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Armchair Oscars – 2014

| March 1, 2015 | 0 Comments

Best Picture

Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu)
The Nominees: American Sniper, Boyhood, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game, Selma, The Theory of Everything, Whiplash

Under the Skin
(Directed by Jonathan Glazer)
My Nominees: Birdman or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance (Alejandro González Iñárritu), The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson), Guardians of the Galaxy (Directed by James Gunn),
The LEGO Movie (Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller), Living Things (Eric Shapiro), Nymphomaniac Vol. 1 (Lars von Trier), Nymphomaniac Vol. 2 (Lars von Trier), Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy)

If you’ve been watching The Academy Awards for as long as I have, you look forward to those rare times when the winners aren’t so darned telegraphed in advance that there is actually a reason to watch the show.  While it is true that no year comes without a least some bits of inevitability (which, for this particular year, came in the supporting categories), it’s nice when there is at least some chance that the top prize is a toss-up.

Two Thousand-Fourteen was such a year as two very different movies squared off for Best Picture and no one really knew which one would be the winner.  In one corner was Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, the heartfelt examination of the formative years of a pair of Texas siblings that the director filmed over 12 years so that the boy and his sister could grow up naturally on the screen.  In the other corner was Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance starring Michael Keaton as a once-great movie star who is now past 60 and feels and the soul-crushing pain of never having reached his potential.  Although both were labors of love, the academy chose the latter.  I’m not complaining because, to be honest, I was was in the minority of those who really weren’t swept away by Boyhood.

I’m glad that the academy chose Birdman, because it shows that, once in a while, their taste does lean toward something new and original wherein most years they choose to tread safe, non-threatening waters (I’m looking right at YOU, King’s Speech).  Movies like Birdman usually have to settle for a single award in the Original Screenplay category, but it claimed four awards that night.  Among these nominees Birdman was the most challenging while others, for the most part, were kind of traditional.  All were about struggles in one way or another, whether it was against PTSD, ALS, white people, teachers, false accusations, career stress, homophobia or growing pains.

Originality was hard to come by in two thousand-fourteen if you stayed within Hollywood’s mainstream product.  The best and most challenging films were those outside the major releases.  I put Birdman on my ten best at #2, right behind my favorite film of the year, Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin, a bizarre science fiction whatzit that divided so many people that it was both cheered and booed at the Venice Film festival.  That divisiveness is mounted on Glazer’s refusal to give us an easy-to-swallow narrative.  That was the prime directive of his previous film Birth – about a woman played by Nicole Kidman who becomes convinced that a 10 year-old boy is the reincarnation of her dead lover – which also left critics and audiences divided.  Birth was a little more straight-forward, while Under the Skin is nutty in the way that it bends the fabric of all that we know about cinematic orientation in order to make a bold statement on gender, sexism and the all-consuming power of what it means to be human.

Loosely based on a 2001 novel by Michel Faber, Under the Skin is structured, in many ways, like Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.  The boundaries and definitions of what we are seeing are not spelled out for us.  Glazer is unwilling to hold your hand to guide you though this story.  He simply shows you the images and lets your imagination interpret what you are seeing.  He provides the bones and the muscle, but your brain provides the connective tissue.  Sound complicated?  Stick around.

The movie opens with several elements on which it is difficult to get a foothold.  Somewhere in deep space we see a group of circles forming into a solid shape.  As the shapes evolve, a voice can be heard emerging from the soundtrack making sounds that we quickly decipher as repeated attempts to mimic English.  As the shapes form into a singularity, we recognize a familiar object – a human eye.  When the shapes and the voice reach earth, they have found a form that we can understand, a human form that looks very much like Scarlett Johansson.

Johannson plays a woman listed in the credits only as “The Female,” but who introduces herself to wayward men as Laura.  She’s an alien who has come to Earth for a purpose that we quickly realize has nothing to do with interplanetary unity.  She’s here to process human beings by stealing their skin and grinding up the meat for a purpose that is never completely revealed.  We get a sense that the particulars of this mission are nothing new.  As she ascends from her ship, she retrieves the clothing from a dead alien (Lynsey Taylor Mackay) whom she has apparently come to replace.  Moving unnoticed amid the human populace for the first time, she steps into a store and dons another skin, a fur coat.

Driving a van around a small town in Scotland, she is a hunter, luring lonely, horny young men to her driver’s side window, beckoning them with small talk and unspoken promises of sex.  The men are interesting.  They all seem somewhat desperate and the locations in which she picks them up seem distant and anonymous.  Like any killer, she carefully chooses men that she suspects will not immediately be missed.  For reasons the movie never explains, she never attempts to pick up a woman.

The men are amazed by their good fortune to meet this woman.  Laura is a gorgeous woman, donned in a brown fur coat, jet-black hair and a shock of red lipstick, bearing the look of a prostitute who is on the clock.  The conversations between Laura and the men are not important.  The men have thick Scottish accents which are often indecipherable to western ears.   What’s clear is that Laura hasn’t quite mastered human conversation.  She peppers them with questions, apparently unaware that she’s suppose to wait for an answer.

