Quotes, URL's, Links And References-by:older Femmes, Butches, Ftms, Mtfs, Queer, Etc. [Archive] - Page 22

sweetlady

09-11-2007, 03:51 PM

(f)

August 26, 2007

The Talk; Eye Spy

By LINDA YABLONSKY

Perched on the edge of her seat in a passenger lounge at La Guardia Airport, Clarissa Dalrymple rears back from her carry-on, aghast. ''Damn it!'' she says in a booming stage whisper. ''I forgot my pearls.''

Dalrymple had hurried that morning into a pair of skinny jeans, a black sweater and pointy, white suede Daryl K boots. All set off a regal figure honed by a daily exercise regimen -- yoga or Pilates, a brisk walk or, lately, something called ball rolling -- and the odd sample sale, but nothing hides the 66 years etched into her striking face.

She looks great.

As the most aristocratic bohemian on New York's contemporary art scene, the British-born Dalrymple is known for her style and wit, and for an almost psychic ability to pinpoint who and what in art will matter next. Coupled with an almost willful inability to turn a profit on that prescience, her reputation as a free spirit given to shooting herself in the foot has made her something of a folk hero to at least two generations of artists and art dealers.

Right now she is flying to Detroit to catch up with ''Meditations in an Emergency,'' a group show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. With her is Billy Sullivan, a painter for whom she has often been a muse, and Klaus Kertess, the guest curator who organized the show. They have been her friends for more than three decades, as have I, but not one of us has ever gotten used to her. As we are boarding the plane, she says, ''I'd never have thought of taking this airline. They have such a high crash record.''

An inveterate outsider with a firmly possessive nature, Dalrymple exudes a personal magnetism that typically captivates, and occasionally infuriates, those who cross her path. In Detroit, she so disarms a senior security guard at the Detroit Institute of Arts that he volunteers to walk us through the collections on a day the museum is closed.

''She's outrageously sexy,'' says Adam McEwen, 42, a conceptual artist whose mordant ''obituaries'' of living personalities were rare bright spots in last year's Whitney Biennial.

''Totally,'' says the 28-year-old Nate Lowman, another conceptual artist.

''Even I feel it,'' says Sullivan, who is gay.

I have heard her called the Julie Christie of the art world, the Marianne Faithfull of the art world and Keith Richards's ex-girlfriend, which she is not. She is the ex-girlfriend of several other men, however, including the filmmaker and television director Jim McBride (''The Big Easy,'' ''Breathless''), with whom she had a son, Jesse, in 1971. She has two older sons as well (each by a different father) -- Joe Ainley, a lawyer in San Jose, Calif., and

Bo Allingham, a pest-control expert in England -- seven grandchildren and one ex-husband, the writer Dennis Dalrymple, whom she married in 1969.

If Dalrymple's past seems clouded by a tendency to drift -- among boyfriends, homes, interests and occasionally drugs -- at heart she is a seeker with curiosity that puts her in constant pursuit of people, knowledge and good health, the latter mostly through food fetishes that could dictate cabbage soup one day and a baked potato and spinach the next. Her greatest appetite, however, is for shared experience.

Discovery is what she is all about. As either a dealer or a freelance curator, she has figured in the early careers of Matthew Barney and Damien Hirst, as well as Nancy Rubins, Gary Hume and Sarah Lucas. She was among the first in the United States to recognize the talents of the German painter Neo Rauch (who currently has a solo show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and has arranged American gallery debuts for a host of others: Christopher Wool, Ashley Bickerton and Nayland Blake, to name a few. As Marianne Boesky, whose Chelsea gallery now retains her as a consultant charged with helping to identify new talent, explains: ''Clarissa is one of the most open-minded people I've ever met. She understands artists in their mid-20s better than their own colleagues.'' Lowman concurs: ''It's a lot more interesting to hang out with someone like her, who's way more radical in her thinking than many in my generation.''

Dalrymple is an enthusiast, a thinker who knows how to listen. She also has an impressive way of speaking, the legacy of boarding school in England and of a family of prominent theater folk who prized lively repartee. Until 1992, many in the New York art world knew her chiefly as a leggy broad with streaked hair, Blahniks and an oversize motorcycle jacket who went to galleries accompanied by her standard black poodle, Flora (now deceased), a gift from Robert Mapplethorpe.

Unlike many professionals in her field, Dalrymple has never been an artist or an academic. She has no formal training. Her art education began when she worked as a waitress in the early 1970s, at Kenn and Bob's Broome Street Bar in SoHo, where the clientele included Mapplethorpe and his patron, Sam Wagstaff, and other habitués of what was then an artists' neighborhood.

Born Clarissa Ainley to dazzling, narcissistic parents who divorced when she was small, Dalrymple was an only child at the mercy of hypercritical adults. Her mother, Angela Jeans, was a young actress and model when she met Henry Ainley, known as Sam, who was at various points a merchant seaman, a journalist and a restaurateur. ''They were totally gorgeous, extravagant and spoiled,'' Dalrymple says of her parents. Interestingly, Jesse McBride describes his mother in much the same terms. ''She was elegant, evasive and seductive,'' he recalls of her younger self, ''sympathetic and caring without being emotionally available.'' He also says she has become a better mom. (He is the naked 5-year-old in the controversial 1976 Mapplethorpe photograph whose exhibition led to obscenity charges in Cincinnati and caused a national debate on child pornography.)

The Ainleys lived in Walberswick, a seaside village in Suffolk, England. ''I only saw my father three times when I was a child that I remember,'' Dalrymple says, describing a lonesome period during which her closest companions were her maternal grandparents.

Her grandfather Ronald Jeans was ''a lesser NoÃdegreesl Coward'' and a cinéaste, while her grandmother Margaret wrote novels but was also a palm reader and potter. ''She was herself in search of the miraculous,'' Dalrymple says, borrowing a phrase from P. D. Ouspensky, whose brand of mysticism her grandmother shared. ''She really was in pursuit of any knowledge that added more to knowledge.'' Ditto Dalrymple. Despite her voracious intelligence, she is oddly superstitious and has sought guidance from astrologers and psychics. (One, she says, predicted her career in art.)

Her life was privileged, but not easy. With the end of World War II, she says, ''my mother decided to go back to London. It was devastating. There was no fuel. It was 1947, the cruelest winter ever in northern Europe. Birds froze in the air. Horrendous. My grandparents had split up, and I never saw my mother once we got to London.''

Boarding school followed. ''It was coeducational, vegetarian, socialist, nature cure and Quaker,'' she says. ''You had to get up before dawn, have a cold bath, go for a walk, have this breakfast -- I had indigestion for the eight years I was there, the diet was so harsh.'' College wasn't part of the picture. ''Nobody ever thought of girls going,'' she says. ''I wanted to go to art school, but the art teacher said I wasn't any good.'' Ultimately, that changed her life. ''In those days,'' she explains, ''art school was a way out of the class you were in.

I knew I couldn't make it in the upper classes in England, and that was why I left. I couldn't bear the idea of being not good enough.''

She also had a few wild oats to sow. After leaving school at 16, she went to Oxford, sent by her grandparents to a finishing school, a place for what she describes as ''young ladies like me who hadn't done their A-level education.'' She recalls that ''for the first time in my life, I had a life,'' adding that she wasn't invited back the following year because she had done ''too much partying.'' Ill-equipped for anything else, she eventually headed to London, shared an apartment with a friend and discovered Preludin, a diet pill then sold over the counter.

''It was really the beginning of serious drug culture,'' she says, ''lots of weed and hash.'' At 19, she became pregnant with her first son, Joe.

Life as a single mother with few practical skills made for more hard times, at least until she arrived in New York in 1968. She began to form friendships in New York's creative underground. But in 1978, strung out from the downtown music-art-bar scene and down to her last dime, Dalrymple left New York for Los Angeles, where her sons Jesse and Joe were now living with McBride. She took a series of odd jobs that included delivering sandwiches to ''fantastically higher-up people'' in the offices of Michael Ovitz and then later flogging screenplays to the very same people. ''They all just laughed in my face,'' she says. ''It was a nightmare.'' If so, it was short-lived. Both her father and her maternal grandmother died and left her a bit of money. ''I've always lived off the kindness of my family,'' she observes.

She headed straight back to New York.

Dalrymple officially entered the art world in 1982, when the artist Sarah Charlesworth recommended her to Nicole Klagsbrun, the director of the now-defunct Olsen Gallery on East 10th Street. ''I was plugged into the scene, but not with Clarissa's breadth of connections,'' Klagsbrun says. ''The combination made us interesting.'' Two years later, they opened Cable Gallery. With one unpredictable show after another -- by Ashley Bickerton, Collier Schorr, Haim Steinbach and others -- the gallery won immediate attention. And yet, when it closed in 1988, Cable had lost every single artist to more commerce-minded, if less visionary, dealers. ''I'm clearly not meant to have money,'' Dalrymple remarks. ''It's like a karmic fact.''

Klagsbrun went on to found another gallery, while Dalrymple farmed herself out as a guest curator and private dealer. Thus began her all-hours reconnaissance of artist studios, art fairs and art bars -- any place artists gather. ''Clarissa is the most restless and disciplined person I know,'' says Anne Livet, a close friend. ''She wants to see it all and not have to go home and take a nap.'' Dalrymple recognized the young Barney's talents early on and was the first to visit Lowman's studio, deep in Brooklyn. ''I remember her coming over in the cold one day in those crazy heels and fur coat,'' he recalls. ''That neighborhood was all crack heads and rats and blocks of huge projects, but she walked in super-glamorous, totally unfazed, and then was super into the work.''

McEwen thinks she's a natural: ''Even though Clarissa is not an artist,'' he says, ''in sensibility she's not far away.'' Dalrymple explains that she responds not so much to the art as to the person, or intellect, behind it. ''It's like I fall in love every time,'' she says. ''It's hero worship.'' In 1991, two weeks before Barney's solo debut at the Petersburg Gallery in SoHo, where Dalrymple was then the director, the gallery's owners abruptly shut the place for reasons of their own. Dalrymple quickly introduced Barney to the gallery owner Barbara Gladstone and her son, the Los Angeles dealer Stuart Regen, and the two catapulted Barney's star into the art-world firmament. Soon, Gladstone was inviting Dalrymple to mount a group exhibition in one of her two SoHo galleries. October 1992 marked the American debuts of Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas and Marc Quinn, among others. A pattern was now discernible: artists nurtured under Dalrymple's wing always left for more established quarters, leaving Dalrymple to fend for herself, much as she had in Walberswick.

''I believe there's nothing more magnificent than repeating childhood patterns,'' she says. ''You look at anybody's life, and when it isn't going right, it's their nursery behavior.''

Because Dalrymple owns nothing, owes nothing and never lets commercial considerations affect the more intrinsic values she attaches to art, her existence at times is precarious -- not that she lets it show. ''Even when she was as down and out as anybody could be,'' as her friend Julian Lethbridge, an artist, puts it, 'Clarissa has always been able to create something out of nothing. That's her strength.''

After the Petersburg Gallery, Dalrymple certainly seemed poised to become a super-dealer or museum curator; mysteriously, though, no job offers came her way, and hanging out a shingle as an adviser to private collectors didn't interest her. (''I'm too shy to ask.'') Instead, she thought about setting up an art salon in her SoHo loft. As the former studio and home of Gordon Matta-Clark, a Pied Piper-like pioneer of the neighborhood's art community, the loft was already a kind of landmark. It became a touchstone of another sort as Dalrymple began to throw dinner parties where a new generation -- the artists Elizabeth Peyton and John Currin, the curator Neville Wakefield, the New York gallery owner Gavin Brown, the London dealer Sadie Coles -- mingled with an older one, in some measure shaping the social structure of the art scene today.

''Any interesting artist, no matter where they came from, ended up at those dinners,'' says Kirsty Bell, a former New York gallery director who is now a writer in Berlin. ''It was really a crash course in the New York art world.''

It wasn't just the company at these gatherings that mattered. It was also the unusual food. ''Clarissa uses the strangest combination of ingredients you can imagine,'' Gladstone says, ''and it always comes out brilliantly.'' (''I lived through the eel, red wine and prunes phase,'' Livet says proudly.)

For Dalrymple, cooking is her one true creative activity. ''I don't know how anybody makes art, but I imagine it's not different than making food,'' she says. ''Both are combustible and inspired by the materials.''

By 2000, the parties had grown less frequent and her activities more public. She organized successful group shows for the Marc Selwyn gallery in Los Angeles and others for Nicole Klagsbrun in New York, but to little financial benefit. ''It was weird to see Clarissa take so many chances on artists and not profit from their success,'' says the artist Rachel Feinstein, who suggested that Dalrymple work with Boesky, her own dealer. Boesky has now taken on four artists that Dalrymple has championed.

Despite her increasing renown, Dalrymple still feels ambivalent about her gifts, which she regards as minor -- because she's not an artist. Almost comically, what she is most afraid of (aside from dying) is not being interesting enough.

Early in the summer we had dinner in Bridgehampton, N.Y., where she rents a cabin. She was dressed in an outfit she termed ''very Walker Evans'' -- a black terry-cloth hoodie, a gray cotton tube dress and gold sandals. In the preceding weeks, she had appeared on a panel for the New Museum of Contemporary Art; attended thesis exhibitions at several colleges; toured the Basel art fair; and traveled to Los Angeles following the birth of her latest grandchild. She was about to leave again for a weekend curatorial jaunt to Bermuda, followed by a stop in England to catch a Barney performance. All of which she dismissed as nothing special. ''I live for olive oil,'' she said in a voice of pure ardor, drizzling the stuff over her greens. ''So good for the liver.''

^o)^o)^o)

:)

Ad augusta per angusta.

To high places by narrow roads.

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

sweetlady

09-11-2007, 03:52 PM

(l) (l) (l)

Navy, old? Not anymore.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/style/BlueBelles.pdf

Lovely.......... :)

(f)

Vive Ut Vitas!!

Live, so that you may live." or "Live life to the fullest.

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

sweetlady

09-11-2007, 03:54 PM

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

Another ad from the Louis Vuitton fall-winter campaign featuring Academy Award-nominated French actress Catherine Deneuve:

http://frillr.com/files/images/catherinedeneuve_vuitton.preview.jpg

:) By the way, Annie Leibovitz took the photo.

(l) (l) Talk about aging gracefully. Wow.

(f) (f) 's,

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

sweetlady

09-11-2007, 03:56 PM

:o :o

(h) (h)

http://www.dior.com/pcd/International/JSP/Home/prehomeFlash.jsp

http://fashion.dior.com/dior.html

LOTS of very cool animation, as well as fashion for Fall................ (y) (y)

(f)

Amicus optima vitae possessio.

A friend is the greatest treasure in life.

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

sweetlady

09-11-2007, 03:57 PM

....Vintage, that is........(y) (y)

August 26, 2007

The Talk; Worn Out

By NELL SCOVELL

Oooh, let me see your Pucci leggings,'' says the owner of a designer resale boutique near my house.

I smile. I have fabulous Pucci leggings, purchased in the '80s during the second Pucci wave. As the third Pucci wave begins to swell 20 years later, I figure it's time to sell. It's easy to spot the loud leggings in the pile of old clothes plopped on the counter. One pair has a geometric blue, black and purple pattern; the other, pink, white and green triangles. No sooner do I pull them out than the owner's face falls.

''Oh, these aren't signature enough,'' she says.

An unexpected disappointment washes over me. But if it's classics she wants, classics I've got. I pull out an elegant black three-quarter-length skirt in wool crepe. ''What about this Armani?'' I ask.

''The thing is,'' she says, barely looking at it, ''90 percent of our clothing is new or from last year.'' She suggests another boutique that's not as upscale but bigger. ''They won't pay much,'' she says. That's fine. I don't care about making money. I just want someone to rediscover these gems that have sat in my closet for two decades.

Heading off with my pile, I stop at another small resale boutique. This time, I leave the clothes in the car. The manager is efficient. ''Any Prada?'' she inquires. No. ''Dolce?'' No. ''Chanel?'' Yes! I have a yellow wool Chanel suit I wore to my brother's wedding. The manager accompanies me to my car, where she glimpses the Chanel buttons, which boast four-leaf clovers instead of the traditional interlocking-C logo. ''No thanks,'' she says dismissively, and heads back to the store. I close my jaw and my trunk.

''What's in the box?'' asks the 20-something male buyer of the larger, downscale boutique. Again, I smile. It's ''Deal or No Deal'' as I open the box to reveal my first formal full-length gown, by Valentino, purchased at Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-'80s. Black and white, it was a size 2 back when being a size 2 meant something.

Removing the protective tissue paper, the buyer lifts the gown out of the box just enough to see the bodice of gathered tulle triangles with a decorative sheer tulle strap. He purses his lips in consideration, then lets the Valentino fall back into the box. ''Strapless doesn't do well for us,'' he says. ''What else you got?''

The store's clientele is young, so I grab one of my kickier items, a hip-hugging lime green Agnès b. skirt with a '60s-style wide belt.

''Here's a cute Agnès b. skirt --''

''Agnès b. doesn't do well for us,'' says the buyer, cutting me off. ''And skirts don't sell well either.'' He throws the formerly kicky skirt aside. He sorts through my 35 items, passing judgment. As the reject pile grows, I scream in my head:

''I have fun taste in clothes! Look, it's Matsuda and Romeo Gigli and Lanvin and Lacroix, sweetie, Lacroix! How can you pass these up?''

He can. ''I'm sorry, but I only want four pieces,'' he says. He grabs an A.P.C. red fitted denim jacket, an Agnès b. herringbone skirt, a black and red Rampage dress, and the Pucci leggings. ''Let me go check on prices,'' he says, disappearing into the back.

I stare at the lumpy pile until the buyer returns with the four items. ''We can't use them after all,'' he says. ''You might try Crossroads. It's just a block away. They won't pay you much.'' Before I can even register that the place that doesn't pay much is suggesting a place that doesn't pay much, the buyer is gone.

I gather my pile, and the weight overwhelms me. No one is around, so I leave four bulkier pieces behind -- a powder blue DKNY jacket, a blue and white striped Armani pantsuit, and two Guess jackets with big shoulders. I gather the rest and bolt, jaywalking to my car before they notice. Ha. Those jackets are their problem now.

But the euphoria doesn't last. By the time I toss the clothes in the trunk again, I'm upset. I wasn't so much angry at my old clothes as disappointed. They are faded and undesirable. And by extension, I, too, am faded and undesirable.

There's only one place to turn: charity. I go to a nearby Council Thrift Shop and convince myself it's fitting that a Valentino gown that began life at a charity event should end at one, too. Except I can't do it. The thrift store is dark and dingy, and it feels wrong to leave my clothes there. So I drive home and ask my husband to do it.

He's nice, so he says all right. ''And don't forget to get a receipt,'' I call after him.

''What are the clothes worth?'' he asks. And that's when I start to cry.

(f)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

09-11-2007, 03:59 PM

:) :)

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/08/25/style/tmagazine/20070826_STYLEMAP_GRAPHIC.html

(f)

Quidquid discis, tibi discis.

Whatever you learn, you learn it for yourself.

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

sweetlady

09-11-2007, 04:02 PM

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

A few small towns in the U.S. are turning what many local residents have considered a major annoyance -- gritty, noisy railroad tracks running through town -- into a tourist attraction.

Railroad buffs watch trains roll over CSX's busy mainline tracks in Folkston, Ga. Several years ago, the town built the wooden platform and outfitted it with chairs, lights, fans and other amenities to attract train watchers. About 70 CSX freight and Amtrak trains come through town every 24 hours.

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/OB-AK833_RAILTO_20070516220143.jpg

An engineer's view from the cab of a diesel locomotive shows the tracks running through Folkston.

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/OB-AK832_RAILTO_20070516220144.jpg

The Trainspotting Vacation

Towns cater to rail nostalgia with covered platforms, train-themed gift shops; Georgia's 'Iron Triangle'

By DANIEL MACHALABA

Wall Street Journal

May 19, 2007

Folkston, Ga.

Stuart and Mary Beth Lodge sit back in their chairs on an outdoor viewing platform and wait for the show to begin. Suddenly, they hear the blast of a horn, followed by the roar of diesel locomotives. A mile-long freight train races by 70 feet in front of them.

For the Lodges, the trains are what bring them to this small town in southern Georgia. "I love the power, the force and the strength of trains," says Ms. Lodge, a personal life coach from Atlanta.

It's been more than 50 years since the end of the railroads' glamour days, when Hollywood stars still traveled on fast streamliners to the coast and powerful steam locomotives symbolized the country's industrial might. These days, when even plane travel is passé, trains evoke a passion in some people the way baseball or food might in others. They recall a bygone era when life was simpler and when small towns still thrived before the suburbs took hold.

Now, Folkston is figuring out how to profit from that passion. Officials are turning what many local residents here have considered a major annoyance -- the gritty, noisy railroad tracks through the center of town -- into a tourist attraction. Several years ago this town near the Florida border built a covered wooden platform next to CSX's busy mainline tracks and outfitted it with chairs, lights, ceiling fans and other amenities. Thousands of train lovers now flock to the platform each year to watch the 70 CSX freight and Amtrak passenger trains that come through town every 24 hours.

Long before I started writing about trucks, ships and railroads for The Wall Street Journal in late 1983, I had an attachment to trains. Since my early years growing up a half block from an elevated train line in Queens, N.Y., I have enjoyed watching and listening to them. In my late teens and 20s I'd go to country areas with busy freight tracks, sometimes camping with friends near tracks in northeast Pennsylvania. There was the quiet and solitude, then the amazing rush of energy and noise when a huge train broke the silence. Then the silence returned, and the anticipation built up for the next rush.

There are all kinds of train buffs, just as there are fresh water and salt water fishermen, says Danny Harmon, a television producer from Tampa, Fla., one of the people gathered on the Folkston platform on a recent day. "Some of us like locomotives, some of us like to listen to operations on the radio and others just enjoy being in the outdoors and watching the trains go by."

Whatever our reason for being drawn to the tracks, we all share a respect for these trains that have helped shape the history of this country. At platforms like the one in Folkston, buffs swap stories, at times exhibiting an almost encyclopedic knowledge of trains, routes, railroad history and schedules. There's even one-upmanship. I find that extreme sector a bit annoying. What should be a relaxing pursuit becomes another ego-driven activity. But it's not long before there's a horn and a long train drowns out such talk.

Here in southern Georgia, train lovers are fueling something of a rail renaissance. It's now possible to take what a CSX spokesman calls an Iron Triangle tour of Georgia, visiting the triad of viewing platforms that have emerged in the state. One of these is in Jesup, about 60 miles north of here, a town that has less than half the trains of Folkston. Manchester, 60 miles southwest of Atlanta, is an old railroad town and mountain retreat of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Its platform, built behind the downtown shops, overlooks a junction of CSX lines from Atlanta and Birmingham, Ala.

What sets Folkston apart though is the sheer number of trains that pass through. Buffs call Folkston the Funnel because trains pour in from both the Midwest and East Coast on their way to Florida. The town has created a grassy train-watching park that stretches along the tracks for two blocks from the town's restored depot to the platform.

When Folkston's town fathers spent $30,000 of state money to build the platform, they had diehard train fanatics in mind. But along with well-heeled buffs from all over the country and the world, who set up expensive cameras and video gear next to the track, officials have been surprised to find that the platform is also drawing families. This is spawning a tiny but growing cottage industry of hotels, restaurants and gift shops. It's not just happening in Folkston, but in towns in Pennsylvania and Illinois.

Since last fall, two new gift shops have opened in Folkston, Whistlin' Dixie and the Wild Caboose, selling railroad-theme merchandise. The town's two bed and breakfasts -- the Inn at Folkston and the Folkston House -- which for years catered mainly to eco-tourists visiting Okefenokee Swamp, are reaching out to rail tourists with train maps, memorabilia and hints about train watching.

Still, Folkston faces challenges as it tries to broaden its appeal to families and the spouses of train lovers. For one thing, it has a small supply of high-end accommodations. Innkeepers and merchants also say it can be difficult to keep non-buff family members entertained.

"It's not your usual going to the beach or the mountains, and we're learning how to capitalize on it," says Claudia Burkhart, executive director of the Okefenokee Chamber of Commerce in Folkston. She estimates that more than 20,000 people visit the platform each year, pumping about $1.2 million into the local economy.

Folkston wasn't the first town to build a train-watching platform. Rochelle, Ill., for instance, put one up in 1998 as a result of train lovers making regular visits to the crossing of two busy freight lines. In the past few years, after decades of decline, railroads have experienced a resurgence, in part, as higher fuel prices hurt the trucking industry. For train watchers, it's a "non-stop show," says Jim Wrinn, editor of Trains, a magazine for enthusiasts.

At the annual Rail Watch Weekend in late March, men and women wearing shirts and caps with the names and logos of their favorite railroads fill the platform and the grounds next to the tracks. John Parker, a line-haul driver for United Parcel Service, wears a dark blue shirt with white lettering: "I spent most of my time and money on trains. The rest I just wasted."

There's a sense of nervous anticipation among the rail buffs. Although they have a rough idea of what trains come through each day, they never know exactly what the next train will be. They hunt for clues, such as a signal turning to green from red to alert them to an approaching train. They listen to the radio scanner at the platform for train communications and mechanized voice announcements that a train has passed a track detector in the area and there are no equipment defects. The latest craze is to use Wi-Fi at the platform to download track diagrams and train positions from rail Web sites to laptops to help pinpoint oncoming trains.

Most bring cameras and a few meticulously log every train, writing down locomotive numbers or the number of freight cars. When a train carrying chemicals, lumber and scrap metal rushes through town, onlookers take aim with their cameras. Some of the biggest attractions are Amtrak trains, particularly the Auto Train, which hauls passengers and automobiles, and the Tropicana orange juice train, with its distinctive orange or white refrigerated cars.

Some buffs will fortify themselves with snacks and settle in for hours -- sometimes returning day after day. The Tropicana train usually passes through Folkston five nights a week, but on my recent visit the Friday-night one heading to New York from Florida didn't arrive when expected. Some returned Saturday. Finally, at 8:50 p.m., a headlight appeared to the south. A few watchers rushed over to a fence closer to the tracks, kneeling down to take photos.

Gail Compton, a corporate communications manager from Port Richie, Fla., says she can't understand why her husband and son love trains so much. "I just don't get it," says Ms. Compton, who keeps busy for hours while at the platform with her family by reading magazines and newspapers.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117953013498608127-PqT1TDR5aDpsOB8ZWUnhtqa4I2I_20070529.html?mod=yaho o_free

(l) (l) (l) I am truly a train buff. ;) All four cheeks, I might add. ;)

(f)

Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis.

The times are changed, and we are changed in them. (again)

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

sweetlady

09-11-2007, 04:09 PM

(f) (f) (f)

http://www.sininthesecondcity.com/

Skipping the Intro: http://www.sininthesecondcity.com/home.html

Review: 'Sin in the Second City':

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/10/arts/0811idbriefs11B.php

July 13, 2007

Books of the Times

Sin in the Second City

By JANET MASLIN

Karen Abbott’s “Sin in the Second City” reports on an early-20th-century phenomenon: the Everleigh Club, which opened in Chicago in 1900 and lasted 11 years as the self-proclaimed grandest whorehouse in America. In a book rife with quaint period details, Ms. Abbott presents photographs of the club’s gaudy extravagance, drawings that alert innocent young women to the perils of white slavery and memorable johns like the Everleigh customer calling himself Uncle Ned. At Christmas Uncle Ned would plant his feet in buckets of ice, drink sarsaparilla and order the house’s “butterflies” to circle him while they sang “Jingle Bells.”

Why, then, is this book so current? Because everything and nothing has changed. The book describes a popular culture awash in wild tales of sexual abuse (described by an ex-mayor of Toledo as “a sort of pornography to satisfy the American sense of news”), crusading reformers claiming God on their side, and deep suspicion of the threat posed by “foreigners” to the nation’s Christian values. There is even the McMansion-minded excess of one Chicago madam who, upon seeing her rivals, Ada and Minna Everleigh, in a carriage pulled by four tassel-wearing horses, insisted that her own carriage have six. And there is a touch of today’s news in the way a madam with politicians for clients can wreak havoc because she can name names.

Famous as they once were, the Everleigh sisters have been sufficiently forgotten to fill “Sin in the Second City” with outlandish surprises. These sisters claimed to be “the only madams in history who had started out as debutantes instead of whores.” Whatever their pedigree, they stopped at nothing to attract attention. They created a big-ticket Chicago institution that boasted a gold piano, designer spittoons, perfume fountains, a lavish menu, a replica of Bernini’s “Apollo and Daphne” sculpture, mirrored ceilings and as many froufrou trappings as the place could hold. “A man who came to their house would see everything he wanted to and nothing he didn’t,” Ms. Abbott writes, “and he would never feel rushed or cheated, disillusioned or alone.”

But he might have felt jittery about the mounting reform movement that surrounded the Everleighs’ operation. Even as business boomed and the Everleighs cosseted their clients, the place was less sturdy than it looked. The excesses of the Everleigh Club, along with those at its much coarser neighboring brothels in the Levee district of Chicago, would help prompt the Mann Act, meant to prevent “white slave traffic.” Such antics also spurred the creation of a branch of the Justice Department, a Bureau of Investigation which would evolve into the F.B.I.

The sisters’ defiance and sharp business acumen kept them on such a friendly footing with Chicago gangsters, saloon keepers and politicians that it also kept them out of jail. Any tale of their accomplishments involves their great skill at co-opting opposition. (State legislators were always entertained free.) They also successfully fended off anti-sin crusaders of many stripes, and did so without apology. Years later, when they changed their names and moved to Manhattan, their nude paintings and other erotica would be explained as relics handed down by dear old granddad.

So Ms. Abbott has a mother lode of material to work with. Even this book’s minutiae, like the way the phrase “getting Everleighed” was abbreviated into “one of America’s bawdiest idioms,” makes for good storytelling. She provides a clear historical context for the Levee district’s wild abandon as she chronicles rising demands toward reform. And she writes with frankness about the particulars of prostitution, although a misguided sense of decorum prompts her to use the word harlot incessantly. Surely there are synonyms for everything when the cast of characters includes Merry Widdo Kiddo, Michael (Hinky Dink) Kenna and Suzy Poon Tang.

“Sin and the Second City” is assiduously researched. And it is well put together, mixing brief and longer chapters rather than striving for a more arbitrary format. But Ms. Abbott has to narrate and debunk, and her task is complicated. She had to wade through mountains of tabloid coverage about young women forced into prostitution; one such case, about a woman named Mona Marshall, whose story did not stand up to close scrutiny, generated about a half-million pages of newspaper attention. It’s no small matter to sift the facts from the hyperbole.

Ms. Abbott also had to contend with the mixed blessing of Minna Everleigh’s mythmaking. Minna’s stories, many spoon-fed to a writer named Charles Washburn for “Come Into My Parlor,” a book Ms. Abbott cites frequently, have a theatricality that wards off any candor. Some even border on vaudeville. “Come, I’ll show you where a man put his hand last night,” Minna supposedly told a handyman when the brothel’s Gold Room was damaged. “If it’s all the same to you,” came the rejoinder, “I’d rather have a glass of beer.”

“Sin and the Second City” winds up requiring greater intimacy than Ms. Abbott can deliver. It’s hardly surprising that a book about prostitution has a basic remoteness; after all, Ms. Abbott has no firsthand sources and is dealing with characters who dissembled and exaggerated to earn their living. And the Everleighs prove especially resistant to scrutiny. They both reduced their real ages by 12 years, and part of their early history remains mysterious. Ada was signing holiday greeting cards with Minna’s name in December 1948, three months after her sister had died.

This book can’t fathom the sisters, but it has a sadder kind of candor. One report on turn-of-the-century prostitution finds a young woman who says, “I ain’t ashamed of what I did,” even though she began selling herself as a 7-year-old. Since her mother was also a prostitute, she equates herself with a boy whose father runs a grocery. “He helps him in the store,” says this speaker, whose story is echoed endlessly in Ms. Abbott’s ultimately grim tale. “Well my mother didn’t sell groceries.”

(y) (y)

(f)

Die dulci fruimini.

Have a nice day.

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

sweetlady

09-11-2007, 04:12 PM

;)

August 26, 2007

THE FACE; Diet by the Sword

By MARY TANNEN

I am trying not to think what Freud would say about this roomful of mostly women brandishing big sticks. At Equinox on Broadway and 19th Street, we stand in rows facing a mirror, eyes trained on our wooden swords as well as on our leader, Ilaria Montagnani. Moving to the beat of music that sounds like rhythmic jackhammering, we squat, lunge, slice and slash. The class is called Forza. The footwork is simple, and there are only 13 sword moves. The difficulty comes in making each cut precise, putting the whole body behind the swing and controlling the stick.

Montagnani's weapon and body move as one. Although I try to mimic the harmony and economy of her motions, I can't help noticing that my stick is on its own trajectory. There's an alarming amount of flailing, and I even strike some shelves behind my head. Montagnani has cautiously taken aside the neophytes before class to watch as they practice. There are no ''Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'' acrobatics in this class, I was disappointed to discover. Montagnani explains that the movie featured an intricate Chinese style that extends over time, with much jousting. The traditional Japanese swordsmanship, iaido, on which Forza is based, is ''linear, precise -- one stab and it's over,'' she says. ''It's very calm, and then quick.''

Forza, Italian for ''strength,'' is the creation of Montagnani, who is in fact Italian. That said, there is no dolce far niente in her demeanor. With her fair hair, hazel eyes and military stance, she looks like a small, feminine Prussian officer.

''I've been a martial artist since I was little,'' she allows, but since she was a proper Florentine young lady, she was not sent to karate lessons but for ballet and piano instruction. All that she learned about martial arts came from books until she left for the States at age 19 to study. ''I was driven,'' she says. ''It was the entire focus of my life.'' She earned her black belt in karate, then took up the sword, attracted by its ''beauty, grace and power.'' She had to train with a wooden sword for 11 years before graduating to the real thing. ''And then you inevitably cut yourself,'' she says. Because of the terminal nature of this kind of fighting, you do not practice with an opponent. You judge your skill by the sound of the blade as it slices through the air.

As her training in martial arts required that she spend hours executing the same moves over and over, Montagnani hit upon the idea of setting moves to music and of fashioning the moves into aerobic routines. She hatched Powerstrike, kickboxing against an imaginary opponent, which is now registered all over the world. Forza came next, with the idea that students could begin with one-pound swords and graduate to heavier weights. (Montagnani trains with a four-pounder, but after an hour of lifting and swinging, I felt one was plenty.)

In addition to teaching 20 hours of classes a week, Montagnani trains instructors worldwide. The sport is a hit in Scandinavia: ''They're good athletes, not soft. They like regimentation. South America and Italy don't have the correct frame of mind. It's not for everyone. It requires focus.''

Montagnani has made a DVD, and the wooden swords, called bokken, can be obtained in Chinatown, so theoretically you could become a sitting-room samurai (after carefully clearing the area of bric-a-brac and kids). But there's nothing like being with other grunting, sweating, slashing acolytes to keep your mind on message.

Outside the glass studio at Equinox, people are trudging on StairMasters and lifting weights. They probably think we are the frivolous ones, but Forza, if done right, is supposed to burn 500 calories an hour, while working arms, legs, back and abs. And you can imagine lopping off heads and disemboweling enemies, which adds a certain passion you can't bring to weightlifting.

Later, over cappuccino, I tell Montagnani that if accosted in a dark alley, I think I'll be able to defend myself, as long as I have access to a big stick. Looking a trifle discomfited, she confesses that she was accosted by a man in a crowded subway recently. Though armed, she did not use her sword: ''It would have been devastating for him.'' Instead she yelled and shoved like any civilian, and no one even looked up.

Well, at least I am burning calories; I'll be able to eat a doughnut. But Montagnani, who has no discernible body fat, is drinking a small skim and looking wistfully at the pastry selection. ''I'm in training,'' she explains. I'm beginning to see that it will take more than a couple of hours a week of stick waving to get to look like her. You must live by the sword.

(y) (y) (y)

;)

(k) 's,

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

sweetlady

09-11-2007, 04:13 PM

8-|8-|

http://www.shoulddothis.com/

(y) (y)

(f) 's,

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

sweetlady

09-11-2007, 04:14 PM

:|

:o :o

:)

http://blog.scifi.com/tech/archives/2007/08/28/top_10_tech_toy.html

(f) (f)

Sapientia est potentia.

Wisdom is power.

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

sweetlady

09-11-2007, 04:17 PM

8-|8-|

http://www.macrumors.com/2007/08/29/volkswagen-apple-working-on-icar/

;)

(f)

Carpe Carpium.

Seize the Carp.

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

sweetlady

09-11-2007, 04:20 PM

.......for Metabolic Syndrome.

:|

:o

^o)^o)

Anti-Fat Injection Can Melt Fat Away, Reducing Risk for Metabolic Syndrome

Posted: Saturday, July 14, 2007

For those who eat to combat stress, researchers here may have made a dream come true -- an injection that inhibits a well-know peptide, that makes fat melt away, at least in mice.

In mice subjected to the equivalent of eating a pound of ice cream to get over some murine vicissitudes, blocking a well-known neuropeptide caused excess visceral fat to vanish, according to Zofia Zukowska, M.D., Ph.D., of Georgetown, and colleagues.

They indicated that in a series of experiments, stress led to the release of Neuropeptide Y (NPY) from sympathetic nerves, which in turn upregulated NPY and its Y2 receptors (NPY2R) in a process dependent on the presence of glucocorticoids in the abdominal fat, the researchers reported online in Nature Medicine.

This positive feedback response by NPY led to the growth of abdominal fat, resulting in an increase in angiogenesis in white fat tissue, infiltration by macrophages, and proliferation of new adipocytes.

Over time, a feedback loop resulted in abdominal obesity and a metabolic syndrome-like condition in the animals, they said.

But injecting the new fat tissue with a compound that blocks the peptide's Y2 receptors (known as NPY2R) stopped the process and caused established visceral fat to disappear, Dr. Zukowska and colleagues said.

"We couldn't believe such fat remodeling was possible, but the numerous different experiments conducted over four years demonstrated that it is, at least in mice," Dr. Zukowska said.

She added that pilot studies show a similar mechanism exists in monkeys, but noted that a great deal of research remains to be done before the approach can be evaluated in humans. In the long run, "we are hopeful that these findings might eventually lead to control of metabolic syndrome, which is a huge health issue for many Americans," she said.

"Decreasing fat in the abdomen of the mice we studied reduced the fat in their liver and skeletal muscles, and also helped to control insulin resistance, glucose intolerance, blood pressure and inflammation."

Interestingly, reversing the process - adding Neuropeptide Y to certain areas of the mice - increased fat tissue locally, noted co-author Stephen Baker, M.D., D.D.S, of Georgetown University Hospital. The findings could open to the door to adding fat grafts for cosmetic purposes, such as facial rejuvenation, buttock and lip enhancement, and facial reconstruction, or to removing fat.

"This is the first well-described mechanism found that can effectively eliminate fat without using surgery," he said. "A safe, effective, non-surgical means to eliminate undesirable body fat would be of great benefit to our patients."

While it's hard to duplicate office politics or an ill-starred love life in mice, the researchers did the next best thing. In separate experiments they made the animals stand in cold water for long periods of time or put them in a cage with an aggressive alpha mouse. In both cases, the animals produced more Neuropeptide Y because of the stress but they didn't gain excessive weight unless they were also fed a high-fat, high-sugar diet.

Then they packed it on. Within two weeks, they had abdominal obesity and within three months had a metabolic syndrome-like condition. In contrast, control mice fed a normal diet - but still subjected to the stress - gained significantly less weight (at P<0.05).

But among the chubby mice either an implanted slow-release pellet of an NPY2R blocker or daily injections caused a 40% reduction in visceral fat within two weeks, the researchers found.

Also, mice genetically modified not to have the receptors in the first place didn't gain weight in response to stress and the high-fat, high-sugar diet.

Lydia Kuo, Ph.D., a co-author, said one key take-home message is that stress has a direct physiological effect on fat tissue, rather then being mediated through the brain.

"This is the first study to show that stress has a direct effect on fat accumulation, body weight and metabolism," Dr. Kuo said. "In humans, this kind of stress-mediated fat gain may have nothing to do with the brain, and is actually just a physiological response of their fat tissue."

Co-author Herbert Herzog, Ph.D., of Sydney, Australia's Garvan Institute of Medical Research said the findings should change how we deal with obesity.

"There are millions of people around the world who have lived with high levels of stress for so long their bodies think it's 'normal'," he said. "If these people also eat a high fat and high sugar diet, which is what many do as a way to reduce their stress, they will become obese."

But pharmaceutical interventions to block the Neuropeptide Y receptor could change all that, he said.

Source: Diabetes In Control: Naturez : Kuo LE et al. "Neuropeptide Y acts directly in the periphery on fat tissue and mediates stress-induced obesity and metabolic syndrome." Nature Med 2007; doi:10.1038/nm1611

http://www.defeatdiabetes.org/news/view.asp?catid=&subcatid=&id=38536

^o)^o)^o)^o)

(f) (f)

Sapientia est potentia.

Wisdom is power.

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

sweetlady

09-11-2007, 04:22 PM

(l) (l)

U. S. Grant Hotel

Ulysses S. Grant, Jr., came to San Diego in 1893 seeking a climate that would improve the failing health of his wife, Fannie Josephine Chaffee Grant. He had made and lost a fortune on Wall street with his father, the former Civil War general and President of the United States, but his father had died in 1885 and the son looked to San Diego for his future. He purchased the original Horton House hotel in downtown San Diego that was built by Alonzo Horton in 1870, kept it operating for several years with his father's photograph in the lobby, but finally decided to tear it down and build a grand new hotel on the same site at Third and Broadway. On July 12, 1905, the first bricks were removed from the old structure by 91-year old Alonzo Horton. Architect Harrison Allbright designed the new hotel but construction was delayed by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and a shortage of lumber. It was finally completed in 1910, the same year Irving Gill finished his renovation of Horton Plaza across the street with a new fountain. On opening day October 15, 1910, the hotel offered 437 rooms, many with private bathrooms, and a striking interior of marble and walnut that featured a great staircase leading upstairs to the Grand Ballroom accommodating 500 people. It also included a roof garden, a palm tree court, and a soon-to-be famous grill.

Sadly, Grant's wife Fannie had died in 1909, but Ulysses Grant, Jr. continued to live in San Diego with his five children in the Havermale mansion on Prospect Hill at Eighth and Ash Streets. This mansion was torn down and replaced with the El Cortez Hotel in 1927. After Grant's death in 1929, the Hotel continued to operate and was listed in 1979 on the National Register of Historic Sites. The Grant Grill has long been rated as one of San Diego's best restaurants, and made headlines in 1969 when a women's protest caused the Grill to start admitting women before 3 pm.

http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/local/usgranthotel.html

U.S. Grant, Jr.: A Builder of San Diego:

http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/81winter/grant.htm

SAN DIEGO | HOTELS

Capsule review of San Diego's US Grant Hotel

By Valli Herman LA Times

March 14, 2007

Stats: 326 Broadway, San Diego, CA 92101; (866) 837-4270 or (619) 232-3121, www.luxurycollection.com/usgrant .

Rating: Four stars*

New and noteworthy: A $52-million renovation has returned it to its former glory.

The stay: Big-spender history buffs and urban adventurers can retreat into rooms rich in crystal, silk, comfort — and complimentary snacks.

The scene: Elegant lodging option lures sophisticates to downtown.

