Quotes, URL's, Links And References-by:older Femmes, Butches, Ftms, Mtfs, Queer, Etc.

[sweetlady]

(y) (y) (y)




http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/22/ralph-lauren-unveils-touch-sensitive-window-shopping-in-london/



(f)




Carpe Diem,

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

[sweetlady]

:s :s Hope NOT.



Finding their genius unappreciated by a callous world, the artists at Take Two Interactive and Rockstar Games have decided to hold off on releasing murder sim "Manhunt 2" and think about what they've done (see "Yeah, it's like 'Guernica,' only with more splatter"). Not that they had much choice, given that the game was being literally or effectively banned at the rate of a continent a week.


"Take-Two Interactive Software has temporarily suspended plans to distribute 'Manhunt 2' for the Wii or PlayStation platforms while it reviews its options with regard to the recent decisions made by the British Board of Film Classification and Entertainment Software Rating Board," a representative told GameSpot. "We continue to stand behind this extraordinary game. We believe in freedom of creative expression, as well as responsible marketing, both of which are essential to our business of making great entertainment."


OK, yeah, sure. The point is, there's been a lot invested in this game, and Take Two needs to figure out how to recoup some of it, which probably means making a few changes to get a friendlier rating. Now with a game built around sadistic torture, this will not be easy, but perhaps we can help by offering the developers some alternate story lines and themes. For instance, I'm thinking they've already got a lot of code that lets a character manipulate pliers, saws and other tools -- how about a Habitat for Humanity game? A combination of construction and fundraising could be particularly fun on the Wii.


Surely the plot can be taken in some direction that will bail out Take Two. Suggestions? It starts like this: An amnesiac scientist and a psychotic killer escape from an asylum, and ... ........



http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=7792




http://svextra.com/blogs/gmsv/2007/06/yeah_its_like_guernica_only_with_more_splatter.htm l




http://www.gamespot.com/news/6172931.html?action=convert&om_clk=latestnews&tag=latestnews;title;0




http://www.gamespot.com/news/6172931.html?action=convert&om_clk=latestnews&tag=latestnews;title;0





(y) (y) I hope that the whole violent thing is scrapped, IMHO.



(f)





Aut disce aut discede.

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

[sweetlady]

:s



Q U O T E D


"The real story is interesting, but conspiracy theorists will be disappointed to learn that it is not the result of a deliberate attempt to deceive."


-- Microsoft's Nick White says that tiny photo of three grinning men on the hologram carried by the Vista Business DVD is an antipiracy measure. (They're members of the team that designed the hologram.)



http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2007/06/13/the-devil-is-in-the-details.aspx





(n) (n) (n) Microsoft has always and will continue to torment anyone using their operating systems. :| :| :| I hate that company!



^o)^o) Oh well.



(f)





Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

[sweetlady]

:o :o :o



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y7u_NXTQGc




:| :| Really silly. ;)



(f)




Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

[sweetlady]

:s :s




http://www.productdose.com/article.php?article_id=6037



;)




(k) 's,

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

[sweetlady]

:o :o



http://blog.scifi.com/tech/archives/2007/06/12/gravity_bookshe.html




(y) (y) (y)



(f)


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

[sweetlady]

(l) :o (l) :o (l) :o


Egyptologists think they have Hatshepsut's mummy


By Jonathan Wright Mon Jun 25, 1:06 PM ET


CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptologists think they have identified with certainty the mummy of Hatshepsut, the most famous queen to rule ancient Egypt, found in a humble tomb in the Valley of the Kings, an archaeologist said on Monday.


Egypt's chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, will hold a news conference in Cairo on Wednesday. The Discovery Channel said he would announce what it called the most important find in the Valley of the Kings since the discovery of King Tutankhamun.


The archaeologist, who asked not to be named, said the candidate for identification as the mummy of Hatshepsut was one of two females found in 1903 in a small tomb believed to be that of Hatshepsut's wet-nurse, Sitre In.


Several Egyptologists have speculated over the years that one of the mummies was that of the queen, who ruled from between 1503 and 1482 BC -- at the height of ancient Egypt's power.


The archaeologist said Hawass would present new evidence for an identification but that not all Egyptologists are convinced he will be able to prove his case.


"It's based on teeth and body parts ... It's an interesting piece of scientific deduction which might point to the truth," the archaeologist said.


Egyptologist Elizabeth Thomas speculated many years ago that one of the mummies was Hatshepsut's because the positioning of the right arm over the woman's chest suggested royalty.


Her mummy may have been hidden in the tomb for safekeeping after her death because her stepson and successor, Tuthmosis III, tried to obliterate her memory.


Donald Ryan, an Egyptologist who rediscovered the tomb in 1989, said on an Internet discussion board this month that there were many possibilities for the identities of the two female mummies found in the tomb, known as KV 60.


"Zahi Hawass recently has taken some major steps to address these questions. Both of the KV 60 mummies are in Cairo now and are being examined in various clever ways that very well might shed light on these questions," he added.


In an undated article on his Web site, Hawass cast doubt on the theory that the KV-60 mummy with the folded right arm was that of Hatshepsut.


"I do not believe this mummy is Hatshepsut. She has a very large, fat body with huge pendulous breasts, and the position of her arm is not convincing evidence of royalty," he wrote.


He was more optimistic about the mummy found in the wet-nurse's coffin and traditionally identified as the nurse's. That mummy is stored away in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.


"The body of the mummy now in KV 60 with its huge breasts may be the wet-nurse, the original occupant of the coffin ... The mummy on the third floor at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo could be the mummy of Hatshepsut," Hawass wrote.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070625/sc_nm/egypt_mummy_dc_1




(y) (y) (f) (y)






(h) Stay cool. (h)



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

[sweetlady]

:s



Women are vacating technology positions at a significant rate.

But their reasons why are still unclear.





June 7, 2007

Why Do Women Leave IT?

By Edward Cone

CIO Insight Magazine

Women are vacating technology positions at a significant rate. But their reasons why are still unclear.


Women are leaving information technology jobs for a variety of interrelated reasons, including historical patterns of labor relations and persistent problems within the field. Negative implications of the trend include reduced opportunities for women in the workplace, decreasing innovation and competitiveness in technology and the economy at large, but it defies a single, silver-bullet solution.


Research by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that employment of women in a broad range of IT positions has declined in relative and absolute terms over the past several years. Some 984,000 women worked in eight IT categories in 2000, accounting for 28.9 percent of all employed IT workers. The corresponding numbers for 2006, when overall IT employment hit an all-time high of nearly 3.47 million, show a 7.7 percent drop from 2000, with 908,000 women working in IT, or just 26.2 percent of the total.


Though the number of female CIOs has increased slightly since 2000, to about 9 percent, overall IT leadership roles for women have receded to 2002 levels, according to a study conducted by the human resources consultancy Sheila Greco Associates. The not-for-profit research group Catalyst reports that women last year held 15.6 percent of all corporate officer positions, compared with 13.2 percent of comparable IT positions; women held 14.6 percent of corporate board seats, versus just 9.6 percent of board seats in IT service companies.


As we began discussing this trend at the CIO Insight website this spring, readers flooded us with theories and anecdotes about challenges facing women in the field. It's a depressingly familiar litany, from the low numbers of female students in math and science classes to the inhospitable, boys-club feel of many IT shops and the lack of networking opportunities and mentors for women. But all of the negatives would seem to have been realities over the life of IT as a specialty. What has changed? There has been little discussion of triggers for the female brain drain. As Lynne Ellyn and Christine Davis of IT advisory firm Cutter Consortium put it, "The exodus has been quiet."


Part of the answer might be contained in the question itself. Perhaps the high employment figures for women in IT at the end of the boom-and-bubble cycle were to some extent an artifact of that time, and the drop-off in subsequent years was driven in part by workplace dynamics beyond technology itself and reinforced by the specifics of the tech workplace.


The idea is that women along with racial and ethnic minorities, including blacks and Hispanics, according to a 2005 survey by the Information Technology Association of America have fared worse in IT jobs than white men during the downturn and subsequent recovery because their position in that marketplace was so tenuous in the first place. The limiting factors on women in IT became self-perpetuating and reinforcing mechanisms when the downturn hit. For example, the lack of female mentors and networks, long seen as a disincentive to entering the field to begin with, made it more difficult for women to find new jobs in a tough market.



http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1540,2149170,00.asp




:o :o :o




Non calor sed umor est qui nobis incommodat. (w) (w) (w)

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

[sweetlady]

(y) (y) (y)



Tuesday, April 17, 2007 2:51 PM/EST

Getting Women Back Into IT


CIO Innsight


Carnegie Mellon University seems to have discovered a formula to halt the exodus of women from careers in IT and computers: Emphasize the creative potential of computing, not the bits and bytes.


Buried deep in a story Tuesday in The New York Times, Computer Science Takes Steps to Bring Women to the Fold, computer science professor Lenore Blum points out that Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science is shifting its emphasis away from programming proficiency to one that sees computing strongly linked to many fields.


The Pittsburgh university is battling the nerd factor too often associated with computing that turns off many high school students to the IT field. And, that image of a geek writing code in an office cubicle turns off more girls than boys.


Carnegie Mellon once demanded high overall achievement and programming know-how to gain admittance. Not any more. Now, Blum told The Times, high overall achievement combined with broad interests, diverse perspectives and whether applicants seem to have potential to be future leaders are the criteria to get admitted.


The new admission criteria seem to be working, with the number of women enrolled in computer science programs at Carnegie Mellon having soared to nearly 40 percent form 8 percent, she said.


Not everyone is happy, though. This good news for girls could spell bad tidings for some boys. A backlash has surfaced among some parents whose sons have been denied admission by Carnegie Mellon. Blum, quoting one parent, told the newspaper: "My son has three patents, how come he did not get into Carnegie Mellon?"


Let's hope others schools follow Carnegie Mellon's lead to halt the flight of women from IT. As a CIO Insight analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows, 76,000 fewer women worked in IT and computer-related jobs last year than they did in 2000, while overall employment in those high-tech occupations rose.


Still, as Blum and other experts told The Times, it's not just about women in IT. Factors driving women from IT could steer men away, too. "Women," Blum said, "are the canaries in the coal mine." Fewer high schools, whether boys or girls, applying to computer science and IT programs would be sad, not only for those of us who care about IT, but for our economy as well.



http://blog.cioinsight.com/parallax_view/content/women_in_it/getting_women_back_into_it_1.html?kc=COQFTEMNL0626 07EOAD




(y) (y) GREAT QUOTE!: "Women are the canaries in the coal mine."



INDEED!!!!!!







Non calor sed umor est qui nobis incommodat.

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

[sweetlady]

......your mom and I think he's a little too "MySpacey" for you.