The men couldn’t care less.  They are not with this woman for conversation, that’s why they are so easily led into the interior of her ship – a pitch black void that they never question.  Their eyes are glued to Laura’s supple form which they don’t dismiss even as they realize that they are sinking into a black ink where their skin is removed and the meat is shuffled down a moving platform, we guess, to be processed as food.

This is a cold-blooded mission, and if this were a horror movie, we might expect a hero to come out of hiding, much Reese in like The Terminator.  That’s not the case, this is not that kind of movie.  There’s a man on a motorcycle (Jeremy McWilliams), but he seems to be aiding her.  Perhaps he is her handler.  Whoever he is, he’s not pleased with what Laura is discovering about herself.  Breaking away from the terms of her apparent mission, Laura begins to feel something for this pathetic human race.  She is attracted to something about us; something about our manner, our sorrow, our traditions, our customs, our simple housekeeping details.  She observes our superficial customs, especially from women whose major preoccupation is constructing and reconstructing their looks.  Curious, she makes an attempt to emulate this practice by trying lipstick for the first time.  She observes humanity in action, people doing meaningless things that seem mindless to humans but perplexing to the visitor.

The breaking point comes during an odd encounter while on her nightly hunt.  She picks up a man (Adam Pearson) whose face has been deformed by neurofibromatosis, and as she talks with him, he admits that he is a virgin and has no close contacts.  Talking with him, she finds that he’s not really interested in sex and keeps pinching his own hands, perhaps trying to see if this is a dream.  She pities this man and lets him go.

This humane gesture will, in many ways, become part of her undoing.  The man on the motorcycle seems to know what she’s doing, and senses that she is no longer fit for the parameters of her mission.  Aware of her transgression, she ditches the clothes and the van and escapes to a small town where her mind is opened more and more to the intricacies of the human world.  She discovers television, music, sex, and dessert.  In a mirror one night, she even discovers the luminous joy of her own naked body.  Some of these things she appreciates, much of it she does not.  In trying a piece of cake, she spits it out.  In trying sex for the first time, she is confused with the mechanics of human genitalia.

Under the Skin is a movie that you have the break apart in your mind.  The director tells you only what you need to know through his visual palette which sometimes feels like guerrilla filmmaking.  But what lies under the surface is a bitter cold allegory about how people look at beauty.  Yes, Laura is a beautiful woman, but under all that beauty is a creature that the human eye cannot relate to.

This is most evident as her journey comes to an end when she is confronted by a logger who tries to rape her in the woods.  During the struggle, he cuts her and sees that underneath her borrowed skin is a blackened form – her true self.  Terrified, he sets her on fire wherein the ashes rise into the sky and fall back to Earth.  From this image, I could only think of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  That, in effect, is what Laura is – a body snatcher, stealing skins.

It is fitting that Under the Skin opens with the formation of a human eyeball.  The movie is all about perception, what we see, what we observe, how we respond to our definition of beauty.  The men around Laura, for the most part, react with a kind of hostility, be it physical violence or sexual violence.  The young men that she picks up only regard her with sexual hostility.  She’s a succubus, using that beauty to lure them into her trap.  Many are halfway into the black murk before they realize what is happening.  Yet, she is not beyond a soul.

Laura’s journey beings with the idea that Earth is merely a hunting ground – suit up and hunt your prey.  But looking under the surface – under the skin – she begins to realize that beauty is only skin deep.  She sees human beings for the fragile and sometimes superficial creatures that they are.  She see how they regard themselves and, more disturbing, how they regard each other.  Earth is an intricate planet, all full of temptations, fascinations, and curiosities that force her to question her mission.  She witnesses the mundane nature of humanity itself, its rituals, its customs, its minor intricacies.  It’s a big, bold confusing world full of things she only half understands.  She regards the beauty of the world, but it regards her beauty with a kind of coldness – in many ways regarding her the way she first regarded it.  The men want sex.  They see what they want and they are willing to take it.  The logger sees what he wants, but when he rips open Laura’s skin and sees the real Laura underneath, he is frightened.  He no longer sees what he wants and destroys her.

Late in the film, when she ditches the van and moves to a small town to get off the radar of the man on the motorcycle, we can see something in her eyes that makes her question what she is doing.  Why is she bastardizing this beautiful planet?  Is there something here for her?

