a moment of connection. If everyone on my end of the line was healthy, we were left with the blandest reassurances. We said "I love you" in every conversation because it was one of the things we could still say. We said it to make up for everything that was closed to us.

It never crossed my mind to ask her how she felt, trapped with such a sparse collection of words. I don't know whether she would have understood the question or whether she could have answered it if she had. I shied away from acknowledging what we both knew was happening as if somehow she might not have noticed it, although she'd been reporting unflinchingly on the process for years.

This time when she said she loved me she gave her voice an unusual intensity, as if she expected it to be the last time we talked and she wanted me to remember it. She had so little left that she could give me but she was still my mother and still struggling to give.

It wasn't the last time we talked, though. I called the next day and she'd gotten up, taken a shower, and gone back to bed. A few days later she got up again, and sometime after that I went to visit. I live in Minnesota and she was living in California, two blocks from my brother.

We had a few more final goodbyes, usually on the last night of one of my visits. She saw me to the door once, a tiny, white-haired woman standing inside the frame of a junior-size walker.

"The next time you see me," she said, and paused.

I waited while she searched for words.

"I won't be here."

I couldn't help it. My mind snagged on the idea of seeing her even though she wouldn't be there and I laughed. She laughed. It seemed like a natural enough thing to do. For some years she'd been telling us she wanted to die. She'd been too active, too competent, too focused to be satisfied with a life whose whole purpose was to sleep, get dressed, eat, read the paper, and sleep again. She'd been an organizer. She'd been a Communist—part of the generation that joined during the Depression, and she remained a member until sometime after the American Communist Party took a position against Gorbachev's reforms, when she finally resigned. She could be a formidable political opponent—I heard that from someone else she worked with, who was still fuming about a battle he'd lost to her—but her commitment to the people whose rights she fought for was as genuine and as deep as any I've known. When my brother and I were young, she talked to us about trying to make the world a better place. It was a simplified explanation of the life she and my father had committed themselves to long before we were born, but it was also exactly what she meant. Now she could no longer try to make the world a better place, so what was the purpose of her life? Especially since she had to wait out her final years without my father, who died ten years before she finally did.

So I had learned from her to talk comfortably about death, and to accept her longing for it. I don't remember what I said once we stopped laughing. Something about hoping she was wrong, probably. Something about knowing she wanted that. Something about how much I'd miss her, although I had no idea how deep the missing would run. It doesn't matter what I said. I'd been saying the same things for years, in one form or another. They didn't change a thing but I said them anyway. They were an attempt at connection, a form of acceptance.

The next time you see me I won't be here. As words slipped out of her reach, she sometimes came at ideas slantwise, from directions that surprised me. The ideas inside her head were richer than the poverty of her speech allowed her to express, although I doubt her thoughts were as varied or as deep as they once had been. She spent an entire evening once trying to explain an insight she'd had into her family. What she needed to put together was a single longish sentence, and the first time she tried she got part of the way through, telling me she'd been thinking about her mother and it had occurred to her—. And there she stopped, as completely as if she'd run into a wall. In my arrogance, in my loneliness for the person she used to be, I didn't expect whatever this was to be a new thought, although I was prepared to act as if it were. It had been a long time since we'd talked about anything new and I assumed her thoughts had narrowed down as much as her language.

She tried the sentence again and stopped in the same place. She was frustrated. I was frustrated. She gave up but came back to it later, starting in the same place—she'd been thinking about her mother-and pushed a few words past the place where she'd stopped the first times through, until finally, about the time I was saying goodnight, she crashed through the barrier and found the rest of the sentence: She'd been thinking about the twelve-year gap between her older sister and herself and it had occurred to her that her mother might well have had a miscarriage, or several miscarriages, between them, and that she was precisely the kind of Victorian lady who would have kept that a secret.

That thought, so laboriously set in words, made more of a connection between us than we'd had in years. My mother was still in there. Her mind was working: in near-silence, in isolation, without the back and forth that, as I think of it, keeps us human, but it was still working.

I don't know if that was a cause for hope or for despair.

The last time I saw her other than in the hospital where she died, we had another final goodbye. By then I also thought it might be final. It was again the last night of my visit and for some time she'd been telling me to go home—back to my brother's house, where I was staying. Even then she remembered that I went to bed earlier than she did and that I was running on Midwestern time. Even then she was trying to take care of me. I kept saying I'd leave soon, I wasn't tired yet.

When I finally started to say goodnight, she said, "Stay put."

She didn't mean don't go—that much was clear from the context, from her gestures. It was one of those slantwise approaches.

"Stay put?" I said.

She waved one hand through the air in a vague and uncharacteristic gesture.

"In an anarchist sort of way," she said.

For a split and disorienting second I thought the century-long hostility between the anarchists and the Communists had been resolved. Then I took the phrase to mean metaphorically speaking, although I'll never know entirely if I was right. We said goodnight. We said "I love you" all over again. I searched for some way to tell her how much I meant that and couldn't, any more than she'd been able to find the words she wanted. Less, because I didn't find any slant from which to approach my meaning. I kissed her and she was impossibly tiny, impossibly frail. The next time I saw her, she was dying.

Her last advice—her last demand—draws me back regularly: Stay put, in an anarchist sort of way. My partner thinks she was telling me to keep on being who I am, that she was saying she approved of me, and of course I like that interpretation. It's the meaning I hold closest. But what she actually said is richer than that, and less certain. It's full of resonances and echoes, of contradictions and possibilities, of meanings beyond any single meaning. It's metaphor: a multilayered message exploding at me out of near-silence.

Ellen Hawley’s novel Trip Sheets won a Writer’s Voice Capricorn Award. She works as a freelance editor in Minneapolis.

http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/hawley_su06.html

(l) (l) This one made me mist up when I re-read it again this morning. I thought that maybe a few others would find it as touching as I did. (l) (l)

(S) "Sleep, perchance to dream." - Shakespeare

(f)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-08-2007, 10:38 PM

:) :) :)

Texaco

The nozzle of the gas pump
plunged into the flank of the car
like the curved beak of a predatory bird

looks like it is drinking
or maybe I'm light-headed
from the fumes

or from the slanted light
of Thursday afternoon.
—Still, it is a powerful moment

when I squeeze the trigger of the handle
and feel, beneath the stained cement,
the deep shudder and convulsion

of the gasoline begin
its plunging rush in my direction.
Out of the guts of the earth,

filtered through sand and blood
down the long hose of history
towards the very nipple of this moment:

—the mechanical ticking of the pump,
the sound of my car drinking—
filling my tank with a necessary story

about the road, how we have
to have it to go down;
the whole world construed around

this singular, solitary act
as if I myself had conjured it
from some strange thirst.

—Tony Hoagland

Tony Hoagland won the 2005 Mark Twain Award for poetic insidiousness. A book of his essays, Real Sofistikashun, will be published in 2006 by Graywolf Press.

http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/hoagland_su06.html

(y) (y)

Ot dushi,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-08-2007, 10:41 PM

;) ;)

The Funny Site of the Day -- Planet M&M has a time killer toy to savor. Create trendy, chocolatey M beings in the salivating images of yourself and friends. The advanced apparatus allows you to select facial and body features, accessories, and background scenery.

Email your candy caricatures to friends. Then, take a few minutes to challenge the M&M arcade games, Funski Runski and Shmuffleboard!

http://www.becomeanmm.com/

;)

"The Day God/Dess Made Dog, She Just Sat Down and Smiled."

:)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-08-2007, 10:44 PM

:) :) :)

http://humor.about.com/od/toys/Funny_Internet_Toys_Games_and_Time_Killers.htm

The Funny Site of the Day:

http://humor.about.com/od/surprise/The_Funny_Site_of_the_Day.htm

Latest Funny Sites and the Full Archive: Welcome to The Works! Here's your jumping off page into The Funny Site of the Day. Remember, humor is in the mind of the beholder. Proceed at your own risk.

http://humor.about.com/library/bldsarc.htm

"There are no passengers on the spaceship Earth. We are all crew."

- Marshall McLuhan

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-08-2007, 10:50 PM

(l) (l) (l)

I saw this film IN THE THEATER (!) back in 1983 when it was released. I had just completed my hours for my private pilot's license in 1982 and always (okay except for maybe 6 times I had to rent a "milk stool spam can" AKA Cessna) antique "taildragger" airplanes including the 1946 Aeronca Champ that I tool most of my lessons in and soloed in and a similar vintage Citabria for my cross-countries. Was helping to rebuild a number of bi-planes including a Boeing Stearman.

When I saw this film, I kept asking myself, "How in the hell is Bess Armstrong's hair always so perfect when SHE takes off her leather helmet and eye goggles, while when I take my own off, my hair looks all flattened?"

http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=22392

http://ia.ec.imdb.com/media/imdb/01/I/67/62/71/10m.jpg

"Take the High Road to China... for an adventure you'll never forget."

(~) Review: Tom Selleck stars as a former World War I flying ace, reduced to reliving his past glories in a bottle and giving flying lessons in two broken down (Sopwith) Camels. Sparks fly between Selleck and Bess Armstrong when she hires him to help find her father (a young looking Wilford Brimley), last seen in Tibet, before her inheritence is lost to a scheming business partner (Robert Morley at his humorously evil best). Adventure abounds as the pair wend their way between Egypt and Tibet, with sidekick mechanic Jack Weston holding the dilapidated planes together. An outstanding musical score helps this entertaining film immeasureably. This is the kind of movie that Hollywood should be making ... but isn't!

I find myself wearing out the recording I made from an on-the-air source and fervently wish that "High Road to China" would be re-released on video and DVD so that I could buy a decent copy for my library.

(~) Review: This movie is not Cassablanca, but I gave it 5 stars because I believe it does everything it set out to do, and does it wonderfully. The aerial cinematography is stunning, and the combination of story, actors, and score had me laughing and wanting to cry (of course I didn't... I'm a manly man). I absolutely can not understand, if it can be release on DVD in region 2, why can't it be released in region 1? Many, many older, more obscure, and far worse movies have made it to DVD in the U.S. Do we not deserve a quality movie? The oxen are too slow, and I am impatient. (If you don't know what that last bit is about, see the movie... if you can find it).

(~) Review: I recorded this film off network late night programming by chance and have loved it and nearly wore out the tape. I managed to buy it from a video store that was going out of business--the owner called me two days later begging to buy it back!! I dearly wish it would be restored and released on DVD, as many have also said.

But now to the film. OK, it's an adventure knock-off...or is it. Tom is not Harrison. Harrison Ford was perfect for Indy but he would have been awful as O'Malley. And I am glad Tom didn't take the Indy role, he's not Indy. Selleck has a lot of depth in this character, more than Harrison has as Indy, in my opinion. He is a real example of what happens to someone who was traumatized by war and then tries to find someplace to hide from life. He and the other characters all demonstrate a lot of humanity. There is also a lot of moral content in this film. The Eve character matures from a vain flapper into a real woman. The not-so-subtle critique of those who use violence and military force as a means of personal aggrandizement is perfect. Weston's side-kick character shows a lot of love and loyalty, not to mention classic humor. (I would love to have a friend like that!) There is no unnecessary, gratuitous or 'comic' violence (as there is in Raider's, by the way). There is frailty, self-sacrifice, commitment, bravery, compassion, repentance and forgiveness, and joy (yes, joy is a moral value!) in this film.