The service: Top-rate, although slightly rehearsed.

Deal maker: Smart, beautiful and historic renovation.

Deal breaker: Downtown neighborhood still changing; not great for children.

Rooms: $479 to $3,500 for a presidential suite.

http://travel.latimes.com/articles/la-trw-hotelbox18mar18

(f) (f)

What goes around, comes around.

Id quot circumiret, circumveniat.

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

sweetlady

09-11-2007, 04:24 PM

(ip) (ip)

"Shaped like a pork chop and just 11 square miles, Block Island is accessible in Summer mostly by ferries."

http://www.blockislandinfo.com/

(ip) Ah, maybe next year or some other Summer.

(f)

Aut disce aut discede,

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

sweetlady

09-11-2007, 04:25 PM

:o :o

http://www.chilediscover.com/tours/trip5.asp?name=Chile2461

http://www.vivatravelguides.com/south-america/chile/southern-chile/

Ski!!!

http://www.gochile.cl/html/Ski/SkiChile.asp

http://www.snoworks.co.uk/i-skiing/9volcanoes.html

http://www.andes.org.uk/skiing-holidays/ski-mountaineering-chile-dossier.asp

(l) (l) (l)

(f) (f)

Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis.

The times are changed, and we are changed in them. (again)

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

sweetlady

09-12-2007, 10:48 AM

(y) (~) (y) (~) (y) (~)

Wed Sep 12, 2007 9:41AM EDT

By Janet Guttsman

TORONTO (Reuters) - It took gay Indian filmmaker Parvez Sharma six years to make "Jihad for Love," a documentary film about gay men and women trying to live Muslim lives in Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt and South Africa.

Now he says his challenge will be to make sure the movie reaches Muslim communities, even in countries where being homosexual remains a crime that could be punishable by death.

"I aim to take this film into Muslim countries as a Muslim," Sharma told Reuters in an interview, noting that the downloading possibilities of the Internet make it far easier to distribute movies than in the past.

"I am going to make sure that this film gets to every Muslim that needs to see it...and if this means I am going to have to smuggle the tapes through my underground contacts in Muslim countries and make sure that people everywhere are able to have screenings for this film, then that's exactly what we are going to do."

The film, which had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival this week, focuses on a few dozen men and women who seek to reconcile their sexuality with life as Muslims. The title defines jihad as personal struggle, rather than as holy war.

It's a first movie for Sharma, who now lives in New York with his partner, an American banker, and who grumbles that he can't marry in the United States and that he doesn't qualify for a spouse's green card because his partner is a man.

"Islam is a way of life. It's my life," he said. "I think that everything in my own life being a gay Muslim, especially living in a post September 11 world, moved me toward making this film. This film found me."

One of those shown in the movie is South African Muhsin Hendricks, a gay Imam who "came out" to a storm of protest and angry phone-ins to local radio stations, including callers calling for his death.

In the film, he argues that censure of homosexuals from Islamic texts is a censure of forced male rape, rather than of loving relations between two men, and he's had discussion sessions with a local Islamic welfare council.

Speaking in Toronto, he acknowledged it is easier for gays to live in South Africa than in many other countries, although acceptance among Muslims remains slow.

"My community is still very conservative, it's still difficult to work within the community, but it's easier that the constitution is protecting gay rights," he said.

The story is different in Egypt, where another participant in the film, Mazen, was one of those arrested in a 2001 raid on a gay club in Cairo. He was imprisoned for two years before winning asylum in France.

Mazen, whose mother still doesn't know he has taken part "Jihad for Love," said he had initially asked director Sharma not to show his face in the movie, but he changed his mind mid-way through the movie making.

"I decided because I wanted to say a message," he said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN1142478120070912

Toronto Film Festival 2007

Reuters correspondents blog on the previews, the personalities and the buzz from the Toronto International Film Festival

(Gay) wedding bells for jihadis for love?

September 12th, 2007, filed by Janet Guttsman

Gay Indian filmmaker Parvez Sharma, director of “Jihad for Love,” made no secret of his dislike for U.S. sentiments against gay marriage in a film festival interview, so I couldn’t resist a cheeky sideline question.

“You’re in Toronto. Gay marriage is legal here. Are you going to just go off and get married?”

What I didn’t expect was Sharma’s response.

“I’d never thought about it. You’re absolutely right. I could. Maybe I should. I’ll ask him. Do we still have time?”

I suspect the answer was no, given the fact that Sharma’s partner, an American banker, was leaving town that day, but it certainly got him thinking, and he promised to tell me if they do decide to tie the knot. Maybe they’ll be back.

The movie, which premiered in Toronto, is a documentary about gay men and women trying to live Muslim lives in countries like Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt and South Africa, and Sharma says it reflects his own struggles to be accepted within the Muslim community.

But Sharma, who has a U.S. visa that describes him as an alien with “extraordinary ability,” says he’s fighting for acceptance in the United States as well. “I have a husband, and he’s here at the film festival with me,” he said. “It’s really unfortunate because in heterosexual marriage the spouse can get a green card through the partner… Same-sex partners do not get immigration benefits.”

http://blogs.reuters.com/category/events/toronto-2007/

(y) (y) (y)

(f)

Ab imo pectore.

From the bottom of the chest (heart).

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

sweetlady

09-12-2007, 10:50 AM

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

Old and new: St Pancras has been spruced up for the arrival of the Eurostar services:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/graphics/2007/09/12/bapancras200.jpg

Romance returns to rail travel

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 12/09/2007

The new Eurostar line to the continent is an engineering wonder of the age and, says Ellis Woodman, it has added lustre to a Victorian architectural jewel

There are just nine weeks to go before St Pancras station replaces Waterloo as London's Eurostar terminal.

That first commercial journey will mark the completion of a project that surely ranks among the wonders of the modern age.

Involving the construction of 150 bridges and the establishment of major stations at Stratford and Ebbsfleet, the high-speed rail link between London and the Channel tunnel has taken 11 years to build at a cost of £5.8 billion. It is, by a margin, the single largest construction project to be undertaken in this country.

While the headline news is that journey times to the continent are set to be slashed by an average of 25 minutes, the project's impact promises to reach considerably farther.

In two years' time, high-speed domestic trains will begin running on the line, dramatically cutting journey times between the capital and the outer reaches of the Thames Gateway. It is estimated that these services will unlock a £10.5 billion bonanza of regeneration, reframing the geography of south-east England.

So extensive are the potential benefits of the line that it would be easy to overlook another happy byproduct: the comprehensive restoration of its new London terminus.

St Pancras, too, was a wonder of its age. Constructed by the Midland Railway Company over 10 years from 1867, it remains this country's most palatially conceived station. Its design comprises two intimately linked parts: a cavernous, cast-iron train shed and the neo-gothic Grand Midland Hotel into which it docks.

They were the work of two remarkable figures, one an engineer, the other an architect. The engineer, William Henry Barlow, was responsible for the shed: at the time, the widest single-span structure in the world.

Quite why Barlow felt the need to carry his roof over in a single heroic bound is the subject of some debate. When the Great Northern Railway Company built its adjacent terminal at King's Cross a couple of decades earlier, it had employed the altogether more expedient solution of twin sheds, side by side.

Barlow considered such a strategy, but he had a freight tunnel running through the middle of his site. If he subdivided the roof, the extra columns would bear directly on it; he is said to have feared a collapse.

Yet, while Barlow's design may have been the product of practical concerns it is hard to believe that his client begrudged the expense. St Pancras was always conceived as a testament to the greater glory of the Midland Railway Company. Its soaring roof meets that brief exactly, putting that of every other London railway station to shame.

The hotel, designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, is every bit as grand. Stretching for an epic 150 metres, it presents a vast cliff of brickwork to the Euston Road, capped by the most exuberant roofline in London. It was as novel a building type as the railway station then was: Scott drew his language from a rag-bag of gothic sources dating back to the 13th century.

But the result is inescapably a work of his age - a vivid declaration that the 19th-century gothic architect could rise above pastiche and forge a living tradition.

The past 80 years have not been kind to the building. In desperate need of upgrading - the shortage of plumbing was a central problem - its life as a hotel came to an end in 1935. It was turned into offices, but abandoned in the 1980s on account of a lack of fire escapes.

Several attempts were then made to return it to its original use, but the financial model never stacked up.

The key difficulty was that the building's protected status - it is Grade I listed - prohibited its upgrading to current five-star requirements. But the new development has resolved this quandary.

A major extension has been built along the west side of the train shed, accommodating the gyms, saunas and conference suites that could not be installed in the original structure. The rooftop levels of Scott's masterpiece have been converted into more than 60 luxury flats, but the rest of the building is due to reopen for business as a hotel in 2009.

The hotel extension is detailed in a manner broadly in keeping with the original building, but another addition is considerably more obtrusive. The Eurostar trains are twice the length of the Victorian shed, so a vast, table-like canopy has been appended to its rear gable. It will not trouble next year's Stirling Prize jury, but it meets its principal responsibility of deferring to the old shed well enough.

Barlow's roof has also been the subject of restoration - a process that has remedied changes made in the wake of its bombing during the second world war. Painted in the original sky-blue and boasting a much increased area of glazing, the refurbished structure is a revelation.

Knowing that they have got something special on their hands, London and Continental Railways have boldly declined to install advertising hoardings and have let the units around the perimeter to a rather better class of shop and restaurant.

So if you are due to take the Eurostar after November 14, please be warned. As you wait for your train at what is supposedly the longest champagne bar in Europe, you may be overtaken by a curious sensation. Don't worry: you've not been overdoing the Bollinger. That's just the romance of rail coming flooding back.

So if you are due to take the Eurostar after November 14, please be warned. As you wait for your train at what is supposedly the longest champagne bar in Europe, you may be overtaken by a curious sensation.

Don't worry: you've not been overdoing the Bollinger. That's just the romance of rail coming flooding back.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/09/12/bapancras112.xml

(l) (l) (l)

(f)

Amicus certus in re incerta cernitur.

A true friend is dicerned during an uncertain matter".

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

sweetlady

09-12-2007, 10:55 AM

:| :| :|

:o

Stand tall: remember high heels are a secret weapon against any rivals:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/graphics/2007/09/12/camilla.jpg

As the dreaded but comfy Croc threatens to take over the world, Camilla Morton calls for high heels to be worn always and everywhere... and says the pleasure far outweighs the pain.

SLIDE SHOW:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Slideshow/slideshowContentFrameFragXL.jhtml;jsessionid4J1XWG B2DDO1PQFIQMGCFF4AVCBQUIV0?xml=/fashion/2007/09/12/pixshoes112.xml&ite=fashion

Put yourself on a 6in pedestal

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 12/09/2007

Why do otherwise sane, normal women allow themselves to go out in public wearing what looks like the remains of a cycle helmet on their feet?

The continued popularity of Crocs is a huge mystery to me. Clearly they will never flatter anyone. Of course they're comfortable, but isn't that a bit of a cop-out for the committed follower of fashion? Apparently not.

Take a look at the feet around you and I'll bet you'll see a whole range of horribly sensible shoes. Yes, your chiropodist (and your mother) might approve of all those biker boots and ballet flats, but where's the glamour, where's the mystique?

With London Fashion Week approaching, now's the perfect time to throw comfort to the wind and strap on a completely fabulous pair of high heels.

If I had my way, I'd ban dress-down Fridays and have everyone dressing up like it's Friday night every day. And dressing up, for me, means ditching the flat shoes.

Since writing the book How to Walk in High Heels, I have felt duty bound to practise what I preach. In my six-inch stilettos I keep my head held high and my eye on the goal. They are my shot of confidence and secret weapon against any rivals.

It's true that as a heels devotee, plasters, pedicures, paracetamol and taxis have become an integral part of life. I also have to admit that cobblestones have become the bane of my life. But then, what work of art was achieved without pain, tears and the occasional blister?

With the heel comes glamour, mystique, height and allure. Lofty, impractical shoes put you on your own personal pedestal, ready to meet the world. Heels are a gym workout in themselves. They slim, elongate, put off the need for liposuction, add grace and poise, and quadruple your self-esteem.

The Croc brigade may have practicality going for them, but heel-lovers have the whole history of the silver screen on their side. Think of any style icon you like and she is going to be in heels - so why not you? Think of Marilyn Monroe's entrance in Some Like It Hot - try as you might, I guarantee you will never achieve the same effect in flats. Audrey Hepburn got lucky. Stilettos are the surest way to bring out your inner starlet.

Live a little - and let this precarious mode of transport bring out a fabulous new you. When I talk about the transforming effect of high heels, I'm speaking from experience. I myself went through a Doc Martens phase (nothing wrong with that!), but this hankering after bulky boots vanished the moment I met Manolo Blahnik, maker of the most beautiful heels on earth.

I was a fashion student, the laces of my Doc Martens were untied, and I tripped and, quite literally, ended up in his arms. He was charming and offered to fashion me a pair of heels. The shoes were works of art, confections that were naughty and nice, and that was it: I was lost. Yes, they cost more than my entire student loan, but I felt transformed, invincible. The icon effect was instant.

While no one's going to swoon over a broad in plastic clogs, the high heel can work wonders for any aspiring Aphrodite. From Manolo to Miss Selfridge, from slingbacks to sandals, there is a shoe and style for all Cinderellas and all budgets.

As burlesque dancer Dita Von Teese says: "The day you don't make an effort, I can guarantee that will be the day you run into your ex." Exes aside, isn't it far more likely that the extraordinary will happen if you are dressed to impress?

Here's my advice to you on kick-starting your new image: give your wardrobe a clean-out and edit out the ugly. It's basic psychology that if you feel you look good, you feel good, and vice versa.

Remember that you only get one chance to make that first impression. So try the magic for yourself; if you give them the chance, high heels will be your own personal Fairy Godmother.

The stars know this already. At a recent in-store evening at Browns, beautiful actress Rachel Weisz was wearing such incredible YSL high black patent heels that I didn't notice anything above her ankles.

Heels are one of the most potent weapons a woman has, so why not stand on that portable pedestal and admire the view?

Still nervous about saying ciao to the Crocs? Remember that heels are not only seductive, they also show that you're the boss. Equip yourself with some stilettos or wedges, and make them look up to you.

Stand tall, shoulders back and, when your shoes start to feel like portable cheese graters, remember, even Cinderella ditched hers at midnight.

• 'A Girl for All Seasons: the Year in High Heels' by Camilla Morton (Hodder).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/main.jhtml?xml=/fashion/2007/09/12/efcamilla112.xml

'No one's going to swoon over a broad in plastic clogs', says heel devotee Camilla Morton:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/graphics/2007/09/12/camilla1.jpg

(l) (l) Everyone needs variety in their shoe collection. But I must admit, my Birki's are not nearly as sexy as my stilettos. ;)

(f)

Audi, vide, tace, si tu vis vivere (in pace).

Hear, see, be silent, if you wish to live (in peace).

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

sweetlady

09-12-2007, 10:58 AM

:o :o

;)

Australian National inferiority complex 'dead'.

The cringe is over, says Clive

By Simon Ferguson

September 13, 2007 01:00am

* National inferiority complex 'dead'

* Australia has 'everything you could want'

* James about to begin Australian tour

THE man who helped invent the great Australian cultural cringe has issued its last rites.

Clive James, the famous wit who, along with Brett Whiteley, Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes was one of a generation of fine minds who fled in the '60s to make their mark in England, yesterday declared our national inferiority complex extinct.

"Really, those days are over," he said.

"If you're asking is Australia still the isolated place from which you felt the necessity to escape, the answer is blatantly no. Australia's got everything you want."

Since before Federation, artistic Australians have felt compelled like James to make tracks for Europe or the US due to their birthplace being seen as a cultural wasteland with no self-confidence.

But nowadays, James believes, we have grown to be more comfortable with ourselves and our place in the world.

James said the cultural landscape has changed along with architecture and urban planning.

"Back when I lived in Sydney, the word 'eyesore' wasn't really used, it wasn't a concept for people and you could tell," he said. "Now we've all gotten a lot more sensitive.

"I would still advise young people to see the world, however, if only to find out just how different it is from Australia. The world is an underprivileged place on the whole, and that's part of Australia's problem. It's hard to see world politics in perspective from the top of the heap."

The author, webcaster, presenter and raconteur extraordinaire will prove his case by touring his one-man show Clive James: Out On His Own! to some far-flung centres in the next six weeks.

While the Kogarah Kid won't be performing in his childhood home town, he will be hitting Wagga Wagga and Thirroul as well as the capitals.

The erudite expat starts his nationwide tour at Parramatta's Riverside Theatres on Friday.

James, who turns 69 on October 7 when playing Perth, has been loitering in Sydney recently to soak up local material for his show, which consists of himself talking about "everything" and then taking questions.

Considering he'll be touring the nation as the federal election looms larger, James will definitely be talking politics.

"It's a big story worldwide. The whole democratic world has its eye on

Howard and they want to know how he does it. For more than a decade he's been doomed at every election but somehow he wins, they want to know how he does that. And just at this very moment it's brewing up beautifully."

So who would James bet on to win?

"Howard has been this far behind before and he's come back. As for Rudd, it was a masterstroke on Rudd's part or on the part of his people to put out the rumour about the strip club, that was brilliant."

But James says neither leader will have final say. "As usual the election will probably be decided by timber cutters in Tasmania."

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22407484-2,00.html

:)

(f)

Ceteris paribus.

Other things being equal.

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

sweetlady

09-12-2007, 11:01 AM

:| :|

THE founder of a leading web chat forum being sued over allegedly "malicious" comments says the case affects the viability of online discussions.

By Mark Schliebs

September 12, 2007 04:03pm

Australia

THE founder of one of the nation’s most popular online discussion forums says a lawsuit brought by a software company threatens freedom of speech on the net.

Whirlpool forums founder Simon Wright, who is being sued by accounting software maker 2Clix Australia for publishing comments the company alleges are “false and malicious”, says the legal action affects all online discussion and even film reviews.

“A lot hangs in the balance here,” Mr Wright told NEWS.com.au.

“This goes beyond Whirlpool, or indeed communities in general.

“It affects the viability of all internet discussion, from blogs to product reviews on Amazon.

“What’s to stop movie distributors from threatening anyone who publishes a negative review of the latest film?”

Mr Wright said that the support from users has been “incredibly heartwarming” and demonstrates how much they appreciate participating in forums that facilitate “fair and reasonable” criticism.

He said that Whirlpool uses a range of measures to identify potentially problematic comments and there is a set of rules in place to regulate posts.

“Whirlpool's forum operates on the basis that users post their comments without prior approval.

“We treat all complaints about posts seriously.”

Members of the Whirlpool forum have also been donating money to help pay the legal costs for Mr Wright, who set up the website to help internet users discuss problems with broadband services.

Legal case

2Clix Australia is suing Mr Wright for damages after two forum discussions about its products on the Whirlpool site.

According to a statement on the site, purportedly from 2Clix, the action was based on comments criticising its software and postings encouraging other Whirlpool members to avoid purchasing their products.

2Clix spokesman David Morgan said that he would not confirm that the “Statement of Claim” on the website was an exact copy of the court documents.

“There is a legal process underway (and) on our legal advice, we will be making no comment,” Mr Morgan said.

According to the document, 2Clix “quantifies its loss in income between January 2007 to July 2007 at approximately $150,000 per month”.

The document also said 2Clix would be seeking $150,000 in damages for the alleged “injurious falsehood”, the permanent removal of two forum threads discussing its software and legal costs to be paid by Mr Wright.

Whirlpool said it would be fighting the allegations in court.

“Whirlpool believes the action has no merit and will defend the matter vigorously, despite being a community website with little resources,” the company said.

The forum threads in question still appear online.

Users show their support

Since news of the court action was posted on the website last night, more than 1200 comments have been posted in support of Mr Wright /no spamming of other sites/ and many users have actually donated money to help with legal costs.

“(I've) donated $1254 via PayPal… $1 for each post I've made on (Whirlpool),” one user said.

“WP is the best forum of its type in the world and it would be a very sad day if that were put in jeopardy… I urge you to donate as much as you can.”

Another user who looked at every cash pledge made on the site calculated that at 10.30am (AEST) today, supporters had donated at least $3097.94 for legal costs.

“Amazing when you consider that these were only the amounts posted, not including those who didn’t post the amount, those who had posts deleted, and those yet to read and donate,” the user said.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22405674-2,00.html

^o)^o)^o)

:)

(f)

Concordia salus.

Well-being through harmony. (f)

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

sweetlady

09-12-2007, 11:08 AM

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

Despite a somewhat checkered past, a New York river town has undergone a renaissance since artists, gallery owners, poets, and other big-city émigrés have discovered its timeless charms

From August 2007

By Alfred Corn

On a sunny morning in Hudson, New York, the skies hazy as though made of milk glass, I stand on Warren Street, trying to make sense of this town’s layered history. Set on the Hudson River less than 100 miles north of New York City, the town’s history includes 17thcentury Dutch settlers, 18thcentury merchants, and 19thcentury whalers who began their voyages to the South Seas from its deep harbor. In the 1830’s, Thomas Cole, the founding genius of the Hudson River School of painting, set up shop across the river in Catskill. He was joined there by Sanford Robinson Gifford, a Hudson resident, and then by Frederic Edwin Church. During the robberbaron era in the early 20th century, Hudson was an upstate pleasure capital with notorious bordellos. Later, the town went into a slow decline, its historic homes falling into notexactly picturesque ruin.

By the end of the sixties, poverty and crime were widespread. A decade or so later, however, a new round of gentrification had begun, paving the way for the town’s bohochic present. Key pioneers included the painters Edward Avedesian and Ellsworth Kelly (who settled in nearby Spencertown). The poet John Ashbery was alerted to Hudson’s potential by these artists, and he and his partner, David Kermani, found an underpriced Queen Anne Victorian house on Court Square and began to renovate it. During a dinner with them and my friend Philip Alvaré, Ashbery talks about his early days here, when many houses on Warren Street were boarded up, but explains that patience has had its rewards.

Another accelerator for Hudson’s revival was the influx of antiques shops; the first was a group store opened in the early eighties by Byrne Fone and Alain Pioton. Byrne, the author of Historic Hudson: An Architectural Portrait, has been a key proponent of preserving Hudson’s old buildings. During the eighties Warren Street suddenly spiffed up with new shops and restaurants, and this remains true today: there’s 18th and early19thcentury furniture at Botanicus, modern vintage pieces at Mark McDonald, contemporary furniture at Lounge, and many purveyors of bizarre or campy junk. Epitomizing the trend away from antiques to modern pieces, McDonald transformed a prewar department store into an airy, multilevel atrium filled with design classics, art books, and revolving shows of contemporary decorative art.

There are numerous art galleries in town, including understated spaces like Carrie Haddad, Richard Sena, and Art Design Digression LTD. When I ask painter Bill Sullivan what he likes about Hudson, he conveys glee at living in the epicenter of the Hudson River school, whose approach to landscape he has adapted for a modern aesthetic.

For lunch, I choose Earth Foods, one of Hudson’s most popular hangouts. Sitting at the counter encourages intimacy with adjacent strangers, and soon I’m speaking with Stephanie Rose, a painter. She tells me her portrait of Ashbery has just been hung in the Albany Institute of History and Art. We discuss some of the nearby attractions: the Catamount ski slopes; Bard College, with its Frank Gehry/no spamming of other sites/designed performance center; and the charming towns of Rhinebeck and Great Barrington.
In Hudson itself, mustsees include the Opera House, formerly the City Hall; since its recent restoration it has served as a nonprofit cultural center for group art shows, readings, and music events. A privately owned counterpart is Time and Space Limited, or TSL, founded by ex/no spamming of other sites/New Yorkers Linda Mussman, a playwright, and her partner, Claudia Bruce, an actor. TSL hosts theater, cult movies, art shows, readings, and a summercamp program for neighborhood children.

Alvaré and I zip across the Rip Van Winkle Bridge to Cedar Grove, Cole’s attractive yellow house in Catskill, and stroll through its garden. The large outbuilding was Cole’s workroom, and it’s billed as the very first artist’s studio in America. Then we drive to Olana, Church’s Moorish 19thcentury fantasy high above the river.

The view is transcendent, chastening conversationalists into silence, at least for a minute. The sun is sinking into a golden cushion of cloud and absorbs our attention until it drops out of sight. We return to Hudson, a bit wistful that we aren’t painters. Back on Warren Street, I settle into the elegant apartment above Alvaré’s shop, which he rents to weekend visitors. Evening plans are loose: dinner at Swoon Kitchenbar (a local favorite), a look in at Red Dot bar and restaurant, and then a leisurely walk through the night streets. This proves more intriguing than anticipated, once you get away from Warren’s glaring orange sodium lamps. Side streets are dimmer and more mysterious, the sound of voices and laughter deepening the effect. Silent Federal or Victorian façades emerge from the gloom, and I notice one frame house set off by itself, lit by a single lamp, as though Magritte had painted it. A black cat darts along the foundation stones of a large Hudson River Bracketed structure flush with the sidewalk, and, at a remove of several miles, an eerie train whistle makes itself heard, a nostalgic sound pulling the mind across the night and back to an earlier century.

http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/hudsons-latest-act

Guide To Hudson, New York:

http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/hudsons-latest-act/sidebar/1

(l) (l) This time of year, it is absolutely gorgeous! Actually, the leaves will be turning soon in this area. My goodness, the Autumn is my favorite time of year, with Winter being a really close second. If I had to choose two seasons, I would chose those two. Bring on the chilly, the cold, the freezing temperatures! (l) (l)

(c) Time for a second cup of bean and on with what is a spectacular "hint of Fall" day.

:D

(f)

Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.

Fool me once and shame on you, fool me twice and shame on me. ;)

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

sweetlady

09-14-2007, 10:43 AM

(l) (f) (l)

Road trip: Colorful Hart Prairie Road

John Stanley

The Arizona Republic

Sept. 13, 2007 01:52 PM

The San Francisco Peaks are Arizona's rooftop, the remnants of a towering, 16,000-foot stratovolcano that blew itself apart hundreds of thousands of years ago. It's a magical region, where aspens tremble in the wind, sunlight trickles through the pines and kachinas dance in the gauzy curtains of virga that hang from passing clouds.

Hart Prairie Road (aka Forest Road 151), which skirts the western flank of the peaks, is one of the premier places in all of Arizona to view fall colors. Although the unpaved road isn't very steep or terribly rough, most drivers will feel more confident in a high-clearance vehicle. Traffic is much lighter on weekdays. Things to note along the way:

Museum of Northern Arizona: Since its founding in 1928, the museum has served as a repository for items in four main fields - anthropology, biology, geology and fine art. And with changing exhibits in three of the museum's eight galleries, there's always something new to see. Details: 3101 N. Fort Valley Road, Flagstaff. $7, $6 for age 65 and older, $5 for students with ID, $4 for Native Americans and ages 7-17, free for age 6 and younger. 1-(928)-774-5213, musnaz.org.

Flagstaff Nordic Center: There's more here than cross-country skiing and snowshoeing. In addition to occasional races and the upcoming "Autumn in the Aspens" Fall Festival, you can rent a yurt or cabin and enjoy the scenic tranquillity of the Coconino National Forest. Details: About 15 miles northwest of Flagstaff on U.S. 180, near mile marker 232. 1-(928)-220-0550, www.flagstaffnordiccenter.com.

Mountain Oasis: After your drive, stop by this charming restaurant in downtown Flagstaff. The international menu features Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and Asian dishes, as well as an assortment of appetizers, sandwiches, soups, salads and beverages. Details: 11 E. Aspen Ave., Flagstaff. 1-(928)-214-9270, themenuplease.com/mountainoasis.

http://www.azcentral.com/travel/arizona/features/articles/0913road0913.html

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

Cum recte vivis, ne cures verba malorum.

If you live properly, don't worry about what the evil ones say. :)

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

sweetlady

09-14-2007, 10:45 AM

(l) (l) (l)

Wilderness & refuges:

Arizona boasts 47 wilderness areas, encompassing some 1.4 million acres throughout the state.

http://www.azcentral.com/travel/parks/travel_wildazindex.html

(f)

Cum grano salis.

With a grain of salt." Take something not literally, but with due consideration.

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

sweetlady

09-14-2007, 10:50 AM

:| :| :|

Doe! State riles folks by taking away deer.

Wildlife - Hundreds call to complain about Oregon officials' removal of a Molalla family's two pets.

Friday, September 14, 2007

JESSICA BRUDER

The Oregonian Staff

As calls poured in from hundreds of outraged Oregonians, state wildlife officials forged ahead Thursday with plans to release a Molalla family's pet deer into the wild or transfer them to a licensed care facility.

Euthanasia, they said, would be considered only as a last resort.

"We're trying to get Snowball back to the wild where she belongs, and everybody's mad at us," said Christie Scott, a regional public information officer for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. She said the agency's Salem phone system was "flooded" and that the department's director, Roy Elicker, came back early from an out-of-town meeting to deal with the firestorm.

The two blacktail deer at the center of the debate -- Snowball and her yearling buck, Bucky -- spent the day munching on alfalfa, grass and blackberry vines at an undisclosed refuge.

Veterinarians evaluated their health and awaited the results of blood tests, which could determine the animals' fate -- a subject that dominated talk shows, attracted interest from "Good Morning America" and created a sensation on the Internet.

Jim Filipetti, the Molalla father who spent thousands of dollars on veterinary bills to correct Snowball's leg deformities and cared for the deer inside his home for the first year of her life, vowed to win her back.

Although it is illegal to possess wildlife without a permit, Filipetti said Snowball is an exceptional case because she never could have survived in the wild. "Isn't the best place for her with me?" Filipetti asked. "I don't care if the law's on their side. What they did and the way they did it is wrong."

On Thursday, he hired Geordie Duckler of the Animal Law Practice in Portland to develop a legal strategy.

"For the last six years, my clients have been doing exactly what the state wants to be done: conserving and protecting these animals," Duckler said, adding that, though Filipetti and his longtime partner, Francesca Mantei, do not have a permit to own wild deer, he believes they surpass any state standards such a permit would require.

"As easy as it is to get a permit to hunt and shoot and kill and eat and butcher them, then why should taking care of them, and protecting them, be more difficult or problematic?" Duckler added.

He also noted that the law that makes it illegal to capture, possess or rehabilitate wildlife without a permit also provides exceptions for "other organizations or individuals that the director determines to be involved in scientific, educational, or conservation efforts of overwhelming benefit to wildlife or wildlife habitat in the state of Oregon."

Duckler said he'd like to bring the matter before a judge.

But Thursday, wildlife officials would not address that possibility. "At this point in time, we're not talking about exemptions, we're talking about what's best for the animals," said Larry Cooper, deputy administrator of the wildlife division of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Cooper added that the family's heartache could have been avoided if they had acted differently six years ago. "If they would have done the right thing and contacted us, we would've gotten hold of a licensed wildlife rehabilitator who has the skills and abilities and knows how to assess the needs of orphaned animals," he said. "It would have been released back into the wild, where it was supposed to be."

The veterinarian who made tiny casts to correct Snowball's deformed legs and hooves may also face sanctions.

On Thursday, state wildlife officials were looking into whether veterinarian Patrick Paradis of the Woodburn Pet Hospital was legally authorized to treat Snowball. "You have to have a permit to work on wild animals," Scott said, adding that licensed wildlife rehabilitators are supposed "to report illegal activity."

If it turns out that Paradis wasn't working on the deer legally, Scott said, "I don't know necessarily what our next step would be" but "we would want to talk to them and educate them. Education is usually our first tool."

Paradis declined to comment on the case.

Mantei, who said she had gone without sleep for 36 hours, wanted people to know how grateful she and her family were for the outpouring of support for them and their deer. "I had no idea that this would incite the feelings it has. Jim and I are very grateful."

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/118974570648310.xml&coll=7

:o :o

(f) (f)

Audi, vide, tace, si tu vis vivere (in pace).

Hear, see, be silent, if you wish to live (in peace).

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

sweetlady

09-14-2007, 10:54 AM

(f) (f) (f)

Quality time with the children, meditating, eating well - it's all about the mind and soul for The Body.

http://ultratravel.telegraph.co.uk/site//pages/ultra_experts/travelling_life_-_elle_macpherson_page1.php

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/graphics/2007/09/13/elle.jpg

(f)

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes. ;)

If you can understand this, you are over-educated.

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

sweetlady

09-14-2007, 10:57 AM

(f) (f) (f)

Slide Show!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Slideshow/slideshowContentFrameFragXL.jhtml;jsessionid4HI4SY PJMBL45QFIQMGCFFWAVCBQUIV0?xml=/arts/filmslide/swedisherotica/pixswedisherotica.xml&site=Arts

(f)

Concordia salus.

Well-being through harmony.

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

sweetlady

09-14-2007, 11:00 AM

:o :o

Slide Show:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Slideshow/slideshowContentFrameFragXL.jhtml;jsessionid4HI4SY PJMBL45QFIQMGCFFWAVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2007/09/14/moscow/moscow.xml&site=News

:| Not what I thought it would be, either. :o Quite a cold shower after my the Sweedish Erotica posting, eh? ;)

;)

(f)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

09-14-2007, 11:04 AM

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

September 14, 2007 10:48pm

From correspondents in London

MODELS aged under 16 will be banned from London Fashion Week after an industry report today which also said they should have to show a health certificate before being allowed on the catwalk.

But the Model Health Inquiry, set up by the British Fashion Council (BFC), stopped short of barring all models with a body mass index (BMI) below a certain level from the event, which starts tomorrow.

It said that using BMI - a ratio of weight to height - was "not an accurate method of determining health" and could even encourage models to make themselves vomit to try and manipulate tests.

Its report comes amid a rumbling international debate about whether skinny or size-zero models should be kept off the catwalks because of fears that they could encourage eating disorders among fashion fans, particularly young girls.

Spain and Italy have already barred models with a BMI of less than 18 from their catwalks. A BMI of 18.5 is the World Health Organisation's minimum healthy standard.

Two South American models have died in recent months after suffering from eating disorders, the report said.

The report was compiled by a panel of experts including Sarah Doukas, the founder of the Storm model agency who discovered supermodel Kate Moss, designer Giles Deacon, model Erin O'Connor plus a top expert on eating disorders.

It said that its earlier suggestion that under-16s be banned from London Fashion Week catwalks had "met with strong approval".

"The BFC (London Fashion Week's organiser) will implement a ban with immediate effect and ensure that no under 16s appear modelling adult fashion during the September 2007 LFW," it added.

The BFC's decision comes amid controversy in Australia over the choice of a 12-year-old girl to be the face of the Gold Coast's Fashion week in Queensland.

Even the Prime Minister John Howard has weighed into the debate, saying it is outrageous and calling for the preservation of "some notion of innocence in our society".

The event's organisers say Maddison Gabriel, who turns 13 on Sunday, is just following her dreams, but critics believe Maddison is too young for the role.

Tonight, the Year 8 student said she was the right model for the job.

"I believe that I can fit into women's clothes, I can model women's clothes, so I should be able to do it," Maddison said on Today Tonight.

"It doesn't matter about age, it matters that you can do the job."

Her mother Michelle also defended the role, saying her daughter could be both a 12-year-old girl, and a young woman.

"For a 12-year-old I think she's handling it very well, I'm very proud of her," she said.

Back in Britain, the report also said that models taking part in London Fashion Week from September 2008 "should provide a medical certificate attesting their good health from doctors with expertise in recognising eating disorders."

It accepted that models were members of "a profession which is at a high risk of eating disorders" and noted that there was a "deep lack of knowledge about eating disorders" in the fashion industry.

"Widespread use of unhealthily thin models feeds criticism that the fashion industry is fuelling an unhealthy obsession with thinness and dieting in the wider population," it added.

The report makes a total of 14 recommendations which also include mandatory criminal records checks for all agents, designers and photographers working with under 16s "in line with other sectors working with children".

It also floated the idea of random backstage drug tests and suggested that "good quality food" should be laid on for models and others working behind the scenes at shows.

The Model Health Inquiry issued its interim report in July but launched its final report Friday.

Hilary Riva, chief executive of the BFC, said she agreed with the report's findings on BMI and health certificates, while London Mayor Ken Livingstone said he would "strongly support" the new measures.

The report's findings are not binding but will now be considered by the fashion industry.

http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,23663,22420848-5007192,00.html

(y) (y) (y)

(f)

Adde parvum parvo magnus acervus erit.

Add little to little and there will be a big pile.

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

sweetlady

09-14-2007, 11:08 AM

(l) (l)

This will serve 4 or so

4 cups whole milk
4 tablespoons Corn Starch
1/2 stick of butter
1/2 of a pound roll of Jimmie Dean Regular Sausage
Little salt and a little pepper.

But those Grands biscuits in the oven first, or whatever you do for biscuits. They will be done at about exactly the right time.

Next, start cooking the sausage - I put it all in as a huge thin patty, then brown one side. Medium, medium high heat.

Flip it like a burger when it is ready and after it is almost all the way cooked, I chop it up in the pan into bite sized pieces. Use a cast iron pot if one is available.

Melt the butter in the microwave or in a pan if you want too, whatever, melt the butter.

Take the milk and blend in the corn starch while the sausage is cooking and the butter is melting. Mix the corn starch in well, but do not get the mixture too "foamy".

Once the sausage is cooked and chopped up into those perfectly sized pieces, stir the milk/corn starch up again and pour in it with the sausage. Yes, leave all the delicious pork fat in there, do not drain it, seriously.

Start stirring.

Pour in the melted butter, keep stirring.

Stir until the mixture comes to a boil, never stopping for long. Once it starts to boil, keep cooking about a minute or so, then it should be ready to serve.

Add your salt and pepper, stir and serve over those biscuits.

Ummmmmmm

Only once in a while though!

:o :o

(l) (l)

(f)

Ad augusta per angusta.

To high places by narrow roads.

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

sweetlady

09-14-2007, 11:13 AM

:) :)

http://pinchmysalt.com/2007/09/05/perhaps-the-best-biscuits-ever/

http://durhamfoodie.blogspot.com/2007/06/best-biscuits.html

http://www.yelp.com/topic/chicago-best-biscuits-gravy-in-chicago

http://newyork.citysearch.com/review/41776861/1993419

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Bills-Sausage-Gravy/Reviews.aspx?Page=1

http://nookandpantry.blogspot.com/2007/07/mile-high-buttermilk-biscuits.html

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1041/686917269_e0acfcf627.jpg

http://www.toptastes.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000299

http://www.verybestbaking.com/recipes/detail.aspx?ID=29735

(f) (f)

Quidquid discis, tibi discis.

Whatever you learn, you learn it for yourself.

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

sweetlady

09-14-2007, 12:42 PM

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

by Gretchen Kelly

From the FALL 2007 issue of The Out Traveler

1. Skibo Castle

Dornoch,Scotland

Approximately $1,800-$2,000 per night for nonmembers

CarnegieClub.co.uk

Skibo, once the "ancestral" castle of millionaire Andrew Carnegie (while Carnegie was born in Scotland, his roots are squarely working-class), has been immortalized of late as "the place where Madonna got married." To make it even gayer, the Gaelic name for this 13th-century Scottish Highlands fortress is Schytherbolle, which translates roughly as "fairyland."

Rub elbows with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas at this members-only club -- nonmembers may be granted a single stay, at the rack rate, to decide whether to join -- or watch the unofficial king of Scotland, Sean Connery, play a round of golf. Odd club rules include a nightly mandatory toast to Andy Carnegie and a daily falcon flight in the great hall (watch your hairdo). Palatial rooms include working fireplaces and giant claw-foot bathtubs.

2. Bovey Castle

Devon, England

Approximately $350-$2,500 per night

BoveyCastle.com

Peter De Savary, responsible for developing Skibo as an elite members-only hotel, sold his original property and clicked the "refresh" button in Devon, site of the original Sherlock Holmes film "The Hound of the Baskervilles." In late 2006, De Savary sold the Devon property too, but not before establishing it as another must-stay castle hotel. Bovey Castle, built in 1906, is a gray stone Edwardian mansion with palatial rooms. Sporting one of the best golf courses in the area, amid miles of beautifully landscaped property, Bovey attracts a well heeled clientele nostalgic for the days of the country-house weekend.

3. Ashford Castle

County Mayo, Ireland

Approximately $350-$2,000 per night

Ashford.ie

Ask anyone in Ireland to name the best castle hotel -- in a country with as many castles as shamrocks -- and they'll cite Ashford without hesitation. The 700-year-old estate, opened to guests in 1939, is one of the oldest castle hotels in the world. A room with a view? Ashford defines it, perched as it is on the shores of Loch Corrib, Ireland's second-largest lake. It even has a Hollywood pedigree: When John Ford shot the quintessential Irish-Hollywood film "The Quiet Man," one of John Wayne's most revered, in the surrounding countryside, the hotel served as mission control for many in the cast and crew.

4. Chateau D'Esclimont

Ile-de-France region, France

Approximately $200-$1,200 per night

Esclimont.com

Whet your appetite for the glory days of the French monarchy at the Chateau d'Esclimont. Set amid 150 acres of manicured gardens and reflecting pools, the estate, once home to the Rochefoucauld family, is a royally romantic stop just an hour's drive from Paris. In addition to rooms rich with bed curtains and Louis Quinze chairs, the chateau offers delights fit for a queen including a heated outdoor swimming pool, two tennis courts, and a wine cellar stocked with the best vintages in France.

5. Hotel Podewils

Krag, Poland

Approximately $75-$120 per night

Podewils.pl/kragen

The largest 15th-century knight's castle in Pomerania and Poland's only castle built over water, the "Castle of Flowers" is perched on oak piles like those supporting the canal buildings of Venice. Considered one of the most beautiful castles in Eastern Europe, the property has its own cinema and a fitness center offering traditional sauna and massage services. Legend has it that the estate's numbers of windows, doors, rooms, and towers are calendrically significant. Providing further mystery for ghost chasers, some claim that at night sympathetic guests can hear spooky minstrel music and the laughter of ghostly courtiers in the castle's mazelike corridors.

6. Hotel Schloss Wolfsbrunnen

Hesse, Germany

Approximately $95-$240 per night

Wolfsbrunnen.Germany-Castles.net

Long ago, according to local lore, a pack of wolves offered villagers their protection in exchange for being allowed to drink freely from the well now called wolfsbrunnen, or "wolf's fountain." One day a rogue villager killed the alpha wolf and the rest of the pack disappeared, leaving behind only the haunted cries of their leader's soul, which, it is said, can still be heard on moonlit nights. The old well sits in front of the Schloss Wolfsbrunnen, which was built at the turn of the 20th century in a neo-Renaissance style. Full of German gemutlichkeit, or "friendly coziness," the 60-plus rooms include white wood paneling and modern amenities, with pool, sauna, and massage services offered on premises.

7. Castillo de Santa Catalina

Malaga, Spain

Approximately $200 per night

CastillodeSantaCatalina.com

From its high interior arches to its outdoor fountain gardens, this 13th-century Arabian fortress has an Alhambra-esque appearance. Take in the views from the contemporary pastel-shaded rooms, or dive into the outdoor swimming pool. This parador, or historic inn, offers local dishes like ajo blanco (cold garlic and almond soup), partridge and pipirrana, a refreshing tomato and cucumber salad -- the perfect meal after sauntering in the warm Andalusian sun.

8. The Kalnoky Guesthouses

Transylvania, Romania

From approximately $66 per night

TransylvanianCastle.com

After the fall of communism in Romania, the 25th generation of the Kalnoky family, once among the most powerful in the Hungarian-speaking region of Transylvania, reclaimed its ancestral castle -- in ruins after 50 years of neglect by the state. Now under restoration, the castle will soon be habitable by guests, but you can help fund the restoration by renting one of the rustic and thoroughly charming village homes on its bucolic property.