Of course, all of this is metaphor, and most of the story is left unexplained.  Under the Skin contains dialogue but it isn’t necessary, this could easily have been a silent film.  The connections made between Laura and the human world are spoken in hushed tones that are often covered up by the sounds of the city.  The men speak in thick Scottish brogues that are sometimes hard to decipher – we’re hearing it through her ears, making out words but straining to understand them as a whole

Best Actor

Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything)
The Nominees: Steve Carrell (Foxcatcher), Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game), Bradley Cooper (American Sniper), Michael Keaton (Birdman or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Michael Keaton (Birdman or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
My Nominees: André Benjamin (Jimi: All is By My Side), Macon Blair (Blue Ruin), Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game), Bradley Cooper (American Sniper), Jake Gyllenhaal (Nightcrawler), Ralph Fiennes (The Grand Budapest Hotel), Liam Neeson (A Walk Among the Tombstones), David Oyelowo (Selma), Joaquin Phoenix (Inherent Vice), Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything), Andy Sirkis (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes)

For playing world-renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything British actor Eddie Redmayne became the ninth Best Actor winner of the millennium to play a real life person, and the only one of those nine actors to play someone who was still living. By all accounts, his performance is a checklist of all the things that the Academy voters like in a performance:

* He plays a real life person – check.
* He plays someone suffering from a debilitating affliction – check.
* He overcomes that affliction – check.
* He has a complicated relationship with his spouse – check.
* His story is inspiring – check.
* No one points out the movie’s flaws because everybody loves Stephen Hawking – double check.

I admit that I didn’t expect to like this performance quite as much as I did. I groaned when I first saw trailers for the film, feeling that it was just another overcoming-adversity story that was high on inspiration and low on the meaty bits of a life being lived. I was sort of right. While I liked Redmayne’s performance, I am not a great fan of the movie. It weighs heavy on Hawking’s struggles with ALS and how it affects his marriage to his supportive but frustrated wife Jane (Best Actress nominees Felicity Jones), but lite on Hawking’s theories, which are presented as a side-note. Here is a brilliant mind, a mind that is reaching to expand our minds about the vastness of the universe while being stuck in a body that is rapidly shutting down, and yet the movie treats his work like an interesting footnote.

I see the flaws in the movie, but I will not deny the power of Redmayne’s performance. He occupies the role of Stephen Hawking without asking for our sympathies – he doesn’t have to. The best scenes in the movie take place in the years when Hawking’s disability rapidly overtake his body – this is a very physical performance, and Redmayne is able to convince us physically and viscerally that we are looking at the real thing.

Redmayne’s win was something of an upset. He won the Oscar that everyone thought would go to my choice for Best Actor, Michael Keaton in a great comeback role in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). It was a joy to see Keaton back in form after a decade of admittedly dry sauce.

Keaton is one of the most approachable of actors, a man who had been a great screen comedian for 10 years, starting in 1982 with Nightshift and then hitting his peak in 1989 after being improbably cast as Batman, leading many angry fans to regard the news with “Really? Mr. Mom?” The movie would become a worldwide phenomenon, but also a height that Keaton never reached again. After the joyless sequel Batman Returns in 1992, he hung up the cape and cowl for good and then slipped into an acting career that kind of coasted.  Occasionally he would rebound slightly with critical praise for his performances in My Life, Out of Sight and Game 6, but nothing was very significant, until he was approached to play one of the strangest roles of his career, one that not only reinvigorated his career but also contained shadows of his biggest success.

In Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman (or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Keaton accepted a role that was, in part, art imitating life.  There is virtually no way that he could brush off comparisons between his own career and that of the character that he plays in Birdman, a once great box office star of a hit superhero franchise who walked away from the series at its height but never really found that level of success again. As moviegoers, we love connectivity – we love seeing actors parallel their lives on the screen. We love to ask “what if?” What if Keaton had continued his role as Batman under the direction of Joel Schumacher? Would he still be as beloved for the role of Batman if he continued as the series drowned itself in camp?

To ask those questions is to wonder if Keaton himself ever considered this. Alas, we shall never know what might have become of the series and that question is what gives a movie like Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) a bit of poignancy.

Keaton plays Riggan Thomson, a once great box office superstar who starred in the blockbuster Birdman series twenty-five years ago but walked away after three films, effectively giving up the fame and the money that went with it. Now, past 60, Riggan is the prime candidate for the “Where Are They Now?” files, a washed up actor who feels that he never reached his potential. Yet, something keeps pulling him back. He misses the notoriety that went with the role, and it doesn’t help that his brain is constantly infected with the gravelly voice of Birdman reminding him of this fact at every moment that he has a moment to think.

The urgent need to redeem himself and restore a degree of respectability is causing Riggan to lose his marbles. In a last ditch effort, he has staked his reputation and all of his money on writing, directing and starring in a flouncy Broadway adaptation of Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.”

Riggan always seems on edge. Like a tight-rope walker afraid he’ll stumble and fall, he’s always shaking, always fearful that he will get knocked on the floor and won’t be able to get back up. His career is only the surface of his problems. We watch the backstage preparation for a play that everyone believes is shaping up to be a disaster. Every conceivable misstep and mishap is resting on Riggan’s shoulders, and the people around him are not exactly comforting. His daughter Sam (Emma Stone) is now his personal assistant – and a reminder of his lousy parenting skills. Laura, his leading lady (Andrea Riseborough), may be carrying his child. One of the cast members (Jeremy Shamos) has been struck dead by a falling stage light. That leads to his biggest stumbling block, the casting of Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), the self-involved leading man who is not only bedding one of the other cast members (Noami Watts), but is known to unexpectedly improvise.