I love the pace of the film and all the supporting cast. Others have pointed out the cinematography & sweeping vistas, ditto! Ok, the model work could have been better, especially the Baron's crash. It is obviously not a high-budget movie. It is a great dialogue movie nonetheless--the romance and adventure part speaks for itself. Tom Selleck is not the greatest living actor but he is PERFECT in this role. He is not Magnum or Quigley in a biplane; he IS O'Malley. Bess Armstrong is brilliant; Brimley is hilarious. What's not to love?

I love Raider's and The Last Crusade, but if I end up on the proverbial desert island I'd want a copy of High Road instead. And then if you tried to take it from me you'd have to pry it out of my cold, dead fingers.

(y) I AGREE!!!!

CAST: (in credits order):

Tom Selleck ... Patrick O' Malley

Bess Armstrong ... Eve 'Evie' Tozer
Jack Weston ... Struts
Wilford Brimley ... Bradley Tozer
Robert Morley ... Bentik
Brian Blessed ... Suleman Khan
Cassandra Gava ... Alessa
Michael Sheard ... Charlie Shane

More: http://imdb.com/title/tt0085678/fullcredits

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00001ZU18.01.MZZZZZZZ.gif (8) (I finally found the film score on CD and was it ever expensive - coming from Europe!)

(8) Original Music by: John Barry (Barry has done many, many film scores, including "Dancing with Wolves".

http://www.soundtrackcollector.com/catalog/soundtrackdetail.php?movieid=2851

Cinematography by: Ronnie Taylor

Stunts:

Petar Buntic .... assistant stunt coordinator: Yugoslavian unit
Bill Lykins .... stunts
Don Lykins .... stunt pilot
Milan Mitic .... stunt coordinator
Milan Mitic .... stunt double: horse stunts
Tony Smart .... stunt coordinator
Marc Boyle .... stunts (uncredited)
Bill Lykins .... aerial stunts support (uncredited)
Terry Richards .... stunts (uncredited)
Domagoj Vukusic .... stunts (uncredited)

Other crew:

John Akroyd-Hunt .... helicopter pilot
John Barry .... conductor
Tony Bianchi .... pilot
Tony Bianchi .... technical supervisor
Mladen Cernjak .... transportation coordinator
Paul Midgley .... helicopter pilot
David Perria .... pilot
Nigel Thornton .... helicopter pilot

Memorable quotes for High Road to China (1983)

Zura: "The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient."

Evie: Which one of you boys would like the honour of loaning me an airplane.
RAF Officer: The RAF would be proud to loan Miss Tozer an aircraft.
Evie: [Blows him a kiss] I'll have it back in two weeks!
RAF Officer: Oh wait a minute, I thought you meant just for the night. Sorry.
[Silence]
Evie: Anyone Else?
[Pause]
Evie: No more heroes? So long boys.

Patrick O' Malley: You wrecked my plane!
Eve "Evie" Tozer: It was always a wreck!

My FAVORITE:

Suleman Khan: "You will be my welcome guests for dinner."
Struts (Jack Weston): "Is he going to eat us or feed us?"

Patrick O' Malley: Look at my Dorothy!

Trivia for High Road to China (1983)

* The scenes with 'Robert Morley' and Timothy Bateson were added after previews.

* In the scene where they first arrive in Afghanistan, Tom Selleck really slaps Bess Armstrong in the face hard enough to knock her to the ground.

* Naming the planes Dorothy and Lillian is a reference to actress sisters 'Dorothy Gish ' and Lillian Gish.

* The biplanes, Dorothy and Lillian, are French-built Stampes, which were built after WW II. Actual Stampes were civilian aircraft without armament. This explains the high mounting positions of the Lewis guns.

* The machine guns on Dorothy and Lillian are Lewis Automatic Machine Rifles, chambered in .303 British caliber. Although the weapon was invented by an American Army captain, it was adopted by almost every other Allied army in WW1 prior to being adopted by the US in 1917. The guns were inexpensive and reliable, explaining why O'Malley could afford a pair.

(*) I give it ten stars, but then the flying scenes in those old Sopwith Camels as well as the story itself is precious to me - after all, I did learn to fly in similar biplanes! (h)

Veni, vidi, volo in domum redire,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-08-2007, 10:57 PM

:o :o :o

;)

Stressed-out women not getting enough sleep

Updated Wed. Mar. 7 2007 10:59 AM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

More than half of women say they get a good night's sleep only a few nights per week or less, finds a new study. And their fatigue is leaving them late for work, stressed out, and too tired for friends or family.

According to a poll by the National Sleep Foundation in the U.S., nearly 70 per cent of women say they frequently have a problem sleeping, and 60 per cent only get a good night's sleep a few nights a week.

While the study polled only American women, the results in Canada would likely be similar.

The study found that 72 per cent of working mothers and 68 per cent of single working women suffered from insomnia. Stay-at-home mothers had even more difficulties, with 74 per cent of them saying they suffered insomnia at least a few nights a week.

Dr. Meir Kryger, the chairman of the 2007 Sleep in America Poll, finds women are trying to juggle too many duties.

"Women are blindsided by their biology," he told Canada AM. "They have periods, they become pregnant, they have babies and the babies keep them awake.

"They have problems when they try to juggle too many things in their life. They're the first to wake up in the morning and the last to go to sleep at night. And they do chores, they do stuff right until the very end of the day. So they just don't sleep enough."

Kryger notes that many women reported they were constantly getting by on six or fewer hours of sleep a night.

"That deficit adds up and people are tired and they have trouble driving. We found there was a lot of daytime sleepiness in that group," he says.

The survey found that when pressed for time, about one half of women responded that sleep and exercise were the first things sacrificed. When women were tired, 39 per cent also reduced the time they spent with friends and family, 37 per cent stopped eating healthily and 33 per cent stopped having sex with their partner.

Instead of trying to get to bed early to make up for lost sleep, 87 per cent of women said they watched television in the hour before going to sleep and 37 percent did other activities.

Kryger says that's a mistake.

"Women need to make sleep a priority," he advises. "They need to decide the following: 'I'm feeling lousy in the daytime and the only way for me to feel better is I have to sleep more.' And they have to make a real attempt to sleep more."

What overworked women don't need -- if they are simply overtired and not suffering from a genuine sleep disorder -- is medication, Kryger believes.

"These are not people who need medication; they are people who need to prioritize their lives, really."

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070307/women_sleep_070207/20070307?hub=Health

;) I just laugh when I read headlines that seems written by a simple-minded individual and think to myself, "No, you don't say!" I think this article is pretty simplistic, IMHO. But then, I am 1) a night person (no, not a "lady of the evening"...) and 2) I do not sleep well.

(i) As a kid, I HATED naps, but must admit that now and then around 3:00 p.m., I get really sleepy and give in to taking a nap. |-) Wyatt, as always, is delighted (or seems to be) to lie down next to me and catch a few winks too. (S)

Ancora imparo,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-08-2007, 11:01 PM

;) Trillin does it again! (y) (y)

Deadline Poet | posted August 24, 2006 (September 11, 2006 issue) The NATION

Presidential Eating Preferences

Calvin Trillin

Each President had favorite foods that we
Identify with him. We still can see
Dick Nixon following some global crise While pouring ketchup on his cottage cheese.
Those grits were loved by Carter best of all--
For eating or for Spackle-ing a wall.
And Reagan, though his mind might wander far
In meetings, he could focus on that jar
Of jelly beans and know just where he was.
Bill Clinton, doing what a bad boy does,
Ignored what all the doctors had advised him
And ate Big Macs until they supersized him.
For LBJ so many 'cue pits burned,
It looked as if the British had returned.
Bush One? By eating pork rinds and not crêpe, he
Believed we wouldn't see him as a preppy.

So what does this Bush eat? We just don't know
We do know, though, what he won't eat is crow--
As if some allergy or something makes
Him sprout a rash if he admits mistakes.
"Just have a taste," say critics of the war.
"It's much like quail, which you and Dick adore.
One bite? This dish is yummy, and homemade.
Admit it was an error to invade."
He won't eat crow. No crow. No, not a bite.
He's never wrong, cause Jesus makes him right.
"Just taste," they say. "We've added some Tabasco.
Eat crow and put an end to this fiasco."
Bush says, "I'm hungry. I could eat a horse,
But not a crow. We have to stay the course."
"This course is crow," they say. "If you'll just try,
We'll get you for dessert some humble pie."

http://www.thenation.com/docprem.mhtml?i=20060911&s=trillin

:D :D

"Dance as though no one is watching you...",

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-08-2007, 11:04 PM

(l) (l) (l)

http://www.kountrylife.com/index.htm

Rethinking the Farmhouse:

http://a820.g.akamai.net/f/820/822/1d/i.ivillage.com/countryliving/decorate/org/photo/52farm61.jpg

http://magazines.ivillage.com/countryliving/decorate/homes/photo/0,,431197_431225,00.html

Nice, but forget the pink-hued quilt:

http://www.cotswoldco.com/LS-res/img/ls-main_country-bedroom.jpg

(y) Not exactly country but gorgeous Sun Room:

http://www.cotswoldco.com/LS-res/img/ls-main_natural-living.jpg

Bright Kitchen: http://www.cotswoldco.com/LS-res/img/ls-main_country-kitchen.jpg

(y) (y)

"Age and treachery will triumph over youth and skill."

;)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-08-2007, 11:05 PM

:o :o

http://www.momastore.org/museum/moma/ProductDisplay_Cardboard%20Speakers_10451_10001_16 442

:)

Ancora imparo,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-08-2007, 11:07 PM

:) :)

http://www.geckotraders.com/

Ot dushi,

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-08-2007, 11:09 PM

:)

http://www.vivavi.com/

My house is smarter than your house. TM (?)

http://www.moderngreenliving.com/

^o) "Modern" with hard edges and glass has never been my cup of tea but I love light-coloured woods for furniture. :)

National Sarcasm Society: "Like We Need Your Support."

;) 's,

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-08-2007, 11:12 PM

(l) (l) (l) (l)

LOVELY Flash Slideshow: http://www.stormking.org/

http://bluehillstonebarns.com/

GREAT Flash Intro and fantastic web site: http://www.bluehillstonebarns.com/bhsb.swf

"50 is the new 30." (y) Most, most definitely.

ANCORA IMPARO,

Sweetlady & wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-08-2007, 11:15 PM

(h) 8-| (h) 8-|

Although the middle ground avoids risk, don't get caught in this no-man's land.

By Geoffrey Moore

Optimize

January 2007

Our culture is enamored of all things bright and new, but innovation is neither good nor bad. It can produce a variety of outcomes, several of which are valuable—although not all equally so—and some that are, in fact, harmful. It's critical, therefore, to focus on return on innovation.

The most valuable return comes from creating sustainable competitive advantage. Here, you invest to create offers that customers value and that competitors either can't or won't match. Think Apple's iPod, Southwest Airlines' pricing, or Google's search engine. These companies have achieved sustainable gains in bargaining power that increase revenue and margins and also buffer them from a commoditizing marketplace.

