Federal prosecutors are seeking the forfeiture of $2.5 million in cash from a former Carnegie Mellon University trustee accused of conspiring to launder more than half a billion dollars for a drug cartel.
An indictment filed Wednesday in Texas alleges that El Paso lawyer and philanthropist Marco Delgado defrauded millions from a firm doing business with a Mexican utility and used that money to underwrite a lavish lifestyle that included a $250,000 contribution to Carnegie Mellon University.
Delgado could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison if convicted. Authorities also have requested forfeiture of $2.5 million in cash, a house and furniture in El Paso and a New Mexico apartment, as well as two vehicles.
Delgado is charged with 15 money laundering and two wire fraud counts. The indictment returned in El Paso alleges Delgado fraudulently instructed a bank in Mexico to move $32 million dollars from his client's Mexican account to an account he controlled in the Turks and Caicos islands. The indictment says the El Paso lawyer then diverted part of that money to Texas, New Mexico and Pennsylvania.
Delgado faces a separate indictment accusing him of conspiring to launder more than $600 million for a Mexican drug cartel. He was arrested in November and charged with conspiring to launder drug profits from July 2007 through December 2008.
Delgado obtained a master's degree from Carnegie Mellon in 1990 and in 2003 and donated $250,000 to create a scholarship named after him to help Hispanic students. He was also a member of several charities and a regular contributor to the El Paso symphony orchestra.
The investigation into Delgado started in September 2007 after a $1 million seizure was made in Atlanta. The man carrying the money told investigators that he, Delgado and other men had met in Mexico and agreed to transport money for the Milenio Cartel, a drug-trafficking organization based in the Mexican state of Colima.
According to U.S. authorities, Delgado admitted to U.S. agents that he had been contacted by people in Mexico about slowing down extradition processes of alleged cartel members and about moving up to $600 million from the U.S. to Mexico. He told the agents the million dollars seized was "a trial run" to see if it was possible, according to the U.S. government.
Treesh was sentenced to die for shooting 58-year-old Henry Dupree during a robbery of an adult book store in Eastlake on Aug. 27, 1994.
Treesh's attorneys described him as a cocaine addict who was high during the robbery and is deeply sorry for what happened.
"Hindsight, regret and remorse cannot turn back the clock and cannot return Mr. Dupree's life," they said in a petition for clemency. "What Fred can do and has tried to do is to help prevent others from making the same mistakes he did" by teaching them to avoid drugs.
Attorney Adele Shenk didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on Kasich's decision. It was unclear Thursday if Treesh had federal appeals remaining, though execution dates are generally set once an inmate has exhausted those appeals.
Treesh, 48, argued he had accepted responsibility for the killing but that it was an unintentional consequence of a struggle for a gun while he was high. But the parole board concluded evidence showed Dupree was seated when shot and hadn't appeared to be a threat to Treesh.
Prosecutors contend Treesh intentionally murdered Dupree and tried to kill others, including police officers who pursued him, after a three-week spree of increasingly violent crimes. They said Treesh and a co-defendant had robbed banks and businesses, committed sexual assaults, stole cars, committed carjackings and shot someone to death in a Michigan robbery during a spree that also took them to Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Vice President Nicolas Maduro said on television that Chavez "is battling there for his health, for his life, and we're accompanying him."
The vice president has used similar phrasing in the past, saying on Dec. 20 that Chavez "is fighting a great battle ... for his life, for his health."
Chavez hasn't spoken publicly since before his latest cancer operation in Cuba on Dec. 11. He returned to Venezuela on Feb. 18, and the government says he has been undergoing more treatment at a military hospital in Caracas.
Maduro also called for Venezuelans to keep praying for Chavez and to remain loyal to the president. He said Chavez's health had suffered because he had dedicated himself "body and soul" to his work as president.
Chavez himself has previously acknowledged that he was neglecting his health in recent years, often staying up late and drinking dozens of cups of coffee a day.
The president has undergone surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation treatments since June 2011, when he first announced his cancer diagnosis. He hasn't specified the type of cancer or the exact location in his pelvic region where his tumors have been removed.
2013年2月28日星期四
2013年2月27日星期三
Council considers proposal to stay at church center to further mission
The church’s denominational offices would remain at the Episcopal Church Center in New York if the Executive Council accepts a recommendation it received Feb. 26 from a group of Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society executives.
Of four main scenarios analyzed, “God’s mission of reconciliation is best furthered” by remaining at 815 Second Ave. in Manhattan and consolidating DFMS operations at the church center to free up even more space to rent to outside tenants than the 3.5 floors that are currently leased out, a report to council says. This choice would be “in the organization’s best interests financially, both in terms of budget effect and for long-term investment purposes,” according to the report.
The DFMS, the church’s corporate entity, currently rents 2.5 floors to the Ad Council and one floor to Permanent Mission of Haiti to the United Nations. The church center has nine floors of office space.
The study began in February 2012, five months before General Convention met, when council’s Finances for Mission committee asked DFMS management to study the possible relocation of the church center.
The report said the group believes that “the real underlying energy in examining the location of the church center is less about its location and more about how it actually functions,” adding that the writers “could not be in greater agreement about the need to reform how the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society functions and serves the needs of the church, particularly as to fostering, encouraging, and supporting mission at the local level in partnership with local leadership.”
Calling the desire for relocation “only a mask for the real reform needed and called for,” the group asks “how long, we wonder, would it be before complaints about the isolation of the Church Center in New York would become complaints about the isolation of the Church Center in some other city?”
“Perhaps rather than shifting the locus of our communal anxiety from one site to another, we would be better served in the long run to use our best judgment to make a rational and strategic decision in the best interests of the church’s engagement of God’s mission and then clearly articulate that decision to the church.”
Episcopal Church Chief Operating Officer Bishop Stacy Sauls told the council that the question of relocating the church center is regularly asked. The first time was about eight years after the building began to be used, and the issue seems to return at the same interval, he said.
Sauls, Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer Kurt Barnes, Deputy Chief Operating Officer and Director of Mission Sam McDonald, Director of Human Resources John Colon and Legal Counsel Paul Nix, all members of the 10-person Executive Oversight Group, conducted the study that began last spring.
The study considered Chicago, Atlanta, Washington, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Houston, Minneapolis, Detroit, Miami, Philadelphia, Boston, Charlotte, Ft. Lauderdale and Cincinnati, as well as another location in New York as alternatives to the 50-year-old church center.
Later in the day, Nat Rockett, Cushman & Wakefield executive vice president, told the entire council that it is not unusual that his firm came to a different conclusion that the Executive Oversight Group because the real estate firm looked at a different, limited set of factors.
After the recommendation was presented, council discussed the conclusion during an executive session on the second day of council’s three-day winter meeting. The session was closed because part of the discussion of the group’s report involved proprietary information such as the anticipated per-square-foot market rental rate for the 11-story building and its presumed value on the Manhattan real estate market. That information will also be absent from the version of the report that is expected to be posted here Feb. 27.
Council took no action on the recommendation and Finances for Mission and Governance and Administration for Mission will take up the report at council’s June 8-10 meeting.
The Executive Oversight Group came to its unanimous conclusion, the report says, after analyzing five “mission considerations,” including the unity of the church, mission partnerships, continuation of services provided, promoting justice and maximizing financial resources for mission. The overall consideration, according to Sauls, was stewardship in terms of financial management of the church’s resources for mission.
“We question the prudence of such a disruption at precisely the time when the church is reforming itself to have an increasingly missional focus and the staff is most needed to facilitate, encourage, and lead the initiatives being implemented as part of the Marks of Mission Budget as adopted at the 2012 General Convention,” the writers say.
In addition, Episcopal Migration Ministries might be threatened by a move because it is unlikely many staffers would leave New York since resettlement jobs abound there. If a major loss of staff impacted EMM’s abilities to offer the services for which it receives government grants, the ministry might have to be discontinued, the report says.
The report expresses concern about leaving New York because of the laws that might be encountered elsewhere. Married same-sex couples would be forced to choose between their jobs and moving to a jurisdiction that did not recognize their marriages, the writers suggest. New York recognizes same-sex marriage.
“We wish to be clear that we, as management, will implement whatever needs to be done to serve the church, and further, that we believe the entire staff of the Church will exercise its best efforts to the same end,” the writers say. “However, we do wonder about the effect on our prophetic voice of the indiscriminate dismissal of staff in order to replace them with cheaper labor absent some persuasive, if not compelling reason, to do so.”
“As leaders in the church, we have a particular concern about the effect on our witness on the issue of marriage equality when some married persons employed by us would be forced to make a choice between keeping their jobs and having their marriages recognized.”
Of four main scenarios analyzed, “God’s mission of reconciliation is best furthered” by remaining at 815 Second Ave. in Manhattan and consolidating DFMS operations at the church center to free up even more space to rent to outside tenants than the 3.5 floors that are currently leased out, a report to council says. This choice would be “in the organization’s best interests financially, both in terms of budget effect and for long-term investment purposes,” according to the report.
The DFMS, the church’s corporate entity, currently rents 2.5 floors to the Ad Council and one floor to Permanent Mission of Haiti to the United Nations. The church center has nine floors of office space.
The study began in February 2012, five months before General Convention met, when council’s Finances for Mission committee asked DFMS management to study the possible relocation of the church center.
The report said the group believes that “the real underlying energy in examining the location of the church center is less about its location and more about how it actually functions,” adding that the writers “could not be in greater agreement about the need to reform how the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society functions and serves the needs of the church, particularly as to fostering, encouraging, and supporting mission at the local level in partnership with local leadership.”
Calling the desire for relocation “only a mask for the real reform needed and called for,” the group asks “how long, we wonder, would it be before complaints about the isolation of the Church Center in New York would become complaints about the isolation of the Church Center in some other city?”
“Perhaps rather than shifting the locus of our communal anxiety from one site to another, we would be better served in the long run to use our best judgment to make a rational and strategic decision in the best interests of the church’s engagement of God’s mission and then clearly articulate that decision to the church.”
Episcopal Church Chief Operating Officer Bishop Stacy Sauls told the council that the question of relocating the church center is regularly asked. The first time was about eight years after the building began to be used, and the issue seems to return at the same interval, he said.
Sauls, Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer Kurt Barnes, Deputy Chief Operating Officer and Director of Mission Sam McDonald, Director of Human Resources John Colon and Legal Counsel Paul Nix, all members of the 10-person Executive Oversight Group, conducted the study that began last spring.
The study considered Chicago, Atlanta, Washington, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Houston, Minneapolis, Detroit, Miami, Philadelphia, Boston, Charlotte, Ft. Lauderdale and Cincinnati, as well as another location in New York as alternatives to the 50-year-old church center.
Later in the day, Nat Rockett, Cushman & Wakefield executive vice president, told the entire council that it is not unusual that his firm came to a different conclusion that the Executive Oversight Group because the real estate firm looked at a different, limited set of factors.
After the recommendation was presented, council discussed the conclusion during an executive session on the second day of council’s three-day winter meeting. The session was closed because part of the discussion of the group’s report involved proprietary information such as the anticipated per-square-foot market rental rate for the 11-story building and its presumed value on the Manhattan real estate market. That information will also be absent from the version of the report that is expected to be posted here Feb. 27.
Council took no action on the recommendation and Finances for Mission and Governance and Administration for Mission will take up the report at council’s June 8-10 meeting.
The Executive Oversight Group came to its unanimous conclusion, the report says, after analyzing five “mission considerations,” including the unity of the church, mission partnerships, continuation of services provided, promoting justice and maximizing financial resources for mission. The overall consideration, according to Sauls, was stewardship in terms of financial management of the church’s resources for mission.
“We question the prudence of such a disruption at precisely the time when the church is reforming itself to have an increasingly missional focus and the staff is most needed to facilitate, encourage, and lead the initiatives being implemented as part of the Marks of Mission Budget as adopted at the 2012 General Convention,” the writers say.
In addition, Episcopal Migration Ministries might be threatened by a move because it is unlikely many staffers would leave New York since resettlement jobs abound there. If a major loss of staff impacted EMM’s abilities to offer the services for which it receives government grants, the ministry might have to be discontinued, the report says.
The report expresses concern about leaving New York because of the laws that might be encountered elsewhere. Married same-sex couples would be forced to choose between their jobs and moving to a jurisdiction that did not recognize their marriages, the writers suggest. New York recognizes same-sex marriage.
“We wish to be clear that we, as management, will implement whatever needs to be done to serve the church, and further, that we believe the entire staff of the Church will exercise its best efforts to the same end,” the writers say. “However, we do wonder about the effect on our prophetic voice of the indiscriminate dismissal of staff in order to replace them with cheaper labor absent some persuasive, if not compelling reason, to do so.”
“As leaders in the church, we have a particular concern about the effect on our witness on the issue of marriage equality when some married persons employed by us would be forced to make a choice between keeping their jobs and having their marriages recognized.”
2013年2月25日星期一
Don Hasson guides family business through multiple expansions
Built in 1906, the seven-story brick building was vast and filled with all sorts of interesting things.
“It was like walking back in time,” Hasson said. “It had five great big freight elevators with those wooden doors that hurl you up and down. It had an old round chute that carried boxes from the top floor down to the basement.”
It had wall shelves that had to be reached by 20-foot ladders that moved on a track attached at the ceiling. When the building was closed in 1980 so the company could move to a new facility, workers found parts for horse-drawn wagons, plow repair parts and other archaic inventory that had been tucked away and forgotten.
“When I was a kid, I loved to go over there and hang out and play and ride the elevator,” Hasson said.
His grandfather C.S. Hasson was one of the founders of the company, and Don Hasson’s father, Jim Hasson, was its president at the time.
“After my dad got tired of me getting in everybody’s way, he decided the best thing for me was to put bicycles together,” Don Hasson said.
“After my dad got tired of me getting in everybody’s way, he decided the best thing for me was to put bicycles together,” Don Hasson said.
That was OK. Building bikes was fun, Hasson said. Now age 62, Hasson is president of the company and has spent most of his life building it into an operation with a combined 700,000 square feet of warehouse space in two states, customers in 17 states and a sales staff of 85.
And the fun now comes from each chance to add to this hardware empire, Hasson said. He keeps a list of 12 companies House-Hasson has either bought outright or acquired the business and sales staff from after they closed. The chance to land a major account or to pick up the pieces when a competitor comes apart and use them to build your business is exciting, Hasson said.
“Every couple of years we get bored just doing the same thing, so we go try to stir up something new and different,” he said.
Hasson focused on building a sales territory in northern Georgia, but when Sam House retired in 1926, Hasson came back to Knoxville to become president. Hasson served until his son J.W. “Jack” Hasson took over as president in 1950. By 1954, House-Hasson Hardware had 35 salespeople and operated in seven states.
Jack Hasson’s brother James K. “Jim” Hasson became company president in 1970. That year, the company made the first of many acquisitions that would propel its growth.
But not all was unbridled expansion. The world wars and the Great Depression presented challenges, and House-Hasson also found itself facing competition from mail order and catalog companies, foreshadowing the competition it would start to face in the 1980s from the growth of “big box” stores like The Home Depot and Lowe’s.
Plan your route to avoid dangerous and stressful intersections. For example, navigating the intersection of 16th Street, U Street, and New Hampshire Avenue NW on foot during rush hour is likely to turn a nice walk into a terrifying near-miss. Turning-arrow patterns and drivers’ behavior have effectively negated pedestrian right-of-way on the south side of that intersection.
I’ve found that the standard advice to make eye contact with drivers (for example when they are turning through a crosswalk) often backfires. When drivers see me watching them, they sometimes take this as license to inch into the crosswalk directly toward me in an attempt to time their crossing with mine, passing only a foot or two behind me.
A modified version of the eye contact strategy seems to produce better results: After seeing that a driver has noticed me, I keep my head facing forward and watch the car from my peripheral vision. I know that the driver has seen me, but he or she might not be sure if I see him or her. This often seems to bring out drivers’ better nature, and they leave me plenty of space to cross to avoid startling me.
Wahl stresses the practical advice that makes urban travel not only survivable but also a good experience. This advice acknowledges realities of urban life without being timid about travel. More people should adopt the attitude, as well as the advice.
Stressful intersections tend to have common characteristics. Traffic can come at you from several directions, traffic volume may be heavy, the walk sign may be short, or you may have to cross multiple lanes with no traffic signal at all.
Drivers analyze their commuting routes. They learn where they might face a difficult left turn or an intersection where they have a stop sign, but the cross traffic is heavy and free-flowing. They figure out ways to avoid the difficult maneuvers.
A walking commuter should be making the same calculations, to limit stress and improve personal safety. The shortest route between two points isn’t necessarily the best.
I particularly admire Wahl for thinking through the “eye contact” strategy. While safety experts urge both drivers and pedestrians to make eye contact, many people who walk in congested areas challenge me when I repeat that advice.
They make solid arguments, based on experience. They often note that a driver who appears to be looking at them may actually be staring into windshield glare that obscures the walker’s location. Others know that drivers are often looking solely for other drivers, and may stare right through a pedestrian. Or if making a left turn, their entire focus may be directed at oncoming traffic and not at the crosswalk they are about to turn into.
“It was like walking back in time,” Hasson said. “It had five great big freight elevators with those wooden doors that hurl you up and down. It had an old round chute that carried boxes from the top floor down to the basement.”
It had wall shelves that had to be reached by 20-foot ladders that moved on a track attached at the ceiling. When the building was closed in 1980 so the company could move to a new facility, workers found parts for horse-drawn wagons, plow repair parts and other archaic inventory that had been tucked away and forgotten.
“When I was a kid, I loved to go over there and hang out and play and ride the elevator,” Hasson said.
His grandfather C.S. Hasson was one of the founders of the company, and Don Hasson’s father, Jim Hasson, was its president at the time.
“After my dad got tired of me getting in everybody’s way, he decided the best thing for me was to put bicycles together,” Don Hasson said.
“After my dad got tired of me getting in everybody’s way, he decided the best thing for me was to put bicycles together,” Don Hasson said.
That was OK. Building bikes was fun, Hasson said. Now age 62, Hasson is president of the company and has spent most of his life building it into an operation with a combined 700,000 square feet of warehouse space in two states, customers in 17 states and a sales staff of 85.