To watch Riggan is to watch an actor adrift in his own public image, whose most prolific moments have nothing to do with his work, like a video that goes viral after he accidentally locks himself out of his dressing room and ends up in the street in nothing but his underwear. When he’s alone, his mind takes flights of fancy and the Birdman persona engulfs him. In fact, the first time we see him, he’s alone in his dressing room seated in the lotus position floating three feet off the floor. Later, as he walks down the busy New York sidewalks, Birdman appears over his shoulder and whispers venomous poison into his ear.

Thomson’s escape into the Birdman persona is off-set by the inescapable reality that his attempts to gain respectability are doomed to fail. That reality, by the way, is established by Iñárritu’s staging, which (through some creative editing) makes the movie look like one continuous shot that takes us down corridors and around corners and eventually between the skyscrapers of New York City. Yet, Riggan cannot escape his own skin; he cannot fly away from the reality that has him bound to the terra firma.

As opening night approaches and the pressure on Riggan mounts, the taunting voice in his head grows louder until it’s unclear what’s real and what’s imaginary. The film breaks with reality too, jackknifing into a trippy detour that audiences will either go with or not. For me, there was never any question. I was so all-in on Keaton’s vanity-free, go-for-broke metamorphosis I would have followed him, or the movie, anywhere. Which is pretty much where it asks you to go.

The beauty of watching Keaton in this role is seeing the culmination of his career. Riggan Thomson can be seen as a sort of George Bailey-esque reflection of what Keaton has been through – on the negative side of course. We see in Riggan the funny, twitchy sharp-tongued wit that made us fall in love with Keaton in the first place – it’s still present after all these years. Then we are given constant reminders of the peak of his career with the winged pestilence that forever hangs around neck, reminding him of what he gave up and the years of insignificance that followed, and his shot at redemption that comes at an age when most actors are slipping into semi-retirement.

Batman will practically be on Keaton’s headstone – it’s inevitable. So, it is a relief that he got this shot to prove that he was much more than a movie superhero. Riggan feared that in giving himself over to his on-screen persona that he lost much of his great potential. That may be true of Michael Keaton. Perhaps he had reached that height and then was never able to match it in the years that immediately followed. The connectivity of his career, his persona, and his shot at redemption in Birdman gives us the feeling that whatever his career may have been through, it wasn’t for nothing.

Best Actress

Julianne Moore (Still Alice)
The Nominees:
Marion Cotillard (Two Days, One Night), Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything), Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl), Reese Witherspoon (Wild)

Jennifer Anniston (Cake)
My Nominees: Marion Cotillard (Two Days, One Night), Scarlett Johansson (Under the Skin), Rhoda Jordan (Living Things), Rinko Kikuchi (Kumiko: The Treasure Hunter), Agata Kulsza (Ida), Guga Mbatha-Raw (Beyond the Lights), Julianne Moore (Still Alice), Tilda Swinton (Only Lovers Left Alive)

Anyone who follows “Armchair Oscars,” at least in the last 20 or so Best Actress choices, will note that I have a particular – and somewhat shameless – affection for Julianne Moore.   This is something that I embrace without apology.  Her name turns up quite often here for her performances in Safe, Far From Heaven and the under-appreciated gem The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio.

I don’t know why I gush.  Yes, she’s beautiful but there is something else going on there.  You can always sense that her characters have intelligence tinged with a hint of vulnerability.  There’s nothing guarded about her, she seems open and so you can always feel what she’s feeling.

As to the Oscars, Moore had to spend many years as an Oscar bridesmaid with nominations for seminal work in Boogie Nights, The End of the Affair, The Hours and Far From Heaven.  Yet, it would take a disease to finally get her the award for Best Actress.

Based on the book by Lisa Genova, Still Alice follows the uneasy trek of Alice Howland, a celebrated Columbia linguistics professor who, at only 50 years of age, is suddenly diagnosed with early on-set Alzheimer’s Disease.  The movie is a sad journey through the inevitable downfall as Alice struggles with a disease that will eventually rob her of her faculties, and worse is the fact that she gets to see it all happen first-hand.  Where Moore’s skill comes into play is in the realization that Alice is completely alert and aware that her condition is robbing her of her identity and her faculties.  Late in the film, she plays the role all in her eyes.  As her brain begins to become non-functional, we can see in her eyes the Alice that is struggling to get out.

Standing back from the film, it might be easy to write off Moore’s performance as just another woe-is-me-disease-role that Oscar voters seem to gravitate toward, especially when you consider that this is the fifth Best Actress performance in a row from an actress playing someone with a mental disorder – after Natalie Portman in Black Swan (schizophrenia), Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady (dementia), Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook (neurosis), and Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine (mental breakdown).