A second positive return on innovation is neutralization, a state of keeping pace with competitors and evolving norms. Think of this as "table stakes," a level of investment required for any legitimate vendor in the category. It doesn't produce the upside return of differentiation, but it does prevent the downside consequences of falling below market expectations or failing to comply with regulatory mandates. In this case, the goal is just to be "good enough." Think cars with cup holders, cellular carriers that don't drop calls (well, we can wish), or hotel rooms with Wi-Fi.

A third positive outcome is productivity. Here, you don't change your customer-facing attributes, but achieve them using fewer resources and invest deeper elsewhere. Such "more-for-less" initiatives are now commonplace in global commerce.

There are also two harmful potential outcomes from an innovation investment: failure, the risk inherent in trying anything new; and waste, which is truly pernicious.

Waste consists of innovation initiatives that fall in the middle ground between differentiation and neutralization; companies spearheading such projects spend far more than the minimum required to be good enough, but fall short of the commitment needed to be truly unique. Think of retailers like Gap, airlines like Delta, and automakers like Ford. While these businesses seem to avoid risk, they actually create the highest form of risk in a commoditizing marketplace by spending innovation dollars and getting little back. Each is caught with a cost structure that's too high and an offer that's too easily matched. As a result, none can generate an acceptable return on innovation. They deliver new incremental value to customers, but can't and don't get paid for it.

The lesson is simple. Either invest to be "beyond good" and don't compromise until you get there, or be frugal with your innovation budget and pare back to "good enough." Anything in between is a sucker's bet.

http://www.businessinnovation.cmp.com/articles/res_strat_070116.jhtml

(h) 8-| (h) 8-|

ANCORA IMPARO, ("I am still learning."),

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (S) (l) (&) (l) (S)

sweetlady

03-12-2007, 04:08 PM

;)

Saltine

How well its square
fit my palm, my mouth,
a toasty wafer slipped
onto the sick tongue
or into chicken soup,

each crisp saltine a tile
pierced with 13 holes
in balanced rows,
its edges perforated
like a postage stamp,

one of a shifting stack
sealed in wax paper
whose noisy opening
always signaled snack,
peanut butter or cheese

thick inside Premiums,
the closest we ever got
to serving hors d'oeuvres:
the redneck's hardtack,
the cracker's cracker.

—Michael McFee

Michael McFee has two new books out in 2006: his seventh collection of poetry, Shinemaster, and his first book of prose, The Napkin Manuscripts: Selected Essays and an Interview. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.

http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/mcfee_f06.html

ANCORA IMPARO,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-12-2007, 04:12 PM

(f) (f) (f) (f) (f)

The Memorial Service

Kathryn Brega Rebillot

The automatic door parted and swung out of the way, pulling us from the crisp March air into the disinfectant smell of the nursing home. Immediately to our left, just across from a tiny waiting room, were two small administrative offices, one nestled inside the other. Scotch-taped to the wall outside the office, next to the parish wall calendar, was the notice: a photocopied form with underlined blanks, filled in by hand in carefully printed letters, announcing the memorial service for Steve to be held on March 14, 2001, at 10:30 a.m. on the second floor.

A plump, pleasant-looking woman, whose eyeglasses and I.D. badges cascaded down her chest on a chain and bounced as she walked, approached us from the other end of the hall. She scanned our six faces quickly with polite curiosity and instantly settled on my mother's with sympathetic recognition.

"Mrs. Brega," she said, taking my mother's hand in both of hers. "And Mr. Brega." She extended her hand to him and paused momentarily, letting their names float as complete sentences. Mom smiled, lips tight, already fighting the urge to cry, and Dad simply said, "Hello."

Then she looked at my twin brothers, towering over all of us, and at my husband and me.

"I'm Kathy," I said, "Steve's sister. We met at one of your team meetings."

"Yes, of course. How nice that you could come."

I thought it an odd thing to say since we were family, but I smiled politely, looking for her name on the tangle of badges. "This is my husband, Pat, and—I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name."

"No, I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head. "I'm Margaret Dowd, the director here. Hello, Pat. So good of you all to come." The introductions seemed endless.

"These are my other sons, Douglas and David," my mother chimed in, her composure momentarily restored.

Please don't say it was nice of them to come.

"I'm very glad to meet you," she said to Doug and Dave. "And so glad you came."

She looked at each of us again as we waited to be told what to do next.

"We're going to the second floor," she said. "This way."

In the hallway several more notices about the service were taped to the wall. A younger, but similarly plump, woman was waiting to escort us to the second floor, and a round of polite hellos and fake smiles sufficed while we waited for the elevator. Inside the elevator another notice was taped to the wall. They were everywhere. Our escort pulled a ring of keys from her sweater pocket and fiddled with them as a final announcement crackled over the PA system in a slow, deliberate female voice: "The memorial service for Stephen Brega will begin at 10:30 on the second floor in the common room." My throat tightened and I looked at Doug and Dave. Doug muttered, "That's weird."

Everything about this is weird.

The elevator stopped, and the woman opened the door with a key. We filed out, stepping to the side to avoid fully entering the area before us. Doug turned pale and whispered, a bit too loudly, "This is like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Dave stifled an uncomfortable chuckle as I shot Doug a look. The room was dotted with people who seemed to be moving in a kind of slow motion. I couldn't tell if it was really their speed or if my mind just couldn't take them in any faster. It was a cold morning, and the gray light from outside backlit the shadowed figures at first, giving them an eerie, silhouette-like appearance. No one seemed to notice us at all, our awkwardness, our hesitation. Mom and Dad had moved through this room and the surrounding halls dozens of times in the last six months, but now they seemed disoriented. They didn't hear Doug's comment or our whispers; they were scanning the room, looking for Steve.

Moving authoritatively around the room was an older, petite woman in a white blouse, dark skirt and cardigan sweater, and black, comfortable-looking shoes. A small gold cross hung around her neck. Dad recognized her and made a beeline for her.

"Hello, Sister," he said.

"Hello, Mr. Brega," she said, offering both hands.

Instead of giving her his, he handed her a folder. "I brought some pictures of Steve. I thought people might want to see them. Is that all right?"

"Of course," she said. "Let's put them right here on this table, and people can come up and look at them whenever they want."

The round, commercial table, adorned by a plain white tablecloth, held a small vase of flowers, a portable cd player and a small stack of programs for the service. Dad spread the pictures out on the table, looked at me and shrugged. Then he took a handful of programs and gave us each one.

The program was typed on a piece of the facility's letterhead and photocopied, similar to the announcements taped to the walls and the elevator. It looked like a one-page script with the title Memorial Service. "Steve" was handwritten into blank spaces in four places. First, where the leader noted that "...we, Stephen Brega's community, turn to God's word as the source of our faith and hope"; then, where we asked God to: "receive Steve into His kingdom"; "to bless Steve and keep him and be gracious to him"; and "to lift up His countenance upon Steve and give him peace." Amen.

There would be two readings, followed by REFLECTION, PRAYER INTENTIONS: (Please feel free to pray out loud if you wish), and OPPORTUNITY FOR PERSONAL SHARING. Fill in the blank.

Three weeks earlier, the wake and funeral had seemed even more unreal. Familiar faces of friends, neighbors, and distant relatives filing into the funeral home, signing the book and looking at the collage of photos on the easel next to the casket, served to heighten the disbelief that Steve had died, that he was truly dead. Not like in 1964, when he was merely "clinically dead" for a few minutes. A few critical minutes, it turned out, before being revived by Dad and Mrs. Merton, the nurse across the street, who took turns pumping frantic breaths into his lifeless mouth. The wake and all of the recent rituals of grieving, however surreal, were at least clear. They weren't shrouded in the confusion and shame, which, in 1964, enveloped the botched suicide attempt that rendered sixteen-year-old Steve blue in the face (asphyxiation from the noose), comatose for two weeks, and permanently brain-damaged for the next thirty-seven years. Most of the callers didn't comment on the obvious double tragedy, that all these years later, at age fifty-three, Steve died from asphyxiation after choking on a sandwich. Irony was beside the point.

In 1964, in our small Massachusetts town, word spread like fire that Steve had tried to kill himself and that he was in a coma in the intensive care unit. People responded as if there had been a death in the family. The B&B Market, where Steve had worked the previous summer and after school until just the week before, sent over a canned ham, bacon, hamburger, cube steak, and a roast beef. Jean Wood made a pie. Marge Rigali made spaghetti and a cake and, on another day, took the ironing home with her. Flo Haetinger brought brownies, and Connie Pel-legrini made lasagna. Other people brought more cakes, bread, cookies, and a whole bag of cheeses. Someone even brought pickles. Mrs. Rockwell, in addition to baking a coffee cake, sent flowers. My aunt, Ruthie, made a list of who did what so that my mother could properly thank everyone later.

Ruthie had flown in from Ohio to be with us (Doug and Dave were fifteen, I was ten) while Mom and Dad took turns at the hospital around the clock. At that time, they were allowed just five minutes an hour to be in the intensive care unit with Steve. He was packed in ice to bring a raging fever down and, even while in a coma, had thrashed around so violently that he tore the skin around the small tracheotomy hole, carving what would later became a long, ugly scar across his throat. A vivid, if redundant, reminder.

Mom slept on a sofa in the hospital waiting room night after night for those first two weeks in order to be awakened by the nurses every hour for her five-minute vigil. Meanwhile, grim-faced doctors used terms like "vegetable" to describe the kind of future Steve was likely to inhabit, if he survived. Mom was adamant that he would neither die nor become a "vegetable." She would say, in her matter-of-fact way, "If he wasn't meant to live, we wouldn't have found him in time." It became a kind of mantra. At least he didn't die. He didn't die. She even stipulated that there were to be no tears unless he did die. Grief was, therefore, suspended, first for two weeks; then, after he emerged from the coma, for a few months. And a few more. Years would pass before Mom could even consider that he might never return to "normal." Since she was the conductor of the family mood, the rest of us followed her lead. We were instructed to use the term "brain injured" because it was implicitly more hopeful than "brain damaged" (and certainly more palatable than the official diagnosis I found in the records years later: Acute Brain Syndrome Associated with Trauma: Anoxia from Strangulation from Hanging). Her insistence on a positive attitude dared anyone to challenge her belief in Steve's ultimate, complete recovery.

During the early days, weekends were spent traveling to visit him in one hospital or another (which even he referred to as "funny farms"), or coping with his visits home. There were batteries of tests, applications to programs, trips to Vermont, Boston, Dallas, Philadelphia and New York. At times he lived at home. One regimen, which lasted a year or two and was designed to "pattern" his brain, required a strict routine of creeping and crawling on the floor, walking and skipping in a deliberate and exaggerated manner while pointing his forefinger at the opposite big toe, sleeping in a particular position, eating large spoonfuls of peanut butter to exercise his jaw so that he could speak better, and breathing into a paper bag for one minute every hour. A prominent department store in Springfield opened its doors early in the morning, before store hours, to let my father guide Steve around the spacious first floor on his belly, then his hands and knees, and then upright, skipping and walking. It was like a demonstration in evolution: reptile to mammal to human. Dad had taken a leave of absence from his job for a few months to follow this around-the-clock schedule of what, on paper, looked like a list of fraternity initiation pranks. When he had to return to work, a "tutor" was hired to put Steve through his paces. That made two strangers in the house.