And the fun now comes from each chance to add to this hardware empire, Hasson said. He keeps a list of 12 companies House-Hasson has either bought outright or acquired the business and sales staff from after they closed. The chance to land a major account or to pick up the pieces when a competitor comes apart and use them to build your business is exciting, Hasson said.
“Every couple of years we get bored just doing the same thing, so we go try to stir up something new and different,” he said.
Hasson focused on building a sales territory in northern Georgia, but when Sam House retired in 1926, Hasson came back to Knoxville to become president. Hasson served until his son J.W. “Jack” Hasson took over as president in 1950. By 1954, House-Hasson Hardware had 35 salespeople and operated in seven states.
Jack Hasson’s brother James K. “Jim” Hasson became company president in 1970. That year, the company made the first of many acquisitions that would propel its growth.
But not all was unbridled expansion. The world wars and the Great Depression presented challenges, and House-Hasson also found itself facing competition from mail order and catalog companies, foreshadowing the competition it would start to face in the 1980s from the growth of “big box” stores like The Home Depot and Lowe’s.
Plan your route to avoid dangerous and stressful intersections. For example, navigating the intersection of 16th Street, U Street, and New Hampshire Avenue NW on foot during rush hour is likely to turn a nice walk into a terrifying near-miss. Turning-arrow patterns and drivers’ behavior have effectively negated pedestrian right-of-way on the south side of that intersection.
I’ve found that the standard advice to make eye contact with drivers (for example when they are turning through a crosswalk) often backfires. When drivers see me watching them, they sometimes take this as license to inch into the crosswalk directly toward me in an attempt to time their crossing with mine, passing only a foot or two behind me.
A modified version of the eye contact strategy seems to produce better results: After seeing that a driver has noticed me, I keep my head facing forward and watch the car from my peripheral vision. I know that the driver has seen me, but he or she might not be sure if I see him or her. This often seems to bring out drivers’ better nature, and they leave me plenty of space to cross to avoid startling me.
Wahl stresses the practical advice that makes urban travel not only survivable but also a good experience. This advice acknowledges realities of urban life without being timid about travel. More people should adopt the attitude, as well as the advice.
Stressful intersections tend to have common characteristics. Traffic can come at you from several directions, traffic volume may be heavy, the walk sign may be short, or you may have to cross multiple lanes with no traffic signal at all.
Drivers analyze their commuting routes. They learn where they might face a difficult left turn or an intersection where they have a stop sign, but the cross traffic is heavy and free-flowing. They figure out ways to avoid the difficult maneuvers.
A walking commuter should be making the same calculations, to limit stress and improve personal safety. The shortest route between two points isn’t necessarily the best.
I particularly admire Wahl for thinking through the “eye contact” strategy. While safety experts urge both drivers and pedestrians to make eye contact, many people who walk in congested areas challenge me when I repeat that advice.
They make solid arguments, based on experience. They often note that a driver who appears to be looking at them may actually be staring into windshield glare that obscures the walker’s location. Others know that drivers are often looking solely for other drivers, and may stare right through a pedestrian. Or if making a left turn, their entire focus may be directed at oncoming traffic and not at the crosswalk they are about to turn into.
2013年2月20日星期三
Tiny House Infographic project meets Kickstarter goal
I’ve switched focus as of late to cleverly designed urban sardine cans geared toward young professionals who are willing to forgo full kitchens and make do with Murphy beds, but the tiny house movement is going strong as ever.
Case in point: Diminutive dwelling demigod Jay Shafer is now cooking up an entire tiny house village dubbed the Napoleon Complex in Sonoma County, Calif. (AKA Land of the Tiny House People). Zoned as an RV park with about 40 to 70 petite residences and loosely based on the cohousing model, the intent of the community is to “create a contagious model for responsible, affordable, desirable housing.” With a proposed opening date of 2015, I'm thinking that it will be the perfect place for Austin Hay to settle down in after he graduates from college!
And then there’s Ryan Mitchell, a Charlotte, N.C.-based tiny house devotee and editor/founder of "tiny lifestyle" website The Tiny Life. A few weeks back, Mitchell launched a Kickstarter campaign that would enable him to create an infographic that tells the story of tiny houses and the people who decided to live in homes of reduced square footage.
A Kickstarter campaign for an infographic? Yep. After embarking on a survey in which more than 2,300 tiny house people responded in under 48 hours, Mitchell knew that he had to share the massive amount of data he had collected in a visually appealing yet informative manner and, well, talented graphic designers cost money. With that, he launched the Kickstarter campaign with the goal of $1,000 to help pay for a designer and bring the infographic to life.
That said, Mitchell has already met his goal. But with a few days left until the campaign expires, tiny house lovers can still contribute and receive one — or a few — of the perks associated with backing the project: bumper stickers, an early release of the infographic, a 12-by-8-inch print of the campaign’s nifty promotional graphic, and a pre-release of Tiny Life’s upcoming ebook “Cracking the Code.” Big spenders will even receive a one-hour phone chat with a tiny house guru.
Walking or driving along Montreal Road through Vanier during the past year, it has been impossible not to notice the dramatic curving walls rising from the ground at the corner of Bradley Avenue.
Construction on the new $14.2-million Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health is expected to be completed in March. An official opening is set for May 9, though executive-director Allison Fisher promises an open house the last week of March for the neighbourhood.
"I think a building like this always brings possibility, especially in a place like Vanier," says Fisher. "That something as beautiful as this, as important as this, is going up brings possibility to everybody who is engaged and everybody who lives around it."
Designed by Ottawa architect Douglas Cardinal and his son Bret, the new building is clad in a golden, rough-cut stone that contrasts with the polished transparency of blue-green glass flowing across it. The materials evoke cliffs, water and sky.
It's the same Minnesota limestone used in Cardinal's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. In Ottawa, he is best-known for the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau.
Since 1998, Wabano has provided health, social services, counselling and cultural programs for Ottawa's 35,000 people of aboriginal origin. Crowded and busy, it has a waiting list of 200 families, shared offices, and lack of quiet space for activities such as after-school tutoring.
Carlie Chase, Wabano's director of initiatives, observes that there is no direct translation of the word "health" in Ojibway. The closest is "Mino Biimaudziwin" which means living a good life.
The architecture of the building is part of the idea. "If our way of being in the world is creating the good life, if that is how health is defined, then you must create space that reflects that," says Fisher.
"If you think of the one thing we should be creating beautiful it should be the things we go in when we're not well," she says. "When you are at your worst is when you are sick. If you come into a space that is beautiful and you belong in it, then you get better."
The new three-storey structure wraps around Wabano's original two-storey building, combining it into one facility, both functionally and es-thetically, and adding 25,000 square feet. The old building, with 15,000 square feet, has been renovated to meet contemporary building codes. Parking is underground.
"You'll see there are curves everywhere," says Fisher. "This is not a square building." Light streams in through large windows. "It's much brighter."
Conspicuous from the street is a new domed gathering space that can accommodate up to 500 people, bringing inside a larger public. It will be rented for events, conferences and celebrations and used by Wabano for educational purposes. Every Wednesday night there will be opportunities to learn about aboriginal culture, open to all.
"We're very invisible in this city," says Fisher. "One aspect for us was to become visible people with value, and to be proud to show who we are."
Wabano - which means new beginnings in Ojibway - will become Canada's first national centre of excellence for aboriginal health care. It will house a maternal and child wellness centre, expand programs in chronic disease, women's health and mental health, and introduce a social enterprise program to develop job skills. The expansion will enable Wabano to double the number of clients from 10,000 to 20,000 a year.
Case in point: Diminutive dwelling demigod Jay Shafer is now cooking up an entire tiny house village dubbed the Napoleon Complex in Sonoma County, Calif. (AKA Land of the Tiny House People). Zoned as an RV park with about 40 to 70 petite residences and loosely based on the cohousing model, the intent of the community is to “create a contagious model for responsible, affordable, desirable housing.” With a proposed opening date of 2015, I'm thinking that it will be the perfect place for Austin Hay to settle down in after he graduates from college!
And then there’s Ryan Mitchell, a Charlotte, N.C.-based tiny house devotee and editor/founder of "tiny lifestyle" website The Tiny Life. A few weeks back, Mitchell launched a Kickstarter campaign that would enable him to create an infographic that tells the story of tiny houses and the people who decided to live in homes of reduced square footage.
A Kickstarter campaign for an infographic? Yep. After embarking on a survey in which more than 2,300 tiny house people responded in under 48 hours, Mitchell knew that he had to share the massive amount of data he had collected in a visually appealing yet informative manner and, well, talented graphic designers cost money. With that, he launched the Kickstarter campaign with the goal of $1,000 to help pay for a designer and bring the infographic to life.
That said, Mitchell has already met his goal. But with a few days left until the campaign expires, tiny house lovers can still contribute and receive one — or a few — of the perks associated with backing the project: bumper stickers, an early release of the infographic, a 12-by-8-inch print of the campaign’s nifty promotional graphic, and a pre-release of Tiny Life’s upcoming ebook “Cracking the Code.” Big spenders will even receive a one-hour phone chat with a tiny house guru.
Walking or driving along Montreal Road through Vanier during the past year, it has been impossible not to notice the dramatic curving walls rising from the ground at the corner of Bradley Avenue.
Construction on the new $14.2-million Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health is expected to be completed in March. An official opening is set for May 9, though executive-director Allison Fisher promises an open house the last week of March for the neighbourhood.
"I think a building like this always brings possibility, especially in a place like Vanier," says Fisher. "That something as beautiful as this, as important as this, is going up brings possibility to everybody who is engaged and everybody who lives around it."
Designed by Ottawa architect Douglas Cardinal and his son Bret, the new building is clad in a golden, rough-cut stone that contrasts with the polished transparency of blue-green glass flowing across it. The materials evoke cliffs, water and sky.
It's the same Minnesota limestone used in Cardinal's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. In Ottawa, he is best-known for the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau.
Since 1998, Wabano has provided health, social services, counselling and cultural programs for Ottawa's 35,000 people of aboriginal origin. Crowded and busy, it has a waiting list of 200 families, shared offices, and lack of quiet space for activities such as after-school tutoring.
Carlie Chase, Wabano's director of initiatives, observes that there is no direct translation of the word "health" in Ojibway. The closest is "Mino Biimaudziwin" which means living a good life.
The architecture of the building is part of the idea. "If our way of being in the world is creating the good life, if that is how health is defined, then you must create space that reflects that," says Fisher.
"If you think of the one thing we should be creating beautiful it should be the things we go in when we're not well," she says. "When you are at your worst is when you are sick. If you come into a space that is beautiful and you belong in it, then you get better."
The new three-storey structure wraps around Wabano's original two-storey building, combining it into one facility, both functionally and es-thetically, and adding 25,000 square feet. The old building, with 15,000 square feet, has been renovated to meet contemporary building codes. Parking is underground.
"You'll see there are curves everywhere," says Fisher. "This is not a square building." Light streams in through large windows. "It's much brighter."
Conspicuous from the street is a new domed gathering space that can accommodate up to 500 people, bringing inside a larger public. It will be rented for events, conferences and celebrations and used by Wabano for educational purposes. Every Wednesday night there will be opportunities to learn about aboriginal culture, open to all.
"We're very invisible in this city," says Fisher. "One aspect for us was to become visible people with value, and to be proud to show who we are."
Wabano - which means new beginnings in Ojibway - will become Canada's first national centre of excellence for aboriginal health care. It will house a maternal and child wellness centre, expand programs in chronic disease, women's health and mental health, and introduce a social enterprise program to develop job skills. The expansion will enable Wabano to double the number of clients from 10,000 to 20,000 a year.
Howard Brown rebranding Triad health clinic alongside expansion
As part of a plan to
move and expand services at its Triad Health Practice in the Boystown LGBT
enclave, Howard Brown Health Center announced Tuesday it is rebranding and
opening the clinic at its new space on North Halsted Street late next month.
Branding for the clinic’s new name, Aris Health, has already appeared on windows at the redesigned 4,050-square-foot facility, 3245 N. Halsted St., formerly occupied by Northwestern Memorial Physicians Group. The changes will officially go into place March 25, the organization said.
In April, Howard Brown said it would relocate the clinic to the larger location from a smaller space at 3000 N. Halsted St. due to capacity demands for its expanding services, such as pediatric care.
The new storefront location, which is steps away from of one of the symbolic Halsted Street rainbow pylons and directly across the street from Steamworks, a gay bathhouse, will afford the clinic greater visibility, the organization said.
“We are excited about opening Aris Health in the heart of the community to serve patients in an environment completely focused on their care,” said Karma Israelsen, interim president and CEO at HBHC. “It’s important for us to meet the comprehensive health and wellness needs of those we serve.”
The increased prominence in Boystown will help the organization reach its goal of more than doubling the clinic’s current base of 2,000 patients to 5,High quality chinamosaic tiles.000 patients in the first few years. The new space has capacity for nearly 10,000 patients, or about the amount served at Howard Brown’s Sheridan Road facility.
In addition to clinical health services and pediatric care, Aris Health will also offer adult primary and behavioral care.
“We added pediatrics as part of our core practice offering last year to serve our patients’ children; Aris Health and the expanded space allows us to fulfill this need,” said Israelsen.
Specifically, the facility will house nine exam rooms, including a separate space for pediatric care; an onsite Walgreens pharmacy and free lot parking off Halsted Street — all of which will translate into benefits for patients, said HBHC’s Medical Director Dr. Magda Houlberg, M.D.
“At Aris Health, we are proud to institute a patient-focused model of care in a new and fresh environment that focuses on our patient experience,” Houlberg said.
Patients served at the new facility will be part of its new “complete patient-centered care model,” a system which promotes the involvement of patients in their medical care and ultimately leads to the development of personal relationships with their providers, according to Howard Brown.
As part of that relationship, the patient and provider work together on preventive and chronic care management which might also include the care a patient receives at other health facilities, the organization said in a statement.
Among the features of the new column-free facility are tunnel space for four batting cages, two infield areas, a 28-foot high ceiling, video capability, a concession stand and pro shop.Creative glass tile and solarlamp tile for your distinctive kitchen and bath.
“As we continue to position ourselves as a prime destination for baseball and softball players, the new building will enable us to provide a place for events and training for the entire year,Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic chipcard and hose.” said Frank Zitaglio, general manager of BBH, a subsidiary of Steel Sports Inc. “Further,Looking for the Best iphoneheadset? the addition of a former player of Frank Catalanotto’s caliber will serve to solidify Baseball Heaven as the leading facility of its kind in the region.”
Catalanotto will provide individual and group instruction to baseball players and teams.Make your house a home with Border and carparkmanagementsystem Tiles. He enjoyed a 14-year MLB career with the Detroit Tigers, Texas Rangers, Toronto Blue Jays, Milwaukee Brewers and New York Mets, compiling a .291 lifetime average in 1,265 games.
“I’m very excited to be a part of this great complex, and I look forward to working with players of all ages as they continue to develop their skills,” said Catalanotto, a native of Long Island, N.Y.
The new building is part of an overall upgrade BBH is planning in the coming year, including the construction of two new concession stands, the creation of extra parking, live online video streaming of all games and the development and implementation of a variety of sports instruction and development programs.
Zitaglio said both the construction of the new building and other renovations to the complex will create new jobs within the community and underscores BBH’s commitment to Long Island, a large portion of which was ravaged by Hurricane Sandy.
“We are extremely thankful to our community leaders and the Town of Brookhaven Planning Board for approving this excellent addition to our complex,” Zitaglio added. “We want to make sure that every current and potential player and team fully understands that we’re here for the long term. And through Baseball Heaven, we aim to continue to foster the values of teamwork, sportsmanship and integrity – all of the good things that baseball and softball are about.”
Branding for the clinic’s new name, Aris Health, has already appeared on windows at the redesigned 4,050-square-foot facility, 3245 N. Halsted St., formerly occupied by Northwestern Memorial Physicians Group. The changes will officially go into place March 25, the organization said.
In April, Howard Brown said it would relocate the clinic to the larger location from a smaller space at 3000 N. Halsted St. due to capacity demands for its expanding services, such as pediatric care.
The new storefront location, which is steps away from of one of the symbolic Halsted Street rainbow pylons and directly across the street from Steamworks, a gay bathhouse, will afford the clinic greater visibility, the organization said.
“We are excited about opening Aris Health in the heart of the community to serve patients in an environment completely focused on their care,” said Karma Israelsen, interim president and CEO at HBHC. “It’s important for us to meet the comprehensive health and wellness needs of those we serve.”
The increased prominence in Boystown will help the organization reach its goal of more than doubling the clinic’s current base of 2,000 patients to 5,High quality chinamosaic tiles.000 patients in the first few years. The new space has capacity for nearly 10,000 patients, or about the amount served at Howard Brown’s Sheridan Road facility.
In addition to clinical health services and pediatric care, Aris Health will also offer adult primary and behavioral care.
“We added pediatrics as part of our core practice offering last year to serve our patients’ children; Aris Health and the expanded space allows us to fulfill this need,” said Israelsen.
Specifically, the facility will house nine exam rooms, including a separate space for pediatric care; an onsite Walgreens pharmacy and free lot parking off Halsted Street — all of which will translate into benefits for patients, said HBHC’s Medical Director Dr. Magda Houlberg, M.D.
“At Aris Health, we are proud to institute a patient-focused model of care in a new and fresh environment that focuses on our patient experience,” Houlberg said.
Patients served at the new facility will be part of its new “complete patient-centered care model,” a system which promotes the involvement of patients in their medical care and ultimately leads to the development of personal relationships with their providers, according to Howard Brown.
As part of that relationship, the patient and provider work together on preventive and chronic care management which might also include the care a patient receives at other health facilities, the organization said in a statement.
Among the features of the new column-free facility are tunnel space for four batting cages, two infield areas, a 28-foot high ceiling, video capability, a concession stand and pro shop.Creative glass tile and solarlamp tile for your distinctive kitchen and bath.
“As we continue to position ourselves as a prime destination for baseball and softball players, the new building will enable us to provide a place for events and training for the entire year,Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic chipcard and hose.” said Frank Zitaglio, general manager of BBH, a subsidiary of Steel Sports Inc. “Further,Looking for the Best iphoneheadset? the addition of a former player of Frank Catalanotto’s caliber will serve to solidify Baseball Heaven as the leading facility of its kind in the region.”