:o :o



In an essay that presages a more academic paper, ethnographic researcher Danah Boyd reports seeing signs that the users of two top social sites for students are starting to divide themselves on the basis of class, or what passes for it in the U.S. In cafeteria clique terms, she says, Facebook is becoming the home to the preps, grinds and others in the in-crowd, while MySpace is favored by the greasers, freaks, geeks and other outsiders. The class divide even shows up in the military, where use of MySpace was recently banned, but not Facebook. The reason, Boyd says: "Soldiers are on MySpace; officers are on Facebook."


Class in the U.S., Boyd says, has less to do with income and lineage than it does social life and networks, self-definition and affiliation. After recapping the evolution of the two sites, she summarizes her observations this way:


"The goodie-two-shoes, jocks, athletes, or other 'good' kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are part of what we'd call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.


"MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, 'burnouts,' 'alternative kids,' 'art fags,' punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn't play into the dominant high-school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn't go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. Teens who are really into music or in a band are on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers."


Clearly, these are gross generalities, and Boyd is apologetic about the less-than-rigorous analysis. "I clearly don't have the language to comfortably talk about what's going on, but I think that this issue is important and needs to be considered," she writes. "I feel as though the implications are huge. Marketers have already figured this out -- they know who to market to where. Policy creators have figured this out -- they know how to control different populations based on where they are networking. Have social workers figured it out? Or educators? What does it mean that our culture of fear has further divided a generation? What does it mean that, in a society where we can't talk about class, we can see it play out online? And what does it mean in a digital world where no one's supposed to know you're a dog, we can tell your class background based on the tools you use?" Good questions.




Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace:

http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html





Social sites reveal class divide :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6236628.stm





(y) (y) Definitely good questions. (y) I wonder what it means when you are not on ANY of these social networking web sites......;)



WHEW!!! (w) (w) I am positively wilting. Talk about stifling weather. Australia and New Zealand are having their WINTER now.....anyone up for it? :)





Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

[sweetlady]

:)




Q U O T E D


"It struck me there must be a way I could get my own money, anywhere in the world or the U.K. I hit upon the idea of a chocolate bar dispenser, but replacing chocolate with cash."


-- John Shepherd-Barron, 82, describes the "Eureka" moment (in the bath, no less) that led him to invent the first ATM, installed 40 years ago this week in a Barclays branch in Enfield, north London.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6230194.stm





(y) Very cool. And who knew?




Non calor sed umor est qui nobis incommodat.

It's not the heat, it's the humidity. (w) (w) (w)


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

[sweetlady]

8-|8-|8-|




http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/generic/9505



http://www.thinkgeek.com/images/products/front/im_in_ur.jpg




(f)






Non calor sed umor est qui nobis incommodat.

It's not the heat, it's the humidity. (w) (w)


Sweetlady the Grrl Propeller-Head & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:| :|



http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/06/21/spinach-powered-house/




http://www.inhabitat.com/wp-content/uploads/spinach-2.jpg





(f) (f)




Carpe Diem,

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

[sweetlady]

(f) (f) (f)



In all of his work - the plays, the sonnets and the narrative poems - Shakespeare uses 17,677 words. Of those 1,700 were first used by Shakespeare. Writers often invent words, either by creating new forms of existing words or coining new words outright, because they are unable to find the exact word they require in the existing language. Shakespeare is the foremost of those. He was by far the most important individual influence on the development of the modern English that we speak today.



Look at this short list of words that we use in our daily speech and ask yourself if you could pass through a day without needing to use at least ten of them. There are many more and you use them without knowing that they were given to you by England's national writer.



accommodation

aerial

amazement

apostrophe

assassination

auspicious

baseless

bloody

bump

castigate

changeful

clangor

control (noun)

countless

courtship

critic

critical

dexterously

dishearten

dislocate

dwindle

eventful

exposure

fitful

frugal

generous

gloomy

gnarled

hurry

impartial

inauspicious

indistinguishable

invulnerable

lapse

laughable

lonely

majestic

misplaced

monumental

multitudinous

obscene

palmy

perusal

pious

premeditated

radiance

reliance

road

sanctimonious

seamy

sportive

submerge

suspicious


:o


As if that were not enough, ask yourself how you could express yourself in normal conversation if Shakespeare had not put the following words together to make the language that you use in almost all the conversations that you have.


barefaced

fancy-free

catch a cold

disgraceful conduct

elbowroom

fair play

green eyed monster

heartsick

hot-blooded

housekeeping

lackluster

leapfrog

long-haired

pitched battle

clothes make the man

method in his madness

to thine own self be true

towering passion

ministering angel

dog will have his day

frailty, thy name is woman

neither a borrower nor a lender be

brevity is the soul of wit

mind's eye

primrose path

flaming youth

it smells to heaven

the lady doth protest too much

witching time of the night

it's Greek to me

live long day

breathe one's last

heart of gold

give the devil his due

too much of a good thing

naked truth

foregone conclusion

break the ice

strange bedfellows

wear one's heart on one's sleeve

all that glitters isn't gold

eat out of house and home

be all and end all

more sinned against than sinning

one fell swoop

the milk of human kindness

the course of true love never did run smooth





http://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/shakespeare_words_phrases.htm





(f)




Mon est vivere sed valere vita est.

(Life is not being alive but being well...life is more than just being alive.)


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

[sweetlady]

:| :| :|



The Google rumor du jour today is a report that the search sovereign is close to announcing the purchase of phone management start-up GrandCentral, whose elevator pitch is "one phone number for all your phones, for life." Price for the company, which has been operating its site in beta since September, is being guesstimated between $50 million and $75 million.


There's certainly some appeal in the deal. Having a single number that rings on all your phones could have a lot of market appeal, especially marketed by Google and especially if its integrated with other GServices like GTalk and GMail. Steve Bryant at Google Watch can imagine things playing out this way: "An offensive strategy assessment suggests that GrandCentral could be a 'wrapper' service for all Google's carrier partnerships. Google provides phone apps and YouTube vids and helps carriers sell data plans. Google makes money from mobile AdWords but doesn't have to worry about hardware costs. As phones proliferate and GrandCentral adoption increases -- with Google's aegis, how could it not -- Google also advertises through the app. Plus, and more importantly, Google gets even more data about how consumers are using their phones, and uses the data to target ads more efficiently." But as with every clever new service that comes out of the Googleplex, one question looms large for potential customers: Just how much of your life are you willing to contribute to Google's database?




http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/06/24/google-to-acquire-grand-central-for-50-million/





Google to Sell Ads Around Your Voicemail Messages?

http://googlewatch.eweek.com/content/google_strategy/google_bets_on_cell_phone_poliferation_trends_with _rumored_grand_central_buy.html





:| :| :|






Aut disce aut discede.

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

[sweetlady]

:)



Houses of the Future


Homes, sweet homes


So what if they don’t include your own personal “Rosie”—the Jetsons’ good-natured, frilly-aproned robot housekeeper. These six futuristic houses are light years ahead of their time in their innovative use of environmentally sustainable materials, rainwater recycling, solar panels, and overall coolness.


Meet George Jetson...


http://www.housesofthefuture.com.au/hof_houses01.html




(l) Not sure if it is the best choice, but the Timber House is for sale! ;)




(f)




(k) 's,

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

[sweetlady]

(f)



Hybrid Cars


Making the switch


With all the chatter about escalating gas prices (and all the missing cash in your bank account), you might be considering trading in your SUV for a cost-efficient hybrid. Check out this comprehensive site about hybrid news, mileage comparisons, buying guides—and for the tech-wary, reasons why you might not want to buy.


Take a right turn:


http://www.hybridcars.com/



(y) (y) For those who have and will buy these! I have 23,000 miles on a seven year old SUV that I just paid off (the first two years, I LEASED it). I'm sure not going to sell a vehicle that the mechanics ask me if the "Little ole lady from Pasadena" wants to sell her SUV yet - every time I take it in for maintenance.



;)



I may be a light blonde with long, long hair - but I am certainly not stupid. ;) ;) Oh, well, on some things, it is inevitavble. This lady is definitely NOT mechanical-saavy. :) However, I most definitely have OTHER talents. :o



(f)



Carpe Diem,

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

[sweetlady]

Aquarium Cam

Watch your web-footed friends

Couldn’t you use some more penguins in your life? Take a well-deserved break from your busy day and check in on these adorable arctic creatures on the Penguin Cam. Then visit some of the other aquarium cams—sea otters, an underwater kelp forest, and more—courtesy of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.



See some sea life:



http://www.mbayaq.org/efc/efc_splash/splash_cam.asp



(f) (f)






(k) (k) 's,

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

[sweetlady]

No one belongs here more than you


One writer's Web site


What do you do after you write a book? You write on your kitchen appliances, naturally. Writer, filmmaker, and artist Miranda July proves the pen is mightier than the kitchen knife as she introduces her book and her self in an unforgettably creative way. Plus, you’ll learn that stovetops are better notepads.


Writer's block or butcher block?


http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/




(y) (y) (y) Have FUN!!




(f) (f)



(k) 's,

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

[sweetlady]

:)



Travelfish

Asia for travelers, by travelers


If your idea of a relaxing 5-star holiday includes a loose plan and the night sky, we’ve got the travel site for you. Travelfish.org offers insightful, organized travel and backpacking information for Asian destinations, such as Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and more—including preparation guides, guesthouse reviews, discussion forums, and general advice from other adventurers.



Hit the road:


http://www.travelfish.org/





(h)(i)




(f)




(k) 's,

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

[sweetlady]

(l) (f) (l)




1 Jul, 2007 l 1859 hrs


SMS NEWS to 8888 for latest updates
LONDON: Police tightened security at London's Wembley stadium on Sunday as music fans flocked to a star-studded concert in memory of Princess Diana, a day after Britain went on maximum terror alert.


More than 60,000 revellers were due to join Princes William and Harry for the six-hour long extravaganza in memory of their late mother, who would have been 46 years old this weekend.


Extra security measures were ordered after a double car bombing plot was foiled in London on Friday followed by an attack at Glasgow airport in which a blazing car rammed into the main terminal building.


On Saturday, the government raised the national threat level to "critical," the highest possible Manning that another attack is expected "imminently."


The Diana concert would be an obvious target. "Policing term for this event have been thoroughly reviewed by the command team," said a spokesman for Scotland Yard, which is coordinating response to the London failed attacks.


"There will be an appropriate policing plan in place," he added, saying that some 450 officers would be deployed.


Prince William, who turned 25 on June 21, predicted it would be "an incredible night" of music after watching preparations being made yesterday for the event.


Performers were to include Diana's favourers like Duran Duranand Supertram as well as Sir Elton John, whom the brothers hope will sing the version of "Candle in the Wind" that he performed at Diana's 197 funeral.



http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-2165153,prtpage-1.cms




:| :| 500 Million viewers around the world........I enjoyed a number of the performers and simply muted other musicians/singers such as a rapper I can't stand...;) It wasn't P. Diddley either...;)



(y) (y) Of course Sir Elton ROCKED!!