There were flash cards and multiplication tables, elementary school books and tape recorders. The suppertime challenge was to re-teach him to eat only one mouthful at a time. We struggled to comprehend the devastating transformation from high school junior to this confused, low-functioning successor. Mostly, we just tried to cope. We became familiar with the top of each other's lungs and the bottom of each other's patience. "Chew your food, Steve." "Don't yell at him." "Stop it, Steve." "He's doing the best he can." "Why doesn't he understand?" "Button your shirt, Steve. Steve? Steve!" "Be patient. He can't help it." At times, neither could we. After the early, periodic, and unsuccessful attempts at living at home, he lived the rest of his lonely life primarily in nearby group homes, coming home for a day visit on most weekends. When asked casually by Dad, "How are things going, Steve?" he would answer simply, "Nightmare, John."

It was all so unnatural. It was as if parts of his brain were precious photographs, destroyed along with the negatives, in a fire. They were just gone. I used to dream that I would wake up one morning and there he would be, bewildered by his own reflection in the mirror and wondering, like Rip Van Winkle, where time had gone. He would be normal again, with a gaping hole in his memory for the lost years up to the morning of my dream. No more afterimage. Once in a while, and for the most fleeting of moments, a glimpse of normalcy would appear. When I was a teenager, he once said to me, while looking into the bathroom mirror and rubbing his fingers over the scar on his throat, "Don't you ever try anything like that, Kathy." His words were clear, not garbled, and it was the last time he said anything so big-brotherly to me.

Mom is fond of saying that time marches on. At times it did. Other times, it crawled, it oozed, it shuffled like someone on Thorazine. Years of industrial-strength medications took their toll as Steve's speech became more unintelligible and his body stiff and awkward. You could see his own frustration in his eyes. Walking through the streets, disheveled, unshaven, and mumbling to himself, he became the kind of guy you would probably cross the street to avoid. Nevertheless, in our small town, people who knew him still tooted their horns and waved to him before casting quick, sad glances into their rearview mirrors.

He managed, incredibly, to maintain a remarkable sense of humor that emerged from time to time in poignant, painful hilarity. But, he also became disruptive and, at times, violent, necessitating extra supervision and an occasional "respite stay" from his environment. His last official address was the "secure unit for behaviorally challenged" patients—the locked psychiatric ward—at the nursing home. He was on a respite stay from there, at a psychiatric hospital, when, in an unsupervised moment, he choked on a sandwich. The cause of death was listed as "asphyxia due to choking," and the manner of death as an accident.

The room was slowly filling up with residents and a few staff members. There we were: Dad, Mom, Doug, Dave, me, and Pat, each in our own little world, sitting uncomfortably on one side of a haphazardly formed horseshoe made of folding chairs. Sister welcomed each new arrival, waving her hand this way and that to direct someone to take a seat or move a chair to make space for the occasional wheelchair, gently guiding into position this unlikely group of mourners. We watched as if their assembly was a separate event and we a separate audience, and I was surprised to see so many people who had all come to say goodbye to Steve. I watched Sister approach a bewildered looking woman in a wheelchair who was asking if she was in the right place.

"Hello, Suzanne," Sister said. "Are you here for the memorial service for Steve Brega?"

"Yes," she said, and then added, "When did he die?"

"A few weeks ago," Sister said.

"Oh," she said, sadly. "That's too bad."

"Yes, it is. Was he a friend of yours?"

Suzanne looked into her lap and answered softly, "No. I didn't know him."

Sister put her hand on Suzanne's shoulder and nodded. "It's okay."

"I just thought it would be nice to come. Something to do," Suzanne added, as if she had decided to stop and watch what everyone else was watching on the television screens in the window of an appliance store.

Sister smiled at her. "It's very nice of you to come. Why don't you pull your chair up right over there, next to Charlie."

Suzanne's expression became purposeful, and she pushed off for the other side of the horseshoe and the space next to Charlie, who was staring intently at Dad across the room. I leaned forward and looked across the laps of my brothers and mother to Dad, who was smiling at Charlie.

"Dad," I whispered. "One of Steve's friends?"

He nodded and smiled a knowing smile. "Later," he whispered back.

Mom and Dad knew several of these people. They had spent part of every weekend for the last few months visiting Steve, greeting the other residents, taking an interest, however briefly, in their lives. Dad later told me that Charlie used to walk around the square of the nurse's station and poke his fingers into the change-return chute of the pay phone, barely stopping to feel for coins. Steve would sometimes wait by the phone and clap his hand over the change return as Charlie approached. Just for fun. Charlie would walk on by and keep walking around the quad past Steve until, eventually, Steve would get bored and move somewhere else, leaving Charlie to his hunt for spare change.

Sister clicked on the CD player and adjusted the volume. A piece of appropriately somber but lovely music began to quiet the voices in the room. All eyes were on Sister, except for those of one man, directly across from me, who was slouched in his wheelchair with his head hanging over his lap. I wondered if he, like Suzanne, was here because it was something to do.

Sister began by welcoming everyone to the service. "I want to thank you all for coming to this memorial service for Steve Brega. I know that it means a great deal to his family, who is here with us today." She held out her hand in our direction and nodded to us. All heads, except that of the man slumped over in his wheelchair, swiveled in our direction and stared. The man lifted his head ever so slightly, just enough to be able to raise his eyes and see us across from him. Suzanne smiled at us.

Sister continued as we followed along with our programs. My anxiety had quieted down, and I was now thinking that this was going to be too short. The whole program was only on one page. After the first section, in which the response from the participants sounded like a warped record, there were two readings, Psalm 23 and another from Revelations. The words spilled into the room like water seeking any crevice to fill. Then there was a moment of quiet reflection. After another request to God to receive Steve into His kingdom of light, love, and peace, it was time for Prayer Intentions. Sister asked us to pray for the pope, the local bishop, and the parish priest. She asked us to consider the poor, the sick, and the elderly. All the while, Mom's head remained down, much like the man's across the way. From time to time, her shoulders would shudder and her hands would crumple the tissues she continued to pull out of her sleeve. We all nodded and droned the response, "Lord, hear our prayer," after each call. Finally, Sister mentioned the nursing home and emphasized that we should say a "special prayer" for the residents. At this point, the man across the way, whose head was now practically in his lap, lifted just his head and moaned, in a loud, gravelly voice, "We can use all the help we can get." Then his head dropped back down over his lap. I looked down the row of Bregas to my left. Mom lifted her head and pursed her lips to stifle her laugh. Dad was unable to control the escape of some chuckling noises. It was something Steve would have said, looking for a laugh. Doug, Dave, Pat, and I could barely look at each other. The residents were not laughing, but simply nodding in agreement, and Sister, thoughtfully, allowed the moment to linger. The relief was glorious. "Thank you, Peter," she said finally. Yes, thank you, Peter.

Everyone was alert now. The last part of the service, which had only taken fifteen or twenty minutes so far, was the Opportunity for Personal Sharing. Sister invited people to say anything at all about Steve. One young man said that he liked to go downstairs with Steve to have a smoke on the porch. He would miss that. Charlie said only, "Steve was my friend." Suzanne sheepishly offered that she didn't know Steve, but that she would have liked to. A young man in sweatpants and slippers, who had been sitting through the service with a notepad on his lap, wrote something on it now, got up, and shuffled over to Dad. He handed the pad to him and looked into Dad's eyes. On the pad he had scrawled, "I want Steve come back." Dad showed the pad to Mom, who smiled and burst into tears. Dad also smiled and handed the pad back to the young man. "Me, too," he whispered. The man turned and looked at the rest of us. He walked slowly past Mom and Doug and handed the pad, arbitrarily, to David. David looked at the words, then at me and back to the man. He handed him the pad, raised his eyebrows, and said, "You never know."

Sister brought the service to an end, and invited people to come up to the table to look at the pictures. All the photos were, at Mom's insistence, pictures taken after 1964. She hadn't wanted any pictures of him as a child or even as a teenager. Perhaps having to grieve for both Steves— the "before" and the "after"—was just too much. Some of the photos were of him alone, candid shots of a nice-looking man whose condition was unknowable from the picture. Others were more strained: a forced smile, a slightly stoned look, an awkward stance, something just a little off. In one, he was laughing hysterically, looking for all the world like a guy having a good old laugh but, just maybe, a little crazy. Dad and I loved that one. Many were family photos, happy-as-we-can-be. Many more were lonely, at least to those of us who knew him. Several people meandered up to the table. They recognized the Steve in the pictures, the only Steve they knew, and they smiled at the photos. One man told me that he, too, liked to go to the beach. Another said, "Cute dog, what's his name?" No one knew what circumstances brought Steve into their lives. There was no grieving for an earlier Steve, no sadness about the life he could have had or the one he inhabited instead, and no double meaning in the silent mourner's note, "I want Steve come back." They were simply sorry he was gone. Charlie picked up one picture to study it more closely. Then he said, to no one in particular, "He was a nice guy."

Kathryn Brega Rebillot is a writing tutor for the Bard College Prison Initiative. She lives in Tivoli, New York, and is working on a collection of stories.

http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/rebillot_sp07.html

(f) (f) (f)

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-12-2007, 06:48 PM

;) ;) ;)

THE ABILITY TO MAKE AND UNDERSTAND PUNS IS THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT.

Here are the ten first place winners in the International Pun Contest:

1. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, "I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger."

2. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says "Dam!"

3. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

4. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says "I've lost my electron." The other says "Are you sure?" The first replies "Yes, I'm positive."

5. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication.

6. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse.

"But why?", they asked, as they moved off.

"Because," he said," I can't stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer."

7. A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption.

One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named "Ahmal." The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him "Juan. " Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal."

:D

8. A group of friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened up a small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town to "persuade" them to close.

Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he'd be back if they didn't close up shop.

Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that only Hugh can prevent florist friars.

9. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him (Oh, man, this is so bad, it's good) a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

:D :D

10. And finally, there was the person who sent ten different puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.

(f) (f)

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-12-2007, 06:52 PM

:| :| :|

http://blog.wired.com/photos/uncategorized/ms_soda.jpg

http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/03/microsoft_soda.html

:o

;)

Carpe Diem,

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-12-2007, 06:55 PM

:o :o

http://thrillingwonder.blogspot.com/2007/03/balancing-forces.html

(h) But who has the time to do them all? ;)

ANCORA IMPARO,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-12-2007, 07:06 PM

(h) 8-| (h) 8-|

http://thrillingwonder.blogspot.com/2007/03/fractals-for-food.html

(y) More on the fractals...and why snowflakes aren't (fractals):

(l) It's All About Fractals, Baby:

http://thrillingwonder.blogspot.com/2006/10/its-all-about-fractals-baby.html

BEAUTIFUL! http://farm1.static.flickr.com/177/403145999_bb8fc3b192_o.jpg

(l) Exquisite!: http://static.flickr.com/94/277085761_6485ff1e7d.jpg

Looks like but is not the Aurora Borealis:

http://static.flickr.com/111/277085048_b5dcea2f45.jpg

(y) Acid Trip without the acid:

http://static.flickr.com/86/277085047_4e5b573717.jpg

If we look on snow crystals under the electronic microscope, we'll see an array of astonishing forms... Crystals could be called the opposite of fractal forms, as they are finite and strictly structured, and just as mesmerizing.

http://static.flickr.com/97/277085033_c2b2c6416e.jpg

(h) 8-|

Carpe Diem,

SWeetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-12-2007, 07:22 PM

(f) (f) (f)

Vintage Commercial Aviation Promotions: Flight Attendants

There was something in the air in the early years of commercial aviation. Perhaps more excitement, perhaps more glamorous stewardesses... in any case, it's worth savoring once again.