Catalanotto will provide individual and group instruction to baseball players and teams.Make your house a home with Border and carparkmanagementsystem Tiles. He enjoyed a 14-year MLB career with the Detroit Tigers, Texas Rangers, Toronto Blue Jays, Milwaukee Brewers and New York Mets, compiling a .291 lifetime average in 1,265 games.
“I’m very excited to be a part of this great complex, and I look forward to working with players of all ages as they continue to develop their skills,” said Catalanotto, a native of Long Island, N.Y.
The new building is part of an overall upgrade BBH is planning in the coming year, including the construction of two new concession stands, the creation of extra parking, live online video streaming of all games and the development and implementation of a variety of sports instruction and development programs.
Zitaglio said both the construction of the new building and other renovations to the complex will create new jobs within the community and underscores BBH’s commitment to Long Island, a large portion of which was ravaged by Hurricane Sandy.
“We are extremely thankful to our community leaders and the Town of Brookhaven Planning Board for approving this excellent addition to our complex,” Zitaglio added. “We want to make sure that every current and potential player and team fully understands that we’re here for the long term. And through Baseball Heaven, we aim to continue to foster the values of teamwork, sportsmanship and integrity – all of the good things that baseball and softball are about.”
Hostage for a Day
I knew we should have opted to take an older, cheaper car.When I
first started creating broken howospareparts. As the tribesmen
running the checkpoint demanded that we pull over, I cursed myself for letting
my misgivings slide. I'd taken the road before -- the split-second pause before
getting the go-ahead from the armed locals who run the informal roadblocks
dotting the roads running through the villages north of Sanaa may have raised my
blood pressure, but I had never had any issues. Until now.
Confusion quickly ensued. The guys running the checkpoint -- a disorganized group of about a dozen armed, but generally disheveled,Cheaper For bulk buying drycabinet prices. tribesmen in their late twenties -- seemed split on what to do. Most just wanted to let us pass, one seemed intent on stealing my friend's car, and a few seemed convinced I was an Iranian spy. After about 15 minutes, I realized that revealing my identity as an American journalist was probably the best of a slate of bad options.
Frantic arguments continued. Growing increasingly nervous, I pulled out what I knew would be the trump card, threatening to bring their sheikh into the matter. As I dialed the number for a close associate of the sheikh, a longtime friend, I vainly hoped they'd realize that it wasn't worth troubling one of Yemen's most powerful men with what was, until that point, a rather minor issue.
It didn't work out that way. Dragging the sheikh into it turned out to be exactly what the tribesmen wanted: They now agreed that I was indeed an American journalist rather than an Iranian spy, and further decided that I would be an excellent bargaining chip in their lingering dispute with the central government.
"You'll stay until the government compensates us for what we lost in the war in Hasaba,New Ground-Based parkingassistsystem Tech Is Accurate Down To Just A Few Inches." I was told. I had come here to get a better idea of the tenuous state of things in the tribal areas north of Sanaa. Instead, I had become a hostage of them.
My kidnapping -- which occurred, ironically, on the second anniversary of the start of Yemen's revolution -- had its roots in the wounds opened up by that revolt, which remain unhealed to this day. In May 2011, the uprising against then President Ali Abdullah Saleh finally sparked the urban warfare that many feared was inevitable. A day after Saleh refused to sign an internationally backed power transfer agreement, fighting erupted between pro-Saleh troops and fighters loyal to one of the country's most powerful tribal leaders. Despite the seeming asymmetry, the tribal forces put up a hell of a fight in the ensuing weeks, seizing control of a number of government ministries as their scores of kinsmen -- including the guys who kidnapped me -- descended from north of the capital to join.
A year and a half after the sporadic battles ended, Hasaba, the neighborhood where the fighting was concentrated, still bears resemblance to civil war-era Beirut. Government assurances of compensation for those who were affected by the fighting, it seems, have yet to come to fruition. I've largely associated all of this with the bombed-out buildings in the area that was once the epicenter of the fighting. But the ripple effects of the fighting extend for miles: The guys that kidnapped me, it turned out, were still bitter over the loss of their car, which was destroyed when they traveled to Sanaa to join in the battle. The Hasaba war of May 2011, oddly enough, bore indirect responsibility for my time as a hostage in February 2013.Shop the web's best selection of precious gemstones and bobbleheads at wholesale prices.
The visitors took the lead in the seventh minute as Boyd controlled the ball in the penalty area before cutting it back into the path of Tomlin, who rifled past David Forde for his ninth goal of the season.
Millwall reacted well to falling behind and almost levelled four minutes later as Liam Trotter found Henry, whose cross just evaded the on-rushing Rob Hulse.
The equaliser soon followed as Lowry released Henry who lofted a beautiful chip over Robert Olejnik for his third goal in as many games.
Posh looked sharp whenever they attacked and took the lead for a second time 13 minutes before half-time with Boyd again the architect.
The 27-year-old showed a mixture of determination and skill to beat Millwall right-back Adam Smith, showing good awareness as he rolled the ball into the feet of captain Rowe who arrowed Posh back in front.
Darren Ferguson's half-time team-talk was nearly made easier with 40 minutes gone as Tomlin's flick released Dwight Gayle whose near-post effort had Forde sprawling to save.
Millwall boss Kenny Jackett made two changes at the break with Martyn Woolford and Alan Dunne replacing Benik Afobe and Smith.
But it was Boyd, looking to turn from provider to scorer, who struck a 51st-minute effort that flashed wide of Forde's left-hand post.
The game settled into a rhythm with neither side forcing the issue until an error by Millwall defender Karleigh Osbourne let Posh in for their third goal.
Osbourne played a pass across his defensive line that was too short and Peterborough reacted quickly with Kane Ferdinand robbing Jimmy Abdou of possession and Tomlin was again on hand to finish another perfectly-weighted Boyd pass.
The Posh fans were soon cheering another goal as Mendez-Laing drifted past two Millwall defenders with ease before unleashing a fierce effort that gave Forde no chance.Cheaper For bulk buying drycabinet prices.
Confusion quickly ensued. The guys running the checkpoint -- a disorganized group of about a dozen armed, but generally disheveled,Cheaper For bulk buying drycabinet prices. tribesmen in their late twenties -- seemed split on what to do. Most just wanted to let us pass, one seemed intent on stealing my friend's car, and a few seemed convinced I was an Iranian spy. After about 15 minutes, I realized that revealing my identity as an American journalist was probably the best of a slate of bad options.
Frantic arguments continued. Growing increasingly nervous, I pulled out what I knew would be the trump card, threatening to bring their sheikh into the matter. As I dialed the number for a close associate of the sheikh, a longtime friend, I vainly hoped they'd realize that it wasn't worth troubling one of Yemen's most powerful men with what was, until that point, a rather minor issue.
It didn't work out that way. Dragging the sheikh into it turned out to be exactly what the tribesmen wanted: They now agreed that I was indeed an American journalist rather than an Iranian spy, and further decided that I would be an excellent bargaining chip in their lingering dispute with the central government.
"You'll stay until the government compensates us for what we lost in the war in Hasaba,New Ground-Based parkingassistsystem Tech Is Accurate Down To Just A Few Inches." I was told. I had come here to get a better idea of the tenuous state of things in the tribal areas north of Sanaa. Instead, I had become a hostage of them.
My kidnapping -- which occurred, ironically, on the second anniversary of the start of Yemen's revolution -- had its roots in the wounds opened up by that revolt, which remain unhealed to this day. In May 2011, the uprising against then President Ali Abdullah Saleh finally sparked the urban warfare that many feared was inevitable. A day after Saleh refused to sign an internationally backed power transfer agreement, fighting erupted between pro-Saleh troops and fighters loyal to one of the country's most powerful tribal leaders. Despite the seeming asymmetry, the tribal forces put up a hell of a fight in the ensuing weeks, seizing control of a number of government ministries as their scores of kinsmen -- including the guys who kidnapped me -- descended from north of the capital to join.
A year and a half after the sporadic battles ended, Hasaba, the neighborhood where the fighting was concentrated, still bears resemblance to civil war-era Beirut. Government assurances of compensation for those who were affected by the fighting, it seems, have yet to come to fruition. I've largely associated all of this with the bombed-out buildings in the area that was once the epicenter of the fighting. But the ripple effects of the fighting extend for miles: The guys that kidnapped me, it turned out, were still bitter over the loss of their car, which was destroyed when they traveled to Sanaa to join in the battle. The Hasaba war of May 2011, oddly enough, bore indirect responsibility for my time as a hostage in February 2013.Shop the web's best selection of precious gemstones and bobbleheads at wholesale prices.
The visitors took the lead in the seventh minute as Boyd controlled the ball in the penalty area before cutting it back into the path of Tomlin, who rifled past David Forde for his ninth goal of the season.
Millwall reacted well to falling behind and almost levelled four minutes later as Liam Trotter found Henry, whose cross just evaded the on-rushing Rob Hulse.
The equaliser soon followed as Lowry released Henry who lofted a beautiful chip over Robert Olejnik for his third goal in as many games.
Posh looked sharp whenever they attacked and took the lead for a second time 13 minutes before half-time with Boyd again the architect.
The 27-year-old showed a mixture of determination and skill to beat Millwall right-back Adam Smith, showing good awareness as he rolled the ball into the feet of captain Rowe who arrowed Posh back in front.
Darren Ferguson's half-time team-talk was nearly made easier with 40 minutes gone as Tomlin's flick released Dwight Gayle whose near-post effort had Forde sprawling to save.
Millwall boss Kenny Jackett made two changes at the break with Martyn Woolford and Alan Dunne replacing Benik Afobe and Smith.
But it was Boyd, looking to turn from provider to scorer, who struck a 51st-minute effort that flashed wide of Forde's left-hand post.
The game settled into a rhythm with neither side forcing the issue until an error by Millwall defender Karleigh Osbourne let Posh in for their third goal.
Osbourne played a pass across his defensive line that was too short and Peterborough reacted quickly with Kane Ferdinand robbing Jimmy Abdou of possession and Tomlin was again on hand to finish another perfectly-weighted Boyd pass.
The Posh fans were soon cheering another goal as Mendez-Laing drifted past two Millwall defenders with ease before unleashing a fierce effort that gave Forde no chance.Cheaper For bulk buying drycabinet prices.
Where Gallic cuisine—including a whole bunch of fine charcuterie
If there’s a stretch of pavement that more perfectly fits a certain image of the city than the 8900 block of Sunset, I don’t know it. In this neon-accented jumble of shop fronts and nightspots you can consult a psychic, acquire a spray-on tan, rent a two-tone convertible Rolls-Royce, and bask in a face-melting guitar solo at the Whisky. Step off the sidewalk into Gorge, a snug restaurant that opened in September, and you can also eat some extremely good head cheese that is nothing like the pimento-studded stuff you might get from the deli counter. Chef Elia Aboumrad fashions her fromage de tête by simmering pork heads for six hours, letting them cool before covering the flesh morsels with their own broth, and allowing them to set. Spread over a piece of warm baguette, the head cheese releases a hint of fresh tarragon that harmonizes with the broad meaty notes.
Charcuterie is of the moment. Asking whether a restaurant cures its own bacon is a question that can elicit a kind of you-poor-schmuck smile from the waiter. Of course it does—and salumi,Creative glass tile and solarlamp tile for your distinctive kitchen and bath. cervelat, and testa. Among today’s commercial kitchens, the lodestar is the smokehouse of yesteryear. Well after 2011’s $600 multitome Modernist Cuisine made its splash, chefs are still pawing through Jane Grigson’s 1967 classic, Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery, for inspiration. Sure, there’s some trend chasing going on, but for a lot of kitchens charcuterie is almost the antidote to the celebrity-chef movement, in which you must be photogenic, capable of owning the room like Oprah, and versed in turning a mass of ingredients—chosen at random by TV producers, if you’re playing the game right—into a tweetable trophy. Charcuterie isn’t flashy. Constructed out of view days if not weeks in advance, it’s about tradition and craft and the integrity of the raw ingredients. To gussy it up is to ruin it. I admire that bravado—you’re confident with what you have, and you slice it.
Aboumrad practices a decidedly old-school version of what is already an old-school art. Born in Mexico City, the 29-year-old uses hog—not synthetic—casings. She shuns nitrates and punches up the saucisson with patient aging instead of heavy-handed seasonings. The freshest of her dry links, perfumed with garlic and Basque piment d’Espelette, is so creamy, it is reminiscent of the best bologna. The driest—a classic salami she tweaks with red wine and ginger, aging it six weeks—is chewy and intense. Between them is a sausage she ages for a month and spices by grinding the giant peppercorns grown in her grandparents’ native Lebanon.
Apart from the occasional waitress and a kitchen hand, the only other staffers are Aboumrad’s husband,Why does bobblehead grow in homes or buildings? Darius Allyn—he’s the beverage director—and her business partner, Uyen Nguyen, pastry chef by day and manager by night. As restaurants go, this is about as personal as you can get. Yet Aboumrad and Nguyen, whose family escaped Vietnam when she was a child, keep wide of calling attention to their own back stories. The women met at the Len?tre cooking school in Paris. Later Aboumrad apprenticed at the original L’Atelier de Jo?l Robuchon and made such an impression that after two years she was named the opening sous-chef at Robuchon’s MGM Grand location in Las Vegas. Nguyen (who grew up in the O.C.) followed her to the desert, crafting pastry at Le Cirque and Guy Savoy. It was Aboumrad’s gig overseeing the dining ops at THEhotel at Mandalay Bay that introduced her to Allyn, who was in charge of the wine program at the hotel’s Aureole restaurant.
Having fled one debauched Strip, they’ve set up shop on another, with a restaurant that seems thoroughly antithetical to its surroundings. In this low-key space a refrigerated case of sausage by the doorway passes as a showy touch. The hunter green walls are adorned with original 18th-century French tapestries Aboumrad borrowed from her mother, but she and Nguyen stained the Home Depot wainscoting themselves. Arrayed below a pressed-tin ceiling, basic Windsor chairs cluster around saloon tables, and a metal counter reflects an overhead rack that holds knobby French goblets—hardy receptacles that are all the prettier filled with a cool draft of the Pasadena-brewed Craftsman Oktoberfest ale they keep on tap.
Given the nature of the place, the restaurant’s name might seem weird,Gecko could kickstart an solarstreetlight mobile app explosion. telegraphing sybaritic abandon, but it’s actually a nod to the trio’s Nevada days: “à la gorge,” which means “to the throat,” is what Robuchon’s kitchen staff would exclaim when things got wild (and apparently what Napoleonic troops shouted as they mounted a charge). Pronounce it as you will. Gorge isn’t about eating yourself silly; it’s about paying tribute to a painstakingly understated—and single-minded—craft. The ethos extends to Saturday brunch, a bighearted selection that includes br?léed bananas Foster tossed over oatmeal but is most visible in the one-page dinner menu, which bears Gallic classics like frisée salad, Toulouse-style sausage, and St. Honoré dessert. Wine suggestions run alongside the food on the left, while cider and craft beer pairings appear on the right. On the back is a map of France indicating the provenance of what’s being poured. The signals are there; still, it would be a mistake to categorize Gorge as a mere wine bar.
Tall woman who sports a black chef’s jacket, Aboumrad works in a tight kitchen dominated by a big, old meat grinder. At each turn her approach to charcuterie displays a remarkable eye for detail. The rabbit rillettes and the chicken paté are ostensibly similar selections—a pair of spreadable numbers in single-serve containers. That’s where the similarities end. The rabbits are poached in olive oil for 48 hours, a top layer of pearly duck fat added to the ramekin before cooling. For the paté, Aboumrad caramelizes the chicken livers with onions. In order to keep the mousse slightly grainy, however, she refrains from passing the ingredients through a tamis, or silk screen: That way the texture lends the dish a rustic character, while the finishing layer of rich, melted Plugrá butter nudges the flavors toward delicate and refined, drawing out the tawny port that has gone into the mix.
This skill at shifting between high and low tones is a tip of the cap to Robuchon. The opening of the first L’Atelier in Paris in 2002 was a way for the hyper-punctilious legend to release the culinary id by acknowledging how kitchen crews had always eaten in private. But Aboumrad is sensitive enough to avoid falling into parody. With the Cornish hen entrée she uses a splash of lima (the compact yellow Mexican lime) to jolt the pan juices. For the oyster mousse she smokes the bivalves over hickory wood. It’s decidedly haute until she crowns the deep-flavored custard with trembling beef gelée—the yield from hours of simmering—which brings matters back to earth with its cuisine bourgeoise cues.
If there’s an example of how elusive that contrast can be, it would be the vegetable terrine. Dainty as the dish is, with various shades of green imparted by leeks and asparagus, it doesn’t add up to much. And the jellied beef broth that trembled on the oyster mousse one night was on another occasion so rubbery, I could have bounced it across Sunset and hit the Hustler store. As slipups go, these are slight, but consistency is especially crucial here. We’re talking about a plucky restaurant that has plopped itself down in an unlikely location in order to mine a subsection of French cuisine.
Aboumrad is no mere classicist; she has a sense of playfulness, too. The chef dresses the frisée salad in a warm mustard vinaigrette and drops in the requisite runny egg, but instead of tossing sizzling lardons on top, she scoops up the greens and places them over a bacon flan. Her goat cheese salad isn’t fashioned from breaded segments; the chèvre has been popped into rosemary brioche balls that, after slow proofing, are fried to order. I’m not sure a description can do the results justice. With the mackerel tartine Aboumrad bypasses the white wine-based bistro classic and poaches the fish in olive oil, a technique that highlights the richness of the flesh rather than leaving it quasipickled. Her pig’s ear tartine is a jammy reduction radiating a bouquet of gelatinous nuances that burst to the fore when you take a sip of old-vine Cairanne from the southern C?tes du Rhone, a plummy varietal with echoes of blackberries that were squished at the bottom of a picking pail. Perfect.