(k) 's,

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

[sweetlady]

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



Simon Rabinovitch

Reuters

Sunday, July 01, 2007


LONDON, June 29 (Reuters Life!) - For a woman who lived so much of her life in front of the camera, few commemorations of Princess Diana could be more fitting than a collection of images on display to mark the 10th anniversary of her death.


Kensington Palace, her former home, has placed on display 200 photographs and acres of television footage to celebrate the life of a woman who married a future British king, gave birth to two princes, divorced and then died in a 1997 car accident.


Diana would have turned 46 on Saturday, inviting a flood of books and documentaries in her honor and a pop concert this weekend organized by her sons, Princes William and Harry.


"The People's Princess" rebuked the paparazzi for hounding her, but at the same time recognized the power of images to captivate the public. And she knew a good photo opportunity.


"She knew that picture, that would be the image that would go around the world," Tim Graham, an official photographer, said in one of the interviews running on a loop in the exhibition.


But she used the power of images not only to burnish her celebrity status but also to promote causes she considered important.


Richard Boulter of HALO Trust, a British de-mining charity, recounted in another exhibition interview how that "Diana effect" boosted the anti-landmine campaign in 1997 when she was photographed visiting blast victims in Angola.


"It stuck a big issue on the front pages of newspapers all around the world," he said. "It was a subject for dinner party conversation which simply hadn't been before."


Kensington Palace dipped into Diana's wardrobe to display some of her striking dresses, such as a green 'mermaid' gown embroidered with sequins that she wore at a reception in 1986.


Most poignant of all are the pictures of Diana as mother -- snapshots of a woman looking lovingly on her children, never mind that they were heirs to the British throne.


The images span her 36 years, from black-and-white baby photos to footage from her wedding to Prince Charles and press shots from her charitable crusades in Africa.


"The whole exhibition is about this sense of becoming," said curator Deirdre Murphy. "She becomes a princess the second she gets married, but then it shows her growing into that role."


The exhibition, "Diana: A Princess remembered," opens on Saturday at Kensington Palace in London and will run until January 2008.



http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=a3a2a84a-21c6-4a16-b459-b2c245489f58





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





(k) 's,

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

[sweetlady]

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


July 1, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

Tears on My Pillow

By MAUREEN DOWD


“I miss Albania!” W. wails. “They know how to treat a president there. Women were kissing me and men rubbed my hair. The crowd kept yelling, ‘Bushie!,’ and they almost grabbed the watch right off my wrist trying to get at me.”


The concerned group huddling outside the president’s closed-bedroom door in Kennebunkport can barely hear him. His voice is muffled because he has his face buried in his feather pillow, which the Secret Service has carefully transported from Washington to Maine for the weekend, knowing that it would be needed. They guard it so conscientiously that they have even given it a code name. Since the president’s Secret Service name is Tumbler, his agents christened his beloved pillow Slumber.


“Son, I know how you feel,” Poppy calls in to him, trying to sound positive. “Riding high in 2002, shot down in 2007. That’s life, as Sinatra says. You were a puppet and a pawn to King Dick and it screwed up your presidency and our party and the Middle East and the Atlantic alliance and the family legacy and Jeb’s future, not to mention the fate of the planet. But you can’t just roll yourself up in a big ball and die, George. Your friend Vlad the Impaler is here, and I think you should come out and talk to him. You invited him and he came all the way from Russia, and you don’t want to be rude.


“I’ve already taken him to Mabel’s Lobster Claw and out on the boat. He scared all the fish away. I don’t know what else to do with him, George. He brained the Filipino manservant, the little brown one, with a horseshoe.”


Putin steps forward. “Let me try,” he tells Poppy.


“George, hey, it’s me, Ostrich Legs, Pooty Poot. Remember when you gave me those nicknames? Come out, and I show you my real soul. Dark, dark, dark. I put the Putin back in Rasputin. Listen, Albania stinks. Maine much nicer. I saw Moose and Squirrel in the woods. Let’s throw horseshoes at them! I love this American sport.”


Tumbler burrows into Slumber. “Why doesn’t anybody like me anymore, Daddy?” he keens. “Man, I miss Tony. My Iraq poodle left me with a porcupine. And I can’t believe my own Republicans crossed me on the immigration bill. Now my Mexican buddies from Midland are saying, ‘Adiós, Jorge.’ Vice doesn’t even want to be in the same branch of government as me. Where is Dick, by the way?”


His mother steps briskly up to the door. “Now listen, Georgie,” Barbara says. “We didn’t invite Dick. He’s not our kind. He has utterly ruined your presidency. There’s a Washington Post series I want you to read. I’ve put it in the kitchen by your bowl of Cookie Crisps. It explains all about how Dick played you for a fool on everything from Iraq to capital gains. He set up the West Wing paper flow in a way that undermined your goals and advanced his. He let you act like you were the Decider, dear, when you were really just the Dupe.”


W. howls, “Dick promised me I would never be a wimp and now I’m a wimp!”


Putin intervenes. “No, George, don’t blame Dick,” he says. “Dick good man. Shoots friend in face. But Dick too soft. Friend lived. He needs put more people in your Gitmo gulag, shut down newspapers, kill more critics. I’ll send you some of my special polonium-210 pellets. They just like Altoids, curiously strong.”


Clarence Thomas rushes up to the door, black robes flapping. “I got here as fast as I could,” he assures Poppy, before yelling in to W.: “I’m sorry about the Guantánamo decision. I don’t know what my brethren were thinking, applying the Constitution to Cuba. What’s law got to do with it? I should have fought harder. I was a little distracted by our decision to stop race from being a factor in making schools racially diverse. I needed to make sure that black children all over America would have none of the advantages I had.”


Henry Kissinger oils his way across the floor. “Mr. President,” he rumbles through the door, “it’s not so bad bungling a war. I got to date Jill St. John.”


Condi joins the group, and wrinkles her nose at Putin. He puts his arm around her and gives her head a noogie. “When I said U.S. aggression is like Third Reich,” he tells her, with his most charming K.G.B. smile, “I meant it in a good way.”


Condi ignores him and coos to W.: “There’s bad news and good news, sir. Or maybe it’s Vice versa. Cheney’s going to pardon Scooter. And the Albanians have agreed to put your presidential library in Tirana.”




(y) (y)


What a complete idiot. :| Can it get any worse? Like the 1960's book......"Been Down So Long, It looks Like Up to Me". Things can ONLY improve. :)






Non calor sed umor est qui nobis incommodat. (w) (w)


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

[sweetlady]

;)



Nighttime along the Lochsa River, in a 30-second exposure.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/07/01/travel/01last600.1a.jpg





Wild Idaho: SLIDE SHOW!

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/06/28/travel/20070701_LAST_SLIDESHOW_1.html





July 1, 2007

The Last Wilderness

By TIMOTHY EGAN

CURIOUS it may be, but there is not a single national park in Idaho, a state with more public forest land, more wilderness, more white water than any other in the country outside of the superlative-trumping asterisk of Alaska. It has two dozen sites as part of a national historical park dedicated to the Nez Perce Indians, but nothing on the order of a velvet-roped shank of mega scenery.


So when people decide to go “Out West” for a visit, a phrase that always sounds quaint to a Westerner’s ear, they usually head for the canyon lands of southern Utah, or the fly-fishing streams of Montana or the aged chasms of Arizona. They fashion their trips around Yellowstone, Zion or Grand Canyon — the iconic national parks, all worth a visit of course.


But just as there are good pastrami sandwiches to be had outside of the Carnegie Deli, there is so much to see, float, hike and absorb in what may be the most overlooked part of the West — the Big Empty of north-central Idaho.


I drove once until there was no more road, and then hiked, with two of my brothers, until there was no more trail. Like leprechauns at rainbow’s end, we found a deep pool at the base of a waterfall, hard by a grove of ancient cedars. We caught fish until our arms were tired, and then watched the night sky theatrics. There was river music, white noise for sleep. And I promised never to tell the exact location. This was in the upper reaches of the St. Joe River — that’s all I’m able to say.


But, there are other moments, other waterfalls, other pools of gin-clear trout water in the grip of the Idaho Panhandle. In many parts, the land is as wild today as it was 200 years ago, full of jumpy rivers kicking out of the Bitterroot Mountains and exotic surprises like the Turkish cook who serves lamb tahini deep in the folds of high country. Though much of this area is roadless, there are numerous landing strips for small planes inside the wilderness, and hundreds of trailheads and river put-ins for outbackers on horse or foot, and rafters or kayakers.


On the map, it is bounded roughly by the St. Joe to the north and the Middle Fork of the Salmon to the south. The names suggest wild mood swings, and a chance for some sublime risk-taking. You can camp at Heavens Gate, not far from Hells Canyon, and wonder about the cartographic argument. What, no Purgatory Flats? You can float without directions on the Big Lost River. Or eat a fine meal near Colt Killed Creek, the place where members of the Lewis and Clark expedition nearly starved. (And yes, they had to dine on one of their young transports.)


The crown jewel is the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, at 2.3 million acres the largest single protected wilderness area in the 48 states. River of No Return is what the natives told the American gold-seekers who headed upstream on the Salmon, and their name for the big river, 425 miles of twisty mountain water. But it may have been an inducement as well. Frank Church was the Idaho boy who loved the outdoors, and became that rarest of 20th-century politicians — a liberal Democratic senator from the Gem State.


One of the offbeat little towns in the middle of all this wild country, Orofino, still has a high school mascot, the Maniacs, which is, according to lore, named for residents of the neighboring state mental hospital. Call them crazy and insensitive, and they say, well, our boys played like maniacs long ago and the name stuck. The mental hospital came later. Sure. No problem. Cool T-shirt, though.


This part of Idaho, if known at all, used to have a reputation as a hideout for neo-Nazis and others of the far-right fringe. When it was black helicopter country in the mid-1990s, I sometimes thought the scariest part of any backcountry trip was in town, mixing it up with the locals. O.K., so tell me again how Hillary Clinton put the transmitter in your back molar? But now, the white separatists have been run out of their compound well to the north, and there’s a winery not far from where another extremist had a standoff with the federal government.


It may be safe to say that the wilds of the Idaho Panhandle, like much of the West, are deep into a new chapter — the microbrews and mountain bike phase. It has its hook-and-bullet enthusiasts, yes, and count me among those who get more excited chasing cutthroat trout with a dry fly than listening to Broadway show tunes.


But I no longer hear the soundtrack from “Deliverance” while floating its rivers. Actually, I stumbled upon a camp of fiddlers from Virginia while floating the Middle Fork of the Salmon not long ago; except for the occasional John Denver tune, it made for a wonderful evening.


When you expect nothing is when you find something.