Hot Pants & Boots: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/185/412277009_333b883830.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/179/406257232_0a24e759b1_m.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/179/416118420_0294f53786.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/171/411998247_a0ba8776be.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/170/412278094_d2e013041d.jpg

Would YOU salute her back? (or front....) ;)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/123/411996478_ed74f046d3.jpg

More HOT Pants & LACE-UP Boots!:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/149/412277200_39fdf352e7_o.jpg

Hot pink in the Engines: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/168/411997672_b8dc3b4e34.jpg

Where in the world airline had these for uniforms?

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/167/406257813_8c20dc612c.jpg

Very Femme and white gloves too!

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/159/416118645_d9ea288fba.jpg

Quite a face, no? http://farm1.static.flickr.com/123/346023250_101e31e0a7_o.jpg

Hot pink miniskirts: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/125/399592231_75b919bef6.jpg

& boots: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/133/399592022_2a5c065da5.jpg

One DOZEN in a row (like June Taylor dancers!):

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/154/399592643_cba1d70f16_o.jpg

Cool: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/146/346023213_ca719f6536_o.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/111/399592132_28c1562907.jpg

Vespas, girls and planes go well together:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/125/399592831_c449ab0526.jpg

:o 1968 was the year of the space helmet to protect the flight attendant's hairdo.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/136/399592451_e300dbf408.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/176/399592589_9f7b8c3ec8_o.jpg

(l) Pretty ladies adorned airplanes since WWII.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/132/323354235_78ab760a07.jpg

(f) Enjoy!

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-12-2007, 07:24 PM

(y) (y) (y)

http://www.savethegirls.org/index.html

(y) Definitely worth the "stay tuned" for. (y)

Carpe Diem,

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-12-2007, 07:30 PM

:) :)

Coffee Warning! http://farm1.static.flickr.com/139/357549661_9ce8ca444e.jpg

Other religious self-defense:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/138/405413652_99766b49f3_o.jpg

I never saw any of the ones I had in school do this:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/136/405430930_a6577e1ced.jpg

HilARious! http://farm1.static.flickr.com/149/405413866_637f31aab9.jpg

(l) My absolute favorite ride (I LMAO every time!) but never saw this:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/158/405413704_4b5fc3341e.jpg

And we finish with the strange "Nun/Darth Vader" toy:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/127/405437082_3725fb664d.jpg

:D :D :D

Veni, vidi, volo in domum redire,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-12-2007, 07:39 PM

;) ;)

Gee, you don't say: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/132/354638490_dcd6ff585c.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/126/393827494_ed218d4a31.jpg

:o http://farm1.static.flickr.com/144/352887466_3803d3f7c5.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/173/383441436_eabea145d4.jpg

:| :| http://farm1.static.flickr.com/188/393827576_ebfbd6e26c.jpg

PRICELESS! http://farm1.static.flickr.com/140/385950540_bb51842688.jpg

:) http://farm1.static.flickr.com/164/357548906_37d4bb8b75.jpg

;) http://farm1.static.flickr.com/150/360344129_6994391ec7.jpg

(y) (y)

(k) (k) 's,

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-12-2007, 07:45 PM

;) ;)

You may be threatened by the crazed digger (hiding in the fog and rain...):

http://static.flickr.com/97/280106457_dcac8db399_m.jpg

Or lured into the untimely death by a funeral home advertisement:

http://static.flickr.com/110/280106901_7cfa6c5127.jpg

More of the good old highway entertainment:

http://static.flickr.com/118/280106458_2265a8e4cd_m.jpg

(y) (y) http://static.flickr.com/97/280106909_391cfd9794_m.jpg

And a couple of the STOP signs to chill your soul:

http://static.flickr.com/117/280107315_2fe7b77897_m.jpg

Finally, a no-brainer:

http://static.flickr.com/109/280106906_bd9f5cc7cc.jpg

:D

ANCORA IMPARO,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-12-2007, 07:53 PM

(l) (f) (l) (f) (l) (f) (l)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/130/361691727_a7bc1332d0.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/158/361691684_617d80c147_o.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/156/361691665_0e917a7fe3_o.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/161/361691645_a248d1cf15_o.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/163/361691501_71ad380060.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/141/361691451_760b8f1696_o.jpg

(f)

ANCORA IMPARO,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

HYSterical HERnia

03-12-2007, 10:19 PM

http://10couples.org/stories.php

sweetlady

03-13-2007, 10:59 PM

http://10couples.org/stories.php

:) I enjoyed the link that you posted. Thanks for posting it. (f) I really love stories and appreciated the learning experience. :)

Have a lovely Tuesday evening and rest of your week. (f) (f)

Warmest wishes to you and yours,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-13-2007, 11:01 PM

;) ;)

Presidential Doodles

Reagan drew hearts?

Some see these scribbles as a subtle Rorschach test able to reveal more about the holders of America's highest office than any memoirs or second-hand history books. Others see them as a humanizing bridge spanning time and world events. Cast your vote...

Hail to the Chief! (or not):

http://www.presidentialdoodles.com/

:)

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-13-2007, 11:02 PM

:)

Hairstyles Gallery

Gwyneth and Reese go Rapunzel-chic...

If the Oscars wetted your appetite for glamorous hair, now you can feed your need for extensions, highlights, and more at this photo archive featuring over 13,000 'dos. Search by color, shape, texture, and more; then save your favorites in your own hair gallery!

Will a mullet bring out my eyes?

http://hairstyles.hairboutique.com/

:o

:D

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-13-2007, 11:04 PM

;) ;)

Destroy any Website

Cyber-vandalism, minus the Feds...

Nothing is destroyed for real, of course. Just a cathartic simulation. Enter the address of a Web site you loathe; then choose from a palette of destructive effects, including "Flamethrower," "Bird Poop," "Land Mines," or our favorite, "Acid."

Ahh... Good times.

http://www.bored.com/destroysites/index.php

:| :| :|

:o :o

;)

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-13-2007, 11:07 PM

:o :o :o

Bananas in Pajamas

Because bananas need sleep too...

Fans of the children's TV show can follow the antics of mischievous bananas "B1" and "B2" at this site filled with fun games, stories, "goodies," and even a gallery of viewers' artwork. Click on the Guestbook to send a message of your own!

Peel out!

http://abc.net.au/children/bananas/

:) :)

(k) 's,

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-13-2007, 11:08 PM

(l) (&) (l) (&) (l)

Pet IQ Test

Is there a Dog MENSA?

You've been bragging to your friends for years about how smart your dog is... Now you'll finally have proof! Print this quick canine SAT and show the world what you and Rover already know. High score goes on the refrigerator!

Bowl is to eating, as toilet is to...

http://today.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=98790

(l) (l) (l) (l)

(k) 's,

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-13-2007, 11:09 PM

:s :s

Crazy Thoughts

Never-ending questions dept.

Here's a cache of imponderable questions, stuff like: Do penguins have knees? If you pamper a cow, do you get spoiled milk? You know, the mental shavings you get from an evening of carving away at a block of insomnia. And it's strangely addictive.

Why is there air?

http://www.crazythoughts.com/

:| :| :| :| :|

;) 's,

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-13-2007, 11:11 PM

:|

Game: Bookworm Adventures — Windows

Eat a good book

Brave reader, you must help Lex the Bookworm protect the Great Library by spelling words, so you can engage the enemy, vanquish villains, and defenestrate demons. Discover gems, potions, and treasures as you do battle in three enchanting storybooks. You'll build your vocabulary muscles (and maybe learn what defenestrate means)!

Learn more and download today...

http://www.alivegames.com/bookworm_adventures/

:| Not me.....I NEVER download anything for Windows. <rasberries to Microsoft!>

ANCORA IMPARO,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-13-2007, 11:11 PM

(l) (y) (l) (y)

Quicksilver — Mac OS X

Super-cool launcher

Upon opening it, Quicksilver has arranged in a catalog your applications, some frequently used folders, and documents. Just activate it and you can search for and open anything in the catalog instantly. And Quicksilver remembers which items you open frequently and offers them up as first choice. When not in use, Quicksilver vanishes from your desktop until the next time you need it.

Learn more and download today...

http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/

(y) (y) (y)

ANCORA IMPARO,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-13-2007, 11:13 PM

(h) 8-| (h) 8-|

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/06/magazine/11dark600.1.jpg

March 11, 2007

Out There

By RICHARD PANEK

Three days after learning that he won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics, George Smoot was talking about the universe. Sitting across from him in his office at the University of California, Berkeley, was Saul Perlmutter, a fellow cosmologist and a probable future Nobelist in Physics himself. Bearded, booming, eyes pinwheeling from adrenaline and lack of sleep, Smoot leaned back in his chair. Perlmutter, onetime acolyte, longtime colleague, now heir apparent, leaned forward in his.

“Time and time again,” Smoot shouted, “the universe has turned out to be really simple.”

Perlmutter nodded eagerly. “It’s like, why are we able to understand the universe at our level?”

“Right. Exactly. It’s a universe for beginners! ‘The Universe for Dummies’!”

But as Smoot and Perlmutter know, it is also inarguably a universe for Nobelists, and one that in the past decade has become exponentially more complicated. Since the invention of the telescope four centuries ago, astronomers have been able to figure out the workings of the universe simply by observing the heavens and applying some math, and vice versa. Take the discovery of moons, planets, stars and galaxies, apply Newton’s laws and you have a universe that runs like clockwork. Take Einstein’s modifications of Newton, apply the discovery of an expanding universe and you get the big bang. “It’s a ridiculously simple, intentionally cartoonish picture,” Perlmutter said. “We’re just incredibly lucky that that first try has matched so well.”

But is our luck about to run out? Smoot’s and Perlmutter’s work is part of a revolution that has forced their colleagues to confront a universe wholly unlike any they have ever known, one that is made of only 4 percent of the kind of matter we have always assumed it to be — the material that makes up you and me and this magazine and all the planets and stars in our galaxy and in all 125 billion galaxies beyond. The rest — 96 percent of the universe — is ... who knows?

“Dark,” cosmologists call it, in what could go down in history as the ultimate semantic surrender. This is not “dark” as in distant or invisible. This is “dark” as in unknown for now, and possibly forever.