In keeping with the quirkiness that motivates Gorge, the classic St. Honoré pastry is the only dessert offered.The 3rd International Conference on custombobbleheads and Indoor Navigation. Named for the patron saint of French patissiers, the fist-size tart demands a mastery of both puff and choux pastry, along with classic crèmes, and a deft hand with sugar work. It could come across as a marmoreal display of skill, but not here. Nguyen offers several variations, each a warm, lively update. The vanilla-flavored St. Honoré carries diminutive cream puffs; the pistachio one, a nutty macaron. My favorite is caramel ringed and hides a payload of cooked-down apples scented with anise and a touch of cinnamon.Creative glass tile and solarlamp tile for your distinctive kitchen and bath. Where others leave the compote smooth, Nguyen’s is somewhat chunky, recalling the kind you’ve fork-pressed at home.
Classic and contemporary, self-assured and feisty—Gorge isn’t showy, but, boy, is it seductive. The duck sausage, browned and sizzling, bursts at the touch of a tine, scattering its seared hash over the mashed potatoes; you could be eating in the inglenook of a farmhouse fireplace. The pheasant paté is a straight-up master class in how far beyond meat curing the charcuterie art can go. First Aboumrad must skin the birds that she buys from Inglewood purveyor Rocker Brothers, keeping them whole to later wrap the breast strips in. From the bones and legs she produces a jus that, when reduced to the consistency of syrup, will go into the forcemeat. Chopped truffles and Trader Joe’s pecans (a nice touch) lend texture, while the caul fat she uses to line the enamel mold adds depth as it slowly renders during the two hours the paté cooks in the oven. The reward, after a few days in the fridge, is a flavor-saturated wonder that commands the taste buds. Served with a bit of potato purée and a light kale salad, the dish is a quiet statement not only about restraint and discipline but the remarkable results they can achieve.
10 Incredible Black Women Balancing Career and Motherhood
This is such an incredible
time to be an American. Our first black President is in his second term,
fighting for – among many things – equal pay and secure reproductive rights for
women. Hillary Clinton just completed her tenure as Secretary of State, the
third woman to hold that prestigious title. Female leaders like Kirsten
Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren are demanding a new kind of transparency in
Washington. And First Lady Michelle Obama is about as perfect a role model as
anyone can be, leading the charge for a healthier (and more stylish) America.
I often think about how transcendent Michelle Obama is, about how expert she is at blending her work life with her family life. Yes, she’s a style icon, and I certainly do admire her for her looks as well as her grace, but mostly I’m inspired by how dedicated she is to the protection and support of her husband and daughters. I keep a magnet of the Obama family on my fridge at home, not just because I love my President, but because the Obamas are such an exceptionally lovely family unit. Their genuine affection and respect for one another is so profound and profoundly touching, and being given the chance to observe such a healthy family dynamic in the White House is a tremendous gift to our nation.
While thinking about the power and strength Michelle Obama possesses, I realized that though when it comes to marketing “mom” is the new black, one group of women we almost never hear about in the media is black moms. And unfortunately when black moms are alluded to in the news, they’re still trotted out as the tired stereotype of the welfare queen, the cautionary tale single mother failure. I find that so depressing, and I knew I could rattle off a list of 10 black moms I admired in less than as many seconds.Massive selection of gorgeous earcap. I’ve compiled a slideshow shouting-out these media mogul moms, and I thought I’d share some of their thoughts about career and motherhood with you, in the hopes that not only will they be celebrated, but that we can all glean something from their tenacity, smarts and bravery:
Although normal wear and tear vs damage can be hard to define, there are a few things you can do to protect yourself from any confusion. As with most things, communication is the key: if both you and your tenants are clear about the condition of the unit at move-in, the importance of promptly reporting needed repairs, and expectations at move-out, the tenancy and the end of the tenancy will be smoother.
Insist on a walk-through with new tenants. At the walk-through the tenants will have an opportunity to note in writing existing damage and wear and tear in the rental. Also, take dated photographs to keep on file. This way both the landlord and tenant are protected. The tenant can't be charged for damage that was not documented in the walk through, and the landlord has picture proof of the unit's condition at move in.
Have your lease outline the requirements for taking care of the property and promptly calling for any repairs needed. Make the tenants aware if they do not not notify the landlord in a timely manner of any issues, they can be charged for any damage that occurred from their negligence. Make your contact information readily available to the tenants, such as a business card, fridge magnet, or website.
Before move-out refer tenants to the “Wear and Tear versus Damages” document and cleaning checklist. This way the tenant knows what is expected of them in preparation for move out and cleaning of the unit.Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic chipcard and hose.
A championship for the Mets in 2013? Yeah, fat chance of that happening. But here we are at Citi Field, plastic covering the lockers in the home clubhouse with champagne dripping off of every surface in sight. The New York Mets are champions, as unlikely as that seemed coming into the season.
The only thing the Mets were expected to contend for in 2013 was the NL East basement. Yet, things didn't exactly work out that way. Veterans Johan Santana and Shaun Marcum not only stabilized the top of New York's rotation, but formed one of the best starting duos in the league.High quality chinamosaic tiles. The pair each threw at least 190 innings, and posted ERAs under 3.50 for the orange and blue. Past those two, New York's rotation was excellent with Jonathon Niese,Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic chipcard and hose. Dillon Gee, and the exciting youngster Matt Harvey holding their own. Harvey was especially a revelation for the Mets in his first full season in the majors, striking out 160 batters in 173 innings while pitching to a 3.79 ERA.Why does bobblehead grow in homes or buildings?
Offensively, it was supposed to be a struggle for the Mets. And at times, it was. New York's outfield was thoroughly unimpressive, totaling just 24 homers among the three regular starters and playing below average defense for the mostpart. But it was in the infield where New York's offense shined. David Wright put together an MVP-caliber season after signing a contract extension this winter, winning a Gold Glove and homering 27 times while hitting .303 with a .942 OPS. First baseman Ike Davis stayed healthy all season and built on his strong second half, belting 38 homers and providing Wright with protection in New York's lineup. Behind the plate, rookie catcher Travis d'Arnaud made his major league debut in May, and ended up hitting 14 homers in 313 plate appearances behind the dish for the Mets.
New York's bullpen also performed better than expectations, especially after a disastrous 2012. Bobby Parnell, slotted into the closer's role after Frank Francisco was placed on the DL for Opening Day, finally took the next step in his new role, striking out 70 hitters in 72 innings and walking only 18. Veteran Brandon Lyon was the ideal setup man for Parnell, striking out 63 in 60 innings and finally earning the label of "underpaid" after years of being overpaid.
I often think about how transcendent Michelle Obama is, about how expert she is at blending her work life with her family life. Yes, she’s a style icon, and I certainly do admire her for her looks as well as her grace, but mostly I’m inspired by how dedicated she is to the protection and support of her husband and daughters. I keep a magnet of the Obama family on my fridge at home, not just because I love my President, but because the Obamas are such an exceptionally lovely family unit. Their genuine affection and respect for one another is so profound and profoundly touching, and being given the chance to observe such a healthy family dynamic in the White House is a tremendous gift to our nation.
While thinking about the power and strength Michelle Obama possesses, I realized that though when it comes to marketing “mom” is the new black, one group of women we almost never hear about in the media is black moms. And unfortunately when black moms are alluded to in the news, they’re still trotted out as the tired stereotype of the welfare queen, the cautionary tale single mother failure. I find that so depressing, and I knew I could rattle off a list of 10 black moms I admired in less than as many seconds.Massive selection of gorgeous earcap. I’ve compiled a slideshow shouting-out these media mogul moms, and I thought I’d share some of their thoughts about career and motherhood with you, in the hopes that not only will they be celebrated, but that we can all glean something from their tenacity, smarts and bravery:
Although normal wear and tear vs damage can be hard to define, there are a few things you can do to protect yourself from any confusion. As with most things, communication is the key: if both you and your tenants are clear about the condition of the unit at move-in, the importance of promptly reporting needed repairs, and expectations at move-out, the tenancy and the end of the tenancy will be smoother.
Insist on a walk-through with new tenants. At the walk-through the tenants will have an opportunity to note in writing existing damage and wear and tear in the rental. Also, take dated photographs to keep on file. This way both the landlord and tenant are protected. The tenant can't be charged for damage that was not documented in the walk through, and the landlord has picture proof of the unit's condition at move in.
Have your lease outline the requirements for taking care of the property and promptly calling for any repairs needed. Make the tenants aware if they do not not notify the landlord in a timely manner of any issues, they can be charged for any damage that occurred from their negligence. Make your contact information readily available to the tenants, such as a business card, fridge magnet, or website.
Before move-out refer tenants to the “Wear and Tear versus Damages” document and cleaning checklist. This way the tenant knows what is expected of them in preparation for move out and cleaning of the unit.Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic chipcard and hose.
A championship for the Mets in 2013? Yeah, fat chance of that happening. But here we are at Citi Field, plastic covering the lockers in the home clubhouse with champagne dripping off of every surface in sight. The New York Mets are champions, as unlikely as that seemed coming into the season.
The only thing the Mets were expected to contend for in 2013 was the NL East basement. Yet, things didn't exactly work out that way. Veterans Johan Santana and Shaun Marcum not only stabilized the top of New York's rotation, but formed one of the best starting duos in the league.High quality chinamosaic tiles. The pair each threw at least 190 innings, and posted ERAs under 3.50 for the orange and blue. Past those two, New York's rotation was excellent with Jonathon Niese,Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic chipcard and hose. Dillon Gee, and the exciting youngster Matt Harvey holding their own. Harvey was especially a revelation for the Mets in his first full season in the majors, striking out 160 batters in 173 innings while pitching to a 3.79 ERA.Why does bobblehead grow in homes or buildings?
Offensively, it was supposed to be a struggle for the Mets. And at times, it was. New York's outfield was thoroughly unimpressive, totaling just 24 homers among the three regular starters and playing below average defense for the mostpart. But it was in the infield where New York's offense shined. David Wright put together an MVP-caliber season after signing a contract extension this winter, winning a Gold Glove and homering 27 times while hitting .303 with a .942 OPS. First baseman Ike Davis stayed healthy all season and built on his strong second half, belting 38 homers and providing Wright with protection in New York's lineup. Behind the plate, rookie catcher Travis d'Arnaud made his major league debut in May, and ended up hitting 14 homers in 313 plate appearances behind the dish for the Mets.
New York's bullpen also performed better than expectations, especially after a disastrous 2012. Bobby Parnell, slotted into the closer's role after Frank Francisco was placed on the DL for Opening Day, finally took the next step in his new role, striking out 70 hitters in 72 innings and walking only 18. Veteran Brandon Lyon was the ideal setup man for Parnell, striking out 63 in 60 innings and finally earning the label of "underpaid" after years of being overpaid.
2013年2月18日星期一
A Retrospective” at the Oklahoma Capitol
Oklahoma artist Regina Murphy has led a prolific art career over more than 40 years. Opening today and on view through April 14, “A Retrospective” features a sampling of her vast portfolio of works from different periods of her career.
Murphy’s passion for art is illustrated by the evolution of her style and experimentation with subject matter and various media including pastel, oil, watercolor, and acrylic painting.
“I experiment often with different techniques and subject matter,” says Murphy in a news release. “This variety holds my interest and keeps me always looking forward to the next project.”
At 91 years of age, Murphy has maintained diligence in her artwork and spends most weekdays working in her studio. After many years of plein air painting (painting on site in the open air), she now only paints in the studio – usually from photographs or recollection. The reality of her subject matter acts as the foundation and her creativity is expressed through abstraction of color, shape, and composition.
Murphy explains in the release, “I blend greatly abstracted shapes with realism, sometimes flatten space, use exaggerated or arbitrary color, and often delineate objects. My goal is to produce a painting that is not a ‘postcard’ view but will intrigue the viewer and prolong interest.”
Beyond the works featured here, Murphy has worked in numerous media, both two- and three-dimensional.
“After all the experimenting, it seems the most comfortable endeavor for me is painting in either oil or acrylic, and my favorite subject matter is some form of landscape,” says Murphy in the release.
In her more recent works, she accentuates her landscapes with slightly abstracted, lyrical shapes in exaggerated colors and bold lines.
Murphy’s process for painting other subjects has evolved over the years as well.
“In the past, for still life paintings, I would set up actual compositions with fresh flowers,” she explains in the release. “But in recent years, I paint from imagination, abstracting shapes, and again, exaggerating colors and outlining objects in bright colors.”
Of Murphy’s “Rocks & Boulders” series, she says in the release, “Nature has always been a source of inspiration to me. A walk in the woods or near the water’s edge can start me planning paintings in which I might convey the feelings that come over me as I experience our awesome environment at close range. In this series my concept was to convey the stability, splendor, silence, and richness of color in nature’s boulders and rocks. Life is so transient; we are so vulnerable; but the earth endures, although gouged and scarred by time and the elements. Perhaps that is why I am awed by its grandeur and inspired by its beauty.”
Of another popular subject matter for Murphy, she explains in the release, “Puppets and dolls have been a recurring subject in my paintings through the years. When I found a wooden monkey puppet in an import shop I thought he would be a great subject for paintings, so I bought him and have created a number of paintings with this single puppet posing in any number of ways.”
Murphy, a longtime resident of Oklahoma, has studied at Oklahoma City University, Louisiana Tech University and at Louisiana Tech’s sister school in Rome, Italy, as well as with numerous nationally known instructors. She has traveled the world for study and pleasure to places such as Holland, France, Morocco, Bali, China, Hawaii, Mexico, and Guatemala.
Her artwork is a staple in solo and juried exhibitions and competitions in the region. In addition, her artwork is included in numerous permanent collections including the Oklahoma State Art Collection, and the collections at the University of Science and Art of Oklahoma in Chickasha and the Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art in Shawnee.
But for Cardot-Greiner, the MBA, etc., had been a radical departure from the art career she once thought she’d pursue.
Giving art one more try has led to her own shop at 210 St. George St., a studio where she works on jewelry, oil paintings, pencil drawings and publication in several books.
She’s on a tight deadline now to finish in time for a New York City show, a group exhibition set to open March 1 and featuring artists from around the world. Called “The Power of Perception,” the exhibition is curated by Creative Concept Studios and one of Cardot-Greiner’s pieces is being used as a logo. A painting published in “The Power of Perception 2013” was commissioned as a backdrop for New York Fashion Week 2014.
When she was 4, her parents hung a white panel on a wall in the breezeway of their Pennsylvania farm house because she would paint on anything. She kept painting on that panel through the years.
In the ninth grade her Pennsylvania art teacher “saw something special. She told me I was already better than her,” Cardot-Greiner said, and an art scholarship to the Erie (Pa.) Art Museum was arranged so she could take art lessons once a week with a noted artist.
For four years she found a way to make the 40-mile trip. She trained to be an oil painter and got a solid foundation in drawing and composition. Later she studied fine art at Mercyhurst College in Erie.
Murphy’s passion for art is illustrated by the evolution of her style and experimentation with subject matter and various media including pastel, oil, watercolor, and acrylic painting.
“I experiment often with different techniques and subject matter,” says Murphy in a news release. “This variety holds my interest and keeps me always looking forward to the next project.”
At 91 years of age, Murphy has maintained diligence in her artwork and spends most weekdays working in her studio. After many years of plein air painting (painting on site in the open air), she now only paints in the studio – usually from photographs or recollection. The reality of her subject matter acts as the foundation and her creativity is expressed through abstraction of color, shape, and composition.
Murphy explains in the release, “I blend greatly abstracted shapes with realism, sometimes flatten space, use exaggerated or arbitrary color, and often delineate objects. My goal is to produce a painting that is not a ‘postcard’ view but will intrigue the viewer and prolong interest.”
Beyond the works featured here, Murphy has worked in numerous media, both two- and three-dimensional.
“After all the experimenting, it seems the most comfortable endeavor for me is painting in either oil or acrylic, and my favorite subject matter is some form of landscape,” says Murphy in the release.
In her more recent works, she accentuates her landscapes with slightly abstracted, lyrical shapes in exaggerated colors and bold lines.
Murphy’s process for painting other subjects has evolved over the years as well.
“In the past, for still life paintings, I would set up actual compositions with fresh flowers,” she explains in the release. “But in recent years, I paint from imagination, abstracting shapes, and again, exaggerating colors and outlining objects in bright colors.”
Of Murphy’s “Rocks & Boulders” series, she says in the release, “Nature has always been a source of inspiration to me. A walk in the woods or near the water’s edge can start me planning paintings in which I might convey the feelings that come over me as I experience our awesome environment at close range. In this series my concept was to convey the stability, splendor, silence, and richness of color in nature’s boulders and rocks. Life is so transient; we are so vulnerable; but the earth endures, although gouged and scarred by time and the elements. Perhaps that is why I am awed by its grandeur and inspired by its beauty.”
Of another popular subject matter for Murphy, she explains in the release, “Puppets and dolls have been a recurring subject in my paintings through the years. When I found a wooden monkey puppet in an import shop I thought he would be a great subject for paintings, so I bought him and have created a number of paintings with this single puppet posing in any number of ways.”
Murphy, a longtime resident of Oklahoma, has studied at Oklahoma City University, Louisiana Tech University and at Louisiana Tech’s sister school in Rome, Italy, as well as with numerous nationally known instructors. She has traveled the world for study and pleasure to places such as Holland, France, Morocco, Bali, China, Hawaii, Mexico, and Guatemala.
Her artwork is a staple in solo and juried exhibitions and competitions in the region. In addition, her artwork is included in numerous permanent collections including the Oklahoma State Art Collection, and the collections at the University of Science and Art of Oklahoma in Chickasha and the Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art in Shawnee.
But for Cardot-Greiner, the MBA, etc., had been a radical departure from the art career she once thought she’d pursue.
Giving art one more try has led to her own shop at 210 St. George St., a studio where she works on jewelry, oil paintings, pencil drawings and publication in several books.
She’s on a tight deadline now to finish in time for a New York City show, a group exhibition set to open March 1 and featuring artists from around the world. Called “The Power of Perception,” the exhibition is curated by Creative Concept Studios and one of Cardot-Greiner’s pieces is being used as a logo. A painting published in “The Power of Perception 2013” was commissioned as a backdrop for New York Fashion Week 2014.
When she was 4, her parents hung a white panel on a wall in the breezeway of their Pennsylvania farm house because she would paint on anything. She kept painting on that panel through the years.