These fascinating guesthouses are filled with rare Romanian folk art, family antiquities and, for those cold Transylvanian winters, working fireplaces to snuggle up with your S.O. The property's sauna is housed in the old castle bakery.

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

(f)

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

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

sweetlady

09-14-2007, 12:43 PM

(f) (f)

by GT McCallan

Don't want the movie to end? Stock up on soundtracks and popcorn and relive your favorite movies long after the credits have rolled in the locations where they were set and shot. Recreate all that widescreen wonder in Sydney, Dallas and Gainesville, Texas; Reno, Nev.; Vancouver, B.C. and Alberta, the alluring co-stars of our five favorite gay and lesbian films.

"Priscilla Queen of the Desert," starring Sydney, Australia

Action: Gay bingo palace, Sydney's Imperial Hotel (35 Erskineville Road; +61-2-9519-9899), was the location for several Sydney scenes. To go on the Priscilla road trip, head out into the desert of New South Wales to the town of Broken Hill. Shop on Argent Street and check out Mario's Palace Hotel (227 Argent St.). Other pit stops along the road include Mundi Mundi Plain Lookout, where the girls break down, Coober Pedy in South Australia (also a shooting location for Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome), Lasseter's Hotel Casino (93 Barrett Drive, Alice Springs; +61-8-8950-7777;

(l)

(f)

Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.

Fool me once and shame on you, fool me twice and shame on me.

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

sweetlady

09-14-2007, 12:44 PM

(f) (f)

There's nothing like a smaller-town Gay Pride event to remind you what it is all about.

by GT McCallan

This Delaware beach community is a resort town marked by a wide expanse of beach, tree-lined streets and old houses. During the summer months, the town comes alive as the population swells to roughly 50,000 -- many times the winter population of 1,500. Its summer residents often refer to it as the Key West of the mid-Atlantic. With its quaint shops, it is also reminiscent of New Hope, Pa. Rehoboth Beach is popular with lesbians and gay men from Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Richmond, Va., and, increasingly, New York and New Jersey, who escape their urban confines to frolic by the sea. The southern Delaware resort reflects D.C.'s conservatism and preppiness to some degree, and offers, like Provincetown, a more wholesome, less sexually focused retreat than Palm Springs or South Beach. You can expect to be charmed by the boardwalk, seaside shops, good restaurants and fun nightlife.

Beachside Pride

Discover the welcoming gay community at Delaware Pride (Saturday, Sept. 15, 2007; 302-378-6524; www.delawarepride.org). At this laid-back, one-day event, Rehoboth Beach gives a nod to its rainbow brethren without pretensions, inviting visitors from up and down the coast to stay as long as they like among the city's quaint attractions.

Hot tickets

For heart-pounding exhilaration, nothing beats an amusement park filled with queer thrill-seekers. Annual Gay Days at Six Flags New Jersey (Friday, Sept. 14, 2007; 6 p.m.-1 a.m.; Six Flags Theme Park; Jackson, N.J.; www.twistedlife.com) is open exclusively to the gay and gay-friendly communities. A bus charter trip from Rehoboth Beach is scheduled; contact coordinator Kenn Miller, 302-395-1698.

Delaware Pride Festival (Saturday, Sept. 15, 2007, noon-6 p.m.; Cape Henlopen State Park and Gordon's Pond State Park) celebrates its 10th year with live music, drag and fun for the whole "family."

Appropriately named band September (Saturday, Sept. 15, 2007; 12:15 p.m.; Cape Henlopen State Park and Gordon's Pond State Park; www.myspace.com/septemberblu) kicks off the early fall festival with a mixture of rock, alt, and acoustic music that's sure to set an energetic pace.

Insider tip

Poodle Beach, just south of the Boardwalk, near Queen Street, is the "circuit" beach, very popular with younger gay people who cram into a three-block area at the south end of the boardwalk. Go early to secure your 6-by-3-foot plot of sand. Beachgoers can rent umbrellas and chairs right on the beach, and plenty of refreshment stands are within easy reach along the boardwalk. It is the last beach in Rehoboth before you enter mostly straight Dewey Beach.

North Shores charges a $5 parking fee per car, and is much quieter than Poodle. It is primarily a lesbian beach, but also attracts slightly older, less "sceney" men who tend to gather to the left of the jetty. Enter the beach from the parking lot as far from the entrance as possible. The jetty itself is jokingly referred to as Indecision Point because it divides the men's beach from the women's beach.

Stay

The Silver Lake Guesthouse (133 Silver Lake Drive; 800-842-2115 or 302-226-2115; www.silverlakeguesthouse.com; from $140) is a gay-owned B&B in a tranquil setting overlooking Silver Lake and the ocean. Most of the 14 rooms have private decks some with lovely lake and ocean views. All rooms have private baths and cable TV. Silver Lake caters to a nice mix of gay clientele but tends to host mostly men, with women welcome. Only 10 minutes away on foot, it's the closest gay guesthouse to Poodle Beach. The third-floor common roof deck with lake and ocean views is popular for late-afternoon sunning and cocktails; a lakefront pier and dock extends 40 feet onto Silver Lake.

Located in town, the Sea Witch Manor Inn & Spa (71 Lake Ave; 302-226-9482 or 866-732-9482; www.seawitchmanor.com; from $325) is a lesbian-owned Victorian property, quaintly furnished and bursting with antiques. Room amenities include private balconies and private baths some with Jacuzzi tubs. The owners of the Sea Witch have added two adjacent properties, Bewitched and Bedazzled.

The Shore Inn (703 Rehoboth Ave; 302-227-8487 or 800-597-8899; www.shoreinn.com; from $130) is a gay-owned B&B for men with 14 rooms, located about a mile from the beach, and five blocks from the downtown bars and restaurants. Rooms have private bath, cable TV and refrigerator. Premises include hot tub, pool and pleasant sundeck. Continental breakfast is served daily with Friday and Saturday happy hours hosted by the owners.

Eat

La La Land (22 Wilmington Ave; 302-227-3887; www.lalalandrestaurant.com; $26-$35) serves eclectic, creative cuisine in a romantic, purple-hued atmosphere. Their little-known back bar, surrounded by a bamboo forest, is a great out-of-the-way place for drinks.

Cloud 9 (234 Rehoboth Ave; 302-226-1999; $21-31) is a fun eatery serving gourmet pizzas, pasta specialties and more. It's perfect for either fine dining or a quick, short meal, and now open year-round. There is some spillover of atmosphere from the popular bar attached to it, which is one of the only places to dance within city limits.

Play

Partners Bistro & Piano Bar (404 Rehoboth Ave; 302-226-0207; www.partners-bistro.com; $11-$25), formerly Harlow's, has live entertainment nightly and tempting happy hours that pack in the crowds from 3-8 p.m.

The Frogg Pond (First at Rehoboth avenues; 302-227-2234; www.thefroggpond.com) is a sports bar where lesbians, sporty gays and straights pack 'em in for happy hour and biweekly karaoke. A $5 cover applies on nights when live bands play. Current information on events and shows at all these venues can be found at www.rehoboth.com/nightlife.

For more information, visit www.visitsoutherndelaware.com

(f) (f)

Sic Itur Ad Astra.

Thus do we reach the stars.

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

sweetlady

09-14-2007, 12:45 PM

:) :)

http://www.wqed.org/mag/features/0607/best_restaurants.shtml

(f)

Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis.

The times are changed, and we are changed in them. (again)

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

sweetlady

09-14-2007, 12:46 PM

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

Our TravelGuides are frequently updated. This TravelGuide was last updated 07/07. Still, there are places that are bound to have closed or changed since our last update. Use the listed phone numbers to call ahead, and please let us know of any corrections or new places of interest you discover.

Chances are that within a few moments of your arrival in Dublin, you'll have one of the classic Irish stereotypes confirmed for you. Whether you're in the cab on your ride from the airport, in the lobby of your hotel or in one of Dublin's 1,000 pubs ordering your first pint of Guinness, you're sure to be confronted by that warmest of Irish clichés -- the friendly, chatty Irish person. And frankly, folks in Dublin, and in most of Ireland, have much to be jolly about. Armed with EU money, intelligent government investment incentives and Irish charm, the spectacular somersault of the Irish economy, christened the Celtic Tiger, created a very different Dublin from the parochial small town it was 10 years ago. Ireland apparently now has more millionaires per head of population than anywhere other than the U.S.

Formerly forlorn streets have been spruced up with new businesses and smart restaurants, using the past decade's makeover of the city's Temple Bar neighborhood as an inspiration. Once considered "the second city of the British Empire," Dublin now shines in its own right, boasting enough culture and coolness to wow any visitor. One of the new titles being used about Ireland is "the world's smallest cultural superpower."

What also impresses about Dublin is its vibrant atmosphere. Any weekday afternoon sees the city center's streets full of people -- shopping on Grafton Street, dashing to meet friends or just out and about. Gay folks are part of this bustle, too. Only officially legalized in 1993, homosexuality has found a firm footing in Dublin's social scene, with gay venues buzzing even on a Monday. And throughout Dublin, there's a fun mix of traditional Irish tempered with 21st-century style -- whether it's the slick, modernist bar that serves classic pints of stout, or the savvy, state-of-the-art museum that showcases the ancient Book of Kells. Equal parts St. Patrick and Sinead O' Connor, the blissful blend of the old and new in Ireland will captivate you.

STAY

The hippest overnight address in town is The Morrison (Lower Ormond Quay; +353-1-887-2400; www.morrisonhotel.ie; EUR345+) - the stylish, broody, designer John Rocha-created delight on the River Liffey. Also at the top of the list, the super-swanky Clarence Hotel (6-8 Wellington Quay; +353-1-670-9000; www.theclarence.ie; EUR340+), owned by Bono and U2 bandmate The Edge. They poured millions into this classic riverside hotel's re-do, and it shows. The rooms are statements in contemporary style.

Smack-dab in the heart of the Temple Bar nightlife is the very stylish Morgan Hotel (10 Fleet Street; +353-1-679-3939; www.themorgan.com; EUR140+). Considering the lively locale, this is a refreshingly tranquil boutique option. Drink in the fine, stark (but not sterile) lines, light tones and stellar attention to detail. The delightfully inexpensive Aston Hotel (7-9 Aston Quay; +353-1-677-9300; www.aston-hotel.com; EUR70+) is located right on the Liffey on the edge of trendy Temple Bar. The Aston offers sunny rooms, crisp service and an indulgent, full Irish breakfast. This could be Dublin's best bargain.

If you prefer to stay gay, check into Nua Haven Gay Guesthouse (Harold's Cross; +353-87-686-7062; www.nua.cc; EUR100+), a clean, basic gay-owned address, ten minutes' taxi or bus from the city center.

DAY ONE: MYTHS AND LEGENDS

Part of what's appealing about Dublin is its accessibility and pleasant scale. Walk for 20 minutes and you can pretty much cross the entire city center. There's a unified harmony to the buildings, found in the splendid symmetry of dignified Georgian townhouses, as well as the grandiose pomp of such 18th-century landmarks as the Bank of Ireland and Trinity College.

Stroll through the grounds of Trinity College (College Green; www.tcd.ie), the Alma Mater of Bram Stoker, Jonathan Swift and Oscar Wilde, stopping in to see the ninth-century Book of Kells. The college, established in 1592, manages to be simultaneously bustling and peaceful. Continue on to the Bank of Ireland, the former Houses of Parliament (2 College Green; +353-1-671-1488), for a peek in at the old House of Commons, now a banking hall, and then cross the Liffey at O'Connell Street. A pleasant boardwalk runs along the north bank of the river and it's only a couple of blocks' easy amble to Dublin's tiny, new Italian Quarter -- a short city block of slick apartments with wine bars and sidewalk tables at ground level. Cross the river, across the landmark Ha'penny Bridge, named for the old crossing toll and walk south to Grafton Street.

For lunch, sashay into Grafton Street's legendary Bewley's Oriental Café and head upstairs to Mackerel (78-79 Grafton St.; +353-1-672-7719; www.mackerel.ie; EUR15-27), the city's most inventive and satisfying seafood restaurant. After lunch, promenade the famed, pedestrian Grafton Street, very much affluent South Dublin's shopping destination. Call into Brown Thomas, the city's most upmarket department store. Local and international names star. For more cutting-edge fashions, cross the street to BT2, their younger, funkier offshoot.

For yet more interesting cuts, turn left from the main doors coming out of Brown Thomas and walk along Wicklow Street to South William Street. Powerscourt Townhouse Centre (15 South William St.; +353-1-671-7000; www.powerscourtcentre.com) was built in 1774 as a town residence for Lord Powerscourt, but today houses chic galleries, sleek bars and restaurants and pricey boutiques, including Eden Park and Genius.

Sidle round the corner to dine under the generous ceilings of the always gay and lesbian-popular Market Bar (Fade Street; www.marketbar.ie or www.tapas.ie; +353-1-613-9094; small plates EUR5-12), top of the list for great gastro-pub food. The airy, converted factory serves Spanish and Tuscan fare in share-plate and solo-size portions. An exciting wine list stars, and the bar is hopping with an attractive, upscale crowd at all times.

Once you've finished feasting on tasty tapas and fine wines, you'll be just two minutes' walk away from your first blast of Dublin's refreshingly unruly gay nightlife. There's no denying that the Irish enjoy their fair share of liquid refreshment and nowhere is that more evident than in the cruisey and crowded rooms of The George (21 South Great George's St.; +353-1-478-2983; www.capitalbars.com), the grande dame of Dublin's gay bars. Every night of the week the late-night bar and club is wild and wildly entertaining.

DAY TWO: ARTS AND TARTS

Make your way to Dublin's Left Bank, Temple Bar, an area often overtaken by herds of overly loud tourists, then lunch (or brunch, depending how late you stayed up last night) at Eden (Meeting House Square; +353-1-670-5372; www.edenrestaurant.ie; EUR18-29). This is where socialites and celebrities convene to contemplate the minimalist decor and modern Irish cuisine, or to sip lattes and linger over weekend brunch, gazing out on the adjacent square's gourmet food market (Saturdays; www.templebar.ie).

If you've still corners to be filled, head out into Meeting House Square and sample Irish cheeses, ciders, mustards and more. Follow the street of Temple Bar along, crossing Parliament Street. On your left Cow's Lane Market (www.templebar.ie) is a Saturday market that showcases fashion and design. If you didn't snack in Meeting House Square, pick up a pastry in the Queen of Tarts (4 Cork Hill, Dame Street; +353-1-670-7499) in Dublin Castle, a gem of a café run by two pastry chefs.

Call in to the National Gallery (Merrion Square West; +353-1-661-5133; www.nationalgallery.ie), with its slick Benson and Forsyth-designed new wing, and its slew of masterpieces by Picasso, Monet, Degas, as well as many Irish names. Walk past the gracious Georgian homes of Merrion Square and into the elegant square itself. In the far corner a colorful Danny Osborne statue of Oscar Wilde lolls on a rock. In true Dublin style, the artwork quickly received a cheeky nickname. "The Fag on the Crag" joins such other irreverently named landmarks as Grafton Street's "Tart with the Cart" (Molly Malone and her barrow) and the "Stiletto in the Ghetto" on O'Connell Street (Ian Ritchie's 400-foot metal Spire), itself a replacement for the unspeakably ugly "Floozy in the Jacuzzi." Oscar reclines opposite his birthplace, Oscar Wilde House (American College Dublin, 1 Merrion Square; +353-1-676-8939; www.amcd.ie/oscar), now an outpost of the American College. They're in the midst of renovations, so call to see if they're doing tours or not.

Continue your culture crawl with a performance at the famous Gate Theatre, founded by openly gay duo, Hilton Edwards and his partner Michael McLiammoir. Book ahead for the pre-theatre menu at Chapter One (18-19 Parnell Square; +353-1-873-2266; www.chapteronerestaurant.com; EUR30-33). It's one of the city's most exciting rooms and perhaps Dublin's most exciting menu.

For elegant drinks in elegant surrounds, The Bailey (2 Duke St.; +353-1-670-4939) is a Wallpaper-esque mixed (straight/gay) option off Grafton Street. To soak up the ambience of a traditional Dublin pub, you can't beat the well-hidden Stag's Head (1 Dame Court; +353-1-679-3687) or busy Kehoe's (9 South Anne St.; +353-1-677-8312.)

DAY THREE: COASTING ALONG

Grab a coffee from Grafton Street institution Bewley's (see above) and hop on the DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transport - www.iarnrodeireann.ie/dart/home). A 30-minute trip takes you through Dublin's affluent southern suburbs, along the coast from Sandymount, to Dun Laoghaire, Killiney and Dalkey, where Dublin's celebrities, including Bono and director Neil Jordan, live in extravagant abodes. Walk through Dalkey Village to the Queen's Pub (12 Castle St.; +353-1-285-4569) and sample their excellent pub food for lunch, or explore Dalkey, following Sorrento Road, peering into immaculate abodes and wondering who might be at home.

Back in the city, catch a cab to Kilmainham Gaol (Inchicore; www.heritageireland.ie), where the leaders of the 1916 Rising were imprisoned and executed. The atmospheric prison was abandoned in 1924 and now serves as a museum on the history of Irish nationalism. The cells where prisoners, such as poet and writer Padraig Pearse, the Rising's commander-in-chief and an author of homoerotic poems, spent their last nights, are eerie.

Bringing things up to the present, IMMA, the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Royal Hospital, Kilmainham; +353-1-612-9900; www.modernart.ie) displays art from the 1940s onwards, including provocative works in unusual mediums. The cavernous cellar café makes a distinctive stop for coffee and, if the weather is willing, the grounds are pleasant to stroll. If you're thirsty, the Guinness Storehouse (St. James' Gate Brewery; +353-1408-4800; www.guinness-storehouse.com) is adjacent, with regular tours and tastings.

Walk the 20 minutes back to Dame Street or catch a cab to dine at the gay-owned Mermaid (69-70 Dame St.; +353-1-670-8236; www.mermaid.ie; EUR19-27), gazing through its ample windows at the hordes heading out to the city's bars. Once you've sampled their transatlantic fare, join the crowds and enjoy your last night out on the town.

Trot through Temple Bar and across Parliament Street Bridge. Keep an eye out on your right for Gubu (7-8 Capel Street; +353-1-874-0483). The bar came out a few years ago, and provides a lower key haunt for city scenesters. Back in Temple Bar, Glitz (Breakdown at Break for the Border, Lower Stephen's Street; +353-1478-0300; www.capitalbars.com) is a good option if high energy, commercial dance music and youthful Irish boys are high on your priority list.

For a more mixed bunch of gay men and women, and ages, head back to The George (see above), where the mayhem lasts till the wee hours. Sunday night bingo is crammed -- and stars both drag queens, drag kings and, occasionally, some bingo calling. Women should also check the gay publication GCN (www.gcn.ie) for dates of the twice monthly, femme-tastic night, Kiss (The Shelter at Vicar Street; 99 Vicar Street; +353-1-454-6656).

http://www.gay.com/travel/premium/?coll=adult_articles&sernum=1036&page=1

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

(f)

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.

If you can understand this, you are over-educated.

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

sweetlady

09-14-2007, 12:48 PM

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

While Dublin's mastery of the arts has been much displayed for centuries, culinary corners of the Irish capital's array of arts venues were very much a grudging afterthought, offering token limp scones and an unenthusiastic sandwich or two. Times have definitely changed. Now, whether your interests are literary, dramatic, artistic or solely gastronomic, there is a kaleidoscopic range of colorful and creative cuisine on show. Absorb some art-healthy fare at our three favorite Dublin museum cafés.

Silk Road Café (The Chester Beatty Library, Dublin Castle; +353-1/407-0750, fax +353-1/407-0788; www.cbl.ie, aljamal@gofree.indigo.ie; dinner entrées: 3-8 EUR)

Dublin's best-kept culinary secret, the Silk Road Café is tucked away within the maze of Dublin Castle. This city-center delight remains an oasis of calm with seats to spare even at lunchtime. On the ground floor of the Chester Beatty Library, housing the New York mining magnate's oriental art collection, the menu is predominantly Middle Eastern. The café spills out to the museum's central courtyard, with tables able to soak up the soothing sounds of the water fountain under the 100-foot-high glass ceiling. Unobtrusive Arabic music and prints complement outstanding food. (Microwaved) mains such as spinach filo bakes, moussaka and daily lamb delights, some of the best vegetarian options in town, generous portions and unusual Eastern-influenced salads make this café almost addictive. There are tasty sandwiches, sample plates for the indecisive, obliging assistance for those with dietary restrictions and the best baklava this side of Istanbul. Juices, beers and some wines are available. The staff is delightful, informative and helpful to those unfamiliar with Greek and Middle Eastern delicacies. The café is extremely popular with gays and lesbians, especially for long weekend brunches. Weekdays attract a mélange of Castle workers (the vast castle houses various government departments, state chambers, theater and arts venues), and film producer types and tourists. The café is closed Mondays in winter, and the food service stops around 4 p.m. Silk Road is wheelchair accessible. There is also a gorgeous roof garden, should you wish to ascend and contemplate either the art or the food.

Chapter One Restaurant (Dublin Writers Museum, 18/19 Parnell Square; +353-1/873-2266, fax +353-1/873-2330; chapter.one.restaurant@oceanfree.net; 23-29 EUR)

Winner of 2001's highly coveted Jameson's "Restaurant of the Year in Ireland" award, Chapter One remains the quintessential place to eat and be seen. Ensconced in the basement beneath the Dublin Writers Museum, chef proprietor Ross Lewis and his restaurant manager partner, Martin Corbett, suavely dish out a confident and creative menu, fusing new Irish with classic French. There are elements of Irish cuisine, though definitely not for the faint-hearted: Starters include crispy lamb sweetbreads and deep-fried lamb's tongue. But Lewis conjures up cunning combinations on a progressive menu, serving braised guinea hen with black pudding, free-range pork fillet with morel jus and (the extremely traditionally Irish) pigs' trotters (pig's feet) and confit of rabbit, vanilla, saffron and chorizo risotto. Excellent and accommodating service, an informative wine list and a warm ambience accompany this assured reuse of Irish ingredients. An oyster bar and wine cave further complement the array of delights on offer. Children are welcome, although far from common occurrences in this elegant cellar venue. Corbett and Lewis also run the coffee shop upstairs, adding extra zing to standard museum coffee shop fare. Soups, daily quiches, roulades and hot specials with three salads are available (6-7 EUR). The museum itself also offers a Zen Garden and portraits of and insights into great Irish scribes from James Joyce to Jennifer Johnston. Chapter One is open for lunch 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. and dinner 6 to 11 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. They also offer a four-course pre-theater menu (28 EUR), during which patrons leave after entrées, catch a nearby show and return for dessert and coffee.

Grassroots Café (Irish Museum of Modern Art, Old Kilmainham Hospital; +353-1/671-8666; 8-10 EUR)

The Grassroots Café, unveiled in 2002, has fast become a prime draw. Located in the extensive vaults of the beautiful old hospital quadrant, clever lighting and bold colors in the arched basement create bright and appealing spaces, garnished with photographs of past exhibitions. Grassroots entices a wide range of people to lounge on couches and lurk in secluded alcoves off the main tunnel. Popular with arty twenty-somethings, straight Sunday newspaper-reading couples, elderly tourists, gay couples and lone lunchers, it can be quite family-popular in the main section, though the café is never overrun with kids. The menu offers two soups daily (4 EUR) from tomato and fennel to smoky bacon with potato and leek. A choice of three lasagnas, three quiches and the option of a substantial salad plate laden with innovative and interesting veggies is supplemented by daily hot dishes such as honey-and-coriander-marinated salmon or tortellini pasta with piquillo peppers and caramelized onions in spinach and goat cheese. A reasonable tea and coffee selection, smoothies and wine by the quarter bottle are available. Service can be incredibly slow; the staff seems plentiful but bemused by the venue's popularity. Wheelchair accessible, Grassroots is open Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays noon to 5.

(f) (f)

Cum grano salis.

With a grain of salt. Take something not literally, but with due consideration.

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

sweetlady

09-14-2007, 12:54 PM

:)

http://www.pikespeakcam.com/

At the summit of Pikes Peak, Katharine Lee Bates was inspired to pen the lines to her most famous poem, "America the Beautiful." She was overwhelmed by the sights of vast, open skies, planted fields, and the majestic Rocky Mountains.

The video camera and the weather station for the Pikes Peak Cam™ World Wide Web Page is mounted on the roof of the Softronics headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

From Softronics, the summit is approximately 15 miles away. The video camera for the Pikes Peak Cam™ Web Page runs during daylight hours, and the image is updated approximately once a minute with the weather updated every five minutes.

(f) (f)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

09-15-2007, 02:55 PM

8-| 8-|

BEST WEB SITE: http://www.metacritic.com/tv/seasons/2007fall/networks.shtml

Keep scrolling, not only does it show all 7 nights graphically, Showtime and competitive premium cable channels have new and returning shows as well.

The L Word Cybill Shepherd guests on the series' fifth season on Showtime, beginning in January, 2008.

I noticed that all the way at the bottom was "Law & Order, Criminal Intent" and USA Network. In a switch, new episodes will air first on USA. with repeats on NBC.

http://www.youtube.com/tv

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/arts/television/index.html?excamp=GGHEfalltvshows

http://tvcomedies.about.com/od/whatscomingup/a/new_tv_shows.htm

http://tvcomedies.about.com/od/whatscomingup/a/renew_cancel.htm

(y) (y) I was jazzed when I read that TNT is bringing back a second season of "Saving Grace" in 2008. Having "The Closer" with Kyra and then Holly Hunter in "Saving Grase" following it on Monday nights this past Summer? I can't remember when I have enjoyed two hours of watching TV - that is - except for "The L Word" and "Deadwood". ;)

:)

(f)

Aut disce aut discede,

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

sweetlady

09-15-2007, 02:57 PM

:| :|

:s

http://www.savedeadwood.net/

(y) One can only hope. :)

(f)

Vive Ut Vitas!!

Live, so that you may live." or "Live life to the fullest.

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

sweetlady

09-15-2007, 03:00 PM

(~) (~) (~)

In this sensual, provocative and deeply intimate film, notorious satirist Claire Jabrowski (Trisha Todd) meets Dr. Noel Benedict (Karen Trumbo), a dour sex therapist, at a women's retreat -- and despite their differences, the promiscuous Claire and the serious Noel find themselves passionately attracted to each other. Sparks fly as the two women clash at first, then reconcile and finally develop a romance that will change Claire's life forever.

Director: Nicole Conn

Cast: Trisha Todd, Karen Trumbo, Faith McDevitt, Patricia Blem, Craig Damen, Leslie Hidula, Caren Graham, Sheila Dickenson, Melissa Mitchell, Gathering Marbet, Sherilyn Lawson.

(~) Reviews:

Passionate intellectual movie for those who like scripts that have meaning and a command of the English language, the two women spark passion on their journey into discovering one another and themselves.

(~)

I can't go along with all of those negative reviews. The only failure in the film for me was the supporting cast of other women at the retreat, who were simply not believable. But beyond that, the two leads were wonderful, their characters well developed, and the story very poignant. True, if you're looking for "soft core porn" this movie probably isn't for you, as there's very little actual sex, but that only adds to the film's quality. It's about the relationships and the curiousity some of us feel about things we don't fully understand. I'd have given it five stars if the supporting cast had been any better.

(y) (y) I originally gave it four stars and although I enjoyed seeing it again, I think it is more in the 3.5 star category. Still, it is a winner, when compared with GLBT films being made. IMHO, of course.

:)

(f)

Carpe Carpium.

Seize the Carp.

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

sweetlady

09-15-2007, 03:05 PM

8-|8-|8-|

www.speedtest.net

(y) (y) (y) (y) Check that latency! Broadband download time.....that is. And choose the location of the test server too!

VERY cool, IMHO.

(f)

Die dulci fruimini.

Have a nice day.

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

sweetlady

09-17-2007, 05:28 PM

:)

Clipmarks

Web speed reading

Say your friend tells you about this cool thing he found on a Web site. Say you go there and it's too complicated a site to find the thing. Say you just go to Clipmarks and find just the thing. Say...that's a great idea!

Crib notes for the Net:

http://clipmarks.com/

8-|8-|

(f)

Vive Ut Vitas!!

Live, so that you may live." or "Live life to the fullest.

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

sweetlady

09-17-2007, 05:29 PM

:o

Trulia

Home $weet home

No garden variety real estate search, Trulia can help you find homes for sale, learn a property's approximate market value, provide info on local schools, shops, and more.

For sale by owner:

http://www.trulia.com/

(y)

(f)

Sapientia est potentia.

Wisdom is power.

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

sweetlady

09-17-2007, 05:30 PM

;)

Yodio

Phone it in

Make your own storyboard of life. Simply upload audio from your phone, and then combine the audio file with photos and captions to create a story. Never leave the comfort of your director's chair. How cool is that?

Life is on the line:

https://beta.yodio.com/

8-| 8-|

(y)

(f)

Concordia salus.

Well-being through harmony.

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

sweetlady

09-17-2007, 05:32 PM

(y) (y) (y)

Warning Label Generator

Caution: Addictive

Every now and then you get a genuinely eponymous Web site. With this one, you'll enjoy (get this) making your own warning labels! Surely, you've got some kind of warning to share with others!

Alert: Labels ahead:

http://www.warninglabelgenerator.com/

(y) (y) (y)

(f)

Quidquid discis, tibi discis.

Whatever you learn, you learn it for yourself.

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

sweetlady

09-17-2007, 05:33 PM

:o :o :o

20 Questions

Give or take...

You know...animal, vegetable, or mineral. Seriously, just think of something, then answer a flow of about 20 inane questions, and 20q will almost always guess what you are thinking. Mind blower!

Bigger than a breadbox:

http://www.20q.net/

:|

:)

;)

Vudi, vide, tace, si tu vis vivere (in pace).

Hear, see, be silent, if you wish to live (in peace).

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

sweetlady

09-17-2007, 05:35 PM

:o

Nietzsche Family Circus

"Wit is the epitaph of an emotion"

What do you get when you mix one of the most rebellious, gifted philosophical minds in history with the most banal comic strip ever created? You get a moment of unexpected art worthy of contemplation and email. After all, "Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings."

Let's play Übermensch!

http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/

(y) (y) (y)

(f)

Cum recte vivis, ne cures verba malorum.

If you live properly, don't worry about what the evil ones say. ;)

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

sweetlady

09-17-2007, 05:38 PM

(~) (~) (f)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0141121/

Film Tag line: Tagline: "The world we create is the world we live in..."

Cast:

Christopher Lambert ...Gideon Oliver Dobbs

Charlton Heston ... Addison Sinclair

Carroll O'Connor ... Leo Barnes

Shirley Jones ... Elly Morton

Mike Connors ... Harland Greer

Barbara Bain ... Sarah

Shelley Winters ... Mrs. Willows

Crystal Bernard ... Jean MacLemore

Christopher McDonald ... Alan Longhurst

Mykelti Williamson ... Coleman Walker

Taylor Nichols ... Dr. Richard Willows

Michael Bowen ... Billy Ray Turner

Harvey Korman ... Jacob Titleman

Gideon Dobbs is young, simple-minded man who checks into a retirement home where he finds the residents have lost their lust for life. Through his innocence he changes their lives and teaches them that each day is a precious gift.

(y) (y) Surprising number of times when I truly LMAO while viewing. The script and film are both winners. (~) (l)

(f)

Cum grano salis.

With a grain of salt. Take something not literally, but with due consideration.

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

sweetlady

09-17-2007, 05:40 PM

^o)^o)^o)

September 19 - International Talk Like A Pirate Day!

http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html

:o

:)

;)

Aut disce aut discede,

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

sweetlady

09-17-2007, 05:43 PM

:o :o

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/12/nwater112.xml

(y) (y)

(f)

Ab imo pectore.

From the bottom of the chest (heart).

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

sweetlady

09-18-2007, 08:18 PM

(l) 8-| (l) 8-|

Game: Laser Dolphin — Mac

Have flipper, will travel

Get ready to take on Missile Fish, Robo Birds, TNT Turtles, Robo Sharks, and more. Each enemy requires different tactics to defeat. Some you just carefully evade, while others are easier to just, well, blow out of the water. No matter which aquatic baddie you come across, you'll always feel safer knowing you have your trusty laser strapped to your back.

http://www.dingogames.com/dolphin/

(y) (y)

;)

(f)

Ad augusta per angusta.

To high places by narrow roads.

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

sweetlady

09-18-2007, 08:19 PM

:o

Plato DVD Ripper — Windows

Rip and view

Plato DVD Ripper allows you to watch your favorite movies on your iPod, PSP, mobile phone, laptop, or even your PDA—all, of course, without the inconvenience of having to carry around any discs. It can encode in DivX, XviD, AVI, iPod, PSP, and a host of other codec/file types.

http://www.dvdtompegx.com/html/dvdripper.html

(f)

Amicus certus in re incerta cernitur.

A true friend is dicerned during an uncertain matter".

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

sweetlady

09-18-2007, 08:20 PM

:| :| :|

:o :o

The unhappier you are, the more ice cream you get:

http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/009721.php

:o

(f)

Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.

Fool me once and shame on you, fool me twice and shame on me.

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

sweetlady

09-18-2007, 08:22 PM

:o

Underwater Urban Archeology: 7 Submerged Wonders of the World:

http://weburbanist.com/2007/09/12/underwater-urban-archeology-7-submerged-wonders-of-the-world/

(y) (y)

(f)

Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis.

The times are changed, and we are changed in them. (again)

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

sweetlady

09-18-2007, 08:23 PM

:|

:o

:)

http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?collectionId=1039

(f)

Ceteris paribus.

Other things being equal.

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

sweetlady

09-18-2007, 08:24 PM

:o

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9777116-1.html

(f)

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.

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

sweetlady

09-18-2007, 08:25 PM

:D

Among the suggestions if you're pretending to be from, say, a dystopian future: "Walk up to random people and say 'WHAT YEAR IS THIS?' and when they tell you, get quiet and then say 'Then there's still time!' and run off."

http://forums.koalawallop.com/viewtopic.php?t=1719

;)

Audi, vide, tace, si tu vis vivere (in pace).

Hear, see, be silent, if you wish to live (in peace).

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

sweetlady

09-18-2007, 08:27 PM

(f) (~) (f) (~) (f)

Pauline Collins reprises a role she originated onstage in this Academy Award-nominated drama about Shirley Valentine, a housewife who decides in her middle age that there's more to life than stifling domesticity. An unplanned trip to Greece with a friend expands her horizons in ways she could never have predicted, allowing her to fall in love again beyond the bounds of marriage, find herself and grab the reins of her future.

Cast: Pauline Collins, Tom Conti, Julia McKenzie, Alison Steadman, Joanna Lumley, Bernard Hill

(~) (~) Reviews:

This is one of my top 10 movies ever! It is very rich... and very real! I am ecstatic to see that it is coming out on DVD so that I can ditch my VHS (crappy) copy! All the characters are great, from Shirley's "street poet" son, whiney spoiled daughter to her school-yard-nemesis, the "air hostess"! HA!! Ah, and Tom Conti... perfect as the reticent Greek paramour who has one of the shockingly best and most intriguing pick-up lines I have ever heard... "boat is boat...." And then there is Shirley's crazy neighbor with the vegetarian dog...who unwittingly sets the ball in motion causing Shirley's half-unexpected trip to Greece. Every time I watch this movie, I come away with some new insight... this last time, I realized that I had not listened closely enough to Shirley's last lines in the movie...listen closely to what she says and decide for yourself which way the movie "really" ends! "Eh, wall?"

(~)

I really got into this movie. What I took away from this film is that I could get up off my duff and do something.(what ever I wanted to) Whether it was going to spain or going into the city. Don't let other people dictate what YOUR life should be. Get Up and do it yourself Great Movie Thanks again for letting me leave my thoughts.

(~)

This is one of the best movies that a woman of forty can watch! Life is never boring (or doesn't have to be!) Go girl! Enjoy ourselves! Love life, and life will love you back!

(y) (y) (y)

(f)

Concordia salus.

Well-being through harmony.

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

sweetlady

09-21-2007, 06:43 PM

:o :o

In what's seen as a sad commentary on modern life to some -- drawing "duh, what'd you expect?" reactions from others -- a survey out this morning reports that we're becoming so dependent on our web lives that we're giving up face-to-face time friends and even sex to keep connected.

The survey of more than 1,000 American adults reports, among other findings that:

- Asked how long they would be OK without Web access: 15 percent of respondents said less than a day; 21 percent said a couple of days; 19 percent said a few days

- 48 percent said they "felt something important was missing" without Internet access

- 28 percent admit spending less time face-to-face with peers because of the amount of time they spend online

- 20 percent say they spend less time having sex because of time spent online.

JWT, the advertising agency that conducted the study, has created a new advertising demographic - 'digivity denizens' - describing people whose lives are profoundly connected to the web, those "whose online and offline lives are co-mingled and who would chose a Wi-Fi connection over TV any day," as JWT trend spotting director Ann Mack describes them.

Is that unhealthy? Perhaps, but it also can be more engaging, thought-provoking and interactive than TV has ever been.

http://markevanstech.com/2007/09/20/the-sad-side-of-the-web/

http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/the-tech-observer/2007/09/20/duh-survey-of-the-day

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070920/wr_nm/technology_addiction1_dc

(y) (y) " ....."but it also can be more engaging, thought-provoking and interactive than TV has ever been."

Kepp those synapses fired up - with Internet research.

;)

(f)

Stay Cool,

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

sweetlady

09-21-2007, 06:44 PM

;)

http://www.infauxmedia.com/

(f)

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.

If you can understand this, you are over-educated.

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

sweetlady

09-21-2007, 06:46 PM

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

http://mashable.com/2007/09/20/music-news/

Music Discovery Sites

Audiobaba.com - Enter a song or artist and get recommendations based on acoustic similarity.

AudioLunchbox.com - Over 2 million licensed and DRM free song downloads, featuring a large selection of smaller and local acts.

Babulous.com - A community of underground, independent musicians for you to explore and discover all kinds of unsigned music.

bandBUZZ.com - A site for bands to upload their music and be discovered by thousands. Users can vote and comment on the music and share it with their friends.

ChartU.com - Another site for bands to upload their music and let people listen. Tracks play right in the browser and continue to play even as you navigate the pages.

Contrastream.com - A way to find new independent artists quickly using a Digg-like system of voting.

Epitonic.com - Explore cutting-edge music, create playlists, and download some full tracks.

Finetune.com - Start with just a couple of artists and the system will build you a playlist of similar artists; alternatively, you can start with a list built by another user.

Haystack.com - Create, share, and explore playlists from your friends and others.

Hypster.com - Allows you to upload your music, create a playlist and share it with others, even on social networking sites. Let people see & hear the bands they may be missing out on.

iJigg.com - You can discover new music, vote on it, and new artists can upload their music to reach a new audience.

iLike.com - Share your iTunes playlists and get suggestions for new music for you to try.

Last.fm - One of the best known sites for searching and finding new music.

Magnatune.com - Listen to over 500 complete albums from independent acts; if you like them, download them for as little as $5.00.

Musiclovr.com - Get suggestions based on what you’re listening to and what similar users play related to that. Also get all the latest news on the artists you love.

Musicmesh.net - Start with one CD, see six similar selections, click on one of them to see six more related and so on. While playing a CD, a track list of YouTube videos come up for you to sample.

Musicmobs.com - Trade and browse playlists to see what other people are listening to.

MusicNation.com - A site specializing in independent and unsigned artists, check out new bands, even participate in contests.

Musicovery.com - Tell the site what your mood is and get music that fits you.

OneLlama.com - Start with just one song, or a whole playlist, and see what other “llamas” suggest you might like.

Owlmusicsearch.com - Have the site open an MP3 file, it compares it to other songs and then gives you a recommendation for other tunes you might enjoy.

Pandora.com - Type in the name of an artist you like, Pandora will create a “radio station” for you featuring that artist and similar acts.

ProjectOpus.com - A site focusing on spreading the word of local acts from countries all over the world.

Purevolume.com - Explore genres of music for bands you’ve never heard of and listen to full length tracks for free.

SessionSound.com - A site focused mostly on indie music. A great place for artists to promote themselves.

Soundflavor.com - Find songs and artists you like and use that as a jumping off point to discover music you may be unaware of.

Stage.FM - Enter a major name act you enjoy and receive a list of independent acts with a similar sound.

SoundPedia.com - Upload your existing playlists or create new ones to help you find like minded lists that aid you in discovering new music.

Twones.com - Share your playlists and match them to users with similar tastes so you can locate artists you didn’t know about.

UpTo11.net - Their search engine allows you to enter up to four bands at once and get a recommendation of a group that sounds like that combination.

ZuKool.com - Choose individual songs, or create a playlist from their library of 600,000+ songs, and receive recommendations of others. Rate those to get even more suggestions.

(y) (y)

(f)

Concordia salus.

Well-being through harmony. (8)

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

sweetlady

09-21-2007, 06:47 PM

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

8-)8-)

Q U O T E D

"I was so happy to have found a woman who finally understood me. Then it turned out that I hadn't found anyone new at all. To be honest I still find it hard to believe that the person, Sweetie, who wrote such wonderful things to me on the Internet, is actually the same woman I married and who has not said a nice word to me for years."

-- Adnan Klaric, of Zenica, Bosnia, now going through a divorce after finding out that the online soul mate with whom he'd been swapping stories of troubled marriages was in fact his wife.

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2512486.html

8-)8-) They derserve one another.

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

09-21-2007, 06:49 PM

:o :o

http://deputy-dog.com/2007/09/09/7-amazing-holes/

:| :| Well, I was certainly floored!

;)

Audi, vide, tace, si tu vis vivere (in pace).

Hear, see, be silent, if you wish to live (in peace).

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

sweetlady

09-21-2007, 06:50 PM

:o

A plethora of news from some major U.S. television networks today:

*NBC is drawing some howls from the blogosphere, a day after unveiling an NBC Direct service that will offer users free downloads of popular NBC programs, but burden them with unskippable advertising and Windows-only files that can't be transferred and will lock after seven days.

http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/09/nbc-tv-download.html

http://www.siliconvalley.com/latestheadlines/ci_6945564?nclick_check=1

* ABC has also found itself a channel to offer its content free. The network has struck a deal with AOL that allows the portal to offer full-length prime-time shows. ABC's agreement goes into effect days before the fall season begins.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119024219680633034.html

* CBS, which already offers its content free via AOL, is going even further. The network now offers software that allows fans to place CBS content including video, photos and production updates, on blogs and social-networking pages.

http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-cbs20sep20,1,528793.story?coll=la-headlines-technology&ctrack=1&cset=true

Content unquestionably remains king, but more and more the free, open models are proving profitable. Says Ed Sim of BeyondVC: "Media companies are increasingly understanding the possibilities and scale that free can provide over paid."

http://www.beyondvc.com/2007/09/video-advertisi.html

|-) |-)

;)

(f)

Sapientia est potentia.

Wisdom is power.