If so, such a development would presumably not be without philosophical consequences of the civilization-altering variety. Cosmologists often refer to this possibility as “the ultimate Copernican revolution”: not only are we not at the center of anything; we’re not even made of the same stuff as most of the rest of everything. “We’re just a bit of pollution,” Lawrence M. Krauss, a theorist at Case Western Reserve, said not long ago at a public panel on cosmology in Chicago. “If you got rid of us, and all the stars and all the galaxies and all the planets and all the aliens and everybody, then the universe would be largely the same. We’re completely irrelevant.”

All well and good. Science is full of homo sapiens-humbling insights. But the trade-off for these lessons in insignificance has always been that at least now we would have a deeper — simpler — understanding of the universe. That the more we could observe, the more we would know. But what about the less we could observe? What happens to new knowledge then? It’s a question cosmologists have been asking themselves lately, and it might well be a question we’ll all be asking ourselves soon, because if they’re right, then the time has come to rethink a fundamental assumption: When we look up at the night sky, we’re seeing the universe.

Not so. Not even close.

In 1963, two scientists at Bell Labs in New Jersey discovered a microwave signal that came from every direction of the heavens. Theorists at nearby Princeton University soon realized that this signal might be the echo from the beginning of the universe, as predicted by the big-bang hypothesis. Take the idea of a cosmos born in a primordial fireball and cooling down ever since, apply the discovery of a microwave signal with a temperature that corresponded precisely to the one that was predicted by theorists — 2.7 degrees above absolute zero — and you have the universe as we know it. Not Newton’s universe, with its stately, eternal procession of benign objects, but Einstein’s universe, violent, evolving, full of births and deaths, with the grandest birth and, maybe, death belonging to the cosmos itself.

But then, in the 1970s, astronomers began noticing something that didn’t seem to fit with the laws of physics. They found that spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way were spinning at such a rate that they should have long ago wobbled out of control, shredding apart, shedding stars in every direction. Yet clearly they had done no such thing. They were living fast but not dying young. This seeming paradox led theorists to wonder if a halo of a hypothetical something else might be cocooning each galaxy, dwarfing each flat spiral disk of stars and gas at just the right mass ratio to keep it gravitationally intact. Borrowing a term from the astronomer Fritz Zwicky, who detected the same problem with the motions of a whole cluster of galaxies back in the 1930s, decades before anyone else took the situation seriously, astronomers called this mystery mass “dark matter.”

So there was more to the universe than meets the eye. But how much more? This was the question Saul Perlmutter’s team at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory set out to answer in the late 1980s. Actually, they wanted to settle an issue that had been nagging astronomers ever since Edwin Hubble discovered in 1929 that the universe seems to be expanding. Gravity, astronomers figured, would be slowing the expansion, and the more matter the greater the gravitational effect. But was the amount of matter in the universe enough to slow the expansion until it eventually stopped, reversed course and collapsed in a backward big bang? Or was the amount of matter not quite enough to do this, in which case the universe would just go on expanding forever? Just how much was the expansion of the universe slowing down?

The tool the team would be using was a specific type of exploding star, or supernova, that reaches a roughly uniform brightness and so can serve as what astronomers call a standard candle. By comparing how bright supernovae appear and how much the expansion of the universe has shifted their light, cosmologists sought to determine the rate of the expansion. “I was trying to tell everybody that this is the measurement that everybody should be doing,” Perlmutter says. “I was trying to convince them that this is going to be the tool of the future.” Perlmutter talks like a microcassette on fast-forward, and he possesses the kind of psychological dexterity that allows him to walk into a room and instantly inhabit each person’s point of view. He can be as persuasive as any force of nature. “The next thing I know,” he says, “we’ve convinced people, and now they’re competing with us!”

By 1997, Perlmutter’s Supernova Cosmology Project and a rival team had amassed data from more than 50 supernovae between them — data that would reveal yet another oddity in the cosmos. Perlmutter noticed that the supernovae weren’t brighter than expected but dimmer. He wondered if he had made a mistake in his observations. A few months later, Adam Riess, a member of a rival international team, noticed the same general drift in his math and wondered the same thing. “I’m a postdoc,” he told himself. “I’m sure I’ve messed up in at least 10 different ways.” But Perlmutter double-checked for intergalactic dust that might have skewed his readings, and Riess cross-checked his math, calculation by calculation, with his team leader, Brian Schmidt. Early in 1998, the two teams announced that they had each independently reached the same conclusion, and it was the opposite of what either of them expected. The rate of the expansion of the universe was not slowing down. Instead, it seemed to be speeding up.

That same year, Michael Turner, the prominent University of Chicago theorist, delivered a paper in which he called this antigravitational force “dark energy.” The purpose of calling it “dark,” he explained recently, was to highlight the similarity to dark matter. The purpose of “energy” was to make a distinction. “It really is very different from dark matter,” Turner said. “It’s more energylike.”

More energylike how, exactly?

Turner raised his eyebrows. “I’m not embarrassed to say it’s the most profound mystery in all of science.”

Extraordinary claims,” Carl Sagan once said, “require extraordinary evidence.” Astronomers love that saying; they quote it all the time. In this case the claim could have hardly been more extraordinary: a new universe was dawning.

It wouldn’t be the first time. We once thought the night sky consisted of the several thousand objects we could see with the naked eye. But the invention of the telescope revealed that it didn’t, and that the farther we saw, the more we saw: planets, stars, galaxies. After that we thought the night sky consisted of only the objects the eye could see with the assistance of telescopes that reached all the way back to the first stars blinking to life. But the discovery of wavelengths beyond the optical revealed that it didn’t, and that the more we saw in the radio or infrared or X-ray parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, the more we discovered: evidence for black holes, the big bang and the distances of supernovae, for starters.

The difference with “dark,” however, is that it lies not only outside the visible but also beyond the entire electromagnetic spectrum. By all indications, it consists of data that our five senses can’t detect other than indirectly. The motions of galaxies don’t make sense unless we infer the existence of dark matter. The brightness of supernovae doesn’t make sense unless we infer the existence of dark energy. It’s not that inference can’t be a powerful tool: an apple falls to the ground, and we infer gravity. But it can also be an incomplete tool: gravity is ... ?

Dark matter is ... ? In the three decades since most astronomers decisively, if reluctantly, accepted the existence of dark matter, observers have eliminated the obvious answer: that dark matter is made of normal matter that is so far away or so dim that it can’t be seen from earth. To account for the dark-matter deficit, this material would have to be so massive and so numerous that we couldn’t possibly miss it.

Which leaves abnormal matter, or what physicists call nonbaryonic matter, meaning that it doesn’t consist of the protons and neutrons of “normal” matter. What’s more (or, perhaps more accurately, less), it doesn’t interact at all with electricity or magnetism, which is why we wouldn’t be able to see it, and it can rarely interact even with protons and neutrons, which is why trillions of these particles might be passing through you every second without your knowing it. Theorists have narrowed the search for dark-matter particles to two hypothetical candidates: the axion and the neutralino. But so far efforts to create one of these ghostly particles in accelerators, which mimic the high levels of energy in the first fraction of a second after the birth of the universe, have come up empty. So have efforts to catch one in ultrasensitive detectors, which number in the dozens around the world.

For now, dark-matter physicists are hanging their hopes on the Large Hadron Collider, the latest-generation subatomic-particle accelerator, which goes online later this year at the European Center for Nuclear Research on the Franco-Swiss border. Many cosmologists think that the L.H.C. has made the creation of a dark-matter particle — as George Smoot said, holding up two fingers — “this close.” But one of the pioneer astronomers investigating dark matter in the 1970s, Vera Rubin, says that she has lived through plenty of this kind of optimism; she herself predicted in 1980 that dark matter would be identified within a decade. “I hope he’s right,” she says of Smoot’s assertion. “But I think it’s more a wish than a belief.” As one particle physicist commented at a “Dark Universe” symposium at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore a few years ago, “If we fail to see anything in the L.H.C., then I’m off to do something else,” adding, “Unfortunately, I’ll be off to do something else at the same time as hundreds of other physicists.”

Juan Collar might be among them. “I know I speak for a generation of people who have been looking for dark-matter particles since they were grad students,” he said one wintry afternoon in his University of Chicago office. “I doubt how many of us will remain in the field if the L.H.C. brings home bad news. I have been looking for dark-matter particles for more than 15 years. I’m 42. So most of my colleagues, my age, we are kind of going through a midlife crisis.” He laughed. “When we get together and we drink enough beer, we start howling at the moon.”

Although many scientists say that the existence of the axion will be proved or disproved within the next 10 years — as a result of work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory — the detection of a neutralino one way or the other is much less certain. A negative result from an experiment might mean only that theorists haven’t thought hard enough or that observers haven’t looked deep enough. “It could very well be that Mother Nature has decided that the neutralino is way down there,” Collar said, pointing not to a graph that he taped up in his office but to a point below the sheet of paper itself, at the blank wall. “If that is the case,” he went on to say, “we should retreat and worship Mother Nature. These particles maybe exist, but we will not see them, our sons will not see them and their sons won’t see them.”

The challenge with dark energy, as opposed to dark matter, is even more difficult. Dark energy is whatever it is that’s making the expansion of the universe accelerate, but, for instance, does it change over time and space? If so, then cosmologists have a name for it: quintessence. Does it not change? In that case, they’ll call it the cosmological constant, a version of the mathematical fudge factor that Einstein originally inserted into the equations for relativity to explain why the universe had neither expanded nor contracted itself out of existence.

After the discovery of dark energy, Perlmutter concluded that the next generation of dark-energy telescopes would have to include a space-based observatory. But the search for financing for such an ambitious project can require as much forbearance as the search for dark energy itself. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen as much of Washington as I have in the last few years,” he says, sighing. Even if his Supernova Acceleration Probe didn’t now face competition from several other proposals for federal financing (including, perhaps inevitably, one involving his old rival Riess), delays have prevented it from being ready to launch until at least the middle of the next decade. “Ten years from now,” says Josh Frieman of the University of Chicago, “when we’re talking about spending on the order of a billion dollars to put something up in space — which I think we should do — you’re getting into that class where you’re spending real money.”

Even some cosmologists have begun to express reservations. At a conference at Durham University in England last summer, a “whither cosmology?” panel featuring some of the field’s most prominent names questioned the wisdom of concentrating so much money and manpower on one problem. They pointed to what happened when the government-sponsored Dark Energy Task Force solicited proposals for experiments a couple of years ago. The task force was expecting a dozen, according to one member. They got three dozen. Cosmology was choosing a “risky and not very cost-effective way of moving forward,” one Durham panelist told me later, summarizing the sentiment he heard there.

But even if somebody were to figure out whether or not dark energy changes across time and space, astronomers still wouldn’t know what dark energy itself is. “The term doesn’t mean anything,” said David Schlegel of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory this past fall. “It might not be dark. It might not be energy. The whole name is a placeholder. It’s a placeholder for the description that there’s something funny that was discovered eight years ago now that we don’t understand.” Not that theorists haven’t been trying. “It’s just nonstop,” Perlmutter told me. “There’s article after article after article.” He likes to begin public talks with a PowerPoint illustration: papers on dark energy piling up, one on top of the next, until the on-screen stack ascends into the dozens. All the more reason not to put all of cosmology’s eggs into one research basket, argued the Durham panelists. As one summarized the situation, “We don’t even have a hypothesis to test.”