The narrative of this land is built around timber, water and native people. The timber was western white pine, a legendary species that drew lumber barons who bought big tracks of forestland and tried to cut it all. What they couldn’t remove, disease did. Today, big, old-growth white pine forests in Idaho are almost as hard to find as those Democrats who used to vote for Frank Church. But the national forestland, largely a legacy of Teddy Roosevelt, is intact, and it has become one of the West’s biggest playgrounds.


In all there are 11 national forests in Idaho — more than 20 million acres. The peaks are not Matterhorn-craggy or even buff skyscrapers like the sentinels of the Sierra. The North Cascades, in Washington, are a small fraction of the size of Idaho’s mountain acreage, but have more glaciers and jaw-dropping vertical flanks.


What this part of the overlooked West has in abundance is a rich variety of forested river country. The big rivers are the St. Joe, the three forks of the Clearwater, the Lochsa, the Selway, the three forks of the Salmon and a half-dozen or so feeder streams, any one of which would be a national attraction if it were in, say, Texas. These rivers drain an amazing swath of real estate, owned by every American — a public land inheritance unseen by most of its owners.


Rare as it is to find an undammed river in the West, the Idaho Panhandle has a surfeit of free-flowing — indeed anarchic — waterways. The best white water, when the rivers are at full froth, tends to be in the spring through early July, as most of the snow melts.


The Middle Fork of the Salmon is a paradise float, through thick-waisted cedars, firs and pines, and open prairie turns, a Class III or better set of bumps almost every hour, sometimes more. But it’s no beer-swilling joy ride. At times, the river will back up with downed timber, requiring a portage around the new hazards.


On our summer trip a few years ago, midday temperatures were well into the 90s, with only a slight breeze. At night, we had a thunderstorm preceded by near-hurricane force winds. It knocked down trees and an outhouse held by guy wires. Our tent walls were flapping like flags on top of Everest. Overnight, the bears had their way with our coolers, even though we had lashed and secured them. That pesto chicken, apparently, had something over roots and berries.


At the other extreme are the natural showers, courtesy of hot-spring waterfalls along the way. Of course you can soak in deep-pocket boulders — nature’s hot tubs. But there is nothing like standing next to polished basalt under a cascade of 105-degree water at the end of a day.


By car, an easy way to see this wild country is along United States Route 12, which crosses the Panhandle. The road passes by the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, an area bigger than the state of Delaware, and follows or intersects three wondrous rivers: the Lochsa, the Selway and the river formed when those two streams merge — the Middle Fork of the Clearwater.


The three rivers in the Route 12 corridor are designated Wild and Scenic, a federal protection, and they live up to the name. The Lochsa, which means Rough Water in the Nez Perce language, is ferocious and explosive white water, for hard-core rafters. The major stretch has more than 40 significant rapids. By that I mean, bumps with names, bumps that are the focus of many a rafter’s dreams. One night in May over dinner at a river rat hangout, a couple of guides showed me photos from a busy day on the Lochsa. Every frame was solid froth, with a bouncing raft in the middle of it.


The Selway, which meets the Lochsa near the hamlet of Lowell, is a different character. Where the Lochsa is stirred and frenzied, the Selway is more meditative, deeper, moving at a much gentler pace for the most part. It is another one of the places here that reminds me of Alaska, mainly because of the wildlife. While hiking and fishing the Selway, I’ve seen moose, elk, black bears, every manner of raptor, and have come upon tracks of cougars, the most elusive of Rocky Mountain inhabitants.


The Selway has a couple of draws: Selway Falls, reached by a road that is paved for part of the way, and a little resort at the confluence of the three rivers, where Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton stayed, in cabin No. 4, in 1985. Hey, it’s the West: Washington or Jefferson never slept here.


I spent a night in a cabin downriver from the confluence, and was forced inside early by a storm. The morning was glorious, with eagles looking for chinook salmon in the swift Middle Fork of the Clearwater and the thinnest of mists holding to the trees.


A few words about the fishing: in the fall and winter months, this is steelhead country, drawing anglers from around the world trying to catch the most difficult of big trout. In the spring, there’s a brief season for salmon, the big kings, or chinooks, coming into the mountains from a long journey that began at sea.


The best trout fishing, in my experience, is on the St. Joe, reached by Interstate 90 from Missoula or Spokane, and then over the Bitterroots on gravel roads. I shouldn’t give this up; my two fishing brothers are going to kill me for this. But in sections of the St. Joe the trout are so easy to catch you want to give them pointers on dodging the cheap fly. They’re cutthroats, some as big as 18 inches. They don’t fight as much as rainbows, but they’re abundant, and rise on cue to any decently presented dry fly. Trout Unlimited called the St. Joe the best cutthroat trout fishery on the west side of the Rockies.


The Lochsa, Selway and Middle Fork of the Salmon are also great places for trout. My son caught a 17-inch cutthroat once when he wasn’t even fishing — his fly rod was dangling out the side of the raft, unattended, when a fish went for his Elk Hair Caddis.


The Clearwater, perhaps because the young salmon and steelhead take much of the food, is not as good for trout. But it’s the gateway to a land where people have lived for thousands of years. Following the main stem Clearwater and Route 12 west gets to the expansive heart of Nez Perce country. These natives impressed Lewis and Clark more than any other people they met along the way. Not only did the Nez Perce basically save the Virginia Men, as they were sometimes called, from starving, but they impressed them with what may be the finest breed of horse in the West — the appaloosa.


Unlike some tribes left with only a casino or a small reservation, the Nez Perce are not a mere passive presence in this part of the West. Their imprint is big.


There is the history, notably that surrounding Chief Joseph and his epic 1877 running battle that is commemorated at sites along the Nez Perce National Historic Park. And then the culture, through powwows and numerous festivals open to the public in reservation towns like Kooskia, Kamiah and Lapwai throughout the summer months.


For me, the most stirring of the Nez Perce sites is White Bird, along Route 95 south of the reservation. This is the Indian Gettysburg, where one of the few real pitched battles between natives and the American Army was fought. The army was routed at White Bird, while the Nez Perce did not lose a man. But it was bittersweet, as Chief Joseph’s people — about 750 men, women and children — were later chased more than 1,500 miles throughout the Rockies and finally gave up, hungry and cold, just short of the Canadian border.


It does not take much to look down into the canyon from the roadside historic site and imagine the battle unfolding, or to stare into the wilds of the Salmon River country, the mountains snagging wayward clouds, the River of No River at its center, and see why they fought so hard to hold on to this place.



VISITOR INFORMATION

HOW TO GET THERE

It is not easy to get to north-central Idaho, but once you get there, transportation choices are numerous. Airlines, connected through Seattle or Salt Lake City, fly into Lewiston, Idaho, on the western end. Or you can approach from the east, through Missoula, which is also served by several airlines.


A good four-wheel-drive car is helpful, especially on national forest roads. But Route 12, the paved scenic route, can accommodate any vehicle.


If you want to float the Middle Fork of the Salmon, get in line, as permits are limited and are issued well in advance. But guided tours, out of gateway towns like Salmon or Riggins, are plentiful. Allow at least five days, and remember that the river runs through land that is mostly without roads.


There are small landing strips along the Middle Fork, but the planes won’t come unless contacted in advance.



WHERE TO STAY AND EAT

River Dance Lodge (208-765-0841; www.riverdancelodge.com), on Route 12, has new cabins with hot tubs and a chef who serves Turkish meals, among other offerings, on the Middle Fork of the Clearwater River. Cabin rates start at about $140.


Just up the road is the place where the Clintons stayed, Three Rivers Resort (208-926-4430; www.threeriversresort.com), with log cabins and motel, pool and Jacuzzi. It’s at the confluence of the Lochsa and the Selway. Motel rates begin at $69, and go up to $145 for the cabins.


In the backcountry of the St. Joe, via horseback or on foot, are rustic cabins and veteran fishing guides at St. Joe Outfitters and Guides (208-245-4002; www.stjoeoutfitters.com). Three nights in the cabins, with food and guiding, are about $1,500 a person.


Idaho is huckleberry country, and perhaps the best cobbler is at the Elk River Café, (208) 826-3398, in the hamlet of Elk River.



TIMOTHY EGAN is a former Seattle correspondent for The New York Times.





(l) (l) Strolling through lupines with the White Bird Battlefield in the background.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/06/28/travel/01last.5.jpg





(l) (l) (l) Horses of the Nez Perce Appaloosa Horse Club of Lapwai.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/06/28/travel/01last.7.jpg





On Route 95 between Moscow and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/06/28/travel/01last.9.jpg




(y) Loved this piece and learned some new things as well.



(k) 's,

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

[sweetlady]

;)



http://designondeadline.blogspot.com/2007/06/digital-newsstand_14.html




(f)



(k) 's,

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

[sweetlady]

:) :) :) :) :)




1. http://www.superdeluxe.com/




2. http://www.comedynet.com/




3. http://www.dailycomedy.com/




4. http://www.thisjustin.com/




(f) (f)





Mon est vivere sed valere vita est.

(Life is not being alive but being well...life is more than just being alive.)


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

[sweetlady]

:| :|


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/06/28/travel/01trans650.1.jpg




July 1, 2007

In Transit

A Flying Apartment to India

By JENNIFER CONLIN


As of Aug. 5, flying to India will not only be easier but more luxurious, too, thanks to Jet Airways, which is about to begin a daily flight between the New York area and Mumbai through Brussels. What’s more, passengers on Jet Airways, India’s largest privately owned airline, will be flying on new Boeing 777s, which have been configured by the airline to offer eight first-class suites that have sliding doors.


Each 26-square-foot suite includes a seat that converts into a seven-foot bed (right), a 23-inch flat-screen monitor, LED lighting, a hanging wardrobe and a credenza for dining or working. Passengers can order Dom Pérignon and Krug.


In premiere class, passengers will have oversize table-and-seat units that convert to beds and have laptop ports. The bar for premiere-class passengers will have a selection of single-malt whiskeys. Even economy class has something new — an ergonomic seat with a 130-degree recline and a foot rest.


All three classes will have a new entertainment system developed for Jet Airways by Panasonic. It has 200 hours of programming, 75 movies — Hollywood and Bollywood — and equipment that allows passengers to create their own play lists from thousands of music selections.


Passengers will depart from Newark at 8:25 p.m. and will arrive in Mumbai at 11:30 p.m. some 18 hours later, with a two-hour layover in Brussels, where passengers must disembark.


Depending on how far in advance you book, a round-trip first-class ticket starts at $10,085, a premiere at $6,150 and economy $850. Information: www.jetairways.com.





:| :| Much too expensive......unless paid for by a client who needed me to be less jet-lagged upon arrival. ;)





<:o) <:o) Happy July 4th!


