Quotes, URL's, Links And References-by:older Femmes, Butches, Ftms, Mtfs, Queer, Etc. [Archive] - Page 18

sweetlady

04-18-2007, 09:56 AM

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

A candlelight vigil on the campus of Virginia Tech on Tuesday nigh

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/17/us/18virgi-2-600.jpg

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/04/17/us/20070417_VIRGINIA_SLIDESHOW_1.html

April 18, 2007

Complaints About Gunman Were Reported in 2005

By SHAILA DEWAN and JOHN M. BRODER

BLACKSBURG, Va., April 19 — Two female students at Virginia Polytechnic Institute complained to authorities about the behavior of Cho Seung-Hui, the killer in the shooting rampage there, in separate incidents in 2005 and he was then sent to a mental health facility, but no charges were filed against him.

In a news conference today, the police revealed more details about the 23-year-old students who was named as the gunman in the shooting rampage in which 32 people were killed. Mr. Cho also died, shooting himself in the face at the end of the spree.

The police said that in November, 2005, Mr. Cho contacted a fellow female student who notified the campus police. She declined to press charges. In December, a second female student also complained to the police. While no threats were made, he was asked to have no further contact with her after the “annoying” messages.

“That’s the way the victim characterized it,” a police spokesman said.

The police later were concerned that Mr. Cho might be suicidal. Officers met with him and suggested that he speak to a counselor. Mr. Cho was later seen at a local mental health facility, then transported to another facility.

Neither of the female students who complained about Mr. Cho were among the victims, and the police were not aware if they were in the vicinity.

Also in 2005, Lucinda Roy, an English professor, shared her concerns with the authorities, but no official report was filed. The writings did not express threatening intentions.

There were no further referrals to the police before Mr. Cho was named on Tuesday in connection with the deaths of the students and teachers on the sprawling campus.

Mr. Cho has been described as a troubled young man few people on campus knew.

Federal investigators said Mr. Cho — a South Korean immigrant who Americanized his name and preferred to be known as Seung Cho — left behind a note that they described as a lengthy, rambling and bitter list of complaints focusing on moral laxity and double-dealing he found among what he viewed as wealthier and more privileged students on campus.

And new information emerged that may help explain a fateful two-hour delay by university officials in warning the campus of a gunman at large. According to search warrants and statements from the police, campus investigators had been busy pursuing what appears to have been a fruitless lead in the first of two shooting episodes Monday.

After two people, Emily Jane Hilscher, a freshman, and Ryan Clark, the resident adviser whose room was nearby in the dormitory, were shot dead, the campus police began searching for Karl D. Thornhill, who was described in Internet memorials as Ms. Hilscher’s boyfriend.

According to a search warrant filed by the police, Ms. Hilscher’s roommate had told the police that Mr. Thornhill, a student at nearby Radford University, had guns at his town house. The roommate told the police that she had recently been at a shooting range with Mr. Thornhill, the affidavit said, leading the police to believe he may have been the gunman.

But as they were questioning Mr. Thornhill, reports of widespread shooting at Norris Hall came in, making it clear that they had not contained the threat on campus. Mr. Thornhill was not arrested, although he continues to be an important witness in the case, the police said.

At the time of the dormitory shootings, Col. W. Steven Flaherty, the superintendent of the Virginia State Police, said, “There was certainly no evidence or no reason to think that there was anyone else at that particular point in time.”

State officials continued to defend the actions of the campus authorities. John W. Marshall, the Virginia secretary of public safety, said Charles W. Steger, the president of Virginia Tech, and Chief Wendell Flinchum of the campus police “made the right decisions based on the best information that they had available at the time.”

At an afternoon news briefing, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said Dr. Steger had asked him to appoint a committee to examine the university’s response and try to answer some of the remaining questions about the gunman’s actions.

Governor Kaine said today in an interview on CNN that he was appointing W. Gerald Massengill, former superintendent of Virginia State Police, to head the independent panel that would conduct the review.

After the shootings, the state police executed another search warrant, this time for Mr. Cho’s dormitory room. The warrant said a bomb threat against the engineering school buildings was found near Mr. Cho’s body. The warrant mentioned two other bomb threat notes against the campus received over the past three weeks.

Mr. Cho had used two handguns, a 9-millimeter and a .22-caliber, to shoot dozens of rounds, leaving even those who survived with multiple bullet wounds, officials said. The guns were bought legally in March and April. Colonel Flaherty said that although one of those guns had been used in the dormitory shooting, investigators were not ready to conclude that the same gunman was responsible for both episodes. But he said there was no evidence of another gunman or an accomplice.

Among the central unknowns is what prompted the gunman to move to Norris Hall, which contains engineering and other classrooms, where all but the first two killings took place. The authorities said Mr. Cho’s preparations, including chaining the doors, suggested planning and premeditation, rather than a spontaneous event.

Bodies were found in four classrooms and the stairwell of the building, Colonel Flaherty said.

“You all have reported that this is the most horrific incident that’s occurred on a college campus in our country, and the scene certainly bore that out,” he said. “Personal effects were strewn about the entire second floor at Norris Hall. So it made it much more difficult for us to identify students and faculty members that were victims.”

Officers also found several knives on Mr. Cho’s body. They first identified him by a driver’s license found in a backpack near the scene of the shootings, although it was not clear at first whether the backpack belonged to the gunman. But the name was checked against a visa application, and when a fingerprint on one of the weapons matched a print on the visa application, the authorities made a positive identification. The print matched another print left in the first shooting location.

Prescription medications said to be related to treatment of psychological problems were found among Mr. Cho’s effects, but officials did not specify what drugs they were.

Mr. Cho’s effects, but officials did not specify what drugs they were.

In addition, investigators were reviewing recent bomb threats at the university in an effort to determine whether the gunman might have been involved in them, as an effort to test the university’s emergency response procedures.

Ms. Roy said Mr. Cho’s writing, laced with anger, profanity and violence, concerned several faculty members. In 2005, she sent examples to the campus police, the campus counseling service and other officials. All were worried, but little could be done, she said.

Ms. Roy said she would offer to go with Mr. Cho to counseling, just to talk. “But he wouldn’t say yes, and unfortunately I couldn’t force him to do it,” she said. Students were also alarmed that Mr. Cho was taking inappropriate pictures of women under desks, she said.

In all, 33 people died Monday, including Mr. Cho and at least four faculty members. The victims’ names were not officially released, but most appeared to be in their late teens or early 20s. They included Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, and Reema Samaha, a freshman and a devoted dancer. Ms. Hilscher wanted to be a veterinarian; Mr. Clark was a member of the marching band. “This is a grief that does not know an international boundary,” Governor Kaine said.

By Tuesday afternoon there were still 14 injured victims at four hospitals, out of 28 initially transported from the scene, two of whom died. The 14 included two at a Level 1 trauma center in Roanoke, one in critical condition and the other in serious condition.

One of the luckier ones was Kevin Sterne, a senior who will graduate in a few weeks. He was hit twice in the right thigh, piercing an artery.

Mr. Sterne grabbed an electrical cord and fashioned a tourniquet until help arrived. “I think there’s a good chance he would have died,” said Dr. David B. Stoeckle of Montgomery Regional Hospital in Blacksburg.

Classes at Virginia Tech were canceled for the rest of the week, and Dr. Steger announced that Norris Hall would remain closed for the rest of the semester.

Thousands of students and faculty and staff members gathered Tuesday afternoon at Cassell Coliseum, the university’s basketball arena, for a solemn convocation. President Bush and Laura Bush attended the gathering and then spent much of the afternoon consoling members of the university family.

“This is a day of mourning for Virginia Tech, and it is a day of sadness for our entire nation,” Mr. Bush said in his remarks.

The president said that Monday began like any other school day, but then took a dark turn.

“By the end of the morning,” he said, “it was the worst day of violence on a college campus in American history — and for many of you here today, it was the worst day of your lives.”

But Mr. Bush’s consoling words, and those of various campus religious leaders and the poet Nikki Giovanni, could not silence the questions of at least some of the stricken families.

“I guess we’re a little curious as to why it took so long” to lock down the campus after the first two fatal shootings, said Kim Tate, the mother of a sophomore. Ms. Tate contrasted Monday’s response to the rapid closing of the entire campus last summer after an incident involving an escaped convict in the area.

Asian-American students at Virginia Tech reacted to news about the gunman’s identity with shock and a measure of anxiety about a possible backlash against them.

“My parents are actually worried about retaliation against Asians,” said Lyu Boaz, a third-year accounting student who was born in South Korea and became an American citizen a year ago. “After 9/11, a lot of Arabs were attacked for that reason.”

Mr. Boaz, a resident adviser at Pritchard Hall, said many Korean-American students had left campus immediately. Parents of other Korean-American students were preparing to pick up their children on Tuesday afternoon and take them home.

Dr. Steger, the university president, has been at the center of this week’s trauma, which he described as a horrible nightmare from which he hoped to awake. Friends said that despite his stoic demeanor, the campus deaths had exacted a heavy toll on a man who has spent his entire adulthood at Virginia Tech, as a student, professor, dean and administrator.

“I think he’s grieving beyond belief,” said Alan Merten, the president of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., who described himself as a colleague and old friend. “I think he’s suffering beyond belief.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/us/18cnd-virginia.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

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

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

sweetlady

04-18-2007, 10:04 AM

:)

This spring the fashion forward take their hues from nature.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/04/13/style/tmagazine/20070415_EYE_SLIDESHOW_1.html

(f)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

04-18-2007, 10:05 AM

(f) (f)

Favorite color: mauve. favorite author: Umberto Eco. Favorite food: meyer lemon sorbetto. Favorite magazine: T.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/04/13/style/tmagazine/20070415_APRIL_SLIDESHOW_1.html

(f) (f) Enjoy!!

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

sweetlady

04-18-2007, 10:07 AM

;)

April 15, 2007

Samurai Shopper

Fake ’n’ Bake

By S.S. FAIR

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Not you — the Samurai Shopper, slathered with baby oil and iodine at the beach, year after adolescent year, sunbathing on a bed of seagull guano, watching toddlers poke jellyfish with sticks, all the while roasting three shades darker than Danger Mouse. I looked good, at least by my account, and laughed at other beachniks slapping Kabuki-like zinc oxide on their noses. Dweebs, one and all, I said through a snicker. But sunbathing wrought terrible damage and put me where I am today.

And where am I today? In the office of Dr. Michael S. Cohen, a dermatologist in the 516 area code who specializes in Mohs surgery. And what is Mohs surgery? It’s what you get when basal cell carcinomas creep over your face: skin-cancer damage control. It means Dr. Mike, wielding a laser, slices out the facial rot. Dr. Mike has done this three times, without once carving “666” on my forehead. But he’s got time; skin-cancer treatments are an ongoing process that disfigures ears, chins and delusional narcissists who sunbathe till crispy.

Still playing Russian roulette with your skin? Stupid, stupid, stupid — and this time I do mean you. Especially with tons of self-tanners on tap and a real possibility that one of them won’t turn you into one of Willy Wonka’s Oompa-Loompas or, worse, George Hamilton. The Samurai Shopper began fiddling with self-tanners during an arctic chill, practicing for summer. At first I jumped into the fray without reading directions carefully, the same way I jump into swimming pools without testing the waters with my big toe. Though self-tanners are much improved from their Coppertone beginnings, you ignore directions at your own pumpkinesque peril. And every self-tanner says: Don’t even think of doing this without exfoliating first. Slough off those dead cells or disappear into a Jackson Pollock canvas. Moisturize, too, especially your body’s bonier bits: knees, knuckles, ankles, elbows.

I dutifully assembled the exfoliators, which smelled heavenly but felt like the same wet sand burrowed in your bathing suit when you’re bodysurfing. (Some sugar scrubs were so oily that they melted onto the bathtub floor and required molestation with Ajax before they disappeared.) Then I misapplied the brown gunk and turned my legs into streaky bacon strips. Finally I formulated a daring hypothesis, replete with cosmetic and cosmological implications: stick with tried-and-true brands. So straight to Kanebo’s Sensei line: Cleansing Gel With Scrub and the delicate Silk Peeling Powder, which erased my checkered past and polished me up for the rest of Kanebo’s new Sensei Silky Bronze Sun line.

Yon-Ka is my other go-to beauty brand. Rhyming nicely with Willy Wonka, Yon-Ka is, in fact, serious aromatherapy skin care, available exclusively through spas. Check with a Yon-Ka facialist and pick the right mix for your skin. I applied Gommage 303, a soft facial peel, and then the Lait Auto Bronzant, filled with botanicals and fruit extracts. Yon-Ka’s Phyto-Gel Exfoliant with jojoba pearls did the perfect prep job on my body; I was the new girl from Ipanema.

Another sensational spa product is Guinot, sold at Clyde’s on Madison Avenue. Type in your ZIP code at www.guinotusa.com and see if a Guinot-friendly spa pops up in your city. Guinot’s Gommage Grain D’Eclat exfoliates gently, and Visage D’Ete is a tinted self-tanning moisturizer; it left me glowy, dark and very winter-in-St. Bart’s.

DHA, or dihydroxyacetone, a carbohydrate derived from plants, is what colors the skin. It doesn’t penetrate the skin’s surface but, when mixed with other ingredients, determines — along with your skin type — your tan’s ultimate success. Clinique’s Quick Bronze Tinted Self-Tanner Mousse and Sparkle Skin Body Exfoliating Cream have got the formula down pat; the exfoliant is minty and fine-grained, and the mousse is like buttah . . . and you’ll be toast in a jiff (that’s a good thing). Elemis’s Total Glow turns out to be great for the fair-haired and freckled.

But I soon tired of auto-tanning and surrendered to the pros at Ajune, 1294 Third Avenue, a medical day spa that airbrushes you brown. The excellent Zaza salt-scrubbed me to a shine ($100) and gave me the sun-kissed treatment ($70) as I posed like a sumo wrestler, like Schwarzenegger in his Mr. Universe days, like a ballet dancer in second position. The following morning I’d morphed into an Oompa-Loompa, but Zaza had warned me that excesses happen. The orange ultimately slithered down the drain, and I was brown and sugared. SkinCeuticals’ Sans Soleil Sunless Tanner kept me that way for days.

So the Samurai Shopper is no longer just a pretty, lasered face. Ajune sold me Colorscience’s SPF 30 Sunforgettable protection brush, a magic wand dispensing non-dweeby zinc oxide to deliver me from any evil under the sun.

Would make a nice avatar:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/15/style/tmagazine/15samurai.1901.jpg

(f)

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

sweetlady

04-18-2007, 10:08 AM

(f)

With her lustrous hair and cover-girl smile, Kelly Klein remains the all-American poster child.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/04/13/style/tmagazine/20070415_LIFE_SLIDESHOW_1.html

(f)

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

sweetlady

04-18-2007, 10:15 AM

(f) (f)

April 15, 2007

Timeless

Celebrity Endorsement

By JOSH PATNER

“I use Nivea. I swear by Nivea!” Kitty Carlisle Hart exclaims. “I was furious that they wouldn’t let me be the Nivea girl.” Hart, who danced with Cole Porter, sang with Irving Berlin and told jokes in between takes with the Marx Brothers, usually gets what she wants. She became the toast of the town in 1946, when she married the playwright Moss Hart, and today, at 96, having just finished a sold-out run at Feinstein’s at the Regency, she remains her glamorous, imperturbable self. “I’m lucky,” she says. “My left profile is very good-looking, and my right profile is very good-looking.” Ba-dum-bum! That doesn’t mean she spends no time preparing for a performance. “I have to do a lot of stuff,” she says. “I have to put on foundation, which I never wear. And eyebrows. And mascara.”

Thanks to an old movie-star friend, she doesn’t overdo it: “Once Jeanette MacDonald called me, and she said, ‘You’re not doing your lips right. Too much lipstick.’ ” Offstage, she never washes her face with soap, and her makeup takes all of 10 minutes. “Pink cheeks. Hairdo. And very red lips.” And she can’t remember a day without Nivea. “The best thing,” she says, she’s ever put on her face.

:o Who knew? I'm sticking with my own skin care - which includes staying out of the sun. It must be working - folks say I look 10 years younger - which is the best endorsement for SPF products, hats and long cotton sleeves in the Summer. ;)

(f) Have a beautiful rest of your week. I'm off to take my pop tomorrow to two medical appts., grocery shop for my folks, etc. (and I order my own groceries, ON-LINE!!) ;) Poor guy can't even drive between recent eye and heart surgeries.(l) (l) Doctors' orders - so he must have somebody drive him. I just wish it wasn't an hour drive via freeways. <sigh>

Oh well, maybe these good deeds will help me get into heaven someday. ;)

(um) (um) Może (maj; majowy) Wasz Uśmiech Jest Wasz Parasol. (um) (um)

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

sweetlady

04-18-2007, 10:17 AM

(f) (f)

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/04/15/style/tmagazine/20070415_GET_SLIDESHOW_1.html

:) I have a gorgeous OPI blue that gorgeous! (for summertine toes, not my hands.....) ;)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-18-2007, 10:19 AM

;)

Did you know that your feet have 500,000 sweat glands? No wonder they...well, you know...

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/15/style/tmagazine/pedi.large.jpg

(f)

Animadvertistine, ubicumque stes, fumum recta in faciem ferri?

(Ever noticed how wherever you stand, the smoke goes right into your face?) ;)

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

sweetlady

04-18-2007, 10:20 AM

:)

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/15/style/tmagazine/makeup.large.jpg

(f)

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

sweetlady

04-18-2007, 10:27 AM

:) (y) :) (y) :)

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/12/garden/12line600.1.jpg

ON THE LINE To reduce energy bills and carbon emissions, the author secretly hung a clothesline in her backyard. Like many homeowners’ associations, hers restricts their use.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/12/garden/12line190.2.jpg

April 12, 2007

To Fight Global Warming, Some Hang a Clothesline

By KATHLEEN A. HUGHES

AS a child, I helped my mother hang laundry in our backyard in Tamaqua, Pa., a small coal mining town. My job was handing up the clothespins. When everything was dry, I helped her fold the sheets in a series of moves that resembled ballroom dancing.

The clothes and linens always smelled so fresh. Everything about the laundry was fun. My brother and I played hide-and-seek in the rows of billowing white sheets.

I remember this as I’m studying energy-saving tips from Al Gore, who says that when you have time, you should use a clothesline to dry your clothes instead of the dryer.

A clothesline. It strikes me that I haven’t seen one since 1991, when I moved to Rolling Hills, Calif., a gated community about an hour south of Los Angeles. There are rolling hills, ranch houses, sweeping views of the ocean and rocky cliffs — plenty of room — but not a single visible clothesline.

I decide to rig a clothesline as an experiment. My mother died many years ago and the idea of hanging laundry with my own daughter, Isabel, who is 13 and always busy at the computer, is oddly appealing. I’m also hoping to use less energy and to reduce our monthly electric bills which hit the absurdly high level of $1,120 last summer.

That simple decision to hang a clothesline, however, catapults me into the laundry underground. Clotheslines are banned or restricted by many of the roughly 300,000 homeowners’ associations that set rules for some 60 million people. When I called to ask, our Rolling Hills Community Association told me that my laundry had to be completely hidden in an enclosure approved by its board of directors.

I briefly considered hanging our laundry in the front yard, just to see what would happen, but my family vetoed this idea. Instead, I settled on stringing two lines in a corner of the backyard, a spot not visible to neighbors or officials. I’m supposed to submit a site plan of our property and a photograph of my laundry enclosure. But I don’t have an enclosure, unless the hedge qualifies.

Looking for fellow clothesline fans, I came across the Web site of Alexander Lee, a lawyer and 32-year-old clothesline activist in Concord, N.H. In 1995 Mr. Lee founded Project Laundry List, a nonprofit organization, as a way to champion “the right to dry.” His Web site, laundrylist.org, is an encyclopedia on the energy advantages of hanging laundry.

Mr. Lee sponsors an annual National Hanging Out Day on April 19. He plans to string a clothesline at the State House in Concord, N.H., this Saturday as part of a Step It Up 2007 rally on climate change, where he will hang T-shirts and sheets with the slogan “Hang Your Pants. Stop the Plants.”

Inspired, I moved forward with my project without submitting the site plan and photograph for approval. My daughter agreed to help me hang the first load.

“It looks beautiful,” she said when we stepped back. “It looks like we care about the earth.”

The experiment was off to a good start. The first load dried in less than three hours. The clothes smelled like fresh air and wind. As we took them down, the birds were chirping and the sun was shining.

But there was a downside. “The towels are like sandpaper,” said my husband, Dan, after stepping out of the shower.

Not only that. Heading outside to the clothesline and hanging each load takes about 7 minutes — 6 minutes and 30 seconds longer than it takes to stuff everything into the dryer.

As the months rolled by, no one from the community association complained. Of course, since the clotheslines are in a lowered corner of the backyard surrounded by hedges, they cannot be seen from the street, the neighbors’ houses or even our own house. But the rope lines started to sag, allowing the sheets and heavy wet towels to drag in the dirt. The wooden clothespins soon became weathered and fell apart.

Meanwhile, my daughter lost interest after the first load, dashing my hope of recreating the happy times I spent hanging clothes with my own mother.

I briefly gave up — the dryer was so much easier — but then tried again. I bought stronger lines, plastic instead of rope, and switched to plastic clothespins. I also learned that tossing the clothes in the dryer for just a few minutes after they have dried on the line makes them softer.

Everyone now seems happy enough with the fresh smelling laundry, which is just slightly stiff. Of course, I still haven’t asked our local board of directors for approval. If they object, I could be forced to take my laundry down or build an enclosure, an inconvenient confrontation I’m simply avoiding. In the meantime, our electric bill has dropped to $576 in March from its high last summer, reflecting a series of efforts to cut energy. (That’s still too high, so we’re about to try fluorescent bulbs.)

There were more than 88 million dryers in the country in 2005, the latest count, according to the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers. If all Americans line-dried for just half a year, it would save 3.3% of the country’s total residential output of carbon dioxide, experts say.

“It’s a huge waste of energy to tumble dry your clothes,” said Tom Arnold, chief environmental officer of TerraPass, a San Francisco company that sells carbon offsets, which aim to reduce greenhouse gases to compensate for one’s activities. “It’s one of the simplest things to do to help with global warming.”

The laundry underground is a mixed group. It includes the frugal, people without dryers, and people from countries where hanging laundry is part of the culture. Many people hang a few delicate items. Tim Eames, a British designer who lives in Los Angeles, does not own a dryer. “The thought of getting a machine to do something as simple as drying my laundry is totally inconceivable,” he said.

For those in colder climates, going without a dryer can be a challenge. Tom Stokes, a global warming activist in Stockbridge, Mass., managed to fit six clotheslines in a large downstairs bathroom, and he now hangs all of his laundry there in the winter. “It’s relatively easy in the summer. It takes more determination to string up a line and hang laundry year round,” he says.

Indeed, Annalisa Parent, a photographer who grew up in New Hampshire, said that when she was a child, her family hung all their laundry outside, even in the snow. Her father, an engineer, built a one-of-a-kind clothesline with an arched roof above it. She recalls standing her frozen jeans on the furnace to thaw them before school and wishing that her family could be like the families with dryers.

Now, at 32, she still doesn’t own a dryer. She hangs all of her laundry inside her town house in South Burlington, Vt. Ms. Parent says she was inspired to see “the beauty in a clothesline” by Mr. Lee, a friend from college. She has taken more than 500 photographs of clotheslines and her work, featured on his Web site, shows clotheslines by the sea, clotheslines in Romania and even close-ups of clothespins.

In Hollywood movies, however, clotheslines often appear in scenes depicting dire poverty. Jennifer Williams, a set decorator, says she hung clotheslines to help convey that in the films “Angela’s Ashes,” “Children of Men” and “Pearl Harbor.”

That image could limit the comeback of the clothesline. “People see laundry as an ugly flag of poverty,” said Mr. Lee. “It’s a reminder to some people of where they grew up.” For me, that was Tamaqua, Pa., where my father worked for a company that made explosives for the mines. Clotheslines are still popular in Tamaqua, where the average home price is $64,400. Linda Yulanavage, head of the local Chamber of Commerce, says more than half of the town’s 11,000 residents use clotheslines because they like the smell of fresh air in their laundry and because it saves energy. “People see it as a normal, everyday thing to see clothes hanging on the line,” she says. “It gives a homey, close neighborhood feeling.”

I completely agree, although I seem to have the only clothesline in Rolling Hills. Maybe others will join. Meanwhile, my carbon footprint is shrinking and our clothes smell like the great outdoors.

(y) (y) (l) (l) Here's to living in rural areas without those pesky association nazis telling us "only one xmas wreath on the door and one WHITE candle in EACH window" - as well as it being a fine-paying offense if I did hang sheets to dry outside.

The only things I do put in the dryer are bath sheets and bed clothes. Everything else is laid flat or dried on plastic hangers. Always. :)

What a wonderful article that initiated memories - of actually helping my grandmother to hang things on her clothesline - but those smells. Those incredible fresh smells that I could still experience at night under the covers.

(f)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-18-2007, 10:30 AM

(f) (f)

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/04/13/style/tmagazine/20070415_LOUISE_SLIDESHOW_1.html

:s Is that first photo scary or is it me?

:)

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

sweetlady

04-18-2007, 10:32 AM

:)

April 15, 2007

Designed for Living

By LESLIE CAMHI

The artist Louise Nevelson said she didn’t believe in reincarnation, but late in life, when an interviewer asked her whom she would like to come back as, she answered without hesitation, herself. “The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson: Constructing a Legend,” opening May 5 at New York’s Jewish Museum, showcases her monumental assemblages and pioneering, room-size environments made of found wooden objects, painted black, white or gold, and rendered infinitely mysterious.

But the artist was in many ways her own greatest creation.

Fame came to her belatedly. She was 60 when the 1959 Museum of Modern Art exhibition “Sixteen Americans” enshrined her along with rising stars like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Frank Stella (all younger than her by at least a quarter-century). Most women, as they age, cling tenaciously to a few well-honed looks. Nevelson made old age the stage for a fashion revolution. Gradually, her full-blown style emerged, an immense collage whose elements were subject to miraculous transformations — the head scarves and multiple pairs of false eyelashes, the ethnographic jewels and enormous furs, the couture garments layered under and over peasant clothing.

There’s the sculptor, at 81, smoking cigars with her dealer Arne Glimcher on the roof of her Spring Street home. She’s wearing a voluminous, ruffled and spangled robe made for her by the couturier Arnold Scaasi. She sports an Inca-style necklace; two enormous disks hang from her earlobes, and her entire ensemble is topped off with a jockey cap. (What is that rule of good taste? Before leaving the house, you remove one thing?)

In most photographs, it’s impossible to tell exactly what she’s wearing — the layering of glimmering bits of exotic fabrics and utilitarian garments, the unexpected juxtapositions, create a sense of utter uniqueness, an indefinable luxury. It’s a look that’s at once out of time and uncannily of this moment — furs over jeans, pants under dresses, riots of pattern and color. Nevelson “wanted to look dazzling at all times,” Scaasi remembers. “I’d show her a blue-and-silver brocade with big gold birds all over it,” the designer recalls, “and she’d say, ‘Oh, that’s perfect for Miss America’ — meaning herself. We’d make the suit, thinking it would be for evening, but then she’d be giving lectures in it at 10 a.m.” Glimcher told me recently that “she used to say, ‘I’m an atmospheric dresser,’ ” as if by piling on the clothes she could invent her own personal weather.

It must be somehow comforting to move about, suspended in an aura of your own creation. An ex-boyfriend of mine, a prominent European artist, was convinced he’d never make it into the major leagues because of his unprepossessing appearance. “Look at Duchamp and Picasso,” he’d say mournfully. “So handsome, both of them!” Of course, he’d neglected to mention the original peintre maudit, Modigliani, whose beauty and way with a neck scarf were legendary, as well as a host of subsidiary dandies, like Foujita, the Japanese painter who, inspired by Isadora Duncan’s brother Raymond, wandered the streets of bohemian Montparnasse in a Greek tunic he had woven himself; or DalÃ (ferally attractive in his youth, before he turned to self-caricature), who almost suffocated from the deep-sea diving suit he wore during a 1936 lecture in London. And in our own day, I can remember artists grumbling at the almost instant success of Matthew Barney, whose early videos showed the fetching young creator elaborately made up as a cloven-foot, nub-horned satyr. “You know,” they’d say, “he was a J. Crew model.”

I was fond of my artist, short and squat as he was. But I suspected he was onto something. Nevelson, too, believed that “the physical is the geography of the being.” Early on and for decades, she grew accustomed to the tributes that a beautiful and charismatic woman receives as her due — so that, when fame finally came, she was ready for it.

“Miss America” was born Leah Berliawsky in Kiev, Ukraine, to upper-middle-class Jews with ties to the lumber industry. In her memoir, “Dawns and Dusks,” she claims to have known that she was an artist from her earliest childhood. She emigrated with her family at age 5, following her father to Rockland, Me.; they were wearing Persian lamb hats and coats, which must have made these rare Jews seem terribly outré in small-town, Puritan New England.

Charles Nevelson, a New York Jew who with his brothers made a fortune in shipping, was her ticket out of Rockland; they married, and their son Mike was born in 1922, but her artistic ambitions soon clashed with the demands of domestic life. An exhibition of Japanese Noh robes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art broke through her depression, convincing her that “life is worth living if a civilization can give us this great weave of gold and pattern.”

So she shook off her marriage, left her son with family in Maine and set off for Munich, where she studied art with Hans Hofmann. Returning to New York, she worked briefly as an assistant for the muralist Diego Rivera, admiring both his wife Frida Kahlo’s paintings and the Mexican folk dress and jewelry that Kahlo wore while entertaining “princesses and . . . laborers” in the couple’s West 13th Street salon.

The record of Nevelson’s clothes during those years of struggle is mixed: a burlap sack, a hot-pink ensemble, secondhand ethnic costumes and bits of old lace alongside sleek suits and fashionable hats. She knew poverty, but she rejected the look, which other American artists embraced as a seal of authenticity. And she never remarried, despite hordes of male admirers. (How did she manage to dress so wonderfully, her fellow artist Alice Neel asked her, on her limited W.P.A. stipend in the 1930s? Nevelson’s answer is unprintable in a family newspaper.)

Nevelson paid a price for her stylishness — other artists mistook her for a bourgeois girl who was slumming, neglecting her almost preternatural energy for work in the years when she regularly woke before dawn to enter her studio, pausing only to dine on sardines and stale bread. In fact, her talent for self-dramatization seems both a reflection of the intensity of her drive and a cover for the deep vulnerability that went with it. Eventually her mature look (photographed by everyone from Cecil Beaton to Robert Mapplethorpe) became a public brand, as much as Warhol’s helmet of white hair and affectless demeanor. “She was a real innovator,” observes Brooke Kamin Rapaport, the guest curator of the Jewish Museum’s retrospective, “not just in creating her work but in her understanding of artistic celebrity.”

A girl with artistic inclinations growing up in the 1970s might have looked to Nevelson or to Georgia O’Keeffe as a role model.

(As a style icon, O’Keeffe was the anti-Nevelson, with her tailored blacks and whites and intensely weathered skin that was almost part of her costume.) For Laurie Simmons, who always knew she wanted to be an artist, there were no visual clues in suburbia for what a woman artist should look like. “Nevelson was one of the first to penetrate my awareness in that way,” she recalls. Simmons, best known for her photographs of eerily animated ventriloquists’ dummies, currently favors little black dresses by Lanvin and Narciso Rodriguez. “All my strangeness is channeled into my work,” she explains. “But I’ve always admired the idea that an artist’s persona could be seamlessly at one with her creations.”

Male artists can pull it off with a single uniform, like Carl Andre’s overalls or Joseph Beuys’s fishing vest and fedora, which they exercise ad infinitum. For women artists, negotiating the fraught terrain of appearance requires considerably more work. (I knew a painter who spent inordinate amounts of time trying to maintain the illusion that she never gave her clothes a second thought.) When the wacky post-minimalist Andrea Zittel faced the problem of maintaining art-world chic on an emerging artist’s budget, she created personal “uniforms” that she wore for months on end around her desert compound near Joshua Tree National Park: they evolved from Comme des Garconish sheaths to wild, organic-looking, felted dresses. The sculptor Chakaia Booker says she begins each morning by collaging her appearance, using head wraps, neckwear, found objects and pieces of rubber to get the creative energy flowing from one medium — herself — into another.

Then there are the performance artists whose looks are vehicles for their oeuvre, like Orlan, who sculpts her own body with cosmetic surgery; Colette, who religiously clothed herself in pink for nearly a year; or Carolee Schneeman and Hannah Wilke, beautiful women who took off their clothes and turned the art world upside down. Marina Abramovic, a statuesque Slav, still endures intense physical trials in the service of her art, but has recently confessed a weak spot for glamour. Three hundred people filed into the Guggenheim Museum to celebrate her 60th birthday in February (dress code: outrageously elegant); we watched a film in which she cut and whipped herself and lay naked on a cross of ice, then we went upstairs and toasted the artist, who was attired in Givenchy.

The sculptor Kiki Smith was there, wearing some flowing white garment that set off her long, gray tresses; with her tattoos, multiple piercings and ankle bracelets, Smith’s flower-child-meets-emergency-medical-technician persona seems entirely of a piece with her uncannily corporeal oeuvre. So do the looks of the film installation artist Shirin Neshat, a tiny, Iran-born woman of birdlike slenderness, whose fiercely kohl-rimmed eyes and heavy Persian jewelry seem drawn, like her work, from a deep well of exoticism and strength. These women, in their appearance, deliver what, on some level, we long for — the vision of an artistic ideal permeating every corner of an artist’s life.

That ideal, it seems to me, is waning. More artists (preoccupied with their career, perhaps?) appear to be playing it safe. Fashionistas like the painters/sculptors Hope Atherton (a Vogue “Girl of the Moment”) and Rachel Feinstein (a muse to Marc Jacobs), when not toiling in their studios, appear fabulously garbed in the party pages of magazines. Which is not the same thing as embodying an artistic ideal.

That, on Nevelson’s terms, requires another half-century of ripening; maybe it requires time spent in the artistic wilderness of neglect, where an individual’s creative will is forged. Nevelson, after all, did dress for success, but success has never looked like that before or since.

(y) (y)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-18-2007, 10:36 AM

:o :o

Not since the human animal made the evolutionary leap have standards of beauty changed so dramatically. Daphne Merkin on cyborg chic.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/04/13/style/tmagazine/20070415_ODYSSEY_SLIDESHOW_1.html

April 15, 2007

2007: A Face Odyssey

By DAPHNE MERKIN

We have always been slightly uneasy – notwithstanding our growing cultural obsession with youth and physical perfection – about the enormous value we assign to female physiognomy, based as it is on nothing more substantive than an undemocratic rolling of the genetic dice. Clearly, although we have all been bequeathed a more or less similar arrangement of facial features (eyes, nose, mouth, neck, skin), there are some women who emerge, either by way of felicitous lineage or a hazard of good fortune, with mugs to die for. Audrey Hepburn. Vivien Leigh. Grace Kelly. Julie Christie. Julia Roberts. Halle Berry. Penélope Cruz. The variations may range from the gamine to the sultry, the classic to the exotic — stopping along the way for the slightly more Nordic look that often goes with blond lovelies — but the theme is the same. They are undeniably beautiful; we, by and large, however attractive or striking, are not. This tragic and unearned differential (one that is becoming ever more tragic in a “looksist” society) has led us to devise ways of minimizing beauty’s importance with dispassionate abstractions or consoling, somewhat grandmotherly mantras. If you want to get high-minded about it, you can clutch for solace at the conjecture of the 18th-century philosopher David Hume that beauty “exists merely in the mind . . . and each mind perceives a different beauty” and hope that no one will notice that this observation, if it ever held up, preceded the invention of photography. Closer at hand is the adage “Beauty is as beauty does,” which is the kind of snippy comment Mary Poppins might have made if she came upon one of her charges preening before his or her reflection. Then there is the old platitude “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” which attempts a similar leveling of the playing field.

I suspect these reassurances never fooled any woman anxiously eyeing herself in the mirror before going out for the evening, and as we get older, this lifelong negotiation with the looking glass becomes only more fraught. (Many of us, I imagine, will eventually feel in sympathy with Bette Davis, who, as Queen Elizabeth I in “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex,” becomes apoplectic at the very thought of catching a glimpse of her ruined face, screaming, “Break every mirror in the palace! I never want to see one in Whitehall again!”) The really noteworthy fact, however, is not that these ploys have never much worked but how singularly irrelevant they have become over the last decade — almost like maxims from another planet. For one thing, the promise and gradual destigmatization of cosmetic surgery has led less-than-stunning women to believe that a gorgeous countenance is there for the paying. Another, more significant reason is that the contemporary archetype of beauty, as seen on the runways and in fashion magazines, is no longer applicable or even familiar. For that matter, it’s barely recognizable.

The faces I’m referring to seem to have arrived here by spaceship from some silent lunar landscape, rather than by the bawling and bloody process by which ordinary mortals enter the world. The Platonic ideal of beauty is now as it never was: more humanoid than human, more the product of an art director’s digitalized pastiche of desirable features than a naturally occurring phenomenon. The reasons for this include our increasingly sophisticated techniques for airbrushing flaws or imperfections out of the picture; our fascination with self-invention and technosexuality (also referred to as robot fetishism); our ever more phobic attitude toward aging and dying; and our worship of young, blank, unlived-in faces that resemble the baby-faced characters in Japanese animation films. Thanks to these influences, our aesthetic standards have mutated into an eerie image of female attractiveness that, if not unprecedented, has been relatively uncommon until now.

I think of this new typology as Android Beauty: part intergalactic and part neonatal; part Angelina Jolie and part Tilda Swinton; part “2001: A Space Odyssey” and part Bratz dolls (the post-Barbie fashion doll with exaggerated eyes and lips that looks, as Margaret Talbot wrote in The New Yorker, “as if the doll had undergone successive rounds of plastic surgery”), with a little bit of Bambi and those kitschy Keane portraits of lollipop-eyed waifs thrown into the mix. You can, of course, coin any term you like, but I’m sure you know what I mean.

The identifying signs of this change — a radical reconception of what makes for feminine pulchritude — can be readily enumerated. They include a high, rounded forehead; a giraffe neck; enormous eyes that are usually spaced low on the head and wide apart; an imperceptible nose; a pillowy or pouty mouth, but one with the lips always everted, as if ready to be kissed. Because the body on which this face is set is, needless to say, thin to thinner to twiglike, the head looks proportionally larger, even otherwordly. Think Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Victoria Beckham. Models like Alice Gibb and Gemma Ward. Think, in a nutshell, Nicole Kidman at this year’s Oscars, whose weirdly vacant mien (especially unsettling in light of her native comeliness) had everyone (who managed to stay up) talking.

The New York plastic surgeon Yael Halaas, who notes that the laws of beauty have been “amped up,” attributes Kidman’s cyboresque look to the “Vulcan eyebrows” that can result from too much or wrongly placed Botox. It might also have to do with the silicone-smooth surface of Kidman’s skin, from which all traces of emotional expressiveness — of having laughed or cried, struggled or aspired — have been erased, leaving a blank slate onto which we can read our own scripts. In this sense, Kidman functions both as herself and as a “sim” — a simulated version of herself, much like the Daryl Hannah character in “Blade Runner.” Where once we tried to understand the fractured nature of identity by way of psychological concepts that pointed to an interior life, these days we seem to have traded in that somewhat demanding approach for an exteriorized, sci-fi dramatization of the seemingly inexplicable divisions within ourselves: goodbye doppelgÃ¤nger, hello avatar. Goodbye therapist’s couch, hello “Star Trek.”

But while the ubiquity of computer-manipulated movies, photographs and other visual media may account for the extraterrestrial, “Beam me up, Scotty” aspect of Android Beauty, old-fashioned terrestrial science may help explain its equally disturbing, arrested-in-time quality. You might wonder, given the feminist legacy of self-determination and the long-ago (or what seems like long-ago) vision of power dressing, why women have suddenly been pushed back to, if not quite the cradle, then certainly to a state of prepubescence. Which is where evolutionary biology and the theory of neoteny — the persistence of larval or fetal features into adult life — enter the picture. Zoologists like Desmond Morris, in his book “The Naked Woman: A Study of the Female Body,” have proposed that our species’ — and especially men’s — apparent preference for juvenile features can be traced back to (or, if you like, blamed on) neoteny.

This theory, which can be seen as a breakthrough or a bit of nonsensical speculation, depending on your view of evolutionary biology, is in truth no more than an extension of Darwin’s principle of sexual selection, which he developed to account for what appeared to be cumbersome and nonfunctional characteristics. (Until he figured out that gender-specific traits — like attention-grabbing fans on male peacocks — informed the dynamics of the mating game, which trumped workaday survival needs, Darwin was in a state of despair about the validity of his revolutionary ideas. “The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick,” he once admitted before finally embarking on “The Origin of Species.”) Accordingly, Morris points out that women have more neotenic physical traits — twice as much baby fat, smoother skin, larger eyes and puffier lips — the better to arouse a protective instinct in males. The zoologist Clive Bromhall, in his book “The Eternal Child,” goes even further, suggesting that neoteny has been misunderstood. In a hubris-smashing moment, Bromhall claims that the entire human species has become “infantized” in order to physically survive and emotionally flourish. We have regressed, it would seem, into a state of permanent childhood.

Where, you might ask, does this leave us? No one needs to be told that the business of beauty is inherently superficial and pitiless, but it’s another matter entirely when it starts to depart from all prevailing norms.

So here’s the burning question: Are Android Beauties ahead of the pack, leaving the rest of us who have not morphed to lag behind, fated to be nonbreeding singletons with our lurking expression lines, relatively teensy eyes, prominent (or at least visible) noses and collagen-free mouths? Or do they point to an alarming future in which little girls will be eroticized without

The constrictions — the civilizing restraints — of guilt or of culturally mandated taboos and in which the Humbert Humberts of the world will be just one of the gang, just another regular pervert, free to cruise the playground without pretext or disguise?

In a remarkable essay, “Afternoon of the Sex Children,” which appeared last spring in the journal n+1, Mark Greif makes a persuasive argument that the possibility of such a pedophilic scenario coming to pass is neither futuristic nor even all that unlikely. In fact, as Greif envisions it, the scenario has already begun without our even noticing. The trend of the last 50 years, he observes, has been toward focusing our lascivious gaze with ever greater intensity on the prenubile rather than averting our eyes from them: “The representatives of the sex child in our entertainment culture,” he writes, “are often 18 to 21 — legal adults. The root of their significance is that their sexual value points backward, to the status of the child, and not forward to the adult.” One doesn’t have to look far afield for confirmation.

A study by the anthropologist Douglas Jones, in which he fed the images of various models into a computer that correlated the size and proportions of people’s faces to their age, estimated the models’ ages to be 6 or 7.

In which case, Stanley Kubrick was more prescient than even he suspected when he ended his sci-fi fantasy “2001: A Space Odyssey” with a puzzling (and somewhat pretentious) image of a fetus. It might well be — it is certainly worth considering — that what our information-stuffed, overstimulating and multitasking time has produced is not a yearning for new legal-age experience but rather a counter-yearning to evolve backward to some beckoning galaxy where life has literally just begun and adult consequence is yet to appear on the horizon. Perhaps the emergence of Android Beauty finally suggests that, rather than facing our respective futures with anticipation, we are, many of us, carrying a secret longing to tarry another day or two (make that a trimester) in the womb.

:| :| :|

:)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-18-2007, 10:43 AM

:)

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/15/style/tmagazine/15spa.1901.jpg

April 15, 2007

Ask and You Shall Receive

By HOLLY SIEGEL

If you’ve always wanted a skyline painted on your nails or the hair waxed off your big toe, all you have to do is ask. The former is available at Manhattan’s BanyanCiti Spa, albeit unadvertised, and the latter can, if you pipe up, be happily accommodated at Bliss.