In the ninth grade her Pennsylvania art teacher “saw something special. She told me I was already better than her,” Cardot-Greiner said, and an art scholarship to the Erie (Pa.) Art Museum was arranged so she could take art lessons once a week with a noted artist.
For four years she found a way to make the 40-mile trip. She trained to be an oil painter and got a solid foundation in drawing and composition. Later she studied fine art at Mercyhurst College in Erie.
Rich Amalgams of Fascinating Personal Detritus
Alison Jacques Gallery is present ing Michael Bauer's inaugural exhibition at the gallery, a new series of oil paintings entitled Slow Future-H.S.O.P.-Opus. He employs an extraordinary range of mark-making in them - from heavy impasto to fine-brush doodles - layering diverse narrative clues as if engaged in some ardent form of reverse archaeology. In the middle of large canvases, Bauer builds rich amalgams of fascinating personal detritus, suspending tangled recollections of historical trivia, friends' anecdotes, forgotten bands, maligned painters' mistakes, and so on. All his paintings are fundamentally portraits, but they are portraits of memories.
Bauer loves titles - the more deliberately obscure and diverse the better - and this series is no exception. The 'slow' ofSlow Future refers to his pace in working, building layer upon layer, organically but never systematically, and because one of the things Bauer has always valued about painting is that it's slower than other media. H.S.O.P. is an acronym for the Hudson River School of painting - a 19th century fraternity of American landscape painters who hold no significance for Bauer other than the fact that they've become unfashionable and he likes the idea of "colonizing their memory". He fundamentally disagrees with the notion that painting itself has become obsolete and, by annexing a school devoted to it, seeks to re-emphasize that painting remains not only central to his future, but to the future. Opus is a typically self-deprecating Bauer addendum, a tongue-in-cheek nod to the fact that he doesn't see this or any other of his series as fitting into an ordered theory or composition.
Bauer usually adds some kind of coding system to his paintings' surfaces, alluding to a faux structure at each of their premises. These have recently taken the form of colour-coded punctuation, but in most of the paintings here the only graphic notations he uses are deliberate red herrings: Bauer has painted small flags in their corners, chosen not because of any personal geographic or historical relevance, but because they are from lesser-known nations that he didn't recognise and are often confused with more prominent countries. What's particularly appealing to Bauer is that any flag, known or unknown, carries so much invented history. So, in addition to these being framing devices or heraldic elements for each painting, he wants them to function as "traps of meaning" in the context of all the other clues in the works.
Investigating failings - both Bauer's own and those of other painters - is another central element of this exhibition. As an adolescent he copied the more expressive elements of "an awful Pointillist painter (his) dad collected" and returns to that here, relishing overused and flawed techniques from this and other artists, and, as he says, "focussing on their stupidities". Bauer has also brought more figurative elements into these new works, notably hands and feet, because he was never any good at rendering them as a young artist. Beyond revisiting failures, he uses his own unconscious acts in these works, often deliberately drawing with a brush "while (his) mind is somewhere else". He then invests time responding to these 'mistakes' in very particular, attentive ways. So, whilst Bauer isn't the slightest bit interested in rectifying them, the process of embracing and creating a kind of recycled beauty from the inappropriate and the rejected is absolutely central to his endeavours. Attempting to create resolved works would be disingenuous to Bauer's practice and to what he believes about painting, and one of the enduring fascinations in these works lies precisely in their remaining unfathomable. As Higgie puts it, 'A painting is not, and never has been, an explanation...it will always choose to hide as much as it reveals'.
“This exhibit began as an urge to share our studies in a spirit of community, encouraging relationships among artists working in a realist mode in New York,” wrote GCA student Anthony Baus in an email. “It is also seen as an opportunity to educate the general public, to give them insight into the working methods and practices of contemporary artists striving to acquire the foundation of a classical education.”
Founded by New York-based realist painter Jacob Collins, the Grand Central Academy of Art instructs students seeking a traditional art education. The academy models itself on the progressive methodology of historic ateliers. Each stage of drawing, painting, and sculpture fits into a larger curriculum built to give students the skills necessary to create classically inspired works.
“This exhibit began as an urge to share our studies in a spirit of community, encouraging relationships among artists working in a realist mode in New York,” wrote GCA student Anthony Baus in an email. “It is also seen as an opportunity to educate the general public, to give them insight into the working methods and practices of contemporary artists striving to acquire the foundation of a classical education.”
Founded by New York-based realist painter Jacob Collins, the Grand Central Academy of Art instructs students seeking a traditional art education. The academy models itself on the progressive methodology of historic ateliers. Each stage of drawing, painting, and sculpture fits into a larger curriculum built to give students the skills necessary to create classically inspired works.
Bauer loves titles - the more deliberately obscure and diverse the better - and this series is no exception. The 'slow' ofSlow Future refers to his pace in working, building layer upon layer, organically but never systematically, and because one of the things Bauer has always valued about painting is that it's slower than other media. H.S.O.P. is an acronym for the Hudson River School of painting - a 19th century fraternity of American landscape painters who hold no significance for Bauer other than the fact that they've become unfashionable and he likes the idea of "colonizing their memory". He fundamentally disagrees with the notion that painting itself has become obsolete and, by annexing a school devoted to it, seeks to re-emphasize that painting remains not only central to his future, but to the future. Opus is a typically self-deprecating Bauer addendum, a tongue-in-cheek nod to the fact that he doesn't see this or any other of his series as fitting into an ordered theory or composition.
Bauer usually adds some kind of coding system to his paintings' surfaces, alluding to a faux structure at each of their premises. These have recently taken the form of colour-coded punctuation, but in most of the paintings here the only graphic notations he uses are deliberate red herrings: Bauer has painted small flags in their corners, chosen not because of any personal geographic or historical relevance, but because they are from lesser-known nations that he didn't recognise and are often confused with more prominent countries. What's particularly appealing to Bauer is that any flag, known or unknown, carries so much invented history. So, in addition to these being framing devices or heraldic elements for each painting, he wants them to function as "traps of meaning" in the context of all the other clues in the works.
Investigating failings - both Bauer's own and those of other painters - is another central element of this exhibition. As an adolescent he copied the more expressive elements of "an awful Pointillist painter (his) dad collected" and returns to that here, relishing overused and flawed techniques from this and other artists, and, as he says, "focussing on their stupidities". Bauer has also brought more figurative elements into these new works, notably hands and feet, because he was never any good at rendering them as a young artist. Beyond revisiting failures, he uses his own unconscious acts in these works, often deliberately drawing with a brush "while (his) mind is somewhere else". He then invests time responding to these 'mistakes' in very particular, attentive ways. So, whilst Bauer isn't the slightest bit interested in rectifying them, the process of embracing and creating a kind of recycled beauty from the inappropriate and the rejected is absolutely central to his endeavours. Attempting to create resolved works would be disingenuous to Bauer's practice and to what he believes about painting, and one of the enduring fascinations in these works lies precisely in their remaining unfathomable. As Higgie puts it, 'A painting is not, and never has been, an explanation...it will always choose to hide as much as it reveals'.
“This exhibit began as an urge to share our studies in a spirit of community, encouraging relationships among artists working in a realist mode in New York,” wrote GCA student Anthony Baus in an email. “It is also seen as an opportunity to educate the general public, to give them insight into the working methods and practices of contemporary artists striving to acquire the foundation of a classical education.”
Founded by New York-based realist painter Jacob Collins, the Grand Central Academy of Art instructs students seeking a traditional art education. The academy models itself on the progressive methodology of historic ateliers. Each stage of drawing, painting, and sculpture fits into a larger curriculum built to give students the skills necessary to create classically inspired works.
“This exhibit began as an urge to share our studies in a spirit of community, encouraging relationships among artists working in a realist mode in New York,” wrote GCA student Anthony Baus in an email. “It is also seen as an opportunity to educate the general public, to give them insight into the working methods and practices of contemporary artists striving to acquire the foundation of a classical education.”
Founded by New York-based realist painter Jacob Collins, the Grand Central Academy of Art instructs students seeking a traditional art education. The academy models itself on the progressive methodology of historic ateliers. Each stage of drawing, painting, and sculpture fits into a larger curriculum built to give students the skills necessary to create classically inspired works.
2013年2月17日星期日
Cruise industry braces for rough waters after Triumph
As weary passengers made their way home from the Carnival Triumph’s ill-fated cruise Friday, travel agents and industry analysts say they haven’t seen an immediate dip in bookings or prices. But if photos and videos of the squalid conditions on board percolate across social media, the impact could linger — and bring back memories of last January’s Concordia disaster, in which a Carnival-owned ship ran aground and capsized in Italy, killing 32.
“It’s still too early to tell” whether would-be cruisers will be turned off by the aftermath of an engine room fire on the Triumph, which had left the ship adrift in the Gulf of Mexico since Sunday, says Steve Loucks, spokesman for Travel Leaders Group, a network of independently owned and operated travel agencies in the U.S.
Loucks said his company hasn’t fielded any cruise cancellations over the past week and says cruise bookings so far this year are up nearly 10% over last year, when the Concordia accident “certainly had an impact.”
Since that disaster, “our agents have been fielding questions about what safety procedures the cruise lines have in place,” Loucks says. “After the Concordia, new safety measures were implemented, and we believe something similar will happen after the (National Transportation Safety Board) investigation. But the big difference here is that there was no loss of life.”
As for prices, “when rates in the Caribbean are already under $100 per person per night, it’s hard to see prices going much lower,” Loucks says.
Michael Driscoll, editor of the industry newsletter Cruise Week, said Carnival canceled a one-day sale this week and will be hit harder than other cruise lines by the Triumph story, in part because because its Carnival brand draws a high percentage of first-time cruisers.
Carnival also owns Costa Cruises, the company that operated the Concordia, as well as Princess Cruises, Holland America, Cunard and P&O. A third Carnival ship, the Splendor, lost power at sea in 2010 and was towed back to port under similar conditions to those on the Triumph.
Driscoll said Friday’s aftermath “hasn’t been as bad as some people in the industry had feared. We all expected to see a flood of photos and videos” documenting such indignities as exploding toilets and four-hour waits for food, but so far, the social media response has been fairly muted, he said.
Matthew Jacob, a cruise industry analyst with ITG Investment Research, noted that Carnival’s stock price “took a fairly sizable hit” following the Concordia disaster, dropping from $34.28 the day before the accident to under $30 but has since rebounded. But declining net yield, or revenue paid per passenger, led to discounts of 10% or more the following summer, noted Jacob.
The cruise industry “had to play catch-up, but heading into 2013, the outlook was pretty positive. Demand was healthy, and net yields were rebounding,” Jacob says.
Carnival shares fell 47 cents Friday to $36.88, or nearly 1.3%. For the week, shares are off nearly 6%. On Thursday, investment bank Goldman Sachs, citing Carnival’s guidance about the fallout from Triumph, lowered its 2013 outlook for the company, saying it would be hurt by lost income and bad public relations.
The Triumph accident, like the Concordia, coincides with “wave season,” a two- to three-month period when agents push summer cruises with advertising and special promotions and offer last-minute discounts geared to sun-starved Northerners.
“Cruise prices are extremely dynamic, so if bookings slow, they’ll respond,” added Jacob. “Social media could play a much bigger role this time, but the bottom line is that the protocols Carnival had in place seemed to work. It’s a different story than last year, when the issue was negligence and there was a loss of life.”
The cruise industry has grown exponentially in recent decades. In 1980 there were 1 million passengers worldwide. This year, projections put the number at 20 million. This week’s Triumph troubles raise questions about whether the industry has grown too big and too fast to be truly safe.
Cruise industry expert Andrew O. Coggins, Jr., doesn’t think so. One reason: Cruise ships are governed by International Maritime Organization regulations and not by the laws of the country in which they’re registered.
“(The industry) is strictly regulated. Ships are foreign-flagged because of labor and cost issues. But the safety certification comes from independent classification societies and that’s what enables ships to get insurance,” explained Coggins, a professor of management at Pace University’s Lubin School of Business in New York.
A number of high-profile ferry disasters brought even stricter regulations in the 1990s, such as the requirement that all ships install sprinkler systems — with no grandfather clause for older vessels – if they were to remain in service.
But other safety issues relate to the ever-growing size of new ships. When the 102,000-ton Carnival Triumph sailed into service in 1999, it was among the first ships too large to transit the Panama Canal. Now, ships are plying the oceans that are more than twice that size. Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas weighs in at 225,282 tons, for instance.
Driscoll said the biggest ships afloat also command the highest prices because of strong consumer demand. But “there’s always a question of how much bigger can they get?” said Coggins, and whether colossal size and safety are compatible when it comes to matters of crowd control in the event of a disaster.
As for the passengers of the Triumph, “They were lucky because the (sprinkler) system worked. It put out the fire. Engine room fires, especially those severe enough to require evacuating the engine room, usually result in loss of the ship. Had the system not worked the 4,000-plus people onboard would have been forced into lifeboats in less than optimal sea conditions.”
Another worry: “Passengers who disembark from the Carnival Triumph today are highly likely to get sick in the days ahead,” said Tony Abate, vice president of operations at AtmosAir Solutions in Fairfield, Ct.
“The biggest concern for these passengers is that they were trapped inside the ship for so long,” said Abate. “The inside of a cruise ship is a space that’s designed to have an air ventilation system to dilute contaminants, and that was knocked out.
In the past, some cruise ships have become floating incubators of illnesses such as norovirus “even when ventilation systems are functioning properly,” says Abate.
Meanwhile, reactions from Triumph passengers on whether they’d hit the high seas again were mixed.
Sharon Ward, of Bay City, Texas, was on her first cruise as part of a 45th high school reunion. She praised the Carnival crew and discounted other passengers’ horror stories with “there’s a lot of people you just can’t satisfy. Life happens.”
But Anna Ward, a Wichita, Kan., homemaker and student, said she “probably won’t” board another ship.
“How do I get on a cruise and not think that that is not going to happen,” she said. “I’d be on my guard the whole time. “
Now that the ship is safely in port, Carnival can begin working in earnest on damage control.
“This is the second (incident) in two years on Carnival. It isn’t something you want to get a reputation for,” said Ernest DelBuono, referring to the 2010 power loss on the Carnival Splendor. That cruise was nicknamed “Voyage of the Spammed” after its stranded passengers were reduced to eating Spam dropped off by a helicopter.
The crisis manager with Levick, a Washington, D.C., communications firm, said the cruise line needs to thoroughly evaluate operational systems on all its ships and provide fair compensation for passengers whose vacations were ruined.
“They need to be reassuring everyone that ‘We’re going to fix this,’ and if it does happen again, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do,’” he said.
Potential cruisers made skittish by this week’s relentless coverage of the Triumph’s woes may give greater scrutiny to individual lines before booking, DelBuono said. But overall, he doesn’t think the incident will have a long-lasting effect on the cruise industry.
“It’s still too early to tell” whether would-be cruisers will be turned off by the aftermath of an engine room fire on the Triumph, which had left the ship adrift in the Gulf of Mexico since Sunday, says Steve Loucks, spokesman for Travel Leaders Group, a network of independently owned and operated travel agencies in the U.S.
Loucks said his company hasn’t fielded any cruise cancellations over the past week and says cruise bookings so far this year are up nearly 10% over last year, when the Concordia accident “certainly had an impact.”
Since that disaster, “our agents have been fielding questions about what safety procedures the cruise lines have in place,” Loucks says. “After the Concordia, new safety measures were implemented, and we believe something similar will happen after the (National Transportation Safety Board) investigation. But the big difference here is that there was no loss of life.”
As for prices, “when rates in the Caribbean are already under $100 per person per night, it’s hard to see prices going much lower,” Loucks says.
Michael Driscoll, editor of the industry newsletter Cruise Week, said Carnival canceled a one-day sale this week and will be hit harder than other cruise lines by the Triumph story, in part because because its Carnival brand draws a high percentage of first-time cruisers.
Carnival also owns Costa Cruises, the company that operated the Concordia, as well as Princess Cruises, Holland America, Cunard and P&O. A third Carnival ship, the Splendor, lost power at sea in 2010 and was towed back to port under similar conditions to those on the Triumph.
Driscoll said Friday’s aftermath “hasn’t been as bad as some people in the industry had feared. We all expected to see a flood of photos and videos” documenting such indignities as exploding toilets and four-hour waits for food, but so far, the social media response has been fairly muted, he said.
Matthew Jacob, a cruise industry analyst with ITG Investment Research, noted that Carnival’s stock price “took a fairly sizable hit” following the Concordia disaster, dropping from $34.28 the day before the accident to under $30 but has since rebounded. But declining net yield, or revenue paid per passenger, led to discounts of 10% or more the following summer, noted Jacob.
The cruise industry “had to play catch-up, but heading into 2013, the outlook was pretty positive. Demand was healthy, and net yields were rebounding,” Jacob says.
Carnival shares fell 47 cents Friday to $36.88, or nearly 1.3%. For the week, shares are off nearly 6%. On Thursday, investment bank Goldman Sachs, citing Carnival’s guidance about the fallout from Triumph, lowered its 2013 outlook for the company, saying it would be hurt by lost income and bad public relations.
The Triumph accident, like the Concordia, coincides with “wave season,” a two- to three-month period when agents push summer cruises with advertising and special promotions and offer last-minute discounts geared to sun-starved Northerners.
“Cruise prices are extremely dynamic, so if bookings slow, they’ll respond,” added Jacob. “Social media could play a much bigger role this time, but the bottom line is that the protocols Carnival had in place seemed to work. It’s a different story than last year, when the issue was negligence and there was a loss of life.”
The cruise industry has grown exponentially in recent decades. In 1980 there were 1 million passengers worldwide. This year, projections put the number at 20 million. This week’s Triumph troubles raise questions about whether the industry has grown too big and too fast to be truly safe.
Cruise industry expert Andrew O. Coggins, Jr., doesn’t think so. One reason: Cruise ships are governed by International Maritime Organization regulations and not by the laws of the country in which they’re registered.
“(The industry) is strictly regulated. Ships are foreign-flagged because of labor and cost issues. But the safety certification comes from independent classification societies and that’s what enables ships to get insurance,” explained Coggins, a professor of management at Pace University’s Lubin School of Business in New York.