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

[sweetlady]

(f) (f) (f)



1. http://www.movingimage.us/site/online/




2. http://www.americanhistory.si.edu/




3. http://www.hfmgv.org/explore/default.asp




4. http://www.thetech.org/




(f)




Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

[sweetlady]

:s



June 30, 2007

Arts, Briefly

Streisand Honored

By PETER EDIDIN

Barbra Streisand received France's highest civilian honor two days after performing her first concert in the country, BBC News reported yesterday. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, with Ms. Streisand, presented her with the Legion of Honor at the Élysée Palace in Paris. "You are the America that we love," Mr. Sarkozy said. Guests at the ceremony included the veteran singer Charles Aznavour and the actor Alain Delon. Ms. Streisand, 65, was accompanied by her husband, James Brolin, and her son, Jason Gould. She sang at Bercy Stadium in Paris on Tuesday before 10,000 fans, including Mr. Sarkozy's wife, Cecilia. Recent honorary recipients of the Legion of Honor include Clint Eastwood and the Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan.



(f) (f)






Carpe Diem,

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

[sweetlady]

(f) (f) (f)



July 1, 2007

Women’s Stories, Including Her Own

By JOHN ANDERSON


LIFE, the director Jennifer Fox says, is like a layer cake: nonlinear, potentially messy and occasionally gravity-defying. And so, therefore, is her latest film.


“Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman,” a documentary made for television in six one-hour segments, will open as a two-part film starting Wednesday at Film Forum in New York. The documentary is a delicate construction asking a delicate question: Is there anything in common between Ms. Fox, a liberal, middle-class Manhattanite, and, say, a prostitute in Cambodia?


“Flying” contends that there is.


Ms. Fox has long appeared allergic to the constraints of the 90-minute film — see “An American Love Story” of 1999, which was five hours long — and she also seems intent on reflecting something altogether outside movies. Or even nonfiction. Balzac, perhaps. Or George Eliot. With perhaps a little dash of “Days of Our Lives.”


“I could really see this being a book,” Ms. Fox, 47, said of her latest documentary, which is scheduled for several European television outlets late this summer. “Flying,” made over five years, is part personal memoir, feminist manifesto and diagnosis of the state of Global Woman. It is also an eclectic mix of film languages, including vérité, self-shooting, diaries, narration and what Ms. Fox calls “passing the camera,” in which her subjects shoot one another as well as her.


This highly personal film, produced by Ms. Fox and Claus Ladegaard, is not entirely autobiographical, though it was her life that ignited it. In 2002 this single, peripatetic New Yorker was deeply conflicted about marriage, babies and the affairs she was having with a married South African and a Swiss cinematographer. She decided to take her confusion on the road and began interviewing women around the world about the experiences of being female, wherever they happened to be.


Her subjects include Cambodian women forced into the sex trade, social activists in Russia and Pakistan, filmmaking friends in Berlin and London, and her own family members. While the content is unambiguously female, Ms. Fox believes that the form is as well.


“Honestly, I can’t explore what I want to explore in 90 minutes,” she said over coffee near her TriBeCa loft. “And the older I get, the more the feature form seems almost male — very conclusive, very ‘here it is,’ all summed up. The serial is more like life, with multiple stories, multiple conclusions. It’s a fabric, or a layer cake.” And, she said, the serial is more female.


For Ms. Fox’s subjects, the experience of working with her was overwhelming and transformative.

“Jennifer’s constant probing was exhausting, and when she left, I was very happy to see her go,” said Theresa Meyer, a South African who participated in the film. Once Ms. Fox was gone, though, Ms. Meyer was haunted, she said.


“We had talked about very deep, dark issues,” said Ms. Meyer, a filmmaker who was abused by a girlfriend’s father at age 11. “The issue of my sexual abuse was hard for me to talk about. But it was also quite liberating to do it so matter-of-factly, with the camera. It opened up a lot of wounds, and after she left it was with me constantly. The experience made me examine myself more closely, made me look more at the consequences — how it affected me and particularly how it affected my relationships.”


Men dominate much of the talk in “Flying,” whether the topic is new love, old love, child support or paternal influence. For her part Ms. Fox makes it clear throughout the film that as a girl she wanted a life like her father’s; he was a pilot, among other things, a man with a career and a life outside the home. Her mother, on the other hand, was busy rearing five children.


As she recreates it Ms. Fox’s childhood home echoed with parental argument.


After seeing the film, her father, Dick Fox, said: “I have to say that when I heard some of the words she used to describe what went on in our house, I said, ‘Jeez, that’s pretty rough.’ But I also understand that it’s her film, and her view.


“Words get heated,” he said, reflecting on family life. “There are differences people have about how to raise their children. But it makes you realize how things would have appeared to an 8- or 9-year-old child. I’m not uptight about it, and I’m fascinated by what Jennifer recalls.”


Her mother, Gerry Fox, said, “I was taken with the way she connects what happened in our family to women around the world.”


The elder Foxes have been married 54 years. Their daughter’s romantic life, as she freely admits throughout the documentary, has been more casual and well-populated. The biggest decision she makes in the film — outside of a decision to undergo in vitro fertilization — is whether to pursue the romance with the unnamed South African or one with Patrick Lindenmaier, the Swiss cinematographer with such an open and accepting attitude toward Ms. Fox’s erotic life that the choice seems obvious. That it’s not illuminates the jagged edges of human desire.


Mr. Lindenmaier was, and still is, conflicted about his participation in the film. “I always knew it could wind up on screen,” he said, “although I guess I was little surprised the relationship was such a prominent part of the film.”


Does it make him nervous? “It will make me more nervous,” he said, “when it plays in Switzerland.”


But even the people most intimately involved with “Flying” are surprised by Ms. Fox’s candor. “We shared intimacies in a very typically girl-talk way,” said Caroline Goldie, a Berlin filmmaker whose bout with cancer became a piece of the “Flying” fabric, “although I must be honest, I was a bit more guarded than Jen about what I was prepared to say on camera.”


For the purpose-driven filmmaker, message obliterates self-consciousness. “I’m not interested in George Bush,” Ms. Fox said. “I’m not interested in right or wrong, or film that says, ‘She’s like this because of that.’ I wanted a film that said, ‘She’s like this because her father is like this, because her mother is like this, because she went to a Quaker school, because she lived in a certain period of time in the history of women.’ ”


Should “Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman” be followed by a question mark?


“Absolutely,” Ms. Fox said with a smile. “Or we could call it ‘Confessions of an Imprisoned Woman Trying to be Free.’ ”



(f) (f)






Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

[sweetlady]

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



May 14, 2007


Walking and work therapy could save us from becoming reliant on chemicals


David Rose


Alternative therapies for depression /no spamming of other sites/ such as country walks and care farms, where patients are prescribed agricultural work /no spamming of other sites/ are being ignored as Britain becomes ever more reliant on chemical treatments, campaigners say.


Findings from two studies released today suggest that “ecotherapy” /no spamming of other sites/ which includes such simple exercises as outdoor walks /no spamming of other sites/ can improve a person’s poor mental health dramatically. The studies have prompted calls for the approach to become a recognised frontline treatment.


Ecotherapy: The Green Agenda for Mental Health, in which the studies are published, is the first report to look at how “green” exercise affects those suffering from depression.


Researchers from the University of Essex compared the benefits of a 30-minute walk in a country park with a walk in an indoor shopping centre on 20 people affected by depression.


After the country walk, 71 per cent said that they felt less depressed and tense while 90 per cent reported increased self-esteem. After the walk in the shopping centre only 45 per cent felt less depressed and 22 per cent actually felt more depressed. About 50 per cent felt more tense and 44 per cent said that their self-esteem had dropped.


The researchers conducted another study in which they asked 108 people with various mental health problems about their experiences of ecotherapy. Ninety-four per cent said that green activities had benefited their mental health and lifted depression and 90 per cent said that the combination of nature and exercise had the greatest effect.


The mental health charity Mind described ecotherapy as “getting outdoors and getting active in a green environment as a way of boosting mental wellbeing”.


The charity said that if it was prescribed as part of main-stream practice, ecotherapy could potentially help millions of people. It would also be vastly cheaper than antidepressant drugs.


Mind said that Britain lagged behind the rest of Europe in prescribing agricultural work to treat mental distress. The Netherlands had 600 care farms operating as a fully integrated part of the health service, while Britain had only 43, the charity said, and none was dedicated to mental health.


Paul Farmer, Mind’s chief executive, said: “It is a credible, clinically valid treatment option and needs to be prescribed by GPs, especially when for many people access to treatments other than antidepressants is extremely limited.


“We’re not saying that ecotherapy can replace drugs but that the debate needs to be broadened.”


The ecotherapy report will be published today at the start of Mind week, which is dedicated to raising awareness about mental health. This morning Mind will hold a mass kiteflying event in Primrose Hill, North London.



On prescription

—SSRIs include citalopram, escitalopram, fluoxetine (Prozac), fluvoxamine, paroxetine (Seroxat) and sertraline (Lustral). They block the uptake of the mood chemical serotonic into the cell that releases it, prolonging its action


—SNRIs include venlafaxine and duloxetine. They slow the reuptake of serotonin and noradrenaline


—Tricyclics can affect heart and circulatory system


—Monoamine oxidase inhibitors have more serious side-effects, and are prescribed when SSRis and tricyclics have failed


—SSRIs are generally better tolerated than older antidepressants. Anxiolytics may be used alongside antidepressants to help to treat severe agitation




http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article1785029.ece





(y) (y) Some of knew this all along, didn''t we? ;)






Carpe Diem,

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

[sweetlady]

:o :o :o


:)



http://www.innerself.com/nyp/naturalhawaii/hiking/kauai_hiking.htm




Sunday, June 24, 2007

Worthy Walks

Hawaii's Kauai has tough trails but forests that speak to the hiker who waits and listens

By Thomas Curwen

LOS ANGELES TIMES


KOKEE STATE PARK, Hawaii - Of course we thought about turning back, but we knew we couldn’t. Never mind that the trail had gone from bad to worse and the afternoon was getting on. We were stubborn - and hopeful.


“What’s it like ahead?” we asked hikers returning to the trail head.


No one could give us the complete picture. Most had given up, discouraged by the slippery clay and the ankle-deep mud that had been with us from the start.


So we kept on, burning our way up the eroded ridgeline, lifting ourselves through a maze of exposed roots, limbo-dancing beneath fallen trees and snaking up sharply etched gullies.


Yet as much as our feet hurt and our legs ached, Pihea Overlook - at 4,284 feet, the highest peak overlooking Kauai’s Na Pali Coast - lured us on.


Let others settle for more scripted entertainments - running a zip line, cruising the coast, sipping mai tais at some seaside resort. My wife, Margie, and I wanted to escape the tourist-industrial complex and get some red dirt in the tread of our shoes, to find a place where the ancient goddess of fire, Pele, was more than a joke for mainlanders - and to hear what the mountains had to say.