Repeat spagoers are discovering what friends of the house have come to expect at swanky restaurants: that dishes not on the menu are available to regulars by request. There is a trove of extra services out there — Cornelia Day Resort will send your watch to Cartier to be repaired, and if you’re bored while your color bakes, Salon Eliut Rivera will order up a reflexologist — but these extras are hush-hush. Why? Cost-effectiveness, for one thing. Some places may have another reason. As Nathaniel Hawkins, a stylist and spokesman for Tresemmé, explained, salons don’t always have insurance for things like brow dying, but if the staff leaves a Q-tip and a bowl of dye next to you, who’s to know?

;) ;) I was just at the salon (finally had time!) late yesterday afternoon. I LOVE how it feels after just getting my hair done. No roots, beautiful highlights, nice trim (hair still to the middle of my back) and bangs can now be worn as bangs......;) (Not pushed to the side.) One of these days I really must get my hands and feet done at a salon, not by me. I miss my acrylics to tell the truth - they prevent my from nervously picking at my hands. :| White gloves also prevent this as well though. ;)

(o) Off to make lunch and get some work done. (o)

Uśmiech (uśmiechać się). Wy jesteście na szczerej kamerze!

( Smile. You are on candid camera! )

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

sweetlady

04-18-2007, 10:50 AM

:| (l) :| (l) :| (l) :| (l)

April 17, 2007, 6:34 pm

Love in the Digital Age

By Alice Mathias

This winter I was in a class called Romantic Comedy. Shakespeare, you might ask? Umm … no. We’re talking “You’ve Got Mail.” I figured this had to be the Rocks for Jocks of the film department, but as it turned out, Rom-Com was no sunset stroll down the beach. We dragged our feet through Freudian readings of “Bringing Up Baby” and analyzed the shift from modernism to postmodernism by contrasting “The Apartment” with “Annie Hall.” All I wanted to do was kick back with some popcorn and take a vacation from my not-so-“Moonstruck” freezing-cold Dartmouth winter, but unfortunately there would be an exam.

For this exam, we had to bust out our crystal balls and write an essay predicting the future of the romantic comedy genre. Our professor raised several issues to consider. Among them was the fact that zero Renaissance Dartmouth men had signed up for this pretty-big class. Our professor was a guy. He liked sappy movies. Was this a generational thing?

One of my classmates suggested a revealing answer. Perhaps a heterosexual Romeo might be paranoid about listing Romantic Comedy as one of his courses in his Facebook profile. He might imagine that Juliet was out there somewhere, stalking through cyberspace looking for the One. What if she were to check out his course load, see that he was in Chick Flicks 101, and assume he was therefore “interested in: men”? This stereotype-fueled miscommunication could be the dagger that might murder their chances of ever meeting face-to-face! Talk about tragedy.

My classmate’s hypothesis demonstrates how young people today think about relationships and identity — that is, in terms of Facebook.com. Men (and women!) of my generation are undergoing an unprecedented emotional crisis that has little to do with gender roles. We are trapped in the Age of the Emoticon :(

Young people today are more inclined than ever to drool over love stories in the flickering privacy of the movie theater, because in our own realities, the classic process of romance is as endangered as — well, the movie theater. We have entered a post-butterflies era. Romantic comedy’s nerve-wracking meet cutes, blind dates, love letters and eye contact have been kicked out of our love lives by MySpace, Match.com, AOL Instant Messenger and e-mail. The mystery man has been expelled from our virtual paradise. His identity has been unveiled by Google, and guess what? He’s no Cary Grant.

My first (and arguably most notable) faux-mance started in seventh grade when a boy in my class asked me to be his girlfriend on AOL. That relationship came to an abrupt end days later when we accidentally bumped into each other in the cafeteria and failed to overcome the challenge of improvising un-spell-checked conversation. (I had just had my braces tightened, so I got away with pretending my teeth were too sore for me to talk.)

Communication has been streamlined by the Internet, and something essential to the process of falling in love has been lost. We can type up carefully crafted statements rather than go face-to-face and improvise from the heart, thereby risking embarrassment, vulnerability or Oscar-worthy dialogue. We can Google our way into the museums of each other’s identities — and fall in love there.

If we get up the nerve to e-mail or IM our love interests, we can correspond at a comfortable pace (i.e., however long it takes us to come up with witty, well-crafted messages). They will assume we’re taking our time to respond because we’re busy fighting off that parade of knights in shining armor who are begging to be listed with us in a Facebook relationship. They don’t know we’re staring longingly at that one picture that pops up when we Google them, and we don’t have to worry about whether or not they’re staring longingly back! (Bonus: No one has to deal with that awkward “who’s paying?” question.)

Flirting has been transformed into a digital process. We don’t even have to touch each other to “hook up.” We can just hook up to the Internet.

The difficulty of negotiating what happens in each arena of reality probably explains why the word “awkward” has shot to the top of my generation’s lexicon. My classmates and I charade our way through first dates, trying to keep track of what’s been said versus what’s been read on the Internet ahead of time. We have to fake it through “Where are you from?” conversation, and if we let something slip that reveals we’ve done our research, it’s awkward.

It gets even more complicated than that.

That real-life Archibald Leach was probably no Cary Grant (the pseudonym under which Archie was advertised to adoring audiences). But today, we are all walking, breathing Cary/Archie complexes — part public, part (we hope) private.

We are all so submerged in one another’s gazes that it’s almost natural to act as though we’re always in a movie. (Thanks to all those security cameras out there, we pretty much are!) Like movie stars, we are sensitive to the fact that everything we do and say (every mistake we make and every triumph at which we “boo-yah”) could be witnessed and speculated about in public forums by just about anyone in the world.

Granted, many of us have not yet established much of a reputation on the Internet; as we get older we will undoubtedly accumulate more and more hits on our Google resumes. But we cannot separate ourselves from our Internet alter egos. Both are relevant players in our job searches, friendships and love lives.

Our children may even Google us someday. We’re never going to be able to ground them for doing anything without being exposed as hypocrites. Whoops.

The truth is, my greatest concern is not with how the Internet will influence romance. Romance is a privilege. One can get through life without it. I’m concerned about emotion in general.

I’m worried that we are becoming desensitized to the fact that there are actual human beings whose lives and feelings are being shaped by things that are so easy to mindlessly type into e-mails, chat rooms, Facebook wall posts and blogs.

Maybe I’m just skeptical about emotional relationships because I haven’t met the right person, i.e. “Entourage” star Adrian Grenier. (Cut to: me swooning.) Who knows, Adrian might be hypnotized by fate to read this online declaration of my love for him and consider e-mailing me, thereby unleashing a flood of digital interactions that might culminate in a (mind-bogglingly awkward) real-life encounter. Of course, this is never going to happen because just before he e-mails me, he’ll Google my name (just to make sure I’m not a freak), and find out that I am, indeed, apparently quite appalling, according to recent comments on blogs in response to my April 1st post on this site. Everyone’s ability to “get to know Alice Mathias” online may very well be the beginning and end of my social life and my chances at scoring that M.R.S. I’m purportedly looking for. (From Mr. Grenier or any other Internet-savvy, earth-dwelling guy for that matter.)

All joking aside, I am willingly putting myself out there for criticism in a public forum. That said, it is important to understand that similar attempts at identity destruction are happening to innocent people in every corner of cyberspace — to people who aren’t asking for it.

For example, Dartmouth students have recently had to deal with the construction of the Web site boredatbaker.com (which has cousins at the other Ivies, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University and Stanford). Intended as a community tool, this Web site has mutated into a forum for the anonymous publication of very personal attacks on students who must try their best not to be emotionally affected when people publicly question their sexuality, comment on their physical appearance and speculate about their value as humans.

In anonymous Internet attacks, people can say things they would never mention aloud while looking their target in the eye. No one need take any personal responsibility. The victims of these unfortunate manifestations of free speech must suspend their emotions and try to trust that people around them (including love interests) aren’t the ones who are writing or consuming this stuff. The safest thing to do in our boredatbaker-shadowed community is to be emotionally isolated from everyone until graduation brings escape.

So I guess the question remains: what does all this mean for the future of romantic comedy?

:) I would not trade with these graduates in this article for anything. I LOVE being my age and looking forward to so many things - such as traveling, especially to old as well as new favorite places. It is while traveling where I meet f2f so many remarkable people of various ages and diversity of background - many of whom continue to stay in touch (however virtual) via the Internet and those lovely one-in-a-blue-moon mailed letters.

;) "Romantic comedy" - I liked that. (y)

(f)

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

sweetlady

04-23-2007, 11:32 AM

;) ;)

It seems almost quaint now, but when the Web was young and carefree, before it got all serious about making money, one of the primary activities was simply wandering around. No highly targeted search, no shopping missions, no mundane transactions -- just cruising from link to link, guided only by curiosity. The reward was coming across something fun or useful that you never would have found otherwise. Now, with the Web much larger and tuned to meeting specific needs and markets, it seems harder to make time for wandering and harder to find wheat among the chaff, hence the popularity of social bookmarking. On Wednesday, Google made a move aimed at bringing back the fun of fortunate finds, and eBay was reported close to doing something similar, with one counting on smart algorithms and the other on wise crowds.

Google has added a button to its browser toolbar (only on Windows IE, for now) whose function is aptly symbolized by a pair of dice. Click it and you'll be taken to one of 50 pages that the search sovereign's computers think you might enjoy based on your search history. If you have a personalized Google start page, you can add a Recommendations page and have it display all the links at a glance. Given the breadth of the Google universe, you can expect to roll a winner now and then, but the results will depend on where you've already gone, not where people are choosing to go right now. And if you're like me, a lot of your searching isn't necessarily for things you're broadly interested in, but rather things you need to find for business, school or some momentary specific need.

(y) (y) http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/searching-without-query.html

http://www.pronetadvertising.com/articles/googles-dice-its-a-gamble23236.html

Meanwhile, eBay, which reported sterling quarterly results Wednesday, is widely rumored to be acquiring StumbleUpon, a site recommendation service run on user ratings, for something close to $40 million. Exactly what use it would put the social technology to is open to speculation. Some are suggesting it could be tied into Skype, eBay's Net telephony service, or auctions. But, like Muhammad Saleem at Pronet Advertising, I suspect the big payoff may be in the area of social shopping, employing StumbleUpon's community filtering to let shoppers share bargain finds and product reviews. "All things considered," writes Saleem, "when you think about the the potential to know what someone wants to buy, and then the ability to link the person to that very thing, which has also reviewed and recommended by the person's peers, eBay's decision makes absolutely perfect sense. Now they have a marketplace, a service to facilitate monetary transactions, and a platform to determine consumer preferences, opinions, demand, and so on. The circle has been completed."

http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_5701633?nclick_check=1

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/04/19/rumor-stumbleupon-to-be-acquired-by-ebay

http://mashable.com/2007/04/18/ebay-stumbleupon/

http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20070418/4424/

http://www.pronetadvertising.com/articles/ebay-and-stumbleupon-unite-to-take-on-multibillion-dollar-social-shopping-industry99822.html

(y) (h) (y) (h) (y) (y) (h)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-23-2007, 11:33 AM

:) :)

Q U O T E D

"I usually start the day by importing a few CDs as I answer the morning e-mail and down my first cup of coffee. As I'm working on a story, I keep on importing - somethings transferring two discs at once simultaneously on the G5 and the iMac. I'm forever tinkering with the library, several hours a day, often when I'm on the phone, sometimes even when I'm watching TV (on the extremely rare nights when I'm not out covering live music)."

-- Will Friedwald, jazz fan, New York Sun writer and possessor of what may be the largest iTunes music collection in the world (his main library has 172,150 tracks from 11,561 album by 2,935 artists).

http://www.glennwolsey.com/2007/04/19/interview-will-friedwald-owner-of-the-worlds-largest-itunes-collection/

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

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

sweetlady

04-23-2007, 11:39 AM

:| :| :|

:)

Last month, it was USA Today adding social features to its news; today, it's MySpace adding news to its social features. The popular online hangout today launched MySpace News, where the presentation is based on user rankings of content that the site pulls in from trusted news sources. Letting users submit their own finds, a la Digg, Reddit and others, may come later.

http://gesterling.wordpress.com/2007/03/05/usatoday-redesign-has-blogs-buzzing/

http://www.siliconvalley.com/latestheadlines/ci_5704502

http://news.myspace.com/

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/18/exclusive-myspace-news-launches-tomorrow/

Whether this has any appeal for you depends largely on whether you spend much time on MySpace and whether you happen to share the interests of the site's youthful demographic. Fox Interactive Group, owner of MySpace, expects that in the absence of any huge news story, the top of the listings will be dominated by entertainment, gossip and oddities. But more value might be found among the 300 subcategories. "It's extremely hard [on other sites] to find the person saying the most interesting thing on something narrow, like USC football," said Brian Norgard, who, with Dan Gould, created NewRoo, acquired by MySpace for this technology.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/site/premium/access-registered.intercept

MySpace News faces the challenges of any socially driven feature, like the small percentage of readers who actually participate on participatory sites, and the interest of MySpace socializers in reading and rating news is open to question. Further, by priming the pump with links and blurbs from news sites, MySpace could end up in the same kind of tussles with content producers that Google News has. But with 100 million members, MySpace has the raw material from which to build an active news site, even if, as Seamus McCauley contends, it's missing a chance to do something truly novel.

(y) (y) :

http://virtualeconomics.typepad.com/virtualeconomics/2007/04/more_on_the_myt.html

http://virtualeconomics.typepad.com/virtualeconomics/2007/04/myspace_digg_cl.html

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

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-23-2007, 11:47 AM

(h) 8-|

Google's shopping search debuted in late 2002 as Froogle, a name that, in the spirit of the company, was cute and clever. As it turns out, it was also less than clear about its affiliation and purpose, and that may have been one factor in keeping the service from becoming the blockbuster Google hoped it would be. On Wednesday, a more mature Google gave the site a more mature, less ambiguous name: Google Product Search. "We were a really young company, and I don't think we really understood the burden of a new brand," said Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google. "I also think it was very hard to build awareness. Our product offering was very robust, but it will fare better with a Google Product Search name."

http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-6177393.html

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/back-to-basics.html

http://www.google.com/products

http://searchengineland.com/070418-202109.php

(f) (f)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-23-2007, 11:55 AM

:) (8) :) (8) :) (8)

http://rope.icgo.fimc.net/staticweb/EdFeatures/PlanetRockGuitarQuiz/index.htm

Very, Very (h)(h)(h)(h).

(y)

Animadvertistine, ubicumque stes, fumum recta in faciem ferri?

(Ever noticed how wherever you stand, the smoke goes right into your face?)

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

sweetlady

04-23-2007, 11:59 AM

;) ;)

http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/feature-geeky-furniture

;) ;)

(y) (y)

:D Now if I could only speak. Coughing for over two weeks, but it got a whole lot worse while down taking my dad to his eye and heart appts last Thursday and Friday. Got back yesterday and felt/still feel as if a Mack truck ran me over. :| My eyeballs hurt! :| Even Wyatt the Boxer is being a good boy and snuggling close to me, as if he knows his mama is feeling really sick. (l)

(f)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

04-23-2007, 12:07 PM

(y) (y) (y) (y) (y)

Profiles of some intriguing people and how they're starting over in life as entrepreneurs.

Profiles in Retirement: The Entrepreneur Option

By GLENN RUFFENACH

Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal.

Profiles in Retirement, a new Encore feature, will take a look each issue at a handful of intriguing people and how they're starting over in later life.

-- Glenn Ruffenach

Running The Numbers

At age 73, Henry K. "Bud" Hebeler is spending the bulk of his retirement -- as much as 12 hours a day, six days a week -- helping thousands of people with their retirement.

Mr. Hebeler, a former top executive at Boeing Co., is the developer of analyzenow.com, widely regarded as one of the best Web sites about retirement finances. Started in the mid-1990s, the site is intended, in his words, to "educate a wide range of people, from laymen to professionals, about the realities of retirement planning." To that end, Mr. Hebeler spends much of his day answering emails from users of the site and thinking up new ways to demystify money management in later life.

(Two of the latest and most helpful tools: free programs titled: "Should You Take Social Security Early?" and "Evaluating Immediate Annuities.")

While Mr. Hebeler preaches the necessity of planning for retirement long before the day arrives, he acknowledges that his own preparations at Boeing were a mixed bag. He was president of Boeing Aerospace Co., a division of the parent company. And like many people with busy lives, he says, "I didn't have time to think about things like retirement."

At age 55, though, Mr. Hebeler found himself reading a set of fuzzy financial projections. Those numbers would start him on his present course.

The projections focused on Mr. Hebeler's own retirement savings and came courtesy of a financial planner provided by Boeing. The problem: "Almost all the material was written in the best interests of the financial firms" that helped produce the projections, Mr. Hebeler recalls. "If I had used that material to make presentations to our board, I wouldn't have had a job."

That shortcoming "got a fire burning in me," Mr. Hebeler says. Leaving Boeing, he embarked on a campaign ("idealist that I was") to educate America about retirement planning. The early days were rocky. An effort to publish a book met with closed doors in New York.

Eventually, he hit on a strategy: Anytime he read what he considered a good article about retirement finances in a magazine or newspaper, he would write the author, complimenting him or her on the material -- and offering his own services if the writer needed help in the future.

Gradually, Mr. Hebeler's name and expertise began showing up in financial planning circles. After starting analyzenow.com, he was asked to write a book about retirement: "J.K. Lasser's Your Winning Retirement Plan," which is still in print. His second book, "Getting Started in a Financially Secure Retirement," comes out next month.

Today, Mr. Hebeler and his wife, Mirriam, divide their time between homes in Seattle and Park City, Utah. At the latter, the couple still ski five or six days each week, despite a growing assortment of injuries. (A friend observes that the Hebelers are "held together with Kevlar, titanium and Velcro.") His Web site, Mr. Hebeler says, typically gets "several thousand hits" each day. Money from sales of software and books is plowed back into analyzenow.com.

When asked to compare his time at Boeing with his new career, Mr. Hebeler talks about the personal nature of his work today. "At Boeing I was largely helping people very indirectly -- through the defense of our country, for instance. There were a lot of filters involved. But here, you're right on the forefront of helping people. You can see the effect it can make."

(y) (y)

One Park At a Time

Most evenings in retirement, Jim and Patricia Raffin sit alone, watching sunsets, listening to the occasional coyote howl and waiting for the morning, when they can return, as Mrs. Raffin describes it, to "one of the greatest jobs you can think of": camp hosts in a national park.

The Raffins are part of a small army of volunteers who travel across the country in recreational vehicles and set up home -- typically for several months at a time -- in destinations as large and prominent as Yellowstone National Park (2.2 million acres, primarily in Wyoming) or as small and remote as Fort Craig (a 19th-century Army post in New Mexico, on about 20 acres). Working for such agencies as the Forest Service, the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management, the Raffins and others serve, as their title indicates, as "hosts," welcoming visitors and campers, answering their questions, providing information about the site, and enforcing local rules and regulations.

At the same time, these volunteers (in some cases, small stipends are available) get the chance to experience the nation's natural wonders as few travelers do. "There is no better way to see the country," says Mrs. Raffin, age 70.

The Raffins are actually on their second retirement. Jim Raffin left the Navy in the early 1970s. The family moved from Rhode Island to Texas, where Mr. Raffin ended up working in a nuclear power plant. He retired from that job in 1996.

At that point, the couple "sold everything," bought a motor home and began touring the country full time. At one early stop, Medicine Bow National Forest in Wyoming, a camp host asked the couple if they would be interested in filling in for some volunteers who hadn't yet arrived. The Raffins agreed and ended up staying almost six weeks. In 2002, they began working as camp hosts virtually year round.

Summers find them at higher elevations in parks in Colorado or Wyoming; winters prompt them to head south, volunteering at sites like Fort Craig, a personal favorite. ("You haven't seen anything until you've seen the sun go down on the mountains of New Mexico," Mr. Raffin, age 72, says.) Volunteering isn't all work; there are get-togethers with other camp hosts, pot-luck dinners and, of course, the chance to meet travelers from around the U.S. and the world.

What many travelers don't realize, the Raffins say, is how budget cuts are hurting (and even forcing the closing of) parks and campgrounds nationwide -- and how badly volunteers are needed.

"Are these parks going to be available for future generations to enjoy as much as we have?" Mrs. Raffin asks. "I think all retirees should give some of their time to causes like this."

(y) (y)

A Passion For Books

Jim Strawn is the classic example of a person taking a passion -- in his case, a penchant for collecting books -- and turning it into a business in retirement. Last October, Mr. Strawn, age 65, a former finance chief in the radio industry, and his wife, Judy, opened their own store, Smythe Books, in Dunwoody, Ga.

Of course, starting a business, whatever the spark, is seldom easy. Mr. Strawn's story involves many small steps over many years, as well as one unexpected setback: a loss of confidence.

A Georgia native, Mr. Strawn graduated from college in 1963 and spent much of the next 35 years in the broadcast business, first with Cox Broadcasting Corp. and eventually as a senior executive with two closely held chains of radio stations. Midway through this career, Mr. Strawn found a new hobby. The catalyst was a biography of C.S. Lewis, the English author best known for writing "The Chronicles of Narnia."

"I never had been a big reader," Mr. Strawn says. But "this book hooked me. I couldn't put it down." By chance, a family trip to England was already in the works, and Mr. Strawn decided he would spend part of the vacation learning more about Lewis. The final day of the trip found him at a book fair in Oxford, where he bought several first editions of Lewis's writings.

In the years that followed, collecting books became a passion. Mr. Strawn began studying authors and why certain writings were important to them. He attended book fairs in the U.S. and Europe and developed relationships with dealers. He enrolled in classes about finding and identifying rare titles. And he bought books and more books, amassing some 2,000 titles in all.

In 1998, Mr. Strawn walked away from the radio business, financially successful, but "tired and burned out." He turned briefly to golf and travel and considered "doing something" in the book industry. As the months passed, though, "I began to lose confidence in myself," he recalls. "My experience in radio had been so specialized. My skills didn't seem to be a match for anything."

A new direction came from a breakfast meeting with his pastor, who steered Mr. Strawn toward an accounting job with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a nonprofit group based in Atlanta. What began as a part-time position turned into a five-year commitment, with Mr. Strawn ending up as the organization's chief financial officer. Perhaps more important, his work and success at the fellowship restored his confidence, and persuaded him to give the book business a try.

Indeed, when asked today what advice he would give others, Mr. Strawn urges would-be retirees to "keep yourself in situations where you don't lose faith in your abilities. With nonprofits and churches, you'll end up being a valuable asset, and that could turn into something much bigger."

Smythe Books, only five months old, is already expanding; Mr. Strawn was able to lease some additional space and will soon have about 14,000 titles on his shelves, up from about 9,000 when the shop opened. (Buying up the inventory of a bookstore that was closing in South Carolina allowed him to augment his personal collection substantially.)

Mr. Strawn spends about 40 hours a week at the store, Monday through Saturday. Two retired librarians work with him part time. He delights, in particular, in being able to satisfy customers' requests for the obscure. "I had a man walk in and ask if I had any books about checkers," Mr. Strawn says. "I told him, 'Yes, I have two!' "

And he continues to look ahead. "I want to be a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America," he explains. "To be a book dealer of any substance, that's a badge you need to wear.

"I still have some goals."

(y) (y)

An Apostle For Fitness

Anger and fear can do wonders for your retirement.

When Carole Carson retired at age 59, she remembers feeling an "ineffable sadness." Although she had enjoyed a successful career in business, she had wanted, at some point, to work as a writer and to get herself in good physical shape.

"I reconciled myself to the fact that I would never write and always be fat," she recalls. That sense of resignation, she adds, was the worst part of retiring. "I didn't have my dreams anymore."

Fast-forward six years. This coming week, Mrs. Carson's first book will go on sale. Titled "From Fat to Fit," it chronicles how she lost 62 pounds, began a new career as a writer and fitness advocate, and helped a California community dedicate itself to good health. Now 65 years old, Mrs. Carson traces her transformation in retirement to a single event: a July morning in 2001 when she stepped on her bathroom scale.

It showed that she was carrying 182 pounds on her 5-foot-1-inch frame. She describes the moment in her book:

" 'That's it!' I said, more in desperation than conviction. 'If you don't change, you'll die fat. You have to do something before it's too late!' "

Mrs. Carson had worked in several different jobs and careers before that summer. She taught high school, worked in college administration, started her own consulting business and eventually owned a chain of 30 hair salons in the Midwest. Selling the chain marked the beginning of her retirement; soon after, the numbers on the bathroom scale sparked a search for help.

Mrs. Carson, who lives in Nevada City, Calif., first found a fitness coach. "Looking back, I realized my problem: I had tried to [lose weight] alone," she says. "For the first time, I admitted that I needed help."

At the same time, she emailed her local newspaper, the Union, and asked if the editors might be interested in a free-lance article for the "senior section": a first-person account of one woman's efforts to get fit. The paper said yes -- and ended up running the story, with a large photo of Mrs. Carson and her 44-inch waist, on its front page.

Mortified at first, she began hearing from people who applauded her candor and wished to talk about their own struggles to lose weight. The Union, meanwhile, asked if Mrs. Carson would be interested in writing a weekly column about her progress (or lack thereof) in shedding pounds. In the months and years that followed, a new career was born.

Mrs. Carson ended up teaching classes about fitness and helped organize a community "meltdown" in Nevada County, Calif. One thousand residents, in teams of about five to 10 people, joined forces to see how much weight they could lose in two months. Shored up by weekly pep rallies and progress reports, the participants shed almost 7,600 pounds. That effort garnered national media attention and convinced Mrs. Carson that her retirement could best be spent helping others lead healthier lives. Her new book is one part of that effort; she continues to write for the Union and is speaking with other communities about organizing their own "meltdowns."

"It's all about reinventing yourself," she says of retirement. "I'm working harder now than I ever did when I had my jobs. But now, I'm doing things I really want to do."

(y) (y)

A Hiring Hand For the Feds

Vicki Novak, retired less than two years, is on a mission: to help smooth the way for fellow retirees, among others, to find work with the federal government.

At the same time, she has found what many Americans appear to be searching for in later life: an important and challenging job that makes use of her talents and experience -- and one that gives her the freedom to, well, play.

"I'm lucky," the 55-year-old Virginia native says simply. "I'm in good health, I'm passionate about what I'm doing, and I'm having a heck of a good time."

Ms. Novak works with the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group based in Washington that educates young and old alike about the value of public service and helps recruit workers for government jobs. After spending 35 years working for Uncle Sam, Ms. Novak is now trying to streamline the government's hiring process, convincing government managers of the benefits of hiring from new "talent sources" (including older adults) and, at the same time, making it easier for applicants to get their foot in the door.

"In the next five years, 600,000 people will be eligible to retire from the federal government," Ms. Novak says. This, from a full-time work force of about 1.6 million. Already, "people are scrambling around, looking for help," Ms. Novak adds. "I think I can make a difference."

Ms. Novak is the first to acknowledge that none of this -- her new job, her lobbying efforts, her commitment -- was planned. "Before I retired, I wanted to do volunteer work -- maybe the elderly, or hospice, or children," she says. "There was no strong focus. Rather, her retirement to date is a lesson in the importance of remaining open to new interests in later life.

Ms. Novak had what she calls a "light-bulb moment" in early 2006. Recently retired from a top position at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, she was invited to speak at Louisiana State University. Talking with students, Ms. Novak realized that most had little if any knowledge about government work. "They thought that all jobs were in Washington, that there were no exciting jobs in government. And they had no idea where to go to find out."

Hoping to change such misconceptions, Ms. Novak approached the Partnership for Public Service and offered her services. Today, she spends about three days a week working on two major programs -- Call to Serve and Fed Experience -- designed to help recruit young adults and baby boomers, respectively, for positions in the federal government.

Ms. Novak says it's the balance she has struck between doing "something that's meaningful" and still enjoying travel and hobbies (her golf scores are in the low 80s) that has made retirement rewarding. After all, "we're telling [government] agencies to be more flexible -- to allow people to work part time, or work from home," she says. "The government hasn't done that in the past. But people want that flexibility, and employers need to be willing to meet them halfway."

(y) (y)

Patching, Painting And Sewing

Travel and volunteer work are near the top of most people's to-do lists as they approach retirement. Which is why Bill and Jackie Conaway think they have found an ideal life.

The couple, who live in Lafayette, Ind., are part of Nomads, a volunteer group associated with the United Methodist Church. (The letters stand for: Nomads On a Mission Active in Divine Service.) Members travel throughout the country in recreational vehicles and spend several weeks at a time refurbishing churches, youth centers and camps, among other sites and facilities. Membership is open to anyone, not Methodists alone.

Last year, a thousand volunteers completed 166 projects in 28 states and Mexico, and donated an estimated 121,000 hours of their time. Members spent 13 weeks alone last spring helping rebuild homes in Louisiana and Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

The Conaways ascribe their introduction to Nomads as "fate." Both retired in 1996, Bill from a career in banking and Jackie from Purdue University. Already RV veterans, the couple embarked the following year on a three-month trip to Alaska. On July 4, the Conaways stopped in the small city of Wasilla to watch the local holiday parade and ended up parking next to a truck with a sign that read "NOMADS."

Catching up with the truck's owners, who also were walking to the parade, the Conaways asked what the sign meant, and the small group fell into conversation about the organization and its work. The following year, the Conaways signed aboard.

In the time since, they have focused primarily on projects in the Southwest (in winter months) and in their home state of Indiana (in spring, summer and fall). Typically, the Conaways will pull their RV into a spot provided by the project coordinators and begin work. The jobs run the gamut: patching floors, painting walls, installing cabinets, sewing curtains -- just about anything involved in restoring and repairing aging churches and related sites. (That said, the Conaways draw the line at scaling large ladders, especially outdoors. "We try to keep off of roofs," Mr. Conaway says.) Most volunteers put in about 20 to 25 hours a week

The work, according to the couple, fills two needs: their desire to travel and their need to feel useful.

"We're not very good at sitting around," says Mrs. Conaway, now 66. "We want to be productive. And that's the reason Nomads is so good for us. It really gives us a purpose, like we're contributing to society."

In some ways, the decision to join Nomads was a logical fit with the pair's lives before retiring. Mr. Conaway, in particular, who is now 68, had been deeply involved with the couple's church in Indiana -- at one point helping to oversee a multiyear building project.

"If it hadn't been Nomads, we would have found something else," says Mr. Conaway, who has spent four years on the organization's board of directors. "We have the wherewithal to do these kinds of things. We're just trying to give back."

(l) (l) REMARKABLE!!!

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

sweetlady

04-23-2007, 12:15 PM

;) (f) ;)

New to Space Monkeys... Detachable Tattoo Sleeves. A pair of nylon mesh sleeves that you pull up your arms to give the illusion of a full sleeve tattoos.

http://www.spacemonkeys.co.uk/onlinestore/detachable.htm

:) I would LMAO but that would start a coughing fit.....:D

;) Is it hot around here today, or is it me? ;)

Uśmiech (uśmiechać się). Wy jesteście na szczerej kamerze!

( Smile. You are on candid camera! ) ;)

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

sweetlady

04-23-2007, 12:17 PM

Dial A Human, the secrets to skipping past the automated phone tree on the service lines of scores of companies:

http://www.dialahuman.com/

(y) :D (y) :D

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

sweetlady

04-23-2007, 12:19 PM

;) ;)

http://www.fromkeetra.com/posts.php?post=012

:D Hilarious!!

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-23-2007, 12:21 PM

;)

The only people sweating more than blacked-out BlackBerry users last night were the millions of last-minute tax filers who hit "send" at the end of their TurboTax toils, only to be left hanging without any sign that their returns had been filed. The flood of taxpayers who now procrastinate electronically rather than on paper was even greater than anticipated and overwhelmed the servers at Intuit, makers of the program. At the peak, company officials said, the servers were processing 50 to 60 returns a second, and that wasn't nearly enough. "If you are sitting there and just did your taxes and want to get assurance it's been filed, it has to go into the queue," said Intuit spokesman Harry Pforzheimer. "We are processing as quickly as we can given the unbelievable demand and the last-minute demand. You can't increase capability quickly enough to solve the problem for every single individual hitting the OK button."

http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_5693003

http://www.siliconvalley.com/latestheadlines/ci_5695219

http://support.turbotax.intuit.com/cgi-bin/turbotax.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=3598

Luckily, the IRS woke up in a good mood this morning and told those who'd been caught in the crush that they would face no late fees. "They will not be penalized for filing late," said Bruce Friedland of the IRS. "We will do everything we can to assist taxpayers affected by the situation. If people couldn't e-file last night, we encourage them to file as soon as they can."

:| :| :| :|

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-23-2007, 12:23 PM

:)

Q U O T E D

"Jerry Yang and I just announced at our quarterly employee all-hands that Yahoo! has committed to going carbon neutral this year. Essentially, that means we're going to invest in greenhouse gas reduction projects around the world to neutralize Yahoo!'s impact on the environment. While doing our homework on this, we measured our carbon footprint and discovered that Yahoo! going carbon neutral is equivalent to shutting off the electricity in all San Francisco homes for a month. Or, pulling nearly 25,000 cars off the road for a year."

-- Co-founder David Filo announces the further greening of Yahoo

http://yodel.yahoo.com/2007/04/17/dont-even-leave-a-footprint/

Pretty and very cool (p) :

http://yodel.yahoo.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/windfarm.jpg

(f) (f)

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

sweetlady

04-23-2007, 12:42 PM

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

http://static.flickr.com/112/262983535_cf6fd4aea7.jpg

1890 Mennonite Antique Quilt Top"

http://oldquiltcompany.com/menonite-blue-fabric-faddin.jpg

http://turkeyfeathers.typepad.com/turkey_feathers/images/100_9681.jpg

http://www.bbonline.com/vt/chocolatetruffle/pix2.jpg

(l) (l) http://www.flyingsquirreldesigns.co.uk/images/blue-alaska/blue-alaska-all-large.jpg

http://www.ourcommonthreads.com/images/OceanBlue.jpg

(l) (l) (l) http://www.finefocus.net/quilts2.jpg

http://cdn.llbean.com/products/home_garden/47436/images/M47436_Blue_Star.jpg

(f) (f)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

04-23-2007, 12:45 PM

(l) (l) (l)

http://www.claibornehousebnb.com/

THAT's a pretty porch! http://www.claibornehousebnb.com/porch2.jpg

(f)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-23-2007, 12:54 PM

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

http://www.plowhearth.com/plow_assets/images/shop/catalog/2139.jpg

http://www.wvbedandbreakfasts.com/images/userphotos/t11_1.jpg

http://img.timeinc.net/toh/images/exteriors/ex200207_porch1.jpg

http://www.bestromanticinns.com/1/PHOTOS/WindoverInn.jpg

(f) (f) Romantic Inns:

http://www.bestromanticinns.com/1/Country/UnitedStates/NorthCarolina/Mountains.htm

(l) The Will Rogers Ranch House in Pacific Palisades. Photo by Marc Holmes.

http://www.parks.ca.gov/pages/626/images/ranch_house_exterior_448_302.jpg

http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=23779

(l) Could this be you and your lady love? Experience down-home hospitality and western charm of a working cattle ranch. The Fite Ranch is chock full of desert beauty, privacy, and history.

FRONT PORCH OF FITE RANCH BED AND BREAKFAST:

http://www.fiteranchbedandbreakfast.com/images/Fite-Ranch-porch-wide-shot.jpg

http://www.fiteranchbedandbreakfast.com/

(y) (y) I would LOVE to check this one out for sure!!

(f)

(um) (um) Może (maj; majowy) Wasz Uśmiech Jest Wasz Parasol. (um) (um)

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

sweetlady

04-23-2007, 01:18 PM

;) ;)

The simple element of beauty is so important in our everyday lives... Beauty knows no age, no race, no gender... it is timeless and forever. Every woman has her own kind of style, a kind of individual, indefinable, incandescent something. There's no such thing as effortless style. Knowing yourself, knowing your budget and knowing your size are required for great style.

http://www.forabeautifulyou.com/images/003699.jpg

http://www.forabeautifulyou.com/images/fabylingerielead.jpg

:o A wee bit off in the weeds IMHO:

http://www.armyofmom.com/justin_timberlake_04.jpg

(f) http://www.noosaheavensent.com.au/pics/heaven_sent_main.jpg

http://www.vintagedesignerclothing.net/BeigePJ.jpg

(l) http://www.vermontcountrystore.com/images/us/local/products/detail/f09434_dt.jpg

http://www.coolantarctica.com/feze/Vermont/country-store0075.html (NOT in pink.)

http://www.vermontcountrystore.com/images/us/local/products/detail/f09210_dt.jpg

Definitely not sexy, but "enough" to answer the door in....;)

http://mylingerieonline.com/lingeriemedium/carolehochman2.jpg

http://image.bizrate.com/resize?sq=160&uid=516609403&mid=23579

Again, ANY color but pink for me:

http://www.lingerieshoppecharlotte.com/images/pink2.jpg

http://www.lingerieshoppecharlotte.com/products.html

;) Okay, I also will not wear yellow sleep wear either.

http://us.st11.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/victorines_1942_95680794

http://www.victorinelingerie.com/silcharsexsl.html

:o Could you sleep in this? http://static.flickr.com/24/58101760_13e2c59abe.jpg

http://firstlastalways.blogspot.com/2005_10_01_archive.html

http://www.femail.com.au/img/lingerie_affil1_sm.jpg

http://www.femail.com.au/sexuality.htm

(l) CLASSY! http://www.apparelsearch.com/images/Womens%20Sleepwear.jpg

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/B000GENC1O.01-A17A9KSBA4BTSR._SCLZZZZZZZ_V65380048_.jpg

http://estore.diplomatcapital.com/images/czcsx02b.jpg

http://www.undercoverwear.com.au/images/fashion.jpg

http://www.undercoverwear.com.au/fashion.html

(l) (l) http://www.horchow.com/products/mn/HCM0870_mn.jpg

http://www.horchow.com/products/Ccat2900731.jsp

http://img.alibaba.com/photo/50074579/Ladies_Sleepwear_10_05.summ.jpg

http://www.alibaba.com/productsearch/Sleepwear/4.html

(f) (f)

(c) (c) More tea and back to the sofa to get some rest. 8-)

If I feel better later, I'll get into some travel and other cool URLs I have been saving up but didn't have Internet access the last two + weeks. It *is* however so nice to "be" here this afternoon.

Have a lovely Monday and rest of your week. (f)

Animadvertistine, ubicumque stes, fumum recta in faciem ferri?

(Ever noticed how wherever you stand, the smoke goes right into your face?)

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

sweetlady

04-24-2007, 08:20 AM

:)

http://www.acrobots.net/

(h) (y) (h) (y)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-24-2007, 08:22 AM

;)

http://jrc313.com/processing/cloth/index.html

8-| 8-|

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

04-24-2007, 08:23 AM

:| :| :|

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu0OX7MQL5I

:o :o Pretty silly, I think.

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

sweetlady

04-24-2007, 08:26 AM

:)

The Alternative To Roller Skates & Bicycles

http://www.booster-blades.com/

:o Might be more of a self defense weapon than mode of transportation, eh? ;)

^o) Or maybe it's just that I am still not feeling well. But - better than yesterday! <:o)

(f)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-27-2007, 09:22 AM

(f) (f)

:o

At Three minutes and Four seconds after 2 AM on May 6th This year,
the time and date will be:

02:03:04 05/06/07.

This will Never happen again in our lifetime.

:o :o

:)

Castigat ridendo mores,

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

sweetlady

04-27-2007, 09:25 AM

(y) (y)

World-O-Meters

5.8 billion and counting

Want to know the world's cold, hard facts—right now? Get real-time info on the world's population, number of births per second, how many bicycles have been made this year, how many people have seen movies so far, and so on. Bliss for an information junkie!

How many kangaroos hopping?

http://www.worldometers.info/

:|

:o

:)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-27-2007, 09:27 AM

;)

Fold School

Origami was never like this

Instead of making a pretend rocket ship or kitchen for your kid, turn that gargantuan cardboard box left over from your new fridge into a footstool. Or even a rocking chair. Just download the pattern and start folding!

Think out of the box:

http://www.foldschool.com/_faq/faq_general.html

(h) (h)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

04-27-2007, 09:30 AM

;)

Shorpy

History in the camera's eye

This photo blog features images of American life as we lived it about 100 years ago. Not staged—real shots from a century past. The buildings are smaller, facial hair a bit poofier, but it's still just folks selling oranges, catching rats, sunbathing on the weekend.

Say "Aged cheese!"

http://www.shorpy.com/

Too bad this was taken before 1931 - I would have invited this person in for tea!

http://www.shorpy.com/woman-mail-carrier

http://www.shorpy.com/files/images/26023u.preview.jpg

(f) (f)

(um) (um) May Your Smile Be Your Umbrella. (um) (um)

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

sweetlady

04-27-2007, 09:32 AM

;)

The Stinkers

Get your tomatoes ready

The self-touted Ultimate Bad Movie Awards. Read about the bad, the ugly, and the, er, uglier in the world of smelly cinema. Check out the odiferous eggs of yesteryear laid by some of today's favorite stars. And don't miss the parody of AFI's 100 years, 100 Movies.

Just roll credits already!

http://www.thestinkers.com/

:)

Animadvertistine, ubicumque stes, fumum recta in faciem ferri?

(Ever noticed how wherever you stand, the smoke goes right into your face?)

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

sweetlady

04-27-2007, 09:34 AM

(o) (o) (o)

The Human Clock

Does anybody really know what time it is?

Sure, if you want to know the time, you can just glance at your watch or the ol' clock on the wall. Très passé! But this ingenious site has thousands of collected photos of found and fabricated numbers, updated every minute, to show you the time in a whole new light!

Time to check it out...

http://www.humanclock.com/?s=1

(o) (o)

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

sweetlady

04-27-2007, 09:36 AM

(ip) (ip) (ip) (ip)

Game: Virtual Villagers — Windows

Your own desert island

Fleeing from a volcano eruption, a tribe of little villagers find themselves stranded on a mysterious island. Lucky for them you're there to help them start life anew by becoming farmers, scientists and explorers. As your village grows and prospers, your villagers become curious about their mysterious new island home and the secrets it holds.

http://www.jollygoodgames.com/virtualvillagers/

(f)

(um) (um) Może (maj; majowy) Wasz Uśmiech Jest Wasz Parasol. (um) (um)

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

sweetlady

04-27-2007, 09:37 AM

:)

MacAstronomica — Mac

The truth is out there

MacAstronomica generates sky maps from the perspective of anywhere on Earth. The maps show all the planets and stars visible to the naked eye, as well as some galaxies and nebulas, known meteor showers, and the Milky Way. Get a view of the universe from your computer:

http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/mac/MacAstronomica-Review-50588.shtml

(y) (y) (y)

(um) (um) Może (maj; majowy) Wasz Uśmiech Jest Wasz Parasol. (um) (um)

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

sweetlady

04-27-2007, 09:39 AM

:o

Bunny Show Jumping

Long-eared galoots hopping over li'l fences

This, ladies and gentlemyn, is exactly what the Internet was made for: broadening your horizons and revealing a bright, wonderful world you'd never otherwise know existed. In this case, the world of show bunnies. Jumping over things. Thank you, Internet.

Watch them wascal-y wabbits:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNPOdffkkLo

:) :)

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

sweetlady

04-27-2007, 09:42 AM

(y)

Q U O T E D

"So my personal belief would be that if privacy is important to you, Google should not be your biggest concern for two reasons. First, I believe Google does more to protect our users' privacy than any other major search engine. Second, I believe other companies such as ISPs have a superset of the data that Google has, plus they have verified payment/identity, plus they know which IP addresses you are on, even if you switch IP addresses."

-- Google's Matt Cutts steers privacy activists toward a new target

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-and-privacy/

(y) (y)

O! Plus! Perge! Aio! Hui! Hem!

(Oh! More! Go on! Yes! Ooh! Ummm! ) ;)

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

sweetlady

04-27-2007, 09:45 AM

:s

Doll Face follows a machine’s struggle to construct its own identity. The machine with a doll face mimics images presented on a television screen and ultimately self-destructs from its inability to adopt a satisfactory visage. Created in its entirety by Andy Huang, Doll Face presents a visual account of desires misplaced and identities fractured by our technological extension into the future.

http://www.vmix.com/view.php?id=1891541&current_resourceid=1891541&type=video

8-|8-|

Ventis secundis, tene cursum.