A number of high-profile ferry disasters brought even stricter regulations in the 1990s, such as the requirement that all ships install sprinkler systems — with no grandfather clause for older vessels – if they were to remain in service.
But other safety issues relate to the ever-growing size of new ships. When the 102,000-ton Carnival Triumph sailed into service in 1999, it was among the first ships too large to transit the Panama Canal. Now, ships are plying the oceans that are more than twice that size. Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas weighs in at 225,282 tons, for instance.
Driscoll said the biggest ships afloat also command the highest prices because of strong consumer demand. But “there’s always a question of how much bigger can they get?” said Coggins, and whether colossal size and safety are compatible when it comes to matters of crowd control in the event of a disaster.
As for the passengers of the Triumph, “They were lucky because the (sprinkler) system worked. It put out the fire. Engine room fires, especially those severe enough to require evacuating the engine room, usually result in loss of the ship. Had the system not worked the 4,000-plus people onboard would have been forced into lifeboats in less than optimal sea conditions.”
Another worry: “Passengers who disembark from the Carnival Triumph today are highly likely to get sick in the days ahead,” said Tony Abate, vice president of operations at AtmosAir Solutions in Fairfield, Ct.
“The biggest concern for these passengers is that they were trapped inside the ship for so long,” said Abate. “The inside of a cruise ship is a space that’s designed to have an air ventilation system to dilute contaminants, and that was knocked out.
In the past, some cruise ships have become floating incubators of illnesses such as norovirus “even when ventilation systems are functioning properly,” says Abate.
Meanwhile, reactions from Triumph passengers on whether they’d hit the high seas again were mixed.
Sharon Ward, of Bay City, Texas, was on her first cruise as part of a 45th high school reunion. She praised the Carnival crew and discounted other passengers’ horror stories with “there’s a lot of people you just can’t satisfy. Life happens.”
But Anna Ward, a Wichita, Kan., homemaker and student, said she “probably won’t” board another ship.
“How do I get on a cruise and not think that that is not going to happen,” she said. “I’d be on my guard the whole time. “
Now that the ship is safely in port, Carnival can begin working in earnest on damage control.
“This is the second (incident) in two years on Carnival. It isn’t something you want to get a reputation for,” said Ernest DelBuono, referring to the 2010 power loss on the Carnival Splendor. That cruise was nicknamed “Voyage of the Spammed” after its stranded passengers were reduced to eating Spam dropped off by a helicopter.
The crisis manager with Levick, a Washington, D.C., communications firm, said the cruise line needs to thoroughly evaluate operational systems on all its ships and provide fair compensation for passengers whose vacations were ruined.
“They need to be reassuring everyone that ‘We’re going to fix this,’ and if it does happen again, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do,’” he said.
Potential cruisers made skittish by this week’s relentless coverage of the Triumph’s woes may give greater scrutiny to individual lines before booking, DelBuono said. But overall, he doesn’t think the incident will have a long-lasting effect on the cruise industry.
The dirt on duct cleaning
John Santos of Los Angeles wants his home to be a healthy gathering place for family and friends, some of whom are recovering from major illness. As part of his effort, he recently had his home's ductwork professionally cleaned.
"I wanted to make certain the air that they were breathing was as clean as it possibly could be," says Santos, 54, a high school technology teacher, "Especially living in a city like Los Angeles, where the air quality can really be poor and cleaning the air systems can provide value."
Although many homeowners consider duct cleaning a way to make their indoor air cleaner, research on whether it can really create a healthier home is in the early stages.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends looking into duct cleaning after fires, floods, pest infestations and in hazardous waste situations, or if you can see particles coming out of your ducts. Otherwise, the agency says it's not necessary for the average household.
Tom Keys, president of Atlantic Duct Cleaning in Sterling, Va., says his company has done more than 80,000 duct-cleaning jobs, and that many customers report back that they have better air quality, a cleaner home and lower energy costs. Customers often are surprised at how much debris collected in their ductwork over the years, he says.
"Most of the people who do it, do it for peace of mind," Keys says. His company has found all sorts of items in ductwork beyond dirt and grime, including class rings, rare baseball cards and construction debris from when the home was built.
Keys encourages homeowners to ask duct-cleaning technicians for evidence that there is dirt in the ducts that should be removed.
Jodi Araujo, executive director of the National Air Duct Cleaners Association, says homeowners can tell when ducts are dirty by simply removing a register cover, inserting a camera and clicking a photo.
On the other hand, contractor John DeSilvia doesn't generally recommend duct cleaning to homeowners. It's normal for dirt to accumulate and stick to the sides of air ducts, he says. But visible mould growth is a problem.
If you do have ductwork cleaned, he advises getting a few estimates and ensuring that the service you hire uses high-powered equipment to capture what they dislodge. Otherwise the effort could backfire.
"Any dust and dirt not collected will be distributed throughout your home, causing a bigger problem," DeSilvia says.
If you decide to get your home's ductwork cleaned, expect to pay between $400 and $800 if there's one HVAC - heating, ventilation and air conditioning - system. If you have more than one zone, you could pay more. That's because duct cleaners don't just clean the ducts - they also clean the furnace and air handler for each unit, which could extend the life of your appliances.
In addition, they can identify any places where a duct has become unsealed, torn or flattened, preventing good airflow. Many professional duct cleaners recommend having a system cleaned every five to eight years.
Patrons who wish to light up while visiting the facility will now have to venture over to a spot by the main soccer field, council decided this week.
Staff had looked at numerous places around the Civic Centre that would meet the requirements for a Designated Smoking Area (DSA). The draft bylaw calls for a DSA to situated 30 metres from doorways, vents, operable windows, ventilation ducts and entryways to community centres, municipal offices and other town-owned buildings.
While staff reviewed potential DSAs north of the arena, that proved problematic due to the amount of equipment and amenities in the area. Secondly, access to the north side would have to be through the fire doors.
Parks and recreation manager Kelly Williams told council that option raised concerns over security and public access to the dressing room corridor. Additional facility retrofits and the installation of a close circuit television system would have to be considered. The soccer field location would fall short of the 30-metre buffer but meets the intent of the regulation, he added.
"I wanted to make certain the air that they were breathing was as clean as it possibly could be," says Santos, 54, a high school technology teacher, "Especially living in a city like Los Angeles, where the air quality can really be poor and cleaning the air systems can provide value."
Although many homeowners consider duct cleaning a way to make their indoor air cleaner, research on whether it can really create a healthier home is in the early stages.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends looking into duct cleaning after fires, floods, pest infestations and in hazardous waste situations, or if you can see particles coming out of your ducts. Otherwise, the agency says it's not necessary for the average household.
Tom Keys, president of Atlantic Duct Cleaning in Sterling, Va., says his company has done more than 80,000 duct-cleaning jobs, and that many customers report back that they have better air quality, a cleaner home and lower energy costs. Customers often are surprised at how much debris collected in their ductwork over the years, he says.
"Most of the people who do it, do it for peace of mind," Keys says. His company has found all sorts of items in ductwork beyond dirt and grime, including class rings, rare baseball cards and construction debris from when the home was built.
Keys encourages homeowners to ask duct-cleaning technicians for evidence that there is dirt in the ducts that should be removed.
Jodi Araujo, executive director of the National Air Duct Cleaners Association, says homeowners can tell when ducts are dirty by simply removing a register cover, inserting a camera and clicking a photo.
On the other hand, contractor John DeSilvia doesn't generally recommend duct cleaning to homeowners. It's normal for dirt to accumulate and stick to the sides of air ducts, he says. But visible mould growth is a problem.
If you do have ductwork cleaned, he advises getting a few estimates and ensuring that the service you hire uses high-powered equipment to capture what they dislodge. Otherwise the effort could backfire.
"Any dust and dirt not collected will be distributed throughout your home, causing a bigger problem," DeSilvia says.
If you decide to get your home's ductwork cleaned, expect to pay between $400 and $800 if there's one HVAC - heating, ventilation and air conditioning - system. If you have more than one zone, you could pay more. That's because duct cleaners don't just clean the ducts - they also clean the furnace and air handler for each unit, which could extend the life of your appliances.
In addition, they can identify any places where a duct has become unsealed, torn or flattened, preventing good airflow. Many professional duct cleaners recommend having a system cleaned every five to eight years.
Patrons who wish to light up while visiting the facility will now have to venture over to a spot by the main soccer field, council decided this week.
Staff had looked at numerous places around the Civic Centre that would meet the requirements for a Designated Smoking Area (DSA). The draft bylaw calls for a DSA to situated 30 metres from doorways, vents, operable windows, ventilation ducts and entryways to community centres, municipal offices and other town-owned buildings.
While staff reviewed potential DSAs north of the arena, that proved problematic due to the amount of equipment and amenities in the area. Secondly, access to the north side would have to be through the fire doors.
Parks and recreation manager Kelly Williams told council that option raised concerns over security and public access to the dressing room corridor. Additional facility retrofits and the installation of a close circuit television system would have to be considered. The soccer field location would fall short of the 30-metre buffer but meets the intent of the regulation, he added.
2013年2月6日星期三
Coming to terms with Tasmania’s forgotten war
Some dark secrets run so deep that they slip from view. The hole left in our collective conscience is gradually plugged, with shallow distractions and awkward half-truths. Questions, if uttered, pass unheard. An uneasy and enduring silence prevails.
This was the first and only properly declared war fought by the British on Australian soil. Initiated by Governor George Arthur on November 1 1828, it was waged against an enemy once dismissed as a meagre scattering of “savage crows”. But the first Tasmanians were an enemy so committed to driving the settlers from their ancestral lands that neither ad hoc massacres on a lawless frontier, nor the ravages of disease that swept ahead of muskets and poisoned flour seemed capable of quelling their determination.
As their numbers fell, Aboriginal resolve seemed to increase. They simply could not give up their land.
This is a story about the consequences of such resolve and the marks it has left on the history and identity of today’s Tasmanians.
I have spent nearly 30 years seeking solutions to the injustice that persists for the Aboriginal community in Tasmania. Attitudes in Tasmania remained unaffected by what seemed pyrrhic victories. The Aboriginal community remained alienated from contemporary Tasmanian society, which in turn resisted the facts of the bloody history that we shared.
These were not simple prejudices, they grew out of penetrating mythologies, rooted in the oldest and most profound of themes; cultures in collision and the inexorable triumph of power.
My thesis: that a hand guided by a thousand years of European history held every pen and wielded every musket used in the campaign against the First Tasmanians. While the nations of Tasmania had lived in splendid isolation on their island for millennia, the invaders had already survived an eternity of war.
The story of Tasmania’s war is not part of the state’s ever-changing tourist brand. It is the one truth that can never be uttered – the source of an ancestral curse. There is a terrible history lurking beneath the surface of the island’s placid lakes. It stalks the shadows of each rainforest glade and casts a disquieting hue across the lurid vistas of wilderness upon which our fame is built.
Tasmania’s history is one of shameless deception that outraged even the citizens of the day. When the war was won a veil was drawn and a chapter closed. Saint and sinner could join in sombre lament. With inevitable necessity the Native threat had been banished.
To live in Tasmania today is to exist in the eye of a quiet, relentless storm. The island, politically and aesthetically, is a quintessential green. It is a destination of choice for Australians seeking an escape from the clutter of urban life. The cleanest of air and mildest of climates bestows on its small population a gourmet life; where fine wine and culinary delights accompany a thriving culture of literary and visual arts. These reassure both visitor and resident alike that, of all the places in the world, this must be closest to heaven.
Within a year of the first European settlement the die had been cast and the fledgling colony took its first confused steps toward conflict with the Tasmanian Aboriginal nations whose land it was to over-run. On 3 May 1804, the British at Risdon Cove had their first encounter with a large group of Aborigines. According to Henry Reynolds, the group, which included women and children, was “probably on a hunting expedition”. Frightened soldiers (some say drunk) fired on them in the commanding officer’s absence. Estimates made at the time of the carnage ranged as high as 50 killed.
In the coming decades, as the number of livestock grew, settlers demanded more land; inevitably increasing the number of destructive encounters with Aboriginal tribes. This culminated in Governor George Arthur issuing a series of proclamations placing the colony under martial law and calling for Aborigines to be expelled by force from the settled districts “by whatever means a severe and inevitable necessity may dictate”. James Boyce argues that the popular interpretation and overall effect of these proclamations was to provide legal immunity and state sanction for the killing of Aborigines wherever they could be found. The resulting slaughter became known as the Black War.
The thought of an ethnic cleansing in Tasmania fatally challenges the notion of an “Australia fair”. This might be Tasmania’s darkest secret, but it is also the least-kept. Raphael Lemkin, the Jewish scholar who first coined the term “genocide” in 1943, referred to Tasmania as a textbook example. The subject remains a disputed one. Henry Reynolds has long held that the term should not be applied in Tasmania.
Yet, the tolerance of active killing, forced exile and permanent detention are all consequences of Tasmanian policies between 1828 and 1864. The last detention facility at Oyster Cove was only abandoned when its inhabitants, left to die in miserable conditions, had reduced to a single old woman. Benjamin Madley, from Yale University’s Genocide Studies Program, concluded an exhaustive 2008 study thus, “Tasmania under British rule was clearly a site of genocide”.
Despite voluminous colonial documents and a wealth of visual records from the time, the Black War remains absent from Australian national remembrance. There was no glorious victory, no legendary loss on a far-flung beach. While our national imagination has churned heroes from slaughter on the fields of France during the Great War, the first war that Australians ever fought entrenched Tasmanian Aborigines as the archetypal enemy within.
This stands in contrast to the long European experience of war, where enemy and ally are fluid identities, and where treaty and reparation are the established guideposts of national relations. In Tasmania the standing of Aboriginal nations was simply swept from the table with an unspoken agreement that it should be raised no more.
Tasmanian colonial artists struggled with the unseemly haste by which any further discussion of the Black War was ceased.
In the early 1830s, John Glover presented his audience with a fanciful memorial to mark the end of conflict. Warriors who, armed with long spears, waddies and firesticks, had slain settlers and burned their barns and crops to the ground just months before, danced and sang in the whimsical scenes he created. They seem cast as a grotesque footnote to colonial accomplishment.
Others artists such as Thomas Bock and John Skinner Prout continued this sentimental acknowledgement. Their portraits provide a unique visual record of the ancestors of today’s Aboriginal community who had died before the introduction of photography to the colony. But this visual record offers little clue to their experience of war.
It was an ageing engraver and minor painter named Benjamin Duterrau who stood alone in his desire to directly confront the seriousness of the Black War. Arriving in Hobart from London in 1832, just months after its end, he was quick to produce a series of engravings, reliefs and portraits on the subject. These characterised a cast of “noble savages” that he would use to play out the drama of Australia’s first epic history painting. The Conciliation embedded an enduring melancholy into the mythology of Tasmanian wilderness, depicting a scene in which a hollow treaty is struck between the governor’s agent, George Augustus Robinson, and the last resistance fighters to oppose British rule. Robinson had travelled with a small group of Aborigines, including a woman called Truganini, traversing the whole island on foot in an effort to contact each of the tribes remaining free on their country. His mission was to end the war and spread his Evangelical Christianity to the survivors.
Dutterau’s painting of The Conciliation presents a complex tableau. It reveals his passion for Raphael and a theme recently revisited by the French revolutionary painter Jean-Jacques David with his painting The Sabine Women, first exhibited in 1799.
Duterrau is known to have had an intense interest in Raphael’s School of Athens and his Cartoons. He utilised these references to invest various characters in the composition with gesture, emotion and passion – among these, incredulity and suspicion. Raphael also supplies allusion to the Apostles as founders of the Christian church. In this way Duterrau describes a tense scene where the war is brought to an end with pious authority. The Aborigines find themselves under a new jurisdiction and are saved from their own ignorance, as the Apostles had saved Jews and Gentiles two thousand years before.
Elements found in David establish a counterpoint in the composition, as the Aboriginal woman known as Truganini pleads with outstretched arms for her reluctant husband to accept the truce. This emblematic figure recalls a similar one in The Sabine Women where Hersilia, wife of the Roman leader, Romulus, also intervenes with an appeal for peace.
Duterrau was aware that Robinson had deceived the Aborigines and that the treaty was immediately discarded by the governor once he had the fighters under his control. The wisdom of Truganini’s husband was proven and their fate was sealed. These are scenes hung heavily with the European history of moral conflict. An origin for David’s figure can be traced to Satan, Sin and Death, an earlier painting by William Hogarth. This work was created as an illustration to Milton’s gothic masterpiece Paradise Lost, a biblical epic of the Fall of Man, the Temptation of Eve, and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. It is an archetypal gothic tale, with Satan the greatest tragic hero in English literature – mingling humanity with hubris and rebellion.
Milton’s epic had a huge influence on the development of gothic literature, running to at least 60 editions between Duterrau’s birth and his arrival in Hobart. Its influence is most notable in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, where the creature reads Paradise Lost and suffers at its revelations.
Duterrau brought Tasmania under the same dark veil. In this analysis, Robinson fits perfectly the role of a tragic hero, alone in the wilderness, miraculously surviving both the rugged landscape and the treacherous Natives. He wrote of his journeys as a terrifying ordeal of the soul requiring virtue, bravery and self-sacrifice. With all the necessary elements of a gothic tale, he challenges the tyrant of war and saves the maiden Truganini (with whom he was romantically linked) from faithless savagery.
In crafting Australia’s first historical epic painting, Duterrau underpinned the drama that had played out on the island of Tasmania as a reiteration of the eternal battle between good and evil, and the profound consequences of betrayal. That he should have chosen such a theme to explore, and drew upon the art of the French Revolution is no surprise. Duterrau’s family history was steeped in war. He was a Huguenot – a French Protestant. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Huguenots had been subject to missionaries, forced conversion, persecution, torture and massacre at the hands of French Catholics. When Louis XIV declared Protestantism illegal in 1685, tens of thousands of Huguenots fled to neighbouring Protestant countries, as their country was no longer their own.
For me, The Conciliation neatly weaves together the histories of French religious conflict and the Tasmanian colonial war against a backdrop of interminable bloodshed across Europe. My experience of the tangible artefacts of war that form the very fabric of monument and landscape in France make it clear that a mature society is one that lives with its past. An enduring legacy of war is to be reminded of past mistakes.