Although I liked Moore’s performance, I’d have to say that out of these five women, her role was the most conventional.  Not that it was bad, Moore’s best asset in the performance is that we see the character first and the disease second.  Yet, as much as I liked Moore, I know I’m going to see greatness from her.  My choice comes from a completely unexpected source because, truth be told, I never thought much about Jennifer Anniston.  I never saw “Friends” so I only know her from her film work which has resulted in a not-so-enviable filmography weighed down mostly by superfluous romantic comedies.  Yet, I like her, I’ve liked her in comedies like Office Space and The Good Girl and Horrible Bosses, but then she blind-sided me with a surprisingly good dramatic turn in Daniel Barnz human drama called Cake.

One of the toughest jobs that a comedian can have in turning to drama is to convince us that it is not just a stunt.  Anniston meets this challenge but also manages to convince us that she can play a character who is basically unlikable.  That is a tricky mixture, like walking a high-wire that will either endear the audience or repel them.  This is a brilliant dramatic turn for Anniston who, after two decades of playing light comedy, dares to delve into drama in which she is unglamorous, devoid of make-up and sporting flattering clothes, and even leaves her trademark Rachel Hair an unkempt mess.

In Cake, Anniston plays Claire Bennett, whom we first meet seated her own private nest of cynicism and self-pity.  She’s a bitter pill to take.  As the movie opens we see her seated in a support group for women in chronic pain.  The group’s simpering leader (Felicity Huffman) is fumbling unsuccessfully to explain how a former group member who recently committed suicide is some kind of hero. Claire is having none of this. Asked to express her feelings, she launches into a tragically humorous verbal reenactment of the girl’s suicide, a fatal jump from an L.A. overpass that ended in an irony so bitter and so funny that you will feel ashamed for laughing. Claire sees the irony in the situation, others in the group do not. She is asked to leave the group.

Claire is  angry, bitter and disagreeable to the point that even her physical therapist quietly dismisses her. We can see how difficult she is, but because of what she’s been through we don’t completely dismiss her as a hollow shell of a person. Not long ago Claire was in a car accident that left her body covered in scars, and left her with physical pain so severe that she has developed an addiction to her pain medication. She has no simplistic, religious or even organic tools to deal with the tragedy that she has suffered.

There was something else lost in that accident that the movie is slow to reveal.  The particulars of Claire’s situation are doled out slowly so we have time to get to know her before we get a complete picture of her circumstances. Claire is obviously a damaged person who we have trouble taking a shine to but more and more, little by little throughout the movie pieces of her puzzle come to light, so that by the end what we’ve seen of Claire’s disagreeable attitude make complete sense.

Despite a fighting spirit hell-bent on not dealing with the situation, Claire becomes otherwise obsessed with the suicide of the girl from the group, named Nina (Anna Kendrick), whom she imagines in ghost form as she attempts to make sense of why someone would choose this final option. Claire herself has several trips to the edge of her own suicide, but something is holding her back, some passionate need to get a handle on what has happened to her. She takes a dangerous road to recovery in making friends with the girl’s husband Roy (Sam Worthington) and her young son, a union that doesn’t quite go where we expect.

To everyone else, Claire seems a lost cause, but one person cares deeply about her, her hired nurse Silvana (Adriana Barazza), a Mexican immigrant whose passionate faith won’t let her give up on this woman despite her employer’s indifference and constant verbal abuse, Silvana refuses to leave her side. This relationship too is not what we expect. Silvana has a life of her own outside of taking care of her employer, and Barazza (who was nominated for an Oscar in 2006 for Babel) gives a wonderful supporting performance as a Godly woman dealing with a difficult assignment.

The screenplay here, written by Patrick Tobin is free of gimmicks and emotional trickery. He’s written a story that has a nice flow. It doesn’t feel gummed up, but is thin enough to let the characters breathe. You feel the flow of real life in these characters, and even if the dialogue gets a little too poetic, you don’t mind because you become invested in Claire’s journey. If the movie has a weakness, it might be that it wears out its welcome at the end. The last half hour probably could have been shorter and a little bit cleaner, and there’s a minor subplot involving a teenage hitchhiker that feels a little tacked on.

Those problems aside, I’m happy for what the film is. Cake could have gone wrong in so many different ways. It could have turned into a pandering mess of heroic clichés and good feeling. But the script is smarter than that. This is the story of a very specific person with a very specific life who wallows in her misery until she finds a reason to keep going. Through Jennifer Anniston’s wonderful performance we see that Claire is not a wounded angel, she’s just a woman trying to find a measure of clarity. By the end, she’s still a bitter pill to take, but we care about her because of how far she’s come.

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About the Author:

Jerry Roberts is a film critic and operator of two websites, Armchair Cinema and Armchair Oscars.
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girls just want to have fun.