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

sweetlady

04-27-2007, 09:47 AM

:|

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jkenning/464845773/in/set-72157600078099414

:D :D :D

Non calor sed umor est qui nobis incommodat.

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

sweetlady

04-27-2007, 09:48 AM

:o

(hint: you don't want to find yours on this list) ;) ;)

http://www.threadwatch.org/node/14095

Animadvertistine, ubicumque stes, fumum recta in faciem ferri?

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

sweetlady

04-27-2007, 09:50 AM

:) :)

http://www.uncrate.com/men/gear/outdoor/george-foreman-igrill/

:D

Fac ut gaudeam.

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

sweetlady

04-27-2007, 09:54 AM

......you just don't have the voice for talkies:

:o

Right now, corporate outposts in the virtual world of Second Life have the novelty thing going for them, but the benevolent dictators at Linden Lab know that if they want to get down to serious business, some improvements need to be made. One big one is in the works -- speaking at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo, CEO Philip Rosedale said Second Life is now beta testing technology that will allow voice communication among the avatars and hopes to roll out the feature in the next few months. And it won't be just plain old voice; the technology includes three-dimensional imaging, so that you can differentiate between sounds coming from behind you or down the hall to the left.

http://news.com.com/2100-1043_3-6178864.html

While many Second Life residents will welcome voice as a way to prevent carpal tunnel problems caused by repeatedly typing "Oh, baby, yeah ... that's right ... yes, yes," Rosedale sees the business-world benefits. "There are a lot of problems with telephony when doing conference calls. You can't tell who's talking if there's more than one person. But in the virtual world, voice solves it," he said. Fertile ground may also be found in using voice for virtual-world marketing interviews, he added: "I do think people even today have a willingness to engage in a conversation beyond what they'd do chair to chair."

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=4913

Rosedale also acknowledged that to encourage more business activity, the entry barriers to Second Life participation -- creating a presentable avatar, learning to fly gracefully -- need to get lower. To that end, he said, perhaps a starter pack would be made available, allowing a busy executive to scan his photo onto a ready-made online persona. And Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger, VP technical strategy & innovation at IBM, also speaking at the conference, said he expects some business etiquette to eventually develop around avatar use. "You don't want to be a chipmunk avatar if you're going to meet clients," he said.

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

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

04-27-2007, 09:59 AM

(ap) (au) (ap) (au) (ap) (au) (ap)

http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/H/human_footprint/calculate/index.html

http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/H/human_footprint/index.html

^o) ^o) If not already, everyone will have jumped on this bandwagon, IMHO. Calculators for that human footprint, that is.....;) It's a good idea but some of the proposed "balancing solutions" are off in the weeds. :|

Fac ut vivas. :)

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

sweetlady

04-27-2007, 10:01 AM

:D

Mini Cooper XXL: Oxymoron on Wheels:

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/mini-cooper-xxl-oxymoron-on-wheels-254481.php

http://gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2007/04/mini_limo_front.jpg

:D

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

04-28-2007, 09:17 AM

:o :o :o

SLIP THE BONDS Dan Brooks, in a 1978 airplane, is a student at the flight school in Smoketown, Pa.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/26/fashion/26pilot600.1.jpg

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/25/fashion/26pilot190.2.jpg

April 26, 2007

Up, Up and ... Never Mind

By MATTHEW L. WALD

Smoketown, Pa.

MATTHEW W. PHELPS was a natural candidate for flying lessons. A computer system administrator, he liked anything technical. He had a brother who had a plane and wrote about aviation for a magazine. And from the moment he got behind the controls, at a small airport north of Boston, he enjoyed himself.

“I liked it a lot,” he said. “It was fun, it was exhilarating.”

But Mr. Phelps, 42, embodies all the promise and crisis of general aviation. He gave up after 15 hours of lessons, probably about a quarter of the way to earning his license.

“At that point, I’d met my future wife and we were starting to save for the wedding, and then to buy a house, and then there was something else to save money for,” he said. That was in 1993. “I’m still sort of dreaming that it might get done, I just put it on hold,” he said.

Once, nearly every boy had the idea that he would slip the surly bonds of earth and dance the skies on laughter-silvered wings, as John Gillespie Magee Jr., a pilot in the Canadian Air Force, wrote in 1941. Plenty of people still go to school hoping for a job at the airlines flying the big jets, but experts fear that the hobbyist, who flies as an alternative to golf or boating, or perhaps to take the family 100 miles to a beach or maybe just an obscure restaurant, is disappearing.

The number of student pilots is down by about a third since 1990, from 129,000 to 88,000. The number of private pilots is down from 299,000 to 236,000, according to statistics kept by the Federal Aviation Administration. And they are aging.

Some longtime private pilots fear that an industry is withering, and a bit of Americana is slipping away, along with a bit of freedom and joy. And it is happening in part because of lack of interest; Walter Mitty doesn’t want to fly anymore.

The industry has recently launched a major campaign to lure people like Mr. Phelps back, and to recruit new students. But something has changed.

“It’s not a Gen X kind of thing,” said Paul Quinn, 62, with a smile, as he fueled up his 1942-vintage Army Air Corps trainer at the tiny airport in Smoketown, Pa. Sitting at the picnic tables overlooking the single runway, a variety of students, pilots and sightseers had gathered in the warm sun. Most, like Mr. Quinn, had gray hair. “Most of the people who are out here are in their 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s,” he said.

Ironically, an increasingly technological society is turning its back on a high-technology pastime.

One problem is fear, in an era when people describe their cars by the number of airbags, not the number of horses. In small planes, the statistics show that fatal accidents per 100,000 hours of flight fell by one-quarter in the decade ending in 2004, but some people in aviation fear that tolerance for risk is falling even faster.

ANOTHER is the shift of income and family decision-making to women. Industry leaders try hard not to sound like a former president of Harvard and attribute anything to innate skill, but women simply do not take up flying as frequently as men do.

“There’s been a big sociological and psychological change in the families of today, in where the discretionary dollars go,” said Phil Boyer, president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. When the husband told the stay-at-home mom of the 1950s that he was going to spend a Saturday afternoon taking flying lessons, she acquiesced, he said. Today, he said, in a two-income family, she is more likely to say: “You are not. That’s your day to take Johnny to the soccer game, and what the heck are you doing spending our hard-earned money on flying lessons?”

Mr. Boyer’s association is trying hard to make flying more appealing to women, including offering training in how to read aviation maps, talk on the radio and provide other help in the plane, and maybe transitioning them to earning a license themselves. But 95 percent of the students are still male, he said.

At the airport in Smoketown, Matt Kauffman, the chief flight instructor at Aero-Tech Services, the only flight school here, said that the training system had not adapted itself to women. “Women learn differently from men,” Mr. Kauffman said. “If two men go up, they will scream and shout, and a transfer of knowledge occurs, and we’d get back on the ground and go have a beer, and life is good,” he said. “If you yell at a woman, she’d start crying, and she’d never come back.” He would like to hire a female flight instructor but can’t find one, he said.

Time and money drive others away. The prospect of taking months to earn a pilot’s license is less appealing now. It is also expensive, $5,000 to $7,000. Renting even a tiny two-seat plane runs $75 an hour, and an instructor, $40 an hour or so. Fuel costs money, too, but its recent price increase is not a major consideration, because small planes burn only six to seven gallons an hour.

David Ehrenstein got his pilot’s license in graduate school in the early 1990s, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “I’m a little bit of a closet technie nerd,” he said. He liked flying because “there’s a bunch of technology involved,” and that using it “to do this great cool thing was exciting.” But he had to give it up when he moved to Washington about three years later.

“My impression is that when people grow up and have kids, they no longer have time to fly,” said Mr. Ehrenstein, now 40. “When I quit, the major demographic of pilots was retired white guys.”

Even people with money find flying a guilty pleasure. Ron Janis, a lawyer in New York who specializes in mergers and acquisitions, wants his license so he can fly to a house he and his wife bought in Provincetown, Mass. And he loves to fly. But, he said: “I certainly work longer hours than when I started. And I do get in trouble with my firm for taking this time off” to fly.

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, did not help, nor did the crash deaths of prominent private pilots like Cory Lidle or John F. Kennedy Jr. Nor did the bumbling flight of two men from Smoketown into the District of Columbia in May 2005, in a two-seat Cessna, that paralyzed the federal government.

“We’ll be paying for that for years,” said Mr. Kauffman, the flight instructor. (The men were not his students and it was not his plane, he quickly pointed out.) Mr. Kauffman said his business has held constant, mostly because his only competitor went out of business last year.

Indeed, airports like this one show signs of stagnation. At any general aviation airport, the cars in the parking lot are usually new but the planes on the field have vintages more like the taxis in Havana. They are all well maintained, some private pilots say, but carburetors are still in common use.

Vern Raburn, the president and chief executive of Eclipse Aviation, which is seeking to sell a new generation of tiny jets for general aviation use, observed in a speech that the Beechcraft Bonanza is now 60 years old. “I challenge you to find another industry in the world today that celebrates building 60-year-old products,” he said.

But Mr. Raburn’s product costs over $1.5 million, and thus is not likely to revitalize the lower end of the spectrum.

Some industry executives say the reason is that America is no longer a do-it-yourself, take-charge society, and that includes fly-it-yourself. Mr. Boyer’s group, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, tried putting ads on the cable TV channels that run do-it-yourself home improvement and electronics programs. The campaign did not work very well, he said. Now his organization has a new marketing campaign, Project Pilot, with a smoothly produced video narrated by Erik Lindbergh, grandson of Charles, who flew the Atlantic solo in 1927 and electrified the world of aviation.

“It gives me a rush every time I go up,” he says on the DVD. But he adds: “Just as my grandfather’s flight created a huge interest in flying, we need to create that same groundswell today. We need a new generation of general aviation pilots, because without more pilots, even A.O.P.A. can’t keep general aviation strong, and that will ultimately have a big effect on every pilot.”

BUT some veterans fear the magic is gone for good. Men who returned from World War II having seen the Mustangs, Corsairs or Thunderbolts might have wanted to fly their own propeller planes. In the wars in the Middle East, the A-10 Warthog has not inspired the same ambitions.

The F.A.A. last year introduced a new kind of license, sport pilot, to try to lower the barriers to entry and draw more people in. The license limits the pilot to very small planes, and, at first, daytime flying, and staying within 50 miles. It also requires fewer hours, and costs about half as much to get.

Many flight instructors say the license is so limited that there is no reason to bother. Hal Shevers, who owns a flight school near Cincinnati, is pushing his students to get the license. With it, he said, “I can take my mom and dad or wife and kids up on a nice afternoon or sunny Sunday, and show them the sights.”

“I can show them a sunset, a sunrise.”

But to work, some people in the industry say, it will require a major manufacturer to build a new class of plane, one that can be sold for less than $100,000, and insured for less, so it will be less expensive to rent.

To be able to offer cut-rate prices for the new sport license, Mr. Kauffman went looking for a small, simple, inexpensive airplane. He ended up with an Aeronca Champion, which was built in 1946. So far, nobody is building a new plane to match the F.A.A.’s program.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/fashion/26pilot.html?em&ex=1177905600&en=b81a359405b4508d&ei=5070

(l) (l) I soloed in an Aeronca Champion, which was built in 1946. Although it was in Riverside, CA, not PA. Small world.

(h)(h) Finally! A passion, a hobby, a lifelong love that Boomers and their folks engage in!! As a private pilot (of antique planes, not "milk stools" or "spam cans"), I felt a kinship with these pilots my age and older. I always learn something new from the stories of older pilots. (y)

(ap) (h) (ap) (h) (ap) (h) (ap) (h)

(ap) Up and away into the wild blue yonder!

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

sweetlady

04-28-2007, 09:27 AM

:s (&) :o (&) :) (&) :)

Pet-Friendly Like an increasing number of dogs in Manhattan, Bogie, a 12-pound Shih Tzu, had to go through an entrance interview for a rental.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/29/realestate/29cov.xlarge1.jpg

Me and My Human Jessica Cohen made an offer on the spot for her new condop so that her two dogs, Hailey and Meagan, could live in a pet-friendly building.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/29/realestate/29cov.1902.jpg

April 29, 2007

So, Do I Make the Cut?

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

BOGIE, a 12-pound Shih Tzu, is an experienced navigator of the many hoops that humans and pets must jump through for acceptance into Manhattan apartment buildings.

A few years ago, he aced his admission test at a luxury rental building at 222 East 34th Street: a half-hour interview with the building’s manager, office assistant and lawyer. Bogie charmed his reviewers with his easygoing manner and his method of communicating by snorting and jingling the bells on his Burberry dog collar.

“He was pretty chill,” said his owner, John Comas. “He just sat around and did his thing — which is sitting around.”

But Mr. Comas, a 34-year-old financial adviser to wealthy clients, knows that even Bogie has his limits. He shakes at the sound of fire engines or when he isn’t petted, so it was unlikely that he would ace every interview.

On May 7, Mr. Comas and his fiancée, Monica Rivituso, are moving to a $7,000-a-month two-bedroom at 300 East 55th Street, which is less strict, dog-wise, than some comparable buildings.

Their new landlord is requiring Mr. Comas to include only Bogie’s age, breed and weight in the lease. While Mr. Comas found cheaper apartments that didn’t allow pets at all or pets over a certain size, he said it was worth paying $400 to $500 a month more in rent to give Bogie a comfortable home.

“If all things remained equal, I would pay more for the pet-friendly building,” he said as Bogie calmly chewed on a pig’s ear among moving boxes in the living room.

Mr. Comas is part of the universe of renters and buyers who are paying more money to find buildings that welcome dogs. Because of the strong sales market in Manhattan, co-op and condo boards have been able to be pickier in every way, demanding higher incomes from buyers and better manners from dogs.

Renters are having an ever-harder time because they are facing one of the tightest markets in seven years, and building managers are becoming stricter about pets, particularly dogs.

While the Miller Samuel appraisal company calculates that 93 percent of the apartments advertised for sale in Manhattan say they allow pets, brokers say that pet-friendly buildings have grown stricter. Increasingly, they limit dogs by their breed, weight and personality. They also make the “dog interview” a contingency for acceptance.

That means that sellers, if given a choice, will pick buyers without pets because they don’t want their sales to fall through. “Five or six years ago, nobody interviewed your dog,” said Michelle Kleier, the president of Gumley Haft Kleier, a Manhattan real estate brokerage and the owner of three Maltese dogs, named Lola, Roxy and Dolly. “Are they going to start interviewing babies next to see if they scream? People will pay up for a building that will allow pets.”

Ms. Kleier said she had spent more time in the last few years researching what buildings really mean when they say they are pet-friendly and preparing clients for pet interviews. She steers clients with dachshunds away from a small Upper East Side co-op that dislikes that particular breed, she said, and she advises buyers at a Central Park West co-op that they will have to present their dogs to the building’s board to confirm that if they have “small dog names” like Fifi or Gigi, they are in fact small dogs.

She said that a co-op on Lexington Avenue in the low 80s goes so far as to put a dog in an apartment and monitor how it responds to the ringing of the doorbell and various telephones.

In one of the most comprehensive interviews, she said, a Fifth Avenue co-op in the 90s conducts a test similar to a nursery school tryout. A prospective buyer’s dog is placed in a room with some of the other dogs that already live in the building. Co-op board members then watch how the new dog acts when a bowl of food is put in front of the group and how well the dog plays with other dogs when a ball is thrown.

“It’s not that they want to exclude dogs,” Ms. Kleier said. “They just want the right types of dogs that are congenial and have the right kind of personality.”

Like the broker who may encourage a buyer not to take a tranquilizer before a co-op board interview, Ms. Kleier encourages her clients to hire a trainer rather than medicating their dogs on interview day. She points out that even if a dog on tranquilizers gets through the interview, the owner could still be asked to get rid of it if it barks incessantly or is overly aggressive after moving in. “A temporary tranquilizer gives an artificial impression,” she said.

Brokers say that most buyers will pass up dream apartments before they will give up their pets. Barbara Fox, the president of the Fox Residential Group in Manhattan, spent two years trying to sell a Fifth Avenue penthouse in a building that didn’t allow pets.

The apartment had an offer within six weeks of hitting the market in early spring of 2004 for close to the asking price of $9.975 million. But the buyer had a dog, and the co-op board wouldn’t make an exception. The penthouse finally sold in November 2006 for $7.5 million after two price cuts, according to data from StreetEasy.com.

Based on her experiences with sales like this and her own purchasing experiences as a dog owner, Ms. Fox was recently hired as a consultant by another Fifth Avenue building, a co-op she would not name, that wanted to know how to raise its sales prices. She advised the building that it had to be far more welcoming of pet owners.

“Don’t tell them you have to get rid of your dogs,” she told the board. “It’s like telling them to get rid of your kid.”

That’s how Jessica Cohen feels about her “girls,” a golden retriever named Hailey and a golden retriever mix named Meagan. In February, Ms. Cohen, a 29-year-old Prudential Douglas Elliman broker, closed on a one-bedroom condop that she is now putting through a gut renovation. She said she made an offer on the spot because she felt so desperate to find a home for her dogs.

“I would have negotiated if I didn’t have dogs,” she said, but being a dog owner takes away a buyer’s leverage.

“I was willing to pay $50,000 more on a $650,000 apartment,” she said.

In 1999, Ms. Cohen bought a studio in a co-op building for $93,000. To ensure that the dogs were considerate neighbors, she spent more than $5,000 on trainers and $500 a month on a low-sodium diet — salmon, steamed chicken and vegetables — to keep the dogs calmer. In 2001, she got a letter from the board asking that she no longer use the building’s washing machines and dryers because dog hair might get on other residents’ laundry.

After searching for nearly two years, Ms. Cohen thought she had found a more pet-friendly co-op on Central Park West and went to contract on a $300,000 studio. When she submitted her board package, the seller asked her to say that she had just one dog and to sneak the other dog into the building after she had been approved. Ms. Cohen would not close on the deal because she feared that the building would not let the second dog in. “I said I was not willing to lie about my living situation or take a risk,” she said.

The seller, convinced that the co-op board would not accept two dogs, refunded Ms. Cohen’s $30,000 deposit and continued to search for a buyer.

Later in 2003, Ms. Cohen bought an Upper West Side condo, hoping that the residents would be more welcoming. But a year after she bought the $350,000 studio, the building imposed a “one dog” rule. The building’s management told Ms. Cohen she would be allowed to keep her two dogs because they had lived there before the rule was introduced.

When she temporarily took in a stray mutt and an ailing one-pound kitten, her condo board sent two letters complaining about the dog, and a board member knocked on her door to tell her that she needed permission to have a kitten. The kitten died within two weeks, and Ms. Cohen found a home for the stray within four months.

In 2005, she moved out of the apartment into a rental that allowed dogs. She sold the condo and started shopping for a more pet-friendly building.

“I felt very stressed out,” she said. “I felt like I didn’t have any rights to live my life.”

While Ms. Cohen was going through her own search, she watched a client who had no pets beat out dog owners on a deal even though he had offered $40,000 less than the highest bid for a two-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side.

While the co-op had a “no dogs” policy, the bidders and their brokers hoped that the small building would make exceptions. So a buyer with a golden retriever and a Yorkshire terrier offered $1.6 million and a bidder with a golden retriever offered the asking price of $1.595 million.

But in the end, the seller accepted Ms. Cohen’s client’s offer for $1.56 million. The sellers didn’t want to take the risk of having a buyer turned down by the co-op board; the sale closed on April 11.

“They didn’t want anything that was iffy,” said Philip Altland, the Prudential Douglas Elliman broker who represented the sellers.

Even buildings that allow dogs can be worrisome for buyers. About 18 months ago, Todd and Toni Finger made an offer of $875,000 on a two-bedroom, two-bath co-op at 115 East Ninth Street. The seller accepted the offer but wanted a clause in the contract saying that the couple would have to go through with the sale even if the co-op board rejected their 30-pound beagle, named Buster.

The Fingers offered about $10,000 more, but the seller wouldn’t budge. A few weeks later, a woman offered $875,000 and was approved by the board, according to the seller’s agent, Gayle Booth of Halstead Property.

Since then, the Fingers have been looking at condos, which tend to be more accepting of buyers with pets. Such dog-friendliness comes at a big price: condos can cost 20 to 30 percent more than co-ops.

But until the market softens and the gatekeepers become more lenient, people with less-than-perfect pets might consider using the time wisely.

In December, Joseph Olshefski, a Bellmarc Realty agent, helped a client find a studio for himself and his 26-pound black pug, named PorkChop, whose girth makes him look a bit like a baby seal. The renter had been turned down by 25 buildings, mainly on the Upper West Side, that said they were pet-friendly.

They were, but in limited ways. They allowed cats but not dogs, or agreed that owners could have pets, but renters could not, or they accepted dogs that weighed 20 pounds or less.

After a six-week search, the client rented an apartment farther uptown, and PorkChop started a diet. Mr. Olshefski said the experience has been good for PorkChop’s health — and would improve his vacations, because he was recently banished from the passenger cabin on a flight from Boston to New York.

“Put your pets on a diet,” he said. “A healthy pet is man’s best friend.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/realestate/29cov.html?em&ex=1177905600&en=217f2ac5f31b2b7d&ei=5070

:| And some folks wonder why I plan on living in a rural area? NOBODY questions pets in rural areas.(y) Most if not all people welcome pets - wherever I have made inquiries on properties. Actually, if there's ever a question in a less-than- rural area - offering a non-refundable "pet deposit" ALWAYS closed the deal. In other words, throw enough money at a landlord and she/hye is not going to take it? Right. ;) It always comes down to how much someone is willing to spend/take to seal the deal. :)

(f)

Carpe Diem - It's nice out there!

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

sweetlady

04-28-2007, 09:33 AM

:)

Shari Billger, left, leads a tour group in a meditation session at a sacred site at Giza, Egypt:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/29/travel/29spir600.1.jpg

Shari Billger, right, and Yoko Sasaki, a member of her spiritual tour group, in the desert near Giza, Egypt:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/24/travel/29spir190.2.jpg

April 29, 2007

Touring the Spirit World

By ETHAN TODRAS-WHITEHILL

NO sound was heard in the burial chamber of the Great Pyramid as a tall, slender woman lay down in the pharaoh’s pitted granite sarcophagus, her flowing silver hair spreading beneath her. Her dozen or so companions in the dank room lifted their arms, palms upward, eyes closed in meditation.

As was prescribed in the training of priests in pharaonic Egypt, the woman had said, each member of the group had taken a turn in the sarcophagus; now she, their spiritual leader, occupied the space. Suddenly, her lips quivered, and a guttural moan escaped them, bouncing off the smooth stone walls and ceiling like an angry pinball. She climbed out of the sarcophagus, her face creased with determination, and formed the group into a circle, sitting cross-legged. In a deep voice, she read from the Emerald Tablets of Thoth, which she believes were translated from the ancient tongue of Atlantis.

The leader’s name is Shari Billger, and her home is near Colorado Springs. But on this January day, she was leading a group of Americans and Japanese who had come to the pyramids to connect with the unique spiritual energy that many Western visitors to Egypt believe they will find there.

Earlier, Ms. Billger had explained the group’s mission this way: When the advanced civilization of Atlantis fell more than 30,000 years ago, the accumulated knowledge of the ancients — sort of a spiritual Library of Congress — was placed on the site of the Great Pyramid. These modern travelers were there to make that wisdom accessible to all mankind. But to harness the energies required for this task, their spirits would temporarily have to leave their bodies.

Ms. Billger had everyone lie down. “When ye have released the self from the body, rise to the outermost bounds of your earth-plane,” she intoned, “and speak ye the word Dor-E-Lil-La.”

“Dor-E-Lil-La,” the bodies replied.

This was not a cult; the participants had met only two days before. They were in Egypt on a package tour.

New Age-style sacred travel, or metaphysical touring, is a growing branch of tourism, particularly in countries like Egypt with strong ancient-civilization pedigrees. Tourists with an adventuresome spiritual focus — predominantly middle-aged, upper middle class and female — come together to improve themselves and the world, as Ms. Billger’s group intended. Their ideas are best understood as an extreme on the continuum that includes yoga, tarot and astrology, and the rituals they perform at sites deemed sacred can vary widely.

“Other groups will be in there with bells and candles, jumping up and down like somebody’s going through their bodies,” Wael Khattab, this group’s Egyptian guide, commented as he observed their ritual from close by. “This is actually quite tame.”

More than a mere sales gimmick, spirituality tours are taken very seriously by their participants, who are commonly pantheistic, choosing to believe in truths of every religion rather than just one. They also invoke the whole panoply of New Age beliefs, finding power in crystals, aromatherapy and, of course, pyramids. They are home inspectors, copywriters and managers, but also mediums, psychics and shamans. Ms. Billger, who is 62, worked in sales for companies like Xerox and Honeywell before becoming a spiritual teacher and healer.

In Egypt, metaphysical tours are a thriving business, bringing in about 5,000 visitors a year, according to Mohammed Fayed, whose company, Guardian Travel, organized Ms. Billger’s tour. The price, usually a few thousand dollars per person, includes the expense of securing private time at the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx — sometimes thousands of dollars a group for an hour. Mr. Fayed’s business grew 45 percent from 2005 to 2006, and he expects another double-digit increase this year.

Even as Ms. Billger’s group had climbed the stairs to enter the Great Pyramid for their ceremony, the most important of their tour, they had passed two women not of their group standing at the base, eyes closed in meditation.

Other popular destinations also tend to be places of mystery. Sites built by ancient civilizations whose construction techniques are not settled fact — like Stonehenge and the perfectly fitting but mortarless walls of the Inca at Machu Picchu, as well as the pyramids — are embraced as evidence that those civilizations had mystical powers. Places with a Christian focus but an overlay of competing spiritual and religious claims — like the sites of the so-called Black Madonnas of France and Italy or the Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, which took on mystical meaning in “The Da Vinci Code” — are also attractive to spiritual tourists.

“They know that whoever built them, built them on places that were already places of power on the earth — the acupuncture points on the earth’s body that hold powerful energies,” said Andrea Mikana-Pinkham, who lives in Sedona, Ariz., a place known for its own energy hot spots, and has led over 50 metaphysical tours since 1993. Body Mind Spirit Journeys, a company that she runs with her husband, Mark Amaru Pinkham, organizes about 25 tours a year to sites around the world. The couple are also the North American grand prior and prioress of the International Order of Gnostic Templars, a group that claims connection to the medieval Knights Templar.

Ms. Mikana-Pinkham, who is also friendly with many of the smaller tour operators — who like Ms. Billger run only a few trips a year — traces the birth of sacred travel as a business to the Harmonic Convergence of 1987, a widely publicized New Age event that supposedly corresponded with a great shift in the earth’s energy from warlike to peaceful. Many in the metaphysical community traveled to sacred sites around the world then for prayer, meditation and ceremonies.

Ms. Mikana-Pinkham herself attended only a meditation session near her home, but it led to “one of the peak spiritual experiences of my life,” she said. The theories behind the Harmonic Convergence state that in 2012 the world will make another great shift, and sacred travel has taken hold in the 25-year period between the two dates — a kind of global awakening, in her view.

To an outsider, spiritual tourists look like any others. They carry cameras, wear comfortable clothes and athletic shoes, travel in private buses and purchase souvenirs. Over time, though, the distinctions manifest themselves.

On Ms. Billger’s tour, Sandra Zimmer, 43, remarked how much she had enjoyed herself the last time she was in Egypt. But Ms. Zimmer had never been to Egypt before, at least not in her current body; she was referring to a memory from a past life.

As the group moved through its tour, the mundane often became magical. During the ritual in the Great Pyramid, a draft was occasionally felt, and the voices of the participants echoed and rebounded in every direction. Ms. Billger took a number of photos to commemorate the experience. Later, the group interpreted the breezes to be the presence of spirits, the multiple echoes the product of disembodied voices. And Ms. Billger’s pictures were full of bright circles of light, possibly lens flares or the refraction of her flash off the dust in the air, but she proudly displayed them to everyone as proof that “orb beings” had been present for their ceremony, inspiring and guiding them.

Some of the beliefs of spirituality tourists will strike nonbelievers as pseudo-science, like Ms. Billger’s claim that the cinnamon leaf oil sniffed by her group before entering the pyramid would make viruses and bacteria “completely unable to live in your bodies.” Others will sound more like mythology or the stuff of fantasy novels.

MR. KHATTAB, the guide, was apparently not exaggerating when he called Ms. Billger’s tour tame. He recalled a Dutch group — touring in the early ’90s, he said — whose members each incarnated as a different Egyptian deity each day. This extended to sleeping arrangements, so if one tourist was possessed by the god Osiris, and another by the goddess Isis, Osiris’s wife, those two tourists would spend the night together. The only problems Mr. Khattab had with this were logistical. “You had bills signed with ‘Seth’ and ‘Osiris’ and ‘Horus,’ ” he said. “You had to sort out which person was who on which day. It was a hassle.”

Still, Mr. Fayed, the Egyptian organizer of the tour, invites those who might be judgmental to take a longer view. “Look at the world nowadays, look at the number of wars in the world, look at the number of people who are being killed every single day,” he said. His tourists, he noted, are different: “They are trying to spread peace and love throughout the world.”

Because their beliefs and practices differ so from those of the average tourist, tour organizers are careful to keep the metaphysical tourists, who call themselves “awake,” separate from the regular tourists, whom they refer to as “asleep.” Ms. Billger requires prospective clients to fill out an application in which they agree to support “the group energy for the greatest good of all.”

Samone Myers, an event coordinator for Luminati Egyptian Travel, another sacred travel operator that runs tours to Egypt, knows firsthand the friction that arises when the two categories of tourist mix.

On a trip to Hawaii to swim with dolphins, which are a powerful draw for metaphysical tourists, the captain combined the “awake” tour group with an “asleep” group, she said. Each time they got in the water, the two groups would segregate themselves, choosing to swim on opposite sides of the boat. The dolphins, which she described as “in tune,” swam only near her group, Ms. Myers said. The other group was angry, but she and her friends found it amusing. “It was a great demonstration of how out of touch unconscious people are with themselves, others, animals,” she said.

Ms. Billger, who also organizes swimming-with-dolphins excursions in addition to Egypt trips, has been leading spirituality tours for eight years and spiritual workshops for 12. Living near Colorado Springs, she is based in a center of New Age culture. She wears clothing she knits herself, like her amazing technicolor sweater coat. She owns a llama named Hopi, whose wool she shears, spins and dyes for her knitting. When she first meets people she hugs them; she does not flinch when flies land on her; and staring in her eyes too long is apt to make her cry “from sheer beauty.”

She left her business career after having a conversation at a party 12 years ago with a man involved in spiritual practices. She hadn’t wanted to attend that party, she said; her guides, other-dimensional beings without physical bodies, had had to prod her. (A specific person’s guides depend on what dimension they belong to, Ms. Billger said, and hers are from the 17th dimension. “They call themselves the Choir, and they swirl in circles of color,” she said. “They can do amazing things.”)

But she does not regret the time she spent in the corporate world. “I’m not airy-fairy,” she said. “In the business world, I can talk that lingo, too. I feel that I have a really good balance of left brain and right brain.”

Traveling with her group in Egypt, I concluded that spirituality tourists feel more in control of the normal hassles of traveling than other tourists. When hawkers at the pyramids bothered Claudia Plattner, 60, a bank operations supervisor and psychic channel with spiky blonde hair and large glasses, she gave them mixed-berry granola bars, which confused them enough so that they left her alone. When I complained of back pain, Ms. Billger, who also practices spiritual healing, meditated over the injury to realign my energy (alas, no luck).

Even with Cairo’s throw-up-your-hands traffic jams the day before the pyramids ritual, they took a proactive approach.

Their bus was halted for 20 minutes, mere blocks from the hotel where they were headed, next to a wrought-iron gate overhung with blood-red bougainvillea. All around, the idling vehicles choked the air with exhaust, and a fusillade of frustrated beeps and honks pelted the bus from every direction. But inside, in comfortable seats and behind shaded windows, the group was blissfully unaware, discussing the day to come.

They finally noticed their predicament. At Ms. Billger’s suggestion, they began to direct their energy to clear a path in the traffic — some meditating with eyes closed, others staring intently ahead. After three or four minutes of quiet focus, the traffic began to move. Ms. Billger looked up triumphantly. “Let’s just give it a little extra oomph here,” she called out, eyeing their approaching hotel. She giggled, a high-pitched tinkle that belied her years. “You guys are good!”

In the pyramid the next day, after returning to their bodies and completing the ritual in the burial chamber, they had gone down to the lower chambers to anchor the released energy, so that their work would not be wasted. The trip down was arduous: they first had to walk with bent backs through a crawl space, then carefully made their way down a set of steel stairs through a tall chamber with a peaked roof like converging staircases. Then came the hard part: backs and knees bent, hands on smooth wooden banisters, they stepped backward 200 feet down a steeply inclined passageway no more than four feet high and wide, stopping frequently to catch their breath.

When they reached the bottom, they met with a pleasant surprise: they would be allowed into the unfinished burial chamber, the lowest accessible point in the pyramid, which the pharaoh had abandoned in favor of the upper chamber. This was significant. In the ceremonies Ms. Billger had performed on two earlier trips to the Great Pyramid, she had never gotten so far down, and the closer they could bring the energy to the spiritual treasures below, the more accessible the wisdom of Atlantis would become to the rest of the world.

But the extra climb would be almost the length of a football field, in a corridor as steep and tight as the one they just emerged from, concluding with a stomach crawl for the last few feet. Ms. Zimmer, the woman who had been in Egypt in a previous life, is a larger person and her brow shone with the perspiration of the last climb. She craned her neck to see down the passageway, which had no discernible end.

“I’m just going to stay,” she announced as the others stooped to enter the corridor, “and anchor the energy from here.”

VISITOR INFORMATION

Here are some tour agencies that specialize in New Age-style spirituality tours and some of the tours planned for this season.

Body Mind Spirit Journeys (www.bodymindspiritjourneys.com; 800-231-9811):

In England, a Holy Grail Pilgrimage and Conference in Mystical Avalon, July 6 to 13; $3,220 a person double occupancy, not including airfare.

In Peru, an Incan Shamanic Journey, June 14 to 19; $2,999 a person double occupancy, not including airfare, with an extension from June 19 to 22 to Lake Titicaca to celebrate the solstice for an additional $699.

Luminati Travel (www.luminati.net, 888-488-1151) is trying to gather hundreds of travelers to circle the Great Pyramid “with unconditional love in their hearts” on Sept. 9 as part of the Circle the Pyramid Event and Global Peace Conference, Sept. 5 to 11; $1,800 a person for the tour, not including airfare or most meals.

Guardian Travel, with offices in Virginia Beach and Cairo (www.guardiantravel.net; 757-422-5568), is helping organize these tours:

Ancient Egypt, Awakening the Initiate Within, Oct. 28 to Nov. 10; $4,795 a person, all inclusive. Conducted with A.R.E. Travel, www.edgarcayce.org/tours.

Grand Sextile Tour, Return to the Nile, Oct. 21 to Nov. 2; $4,440 a person, all inclusive. Conducted with Queen of Cups Inc., www.queenofcups.com.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/travel/29spirituality.html?_r=1&ref=travel&oref=slogin

(y) (y) Sounds like a great new business to invest in - there are countless folks with the means as well as the time to go on these retreats. (I know, I know - those pesky Boomers with all of that descretionary income to spend on right-brain, travel and learning opportunities....;) ;)

(h)(h)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-28-2007, 09:35 AM

:| :|

The 17th Karmapa Lama with a group of newly initiated monks.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/29/travel/29side600.1.jpg

April 29, 2007

21st-Century Religious Travel: Leave the Sackcloth at Home

By JOSHUA KURLANTZICK

IT’S not often you meet a god. But on a pouring day last summer in Dharamsala, home to the Tibetan exile community in India, I did. In a monastery outside town, I was shown into a vast, bare room. At the front sat the 17th Karmapa Lama, third-ranking leader in Tibetan Buddhism — a figure considered almost a god by many Tibetans. The Karmapa fled Tibet when he was a boy, but in exile he had become a man, in his early 20s, with a broad, shaved head and meaty arms beneath his flowing monk’s robes.

For nearly an hour, I questioned the Karmapa about Buddhism, world politics, his own life. Sometimes, he would answer as I imagined a monk should, gazing into the distance and delivering oblique replies. Sometimes, he would answer like a boy asked a school question he does not know, scrunching up his face as he scrambled for a reply. In either case, the Karmapa answered like a figure who knows an entire people follow his every word.

The Karmapa finally left, draping a traditional white scarf on my shoulders; I walked out feeling I might never have such an unusual experience. But when I descended from the Karmapa’s quarters, I realized my audience had not been so unique. Buddhist travelers from Hong Kong and Taiwan waited outside to see the Karmapa. His assistants lugged through the monastery bags full of the visitors’ offerings, which, bizarrely, included enough vials of multivitamins to stock a health food store. (Maybe he was lifting weights back in his private quarters.)

Not that I should have been surprised. While religious-oriented travel has been around since the first pilgrimages, in recent years it has developed into a much larger and more segmented market, with niches ranging from high-end religious travel to volunteer-oriented religious travel to modern-day pilgrimages like a visit to the Karmapa.

Kevin Wright, executive director of the World Religious Travel Association, a trade group set up this year to help organize the faith-based market, says there is an increase in “the overall demand for religious travel by people of faith,” which, in turn, has brought growth to companies serving this market. Next year, Mr. Wright’s group will be host of the first World Religious Travel Expo.

In fact, a study released in November by the Travel Industry Association revealed that a quarter of travelers said they would be interested in taking a spirituality-oriented vacation. Today, the global religious travel market has reportedly become an $18 billion-a-year industry.

Travel experts credit several factors for this upsurge. Offering travel programs allows churches and other institutions a competitive advantage in the search for constituents. Many younger religious travelers want a vacation that combines faith with fun, and churches recognize a need for an active religious vacation. Nations with critical religious sites, like Scotland, home to some of the fathers of the Reformation, have begun to brand themselves to faith-oriented tourists.

Also, major travel companies have gotten into the action, which brings more publicity to the field. Globus, a giant European travel firm, has opened a religious-travel section, which runs trips ranging from vacations that explore the Christian theology of C. S. Lewis to excursions following the Polish heritage of Pope John Paul II.

As the religious travel market has boomed, it also has broken into niches. Once, religious-oriented travel meant either trips to historic sites, like Jerusalem or Mecca, or volunteer vacations to help needy people in developing nations. But in recent years, religious travelers have expanded their vacation options, though traditional trips like an Israel tour or volunteering with a group like American Jewish World Service remain popular.

“In the past five to 10 years, the religious market has transitioned from a ‘poverty/penitential travel mentality’ to a first-class travel mentality,” said Mr. Wright. “The religious market now pays for first-class travel products and services. This is a major departure from several millennia of religious travel tradition.”

Tour operators and religious-oriented travel agents are realizing religious travelers do not necessarily need sackcloth and ashes. Royal Caribbean now allows Christian travel operators to run specialty cruises on its ships, like Cruise with a Cause, a Christian cruise to the Bahamas featuring Christian pop stars like Matthew West and opportunities to land ashore for mission work. Holland America has done the same, allowing operators to run cruises to Alaska on its vessels featuring Christian naturalists, gospel singers and a religious bookstore where the on-board casino normally is.

In the most notable example of high-end faith travel, this year, the ultra-luxury operator TCS Expeditions offered a $45,000 tour around the world called Great Faiths. On the trip, tourists were to take in the greatest religious sites in the world, from Varanasi’s sacred waters to Ethiopia’s subterranean churches — all on one excursion. They also planned to hop from site to site in private jets and spend evenings at luxurious hotels, from the King David in Jerusalem to the Oberoi in Delhi.

Other religious travelers, including church groups, have recognized that spiritual healing fits naturally with physical healing, or with active pursuits like skiing or hiking. Recognizing this, luxury spas in countries like India and Thailand have begun offering Buddhism-related packages for travelers coming for more prosaic services like massage.

The religious travel boom also means it is easier for tourists to research their trips and find a vacation suited to their exact needs. In the religious-travel section of the comprehensive site flyertalk.com, travelers now trade tips on the best places to find kosher food in China and opinions on the best religious festivals to visit in the world. Www.christian-travelers-guides.com lists links to guidebooks and many other Web sites. The World Religious Travel Association Directory (on the Web at www.religioustravelassociation.com) offers links to tour operators around the world.

Or, you could take the traditional approach: Wander foreign lands until you find a site that seems holy to you. On one of my last days in Dharamsala, I attended Friday night services at the local synagogue. Standing outside, under the cover of a tarpaulin roof, rows of men in yarmulkes and women in traditional long Indian skirts rocked back and forth as they chanted joyous hymns welcoming the Jewish Sabbath.

Later, after services, we all walked upstairs to a communal room, where we sat in rows on the floor, breaking off tiny pieces of challah and dipping them into communal bowls of hummus and salad. Across from me, a young Israeli traveler eagerly tore into his bread. “I just got out of the army — I’ve been here a few weeks,” he said. “I could stay here for months. I don’t even need to do anything here. Just be here.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/travel/29religion.html

:) Ohm. Ohm.

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

sweetlady

04-28-2007, 09:37 AM

:) :)

Click to navigate to a city.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/22/travel/Europe_600.jpg

April 22, 2007

Affordable Europe: City Guides

Yes, the euro remains strong, but you don't have to max out your credit card to indulge in some of Europe's timeless luxuries. From stylish hotels that won't break the bank, to offbeat boutiques favored by local bargain hunters, the correspondents and contributors of The New York Times offer money-saving tips for visiting 15 major European cities. You can also read suggestions from other Times' readers and share your own tips on visiting Europe affordably.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/travel/22affordable_europe.html

(y) (y)

Animadvertistine, ubicumque stes, fumum recta in faciem ferri?

(Ever noticed how wherever you stand, the smoke goes right into your face?)

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

sweetlady

04-28-2007, 09:39 AM

(f) (f) (f)

While modernity certainly intrudes, somehow or other, this Lithuanian city, despite its many recent changes, often has the feel of an old-world diorama sprung to life.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/29/travel/29next395.1.jpg

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/04/26/travel/20070429_NEXT_SLIDESHOW_1.html

April 29, 2007

Next Stop | Vilnius, Lithuania

After a Dark Era, a City Looks West and Sees a Future

By CLIFFORD J. LEVY

MAYBE it is the cobblestone byways that meander through Vilnius and appear more suited for horses than horsepower. Perhaps it is the unexpectedly historic architecture or the hulking castles that whisper of medieval derring-do. While modernity certainly intrudes — it would not be a European capital without its Prada and Ermenegildo Zegna stores, now would it? — somehow or other, this Lithuanian city, despite its many recent changes, often has the feel of an old-world diorama sprung to life.

Lithuania may seem little more than a crossword puzzle answer, one of the many nations that came back to life after the collapse of Communism, but like its Baltic siblings, Latvia and Estonia, it has turned its gaze and ambitions westward, and its back to Moscow. In Vilnius, you’ll find an easygoing, appealing and less expensive alternative to Paris or Prague.

Restaurants and museums proliferate in this city of 550,000, and well-established hotel chains, not to mention stylish boutique hotels, have staked their claims in recent years. Ramada and Novotel have opened in the city center, and Kempinski will soon as well. Le Meridien, a high-end hotel and conference center on the city’s outskirts, even has a golf school. At many hotels, Wi-Fi and other high-tech staples are a given.

On the streets, it is readily apparent that young people, who have little if any memories of Soviet domination, have embraced Western European mores, hence all those fashion shops. English has replaced Russian as the second language of public life, after Lithuanian.

In whatever language, people are welcoming. On a recent visit, my wife, Julie Dressner, and I chatted our way from peddler to peddler on Pilies Street in the heart of the old city. Many were selling jewelry and other items made from amber. We ended up buying a handsome fruit bowl hawked by a craftsman from an outlying village who had carved it from birch.

In the Old Town, it is not difficult to get lost among the crazy-quilt streets, and you may be thankful that you do, especially when you alight at places like St. Anne’s Church, as curious and enthralling a Gothic edifice as you will find. Go ahead, squint. The facade truly is made of exposed bricks of numerous shapes, even the spires, as if someone turned loose a master builder with a masonry Lego set.