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

sweetlady

09-21-2007, 06:51 PM

:o :o

The two-day orgy of product pitches that was TechCrunch40 wrapped up last night (see "TechCrunch40 online - so real, you can almost smell the flop sweat"), and the winner of the $50,000 prize for best presentation was Mint, a personal finance management site. By most reports, Mint is a nifty piece of programming that, depending on your needs, could be an alternative to Quicken or Microsoft Money. Mint lets you consolidate your various banking and credit accounts, keeps all of them up-to-date automatically, and provides tools to track your spending. Through arrangements with partners, Mint will also offer you deals that seem applicable to your situation -- for a lower-interest credit card or a higher-interest bank account, for instance.

http://www.techcrunch40.com/2007/index.php

http://svextra.com/blogs/gmsv/2007/09/techcrunch40_online_--_so_real_you_can_almost_smell_the_flop_sweat.html

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/18/mint-wins-techcrunch40-50000-award/

http://www.mint.com/

http://gigaom.com/2007/09/19/review-mint%E2??s-a-personal-finance-after-banking-treat/

http://venturebeat.com/2007/09/18/mint-the-easiest-way-to-manage-your-personal-finances/

Sounds very promising, except for one small hurdle, one that it has in common with its competitors -- trust. Would you trust a fledgling Web 2.0 business with all your financial account information and passwords, to be stored out there in the data cloud? You have to figure anything like Mint would win the endorsement of the hacking community. A site like that could offer one-stop shopping for the black hats. VC Fred Wilson has a whole list of questions about data ownership and security that such sites should answer for the sake of curious but wary consumers.

http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2007/09/who-owns-your-f.html

For a recap all the TechCrunch doings, scan through John Paczkowski's liveblogging posts at Digital Daily.

http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/

(y) (y) (y)

(f)

Quidquid discis, tibi discis.

Whatever you learn, you learn it for yourself.

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

sweetlady

09-21-2007, 06:54 PM

:| :|

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/science/14tier.html?ei=5124&en=22efff4469281187&ex=1344744000&adxnnl=1&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink&pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1190409812-ywZxqqUn8rYWQZuPk6EArQ

August 14, 2007

Findings

Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch

By JOHN TIERNEY

Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else’s hobby. I hadn’t imagined that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the heavens and earth could be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like the Sims.

But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.

This simulation would be similar to the one in “The Matrix,” in which most humans don’t realize that their lives and their world are just illusions created in their brains while their bodies are suspended in vats of liquid. But in Dr. Bostrom’s notion of reality, you wouldn’t even have a body made of flesh. Your brain would exist only as a network of computer circuits.

You couldn’t, as in “The Matrix,” unplug your brain and escape from your vat to see the physical world. You couldn’t see through the illusion except by using the sort of logic employed by Dr. Bostrom, the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford.

Dr. Bostrom assumes that technological advances could produce a computer with more processing power than all the brains in the world, and that advanced humans, or “posthumans,” could run “ancestor simulations” of their evolutionary history by creating virtual worlds inhabited by virtual people with fully developed virtual nervous systems.

Some computer experts have projected, based on trends in processing power, that we will have such a computer by the middle of this century, but it doesn’t matter for Dr. Bostrom’s argument whether it takes 50 years or 5 million years. If civilization survived long enough to reach that stage, and if the posthumans were to run lots of simulations for research purposes or entertainment, then the number of virtual ancestors they created would be vastly greater than the number of real ancestors.

There would be no way for any of these ancestors to know for sure whether they were virtual or real, because the sights and feelings they’d experience would be indistinguishable. But since there would be so many more virtual ancestors, any individual could figure that the odds made it nearly certain that he or she was living in a virtual world.

The math and the logic are inexorable once you assume that lots of simulations are being run. But there are a couple of alternative hypotheses, as Dr. Bostrom points out. One is that civilization never attains the technology to run simulations (perhaps because it self-destructs before reaching that stage). The other hypothesis is that posthumans decide not to run the simulations.

“This kind of posthuman might have other ways of having fun, like stimulating their pleasure centers directly,” Dr. Bostrom says. “Maybe they wouldn’t need to do simulations for scientific reasons because they’d have better methodologies for understanding their past. It’s quite possible they would have moral prohibitions against simulating people, although the fact that something is immoral doesn’t mean it won’t happen.”

Dr. Bostrom doesn’t pretend to know which of these hypotheses is more likely, but he thinks none of them can be ruled out. “My gut feeling, and it’s nothing more than that,” he says, “is that there’s a 20 percent chance we’re living in a computer simulation.”

My gut feeling is that the odds are better than 20 percent, maybe better than even. I think it’s highly likely that civilization could endure to produce those supercomputers. And if owners of the computers were anything like the millions of people immersed in virtual worlds like Second Life, SimCity and World of Warcraft, they’d be running simulations just to get a chance to control history — or maybe give themselves virtual roles as Cleopatra or Napoleon.

It’s unsettling to think of the world being run by a futuristic computer geek, although we might at last dispose of that of classic theological question: How could God allow so much evil in the world? For the same reason there are plagues and earthquakes and battles in games like World of Warcraft. Peace is boring, Dude.

A more practical question is how to behave in a computer simulation. Your first impulse might be to say nothing matters anymore because nothing’s real. But just because your neural circuits are made of silicon (or whatever posthumans would use in their computers) instead of carbon doesn’t mean your feelings are any less real.

David J. Chalmers, a philosopher at the Australian National University, says Dr. Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis isn’t a cause for skepticism, but simply a different metaphysical explanation of our world. Whatever you’re touching now — a sheet of paper, a keyboard, a coffee mug — is real to you even if it’s created on a computer circuit rather than fashioned out of wood, plastic or clay.

You still have the desire to live as long as you can in this virtual world — and in any simulated afterlife that the designer of this world might bestow on you. Maybe that means following traditional moral principles, if you think the posthuman designer shares those morals and would reward you for being a good person.

Or maybe, as suggested by Robin Hanson, an economist at George Mason University, you should try to be as interesting as possible, on the theory that the designer is more likely to keep you around for the next simulation. (For more on survival strategies in a computer simulation, go to www.nytimes.com/tierneylab.)

Of course, it’s tough to guess what the designer would be like. He or she might have a body made of flesh or plastic, but the designer might also be a virtual being living inside the computer of a still more advanced form of intelligence. There could be layer upon layer of simulations until you finally reached the architect of the first simulation — the Prime Designer, let’s call him or her (or it).

Then again, maybe the Prime Designer wouldn’t allow any of his or her creations to start simulating their own worlds. Once they got smart enough to do so, they’d presumably realize, by Dr. Bostrom’s logic, that they themselves were probably simulations. Would that ruin the fun for the Prime Designer?

If simulations stop once the simulated inhabitants understand what’s going on, then I really shouldn’t be spreading Dr. Bostrom’s ideas. But if you’re still around to read this, I guess the Prime Designer is reasonably tolerant, or maybe curious to see how we react once we start figuring out the situation.

It’s also possible that there would be logistical problems in creating layer upon layer of simulations. There might not be enough computing power to continue the simulation if billions of inhabitants of a virtual world started creating their own virtual worlds with billions of inhabitants apiece.

If that’s true, it’s bad news for the futurists who think we’ll have a computer this century with the power to simulate all the inhabitants on earth. We’d start our simulation, expecting to observe a new virtual world, but instead our own world might end — not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a message on the Prime Designer’s computer.

It might be something clunky like “Insufficient Memory to Continue Simulation.” But I like to think it would be simple and familiar: “Game Over.”

^o) ^o)

Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.

Fool me once and shame on you, fool me twice and shame on me.

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

sweetlady

09-21-2007, 06:55 PM

:o

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/09/techshop-geek-h.html

:)

(f)

Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis.

The times are changed, and we are changed in them. (again)

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

sweetlady

09-21-2007, 06:56 PM

:)

......"fully-equipped open-access workshop and creative environment that lets you drop in any time and work on your own projects at your own pace. It is like a health club with tools and equipment instead of exercise equipment ."

http://techshop.ws/

(y) (y)

:D

(f)

Audi, vide, tace, si tu vis vivere (in pace).

Hear, see, be silent, if you wish to live (in peace).

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

sweetlady

09-21-2007, 06:58 PM

;)

The No. 1 programmer excuse for legitimately slacking off:

http://xkcd.com/303/

(y) (y)

8-|

Ad augusta per angusta.

To high places by narrow roads.

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

sweetlady

09-21-2007, 06:59 PM

(y) (y)

.........this is a "Public Dialogue about Belief - One Essay at a Time."

http://thisibelieve.org/

This I Believe is an international project engaging people in writing, sharing, and discussing the core values that guide their daily lives. These short statements of belief, written by people from all walks of life, are archived here and featured on public radio in the United States and Canada. The project is based on the popular 1950s radio series of the same name hosted by Edward R. Murrow.

(f) (f)

Cum grano salis.

With a grain of salt. Take something not literally, but with due consideration.

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

sweetlady

09-23-2007, 07:11 PM

:o :o :o

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/09/19/garden/20couch-600.jpg

September 20, 2007

Surfing the World Wide Couch

By PENELOPE GREEN

NEIL MEDEL’S Manhattan domicile is certainly homey, but it is by no means spacious. Just 7 feet by 10 feet, with its one window overlooking St. Marks Place, it is a living room in miniature, a mere haiku of a place. Mr. Medel, who is 33 and works for an importing company, sleeps on a loft platform that he shares with 40 pairs of blue jeans that rise in untidy stacks, and blue plastic tubs stuffed with other belongings.

Nonetheless, the Philippine-born Mr. Medel is an eager and generous host at least three days out of seven to like-minded visitors from Los Angeles, Texas, Sweden, Germany and points beyond. Mr. Medel is a couch surfer, as are his guests; he and they find one another through the Couch Surfing Project, at couchsurfing.com, a three-year-old global community built on a MySpace/Facebook model of personal profiles connected through a network of “friends.” According to statistics on the site, it has well over 300,000 members from more than 31,000 towns and cities around the world.

The group’s philosophy is also its method, which might be summed up this way: I will offer you my couch free, along with the company of my friends and a tour of my favorite spots in my city. In return, you will give of yourself, and not just slink into my home at 3 a.m. after you’ve done your own tour of my city. In this way, we will be friends, if only for a day or two.

Or, as its mission statement proclaims: “Participate in creating a better world, one couch at a time.”

Couch surfing takes an ancient notion of hospitality and tucks it into a thoroughly modern paradigm, the social networking Web site. But, as its members say sternly, it is not a site for dating, or for freeloaders.

“It’s a lifestyle and a commitment,” Mr. Medel said. He and his fellow New York hosts meet at least one night a week at a bar in Union Square, new surfers in tow. They throw birthday parties for one another and mount what they call invasions of other cities, as 30 or so New York surfers did last summer in Boston, strewing themselves on the couches of 30 or so Bostonians for three days.

Inevitably, there have been couch surfing romances, marriages and even babies, said Sherry Huckabee, 41, a couch surfer from Charlotte, N.C., who is now living in Romania since falling in love with her host, Hans Hedrich, last summer, ending a two-year surf of Europe. Now Ms. Huckabee and Mr. Hedrich, 36, who runs a charitable foundation devoted to sustainable tourism, are hosts to 20 young surfers at a time: Mr. Hedrich, Ms. Huckabee said proudly, has an open-couch policy.

A Kerouac mind-set inspired Ms. Huckabee to write a novel about her couch surfing experiences. Three years ago she was a lawyer in Charlotte, divorced for some years and facing an empty nest, as her children had left home. “It was a huge reconsideration of self,” she said. “Who was I if not wife, mother, etc.? I wanted to find a sense of carrying my home with me, and to do that I needed to let go of the sense that there was a home somewhere waiting for me.”

She gave away most of her belongings and set off on what was to be a three-month tour of Italy. That’s where she discovered couch surfing.

What kept her surfing were the sorts of details that delight a writer’s eye: the Algerian host in Paris who slept with a poster of Monica Bellucci above his bed so he could imagine falling asleep in her arms each night; a Bulgarian family’s grim Soviet-era concrete housing, which, when you opened the door, was like a tropical island, painted in bright greens and blues; the northern European woman who had not worked in three years and had not cleaned her bathroom in that time, either, it seemed, yet who nonetheless borrowed a bottle of wine from a neighbor to welcome Ms. Huckabee.

Back home in Charlotte, Ms. Huckabee said, “if you don’t have a guest bedroom, you don’t have company.” She added: “Even your family stays in a hotel. Even for dinner, there is this sense you have to go through this process: get out the vacuum cleaner, wash the sheets. In Europe there’s the couch and that’s it. There’s no dusting. It’s more of a view into other people’s worlds, instead of this idealized thing where everything is clean and tidied up.”

She did, however, surf on some pretty grimy couches, she said.

In an age of cheap airfares and porous borders, where nearly every corner of the earth, from Bulgaria to Bhutan, is open for tourism, the home is the final frontier, the last authentic experience. Instead of being in some sanitized hotel in Hanoi, said Erik Torkells, editor of Budget Travel magazine, “if I couch surf I could be on some cool ex-pat’s or local’s sofa.” He added: “I’ve already leapfrogged barriers. It would take weeks under ordinary circumstances to get in someone’s home.”

With regard to “the whole MySpace thing,” he added: “This is a generation that’s all about talking to strangers. And why stop there? Why not crash at their place?”

Then Mr. Torkells, 38, asked plaintively: “This is for the young, right? I don’t even want to sleep on my sister’s couch.”

Just before noon one day last week, Marisol Montoya, a 25-year-old filmmaker from Los Angeles, was rolling up her red silk pajamas and tucking them next to the red fuzzy slippers in her suitcase. She had spent two nights on Mr. Medel’s tiny couch, which was no trial, she said, because she had been dancing hard most nights and liked to elevate her feet by hanging them over the arms.

Mr. Medel was her second host; she had arranged for three different couches, she said, because she wanted to see three different New York neighborhoods. “It’s like a cultural study,” she said. On her first night at Mr. Medel’s he took her to a rooftop dinner party at Connie Hum’s. Ms. Hum, who is 26 and works for a management consulting firm, is a New York couch surfing host who lives high above Times Square; after dinner Ms. Hum taught Ms. Montoya how to belly dance.

“When you couch surf,” Ms. Marisol said, “you go straight to the goods.”

Like Servas, the so-called hospitality network that has promoted peace through home stays since World War II, the Couch Surfing Project aims “to bring people together and create intercultural understanding,” said Daniel Hoffer, one of its founders.

Or, as Mark Credland, an electrical engineer living in Toronto whose job requires extensive travel in the United States, explained: “I used to try to meet people in bars and would always end up getting stuck talking to the drunk in the corner.” Couch surfing yields better conversations, he said. (He had tried another travelers’ social networking site called wayn.com, he said, “but I got lots of e-mails from Russian girls wanting to marry me.”)

Mr. Hoffer, 29, who received an undergraduate degree in philosophy from Harvard and an M.B.A. from Columbia, started his first dot-com when he was 15 and now develops new business for Symantec. His main couch surfing co-founder, Casey Larkin Fenton, a 29-year-old programmer and former political consultant, is also a dot-com veteran, schooled in interconnectivity and social values.

Couch surfing was Mr. Fenton’s idea, the seeds of which were planted on a trip to Iceland six years ago. He harvested 1,500 names and e-mail addresses from the University of Iceland’s student directory and sent each a come-on: “Hey, Bjorn, I’m coming to Iceland.” In 24 hours he had 100 invitations.

“I knew it was how I wanted to travel,” Mr. Fenton said. He has been surfing on and off since 2005, and was surfing Mr. Hoffer’s couch, a long black leather one discovered on craigslist.com, last week. “But I didn’t know if other people would. I thought, I’ll take a chance and see if there are other people like me. And, wow, do they exist.”

Membership, he pointed out, has tripled each year. Each week this month more than 5,000 members have been signing on. Mr. Fenton is working on gaining 501(c)(3) status for the Couch Surfing Project, the holy grail of nonprofits, as he put it, which would make it tax exempt. (The Couch Surfing Project is not a moneymaking venture, though it charges members who would like to be “verified” with an address check. In the United States that service costs $25. As for why the site might qualify as a charity, Mr. Hoffer said, “We have a benevolent mission that we think is better served by a nonprofit corporate structure.”)

“We’ve all worked very hard at our other jobs and we’ve paid the bills,” Mr. Fenton said. “Up till now the site has functioned passively. We want to understand how to do it more efficiently. It’s complex, and its demographics are literally all over the map.”

He said the process of surfing was like the lottery. “Anything can happen: the glamour and the appeal are the stories you hear, the coming of age stories, the travel stories,” he said. Hosts get to travel without leaving home, through the surfers in their living rooms. “Who are they and what makes them that way?” Mr. Fenton continued, “and who are you? Because you get to compare and contrast yourself with these other selves every day in your own living room.”

For constant surfers, the couch becomes a new sort of home, redefining, in many ways, their own ideas about what a home really is.

Jennifer Metz, an American-born artist and teacher of philosophy living in the Netherlands, spent a year housesitting in 24 homes in six countries after a divorce in 2001. After buying an apartment in Rotterdam in 2004, she quickly sublet it, and reprised her year of “urban camping” in a 55-week housesitting tour of 30 homes that she packaged as an art project, with pictures and a blog (urbancamp.blogspot.com). What was compelling to her about both these sojourns was the experience of being welcomed into the intimate spaces of others and trusted with their belongings, of learning to feel at home anywhere. She is now an intermittent couch surfer, having discovered that community last year.

A state of near ceaseless traveling puts the couch surfer in a transnational zone, an idea dear to Pico Iyer, the travel writer and novelist who has been chewing over notions of home and nomadism for 25 years. Mr. Iyer sees the surfers exemplifying a new form of globalism, “one not defined by the plutocrats as meaning foreign goods,” he said, but by the “road” — or couch — where people meet outside the boundaries or categories of their passports or religions.

“Home for folks like the couch surfers has less and less to do with a piece of soil and more to do with the friends and values they carry,” Mr. Iyer said. “I think the beauty of the present century is that more and more folks are defining their home inwardly.”

Couch surfing, he said, “has consecrated the floating planetary home.”

Mark Ellingham, the founder of the Rough Guide travel guides, noted, too, that what couch surfing seems to diminish is the idea of the foreign country as a commodity to be sampled and purchased. “It sounds more empathetic than the old hippie-backpacker thing of seeing what you can get out of a place and moving on,” he said. “It reminds me of when everyone was hitchhiking, a practice that stopped in the 1990s either because of fear or a new affluence, or both. Hitchhikers were very committed, too. It’s a new idea but an old ethos.”

Jim Stone, who turned 30 last week, has been surfing nonstop for three and a half years. He was the 99th person to join the Couch Surfing Project, and for many members, their first guest. He had been working in the tax appraiser’s office in Denton, Tex., he said, “and I was alarmed that two years went by so quickly and I hadn’t done anything significant.”

Surfing is hard on romance, he said, but a boon to sleep. “I used to think I was an insomniac,” he said. “Now I find in new places I sleep like a baby.”

Mr. Stone’s traveling companions are a red blow-up couch named Lucy (for “that other famous redhead,” he said), a Winnie the Pooh costume he likes to hitchhike in, a pair of stretch leopard pants that he wears to the Burning Man festival each year and another in gold that he can do a split in, and dress-work clothes neatly pressed and stored in a Ziploc bag in his pack.

He worked odd jobs around the globe for the last four years to finance his travels. Since July, however, he has been working full-time for the Couch Surfing Project, as one of its three paid employees, operating from his laptop, wherever he and it may be. Does that mean he is settling down?

“I like this traveling road show of my friends,” he said, describing what are known in couch surfing circles as collectives, in which 100 or so volunteers, mostly experts in programming, surf a city for a few months while tinkering with the Web site. A collective for Thailand is planned for next year. “My mom is real happy,” he did admit, “especially now that I have a real job.”

(ap) (ap) I'm not sure if I would do this..........I would need to speak with some people who have been doing this for a long time and could also provide some recommendations on "target, preferred couches". ;)

(ip) (ip) The central air conditioning has been out since Thursday. :| :| Time for a new furnace AND central air conditioning system. Of course this upcoming week will have days in the high 80's. Whew! (ip) (ip)

(f)

Amicus certus in re incerta cernitur.

A true friend is dicerned during an uncertain matter".

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

sweetlady

09-23-2007, 07:13 PM

;)

September 23, 2007

Don’t Care to Send the Very Best?

By J. COURTNEY SULLIVAN

A few weeks ago, Laura Bonner received an e-mail alert at her office computer: A friend she hadn’t heard from in ages had sent her an electronic greeting from a Web site called Someecards.com. “I think I actually groaned,” said Ms. Bonner, 26, a subsidiary rights manager for Farrar, Straus & Giroux. “I mean, really, an e-card?”

Ms. Bonner ignored the message for as long as she could. Finally, at day’s end, she clicked on the link, expecting to find a typically treacly online greeting, the kind that assaults the eyes and ears with bright colors and cloying music. Instead she saw a simple sketch of a smiling elderly man in a bowling shirt, with a caption that read: “I’m glad we stay mildly interested in each other’s lives.”

“I laughed out loud,” she recalled. “I was instantly obsessed with the site.”

Though electronic greetings were once supposed to make traditional cards passé, today many e-cards are just as cringe-inducing as their tangible store-bought counterparts. But in the last year, a new wave of e-card sites have emerged, seeking a hipper audience with sarcastic, edgy and proudly vulgar messages.

Since its introduction in April, Someecards .com says more than 700,000 cards have been sent from the site, ranging from traditional birthday and get-well wishes to cards from more offbeat categories, like Cry for Help, and Flirting.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever seen cards made specifically for people with emotional baggage, which is pretty much everyone I know,” said Matt Ian, a 34-year-old creative director at the advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty, who said he sends at least three or four cards from Someecards.com a day. “That ‘Hang In There’ cat swinging from the tree branch just doesn’t cut it anymore.”

Many Americans would disagree. According to the Internet research firm Media Metrix, the top 20 e-card sites in the country had approximately 29 million unique American visitors in July, the most recent month for which data is available. The most popular site, AmericanGreetings.com, had over 7 million hits that month.

In most cases, these e-card sites are deliberately courting mass appeal. “Our sites are popular with a broad range of consumers,” said Frank Cirillo, a spokesman for AG Interactive, the group that owns the e-card sites AmericanGreetings.com, Egreetings.com and BlueMountain.com. “Some of our cards are edgier than others, but for the most part, our material is family-friendly.”

The most audacious cards on the AG Interactive sites are labeled “mature” and carry warnings that some users may find their content objectionable. One of them, a birthday card called “Lick the Batter” shows a man’s burly arms and bare torso. Chippendales-style music thumps in the background as he mixes a cake batter, which inevitably splatters onto his skin.

“We’re trying to keep up with demand across age groups and tastes in humor, so we don’t get into the more risqué stuff,” Mr. Cirillo said. “If people want that, they can go somewhere else.”

This kind of thinking has created an opening for edgier sites like Someecards.com, whose most popular card is a vintage black-and-white illustration of a little boy sitting on a stack of books, bearing the message: “When work feels overwhelming, remember that you’re going to die.”

“We wanted it to be more than just a place you go to send an e-card,” said Duncan Mitchell, a creator of Someecards.com. “We also wanted it to be somewhere people could go and just read.”

Mr. Mitchell, 37, a creative director at MRM Worldwide, and his business partner, Brook Lundy, 36, a creative director for the interactive marketing agency Avenue A/Razorfish, first met when they worked at the advertising agency Tribal DDB Worldwide. For months, the two had been looking at other electronic greeting sites, but, Mr. Lundy said, “there wasn’t a single message there that we’d ever want to send.”

Mr. Lundy had also written for the satirical newspaper The Onion, but the downside, he said, “was that there are so many extremely talented writers there, there’s so much competition, and the voice is very specific.

“When we talked about this site, it seemed like a way to build a unique voice while always ensuring that your ideas would make it in.”

Someecards.com now offers more than 1,000 cards, and Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Lundy add 40 to 50 cards a week, drawn from a variety of sources: random thoughts scribbled on napkins, stories from friends or inspiration from Clip Art images. “It’s starting to become profitable,” said Mr. Mitchell, “but we can’t quit our day jobs.”

Other media companies also offer e-cards, aimed at consumers who wouldn’t dare set foot in a Hallmark store. MTV.com allows users to send quirky animated greetings, some of which advertise MTV shows like “Punk’d,” “Jackass” and “The Osbournes.”

And last December, the marketing firm Buzztone acquired Hipstercards.com, an online greeting site that offers cards for such 21st-century occasions as the announcement of a new e-mail address or the introduction of a blog.

“The American Greetings people don’t see us as competition because we don’t have their numbers, and because we’re reaching out to a certain niche,” said Liz Heller, the chief executive of Buzztone. “It’s just like any shopping experience: sometimes you want something from a really unique little boutique, and sometimes you just want to go to Banana Republic.”

For some repeat customers, these edgier e-cards have taken the place of a tossed-off text or e-mail message.

“I’ve started communicating more-or-less exclusively through Someecards because it says everything I’m thinking,” said Eric Kind, 34, an executive assistant at Lionsgate Television in Los Angeles, who sends upward of 50 cards a week from the site. “A friend from work sent me a card that said, ‘Sorry I thought you were gay.’ Now everyone I know is sending them.”

The comedian Jessi Klein, who is writing for ABC’s upcoming sitcom “Samantha Who?” said she found a particular pathos in the online greetings of Someecards.com, because she also happens to be Mr. Lundy’s former girlfriend. “I actually think if Someecards was around when we were together, we would have had a much easier time communicating,” Ms. Klein said. “I like to think the ‘You put the “oy” in boyfriend’ card is a little tribute to our relationship.”

(y) (y)

;)

(f)

Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.

Fool me once and shame on you, fool me twice and shame on me.

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

sweetlady

09-23-2007, 07:17 PM

(l) (l) (l)

"Winter is a refuge, not just for seekers and wildlife, but for Big Sur itself."

(l) Slide Show:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/01/07/travel/20070107_BIGSUR_SLIDESHOW_1.html

Towering redwoods in Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park.:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/01/07/travel/sur_trees_650.jpg

<sigh...>

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/01/07/travel/sur_walk_650.jpg

(f)

Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.

Fool me once and shame on you, fool me twice and shame on me.

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

sweetlady

09-23-2007, 07:20 PM

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

September 23, 2007

National Perspectives

Retirees Find Housing at Their Alma Maters

By ROBERT SHAROFF

CHICAGO

WHEN Jim O’Neal decided it was time to move to a retirement community, he looked no further than his alma mater.

Mr. O’Neal is an alumnus of Loyola University here, class of 1967, and the place that he and his wife, Dawn, will move into late next year is under construction on the university’s downtown campus.

“We’re literally starting a new life,” said Mr. O’Neal, who is retiring as a funeral director. “The fact that Loyola is involved is one of the things that made the project attractive to me. I also like the location and amenities and the fact that being so close to the school will provide a lot of opportunities for continuing education.”

Mr. O’Neal, 64, and his wife, who is 62, are part of a growing trend of retirees nationwide who are literally heading back to campus in their later years.

According to a study by the Ziegler Capital Markets Group of Chicago, there are more than 50 continuing-care retirement centers on or near college campuses, a 30 percent increase over the last decade, with 2,000 such centers nationwide. Another 33 centers or so are on the drawing boards.

Daniel J. Hermann, the managing director of Ziegler Capital Markets, called the centers “a very popular theme right now with retirees.”

Mostly developed by nonprofit groups, continuing-care retirement housing provides several levels of care, allowing residents to age in place rather than move from one residence to the next as their health declines.

There are centers for all income levels, though most focus on the top half of wage earners. “They are people who can take equity out of their home and use it to pay their entry fee,” said Larry Minnix, the president and chief executive of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging.

Residents typically pay an entry fee and a monthly assessment that varies according to the size and type of unit, as well as to local market conditions. Many centers will refund all or part of the entry fee when a resident either moves out or dies, Mr. Minnix said.

The O’Neals’ future home, the Clare at Water Tower, is being developed by the Franciscan Sisters of Chicago Service Corporation, a charitable group that specializes in owning and managing senior housing projects, at a cost of $270 million. The organization has a 99-year lease for the site, which is nestled among several of Loyola’s academic and dormitory buildings on the city’s north side. The designer is Ralph Johnson of Perkins & Will, one of the city’s most prominent architects.

The O’Neals are buying two apartments: a two-bedroom unit for themselves and a one-bedroom unit next door for Mrs. O’Neal’s mother, Alyce Griffin, who is 89. “We started out looking for a place for my mother-in-law,” Mr. O’Neal said. “I wasn’t thinking that I wanted to move here myself. But, when I saw the plans and went through the model apartment, I thought, this is not bad at all.”

The 54-story Clare has 258 independent-living apartments on the upper floors and various levels of assisted living farther down. There are also 38,000 square feet of classrooms and administrative space for Loyola University on its first two floors.

Entry fees for the independent-living units start at about $540,000 for a 775-square-foot one-bedroom and rise to $1.2 million for a 1,700-square-foot three-bedroom. Monthly fees, which cover utilities, maintenance, housekeeping and some meals, start at $2,300 for the primary occupant and rise to $4,600, depending on the unit. There is a reduced fee for additional occupants.

Because residents range from active and healthy to more or less incapacitated, designing these centers can be a challenge. “You want to avoid anything that looks too institutional,” said Mr. Johnson, the architect of the Clare. “The layouts for the independent-living units aren’t much different than for a standard condominium. The one exception is the bathrooms, which are more accessible.”

The Clare is being marketed like other luxury condos going up in downtown Chicago. “The buyers in this market are used to condo projects being marketed with virtual tours, design centers and model unit buildouts,” said Angela Hanson, the director of marketing for the Clare. “We found we had to have those in order to compete.”

The Clare broke ground in November 2005 and will be finished late next year. About 87 percent of the independent-living units have been sold.

Developers of such centers near college campuses say they seek to attract a mix of alumni and faculty along with individuals who appreciate the diversity and excitement that are essential on most college campuses but often in short supply at retirement homes.

Maggie Stark, the director of marketing and admissions for Kendal at Oberlin, which was developed in the early 1990s and has 281 independent-living units near Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, said that about 37 percent of the project’s residents have a connection to the school. “The college has such appeal,” she said. “There’s youth, there’s energy, there’s all kinds of activities.” Entry fees start at $91,000 for a 482-square-foot studio and rise to $390,000 for an 1,800-square-foot two-bedroom.

Oberlin — like many colleges — allows older residents to audit classes free of charge. Janet Kelsey Werner, 75, a retired nutritionist who recently moved to Kendal at Oberlin with her husband, Budd, 76, is currently auditing a sociology class. “I miss being with younger people,” she said. “This is a way to get involved with the town and what’s going on here.”

Patricia Sprigg, the president and chief executive of Carol Woods Retirement Community, near the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says graduates and faculty make up a large part of the community’s residents.

“We have a 10-year waiting list,” she said. “We don’t have to do any marketing. Word of mouth carries us.”

Carol Woods has 284 independent-living units that start at $63,900 for a 447-square-foot studio and reach $322,000 for a two-bedroom.

“They call this place the Faculty Club,” said Gordon DeFriese, 65, alluding to all the retired professors at Carol Woods. Mr. DeFriese, a retired medical sociologist and an expert on aging issues, moved to Carol Woods a year and a half ago after nearly 40 years teaching at the University of North Carolina.

Mr. DeFriese said that one benefit of being in a retirement center at a university is that the residents tend to be highly educated and vocal in their demands. “The residents here have about 60 committees and they essentially manage everything,” he said. “No one is sitting around playing bingo.”

(y) (y)

(f)

Quidquid discis, tibi discis.

Whatever you learn, you learn it for yourself.

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

sweetlady

09-23-2007, 07:24 PM

(y) (y)

http://erwinpearl.com/about_us.htm

http://www.erwinpearl.com/collection.htm

:) What an amazing number of hotlinks on this web site. I really liked a couple of pieces.

|-) |-) I am so tired of seeing jewelry made in China, and find it especially nice to discover a designer with manufacturing facilities in New England. Bravo. (y)

(S) (S) Here's hoping for a cooler night. Today wasn't as bad with humidity around 29 percent. It was actually tolerable. ;)

(f)

Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis.

The times are changed, and we are changed in them. (again)

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

sweetlady

09-25-2007, 12:32 AM

;)

Tomato-Garlic Angel Hair: Talk about Simple!

1. 1 (16 ounce) package angel hair pasta

2. 3 large ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped

3. 1/3 cup olive or vegetable oil

4. 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

5. 1/4 cup minced fresh parsley

6. 1 clove garlic, minced

7. 1 tablespoon minced fresh basil

8. 1/4 teaspoon garlic salt

Cooking Directions:

Cook pasta according to package directions. Meanwhile, combine remaining ingredients in a large bowl.

Rinse and drain pasta; add to tomato mixture and toss to coat. Serve immediately

Nutrition Info

Per Serving

* Calories: 269 kcal
* Carbohydrates: 34 g
* Dietary Fiber: 2 g
* Fat: 11 g
* Protein: 7 g
* Sugars: 3 g

(y) (y)

(f)

Cum grano salis.

With a grain of salt. Take something not literally, but with due consideration.

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

sweetlady

09-25-2007, 12:37 AM

(l) (l) (l)

The Top Ten Greenest Cities

By Nicki Kipen

May 18, 2007

It's not easy being green -- for a city, that is. It's tough enough to simply keep up with the endless trash, traffic and pollution generated by urban life. To actually get the better of it with good public transportation, smart recycling programs and the kind of well-kept streets, parks and playgrounds that make cities fun and healthful places to live, that's the true challenge. So who measures up?

We've picked 10 places -- in no particular order -- that we think are doing a great job at putting residents first. That means they're obsessed with clean air and clean water, renewable energy, reliable city buses, trams, streetcars and subways, a growing number of parks and greenbelts, farmer's markets and, very important, opportunities for community involvement.

Portland, Oregon

Affordable and accessible, this city straddling the banks of the Willamette River has long made sustainable living a priority. More than 30 years ago, with other cities in a freeway-building frenzy, Portland broke ranks and tore down a six-lane expressway to make room for a waterfront park. Since then the city has set an urban growth boundary to protect 25 million acres of forest and farmland, started a solid-waste program that recycles more than half of the city's trash and erected more than 50 public buildings that meet tough standards set by the United States Green Building Council. One of the most bike-friendly cities in the U.S., Portland's public transportation systems boasts a high rate of ridership. Add in one of the nation's largest city parks -- the aptly named Forest Park has 74 miles of running, biking and hiking trails -- and Portland's rep as the nation's greenest city makes sense.

Austin, Texas

Home to the first Whole Foods Market and more than 300 days of sunshine a year (and you thought this city was all about the music) Austin spreads out among 205 parks, 14 nature preserves, and 25 greenbelts. Talk about green. The city plans to meet 20 percent of its energy needs with renewable energy and energy efficiency by 2020. Factor in county laws protecting the region's natural watershed from development, a recycling center that dates back to 1970, a dozen outdoor farmer's markets, city buses that offer free rides on 'high ozone' days and an innovative "pay-as-you-throw" trash collection program that rewards residents for being less wasteful and Austin easily earns a spot on the Green List.

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Named one of the top business districts in the nation for by the Environmental Protection Agency, Minneapolis is a commuter's paradise where more than 60 percent of downtown workers use public or alternative transportation to get to the office. Free parking for registered van and car pools, an extensive bike path and bike lane system and employer-sponsored showers and locker rooms not only add endorphins but make a significant dent into auto-based air pollution. On the way to work, commuters thread their way among scores of lakes and parks and ponds and greenbelts and more than 200,000 trees. With great drinking water, active community organizations and the Minnesota State Department of Commerce nudging businesses and residents to hook solar systems up to the city's grid, it doesn't take Mary Tyler Moore tossing her beret into the air to let you know this is a great place to live.

Boulder, Colorado

Being green has been a way of life in this small Rocky Mountain city ever since prescient city planners started preserving parkland in 1898. Today, with more than 42,000 acres of pristine land cushioning the city from urban sprawl, Boulder is a place where hiking trails, rock-climbing areas, picnic spots and fishing holes are within reach of every resident. But there's more to this city than just a pretty face. It's a place where more than 90 percent of residents recycle, where new water meters are not allowed above certain elevation, thus protecting ridgelines and peaks, and where, when recent federal tax cuts gutted city budgets, residents voted themselves a third sales-tax hike to raise $51 million to buy and protect even more open land.

Burlington, Vermont

In this small city on Lake Champlain, community pride and responsibility drive the urge to be green. More than one-third of all energy used in the city comes from renewable resources, an impressive statistic in chilly New England. Burlington laws don't allow the use of pesticides on public parks, land or waterways. Challenged by their local leaders to come up with environmental priorities and solutions to existing problems, residents formed an extensive network of citizen-based groups that take on everything from environmental programs to clean up toxic sites to watchdog groups to monitor pollution in Lake Champlain. With local agriculture a mainstay of the region, schools are switching to locally- and organically-grown foods. The idea of sustainability is becoming part of the school curriculum so, as Burlington's children grow and take their places in the community -- any community -- they can take a greener way of thinking along with them.

Madison, Wisconsin

Madison was the first city in the United States to offer curbside recycling (and one of the few with a university course on ice cream making), and its 15,000 acres of lakes and 6,000 acres of parkland give it great appeal. Drawn by the natural beauty, residents seem determined to help preserve it. The recycling program gets a whopping 97 percent participation, with 265 tons of material -- everything from broken washers to empty beer cans to grass clippings -- collected each week. A year-round farmer's market (held indoors in the frigid winter months) draws vendors and buyers from throughout the fertile region. As a result, organic and local-grown foods are a priority. This bike-friendly city with more than 100 miles of bike paths ranks high in air quality, no surprise in a place where there are three bikes for every car.

New York, New York

Surprise! Thanks to its storied (and widely used) public transportation, energy-efficient housing and good water quality, New York rates a place among the nation's green cities. Central Park makes it even greener. Considered a folly of epic proportions when its 843 swampy, muddy acres were set aside in the 1850s, Central Park is a wilderness within the urban core. More than 80 percent of NYC residents use public transportation, something that earns the city bragging rights. In fact, New Yorkers burn gasoline at the rate the U.S. did in the 1920s. The key to the city's low use of fossil fuels, pesticides and other energy sources is population density. Calculated by square foot, New York uses as much energy and produces as much solid waste as any city. Calculate by population, however, and the numbers shift. Per capita, New Yorkers use fewer resources and put less pressure on their surroundings than any other city of its size. So welcome to the Big Green Apple.

San Francisco, California

To the superlatives the City by the Bay has acquired over the decades -- steepest, foggiest, most expensive -- add greenest. With bus, subway and ferry services that reach throughout the Bay Area, avid bikers and devoted car poolers, San Francisco has a good track record for getting people out of their cars. In fact, more than half the city's residents use public or alternative transportation to get to work. With Golden Gate Park, the newly-decommissioned Presidio, beaches, extensive bike paths and access to the Pacific and the Bay, the city has an abundance of recreational options. Prevailing winds from the water help keep pollution at bay. The city is also a leader in green building, with more than 20 building projects registered for official green certification. And city residents are willing to tax themselves. Voters said yes to allowing the city to sell $100 million in revenue bonds to support renewable energy.

Santa Monica, California

Just 12 years ago, the environmental future of this seaside city looked unimpressive. Thanks to an active city council, which wrote and enacted the Sustainable City Plan, Santa Monica has turned green. Three of every four of the city's public works vehicles run on alternative fuel, making it among the largest such fleets in the country. All public buildings use renewable energy. In the last 15 years, the city has cut greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 10 percent, a feat in car-crazy Southern California. City officials and residents have made the ongoing cleanup of the Santa Monica Bay a priority -- an urban runoff facility catches 3.5 million gallons of water each week that would otherwise flow into the bay. Add in the miles of beaches, extensive curbside recycling, farmer's markets, community gardens, the city's nimble bus system and Santa Monica is clearly more than just another bathing beauty.

Chicago, Illinois

With open space, public transportation and a commitment to renewable and sustainable energy, Chicago has earned a spot on numerous 'greenest city' lists. The city has 42 green-certified building projects, with more to come. All of the city's nine museums and the Art Institute of Chicago have been converted to run partially on solar power. Close to one-third of all residents use public transportation to get to work. Among the city's energy goals, likely to be met, is buying 20 percent of its electricity from renewable energy sources this year. City officials have voted to give tax incentives to homeowners who invest in Chicago's many historic homes and retrofit them with energy efficient heating and cooling systems, as well as water-saving plumbing. Water quality on the city's lakefront is rated as excellent by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a happy detail for all the swimmers, boaters and sun bathers along the shore in the summer. And you thought it was all about Oprah.

http://promo.realestate.yahoo.com/the_top_ten_greenest_cities.html

:o :o I have lived or visited ALL but Austin.

:) S.F. is WAY too expensive and I lived there already. I still love it there but would never move back.

(l) (l) Seems like Boulder and Burlington would be my picks on this list. What are yours?

(f)

Vive Ut Vitas!!

Live, so that you may live." or "Live life to the fullest.

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

sweetlady

09-25-2007, 12:40 AM

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

1. http://www.angelicdreamz.com/store/Barbie/2006/2005/buttons/bob_mackie.gif

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Mackie

3. Barbie!

http://www.angelicdreamz.com/store/mackie.html

4. http://www.juliensauctions.com/auctions/Bob-Mackie/lots.html

5. Cher in a Bob Mackie gown:

http://z.about.com/d/fashion/1/7/Q/i/2/cher.jpg

Cute: http://www.cherworld.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/cherbarbie3.jpg

6. Mackie Vintage:

http://www.vintagetextile.com/images/1930's/2139a_1.jpg

The Bob Mackie gown worn by Cher while performing "The Beat Goes On" on The Sonny and Cher Show is valued at $7,000. (At Sotheby's):

http://media.npr.org/programs/day/features/2006/oct/cher/main.jpg

Cher on cover of "Time" Magazine:

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/5/5e/Cher_time_cover.jpg

7. Diana Ross, Sir Elton John.....and can you guess the others?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/graphics/2005/06/28/et4.jpg

8. More Mackie Ladies:

http://img2.timeinc.net/people/i/2006/gallery/bestworstdresspoll/eva_longoria.jpg

http://img2.timeinc.net/people/i/2004/04/specials/oscars04/scarystyles/cher.jpg

(l) :D (l) :D

(f)

Cum recte vivis, ne cures verba malorum.

If you live properly, don't worry about what the evil ones say. ;)

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

sweetlady

09-25-2007, 03:36 PM

:| :| :|

;)

:[:[ Spooky Manor — Windows

Get lost inside!

Hunt the halls of Spooky Manor for broken objects, return the items to their rightful places, and solve a series of puzzles to get to the bottom of this eerie mystery. What is this strange machine and who scattered its pieces? Only those with a keen eye for detail will discover the answers hidden inside Spooky Manor! :[:[

http://www.funpcgame.com/puzzle-games/Mortimer-beckett-and-the-secret-of-spooky-manor/Mortimer-beckett-and-the-secret-of-spooky-manor-game.php

:)

:[

Carpe Carpium.

Seize the Carp.

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

sweetlady

09-25-2007, 03:37 PM

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

COLOURlovers™

Shout it from the rooftops—periwinkle!

Wondering what color scheme will make your Web page welcoming yet businesslike? COLOURlovers has the answer. By monitoring color trends in design, architecture, advertising, and everywhere else, this site provides designers and regular folks alike with a place to satisfy their hunger for mauve, taupe, and all shades in between.

http://www.colourlovers.com/

(y) (y) Color me impressed.

;)

(f)

Aut disce aut discede,

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

sweetlady

09-25-2007, 03:38 PM

:o :o :o

;)

PC Decrapifier

Crap, crap—go away!