By the time we reached the summit, a denuded crown no larger than a pitcher’s mound, we were spent. To the north lay the expansive Kalalau Valley, a complex watershed of steep fluted ridges, red cliffs, waterfalls and jungle extending 4,000 feet below us and running less than a mile and a half away to the blue Pacific. To the south stretched the Alakai wilderness, the source of Kauai’s seven rivers, a forested plateau with deep, eroded and unseen gorges, punctuated by the summits of Kawaikini and Waialeale hidden in their eternal rainstorms.


We had two more hours of daylight. We needed to start back, but first we paused and listened: In the midst of it all - the gusting wind, the muted surf - we heard a deepening silence.


It sounds crazy - the idea that these mountains might have something to say.


But as we looked out from Pihea and watched the wisps of ragged clouds spiral in the valley below, rise up toward the sun, reveal rainbows inside their misty cores, turn silver and spectral and cyclone over the ridge into the interior, we found ourselves suddenly listening more carefully.


Two days earlier, we had left the genteel comforts of Waimea for five days in the mountains, intrigued by the prospect of exploring a corner of the state that still held glimpses of a time 1,500 years ago, before man stepped upon these shores.


The winding two-lane road cut through patches of bamboo, stands of eucalyptus and a scattering of native koa trees. Kokee State Park sits at the top of Waimea Canyon and extends north on a plateau to a ridgeline above the Na Pali Coast.


At 4,000 feet, Kokee is something of an anomaly for the Garden Isle. Here, temperatures in the winter can drop into the 40s, cabins rent for a song, trails go begging for hikers, and its vistas reach out beyond the horizon.


We had made our reservations at the Lodge at Kokee, a collection of housekeeping cabins near the lovely Kanaloahuluhulu Meadow in the center of the park. We had been told that the cabins were rustic, but that didn’t explain the broken window, a crudely patched hole in the floor, peeling paint and a cracked toilet lid.


It was more than we could take, even at $75 a night. We canceled our reservations and thought about cutting our trip short.


We went over to the Kokee Natural History Museum. I had spoken with Marsha Erickson, the director, the week before, and she had offered us a sweet little cottage, just up from the meadow. Closed to the public, it usually is bustling with researchers and volunteers, but this week it was vacant.


Erickson was the one who said that the mountains had voices. That night, rainfall woke me from a sound sleep, and as I pulled the blankets around me, I started to get a sense of what they might be trying to say.


“Here, try this.” David Kuhn handed me the set of headphones. He pointed the microphone, surrounded by a parabolic reflector the size of a trash-can lid, into the forest, and the symphony began.


Leaves in the wind were violins; creaking branches, horns; a bird in close flight, drums. This is what it’s like to be a dog, I thought, and then I tilted my head: a shama, a white-rumped shama, singing in the distance. And then, an apapane, as clear as a bell, its descending inflected trill followed by what sounded like a little burp.


Kuhn smiled. “A very self-satisfied bird,” he said.


We had hiked with Kuhn just beyond the eastern boundary of the park, above the Kawaikoi River, one of the many streams that cuts down into Waimea Canyon. It was an easy trail with a shoulder-wide boardwalk, wooden planks covered with steel mesh for traction.


When we arrived in the middle of the forest, we sat down on the boardwalk, legs dangling off the side, and waited.


“Humans are here on the planet to appreciate nature,” Kuhn said. “No other being has the means, intellectually or physiologically, to see and discern the meaning of nature around us. Native Hawaiians knew this; this is one reason so many of their names for places are animistic.”


A small yellow bird with a black mask hopped through the ohia branches in front of us. It was an amakihi.


“A gift,” Kuhn whispered.


We had met Aunty Aletha, as she is known, at the West Kauai Visitor Center. She has lived on the west side of the island for most of her 77 years.


“It is hard to say how to be in the forest,” she had said. “You have to let go of all your rubbish.... You go up to the mountains with an empty mind.”


On our last day at Kokee, we wanted to hike to Kilohana. At 4,022 feet, this vista point peers down into the Wainiha River Valley and looks out toward Hanalei Bay and Princeville.


Kilohana is a small wooden platform set on an edge of Wainiha Pali. The skies had stayed clear, and seven miles away, Hanalei Bay was a white-and-blue crescent. Past the clutter of Princeville, we saw the Kilauea Point lighthouse.


On the trail back, we were bone-tired but sustained. The green ferns seemed to fluoresce in the understory. The plants shimmered like chrome.


I was overcome by a sense of fragility, the feeling that our time here - in Kokee, on the planet - is limited and lucky.


This is what the mountains said to me.



GETTING THERE: From Los Angeles International Airport, nonstop service to Lihue is available on United and American. Connecting service (change of plane) is offered on Hawaiian and Aloha in Honolulu. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $632.


ABOUT WAIMEA: As the gateway to Polihale State Beach, Waimea Canyon and Kokee State Park, Waimea gives travelers plenty of reasons to pause. The main strip showcases not only the town’s Art Deco movie theater and its eclectic store fronts but also a couple of nice places to eat.


WHERE TO EAT: Ishihara Market, 9894 Kaumualii Highway, Waimea, HI 96796; (808) 338-1751, has a deli counter that’s a delight. Prices from $7. Waimea Brewing Co., 9400 Kaumualii Highway, Waimea, HI 96796; (808) 338-9733, www.waimeabrewing.com , on the grounds of Waimea Plantation Cottages. Beer samplers never tasted better. Main dishes $9 to $30.


TO LEARN MORE: Kokee Natural History Museum, P.O. Box 100 Kekaha, HI 96752; (808) 335-9975, www.kokee.org. Kauai Visitors Bureau, (800) 262-1400, www.kauaidiscovery.com or www.kauai-hawaii.com .


WHERE TO STAY: You can go high-end and plan a day trip out of Poipu. Or you can go midrange, stay in Waimea and be a mere half an hour from the park. Or you can go rustic. Here are three options.

• Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort
1571 Poipu Road, Koloa, HI
(808) 742-1234
www.kauai.hyatt.com/hyatt/hotels/index.jsp

We started our trip at this 600-room resort, which gives its guests little reason to step outside the compound. The gardens are beautiful, but our room didn’t measure up; it had a jammed screen door and an overflowing toilet. But the staff was unfailingly kind and courteous. Doubles from $441.


• Waimea Plantation Cottages
9400 Kaumualii Highway, Waimea, HI
(800) 992-4632
www.waimea-plantation.com

The one- to four-bedroom Waimea Plantation Cottages have lovely sash-hung windows, wooden floors, rattan furniture and lanais. Banyan trees form canopies larger than most city blocks over the property’s wide stretches of open lawn. Cottages from $175.


• Lodge at Kokee
3600 Kokee Road, Kokee, HI
(808) 335-6061


We found the rustic experience at the Lodge at Kokee less than wonderful. But the Kikiaola Land Co., the managers, said a handyman was working to repair the cabins. We also checked out the Lehua cabin, the newest, largest and most popular of the 12. If we had to do it again, we would insist on staying there. Cabins about $75.


HIKING: Kokee has 45 miles of trails that can take hikers deep into the park’s rain forests or take them out to the precipitous ridgelines above Waimea Canyon and the Na Pali Coast. All are extremely gratifying and can be tailored for hikers of all levels of conditioning.


• From Pihea Peak to Alakai Swamp and onto Kilohana Lookout
Level: Moderate
Distance: Six miles round-trip


Just before the turnoff to Pihea Peak, the trail drops into the Alakai wilderness. The birding is superb, and an elevated boardwalk keeps you out of the mud.


• From Puu o Kila Lookout to Pihea Peak
Level: Moderate to difficult
Distance: Two miles round-trip


This ridgeline trek provides stunning views of the Kalalau Valley to the north and the Alakai wilderness to the south.


GUIDED TREKS: Birders can contact David Kuhn for information about birding on Kauai at www.soundshawaiian.com. Kauai Nature Tours offers varied guided hikes; (888) 233-8365, www.kauainaturetours.com. The Kokee Natural History Museum offers weekend guided hikes in summer.




http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ/MGArticle/WSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1173351750208




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




<:o) <:o) Happy July 4th!! <:o) <:o)


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

[sweetlady]

:s :s :s



Business travel is becoming increasingly bare-bones as companies continue to clamp down on spending.



The Downgrading Of Business Travel

By DARREN EVERSON and ANJALI ATHAVALEY

July 3, 2007; Page D1

WSJ

For many professionals, business travel used to come with certain perks -- a posh hotel, a lavish meal, minibar raids and maybe a pay-per-view movie before bed. But, with hotel rates skyrocketing and companies clamping down on spending, business travel is becoming increasingly bare-bones, even a tinge humiliating. These days, it can sometimes resemble college dorm living, involving roommates, cooking your own meals and crashing on a friend's couch.


When Nathan Ayer, a project manager at Linckia LLC, a venture-development firm based in Burlington, Vt., travels to New York for business, he skips a hotel altogether and stays with his girlfriend's family in East Islip, Long Island, making the one-and-a-half-hour commute into Manhattan by train. He does this with the encouragement of his boss, company president Scott Hardy, who often bunks at a friend's apartment in Greenwich Village (where he usually sleeps on a sofa) when he travels to Manhattan for work. "You've got to walk the walk," he says.


While companies long have been slashing costs on air travel, forcing employees to fly coach and take cheaper connecting flights, comfortable hotel stays, until recently, were still usually a given. Now, corporate cost-cutting efforts include everything from pushing employees to share hotel rooms to installing software that guilts travelers into choosing cheaper digs.


The Virginia Community College System says it pays for two nights of lodging for employees who double up in rooms when attending professional-development conferences; those who choose to go solo must pay for one of the nights themselves. At Bayer AG, the German pharmaceutical company, a booking tool encourages employees to choose the least expensive hotel by allowing the employer to rank the options, says Paul Lang, Bayer's manager of travel services. If employees don't pick the most affordable choice, they have to choose a reason explaining why from a drop-down box. Honeywell International Inc. has switched to more limited-service hotels such as Courtyard by Marriott and Holiday Inn from full-service Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt hotels in cities employees travel to most often.


Indeed, more companies are banning stays in pricey boutique hotels. This year, more than 76% of employers say they are booking fewer luxury hotels in favor of midclass properties, according to the National Business Travel Association survey of 1,800 corporate travel managers.


This is happening as travel costs rise -- particularly hotel rates, which are up 19.2% in the U.S. since the end of 2004. Spurred by strong demand, average daily rates grew 7.2% last year and are projected to rise another 6% this year, according to Smith Travel Research, making this the fourth straight year of significant growth. In some cities, rates are up even more. Denver rates are up 11.4% this year versus last year, according to Smith Travel, while New York rates are up 10.6%. Midweek rates at the W New York Times Square, for example, start at $399 the last week of July, before taxes.