All over Vilnius, night life is lively and unpretentious. At a D.J. bar in the Old Town called Tipo Zoro, where a cozy section in the back is furnished with vinyl bucket seats apparently yanked from old vans, a table of Lithuanians invited Julie to join them while she waited for the bathroom. Similarly cheerful residents lingered in groups in front of many spots, and were eager to strike up conversations with foreigners.

Like the nation itself, food culture has blossomed, and you can sample everything from Greek to Chinese. In search of local fare, we ended up at Forto Dvaras, a restaurant that is a bit of a Lithuanian culinary theme park. Rustic furniture, staff in national costumes and a menu laden with blini, pancakes and giant dumplings called zeppelin (my 9-year-old daughter, Danya, has something of a sour cream addiction, and she was not disappointed). California spa cuisine, it is not. But portions were tasty and sizable, and the bill for six for lunch was only the equivalent of $35.

The contemporary art scene has also taken off. The city recently established an avant-garde visual arts center named after the Lithuanian-American filmmaker and counterculture icon Jonas Mekas, a fellow traveler of Andy Warhol and Allen Ginsberg. The roster of private galleries seems to grow every month, taking advantage of a robust economy and a rich artistic history.

One morning, we showed up at the doorstep of a 15th-century Gothic building on town hall square that is the home of an esteemed Lithuanian painter, Kazys Varnelis. The building is also a museum, and though we didn’t have an appointment, the soft-spoken, long-haired young curator, Vidas Poskus, was soon giving us a free private tour of Mr. Varnelis’s sprawling, eclectic collection. It includes antique books and maps of Eastern Europe and elsewhere, Renaissance furniture, illustrations, paintings and sculpture.

Then there are Mr. Varnelis’s own creations, which often use geometric patterns to create optical illusions, and are sometimes described as a modernist interpretation of Lithuanian folk art. My three children found his work — which is also in the Guggenheim in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago and other museums — transfixing.

Like some of his compatriots, Mr. Varnelis, 90, went into exile in the United States after World War II and returned to Lithuania only in the 1990s. “He wanted to come back for emotional reasons — homesickness and patriotism,” Mr. Poskus told us. “It was important for him to donate his collection to his people.”

If Mr. Varnelis symbolizes the revival here, shards of the nation’s mournful past exist as well, and it is worth acknowledging them. At the National Museum, a grim current exhibit describes the exiling of Lithuanians to Siberian gulags and other repressive measures carried out by Stalin and his successors after Moscow invaded and turned independent Lithuania into a vassal Soviet republic. Not far away is the Museum of Genocide Victims, known as the K.G.B. museum, in a former prison where the Soviet secret police once imprisoned, tortured and killed Lithuanian nationalists, dissidents and others. The cells are intact, and you can walk them.

A century ago, Julie’s great-grandfather emigrated to New York from the Jewish quarter of Vilnius, at the time one of the world’s most vibrant Jewish communities, later decimated by the Nazis. He recalled in unpublished memoirs that after he arrived in Vilnius on his own as a teenager to attend yeshiva, the sense of kinship among Jews was so deep that an informal network made sure he and other poor students did not go hungry. “Every night, those who could afford to invited a boy to his home,” he wrote.

Before our trip, we read his memoirs, and we wondered: was anything left?

So we wandered the site of the former Jewish quarter, spotting only a few instances of Jewish stars and Hebrew writing chiseled into buildings, then feeling a little more hopeful when we reached the restored synagogue on Pylimo Street, one of the few Jewish institutions to survive the war.

After visiting the city’s Holocaust museum, in a small green cottage set back from a main road, and viewing maps and photographs of the two ghettos where Jews were detained, we realized how little the footprint of the city had changed. In some places, what now look like quaint gates were once covered with barbed wire.

Relying extensively on witness testimony and original documents, the museum offers a timeline of the Jewish community’s ascent and destruction in Vilnius. Larger Holocaust museums may present comparable exhibits, but to gaze upon them here, after walking those very same streets, is especially affecting.

While we tried to shield our children from some of the more graphic museum exhibits on Nazi and Soviet atrocities, plenty in Vilnius engaged them. One afternoon we hiked up a cobblestone path to the Higher Castle Museum. First constructed in the 13th century, the castle offers lovely views of the city from its open-air roof, as well as exhibits of medieval weaponry. (If you don’t want to walk up the hill, you can ride a funicular.)

Another walk brought us to the Gates of Dawn, a bulwark that blocks a narrow road. Once part of the city’s original fortifications, it was later transformed into a small chapel containing a venerated icon that has long drawn pilgrims, including Pope John Paul II. On Cathedral Square, the city’s main cathedral, which has several chapels and bell towers, is another prominent attraction.

In fact, the Old Town has an alluring mishmash of architecture — from Gothic to neo-Classical and more — and locals say Vilnius has one of the world’s largest assortments of Baroque buildings. Whatever the style, the place sure is nice to gaze upon, whether you are lugging around an architectural tome or, as we did, simply enjoying going astray among the narrow streets.

VISITOR INFORMATION

HOW TO GET THERE

Travelers from North America typically have to make a stop in Europe to reach Vilnius. Air Baltic (www.airbaltic.com) often has some of the cheapest fares, as low as 150 euros round trip to Vilnius from major cities in Europe.

WHERE TO STAY

Although Lithuania is a member of the European Union, the currency used is generally the lita. Hotel prices, however, are often quoted in euros.

Mabre Residence Hotel, 13 Maironio Street; (370-5) 212-2087; www.mabre.lt. On the outskirts of the old city, it is in a restored former monastery and has a private sauna with a small pool that you can rent to give yourself a true Eastern European experience. Rooms from 120 euros ($165.60 at $1.38 to the euro).

Shakespeare Boutique Hotel, 8/8 Bernardinu Street; (370-5) 266-5885; www.shakespeare.lt. Another quaint hotel in the old city, with rooms whose designs and decorations are inspired by you-know-who. Rates from 105 euros.

Ramada Vilnius, 2 Subaciaus Street, (370-5) 255-3355; www.ramadavilnius.lt and Novotel, 16 Gedimino Avenue, (370-5) 266-6200, are two new luxury hotels in the city center. Rates start at around 100 euros.

WHERE TO EAT AND WHAT TO DO

Forto Dvaras, 16 Pilies Street, (370-5) 261-1070; www.fortodvaras.lt. Typical Lithuanian food, heavy on the quaint atmosphere and sour cream, light on the wallet. Dinner for two is about 70 litas ($27 at 2.6 litas to the dollar).

Kazys Varnelis House Museum, 26 Didzioji Street, (370-5) 279-1644. Works painted and collected by the artist Kazys Varnelis, viewable by appointment only. Admission is free.

Admission to the following museums is 8 litas or less, depending on age and student status.

Higher Castle Museum, 5 Arsenalo Street; (370-5) 261-7453. Views of the city, along with military exhibits.

Holocaust Museum, 12 Pamenkalnio Street; (370-5) 262-0730. A small, deeply affecting museum on the massacre of the nation’s Jews.

Museum of Genocide Victims, 2A Auku Street; (370-5) 266-3282; http://www.genocid.lt/muziejus/en/. A history of Communist oppression.

National Museum, 1 Arsenalo Street; (370-5) 262-9426; www.lnm.lt. An overview of Lithuanian culture and art.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/travel/29next.html?ref=travel

(l) (l) (l) (l) Okay, whose ready to take a trip? :)

Uśmiech (uśmiechać się). Wy jesteście na szczerej kamerze!

( Smile. You are on candid camera! )

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

sweetlady

04-28-2007, 09:41 AM

:)

April 29, 2007

Weekend in New York | Speakeasies

Tell Them Seth Sent You

By SETH KUGEL

ON April 4, 1929, nine parched years into Prohibition, New York City's police commissioner, Grover Aloysius Whalen, told a crowd at the Rotary Club in Manhattan that there were a whopping 32,000 speakeasies peddling forbidden hooch in New York City.

That was one for about every 215 New Yorkers (including children), and those were just the ones the police had documented. Ten days later, The New York Times called speakeasies — which it also called “resorts” — “one of the outstanding social institutions of New York.”

In case you couldn't tell, Prohibition never really caught on here.

Want to spend a weekend visiting the sites of former speakeasies? It's not hard, given the sheer number. The building housing the grilled-cheese purveyor Say Cheese in Hell's Kitchen? Check. The parking lot at 100 Bayard Street in Chinatown? Check. But you want the ones that are still slinging the sauce to this day.

Though the expensive (and jacket-required) “21” Club may be the most famous, what with its secret wine cellar and storied clientele and all, the award for coolest history goes to Onieal's Grand Street, whose predecessor was connected by a secret tunnel to the old Police Headquarters across the street. The tunnel was filled in (they say), but the cellar's stone walls and the barroom's carved-wood ceiling — said to have been imported from Venice in 1875 — has been left alone. (More recent history: Onieal's was the location for Scout Bar on “Sex in the City.”)

Fanelli Cafe in SoHo still has its pressed-tin ceiling, old hanging light fixtures and the Neolithic neon sign that makes the place seem like a diner, not a bar and restaurant. (That was probably not an accident: serving drinks in teacups was a popular tactic in the time of temperance.) The walls are decorated with black-and-white photos of scrawny and venerable pugilists and liquor licenses that date to 1879. Behind the bar, the pantry doors lead to what was a hush-hush back room; the bartenders use it these days to count their tips.

Normally, you shouldn't do a speakeasy tour without visiting Chumley's, a beer-drinking, burger-eating place with a literary history (John Steinbeck and F. Scott Fitzgerald were customers). It maintains its 1920s anonymity in part because it doesn't have a sign, and in part because it's buried in the labyrinth of confusing West Village streets. But part of a wall collapsed on April 5, and rebuilding is going on. The manager, Gina Ruiz, said that it is expected to reopen by June 1.

Midtown had a heck of a lot of speakeasies back when, and flipping through the newspapers of the day, you'd have noticed a marketing nightmare: people were always showing up dead in them. That is no longer a problem. But since most of Midtown has been rebuilt over the decades, finding a former speakeasy could be.

Here's one: Flute Bar in Midtown sits in the former underground home of the Club Intyme, run by the well-known nightclub hostess Texas Guinan. The place doesn't quite have the same charm as in those days, when Tex popularized the phrase “Hello, sucker.” (One time, when asked in court, she defined sucker as “pal.”) Though Flute Bar's attempts to dress itself up are a bit off — those empty Champagne bottles lining the ceiling edge toward dorm-room chic — it does have a great Champagne list and a lot of history.

If you really want to go back in time, try Bill's Gay Nineties. Though it doesn't actively hide its location, it is still, in a way, a latter-day speakeasy, not listed in some of the major dining and nightlife guides (not Zagat, not Time Out, not Shecky's).

But lots of people know about the place, which you might call “retro retro.” It opened during Prohibition as a tribute to the 1890s, which, in those days, must have seemed gloriously boozy. Through the ancient swinging doors, and past your gracious, storytelling host, Aldo Leone (the 83-year-old nephew of Mama Leone), is the cozy Silver Dollar Bar. It's open very night except Sunday. On weekends starting at 8:30 p.m., a piano player rouses the sometimes startlingly raucous crowd with sing-along tunes that on a recent night ranged from “Don't Cry for Me Argentina” to the Prohibition-era “Carolina in the Morning.”

The walls are thick with photos, including those of athletes of yore (boxers from the 1890s) and getting-toward-yore (Wade Boggs and Roger Clemens in Red Sox uniforms — wrong '90s). There are a dining room upstairs and a private party room up from that, but the action is in the bar, where the full menu (try the crab cakes) is served, too.

One person who probably did not patronize the place was William M. Bennett, who in 1929 ran in the Republican mayoral primary as a dry candidate. One of his campaign promises was that he would close a speakeasy that sat “in the shadow of Police Headquarters” — very possibly Onieal's predecessor — along with what he estimated were 100,000 speakeasies in the city.

His threat did not go over well. He lost the nomination to a wet candidate named Fiorello H. La Guardia, 62,894 to 17,100. Which might explain why your flight to New York will not be landing in Bennett Airport, and why you can have a drink at the bar upon arrival.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/travel/29weekend.html?ref=travel

(f)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

04-28-2007, 09:42 AM

;) ;)

Say Cheese

There are cows, villages and restaurants to visit on the way to finding the perfect tartiflette in the Haute-Savoie region of France.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/04/26/travel/20070429_JOURNEYS_SLIDESHOW_1.html

(y) (y)

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

sweetlady

04-28-2007, 09:44 AM

(f) (f)

April 29, 2007

Journeys | France

Searching the Alps for Haute Comfort Food

By KIM SEVERSON

THE first thing to do with a tartiflette is to ease your fork through the crust of cheese. If the casserole is done right, that cut will release a whiff of milky steam infused with a suggestion of onion and garlic.

The best moment, though, comes with a perfectly proportioned forkful. A chunk of cream-soaked potato and a smoky bit of lardon will be married with a smooth coat of reblochon — cheese made from the milk of one of three breeds of French cows that march to Alps meadows in the spring and return to hay-filled barns in the winter.

The tartiflette is perhaps the most comforting dish in all of France's Haute-Savoie, and it's what led me to take a three-day tour of small villages in the region in search of what I imagined as a perfect tartiflette. The dish has the tang and satisfaction of macaroni and cheese baked until it forms a chewy crust, the pure pleasure derived from a bowl of creamy mashed potatoes and a flavor that could only come from 500 years spent perfecting cheesemaking.

I was in Annecy, the capital of the region, with my partner, Katia, visiting her cousin Nora in October. Lunch the first day was at Marc Veyrat's three-star Michelin country French temple, and as we worked our way through 15 refined courses (it now costs 338 euros, or about $465 each, at $1.38 to the euro), Nora described the best tartiflette she had ever eaten. It was made by Mr. Veyrat himself, for a little side operation he had back in the early 1990s.

“I can remember nothing else of that restaurant but the tartiflette,” she told us. That's the effect a good tartiflette can have.

The trick is the reblochon, which is sliced over the top before the dish is baked. Reblochon is a soft, washed-rind round cheese about as thick as a paperback copy of “Candide.” A good one has tang and aroma and a slightly salty quality. The bad are as bland and rubbery as cheap brie.

At its best when the cows are eating nothing but Alpine grass, the cheese got its name from 16th-century farmers who were sick of the tax on their milk. They'd milk their cows until they were about halfway done, pay the tax on that bounty and then finish the job.

They had to do something with the remaining milk to avoid charges of tax evasion. So they made cheese, the name of which comes from the word reblocher, which means to milk again. (Some tie the name to the slang term “reblessa,” which in the local dialect basically means to steal.)

To make tartiflette, the whole cheese is sliced in half horizontally and turned cut side down before the dish goes in the oven. The idea is to turn the soft, brushed rind into a crispy crust as the inside of the cheese melts into the cream and coats the potatoes.

For a road-weary traveler looking for a regional dish, tartiflette is inexpensive and accessible. No one can argue with the instant comfort that comes from a bubbling hot dish of cheese, bacon and potatoes.

In dozens of villages around Lake Annecy, people make and sell reblochon. Similarly, the region is crazy for tartiflette. It is a staple on the menus in the small city of Annecy, considered one of the oldest settlements in the Alps.

Bad tartiflette is easy to find. The tourist-driven cafes near the medieval prison in the heart of the historic quarter of Annecy all offer versions with a small salad and sometimes a small plate of charcuterie. I ate enough bad tartiflette that halfway through my search, I threw myself across my bed like fat Elvis.

Things started looking up at Le Fréti, in the pedestrian-only section near the old prison. It had a terrific cheese cellar and three small rooms filled with the smoky smell that comes when half-moons of raclette melt in front of long electric burners.

Local fruity white wine or warm tea is the thing to drink with all the cheese dishes in the Haute-Savoie; otherwise, Nora warned, “you end up with a cheese stone in your stomach.”

We ordered some of both, and I paid about 11 euros for a bubbling tartiflette. The dish was capped with a couple of crusty bits of cheese and had fatty strips of lardon.

It was good, but I felt vaguely disappointed. This wasn't the tartiflette that the food-obsessed argue over on culinary blogs. True, it was an improvement over my grandmother's scalloped potatoes, but I knew there had to be something better.

The next day, we headed to the village of Menthon-St.-Bernard to eat tartiflette with the cows. Not literally, but pretty close.

The owners of Ferme de la Charbonnière take the idea of farmstead dining to an extreme. Want to know where all the cheese on your table came from? Just glance through the plexiglass down to the barn below, where some of the herd is most likely being milked.

The restaurant smells like a mix of broiling cheese and barnyard. An evening sitting on wooden benches and watching the cows brings the notion of terroir to a new level.

There, a tartiflette must be ordered in advance. If you don't call ahead, you can make do with a kind of do-it-yourself tartiflette called “reblochonnade.” Grumpy-looking women haul little charcoal broilers that look like toy ovens to your table, along with reblochon split into two rounds and placed on little skillets. The customer shoves the cheese under the broiler until it melts, then pours it over a boiled potato and adds some slices of soft, dense air-cured ham.

But the dish, like its sister tartiflette, suffered from cheese that was almost as bland as American Muenster.

At this point, I thought perhaps I had been wrong about the tartiflette. I was at the epicenter of tartiflette cooking, and I couldn't find a good one. Perhaps, as I had been warned, tartiflette was nothing more than a marketing ploy invented by the makers of reblochon to sell more cheese.

Then I headed up the mountain toward Montmin, a place that is not much more than a collection of small buildings, some cows and a little ski area for kids. I parked and took a short, steep hike to Col de la Forclaz, mesmerized by the view of blue Lake Annecy far below the mountain pass.

I continued through a clearing and saw a soft asphalt ramp on the edge of the mountain. A driveway to nowhere. Men and women were strapping themselves into what looked like tricked-out baby car seats and running down the ramp, parachuting to the fields far below.

An hour of watching that can make a girl hungry. Besides, the sun was going down and it was getting cold. So I hiked back to a small restaurant, Châlet la Pricaz, a gathering spot in Montmin. The owners have 50 head of Tarine cows, and make their reblochon not far from their restaurant.

Two old French women were the only other customers on that cold Sunday night. I decided to take one more shot.

“Une tartiflette, s'il vous plaît.”

Finally, it came. A brown crockery oval covered in cheese that a hot oven had transformed into a crispy lace crust. The reblochon had character and tang, and had melted into the cream just so, marrying the potatoes and bacon. I had found tartiflette nirvana, with a side of charcuterie.

I paid my 13 euros, said goodbye to the women, and drove back down the mountain. But after three days of almost nothing but cheese and potatoes, I kind of wished I'd hiked.

VISITOR INFORMATION

Le Fréti, 12, rue Ste. Claire, Annecy; (33-4) 50-51-29-52; www.le-freti.com. Open for dinner every day and for lunch on Sundays and public holidays. The tartiflette costs 11.10 euros, about $15.50 at $1.38 to the euro.

Ferme de la Charbonnière, Route de Thônes, Menthon-St.-Bernard; (33-4) 50-02-82-59. Open all year for lunch and dinner. Closed Monday. A meal of charcuterie, tartiflette, salad, cheese and coffee is 17 euros.

Châlet la Pricaz, Col de la Forclaz, Montmin; (33-4) 50-60-72-61; e-mail: lapricaz@fnac.net. Open every day in summer; closes Thursdays in April and May and Wednesday and Thursday from October through March. Tartiflette, 17 euros.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/travel/29Journeys.html?ref=travel

(f) (f)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-28-2007, 09:45 AM

(y) (y) (y) (y)

April 27, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

Gilded Once More

By PAUL KRUGMAN

One of the distinctive features of the modern American right has been nostalgia for the late 19th century, with its minimal taxation, absence of regulation and reliance on faith-based charity rather than government social programs. Conservatives from Milton Friedman to Grover Norquist have portrayed the Gilded Age as a golden age, dismissing talk of the era’s injustice and cruelty as a left-wing myth.

Well, in at least one respect, everything old is new again. Income inequality — which began rising at the same time that modern conservatism began gaining political power — is now fully back to Gilded Age levels.

Consider a head-to-head comparison. We know what John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in Gilded Age America, made in 1894, because in 1895 he had to pay income taxes. (The next year, the Supreme Court declared the income tax unconstitutional.) His return declared an income of $1.25 million, almost 7,000 times the average per capita income in the United States at the time.

But that makes him a mere piker by modern standards. Last year, according to Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine, James Simons, a hedge fund manager, took home $1.7 billion, more than 38,000 times the average income. Two other hedge fund managers also made more than $1 billion, and the top 25 combined made $14 billion.

How much is $14 billion? It’s more than it would cost to provide health care for a year to eight million children — the number of children in America who, unlike children in any other advanced country, don’t have health insurance.

The hedge fund billionaires are simply extreme examples of a much bigger phenomenon: every available measure of income concentration shows that we’ve gone back to levels of inequality not seen since the 1920s.

The New Gilded Age doesn’t feel quite as harsh and unjust as the old Gilded Age — not yet, anyway. But that’s because the effects of inequality are still moderated by progressive income taxes, which fall more heavily on the rich than on the middle class; by estate taxation, which limits the inheritance of great wealth; and by social insurance programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which provide a safety net for the less fortunate.

You might have thought that in the face of growing inequality, there would have been a move to reinforce these moderating institutions — to raise taxes on the rich and use the money to strengthen the safety net. That’s why comparing the incomes of hedge fund managers with the cost of children’s health care isn’t an idle exercise: there’s a real trade-off involved. But for the past three decades, such trade-offs have been consistently settled in favor of the haves and have-mores.

Taxation has become much less progressive: according to estimates by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, average tax rates on the richest 0.01 percent of Americans have been cut in half since 1970, while taxes on the middle class have risen. In particular, the unearned income of the wealthy — dividends and capital gains — is now taxed at a lower rate than the earned income of most middle-class families.

Those hedge fund titans, by the way, have an especially sweet deal: loopholes in the law let them use their own businesses as, in effect, unlimited 401(k)s, sheltering their earnings and accumulating tax-free capital gains.

Meanwhile, the tax-cut bill Congress passed in 2001 set in motion a complete phaseout of the estate tax. If the Bush administration hadn’t been too clever by half, hiding the true cost of its tax cuts by making the whole package expire at the end of 2010, we’d be well on our way toward becoming a dynastic society.

And as for the social insurance programs —— well, in 2005 the Bush administration tried to privatize Social Security. If it had succeeded, Medicare would have been next.

Of course, the administration’s attempt to undo Social Security was a notable failure. The public, it seems, isn’t eager to return to the days before the New Deal. And the G.O.P.’s defeat in the midterm election has put on hold other plans to restore the good old days.

But it’s much too soon to declare the march toward a New Gilded Age over. If history is any guide, one of these days we’ll see the emergence of a New Progressive Era, maybe even a New New Deal. But it may be a long wait.

(y) (y) As always, Krugman does it again!

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

04-28-2007, 09:47 AM

:)

April 27, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

China Needs an Einstein. So Do We.

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

I’ve been thinking about China as I read Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Albert Einstein. China isn’t even mentioned in the book — “Einstein: His Life and Universe” — but Mr. Isaacson’s stimulating and provocative retelling of Einstein’s career plays into two very hot debates about China.

First, what does Einstein’s life tell us about the relationship between freedom and creativity? Or to put it bluntly: Can China become as innovative as America, can it dominate the 21st century, as many predict, when China censors Google and maintains tight political controls while establishing its market economy?

Second, how do we compete with China, no matter how free we are, when so many of China’s young people are studying math and science and so many of ours are dropping out? Or to put it more bluntly: If Einstein were alive today and learned science the boring way it is taught in so many U.S. schools, wouldn’t he have ended up at a Wall Street hedge fund rather than developing theories of relativity for a Nobel Prize?

Mr. Isaacson’s take on Einstein’s life is that it is a testimony to the unbreakable link between human freedom and creativity.

“The whole theme of the last century, and of Einstein’s life,” Mr. Isaacson said in an interview, “is about people who fled oppression in order to go places to think and express themselves. Einstein runs away from the rote learning and authoritarianism of Germany as a teenager in the 1890s and goes to Italy and Switzerland. And then he flees Hitler to come to America, where he resists both McCarthyism and Stalinism because he believes that the only way to have creativity and imagination is to nurture free thought — rebellious free thought.”

If you look at Einstein’s major theories — special relativity, general relativity and the quantum theory of light — “all three come from taking rebellious imaginative leaps that throw out old conventional wisdom,” Mr. Isaacson said. “Einstein thought that the freest society with the most rebellious thinking would be the most creative. If we are going to have any advantage over China, it is because we nurture rebellious, imaginative free thinkers, rather than try to control expression.”

My gut tells me that’s right, but my mind tells me not to ignore something Bill Gates said in China the other day: that putting PCs, education and the Internet in the hands of more and more Chinese is making China not only a huge software market, “but also a contributor to this market. Innovation here is really at a rapid pace.”

Will China hit a ceiling on innovation because of its political authoritarianism? That’s what we need to watch for.

In the meantime, we should heed another of Mr. Isaacson’s insights about Einstein: he found sheer beauty and creative joy in science and equations. If only we could convey that in the way we teach science and math, maybe we could nurture another Einstein — male or female — and not have to worry that so many engineers and scientists in our graduate schools are from China that the classes could be taught in Chinese.

“What Einstein was able to do was to think visually,” Mr. Isaacson explained. “When he looked at Maxwell’s equations as a 16-year-old boy, he visualized what it would be like to ride alongside a light wave and try to catch up. He realized those equations described something wondrous in reality.

“By being able to visualize and think imaginatively about science, he was able to see what more academic scientists failed to see, which is that as you try to catch up with a light beam, the waves travel just as fast, but time slows down for you. It was a leap that better-trained scientists could not make because they did not have the visual imagination.”

If we want our kids to learn science, we can’t treat science as this boring or intimidating thing. “We have to remind our kids ... that a math equation or a scientific formula is just a brush stroke the good Lord uses to paint one of the wonders of nature,” Mr. Isaacson said, “and we should look at it as being as beautiful as art or literature or music.”

My favorite Einstein quotation is that “imagination is more important than knowledge.” A society that restricts imagination is unlikely to produce many Einsteins — no matter how many educated people it has. But a society that does not stimulate imagination when it comes to science and math won’t either — no matter how much freedom it has.

So my sense, from reading Mr. Isaacson’s book, is that if Einstein were alive today, he would be telling both America and China that they have homework to do.

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

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 09:17 AM

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

The owner Elizabeth Valando and the trainer Barclay Tagg, right, with Nobiz Like Shobiz after he won the Wood Memorial.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/29/sports/29racing.1.600.jpg

April 29, 2007

For Colt and His Owner, a Long Ride to the Derby

By JOE DRAPE

Elizabeth Valando was bundled in fur and looked as if she were at Sardi’s awaiting the opening-night reviews of a Broadway show. Instead, she stood shivering in the paddock of Aqueduct racetrack watching her trainer, Barclay Tagg, saddle a colt she had fallen for when he was a spindly-legged foal in the Kentucky bluegrass.

Behind her serene smile, Mrs. Valando, 82, was a wreck. The colt that she had bred was heading onto the track on April 7 for the Wood Memorial, a race that could send them to the 133rd Kentucky Derby.

When the colt was born, Jan. 29, 2004, he faced improbable odds of securing one of the 20 post positions for the Derby.

He was, after all, one of 34,642 thoroughbreds foaled in the United States in 2004, and Mrs. Valando was just another owner with the first Saturday in May 2007 circled in her fantasies. By 2006, the colt was one of 10,390 from that crop to make it to the racetrack. Now, as a 3-year-old, he is one of 450 horses, including 27 from outside the United States, nominated for the Triple Crown races: the Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes.

The pursuit of a Derby champion has humbled people like George Steinbrenner, the principal owner of the Yankees; the television impresario Merv Griffin; and a who’s who of business titans. Last year, horse owners spent more than $1.26 billion at North American thoroughbred auctions.

Still, when Mr. Tagg, a pessimist by nature, saw Mrs. Valando’s bay colt with the white blaze between his eyes for the first time, he said, “If this isn’t a Triple Crown horse, I don’t know what one looks like.”

Mr. Tagg knew something about champions as the trainer of the 2003 Derby and Preakness winner, Funny Cide.

Mrs. Valando called her colt Nobiz Like Shobiz, a name that she had been saving to honor her husband, Tommy, a music publisher and Broadway show backer.

Like a Member of the Family

Last September, when Nobiz raced for the first time, he seemed to float to a 10 ¾-length victory, which brought a visit from a representative of Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai. He made an offer that was hard to refuse: $17 million for Nobiz.

But Mrs. Valando did refuse. Like Roy and Gretchen Jackson, the owners of Barbaro, who won last year’s Derby and was fatally injured in the Preakness, Mrs. Valando had a special relationship with her horse.

“You’re not supposed to fall in love with these animals,” she said. “Nobiz is like a member of the family. I cannot sell one of them off.

“I want him to go to Kentucky, but I want him to go with a chance to win. I don’t think people understand what a feat it is to get to the Derby, about how much you endure to get there.”

In 1991, the Valandos had another good horse, Fly So Free. He was the 2-year-old champion and won 7 of 10 starts. He finished fifth in the Derby. They were hooked.

When her husband of 32 years died in 1995, Mrs. Valando, a former singer, continued to breed horses. She has eight broodmares in Kentucky and races two or three horses at a time. By breeding her mare Nightstorm with the sire Albert the Great for a modest $7,500, Mrs. Valando produced Nobiz.

On March 1, two days before the Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream Park in Florida, Mr. Tagg could be forgiven for believing Nobiz was on a path to greatness. In four races, he had lost once, by less than a length, to the accomplished Scat Daddy in the Champagne Stakes last October. Nobiz turned in a flawless workout, and Mr. Tagg ticked off his plan.

“I’d like to win this race really easily,” he said. “I’d like to go to the Wood Memorial and win that race really easily. I’d like to go to the Kentucky Derby and win that race really easily.”

Derrick Sturniolo, Nobiz’s exercise rider, nicknamed him Junior and talked to him as if he were a brother. Mr. Sturniolo, who raced inexpensive horses for small purses at Midwest tracks, had never been close to such a talented thoroughbred. He marveled at Nobiz’s economy of motion, how the colt made him feel like a hummingbird atop a jet.

“Most of the time, these babies, with all their muscle and talent, can be a little mean or nervous,” he said, stroking Nobiz’s nose. “But Junior here is two different horses. He’s all business on the racetrack. But he’s a big old love bug in the barn.”

Even Mr. Tagg could find little to worry about when it came to Nobiz. At 69, his face is unlined, and he has the lithe build of a dancer. Mr. Tagg, however, blends a barbed sense of humor with exasperation that betrays too many hard years.

After the success of Funny Cide, Mr. Tagg’s stable grew to more than 60 horses, nowhere near the hundreds trained by those who top the earnings list.

“I don’t think it hurt me any, but you know it wasn’t like everybody is knocking down my door to give me horses,” he said. “I had some owners come back that had been with me before. But they might have come back anyway.”

Mrs. Valando was one of the owners who returned. In the late 1990s, he had trained a few of her horses, including Nightstorm. They did not have much luck, so she did what owners often do: moved on to another trainer, first Todd Pletcher, then Carl Nafzger. Mr. Pletcher has a record-tying five horses pointed to the Derby starting gate, and Mr. Nafzger will saddle Street Sense, last year’s 2-year-old champion.

At Mr. Tagg’s barn at Gulfstream, the days begin at 5 a.m. Saddles are waxed to a shine, bridles glimmer and the horses’ legs are enveloped in spotless white bandages. Mr. Tagg and his assistant and companion, Robin Smullen, rub the horses, dispense ice and examine the animals throughout the day.

“He’s very antidrugs,” Mrs. Valando said, noting one of the qualities that brought her back to Mr. Tagg. “What you see is what you get.”

She was also pleased by his reaction to her refusal of the sheik’s offer for Nobiz, and a $500,000 commission for Mr. Tagg.

“I didn’t go into this business for the money,” he told her.

Nor is Mrs. Valando, who has refused to insure Nobiz because she does not want to profit from any injury.

Getting Serious With Funny Cide

Mr. Tagg said that another Derby victory is out there for him, and hinted that he should have captured his first one sooner.

He spoke of Funny Cide as if he were speaking about himself. They were the wrong-side-of-the-tracks winners. He was a little-known horseman, Funny Cide a modest New York-bred gelding. The owners were a consortium of everymen, including six middle-aged high school buddies from Sackets Harbor, N.Y.

Despite winning the first two legs of the Triple Crown and the Jockey Club Gold Cup the next year, Funny Cide has been underappreciated, Mr. Tagg said.

“He won stakes every year of his life except as a 5-year-old,” he said. “He won a graded stake as a 6-year-old. No Kentucky Derby winner has ever done that before. And everybody still knocks him and knocks me.”

Now 7, Funny Cide remains in Mr. Tagg’s barn even though his best racing days are probably over.

“He’s happy as hell out there,” Mr. Tagg said. “He loves to gallop. He loves to breeze, and he loves the training. He loves to go out and roll in the sand in the afternoon, buck and kick and bray.”

Funny Cide used to be in the No. 1 stall, but he was moved next door to make room for Nobiz.

Last year, Mr. Tagg paid attention to the way Michael Matz trained Barbaro at the Fair Hill Training Center in Maryland, where each had a barn.

“He had the most fabulous horse anybody’s seen in a long time,” Mr. Tagg said. “It was a machine.”

He thought he had a colt as capable as Barbaro. It took 1 minute 49.11 seconds to change his mind.

That was the time it took for Nobiz to finish third behind Scat Daddy and Stormello in the Fountain of Youth. He lost by half a length, but it was the way he finished that worried Mr. Tagg.

As the field turned for home, jockey Cornelio Velasquez had Nobiz comfortable and in striking range. When Velasquez asked Nobiz to find his finishing gear, it was not there. Scat Daddy surged past in the final 50 yards. When Nobiz found his stride, it was too late.

In the days that followed, Mr. Tagg watched replays of the race and figured that Nobiz was just immature. He had two months, and one more race, to grow up.

On March 20, Mr. Tagg sent Nobiz to the track alongside Funny Cide, to get Nobiz used to being challenged in close quarters.

The two went five furlongs in a blistering pace. It was difficult to tell the old pro who had won more than $3.5 million from the inexperienced colt.

“I wanted to work him in company, and there aren’t many I could send with him other than Funny Cide,” Mr. Tagg said.

Tinkering to Victory

Six days later, Nobiz worked well in tandem again. Still, Mr. Tagg was not done tinkering.

For the Wood Memorial, Nobiz wore blinkers to force him to focus on the racetrack. He also had his ears stuffed with cotton to block out the crowd noise.

Either Nobiz was going to run himself into the Kentucky Derby or he was not. Mr. Tagg wondered whether the colt who had always looked the part of a Triple Crown champion was going to act like one.

That was an excruciating afternoon for Mrs. Valando. She had lunch with friends and relatives in the Trustees Room of Aqueduct, a far cry from Sardi’s on opening night, though the tension was about the same.

If Nobiz performed well, they were going to Churchill Downs. Mrs. Valando seemed to be barely breathing as Nobiz took the lead into the final turn. He beat back the challenge of the highly regarded Any Given Saturday as they hit the stretch. Then Nobiz stayed straight and true, winning by half a length over the late-running Sightseeing.

Mr. Tagg looked relieved. Mrs. Valando was drained and exhausted. In the weeks since, she has been battling bronchitis and an ulcer at her home in Greenwich, Conn.

She will be at the Derby on Saturday, however, with a horse that she bred and believed in.

:D "Like a member of the family." (y) (y)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 09:22 AM

:| :| :| :| :| :|

The dead lie near a Stop and Shop in Narragansett, R.I.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/28/us/29land.xlarge1.jpg

April 29, 2007

This Land

Here and There Amid the Living, the Dead Call Out

By DAN BARRY

NARRAGANSETT, R.I.

Perhaps the long-ago dead should have ceded ground by now, considering the premium on land in a state that is, to employ one cliché of measurement, “about the size of Rhode Island.” But in stubborn silence, the dead here refuse.

Wander anywhere, and Rhode Islanders of the distant past all but rise to greet you from one of at least 3,300 family burial grounds still extant in this smallest of states. Their headstones, in clusters of five here or 10 there, often jut from surroundings so thoroughly developed that few of the living ever pay heed.

In a tidy subdivision in Narragansett, off Ginger Lane, a weedy mound rises from putting-green lawns. There, just a few yards from a driveway’s basketball hoop, rest some Robinsons, including one woman who died under British rule, succumbing to that all-too-familiar ailment, a broken heart.

A few miles away, across the road from a Moo Moo’s ice cream stand, dozens of Kenyons are buried in a grassy plot that seems to have been carved from a Super Stop and Shop parking lot, when of course it was the other way around. Beside the flow of minivans and trucks rest broken headstones, including one for a Kenyon named Welcome.

And in Cranston, between two houses and behind a third, lie some Watermans and Stones, the calculations upon their tablets speaking to the preciousness of every day. Benjamin Stone, for example, died April 10, 1877, “aged 33 years, 9 mo. & 15 days.”

Many of the headstones here have been uprooted or broken, and a vandal has scratched curlicues into a slate stone “sacred to the memory of Eleanor F. Waterman.” Judging by the lawn chairs and beer cans about, the place has become a neighborhood hangout. But a single dollop of white among the decaying leaves suggests that at least one child had too much respect, or fear, to retrieve an errant baseball.

With the present nose-to-nose with the past, it is not hard to imagine the dead, resting against their own headstones and liberated by invisibility, pondering our silly modern ways: being led by dogs on evening walks past that Cranston plot; idly tossing basketballs at that Narragansett hoop; buying milk at that Super Stop and Shop. Pray tell, hast thou no cow?

And every now and then, you ponder them. You almost feel them peering over your shoulder as you kneel before their graves to picture who they were, based on the bare-bone statistics that time slowly erases from slate: date of birth, length of time above ground, role as husband or wife, son or daughter.

You move on, but they remain, in circumstances not always reflecting well upon the living.

Some local historians say that the large number of these private burial grounds — that is, those not trampled by progress’s march — reflects Rhode Island’s origins as a place of religious tolerance, with few centralized churches. It may also reflect a more temporal matter: the distance, say, between rural East Greenwich and the colonial settlement of Providence, some 16 miles away. Might as well set aside a corner of the family farm.

That is what the Tillinghasts of East Greenwich did. Then the descendants died off or moved away, bequeathing by their absence the family plot to the elements. Now, if Dean Thompson is inclined, and he usually is, he will lead you dozens of yards to the back of his family’s greenhouse business, Briarbrook Farm, where Pardon Tillinghast and kin rest.

There, among gravestones adorned with etchings of angels, the wild rose and bittersweet vines snag your clothing, refusing to let go. “The stuff’ll climb up your leg if you stand long enough,” Mr. Thompson says, standing amid overgrowth more accustomed to visits by deer.

Over the years, interest in historic cemeteries rose and fell. Then Evelyn Wheeler, a formidable woman of 67 living in restless retirement in Narragansett, sought permission a few years ago to tidy up a local cemetery, but could find no one in charge, either in town or in the state.

Faster than you could say Pardon Tillinghast, she pushed the state legislature to resurrect a state commission on historic cemeteries. Dozens of people attended the first meeting, at a senior citizens center in Warwick. Plans were made to have volunteers clean up grave sites, identify long-forgotten burial plots and bolster the efforts of local cemetery commissions.

Narragansett alone has 15 historic cemeteries still in existence, including one opposite Charlie O’s, a tavern known for its ribs. Past stacks of lobster traps rest, among others, Hazard Knowles and his wife, Susan. For anyone wondering about the couple’s next intended port of call, their headstones feature carvings of a single hand, pointing up.

Then there’s the old cemetery of Gardners and Slocums. Not long ago, Ms. Wheeler noticed that the plot, which measured about 30 feet by 30 feet, was described in town records as 66 feet by 135 feet. “So I climbed over a wall and started taking debris out,” she recalls. “I kept finding stones and more stones and more stones.”

Some people believe that it is better to have cemeteries rest under the peaceful blanket of natural growth than to expose them to vandals. But Ms. Wheeler says that daylight coaxes more than periwinkle from the soft earth; that old headstones, even those bearing little more than someone’s name, touch us in ways we can hardly articulate.

One day after the clean-up, she saw sunlight shining again upon the headstone of a Mary Slocum, dead more than 200 years, and who knows why, but she cried.

(l) Anyone ever do gravestone rubbings in their youth? Victorian and older stones etchings of angels and other artwork right on the stones themselves created beautiful although admittedly eerie artwork. :)

(y) (y)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 09:27 AM

:D

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/28/weekinreview/29revkin.190.jpg

April 29, 2007

Global Coolness

Carbon-Neutral Is Hip, but Is It Green?

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

THE rush to go on a carbon diet, even if by proxy, is in overdrive.

In addition to the celebrities — Leo, Brad, George — politicians like John Edwards and Hillary Clinton are now running, at least part of the time, carbon-neutral campaigns. A lengthening list of big businesses — international banks, London’s taxi fleet, luxury airlines — also claim “carbon neutrality.” Silverjet, a plush new trans-Atlantic carrier, bills itself as the first fully carbon-neutral airline. It puts about $28 of each round-trip ticket into a fund for global projects that, in theory, squelch as much carbon dioxide as the airline generates — about 1.2 tons per passenger, the airline says.

Also, a largely unregulated carbon-cutting business has sprung up. In this market, consultants or companies estimate a person’s or company’s output of greenhouse gases. Then, these businesses sell “offsets,” which pay for projects elsewhere that void or sop up an equal amount of emissions — say, by planting trees or, as one new company proposes, fertilizing the ocean so algae can pull the gas out of the air. Recent counts by Business Week magazine and several environmental watchdog groups tally the trade in offsets at more than $100 million a year and growing blazingly fast.

But is the carbon-neutral movement just a gimmick?

On this, environmentalists aren’t neutral, and they don’t agree. Some believe it helps build support, but others argue that these purchases don’t accomplish anything meaningful — other than giving someone a slightly better feeling (or greener reputation) after buying a 6,000-square-foot house or passing the million-mile mark in a frequent-flier program. In fact, to many environmentalists, the carbon-neutral campaign is a sign of the times — easy on the sacrifice and big on the consumerism.

As long as the use of fossil fuels keeps climbing — which is happening relentlessly around the world — the emission of greenhouse gases will keep rising. The average American, by several estimates, generates more than 20 tons of carbon dioxide or related gases a year; the average resident of the planet about 4.5 tons.

At this rate, environmentalists say, buying someone else’s squelched emissions is all but insignificant.

“The worst of the carbon-offset programs resemble the Catholic Church’s sale of indulgences back before the Reformation,” said Denis Hayes, the president of the Bullitt Foundation, an environmental grant-making group. “Instead of reducing their carbon footprints, people take private jets and stretch limos, and then think they can buy an indulgence to forgive their sins.”

“This whole game is badly in need of a modern Martin Luther,” Mr. Hayes added.

Some environmental campaigners defend this marketplace as a legitimate, if imperfect, way to support an environmental ethic and political movement, even if the numbers don’t all add up.

“We can’t stop global warming with voluntary offsets, but they offer an option for individuals looking for a way to contribute to the solution in addition to reducing their own emissions and urging their elected representatives to support good policy,” said Daniel A. Lashof, the science director of the climate center at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

But he and others agree that more oversight is needed. Voluntary standards and codes of conduct are evolving in Europe and the United States to ensure that a ton of carbon dioxide purchased is actually a ton of carbon dioxide avoided.

The first attempt at an industry report card, commissioned by the environmental group Clean Air/Cool Planet (which has some involvement in the business), gave decidedly mixed reviews to the field, selecting eight sellers of carbon offsets that it concluded were reasonably reliable.

But the report, “A Consumer’s Guide to Retail Carbon-Offset Providers,” concluded that this market was no different than any other, saying, “if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

Prices vary widely for offsetting the carbon dioxide tonnage released by a long plane flight, S.U.V. commute or energy-hungry house. The report suggested that the cheapest offsets may not be legitimate.