You finally bought that awesome new PC with a monstrous 320GB hard drive—only to discover that 40GB are already in use by unwanted "crapware" (preinstalled trial software). Reclaim your hard drive and clear your desktop of unwanted shortcuts with the free PC Decrapifier!

It's craptastic!

http://www.yorkspace.com/pc-de-crapifier

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

(f)

Ad augusta per angusta.

To high places by narrow roads.

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

sweetlady

09-25-2007, 03:40 PM

:)

Dr. Greene

But the other kids reduced their carbon!

The aptly named Dr. Greene is the author of "Raising Baby Green: The Earth-Friendly Guide to Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Baby Care." His Web site provides expert advice and eco-friendly resources for parents dealing with childhood maladies, behavior issues, and all things kid-related.

Eat your (organic) vegetables.

http://www.drgreene.com/

:| :| :| :|

|-) |-) |-)

Cum grano salis.

With a grain of salt. Take something not literally, but with due consideration.

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

sweetlady

09-25-2007, 03:42 PM

:o :o :o

(h) (h)

Street Mattress

Street side harbors for dust mites

You probably passed by one today—the ubiquitous mattress abandoned on a sidewalk or alleyway. By inviting you to notice this seemingly invisible fixture of our environment, this site brings some Zen-like clarity to the everyday world. Post your own mattress photos or vote for your favorites.

Or your mattress is FREE!

http://www.streetmattress.com/sm.php

(*) (S) (*) (S) (*) (S) (*)

(f)

Audi, vide, tace, si tu vis vivere (in pace).

Hear, see, be silent, if you wish to live (in peace).

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

sweetlady

09-25-2007, 03:43 PM

(ip) (l) (ip) (l) (ip)

Your Hawaiian Name

Sorry, Keanu is taken.

Imagine how cool you'll sound on vacation when you introduce yourself to the bartender as "Keoni" instead of John—they'll never mistake you for a Haole! Just type your name and click the button—easy as falling out of a hammock. ;)

Can I be Dano?

http://www.hisurf.com/hawaiian/names.html

(y) (y)

(f)

Quidquid discis, tibi discis.

Whatever you learn, you learn it for yourself.

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

sweetlady

09-25-2007, 03:49 PM

:| :| :| :| :|

Dying Words

Poetry of the Condemned

You'll find chills and heartbreak in this collection of last words spoken by criminals just before they were executed—from Breaker Morant and Benito Mussolini to Marie Antoinette.

Last Exit to Nowhere

http://www.corsinet.com/braincandy/dying2.html

:o :o Some famous last words have most certainly made their speakers immortal, yes?

This web site caused me to pause and think about who I admire, and what their last words might have been. :)

(l) (l) "The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure , the process is its own reward." (l) (l)

- Amelia Earhart

(f) (f)'s,

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

sweetlady

09-25-2007, 03:55 PM

(y) (y)

Q U O T E D

"Teens are tire kickers -- they hang around, cost you money and then leave. The older demographic has a bunch of interesting characteristics, not the least of which is that they hang around."

-- VC and blogger Paul Kedrosky says social sites aimed at the boomer-plus market find older people are stickier

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/12/technology/12social.html?_r=1&em&ex=1189742400&en=f8aadaadb1ca115d&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin

^o)^o)^o)^o)

(y) (y) (y)

(f)

(l) "Women must pay for everything. They do get more glory than men for comparable feats. But, they also get more notoriety when they crash." (l)

- Amelia Earhart

(k) (k) 's,

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

sweetlady

09-25-2007, 03:59 PM

(i) (i) (i) (i)

http://www.tdbspecialprojects.com/

(y) (y)

(f)

(l) "The stars seemed near enough to touch and never before have I seen so many. I always believed the lure of flying is the lure of beauty, but I was sure of it that night." (l)

- Amelia Earhart

(f) (f) 's,

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

sweetlady

09-25-2007, 04:09 PM

(S) (*) (S) (*) (S) (*) (S) (*)

http://ask.yahoo.com/20031230.html

http://gorp.away.com/gorp/eclectic/nightsky/main.htm

(*) (*) 2007 Meteor Showers and Viewing Tips (*) (*)

The next meteor shower is the Orionids on October 21. The gibbous Moon sets by 1 or 2 a.m., providing several good hours to watch the shower. Some experts predict that the Orionids could be better than average this year, with perhaps a score of meteors per hour visible at their peak.

http://stardate.org/nightsky/meteors/

Best places for Seeing Stars:

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/bluelist/index.cfm?fa=main.viewList&list_id=9356

^o)^o) As usual, "Best" is always relative.

(l) "The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one's appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship." (l)

(f) 's,

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

sweetlady

09-26-2007, 11:52 AM

(y) (y)

By Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Staff Writer

27 August 2007

http://www.livescience.com/history/070827_civil_unions.html

(f)

Same-sex civil unions, while seemingly new and radical, appear to have existed 600 years ago in late medieval France, a professor writes in the September issue of the Journal of Modern History.

The term affrerement, or "brotherment," referred to a certain type of legal contract that provided a marriage-like foundation for non-nuclear households of many types, according to Allan Tulchin, an assistant professor of history at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania.

The model for the arrangement was that of biological brothers who inherited the family home on an equal basis from their parents and continued to live together, Tulchin wrote.

But in cases where the affreres were single, unrelated men, the contracts provide "considerable evidence that the affreres were using affrerements to formalize same-sex loving relationships," he wrote.

"I suspect that some of these relationships were sexual, while others may not have been. It is impossible to prove either way and probably also somewhat irrelevant to understanding their way of thinking," Tulchin wrote. "They loved each other, and the community accepted that."

Before a notary and witnesses, the "brothers" pledged to live together sharing "un pain, un vin, et une bourse" -- one bread, one wine and one purse.

The "brothers'" goods usually became the joint property of both parties, and each commonly became the other's legal heir.

"Western family structures have been much more varied than many people today seem to realize, and Western legal systems have in the past made provisions for a variety of household structures," wrote Tulchin, who studied documents and gravestones of the affreres to arrive at his conclusions. (Barbara Wilcox, The Advocate)

http://www.gay.com/news/article.html?2007/08/24/5

(y) (y) Isn't the study of history great?

:)

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.

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

sweetlady

09-26-2007, 12:36 PM

.........no, not the pudenda padlock........:o

;)

Ponte Milvio is becoming less romantic after Rome officials began forcing people to hang locks not on lamp post but on a recently installed chain.

http://img.iht.com/images/2007/08/06/06rome550.jpg

Locks of love clutter Rome's oldest bridge

By Ian Fisher

Published: August 5, 2007

ROME: Love, in all its splendor and mess, found a fit expression on Rome's oldest bridge last year. Inspired by a best-selling book, then the movie version, young couples wrote their names on a padlock. They chained it around a lamppost on Ponte Milvio. Then they symbolically cut off escape by tossing the key into the wine-dark Tiber below.

But reality quickly set in, as it often does after passion. Thousands of locks and chains piled up. The lamps atop two lightposts crumbled under the weight. Neighbors complained of vandalism. Politicians who tried to solve the problem were accused - and this is bad in Italy - of being anti-love.

Late last month, a solution was finally put into place. City officials created official spots for the locks - six sets of steel posts with chains on the bridge - so now lovers can declare themselves without damage to the infrastructure. And so this city of monuments has just created another one, if at a cost: Tossing a key off Ponte Milvio, some Italians complain, may soon be as touristy and routine as flipping a coin into the Trevi Fountain.

"It's less romantic," said Costantino Boccuni, a 28-year-old soldier who had just affixed a lock to one of the new city-approved spots to declare his love for his wife of six years, Daniela, 26. "It was more beautiful before. It was more original.

"Now it's more like a fashion," he said.

But still, as Rome's distinctly lovely light faded into evening, they did it. And in the few days since the new posts and chains went up, dozens of new love locks have been sealed shut on Ponte Milvio, in a perfect world, forever (though in practice, the city will periodically prune the locks just as they sweep the coins from the Trevi Fountain).

The story of how Ponte Milvio, at the north of Rome's center, became the city's symbol of love follows a particularly Italian script, a perfectly balanced mix of history, myth, truly ludicrous political posturing and the unexpected.

First built in 206 B.C., the bridge attracted lovers long ago: Tacitus, the first century Roman historian and statesman, reported that even in his time it was "famous for its nocturnal attractions." The Emperor Nero, Tacitus said, visited there "for his debaucheries." (It is also the place where in 312, Constantine defeated his rival Maxentius. He became the first emperor to convert to Christianity, which to many Italians still stands against the sort of love often found on Ponte Milvio.)

Last year, a novelist and screen writer, Federico Moccia, wrote the second installment of a story of young Romans called, in English, "I Want You." Like many affairs, his hero's starts with a lie: He convinces a potential girlfriend of an invented legend, in which lovers wrap a chain around the third lamppost on the bridge's northern side, lock it and throw the key into the Tiber.

"And then?" the girl asks.

"We'll never leave each other," he says, with no shame.

Moccia, 44, says he just dreamed up the ritual. "I liked the idea of tying locks to love because it is more solid, tangible," he said. The book sold 1.1 million copies, the movie version came out - and soon life began imitating art.

Moccia said he was stunned when locks and chains appeared on the bridge, though he tied the craze to a lingering malaise in Italy, which is growing old, producing fewer babies, suffering from an economy that often keeps young people unemployed and at home with their parents into their 30s.

"It is a precise sign of our times - there is a lack of dreaming in Italy," he said. "We only hear bad news. There is no longer the smile of who we see from afar or near the dream. And that gesture of the lock on the bridge, of the feeling of the iron closing, it's a promise. It's beautiful."

Soon beauty turned to menace. Lovers came from all over Italy, joined by some tourists. The ancient bridge, which also attracts not only lovers but drinkers and no small number of pot smokers, began to be covered in lovers' graffiti, along with the overwhelming number of chains.

This spring, the city cracked down.

Inevitably, politics intruded: In this nation's long battle between left and right, right-wing parties accused the leftist mayor, Walter Veltroni, who may some day become prime minister, with a crime far worse than corruption.

"The left is against lovers," one rightist city official, Marco Clarke, charged in February.

Fighting words: An artful compromise clearly needed finding. Thus the posts and chains.

Lovers can affix their locks directly to them (which seemed to be the case in two recent, very pleasant evenings on the bridge). Or if they insist on chaining them to the lampposts, the locks will periodically be transferred down to the posts and chains.

"We have used good sense, meaning we realize that it is about a primary and innocent feeling," said Silvio Di Francia, a city official responsible for solving the problem. "However if all the historic bridges had locks we would have a problem with the maintenance."

So the tradition continues, if with some reservations about compromising on love. And some young Roman said that even before the new official posts, the tradition had lost its edge.

They complain that it has become just another tourist attraction, complete with two vendors selling locks on the spot for €5, or $6.90, €3 or €1 for the smallest. Families pose for cell-phone photos there.

"I would be embarrassed," said Michael P., a 22-year-old photographer's assistant who would not give his last name because he was smoking marijuana. "It's a question of dignity. If I want to express love, I will express it in my way."

But Gianluca and Federica recently marked their love with a lock, as did Ricky and Francy, Piti and Piti, several Mirkoses with suspiciously similar handwriting. Anna and Philip Colletti, from Montreal, marked their 25th anniversary with a lock. Their children told them about it.

"Twenty-five years of marriage - it might freak out these young couples," Colletti said.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/05/africa/rome.php

More info:

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

(l) (l) (l)

Ab imo pectore.

From the bottom of the chest (heart).

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

sweetlady

09-29-2007, 09:40 AM

:| :s :o :| :s :o

Friday, September 28, 2007 / 04:29 PM

The Advocate

Rep. Barney Frank will introduce two separate versions of the Employment Nondiscrimination Act -- one that prohibits job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and another one that does the same for transgender people, his staff said Friday.

The ENDA bill without trans-inclusion will be marked up by the chamber's Education and Labor Committee on Tuesday so that it can be sent it to the House floor for a vote, Steven Adamske, a spokesperson for Rep. Frank, told The Advocate.

"The other one, GENDA if you will, will move on a separate track and will give the ability for the committee and other lawmakers to hold hearings on it and better educate other lawmakers," Adamske said.

The original bill sponsored by Reps. Frank and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., included protections for sexual orientation and gender identity. Frank and House leadership decided to split the measure in two after a whip vote revealed that the trans-inclusive language was sinking its chances.

Advancing two separate bills has, at least temporarily, set House leaders and LGBT activists on opposite sides of the fence.

Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said she wasn't convinced the original trans-inclusive bill couldn't pass.

"We think the bill was pulled prematurely and abruptly," Keisling said. "Because they pulled the bill, we'll never know."

Keisling said the language of the two new bills was probably close to identical, except that the gender-identity bill had shower and dressing-room provisions specific to the trans community.

"It is disheartening to see that a bill, drafted over several years through a collaborative effort of LGBT advocates and allies, would be rejected without the counsel or assent of a single one of these organizations," her group said in a statement Friday.

Eleven other groups, including the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and National Stonewall Democrats, had joined Keisling's group Thursday in opposing removal of the transgender protections from the original bill.

The Human Rights Campaign said it did not "assent" to stripping trans language from ENDA but has yet to indicate how it will proceed now that two separate bills have emerged.

The Washington Post praised the move in an editorial Friday, saying, "It requires time and patience to educate the public and lawmakers about how prejudice harms some people . . .

"Delaying passage of ENDA, which was first introduced in the House in the mid-1970s by Rep. Bella Abzug, until the transgender community changes enough hearts and minds would be a mistake." (Kerry Eleveld, The Advocate)

:-#:-# What a shame they had to split into two pieces of legislation for the Employment Nondiscrimination Act -- one that prohibits job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation to get passed. I wonder how much longer it will take for the bill that addresses the needs of transgendered people to get passed? :s :s How much more "education" for members of Congress will be "enough"?

8o| Grrrrrr.........

(l) (l) (l) .......to all of my transgendered friends. (f) Hope springs eternal.

Amicus certus in re incerta cernitur.

A true friend is dicerned during an uncertain matter".

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

sweetlady

09-29-2007, 09:46 AM

:'( :'(

Friday, September 28, 2007 / 05:17 PM

Gay.com

A Salt Lake City bus driver has lost her trans discrimination case before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.

In a 25-page opinion, the panel ruled that the Utah Transit Authority was justified in firing Krystal Etsitty due to its concerns about her eventual use of public restrooms along her route.

Etsitty joins a lengthening line of cases that seek to extend the main federal law against workplace discrimination to protect people who are targeted due to sex stereotyping.

The decision, which is now binding law in the federal courts of the six states covered by the 10th Circuit, is a step backward in the continuing effort to bring the force of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to bear on LGBT discrimination cases.

Next week, Congress is poised to hold a House vote on the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, a separate bill that would protect LGBT workers against discrimination under most circumstances. Ironically, Democrats, who added trans folk to the bill for the first time this year, are considering cutting them loose as the vote looms, the Washington Blade reported.

Although ENDA would be a great step forward, the most effective way to protect LGBT individuals in the workplace would be eventually to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of factors covered under Title VII.

That law protects individuals against workplace bias because of "sex" and other factors. Over time, Title VII's ban on sex discrimination has evolved to outlaw sexual harassment, as well as some instances of gender stereotyping. In a key 1989 case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Price Waterhouse violated Title VII when it refused to promote a masculine woman based on her personal style.

That ruling would appear to open the door to all kinds of gay, lesbian and transgender complaints under Title VII, which does not specifically protect against LGBT discrimination.

What if a gay man was harassed or fired, not because he was gay, but because he was effeminate? Why shouldn't the rationale of Price Waterhouse insulate a transwoman from bias based on her sexual presentation?

Indeed, although many courts have ignored Price Waterhouse or found a way around the precedent, other courts in recent years have recognized that its principles could apply in gay and trans cases. Unfortunately for Etsitty, both the lower court and the appellate panel ruled that even if she could make an argument under the sexual stereotyping theory, the Utah Transit Authority had a legitimate and non-discriminatory justification for letting her go.

In other words, had the UTA simply fired her because she was transitioning, her case might have gone to trial. But since her termination revolved around bathrooms, the agency was off the hook.

According to the court opinion, Etsitty went through a training period, driving as "Michael," wearing male clothes, and using public facilities for breaks. Once she began her formal employment, she told her supervisor she would be transitioning, and living as a woman.

Although the supervisor had no problem with the news, another manager called Etsitty into a meeting with human resources staff and pursued the question of the bathrooms. After determining that Etsitty was pre-operative, the manager put her on administrative leave, and later fired her, claiming that the Utah Transit Authority could be legally liable for unspecified disasters that might occur if Etsitty used a ladies room on her route. According to the opinion, the UTA even told Etsitty she would be eligible to return if she had corrective surgery.

The UTA and the court did not examine the illogical premise behind the decision to fire Etsitty. In fact, unless Etsitty was inclined to flash the patrons of the Salt Lake City ladies' rooms, there would be no reason for her presence in a stall to disrupt the public in any way. Transwomen are legallly free to use the city facilities, and in any case, Etsitty could, in theory, have located a string of single-occupancy bathrooms along her route.

These obvious points were brushed aside as the court determined that it was not up to a judge to evaluate the merits of the company's policy decisions, only to decide whether or not they amounted to illegal discrimination. The panel also dismissed Etsitty's claim that her treatment violated her right to equal protection under the U.S. Constitution. (Ann Rostow, Gay.com)

(n) IMHO, Salt Lake City is an unfortunate city to achieve success in the courts with GLBT issues.

:s This really sux big time. (n)

(c) Off for a fresh cup of java soon. Have a lovely Autumn Saturday! (f)

Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis.

The times are changed, and we are changed in them. (again)

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

sweetlady

09-29-2007, 09:48 AM

:D :D :D

Friday, May 25, 2007 / 10:09 AM

Associated Press

The mayor is a transsexual, so is her partner, and the English university city of Cambridge is taking them in stride.

Jenny Bailey, 45, was installed Thursday as mayor of the Cambridge City Council, and her partner Jennifer Liddle, 49, a former council member, assumed the honorary title of mayoress, which is given to the partner of the mayor.

Both were born male, and had gender reassignment surgery in their 30s. According to the Local Government Association, Bailey is the first transsexual to serve as a mayor in Britain.

"This is fantastic," Bailey said after being installed.

She has two sons with her ex-wife, who remains a friend.

Rob Hammond, Cambridge Council's chief executive, said he knew there would be interest in the new mayor's sex change.

"It is the council's firm view that someone's gender and sexual orientation has no bearing on their suitability to hold public office," Hammond said.

Bailey, a Liberal Democrat, previously served as deputy mayor.

"People can take me as a role model if they want," The Times newspaper quoted her as saying.

"But for transgender people, all we want is to disappear and become normal, so I don't want to let it define me. When you go through transgender experience and come through the other side, you are just happy to get on with normal life, normal problems, so this is a wonderful opportunity." (AP)

(y) (y)

(f)

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.

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

sweetlady

09-29-2007, 09:51 AM

(l) (~) (l) (~) (l) (~) (l) (~) (l) (~)

Desert Hearts - 2 disc Collector's Edition

The best-selling lesbian title returns with NEVER BEFORE SEEN ADDITIONAL FOOTAGE! Desert Hearts ranks as the all-time classic lesbian favorite romantic film - and also stands as the top-grossing lesbian-made lesbian feature of all time (drawing $2.4 million at the box office).

Based on Jane Rule's novel "Desert of the Heart," the movie tells the story of Vivian Bell (Helen Shaver), a repressed English professor who goes to Reno for a quickie divorce in 1959. She spends the weeks waiting for her final divorce papers at a dude ranch where she meets Cay Rivvers (Patricia Charbonneau), a beautiful young casino worker.

Cay is a free spirit - an artist by day and casino worker by night, as well as a lesbian. Her surrogate mother Frances (Audra Lindley in an amazing departure from her comic role in "Three's Company") disapproves of her lifestyle, while also craving Cay's affection and attention.

To everyone's surprise, Vivian and Cay hit it off immediately as Cay introduces the shy academic to the wild-west casino scene as well as the breathless beauty of the desert. It's not long before Vivian finds her friendship moving into unexpected passion. And for Cay, it's the first time she has met someone who stirs her deepest emotions. An original 35mm print of this film has been donated to the Outfest Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation at the UCLA Film & Television Archive. The Legacy Project is the first program of its kind in the world.

(y) (~) (y) (~)

(f)

Peace,

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

sweetlady

09-29-2007, 09:59 AM

(*) (~) (*) (~)

(~) What If God Were the Sun? (2007)

Shattered by the sudden death of her father, harried ER nurse Jamie (Lacey Chabert) struggles with her job, her relationship with her fiancé and her overpowering grief. But the healing soon begins when Jamie meets a terminally ill patient (Gena Rowlands, in an Emmy-nominated role) with a lust for life. Based in part on the book by John Edward, this heartwarming drama originally aired on the Lifetime network. Keep a tissue box at close reach.

Director: Stephen Tolkin

Cast: Lacey Chabert, Gena Rowlands, Jan Skene, Kim Roberts, Maria Ricossa, Diana Reis, Klea Scott, Sam Trammell andWayne Nicklas.

(*) (*) (*) I gave it 3 stars. However, Rowlands gets 5 stars, in my view. She was spectacular! I viewed this on broadcast television. When I checked netflix, they didn't have a copy in their inventory. (Not even for the future, as with films being released now in theaters - which can be "saved" to a different queue and it automatically goes into my "active" queue when it is released on DVD.) Pretty cool, I think.

:) I bought and read the book by the medium, John Edward. So when I noticed it on a cable film channel, I tuned in. It definitely wasn't a waste of time. (f)

(g) (g) What a gift of a day! Today is the first time since the central air failed, that it feels GREAT! Give me cooler weather anytime. The chillier the temp, the better I feel. ;) I'll take "faux glow" via makeup any day! ;)

(f)

(l) “The woman who can create her own job is the woman who will win fame and fortune.”

- Amelia Earhart

(k) 's,

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

sweetlady

09-29-2007, 10:07 AM

(S) (*) (S) (*) (S) (*) (S)

http://spaceweather.com/

(l) (l) (l) I LOVED the September Aurora Gallery! (l) (l)

(f)

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes. ;-)

If you can understand this, you are over-educated. ;) ;)

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

sweetlady

09-29-2007, 10:49 AM

:o :o

The sweater dress, no longer a boring basic straight out of your mother’s college yearbook, is swiftly racking up votes for the retail world’s Homecoming queen.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/30/fashion/20070930_PULSE_SLIDESHOW_index.html

:) Some of these would look nice with leggings?

;)

(f)

Quidquid discis, tibi discis.

Whatever you learn, you learn it for yourself.

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

sweetlady

09-29-2007, 10:52 AM

8-| 8-|

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/26/fashion/thursdaystyles/20070927POINTS_index.html

:) I didn't care for the 1950's dark-rimmed glasses at all in this slide show.

(l) I really love the frosted frames with the nose pieces part of the frame itself (SO comfortable!) - especially in turquoise and royal blue. (l)

(f)

(l) "No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves."

- Amelia Earhart

(f) 's,

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

sweetlady

09-29-2007, 10:53 AM

:)

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/10/fashion/shows/20070910_FASHION_SLIDESHOW_index.html

(f)

Quidquid discis, tibi discis.

Whatever you learn, you learn it for yourself.

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

sweetlady

09-29-2007, 10:55 AM

(l) (l)

September 23, 2007

Food: Recipe Redux

1909: Eggs Eli

By AMANDA HESSER

In the early 20th century, The Times ran a story on ways to cook eggs for breakfast on Easter Sunday. According to the unnamed writer, the challenge a cook faces in disguising the flavor of eggs “is a puzzle that adds years to his age unless inspiration or accident brings a happy solution.” He apparently never experienced the delight of truffles with eggs or, for that matter, of bacon and eggs. Three decades later, Marcel Boulestin’s book “Eggs” would put the supposed quandary to rest, and by 2000, eggs would become so revered that they would inspire Marie Simmons’s 464-page cookbook, “The Good Egg.”

In the meantime, a temporary solution was offered by John W. Keller, a former city commissioner. His “Eggs Eli” involved rubbing a chafing dish with a garlic clove, then scrambling eggs in it with a mash of Virginia ham and anchovies — just the kind of unfussy, robust dish you might find on the brunch menu at Prune in the East Village.

Among the story’s other overstrenuous tips for masking the flavor of eggs were poached eggs topped with a hops-scented béchamel, President Taft’s campfire omelet (fried trout, salt and pepper) and the Colony Club’s “Eggs Suffragette,” a twist on deviled eggs that incorporated anchovies (the dish, however, didn’t hasten women’s suffrage). Delmonico’s Restaurant, meanwhile, was dismissed as having “failed to evolve any novelty.”

Most inventive of all was Mark Twain’s “Eggs à la Canton, Williamsport, Trout Run and Way Stations,” which instructed you to: “Divest two genuine eggs of shell and claws, being careful to avoid breaking same. If you break ’em, begin again at the top of the recipe and proceed anew. Lay the plumage and cackle on one side, roll the remainder very thin, add baking powder and boil in a pudding bag over a slow fire for a week. Tie with baby ribbons and serve cold.”

It’s difficult to improve on a dish like that, or even one as blunt and tasty as Eggs Eli. I thought Charles Phan, the chef and owner of the Slanted Door in San Francisco, might be up to the task.

Eggs Eli reminded him not of a hearty breakfast after a morning of rowing but of lunches in China, where eggs are served as an entree. “If you told me you got this out of the 1909 Hong Kong paper, I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said.

In China, salted fish, like anchovies, appear at nearly every meal. “They salt the entire sea,” Phan said. For his modern recipe, he added: “I was going to do ground pork and anchovy, but everybody knows that dish — it’s too literal. I wasn’t working hard enough.”

Persistence led him to two dishes served over rice. For the first, finely chopped pork shoulder is mixed with fish sauce, browned in oil and smothered with spicy yellow chives and eggs. Anchovies and garlic appear in the second as the aromatic for sautéed gai lan, or Chinese broccoli. Into each bowlful, you spoon a little rice, then top it with the crisp pork and egg on one side and the gai lan on the other — fat and happy, lean and mean. Tie on some baby ribbons, and you’ll have a meal fit for Mark Twain.

1909: Eggs Eli

This recipe by John W. Keller, a city commissioner, appeared in an article in The Times.

Anchovies were a popular ingredient at the turn of the 20th century. It’s impossible to know what the quality of the average anchovy was then. A good anchovy now is plump and assertive but neither too salty nor too fishy. (And whatever you do, avoid the ones with capers.) Lots of cookbooks call for those packed in salt, but Agostino Recca, a common brand found in supermarkets, makes good-quality ones, already filleted and packed in oil, that are fine substitutes.

1 garlic clove, peeled

2 tablespoons butter

8 eggs, cracked into a bowl

1 tablespoon finely minced anchovy

3 tablespoons finely minced

Virginia ham, or other smoked ham.

Rub the inside of a large skillet with the garlic clove. Place over medium-high heat and add the butter. When it’s nice and foamy, pour in the eggs. Sprinkle the anchovy and ham over the eggs, then begin scrambling them, stopping when they’re done to your liking. Keller, a Yale dropout, adds: “Serve on a Yale blue dish.” But any dish is fine. Serves 4.

2007: Crisp Pork With Scrambled Eggs and Yellow Chives

By Charles Phan, chef at the Slanted Door in San Francisco.

You can substitute green Chinese chives for yellow Chinese chives (which are available at Asian markets), but you will lose some of the spiciness.

3 ounces finely chopped pork shoulder

1 teaspoon fish sauce

1 tablespoon canola oil

Salt

Freshly ground white pepper

2 tablespoons yellow Chinese chives cut into 1-inch strips

4 eggs, beaten with a pinch of salt.

1. In a small bowl, combine the pork, fish sauce, oil and a pinch of salt and pepper.

2. In a nonstick sauté pan set over medium-high heat, brown the pork until crisp and no longer pink. Add the chives and cook 1 minute more. Reduce the heat to medium, add the eggs and stir them around the pan until the eggs set. Accompany with white rice and gai lan with anchovies. Serves 2.

(y) (y)

(f)

Ad augusta per angusta.

To high places by narrow roads.

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

sweetlady

09-29-2007, 10:56 AM

(*) (*) (*) (*) (*)

PEERING ACROSS KANANASKIS VALLEY, ALBERTA, CANADA , JUNE 22, 2007 David Noskin, 43, a high school English teacher from Highland Park, Ill., gazes from the Delta Lodge at Kananaskis toward a mountain named, simply, the Wedge. “Where I was standing, it wasn’t really as steep as it looked. To me it just felt like a pristine escape from a mundane world. My expectation was just to have a few days for hiking and bike riding in a pretty setting. But my expectations were surpassed. I didn’t anticipate feeling such a contrast between what it’s like living in my crowded, overpopulated, suburban area of Chicago and what it’s like being in the middle of this unadulterated land. I also didn’t expect it to seem so clean and pure up there — you could breathe in the air, and it just tasted and smelled good. And there was a certain crispness about the weather — the air didn’t feel heavy or thick. There was just a quiet beauty to it.”

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/30/travel/20070930_WHY_slideshow_index.html

Slide Show:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/30/travel/20070930_WHY_slideshow_index.html

KIPU FALLS, KAUAI, HAWAII, APRIL 4, 2007 Arlene Pollard, 54, a clinical social worker from San Diego: “My son Alex was talking to some of the island locals about what the local people do that the tourists don’t. And he kept hearing about this place with a rope swing, but it didn’t have a name — at least not with the locals. It feels like you’re in the middle of nowhere. The whole area is surrounded by huge trees with amazing vines; it’s just all overgrown. Someone has climbed out very far onto this branch and attached a rope, maybe 40 or 50 feet long, so you can swing over the lake and drop in the water. What a relaxed environment. I work in a glass high-rise building that’s climate controlled, so I can never even open the windows. And I spend a lot of time there. This place was the antithesis of that, which is why it felt as magical as it did.”

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/30/travel/20070930_WHY_slideshow_4.html

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

Cum grano salis.

With a grain of salt. Take something not literally, but with due consideration.

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

sweetlady

09-29-2007, 10:57 AM

(f) (f) (f)

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/24/arts/20070925_METGALA_SLIDESHOW_index.html

:) I was a little bit surprised at some of the attendees.........:o

;)

Sapientia est potentia.

Wisdom is power.

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

sweetlady

09-29-2007, 10:58 AM

:o :o

:|

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/25/fashion/shows/20070926REVIEW_index.html

:| :| What's with the black rimmed eyes? There's smoky as a sexy look, but some of these models look like they're vampires. Perhaps that is the intention of the designer.......

:o

;)

(f)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

09-29-2007, 11:00 AM

:o

The draped daytime crepe dress of the wartime ’40s has been revived in fluid jersey, minus the shoulder pads but often complete with the signature dolman sleeve. A year ago, the designer John Galliano for his own label presented colorful, imaginatively cut versions that captured the glamorous movie-star spirit of the originals. He was definitely onto something. Vintage versions are still in circulation; three are at bottom left.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/28/fashion/20070930STREET_2.html

:| :| YIKES! NOT attractive:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/photo/2007/09/27/20070930STREET/19394361.JPG

(f)

Cum recte vivis, ne cures verba malorum.

If you live properly, don't worry about what the evil ones say. ;)

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

sweetlady

09-29-2007, 11:03 AM

:)

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/16/arts/20070917_EMMY_SLIDESHOW_index.html

Helen Mirren was named best actress in a mini-series or movie for her role in "Prime Suspect: The Final Act" on PBS.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/16/arts/20070917_EMMY_SLIDESHOW_8.html

Sally Field won the award for leading actress in a drama series for her role on "Brothers & Sisters" on ABC.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/16/arts/20070917_EMMY_SLIDESHOW_10.html

Cast members from "The Sopranos," from left: James Gandolfini, Edie Falco, Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Robert Iler.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/16/arts/20070917_EMMY_SLIDESHOW_14.html

:o I haven't watched many of the TV shows whose actors were nominated and/or won. Just don't care for all of the half-hour episodics and many of the hour ones at all. Oh well. I would much rather read a book........ ;)

(f)

<:o) <:o) Enjoy the beautiful, breezy Autumn day!

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

sweetlady

09-29-2007, 11:06 AM

(~) (~) (~)

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/20/movies/20070921_SLIDESHOW_JESSEJAMES_index.html

(y) I might add this one to my netflix "Saved" queue so I can watch when it comes out on DVD.

(f)

Carpe Capium. ;)

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

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 01:09 PM

(f) (f) (f)

ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER

Pedro Almodovar’s multi-layered film gets am imaginative theatrical makeover starring Diana Rigg and with Leslie Manville playing the mother who seeks out her past in Barcelona. It’s the first time Almodovar has agreed to his work to be produced in English for the theatre and nearly 20 years since he has permitted a major stage production.

Old Vic Theatre, The Cut, Waterloo Road, SE1. T: 0870 060 6628.

http://www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk/shows/display?contentId=94228

After the tragic death of her son, Manuela embarks on a quest to Barcelona to find the father he never knew. Before reaching her goal, her life becomes entwined with that of three other women; a long-lost transvestite friend, a young nun searching for love, and the actress admired by her son.

All About My Mother revels in the strength and spirit of women, embracing motherhood, love and desire.

Pedro Almodóvar's film, on which this production is based, won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and BAFTA for Best Film not in the English Language in 2000.

Role-playing: Diana Rigg as a diva, and Mark Gatiss as a transvestite:

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Arts/Arts_/Pictures/2007/09/05/mother372.jpg

Theater Review:

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/theatre/drama/reviews/story/0,,2162704,00.html

(y) (y) I liked the film when I rented it on DVD from netflix last year or the year before.

(*) (*) I think it would be wonderful to have the opportunity to experience it in a London theater!

:D

(f)

Claude os, aperi oculos!

Shut your mouth, open your eyes. ;)

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

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 01:14 PM

:)

"A whole new definition of glamour."

http://www.haymarkethotel.com/index.php?page_id=8

"Haymarket Hotel is situated on the corner of Haymarket and Suffolk Place in the heart of London's theatre district. It is next door to the famous Haymarket Theatre Royal and is surrounded by some of London's best restaurants and bars. The hotel is perfect for Mayfair, Regent Street and Jermyn Street shopping. Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery are just around the corner - St. James's Park is a short walk. The hotel is within easy reach of the city's financial centre."

Sister Properties in London:

http://www.haymarkethotel.com/

London Now:

http://www.haymarkethotel.com/index.php?page_id=23

:) Nice and I prefer the much smaller, intimate hotels, especially in London. However, the Antheneum was truly the best hotel in London - with a 5 star rating - and it was not one of those tiny hotels. I have never experienced such attentive service from everyone in my life!

:| But for 500 pounds a night - that's $1,000 in U.S. dineros - the hotel should have been fabulous.

;)

(f) (f)

Contraria contrariis curantur.

Opposites are cured by their opposites. (Not always, IMHO!) :)

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

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 01:15 PM

:)

http://gorp.away.com/gorp/resource/us_wilderness_area/ca_john.htm

Inyo National Forest:

http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/inyo/recreation/wild/index.shtml

The John Muir Wilderness is a wilderness area that extends along the crest of the Sierra Nevada of California, USA for approximately 100 miles (150 km), in the Inyo and Sierra National Forests. Established in 1964 by the Wilderness Act, and named for naturalist John Muir, it contains 581,000 acres (2350 km²). The wilderness extends from Reds Meadow (near Mammoth Mountain) in the north, to south of Mount Whitney. The wilderness area also spans the Sierra north of Kings Canyon National Park, and extends on the west side of the park down to the Monarch Wilderness.

The wilderness contains the most spectacular and highest peaks of the Sierra Nevada. The peaks are typically made of granite from the Sierra Nevada batholith, and are dramatically shaped by glacial action. The southernmost glacier in the United States (the Palisades Glacier) is contained within the wilderness area.

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

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/38/SabrinaBasin.jpg/250px-SabrinaBasin.jpg

In 1889 John Muir described himself as a "self-styled poetico-tramp-geologist-bot. and ornith-natural, etc.!!! ". John Muir spent his life advocating for the protection of the wild parts of the Sierra Nevada. He believed that public support for the protection of these lands would come about if more of the public experienced these areas and he formed the Sierra Club for just this reason. The John Muir Wilderness encompasses many of the lands that Muir explored in the late 1800's.

http://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=NWPS&sec=wildView&wname=John%20Muir

(l) (l)

(y)

Crudelius est quam mori semper timere mortem.

It is crueller to be always afraid of dying than to die.

Sweetlady & Wyattt he Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 01:17 PM

(f) (f)

Sat 29 Sep 2007

Colour and art are themes at Milan's womenswear shows

By Jo Winterbottom

MILAN (Reuters) - Bold colours, high heels and an artist's touch were key themes at Milan's summer 2008 womenswear week which ended on Saturday, epitomised in the stunning gallery gowns that finished Dolce & Gabbana's show on Thursday.

And if hemlines really are a barometer of financial markets, current stock market falls will be short-lived as many skirts were short, either swinging full in 1950s style or pencil slim.

"The continuing message ... is colour, which is going to be very exciting for customers," Ken Downing, fashion director at Neiman Marcus in New York told Reuters.

Jil Sander, Marni and Burberry all used bold colours, while Donatella Versace ended her show on Thursday with a series of sweeping, slim evening gowns in jade, yellow, pink and turquoise -- a colour that seemed in every designer's paintbox.

At Gucci, designer Frida Giannini used a black and white base for her patterns but liberally splashed them with bright yellow and bubblegum pink.

Shorts or short skirts were favoured by many brands, from hot pants at Blumarine to shorts at Versace and then trousers tied just above the knee at Giorgio Armani's two collections.

And if the trousers were long, they were almost all wide-legged and loose, with Dolce & Gabbana's D&G line labelling them "elephant foot."

Many designers opted for soft, flowing fabrics that they could layer for a selection of effects through teasingly transparent to full flounces.

Miuccia Prada, often seen as one of Milan's most innovative designers, used huge petals of tissue-like silk hung on the hips of dresses or draped across shoulders.

HIGH ART

High heels tottered along runways everywhere, many with beautifully sculpting or embellished with woven leather, as at Bottega Veneta, or linen coverings for Saturday's last show at Alviero Martini.

Gucci chose gold, for lace-up front stilletoes, and Versace and Armani both shaped heels with inward cuts to give an artistic flavour to the footwear.

Bags -- another important accessory for designers -- were big, soft and often carried a side pouch pocket, as at Dolce & Gabbana on Thursday -- enabling women to have the utility of a holdall and the chicness of a handbag together.

"A clutch bag that fits into a tote becomes your new twinset," Downing said.

For many designers, details were not confined to accessories and there were ample amounts of embroidery, ruffles and frills.

Emporio Armani had splashes of silver and sequins on Wednesday, Missoni banded a gold dress with bright turquoise that looked like enamelling and Love, Sex, Money on Friday embroidered outfits in silver that gave an almost Turkish feel.

"The hand of the artist has popped up in every collection ... this whole painterly attitude feels very fresh," Downing said.

The artistic touch became fully-fledged artwork at Dolce & Gabbana's show on Thursday, when designers Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce asked three artists to paint fabrics for them.

Their finale was overflowing black dresses daubed with white, magenta, green or bright pink that looked as if the models had swirled themselves in the cast-off canvas in an artist's studio.

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1561262007

(f) (f)

Damnant quod non intellegunt.

People fear what they do not understand.

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

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 01:23 PM

(ap) (*) (ap) (*) (ap) (*) (ap)

It appears that business travel will be slowing down over the next year. The reasons, say corporate travel managers, are extensive flight delays and rising costs.

October 2, 2007

On the Road

Teleconferencing as Plan A, With Flying as a Backup

By JOE SHARKEY

BUSINESS travel accounts for about $165 billion of the roughly $700 billion spent each year on domestic travel. Since overall travel began recovering in 2003, spending on business travel has been increasing.

Until now. Although no hard data is available, it appears that business travel will be slowing over the next year. The main reasons corporate travel managers cite are the extensive flight delays this year and rising costs.

“Some companies are putting in much tighter controls about flying,” said Susan Gurley, the executive director of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, a trade group. “There’s an increased frugality, and I think everybody is becoming more conscientious” about weighing the benefits of a trip against the costs, she said.

The air fares themselves, in general, are not rising yet. According to the Travel Industry Association, average domestic air fares actually dropped 1.3 percent in August compared with August 2006. But other factors, especially a 6.5 percent rise in average hotel rates, drove up overall travel costs by 2.4 percent for the month.

As spending is more controlled, we’ll be hearing more about alternatives to the headaches of business travel, beyond my favorite solution, which is to stay home more often.

Yes, we are back to talking about teleconferencing.

About five years ago, when teleconferencing was first widely presented as a way to reduce travel costs, I had a good look at the technology, which was marvelous. With great audio and wraparound video screens, you really felt as if you were with the other participants, even though they might be far away.

But there were several problems with teleconferencing. The technology was expensive. And even if you had a system, the other person or company had to have one, too.

At first, teleconferencing often merely replaced internal phone calls or e-mail messages with televised intraoffice “meetings.” What once would have been accomplished quickly became an in-house television program.

Ms. Gurley, of the travel executives’ trade group, said that many companies are working through those problems as teleconferencing systems have become more common. Beyond travel costs, the chief motivator is the cost of lost productivity when an employee is stuck for hours, or days, at an airport.

Teleconferencing also acquired a new name. “It’s called ‘telepresencing,’” Ms. Gurley said. Used judiciously, she said, it allows companies “to decide what is critical to the core business and requires a trip, and what is less critical.”

Teleconferencing — oops, telepresencing — aside, those of us who actually need to get on an airplane regularly are still left with a system in disrepair, with airlines under growing political pressure to shape up. Last week, in calling for the Transportation Department to address the problems more effectively, President Bush noted the “egregious behavior” of airlines as passengers were stranded for hours on planes and delays piled up, in a system stretched so thin that it could not deal with even routine weather disruptions.

Ms. Gurley says she believes that the airlines built a system that “gets you from one place to another” at a reasonable fare and that now they are being hoisted by their own petard because the system attracted more passengers than it could handle.

Until fundamental, costly and long-range improvements can be made in air-traffic control technology and in hiring and training more controllers, many of whom are now reaching retirement age, she thinks business travelers need to trim their sails and stop just blaming the airlines.

Ms. Gurley said there were “unrealistic expectations” among business travelers, for whom complicated flight schedules were chiefly created.

That’s pretty tough talk. But so be it, she said.

“As a frequent business traveler, I think I might have to realize that maybe there can’t be as many flights out of a certain airport when I want them. I also may have to understand that as a member of the public I may have to pay more taxes — income taxes — to fix the crumbling aviation infrastructure.

“I think we all have become spoiled,” she said.

Your comments are welcome. But please note: She said it, not I.

(y) (y) (y)

(f)

Docendo discimus.

We learn by teaching.

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

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 01:30 PM

:D :D :D

http://newhampshire.com/calendar/details.aspx?eventID=7341&eventDate=10/06/2007

(l) (l)

(f)

Dulce enim etiam nomen est pacis.

The name 'peace' is sweet itself.

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

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 01:35 PM

.........an Apple Orchard Guide! (l) (l)

:)

http://www.nhliving.com/appleorchards/

LOTS of links. (y)

:D Making my mouth water for a cold Red Delcious apple.......and I actually have a few in my refrigerator at the moment. Cut up one with some Vermont sharp white cheddar cheese? One of life's treats. (y)

(f)

Dum spiro, spero.

As long as I breathe, I hope.