While Andrew is away at drill all weekend, what better therapy than to have a girls weekend? Today I took two of my nieces, Mikayla, Kamry and their friends Megan and Emily to the mall for lunch and shopping. Londyn was such a trooper and pulled through the entire outing. It was fun to crank up the "hot" tunes and wave to all the random cars passing us by.
Oh the adventures of being a teen again!

Then we came back home and hung out for a while... which led to a sleepover, including my nieces Mikayla, Kamry, Megan, Kaylee and my adopted niece for a day- Megan D. We had a full house! Once Londie Lou went to bed, the fun began! But it's all fun and games until your oldest niece Mikayla duct tapes your cupboards, fridge and microwave shut.
haha... very funny Mikayla.

Of course, the girls got hungry... which led to the preparation of a hearty and nutritious spread of mac n' cheese, tater tots and Country Time lemonade. What can I say? I'm a health nut!

Thanks for the fab time this weekend girls! I love being an aunt!

Brendi68 said...

That duct tape means you never have to cook again!

Armitage Home said...

LOL I didn't realize that the duct tape incident was a blessing in disguise! Actually, I thought it might be a good diet technique... but then I got hungry.

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text:
Londyn Lately {21 months}

This little busy-body is constantly growing, changing and getting more fun with every day that passes!  She is constantly on the move with places to be and people to see.  She speaks and communicates thoroughly, understanding everything we say (whether she acknowledges us is another issue).

most used words/phrases:
No, mine!
Ni Hao or Hao
{her favorite show}
{Londyn wants to go outside every moment of the day and with the intermittent rain still coming down, she just looks out the window and says it over and over again.  We can't wait for Summer!}
{during every meal, LJ proceeds to fold her arms and remind us to pray... every few minutes we are asked to say another prayer}

Lulu has been trying hard to take off and put on her own clothes.  This is really interesting to watch when she tries to put her pants on her arms and her shirts on her legs.  Whenever I get her up from a nap or in the morning, she has no clothes on!  Silly girl.

She has always been independent but more now than ever.  I have noticed this when she's outside and she loves to tromp around EVERYWHERE... not caring where or who I am.  She loves to run away from me, especially in public.  She thinks its hilarious.

Londyn is also becoming quite the bossy-pants.  I think she's getting back at all the older kids that used to take her toys away (it never phased her and she would just move on to something else).  But now, when in nursery at church, play group or even during play dates, she is very territorial.  She will just yell at kids if they cut in line on the slide or shout, "No, MINE!" when they have a toy that she wants.  I fear these toddler years.  It's starting. I don't know how many times a day I tell her, "Not everything is Londyn's... we share."  I can see why she doesn't listen, because I'm sick of hearing myself say it.

One of the fun parts of this stage is that she loves to help... well, when she feels like it.  When we get home from running errands, she always wants to help bring in bags from the car (also a decoy to keep her from running away into the street).  She also helps me put clothes in the dryer and take them out when they are finished.  We are still working on how to load the dishwasher.  One of my favorites is giving her a baby wipe or wet rag.  She will use it to wipe everything and anything down around the house.  She will stay at it for at least 30 minutes.

Oh!  My favorite happening to announce is that LJ is down to one nap per day.  Why would that be exciting, you ask?  Two naps were great for a while... but this mom has things to do and when she was taking two 3-4 hour naps per day, I only had a 2 hour window of time to be productive outside of the home.  Now we can actually go to more activities and get things done, because she's not snoozing ALL the time.

Although the tude is overwhelming at times, this stage is super fun.  In the evenings, Andrew and I spend 20-30 minutes just watching her be Londyn.  I love that time of the day.  We sing songs, make funny faces and tickle her until she probably pees her pants!  I love my Lulu-pants.

The Leiths said...

how cute! sounds like she is so much fun! i hope she's sleeping better at night for you too!

Laura said...

I agree!! 1 nap is way better than 2!! We just made that adjustment too!!


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Apr 18 2016

Guggenheim Breaks Off Negotiations with Gulf Labor Coalition

by HG Masters

(Left) Guggenheim Museum and Foundation director Richard Armstrong. Photo by David M. Heald. Courtesy Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. (Right) A rendering of the future Guggenheim Abu Dhabi by Frank Gehry Partners, LLP.