For example, depending on where you shop for carbon credits, avoiding the ton of carbon dioxide released by driving a midsize car about 2,000 miles could cost $5 or $25, according to data in the report.

Mr. Hayes said there were legitimate companies and organizations that help people and companies measure their emissions and find ways to cut them, both directly and indirectly by purchasing certain kinds of credits. But overall, he said, an investment in such credits — given the questions about their reliability — should be looked at more as conventional charity (presuming you check to be sure the projects are real) and less as something like a license to binge on private jet travel.

In many ways, the carbon-neutral campaign mimics other efforts that use markets to save the environment. For nearly two decades, for example, forest protection groups have disputed the merits of “certified” tropical hardwood and other products that manufacturers claim are harvested in ways that don’t imperil virgin forests.

Some environmentalists say it’s better to offer some income to those who use forests in a renewable way. But others insist that instead of trying to police the trade by rooting our fraudulent planks, it’s better to avoid the timber altogether. Only one of many forest certification programs, run by the Forest Stewardship Council, has been widely endorsed by environmental groups.

Michael R. Solomon, the author of “Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having and Being” and a professor at Auburn University, said he was not surprised by the allure of the carbon-offsetting market.

“Consumers are always going to gravitate toward a more parsimonious solution that requires less behavioral change,” he said. “We know that new products or ideas are more likely to be adopted if they don’t require us to alter our routines very much.”

But he said there was danger ahead, “if we become trained to substitute dollars for deeds — kind of an ‘I gave at the office’ prescription for the environment.”

Charles Komanoff, an energy economist in New York, said the commercial market in climate neutrality could have even more harmful effects.

It could, by suggesting there’s an easy way out, blunt public support for what will really be needed in the long run, he said: a binding limit on emissions or a tax on the fuels that generate greenhouse gases.

“There isn’t a single American household above the poverty line that couldn’t cut their CO2 at least 25 percent in six months through a straightforward series of fairly simple and terrifically cost-effective measures,” he said.

Jonathan Shopley, the chief executive of Britain’s CarbonNeutral Company, which does only 5 percent of its offsetting directly for individuals and the rest for businesses, insisted that the voluntary markets fill a vital gap.

This is particularly true, he said, because laws or treaties, like the Kyoto Protocol, that have mandatory limits on greenhouse gases have so far failed to blunt the relentless global rise in such emissions.

“That isn’t going to get us where we need to go,” Mr. Shopley said.

;) Definitely green is more hip but once again in whose definition? This article writer? Some other authority? Abnd so what about an S.U.V. that is seven years old and yet has fewer than 22K miles on it? :| :|

As Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say on SNL way back iin the 1970s, "It's always something!" ;)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 09:30 AM

;)

Tune in, turn out, shop! For anything acid green, purple or funky. Make it a summer of love.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/04/27/magazine/20070429_STYLE_SLIDESHOW_1.html

(f) (f)

Peace,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 09:37 AM

:s :s

April 29, 2007

Lives

Desperado Housewife

By LISA CARVER

For me, getting married has always been like throwing up. I’ve done it as alone as possible, feeling sick, drastic and doomed. My first one was before a justice of the peace in Philadelphia. I was 19 years old, marrying a 35-year-old Frenchman. I wore my work apron from Kelly & Cohen’s diner. We did it between shifts. We did it for our twin, tremulous hearts that somehow reached through age, country and political differences to touch each other. We moved to Paris. He was a composer and a real live Communist. I felt that because I loved him so much, and knew myself so little, I would have to make myself his enemy, his opposite, or else be swallowed whole. For the next two years, my obsession with him grew, and so did my need to see myself as separate from him, until finally all there was to do was leave.

For years I tried out various boyfriends, places, religions, politics and lifestyles. When I first met future Husband No. 2, I was mesmerized by what he was not. He did not hate and fight God and state and the patriarch. Attractive, reliable, middle-class, he was inexplicable to me. When he asked me to marry him, I said yes for what I thought he could give my son, who was 4 years old: stability, faithfulness, normalcy. I would have said yes to him anyway, even without my son, because to know better, to avoid a mistake, wasn’t high on my list of qualities to aspire to.

We married on a tiny, rocky island in upstate New York in a storm at dusk. I shivered in the rain while the groom looked solemn and right. But nothing else was right: no white dress, no guests, no flowers, no doves. Order of any kind — tradition, a planned life, even a neat room — strikes me as suspicious. Having been raised with chaos and abandonment, that’s the only life that looks real to me. So I made no arrangements. I guess I thought that by being haphazard and isolated and gloomy, by doing the wedding ceremony all wrong, I was unjinxing the marriage, or at least freeing it up and freeing myself from becoming “a married woman.” And it worked. Both my marriages were open. When I fooled around on No. 2 with someone else, I didn’t take off my wedding ring. I was vaguely dissatisfied with the arrangement, but I expected to be.

Then one night, six years into our marriage, we were sitting on the couch and I told him how lonely I was. He said he felt the same. It was the first conversation we’d had in a long time. I think we were able to talk instead of argue because we both knew that this was the end. There was nothing to struggle against anymore. We didn’t argue about money or sex, fixable problems if you just go on “Dr. Phil.” We argued about what we were arguing about, and you can never bring that to a conclusion because there’s no beginning or middle. All you can do, when you see it, is to disengage your hooks from each other’s bones, turn away and start walking. Eventually, I lost the house. Our children felt adrift. My divorce dismantled every structure that marriage had put over our heads to protect us.

Before all that happened, while I was still married, I was talking on the computer with a fellow across the country in even worse straits than I was about to fall into. (Yes, I know, I’m totally sleazy.) He was already divorced, he once spent five days in jail, his guitar was in hock and some guy wanted to kill him. He had left everything behind in the town that was home to the guy, and to the ex-wife, who, for unrelated reasons, also wanted to kill him, and moved to the desert. I can’t say exactly why everybody wanted to do him harm, but it must have been the same thing — somehow — that made me want to join my life to his ragged, wide-open one. He was the antithesis of everything I’d tried to become by marrying No. 2.

When we got together two years ago, there was nothing for me to hide or change or try defensively to explain. We were happy, and my kids were happy. I didn’t ask him to get a job and behave; he just did. He didn’t ask me not to ask things of him; I just didn’t. I know it looks bad. But I also know how bad my good-looking marriage actually was. Not that he doesn’t irritate me, but you know, I irritate myself. When my mood passes, I just forget how infuriating he is instead of remembering and counting and measuring what this person has done to me and what he owes me and looking for new ways to explain his deficit to him.

He never asked me to marry him; we have both just assumed that it will happen and that a bunch of people will be there when it does and that I won’t be throwing up. I don’t feel bad at all that this will be my third marriage. Sometimes you have to try out both coasts before you decide Ohio is the place for you. And even an anxiety-ridden, lonely monster doesn’t have to spend her entire life under a rock, all curled up and hissing.

Lisa Carver is the author of “Dancing Queen” and “Drugs Are Nice.” This essay is adapted from a contribution to “Altared,” an anthology about weddings due out next month.

^o)^o) Mother of Goddess - I had no idea people put up with such nonsense - just to be "not alone". Once again, I appreciate solitude with gratitude.(f) (f) Nobody ever needs to settle like this womyn. What's the big deal about getting married again. What's the point?

Fac ut vivas.

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 09:42 AM

(f)

Rosie O’Donnell stepped out of “The View,” the head of Siemens punched out, M.I.T.’s admissions dean failed her own application, Vladimir Putin remained serious about stepping down and British cosmologist Stephen Hawking left his gravity behind for a time.

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/04/28/weekinreview/20070428_WEEK_GRAPHIC.html

(f) Have a lovely Sunday.

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 09:44 AM

;)

April 29, 2007
Laugh Lines: Jay Leno and David Letterman

Jay Leno

Some sad news, I’m sure you’ve heard. The former president of Russia, Boris (Buy Me a Drink) Yeltsin, has passed away. He left behind a bar tab of $3.2 billion.

In a speech Sunday, before a church group, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom said that he is going to make San Francisco a sanctuary for illegal immigrants so they can go there and not worry about being deported to their home country of Los Angeles.

The story that has rocked show business: Rosie O’Donnell announced that she’s leaving “The View.” The sad part: None of the other hosts on “The View” heard what she said because they were all talking at the same time.

President Bush sent out an e-mail today asking people to send money to the Republican Party. How come those e-mails never get deleted?

:D

Animadvertistine, ubicumque stes, fumum recta in faciem ferri?

(Ever noticed how wherever you stand, the smoke goes right into your face?)

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 09:52 AM

(y) (y) (y)

April 29, 2007

Editorial

Strengthening Abortion Rights

On the heels of a major Supreme Court setback for women’s reproductive rights, Gov. Eliot Spitzer has produced a sound proposal aimed at shoring up those rights in New York State. His timely initiative, which would update the state’s abortion laws and inoculate them as much as possible from federal anti-abortion edicts, should be acted on quickly by lawmakers in Albany and emulated by other states.

New York’s pioneering law legalizing abortion, which Gov. Nelson Rockefeller signed in 1970, predated Roe v. Wade by three years. The provisions lifting the old abortion prohibition, and allowing abortion in many cases, are part of the state’s homicide law, which is not the right place for them. Mr. Spitzer’s updating would remove abortion from the criminal statutes and affirmatively make it a matter of professional and medical discretion. His proposal would also repeal an outmoded statute, previously overturned by the courts, that criminalizes providing nonprescription contraception to minors.

Beyond that cleanup, the proposed legislation would enshrine in state law Roe’s core protections, expressly protecting a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy prior to fetal viability, and making clear that her life and health take precedence over the rights of the fetus throughout pregnancy.

Joseph Bruno, the Republican majority leader of the State Senate, has indicated that he has no interest in moving forward with Mr. Spitzer’s proposal. But with Republican control of the Senate now whittled down to just a few seats, blocking the abortion rights initiative carries real political risks. It would not be surprising if Mr. Bruno developed a sudden interest in the bill as legislative elections drew closer.

New York, like other states, lacks the authority to undo the Congressional ban on so-called partial birth abortion just upheld by the Supreme Court. That is regrettable, since the ban endangers women because of its lack of any exception to protect a woman’s health. The Spitzer bill cannot reverse the ruling. But it can put important protections in place in the event that the Supreme Court scales back federal abortion rights further, or even repeals Roe v. Wade entirely, handing the issue back to the states.

^o)^o) Seems that the direction back to states' rights from three decades ago is the trend. I believe in choice and always have. I won't even MOVE to reside in a red state at this point in my life. All womyn should have this choice and power over their own bodies. I must admit that I am grateful never to have had kids (because of this right to choose), especially a daughter. I still worry sometimes about womyn getting raped and then not having choices to end a tragically-produced pregnancy. New York is definitely pushing back the most recent Supreme Court's CONSERVATIVE decision - which takes away the right of a womyn.

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 09:59 AM

;)

A Silicon Valley startup hopes to turn America’s televisions into limitless multiplexes, changing the landscape of the home entertainment business.

The working prototype of a Vudu box, with its remote. (meaning that the box is empty...;)

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/29/business/190-vudu-01.jpg

April 29, 2007

Vudu Casts Its Spell on Hollywood

By BRAD STONE

FOR the last two years, the employees of Vudu Inc. have quietly toiled in a nondescript office in Santa Clara, Calif., in the heart of Silicon Valley. The only hint of the company’s plans are black-and-white Rat Pack photos that adorn its walls and oversized models of Gollum and R2D2 that watch over its cubicles.

Insiders familiar with Vudu’s hidden magic say that this 41-employee start-up has everything we’ve come to expect from Silicon Valley: a daring business plan, innovative technology and entrepreneurs prone to breathless superlatives when discussing their new offering’s possible impact on the world.

“This is something that is going to alter the landscape,” boasts Tony Miranz, Vudu’s founder, of the product he plans to begin selling this summer. “We are rewriting economics.”

Vudu, if all goes as planned, hopes to turn America’s televisions into limitless multiplexes, providing instant gratification for movie buffs. It has built a small Internet-ready movie box that connects to the television and allows couch potatoes to rent or buy any of the 5,000 films now in Vudu’s growing collection. The box’s biggest asset is raw speed: the company says the films will begin playing immediately after a customer makes a selection.

If Vudu succeeds, it may mean goodbye to laborious computer downloads, sticky-floored movie theaters and cable companies’ much narrower video-on-demand offerings. It may even mean a fond farewell to the DVD itself — the profit engine of the film industry for the last decade. “Other forms of movie distribution are going to look silly and uncompetitive by comparison,” Mr. Miranz asserts.

It is not only Vudu’s disciples who are zealous about the company’s prospects. Every major studio — except, for now, Sony Pictures Entertainment — and 15 smaller ones will make their films available on Vudu. And film executives largely wax adulatory when speaking about Vudu. Jim Rosenthal, president of the New Line Television division of Time Warner, says Vudu addresses “the two major issues that people think are getting in way of the growth of digital distribution: they are getting movies onto the television, and they are doing it in a way that consumers don’t have to sit there for two hours waiting.”

Despite such high praise, Vudu faces hurdles. It is wading into a field dominated by heavyweights whose own aggressive efforts to kindle movie downloading over the Internet have largely failed. There is also little proof that consumers care much about the wide selection or instant availability of movies downloaded from the Web, especially if a movie isn’t cheaper than buying a DVD.

Vudu also needs to persuade regular folks to drag another whirring, electricity-guzzling gizmo into their already-crowded living rooms. “Three hundred dollars for the privilege of paying another 6 or 10 for a movie is a high hurdle,” said Nicholas Donatiello Jr., chief executive of the market research firm Odyssey. “Americans do not want more boxes under their TV if they can avoid it.”

Even with such challenges, however, Hollywood itself says Vudu represents a real breakthrough.

“The first time I ever saw TiVo was an a-ha moment, and this was the same thing,” says Jim Wuthrich, a senior executive with Warner Brothers Home Entertainment Group. “It looks fairly sexy and inviting. This is going to pull people in.”

VUDU is arriving at a time of rapid change in the entertainment and media landscapes. This year, for the first time, a majority of American homes will have a broadband connection to the Web, according to iSuppli, a research firm. That benchmark has reshuffled the cards in the media and entertainment industries.

With versatile data pipes now reaching into most homes, the deep thinkers in Hollywood and Silicon Valley say they believe that television shows and movies — just like e-mail, Web pages, songs and albums — will one day be cheaply and efficiently imported into the home.

The question is when.

For all of their confidence, the new ventures now crowding the digital video launching pad look, if anything, a tad sickly. YouTube, which Google bought last year for $1.65 billion, is an exception: it has attracted millions of users fanatical about watching bite-sized video clips. But services offering longer video content have yet to get much traction.

The Web sites Movielink and CinemaNow have allowed consumers to download feature-length films to their personal computers for the last five years. Few viewers have chosen to, partly because the pinched PC screen is a lousy place to watch movies. Over the last 15 months, similar movie downloading services for the PC have started from such varied sources as Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, Google, BitTorrent and the Starz movie channel of Liberty Media. Bowing to the copyright anxieties of Hollywood, all of these companies encrust their digital media files with cumbersome copyright protection software that often foils computers and frustrates users.

“Consumers want choice and control, but for long-form video like movies on the PC that is not enough,” said Mr. Donatiello at Odyssey. “You have to get the content to the television.”

Steve Jobs, at least, understands that. Apple, which has the most successful movie downloading effort so far on iTunes — offering just 500 films from two major studios — began selling a device called Apple TV last month. Priced at $299, the box wirelessly draws movies, TV shows and music from the computer to the television.

The people at Vudu seem particularly wary of Apple TV: they have bought two to test. But they are betting that movie downloads will ultimately be free from an awkward dependence on the computer, and they think that this could happen sooner than anyone else expects.

“This shift can look very slow in the beginning and very sudden at some moment in the future,” says Alain Rossmann, a Silicon Valley veteran and the chairman of Vudu. “That is the history of technology.”

A graduate of the École Polytechnique, the engineering school in France, Mr. Rossmann worked on the original Macintosh for Apple in the 1980s before starting four Silicon Valley companies over the following 20 years. The last, a software start-up named Phone.com later renamed OpenWave Systems, established a standard for how early cellphones wirelessly connected to the Internet.

Mr. Rossmann left Phone.com in 2001, and three years later one of his former colleagues came to him with an idea. Mr. Miranz, 43, an energetic and persuasive former vice president at OpenWave, started thinking about downloading movies over the Internet after his wife grew frustrated at her inability to find the 1980 miniseries “Marco Polo” at a nearby Blockbuster. Signing up for Netflix and waiting for DVDs to arrive in the mail, he said, “seemed like settling for a meal of worms in the desert.”

Over the summer of 2004, Mr. Miranz and Mr. Rossmann began discussing a digital download service, and soon watched the first generation of downloading stores beat them online. But they agreed that a truly mainstream movie service would need to originate on the television, not the computer. Mr. Miranz said he was also “obsessed with the idea of instantaneousness” — the notion that consumers, sitting in front of the television, could click a button and play a film without delay, as if a disc were in the DVD player.

Mr. Rossmann approached that challenge mathematically. Sending each ordered movie from a central facility over the Web, he reasoned, would become more expensive the more popular such a service became. Instead, he concluded, peer-to-peer networking — the idea of passing files, or pieces of files, between users — was the most economical and efficient solution.

That technology was behind renegade file-trading bazaars like the early manifestations of Napster and Grokster, that were the bane of the entertainment industries. But it also underlies a new wave of legal Internet video services like Joost and Kontiki.

From 2004 to 2006, Mr. Miranz’s and Mr. Rossmann’s newly formed company — which first went by the name Vvond, and later Marquee — filed 42 patent applications sketching the principles of an Internet movie network that would keep consumers where they belonged: rooted to their living-room couch.

The system, according to interviews and those patent applications, will operate like a traditional peer-to-peer service, but without any active participation by users. Vudu boxes that already have a certain movie on their hard drives — say, “The Godfather” — will send pieces of that movie to a nearby box when its owner suddenly gets a taste for the epic Mafia drama.

But to get those movies playing quickly, the Vudu engineers struck upon another notion: using a slice of the digital real estate on each Vudu box to store the beginning portions of each film. They also delved into the science of predictions. When the company determines that a movie is more likely to be rented or purchased — early in its release, for example — it will plant lengthier pieces of that film on unused portions of Vudu boxes in customer homes.

Rajeev Motwani, a computer science professor at Stanford who worked with the Google founders when they were doctoral students, reviewed Vudu’s early plans. “It’s so clever that in hindsight it seems like the obvious thing to do,” he says.

By mid-2005, after raising $21 million from two Valley venture capital firms, Greylock Partners and Benchmark Capital, Vudu was ready to begin designing the box itself. Mr. Rossmann said he advised Mr. Miranz to “get some DNA from the company with the closest experience to what we are going through: TiVo.”

TiVo’s set-top boxes have snared a passionate audience over the last decade by offering time-saving utility with a simple user interface. Vudu hired 11 TiVo veterans to help steer product design and manufacture its box. That left Vudu in need of content deals with studios — a challenge that fell to Mr. Miranz, whose ambition and taste for deal-making were suited to Hollywood.

During his first year of regular trips to Los Angeles, Mr. Miranz found the going tough; Mr. Rossmann regularly called from his vacation home in France to express concern over the lack of progress.

But by 2006, Mr. Miranz recalled, the tide had turned Vudu’s way. DVD sales began to stagnate because studios had finally plowed through their entire backlog of movies that could be released on the shiny discs. The success of iTunes was also proving that the digital transition was inevitable and that one powerful player, Apple, could control the market if Hollywood did not find other viable partners. And outlaw services like the pirate Web sites that use BitTorrent technology demonstrated that digital piracy, which had consumed the music business first, now posed a real problem for Hollywood.

The studios were suddenly very ready to talk. Ron Lamprecht, the senior vice president for digital distribution at NBC Universal, which signed the first deal with Vudu in May 2006, said he was enamored by the relative simplicity and intuitive user interface of the company’s box. Universal also liked the system’s security. Vudu’s devices use the same encryption technology inside a cable or satellite box, and Hollywood’s valuable film assets never have to cross the PC screens, where they typically become exposed to the predations of hackers.

“The platform is secure from the moment we provide them content to the moment it shows up in the box,” Mr. Lamprecht said.

With Universal on board, Mr. Miranz signed up Fox, Disney, Warner Brothers and Paramount over the last year. “It’s always nice to see the entire industry getting behind a format,” said Thomas Lesinksi, president of Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment, noting the industry rift over high-definition DVD technology. “When that happens, it has a much higher chance of success.”

Edward Lichty, who left TiVo last year and is now Vudu’s chief operating officer, says the company is “not expecting to be a mass product out of the gate.” But its peer network can be run so cheaply, he says, that it needs to have only modest success selling its box, which should retail for around $300. (A final price has not yet been set.) The company can also someday add television shows, music and video games to its service.

Vudu executives even consider the possibility that their hardware box might eventually melt away, with its services running as the video-on-demand feature in a satellite box, video game console or a new breed of high-definition televisions.

BUT can the little company with big plans even get that far?

In addition to Apple TV, Vudu has to face off against Microsoft’s gaming console, Xbox 360, which lets users download movies and TV shows. Other technology heavyweights such as Yahoo, Google and Cisco are no doubt also contemplating how to get Internet video onto television. Even Netflix, which built a DVD rental business via mail premised on the idea that movies delivered online were a long way off, is thinking about it. It recently hired a founder of ReplayTV — an early rival to TiVo — inviting speculation that it, too, was working on a movie box for the television.

In an interview, Reed Hastings, a founder of Netflix, said he recently met with Vudu to learn more about the company. He would not discuss details of the meeting other than to say: “It’s an open question whether Vudu makes an impact on the world or not — but either way it is emblematic of the Internet innovation wave beginning to wash over television sets everywhere.”

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

Castigat ridendo mores,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:04 AM

:| :|

He's no dummy. :|

April 27, 2007

Murdoch Is Taking MySpace to China

By DAVID BARBOZA

SHANGHAI, April 26 — Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is bringing MySpace.com to China, a latecomer that is betting it can overcome that handicap by competing unconventionally as a start-up.

The News Corporation signed a deal to license the brand for its popular online social networking site and allow local Chinese entrepreneurs who understand their market to pick and choose to build an indigenous business. Using this approach, the News Corporation hopes to succeed where other Western Internet ventures have failed.

The company and two venture capital firms agreed this month to hire a former Microsoft executive to license the MySpace.com brand and technology in China in an attempt to capture some of the business in the world’s fastest-growing Internet market.

MySpace.com is entering China at a time when social networking sites, online games and entertainment sites are already wildly popular.

“They want to avoid some of the mistakes made by the first and second waves of international Internet companies that came to China,” said William Bao Bean, a partner at Softbank China & India, a venture capital firm. “By putting a local manager in, they give the company a fighting chance. This is a very crowded area, with at least 100 companies competing in the same space that MySpace has entered.”

American Internet companies have scrambled to set up operations in China’s booming online marketplace, which already has more than 137 million Internet users, second only to the United States.

But the China operations of Amazon.com, eBay, Yahoo and even Google have all either lost ground or ceded the role of market leader to local rivals despite sometimes spending hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire established Chinese competitors.

The new company, called MySpace China, will tailor the site to the Chinese market. For instance, while MySpace.com invites newcomers to meet their first friend, Tom Anderson, who is a company founder, MySpace China introduces new visitors to a Chinese friend.

Still, it faces stiff competition from China’s home-grown Internet companies, including Baidu, Tencent, Sina and 51.com, as well as dozens of other MySpace.com-like Internet start-ups.

Analysts say that Chinese Internet entrepreneurs like Robin Li of Baidu, Ma Huateng of Tencent and Jack Ma of Alibaba.com, have managed to outmaneuver their Western counterparts, partly because they have a better sense of the needs of Chinese Internet users.

Foreign Internet companies have also struggled to find the right balance of complying with China’s stringent censorship — their sites are sometimes blocked in China — yet providing enough interesting content to attract users.

Mr. Murdoch has tried to gain access to the Chinese market for some of his media properties, but has faced difficulties because of tight controls. Now the News Corporation, which acquired MySpace in 2005 for about $580 million, has teamed up with IDG VC, a unit of the Boston-based International Data Group, and China Broadband Capital Partners. In effect, they are financing a Chinese start-up.

Richard Ji, an Internet analyst at Morgan Stanley, said MySpace China might use the News Corporation’s content. “They have a competitive advantage in sports content,” Mr. Ji said. “The Chinese government likes sports content, and so do advertisers” in China.

The group, headed by the News Corporation, did not say how much it has committed to invest in MySpace China, but people close to the talks say that the financing is substantial. The strategy and partnership were partly devised with the help of Wendi Deng, Mr. Murdoch’s Chinese-born wife, according to people involved in the deal. Ms. Deng is not an officer of the News Corporation, but she has been named to the board of MySpace China, according to people involved in the talks.

According to the deal, the News Corporation, IDG and China Broadband Capital will largely finance the operations. IDG, which is headed in China by Hugo Shong, has more than $800 million under management and has invested in some of China’s biggest Internet start-ups, including Baidu, Tencent, 3721.com and Eachnet.

Luo Chuan, 38, who used to run Microsoft’s MSN portal in China, will be the company’s chief executive. “We want to create a site that allows people to find serious relationships and to share something with new friends,” he said, “to share pain and loneliness.”

8-)8-) Oh brother, give me a break on that last quote. 8-)

;)

Bis pueri senes (especially Murdoch),

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:10 AM

:)

Tribeca spotlight

Tribeca Preview

25 movies that intrigued, annoyed, and greatly pleased our fest-happy critics

April 24th, 2007 4:21 PM

This year's Tribeca Film Festival (April 25–May 6) opens with earth mother Al Gore and his eco-themed shorts, ends with Central Park drapists Christo and Jean-Claude (Albert Maysles's The Gates), and kicks off the summer blockbuster season early with Spidey Fever In between there's a whole lot of, umm, other stuff, including some panel thingy with Debra Messing, a chat with Today show news (!) correspondent Tiki Barber, and the Goo Goo Dolls live at the Verizon Wireless lounge. But do not let the above distract you from what's really going on: 159 features and 87 shorts, many of which the Voice's film critics were excited to preview, thereby providing you with this 25-film overview of what lies ahead.

For more info: tribecafilmfestival.org

Alexis Arquette: She's My Brother

Sister . . . brother . . . sister . . . brother . . . she's my sister and my brother! That pretty much sums up this weirdly appealing documentary, which follows Alexis Arquette—the semi-famous scion of a semi-famous Hollywood family—as he (now she) prepares for a sex-change operation. Our mercurial subject cycles between melancholy and flamboyance: At times she is reflective about her gender trouble; at times she retreats into a shell of drag-queen bitchery. The scariest scenes come when directors Matthew Barbato and Nikki Parrott juxtapose home videos of Alexis as a happy teenager with diary-style footage of her today, a drug-addled blonde who vacantly asks the camera, "Is there any celebrities in space?"

Black Sheep

Or: Mutton Chomps. Genetically tweaked and dangerously pissed-off sheep turn rabid in this cheeky, campy Kiwi gorefest, loosely modeled by writer- director Jonathan King on countryman Peter Jackson's early dead/alive puppet gross-outs. Subtext—indeed, substance—is nonexistent, but King's sense of fun is as infectious as the disease of his zombie sheep; sharp-fanged stuffed animals tossed from offscreen toward the jugulars of various deserving victims. Bitten humans turn sheepish, too, which allows the FX department to uncork some old-school, American Werewolf–style flesh-ripping transformations. Karo syrup abounds, as does the irresistible spirit of juvenilia; the last few gags in particular are a gas.

Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe

Recent biodocs have an unfortunate tendency towards desperate myth- ologizing ("Though today forgotten, so-and-so changed history"); this clips-and-interviews portrait of late collector-curator Sam Wagstaff is no exception, ornamented with breathlessly overwrought narration. But Wagstaff's life nevertheless holds up as the doc makes a case for his primary influence on the rise of minimalism and the market for vintage photography. His relationship with the much younger Mapplethorpe—an only-in–New York mixture of love, lust, mentorship, mutual inspiration, and careerism—provides the tale's fascinating core, much of it told through the reminiscences of close friend Patti Smith.

Bomb It

The first 15 minutes of the documentary Bomb It are a retread of the seminal 1983 New York City graffiti doc Style Wars, but once director Jon Reiss leaves the gritty streets of late-1970s New York, his film begins to pave its own way. Bomb It follows graffiti artists all over the world, most poignantly in the garbage-strewn shanty towns of São Paulo and Cape Town. In developed nations, graffiti is treated as desecration or extravagance, but in bleak corners of the earth, wall art is a true political statement.

Half Moon

Bahman Ghobadi, Dogpatch fabulist and dean of Iranian Kurdish cinema, leads another magical mystery tour through his mountainous homeland—populated, per usual, by a small army of cute urchins, irascible wives, and garrulously self-important old goats. One of the latter, a renowned Kurdish musician named Mamo, visits a village where 1,334 women singers have been exiled and attempts to smuggle one into Iraq for a concert with him and his 10 sons. The music is, as always, terrific; the overall ethno-funkiness brings Ghobadi within hailing distance of such folk cinema maestros as Alexandr Dovzhenko and Sergei Parajanov.

The Hammer

A surprisingly charming Adam Carolla anchors this likable comedy from the director and producer-star of Kissing Jessica Stein, Charles Herman-Wurmfeld and Heather Juergensen. Carolla plays Jerry Ferro, an out-of-work carpenter who rediscovers his talents as a boxer. The schlubby former host of The Man Show maintains a breezy on-screen persona that belies the hard work it surely took to become such a convincing pugilist (check out those skills on the jump rope!). The ending is predictable, but you can't beat that ironic "Eye of the Tiger" montage for pure comic gold.

In the Beginning Was the Image: Conversations With Peter Whitehead

Experimental documentarian, political radical, jet-setting '60s hobnobber, and world-class falconer to Saudi royalty (!), British filmmaker Peter Whitehead is an unsung visionary of a breed only the Age of Aquarius could have produced. This lengthy two-part extended interview with Whitehead at times retraces its own steps, but director Paul Cronin's strategy of allowing Whitehead to expostulate freely on his life and philosophy nevertheless pays off, providing an entrée into an artist's mind at a level of detail rarely achieved outside of written biography.

The King of Kong

Seth Gordon's astonishingly good doc, featuring 25-year Donkey Kong champ Billy Mitchell, is as much about the perils of hubris as it is the price of heartbreak. Only one man has emerged since 1982 to challenge Mitchell: Steve Wiebe, a family man whose life thus far has been defined by his failures. All he's got going for him are a patient wife, a Donkey Kong machine, and the ability to beat every flaming barrel Kong throws his way. When Wiebe unseats Mitchell, the former No. 1 conspires against the upstart; Gordon's movie would play like dark comedy were there not such cruelty at its core.

The Letter That Was Never Sent

Winner of the top prize at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, Mikhail Kalatozov's revelatory World War II drama The Cranes Are Flying was something of a cultural Sputnik—one of the first post-Stalin Soviet films to circle the globe. "One Crane does not make a summer," Time sniffed, but Kalatozov and his brilliant cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky followed up in 1959 with an equally convulsive film, The Letter That Was Never Sent. The story of geologists battling nature in the Siberian wilderness provided the pretext for an even more visually extravagant, almost hallucinatory spectacle.

Making Of

While a confused 25-year-old breakdancer named Bahta evades the police and joins a group of Islamic fundamentalists, the actor who plays Bahta (Lotfi Ebdelli) battles director Nouri Bouzid for the right to decide the fate of the character. The result is sort of like Richard Rush's The Stunt Man recast as a debate about the ethics and morality of storytelling. Bouzid uses his unconventional structure to cleverly play his own devil's advocate: When Bouzid tells Ebdelli, "With this film, I want to show how a young man like you can be manipulated," he could be referring to Bahta's actions or his own.

My Father My Lord

My Father My Lord is not a happy movie or a particularly subtle one: It draws a grim parallel between Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac and a modern Israeli rabbi's devotion to God at the expense of his wife and son. A series of tense religious scenes culminates in tragedy during a family vacation to the Dead Sea (symbolism duly noted). Still, director David Volach manages to capture the fumbling wonder of a child's world as young Menachem (Eilan Grife) struggles to put on his shoes, save a dying fish, and understand his father.

Nobel Son

Eli Michaelson (Alan Rickman), world-renowned chemist and asshole, has just won the Nobel Prize, to his colleagues' chagrin. Meanwhile, his regrettably named son Barkley (Bryan Greenberg) gets by on $35 a week while he plugs away at his thesis on cannibalism. Eli hates Barkley. Barkley hates Eli. So when Barkley is kidnapped just as his father is leaving for Stockholm, who pays the ransom? Throw an obsessive- compulsive Danny DeVito and a criminally insane Eliza Dushku into the mix, and this frenetic, ungainly L.A. story becomes what might once have been called "a madcap romp."

The Optimists

Goran Paskaljevic takes a page from Voltaire's book and gives us five inter- locking vignettes of Serbian men who are convinced that we live in the best of all possible worlds. Taken as a whole, the film paints a damning picture of modern Serbia as a ship of fools. Each of its parts, though, is kind to its characters, who range from a blind girl dreaming of a miracle cure to a chubby boy whose hobby is slaughtering pigs. Luckily, Paskaljevic complements his sense of pathos with a sense of humor, and every scene is ripe with both.

Pete Seeger: The Power of Song

This admiring documentary about ur-folkie Pete Seeger is as dependably good as its subject. Everyone's here to pay him tribute: Dylan, Springsteen, Baez—and even, inexplicably, Bill Cosby. The mid-century folk revival may seem quaint in retrospect—all those middle-class teenagers learning to play "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore" on their brand-new banjos—but director Jim Brown does a nice job of showing its strong influence on progressive politics. Seeger's goal, as he puts it, was "to build a singing labor movement," and his success in harnessing the power of song to achieve social change will be his most enduring legacy.

Playing the Victim

The title sums it up nicely: The police hire Valya (Yuri Chursin) to re-enact alleged crimes, while a hilariously inept collection of Moscow detectives and deputies film the incident in Russian theater director Kirill Serebrennikov's feature entry. Alternating with the restagings are scenes of Valya's family life, which are loosely based on Hamlet; he lives in a dank apartment with his blowsy mother and his dead father's brother. Chursin's got screen presence, but the interplay between Valya's darkly funny work life and patently miserable home life doesn't quite work—it's a movie in search of a tone.

The Polymath, or The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman

Author, critic, academic, and occasional Wonder Woman scribe Samuel R. Delany believes that sexuality belongs in public discourse, so director Fred Barney Taylor obliges by crafting a documentary about Delany in which the writer's many literary accomplishments share the spotlight with his sexual ones: A scene about one of Delany's celebrated novels, for example, might segue into a recollection of a night spent cruising old St. Marks Place. Clearly, Delany's claim that he's a very dull, ordinary person is false modesty—how many other Hugo Award winners have slept with 50,000 people?

Still Life

A film about persistence and the passage of time, Jia Zhangke's Still Life finds a miner returning to a Yangtze town looking for his ex-wife only to discover its houses swallowed by water and its buildings primed for demolition. When he grows weary of searching, the man looks upward to witness a light (an alien spaceship, perhaps?) darting across the sky. Cue fierce rhetorical shift! Across the expansive landscape, a woman sees the craft too but barely bats an eye; she's distracted, after all, also searching for a missing spouse. For those who thought The World was not enough, Zhangke's latest represents progress.

Taxi to the Dark Side

Director Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) uses the tragic story of a taxi driver named Dilawar, who was wrongfully incarcerated and later murdered by American forces in Afghanistan, as a microcosm for the War on Terror's culture of torture. As the evidence piles up and his investigation widens to include similarly infuriating abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, Gibney's powerful documentary quickly progresses from chilling to alarming to utterly terrifying.

This Is England

A nostalgic but bitter trip through Mrs. Thatcher's Britain, from the highs (punk rock!) to the lows (strikes, unemployment, you name it). Shaun (Thomas Turgoose) is 10 and miserable after his father's death in the Falklands. He falls in with a group of multicultural, weirdly touchy-feely skinheads, and has a grand old time listening to ska and committing minor acts of vandalism. But when a former member of the gang comes back from jail full of racist rage, the charmed circle is broken, and Shaun has to figure out what it really means to be English in 1983.

Times and Wind

A quiet depiction of middle-of-nowhere Turkey, seen through the eyes of a group of tweens who are strikingly similar to their American counterparts: They sneak out of their houses at night—although instead of hanging out on street corners or toilet-papering the neighborhood, these pre-teens sit on a cliff—and struggle with growing sexuality and parental demands. (One boy prays every night for his critical father, an imam, to die: "Maybe he'll fall from the minaret!") But despite these everyteen themes, the rhythms of their lives are uniquely Turkish, circumscribed by the lonely landscape and punctuated by calls to prayer.

Tuya's Marriage

So many sheep! They undulate across the screen like water in this Mongolian tragicomedy, which won the Golden Bear at this year's Berlinale. Director Wang Quanan casts a meditative, almost ethnographic eye on Tuya (Yu Nan), a rural shepherdess who tries to wring a living out of the unforgiving steppes. Her saintly, paralyzed husband can't do much to help her, and when Tuya, too, suffers a debilitating injury, she reluctantly divorces him and interviews a parade of suitors eager to take his place. Her resourcefulness in the face of chronic male incompetence is a delight.

A Walk Into the Sea

Was Andy Warhol a bottom? A Walk Into the Sea brings us closer to the horrible truth. Pity we know less about Warhol's onetime boyfriend and undiscovered avant-gardist Danny Williams, who may or may not have drowned in the summer of '66. Forty years later, Williams's niece Esther Robinson tries to shed light on the man's abbreviated life, providing what may be the toothiest exposé yet into the soul-sucking modus operandi of Warhol's Factory. The filmmaker never knew her uncle, but she comes to understand him as something of a kindred spirit of Edie Sedgwick—which is to say, a better person than Warhol.

West 32nd

Some clunky exposition and an ill-advised action-heavy finale aside, director Michael Kang's second feature is a fine piece of filmmaking, equal parts ethnography and mob story. Harold and Kumar's John Cho plays a power-hungry young attorney who takes on a pro bono case and is subsequently seduced by the criminal underworld he discovers in New York City's Koreatown. The film's best moments examine the things that get lost, sometimes intentionally, in translation: One riveting scene, where Cho interviews a witness through a translator with selfish motives, matches anything in Hitchcock's oeuvre for sheer suspense.

The Workshop

When Marvin Gaye sang about sexual healing, he likely never imagined a place like "personal life coach" Paul Lowe's mountain retreat, where successful yuppies deal with their midlife crises through naked hot-tubbing and late-night orgies. Getting in touch with yourself, it seems, most fundamentally involves touching lots of others first. Director Jamie Morgan's documentary would be a great work of satire if only he were in on the joke. Instead, he's as caught up in Lowe's world as are the nude subjects.

The Year My Parents Went on Vacation

São Paulo, 1970. Pelé is playing in the World Cup, Brazil is under the rule of a military junta, and Mauro (Michel Joelsas), the young son of leftist dissidents, is dropped off to stay with his Jewish immigrant grandfather while his parents go on an underground "vacation." A series of unfortunate events leaves Mauro effectively orphaned, intermittently cared for by residents of his grandfather's Yiddish-speaking apartment complex, who insist on calling him Moishele. Everyone is football-mad here, even the rabbi, and the sport becomes a metaphor for both Brazil's national struggle and Mauro's personal one to retain his identity in a new home.

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0717,various,76460,20.html

(f) (f)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:12 AM

;)

Ripping off the planet without clearing the samples

by Mike Powell

April 24th, 2007 4:59 PM

Björk
"Earth Intruders"
From Volta

Björk has been hammering out her resident alien persona for 14 years now, a few ticks longer than producer Timbaland has spent polluting urban pop radio with syncopated crickets and Orientalist neons swiped from pretty much anywhere he can pull it off without coughing up a royalty. (The Economist reported last week that globalization is doing well.) She's a "rich artist" and he's a "commercial auteur." After a long softening from the former—Vespertine's domestic glitch was like a bunch of glasses rattling in a cupboard, Medúlla was a cappella, and they were buffered on either side by long breaks and repackagings—the oversize drumming and chants Tim brings to "Earth Intruders" are supposed to return Björk to primordial wilin' out. "We're all fucking animals," she said in a recent interview. "Let's just march." A rupture, but a predictable one in a climate where Mother Earth has retaken the throne as muse. The most mannered work here comes through the thumb piano of the Congo's Konono No. 1, actually from the cradle of civilization.

Panda Bear
"Good Girl/Carrots"
From Person Pitch

Where Björk's return-to-dirt anthem is a freaking mandate, Panda's approach is more gentle—an invitation. "Carrots" (and the rest of Person Pitch) even swaps the thubba-thubba bonfire- dance drumming he's known for in Animal Collective for trebly tabla loops, a toss in the sandbox compared to the native, American trauma of pulling out that inner child from under the rough blankets of socialization. His quacky Beach Boys harmonies are fed through enough echo and reverb to make them sound like ambient chatter from the seat of a carousel. Person Pitch's noncommittal bliss is pretty much its best asset—letting go is hard enough as it is without getting throttled in the exchange.

Soft Circle
"Sundazed"
From Full Bloom

Hisham Bharoocha, the peacenik behind Soft Circle, used to drum in Brooklyn's Black Dice, a neo-tribal powerhouse that has gradually fizzled into synth bloopery. "Sundazed," though, saves face by taking the same impulse as the crashing-drums crowd—rhythmic, hypnotic—and dissolving it into a tangle of synth marimbas, tricky off-rhythms, and reverberant shades. Turns out new age is something like the Cretaceous, just with hairier lizards shimmying around.

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0717,powell,76473,22.html

(f)

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:15 AM

;)

Fly Life columnist Tricia Romano went bowling with the Pierces. They've got balls.

http://images.villagevoice.com/gallery/0717april/1.jpg

http://www.villagevoice.com/gallery/0718,0717april,76490,30.html

:o CW and other warnings: There is some sick stuff here. :o

(f)

Damnant quodnon intelligunt. (They condemn what they do not understand.)

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:19 AM

;)

http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/food/

(p) PW! (Photos' warning....) ;) ;)

(f)

Vincit qui se vincit,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:25 AM

:| :|

Pucker Up

The Cum of Alt Fears

Sexual subcultures leave hetero wankers hangin'

by Tristan Taormino

April 23rd, 2007 10:56 PM

Back in the day, I went to a Lesbian Sex Mafia party at Hellfire, a BDSM club in the meatpacking district. The deal was, we women had the place to ourselves until 11 p.m., and then the "general public" would be allowed in. Well, I was in the middle of paddling some ass when the clock struck 11, and since no alarm went off or anything, I continued my scene until around 11:30. When I was finished, I remember turning around and seeing dozens of dudes—who had surrounded my plaything and me—drooling with their dicks out. I have to admit it was disconcerting; I began my scene in a sex-positive, safe exhibitionist environment and ended it in the middle of a circle jerk. "Damn wankers," sighed another female partygoer.

Wankers are usually heterosexual guys who go to sex clubs and parties alone to watch the activities and jerk off. If there is no wanker population control plan in place, the space can become overrun with them, like what happened at Hellfire. The problem of wanker overload has led to an unfortunate phenomenon in the world of alternative sex organizations and events: Single guys are treated with automatic suspicion. I spent Easter weekend organizing sex workshops, an erotic egg hunt, and a dinner banquet at the biannual event I co-produce that brings together sex, BDSM, and spirituality. Holding it at a hotel, we transform banal ballrooms into fantasy spaces for people to play, and some attendees hold smaller parties in their rooms. My friend Mark e-mailed a woman who was hosting a Sunday night swinger shindig in her suite to see if he could attend. His wife was leaving early that morning, but he was staying through Monday. The party hostess replied with: "You're a single guy and I don't know you, so I am not going to say yes off the bat. I need to meet you. We'll see." He responded politely and reminded her that he was a presenter at the event and had attended six of the eight biannual gatherings. He promised he was a responsible orgy attendee, well versed in sex-party etiquette. In fact, Mark is one of the gentlest, kindest, most respectful men I know. His gender politics are right on as far as I'm concerned and I've never seen him behave inappropriately at an event. But his solid standing within the community didn't matter to this hostess. She needed to size him up for herself.