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

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 01:39 PM

(l) (f) (l)

BOOK REVIEW

'Femme Fatale' by Pat Shipman

Behind Mata Hari's veil of myth and mystery lies an unconventional upbringing.

By Emily Barton

August 5, 2007

(f)

Femme Fatale

Love, Lies, and the Unknown Life of Mata Hari

Pat Shipman

William Morrow: 450 pp.

Until a few weeks ago, much of what I knew of Mata Hari I'd gathered from an eponymous pinball machine I'd played as a child. Its cartoon backdrop showed a brunette, supine on a tiger-skin rug and wearing bejeweled underwear, offering a debonair fellow a secret map. I knew Mata Hari had been a spy, though for whom, and when, remained hazy.

Uncertainty, it turns out, is a vital part of Mata Hari's story. Margaretha Geertruida Zelle MacLeod, as she was known before reinventing herself as a glamorous and overtly sexual dancer, was executed by a French firing squad in 1917 after being convicted of spying for Germany. Yet as Pat Shipman makes clear in her new biography, "Femme Fatale: Love, Lies, and the Unknown Life of Mata Hari," the case was prosecuted chiefly on grounds of immorality and her conviction based on questionable evidence.

Shipman prudently resists racing ahead, like a teen reading "Lady Chatterley," to the steamy bits and begins with a thorough investigation of her subject's early life. She writes, "[P]revious biographers had neglected her married years in the Dutch East Indies. Because I had researched the colonial period in Indonesia extensively for another book I was convinced that the roots of the later, better-known part of her life lay in her years in the Indies."

Margaretha Zelle was born in 1876, the eldest child of Antje and Adam Zelle, her father a merchant in the Dutch town of Leeuwarden, whom some called " 'the Baron' as a jibe at his pretension and posing." He spoiled his only daughter. For one childhood birthday, he gave her "an exquisite miniature phaeton pulled by a matched pair of stout goats with fine horns," a gift a friend later described as "an amazing bit of foolhardiness."

When Zelle went bankrupt, he and his wife separated, and when Margaretha was 14, Antje died. One of Margaretha's brothers was shipped to relatives of their mother's and her twin brothers went to their father, but Margaretha was sent to live with an uncle; Shipman speculates that Zelle's new lover may have found it "less onerous to take on twin ten-year-old boys than a spoiled teen-aged girl who loved extravagant clothes and being the center of attention." Margaretha found her new life intolerable and, a few years later, answered a newspaper personal ad placed on behalf of a Dutch army officer serving in the East Indies. She married the man, Rudolf MacLeod, within months of meeting him, and they shipped out when their first child was a few months old.

Shipman's research illuminates the MacLeods' unhappy marriage. The author reads "[c]ircumstantial evidence of the influence of a wise nyai" (native mistress) into Rudolf's premarital career successes and postulates that his long-term illness, which he called diabetes, may have been syphilis. If she is correct in her diagnosis and Rudolf passed the disease along to his wife and children, this might explain the bitter hatred between Rudolf and Margaretha as well as the mysterious deaths of their two children, Norman at age 4 and Nonnie at age 21.

Though Margaretha eventually returned to the Netherlands and sued for a divorce on grounds of battery, one was not granted until Rudolf sued because of marital infidelity. (Both charges seem to have been true, though Margaretha's affairs may have begun only when she returned penniless to Europe and sought the attentions of wealthy men.) She was free from the strictures of marriage, and with a "superb sense of what would succeed, she developed a series of 'sacred dances' that she ostensibly learned in the Indies."

Margaretha chose a new name for herself, a Malay phrase that meant " 'sunrise' or, more literally 'the eye of the day.' " About this period, she said, "I never could dance well. People came to see me because I was the first who dared to show myself naked to the public." (Shipman remarks that at one of Natalie Barney's "notorious lesbian garden parties in Neuilly Mata Hari made her entrance as Lady Godiva naked on a white horse." ) The photographs Shipman includes -- showing a quirkily beautiful brunette in a metal bra, spangly headgear and various kinds of transparent veiling -- are worth the price of admission; and the accounts of her early dances, all related by male viewers set atremble by the intoxicating mixture of striptease and the supposed Mysteries of the East, are a hoot.

But the beginning of World War I put a damper on Belle Epoque gaiety, making it harder for Mata Hari to earn a living. Around this time, her ensnarement in espionage began. She was approached by Karl Kroemer, a German diplomat, who asked her to spy for him, provided her with invisible ink and a code name, and gave her a sizable advance. Mata Hari recollected, "My 20,000 francs in my pocket, I bowed Kroemer out the door, but I assure you that I never wrote him anything. . . . " She was in the habit of taking large sums from a succession of men and viewed Kroemer's gift in the same light.

Yet this visit would haunt her. By 1916, two Paris detectives were tailing her, and she had the misfortune to meet Georges Ladoux, a leading French espionage officer, who may himself have been a double agent (which could explain why he hounded Mata Hari so mercilessly). Hoping to smoke her out as a German spy, he persuaded her to spy for France -- though, as Shipman rightly points out, "it is difficult to imagine a woman less likely to be able to go unnoticed or to be able to engage in clandestine activities than Mata Hari" -- but when she seduced a German captain, obtained secrets from him and attempted to present them to Ladoux, her spymaster was mysteriously impossible to reach.

In February 1917, the French police arrested Mata Hari and took her to the rat-infested prison of Saint-Lazare, where, ill and mistreated, she lived until her execution that October. The story of her unfair treatment at the hands of the authorities, who seem clearly to have cut their case against her from whole cloth and chiefly because of "her lack of shame," is both suspenseful and shocking. Her trial was a flagrant miscarriage of justice and serves as a grim reminder of how tainted a judicial system can be.

Shipman is a better researcher than writer. She ends her chapters with declarative sentences meant to sound like pulp-fiction cliffhangers ("For Mata Hari, the trap had been set, but she had not yet felt the snap of its teeth"; "Real disaster came swiftly"); the unvarying predictability of this tactic makes it seem a little silly. Individual sentences are sometimes muddled, and the final one -- "Butterflies who live in the sun must die young" -- is such a clunker you have to wonder if the author didn't just give up. (At dull moments, I found myself wondering whether the trend of nonfiction books having tripartite subtitles would ever, ever end.)

But overall, Shipman tells her story with interest and spirit; and her research does shed instructive light on Margaretha Zelle's transformation into Mata Hari. Though "Femme Fatale" may not be a great biography, it is an interesting book, and Mata Hari's story is lively enough to soften the impact of her biographer's flaws. •

Emily Barton is the author of two novels, "Brookland" and "The Testament of Yves Gundron."

(l) (l) I really love well-researched novels!

(f)

Duo cum faciunt idem, non est idem.

When two do the same, it isn't the same.

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

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 01:48 PM

:o :o :o

"A woman should be beautiful, eloquent, smart and hardworking, but above all, feminine."

???

Her Excellency Sheikha Lubna Al-Qasimi

UAE Minister of Economy and Chief Executive Officer, Tejari

Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi is the United Arab Emirates’ Minister for Economy & Planning. In November 2004, she became the first woman in the country’s history to assume a cabinet position. Sheikha Lubna is also the Chief Executive Officer of Tejari, the Middle East’s premier electronic business-to-business marketplace.

After honouring Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi as the “Distinguished Government Employee Award” in 1999, HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and United Arab Emirates (UAE) Defense Minister appointed her as the head of Tejari at the launch of the marketplace in 2000.

Prior to managing Tejari, Sheikha Lubna was the senior manager of the information systems department at the Dubai Ports Authority (DPA), a position she held for more than seven years. Before joining DPA, Sheikha Lubna acted as the Dubai branch manager for the General Information Authority, the organization responsible for automating the federal government of the United Arab Emirates. She has more than fifteen years of information technology management experience in the Middle East region.

In 2001 Sheikha Lubna headed the Dubai e-government executive team responsible for instituting e-government initiatives throughout the public sector. Sheikha Lubna holds a Bachelor of Science degree from California State University of Chico, and an Executive MBA from the American University of Sharjah.

She volunteers extensively with the “Friends of Cancer Patients” Society and serves on the Board of Directors for the Dubai Autism Center.

MUCH MORE: http://www.zu.ac.ae/leadership2006/sheikhalubna.aspx

http://www.tejari.com/English/Corporate/ExecutiveManagement/Lubna_alqasimi.htm

Sheikha Lubna al-Qasimi: Technocrat, Business Whiz Kid in black robes and the first Woman Gov:

http://middleeasttravel.suite101.com/article.cfm/sheikha_lubna_al_qasimi

:| It was a man who supported Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi’s ambitions:

http://word.world-citizenship.org/word/index.php/wp-archive/431

(f) (f) Regardless of religious, cultural and political orientation, this lady certainly is an impressive role model for many folks. In certain ways, she reminds me (slightly, in terms of committment to working in service of the less fortunate) of Princess Diana. It is very unusual for an Arab womyn to hold such power - and I think it's great! I just hope that she has the best bodyguards to protect her against some sharia-is-the-only way fundamentalist wingnut.

(f)

Eventus stultorum magister.

Stupid people learn by experience, bright people calculate what to do. :o ;)

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

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 01:56 PM

(f)

http://www.oldcity.com/

:o It is the oldest continuously occupied European-established city in the continental United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Augustine,_Florida

http://www.historictours.com/staugustine/default.htm

St. Augustine: History of the Nation's Oldest City:

http://www.staugustinelinks.com/st-augustine-history.asp

(f) (f)

Ex oriente lux.

From the East comes the light.

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

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 02:00 PM

(f) (f)

WEEKEND GETAWAYS | CALIFORNIA | NAPA VALLEY

Napa Valley medieval: Sattui's Castello di Amorosa

By Jane Engle, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

February 27, 2007

A castle is rising south of this small resort town that promises to be Napa Valley's most lavish tourist draw.

Or a vintner's fortune-busting folly.

In April, 2007, Daryl Sattui, whose winery and deli a few miles away in St. Helena are a popular picnic stop, plans to open to the public a sprawling, medieval-style castle and second winery that he has been building for 12 years. At 121,000 square feet, Castello di Amorosa , tucked away on a hilltop off California Highway 29, could hold 50 average-sized homes. It has 107 rooms on seven levels.

But it's not just big. It's monumentally eccentric, rivaling the late William Randolph Hearst's rambling residence five hours down the coast in San Simeon. And like Hearst Castle, it cost a king's ransom.

Sattui, a self-confessed medieval architecture fanatic who also owns a former monastery and a Medici palace in Italy, figures his current project will eat up $30 million.

"Honestly, I've spent everything I have except my pension plan," said Sattui, 65. "But I don't care. I just hope I don't go broke."

Castello di Amorosa is a meticulous, if not always authentic, vision of a Tuscan castle. It sports a dry moat, drawbridge, iron-gated entrance, five towers with battlements, a church, a great hall, gargoyles and wrought-iron sconces.

More wondrous stuff lies below, in four underground levels.

A dungeon is outfitted with torture equipment, including a reproduction of a rack and an antique iron maiden, which Sattui said he bought for $13,000 in Pienza, Italy. The iron maiden, looking like an upright mummy case, is lined with spikes meant to impale victims shut inside.

A labyrinth of cellars, housing thousands of wine bottles and barrels, showcases centuries of architectural elements. The largest underground chamber is the main barrel cellar, 135 feet long, with 40 cross vaults.

The most impressive room above is the great hall, 72 by 30 feet, with a 22-foot-high coffered ceiling. Frescoes — decorative but perhaps not museum-worthy — cover the walls, inspired by such classics as Ambrogio Lorenzetti's "Good and Bad Government," at the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, Italy.

Throughout the castle, details attest to Sattui's passion for vintage buildings. Iron gates, fashioned five years ago, have been aged with acid to appear ancient. Double doors outside the great hall contain 2,000 nails, all handmade in Italy.

The project, at first overseen by a Danish naval architect and now by Italian Paulo Ardito, has employed workers from six countries and materials from eight, Sattui said.

Down in Calistoga, known for hot springs and mineral water, Castello di Amorosa is an object of curiosity and some mystery.

"A lot of people don't know it's there," said Kendall Heck, a longtime bartender in town.

When bricklayers gave him a tour, he was impressed with the "fairy-tale thing." But he added, "It looks like [Sattui's] got more money than sense."

Sattui agreed that no rational businessperson would have built his castle. But this son of a San Francisco cabby has beaten the odds before. He borrowed money and lived out of a van while starting up V. Sattui Winery in 1975. Today, it attracts more than 400,000 visitors a year.

"I have a philosophy," he said. "Average people can do great things if they don't know they're average."

http://travel.latimes.com/articles/la-tr-castle25feb25

(f) (f)

Faber est suæ quisque fortunæ.

Each is the maker (smith) of his own fortune.

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

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 02:03 PM

:o :o

http://www.dbq.com/fenplco/

http://web.presby.edu/~jtbell/transit/Dubuque/

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/de/4thElevator2.jpg

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

:)

(f)

Fama crescit eundo.

Rumors grow through circulation.

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

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 02:09 PM

:)

http://www.visitludington.com/beaches.php

(l) (l) http://pics3.city-data.com/cpicv/vfiles22733.jpg

Stearns City Beach: http://www.getoffthecouch.info/mason/stearns.htm

http://www.michigan.org/travel/detail.asp?m=4;0&p=B6566

(l) Breathtaking and I wish I was there tonight:

http://www.msg.ku.edu/~dave/images/acottagen.jpg

http://www.msg.ku.edu/~dave/mich.html

:) The Other West Coast: Michigan's Beaches:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_travel/20060605/ap_tr_ge/travel_trip_michigan_s_west_coast

(f)

Felicitas est parvus canis calidus.

Happiness is a warm puppy.

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

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 02:12 PM

(f)

http://www.grandhaven.com/

(l) (l) Lake Michigan Cam:

http://www.lakemichigancam.com/

http://www.grandhaventribune.com/index.bsp

(f) (f)

Fide, sed qui, vide.

Trust but take care whom. :|

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

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 02:17 PM

(f) (f) (f)

In a war that has left more than 25,000 wounded, ALIVE DAY MEMORIES: HOME FROM IRAQ looks at a new generation of veterans. Executive Producer James Gandolfini interviews ten Soldiers and Marines who reveal their feelings on their future, their severe disabilities and their devotion to America. The documentary surveys the physical and emotional cost of war through memories of their "alive day," the day they narrowly escaped death in Iraq.

http://www.hbo.com/aliveday/

INTERVIEW WITH JAMES GANDOLFINI

HBO: How did you come to the project, and why did you want to be a part of it?

James Gandolfini: I first went to Iraq in November of 2004, and then I went to Walter Reed Hospital. And it was after that the idea came up about doing something to help these guys. [HBO's] Sheila Nevins talked to me about it. We were going to film at Walter Reed. The Army was very into it, the generals and everything. And then, from what I understand, someone high up pulled the plug on it. What a shock. Then Sheila being the force of nature that she is basically went and found guys in the world that had gotten out of Walter Reed, and brought them to New York City, and sat them down for me to talk to.

HBO: The film puts a face to some of the many soldiers and Marines who've come back in record numbers suffering from severe injuries and trauma, and who, in many ways, have been hidden from the public's view.

James Gandolfini: Well, we don't see them, and we don't hear from them. And this was an opportunity to let them speak. And they wanted to talk. I wasn't pulling anything out of anybody. I just sat there and asked questions the way anybody would. They want to get the story out. They've been through so much, and I guess they feel like no one is listening, and no one cares.

HBO: When you watch the film and listen to these individuals' stories, words like "courage" and "self-sacrifice" suddenly take on a different, more powerful meaning.

James Gandolfini: I think a lot of times on both coasts we're so cynical about this kind of thing. First of all, I think a lot of people think this whole volunteer army is just people who couldn't make it in other areas of life and joined for the financial reasons of being taken care of, so to speak. And when you talk to these people, it's obvious that that's not true. These are smart kids. They're intelligent, they're articulate.

And when we talk about loyalty to the country--that they joined because they were angry that their country got attacked--I mean these are the kinds of things we don't hear about anymore. You know, everyone says, "the kids today, the kids today." Well these are the kids today. And we need to pay attention to them. They're not just disposable people.

We need to get our heads out of the sand and wake up. These are our kids over there, and they're getting killed for what we don't even know. We should be proud of these kids who are over there risking their lives. And we should take better care of them.

http://www.hbo.com/aliveday/interview/index.html

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

Hinc illæ lacrimæ.

Therefore these tears.

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

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 02:22 PM

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

http://www.lovetoeatandtravel.com/Site/Sfbay/HMBay/Food/barbara.htm

Barbara's Fish Trap features a cozy glassed-in front patio and a small, casual dining room with windows overlooking the water. Decor includes fish nets dangling from the ceiling.

(l) (l) Description & Atmosphere (l) (l)

Look for the little red building on stilts, hanging over the water in Princeton-by-the-Sea.

Food

Famous for two dishes in particular — its delicious thick Clam Chowder and the Fish 'n Chips — Barbara's Fish Trap also has excellent Salmon Burgers, Seafood Tempura (prawns, scallops, fish, calamari and vegies), and an awesome Dungeness Crab Sandwich (crab, onion, celery and special sauce heaped on a Sourdough roll).

(l) (l) I ate here way, way too many times to count when I lived in the area. Even when I was in the S.F. area on many business trips (after moving away and living elsewhere) - I drove that rental car "over the hill, AKA Route 92 West, off I280) to get here and sometimes bring folks along to experience what to me, is a priceless experience. Been here many times alone for a big bowl of New England Clam Chowder.

(f)

Historia est vitae magistra.

History is the tutor of life.

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

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 02:33 PM

(f)

http://www.daddyohotel.com/main.htm

Photo Gallery:

http://www.daddyohotel.com/main.htm

(f)

In medio stat virtus.

Virtue is in the moderate, not the extreme position.

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

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 02:38 PM

(l) (l) (l)

A break at a backcountry lodge means no calls to the office, no dashes to the computer and no BlackBerries.

February 11, 2007

Journeys | Remote Lodges

Some Getaways Are More Away Than Others

By CATHERINE PRICE

THE Lost Trail Lodge, nestled in the Sierra Nevada in California near Donner Memorial State Park, is meant for people who like to work for their rewards.

The lodge has four private cabins connected to a cozy common room, and a shared kitchen outfitted with a full set of antique cast-iron cookware and a six-burner gas stove. It has private Jacuzzis, and wooden lofts where the kids can sleep. It has large windows looking out on snow-covered trees, and a stone hearth that continuously glows with a fire.

But it is missing other amenities, like landline phones, an Internet connection or direct road access for most of the year. To earn your bubble bath, you have to hike, use cross-country skis or snowshoes (half a mile in the summer and four miles in the winter), and once at the lodge, you're cut off from the outside world. The isolation is particularly striking since, technically, the Lost Trail Lodge is only four and a half miles away from Interstate 80 and Truckee, Calif.

The Lost Trail Lodge and its brethren — similarly isolated hotels scattered across the United States and Canada — manage to make deprivation appealing. These are places that really force you to get away from it all. They allow no calls to the office or dashes to the computer “just to check in.” The only blackberries are the ones on the bushes.

David Robertson, 50, is the man behind the Lost Trail Lodge. He designed the lodge himself — on the back of a napkin — in 1997, and spent the next five summers building it. Since no real road leads to the Lost Trail, Mr. Robertson had to carry in all the materials and furniture piece by piece, including four hot tubs, 21 beds, a six-burner cast-iron gas stove and three refrigerators.

He also had to use his background as a civil engineer and a former public water agency owner to design the electricity and water systems for the lodge, which is completely off-grid. It gets its power from solar panels and a small refurbished hydroelectric plant powered by a nearby creek. (The lodge also has a small backup diesel generator, just in case.)

Mr. Robertson's guests used to be mostly hard-core backcountry snowshoers, but today he plays host to a combination of wilderness groups, vacationing couples and families and the occasional hiker who has stumbled off the Pacific Crest Trail, which passes about five miles south of the lodge.

Mr. Robertson usually putters unobtrusively in the background, but on Friday and Saturday nights he pulls out a songbook and encourages guests to gather in the living room to sing or play music on one of the lodge's numerous instruments, which include several guitars, an upright piano, percussion instruments, a stand-up bass and a banjo.

The Lost Trail Lodge is by no means the only off-grid place to vacation. In Banff National Park in Alberta, Brewster's Shadow Lake Lodge is nine miles by foot, cross-country ski or snowshoe from the trailhead. Once there, guests stay in one of 12 private cabins and share a central washroom that has hot showers and pit toilets.

Unlike the Lost Trail Lodge, where guests are responsible for bringing and cooking their own food, Shadow Lake's rates include three meals a day (including packable lunches for day hikes to nearby lakes and passes) and afternoon tea with homemade treats.

Originally built in 1930 as a rest house by the Canadian Pacific Railway, the Shadow Lake Lodge won the Heritage Tourism Award for Best Environmental Practice in 2003. Supplies for the lodge arrive twice a week by horseback in the summer and by snow vehicles in the winter, and to minimize environmental impact, the lodge treats and reuses the water used for dishes and showers for irrigation. The lodge is propane-heated and solar-lighted.

“It's really refreshing,” said Faye Domonkos, sales manager for the lodge and its sister hotel, the less rustic Brewster's Mountain Lodge in downtown Banff.

Her stay at the lodge was shorter than most — she hiked in one day and left the next. “I was dead tired when I got back, but I felt awesome,” Ms. Domonkos said. For people looking for an off-the-grid experience without too much physical exertion, there are also fly-in options —Brooks Lodge in Katmai National Park in Alaska is accessible only by float plane. It is one of three Anglers' Paradise Lodges constructed in Katmai by Ray Petersen, 94, an airline entrepreneur and sports fisher who was the first person to build sports lodges in the park (today the lodges are run by his son, Sonny Petersen).

Brooks's sister lodges —Kulik Lodge and the intimate, six-guest Grosvenor Lodge — are mainly oriented to fishing — but there's more at Brooks than abundant supplies of rainbow trout and arctic grayling. Once at Brooks, you can take a day trip to the nearby Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, created when a powerful 1912 eruption of the Novarupta Volcano left a 40-square-mile area covered in volcanic ash, where countless wisps of steam still seep out through holes and fissures from the heated ground below. Or you can replace the healthy flush of exercise with the adrenaline rush that comes from close-up viewing of one of the world's largest populations of grizzly bears, which like to fish for salmon in the nearby Brooks River. (Elevated walkways and platforms prevent the bears from fishing for tourists.)

But if you're really looking for a bare-bones, off-grid experience, you should forget about these lodges, with their teatimes and solar panels, and sign up for one of the Southwest Nordic Center's yurts, round, tentlike structures designed, in this case, specifically for winter use. The Southwest Nordic Center offers several options: four yurts in southern Colorado and one larger “luxury” yurt above Taos Ski Valley in northern New Mexico that can accommodate 6 to 10 guests.

The main activities at the yurts — which are open only in the winter — are snow-shoeing and cross-country skiing (the larger yurt in New Mexico also has a Twister game). The yurts in Colorado have a good mix of downhill and flat terrain that can accommodate groups with uneven skill levels; the New Mexican yurt, on steeper terrain, caters mostly to snowshoers and experienced skiers.

The yurts aren't as isolated as the other lodges (Southwest Nordic Center's are two to four and a half miles from the road) but once you're there, no homemade breakfast awaits. You have to carry in all your food yourself. Each yurt sits on a raised wooden platform and has a wood-burning stove, lanterns, mattresses without linens and a propane stove for cooking. There's no electricity or running water, but cookware and board games are provided. As a touch of comfort, the outhouse's toilet seat hangs on a hook by the stove to keep it warm.

Most Americans don't think of outhouses as a vacation perk, but there's a certain appeal in having to work for your vacation. A little bit of struggle, it seems, can make the escape more fun.

“Ironically, I get more repeat business from people who had the drama trip, the one with the snowstorm,” said Doug MacLennan, 48, the yurts' owner and builder. “You'd think it'd be the groups that came in under bluebird skies, but nope, it's the ones who had to bear down and work together to figure out how to get there. Those groups call me right away the next year.”

VISITOR INFORMATION

Lost Trail Lodge: Tahoe West Company, 8600 Coldstream Trail, Truckee, Calif, (530) 320-9268; www.losttraillodge.com. Rates are $69 a person a night. Two-night minimum. The Web site has listings for places to rent equipment.

Brooks Lodge: Katmailand Inc., 4125 Aircraft Drive, Anchorage, (800) 544-0551; www.katmailand.com. Rates are $630 a night, double occupancy. Reduced rates are available in package deals with air transportation.

Shadow Lake Lodge: Box 2606, Banff, Alberta, (403) 762-0115; www.shadowlakelodge.com. For reservations or to check availability, visit the Web site. Prices vary by season and include private log-cabin accommodation and three meals a day.

Southwest Nordic Center: Southwest Nordic Center, P.O. Box 3212, Taos, N.M., (505) 758-4761; www.southwestnordiccenter.com. Yurt rates are $65 to $125 a night for a group, depending on which night and which yurt you choose. The trails to the yurts are marked well, but those unfamiliar with finding routes might want to choose a guided trip, which includes the yurt rental, a professional guide and meals. Prices vary; call for details. Yurts are open only for the winter.

(l) (S) (l) (S) (l) (S)

(f) (f)

In omnia paratus.

Ready for all things. ;)

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

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 02:43 PM

(l) (l) (l)

http://www.stlzoo.org/

<:o) Celebrate Ottertoberfest this weekend!

http://www.stlzoo.org/events/calendarofevents/ottertoberfest.htm

Saturday and Sunday

October 6-7, 2007

10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Admission is FREE

In honor of the fun-loving North American River Otters, the Zoo will host Ottertoberfest presented by Saturn, a fall event featuring a traditional German biergarten, live music, kids' activities and more. At the biergarten, visitors can purchase beer, root beer, bratwurst, pretzels, and other specialties.

http://www.stlzoo.org/events/calendarofevents/

http://www.stlzoo.org/animals/abouttheanimals/

(f) (f)

In lumine tuo, videbimus lumen.

In your light, we shall see light.

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

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 02:47 PM

(l) (l)

http://www.calgary.ca/portal/server.pt?

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

Nestled in the foothills of Canada ’s Rocky Mountains, Calgary, Heart of the New West TM is a place where visitors come to explore the heritage of the Canadian West. This safe, clean and vibrant city offers the best of all worlds: a cosmopolitan city of over 1 million people and breathtaking outdoor adventure in pristine wilderness.

http://www.tourismcalgary.com/

(h) Cool School:

http://www.ucalgary.ca/

(y) (y) (y)

(f)

Licet volare si in tergo aquilæ volat.

A man can fly if he wishes, if he rides on the back of an eagle.

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

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 02:58 PM

:| :| :| :|

The China Christ Crisis

Brian Doherty | September 13, 2007, 12:38pm

From The Week, via Asia Times, columnist "Spengler" notes that if current trends in conversion continue, there will be 200 million Christians in China come mid-century--and says that:

Barred from worshipping publicly, Chinese Christians meet in their homes, and the resulting network of the faithful is already creating a “leaven of democracy” that the communist regime can’t control. “These fearless grass-roots evangelists will do more to bring democracy to the world than all the bluster of President George W. Bush.”

http://www.reason.com/blog/printer/122479.html

The Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (Chinese: 中国天主教爱国会, pinyin: Zhōngguó Tiānzhǔjiào Àiguó Huì), abbreviated CPA, CPCA, or CCPA, is a division, established in 1957, of the People's Republic of China's Religious Affairs Bureau to exercise state supervision over mainland China's Catholics.

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

Pew Forum: Overview: Pentecostalism in Asia :| :|

http://pewforum.org/surveys/pentecostal/asia/

:| :|

The Chinese Expression of Pentecostalism:

http://www.pctii.org/cyberj/cyberj16/yeung.html

The uphill journey of Catholicism in China

Posted on Aug 2, 2007 15:45pm CST.

All Things Catholic by John L. Allen, Jr.

If there were any lingering question about whether there's a spiritual boom in China today, it now has a two word answer: Yu Dan.

A 42-year-old female talk show host and pop culture icon, Yu Dan is the author of Notes on Reading the Analects -- a sort of Confucian Chicken Soup for the Soul -- which has sold somewhere between 3 and 4 million copies, making it one of the biggest best-sellers in China since Mao's "Little Red Book." Dan's success illustrates that China has become, according to writer Zha Jianying, the "largest soul market" in the world. With a population of 1.3 billion, China is trying to fill an ideological void left by the collapse of Communism as anything more than a system of political control, and the dislocations of astonishing but uneven levels of economic growth.

"There are so many wounded, helpless souls that are desperate to find something to believe in and to hold onto after these drastic changes," Jianying told Reuters in May.

Dan's post-modern Confucianism is not the only spiritual option riding this wave. In northwestern China, an estimated 20 to 30 million Muslims are also in the grip of a revival. According to a 2006 report in Asia Times, new Muslim schools are opening with a strong accent on Islamic orthodoxy, young Chinese Muslims are studying across the Middle East and bringing new missionary energies home, and rising numbers of Chinese Muslims are making the annual hajj to Mecca. China's post- Deng Xiaoping economic opening has expanded opportunities for Muslim nations, especially Saudi Arabia, to fund Islamic enterprises in China.

Perhaps the most remarkable burst of religious energy is in China's Pentecostal Christian population. At the time of the Communist takeover in 1949, there were roughly 900,000 Protestants. Today, the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, which puts out the much-consulted World Christian Database, says there are 111 million Christians in China, roughly 90 percent Protestant and mostly Pentecostal. That would make China the third-largest Christian country on earth, following only the United States and Brazil.

The Center projects that by 2050, there will be 218 million Christians in China, 16 percent of the population, enough to make China the world's second-largest Christian nation. According to the Center, there are 10,000 conversions in China every day.

Religious data is notoriously imprecise in an officially atheistic state, and not everyone accepts these eye-popping estimates. In the 2006 update of his book Jesus in Beijing, former Time Beijing bureau chief David Aikman put the number of Protestants at 70 million. Richard Madsen, a former Maryknoll missionary and author of China's Catholics, told me he would put the number still lower, at 40 million. That's in line with the CIA World Factbook, another widely consulted resource.

Even those conservative estimates, however, would mean that Protestantism in China experienced roughly 4,300 percent growth over the last half-century, most of it since the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s and 1970s. A four-part video series issued in 2003, called "The Cross: Jesus in China," and produced by Chinese documentarian Yuan Zhiming, interviews many of the leaders of this revival, whose evangelical drive is palpable. Notably, Protestantism took off after the expulsion of foreign missionaries, meaning most of the expansion has been home-grown.

Curiously, this booming "soul market" seems largely to have bypassed the Catholic church. In 1949, there were 3.3 million Catholics. The most common estimate today is 12 million. Over that time, China's population increased by a factor of four, which means that Catholicism has done little more than keep pace. A half-century ago, Chinese Protestantism was three and a half times smaller than Catholicism; today, it is at least three and a half times larger.

In a 2003 interview, then-Bishop Joseph Zen of Hong Kong (now a cardinal) said that Protestants are "winning" the contest for the souls of the Chinese.

Of course, given the harsh persecution of Chinese Catholics, the fact that the faith survived at all is in some ways a miracle. Those persecutions continue into the present; just last week, three Catholic priests were arrested in Inner Mongolia for refusing to submit to China's state-sponsored Catholic association. The heroism of Chinese clergy and laity is without a doubt one of the most inspirational chapters in church history.

Yet persecution has not fallen on Catholics alone. Protestants, Buddhists, Daoists, Muslims, the Falungong, and others have similar stories of martyrdom to tell. One Protestant pastor told Aikman, "Chinese prison is my seminary. Police handcuffs and the electric nightstick are our equipment. That is God's special training for the Gospel." Despite similar experiences, Catholicism seemingly has not experienced the same recent surge.

Why not? Veteran China-watchers generally offer four explanations.

(1) Lack of Ecclesial Infrastructure

According to a 2005 analysis by Maryknoll Sr. Betty Ann Maheu, there are 6,000 Catholic churches in China but 3,000 priests, which would mean that roughly half the Catholic churches in the country lack a resident priest. Overall, the priest-to-Catholic ratio in China is about 4,000-to-one, better than Latin America (where it's 7,000-to-one) or the Caribbean (more than 8,300-to-one,) but considerably worse than in Europe (1,100-to-one) or the United States (1,300-to-one). A significant number of Chinese priests are also in jail or placed under other forms of supervision.

Maheu says that in the short term, the priest shortage in China is likely to deepen. There was a vocations boom in the early 1980s, she said, but today numbers are dropping, as expanding economic opportunities makes recruitment and retention more difficult. Madsen says that even in Shanghai, normally held up as the most dynamic urban Catholic community in the country, most seminarians come from rural Catholic villages whose populations are in decline.

China has 110 dioceses and 114 active bishops, which in theory means that most dioceses should have a bishop. At least a dozen bishops, however, are in jail, under house arrest or subjected to severe surveillance. Because of doubts over the legitimacy of bishops who have registered with the government, their leadership is often contested. Given chronic tensions between China and the Vatican, dioceses sometimes remain vacant for extended periods. Some of the youngest bishops in the world today are in China, many appointed in their early 30s, in part out of fear that the opportunity to name another one might not roll around again soon.

Maheu notes that there are more than 5,000 religious women in China, saying the growth of religious life has "great potential" for the church.

(2) The Sociology of Chinese Catholicism

Historically, Catholicism in China was almost entirely a rural phenomenon. Madsen says that despite run-away urbanization, 70-75 percent of Catholics are probably still concentrated in largely homogenous Catholic villages, especially in Hebei and Shanxi provinces in the northeastern area around Beijing. Even the urban footprint of Catholicism, he said, is largely composed of villagers who have relocated to the city, and experience suggests it's sometimes difficult for them to maintain the faith in this new environment.

The tenacity of these Catholic villagers is the stuff of legend. China's Catholics tells the story of a village in Shanxi Province where a family planning team arrived in 1985 to try to distribute contraception in accord with the state's "one-child" policy. Villagers surrounded their car, and when the team retreated to their living quarters, the villagers hurled rocks through the windows. Eventually the team had to be rescued by the police, and fled the area.

Yet the rural character of the church also means that it is handicapped in terms of missionary expansion, since preserving Catholic communities is often a higher priority than making new converts. Catholics are under-represented in urban areas, which are creating the most vibrant "growth markets" for new spiritual movements.

The insularity of some rural communities, Madsen says, also means that many reforms triggered by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) never really arrived. Even in cosmopolitan Shanghai, the first Chinese-language Mass wasn't celebrated until 1989. (Ironically, this is one point upon which Chinese Communists and Catholic traditionalists agree. Both prefer Mass in Latin, in the case of the Communists because it means that most people won't understand it.)

(3) Internal Division

Chinese Catholicism is deeply lacerated over the question of cooperation with the Communist regime. For the most part, China-watchers say, Catholics who tolerate state oversight do so not out of enthusiasm for the official project of a "self-governed, self-funded, self-propagated" church, but rather because it seems the best survival strategy. Nonetheless, Catholics who reject this option out of unwavering loyalty to the pope, and who often endure prison, harassment, and discrimination, frequently regard "open" Catholics as compromised.

In their most extreme form, the divisions can turn violent. In 1992, an "open church" priest in Henan was murdered by a disgruntled seminarian who claimed that he had been denied ordination because of his ties to the unofficial church. The priest collapsed and died after drinking from what was literally a poisoned chalice at Mass.

Recent years have seen significant efforts to heal this breach. Conventional estimates are that as many as 90 percent of bishops ordained without the authority of the pope now have received Vatican recognition. Catholics from both the open and the unregistered church often worship together and receive the sacraments from the same clergy; it has become a mantra that "there is only one Catholic church in China."

Yet the bitterness is hardly a museum piece. Pope Benedict XVI released a "Letter to Chinese Catholics" in May, which called for unity and pledged that Catholicism is not an enemy of the state, but also insisted that the church cannot accept interference in its internal life. Notably, Benedict revoked faculties given in 1978 for "underground" bishops to appoint successors and to ordain priests without contact with Rome.

Fierce debates broke out over how to interpret the letter. One testy exchange has been between Belgian missionary Fr. Jeroom Heyndrickx, a frequent Vatican advisor on China, and Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong, an outspoken critic of the Communist regime.

In early July, Heyndrickx published a commentary on the pope's letter with the Union of Catholic Asian News, stressing that it called for dialogue and unity. Among other things, Heyndrickx suggested it would be desirable for unregistered bishops to come out into the open.

Zen published a tough response on July 18, which began by saying that Heyndrickx has lost the "vast consensus and positive regard" he once enjoyed among Chinese Catholics.

"Fr. Heyndrickx's every initiative needs the approval of Mr. Liu Bainian, of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, and has to be carried out according to conditions imposed by him. Mr. Liu's prestige has thus been steadily built up," Zen wrote, referring to the official state regulatory body for Catholic affairs.

Zen went on to argue that there is still a need for the clandestine church in China, and that in many, if not most, cases, bishops should not apply for registration. Those who act without the authority of the pope, he said, should be subject to canonical sanctions.

Heyndrickx shot back on July 20: "I have learned that it does not take much courage to use the media to prove one's own views and criticize others, while it takes a lot of guts to sit down with those who disagree with you and have long personal dialogues to overcome differences and seek the common ground."

Whatever one makes of this exchange, it illustrates the tensions that course through Chinese Catholicism, making it difficult to exploit new missionary opportunities.

(4) Missionary Strategy

Much Catholic conversation about evangelization in China is usually phrased in the subjunctive: "If China were to open up on religious freedom …" or "If the Holy See and China were to establish diplomatic relations …" The implicit assumption is sometimes that structural change is required before Catholicism can truly move into an expansion phase.

Pentecostal talk about mission, on the other hand, is very much phrased in the simple present. Most Pentecostals would obviously welcome being arrested less frequently, but in general they are not waiting for legal or political reform before carrying out aggressive evangelization programs. The most audacious even dream of carrying the gospel beyond the borders of China, along the old Silk Road into the Muslim world, in a campaign known as "Back to Jerusalem." As Aikman explains in Jesus in Beijing, some Chinese Evangelicals and Pentecostals believe that the basic movement of the gospel for the last 2,000 years has been westward: from Jerusalem to Antioch, from Antioch to Europe, from Europe to America, and from America to China. Now, they believe, it's their turn to complete the loop by carrying the gospel to Muslim lands, eventually arriving in Jerusalem. Once that happens, they believe, the gospel will have been preached to the entire world.

Most experts regard that prospect as deeply improbable; Madsen said he doubts more than a handful of Protestants in China take the "Back to Jerusalem" vision seriously. Aikman is more sanguine, reporting that as of 2005 two underground Protestant seminaries in China were training believers for work in Islamic nations. In any event, it's revealing as an indication of missionary ferment.

One exception to the general Catholic hesitancy is Bishop Jin Luxian of Shanghai, a controversial figure because of his willingness to register with the government, but someone who enjoys the respect of many senior Catholic leaders internationally. Luxian, the subject of a flattering profile in the current issue of The Atlantic, is revamping his cathedral to draw upon traditional Chinese aesthetics, part of a larger program of forging an authentically Chinese expression of the Catholic faith.

"The old church appealed to 3 million Catholics," he said. "I want to appeal to 100 million Catholics."

The Future

By universal consensus, China is an emerging global superpower. Its economy grew at an average annual rate of 9.4 percent over the last 25 years, and today has a GDP of $11 trillion, making it the second-largest economy in the world after the United States. Foreign companies have poured more than $600 billion into China since 1978, far eclipsing what the United States spent rebuilding post-war Europe in the Marshall Plan. China now has a middle class of 200 million people, 80 million of whom are quite well-off. The country exports more in a single day than it did in all of 1978.

How things shake out religiously, therefore, is of tremendous strategic importance, even for people who don't feel any particular spiritual stake in the result. If Christianity ends up at around 20 percent of the population, for example, China could become an exponentially larger version of South Korea (where Christians are between 25-50 percent of the population, depending upon which count one accepts) -- a more democratic, rule-oriented, basically pro-Western society. On the other hand, if dynamic Muslim movements create an Islamic enclave in the western half of the country, with financial and ideological ties to fundamentalist Wahhabi forms of Islam in Saudi Arabia, at least that part of China could become a wealthier and more influential Afghanistan. If growing religious pluralism in China becomes fractious, it could mean that a well-armed and wealthy superpower is destabilized by internal conflict, posing risks to global peace and security.

Catholicism could potentially offer a positive ingredient in China's new spiritual stew. In part, the church could realize significant numbers of new members, even if mere statistical growth is not an end in itself -- as Benedict XVI said recently, "statistics are not our divinity." Perhaps more importantly, Madsen believes, a dynamic and growing Catholicism could be an important force in building a healthy civil society in China.

For that to happen, however, the four liabilities outlined above would somehow have to be addressed. At present, it's difficult to see that happening. As Maheu said in 2005, "Short of a series of miracles, the journey of Catholicism in China will continue, in my opinion, to be uphill in the foreseeable and even distant future."

One key to Pentecostalism's worldwide expansion, however, is that Pentecostals live in constant expectation of just such a series of miracles. Perhaps rather than waiting for the "one step forward, two steps back" ballet between Rome and Beijing to reach conclusion, Chinese Catholics will steal a page from the Pentecostal playbook, and embrace a vision of "the future is now." It would be fascinating to watch them try.

http://ncrcafe.org/node/1252

:| :| :| What is worse? Pentecostalism or the Catholic Church's efforts to slow the christian evangelical spread?

:|

Mala herba cito crescit.

Weeds grow fast. !!!

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

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 03:05 PM

:) :)

Belgian Food by a Belgian Chef:

http://www.zotrestaurant.com/

http://www.zotrestaurant.com/about%20zot.htm

Innovative:

http://www.zotrestaurant.com/Menumarch2007.htm

THIS really LOOKS like a couple of the medieval "BASEMENT" with low lighting - just in in Belgium! Very cool. (y) (y)

http://www.zotrestaurant.com/DSC_0083.JPG

(f) (f)

Memento audere semper.

Remember to always dare.

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

sweetlady

10-02-2007, 03:13 PM

:o :o

Now from HRC, the Healthcare Equality Index

Monday, October 1, 2007 / 10:17 AM

The inaugural Healthcare Equality Index, a new annual report that assesses hospitals nationwide on a range of criteria relevant to LGBT patients and consumers, was released Monday by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation and the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association.

In the tradition of HRC's influential Corporate Equality Index, which evaluates U.S. companies' gay-friendly policies and practices, the Healthcare Equality Index is the first comprehensive look at how the medical industry responds to the needs of the LGBT community.

Results from the 2007 index are posted online at the organizations' Web sites:

http://www.hrc.org/documents/HEI_Report_Oct_1_2007.pdf

and

www.GLMA.org.

"The Healthcare Equality Index sets a standard that didn't exist before," Ellen Kahn, director of HRC's Family Project, which oversaw the index, told The Advocate.

Starting last year, surveys were mailed to 1,000 hospitals across the country that were granted one-time-only anonymity to respond. It was a way for the hospitals to become acclimated to the idea of the index before individual results were made public.

"We felt it was simply respectful and fair to allow the industry to understand the issues, to try to pull together some key policies that they can start thinking about, and to be ready to get the best possible rating" the next time, said Joel Ginsberg, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association.

Out of that 1,000, 78 hospitals responded from 20 states and the District of Columbia, providing a wealth of information in five primary areas: patient non-discrimination; visitation; decision-making; cultural competency training for staff; and employment policies.

Ginsberg calls the initial results a "mixed bag."