The Conciliation elaborates a theme that seems to have resonated powerfully for an artist of Duterrau’s background. That this might be so takes the events in Tasmania from being an inconsequential flurry on the edge of civilisation and places them among the mainstream of world events. It shifts the Aboriginal nations of Tasmania from anthropological curiosity to players on the world’s stage – with the same international rights to justice.
This was the first and only properly declared war fought by the British on Australian soil. Initiated by Governor George Arthur on November 1 1828, it was waged against an enemy once dismissed as a meagre scattering of “savage crows”. But the first Tasmanians were an enemy so committed to driving the settlers from their ancestral lands that neither ad hoc massacres on a lawless frontier, nor the ravages of disease that swept ahead of muskets and poisoned flour seemed capable of quelling their determination.
As their numbers fell, Aboriginal resolve seemed to increase. They simply could not give up their land.
This is a story about the consequences of such resolve and the marks it has left on the history and identity of today’s Tasmanians.
I have spent nearly 30 years seeking solutions to the injustice that persists for the Aboriginal community in Tasmania. Attitudes in Tasmania remained unaffected by what seemed pyrrhic victories. The Aboriginal community remained alienated from contemporary Tasmanian society, which in turn resisted the facts of the bloody history that we shared.
These were not simple prejudices, they grew out of penetrating mythologies, rooted in the oldest and most profound of themes; cultures in collision and the inexorable triumph of power.
My thesis: that a hand guided by a thousand years of European history held every pen and wielded every musket used in the campaign against the First Tasmanians. While the nations of Tasmania had lived in splendid isolation on their island for millennia, the invaders had already survived an eternity of war.
The story of Tasmania’s war is not part of the state’s ever-changing tourist brand. It is the one truth that can never be uttered – the source of an ancestral curse. There is a terrible history lurking beneath the surface of the island’s placid lakes. It stalks the shadows of each rainforest glade and casts a disquieting hue across the lurid vistas of wilderness upon which our fame is built.
Tasmania’s history is one of shameless deception that outraged even the citizens of the day. When the war was won a veil was drawn and a chapter closed. Saint and sinner could join in sombre lament. With inevitable necessity the Native threat had been banished.
To live in Tasmania today is to exist in the eye of a quiet, relentless storm. The island, politically and aesthetically, is a quintessential green. It is a destination of choice for Australians seeking an escape from the clutter of urban life. The cleanest of air and mildest of climates bestows on its small population a gourmet life; where fine wine and culinary delights accompany a thriving culture of literary and visual arts. These reassure both visitor and resident alike that, of all the places in the world, this must be closest to heaven.
Within a year of the first European settlement the die had been cast and the fledgling colony took its first confused steps toward conflict with the Tasmanian Aboriginal nations whose land it was to over-run. On 3 May 1804, the British at Risdon Cove had their first encounter with a large group of Aborigines. According to Henry Reynolds, the group, which included women and children, was “probably on a hunting expedition”. Frightened soldiers (some say drunk) fired on them in the commanding officer’s absence. Estimates made at the time of the carnage ranged as high as 50 killed.
In the coming decades, as the number of livestock grew, settlers demanded more land; inevitably increasing the number of destructive encounters with Aboriginal tribes. This culminated in Governor George Arthur issuing a series of proclamations placing the colony under martial law and calling for Aborigines to be expelled by force from the settled districts “by whatever means a severe and inevitable necessity may dictate”. James Boyce argues that the popular interpretation and overall effect of these proclamations was to provide legal immunity and state sanction for the killing of Aborigines wherever they could be found. The resulting slaughter became known as the Black War.
The thought of an ethnic cleansing in Tasmania fatally challenges the notion of an “Australia fair”. This might be Tasmania’s darkest secret, but it is also the least-kept. Raphael Lemkin, the Jewish scholar who first coined the term “genocide” in 1943, referred to Tasmania as a textbook example. The subject remains a disputed one. Henry Reynolds has long held that the term should not be applied in Tasmania.
Yet, the tolerance of active killing, forced exile and permanent detention are all consequences of Tasmanian policies between 1828 and 1864. The last detention facility at Oyster Cove was only abandoned when its inhabitants, left to die in miserable conditions, had reduced to a single old woman. Benjamin Madley, from Yale University’s Genocide Studies Program, concluded an exhaustive 2008 study thus, “Tasmania under British rule was clearly a site of genocide”.
Despite voluminous colonial documents and a wealth of visual records from the time, the Black War remains absent from Australian national remembrance. There was no glorious victory, no legendary loss on a far-flung beach. While our national imagination has churned heroes from slaughter on the fields of France during the Great War, the first war that Australians ever fought entrenched Tasmanian Aborigines as the archetypal enemy within.
This stands in contrast to the long European experience of war, where enemy and ally are fluid identities, and where treaty and reparation are the established guideposts of national relations. In Tasmania the standing of Aboriginal nations was simply swept from the table with an unspoken agreement that it should be raised no more.
Tasmanian colonial artists struggled with the unseemly haste by which any further discussion of the Black War was ceased.
In the early 1830s, John Glover presented his audience with a fanciful memorial to mark the end of conflict. Warriors who, armed with long spears, waddies and firesticks, had slain settlers and burned their barns and crops to the ground just months before, danced and sang in the whimsical scenes he created. They seem cast as a grotesque footnote to colonial accomplishment.
Others artists such as Thomas Bock and John Skinner Prout continued this sentimental acknowledgement. Their portraits provide a unique visual record of the ancestors of today’s Aboriginal community who had died before the introduction of photography to the colony. But this visual record offers little clue to their experience of war.
It was an ageing engraver and minor painter named Benjamin Duterrau who stood alone in his desire to directly confront the seriousness of the Black War. Arriving in Hobart from London in 1832, just months after its end, he was quick to produce a series of engravings, reliefs and portraits on the subject. These characterised a cast of “noble savages” that he would use to play out the drama of Australia’s first epic history painting. The Conciliation embedded an enduring melancholy into the mythology of Tasmanian wilderness, depicting a scene in which a hollow treaty is struck between the governor’s agent, George Augustus Robinson, and the last resistance fighters to oppose British rule. Robinson had travelled with a small group of Aborigines, including a woman called Truganini, traversing the whole island on foot in an effort to contact each of the tribes remaining free on their country. His mission was to end the war and spread his Evangelical Christianity to the survivors.
Dutterau’s painting of The Conciliation presents a complex tableau. It reveals his passion for Raphael and a theme recently revisited by the French revolutionary painter Jean-Jacques David with his painting The Sabine Women, first exhibited in 1799.
Duterrau is known to have had an intense interest in Raphael’s School of Athens and his Cartoons. He utilised these references to invest various characters in the composition with gesture, emotion and passion – among these, incredulity and suspicion. Raphael also supplies allusion to the Apostles as founders of the Christian church. In this way Duterrau describes a tense scene where the war is brought to an end with pious authority. The Aborigines find themselves under a new jurisdiction and are saved from their own ignorance, as the Apostles had saved Jews and Gentiles two thousand years before.
Elements found in David establish a counterpoint in the composition, as the Aboriginal woman known as Truganini pleads with outstretched arms for her reluctant husband to accept the truce. This emblematic figure recalls a similar one in The Sabine Women where Hersilia, wife of the Roman leader, Romulus, also intervenes with an appeal for peace.
Duterrau was aware that Robinson had deceived the Aborigines and that the treaty was immediately discarded by the governor once he had the fighters under his control. The wisdom of Truganini’s husband was proven and their fate was sealed. These are scenes hung heavily with the European history of moral conflict. An origin for David’s figure can be traced to Satan, Sin and Death, an earlier painting by William Hogarth. This work was created as an illustration to Milton’s gothic masterpiece Paradise Lost, a biblical epic of the Fall of Man, the Temptation of Eve, and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. It is an archetypal gothic tale, with Satan the greatest tragic hero in English literature – mingling humanity with hubris and rebellion.
Milton’s epic had a huge influence on the development of gothic literature, running to at least 60 editions between Duterrau’s birth and his arrival in Hobart. Its influence is most notable in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, where the creature reads Paradise Lost and suffers at its revelations.
Duterrau brought Tasmania under the same dark veil. In this analysis, Robinson fits perfectly the role of a tragic hero, alone in the wilderness, miraculously surviving both the rugged landscape and the treacherous Natives. He wrote of his journeys as a terrifying ordeal of the soul requiring virtue, bravery and self-sacrifice. With all the necessary elements of a gothic tale, he challenges the tyrant of war and saves the maiden Truganini (with whom he was romantically linked) from faithless savagery.
In crafting Australia’s first historical epic painting, Duterrau underpinned the drama that had played out on the island of Tasmania as a reiteration of the eternal battle between good and evil, and the profound consequences of betrayal. That he should have chosen such a theme to explore, and drew upon the art of the French Revolution is no surprise. Duterrau’s family history was steeped in war. He was a Huguenot – a French Protestant. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Huguenots had been subject to missionaries, forced conversion, persecution, torture and massacre at the hands of French Catholics. When Louis XIV declared Protestantism illegal in 1685, tens of thousands of Huguenots fled to neighbouring Protestant countries, as their country was no longer their own.
For me, The Conciliation neatly weaves together the histories of French religious conflict and the Tasmanian colonial war against a backdrop of interminable bloodshed across Europe. My experience of the tangible artefacts of war that form the very fabric of monument and landscape in France make it clear that a mature society is one that lives with its past. An enduring legacy of war is to be reminded of past mistakes.
The Conciliation elaborates a theme that seems to have resonated powerfully for an artist of Duterrau’s background. That this might be so takes the events in Tasmania from being an inconsequential flurry on the edge of civilisation and places them among the mainstream of world events. It shifts the Aboriginal nations of Tasmania from anthropological curiosity to players on the world’s stage – with the same international rights to justice.
Supacoustic custom slotted panels by Supawood
With major shopping complex redevelopment projects like The Willows, lead times are absolutely critical to maintain normal trading in existing retail areas while the work is being completed. The client also expects rapid completion to maximise a prompt return on their capital investment.
By choosing Supawood products architects are guaranteed a superior product together with reliable lead times to meet very tight project programmes. Supawood are able to support this due to their extensive experience in shopping centre developments throughout Australia.
Supawood’s inspiring range of products ensures a superior interior finish within the project’s budget to give superb quality, real value for money and the utmost benefit to the investment.
Hames Sharley Architects, the design team for The Willows Shopping Centre at Townsville, needed to integrate air ventilation into the interior design without interrupting the actual airflow or taking away from the overall look they wanted to achieve. An adaptable panel system was required and Supawood’s Supacoustic Custom slotted panels proved the perfect solution.
At the Willows Shopping Centre the Supacoustic panels have been used on both the ceilings and bulkheads. The bulkhead panels are open backed and form part of the air ventilation system. The panels have been custom manufactured with extra wide slots to accomplish even air flow into the malls of the shopping centre. The matching ceiling panels form featured areas and have Supawood’s IAT acoustic backing to help with noise reduction.
Supacoustic Custom panels can be supplied in a range of standard patterns as well as in custom permutations aimed at achieving a specific result. This gave the design team the flexibility to achieve the look and function they wanted. As Supacoustic Custom panels are available in a large range of durable finishes, it was also possible to match exactly the colour required. The panels used here are in Supafinish White.
This project emphasises the versatility of Supacoustic Custom panels. This panelling system can be fully customised to a designers exact needs, create the look they want while achieving excellent acoustics and smart access to utilities. And, as Supacoustic Custom comes complete with its own fixing system, the product is quick and extremely economical to install.
During the refueling outage, workers replaced the steam dryer. In a boiling water reactor, the steam dryer, a large metal component with no moving parts, rests above the nuclear core inside the reactor vessel. The steam created when water is heated to the boiling point while flowing through the core passes through another large metal component with no moving parts called the steam separator. Water droplets carried upward by the steam flow are removed as they pass through the steam separator and steam dryer. The dryer’s vertical panels have holes in them not unlike a cheese grater. Steam navigates its way through this metal maze while heavier water droplets tend to get snagged and left behind. The result is steam containing very few water droplets, also called clean or dry steam, which leaves the reactor vessel via four pipes to the turbine. The water removed from the steam drains by gravity down to re-enter the nuclear core for another chance of becoming steam.
Steam dryers were originally expected to last the entire 40-year operating lifetime of the reactor. As owners sought and obtained 20-year extensions to reactor operating licenses and also obtained permission to operate reactors at up to 20 percent higher power levels, more and more steam dryers needed replacement to allow reactors to operate longer at higher power levels.
On November 12, 2012, workers prepared the steam dryer for shipment to a waste site. The refueling floor’s overhead crane lifted the steam dryer and began moving it laterally towards the equipment hatch. The equipment hatch is a vertical opening extending from the refueling floor down to the first floor of the reactor building. The plan was to lower the steam dryer through the equipment hatch onto a vehicle for transport from the plant site.
That plan was carried out, but not without a bump along the way. En route to the equipment hatch, the radiation emitted from the large metal component that had resided near an operating nuclear reactor for nearly 40 years set off radiation monitors on the refueling floor. The purpose of these radiation monitors is to detect a fuel handling accident (e.g., a spent fuel bundle that is dropped onto other spent fuel bundles in the spent fuel pool breaking some fuel rods and releasing radioactive gases and particles into the water). When the monitors detect high levels of radiation from a fuel handling accident, or irradiated steam dryer, they cause a number of safety actions to automatically occur. For example, the ventilation system for the control room switched from its normal mode to a mode that protects the operators from radioactivity in the air. In addition, the ventilation system for the reactor building was shut down and an emergency ventilation system, called the standby gas treatment system, started. The standby gas treatment system maintains the reactor building at a slightly lower pressure to the outside atmosphere, forcing clean air to leak into the building instead of potentially contaminated air from leaking out.
By choosing Supawood products architects are guaranteed a superior product together with reliable lead times to meet very tight project programmes. Supawood are able to support this due to their extensive experience in shopping centre developments throughout Australia.
Supawood’s inspiring range of products ensures a superior interior finish within the project’s budget to give superb quality, real value for money and the utmost benefit to the investment.
Hames Sharley Architects, the design team for The Willows Shopping Centre at Townsville, needed to integrate air ventilation into the interior design without interrupting the actual airflow or taking away from the overall look they wanted to achieve. An adaptable panel system was required and Supawood’s Supacoustic Custom slotted panels proved the perfect solution.
At the Willows Shopping Centre the Supacoustic panels have been used on both the ceilings and bulkheads. The bulkhead panels are open backed and form part of the air ventilation system. The panels have been custom manufactured with extra wide slots to accomplish even air flow into the malls of the shopping centre. The matching ceiling panels form featured areas and have Supawood’s IAT acoustic backing to help with noise reduction.
Supacoustic Custom panels can be supplied in a range of standard patterns as well as in custom permutations aimed at achieving a specific result. This gave the design team the flexibility to achieve the look and function they wanted. As Supacoustic Custom panels are available in a large range of durable finishes, it was also possible to match exactly the colour required. The panels used here are in Supafinish White.
This project emphasises the versatility of Supacoustic Custom panels. This panelling system can be fully customised to a designers exact needs, create the look they want while achieving excellent acoustics and smart access to utilities. And, as Supacoustic Custom comes complete with its own fixing system, the product is quick and extremely economical to install.
During the refueling outage, workers replaced the steam dryer. In a boiling water reactor, the steam dryer, a large metal component with no moving parts, rests above the nuclear core inside the reactor vessel. The steam created when water is heated to the boiling point while flowing through the core passes through another large metal component with no moving parts called the steam separator. Water droplets carried upward by the steam flow are removed as they pass through the steam separator and steam dryer. The dryer’s vertical panels have holes in them not unlike a cheese grater. Steam navigates its way through this metal maze while heavier water droplets tend to get snagged and left behind. The result is steam containing very few water droplets, also called clean or dry steam, which leaves the reactor vessel via four pipes to the turbine. The water removed from the steam drains by gravity down to re-enter the nuclear core for another chance of becoming steam.
Steam dryers were originally expected to last the entire 40-year operating lifetime of the reactor. As owners sought and obtained 20-year extensions to reactor operating licenses and also obtained permission to operate reactors at up to 20 percent higher power levels, more and more steam dryers needed replacement to allow reactors to operate longer at higher power levels.
On November 12, 2012, workers prepared the steam dryer for shipment to a waste site. The refueling floor’s overhead crane lifted the steam dryer and began moving it laterally towards the equipment hatch. The equipment hatch is a vertical opening extending from the refueling floor down to the first floor of the reactor building. The plan was to lower the steam dryer through the equipment hatch onto a vehicle for transport from the plant site.
That plan was carried out, but not without a bump along the way. En route to the equipment hatch, the radiation emitted from the large metal component that had resided near an operating nuclear reactor for nearly 40 years set off radiation monitors on the refueling floor. The purpose of these radiation monitors is to detect a fuel handling accident (e.g., a spent fuel bundle that is dropped onto other spent fuel bundles in the spent fuel pool breaking some fuel rods and releasing radioactive gases and particles into the water). When the monitors detect high levels of radiation from a fuel handling accident, or irradiated steam dryer, they cause a number of safety actions to automatically occur. For example, the ventilation system for the control room switched from its normal mode to a mode that protects the operators from radioactivity in the air. In addition, the ventilation system for the reactor building was shut down and an emergency ventilation system, called the standby gas treatment system, started. The standby gas treatment system maintains the reactor building at a slightly lower pressure to the outside atmosphere, forcing clean air to leak into the building instead of potentially contaminated air from leaking out.
2013年2月4日星期一
PHCC offering students, residents opportunity to live
Ever since Patrick Henry Community College Professor Gerry Bannan studied in Rome, he has hoped for an opportunity to share the experience with other students and aspiring artists.
Now, with the help of another art teacher with a local connection, he is getting that chance.
PHCC will offer its first study abroad program from June 4 through July 16 in Todi, Italy, for a class of about eight students, the school has announced. Bannan, a professor of fine arts at PHCC, will lead the group on the six-week course of study worth six transferable credits in the arts and humanities toward an associate or bachelor’s degree, according to a PHCC flyer for the program.