Men unaccompanied by a woman are unwelcome at nearly all swinger events and often excluded from (or barely tolerated at) other kinds of sex-positive gatherings. Like Ladies' Night at a bar, this rule first came about in order to achieve gender parity. The theory (and the reality) is that if you hold any sort of sexually themed party, single guys come in droves and outnumber women and couples; a gathering that's 75 percent single men is usually not desirable. So to balance things out, solo men must pay a higher entrance fee (as much as five to 10 times what single women pay, if those gals pay at all), have to be referred by another member in order to attend, or just can't enter period. It's not always just about the door policy: I went to a swingers party (for couples and single women only) where men were not even allowed to walk around without a female companion in certain areas.

Part of me can appreciate the anti- patriarchal revenge of a world where single women are prized and single men are treated as second-class citizens. Why not make them jump through some hoops in the sex world for a change? However, when it comes down to it, I want to challenge people to rethink the exclusionary policy.

The truth is, single, voyeuristic, masturbating men are not the problem for me. I don't appreciate anyone at a fuck fest who is loud, obnoxious, drunk, high on drugs, crossing boundaries, or some combination thereof. I don't like folks who don't understand the concept of personal space, who hover closer than they should to a scene, who don't take no for an answer, and who don't ask permission to touch. Are these people predominantly single men? A lot of the time they are. I've experienced firsthand how lots of men feel entitled to take up too much space, to insert themselves into other people's scenes, and to make their presence known even if all they are doing is watching. It's like they start thinking with their cocks and any manners they have fall out of their brains. In a space meant to be freeing and comfortable, these particular offenders can be predatory as they wave their dicks around, literally and figuratively, in a way that makes other people uneasy.

But simply a cock in a fist does not a wanker make. Solo men who are shy, polite, well-behaved, rule-abiding, respectful voyeurs get lumped together with those who have no boundaries. And that doesn't seem fair, especially within alternative sex communities where we actively challenge sexual norms. As an event organizer, I want people to explore their sexuality and experiment with different kinds of sexual expression by creating a safe, nonjudgmental, open environment where they can do that. Other event producers claim to have a similar mission, but how can they truly achieve such a welcoming environment for everyone if they say, "Please feel free to come, unless of course you're a man attending alone and your form of sexual expression is voyeurism and self-pleasure"? By excluding single men, plenty of groups do just that, and I think it's counterproductive and hypocritical.

"Wanker" is a derogatory term, but if we strip it of its judgment and redefine it simply as "a man without a partner in attendance who likes to watch and jack off" then all wankers are not the same. We must make room in our communities for wankers who respect boundaries. We must not assume that all single men want to do is jerk off in public sex spaces. If some do, we have to stop shaming them as we simultaneously encourage women to do the exact same thing; this only reinforces narrow stereotypes about male and female sexuality. To create a truly inclusive community, the rules need to be reframed to be about people's behavior—not their gender, relationship status, or fondness for touching themselves.

Please visit puckerup.com.

http://www.villagevoice.com/people/0717,taormino,76428,24.html

:o :o :o Whoa!!! More than I wanted to know - but thought others might have an interest in this writer and other articles written previously and in the future. IMHO, it's a bit salty, so to speak. ;) ;)

Fac ut vivas.

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:31 AM

:s

Food safety worries mount

Does melamine hurt humans? Why isn't food supply protected?

By Stephen J. Hedges and Mary Ann Fergus

Chicago Tribune staff reporters

Published April 29, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The tainted pet food scare, which has swelled into a serious crisis for animal lovers, now has spread to humans.

California officials have revealed that the contamination got into the food chain: About 45 state residents ate pork from hogs that consumed animal feed laced with melamine from China. Melamine is used to make plastics, but it also artificially boosts the protein level—and thus the price—of the glutens that go into food.

It was already fatal for some pets: 17 cats and dogs are confirmed dead, more have likely died without being reported, thousands have suffered kidney problems, and 57 brands of cat food and 83 of dog food have been recalled. On top of that, roughly 6,000 hogs will be destroyed because they ate tainted feed.

The effects of melamine on people are thought to be minimal, but no one really knows. Its consumption by humans is considered so improbable that no one has even studied it.

But they are studying now. What last month was a limited recall of canned pet food is on the verge of becoming a full-fledged public health scare, potentially overwhelming government agencies and raising troubling questions about U.S. food safety in the global economy and in the post-Sept. 11 era.

The Food and Drug Administration, criticized by some in Congress for responding too slowly, is struggling to catch up with the implications of the spread of melamine-contaminated glutens from China to hogs, and the human food chain. The FDA is still trying to get its investigators into China, where a skeptical government only last week assented to investigators' visa requests.

At a time when food imports are growing, and only 1 percent to 2 percent of food imports receive any government scrutiny, critics say the scare reveals the shortcomings of a weakened food safety bureaucracy, the inadequacy of existing regulations and the inability of the FDA, which has suffered significant cutbacks, to protect the food supply.

"They're reactive, not proactive," said Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), whose House subcommittee on investigations last week held a hearing on food safety. If the problem was imported pet food additives, he asked, "How does it then get to hogs? They've known about this for some time. What did they do with it?"

In a statement, the FDA said that "food safety funding" for the year ending last Sept. 30 "was $376 million." But funding for the agency's Center for Food Safety has dropped from $48 million in 2003 to about to $30 million in 2006, according to the center's 2006 budget priority statement. Full-time jobs in the Center for Food Safety have also been cut from 950 in 2003 to about 820 in 2006, according to the budget statement.

FDA looking for origins

The FDA's real detective work may be just beginning. Having found many sources of contamination, investigators must now determine exactly how widespread the problem is and how it began.

The importer of the bad wheat gluten, ChemNutra Inc. of Las Vegas, contends that its Chinese manufacturer, Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co., illicitly added melamine to the gluten in order to boost the measurable protein level and thus the price of the shipment. If so, the FDA may find itself pursuing criminal charges against the Chinese company.

FDA officials Friday searched ChemNutra's offices, as well as a pet food plant operated by Menu Foods in Emporia, Kan., according to The Associated Press. Menu Foods has recalled millions of cans of pet food in recent weeks.

In China, the central government has been defensive about charges that an export shipment had been deliberately contaminated, at first denying that any tainted wheat gluten was even shipped to the U.S. But that tone has softened as the extent of the pet food recall expanded. On Friday, a government spokesman told USA Today that some shipments were contaminated.

Scores of pet food brands have now been recalled in the U.S. for fear that melamine-contaminated glutens were used in their manufacture. They include canned and dry dog food and dog biscuits that are made in places as widely scattered as Utah, Missouri and South Carolina.

The FDA is also examining imported vegetable proteins earmarked for human products like pizza, protein bars and baby formula. That investigation, still in its early stages, hasn't uncovered any contaminated ingredients, but the agency, an FDA doctor said, wanted to "get ahead of the curve."

The melamine-laced food reached hogs because surplus pet food—crumbled and broken food bits rejected as unsuitable for dogs or cats—was sent to hog farms and turned into feed. The FDA says bulk shipments of feed were delivered to hog farmers in California, Utah, Ohio, Kansas, Oklahoma, New York, North Carolina and South Carolina. FDA officials said they were also concerned that contaminated livestock feed may have been shipped to Missouri.

"It's absolutely a terrible nightmare story," said Eric Nelson, a Wisconsin feed specialist and president of the Association of American Feed Control Officials. "It just doesn't seem to get any better, and I'm sure it's not over."

Rice protein also a problem

Even as the tainted wheat gluten cases have multiplied, the FDA has learned of another problem: Chinese rice protein. U.S. importer Wilbur-Ellis told the agency that a single bag of rice protein that it had imported tested positive for the presence of melamine. Wilbur-Ellis imported the rice from Binzhou Futian Biology Technology Co. in China's Shandong province. In the U.S., the protein went to five U.S. pet food makers in Utah, New York, Kansas and Missouri.

While the FDA has targeted select states for hog inspections, the pet food recall and the large number of sick cats and dogs have overwhelmed state agencies that often only investigate a dozen pet food complaints a year. The FDA says about 400 employees across the country are collecting pet food samples, monitoring the recalls' effectiveness and preparing complaints.

The investigation's progress in Illinois alone illustrates the problem.

About half of the 32 FDA investigators in the state have worked on responding to more than 500 complaints of sick or deceased dogs and cats since the recalls began March 16. They must collect medical records from veterinarians and gather samples of contaminated pet food.

The office is also involved in recall effectiveness. "It's very taxing on our resources," said Scott MacIntire, director of the FDA's Chicago office, which oversees state operations.

MacIntire said his office is investigating a shipment of rice protein concentrate imported to Illinois and potentially used in a human product.

Nationwide, the FDA has only enough inspectors to check 1 percent to 2 percent of the 8.9 million imported food shipments in 2006.

"We don't have the resources or the capabilities to test every single shipment of every single food item that crosses into our country or into our state borders," said Frank Busta, director of the National Center for Food Protection and Defense.

Stupak is among a small number in Congress who for several years have pressed for stiffer food safety regulations. He said legislation likely to pass this year could include a provision giving the FDA authority to order food processors to recall questionable items.

Currently, the FDA can issue mandatory recall orders only for baby formula, while other government safety agencies can demand the recall of goods such as unsafe toys and tires.

"It took Menu Foods almost a whole month to do a full recall of the dog food," Stupak said. "If they're dragging their feet on the recall of dog food, in the meantime this tainted wheat gluten is going to hogs."

Other fixes could include expanded funding for food safety inspections and labs, the right to conduct spot inspections, subpoena power for the FDA and country-of-origin labeling on food products. Congress has already passed the labeling law, but the Bush administration has declined to implement it, citing cost concerns.

FDA officials acknowledged that they are closing seven labs but said they are older facilities that needed renovation and that other labs are being expanded to compensate.

What price safety?

The end of this pet food crisis appears more elusive than ever, shedding light on issues beyond the largely self-regulated pet food industry to America's growing dependence on cheap imported ingredients from China and other countries, where safety precautions may be more lenient.

But just as troubling, federal officials and congressional critics of the FDA say, is the ease with which the bad gluten was passed along once in the U.S. After the Sept. 11 attacks, food and water safety were an issue of great concern, they say, but those concerns seem to have eroded.

America's increasing reliance on low-cost food creates a complicated food distribution system, Busta said — and that leaves "many potential vulnerabilities."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-070428food-story,1,7734426.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

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

Possunt quia posse videntur.

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:33 AM

:s

Geez, you don't say. :o

Last updated April 28, 2007 8:32 p.m. PT

Debaters question if hip-hop hates women

By CARLA K. JOHNSON

ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

CHICAGO -- A panel discussion titled "Does Hip-Hop Hate Women?" drew more than 400 people Saturday - a sign that the furor that erupted over Don Imus' comments isn't over yet.

As Imus struggled in vain to keep his radio-host job earlier this month, he claimed that rappers routinely "defame and demean black women" and call them "worse names than I ever did." That led to some music-industry navel-gazing, but too little action, some panelists at the University of Chicago said.

Some criticized music executives failing to make a strong statement against violent and demeaning language in mainstream rap music when they met earlier this month in New York.

Others blasted hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons for not doing enough when he called this week for the recording and broadcast industries to ban three words - "bitch," "ho" and "nigger" - from all so-called clean versions of rap songs.

"How is no one saying to Russell, 'Yo, we already bleep out those words'?" said Joan Morgan, an author and commentator on hip-hop and feminism.

Others at the event said hip-hop shouldn't be made a scapegoat for what's wrong in America.

"We allow this language to go on," said Amina Norman-Hawkins, a Chicago hip-hop emcee and executive director of the Chicago Hip-Hop Initiative. "As a community, we aren't responsible for our children. So we don't teach our little boys how to grow up to be men and respect women. We allow them to learn from the street what's acceptable."

Some said Imus' April 12 firing by CBS Radio over a slur he used to describe Rutgers University's women's basketball team has provided a new opportunity to galvanize public opinion on the issue.

"Sexism is too convenient within the black community for black men," said David Ikard, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee. "This issue of Imus came up and I asked the black men in my hip-hop course what were their stakes in it. They were like, 'Well, we don't really have any stakes in it. It seems trivial.'"

He called on black men to do more to speak up for black women.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Rap_Language.html

:| :|

Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:37 AM

(f) (f) (f)

http://earth.google.com/showcase/index.html

(f) (f)

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:00 PM

(l) (au) (l) (au) (l) (au) (l)

http://www.panoramicnaturephotography.com/

http://www.panoramicnaturephotography.com/news/default.asp

http://www.panoramicnaturephotography.com/ptfiles/private/us_89_panoramics/default.asp

(f)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:01 PM

(l) (l)

http://www.losttraillodge.com/

(f)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:01 PM

(f) (f)

"Katmai is the Alaska that people dream of."

http://www.katmailand.com/

(l) (l)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:02 PM

(f)

http://www.winvian.com/

(f)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:03 PM

(y) (y)

1. http://www.searchmash.com/

2. http://www.msdewey.com/

3. http://www.alltheweb.com/

4. http://www.ask.com/?ax=5

:)

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:05 PM

(y) (y)

The First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and a Twentieth-Century Medical Revolution.

Pagan Kennedy

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1950, Michael Dillon, a dapper, bearded medical student, met Roberta Cowell, a boyish-looking woman, for lunch in a discreet London restaurant. During the lunch, Dillon announced that five years earlier he was a woman named Laura, and Roberta stated she was on her way to full womanhood from being Robert. Eventually, Cowell (a former Royal Air Force captain) would garner fame as a glamorous woman and author of the 1954 bestseller Roberta Cowell's Story, while in 1958 Dillon began a long, rocky journey to become a Tibetan monk. But Kennedy (Black Livingstone) does far more than detail their short-lived, topsy-turvy transgender romance. She gives us an enlightening tour of how mid-century science conceptualized gender, hormones and transsexual surgery, as well as how advances in plastic surgery for men maimed in WWI became the basis for sex change operations. Kennedy's slangy style—she describes presurgery Dillon as living in the "slushy canal between sexes"—also suits the material. Though her effort doesn't surpass other books on the topic—especially Joanne Meyerowitz's How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States—it's an entertaining and informative popular history. (Mar.)

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School—Born into a wealthy family near the beginning of the 20th century, Laura Dillon attended Oxford University and went on to become a doctor, a published author, and, eventually, a man named Michael. At Oxford, she tried to identify as a homosexual, but that didn't quite fit; it would be years before the words transsexual or transgendered were coined. In 1939, Dillon began to experiment with a new drug, testosterone. Her life changed after meeting Dr. Gillies, a practitioner in the emerging field of plastic surgery, who performed several operations to reconfigure Dillon's anatomy. Upon meeting Roberta Crowell in 1949, Michael believed that he had found his soul mate. Born and raised as a man, Crowell was in the process of transforming into a woman. Following a failed love affair, Dillon traveled to India to study Buddhism. He died a pauper after finally discovering happiness among monks in Tibet. He left a legacy of notebooks, memoirs, and a groundbreaking treatise on the nature of sex and gender. These form the basis of Kennedy's narrative, which leapfrogs back and forth across Dillon's life. Kennedy traces the emotional isolation and triumphs throughout Dillon's struggle to define himself according to his own rules. The author peppers the text with historical details of early-20th-century medicine and evolving notions of gender in Western society. This story is fascinating to modern readers whether or not they have personal questions about gender.

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

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:06 PM

(f)

1. http://www.restaurantguysradio.com/sle/rg/

2. http://www.podarama.com/podcasts/chefjondreau/jimskitchen.html

3. http://www.naturespath.com/newsroom/podcast

(f)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:06 PM

:) :)

http://www.riverjourneys.com/

(y) (y)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:07 PM

(l)

http://www.trainways.com/

http://static.hitfarm.com/common/images/spacer.gif

http://www.railsnw.com/tours/australia/gsr_ghan001.htm#au

Experience one of the world's greatest train journeys aboard The Legendary Ghan. The legend has soared to new heights with the extension of The Ghan journey to Darwin. When The Ghan first departed Adelaide for Alice Springs, it was always intended that it would one day travel through to Darwin. More than 70 years, that dream has become reality.

The Ghan now travels 2,979 kilometres from Adelaide to Darwin on this transcontinental journey through the Red Centre of Australia. The Ghan offers a weekly return journey between Adelaide and Darwin, and in either direction provides two nights aboard this legendary train. Marvel at the spectacular Australian landscapes; from the rusty reds of the MacDonnell Ranges surrounding Alice Springs, gateway to Ayers Rock and the Red Centre, then north to Tennant Creek, Katherine and the tropical splendour of Darwin. Off-train touring is a feature of the new journey, providing the chance to learn more about the unique desert flora and fauna.

(l) (l)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:08 PM

(f)

1. http://www.mayoclinic.com/

2. http://www.supplementwatch.com/

3. http://nccam.nih.gov/health/supplements.htm

4. http://www.consumerreports.org/mg/

(f)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:09 PM

(ip)

http://www.ibizaholidays.com/

(f)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:09 PM

;) ;)

http://www.warnerbreaks.co.uk/

(f)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:10 PM

:s

:)

http://www.itsatrip.org/

(f)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:11 PM

:)

http://www.rittenhouseinn.com/

(f)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:12 PM

:)

http://www.whitewilderness.com/

http://www.whitewilderness.com/images/Winter2005.jpg

:) Hmm, maybe later in 2007. Seems like spring is here, eh?

(f)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:14 PM

:) :)

http://www.blueeyeddaisy.com/

http://www.travelandleisure.com/restaurants/blue-eyed-daisy-bakeshop

SUPER CRISPY Chicken:

http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/alabamas-best-covered-dish-dinner

http://www.coogsfinest.com/Chicken-Seasoning/3/pan-fried-chicken-recipe.php

http://www.mygoldenrecipes.info/free-chicken-recipes-5/pan-fried-chicken.html

:o :o I can just feel hardening of the arteries reading about this chicken. ;)

(f)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:14 PM

(l)

http://www.thepollard.net/

(l)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:16 PM

:) :) :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRBIVRwvUeE

:D

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

sweetlady

04-29-2007, 10:20 PM

(l) (&) (l) (&) (l) (&) (l)

http://www.flexpetz.com/

(o) (o) Tiime to take Wyatt for a short walk. Maybe get to bed earlier than usual. Seems that all I did this week was catch up on rest so I could feel better. I have not been THIS sick in years! Coughed my a** off. ;)

(S) (S) Restful sleep and dreams.

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

sweetlady

05-07-2007, 03:43 PM

;) ;)

Two Newfies, Jorge and Eli, were adrift in a lifeboat. While rummaging
through the boat's provisions, Jorge stumbled across an old lamp. He
rubbed the lamp vigorously and a genie came forth. This genie, however,
stated that he could only deliver one wish, not the standard three.

Jorge, immediately blurted out, "Turn the entire ocean into Molson
Canadian beer."

The genie clapped his hands with a deafening crash, and immediately the
sea turned into beer and the genie vanished. Only the gentle lapping of
beer on the hull broke the stillness as the two men considered their
circumstances.

Eli looked disgustedly at Jorge whose wish had been granted. After a long,
tension-filled moment Eli said, "Nice going Jorge! Now we're going to have
to piss in the boat."

:D :D

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

05-07-2007, 03:46 PM

:o :o

May 6, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

La Campagne, C’est moi

By MAUREEN DOWD

LILLE, France

It’s hard not to be drawn to a presidential candidate with a name like a Bond girl, a smile like an angel, a figure that looks great in a bikini at 53, a campaign style like Joan of Arc, and a buffet for the press corps brimming with crustless fromage sandwiches, icy chocolate profiteroles, raspberry parfaits, red Bordeaux, espresso and little almond gâteaux. (When in France, let us eat cake.)

Ségolène Royal brought back the sizzle to socialism, raising the ire of Stephen Colbert’s right-wing TV host, who warned that “socialism is always a threat but never more so than when it looks like this.”

At first, Ségolène seemed like the ideal candidate for a country that knew it needed change but didn’t really want change, because she looked like change but wasn’t really going to change anything. But the infatuation dampened, like a spring romance.

I entered the Ségosphere, as her supporters call it, Thursday evening in Lille, for the last big rally — and perhaps last hurrah — of her “serene revolution,” as it’s dubbed.

The unmarried mother of four and daughter of a misogynistic army colonel entered the factorylike hall to a militant techno beat, gliding through the cheering crowd of 20,000 with a radiant smile and bright red jacket. Supporters, including many young ethnic Arab men and older women in head scarves up front, strained to touch and pat her.

On stage, she channeled a divine aura, levitating her arms like a Blessed Virgin statue, presenting herself as a glowing beacon against the forces of darkness, a k a Nicolas Sarkozy. In the Ségosphere, the right-wing front-runner is a brute, Rudy Giuliani without the restraint, while she is a healer. She consciously casts herself as Marianne, the symbol of France — playing “La Marseillaise” at rallies — but comes across more like Marianne Williamson, the New Age spirituality guru, going for the chakra vote.

“What I want, it’s for everybody to unleash this energy they feel within themselves,” she said, “but this energy that is sometimes curbed, curbed by so many blockages, curbed by so many negative speeches, curbed by so many shadows. ... It is not the dark side that I want to awake. It is the side of light, it is the side of hope, it is the part of joy, it is the part of smile, it is the part of France that loves itself as it is.”

Even though her strategy of playing the woman card fell flat, she kept it up in her last week. In Lille, she said she knew some wondered: “Is it really reasonable to choose a woman? Is France going to dare? I want to say: Dare. Dare! You won’t regret it.”

Ségo is bolder than the cautious Hillary, but stumbles into mistakes more often; unlike Hillary, she has not done her homework on foreign policy. Ségo blends a fierce will and feminine style more deftly than Hillary, but is also seen as somewhat cold, porcelain under her porcelain skin, rather than seductive, like Bill Clinton.

Ségo showed verve and grit in her self-professed role as a “gazelle” darting past the sexist old Socialist elephants — not to mention the father of her children, François Hollande, the head of her party, who wanted to run himself. Though Mr. Hollande supports Ségo, she does not seem as dependent as Hillary on getting her man to push people around for her.

France is chauvinistic — women got the vote in 1944 and compose only a small percentage of the National Assembly — but the country seems less neurotic than America about the idea of a woman as president. The trouble with Ségo’s campaign is not her gender. The trouble is that her only vision for France is herself. Hence, her nickname: Egolene.

A Sarko adviser called Ségo “a very pretty gadget” who looked modern but had no real plan to move France out of malaise and into the future.

When Ségo lost her temper at Sarko during Wednesday’s debate, on the issue of disabled children’s going to regular schools, it was denounced as contrived and inaccurate. She wanted to seem assertive and goad her abrasive and volatile rival into boiling over. Instead, he pushed the gender card back, telling her to “calm down” and stereotyping Serene Ségo as too moody and changeable to run a country that likes big, powerful leaders.

“She is not in a good mood this morning; it must be the polls,” he said Friday, after she warned that he was “a dangerous choice,” with “the same neoconservative ideology” as W., someone who could cause the country to erupt.

In a contest between what one Parisian calls “le fou” and “la fausse,” the crazy and the false, France may say oui to le fou.

8-)8-) Losing her cool will lose her the election, IMHO.

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

05-07-2007, 03:47 PM

:o

LOOSE WIRE

By JEREMY WAGSTAFF WSJ (Wall Street Journal)

Your Phone Is a Shield And How You Carry It Has A Lot To Say About You

May 4, 2007

JAKARTA -- The only things most of us carry around that we didn't use to are our cellphones. I remember titters from my colleagues when I bought my first one 11 years ago, but now even my most cave-dwelling friends have given in and carry one. That's quite a shift: I can't think of anything since the introduction of the wristwatch more than 100 years ago that became such a required accessory. But it begs a further question: How, exactly, do we carry our cellphones -- and what does that say about us?

Nokia researchers based in China, Japan and Finland have looked at just that. The answer, it turns out, isn't as simple as it sounds, and the conclusions contain some important pointers to our lingering ambivalence about being at the beck and call of others.

First, it's probably no surprise that men carry their cellphones in their front pockets, and more often than not in their right pocket (most people being right-handed). It's about the most accessible place a guy has at his disposal. It's also why you may find an elbow in your face/stomach/groin if a co-passenger answers his phone in a crowded train. My tip to solve the elbow problem: Persuade pant designers to make pockets with openings that face forward rather than backward. Men could then store their phones in the opposite pocket to their dominant hand and reach across their bodies to grab the devices, rather than elbowing other people. Try it: It works. Plus you feel like Clint Eastwood.

This would also help solve another problem for pocket carriers: The team's research suggests that 30% of such people sometimes or always miss incoming calls. This is nothing, however, compared with the problems that women face. Nokia's research concludes that 61% of women carry their mobile phone in a bag, usually a handbag. As a result, half of such people regularly miss an incoming call because, in the words of one of the researchers, Tokyo-based Jan Chipchase, "it is not noticed, or...even if it is noticed the phone cannot be retrieved in time -- because the phone is buried deep in the handbag." Technically speaking, this is called The Desperate Rummage, and I'm sure many of you have done it a few times, in the middle of cinemas, religious services or job interviews, trying frantically to throttle that silly ringtone you installed the previous evening in a moment of high spirits.

Not being a woman, I don't have a glib solution to The Desperate Rummage. As Mr. Chipchase points out in an essay accompanying the research, there's a fundamental contradiction between the preference for the handbag-cellphone-stash and advances in one key aspect of cellphone technology: miniaturization. As new cellphone models get smaller, and drop the external aerial, they get harder to find, partly because they're so small, and partly because they're a similar size and shape to other objects in the bag, such as a mascara box or name-card holder. Obviously one solution is to wear a Bluetooth headset at all times so incoming calls can be heard directly. Women seem averse to this, perhaps for the same reason that they're not flocking to another male preference: the Belt Pouch.

The Belt Pouch allows the mobile phone to be attached to the waist. But it's really quite geeky-looking, and so doesn't seem to have caught on in fashion-conscious cities like Tokyo, where the Nokia research could find no one wearing a belt pouch, or Milan, where only 4% of people did. While 19% of respondents in Beijing had one, the percentage doubled in the more remote Chinese city of Jilin. As Mr. Chipchase puts it, "perhaps this reflects a preference for convenience over elegance" in the sticks.

Women, needless to say, give belt pouches a wide berth: Instead they go for straps. These are usually bands that are threaded through the top of the devices, allowing them to hang around the neck. Variants include dangly pendants that help facilitate tactile discovery during The Desperate Rummage.

Here regional variations are clear: Phone straps are big in North Asia but aren't elsewhere. Seoul seems to have the most straps -- 71% of phone users have one there -- with Tokyo only slightly behind. Compare that with only 11% in Delhi, 9% in Los Angeles and 4% in Kampala. Mr. Chipchase reckons the phone strap is "an immediate, nontechnical and obvious way of projecting oneself and one's values." In other words, for the average South Korean or Japanese, the dangling cellphone is a great way of saying who she is. Presumably your average Indian, Californian or Ugandan has found other ways of conveying the same information. Or perhaps people who wear a phone around their neck simply want to be reached by the people who are calling them.

Which brings me to what I think all this tells us: Most of us still aren't sure we want a device that we will notice every time it summons us. Mr. Chipchase recognizes that some of those missed calls may have been intentional -- because we're in a situation where to answer the phone would be rude, or because we don't recognize the number and don't want some weirdo calling us for a survey on where we stash our cellphone, or simply because we just want a bit of time off. In short, where we stash our cellphone -- pocket, belt, strap or bag -- may say as much about how easily we want to be reached as about our fashion sense or what culture we're from.

As with all technology, we need to remain in control, and if we can't do that directly, we will erect barriers to shield us from it (the shield, in this case, being a chaotic handbag or deep pockets). The consideration for Nokia and others, as they design the next wave of devices, is to give the shield element as much priority as the communication element. Or, as Mr. Chipchase concludes: "We could design a device where incoming communication is impossible to miss -- but should we?"

^o)^o)

Animadvertistine, ubicumque stes, fumum recta in faciem ferri?

(Ever noticed how wherever you stand, the smoke goes right into your face?)

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

sweetlady

05-07-2007, 03:49 PM

:| :|

The $40 Game Controller Hits Balls, Plays Deejay And Regulates a Roomba

By JAMIN BROPHY-WARREN

April 28, 2007; Page A1 WSJ

A deejay in the Netherlands uses his to mix techno music at dance parties. A medical student in Italy has reprogrammed his to help analyze the results of CT scans. And a Los Angeles software engineer has found a way to get his to help vacuum the floor. The high-tech device in each case: the remote control from a $250 videogame console.

Since Nintendo Co.'s Wii landed in stores in November, it has become one of the game industry's biggest hits, selling more than two million consoles in the U.S. Many stores can't keep the console in stock, and it fetches nearly twice its retail price on eBay. One of the major drivers of the Wii's popularity is its remote control, which fans call the Wii-mote. Unlike past remotes, it is motion sensitive and can detect when a player waves it to one side or tilts it forward or back.

The Wii-mote is becoming a cult object for hackers, with gadget geeks re-engineering the device to do all sorts of things having nothing to do with playing videogames. To repurpose the Wii-mote, they download free software from one of a number of Web sites and then tweak that code to assign a specific command to each movement of the device. In the end, the remote takes the place of a computer mouse or keyboard. Waving the Wii-mote sends a message wirelessly to the computer, which then communicates with whatever object the hacker is trying to control.

Software engineer Chris Hughes has tinkered with almost everything in his Los Angeles home, from adding more storage capacity to his TiVo digital video recorder to changing the combination on the keyless entry to his Ford Explorer. When a friend at a Christmas party suggested he find a way to get his Wii-mote to control his Roomba robot vacuum cleaner, Mr. Hughes worked through the night tailoring the software code.

He sent a video of the results to his girlfriend and posted a demonstration on YouTube. It shows the sleepy Mr. Hughes tilting his white remote up and down to make the Roomba go back and forth, and then turning it over to get the vacuum cleaner to spin circles in his living room. "Normally my eyes just glaze over when he talks about technical stuff," says his girlfriend, Erin Bradford. "But he was so pleased with himself." She's hoping the invention means the house will now stay cleaner.

The standard videogame remote, little changed in two decades, consists of a joystick or game pad that controls a character's movements, and buttons to trigger different actions, like shooting a gun. The Wii-mote, which is about the size of a large candy bar, relies on some different technologies. It communicates with the on-screen cursor, for example, via an infrared beam. But what has most captivated hackers is a mechanism inside the Wii-mote called an accelerometer that can detect its speed and direction of motion. It is the accelerometer, made by Analog Devices Inc., in Norwood, Mass., that allows Wii players to use their remotes to act out whatever game they're playing, whether it's casting with a fishing rod or swinging a tennis racket.

Tim Groeneboom, who lives in the Netherlands, uses his Wii-mote to spice up his deejay act. He was inspired by a video on the Web of a California music student bobbing in front of the computer in his room and making jabbing motions with the Wii-mote to splice different tracks. During his second gig with the Wii-mote, Mr. Groeneboom, 22, says he was able to roam up to about 100 feet from his deejay booth and still be able to control how the music blended and do some sound effects. At one point, he danced into a circle of revelers clutching his Wii-mote.

Aaron Rasmussen has a sporting purpose for his Wii-mote. At his Garden Grove, Calif. software company, USMechatronics, he and his partner stuck a tennis racket in the "hand" of a $40,000 industrial robot and then tweaked the Wii-mote to control the robot's arm so it can hit back tennis balls on the factory floor. "This is what we do to relax," he says.

Some people are using their remotes to play Laser Tag -- where players shoot one another with infrared light beams -- while others are using them to strum a virtual guitar. Several Web sites, like Wiihacks.blogspot.com and WiiLi.org, have sprouted up for hackers to trade tips on repurposing Wii-motes. Because Nintendo sells the Wii-mote separately for $40, hackers don't even need to buy the console.

Nintendo says it is surprised by efforts to reprogram the Wii-mote and discourages the practice. "The Wii Remote was created to play on the Wii system only," says Anka Dolecki, spokeswoman for Nintendo.

But all the interest in the Wii-mote could have an upside for the company. The dozens of free games on the Web that incorporate the Wii-mote have helped add to the buzz surrounding the console.

Much of the Wii-mote hacking is by music aficionados. Bob Somers, a second-year student at California Polytechnic State University, has figured out a way to play his virtual drum set with the Wii-mote. He waves the remote while holding down one of the buttons on the device to produce a drum sound. To get a bass kick, he holds down the "B" button while flicking his wrist; for the snare drum, he makes the same movement but holds down the "A" button. Paul Henry Smith, 43, has even bigger ambitions. A formally trained conductor in Hamden, Conn., Mr. Smith wants to lead a handful of classical musicians through a Beethoven symphony. The musicians would use Wii-motes to control a digital version of a section of the orchestra.

Some companies see possible business applications with the Wii-mote. Rick Bullotta, vice-president of SAP Research, an arm of the German software giant SAP AG, is looking at ways to integrate the Wii-mote into their clients' manufacturing operations. He envisions factory and warehouse employees walking through facilities pointing and waving Wii-motes to monitor and control machines. "It's the first time we've used a videogame controller for R&D," he says.

(y) (y) (y)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

05-07-2007, 03:50 PM

(f) (f)

La Paz

Reporters Jonathan Karp and Miriam Jordan on what to do and where to stay in this low-key spot in Mexico's Baja California.

By JONATHAN KARP and MIRIAM JORDAN

May 1, 2007; Page D3 WSJ

What to do: Pack water and food and hit Balandra beach, a 20-minute drive north of town. White-sand crescents line a stunning bay of calm, crystal-clear Sea of Cortez water. Snorkel among sea lions off the northern tip of Espiritu Santo Island, also popular for scuba diving, and kayak from cove to cove of the dramatic rocky isle. (Baja Quest arranges day trips, including lunch, for $90 a person; Tel. 011-52-612-123-5320; www.bajaquest.com.mx. Longer trips, camping excursions and whale-watching cruises during the January through March season can be organized through Baja Expeditions; Tel. 800-843-6967; www.bajaex.com.) On the other side of La Paz bay, take a canyon horse trek with Mexican cowboy Chayo in the late afternoon for rich views of the water. Bring a Spanish speaker and, if you are squeamish, a riding helmet ($25 per person for a three-hour tour; Tel. 011-521-612-111-6319).

Where to eat: Las Tres Virgenes is La Paz's new upscale restaurant with stylishly presented seafood, pleasant outdoor seating and an extensive wine list. Try the herb-seasoned cabrilla (sea bass) or blue crab enchiladas (Tel. 011-52-612-165-6265). Facing the malecon, or seafront promenade, Mariscos Los Laureles serves up fresh catches and has an appetizing raw seafood bar (Alvaro Obregon at corner of Salvatierra). For turf lovers, Rancho Viejo dishes out arguably the town's tastiest tacos of arrachera, or marinated skirt steak, as well as baked potatoes stuffed with meat, veggies or cheese (Marquez de Leon at corner of Belisario Dominguez).

Where to stay: This low-key state capital doesn't have five-star lodging. Casa Buena is a pleasant, family-friendly nine-room bed-and-breakfast with a pool, frisky dogs and a pet rabbit. Book a garden room (rooms are $55 a night, Tel. 011-52-612-122-5538). The boutique Posada de las Flores has well-appointed but dark rooms (starting at $150 a night, Tel. 877-245-2860). Down the malecon is the Hotel los Arcos, a full-service hotel that also offers bungalows (rooms from $90 a night, Tel. 800-347-2252).

Visitors can go diving and kayaking in the Sea of Cortez.

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/PJ-AK122_OFFTRA_20070430185224.jpg

(y) (y)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

05-07-2007, 03:53 PM

:| :| :|

The latest in men's fashion in Japan: large over-the-shoulder totes that look very much like women's purses.

Global Trends

Japan's Twist on the Man-Bag

By AMY CHOZICK

April 28, 2007; Page P4

TOKYO -- The latest in men's fashion in Japan: large over-the-shoulder totes that look very much like women's purses.

Japanese men began to depart from the standard briefcases a decade ago, but the trend has since evolved from messenger bags to small under-the-arm clutches and now to totes strewn over the shoulder with nonchalance. The look is making its way through Asia and is reaching some fashion-forward men in the U.S.

A few years ago, Japanese designers began noticing that men were buying women's handbags to lug around their usual load of iPod, cellphone and magazines. So designers started coming out with versions exclusively for men in dark or neutral colors, with minimal trim and a place to put business cards or hold a pack of cigarettes.

In the past year, men in South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan have started carrying similar totes. China's newly cash-rich male consumers are buying unisex Louis Vuitton and Burberry totes to show off their wealth.

Some makers are trying to tempt men outside Asia. In the U.S., Coach has expanded its offerings of masculine-looking totes for blokes. Saks Fifth Avenue says a natural-colored cotton tote with tan and blue handles and leather trim by Gucci has been selling well among trendier men. Still, most American men would prefer a messenger bag so that their hands are free, says Michael Macko, Saks's men's fashion director.

Tokyo-based bag maker Tsuchiya Kaban was one of the first Japanese companies to notice that its male customers, mostly in their 20s and 30s, were yearning for an over-the-shoulder bag of their own. Sales of Tsuchiya Kaban's "toto" bags for men are now equal to its briefcase sales. "Men want a bag to go with suits but that also matches their casual daily life," a company spokesman says.

Totes for Blokes: In Japan, bags like this one (right) from Tsuchiya Kaban are similar to women's totes; Gucci's rugged tote (below) has been selling well among trendier U.S. men.

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/pt-af311_manbag_20070427173934.jpg

(z) (z) (z) Do any butches and/or FtM's carry some kind of bag - maybe a backpack to hold personal items? Inquiring minds like mine want to know. :o

;) ;)

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

sweetlady

05-07-2007, 03:55 PM

:s :s :s

DECLARATIONS

We're Scaring Our Children to Death

By PEGGY NOONAN

April 28, 2007; Page P14 WSJ

This week saw a small and telling controversy involving a mural on the walls of Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles. The mural is big -- 400 feet long, 18 feet high at its peak -- and eye-catching, as would be anything that "presents a colorful depiction of the rape, slaughter and enslavement of North America's indigenous people by genocidal Europeans." Those are the words of the Los Angeles Times's Bob Sipchen, who noted "the churning stream of skulls in the wake of Columbus's Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria."

What is telling is not that some are asking if the mural portrays the Conquistadors as bloodthirsty monsters, or if it is sufficiently respectful to the indigenous Indians of Mexico. What is telling is that those questions completely miss the point and ignore the obvious. Here is the obvious:

The mural is on the wall of a public school. It is on a public street. Children walk by.

We are scaring our children to death. Have you noticed this? And we're doing it more and more.

Last week of course it was Cho Seung-hui, the mass murderer of Virginia Tech. The dead-faced man with the famous dead-shark eyes pointed his pistols and wielded his hammer on front pages and TV screens all over America.

What does it do to children to see that?

For 50 years in America, whenever the subject has turned to what our culture presents, the bright response has been, "You don't like it? Change the channel." But there is no other channel to change to, no safe place to click to. Our culture is national. The terrorizing of children is all over.

Click. Smug and menacing rappers.

Click. "This is Bauer. He's got a nuke and he's going to take out Los Angeles."

Click. Rosie grabs her crotch. "Eat this."

Click. "Every day 2,000 children are reported missing . . ."

Click. Don Imus's face.

Click. "Eyewitnesses say the shooter then lined the students up . . ."

Click. An antismoking campaign on local New York television. A man growls out how he felt when they found his cancer. He removes a bib and shows us the rough red hole in his throat. He holds a microphone to it to deliver his message.

Don't smoke, he says.

This is what TV will be like in Purgatory.

It's not only roughness and frightening things in our mass media, it's politics too. Daily alarms on global warming with constant videotape of glaciers melting and crashing into the sea. Anchors constantly asking, "Is there still time to save the Earth? Scientists warn we must move now." And international terrorism. "Is the Port of Newark safe, or a potential landing point for deadly biological weapons?"

I would hate to be a child now.

Very few people in America don't remember being scared by history at least to some degree when they were kids. After Pearl Harbor, they thought the Japanese were about to invade California. If you are a boomer, you remember duck-and-cover drills. The Soviets had the bomb, and might have used it. I remember a little girl bursting into tears during the Cuban Missile Crisis when I was in grade school.

But apart from that, apart from that one huge thing, life didn't seem menacing and full of dread. It was the boring 1950s and '60s, and the nice thing about a boring era is it's never boring. Life is interesting enough. There's always enough to scare a child.

But now it's a million duck-and-cover drills, a thousand alarms, a steady drumbeat of things to fear.

Adults have earnest discussions about how more and more of our children are being prescribed antidepressants and antianxiety drugs. What do you think -- could there be a connection here?

Why are we frightening our kids like this, with such insensitivity? Part of it is self-indulgence, part of it is profit, but not all of it is malevolent. Some of it is just mindless. Adults forget to think about kids. They forget what it's like to be a kid.

ABC's John Stossel is a person in media who knows. He did a piece recently on the public-service announcements warning about child abduction. He asked some children if the warnings worried them. Yes, they said. One little boy told him he worries every night "because I'm asleep and I don't know what's gonna happen."

Children are both brave and fearful. They'll walk up to a stranger and say something true that a grown-up would fear to say. But they are also subject to terrors, some of them irrational, and to anxieties. They need a stable platform on which to stand. From it they will be likely to step forward into steady adulthood. Without it, they will struggle; they will be less daring in their lives because life, they know, is frightful and discouraging.

We are not giving the children of our country a stable platform. We are instead giving them a soul-shaking sense that life is unsafe, incoherent, full of random dread. And we are doing this, I think, for three reasons.

One is politics -- our political views, our cultural views, so need to be expressed and are, God knows, so much more important than the peace of a child. Another is money -- there's money in the sickness that is sold to us. Everyone who works at a TV network knew ratings would go up when the Cho tapes broke.

But another reason is that, for all our protestations about how sensitive we are, how interested in justice, how interested in the children, we are not. We are interested in politics. We are interested in money. We are interested in ourselves.

We are frightening our children to death, and I'll tell you what makes me angriest. I am not sure the makers of our culture fully notice what they are doing, what impact their work is having, because the makers of our culture are affluent. Affluence buys protection. You can afford to make your children safe. You can afford the constant vigilance needed to protect your children from the culture you produce, from the magazine and the TV and the CD and the radio. You can afford the doctors and tutors and nannies and mannies and therapists, the people who put off the TV and the Internet and offer conversation.

If you have money in America, you can hire people who compose the human chrysalis that protects the butterflies of the upper classes as they grow. The lacking, the poor, the working and middle class -- they have no protection. Their kids are on their own. And they're scared.

Too bad no one cares in this big sensitive country of ours.

:| :| Kids aren't the only ones being scared to death IMHO. :| :|

Animadvertistine, ubicumque stes, fumum recta in faciem ferri?

(Ever noticed how wherever you stand, the smoke goes right into your face?)

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

sweetlady

05-07-2007, 03:56 PM

;)

The French term for window-shopping is "lèche-vitrines" -- literally, licking windows. And in Émile Zola's 1883 novel "The Ladies' Paradise," about a Paris department store, shopping does seem almost like eating.

READBACK

By CYNTHIA CROSSEN WSJ

Shopping for Sport

In Zola's 1883 Novel 'Ladies' Paradise,' Temptation at a Paris Department Store

May 4, 2007

The French term for window-shopping is "lèche-vitrines" -- literally, licking windows. And Émile Zola's 1883 novel "The Ladies' Paradise" (originally "Au Bonheur des Dames"), shopping does seem almost like eating.

Ladies' Paradise is the fictional counterpart of Bon Marché, the first department store in Paris, which during the late 19th century grew from a drapery shop into a grand magasin offering everything from liquor cabinets to umbrellas. Like a Victorian Wal-Mart, the department store revolutionized buying and selling, to the rapture of some and the ruin of others.

"Had anyone ever seen such a thing?" raged M. Baudu, whose old-fashioned fabric shop was withering in the shadow of Ladies' Paradise. "A draper's shop which sold everything! Just a big bazaar! No affection, no manners, no art!"