But the budget moves can instill a bit of hotel shame in some business travelers. Indeed, some flee their low-cost digs first thing in the morning, heading to plusher -- and more conveniently located -- hotels for meals and business meetings. On a trip to Baltimore in October, Heman Bhojwani, managing partner of Earthly Gourmet Distribution LLC, an organic food distributor in Portland, Ore., stayed at an airport hotel (the Four Points by Sheraton BWI Airport, which starts at $190 in late July). But, he scheduled meetings with colleagues at the Hyatt Regency Baltimore (which starts at $359 a night). Breakfast at the Hyatt, which offers crab-cake benedict and smoked salmon, was a clear step up from the Four Points' fare, Mr. Bhojwani says. "It wasn't just scrambled eggs and bacon," he says.


Companies also are trying to manage the cost of traveling abroad, where hotel rates are sometimes even frothier than they are here. London's rates are up 30.3% this year compared with last year in U.S. dollars. Mumbai, India, has seen a 48.8% rise over that same period and Singapore's has climbed 32.9%. Indeed, rates for the entire Asia/Pacific region, according to Smith Travel, are up 13.1%. Trilogy Inc., a technology firm in Austin, Texas, rents an apartment in Bangalore, India, where two or three employees make business trips each month. The company began renting the apartment in 2004 when hotel rates in the city started escalating, says travel manager Sue Nelson.


Other companies are turning to teleconferencing to cut travel costs. GMAC Mortgage, a subsidiary of GMAC Financial Services, has increased its use of teleconferencing to cut down on employee business trips. The company now uses teleconferencing and Web conferencing for 75% of its training. Previously, the company would fly its employees and trainers to one location to do the training face to face, says Terri Lewis, vice president of training for consumer services at GMAC Mortgage.


Perhaps most annoying for employees are new policies requiring travelers to share rooms on some trips. Matt Simmons of London had to bunk with a colleague during a corporate conference in Orlando late last year. Although he had no complaint with his roommate -- they got along okay, and they mostly came and went at different times -- the lack of privacy irked him. "When you get back to your room, you want to crash out, walk around in your shorts, watch the wonders of 150 channels of American TV and not be polite to somebody you don't know," says Mr. Simmons, who worked for a U.S.-based health-care technology firm.


Some companies even want their employees to cook. When Ryan McGovern had to go to Milwaukee for a three-month trip late last year, he booked a room at a Residence Inn and thought he'd gotten a good deal, since the length of his stay meant there would be no occupancy tax. But his employer, AccSys Technology Inc., an ion-linear-accelerator company in Pleasanton, Calif., had a further money-saving idea: Since his hotel room had a kitchen, he could make his own meals -- and thus would receive only two-thirds the normal per diem. "I was like, 'Thanks for nothing,' " he says.


Mr. McGovern left the company in April, saying that the firm's penny-pinching -- when other AccSys employees passed through town, Mr. McGovern says he had to bunk up -- was one factor that led to his departure. AccSys Chief Operating Officer Gerard Goldner says he can't comment on the posture of previous management; he became operating chief on June 1, well after Mr. McGovern's trip occurred.


Travelers used to boutique hotels -- and their 400-thread-count sheets -- can have a tough time adjusting to budget-hotel living. When she travels for work, Jennifer Jones, a marketing and communications manager in Chicago, usually stays at luxury boutique hotels such as Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group LLC's Alexis Hotel in Seattle, where rooms are $389 a night. But for a recent conference, her employer put her up at the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers, since it was more cost-effective for a group of employees. Her room, she says, "was coffin-sized." There were no drawers to store her clothes, and the décor seemed outdated. "I'm used to having a big fluffy bed, not the same bed that's been there since 1974," she says. Some business travelers, however, take pride in their low-cost hotels. Ellen Pishenin, a regional sales manager in Weston, Mass., for Liberty Mutual Group, often stays at the Holiday Inn Express Midtown-Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, where there's no room service and rates run as low as $209. Ms. Pishenin used to stay at the boutique Muse Hotel near Times Square but switched because of the Holiday Inn's rates. "The corporate culture has changed to the degree that there's acknowledgment and respect for people who are expense-conscious."


That particular Holiday Inn Express, which opened a year and a-half ago, has a client list that also includes Marsh & McLennan Cos. "People are looking for a clean room, strong shower and a quick checkout," says Robbie Wilson, New York City manager for Magna Hospitality Group LC, which owns the hotel.


Employees -- even prospective employees -- may just have to get used to company cost cutting. Richard Heath of Bethesda, Md., who works for a consulting company (whose name he didn't want revealed), says that when his firm interviewed him in January, it said it would reimburse no more than $500 of the cost of the flight. But he couldn't find a nonstop flight for under $500, he says, because he had just three days to book the trip. So he woke up at 4 a.m. and flew from Columbus, Ohio, through Chicago to Washington for his noon interview, and wound up having to call the company to push back the appointment two hours because of flight delays. "That's the last thing you need before an interview," he says.




:| :| The first time that a client insists that I have to share a hotel room, is the last time I work for that client........;) Geez, what some companies force their employees to do for business travel borders on abusive, IMHO. :s




(o) <yawn>



(S) (S) Pleasant dreams.






Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

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

[sweetlady]

:o :o :o


A spree of violent incidents and a soaring murder rate could have unsettling repercussions for the tourism-dependent economy in the Orlando, Fla., area.





Will Orlando's Crime Surge Take Away Some Disney Magic? Increase in Violence May Dissuade Tourists From Visiting, Spending

By RYAN CHITTUM

June 27, 2007; Page B6

WSJ

Could the land of the Magic Kingdom and one of the top tourist destinations in the U.S. be getting a reputation for crime?


In recent months, a spree of violent incidents has shaken Orlando, Fla. Two weeks ago, two Connecticut tourists said they were kidnapped from a Downtown Disney parking lot, robbed and beaten. (The couple declined to press charges.) Several days before that, three bandits shot two sheriff's deputies outside a police convention at the Caribe Royal Resort. In May, a German tourist was raped and robbed in her room in the Howard Johnson on International Drive, the main tourist drag that is seemingly so safe that families often let kids roam unsupervised.


These alleged crimes could have unsettling repercussions for the tourism-dependent economy of Orlando, where nearly 20% of all jobs are related to the 50 million visitors a year who come to the area. Murders soared 123% last year to a high of 49 from 2005. While the number of murders is much lower than in most big cities, the per-capita number is high because Orlando has 221,000 residents.


A spokeswoman for Walt Disney Co. declined to comment, as did the general managers of the Caribe Royale Resort and the Howard Johnson.

Orlando was recently named one of the top-25 most-dangerous cities in the country by Morgan Quitno Press, a Lawrence, Kan., research and publishing firm that has been compiling the list from Federal Bureau of Investigation crime data for 13 years. The list ranks cities by measuring their crime rates in six categories, including murder, rape and robbery, against the national average. St. Louis was No. 1 and Orlando was No. 25.

Orange County has the highest per-capita crime rate of any county in the state, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.


"This needs to be kept in perspective," said Danielle Courtenay, spokeswoman for the Orlando/Orange County Convention & Visitors Bureau. "We have 49 million visitors who come here, and the vast majority who come here have wonderful experiences."


Much of the crime that put Orlando on the Morgan Quitno list is concentrated in a few poor neighborhoods in city limits, but the perception that crime is spreading could depress tourism in the region. Many tourists don't know that most of the tourist destinations such as Disney World are located outside the city.


"The perception is that Orlando is one area and everyone is kind of mushed together," said Harris Rosen, president and chief operating officer of Rosen Hotels & Resorts, the largest independent hotel owner in Orlando. "The number of criminal events against tourists is minuscule. However, the crime in Orlando is going up."


In a recent Chamber of Commerce study, the top worry among Orlando citizens was violent crime. "Five or 10 years ago, you wouldn't see it in the top 10," said Jim Kitchens, president of Kitchens Group, an Orlando public-opinion research firm that has done surveys and focus groups on the subject.


Now, the Justice Department is sending Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and FBI special task forces into Orlando after requests from the local FBI office and the acting U.S. attorney. "I don't think there's any doubt that one of the concerns is that a high crime, especially violent-crime, rate will have a negative impact on tourism and adversely impact the economy," said acting U.S. Attorney Jim Klindt of the Middle District of Florida. In addition, the local police department is launching a program that will put more desk officers out on patrol.


All this comes at a time when construction of hotels, time shares and condo hotels is soaring in the area. Demand is driven in large part by the trend toward so-called vacation ownership, where consumers either own their hotel rooms or own the right to use them for a specified time. Orlando is also dependent on business travelers. It is the second-biggest convention market, behind Las Vegas, by number of visitors.


So far, there is little evidence that tourism has suffered because of the crime, and no tourist has been killed. Ms. Courtenay of the Orlando/Orange County Convention & Visitors Bureau, said visits were up this spring and hoteliers expect a strong summer.


Expectations could change with a single high-profile crime or a series of crimes against tourists, says Abe Pizam, dean of the Rosen School of Hospitality Management at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.


Tourism got hit severely when Orlando and Miami experienced a rash of crimes against visitors in the early 1990s. Visits from foreign tourists tumbled 25% from 1992 to 1994 and have never fully recovered, according to data from the Orlando/Orange County Convention & Visitors Bureau.


What is driving the sudden surge in murders and violent crimes isn't yet known. Jay Corzine, who runs UCF's sociology department and studies crime in the area, says two of last year's murders were gang-related, but the Parramore neighborhood and others seeing the spike have long had drug problems. "There's been a change in what we would call street culture," he says. "Where it exists in the Orlando area, it has become more violent and, in some cases, more lethal."


It has also gotten younger. About two-thirds of murder suspects are under 25, Mr. Corzine says, and many have lengthy criminal records and have been in and out of jail.


Sgt. Barbara Jones, a spokeswoman for the Orlando Police Department, says most of the crimes affecting tourists are burglaries. "People come here, the weather's beautiful, they have a great time going to Disney, and then they go to their room and leave the door open," she says. "It's all about being in that holiday vacation mode."







:s Florida and Texas (top two among several extremely humid states, IMHO) are places I am relectant to visit again for any reason. After reading this article, I believe that I will skip a conference in this city. :| It is WAY too crowded with families anyway. Give me WIDE open skies anytime, preferably those with very low humidity. ;)





<:o) <:o) Happy July 4th! <:o) <:o)

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

[sweetlady]

(f) (f) (f)



Public green spaces are proliferating in U.S. cities on a scale not seen the 19th century. However, prime urban real estate is now much more scarce, and it's challenging to satisfy everyone's notion of what a park should be.


Hudson River Park, New York; 550 acres; Opened 2003 Construction, partly on top of old piers, is continuing along Manhattan's West Side. It's the largest open-space development in New York since Central Park, with green spaces, trails for bikers and Rollerbladers, and free wireless Internet.

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/WK-AJ562_jp1_PA_20070628233835.jpg




Gold Medal Park, Minneapolis; 7.5 acres; Opened 2007 Built on a set of old parking lots, site aims to foster quiet activities like picnics and strolls rather than sports. It was financed by a $5 million donation from former United Health Care chief executive William McGuire.