However, the program is not just for current students. Bannan said it is available to anyone in the community interested in traveling or learning about other cultures.
“We know the participation in study abroad programs really changes people’s lives,” he said.
Todi is referred to in the program’s flyer as “a small medieval city” located about two hours north of Rome and two hours south of Florence. Bannan said studies during the course would include painting, archaeology, pottery art restoration and history.
Students will travel to Rome, Florence and the Vatican, as well as several art galleries. The idea of the program is to be “intensive,” according to Bannan and his colleague, Allison Hall, who helped him plot a course for the program.
“This is about students moving to this town (Todi) and integrating themselves into the community,” said Hall, a Martinsville native and graduate of Fieldale-Collinsville High School. She is a visiting assistant professor at Hollins University in Roanoke, as well as the creator and program director of Hollins’ study abroad program in Todi.
Hall went to Todi as an undergraduate landscape painter and “fell in love with the place,” she said. “When I landed there I knew I wanted to work on making the place a part of my life.”
Hall moved to Italy after graduate school at American University in Washington and spends about half of the year there. She spends the rest of the time in Roanoke.
Both Hall and Bannan referred to the program is “immersive.” Part of that involves learning from local artists, restorers and historians.
Bannan, who also lives in Roanoke, started discussing with Hall the possibility of creating a study abroad program in Todi last semester.
“We started talking about it nonchalantly, and (Bannan) mentioned that they should try to get kids from Martinsville there,” Hall said “Gerry and I just started putting our heads together on how to make it happen.”
Hall, who developed the Hollins program in 2005, will teach humanities and Bannan will teach painting during the course. Both Hollins and PHCC students will be in Todi at the same time, Hall said, which made it easier for she and Bannan to set up PHCC’s program.
By already being in Todi with Hollins students, Hall said, “I could help Gerry work out the logistics for his group.”
Hall now is an abstract painter. A collection of works based on her experiences in Italy soon will be displayed at The Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, she said.
Both Hall and Bannan stressed that an interest in painting is not a prerequisite for the program, only an interest in learning about other cultures. Bannan also cautioned prospective students against assuming such a trip would be out of reach for them.
“I think sometimes my student population feels it’s too remote for them to expect to be able to do (this),” Bannan said. “We want to make sure people have the opportunity.”
According to PHCC’s flyer for the program, the total cost for the six-week study is $4,740. However, that amount does not include airfare, Bannan said. Financial assistance also may be available, he added.
Bannan said he doesn’t want to “let cost discourage people from at least finding out about it. It can be a wonderful component to a traditional student’s academic career.”
This was Lincoln's summer home, where he and his family escaped Washington's heat and humidity. Located on a breezy hill three miles from the White House, it was the 19th-century equivalent of contemporary presidential retreats like Camp David. A statue of Lincoln and his horse evoke his daily half-hour commute to the White House on horseback. He first visited the house three days after his inauguration and last rode to the site the day before he was shot.
Wagonloads of furniture were brought here each summer from the White House. But unlike many historic sites, the house today is not filled with furniture or personal items, and that's the point. Guided tours of the mostly empty rooms emphasize Lincoln's ideas and the people he encountered during his stays here and on his daily rides, from favor-seekers and foreigners to former slaves and soldiers. You'll stand in the room where he read Shakespeare and the Bible, hear about his meetings with the secretary of war, see the view from the porch that once offered a clear sightline all the way to downtown Washington, and walk up the stairs where his footsteps were heard when he couldn't sleep. Through April 30, an exhibit here displays one of just 26 existing signed copies of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Now, with the help of another art teacher with a local connection, he is getting that chance.
PHCC will offer its first study abroad program from June 4 through July 16 in Todi, Italy, for a class of about eight students, the school has announced. Bannan, a professor of fine arts at PHCC, will lead the group on the six-week course of study worth six transferable credits in the arts and humanities toward an associate or bachelor’s degree, according to a PHCC flyer for the program.
However, the program is not just for current students. Bannan said it is available to anyone in the community interested in traveling or learning about other cultures.
“We know the participation in study abroad programs really changes people’s lives,” he said.
Todi is referred to in the program’s flyer as “a small medieval city” located about two hours north of Rome and two hours south of Florence. Bannan said studies during the course would include painting, archaeology, pottery art restoration and history.
Students will travel to Rome, Florence and the Vatican, as well as several art galleries. The idea of the program is to be “intensive,” according to Bannan and his colleague, Allison Hall, who helped him plot a course for the program.
“This is about students moving to this town (Todi) and integrating themselves into the community,” said Hall, a Martinsville native and graduate of Fieldale-Collinsville High School. She is a visiting assistant professor at Hollins University in Roanoke, as well as the creator and program director of Hollins’ study abroad program in Todi.
Hall went to Todi as an undergraduate landscape painter and “fell in love with the place,” she said. “When I landed there I knew I wanted to work on making the place a part of my life.”
Hall moved to Italy after graduate school at American University in Washington and spends about half of the year there. She spends the rest of the time in Roanoke.
Both Hall and Bannan referred to the program is “immersive.” Part of that involves learning from local artists, restorers and historians.
Bannan, who also lives in Roanoke, started discussing with Hall the possibility of creating a study abroad program in Todi last semester.
“We started talking about it nonchalantly, and (Bannan) mentioned that they should try to get kids from Martinsville there,” Hall said “Gerry and I just started putting our heads together on how to make it happen.”
Hall, who developed the Hollins program in 2005, will teach humanities and Bannan will teach painting during the course. Both Hollins and PHCC students will be in Todi at the same time, Hall said, which made it easier for she and Bannan to set up PHCC’s program.
By already being in Todi with Hollins students, Hall said, “I could help Gerry work out the logistics for his group.”
Hall now is an abstract painter. A collection of works based on her experiences in Italy soon will be displayed at The Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, she said.
Both Hall and Bannan stressed that an interest in painting is not a prerequisite for the program, only an interest in learning about other cultures. Bannan also cautioned prospective students against assuming such a trip would be out of reach for them.
“I think sometimes my student population feels it’s too remote for them to expect to be able to do (this),” Bannan said. “We want to make sure people have the opportunity.”
According to PHCC’s flyer for the program, the total cost for the six-week study is $4,740. However, that amount does not include airfare, Bannan said. Financial assistance also may be available, he added.
Bannan said he doesn’t want to “let cost discourage people from at least finding out about it. It can be a wonderful component to a traditional student’s academic career.”
This was Lincoln's summer home, where he and his family escaped Washington's heat and humidity. Located on a breezy hill three miles from the White House, it was the 19th-century equivalent of contemporary presidential retreats like Camp David. A statue of Lincoln and his horse evoke his daily half-hour commute to the White House on horseback. He first visited the house three days after his inauguration and last rode to the site the day before he was shot.
Wagonloads of furniture were brought here each summer from the White House. But unlike many historic sites, the house today is not filled with furniture or personal items, and that's the point. Guided tours of the mostly empty rooms emphasize Lincoln's ideas and the people he encountered during his stays here and on his daily rides, from favor-seekers and foreigners to former slaves and soldiers. You'll stand in the room where he read Shakespeare and the Bible, hear about his meetings with the secretary of war, see the view from the porch that once offered a clear sightline all the way to downtown Washington, and walk up the stairs where his footsteps were heard when he couldn't sleep. Through April 30, an exhibit here displays one of just 26 existing signed copies of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Catskill Creek
We have been traveling the Hudson River Art Trail, seeing the landscapes that so inspired the great American artists of the 19th Century. But ours have not been the journeys of art historians, but those of geologists. We are privileged to see what the artists could not; we can look into the distant past. Last time we visited Frederic Church’s Persian Revival house Olana and we saw the ice age history of that site. In this journey we visit what may have been Thomas Cole’s favorite scene: that is the view of Catskill Creek from Jefferson Heights just west of the Village of Catskill.
That location was just across Catskill Creek from Cole’s home. He frequently hiked there and composed views. In the foreground there was a great bend in the creek as it flowed by below. That was scenic enough, but in the distance it all got better. Out there was the Catskill Front, the fabled Wall of Manitou, lying on the western horizon. In a recess on that distant horizon, but still close enough to be seen, were the lower stretches of Kaaterskill Clove.
Cole seems to have done a dozen or so paintings at this location. Like any good artist he experimented. He tried out the scene at different times of the day and during different seasons of the year. His art can be called luminism; he liked to place the sun in the far distance and paint its light shining down and across the landscape. He could vary the sun’s color with the time of the day, saving deep reds and oranges for late afternoon. He returned to the site as the years went by and painted changes that had occurred there. Much to his dismay he saw a railroad line put in. He lamented the encroachment of industry on what had been a purely bucolic image. Landscape artists do not celebrate industrial development.
As the generations have passed since Cole’s time, a different sort of development came along: the forests returned. At least the trees did. They grew up and blocked Cole’s cherished view. When we first searched for it, we could not find it; it was hidden by the foliage. When the Art Trail was developed that posed a problem. The trail guide leads visitors to a nearby restaurant site, but you just cannot obtain a good view there. Thomas Cole’s grand scene seemed to have been lost to the very nature he painted so well.
But, very recently, that all changed. At the top of the hill, at Jefferson Heights, a new sidewalk was installed. You can walk it and look to the west and, especially during the winter, you can see Cole’s bend in the river, right in front of you, and in the distance, the Catskills are out there too. It’s not as clear a view as Cole had, but it’s pretty good. We were thrilled when we first found this. We were sharing a moment with Thomas Cole and the whole Hudson River School.
But we also saw this view as Cole couldn’t; we saw it about 15,000 years ago, at the close of the Ice Age. As geologists we get to pick exactly what times we go back to and visit. With our mind’s eyes we can witness those moments. And, for this journey, we picked a very good moment to visit. We wanted to see the Cole view as it was when the ice was melting. But we wanted to see that view on the day when the melting reached its all-time peak. There had to have been a day and an hour when a warming climate was melting an absolute maximum of ice. That was the very moment when more water was cascading down Catskill and Kaaterskill Creeks than ever had before or ever would again. The channels and valleys of these streams strained to contain the flow — and failed.
We stood upon the same Jefferson Heights site, but for us it was that exact moment, 15,000 years ago. Below us a vastness of water was pouring down the creek. It ignored the bend in the river as its flow rose and swelled up to overwhelm the whole valley. What we saw was a horizontal waterfall. The water presented a mixed image, contrasting its own gray brown colors with whitecap whites. This torrent swirled, and foamed, and thundered as it rushed by. The power of the flow was frightening; the sound was deafening. This was the full fury of Nature, displayed in a riotous image.
We looked up, all the way beyond to Kaaterskill Creek. Even in our mind’s eyes we could not travel that far. It must have been much worse out there, with a still greater flow of water coming down that steep canyon. We strained to see and were frustrated that we could not. We debated it and finally convinced ourselves that we were seeing a large rainbow rising above the mouth of Kaaterskill Clove. It was too distant to be sure. We were awed by all that we beheld and we fully understood that we were seeing history in the making. What we were watching was nothing less than the great rising crescendo of an ending Ice Age.
Judging by its trailer, Stephen Poliakoff’s Dancing on the Edge harbours every emblem of the Jazz Age known to popular art. Elegantly dressed couples carouse in smoke-filled nightclubs to the racket of “Negro orchestras”; women in cloche hats and cylinder dresses pass sleekly by; great houses with retinues of servants fling open their doors to the party-going throng. Amid suggestions of violence, snobbery, intrigue and interracial mésalliance, the dance continues, grimly foreshadowing some of the embarrassments and tragedies that are waiting to unravel once the musicians have packed up and the guests have gone home.
Dancing on the Edge, which starts on BBC Two tonight (February 4), is testimony to the 21st-century’s fixation on the brief period between the end of the First World War and the onset of the second, when a proportion of the nation’s young people – a fairly small proportion, given the unemployment statistics – were allowed the money and the licence to let rip.
But what is it about the late 1920s and the early 1930s that so fascinates everyone from the social historian (see Juliet Gardiner’s monumental The Thirties) and the moviegoer to the cultural websites absorbed by the legend of the “It” girl? Why should the age of No?l Coward, Tallulah Bankhead and Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies possess a resonance that other epochs struggle to acquire?
The answer lies in the odd combination of revolt, sophistication, self-consciousness and changing media styles that gives the age of jazz, shingled hair and the Charleston its distinctive flavour, while emphasising its curious resemblance to our own. Young people had gone around annoying their elders before – Teddy Boys had their ancestors in 1840s London – but in the era of the General Strike they contrived to magnify their dissatisfaction in a way that, to an older generation brought up on the certainties of Edwardian England, seemed downright sinister.
They were a “rebel army”, as the society columnist Patrick Balfour (the model for Waugh’s “Mr Gossip”) put it, whose brothers had died in Flanders, whose parents – here in a cultural landscape marked out by The Waste Land – were hopelessly out of date, and whose lives seemed overshadowed by the prospect of a second apocalypse: the final chapter of Vile Bodies, after all, takes place on “the biggest battlefield in the history of the world”.
That location was just across Catskill Creek from Cole’s home. He frequently hiked there and composed views. In the foreground there was a great bend in the creek as it flowed by below. That was scenic enough, but in the distance it all got better. Out there was the Catskill Front, the fabled Wall of Manitou, lying on the western horizon. In a recess on that distant horizon, but still close enough to be seen, were the lower stretches of Kaaterskill Clove.
Cole seems to have done a dozen or so paintings at this location. Like any good artist he experimented. He tried out the scene at different times of the day and during different seasons of the year. His art can be called luminism; he liked to place the sun in the far distance and paint its light shining down and across the landscape. He could vary the sun’s color with the time of the day, saving deep reds and oranges for late afternoon. He returned to the site as the years went by and painted changes that had occurred there. Much to his dismay he saw a railroad line put in. He lamented the encroachment of industry on what had been a purely bucolic image. Landscape artists do not celebrate industrial development.
As the generations have passed since Cole’s time, a different sort of development came along: the forests returned. At least the trees did. They grew up and blocked Cole’s cherished view. When we first searched for it, we could not find it; it was hidden by the foliage. When the Art Trail was developed that posed a problem. The trail guide leads visitors to a nearby restaurant site, but you just cannot obtain a good view there. Thomas Cole’s grand scene seemed to have been lost to the very nature he painted so well.
But, very recently, that all changed. At the top of the hill, at Jefferson Heights, a new sidewalk was installed. You can walk it and look to the west and, especially during the winter, you can see Cole’s bend in the river, right in front of you, and in the distance, the Catskills are out there too. It’s not as clear a view as Cole had, but it’s pretty good. We were thrilled when we first found this. We were sharing a moment with Thomas Cole and the whole Hudson River School.
But we also saw this view as Cole couldn’t; we saw it about 15,000 years ago, at the close of the Ice Age. As geologists we get to pick exactly what times we go back to and visit. With our mind’s eyes we can witness those moments. And, for this journey, we picked a very good moment to visit. We wanted to see the Cole view as it was when the ice was melting. But we wanted to see that view on the day when the melting reached its all-time peak. There had to have been a day and an hour when a warming climate was melting an absolute maximum of ice. That was the very moment when more water was cascading down Catskill and Kaaterskill Creeks than ever had before or ever would again. The channels and valleys of these streams strained to contain the flow — and failed.
We stood upon the same Jefferson Heights site, but for us it was that exact moment, 15,000 years ago. Below us a vastness of water was pouring down the creek. It ignored the bend in the river as its flow rose and swelled up to overwhelm the whole valley. What we saw was a horizontal waterfall. The water presented a mixed image, contrasting its own gray brown colors with whitecap whites. This torrent swirled, and foamed, and thundered as it rushed by. The power of the flow was frightening; the sound was deafening. This was the full fury of Nature, displayed in a riotous image.
We looked up, all the way beyond to Kaaterskill Creek. Even in our mind’s eyes we could not travel that far. It must have been much worse out there, with a still greater flow of water coming down that steep canyon. We strained to see and were frustrated that we could not. We debated it and finally convinced ourselves that we were seeing a large rainbow rising above the mouth of Kaaterskill Clove. It was too distant to be sure. We were awed by all that we beheld and we fully understood that we were seeing history in the making. What we were watching was nothing less than the great rising crescendo of an ending Ice Age.
Judging by its trailer, Stephen Poliakoff’s Dancing on the Edge harbours every emblem of the Jazz Age known to popular art. Elegantly dressed couples carouse in smoke-filled nightclubs to the racket of “Negro orchestras”; women in cloche hats and cylinder dresses pass sleekly by; great houses with retinues of servants fling open their doors to the party-going throng. Amid suggestions of violence, snobbery, intrigue and interracial mésalliance, the dance continues, grimly foreshadowing some of the embarrassments and tragedies that are waiting to unravel once the musicians have packed up and the guests have gone home.
Dancing on the Edge, which starts on BBC Two tonight (February 4), is testimony to the 21st-century’s fixation on the brief period between the end of the First World War and the onset of the second, when a proportion of the nation’s young people – a fairly small proportion, given the unemployment statistics – were allowed the money and the licence to let rip.
But what is it about the late 1920s and the early 1930s that so fascinates everyone from the social historian (see Juliet Gardiner’s monumental The Thirties) and the moviegoer to the cultural websites absorbed by the legend of the “It” girl? Why should the age of No?l Coward, Tallulah Bankhead and Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies possess a resonance that other epochs struggle to acquire?
The answer lies in the odd combination of revolt, sophistication, self-consciousness and changing media styles that gives the age of jazz, shingled hair and the Charleston its distinctive flavour, while emphasising its curious resemblance to our own. Young people had gone around annoying their elders before – Teddy Boys had their ancestors in 1840s London – but in the era of the General Strike they contrived to magnify their dissatisfaction in a way that, to an older generation brought up on the certainties of Edwardian England, seemed downright sinister.
They were a “rebel army”, as the society columnist Patrick Balfour (the model for Waugh’s “Mr Gossip”) put it, whose brothers had died in Flanders, whose parents – here in a cultural landscape marked out by The Waste Land – were hopelessly out of date, and whose lives seemed overshadowed by the prospect of a second apocalypse: the final chapter of Vile Bodies, after all, takes place on “the biggest battlefield in the history of the world”.
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