But for shoppers, particularly affluent women with time to spare, the department store was a pleasure palace -- one of the few public spaces where they could respectably see and be seen by others, while also indulging their fashion whimsies. Unlike classic dress shops, department stores welcomed browsers who just wanted to look, said Brian Nelson in an introduction to his translation of the Oxford World's Classics edition of "The Ladies' Paradise." "Shopping came to be seen for the first time as a leisure activity."

For the first time, too, prices of the goods were prominently displayed, making cost comparisons simpler. Shopping was sensual, but it also became a ruthless competitive sport.

Octave Mouret, the hero of "The Ladies' Paradise," was a retail visionary who could see the infinite promise of capitalism when most merchants couldn't see past their front windows. In both his personal and professional lives, Mouret was the consummate seducer. He had many lovers, but he would commit to none.

He knew the success of Ladies' Paradise depended on another kind of seduction. His sumptuous displays and low prices "awakened new desires in a woman's weak flesh; they were an immense temptation to which she inevitably yielded, consumed by desire." When he had "emptied her purse and wrecked her nerves, he was full of secret scorn."

But he met his match in Denise Baudu, the niece of the failing shopkeeper M. Baudu. A destitute orphan, Denise was hired as an assistant at Ladies' Paradise. Unlike the other shop girls, Denise spurned Mouret's tender advances, which, naturally, made her all the more desirable. Mouret was, he realized, in love with the one woman he couldn't seduce: "He held the fate of the French textile industry in his hands, and yet he couldn't buy a kiss from one of his salesgirls."

Mouret's pursuit of Denise is the skeleton of "The Ladies' Paradise," but the novel's flesh and blood are Mr. Zola's descriptions of the little city of more than 2,000 employees working, plotting, harassing and backstabbing.

In slack seasons, the workers were swept out like annoying pests. Instead of "you're fired," bosses said, "go and collect your wages." "'You there, you've got an ugly mug,' a manager said one day to a poor devil whose crooked nose got on his nerves. 'Go and collect your wages!'" Management also frowned on female employees falling in love or marrying, and maternity was considered "cumbersome and indecent."

"The Ladies' Paradise" is one of 20 novels Mr. Zola wrote between 1871 and 1893 about several generations of one French family. Mr. Zola was also the author of an incendiary open letter to the president of France under the headline, "J'accuse!" in which he defended Alfred Dreyfus, a French army officer, who in 1894 had been arrested and falsely convicted of treason. "Truth is on the march, and nothing can stop it," Mr. Zola wrote. For this letter, he himself was convicted of libel, and he fled to England before eventually being exonerated.

Although Mr. Zola is known as an advocate of naturalism in literature, Denise would strike a modern reader as anything but natural: "She always gave way to her sensitive nature's initial flood of feeling: tears would choke her, uncontrollable emotion doubled her suffering; then she would come to her senses again, and she would regain her splendid, calm courage, and her gentle but inexorable strength of will." Passages like these must be tolerated as artifacts of a bygone era, when women spent half their time blushing and the other half getting pale.

Mr. Zola said that what he wanted to do in "The Ladies' Paradise" was to "write the poem of modern activity." It would be a complete shift of philosophy for him. "Don't conclude with the stupidity and sadness of life," he wrote in notes. "Instead, conclude with its continual labor, the power and gaiety that comes from its productivity."

^o)^o) It figures the French came up with this.......;)

(f)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

05-07-2007, 03:58 PM

:) :)

Sounds like alot of fun, but that first step is a killer. :o

;)

Resort operators in Wayanad, a verdant district in India, are rushing to build treehouse resorts in the hope of appealing to the inner child of travelers.

Living It Up

Treehouse Resorts in Asia

By MARGOT COHEN

May 4, 2007

Wayanad district, India

For this vacation, no ordinary dacha would do. Three women from Moscow, on a holiday in India, decided they wanted to sleep in a treehouse. The $220-a-night price tag didn't deter them. What did give them pause was the narrow iron cage suspended by rope that would transport them 30 meters up a banyan tree to their woven bamboo hideaway.

The occasion called for a little extra fortification. "Cognac? It's very good," offered 45-year old painter Galina Bystritskaya, whipping out a leather flask and taking a swig. Then she stepped into the cage, hoisted by two men with less brawn than would seem necessary.

Not to worry. The slender redhead waved from the hut's elevated veranda and returned to earth as bedazzled as an amateur cosmonaut. "It's an absolute dream of childhood," she said. The Russians decided to stay for two nights, descending for meals to avoid intrusions by the rats and snakes that are always on the lookout for tasty morsels.

Such are the charms of treetop tourism in Wayanad, a refreshingly verdant district in India's southwestern state of Kerala. The state is better known for its ayurvedic spas, its coconut groves and the houseboats that ply its serene southern backwaters. Further north, though, Wayanad's wildlife sanctuaries and sloping plantations of coffee, cardamom and pepper provide a different sort of haven. Inspired by the success of Green Magic Nature Resorts, the pioneering eco-tourism venture that attracted the Moscow adventurers, other Wayanad resort operators are now rushing to build more treehouses in the hope of appealing to the inner child of travelers.

"The tourists go crazy for treehouses. A lot of building is under way," says K. Ravindran, secretary of the Wayanad Tourism Organization. The treehouse at Blue Ginger Wayanad Resorts, for example, began receiving guests in April; now, according to general manager Lenin Peter, the resort is scrambling to complete 15 more treehouses by August. "People just want to be close to nature," he says.

Demand continues to outstrip supply, however. "We don't have enough treehouses," says Babu John, tours manager for Kerala Adventures Pvt. Ltd., a travel agency based in the Keralan capital, Trivandrum.

These aren't traditional treetop shacks. At Tranquil Resort, for example, two treehouses come with amenities not normally associated with tree dwelling, including television, a minibar, a refrigerator and 24-hour hot water dispensed by massage showerheads. Tranquil Resort director Victor Dey says the luxury trappings were a response to complaints from visitors to other treehouses about damp sheets, cold showers and insects galore: "Even though they were on top of a tree, they wanted to be as comfortable as they could be."

That comfort extends to making access to the treehouses easy, so older guests won't be put off. One treehouse -- known as the TranquiliTree -- can be entered via a gently sloping walkway fashioned from areca palm, moored by sturdy railings. More delicate craftsmanship can be found on the veranda of the 517-square-foot dwelling, which is decorated with gnarled, carved coffee wood.

For one recent guest, the luxury of the TranquiliTree didn't quite mitigate the sight of a spider. "I freaked out about that," confesses Christine Gurnik, a 37-year-old human-resources manager from Wisconsin. To ease her fears, the resort staff rigged up a tightly zippered tent so it sat on top of her bed.

Wayanad's highest treehouse, 30 meters up and built in 1997, is at Green Magic. The treehouse that impressed the visitors from Moscow, it has a rough-hewn flair, with panels of woven bamboo billowing in corners like sails catching the wind. A spiral staircase connects the three floors of the treehouse, which feature semi-open-air shower stalls and enormous bamboo beds lashed with rope.

There's no need to endure an iron cage to experience the other treehouse at Green Magic. Nestled in a tree canopy overlooking a valley, this treehouse is accessible through a horizontal walkway moored with rope. Unlike the first dwelling, which is enveloped in dense greenery, this one has sweeping views of distant hills.

These aren't the only treetop structures in the region. Some tribal communities in the district still use treetop platforms of bamboo to protect themselves from wild animals, according to Baburaj M., secretary of Uravu, an indigenous science and technology study center in Wayanad (like many Indians, he only uses a single name and an initial). This nongovernmental organization, known for its expertise in shaping and treating bamboo, supplied workers to help construct a treehouse at the Edakkal Hermitage Resort, which was designed by the owner-architects.

Comfort rather than protection from wildlife is the priority for the new breed of treehouses, and that raises questions about authenticity. When a treetop dwelling is as high-end as it is high up -- and sits on a platform that is supported by metal girders -- is it really a treehouse?

Kerala architect Sibi Raj takes a purist's view. When he and his colleagues built the Edakkal Hermitage's treehouse in 2003, they didn't want anything too heavy perched 10 meters up in the branches of a tamarind tree. "We wanted the treehouse to be entirely structurally supported by the tree, so it would sway in the wind. Only then would it be an authentic treehouse," he says. Measuring three meters by 4.5 meters, the Edakkal treehouse comes with woven bamboo walls that give the place an airy, beach-cottage feel.

It isn't just the wind that makes the treehouse sway. During a visit in February, Mumbai-based artist Ashok Sukumaran, 32, decided to test the tamarind tree, reputed to be the strongest variety in Kerala, by swinging from all the beams in the treehouse. Fortunately, it passed the test. "I had stayed in other treehouses before, but this was the first that was just supported on one tree," says his partner, filmmaker Shaina Anand, 31.

The Edakkal Hermitage is still mighty fancy compared to the Mykkara Home Stay, located close to the Muthanga Wildlife Sanctuary, 18 kilometers east of Sulthan Bathery town. No electricity, hot water or bathroom facilities here, just a bamboo box big enough for a couple of mattresses, a mosquito net and a bucket; prices are by negotiation with the owner.

Authenticity may be an issue for some guests, but location is far more likely to be the decisive factor. Edakkal is a winner here, with a mesmerizing view of the Ambalavayal valley, crowned by a distant peak, from three sides of its treehouse.

Seclusion and serenity characterize the location of the Blue Ginger Wayanad Resorts, which also has a swimming pool and plenty of hammocks. Its treehouse overlooks a rushing stream, courtesy of a balcony sheathed in glass. A 100-year-old plantation of cardamom, coffee and cloves lies nearby.

It's the kind of peaceful scenery that keeps people coming back to the region. "You really experience a different sense of time when you are there," says C.F. John, a Kerala-born painter who now lives in Bangalore but makes frequent journeys to Wayanad to absorb its natural beauty and tribal culture. "You feel that you expand along with the vast expanse you see outside. You realize that the trees are watching you."

TranquiliTree at Tranquil

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/AW-AD579_treeho_20070503224651.jpg

The Big Beach in the Sky at night at the Sanya Nanshan Treehouse Resort and Beach Club

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/AW-AD578_treeho_20070503224633.jpg

SereneTree at Tranquil Resort

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/AW-AD577_treeho_20070503224700.jpg

(f) (f)

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

sweetlady

05-07-2007, 04:03 PM

(y) (y)

Bike-friendly cities in Europe are launching a new attack on car culture. Can the U.S. catch up?

Bike-friendly cities in Europe are launching a new attack on car culture as concern about global warming intensifies. In the Netherlands and Denmark, new measures have been designed to shift bike commuting into high gear, including construction of a 10,000-bike parking garage.

By NANCY KEATES

May 4, 2007; Page W1

COPENHAGEN -- No one wears bike helmets here. They're afraid they'll mess up their hair. "I have a big head and I would look silly," Mayor Klaus Bondam says.

People bike while pregnant, carrying two cups of coffee, smoking, eating bananas. At the airport, there are parking spaces for bikes. In the emergency room at Frederiksberg Hospital on weekends, half the biking accidents are from people riding drunk. Doctors say the drunk riders tend to run into poles.

Flat, compact and temperate, the Netherlands and Denmark have long been havens for bikers. In Amsterdam, 40% of commuters get to work by bike. In Copenhagen, more than a third of workers pedal to their offices. But as concern about global warming intensifies -- the European Union is already under emissions caps and tougher restrictions are expected -- the two cities are leading a fresh assault on car culture. A major thrust is a host of aggressive new measures designed to shift bike commuting into higher gear, including increased prison time for bike thieves and the construction of new parking facilities that can hold up to 10,000 bikes.

The rest of Europe is paying close attention. Officials from London, Munich and Zurich (plus a handful from the U.S.) have visited Amsterdam's transportation department for advice on developing bicycle-friendly infrastructure and policies. Norway aims to raise bicycle traffic to at least 8% of all travel by 2015 -- double its current level -- while Sweden hopes to move from 12% to 16% by 2010. This summer, Paris will put thousands of low-cost rental bikes throughout the city to cut traffic, reduce pollution and improve parking.

The city of Copenhagen plans to double its spending on biking infrastructure over the next three years, and Denmark is about to unveil a plan to increase spending on bike lanes on 2,000 kilometers, or 1,240 miles, of roads. Amsterdam is undertaking an ambitious capital-improvement program that includes building a 10,000-bike parking garage at the main train station -- construction is expected to start by the end of next year. The city is also trying to boost public transportation usage, and plans to soon enforce stricter car-parking fines and increase parking fees to discourage people from driving.

Worried that immigrants might push car use up, both cities have started training programs to teach non-natives how to ride bikes and are stepping up bike training of children in schools. There are bike-only bridges under consideration and efforts to make intersections more rider-friendly by putting in special mirrors.

The policy goal is to have bicycle trips replace many short car trips, which account for 6% of total emissions from cars, according to a document adopted last month by the European Economic and Social Committee, an organization of transportation ministers from EU member countries. Another report published this year by the Dutch Cyclists' Association found that if all trips shorter than 7.5 kilometers in the Netherlands currently made by car were by bicycle, the country would reduce its carbon-dioxide emissions by 2.4 million tons. That's about one-eighth of the amount of emissions it would need to reduce to meet the Kyoto Protocol.

Officials from some American cities have made pilgrimages to Amsterdam. But in the U.S., bike commuters face more challenges, including strong opposition from some small businesses, car owners and parking-garage owners to any proposals to remove parking, shrink driving lanes or reduce speed limits. Some argue that limiting car usage would hurt business. "We haven't made the tough decisions yet," says Sam Adams, city commissioner of Portland, Ore., who visited Amsterdam in 2005. There has been some movement. Last month, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a proposal to add a congestion charge on cars and increase the number of bicycle paths in the city. It would also require commercial buildings to have indoor parking facilities for bikes.

Even in Amsterdam, not everyone is pro-biking. Higher-end shops have already moved out of the city center because of measures to decrease car traffic, says Geert-Pieter Wagenmakers, an adviser to Amsterdam's Chamber of Commerce, and now shops in the outer ring of the city are vulnerable. Bikes parked all over the sidewalk are bad for business, he adds.

Still, the new measures in Amsterdam and Copenhagen add to an infrastructure that has already made biking an integral part of life. People haul groceries in saddle bags or on handlebars and tote their children in multiple bike seats. Companies have indoor bike parking, changing rooms and on-site bikes for employees to take to meetings. Subways have bike cars and ramps next to the stairs.

Riding a bike for some has more cachet than driving a Porsche. Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende sometimes rides to work, as do lawyers, CEOs (Lars Rebien Sorensen, chief executive of Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, is famous for his on-bike persona) and members of parliament, often with empty children's seats in back. Dutch Prince Maurits van Oranje is often seen riding around town. "It's a good way to keep in touch with people on the streets," says Tjeerd Herrema, deputy mayor of Amsterdam. Mr. Herrema's car and driver still make the trip sometimes -- to chauffeur his bag when he has too much work to carry.

Jolanda Engelhamp let her husband keep her car when they split up a few years ago because it was becoming too expensive to park. Now the 47-year-old takes her second-grade son to school on the back of her bike. (It's a half-hour ride from home.) Outside the school in Amsterdam, harried moms drop off children, checking backpacks and coats; men in suits pull up, with children's seats in back, steering while talking on their cellphones. It's a typical drop-off scene, only without cars.

For Khilma van der Klugt, a 38-year-old bookkeeper, biking is more about health and convenience than concern for the environment. Her two older children ride their own bikes on the 25-minute commute to school while she ferries the four-year-old twins in a big box attached to the front of her bike. Biking gives her children exercise and fresh air in the morning, which helps them concentrate, she says. "It gets all their energy out." She owns a car, but she only uses it when the weather is really bad or she's feeling especially lazy.

Caroline Vonk, a 38-year-old government official, leaves home by bike at 8 a.m. and drops off her two children at a day-care center. By 8:15, she's on her way to work, stopping to drop clothes at the dry cleaner or to buy some rolls for lunch. On the way home, she makes a quick stop at a shop, picks up the children and is home by 5:55. "It is a pleasant way to clear my head," she says.

Teaching Newcomers

The programs for non-natives target those who view biking as a lower form of transportation than cars. "If they don't start cycling it will hurt," says Marjolein de Lange, who heads Amsterdam's pro-bicycle union Fietsersbond and has worked with local councils to set up classes for immigrant women.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, 23 women -- many in head-scarves -- gathered at a recreational center north of Amsterdam to follow seven Fietsersbond volunteers to learn to navigate through traffic. The three-hour event cost €3 (about $4) and included practice weaving in and out of orange cones and over blocks of wood. It ended with all of the women gathering in a park for cake and lemonade.

Though she faltered at times, Rosie Soemer, a 36-year-old mother of two who came to the Netherlands from Suriname, was sold. "It is so much easier to go everywhere by bike," she says. Learning to ride was her husband's idea: He bought her a bicycle for her birthday a few months earlier and has been spending his lunch hour teaching her in a park. "It helps me if she can get around better," says her husband, Sam Soemer. "And it's safer than a car."

Amsterdam and Copenhagen are generally safer for bikers than the U.S. because high car taxes and gasoline prices tend to keep sport-utility vehicles off the road. In Denmark, the tax for buying a new car is as high as 180%. Drivers must be over 18 to get a license, and the tests are so hard that most people fail the first few times. Both cities have worked to train truck drivers to look out for bikers when they turn right at intersections, and changed mirrors on vehicles and at traffic corners so they're positioned for viewing cyclists.

As bike lanes become more crowded, new measures have been added to address bike safety. A recent survey found that people in Denmark felt less safe biking, though the risk of getting killed in a bike accident there has fallen by almost half. (The number of bicyclists killed fell to 31 in 2006 from 53 in 2004, and the number seriously injured dropped to 567 from 726 in that period.) According to one emergency room's statistics, the primary reason for accidents is people being hit by car doors opening; second is cars making right-hand turns and hitting bikers at intersections; third is bike-on-bike crashes. Bike-riding police officers now routinely fine cyclists in Amsterdam who don't have lights at night.

Parking for 10,000

Amsterdam is also working to improve the lack of parking. The city built five bike-parking garages over the past five years and plans a new one every year, including one with 10,000 spaces at the central railroad station. (While there's room for 2,000 bikes now, there are often close to 4,000 bikes there.) But even garages aren't enough. Bikers usually want to park right outside wherever they're going -- they don't like parking and walking.

Combating theft is an important plank in developing a bike-friendly culture. In 2003, the city created the Amsterdam Bicycle Recovery Center, a large warehouse where illegally parked bikes are taken. (Its acronym in Dutch is AFAC.) Every bike that goes through AFAC is first checked against a list of stolen bikes. After three months, unclaimed models are registered, engraved with a serial number and sold to a second-hand shop. At any one time, the center has about 6,000 bikes neatly arranged by day of confiscation, out of an estimated total of 600,000 bikes in the city.

How AFAC will encourage bike riding in Amsterdam is a somewhat perverse logic, because it means some 200 bikes are confiscated by city officials a day compared to a handful before it existed. The thinking is that the more bikes that are confiscated, the more bikes can be registered and the better the government can trace stolen bikes. The less nervous people are that their bikes will be stolen, the more likely they are to ride. "Is your bike gone? Check AFAC first," is the center's slogan.

Remco Keyzer did just that on a recent Monday morning. The music teacher had parked his bike outside the central station before heading to a class and returned to find it gone. "I can be mad, but that really wouldn't help me," he says. Sometimes people ride away without paying the required fee. Bruno Brand, who helps people find their bikes at AFAC, says people get mad, but he explains it is the local police, not him, who confiscated the bike.

Within the past four years, the city increased the fine for buying or selling a bike in the street. Punishment for stealing a bike is now up to three months in jail.

Danish and Dutch officials say their countries might have been more congested if protests in the 1970s and 1980s had not sparked the impetus for building bicycle-lane networks. The arguments for more biking were mostly about health and congestion -- only in the past year has the environment started to be a factor. Proponents of better infrastructure point to China as an example: In Beijing, where the economy has boomed, 30.3% of people commuted to work on bikes in 2005, down 8.2% from 2000, according to a survey by the Beijing Transportation Development Research Center and Beijing Municipal Committee of Communication.

Now, the Dansk Cyklist Forbund, the Danish Cyclist's Federation, says that to make progress it can't be too confrontational and must recognize that many bikers also have cars. "Our goal is the right means of transportation for the right trips," says director Jens Loft Rasmussen.

In comparison, the rules of the American road can take some adjustment, as Cheryl AndristPlourde has found when she visits her parents in Columbus, Ohio. Last summer, the Amsterdam resident enrolled her 8-year-old daughter in a camp close to her parents' house. The plan was for her daughter, who biked to school every day back home, to walk to camp. But her daughter whined about the 10-minute walk -- all the other kids drove, she said -- and the streets were too busy for her to bike. By the third day, Ms. AndristPlourde was driving her daughter to the camp.

Bikes at the Amsterdam train station. Construction there begins soon on a 10,000-bike garage.

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/WK-AJ189_BIKE_j_20070503211828.jpg

(y) (y) Maybe for some, but I just cannot even imagine not having an S.U.V. However, I need to fill up tomorrow before taking Wyatt to a vet appointment. Gas prices nearby are almost $4./gallon. :| :| Good thing I work via broadband Internet and have a seven year old vehicle with fewer than 23K miles. (And? It had 1,200 miles on it since it was a sales' person's demo when I bought it back in 2000.) :o :o

(f) (f)

(um) (um) May Your Smile Be Your Umbrella. (um) (um)

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

sweetlady

05-07-2007, 04:06 PM

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

GREAT quote and article!

The Kokee forest, on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, is a place of spectacular mountain crags, fertile valleys, treacherous hidden paths — and few people.

Visitors at a lookout at Waimea Canyon on Kauai Island, Hawaii. The Kokee region of the island is largely unspoiled and best experienced by hiking.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/05/04/travel/04kokee_span.jpg

May 4, 2007

Heart of Hawaii

By CHARLES E. ROESSLER

THE Poomau Ditch Trail hugs a mountainside, and we hiked carefully, looking down at the path so as not to take a false step and fall hundreds of feet to eternity. Gnarly ohia lehua trees lined the side away from the chasm, and abrasive blackberry bushes — not native to Hawaii, but thriving here on Kauai like so many other invasive imports — reached out their scratchy canes. Everything around us was green: mountains, canyons, tree canopy.

This was the Kokee Forest, a place of spectacular mountain crags, fertile valleys, treacherous hidden paths — and very few people. I’ve lived on Kauai for decades, but bird calls coming from the dense tropical woodland were new to me. When I mimicked them, sometimes there was a sonorous response. Off and on, we heard the rush of streams. Other times, there was no sound at all.

The trail switched back three times, leading into dank canyons and out to hot sun, and then emerged on a tip of land that seemed suspended in air over Poomau Canyon. An edge-of-the-seat view spread out before us: confluent valleys and a waterfall with double-dip pools draining from a swamp in what is one of the very wettest spots on Earth — Mount Waialeale, which averages 460 inches of rain a year. White-tailed tropicbirds with two-foot long tails cruised in the gentle wind. We were looking down on them.

Kokee (pronounced ko-KAY) is a Kauai that few tourists imagine — 20 or 30 miles from the white sand beaches that draw 1.2 million visitors a year, but wild and otherworldly, its cool, blossom-drenched inner reaches still reverberating with the ancient heartbeat of the Hawaiian Islands. Much of Kokee — the generalized name for the area including Kokee and Waimea State Parks — lies in Kauai’s no-drive zone, the mountainous northwestern quadrant of the island that has few roads and no coastal highway. Even Kauai residents rarely penetrate far into it. When someone returns from a few days there and describes the trip, the neighbors’ typical response is a low breath of respect and awe.

Kokee has not only remoteness and exotic beauty, but also a mystique — Kauaians think of it as the island’s spiritual center, where natives traditionally went to find renewal and where beleaguered indigenous plants and birds still survive. Jack London, who used Kokee as the setting for “Koolau the Leper,” a grim allegorical tale of capitalism’s invasion into Polynesia, described the place with magical atmospherics that still apply — an earthly paradise with “gorges among the jumbled peaks” and “fantastic draperies of tropic vegetation.”

Thomas Kaiakapu, wildlife manager for the Hawaii division of forestry and wildlife, described the significance this way: “All of the islands have a special place where locals go to do the gathering, to hunt pig and perform the hula. Kokee is where Kauaians go.”

Anyone willing to hike challenging trails and sleep in rustic cabins or sturdy tents can get to know Kokee. On a trip there this past winter, my wife, Chie, and I and another couple — all longtime Kauai residents — and a German visitor made it our mission to hike as many trails as possible in five days, while staying in one of the 10 barebones state cabins in Kokee State Park.

We walked amid cathedrals of magnificent koa trees; koa wood is treasured by furniture and musical-instrument makers. We examined weird mosses, huge mushrooms, colorful lantana and feathery ferns, and experienced the sounds of rare birds and the smells of exotic flowers and fragrant earth. We saw spectacular ocean and canyon vistas, and we felt at peace in a place that is both exhausting and totally refreshing.

We were lucky; the weather held out. It can rain for days straight in Kokee at any time of year, and vacationers who commit to going are wise to take along diversions. But the real magic must be experienced in Kokee’s 24-hour cycle, from when the sun emerges and warms the cold morning air to the sunset over the forbidden island of Niihau, where only the descendants of the original Hawaiians may go. We kept on the move by day, warmed ourselves in front of the fireplace in the evening, and slept deeply in the chilled mountain air — temperatures can dip into the 30s in the winter months.

Kauai is like an artichoke: you must uncover it layer by layer. Most vacationers who spend at least a few days on the island venture inward from the outermost layer — the coast and its resorts — to the much visited Waimea Canyon and Kalalau lookouts — both can be reached by car on the Kokee Road, and the first two Waimea Canyon lookouts are accessible to tour buses. Weather permitting (that is, if rain and clouds don’t intervene), the views from both of these lookouts are awe-inspiring, and the fresh air is perfectly clean and cool.

At the next layer, adventurers hike from the northwestern end of the coast road along an ancient, mountain-hugging Hawaiian trail to the beach and into the Kalalau Valley, where a stream flows until spilling out into the ocean from the sequestered Kalalau Beach. This 11-mile trek has often been featured in outdoor and hiking publications. It weaves in and out of canyons on a switchback trail that traverses the coastal cliffs.

We wanted to go deeper still into the 6,182 acres of Kokee and Waimea parks, with their thundering waterfalls, vast canyons, primeval mesic forest and unique high-altitude Alakai Swamp.

Our cabin was near what functions as downtown Kokee: an ethereal meadow, a quaint museum, a small restaurant (breakfast and lunch only) and two pay phones that provide the only lifeline to the outside world in this cellphone graveyard. We awoke to the screeching of wild chickens, a major element of Kauai wildlife. We hiked by day and returned to the cabin each night.

One memorable trail took us into the Alakai Swamp, a vast, green boglike area with stunted plants and endangered birds in the leeward shadow of Mount Waialeale. In the past, hikers there sometimes found themselves in thigh-deep mud as they slogged toward a magnificent vista of Wainiha Valley and Hanalei Bay, on the other side of the island and 75 miles away by road. Today, a grated-board trail makes walking easier.

The women in our group, Loutoa Zoller and Chie, have both practiced hula and felt a special attraction to the lush forest, where Laka, the Hawaiian goddess of the hula, dwells. The tourist-trade hula, or hula auana, with its smiling dancers and suggestive movements, is a far cry from the traditional hula kahiko, a sacred rite. Jo Manea, a hula dancer for more than 20 years and now an instructor, told us that we would find Kokee “full of Laka.”

“It’s where people from all over come to gather the seven sacred plants of hula kahiko,” she said. “We adorn her and ourselves in the plants so we can honor her.”

We felt Laka amid the 40-foot koa trees, now protected by law, and the puffy red ohia lehua blossoms, and heard her along the babbling brooks. She can be inhaled in the fragrance of the maile vines and mokihana berries.

As the oldest of the main islands, Kauai has been etched away by wind and rain to create unique microclimates that are home to a variety of indigenous flora and fauna. For instance, Kokee is home to birds that still live because the mosquitoes bearing avian malaria and other diseases can’t exist at its cool elevation. This environment, and dozens of native species of birds, are endangered by feral animals that chew and trample and wallow in the vegetation.

ONLY rarely in our days on Kokee’s trails did we meet anyone else in the forest. On our most adventurous hike, deep in the woods, we strolled along a fairy-tale mountainside trail, picking and eating lilikoi (passion fruit), guava and other wild fruits, and were suddenly engulfed by a sea of tail-wagging retrievers. Close behind was Jim Cassel, a local hunter looking for wild pigs — a cross between pigs introduced by the Polynesians centuries ago and the European boar.

Hawaii suffers from many misconceptions on the part of outsiders, one being that it’s a wonderful thing that most everything thrives and grows easily there. But the operative word is “everything.” Insects, rodents, invasive plants, molds and fungi have destroyed many of the original plants and birds. Wild goats, introduced in Kauai by Capt. James Vancouver in 1792, eat fragile plants to extinction. So do the blacktail deer first imported from Oregon in 1961.

The pig not only roots and digs, exposing virgin soil to invasive species, but disperses seeds from undesirable plants as it travels. It is this part of the “everything” growing here that must be culled if the native species are to have any chance of survival. The hunters are happy to help, finding the pigs fun to chase and good to eat.

Kokee is absorbed in a give-and-take about the future of the state parks. Locals chafed at early proposals for a 40-to-60-room hotel, a helicopter pad, more parking areas and wider roads to allow large buses. Proposals and public hearings continue.

The future is uncertain, but for now, aside from the damage inflicted by the imported plants and animals, much of Kokee still remains untouched, even occasionally dangerous. Hikers should never go off-trail. Even seasoned hikers have slipped, become lost or fallen through a hole under a fern bed and never been found. We were Kokee veterans, but we still needed constant mapping references and weather assessments.

Yet it was magical. This, we found, was a place to get high on life in some of its richest natural forms — and on the oxygen of unpolluted air in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. This was the domain of Laka.

Walks And Vistas: Using the Car Is Just the Start

KOKEE is accessible by car from the west side of Kauai, via the Kokee Road or the steeper Waimea Canyon Road. “Downtown,” the main visitor area of Kokee State Park, is reached from a driveway at Mile 15 of the Kokee Road. Guides and relevant information on trails and park conditions can be picked up there, at the Lodge at Kokee, which is a small restaurant open daily for breakfast and lunch and a gift shop, or at the rustic Kokee Natural History Museum next door, open daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. More information is available at www.kokee.org.

The museum is an excellent primer for the area. Though small, it presents a number of scientific and natural exhibits, including a three-dimensional map of Kauai, and has a well-stocked book rack.

To rent a cabin (they start at about $95 a night and are best reserved well in advance), contact the Lodge at Kokee (808-335-6061; www.thelodgeatkokee.net). There are also four state campgrounds in Kokee and Waimea State Parks, and some hikers backpack and camp in the woods.

Many trails are best reached by hiking more than one day or by four-wheel-drive vehicles. Visitors who do not have their own trucks or S.U.V.’s will be limited by rental car companies’ strictures against taking their vehicles off-road.

(l) (l) (l) Kauai ROCKS! Since it is filled with folks who LIVE there year-round, when I visited, it felt really laid back with the residents being extremely friendly and welcoming to tourists like me. The local mom and pop places were wonderful! (l) (l)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

05-07-2007, 04:07 PM

:o :o

An emergency food supply can make an unplanned tarmac delay, if not pleasant, at least bearable.

May 1, 2007

Trail Mix Isn’t Just for Hikers

By KARLA COOK

As tarmac-sitting stories mount and the Transportation Department investigates the possibility of unrealistic flight schedules, nutrition experts are in agreement: carry-on food is crucial for business travelers.

This is not because extra, unplanned hours without food or water can be fatal. Most adults can survive at least three days without water and about three weeks without food, according to the “Rule of 3’s in Survival” on the Federal Emergency Management Agency Web site. It is because anxiety can stimulate hunger and thirst, and unquenched needs can turn an unpleasant event to misery.

“You never know what’s going to happen,” said Nancy Clark, a registered dietitian in Chestnut Hill, Mass., who has written books about the nutrition needs of distance cyclists, marathon runners and other athletes. “It’s always wise to have emergency food with you.”

Bonnie Taub-Dix, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association who has, on occasion, found herself at meetings with no food or drink provided, takes a more self-sufficient view. “Never count on anyone, that’s the bottom line.”

“If you’re traveling and going to a meeting, you want to be fresh,” she said. “If you have to give a presentation, already you’re not in a relaxed position. If there’s a delay in traveling, it could be stressful. The likelihood is that you won’t be comfortable. You won’t sleep.”

At best, she said, a food kit can help travelers fuel themselves so that they can think clearly. With little prompting, she recited in detail a February business trip to Athens that stretched into a 35-hour ordeal, including 10 hours on the tarmac with no food or water provided by the airline. But she and another spokeswoman at the association, Tara Gidus, were in better shape than many on the plane: They had their stash.

Ms. Gidus, a registered dietitian in the Orlando area, said that an emergency food kit can also serve another function: It helps travelers hold their tempers. “Stress brings out the worst in people, and couple that with hunger — there were people who were very upset.”

Sharon R. Akabas, a nutrition professor at Columbia University, said it was an issue of perception. “Someone trapped on the tarmac isn’t in danger compared to someone trapped in the snow on Mount Hood,” she said. “But ask those people on the plane in the seventh hour, or the 11th hour, and they may not feel any differently.”

But beyond a few intensely personal comfort foods — lemon drops, or say, Twizzlers — what is best in an emergency food kit?

There is a Plan A, which is making food at home and packing it in your bag — those are the best intentions, said Dawn Jackson Blatner, also a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, a cooking instructor and a registered dietitian at the Wellness Institute at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. “That’s when you have full control. You know portions, you pack whole grains, and one-ounce baggies of nuts.”

And there’s Plan B, when people cannot get it together, but seek out healthy foods in the airport — pieces of fruit (the fiber and water contribute to a long-lasting feeling of satiety), whole-grain granola bars or nuts.

Additionally, government regulations now limit travelers to only as many three-ounce bottles of liquid as they can stuff in a one-quart zip-lock bag. So buying a couple of 16-ounce bottles of water, or yogurt, is best left until after the security line. Otherwise, inspiration comes from hikers, campers, runners, cyclists and climbers — all of whom want nutrient-dense foods that take up little space and require no refrigeration. And nutrition experts say travelers could throw in a little extra to share with a testy seatmate or flight attendant.

For Ms. Taub-Dix, the standout travel food is peanut butter, whether on whole-grain bread and packed at home, or bought in ¾-ounce portions and used as a dip for crackers. “It’s one food that feels like it’s decadent, but it really is great, and very satisfying.”

Ms. Clark agreed, saying that she packs two peanut butter sandwiches before every trip. “It’s cheap and tasty. If it squishes, it’s still edible — a nice security blanket.”

Nutrition bars, once the domain of runners, are portable food and for some, can rival peanut butter in comfort, as long as they provide a balance of carbohydrate, protein and fat, Ms. Taub-Dix said. She had one stowed away for her Greek odyssey, along with a bag containing mixed nuts and dried fruit (her favorites are roasted almonds, cashews and dried apricots).

Other items in an emergency food kit can include processed cheese, dried meats (jerky-style products), popcorn, and trail mix. A traveler can add bits of almost any finger food to the basics of nuts and dried fruits: coconut, dry cereal, pretzels, even chocolate (plain or wrapped around nuts), which makes nearly everyone’s list.

“Chocolate? I had some of that,” said Ms. Gidus, recalling her trip to Greece in the first few months of her pregnancy. “It’s one of those stress foods — it relaxes people, and it brings comfort, and it’s high-energy as well.”

Once the emergency food kit is assembled, add a few nonfood items: hand sanitizer (in the government-regulated tiny bottles), moist towelettes, travel-size board games and a deck of cards.

And if the time comes that tarmac-sitting is required, surviving the experience with dignity begins with a good attitude, and the discipline of rationing the resources. “Some people see food as an annoyance, or a pain,” Ms. Clark said. “Get in the mindset that it’s fuel, and people need fuel every four hours.” That, she said, can make the difference.

For Ms. Taub-Dix, it did. “I bought a bottle of water. I had my snacks. I had my laptop. Food, clothing, shelter,” she said, reciting a variation of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. “I didn’t have love, but I had my phone. And my BlackBerry. I was happy I was taken care of.”

(y) (y) (y)

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

sweetlady

05-07-2007, 04:08 PM

(f) (f)

As any aspiring writer knows, sometimes the only route to productivity is escapism. Luckily, there are plenty of workshops and conferences this summer to supply it.

May 4, 2007

Ahead | Writers’ Workshops

Where Words Go to Work and Play

By BETH GREENFIELD

AS any aspiring writer knows, sometimes the only route to productivity is escapism. Luckily, there are plenty of workshops and conferences around to supply it — and simultaneously offer not only inspiration but practical advice. Usually held in seaside cities and resort towns or on bucolic college campuses, these writers’ programs can be found year-round. But the summertime crop takes authors to particularly seductive spots.

“Our location is the key thing that sets us apart,” said Dorothy Antczak, director of the Fine Arts Work Center Summer Program in Provincetown, Mass., which runs weeklong workshops for poets, memoirists, playwrights and fiction writers (as well as visual artists) from mid-June through August. Daily sessions — led by writers like the poet Rafael Campo, the novelist Maria Flook and the playwright Wendy Kesselman — typically end in mid-afternoon. That leaves plenty of time to take inspiration from the Cape Cod National Seashore and the town’s literary legacy — a long line of heavyweights from Norman Mailer and Michael Cunningham to Stanley Kunitz have produced work in Provincetown.

The work center limits each workshop to 10 students. “It’s a real community here for the week,” Ms. Antczak said. “You tend to get a lot of feedback and support.”

That’s the goal of most writers’ workshops. Where they differ is in structure, schedule and class size, and price — conferences typically cost about $600 to $2,000, exclusive of transportation, meals and lodging.

The Maui Writers Conference and Retreat, one of the largest, draws about 500 people from the United States, Australia, Japan and England for a series of lectures and workshops. The conference is the networking side of the week, meant to guide writers through the complex world of publication. Authors — this year including Dorothy Allison, W. S. Merwin, Jacquelyn Mitchard and Michael Arndt — take turns leading the sessions.

The retreat element is about working on the craft of writing and having work critiqued in a classroom setting. Writers must apply for admission. “We have people who have been published, as well as those who are just starting their first book,” said Renee Sakurada, a planner of the event.

Also welcoming writers of varying abilities is the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. Some participants, said Marcia Meier, the director, “come back year after year for motivation, inspiration and to see friends.” One woman, she added, “has been coming for 20 years and actually met her husband here, and they wrote a book together before he died.”

Santa Barbara offers workshops, master classes for experienced writers, panels of agents and editors, individual manuscript reviews and a program for teenage authors. Guest speakers this year will include Carolyn See (“There Will Never Be Another You”), Gregory Maguire (“Wicked”) and Ray Bradbury, who has spoken at every conference since the program began 35 years ago. “He just talks about love and writing, and it’s really motivating,” Ms. Meier said.

The Stony Brook Southampton Writers Conference in July, which takes over the Southampton Stony Brook Campus a few miles from the dune-edged Hamptons beaches, is competitive, with acceptance based on writing samples. Participants will settle in for 12 days of intensive workshops in poetry, playwriting, fiction and creative nonfiction, and events including lectures and an open-microphone night. This year’s staff includes Frank McCourt, Melissa Banks, Billy Collins and Robert Reeves.

July also brings the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop, another by-admittance-only conference, at Reed College in Portland, Ore. “We’ve been more selective lately, especially with fiction writers,” said Emily Bliquez, the director, adding that 400 applications are expected for 175 slots.

Begun in 2003 and borrowing its name from Tin House literary magazine (bearing the nickname of its Portland office, a Victorian house with corrugated zinc siding), the conference is based on the high standards of well-established writers’ programs like the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont in July and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference in Tennessee in August, deadlines for which have already passed. The Tin House panelists and readers will include Annie Proulx, T. C. Boyle, Charles Baxter, Colson Whitehead and Dorothy Allison.

“We keep people busy, but it’s sort of a leisurely atmosphere on a beautiful quad area,” Ms. Bliquez said. “It’s like a vacation college.”

VISITOR INFORMATION

PROVINCETOWN, MASS.

What: Fine Arts Workshop Summer Program (www.fawc.org; $600 to $725 for each weeklong workshop).

When: June 17 to Aug. 24. No reservation deadline.

SANTA BARBARA, CALIF.

What: Santa Barbara Writers Conference (www.sbwritersconference.com; $825).

When: June 22 to 29. May 15 deadline.

PORTLAND, ORE.

What: Tin House Summer Writers Workshop (www.tinhouse.com/workshop; $1,000 to $1,100).

When: July 8 to 15. No deadline.

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y.

What: Stony Brook Southampton Writers Conference (www.stonybrook.edu/writers; $1,450 or $2,050 with lodging and meals).

When: July 18 to 29. May 15 deadline.

MAUI, HAWAII

What: Maui Writers Retreat & Conference (www.mauiwriters.com; conference $695, retreat $1,295).

When: Retreat, Aug. 25 to 31; conference, Aug. 31 to Sept. 3. No deadline.

(y) (y) (y) (y) (y)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

05-07-2007, 04:11 PM

:o

Some of the million or so cattle that graze in the Flint Hills’ pastures, once the domain of buffalo, can be seen from the Flint Hills Scenic Byway in Kansas.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/05/04/travel/kansas-600.jpg

May 4, 2007

American Journeys

Old Kansas, Still Growing Tall

By BETSY RUBINER

THINK all of Kansas is flat? Think again. The Flint Hills, in the eastern part of the state, fan out over 183 miles from north to south, stretching 30 to 40 miles wide in parts, the land folding into itself, then popping up in gentle bumps, with mounds looming far off on the horizon. Seemingly endless, the landscape offers up isolated images — a wind-whipped cottonwood tree, a rusted cattle pen, a spindly windmill, an abandoned limestone schoolhouse, the metal-gated entrance to a hilltop cemetery.

Proud of the region’s beauty, Kansas has seen to it that 48 miles of its Highway 177, leading through the heart of the hills, are designated the Flint Hills National Scenic Byway. This stretch starts about 50 miles northeast of Wichita and leads north to the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, one of the few places left in the United States where a visitor can see the grasses that once covered so much of the American heartland.

While up to a million head of cattle graze each summer in the Flint Hills’ rolling pastures, they’re long gone from Wichita, a metropolitan area of half a million people, at the confluence of two narrow curving rivers. But when a strong dusty wind blows through, it’s a reminder of the city’s roots as a wild cow town.

The Flint Hills Scenic Byway winds through almost treeless rolling land where bison once roamed; they have been replaced by prairie chickens, great blue herons, coyote, deer, collared lizards, bobcats and, of course, cattle.

The route starts in the tiny ranch town of Cassoday (population 130), where the dirt Main Street has a few weathered 19th-century wooden buildings housing an antiques store and a cafe popular with cowboys, truck drivers and bikers. It then goes through a handful of small towns and past the tallgrass prairie preserve to Council Grove, a former staging area on the Santa Fe Trail.

But what this ribbon of a highway offers most is wide-open space. For dramatic effect, visit at sunset when the sky is awash in reds, purples and blues.

Of late, tourist amenities have been beefed up in the Flint Hills, especially in Chase County, made famous by William Least Heat-Moon’s 1991 book “PrairyErth.” In Cottonwood Falls, with about 1,000 residents, the two-block shopping district is dominated by the grand Chase County Courthouse, the oldest county courthouse (1873) still in use in Kansas (though it is closing today for renovation). Made of native honey-hued limestone with a red mansard roof, it resembles a small chateau.

(The hills are named after another native stone, flintlike chert that Indians used to make tools. Many artifacts have been found at area quarries.)

In small shops along Broadway Street, a bumpy road paved in red brick, you can find Western gear at Jim Bell & Son, antiques and art at the Gallery of Cottonwood Falls, and bison burger and chicken-fried steak dinners ($6.95) at the Emma Chase Cafe.