Of the 78 hospitals, 50 have written policies affirming that same-sex partners have the same access to their partners as married spouses and next of kin, and 56 allow patients to designate their domestic partners or someone else as a medical decision maker for them.

Only 45 of the hospitals have a written policy that allows same-sex parents the same rights as opposite-sex parents for medical decision-making for their minor children.

On cultural competency, 57 hospitals provide training to personnel that specifically addresses the unique issues facing LGBT patients and their families.

HRC and the medical association acknowledge that these numbers are not enough to represent what the entire medical community is doing, but they do identify some early trends that have never before been documented.

Ennis Shells, director of patient and concierge services at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, a hospital that responded to the survey, believes the index will influence both patients and providers.

"With so much competition, hospitals have to market themselves as well as they can," Shells said. Advocate Illinois has satellite offices in 19 different communities and serves "a very diverse community," he said.

Responding to the survey only brought attention to what the hospital was already doing right, like allowing same-sex partners the same access as that provided a married heterosexual couple.

"We're a very diverse hospital and we're proud of our diversity," Shells said.

"It sets the bar for what different kinds of health care institutions should be doing with respect to the GLBT community and it creates a system of transparency and accountability, particularly for institutions making an effort to create better practices."

"In my mind, equality in health care is one of the pillars of our movement for full equality and civil rights," Ginsberg said.

"There are so many areas where we have to do a lot of work, but health care has emerged as an important issue for all people. Health care has risen to the top of the agenda for Americans."

Results will be included with the 2008 HEI survey, being mailed out to the 1,000 largest hospitals in the country, along with the 78 hospitals that responded to this inaugural edition. Both HRC and GLMA expect a much bigger response for this next round.

"A lot can change in a year," said Kahn. "Now people know that this is happening and there has been some buzz among hospital administrators. This is a new thing for hospitals to do. We're hopeful, going forward, that we're going to have a higher level of participation."

At that point, the health care index will start to resemble the Corporate Equality Index and its rankings of participants on numerous criteria. Eventually, that information will become the basis of an online resource for patients and consumers to use when searching for hospitals that can meet their particular health care needs.

"Change in health care is slow," Ginsberg said. "It takes years to really understand the scope of the problem and then to come up with solutions. We're not going to simply settle. We want the whole enchilada." (William Henderson, The Advocate)

:s Why does it take so much time? And THAT is a philosophical question not requiring an answer.

:| The bottom line is those who have the money as well as health insurance (among the self-employed that is as well as employees) have access to the BEST medical care that money can buy. Isn't that the case for everyone?

:)

(f)

Mens sana in corpore sano.

A healthy mind in a healthy body.

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

sweetlady

10-05-2007, 09:21 AM

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

:o

:)

October 3, 2007

On Education

Exploring Ways to Shorten the Ascent to a Ph.D.

By JOSEPH BERGER

PRINCETON, N.J.

Many of us have known this scholar: The hair is well-streaked with gray, the chin has begun to sag, but still our tortured friend slaves away at a masterwork intended to change the course of civilization that everyone else just hopes will finally get a career under way.

We even have a name for this sometimes pitied species — the A.B.D. — All But Dissertation. But in academia these days, that person is less a subject of ridicule than of soul-searching about what can done to shorten the time, sometimes much of a lifetime, it takes for so many graduate students to, well, graduate. The Council of Graduate Schools, representing 480 universities in the United States and Canada, is halfway through a seven-year project to explore ways of speeding up the ordeal.

For those who attempt it, the doctoral dissertation can loom on the horizon like Everest, gleaming invitingly as a challenge but often turning into a masochistic exercise once the ascent is begun. The average student takes 8.2 years to get a Ph.D.; in education, that figure surpasses 13 years. Fifty percent of students drop out along the way, with dissertations the major stumbling block. At commencement, the typical doctoral holder is 33, an age when peers are well along in their professions, and 12 percent of graduates are saddled with more than $50,000 in debt.

These statistics, compiled by the National Science Foundation and other government agencies by studying the 43,354 doctoral recipients of 2005, were even worse a few years ago. Now, universities are setting stricter timelines and demanding that faculty advisers meet regularly with protégés. Most science programs allow students to submit three research papers rather than a single grand work. More universities find ways to ease financial burdens, providing better paid teaching assistantships as well as tuition waivers. And more universities are setting up writing groups so that students feel less alone cobbling together a thesis.

Fighting these trends, and stretching out the process, is the increased competition for jobs and research grants; in fields like English where faculty vacancies are scarce, students realize they must come up with original, significant topics. Nevertheless, education researchers like Barbara E. Lovitts, who has written a new book urging professors to clarify what they expect in dissertations; for example, to point out that professors “view the dissertation as a training exercise” and that students should stop trying for “a degree of perfection that’s unnecessary and unobtainable.”

There are probably few universities that nudge students out the door as rapidly as Princeton, where a humanities student now averages 6.4 years compared with 7.5 in 2003. That is largely because Princeton guarantees financial support for its 330 scholars for five years, including free tuition and stipends that range up to $30,000 a year. That means students need teach no more than two courses during their schooling and can focus on research.

“Princeton since the 1930s has felt that a Ph.D. should be an education, not a career, and has valued a tight program,” said William B. Russel, dean of the graduate school.

And students are grateful. “Every morning I wake up and remind myself the university is paying me to do nothing but write the dissertation,” said Kellam Conover, 26, a classicist who expects to complete his course of study in five years next May when he finishes his dissertation on bribery in Athens. “It’s a tremendous advantage compared to having to work during the day and complete the dissertation part time.”

But fewer than a dozen universities have endowments or sources of financing large enough to afford five-year packages. The rest require students to teach regularly. Compare Princetonians with Brian Gatten, 28, an English scholar at the University of Texas in Austin. He has either been teaching or assisting in two courses every semester for five years.

“Universities need us as cheap labor to teach their undergraduates, and frankly we need to be needed because there isn’t another way for us to fund our education,” he said.

That raises a question that state legislatures and trustees might ponder: Would it be more cost effective to provide financing to speed graduate students into careers rather than having them drag out their apprenticeships?

But money is not the only reason Princeton does well. It has developed a culture where professors keep after students. Students talk of frequent meetings with advisers, not a semiannual review. For example, Ning Wu, 30, a father of two, works in Dr. Russel’s chemical engineering lab and said Dr. Russel comes by every Friday to discuss Mr. Wu’s work on polymer films used in computer chips. He aims to get his Ph.D. next year, his fifth.

While Dr. Russel values “the critical thinking and independent digging students have to do, either in their mind for an original concept or in the archives,” others question the necessity of book-length works. Some universities have established what they call professional doctorates for students who plan careers more as practitioners than scholars. Since the 1970s, Yeshiva University has not only offered a Ph.D. in psychology but also a separate doctor of psychology degree, or Psy.D., for those more interested in clinical work than research; that program requires a more modest research paper.

OTHER institutions are reviving master’s degree programs for, say, aspiring scientists who plan careers in development of products rather than research.

Those who insist on dissertations are aware that they must reduce the loneliness that defeats so many scholars. Gregory Nicholson, completing his sixth and final year at Michigan State, was able to finish a 270-page dissertation on spatial environments in novels like Kerouac’s “On the Road” with relative efficiency because of a writing group where he thrashed out his work with other thesis writers.

“It’s easy, especially in our field, to feel isolated, and that tends to slow people down,” he said. “There’s no sense of belonging to an academic community.”

Some common sense would also hasten the process. The dissertation is a hurdle that must be cleared, not a magnum opus, the capstone of a career. Princeton’s Mr. Wu has made that calculation.

“You do not want to stay forever,” Mr. Wu said. “It’s a training process.”

:| This really hit home hard for me........Geez, no wonder online graduate school has felt so completely isolating at various times the past four years. Even graduate folks on f2f "brick and mortar" campuses feel isolated! AND it also depends on how much support the university provides its graduate students as well.

(S) (S) I'm dreaming of another, as yet-to-be-determined f2f real-world university. One where I could get to know professors - before asking any one of them to be on my dissertation committee. :o One where the university STRONGLY SUPPORTS COMPLETION OF THE PhD in a reasonable period of time.

:) It is indeed a lifelong journey - with getting that PhD as with any worthwhile endeavor. But I would love to "achieve" that doctorate sooner rather than dragging it out like many folks seem to do. What an amazing sense of accomplishment in which the Major Milestones feel so good, such as getting my Masters of Science in 2004 and then finishing ALL of my PhD courses earlier this year. One step (in this case, one course) at a time.

8-| At least ALL of my course work in done. <:o) <:o)

(f)

Quidquid discis, tibi discis.

Whatever you learn, you learn it for yourself.

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

sweetlady

10-05-2007, 09:28 AM

(y) (y) (y)

This takes about 2 minutes and produces fascinating results:

http://www.wqad.com/Global/link.asp?L=259460

(y) (y)

(f)

Claude os, aperi oculos!

Shut your mouth, open your eyes.

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

sweetlady

10-05-2007, 09:30 AM

(a) (l) (a) (l) (a)

October 4, 2007

Life’s Work

A Capital Idea for Women

By LISA BELKIN

SOMEWHERE out there are hundreds of thousands of women who should be millionaires. You can find them in rented executive suites and home offices — women who started down the road to riches, but who got lost along the way.

It is a well-known and oft-quoted fact that women are starting businesses in the United States at twice the rate of men. The result, according to the Center for Women’s Business Research, is 10.4 million businesses owned by women nationwide.

That these businesses aren’t doing all that well is far less talked about. About 43 percent of all businesses owned by women have revenue of $10,000 or less. Over 70 percent have revenue of less than $50,000. And only 3 percent have revenue exceeding $1 million, according to the Women Presidents’ Organization, a nonprofit group for women whose businesses take in $1 million or more. (By contrast, men clear $1 million at more than twice that rate, or about 7 percent.)

Nell Merlino has made it her business to close this gap. She founded Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence, an online microlender created to help finance companies owned by women. The theory behind her business was that these companies would thrive if they had the capital. Instead she found that when she made capital available, only the owners of tiny businesses applied. The applicants had plans not to become huge, but merely less tiny.

“They get to a certain point and they stall,” Ms. Merlino said.

Lack of access to capital, which she had thought was the whole problem, was only a part. True, women have had the legal right to business loans in their own names just since 1974, and men still have an easier time raising investment capital from friends and family. But even women with adequate financing struggle to build their companies.

“To get anywhere they have to work harder than they have ever worked before,” Ms. Merlino said. “They think that if they are at $250,000, then in order to get to $500,000 they have to work twice as hard. And they know that twice as hard will kill them.”

Understanding their ambivalence, she said, is easier if you remember why most women go into business: to regain control over their lives. In that context, it seems logical to sacrifice potential profit for time.

But Ms. Merlino said this logic was “backwards.” What it takes to get “unstuck” is usually to hire help or outsource work, which may seem like taking on risk, but may really be buying yourself time.

Ms. Merlino’s interpretation is not universally shared. “I do not hold that theory that they stall,” said Marsha Firestone, the president and founder of the Women Presidents’ Organization, which has 1,100 members who average $12 million in annual revenue. “Those women who are most motivated will succeed just as well as motivated men will succeed.”

She does agree, however, that because women “came to the party later,” they lag behind men. Now that there is parity in numbers, she said, it is time to push for parity in revenue. And while she finds the idea that women stall “a little insulting to women,” she said she has no argument with Ms. Merlino’s goal.

That goal is to reach one million businesses owned by women with annual revenue of more than $1 million within the next decade. To do this Ms. Merlino founded Make Mine a Million two years ago. Known as M3 for short, the event is a cross between the television shows “American Idol,” “The Apprentice” and “Queen for a Day.”

Women whose businesses have revenue of $250,000 or more can fill out an application dissecting their business and explaining how it might be taken to the $1 million level within 18 months. Twenty finalists are chosen for each event, which rotate nationwide. (The next is in New York on Oct. 23.) Each woman has three minutes to make her case in front of hundreds of small business owners. The audience votes, and the winners are named with a drum roll and fanfare worthy of a beauty pageant.

Applicants say that filling out of the application itself is enlightening. “The questions that are asked gets you thinking more strategically, more ambitiously,” said Monica Tomasso, who is hoping to be a finalist in New York. Her company, Health e-Lunch Kids, delivers lunch to schools and camps in the Washington area. Parents order 400 lunches online daily, and a staff of four prepares and transports them all.

In the last 12 months she has taken in $300,000, but not until she filled out the M3 form did she calculate how many lunches it would take to reach $1 million.

“One thousand lunches every school day for the 10 months of school,” she said.

Focusing on what it will take to grow is the point, Ms. Merlino said, because growth is often not the first priority of women in business. Open, the small-business arm of American Express, is a founding sponsor of M3, and in a survey of 627 customers released this week, it found that while men say their No. 1 goal is “growing the business,” women say their top priority is “maintaining the business.”

The winners receive more than prodding to think big. There is access to a line of credit from Open, and to consulting from American International Group about insurance and work-life balance tools like emergency child care. And there is an ongoing business coaching.

A coach from M3 helped Garnett Newcombe see “that I was a little bit of a control freak,” she said. Ms. Newcombe is the owner of Human Potential Consultants, a job training and placement agency in California for participants in government disability, welfare and parole programs. When Ms. Newcombe won an M3 competition last June, she had nine employees, gross revenue of $350,000 a year, and a dawn-to-midnight schedule.

Weekly phone conversations with her coach allowed her to create more specific job descriptions for her existing employees and then to trust those she had hired to do their jobs. “I had thought I was the only one who could do anything,” she said, “and that I had to be there all the time.”

The consultant also noticed that while Ms. Newcombe had applied for and received a number of designations — minority-owned business, small business — that qualified her for government work, she had never used those designations to bring in work. Last summer she bid on and received a contract to provide job training and placement for Marines at the base in Twentynine Palms, Calif., where she now has a satellite office with 70 employees.

This year she projects revenue of $3 million. She has contract commitments over the next five years that are worth close to $14 million. She still gets up early, but she uses the time to read, not worry. Her working day is 8 to 5.

M3 has chosen 80 women in the past two years, and Ms. Newcombe is among the 10 who have cleared the $1 million mark; 34 more are on track to do so by the end of this year. That 55 percent are succeeding is evidence that intense business coaching can work. That 45 percent have not shows that a million dollars is a lot of money.

“What we’re learning is that for some people it takes longer than our original thought of 12 to 18 months,” Ms. Merlino said, listing a dozen or so business that are within a hair’s breadth of $1 million but need another year.

Meanwhile, Ms. Newcombe, 55, has started a different kind of counting. Her goal is to maintain her current level of business and to add one to two contracts a year. Then in about four years, she said, “I will retire.”

(y) (y) (y)

(f)

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes. ;-)

If you can understand this, you are over-educated. ;)

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

sweetlady

10-05-2007, 09:31 AM

:o

;)

Car-Baked Chocolate Chip Cookies, step by step:

http://bakingbites.com/2007/09/car-baked-chocolate-chip-cookies-step-by-step/

;)

(f)

Memento audere semper.

Remember to always dare.

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

sweetlady

10-05-2007, 09:32 AM

:o

If you're a parent worried about your young children roaming free in the wired world, there may well have been times when you've wished your kid had a trustworthy Internet guide and traveling companion, someone like ... Miss America. Well, your wish has come true. Lauren Nelson, the reigning Miss America, chose Internet security as her pet issue for the year, based on an unfortunate chat room experience when she was 13. Now, in cooperation with the Children's Educational Network, she's promoting the Miss America Kid Safe Browser, a window on the Web that's limited to accessing about 10,000 pre-screened sites. The browser opens with the pageant theme song, and periodically during the browsing experience, an animated Nelson pops up to offer safe surfing advice and random facts like "There are twice as many kangaroos as people in Australia!" If your youngster tries to wander afield, Nelson's avatar warns, "This Web site is not on the master list. Please ask Mom or Dad to add this site for you." First test should you download this -- see if you can get to any sites about the dangers of glorifying unrealistic body images.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/latestheadlines/ci_7072812?nclick_check=1

http://www.childrenseducationalnetwork.com/

http://www.missamericakids.com/

(y)

(f)

Carpe Diem,

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

sweetlady

10-05-2007, 09:33 AM

<:o) <:o) <:o) <:o) <:o)

The Internet ... Party planning sites

Evite.com may be the most popular site for organizing a social event, but it’s not the only one—or the best.

MyPunchbowl.com provides such a wide variety of party themes that it “will not only help you plan a shindig, it’ll give you an excuse to have one.” Inte/no spamming of other sites/gration of Google Maps and YouTube.com make it easy to provide directions and post video afterwards.

Skobee.com is a great way to make plans on the fly. Its “fuzzy scheduling” lets one person suggest an activity and others “chime in with date, time, and location suggestions.” You can even visually compare schedules with your friends to identify a time that works.

Socializr.com is party planning for the next generation. It can “pull info, photos, and even blogs you’ve created from MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook and use them to create a profile” for you. It can also send out invitations as text or instant messages, as well as e-mail.

Source: Consumer Report ShopSmart

http://www.theweekdaily.com/

(f)

Carpe Carpium,

Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-05-2007, 09:35 AM

(f) (f)

French Landscapes (Slide Show):

This Renoir exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is billed as the first large display of landscape paintings by an artist best known for portraits, figures and nudes.

This show should be a revelation for Renoir idolaters and skeptics alike. The consistent subject matter encourages an unusual concentration on surface and technique. It proves that Renoir’s textures, far from being rote, vary almost willfully from canvas to canvas and even shift quite a bit within a single work.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/10/04/arts/20071005_RENO_SLIDESHOW_index.html

October 5, 2007

Art Review | 'Renoir Landscapes'

When Renoir Left the Parlor for Fresh Air

By ROBERTA SMITH

PHILADELPHIA — Pierre-Auguste Renoir may be the last numbingly famous Impressionist painter whose achievements can still be fought over. There are, of course, his sensitive portraits of adults and children; enthralling images of men and women relaxing in the sun-dappled parks of Paris; lush still lifes; sparkling landscapes; and his demure yet voluptuous nudes. But what about his saccharine images of buxom young women and apple-cheeked mothers with children? Or the acres of late nudes whose ponderous staginess looks back to Rubens and forward to Botero? The aspersion “kitsch” has been cast their way.

And then there are the endless flurries of tiny brush strokes. His surfaces range from overly burnished — reflecting Renoir’s early apprenticeship as a painter in a Paris porcelain factory — to sticky-looking, to downright hairy. Frequently the strokes seem finicky, rotelike and relentless. At times they even evoke the shambling furry creatures of an Edward Koren cartoon.

Despite Renoir’s immense popularity, his art doesn’t get nearly the respect, nor the scholarly attention, given that other Impressionist idol, Claude Monet, who parlayed light and oil paint into surfaces that shimmer yet are also structurally solid. Monet’s late works presage Pollocks, not Boteros — a much better class of retroactive validation.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art isn’t expecting fights at “Renoir Landscapes: 1865-1883,” at least not beyond the usual jockeying for space among adoring fans. The tickets are timed, and stanchions are at the ready. The gift shop is large and lavishly stocked. But for all its ingratiating aspects, this Renoir exhibition is more than just good. Billed as the first large display of landscape paintings by an artist best known for portraits, figures and nudes — albeit often in natural settings — the show is tantamount to revisionist.

Renoir may have been the first to undervalue his landscapes. Portraits and figures dominated his submissions to the Impressionist exhibitions and annual salons during the 1870s — possibly because they fared better with both critics and collectors. Many landscapes done in the 1870s, when Renoir painted his greatest number, were not immediately exhibited.

Of the 61 paintings here, 14 have never been shown in the United States. Several others are strikingly unfamiliar, notably the Toledo Museum of Art’s stunning “Landscape at Wargemont.” Painted in 1879, during Renoir’s first visit to the country estate of his patron Paul Berard, it defines a sloping hill and valley in thin, unexpectedly smooth wipes of hallucinatory greens, purples and deep blues. These are set on edge with judicious daubs of yellow, culminating in a string of trees in the middle distance.

This show should be a revelation for Renoir idolaters and skeptics alike. The consistent subject matter encourages an unusual concentration on surface and technique. It proves that Renoir’s textures, far from being rote, vary almost willfully from canvas to canvas and even shift quite a bit within a single work. They flirt with what the art historian Richard R. Brettell called “a radical instability” in the catalog to the exhibition “Impression: Painting Quickly in France 1860-1890.” The technique disturbed Renoir’s contemporaries and points to the all-over surfaces of Pollock as surely as do Monet’s late water lilies paintings.

“Renoir Landscapes,” organized by John Zarobell, an associate curator at the museum, is arranged thematically, though a strictly chronological arrangement would have further clarified the peripatetic nature of Renoir’s methods. This is a minor complaint, however, as most works date from 1872 to 1883. The sections include “Beginnings,” “Pure Landscape” and “The Impressionist Landscape”; they then follow Renoir from city to seashore and on his travels. In Algiers he learned to shore up his sun-drenched views with purply undertones. In Venice, at the behest of his dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, he painted lavender-pink views of tourist attractions like the Doges’ Palace and Piazza San Marco.

In the opening gallery we glimpse Renoir’s talent before he absorbed, a bit later than some, the basics of Impressionism. (This occurred in the summer of 1869, which he spent working beside Monet, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley in Louveciennes and Bougival.) “A Clearing in the Woods” (1865) reflects his awareness of Corot and the school of Fontainebleau, which pointed the future Impressionists toward plein-air painting. The prevailing browns, the wooded glen and a manly hunter in “Jules Le Coeur and His Dogs Walking in the Forest of Fontainebleau”(1866) are indebted to Courbet, down to the painting’s palette-knifed tree trunks and dabbed-on autumn leaves.

In effect these precedents are the twin peaks of Renoir’s sensibility. He often seems locked in a struggle to subject Impressionist technique to a personal brand of realism, one that saw nature with something of a naturalist’s eye for detail. Monet may have had a genius for painting light, but Renoir also painted light, as well as humidity hanging in the air, wind flattening grass, briskly moving water and leaves whose textures change with both distance and variety. Less interested than Monet in surface coherence or underlying infrastructure, Renoir favored small, rapid, curling strokes that build in one direction and then shift abruptly, like schools of fish.

In “The Gust of Wind,” from about 1872, some but not all of the bushes in the foreground are blurred. In “The Seine at Champrosay” (1876) Renoir marshaled green diagonal strokes to suggest wind coursing into the picture from the bottom edge, steamrolling the grass, roiling the water and pushing at the clouds. “Springtime (in Chatou),” from about 1875, has more unity: an enveloping hazy surface mixes together intimations of humidity, sunlight, grass, butterflies and flowers, while a figure ambles into the distance.

The variety of this show establishes Renoir as a kind of ventriloquist who could adopt the diction of other artists without losing his own voice. In the majestic “Pont Neuf” (1872) he forsakes his usual textures to paint a lushly cohesive snapshotlike view of pedestrians crossing the oldest bridge in Paris, achieving a depth and structural clarity characteristic of Monet.

In a small, mostly white 1882 canvas titled “The Wave,” his surface has a buttery abstractness that also evokes Monet and, by contrast, emphasizes Renoir’s usual indifference to niceties of paint in his scramble to build his images. In an earlier, larger wave painting, from 1879, tiers of soft, gauzy blue make the ocean look almost like ruffles on a dress worn by one of Renoir’s Parisian fashion plates. In fact, the paint handling is considerably more ladylike than the broad slashes used to define the flowing white dress in “Woman With a Parasol and a Small Child on a Sunlit Hillside” (1874).

In stark contrast, “Rocky Crags at L’Estaque” (1882) banishes atmosphere to suggest clenched fists, or at least a muscular hardness, more characteristic of Cézanne, who painted the same landscape.

Sometimes Renoir throws his voice into the future, tossing out ideas to other artists. “In the Woods,” from about 1877, dissolves a tree-lined path into evenly distributed dapples of color and is Pointillism before the fact. The cryptic “Landscape at Wargemont” presages the similarly smoothed-out, nearly abstract topographies that Degas would paint in the early 1890s.

This exhibition affirms Renoir as a great landscape painter, even if his attention was frequently diverted elsewhere. It also reminds us that he was a pragmatist. He willingly painted pastel-toned scenes of Venice, which even the exhibition identifies as “postcard views.” And two years after the 1879 Wargemont vista, he turned out an aristocratic portrait of his patron Berard’s son that could easily date from the late 1860s, before his summer of Impressionism. Full length, it shows the youth with his dog in a manner that both Courbet and Velázquez might have admired.

Appearing unexpectedly in the final gallery, it is a reminder that the familiar, beloved Renoir is only part of the story. This keeps his work unruly, vital and useful. Perhaps we should think of him as the Philip Guston of Impressionism.

“Renoir Landscapes: 1865-1883” is on view through Jan. 6 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 26th Street; (215) 763-3100.

(y) (y)

(f)

Ad augusta per angusta.

To high places by narrow roads.

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

sweetlady

10-05-2007, 09:42 AM

:| :| :| :| :|

Caro: Tired of hiding

http://www.theweekdaily.com/images/front_picture_library_UK/dir_0/the_week_214_27.jpg

Anorexia crashes Milan Fashion Week

An Italian clothing label, Nolita, ignited new debate about the fashion industry’s use of ultra-skinny models by launching an ad campaign featuring a 27-year-old anorexic woman. Nolita unveiled its first billboard in Milan as fashion week kicked off there this week, with the words “No. Anorexia” emblazoned across a giant nude photograph of an emaciated Isabelle Caro. "I've hidden myself and covered myself for too long,” Caro, who has suffered from anorexia for 13 years, wrote on her blog. “Now I want to show myself fearlessly, even though I know my body arouses repugnance.

Designer Diane Von Furstenberg, who spearheaded debate over sickly thin models in the U.S., said the picture was “horrible,” but could do good by exposing the problem. And that’s what executives at Nolita's parent company, Flash&Partners, said they were trying to do. But Fabiola De Clercq, who once suffered from anorexia and now heads an Italian association against eating disorders, said the campaign was irresponsible. “This girl needs to be in a hospital,” she said in The Wall Street Journal, “not at the forefront of an advertising campaign."

“Altruism aside,” said Glamour.com’s gossip blog, this is pure exploitation. Caro is 5-foot-5, and weighs 68 pounds. That’s extraordinary, but “aren’t they still using a picture of a way-too-skinny chick to sell clothes?” This is an ad campaign, after all.

Sure, but there are easier ways to sell women’s wear, said Kate Harding on Shakespearessister.com. It took guts for Nolita to acknowledge the link between fashion ads and eating disorders, and for Caro, who has suffered from anorexia since age 13, to show “people what her body really looks like.” We’re all bombarded every day with images that tell us we need to be skinny to be beautiful. At least someone’s finally being honest about it.

Still, you have to wonder about Nolita’s motivation, said Fiona MacGregor in Scotsman.com. It signed up photographer Oliviero Toscani, who did controversial work for Bennetton in the 1980s and ‘90s, to shoot the ads, and that may be part of the reason the campaign has “met with cynicism.” The fashion industry has an ugly history of cashing in on images of vulnerable young women, and it’s hard to escape the suspicion that this is just more of the same.

And what about the women with eating disorders who see the ads? said Richard Roeper in the Chicago Sun-Times. Toscani says girls will see the ads and realize they need to stop dieting. "He's dead wrong." A few anorexic girls might "be shocked into getting help," but many more "will find the photos to be glamorous." They'll admire Caro's skeletal frame with "envy," and want to look just like her.

http://www.theweekdaily.com/arts_leisure/people_gossip/318/anorexia_crashes_milan_fashion_week.html

:| I agree that this does not belong on a billboard. It might provide powerful imagery to young girls "on the edge", and thus that extra push into this tragic illness.

GRRRR.

:) At least people ARE getting the discussion about this awful disease out into the open and maybe someday, skinny models will all seem unhealthy. Maybe fashion designers and the infrastructure that supports them will not herald back to "Reubenesque-ladies", but to a healthier look for young girls to emulate, rather than the starving-waif look? :|

:)

(f)

(f) Too bad there are so many sheep and shepherdesses.

Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-05-2007, 09:44 AM

:)

http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19462/

Gibson's Self-Tuning Guitar

A new line features advanced electronics that automatically tune the instrument.

(y)

(f)

Docendo discimus.

We learn by teaching.

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

sweetlady

10-05-2007, 09:45 AM

(y) (y)

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/citizen_science/starcount/

(f)

Duo cum faciunt idem, non est idem.

When two do the same, it isn't the same.

Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-05-2007, 09:47 AM

:o :o :o

On the lookout for light pollution

EFFORT TO ASSESS PROBLEM'S SCOPE

By Julie Sevrens Lyons

Mercury News

Article Launched: 10/01/2007 01:37:57 AM PDT

Here's your mission, should you choose to accept it: Look up in the sky after dark and count the stars you see.

As part of a worldwide push to gauge how much light pollution is out there, a scientific organization is asking people to look for specific constellations during the next two weeks and share observations on the Internet.

You probably won't be able to see the Milky Way from your San Jose backyard, experts say - but this area is still better off than some when it comes to the artificial lighting that illuminates the sky and interferes with stargazing. It isn't as bright as Los Angeles, isn't as gaudy as Las Vegas, and is home to the Lick Observatory - which has worked closely with San Jose officials to ensure special streetlights are used here.

The stargazing effort, dubbed the Great World Wide Star Count, is open to anyone who has access to a computer and the World Wide Web. And while scientists hope it will help them map light pollution on a global scale, they do have another motive.

"We want people to go outside and look up, to appreciate the night sky," said Dennis Ward, an educational technologist and astronomer with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. The consortium of universities is organizing the event along with planetariums and scientific societies across the country.

Under perfect conditions - no moon, a clear sky and minimal light pollution - a stargazer should be able to see as many as 14,000 stars, Ward said. But in many major cities, where used car lots, shopping malls and football stadiums illuminate the night, often fewer than 150 are visible.

"It's pretty bad," said Ben Burress, staff astronomer at Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland. "People who live in cities tend to not think about the nighttime sky very much because they can't see it very well," he said. "You can't just walk outside and see something really enthralling."

That's a shame - and probably a major deterrent to kids developing an interest in the sciences these days, said Bob Gent president of the board of directors of the International Dark-Sky Association in Tucson, Ariz. When Gent was a young boy growing up in Phoenix, he could view a sky filled with thousands of objects, including his favorite, the Milky Way.

Seeing the constellations made him curious about the universe and our solar system, and instilled in him a respect for the outdoors.

"I became an astronomer for life by the time I was 5 years old," he said. "But now we've lost the heritage of dark skies in these big cities."

Light pollution has become a growing problem around the globe, fueled by urban sprawl and a growing population. Satellite images show much of the U.S. eastern seaboard is socked in by light pollution, as well as most large cities across the rest of the country.

Among the problems caused by light pollution: Bright lights have interrupted the migratory patterns of birds and disoriented baby marine turtles. As a result, dozens of communities across the country have begun to enact ordinances aimed at reducing the glare.

"It's not just astronomy impacted," Gent said. "It's a wildlife issue. It's the loss of the inspiration of the night sky. It's all those - while we're wasting energy."

When it comes to lighting, many city governments and private corporations have kept safety issues - and good business - squarely in mind, opting to keep streets, parking lots and store displays well-lit. While dark-sky advocates aren't calling for blackened city scapes, they do point out that some lighting is purely ornamental and unnecessary - think Las Vegas.

Despite the fact that the Bay Area has been densely populated for decades, it wasn't that long ago that you could drive a little ways and get a magnificent view of the sky, said Marni Berendsen, education project coordinator for the San Francisco-based Astronomical Society of the Pacific. During the early 1990s, for example, Berendsen would go to Mt. Diablo near Walnut Creek to see the Milky Way.

No longer.

"As the years go by and more and more houses are built at the base of the mountain," she said, "we're really starting to lose our dark sky up there."

San Jose is one community that has made great strides to reduce its light pollution - at least the kind that can obstruct observatory instruments. Of the city's 60,293 streetlights, an estimated 51,341 are low-pressure sodium lights, energy savers that give off a yellowish hue. They produce a light that researchers at the Lick Observatory can easily filter out.

"They've really gone out of their way to help the observatory," said Burt Jones, assistant director of Lick. "Most cities are not like that."

Organizers of the Great World Wide Star Count wish more communities would take similar steps to turn down the lights. If their event becomes an annual one as they envision, scientists will be able to compare data from year to year and map the light-pollution changes. They hope their event will raise awareness of the issue, while shedding light on how poor the stargazing is from some urban centers.

"That's one of our goals," Ward said, "to make people understand there could be so much more."

http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_7050655

(l) (S) (l) (S) (l) (S) (l)

(y) (y)

Damnant quod non intellegunt.

People fear what they do not understand.

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

sweetlady

10-05-2007, 09:49 AM

(l) (f)

October 5, 2007

American Journeys

Up New Hampshire’s Antique Alley

By MICHAEL CARLTON

“WE sell the good, the bad, the ugly, the great and the grand,” Barbara Callioras, a diminutive woman with a long gray ponytail, said as she stood among her wares at Lee Circle Antiques and Collectibles in Lee, N.H., at the eastern end of New Hampshire’s Antique Alley.

Pointing out an 1875 French automaton — a birdcage, basically, with two animated singing canaries — priced at $5,500, she said, “This is in excellent condition and well worth the price.”

“Then there’s this,” she added, indicating a shelf of pottery that was, to put it kindly, amazingly unattractive. “Everyone has his own taste,” she observed. “If a customer loves it, I can love it too.”

That’s pretty much the spirit of Antique Alley, a 20-mile stretch of two-lane road with more than two dozen antiques and collectibles shops, some of them cooperative stores representing scores of dealers. The Antique Alley Association, which provides advertising and public relations, says that more than 500 dealers sell there on any given day. The Alley runs from Lee west to a bit beyond Epsom, taking up a chunk of Route 4, the traditional main road from Portsmouth to the state capital at Concord. Route 4 passes through rural countryside typical of New Hampshire, with small farms belted by aging stone walls, hay being cut and dairy cows grazing.

Antique Alley wins a following among serious collectors and leisure-time browsers for its rich supplies of early American art, furniture, farm tools, sea glass, books, yellow ware pottery, textiles, ironstone, china and glassware. Its loyalists also praise its prices, enhanced in their attractiveness by New Hampshire’s lack of a sales tax.

Visitors are a convivial, low-key group — middle-aged couples looking to replace a beloved broken ironstone platter, starry-eyed young couples with kids in tow hoping to furnish their first homes with solid bargains, elderly people hoping to recapture the past. The shops are in buildings with rough wooden floors betraying their origins as farmhouses and barns, sheep shelters and churning rooms. They are easily enjoyed at your leisure, and they’re hard to miss — some have been painted Crayola colors like fuchsia, canary yellow and bluebird blue.

If you’d like to shop on foot, strolling on old city streets shaded by trees glowing red and orange at this time of year, head to the village of Northwood, where a rich selection of stores is tightly clustered. Shopping the entire Alley requires popping into and out of your car, but there are plenty of places to park. Most local people trace the beginning of Antique Alley to the opening of a small shop in 1976 by Sumner and Muriel Parker, a Northwood couple who decided to sell soft ice cream and curios (mostly moccasins) to travelers passing by. When they added a few collectibles and antiques, they quickly found that the profit was considerably higher in old furniture than in ice cream. Other entrepreneurs soon opened shops, and then came cooperatives.

The Parkers retired in 1986, but their first shop still stands, renamed Parker-French. Its current owners, Richard Bojko and John Mullen, are passionate about keeping the Alley’s focus on American antiques, having gone so far, they said, as to buy a nearby building (now Parker-French West) to prevent its becoming a flea market or craft shop. For their own business, Mr. Bojko said, “we have two rules: no reproductions and no crafts.” Their inventory includes displays from 130 dealers, they said.

Their sentiments about authenticity were echoed by Fern Eldridge, who began her antiques business, Fern Eldridge & Friends, in Northwood in 1985 and now, at the age of 80, is still there every day. “I wanted a real antique shop,” she said as she stood in the handsome barn where she sells some of the area’s finest early American pieces. “I’ve avoided the Beanie Babies route.”

Few shops along Antique Alley specialize in one genre; that’s what transforms a visit there into an exhilarating treasure hunt. In a single shop you may find hundreds of farm tools in one room, elegant handmade New England furniture in another, and first-edition books and old cast-iron skillets in a third. Some of the larger shops offer thousands of items. In one, the four-level Town Pump in Northwood, I found everything from a Victorian salt dish for $2 to a Hepplewhite chest for $2,595. Like Parker-French and several others, the store is a group shop, showing the offerings of dozens of sellers.

Some shops are as tightly packed as overstuffed closets. Others are spacious and easily navigated. Almost any one of them may have the prize you’re hankering for, whether it’s a vintage duck decoy or an 1800s Shaker chair.

Dealers from all over the country prowl Antique Alley, along with the casual browsers and lots of homeowners working on furnishing their living rooms. Mr. Bojko said the shoppers in Parker-French have included Martha Stewart and Sheryl Crow. In Antique Alley parking lots, you’ll see license plates from several nearby states — especially Massachusetts (the Alley draws the Boston crowd).

I asked Matthew Mead, a Concord resident and editor at large for Country Home magazine, to guide me on a trip to the alley. Mr. Mead, who has worked as a photo stylist for companies like Pottery Barn, L. L. Bean and Waterford Crystal and has written several books on home decoration and collecting, has foraged there for years. It has “the country’s best and most reasonably priced collections of early American antiques and collectibles,” he told me as he picked through a box full of green glass bottles at Lee Circle Antiques. “It is really a treasure trove of great items at good prices.”

He has some simple advice for novices shopping Antique Alley: Come carrying cash to get the best prices: some owners will bargain. Look for small defects. Compare prices of similar items in different shops. And if you fall desperately in love with something, take it to the counter and ask to have it held for you. “I’ve seen things I wanted walk right off the counter with someone else before I could make a final decision,” Mr. Mead told me.

In addition to Lee Circle, some of Mr. Mead’s favorite shops are Parker-French, Town Pump and two more in Northwood: R. S. Butler’s and Sleigh Bell Antiques.

My own favorite shop is Northwood Old Books, for purely personal reasons. On my trip with Mr. Mead, we stopped there and I found a copy of the December 1976 issue of National Geographic, which included some photographs I took of tall ships leaving Bermuda for New York in honor of America’s Bicentennial. I had misplaced my only copy, but amid the tiny rooms in this shop, smelling of old paper and leather, I located my replacement.

Antique Alley’s weak point is restaurants: fast-food chains dominate. For a more interesting meal, drive to Dover and pick up a picnic at Tuttle’s Red Barn farm stand, where you can choose international fare like pâté and sushi or buy New England products including jam, cheeses, produce, even hard cider.

Tuttle’s also offers soups, sandwiches, salads and desserts, and the Tuttle family claims that its spread is the oldest family-owned farm in America, established in 1632. They have the deeds to prove it, right from the first royal grant. The farm is always passed along to the eldest son; Generation 11 is now in charge.

The many dining choices in Portsmouth include Pesce Blue, for seafood and Italian dishes, and Portsmouth Brewery, for a burger or steak with beer. And on almost any highway near the coast, you should be able to find a roadside stand offering the region’s most prized snack: lobster rolls.

VISITOR INFORMATION

Antique Alley begins less than 20 miles west of Portsmouth, N.H., on Route 4, in the town of Lee and continues westward to a bit beyond Epsom. A map and information are posted at www.nhantiquealley.com. More dealers are listed at www.nhada.org.

In summer and fall most shops are open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, although some close on Mondays. In winter and spring, many are open only on weekends.

Accommodations are scant along Antique Alley itself, but chain hotels and bed-and-breakfasts are abundant in cities nearby. A classic 1800s grand hotel in New Castle is Marriott’s Wentworth by the Sea (866-240-6313; www.wentworth.com). In leaf season, rooms start at $299 on weekends. In Durham, the Three Chimneys Inn (17 Newmarket Road; 603-868-7800) has 23 rooms in a mansion dating from 1649. Rooms start at $189 on October weekends.

Tuttle’s Red Barn farm stand (603-742-4313) is at 151 Dover Point Road, Dover. Restaurants in Portsmouth include Pesce Blue (103 Congress Street; 603-430-7766; www.pesceblue.com) and the Portsmouth Brewery (56 Market Street; 603-431-1115; www.portsmouthbrewery.com).

(y) (y) (y)

(f)

Cum recte vivis, ne cures verba malorum.

If you live properly, don't worry about what the evil ones say.

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

sweetlady

10-05-2007, 09:50 AM

;)

A Flashy Second Act for Truck Reflectors

At the London Design Festival, which ran from Sept. 15 to 25, more than 350,000 people attended exhibitions across the city, from 100% Design London at Earl’s Court in the West End, to Designersblock, an alternative show in the East End, to smaller shows in galleries, shops and schools. Surprisingly, in an era in which many designers work digitally, some of the most appealing pieces on display were handcrafted. Peter Ting, a designer for Asprey, the luxury goods retailer, offered an explanation. “There’s a debate going on in London between the virtues of digital and handmade goods,” he said, and the appeal of one-offs — to both designers and consumers — is that “they’re beautiful and unique.” The Tail Light chandelier, above and left, part of a group exhibition called “Grandmateria” at Gallery Libby Sellers, is an example. Stuart Haygarth, the 41-year-old designer, above, who began his career as an illustrator, is one of the five artists in the show who “use humble materials to a spectacular effect,” said Libby Sellers, the gallery owner, formerly a curator at the Design Museum in London. Made out of truck and tractor reflectors, in a limited edition of seven, Tail Light is about 4 ½ feet long and 2 feet wide, and sells for $24,472. “Grandmateria” continues through Oct. 14 at the Gallery Libby Sellers, 1-5 Exhibition Road, London, 011-44-7774-113-813 or libbysellers.com.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/10/04/garden/20071004_CURRENTS_SLIDESHOW_index.html

:)

(f)

Contraria contrariis curantur.

Opposites are cured by their opposites. (Not always, IMHO!) ;)

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

sweetlady

10-05-2007, 09:52 AM

8-| 8-| 8-|

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/317/5846/1858

INTERACTIVE MEDIA: HONORABLE MENTION: Breast Cancer Virtual Anatomy:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol317/issue5846/images/small/1858-7-thumb.gif

A visit to the doctor's office can be a scary, confusing experience, particularly when the subject under discussion is chemotherapy's failure to eradicate breast cancer. Cathryn Tune, Samantha Belmont, and their team at CCG Metamedia, a medical education company based in New York City, created this interactive tool to help doctors explain to their patients the anatomy and progression of their cancers in a clear, easy-to-understand manner. The interface allows doctors to select tumor size and level of metastasis and displays the part of the patient's anatomy that cancer is attacking while suggesting treatment options.

The program was created to promote Abraxane, an injectable drug designed to treat patients whose chemotherapy has failed, and was distributed to oncologists during an educational course titled "Difficult Cases in Metastatic Breast Cancer," funded by Abraxis BioScience, the drug's developer.

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

:)

Crudelius est quam mori semper timere mortem.

It is crueller to be always afraid of dying than to die.