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/WK-AJ564A_jp3_P_20070628233718.jpg




BeltLine, Atlanta; Over 1,200 acres; Opening unknown The initiative, which awaits funding, would double Atlanta's park acreage. It calls for converting this former quarry into the city's largest park.

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/WK-AJ567_jp6_PA_20070628233455.jpg




Millennium Park, Chicago; 24.5 acres; Opened 2004 Some have criticized the park for naming prominent areas -- including the Frank Gehry-designed BP Bridge, pictured here -- after corporate sponsors.

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/WK-AJ563_jp2_PA_20070628233754.jpg




Great Park of Orange County, Orange County, Calif.; 1,347 acres; Opening 2009 (projected) Plans for the $1.1 billion project, on a former military base, include a 2.5-mile man-made canyon and a massive wildlife corridor. Most visitors will need to drive there, since it's far from residential neighborhoods.

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/WK-AJ565_jp4_PA_20070628233348.jpg




Discovery Green, Houston; 12 acres; Opening 2008 The park -- located between the city's two recently built sports venues, the Toyota Center and Minute Maid Field -- is expected to cost $93 million.

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/WK-AJ566_jp5_PA_20070628233639.jpg




The Focus-Grouped Park

Cities are building new parks at a rate not seen for 100 years. Jon Weinbach on the increasingly heated debate about what to put in them.

By JON WEINBACH

June 29, 2007; Page W1

WSJ

There's a new status symbol for American cities and it's not a soaring office tower or retro stadium. To many civic leaders, nothing says progressiveness and prosperity like an elaborate urban park.


On a scale not seen since the "City Beautiful" movement of the late 19th century, public green spaces are proliferating. In Irvine, Calif., work has begun on a $1.1 billion recreational area that will be 60% larger than New York's Central Park. Private donors in Houston financed the bulk of a $93 million downtown greensward, while the mayor of Louisville, Ky., wants to ring the city's borders with 100 miles of trails. In all, 29 of the nation's biggest cities have added nearly 14,000 acres of new parkland in two years -- the equivalent of about 11,000 football fields.


But even grass and trees can be complicated. Citizens and planners across the country are getting tied up in a larger debate about what a park should be -- one that often pits people who believe in peace and quiet and the soulful contemplation of nature against those who prefer zip lines, Frisbee golf and hang-gliding.


In the Twin Cities, some residents don't agree with the decision to build a public sports field with artificial turf. Park builders in Dallas are trying to find room in one new project for a backgammon area. And an effort to rehabilitate Manhattan's Washington Square Park has been met by three lawsuits so far -- including an attempt by preservationists to keep the city from moving the central fountain about 15 feet to the east. "You'd think we were proposing to build a nuclear waste dump," says Adrian Benepe, the city's commissioner of parks and recreation.


At a public meeting earlier this month in Louisville, about 150 people came to weigh in on Floyd's Fork Greenway, a 27-mile stretch of parks, bike paths and canoe launches to be built along a scenic creek. After the presentation, residents furiously scribbled suggestions on project maps that hung around the room. Among them: "A nature trail can't run along a highway!"; "Leave an area large enough for a hot air balloon launch"; and from one particularly agitated person, "Many people were not notified of this meeting." Ralph Stanton, a goateed tile contractor in his mid-50s, was concerned that the park plans didn't include a trail wide enough to accommodate all three of his horses. "Kentucky is the home of the Derby, but we've got to go to Indiana to ride," said Mr. Stanton, clutching his cowboy hat. "They ought to get the horse people more involved."


Symbols of Democracy

For decades, local and federal governments had cut back on park budgets as funding needs grew for education, health care and safety. That marked a change from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when urban parks were held up as symbols of democracy, public health and progressive social planning -- and received generous government support. There was another surge of park building during the "Great Society" era of President Lyndon Johnson, but as more city residents fled for the suburbs, many urban parks were not properly maintained -- and green spaces deteriorated or disappeared.


Federal money is still hard to come by. The Land and Water Conservation Fund, a program that provides grants for state and national parks, will receive about $28 million this fiscal year, down nearly 80% from 2002. Another initiative, the Urban Park and Recreation Recovery Program, has not been funded in five years.


A number of factors are spurring the current parks boom, from research about the health benefits of green space to interest from private donors and corporate sponsors. Developers who once fought with conservationists are now pushing the idea, after discovering that successful parks -- such as Manhattan's Bryant Park and Atlanta's Piedmont Park -- can dramatically increase property values.


City leaders are also using parks as a marketing tool. In an effort to draw young professionals and graying suburbanites, a number of cities including Denver, Philadelphia and San Diego have gentrified their downtowns recently. But politicians are finding that most of the new residents grew up with access to running trails, sports fields and the like -- and expect to have the same access in the city.


The largest increases in park space over the last two years took place in sprawling municipalities like Houston and Jacksonville, Fla., but even densely packed older cities such as Cleveland (with 187 new acres) and Philadelphia (22 acres) are finding ways to create new open space, often on former military bases or industrial sites. Seattle's nine-acre Olympic Sculpture Park, opened earlier this year, was built on a former oil-transfer site. Other cities have focused on building parks on reclaimed brownfields -- industrial or commercial sites tainted by pollution -- especially near valuable waterfront or downtown real estate. Pittsburgh, the long-time hub of the U.S. steel industry, redeveloped a 283-acre slag dump along the Monongahela River a few years ago, converting it into a residential complex and 200 acres of green space.


New York is in the midst of "the biggest period of park construction and redevelopment since the 1930s," says Mr. Benepe, the parks commissioner. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who sat on the boards of two local park foundations before taking office, recently increased the parks department's operating annual budget to about $355 million -- double the total in 2000. The city's most ambitious projects are building a park on top of an abandoned elevated railway line in Manhattan and converting the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island to a 2,315-acre recreation area.


As cities increasingly rely on corporate donors, real-estate developers and private, not-for-profit entities for park funding, they're facing some criticism. When Chicago's Millennium Park, opened in 2004, named prominent areas after corporate sponsors such as SBC, Boeing and British Petroleum, some traditionalists cried foul. Several cities have recently devised guidelines for sponsorship and naming rights -- in Denver, a company has to contribute 50% of all capital costs to get its name or logo on a new park.


But in most cases, the arguments revolve around one issue: the purpose of a park. In Chico, Calif., work on the city's new master plan for Bidwell Park has been hamstrung by a fight between preservationists and disc golfers who have been using a remote part of the park to play the Frisbee-inspired sport. Environmental advocates say the golfers are damaging trees and compacting the soil. At a meeting earlier this month, two golfers said their course should not be treated any differently than bike or hiking trails.


Planners for downtown Houston's 12-acre, $93 million Discovery Green park, which is set to open next year, wanted to create a "critical mass of activities" to generate buzz in a long-forgotten area of town, says Philip Myrick, vice president of Project for Public Space, a New York nonprofit that helped conceive the park's programs. Throughout 2005, the group conducted about a dozen small meetings with different "stakeholders" -- ranging from Hispanic community leaders to downtown employees to elementary-school students -- and held workshops for anyone interested in contributing ideas. The Hispanic community wanted open space for events, while the students proposed adding a "zip line" ride, a pulley suspended from a cable wire that allows thrill seekers to fly through the air.


The final park plans included a dog area, a jogging trail, a puppet theater and a "birthday veranda" for parties -- but no zip line.


Bocce Ball and Dogs

"Just having a baseball diamond, a grove of trees and a couple soccer fields is really the old model," says landscape architect James Burnett, whose firm is designing a $80 million park in downtown Dallas that will cover a sunken eight-lane freeway. The current plans for the site, tentatively called Woodall Rodgers Park, include a bocce ball court, a backgammon area, spaces for leashed and unleashed dogs and a botanical garden. "The program list can get very long," he says. "The discussion is always heated."


In some ways, the skirmishes over space mirror previous controversies over park land. After Central Park opened in the 1800s, New York City commissioners were overwhelmed by public requests for boat rides and more activities, even though landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted imagined the park as "purely passive space," says Witold Rybczynski, a professor of urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania and author of a 1999 biography of Mr. Olmsted.


But now that prime urban real estate is much more scarce and expensive, "it's much more challenging to satisfy everyone's notion of what a park should be," he says. As a result, many of the new projects share a theme-park quality, with neatly organized areas catering to different groups. "You want to please as many people as possible, but we've become so different," he says.


Few parks today match the cost or scope of the Great Park of Orange County in Southern California, on the site of the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. The decision to build the park came after years of battles over the fate of the base, which closed eight years ago. In 1994, county voters narrowly approved a plan to convert the base into an airport, but opponents stalled the effort until 2002, when voters approved a measure overturning the airport plan in favor of a park.


The Navy handled the sale of the base, dividing it into four parcels. In 2005, Lennar Corp., the nation's second-largest home builder, bought all four lots for about $650 million. In order to build on the site, Lennar had to turn over a chunk of the land to the public for park development, contribute $200 million toward the creation of the park, and spend another $201 million on infrastructure. For its part, Lennar plans to create a sprawling, 3,400-unit residential development around the park, as well as a 750-acre "Lifelong Learning" area that's slated to include a college campus and senior housing.


The park won't begin to open until 2009, though its first attraction, a balloon ride that will take riders 500 feet in the air, is scheduled to debut on July 14. (The balloon will be orange, naturally.) Last March, the park's designers announced a projected cost of about $1.1 billion -- not including the funds needed to construct a planned set of museums or a botanical garden.


No to Advertising

To generate revenue, the park is exploring sponsorship, naming rights and sublease options, as well as charging fees for parking and certain events and activities, like evening softball games. However, earlier this month the park's board of directors voted not to put advertising on the new balloon ride, despite estimates that it could bring in as much as $250,000. (Visitors may be charged for parking though.)


Like most park projects, this one has youth sports organizations and enthusiasts of every stripe angling for prime turf. Last year, the board asked for suggestions how to develop the park's 165-acre sports area -- and got an avalanche of proposals. The list includes a "casting pond" to teach aspiring fly fishermen, a research center to study children's exercise habits, and a "California Sports Hall of Fame" honoring local athletes. Mike Meier, a 56-year-old hang-gliding manufacturer from Orange, Calif., concedes his request for hang-gliding space probably won't get top priority. Nonetheless, he spent "about 30 or 40 hours" putting together a 12-page proposal, which included sketches of a bowl-shaped hill where beginner-level pilots could learn how to take off. "It wasn't a Madison Avenue-like production," he says. "I'm not holding my breath."


In contrast to most urban green spaces, which are centered around pedestrian access, few people will be able to walk to the Great Park -- aside from residents in Lennar's new homes. (The site is in a remote area a few miles northeast of Interstate 5, far from anything resembling a neighborhood.) There are plans to create a light-rail service t