Michael Turner won’t hear of it. “This is one of these godsend problems!” he says. “If you’re a scientist, you’d like to be around when there’s a great problem to work on and solve. The solution is not obvious, and you could imagine it being solved tomorrow, you could imagine it taking another 10 years or you could imagine it taking another 200 years.”

But you could also imagine it taking forever.

“Time to get serious.” The PowerPoint slide, teal letters popping off a black background, stared back at a hotel ballroom full of cosmologists. They gathered in Chicago last winter for a “New Views of the Universe” conference, and Sean Carroll, then at the University of Chicago, had taken it upon himself to give his theorist colleagues their marching orders.

“There was a heyday for talking out all sorts of crazy ideas,” Carroll, now at Caltech, recently explained. That heyday would have been the heady, post-1998 period when Michael Turner might stand up at a conference and turn to anyone voicing caution and say, “Can’t we be exuberant for a while?” But now has come the metaphorical morning after, and with it a sobering realization: Maybe the universe isn’t simple enough for dummies like us humans. Maybe it’s not just our powers of perception that aren’t up to the task but also our powers of conception. Extraordinary claims like the dawn of a new universe might require extraordinary evidence, but what if that evidence has to be literally beyond the ordinary? Astronomers now realize that dark matter probably involves matter that is nonbaryonic. And whatever it is that dark energy involves, we know it’s not “normal,” either. In that case, maybe this next round of evidence will have to be not only beyond anything we know but also beyond anything we know how to know.

That possibility always gnaws at scientists — what Perlmutter calls “that sense of tentativeness, that we have gotten so far based on so little.” Cosmologists in particular have had to confront that possibility throughout the birth of their science. “At various times in the past 20 years it could have gotten to the point where there was no opportunity for advance,” Frieman says. What if, for instance, researchers couldn’t repeat the 1963 Bell Labs detection of the supposed echo from the big bang? Smoot and John C. Mather of NASA (who shared the Nobel in Physics with Smoot) designed the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite telescope to do just that. COBE looked for extremely subtle differences in temperature throughout all of space that carry the imprint of the universe when it was less than a second old. And in 1992, COBE found them: in effect, the quantum fluctuations that 13.7 billion years later would coalesce into a universe that is 22 percent dark matter, 74 percent dark energy and 4 percent the stuff of us.

And if the right ripples hadn’t shown up? As Frieman puts it: “You just would have thrown up your hands and said, ‘My God, we’ve got to go back to the drawing board!’ What’s remarkable to me is that so far that hasn’t happpened.”

Yet in a way it has. In the observation-and-theory, call-and-response system of investigating nature that scientists have refined over the past 400 years, the dark side of the universe represents a disruption. General relativity helped explain the observations of the expanding universe, which led to the idea of the big bang, which anticipated the observations of the cosmic-microwave background, which led to the revival of Einstein’s cosmological constant, which anticipated the observations of supernovae, which led to dark energy. And dark energy is ... ?

The difficulty in answering that question has led some cosmologists to ask an even deeper question: Does dark energy even exist? Or is it perhaps an inference too far? Cosmologists have another saying they like to cite: “You get to invoke the tooth fairy only once,” meaning dark matter, “but now we have to invoke the tooth fairy twice,” meaning dark energy.

One of the most compelling arguments that cosmologists have for the existence of dark energy (whatever it is) is that unlike earlier inferences that physicists eventually had to abandon — the ether that 19th-century physicists thought pervaded space, for instance — this inference makes mathematical sense. Take Perlmutter’s and Riess’s observations of supernovae, apply one cornerstone of 20th-century physics, general relativity, and you have a universe that does indeed consist of .26 matter, dark or otherwise, and .74 something that accelerates the expansion. Yet in another way, dark energy doesn’t add up. Take the observations of supernovae, apply the other cornerstone of 20th-century physics, quantum theory, and you get gibberish — you get an answer 120 orders of magnitude larger than .74.

Which doesn’t mean that dark energy is the ether of our age. But it does mean that its implications extend beyond cosmology to a problem Einstein spent the last 30 years of his life trying to reconcile: how to unify his new physics of the very large (general relativity) with the new physics of the very small (quantum mechanics). What makes the two incompatible — where the physics breaks down — is gravity.

In physics, gravity is the ur-inference. Even Newton admitted that he was making it up as he went along. That a force of attraction might exist between two distant objects, he once wrote in a letter, is “so great an Absurdity that I believe no Man who has in philosophical Matters a competent Faculty of thinking can ever fall into it.” Yet fall into it we all do on a daily basis, and physicists are no exception. “I don’t think we really understand what gravity is,” Vera Rubin says. “So in some sense we’re doing an awful lot on something we don’t know much about.”

It hasn’t escaped the notice of astronomers that both dark matter and dark energy involve gravity. Early this year 50 physicists gathered for a “Rethinking Gravity” conference at the University of Arizona to discuss variations on general relativity. “So far, Einstein is coming through with flying colors,” says Sean Carroll, who was one of the gravity-defying participants. “He’s always smarter than you think he was.”

But he’s not necessarily inviolate. “We’ve never tested gravity across the whole universe before,” Riess pointed out during a news conference last year. “It may be that there’s not really dark energy, that that’s a figment of our misperception about gravity, that gravity actually changes the way it operates on long ranges.”

The only way out, cosmologists and particle physicists agree, would be a “new physics” — a reconciliation of general relativity and quantum mechanics. “Understanding dark energy,” Riess says, “seems to really require understanding and using both of those theories at the same time.”

“It’s been so hard that we’re even willing to consider listening to string theorists,” Perlmutter says, referring to work that posits numerous dimensions beyond the traditional (one of time and three of space). “They’re at least providing a language in which you can talk about both things at the same time.”

According to quantum theory, particles can pop into and out of existence. In that case, maybe the universe itself was born in one such quantum pop. And if one universe can pop into existence, then why not many universes? String theorists say that number could be 10 raised to the power of 500. Those are 10-with-500-zeros universes, give or take. In which case, our universe would just happen to be the one with an energy density of .74, a condition suitable for the existence of creatures that can contemplate their hyper-Copernican existence.

And this is just one of a number of theories that have been popping into existence, quantum-particle-like, in the past few years: parallel universes, intersecting universes or, in the case of Stephen Hawking and Thomas Hertog just last summer, a superposition of universes. But what evidence — extraordinary or otherwise — can anyone offer for such claims? The challenge is to devise an experiment that would do for a new physics what COBE did for the big bang. Predictions in string theory, as in the 10-to-the-power-of-500-universes hypothesis, depend on the existence of extra dimensions, a stipulation that just might put the burden back on particle physics — specifically, the hope that evidence of extra dimensions will emerge in the Large Hadron Collider, or perhaps in its proposed successor, the International Linear Collider, which might come online sometime around 2020, or maybe in the supercollider after that, if the industrial nations of 2030 decide they can afford it.

“You want your mind to be boggled,” Perlmutter says. “That is a pleasure in and of itself. And it’s more a pleasure if it’s boggled by something that you can then demonstrate is really, really true.”

And if you can’t demonstrate that it’s really, really true?

“If the brilliant idea doesn’t come along,” Riess says, “then we will say dark energy has exactly these properties, it acts exactly like this. And then” — a shrug — “we will put it in a box.” And there it will remain, residing perhaps not far from the box labeled “Dark Matter,” and the two of them bookending the biggest box of them all, “Gravity,” to await a future Newton or Einstein to open — or not.

Richard Panek is the author of “The Invisible Century: Einstein, Freud and the Search for Hidden Universes.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/magazine/11dark.t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin

ANCORA IMPARO,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-13-2007, 11:19 PM

:| :| :| :| :|

As most Nation readers know from Jeremy Scahill's on-going reporting for the magazine, Blackwater, USA, a powerful private army with its own military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft, and 20,000 soldiers, is run by a multimillionaire Christian conservative who bankrolls President Bush and his allies.

Acting, as Scahill has written, as the Bush Administration's Praetorian Guard for the "global war on terror," Blackwater has been busy fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, establishing military bases in Iran, and patrolling the hurricane-ravaged streets of New Orleans. The problem, as Scahill points out, is that such power in the hands of one company embodies the "military-industrial complex" President Eisenhower warned against in 1961.

For the full story of the world's most powerful mercenary army and what the privatization of the US military means for American democracy, read Scahill's new book Blackwater.. It's an invaluable read for anyone concerned with the direction of the American experiment.

Scahill's NATION articles: http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/jeremy_scahill

(n) (n) "American experiment"? Iraq is an American experiment - using Blackwater - "run by a multimillionaire Christian conservative who bankrolls President Bush and his allies"?

:| :|

^o) A seachange is coming........

Veni, vidi, volo in domum redire,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-13-2007, 11:24 PM

:o

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/11/us/11separate.xlarge1.jpg

March 11, 2007

To Have, Hold and Cherish, Until Bedtime

By TRACIE ROZHON

Not since the Victorian age of starched sheets and starchy manners, builders and architects say, have there been so many orders for separate bedrooms. Or separate sleeping nooks. Or his-and-her wings.

In interviews, couples and sociologists say that often it has nothing to do with sex. More likely, it has to do with snoring. Or with children crying. Or with getting up and heading for the gym at 5:30 in the morning. Or with sending e-mail messages until well after midnight.

In a survey in February by the National Association of Home Builders, builders and architects predicted that more than 60 percent of custom houses would have dual master bedrooms by 2015, according to Gopal Ahluwalia, staff vice president of research at the builders association. Some builders say more than a quarter of their new projects already do.

What could be called the home-sleeping-alone syndrome is not limited to the wealthy. For middle-income homeowners, it may be a matter of moving into a spare bedroom, the recreation room or the den. In St. Louis, Lana Pepper, a light sleeper who battled for years with her husband’s nocturnal restlessness, reconfigured the condominium they bought recently, adding walls to create separate bedrooms. Mrs. Pepper said the advantage to separate rooms was obvious: “My husband is still alive. I would have killed him.”

“It was more than snoring,” she said, recounting the bad old days of a shared bed. “He cannot have his feet tucked into any of the covers; I have to have them tucked in. So I took all the linens and split them with scissors. Then I finished the edge so that half of the sheet would tuck under and the other half he could kick out.”

That did not help his snoring, so she bought a white noise machine; she even went to a shooting range to buy “a pair of those big ear guards they wear.” They did not suit her.

According to the National Sleep Foundation in Washington, 75 percent of adults frequently either wake in the night or snore — and many have taken to separate beds just for those reasons. In a report issued Tuesday, the foundation found that more than half the women surveyed, ages 18 to 64, said they slept well only a few nights a week; 43 percent believed their lack of sleep interfered with the next day’s activities.

Stephanie Coontz, director of public education for the Council of Contemporary Families in Chicago, said many couples she interviewed were “confident enough that they have a nice marriage, but they don’t particularly like sleeping in the same room.”

“I don’t think it says anything about their sex lives,” Ms. Coontz said.