After a year of renewed formal dialogue between the Guggenheim Foundation and labor-activist groups about workers rights and compensation on the Saadiyat Island campus of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, talks have broken down. On April 18, the Gulf Labor Coalition (GLC) announced publicly that the Guggenheim Board of Trustees had unilaterally terminated the dialogue with the activist group during a conference call on April 13. This was followed an by email sent to artists, curators and museum colleagues around the world by the Guggenheim Foundation director Richard Armstrong on April 17, in which he accused Gulf Labor of continuing to “shift its demands on the Guggenheim beyond the reach of our influence as an arts institution while continuing to spread mistruths about the project and our role in it.” Armstrong reiterated the Guggenheim’s claim that “there are no workers on the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi” and that “there is no construction on the site because a contractor has not been selected”—claims that Gulf Labor has contested by showing the landscaping and infrastructure on Saadiyat Island being prepared in advance of the Frank Gehry-designed building. Over the weekend, the Gulf Ultra Luxury Faction (GULF), the protest wing of GLC, announced it would resume public actions against the Guggenheim, which it had ceased during the previous year.
Over the past year, members of the GLC and the Guggenheim had met three times, in the wake of GULF’s public actions on May 1, 2015, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim in New York that lead to the museum being shut down for the day, and at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice on May 8 during the opening of the Venice Biennale. Earlier in the spring, three members of GLC—New York University professor Andrew Ross, and artists Walid Raad and Ashok Sukumaran—had been denied entry to the UAE.
According to GLC, the first of those three meetings took place on June 3, with Guggenehim Board Chairman William Mack and President Jennifer Blei Stockman in attendance for the first time. A second meeting on September 15, 2015, included board member Stephen Robert. GLC then requested a “summit level meeting” that would include representatives of GLC, the Guggenheim and several labor- and human-rights groups, which was scheduled for February 2016. That meeting included Fiona Murie of Building and Woodworkers’ International, Jill Wells from Engineers Against Poverty, Sarah Leah Whitson from Human Rights Watch, Jeffrey Vogt of International Trade Union Confederation, and Shilkha Silliman Bhattacharjee from Society for Labor and Development.
In its April 18 statement the GLC reported that the three-hour meeting was “productive,” and that the coalition followed up with two concrete proposals: to begin bi-weekly meetings between the GLC and its NGO partners and the Guggenheim and TDIC (the Abu Dhabi agency overseeing the development of Saadiyat Island), and that the groups discuss five areas of policy, including recruitment debt, subcontracting, workers’ representation and “robust monitoring.” Although GLC says it left the February meeting feeling “optimistic,” the Guggenheim’s response was to shut down the formal talks completely.
In the conference call on April 13 in which the Guggenheim broke off its dialogue with GLC and partners, it blamed the activist and labor groups for making demands “outside of their reach,” about issues that are “matters of state,” and repeated Richard Armstrong’s own previous accusations towards the GLC that the group was distributing “deliberate falsehoods” through the media and protests. The GLC statement released on April 18 says it “regrets that Guggenheim has broken off negotiations in a hostile manner” and claims the museum is on a “self-destructive path.” A spokesperson for the Guggenheim Foundation disputed this characterization, writing to ArtAsiaPacific: “The call [of April 13] was professional and polite in tone. We explained that such meetings are no longer productive and offered to continue to update Gulf Labor on project developments.”

HG Masters is editor at large of ArtAsiaPacific.


text:
Friday, November 5, 2010

The dreaded "S" word

Wow, I can't believe how long it has been since I lasted posted! Sorry about that. :(

It has been very dreary and windy the last couple of days and it is getting downright cold. Now, for me to say it is cold is generally unheard of as I go around most of the winter without a coat. But today, we actually got our first little ssssssnowfall.

YIKES, the dreaded S word! It wasn't much, but it was still not welcome. My ideal winter would be to snow on Christmas Eve a soft, fluffy gentle snow. You know the kind, the perfect snowfall you always see in the movies where you get snowed in with that special someone and spend the evening curled up next to the fire, or sharing some much needed quality time with your family, and then it would be gone the day after Christmas. (and be about 68 degrees and sunny the rest of the time) Perfect! :)

I thought this card would be appropriate to post since we have been seeing the little flecks blowing about today.

Cardstock: Soft Suede, Real Red, Crumb Cake, Pear Pizazz
Ink: Soft Suede, Whisper White
Accessories: White Embossing Powder, Build-a-Brad, Scallop Edge Punch, Heat Tool

I stamped the trees in Whisper White craft ink and then embossed them with white detail powder. The green mat and Build-a-Brad center are the new Pear Pizazz In-Color. I really liked the clean easy style of this card, and it went together very quickly.

I hope wherever you are the weather is clear and bright!

Rosa Youschak said...

How pretty! That time of year is really near! Great Card!

Allison said...

Pretty! I love the brad/sentiment banner combo. Glad to see you are back!

Pat said...

Beautiful card!

Amanda Mertz said...

Kym- Great card! I love this clean and simple layout. It lets the beauty of the stamp & colors shine through. TFS!

Shari said...

Love the build-a-brad!

The Country Rose said...

This is a very pretty card! We had snow flurries today! I am not quite ready for snow yet!

angieh29 said...

This card is so beautiful! TFS!


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Arundel's tax cap fever

January 15, 1993

No one, least of all Anne Arundel County tax rebel Robert Schaeffer, should be shocked or upset by a recent study showing that caps on the taxable amount of assessment increases help people in Towson and Severna Park more than homeowners in Dundalk and Harundale.

Assessment caps are doing exactly what they were intended to do: protect homeowners in areas of rapidly increasing value from being taxed out of their houses.