One of the town’s biggest annual events took place last month, the weeklong Prairie Fire Festival, paying tribute to the annual controlled burning to clear out old dry grass and promote new growth, an astonishing sight of flames sweeping through the hills. But near Cottonwood Falls, there are guided tours of the high open hills available now on foot, horseback, four-wheel all-terrain vehicle and 19th-century covered wagon.

Kansas Flint Hills Adventures offers two-hour tallgrass prairie interpretive tours, wildflower tours and trail rides led by a naturalist who expounds on local history, cowboy culture, American Indian traditions, plants and animals.

WANNA-BE cowboys can help out with the chores (or not) at the Flying W Ranch, a 10,000-acre, fifth-generation, working cattle ranch to the west of the byway, off Route 50 in the one-building town of Clements. It offers modern bunkhouse lodging, chuck wagon meals, trail rides, longhorn-roping demonstrations and sunset rides in a 1959 Ford wheat truck.

In the summer and early fall, weekend pioneers can pick up the Flint Hills Overland Wagon Train in Council Grove. Riders camp overnight and are duly fed several “pioneer meals” cooked over an open fire. Saturday night’s entertainment is a performance of cowboy songs and poems.

About 18,000 people a year visit the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, two miles north of Cottonwood Falls. It includes 10,894 acres of an almost-lost ecosystem that once covered 400,000 square miles of North America’s midsection.

The Flint Hills in Kansas — and in Oklahoma — are North America’s largest remaining tract of tallgrass prairie. The preserve is at its full glory in late spring, when yellow, white, purple and blue wildflowers pop up amid a sea of green grass. The grass is tallest — about waist high — in the fall.

The preserve has over 16 miles of hiking trails through grass dotted with black-eyed susans and coneflowers, groundplum milkvetch and plains indigo. You can take a bus tour or roam around the 1881 hilltop ranch, with a limestone mansion and an impressive three-story barn. Even there, the Flint Hills feel untrampled and unharnessed, quiet enough for a lawless wind to be heard rustling the leaves and grass, producing the unexpected sound of the seashore, of crashing waves and blowing sand.

Only 85 miles away, where the land flattens into the kind of pancake terrain more expected in Kansas, is the busy city of Wichita, which once served as a stopover for cowboys driving cattle along the Chisholm Trail from Texas to northern Kansas railheads. Wyatt Earp corralled horse thieves there.

Today, Wichita is the largest city in Kansas. Airplane-building is a major industry, with five manufacturers, including Boeing and Cessna. A hotel where Carrie Nation smashed whiskey bottles and threw billiard balls is now a loft and shopping complex in Old Town, a gentrified warehouse district.

Two rivers — the Arkansas and the Little Arkansas — meet downtown and the surest way to be exposed as an outsider is to mispronounce them. Kansans, understandably, say Ar-KAN-zis not AR-kan-saw. At the confluence of these sleepy Plains streams, near where the Wichita tribe lived, looms the Keeper of the Plains, a 44-foot tall sculpture of a Native American. Not surprisingly, Wichita’s big annual event is Riverfest, nine days of concerts, boat races and fireworks — and runs this year from May 11 to 19.

The gentle Little Arkansas winds through a quiet residential neighborhood where cottonwood trees shade the riverbanks and people stroll through 118-acre Riverside Park, which fills grassy pockets between the river’s bends. Local bohemians hang out at Riverside Perk, a ramshackle coffeehouse with a cowboy/South Seas/leopard lounge/Salvation Army design aesthetic.

Several museums overlook the rivers, the most architecturally arresting being Exploration Place, a science center designed by Moshe Safdie with curvy chunks of poured-concrete that swoop up from the river. Inside are Kansas-themed exhibits — about planes, tornados, the wind and prairies — and “Kansas in Miniature,” a 1950s-era diorama that fills a 2,800-square-foot room. Accompanied by lighting, animation and sound effects, it offers an engaging presentation of Kansas history, with 125 scale models of classic buildings from Dwight D. Eisenhower’s childhood home in Abilene to a humble oilfield worker’s house, plus distinctive Kansas landscapes, including the Flint Hills.

For nightlife, locals flock to Old Town, begun in the 1990s with the renovation of red brick warehouses on brick streets, and dominated by restaurants, bars and theaters. A more quirky option is out on the range, at the Prairie Rose Chuckwagon Supper, a popular western dinner-and-show 15 miles east of Wichita in Benton, opened in 1999 by struggling cattle farmers trying to hold onto their 600-acre, five-generation family ranch.

The drive takes you past fields of wheat, corn, soybeans and grain sorghum, past round hay bales dotting pastures, past what could be Dorothy’s house before she was swept off to Oz. The all-you-can-eat meal is delicious (especially the smoked barbecue brisket); the food is served inside a recreated opera hall that’s blissfully air-conditioned and fly-free; and the cowboy music is performed by a talented, corny-joke-cracking foursome whose repertory includes “Red River Valley” and “I Just Don’t Look Good Naked Anymore.”

VISITOR INFORMATION

THE Flint Hills area of Kansas runs north to south through several counties of eastern Kansas, in an area once covered with native grasses. A tour there leads naturally to Wichita, the state’s largest city, to the southwest.

Tallgrass National Prairie Preserve (620-273-8494; www.nps.gov/tapr) offers ranger-guided prairie bus tours ($5) through October.

Kansas Flint Hills Adventures (620-342-2625, www.kansasflinthillsadventures.com) offers tours and rides year round; $60 a person for a two-hour trip, with a two-person minimum.

Visits to the Flying W Ranch (620-274-4357, www.flying-w-ranch.net) can include modern bunkhouse lodging ($45 a person), chuck wagon meals ($25) and a sunset tour ($10). Another nearby lodging option is the Clover Cliff Ranch (Highway 50, Elmdale; 800-457-7406; www.clovercliff.com) with rooms from $95 to $180.

Flint Hills Overland Wagon Train Trips ( 316-321-6300; www.wagontrainkansas.com; $170) are offered several weekends between June and early October.

In Cottonwood Falls, the 19th-century Grand Central Hotel (215 Broadway Street; 620-273-6763; www.grandcentralhotel.com) has rooms from $150 to $180. Its white-tablecloth restaurant serves hefty Kansas steaks ($16 to $28).

In Wichita’s warehouse district, the Hotel at Old Town (830 East First Street North; 316-267-4800; www.hotelatoldtown.com) is a former warehouse built in 1906 with 115 rooms from $109 to $295. Nearby are restaurants aplenty.

For lunch or (on Saturday only) breakfast ($4.50 for biscuits and gravy, a Kansas classic), visit the 75-year-old Old Mill Tasty Shop (604 East Douglas Avenue; 316-264-6500), which has a gorgeous marble soda fountain and vintage Wichita photos. For dinner, the Larkspur Restaurant (904 East Douglas Avenue; 316-262-5275), serves Kansas beef ($24 for a 14-ounce Kansas City strip) and not-from-Kansas seafood ($19 for grilled salmon.) Riverside Perk (1144 North Bitting Avenue; 316-264-6464) is an artsy hangout.

Wichita museums include Exploration Place (300 North McLean Boulevard; 316-263-3373; www.exploration.org; $8) and Wichita Art Museum (1400 West Museum Boulevard; 316-268-4921; www.wichitaartmuseum.org; $5).

At the Prairie Rose Chuckwagon Supper in Benton (316-778-2121; www.prairierosechuckwagon.com), dinner and a show are $25.

:) I never would have ever considered a few days off to kick back and relax in this state because of the state's extremely conservative political leanings. Still, it was a nice virtual trip via the article. ;)

(f)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

05-07-2007, 04:12 PM

(y) (y)

May 2, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

Better Never Than Late

By MAUREEN DOWD

Instead of George Tenet teaching at Georgetown University, George Tenet should be taught at Georgetown University.

There should be a course on government called “The Ultimate Staff Guy.” A morality saga about how much harm you can do as a go-along, get-along guy, spending so much time trying not to alienate the big cheese so he doesn’t can you that you miss the moment where you have to can him or lose your soul.

If Colin Powell and George Tenet had walked out of the administration in February 2003 instead of working together on that tainted U.N. speech making the bogus case for war, they might have turned everything around. They might have saved the lives and limbs of all those brave U.S. kids and innocent Iraqis, not to mention our world standing and national security.

It would certainly have been harder for timid Democrats, like Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and John Edwards, to back up the administration if two members of the Bush inner circle had broken away to tell an increasingly apparent truth: that Dick Cheney, Rummy and the neocons were feverishly pushing a naïve president into invading Iraq with junk facts.

General Powell counted on Slam Dunk — a slender reed — to help him rid the speech of most of the garbage Mr. Cheney’s office wanted in it. Slam, of course, tried to have it both ways, helping the skeptical secretary of state and pandering to higher bosses. Afterward, when the speech turned out to be built on a no-legged stool, General Powell was furious at Slam. But they both share blame: they knew better. They put their loyalty to a runaway White House ahead of their loyalty to a fearful public.

Slam Dunk’s book tour is mesmerizing, in a horrifying way.

“The irony of the whole situation is, is he was bluffing,” Slam said of Saddam on “Larry King Live” on Monday night, adding, “And he didn’t know we weren’t.” Mr. He-Man Tenet didn’t understand the basics of poker, much less Arab culture. It never occurred to him that Saddam might feign strength to flex muscles at his foes in the Middle East? Slam couldn’t take some of that $40 billion we spend on intelligence annually and get a cultural profile of the dictator before we invaded?

If he was really running around with his hair on fire, knowing the Osama danger, shouldn’t he have set off alarms when W. and Vice went after Saddam instead of the real threat?

Many people in Washington snorted at his dramatic cloak-and-dagger description of himself to Larry King: “I worked in the shadows my whole life.”

He was not Jason Bourne, lurking in dangerous locales. He risked life and limb on Capitol Hill among the backstabbers and cutthroat bureaucrats — from whom he obviously learned a lot. He spent nine years on the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, four as staff director. When Bill Clinton appointed him to run the C.I.A. in 1997, the profile of him in The Times was headlined “A Time to Reap the Rewards of Being Loyal.” It observed that old colleagues had said “he had an ability to make many different superiors feel at ease with him.”

Six former C.I.A. officials sent Mr. Tenet a letter via his publisher — no wonder we’re in trouble if spooks can’t figure out the old Head Spook’s home address — berating him for pretending he wrote his self-serving book partly to defend the honor of the agency and demanding that “at least half” of the profits be given to wounded soldiers and the families of dead soldiers (there needs to be a Son of Slam law). One of the signers, Larry Johnson, told CNN that Slam “is profiting from the blood of American soldiers.”

“By your silence you helped build the case for war,” the former C.I.A. officials wrote. “You betrayed the C.I.A. officers who collected the intelligence that made it clear that Saddam did not pose an imminent threat. You betrayed the analysts who tried to withstand the pressure applied by Cheney and Rumsfeld.”

They also said, “Although C.I.A. officers learned in late September 2002 from a high-level member of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle that Iraq had no past or present contact with Osama bin Laden and that the Iraqi leader considered Bin Laden an enemy ... you still went before Congress in February 2003 and testified that Iraq did indeed have links to Al Qaeda. ...

“In the end you allowed suspect sources, like Curveball, to be used based on very limited reporting and evidence.” They concluded that “your tenure as head of the C.I.A. has helped create a world that is more dangerous. ... It is doubly sad that you seem still to lack an adequate appreciation of the enormous amount of death and carnage you have facilitated.”

Thus endeth the lesson in our class on “The Ultimate Staff Guy.” If you have something deadly important to say, say it when it matters, or just shut up and slink off.

(y) (y)

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

sweetlady

05-07-2007, 04:13 PM

(y) (y) (y) (y) (y) (y) (y)

May 3, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

An Invisible War

By BOB HERBERT

Paul Rieckhoff looked across the crowded restaurant, which was not far from Times Square.

“During World War II,” he said, “we could be in this place and there would be a guy sitting at that table who was in the war, or the bartender had been in the war. Everybody you saw would have had a stake in the war. But right now you could walk around New York for blocks and not find anybody who has been in Iraq.

“The president can say we’re a country at war all he wants. We’re not. The military is at war. And the military families are at war. Everybody else is shopping.”

Mr. Rieckhoff is an imposing six-foot-two-inch, 245-pound former infantry officer who joined the military after graduating from Amherst College. When he came home from a harrowing tour in Iraq in 2004, he vowed to do what he could to serve the interests of the men and women who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan but have never fully gotten the support they deserve from the government or the public at large.

He wrote a book, “Chasing Ghosts,” which is now out in paperback, and he formed a powerful veterans’ advocacy organization called Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Mr. Rieckhoff is not bitter. He’s actually funny and quite engaging (and a good writer). But he has very little tolerance for the negligence and incompetence the government has shown in equipping the troops and fighting the war in Iraq, and he is frustrated by the short shrift that he feels the troops get from the media and the vast majority of Americans.

There’s a gigantic and extremely disturbing disconnect, he says, between the experiences of the men and women in uniform and the perspective of people here at home. “We have a very diverse membership in I.A.V.A.,” he said. “We’ve got Republicans and Democrats and everything in between. But one of the key things we all have in common is this frustration with the detachment that we see all around us, this idea that we’re at war and everybody else is watching ‘American Idol.’

“I think that’s one of the main reasons why so many guys want to go back to Iraq. They come home and feel like: ‘Man, I don’t fit in here. You know, I’m out of place.’ ” Even though there’s never been a clear statement of the military’s mission in Iraq, and the goals have shifted from month to month and year to year, the soldiers and marines who have been sent there have felt that they were carrying out an important task on behalf of the nation.

“It’s tough to have such a serious sense of commitment,” Mr. Rieckhoff said, “and then come home and see so many people focused on such frivolous things. So I think that frustration is serious and growing. And I’ll tell you the truth: I blame the president for that. One of the biggest criticisms of the president, and I hear this across the board, is that he hasn’t asked the American people to do anything.”

Mr. Rieckhoff is convinced that if the public heard more from the soldiers and marines who have actually experienced combat, including those who have been wounded and suffered emotional trauma, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would be viewed more seriously. Part of the problem, he said, is that too many civilians have little or no understanding of what war is really like, and of the toll it takes beyond the obvious toll of the dead and wounded.

Among other things, there are family problems, drug and alcohol abuse, untreated post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and suicide — all directly attributable to service in a war zone. “Incredibly,” he writes in his book, “no government agency keeps track of the number of veterans who kill themselves after their service has ended — another sign of how little value is placed on veterans’ long-term well-being.”

I mentioned a young soldier I had interviewed in 2005 who worried that because he had killed three insurgents during a battle in Iraq he might not be “allowed into heaven.” The soldier wondered whether he had “done the right thing.”

Mr. Rieckhoff nodded. “Asking somebody to die for their country might not be the biggest thing you can ask,” he said. “Asking my guys to kill, on my orders — as an officer, that’s difficult. I’m telling that kid to squeeze that round off and take a man’s life. And then he’s got that baggage for the rest of his life. That’s what you have to live with.”

I signaled for the check and we left the restaurant. It was a beautiful, sunlit afternoon. New Yorkers were smiling and enjoying the spring weather. There was no sign of a war anywhere.

(y) (y)

Damnant quodnon intelligunt. (They condemn what they do not understand.)

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

sweetlady

05-07-2007, 04:14 PM

:o :o :o

May 4, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

The Aussie ‘Big Dry’

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

SYDNEY, Australia

Almost everywhere you travel these days, people are talking about their weather — and how it has changed. Nowhere have I found this more true, though, than in Australia, where “the big dry,” a six-year record drought, has parched the Aussie breadbasket so severely that on April 19, Prime Minister John Howard actually asked the whole country to pray for rain. “I told people you have to pray for rain,” Mr. Howard remarked to me, adding, “I said it without a hint of irony.”

And here’s what’s really funny: It actually started to rain! But not enough, which is one reason Australia is about to have its first election in which climate change will be a top issue. In just 12 months, climate change has gone from being a nonissue here to being one that could tip the vote.

In the process, Prime Minister John Howard, a conservative now in his 11th year in office, has moved from being a climate skeptic to what he calls a “climate realist,” who knows that he must offer programs to reduce global-warming greenhouse gas emissions in Australia, but wants to do it without economic pain or imposed targets, like Kyoto’s. He is proposing emissions trading and nuclear power.

The Labor Party, led by Kevin Rudd, proposes a hard target — a 60 percent reduction in Australian CO2 emissions from 2000 levels by 2050 — and subsidies for Aussies to retrofit their homes with energy-saving systems. The whole issue has come from the bottom up, and it has come on so quickly that neither party can be sure it has its finger on the public’s pulse.

“What was considered left a year ago is now center, and in six months it will be conservative — that is how quickly the debate about climate change is moving here,” said Michael Roux, chairman of RI Capital, a Melbourne investment firm. “It is being led by young people around the dinner table with their parents, and the C.E.O.’s and politicians are all playing catch-up.”

I asked Mr. Howard how it had happened. “It was a perfect storm,” he said. First came a warning from Nicholas Stern of Britain, who said climate change was not only real but could be economically devastating for Australia. Then the prolonged drought forced Mr. Howard to declare last month that “if it doesn’t rain in sufficient volume over the next six to eight weeks, there will be no water allocations for irrigation purposes” until May 2008 for crops and cattle in the Murray-Darling river basin, which accounts for 41 percent of Australian agriculture.

It was as if the pharaoh had banned irrigation from the Nile. Australians were shocked. Then the traditional Australian bush fires, which usually come in January, started in October because everything was so dry. Finally, in the middle of all this, Al Gore came to Australia and showed his film, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

“The coincidence of all those things ... shifted the whole debate,” Mr. Howard said. While he tends to focus on the economic costs of acting too aggressively on climate change, his challenger, Mr. Rudd, has been focusing on the costs of not acting. Today, Mr. Rudd said, Australian businesses are demanding that the politicians “get a regulatory environment settled” on carbon emissions trading so companies know what framework they will have to operate in — because they know change is coming.

When you look at the climate debate around the world, remarked Peter Garrett, the former lead singer for the Australian band Midnight Oil, who now heads the Labor Party’s climate efforts, there are two kinds of conservatives. The ones like George Bush and John Howard, he said, deep down remain very skeptical about environmentalism and climate change “because they have been someone else’s agenda for so long,” but they also know they must now offer policies to at least defuse this issue politically.

And then there are conservatives like Arnold Schwarzenegger and David Cameron, the Tory Party leader in London, who understand that climate is becoming a huge defining issue and actually want to take it away from liberals by being more forward-leaning than they are.

In short, climate change is the first issue in a long time that could really scramble Western politics. Traditional conservatives can now build bridges to green liberals; traditional liberals can make common cause with green businesses; young climate voters are newly up for grabs. And while coal-mining unions oppose global warming restrictions, service unions, which serve coastal tourist hotels, need to embrace them. You can see all of this and more in Australia today.

Politics gets interesting when it stops raining.

(y) (y) INDEED!

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

sweetlady

05-07-2007, 04:16 PM

:| :| :| :| :|

May 3, 2007

Editorial

Unwanted Folk

Joan Baez sang at Woodstock. If you recognize either name, you probably already knew that. If you don’t, go to Google, then come back and help us puzzle something out.

Why would the Army be afraid of her?

Last Friday, John Mellencamp gave a concert for injured soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Ms. Baez, a friend who’d been invited by Mr. Mellencamp, did not. She was barred by Army brass, supposedly because of the lateness of the invitation, although Mr. Mellencamp’s camp suggested it was because she was considered objectionable.

Objectionable for what? To whom?

Mr. Mellencamp and Ms. Baez are both politically outspoken. Both have denounced the Iraq war. Yet Mr. Mellencamp’s activism is the kind the Army could more easily overlook. He wears a T-shirt and jeans and sings songs so down-home, so red, white and blue, that you could use them to sell Chevy trucks, which Mr. Mellencamp has actually done. “Let’s forget about any problems we might have and let’s just have a good time,” Mr. Mellencamp told his audience in what The Washington Post reported was a rousing and apolitical show.

Although Ms. Baez is as much of an activist as ever — she camped in a tree last year to stop the bulldozing of an urban farm — she would probably have shown similar tact. In a letter in The Post yesterday, she said she regretted not having given soldiers a better welcome home from Vietnam, and would have loved to sing at Walter Reed.

What is astounding is that somebody apparently could not get past the image of willowy Joan singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” nearly 40 years ago and thought troops so young they wouldn’t know Mimi Fariña from Cream of Wheat couldn’t or wouldn’t abide her presence.

They say generals are always fighting the last war. But Vietnam was two wars ago, three if you count the war on terror.

:| :| :| :| :|

Fac ut vivas.

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

sweetlady

05-07-2007, 04:22 PM

;) ;)

SUN-KISSED Malibu Barbie, born in 1971, and a newer powder.

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LIQUID GOLD A new spate of fake-tanning products are out, started by Jergens Natural Glow, introduced in 2005.

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May 3, 2007

Skin Deep

Beware the Afterglow

By NATASHA SINGER

YEARS before Ursula Andress, the Swiss actress who was the first Bond girl, emerged from the waves in “Dr. No” with her caramel skin offset by a blindingly white bikini, the tan had taken hold as the abiding fashion image.

A honey-glowing face and a body that is buff and bronzed had come to conjure up associations of beauty, leisure and upper-class privilege: of exotic private beaches, robust games of tennis, long afternoons aboard a yacht and, of course, the healthy-looking afterglow of exercise or sex.

Even in the 25 years since medical groups began warning that ultraviolet irradiation can lead to skin cancer as well as to dire consequences for the appearance-conscious — wrinkles! — tan-looking skin has remained an iconic beauty image, promoted by fashion magazines, advertisements and celebrities.

But the chic method of acquiring a tan has shifted. With sunbathing and tanning beds deemed risky, some doctors, magazines and beauty companies are promoting the idea of a “sunless” tan begat by cosmetics as the safe alternative to UV irradiation.

And so simulated tanning is booming. This month, cosmetics brands are introducing new artificial bronzing agents including sprays, lotions, mousses, powders and towelettes into a market that is already brimming with products. Meanwhile, fashion magazines are enthusing over the fake tan with buzzwords like sun-kissed, radiant, natural-looking, tawny, healthy and glowing.

“We are being inundated with the look of a woman of leisure who has a beautiful glow, whether from a sunless tanner or a bronzer,” said Karen Grant, the senior beauty industry analyst for the NPD Group, a market research firm. “The marketing theme is that the products can give you the same glow that the sun can provide without the risks of going out into the sun.”

Indeed, the notion of a safe, healthy sunless tan is making Malibu Barbie the retro icon of the season.

But some researchers who study the skin are worried that promulgating the simulated tan as a beauty ideal is simply perpetuating an image that is fundamentally linked to risky behavior. The concern is that the fashion for a bronzed look, even a cosmetically induced one, may encourage young women to seek a tanned appearance at any cost.

According to a study published last year in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, for example, young women who used sunless tanners were more likely to have been sunburned and to have visited tanning parlors compared with those who were not interested in and did not use such bronzing lotions. The study, conducted at Boston University School of Medicine, also reported that, although many self-tanning products do not contain sunscreen, a number of young women believe they offer sun protection.

“We know that physicians are urging patients to use sunless tanning products instead of tanning booths,” said Alan C. Geller, a research associate professor in dermatology at Boston University and one of the authors of the study. “But sunless tanners are not serving the purpose of a safe alternative because we found young women using them as an adjunct to sunbathing and tanning beds.”

Many women say self-tanners have become as regular a part of their beauty routine as moisturizer or mascara. Most commonly, they apply powdered bronzer to their faces and tanning moisturizers to their arms and legs.

The sales figures bear this out. In the last five years, department-store bronzer sales have increased to about $62 million from about $30 million, according to NPD. At the mass market level, self-tanners, bronzers and tanning moisturizers, called “natural glow” lotions, have annual sales of about $229 million, according to Information Resources Inc., a market research firm that covers the personal care industry.

Nina Jablonski, the chairwoman of the anthropology department at Penn State University, said that trying to change one’s skin color is a peculiar and disturbing phenomenon — whether it be Africans and Asians who use bleaching products to lighten skin or lighter-pigmented Americans seeking to emulate deck stain. Along that continuum, the sun-tanned look is a relatively new beauty ideal, she said.

“For most of the last 500 years, a tan was considered the mark of a hard-working person who toiled outside,” said Dr. Jablonski, the author of “Skin: A Natural History.” “A tan was eschewed by people who considered themselves upper class.”

During the Industrial Revolution, as work increasingly moved to indoor factories, sun-baked skin became the province of the upper classes who had more leisure time and money to travel. Coco Chanel, who returned to Paris with a dramatic suntan acquired during a holiday on the Riviera in the 1920s, is credited with initiating the vogue for sunbathing. She reincarnated what had been a lower-class stigma as an aspiration, a symbol of upper-class wealth, leisure, good looks and healthy athleticism.

In the 1960s, George Hamilton personified the perpetual tan. In 1971, Mattel introduced Malibu Barbie, the ultimate beach bunny. And baby oil, used to hasten a deeper tan, was the rage in the 1970s.

“The tan went from being a thing that working people got by the sweat of their brows to being associated with a glamorous, luxurious lifestyle,” Dr. Jablonski said. “It is one of the most deeply ingrained images in American advertising.”

But in the early 1980s, the tan began to lose some of its allure after health authorities in Australia noticed an increased incidence of skin cancer among residents who had emigrated from Europe. They began to link skin cancer and sunbathing. In 1985, the American Academy of Dermatology conducted its first national campaign to warn Americans about the risks of sun exposure.

As a result, the product-induced tan has replaced the outdoorsy tan as a beauty ideal. And celebrities like Jennifer Lopez, Jessica Alba and Eva Longoria, with their own naturally glowing skin, are inspiring legions of imitators. Now starlets like Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton often appear preternaturally bronzed. Even the model Natalia Vodianova, known for her porcelain face, appears this month in a Calvin Klein perfume ad looking as if she has been powdered with baked earth.

“Bronzer makes you look healthy, healthy, healthy,” said Olivier Échaudemaison, the makeup artistic designer for Guerlain. “Pale skin makes you look tired, but if you are wearing bronzer nobody knows you are tired underneath.”

To provide that simulacrum of health, cosmetics that create ersatz tans now come in three categories: self-tanners, bronzers and “glow” lotions.

Self-tanners trigger a chemical reaction, causing a brownish stain to form on the outer layer of the skin. Until recently, self-tanners were often messy to use, noxious-smelling, time-consuming and capable of turning the skin a bright shade of Oompa-Loompa orange. In the last few years, however, cosmetics companies have introduced improved formulas.

Bronzers are powders that are applied like blush. Guerlain is credited with creating the category in 1984 when it introduced Terracotta Powder, which could be brushed on for an instant coppery sheen.

“Suddenly, they have the look of just coming back from St. Barth’s, but really they spent the weekend at home and put on the powder,” Mr. Échaudemaison said.

Meanwhile, other brands, including Lancôme, are bringing out increasingly elaborate bronzing compacts that are embossed with patterns and come in multiple luminescent hues that can be used all over the body.

“Women today are on the go and they have no time or desire to sit down and sunbathe or wait overnight for a tanner to show its real color,” said Gracemarie Papaleo, assistant vice president for new product development at Lancôme USA. “With a bronzer, you get immediate results.”

“Glow” lotions, which are moisturizers that gradually darken the skin with each use, are also a growing trend. Jergens Natural Glow, introduced in 2005, was the first successful tanning moisturizer. Now other beauty brands are coming out with similar products based on the idea of a healthy, natural-looking glow. Ads for the new Nivea Visage Sunkissed Facial Moisturizer, for example, promise “a healthy-looking tan in just five days.”

“People want to look healthy without getting sun damage, to have that same California, sun-kissed type of look like every celebrity on the red carpet,” said Leigh Anne Rowinski, director of client solutions at Information Resources Inc.

But some critics worry that promoting sunless tans and glows as healthy, stylish and natural perpetuates the tan — whether cosmetic induced or sun-induced— as a beauty ideal, even as it posits pale skin as unhealthy, dull, unnatural and even passé.

“Even though a tan is now associated with pathology, it has had such a profound impact on the American psyche that to be untan is to look as terribly uncool as an unplucked chicken,” said Dr. Jablonski of Penn State. “People tend to think they look healthier if they have some sort of glow on their cheeks.”

But researchers at Boston University School of Medicine did not find that those who use self-tanners necessarily avoid UV rays. In a survey of 448 people age 18 to 30, the researchers found that young women who used sunless tanners were more likely to get sunburns and use sun beds than their peers who were not interested in self-tanning products; the results were similar to those found in studies in Australia. The researchers urged companies to include a minimum of S.P.F. 15 sunscreen in every sunless tanning product.

In a related research project, Zeina Dajani, a medical student at Boston University, found that a number of sunless tanners that did not contain sunscreen failed to carry a warning label, mandated by the Food and Drug Administration, to indicate that the products do not protect against sunburn and other damage.

“The question is whether dermatologists should stop recommending sunless tanning products as an alternative to tanning beds and discourage the idea of a tan altogether,” Ms. Dajani said.

At least one celebrity is glow-averse. In the May issue of Allure magazine, the actress Michelle Trachtenberg said the pressure to bronze is her pet peeve with beauty advisers at makeup counters.

“They’re like, ‘Maybe you’d like to warm up your skin tone,’ ” Ms. Trachtenberg is quoted as saying. “And I’m like, ‘No, I’m going to embrace the pale.’ ”

(y) I've done that for years - "embraced the pale" and now look ten (so I am told) years younger because the last time I was in the sun to get a tan was 1981. Been extremely careful since then. I just bought a Bare Escentuals' Bronze Babe Kit recently and plan on "faux tanning" from neck to toes. The kit included a powder bronzer for my face that is washed off at night. I guess that will look pretty weird having a tan all over except for a very white face at night - but Wyatt has already seen me in a white facial mask and well - he *did* watch me strangely until I washed it off. ;) Poor pup - his mama provides strange "entertainment".

:)

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

sweetlady

05-07-2007, 04:24 PM

:| :| ...or not. This place is HIGH!

Williamstown draws many Williams College alumni back as second-home owners.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/05/04/realestate/greathomes/04havens_span.jpg

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/05/02/realestate/greathomes/04havens_threeforsale_large.jpg

May 4, 2007

Havens | Williamstown, Mass.

Sometimes You Can Go Home Again

By MICHELLE FALKENSTEIN

When Gene Bauer told his mother he was buying a second home in Williamstown, Mass., in 1998, she couldn’t believe it. Mr. Bauer, a Boston lawyer who graduated from Williams College in 1971, had complained heartily about the frigid, snow-filled winters there when he was a student. “My mother said, ‘You swore you’d never go through another Williamstown winter again,’ ” he recalled recently.

Never say never. For Mr. Bauer and many others, the town’s beauty and rich life of the mind outweigh a few months of single-digit temperatures and annual snowfall that regularly tops 80 inches. Besides, said Paul Harsch, a local real estate agent, “for some people, the winter is glorious.”

Williamstown, a storybook New England town in the North Berkshires with one traffic light and one shopping street, sits beside Mount Greylock, a gently rounded, 3,491-foot peak that is the highest point in Massachusetts. Williamstown was established in 1753 as a plantation called West Hoosac and renamed Williamstown in 1765, when Col. Ephraim Williams bequeathed his estate to the town to establish a free school. (Williams now costs more than $40,000 a year). Students of Williams College, which was chartered in 1793, call themselves the Ephs, pronounced “eefs,” in his honor.

“What drew us back, in addition to our fond associations, is the beautiful physical setting in combination with an inspiring array of cultural and intellectually stimulating activities,” said Mary McTernan (Williams Class of 1976), who bought a three-bedroom colonial-style house on five acres last year for about $1 million with her husband, Thomas Lee (’73), a lawyer.

Ms. McTernan, a former health care administrator, said that she and Mr. Lee make the five-hour trip from Swarthmore, Pa., at least once a month, spending time with their daughter Liz , who graduates from Williams this spring.

The Scene

Second-home owners say that Williamstown has the charm of country living without the provincialism. “There are things going on year-round,” said Michele Riley, a lawyer in New York City who owns a condo in a development called Stratton Hills. “It’s hard to find that in a small town.”

Susan Brown, a remedial reading teacher from Berwyn, Pa., who with her husband, Stephen, bought a renovated 1860s three-bedroom house within walking distance of the campus in 2004 for about $520,000, said she never dressed up. “It’s fleece and jeans.”

Spring Street, Williamstown’s main drag, is about the length of a short city block. Students and local residents mix genially in cafes, shops and restaurants, including Sushi Thai Garden and Mezze Bistro and Bar, an upscale restaurant on Water Street.

Williams makes an effort to enhance the life of the entire community by presenting free public lectures, readings, concerts, performances and films, often several in one day. Jim Kolesar, Williams’s assistant to the president for public affairs, said it was important for the college to be a good citizen.

Local residents can audit classes free, with the professor’s permission, and can take books out of the college’s library. An annual pass for Williamstown residents or Williams alumni to use the school’s extensive athletic facilities costs $205 for individuals and $320 for families. “There’s always more to do than you can possibly do,” Ms. McTernan said.

Williamstown’s small size has its pluses and minuses. “You can’t be anonymous,” said Roger Fachini, an agent with Elder & McDonough Real Estate, “but there’s always someone you can count on.”

Pros

Despite a population of only a little more than 8,000 — and that includes Williams College’s 2,000 students — Williamstown has deep cultural riches. There are two important museums: the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, with more than 30 Renoirs, and the Williams College Museum of Art, which holds a significant collection of 18th- and 19th-century American art.

There is also the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, five miles east on Route 2 in a former textile mill, and from June to August, the Tony-award-winning Williamstown Theater Festival, which has sent plays to Broadway.

There are biking, hiking, skiing and swimming. Golfers gush about the Taconic Golf Club, one of Golfweek’s top 100 classic courses in the country in 2006, which has a waiting list for membership. And all Williams athletic events are open to the public.

Cons

Williamstown, 45 minutes north of the more bustling Southern Berkshires (Lee, Lenox, Stockbridge), is not an easy trip from anywhere. There are no Interstates to the region, and the roads into town — Routes 2, 7 and 43 — are slow and single lane. (To some, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.) The nearest major airport and the most convenient Amtrak station are an hour away in Albany. Williamstown is three hours from Boston, more than three hours from New York and five hours from Philadelphia. “There’s no good way to get here,” Mr. Fachini said. “You have to make an effort.”

There are only a handful of clothing stores in town, and many people shop at the Manchester Designer Outlets in Vermont, an hour’s drive, or the Berkshire Mall in Lanesborough, 20 minutes south. “If you’re into shopping, this is not the place to be,” said Bill Frado, a Williams graduate who recently moved to Williamstown and now uses his house in Natick, Mass., as his second home.

The Real Estate Market

It appears that Williams graduates can’t get enough of Williamstown. Real estate agents reported that around 10 percent of home sales were to second-home owners, and they also estimated that close to 40 percent of those were Williams alumni. “When they graduate from Williams, they don’t want to leave,” Mr. Fachini said. “There’s something about it that keeps them coming back.”

Stephen Birrell, vice president for alumni relations and development at Williams, said: “As a group, Williams alum are extraordinarily loyal and devoted. The college is happy to have alums in town, but we don’t have to do anything to encourage them. They just come.”

Most homes in Williamstown were built in the 20th century, but 18th- and 19th-century houses occasionally come on the market. “Many people want an old farmhouse on five acres, but some don’t stick with that,” said Don Westall, the owner-broker of Alton & Westall. “They love the thought of old, but they don’t want a wrestling match with an alligator to open a window.”

Home sales are off from where they were two years ago, real estate agents say, and there is more inventory than usual. Yet prices have not declined.

In the spring, a house can sell in 90 days, but in the colder months a property can languish. Three-bedroom, two-bath houses on an acre or less sell in the upper $300,000s to low $400,000s, though Mr. Harsch said the better three-bedrooms sell for around $500,000. A number of high-end homes with views have sold for more than $1 million.

Williamstown has three villages of condos; prices range from $100,000 for a small one-bedroom to $350,000 for a large three-bedroom. Several real estate agents said the town could use more, but it’s hard to get approval for new developments.

“Williamstown is highly protected from development,” Mr. Harsch said. “In Florida and Colorado, the subdivisions spring up like flowers or weeds, depending on your perspective. That’s not going to happen here. There are zoning restrictions, topographical restrictions and limited sewer service. The town is going to change very little, and the people here like it that way.”

Lay of the Land

POPULATION 8,238, according to an estimate by the Census Bureau.

SIZE 46.9 square miles.

LOCATION Williamstown is in the northwesternmost corner of Massachusetts, just south of Vermont and east of New York.

WHO’S BUYING Most second-home owners come from New York, Philadelphia and Boston, and many are professionals — lawyers and doctors — or in finance. Real estate agents estimate that nearly 40 percent are Williams graduates.

GETTING THERE Routes 2, 7 and 43 lead directly into town, but none are major highways, which makes the going slow. Williamstown is 165 miles from New York City and 150 miles from Boston by car. Buses from Manhattan take about five hours.

WHILE YOU’RE LOOKING Guest House at Field Farm (554 Sloan Road, 413-458-3135; www.guesthouseatfieldfarm.org), set on 316 conserved acres with great views of Mount Greylock, is unremarkable on the outside but a midcentury masterpiece on the inside. There are only five rooms, so reserve early. Rooms with full breakfast range from $175 to $295 through October. A more modest choice is the 1896 House Country Inn & Motels (Route 7, 413-458-1896; www.1896house.com), where a small room for two runs $69 and the fanciest suite costs $259.

(y) Nice article, but I'd never live here. :)

ANCORA IMPARO,

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

sweetlady

05-07-2007, 04:26 PM

8-| 8-|

The new crop of ultraportable computers includes a budget-priced model from Averatec, left; Sony’s full-featured Vaio, less than an inch thick, center; and Fujitsu’s 2.6-pound Lifebook. All are equipped with built-in DVD drives.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/05/03/business/03basics.600.sub.jpg

May 3, 2007

Basics

Small and Smaller

By MICHEL MARRIOTT

LONG among the hottest items in Europe and Asia, ultraportable notebook computers — supercompact, lightweight laptops that slip into briefcases as easily as a legal pad — appear to be finding favor with American tastes. In cafes and corporate boardrooms and on college campuses, the sleek machines are in growing evidence.

Their increasing appeal to Americans, some ultraportable computer makers say, reflects the same attraction as ever-smaller music players and credit-card-size digital cameras, in both styling and mobility.

“The mind-set of the American consumer is changing,” said Mike Abary, vice president for Vaio product marketing at Sony Electronics in the United States. “It has come to place more value on mobile products. These ultraportable notebooks are mobile products, like cellphones and MP3 players.”

The small notebooks offer many if not most of the productivity and entertainment features popular in much larger, bulkier computers, like built-in optical drives for CD and DVD use. (Sorry, no high-definition Blu-ray or HD-DVD capabilities yet). They also tend to be more expensive than their larger counterparts — in some cases, four times as expensive — with prices just above $2,000.

The price notwithstanding, ultraportable notebooks can stir techno lust in even the most practically minded. In fact, computer makers say, one of the largest single groups buying ultraportables are businessmen and businesswomen.

“People want portability,” said Michael A. Vorhaus, managing director of Frank N. Magid Associates, a television and entertainment consultant company based in Los Angeles. “People want BlackBerrys for e-mail and cellphones for text messaging, but that is not enough.

“American consumers want a decent-sized screen,” said Mr. Vorhaus, who noted that a recent online survey indicated that 54 percent of Americans between 18 and 30 own a laptop. “They want 12- and 11-inch screens that they can slip into a briefcase or a backpack and do everything they want except make calls on it.”

The diminutive size of the ultraportables — although not so small to be confused with ultramobile personal computers, or UMPCs, which are practically palm-size — is not for everyone, said Stephen Baker, vice president for industry analysis at the NPD Group.

While affirming that ultraportables represent “a nice concept,” he questions whether the benefit of a smallish notebook computer is worth its premium price.

“It’s unclear what that gets you,” he said. “A couple of less pounds?”

Mr. Baker added that he generally considers computers with screens as large as 12 inches not in the ultraportable category. He draws the line at those under 10 inches.

While a precise definition of ultraportable varies, the broader attributes of the category are as easy to discern as telling a sports car from a sport utility vehicle. Standard notebook computers generally have screens that measure 15 inches or so when measured diagonally (17-inch screens are also popular, many retailers report). Many computer makers, including Toshiba, Sony and Hewlett-Packard, classify ultraportable notebooks as those with screens measuring 12 inches or less.

Computer makers note that when laptops have smaller screens, the rest of the computer must adhere to a proportionality that usually forces the keyboard — as well as the overall size of the computer — to be smaller than standard. In turn, the body thins and the computer gets lighter. Many ultraportable notebooks weigh around four pounds or less, while an entry-level Dell Inspiron 1501 notebook with a 15.4-inch screen, in contrast, weighs 6.19 pounds.

In past years, packing components so closely together to achieve what computer makers call a smaller “footprint” encouraged many laptop manufacturers to use less powerful microprocessors than those in larger computers to reduce heat and not overtax smaller batteries. But advances in microprocessor design and cooling systems have significantly reduced the need for such striking compromises, especially in the higher-priced ultraportable notebooks, experts say.

“We are excited about the fact that laptops can now pack more power into a smaller, more lightweight and energy-efficient package,” said Karen Regis, manager of the mobile platforms group at Intel.

Or as Mr. Abary of Sony put it, “Miniaturization is an art of engineering.”

Showcasing such engineering, he said, is the Vaio VGN-TXN15 by Sony, released this spring. It is part of the company’s TX series of full-featured, ultraportable notebooks. The TXN15 has an 11.1-inch screen in a wide (16:9) aspect ratio and weighs 2.8 pounds. Mr. Abary said much of the notebook’s economy of size, weight and strength was managed with innovative engineering as well as the use of carbon fiber for its chassis.

The Vaio TXN15, which costs $2,300, is powered by a 1.2-gigahertz Intel Core Solo Ultra Low Voltage microprocessor and, depending on use, offers a standard battery life of 5 to 11 hours, Sony engineers said. The TXN15 also features a fingerprint security sensor and is equipped with sensors to protect the hard drive if the notebook is dropped or severely jostled.

Besides its internal read-and-write DVD drive, the TXN15 includes Sony’s Instant Mode, which enables quick access to features like the notebook’s music and movie playback without running its operating system, Microsoft’s Windows Vista. Another extra is its built-in EV-DO system, which uses Sprint’s wireless cellular broadband network for mobile Internet access. The TXN15 has more conventional Wi-Fi ability as well.

And unlike some ultraportables, the TXN15 has not significantly shrunk its keyboard. Mr. Abary said the keyboard was near full size.

Another svelte and sophisticated new ultraportable notebook, the Fujitsu Lifebook P7230, weighs 2.63 pounds, even less than the Sony TXN15, and is encased in a stylish magnesium body. Its screen is smaller, too — 10.6 inches. This notebook is fully featured and powered by a 1.2-gigahertz Intel Core Solo microprocessor. Depending on a long list of options, its price ranges from $1,650 to $2,180.

Breaking the three-pound barrier is a major factor in achieving an “unconsciously portable” state, said Paul Moore, senior director of mobile products and marketing for Fujitsu Computer Systems. That, he explained, is the top weight so “you don’t realize you have it.”

Averatec, a South Korean company with an office in Santa Ana, Calif., is a relative newcomer to notebook computers, which it has been making since 2002. The Averatec 2371, its latest ultraportable notebook, which has a 12.1-inch screen and weighs about four pounds, aims to be a solid performer but light on the budget, said Darren Lee, the company’s director of product marketing.

The 2371 costs $900 to $950, depending on options, and is available on the company’s Web site (www.shopaveratec.com) and from other online retailers. This month, Averatec will introduce a smaller and lighter ultraportable, the 3.4-pound 1579, at $1,300.

Averatec ultraportables, widely available online and at stores like Circuit City, Sam’s Club and Staples, cost $850 to $950.

“We don’t have the buying power of the rest of the guys,” Mr. Lee said. “We chose to take a margin percentage hit, and they do not.”

Like the computers the company makes, he said, “we are a very small organization.”

(y) (y) I'm waiting for lighter laptops with Linux - 2008 is the year to buy. At least, that's what I'm doing. :)

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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