Mrs. Pepper, 60, who co-founded St. Louis’s annual Shakespeare festival, takes her sleeping seriously. On her nightstand is an arsenal of remote controls: for the adjustable bed, the television, the lights, the humidifier and the DVD player. Her mattress is made from a foam developed by NASA that rests in a four-poster frame under a skylight.

At Escala, a condominium project in Seattle, a quarter of the 270 units have double master bedrooms, said John Midby, a partner in the development. In St. Louis County, Dennis Hayden, president of Hayden Homes, said that each of the 30 detached homes in his latest planned community would have two separate-but-equal bedroom suites.

Kristen Scott, an architect in Seattle, said about one-third of her empty nester clients asked for separate bedrooms, which can cost a few thousand dollars to more than $100,000. In Honolulu, Nancy Peacock, an architect, said her clients increasingly requested “punees,” as daybeds are known in Hawaii — sometimes on the lanai, the covered porch of the house.

In St. Louis, Carol Wall, president of Mitchell Wall Architects, said that three or four years ago her company began “doing a lot of these little rooms off the master bedroom where the snorer would go.” More recently, couples, including some in their 30s, have started asking for two master suites, “and we don’t ask any questions,” Ms. Wall said.

Not everyone wants to talk about it. Many architects and designers say their clients believe there is still a stigma to sleeping separately. Some developers say it is a delicate issue and call the other bedroom a “flex suite” for when the in-laws visit or the children come home from college. Charles Brandt, an interior designer in St. Louis, said, “The builder knows, the architect knows, the cabinet maker knows, but it’s not something they like to advertise because right away people will think something is wrong” with the marriage.

An interior designer in Chicago moved into her son’s bedroom when he went off to college. “Separate bedrooms are de rigueur for us,” she said, adding that she and her husband sleep together on the weekends. The couple asked that their names not be published.

Fred Tobin, a builder in North Canton, Ohio, is friends of a prominent couple in Columbus whose house was remodeled with two master bedrooms. The wife sleeps on one side of the house, the husband on the other. “It’s a hush-hush thing,” Mr. Tobin said. “The husband travels a lot, all the time, and he comes home late, and he wants to be able to check his e-mail and go to bed without waking her up.”

The move to separate sleeping spaces is yet another manifestation of changing marital patterns.

“Couples today are writing their own script, rewriting how to have a marriage,” said Pamela J. Smock, a University of Michigan sociologist. “The growing need for separate bedrooms also represents the speed-up of family life — women’s roles have changed — and the need for extra space eases the strain on the relationship. If one of them snores, the other one won’t be able to perform the next day. It’s nothing to do with social class, and it’s not necessarily indicative of marital discord.”

Nevertheless, Professor Smock said husbands were less willing to change familiar patterns.

“Men are supposed to be one, dominant, and two, sexual,” she said. “Their wives might be thrilled to have their own bedroom, and see it as a romantic thing — going back to their romance, going back to dating, to intimacy, but the husband might not see it that way.

“As a social pattern, this could increase,” she continued. “A lot of people I know fantasize about living in the same apartment building as their husband — but in a separate apartment. That could be next.”

Paul C. Rosenblatt, a professor in the department of family and social science at the University of Minnesota, has studied couples who sleep separately, and wrote a book last year on the challenges and benefits, “Two in a Bed: The Social System of Couple Bed Sharing.” To him, a large part of the phenomenon has to do with aging. Many of those Professor Rosenblatt surveyed, like the Chicago couple, split into separate bedrooms when their children grew up.

“It’s suddenly available,” he said, “and if you have trouble sleeping you go into the kid’s room and find you slept better than with your partner.”

But some of the people he studies still want a place to cuddle. “In my research, couples had separate places for their sleeping arrangements but also had a together place,” he said. “Some do their cuddling before going their separate ways.”

Occasionally, the need to separate does have to do with sex. Professor Rosenblatt said one older woman he interviewed said she had her own bedroom because, “I’ve paid my dues. I’m old enough that I don’t want to have sex at 1 a.m.”

No matter what the reasons, architects and builders say they know enough not to call them “master” bedrooms anymore.

“Women are buying more homes, and women are sensitive to that terminology of the ‘master suite,’ and they’re opting for the term ‘owners’ suite,’ ” said Barbara Slavkin, an interior designer in St. Louis.

Dale Mulfinger, an architect in Minneapolis, said, “How about ‘couples’ realms’?”

Whatever you call them, they certainly seem to suit the Peppers, the St. Louis couple who reconfigured their new condominium to give them each a sleeping sanctuary.

Ted Pepper’s room, lined with a bank of windows that open onto a rooftop terrace, has none of the sleeping paraphernalia — the sound machine, the sleeping mask — found in his wife’s room. The only evidence of his sleep habits is the twisted knot of sheets and blankets on his bed.

“Now, there’s a demonstration,” said Mr. Pepper, 67, gesturing toward the swirl of bedding and chuckling. “She’d wake up if I moved even a little.”

The Peppers agree: separate bedrooms have added spice to their relationship. “It’s more exciting,” Mrs. Pepper said, “when you can say: ‘Your room or mine?’ ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/us/11separate.html?em&ex=1173931200&en=8b2132ffa2e8e4c0&ei=5087%0A

(y) (y) Of course the other way to not get on one another's nerves is if one travels on business. This worked well when I was on the road every week - if I *was* in a relationship, that is.

(l) However, I kind of liked the idea of two "owner" suites. IMHO, as people age, they need more breathing room and cannot tolerate NOT getting enough sleep for starters. I loved this approach. (y) (y) I always planned on having two "suites" like those described in the article in my ranch log home or B&B.

Veni, vidi, volo in domum redire,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-13-2007, 11:27 PM

(y) (y) (y)

The golden age of the Hollywood player (Armani, anyone?) meets the golden age of the Hollywood star.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/03/08/style/tmagazine/20070311_STUDIO_SLIDESHOW_1.html

The Gleam Team:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/03/08/style/tmagazine/20070311_METAL_SLIDESHOW_1.html

(f) (f)

ANCORA IMPARO,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

03-13-2007, 11:32 PM

8-) 8-) 8-)

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/06/magazine/11safire600.1.jpg

March 11, 2007

On Language

Vogue Words

By WILLIAM SAFIRE

Three phrases, new and old, are being bruited about the world of English. If you’re not using at least one, you are letting the language pass you by.

Age-Appropriate

The actor Harrison Ford, making a pitch to film critics about a forthcoming cops-and-robbers thriller, described his female lead as “my beautiful, age-appropriate, Swedish psychic girlfriend.” Since he is middle-aged, that would place the actress, Lena Olin, in at least her 30s or early 40s.

Helen Mirren, who won the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II, strolled down the Academy Awards red carpet in what several reporters called “a very pretty, age-appropriate dress.” That meant that this woman “of a certain age,” as the French say, did not strain to look young and sexy; her décolletage was natural and decorous.

The compound adjective has been around for more than a generation: the Children’s Television Network designed a computer game for kids in 1982, and its spokeswoman told The Boston Globe that “the educational concepts are age-appropriate” (not the fiendish fun kids have today blasting monstrous space aliens to smithereens).

What does the term mean? I tried it on Punch Hutton, an editor at Vanity Fair. (I think of Punch as a nickname for Arthur.) “When you’re a teenager,” she says, “an age-appropriate outfit means there’s a little sass but nothing is too tight and there aren’t any cracks — cleavage or tush — showing. When women get older, they don’t need to show as much skin, but showing lovely shoulders and arms is feminine without being too much. No short skirts unless you’re playing tennis.”

A general definition, then, is “behavior in dress, speech or action befitting one’s age.” But were that to take hold, there would go the cosmetics industry.

To Show Ankle

During the trial of Lewis (Scooter) Libby, former chief aide to Vice President Cheney, a former State Department official — now a much-quoted critic of Iraq policy — expressed his surprise at talk of a rift between Libby and the Bush adviser Karl Rove. “One of their strengths,” Lawrence Wilkerson said, “was that they worked together. They didn’t show any ankle — it was always a team effort.”

“The use of show any ankle here is confusing,” Roger Danforth of New York e-mails. “I’m used to it as a way of describing giving a woman’s outfit a little sex appeal, or as Variety-speak (‘she ankled the production’) meaning ‘to walk away from a movie deal.’ But this is new to me. Where did it come from?”

One of my Times colleagues reporting on the trial, Jim Rutenberg, who went to a Quaker school for 13 years, recalls a movie about Quakers (probably “Friendly Persuasion”) in which “one of the young female characters was scolded for allowing her ankles to show beneath her huge ruffled skirt. The phrase ‘show a little ankle’ has come up quite a bit in my interviews with political types, usually when they are weighing whether to share strategic details: ‘We may be willing to show a little ankle on that eventually, but not right now.’ ”

A search engine went puffing back to 1984 to find a diplomatic use. Secretary of State George Shultz was meeting Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko about resuming talks on arms control. The Christian Science Monitor reported that some of the secretary’s aides “feel Mr. Shultz should show ‘some ankle,’ that is, suggest specific negotiating gambits that would indicate President Reagan is serious about wanting results.”

John Keats in 1816 ghosted a poem for his brother George to send as a valentine to one Mary Frogley, his mouth fairly watering over “the neatness/Of thine ankle lightly turn’d:/With those beauties, scarce discern’d. . . .”

To avert 80 days in the slammer, I will now cravenly reveal a source: Lawrence Wilkerson sends word that as a 10-year-old he was “helplessly smitten” with a teacher: “When she would lean to reach the blackboard . . . her longish skirt would rise and expose a lovely ankle, and all of the boys would nearly swoon. She was, however inadvertently, ‘showing a little ankle.’ ” In diplomatic lingo, however, such showing is intentional: the phrase means, according to Wilkerson, the witness who used it, “to expose a bit of one’s position but only enough to tease, not enough to divulge the whole matter or to give away the bigger picture.”

Does that show “a team effort” or a rift or what? Go figure.

Go figure

A verbal shrug has been whipping through the language. Google reports more than two million uses in its files over the past half century, growing in intensity as the phrase has been shortened.

“Go figure it out,” Robert Stack sighed, one Erskine Johnson reported in a column that appeared in The Walla Walla Union Bulletin on June 10, 1953. “After ‘The Bullfighter and the Lady,’ which was a great prestige picture, I didn’t work for a year. ‘Bwana Devil,’ panned by everybody in Hollywood, did the trick for me.”

Benjamin Zimmer, editor for American dictionaries at Oxford University Press, passed that citation around the American Dialect Society more than two years ago. He informs me that “‘go figure’ seems to have originated as a shorter form of such expressions as ‘go figure it out’ and ‘you go figure it,’ both of which date to the 1950s.” Then shortening took place, and by the 1970s we had go figure. Now that phrase is rampant.

Why has it mushroomed so? What subtleties of meaning does it express that no other phrase conveys? Or is there some other way to get across its resigned puzzlement?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/magazine/11wwlnsafire.t.html?ref=magazine

(y) (y) "To Show Ankle" reminded me of the good old days when in a business meetings with vendors, after signing an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) - the vendor would "open the kimono" - and show technology (ies) coming in the next three years. The intention was ususally the same - to entice existing/potential customers to buy from that vendor. ^o)

ANCORA IMPARO,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)