Sweetlady & Wyattt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

10-05-2007, 09:54 AM

:o :o

;)

Which soccer fans will be eating the terrine of foie gras and asparagus with truffles cooked by Marco Pierre White at Marco, the sleek new restaurant that opened Monday at the Chelsea Football Club in London? Not the ones in the stands. Roman Abramovich, the owner of the club, “wanted a restaurant for the customers who own the corporate boxes,” said Tara Bernerd, chief executive officer of Target Living, the firm that created the décor. The restaurant, far right, which is also open to the public, cost about $2 million to create, she said. Its mirrored ceiling, black-and-white tiled floor and leather banquettes create a “masculine, chunky look,” Ms. Bernerd said, that is offset by a column covered in Swarovski crystals, velvet chairs and Murano glass vases, above, on the tables. Marco is at Stamford Bridge, Fulham Road; 011-44-20-7915-2929.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/10/04/garden/20071004_CURRENTS_SLIDESHOW_4.html

:)

(f)

Dulce enim etiam nomen est pacis.

The name 'peace' is sweet itself.

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

sweetlady

10-05-2007, 09:57 AM

:)

INSPIRED by the glamour of the 1940s, many manufacturers are producing updated versions of the mirrored furniture popular during that decade. A piece here or there can add enough sparkle to energize any room, traditional or modern. There is mirrored furniture at many prices and for all kinds of spaces, from the bath to the living room.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/08/29/garden/20070830SHOPPER_2.html

:) It is a little strange that I love many fashions from this era and yet do not care for the era's furniture - either originals AKA antiques...;) ......or updated versions. But I thought that some folks might enjoy the slide show.

(f)

(k) 's,

Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-05-2007, 10:00 AM

:)

MANY new and amusing products for the home were introduced last week at Accent on Design, a trade show for the home furnishings industry held in New York at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. Among the lighthearted items on display were fabric printed to look like wood veneer; a coffee table book that opened into a lamp; and a half-electric, half-candle-powered table light.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/08/22/garden/20070823_SHOP_SLIDESHOW_index.html

VERY silly: The wool-and-synthetic Buddy Throw blanket offers the illusion of companionship; $139 from (415) 999-9878 or www.charlesandmarie.com:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/22/garden/23shop_slide5.jpg

Kind of cool: Cotton printed with a wood-grain pattern, designed in Tokyo, can be ordered from Tortoise in Venice, Calif.; starting at the end of September, $42 a yard from (310) 314-8448.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/22/garden/23shop_slide8.jpg

VERY cool: Woofy is a plastic dog-shaped container for unruly cables; $200 from Fitzsu, (323) 655-1908.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/22/garden/23shop_slide9.jpg

V, V, C (Very, Very Cool): The Book of Lights ($95), designed by Takeshi Ishiguro, is a coffee table book that becomes a lamp with a shade when it is opened; for locations: (323) 655-6551 or www.artecnicainc.com.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/22/garden/23shop_slide10.jpg

(y) (y)

(o) Time to get going and on with my day. Have a lovely Friday and rest of your weekend!

(f)

Ab imo pectore.

From the bottom of the chest (heart). (l)

Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-05-2007, 10:04 AM

(S) (*) (S) (*) (S) (*) (S) (*) (S) (*)

October 4, 2007

Adding an Extra Room for the Sky

By KATE MURPHY

IN the quaint seaside community of Gloucester, Mass., on Cape Ann, one gray clapboard house stands out from the rest. It has a big white dome rising from the top, with a sliding shutter that opens to the sky and a powerful telescope inside. “My wife got an ocean view and I got a view of the sky,” said Dr. Mario Motta, 55, a cardiologist and astronomy enthusiast, of the house they built three years ago.

At a time when amateur astronomy is becoming increasingly popular — thanks in part to the availability of high-tech equipment like digital cameras that filter out light pollution — Dr. Motta and his wife, Joyce, are among a growing number of Americans incorporating observatories into new or existing homes. Manufacturers of observatory domes report increasing sales to homeowners, and new residential communities are being developed with observatories as options in house plans.

“As the baby boomers and wealthy tech types retire, they want challenging hobbies like astronomy, and have enough cash stashed away to afford to build their own observatories,” said Richard Olson, president of the Ash Manufacturing Company in Plainfield, Ill., which makes steel domes for observatories. His customers used to be limited to academic and research institutions, but within the last five years, he said, homeowners have begun making requests, to the point where 25 percent of his sales are to people like Steve Cullen, a 41-year-old retired senior vice president of the Symantec Corporation, who is building a home and observatory on 190 acres in Rodeo, N.M.

Mr. Cullen said he chose the location because it has “some of the darkest skies and clearest weather for space photography in the U.S.” (Most sophisticated telescopes now allow for the addition of digital cameras.) He expects the total cost of his observatory, which is still under construction, to be close to $340,000, including a $225,000 telescope, but his is a high-end project.

Most home observatories have between $10,000 and $40,000 in equipment, including telescopes, computers, refractors, filters and tracking mechanisms, according to astronomy equipment retailers. The total budget for an observatory can range from $50,000 to more than $500,000, depending on how technologically advanced the equipment and the size and complexity of the structure.

Dr. Motta also photographs deep space from his home’s observatory, posting his images of distant galaxies online and publishing them in astronomy magazines and journals.

His telescope, which he constructed himself, weighs well over a hundred pounds, and would be cumbersome to move outdoors if he didn’t have an observatory. And like most sophisticated telescopes, it would also require at least an hour of careful recalibration if relocated.

“The reason why people don’t use their telescopes is they are such a pain to haul out and set up,” said John Spack, 50, a certified public accountant who had a domed observatory built on top of an addition to his house in Chicago last year. “Now, if I want to get up at 3 a.m. and look at something, I just open the shutter.”

Like observatories at research facilities and museums, most home observatories now have computers that rotate the dome so the telescope is oriented toward precisely what the user wants to see. Once fixed on a point in space, the dome continues to slowly rotate to compensate for the earth’s rotation, so whatever is in view doesn’t move out of range.

“It’s all fully automated, real high-tech,” said Mr. Spack, who estimated that he spent at least $100,000 to build and equip his observatory. Many home observatories also allow remote real-time views through the telescope from any computer with an Internet connection.

Roy and Elise Furman, who own a software company, view the cosmos through the telescope in their vacation house observatory in Portal, Ariz., both when they are there and when they are at home, in Philadelphia.

“Philadelphia skies are so light polluted, we got depressed trying to do astronomy,” said Ms. Furman, 48. So the couple bought the Portal property, which is about 10 miles from Rodeo and part of a community called Arizona Sky Village, founded in 2003. Half of the 15 adobe-style homes there have matching domed observatories, and five more observatory homes are under construction. “We are a bunch of astronomy buffs looking through our telescopes out in the middle of nowhere,” said Mr. Furman, 57.

Other astronomy-themed residential developments include Deerlick Astronomy Village in Sharon, Ga., about 100 miles east of Atlanta, established in 2004, and Chiefland Astronomy Village in Chiefland, on Florida’s west coast, which began in 1985 as a place for amateur astronomers to buy or rent land on which to camp. Within the last five years, several houses with observatories have been built there.

These communities encourage home observatories, but elsewhere, “people do run into problems with deed restrictions,” said Jerry Smith, president of Technical Innovations, a manufacturer of observatory domes in Gaithersburg, Md. The company started in 1991 and primarily served universities and government agencies, but since 2002 individual consumers have accounted for 60 percent of the 1,400 domes it has sold.

To avoid overheating and warping the viewing equipment, Mr. Smith said, “it’s better to have a white dome, because it’s reflective, but we’ve had to do them in earth tones because that’s the only way to get them approved by property owners’ associations.”

Domes in home observatories are typically made of metal or fiberglass and range in size from 8 to 30 feet in diameter. They are sold in kits from manufacturers like Ash or Technical Innovations and start at about $5,000, depending on the size, materials and features. The price includes a computer-controlled motorized system that opens the dome’s sliding or hatch-like shutter and rotates the dome.

The telescope beneath the dome requires “a dedicated foundation so it’s not subject to the vibrations transmitted by people walking around in the building,” said Gregory La Vardera, an architect in Merchantville, N.J., who designed Mr. Cullen’s observatory. This usually involves elevating the instrument on a discrete concrete pier. A telescope mount is bolted to the pier and the mount is motorized so it rotates the telescope in sync with the dome.

Observatories cannot be air-conditioned because any difference between the inside and outside air would distort the telescope’s optics, Mr. La Vardera said. For comfort, most home observatories have a separate insulated and air-conditioned control room that houses all the computer equipment. These rooms often look like studies, with lots of space photography hanging on the walls.

“I have a lot of astronomy books on the bookshelves so I can feel knowledgeable,” said Dr. M. Eric Gershwin, the chairman of clinical immunology at the University of California, Davis, about the control room in his home’s observatory in Davis. An avid amateur astronomer, Dr. Gershwin, 61, had the observatory built 10 years ago and has been tweaking the instrumentation and control systems ever since. “You’re never done,” he said. “Right now I’m updating the computers.”

Helping people with the installation and computerization of observatories has become a sideline for Kris Koenig, 45, a video producer from Chico, Calif., who specializes in astronomy-themed productions.

“It started a couple of years ago, when I helped set up the digital equipment in some public and private observatories locally,” Mr. Koenig said, adding that he is now getting at least half a dozen calls for assistance a month just through word of mouth. He charges $500 to $1,000 an hour depending on the difficulty of the job, plus travel expenses. His most recent project involved linking a California home observatory’s telescope to an entertainment center, so the images could be broadcast on a big-screen television.

The work is gratifying, he said. “It’s great that so many people want to bring the universe home.”

(l) (l) (l) Sigh. I LOVE stargazing! Imagine living in a HOME in which you can see stars (at night). :) Too cool.

(f)

(k) (k) 's,

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

sweetlady

10-05-2007, 10:20 AM

:D

Antique cobalt bottles and jars - I have them on glass shelves in a bathroom window so the light can shine through.

Overdone IMHO, but I like the idea of a small collection displayed on glass shelves in a window:

http://www.sinsleystuff.info/images/BOTL%20WINDOW.jpg

I have one:

http://www.sha.org/bottle/Typing/medicine/bromo.jpg

From: www.sha.org/bottle/medicinal.htm

(l)

http://www.bottlebooks.com/questions/February%202002/CHAMBERLAINfeb2002.jpg

http://www.lividlookingglass.com/store/bottles/poison%20bottle2-2.JPG

http://hometown.aol.com/meechuta/keasbey.jpg

GORGEOUS! http://www.royaldoultonantiques.com/images/cb2.jpg

http://hometown.aol.com/meechuta/chelf.jpg

Not cobalt but I have one like this:

http://www.sha.org/bottle/Typing/medicine/lindseys_small.jpg

(l) (l) (l) Well, I enjoyed searching for images of items in my own collection today. I could not find any really old Vicks' jars - and I have some of those as well as other cobalt medicine and poison bottles. Actually, lapis blue is my favorite colour and so there are quite a few blue "collections" that I am keeping during my "divesting process" of selling and giving things away. It's always like this well before an eventual move, right? Weed, weed and weed some more. ;)

(f)

Ab Iove principium.

Let's start with the most important.

Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-06-2007, 11:57 AM

:) (y) :) (y)

If you were asked to quickly rattle off the U.S. metropolitan areas with the densest concentration of IT professionals, your list would probably include some of the usual suspects -- Silicon Valley, of course, Seattle, Boston, Austin and the like. But take a look at the latest census figures (2006) as crunched by Computerworld, and you could be surprised. The valley is indeed at the top of the list, with its 71,426 IT workers making up 8.3 percent of the workforce, and the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont stretch is in 12th place, with 4.3 percent. But second place is held by the Washington, D.C. area, where 6.1 percent of workers are employed in IT, followed by the Raleigh, N.C., area (5.3 percent); Boulder, Colo., and Huntsville, Ala. (both with 5.2 percent); and the Bloomington-Normal, Ill., area (5.0 percent). In raw numbers of IT workers, the New York metropolitan area easily takes top spot, with more than 221,000.

One interesting sidelight: The D.C. area had the highest proportion of women in its IT workforce -- 32.3 percent. You have to scan past a bunch of Eastern and Midwest cities before you get to the first California entry on the list -- S.F.-Oakland-Fremont, with 25 percent, in 13th position. And Silicon Valley is another few notches down, at 22.3 percent. What's going on? The optimistic possibility is that out here, more women in tech have left IT to become business owners and executives.

http://factfinder.census.gov/jsp/saff/SAFFInfo.jsp?_pageId=sp1_acs&_submenuId

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9039699

Women in IT go east, data shows:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9039718

8-|8-| With a T1 (1.5 Mb/s) connection through a local telephone company, cable modem through digital cable services provider, satellite (and thus wireless) service provider or other broadband connection? I would think that prospective clients or employers would be delighted to have womyn work from anyplace. IMHO, this WILL happen. It's just a matter of targeting the firms that embrace this workflow process - that is, "geographically independent". (y) (y)

(f) (f)

Faber est suæ quisque fortunæ.

Each is the maker (smith) of his own fortune.

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

sweetlady

10-06-2007, 12:01 PM

(~) (f) (~) (f) (~)

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/10/04/movies/20071005_NYFF2_SLIDESHOW_index.html

:o

I did not recognize her at first:

Nicole Kidman as Margot in "Margot at the Wedding," directed by Noah Baumbach.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/10/04/arts/Margot2.jpg

(f) (f)

Dulce enim etiam nomen est pacis.

The name 'peace' is sweet itself.

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

sweetlady

10-06-2007, 12:13 PM

:) ;) :) ;) :)

;) This one came in an email yesterday and it made me smile. Maybe you will too.

Eat right! Make sure you get your daily dose of fruits and veggies. Take
your vitamins and bump up your vitamin C. Get plenty of exercise because
exercise helps build your immune system. Walk for at least an hour a day,
go for a swim, take the stairs instead of the elevator, etc. Wash your hands often.
If you can't wash them, keep a bottle of antibacterial stuff around. Get lots of
fresh air. Open doors & windows whenever possible. Try to eliminate as much
stress from your life as you can. Get plenty of rest.

OR Take the doctor's approach.........

Think about it... When you go for a shot, what do they do first? They
clean your arm with alcohol... Why? Because Alcohol KILLS GERMS.
So....... I walk to the liquor store. (exercise) I put lime in my
Corona...(fruit) Celery in my Bloody Mary (veggies) Drink outdoors on
the bar patio..(fresh air) Tell jokes, laugh....(eliminate stress) Then
pass out. (rest) The way I see it... If you keep your alcohol levels up,
flu germs can't get you! My mother always said, "A shot in the glass is
better than one in the ass!"

Live Well - Laugh Often - Love Much.

:o Not exactly the best advice for some, but hey, life is short. WAY too short not to laugh or at least smile at silly stories like this one. Serious is collapsing and requiring a pacer to regulate the heart. Serious is someone deliberately eating sugar-based foods/drinks when they have diabetes. (You get my drift....)

May your worst worry today (or any day) be in finding your slippers next to your bed when you wake up in the morning. :)

:D :D I am absolutely DELIGHTED that as of 4:00 p.m. yesterday afternoon - a brand new TRANE system is happily humming away with central air for the first time in over two weeks AND a Clean Air System filtering 99.98 % of allergens!! <:o) <:o) <:o)

OH BABY! Cool comfort - for which I am extremely grateful. I know that I am going directly to heaven someday - since hot, humid weather is the worst purgatory here on earth. ;)

(f)

Dum spiro, spero.

As long as I breathe, I hope.

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

sweetlady

10-07-2007, 12:17 AM

(S) (*) (S) (*) (S) (*) (S) (*)

Slide Show: A Night With the Stars:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/14/travel/escapes/20070916_DARK_SLIDESHOW_index.html

September 14, 2007

Dark Sky, Bright Lights Over Pennsylvania

By DAVE CALDWELL

GLIMMERING like a sequined showgirl and hovering in the Western sky near the setting sun, Venus appeared first, the warm-up act for what would become a cavalcade of, literally, thousands of real stars. Within an hour after sunset that June evening, Jupiter took a bow, then Saturn. Slowly, almost magically, constellations began to glint through the inky darkness.

On a good night for stargazing at Cherry Springs State Park, in north central Pennsylvania, the Milky Way is a speckled wash across the sky. On a perfect night, particularly during a new moon, the Milky Way is so bright it casts shadows. Stargazers hold out their hands and look at the shadows on the ground in awe.

“You get kind of overwhelmed at how many stars are actually visible,” said Stanley Nawrocki, a local self-taught astronomer whom his friends and neighbors call Stash.

The observation field at Cherry Springs, in remote Potter County, a 275-mile drive from New York City, has become a magnet in recent years for passionate astronomers, as well as for people who just want to tilt their heads back and ponder the vast majesty of the universe. Spotting the Big Dipper, Sagittarius and Cassiopeia among 10,000 stars is a delight in itself.

Many remote spots, particularly in the American West, are ideal for stargazing: the Natural Bridges National Monument and Bryce Canyon National Park, both in Utah; Mount Graham in Arizona; and Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Cherry Springs is just about as dark, even though it is close to what astronomers call the light pollution of East Coast cities.

“Cherry Springs State Park is doing an excellent job of preserving the dark skies,” said Bob Gent, president of the board of the International Dark-Sky Association, which fights light pollution. “The park management in Pennsylvania really appreciates this.”

Anyone over 40 can probably remember staring into a sky that pulsed with stars, but nowadays, man’s artificial light has erased the view. Chip Harrison, who manages Cherry Springs and seven other state parks, said only 10 percent of the United States population has seen a true dark sky, but a growing number are doing so at Cherry Springs.

Lured by the dark-sky observation field in the middle of the park, more than 10,000 visitors came to Cherry Springs last year, up 30 percent from 2005, Mr. Harrison said. Some visitors come to the park from far-flung locales — speaking in Earth distances, that is — like Texas, Canada and Australia. It can be a life-changing experience.

Mr. Nawrocki’s wife, Helene, said: “When you come up here, and you look up and can see the Milky Way, you are changed. You will never be the same again. It pulls people out of being self-centered. It pulls people out of their own little worlds.”

The dark-sky field at Cherry Springs is open year round, with 60 to 85 nights a year that are ideal for stargazing. Conditions are actually better in the fall and winter, when the humidity is lower and, of course, the nights last longer.

Besides two annual “star parties” at Cherry Springs (the next is scheduled today through Sunday), which draw hundreds of professional and amateur astronomers, the park has programs, most free, for those who just want to peek at the stars. Volunteer star guides, like Mr. Nawrocki, provide history and facts and often share their telescopes.

Eleven years ago, the Nawrockis moved from suburban Philadelphia to Potter County because they wanted a calmer life. They got a fringe benefit: Because Potter County is so isolated, the night skies are often pitch black.

A visitor from their old neighborhood arrived with a telescope, and Mr. Nawrocki, already a “Star Trek” and Carl Sagan fan, was overwhelmed. Mr. Nawrocki, a nurse by trade, began to learn more about the planets and stars, and he absorbed so much information that he became a volunteer star guide at Cherry Springs.

BECAUSE it sits in the Allegheny Mountains, about 60 miles northwest of the nearest city, Williamsport, Cherry Springs offers optimum stargazing conditions. The park sits atop a 2,300-foot mountain, surrounded by relatively undeveloped state forest. And there is little commercial air traffic.

The main stargazing field is a 50-acre lawn, speckled with clover and rimmed with low-standing pines, that has a view that nearly stretches from horizon to horizon — a natural planetarium. Earthen berms were built and trees planted next to the road that runs through the park to absorb light from the little traffic that passes through.

The park sits off State Route 44, so it is much more accessible than other ideal stargazing locales. Its location was crucial in helping it become established. In 1998, Mr. Harrison, the park manager, said he noticed a man peering through a telescope at Cherry Springs. He asked him why the park was such a good place to look at stars.

The astronomer, Mr. Harrison said, had found his way to Cherry Springs because nighttime satellite photos of the Earth’s surface had shown it to be smack-dab in a black patch — one of the best spots east of the Mississippi River for stargazing. So Mr. Harrison figured Cherry Springs was big enough for the public to share the sky with astronomers.

“Being from here, I’d always appreciated the dark skies at night,” said Mr. Harrison, who lives in nearby Coudersport, “but I didn’t have a true appreciation until I’d met these astronomers.”

A Cherry Springs Dark Sky Fund has been established to finance enhancements to the park to make it even better for stargazing. To cut back on light pollution, for example, all the park’s fixtures are shielded.

The cost of a visit is minimal: $4 to use the observation field and $20 to $25 to use one of three large white domes and a shed at the field that open so astronomers can set their telescopes inside and look at the stars — and take photographs — without the telescopes being shaken by the wind.

For less sophisticated stargazers, there are Music and Stars programs — $10 a person, $17 for families — that include a concert, hot chocolate and cookies, plus a 10 p.m. tour of the night sky by Mr. Nawrocki, who has retired and started a company, Crystal Spheres, that also offers star talks to private groups.

“There’s a good part and a bad part,” he said of gazing into a sky of 10,000 stars. “It’s good because there are so many stars. It’s bad because there are so many stars. It’s hard to keep yourself oriented sometimes.”

ONE Saturday night in June, Mr. Nawrocki gave a one-hour star tour to about 200 people, many bundled in blankets, who had just listened to a concert by Jakob’s Hollow, a local folk group. The sky was clear and illuminated by a first-quarter moon — not perfect conditions, but not bad. Five telescopes and star maps were provided.

The ground rules: Only flashlights with red lights were allowed, and they could only be pointed downward. Those leaving the park were asked to keep their headlights off until they were away from the dark-sky field. Conversations were kept low, as hushed as those in a church.

The crowd included visitors from Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Rochester — and several people from just down the road, which is a recent development. As Lori Bollhorst, a resident of nearby Sweden Valley, put it later, “Now when you hear ‘stargazing,’ you know it’s not just something you go out and do in your backyard.”

Carol Spaulding, who lives in Coudersport, says she used to enjoy lazy drives through the park with her husband because the daytime scenery was so magnificent. The views are majestic, looking down on rumpled hills that are blanketed with trees that blaze with color each fall.

But now, she goes there at night. And she gazes upward, learning a little more with every visit about a sky she says she always took a little for granted.

“I don’t have a telescope, but I love to come out here because it’s so beautiful,” she said between bites of a cookie. “These people are so anxious to share their telescopes with you and help you see the skies. It takes your breath away.

“You feel like you can touch the stars.”

VISITOR INFORMATION

Cherry Springs State Park, where a “star party” will be held this weekend, is in Potter County, Pa., off State Route 44, about 15 miles southeast of Coudersport, Pa. From New York, take Interstate 80 west to I-180 north. At Williamsport, take Route 15 North, then Route 6 west to Galeton. Follow signs for about 11 miles to Cherry Springs.

The Cherry Springs State Park’s Web site:

www.dcnr.state.pa.us/stateparks/parks/cherrysprings.aspx includes a calendar of events and a Clear Sky Clock, which carries a forecast of stargazing conditions.

The Potter County Visitors Bureau (www.visitpottercounty.com) offers information about places to stay, eat and shop. With about 18,000 residents spread over 1,081 square miles, Potter County is a prime area for fishing, hunting, hiking and snowmobiling.

A little money goes a long way in Potter County. The Mill Stream Inn (918 East Second Street, Coudersport; 814-274-9900; www.millstreaminn.com), which is about 12 miles from Cherry Springs, has double rooms for $73 and suites for $115.

A typical dinner for two at the Sweden Valley Inn (Route 6 at Route 44 in Coudersport; 814-274-7057; www.swedenvalleyinn.com) costs about $30.

:D I am already planning a trip when the weather turns chilly - probably November. It depends on WHEN it gets cold as well as clear and dry. :) For the best viewing. I can't wait! :D

(S) (*) (S)

(f)

Dum spiro, spero.

As long as I breathe, I hope.

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

sweetlady

10-07-2007, 12:24 AM

(l) (l) (l)

"In my travels I have been given the gift of having my perceptions wrenched from their moorings. This I believe is the single most valuable thing about leaving your physical comfort zone and entering another zone that's uncomfortable and foreign.There's a growing awareness that my dissatisfaction with my life was propelled by a force that offers another path. This force is neutral though. That is the hardest thing to understand. You want it to take over, to decide. But it won't. Even though it's an abundantly caring loving presence, it insists on nothing. We all make out own choices. But with choice there's always a price to pay, either hard lessons or ones that eventually come with reward."

p. 237: Yearning Wild: Exploring the Last Frontier and the Landscape of the Heart.

(f)

Dum spiro, spero.

As long as I breathe, I hope.

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

sweetlady

10-07-2007, 12:27 AM

(l) (l) (l)

"I'd suggest that loving a place is a big part of what life is about. One of those frustrating paradoxes of our modern humanness is that wee seem to deny, fear or resist, even destroy what we most yearn to experience. One of the ways we avoid feeling for a place is by staying on the move. I know this well. I know also, that we Americans are the most restless people on earth. We migrate, not like nomads following seasons and food, but because we are unhappy, because we seek something that can never be found. My own running was no different. We resist learning to love a place, a landscape, resist risking that much intimacy with something so powerful, because doing so might mean we have to stay and take a stand. Government policies support such transience and detachment. The managers of National Parks, Refuges and Forests are routinely transferred every few years to keep them from loving a place too much. Loving a place, in the industrial/political mind set, is a hindrance, a tragic flaw."

....about ANWR being protected from petroleum development, p. 292, "Yearning Wild: Exploring the Final Frontier and the Landscape of the Heart."

(l) (l)

(f)

Dum spiro, spero.

As long as I breathe, I hope.

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

sweetlady

10-09-2007, 05:52 PM

:o :o :o

Elderly gay people in assisted-living centers and nursing homes increasingly report being mistreated.

October 9, 2007

Aging and Gay, and Facing Prejudice in Twilight

By JANE GROSS

New York Times

Even now, at 81 and with her memory beginning to fade, Gloria Donadello recalls her painful brush with bigotry at an assisted-living center in Santa Fe, N.M. Sitting with those she considered friends, “people were laughing and making certain kinds of comments, and I told them, ‘Please don’t do that, because I’m gay.’”

The result of her outspokenness, Ms. Donadello said, was swift and merciless. “Everyone looked horrified,” she said. No longer included in conversation or welcome at meals, she plunged into depression. Medication did not help. With her emotional health deteriorating, Ms. Donadello moved into an adult community nearby that caters to gay men and lesbians.

“I felt like I was a pariah,” she said, settled in her new home. “For me, it was a choice between life and death.”

Elderly gay people like Ms. Donadello, living in nursing homes or assisted-living centers or receiving home care, increasingly report that they have been disrespected, shunned or mistreated in ways that range from hurtful to deadly, even leading some to commit suicide.

Some have seen their partners and friends insulted or isolated. Others live in fear of the day when they are dependent on strangers for the most personal care. That dread alone can be damaging, physically and emotionally, say geriatric doctors, psychiatrists and social workers.

The plight of the gay elderly has been taken up by a generation of gay men and lesbians, concerned about their own futures, who have begun a national drive to educate care providers about the social isolation, even outright discrimination, that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender clients face.

Several solutions are emerging. In Boston, New York, Chicago, Atlanta and other urban centers, so-called L.G.B.T. Aging Projects are springing up, to train long-term care providers. At the same time, there is a move to separate care, with the comfort of the familiar.

In the Boston suburbs, the Chelsea Jewish Nursing Home will break ground in December for a complex that includes a unit for the gay and lesbian elderly. And Stonewall Communities in Boston has begun selling homes designed for older gay people with support services similar to assisted-living centers. There are also openly gay geriatric case managers who can guide clients to compassionate services.

“Many times gay people avoid seeking help at all because of their fears about how they’ll be treated,” said David Aronstein, president of Stonewall Communities. “Unless they see affirming actions, they’ll assume the worst.”

Homophobia directed at the elderly has many faces.

Home health aides must be reminded not to wear gloves at inappropriate times, for example while opening the front door or making the bed, when there is no evidence of H.I.V. infection, said Joe Collura, a nurse at the largest home care agency in Greenwich Village.

A lesbian checking into a double room at a Chicago rehabilitation center was greeted by a roommate yelling, “Get the man out of here!” The lesbian patient, Renae Ogletree, summoned a friend to take her elsewhere.

Sometimes tragedy results. In one nursing home, an openly gay man, without family or friends, was recently moved off his floor to quiet the protests of other residents and their families. He was given a room among patients with severe disabilities or dementia. The home called upon Amber Hollibaugh, now a senior strategist at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the author of the first training curriculum for nursing homes. Ms. Hollibaugh assured the 79-year-old man that a more humane solution would be found, but he hanged himself, Ms. Hollibaugh said. She was unwilling to identify the nursing home or even its East Coast city, because she still consults there, among other places.

While this outcome is exceedingly rare, moving gay residents to placate others is common, said Dr. Melinda Lantz, chief of geriatric psychiatry at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, who spent 13 years in a similar post at the Jewish Home and Hospital Lifecare System. “When you’re stuck and have to move someone because they’re being ganged up on, you put them with people who are very confused,” Dr. Lantz said. “That’s a terrible nuts-and-bolts reality.”

The most common reaction, in a generation accustomed to being in the closet, is a retreat back to the invisibility that was necessary for most of their lives, when homosexuality was considered both a crime and a mental illness. A partner is identified as a brother. No pictures or gay-themed books are left around.

Elderly heterosexuals also suffer the indignities of old age, but not to the same extent, Dr. Lantz said. “There is something special about having to hide this part of your identity at a time when your entire identity is threatened,” she said. “That’s a faster pathway to depression, failure to thrive and even premature death.”

The movement to improve conditions for the gay elderly is driven by demographics. There are an estimated 2.4 million gay, lesbian or bisexual Americans over the age of 55, said Gary Gates, a senior research fellow at the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. That estimate was extrapolated by Dr. Gates using census data that counts only same-sex couples along with other government data that counts both single and coupled gay people. Among those in same-sex couples, the number of gay men and women over 55 has almost doubled from 2000 to 2006, Dr. Gates said, to 416,000, from 222,000.

California is the only state with a law saying the gay elderly have special needs, like other members of minority groups. A new law encourages training for employees and contractors who work with the elderly and permits state financing of projects like gay senior centers.

Federal law provides no antidiscrimination protections to gay people. Twenty states explicitly outlaw such discrimination in housing and public accommodations. But no civil rights claims have been made by gay residents of nursing homes, according to the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, which litigates and monitors such cases. Potential plaintiffs, the organization says, are too frail or frightened to bring action.

The problem is compounded, experts say, because most of the gay elderly do not declare their identity, and institutions rarely make an effort to find out who they are to prepare staff members and residents for what may be an unfamiliar situation.

So that is where Lisa Krinsky, the director of the L.G.B.T. Aging Project in Massachusetts, begins her “cultural competency” training sessions, including one last month at North Shore Elder Services in Danvers.

Admissions forms for long-term care have boxes to check for marital status and next of kin. But none of the boxes match the circumstances of gay men or lesbians. Ms. Krinsky suggested follow-up questions like “Who is important in your life?”

In the last two years, Ms. Krinsky has trained more than 2,000 employees of agencies serving the elderly across Massachusetts. She presents them with common problems and nudges them toward solutions.

A gay man fired his home health aide. Did the case manager ask why? The patient might be receiving unwanted Bible readings from someone who thinks homosexuality is a sin. What about a lesbian at an assisted-living center refusing visitors? Maybe she is afraid that her friends’ appearance will give her away to fellow residents.

“We need to be open and sensitive,” Ms. Krinsky said, “but not wrap them in a rainbow flag and make them march in a parade.”

Some of the gay elderly chose openness as the quickest and most painless way of finding compassionate care. That is the case for Bruce Steiner, 76, of Sudbury, Mass., whose 71-year-old partner, Jim Anthony, has had Alzheimer’s disease for more than a decade and can no longer feed himself or speak.

Mr. Steiner is resisting a nursing home for Mr. Anthony, even after several hospitalizations last year. The care had been uneven, Mr. Steiner said, and it was unclear whether homosexuality was a factor. But Mr. Steiner decided to take no chances and hired a gay case manager who helped him “do some filtering.”

They selected a home care agency with a reputation for treating gay clients well. Preparing for an unknown future, Mr. Steiner also visited several nursing homes, “giving them the opportunity to encourage or discourage me.” His favorite “is one run by the Carmelite sisters, of all things, because they had a sense of humor.”

They are the exception, not the rule.

Jalna Perry, a 77-year-old lesbian and psychiatrist in Boston, is out, she said, but does not broadcast the fact, which would feel unnatural to someone of her generation. Dr. Perry, who uses a wheelchair, has spent time in assisted-living centers and nursing homes. There, she said, her guard was up all the time.

Dr. Perry came out to a few other residents in the assisted-living center — artsy, professional women who she figured would accept her. But even with them, she said, “You don’t talk about gay things.” Mostly, she kept to herself. “You size people up,” Dr. Perry said. “You know the activities person is a lesbian; that’s a quick read.”

Trickier was an aide who was gentle with others but surly and heavy-handed when helping Dr. Perry with personal tasks. Did the aide suspect and disapprove? With a male nurse who was gay, Dr. Perry said she felt “extremely comfortable.”

“Except for that nurse, I was very lonely,” she said. “It would have been nice if someone else was out among the residents.”

Such loneliness is a source of dread to the members of the Prime Timers, a Boston social group for older gay men. Among the regulars, who meet for lunch once a week, are Emile Dufour, 70, a former priest, and Fred Riley, 75, who has a 30-year heterosexual marriage behind him. The pair have been together for two decades and married in 2004. But their default position, should they need nursing care, will be to hide their gayness, as they did for half a lifetime, rather than face slurs and whispers.

“As strong as I am today,” Mr. Riley said, “when I’m at the gate of the nursing home, the closet door is going to slam shut behind me.”

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force:

http://www.thetaskforce.org/issues/aging

Free Report: Outing age: Public policy issues affecting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender elders:

http://www.thetaskforce.org/reports_and_research/outing_age

Selling us short: How Social Security privatization will affect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans:

http://www.thetaskforce.org/reports_and_research/selling_us_short

Make room for all: Diversity, cultural competency and discrimination in an aging America:

http://www.thetaskforce.org/reports_and_research/make_room_for_all

LGBT Aging Project, a Boston group that provides cultural competency trainings:

http://www.lgbtagingproject.org/

:| I am nowhere near the age of these folks, but it IS a deep concern for the future. :s

(o) (o) Time to get involved and take action! (o) (o)

(f)

Fide, sed qui, vide.

Trust but take care whom.

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

sweetlady

10-09-2007, 05:53 PM

<:o) <:o) <:o)

Scotland on Sunday Sun 5 Aug 2007

Now here come the brides...

MURDO MACLEOD

THE anvil's future is pink. Gretna Green - the Border village where eloping English couples once flocked to take advantage of Scotland's liberal marriage laws - is aiming at the gay wedding market to boost flagging business.

It is hoped that the tradition of allowing couples to tie the knot there will attract a new stream of lovers.

The move comes in the wake of figures showing that conventional weddings in the village have fallen by a fifth since 2004.

The drop is blamed largely on the rise of couples going overseas to marry.

Now, Dumfries and Galloway Council is in talks with the local tourism agency about plans to attract more civil partnerships.

A source at VisitScotland Dumfries and Galloway said: "We are preparing guides and working on proposals to step things up for general weddings.

"As far as civil partnerships are concerned, it's something we have been talking to the registrar about building up for the future."

So far, almost half of all the civil partnerships in Dumfries and Galloway have taken place at Gretna Green, with the village hosting 46 of the 94 ceremonies since the law was introduced in 2005.

Dumfries and Galloway is also the region where female civil partnerships most heavily outnumber those involving males, with 60 female 'weddings' compared with 34 for the men. In most of the rest of Scotland, most gay weddings involve men.

Local wedding organisers have already seen demand from gay couples.

Rhona Lynn runs the Gretna Wedding Bureau with her husband Alister.

She said: "Gretna does seem to be attracting women for civil partnerships. We have had three couples in just the past month and they were all women, and we have more booked in.

"They are of different ages and it's lovely to see them."

Audra Glendinning, of Gretna One-Stop Wedding, said: "It's definitely something that's coming in. We have done three or four civil partnerships so far, although we do still have more bookings for 'conventional' weddings."

She added: "I think Gretna still has that romance, and the idea of running away to get married is still a very powerful one, even though the law has been changed now for years. Gretna has a very strong romantic image."

Calum Irving, director of gay rights group Stonewall Scotland, said: "I have long thought that civil partnerships would be a great opportunity for Scotland. It's good to see that Dumfries and Galloway have realised that it's a great opportunity."

The 'pink pound' - gay spending power - is worth an estimated £70bn a year.

A spokesman for Dumfries and Galloway Council said: "Civil partnerships certainly seem to be taking off at Gretna, with 2007 on course to record the highest figure yet.

"Conventional marriages continue to hover around the 5,000 mark each year."

Figures released last month by the Registrar-General for Scotland show that the number of marriages at Gretna Green fell by 10%, from 4,926 in 2005 to 4,434 in 2006.

That represents a 20% drop from the peak of 5,555 weddings in 2004.

One of the weddings was that of Scottish socialite and model Honor Fraser.

Gretna Green became a popular destination for eloping couples in 1753, when English law required both bride and groom to be 21 or over before they could marry without the consent of both sets of parents.

At that time in Scotland, boys could marry at 14 and girls at 12, with neither requiring parental consent.

And a marriage carried out in Scotland was valid south of the Border.

Gretna Green was the first stop over the Border for stagecoaches and became a focus for eloping couples.

The blacksmith and his anvil became popular as, under Scots law, anyone had the authority to conduct an "irregular marriage".

Meanwhile, newly published official statistics show that, for the first time, there are more gay weddings involving women than men.

In the first three months of 2007, there were 63 partnerships involving women, compared to 49 for men.

Previously men had always outnumbered women.

The Western Isles is the only part of Scotland to have had no civil partnerships so far, with Orkney hosting just the one ceremony.

Legal changes in Scotland's gay history

Although homosexuality was decriminalised in England and Wales in 1967, Scotland did not follow suit until 1980, and then only for males over 21.

The age of homosexual consent was brought down to 18 in 1994 and then reduced to 16 in 2000, to make it the same age as for heterosexuals in the wake of fears by the government that having different ages of consent might be open to legal challenge on equality grounds.

Scotland's first "gay wedding" took place on December 20, 2005 involving John Maguire from West Lothian and partner Laurence Scott-Mackay from Sutherland, who went on to have their union blessed by Bishop Richard Holloway.

In the rest of that year 84 civil partnerships took place.

In 2006, there were a further 1,047 partnerships.

Scotland's "gay wedding capital" is Edinburgh, which has hosted 620 ceremonies, compared to Glasgow which has had 452, despite the overall population of Glasgow being much larger.

http://new.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=294&id=1224322007

(y) (y) (y)

(f)

Fama crescit eundo.

Rumors grow through circulation.

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

sweetlady

10-09-2007, 05:55 PM

:D :D :D

"I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic and a progressive religious experience."

~~Shelley Winters

;)

(f)

Claude os, aperi oculos!

Shut your mouth, open your eyes. ;)

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

sweetlady

10-09-2007, 05:56 PM

:o

;)

Lamb Shanks

SUMMER IS GOING, going, gone and with it those flimsy Capri leggings. As shoppers fill the gap with cigarette pants and skinny jeans, leather leggings by Rag & Bone have become a surprise must-have. Part Lara Croft, part Barbarella and just a touch Material Girl, the leggings are made of lambskin with a stretch backing that prevents uncomely sagging in the seat and bagging in the knees — ensuring that the shape snaps back, every time. In black (at right), dark gray and light gray ($780 at Barneys New York). Wear them to cool down a chunky sweater, rough up a frothy dress or with a crisp shirt and jacket for a punk equestrian effect.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/10/05/fashion/07pulse.3.jpg

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/10/05/fashion/20071007_PULSE_SLIDESHOW_3.html

Cool story:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/10/05/fashion/20071007_PULSE_SLIDESHOW_4.html

(f)

Docendo discimus.

We learn by teaching.

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

sweetlady

10-09-2007, 05:57 PM

(f)

The early fall shoes women are wearing in New York are a cobweb of straps, and some are studded like motorcycle jackets. Despite the warm temperatures, summer’s comfortable flip-flops have faded and the interesting shoe is definitely the status accessory, along with handbags. High heels and platforms are part of the mix. By BILL CUNNINGHAM

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/10/05/style/20071007STREET_2.html

(f)

Crudelius est quam mori semper timere mortem.

It is crueller to be always afraid of dying than to die.

Sweetlady & Wyattt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

10-09-2007, 05:58 PM

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

Naomi Klein, the author of “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” uses Bach Rescue Remedy to calm her nerves.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/10/05/fashion/07poss190.2.jpg

October 7, 2007

Possessed

A Small Bottle of Calm in a World Gone Mad

By DAVID COLMAN

BOOKSTORES and best-seller lists are arranged by, among other things, fiction and nonfiction. But with so much blurring of the two, do they truly merit segregation?

If you wanted a more clear-cut division, you could do worse than draw a line between panic-inducing and panic-allaying. The best-seller list is awash in books aimed at either inducing or reducing stress. Certainly the title of (and blurbs for) Naomi Klein’s new book, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” (Metropolitan Books), would seem to place it squarely in the freak-out-immediately camp rather than the light-a-scented-candle one. (John le Carré, who would know, called it “scary as hell.”)

Ms. Klein understands that such blurbs sell books, but she was disappointed that her publisher didn’t use her favorite, from the writer John Berger, who wrote that the book “provokes and instills a calm.”

That’s because Ms. Klein doesn’t want you to panic. This desire was born out of her research on spots like New Orleans after the hurricane and Indonesia after the tsunami. A kind of numbness, a mental and economic shock, afflicts people and places that have undergone catastrophes, she said, and makes them easy targets for exploitation. She would rather not terrorize her readers similarly.

Still, she draws enough connections — between, to name a few, the Blackwater scandal in Iraq, the Pinochet regime in Chile and the economist Milton Friedman — to push a panic button or two. And it was while she was reporting on the elusive economics of Iraq reconstruction in spring 2004 that she learned an important life lesson: remain calm.

“That was when everything went crazy,” she recalled. “The four Blackwater guards were killed, Paul Bremer had closed down Moqtada al-Sadr’s newspaper, and both Falluja and Najaf were under siege.” Then the Abu Ghraib photographs leaked out.

“It was scary to be a Westerner,” she said. “A lot of reporters were on Valium.” Around that time she noticed a friend putting droplets of some sort into a glass of water. Intrigued, she found that the potion was Bach Rescue Remedy, a homeopathic treatment developed in the 1930s and meant, the label says, “for relief of occasional stress.”

She tried it. Soon enough, the little dropper-top bottle was a constant presence in her bag. She wasn’t hooked exactly, but, well, let’s call it charmed. “It’s very, very mild, especially if you dilute it,” she said. “I use it if I’m having trouble sleeping, or before a speech if I’m tense.”

But the contents of the bottle (a blend of flower essences, according to a spokesman for Nelsons, the British company that makes the Bach line) are not its real charm.

“I have no real sense that it works,” Ms. Klein said. “I think of it like a kind of talisman. I like the old-fashioned country-doctor packaging.”

While the tough-minded Ms. Klein does not seem the type to be toting around a vial of flower essences, she said she takes an abstract view, as if the bottle is filled not with flower power, but with those elusive connections she loves, and which give her a sense of reassurance.

“Whenever I feel bombarded, my body tenses up,” she said. “Shock is about severing connections. It’s about losing our narrative. This is why I’ve been thinking about being calm. I think, if this is what shock is, what’s the antidote? I think it’s calm.”

Like her yellow bottle, it may not be the cure for everything, but it’s not a bad place to start.

:D :D AMEN, SISTER, AMEN!

(f)

Memento audere semper.

Remember to always dare.

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