The 1990 Homestead Tax Credit Law, which requires the 23 counties and Baltimore City to limit individual taxable assessment increases to no more than 10 percent annually, was never designed to give all homeowners a break; people living along the water or in other desirable areas -- they have been the victims of rising assessments.

In Anne Arundel County, for instance, assessments for half of its 100,000 homeowners are rising at least 10 percent a year. These homeowners were the force behind the tax revolt that led to passage of the county's Nov. 3 referendum limiting property tax revenues.

Mr. Schaeffer knows this. So it's ironic to find him threatening to take the homestead law to court -- a move that could affect homeowners statewide -- because, he says, it doesn't help the "little guy."

Why is Mr. Schaeffer doing this when a year ago he blasted Anne Arundel Executive Robert R. Neall for not lowering assessment limits?

It all goes back to the tax cap referendum, which he spearheaded.

Instead of cutting the tax rate by 9 cents to meet the cap, Mr. Neall is slicing the rate by only 5 cents and reducing assessment limits from 10 percent to 4 percent. That way, no one's tax bill, including those whose assessments are rising fastest, will rise beyond the rate of inflation.

Mr. Schaeffer says homeowners with flat assessments would be better off with a straight cut in the tax rate. Still, it's hard to see why he's making a fuss, unless he just wants to have the last word. The 50,000 homeowners who stand to benefit most from Mr. Neall's plan are the ones who have been crying loudest for tax relief. Some are wealthy waterfront owners, but not all are.

No artificial tax constraint can be applied absolutely equitably. But the homestead law has worked to give relief where assessments have risen inordinately.

If Mr. Neall can make the tax cap work for more homeowners, why complain?

Baltimore Sun Articles
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Jurisdictions should be purchasing open space

February 13, 1993|By TOM HORTON

We could stop worrying about the governor's and the legislature's ongoing neglect of Maryland's once-proud Program Open Space if:

* The state's population stopped growing.

* The trend toward sprawl development reversed itself.

* Our remaining farmland, forests and wetlands proved expendable.

Since those things aren't likely to happen, we do need to worry about Program Open Space, a national model when it began in 1969. The genius of POS was that it tied the pace of development statewide to the pace at which we acquired natural areas for parks, recreation and hunting.

One-half of 1 percent of Maryland's transfer tax on every sale of

property was tapped as the funding source for the open space program. The faster land was getting developed, and the more land cost, the faster money would build up to preserve land forever from development.

We're talking substantial money here. By 1991, POS had spent more than half a billion dollars and acquired some 150,000 acres, or nearly 240 square miles.

And acreage alone can't describe the beauty and diversity owed to the program: the state's second highest waterfall, in Harford County; near-wilderness terrain in Western Maryland, for hiking and hunting; miles of pristine river shoreline on the Eastern Shore.

But there is so much more the program could have done -- should have done -- had Maryland not weakened it in 1984, and virtually gutted it in the last few years.

POS has effectively "lost" more than $250 million and fallen short of its official goal, preserving 10 percent of Maryland, by a whopping 105,000 acres.

And that goal understates the failure. The goal was based on Maryland's 6.3 million acres being 10 percent developed by 1990, but the percentage is closer to 15.

Nor did the original goal, mainly recreation-oriented, envision the heightened importance we now attach to open space -- as a pollution filter, as a refuge for rare and endangered species, as greenways for both people and wildlife, and as a way to preserve farmland.

It was in 1984 that the state capped the program at $24 million a year, with any excess being siphoned off to general funds. Environmental groups protested only mildly because the change coincided with passage of heralded legislation to restore Chesapeake Bay.

There was no commensurate capping of development pressure. Statewide, residential building permits spurted from 20,000 in 1980 to 42,000 in 1985. (Since 1989 they have fallen from 40,000 to 25,000 because of the recession, but they now appear to be picking up again.)

Finally, in 1990, the cap was lifted, with a phase-in to full funding by 1996; but the legislature proceeded to simply raid most of the transfer-tax money, to ease the state's budget crisis. (Some bond authority was given to POS in partial atonement, but the power has been used sparingly). Meanwhile, since 1981, Maryland's share of federal land-acquisition money has fallen from $3.3 million to barely a tenth of that.

Now, Gov. William Donald Schaefer wants to postpone the full uncapping of the transfer tax monies another two years, until 1998; and another legislative raid on the program appears a done deal. Some legislators now say candidly that Program Open Space will never be restored to full funding.

That would be a tragedy not only for natural areas but also for Maryland's farm community, which has effectively lost tens of millions of dollars since 1984. The money, under a program once considered a national model, went to buy farmers' development rights, thus preserving the land while allowing farm families to keep working it.

This program, which has preserved about 98,000 of the state's 2.3 million farm acres, was just beginning to take off in 1990. But shifting the funds elsewhere hurt hundreds of farmers who had gone through the lengthy process of qualifying for preservation money.

Frankly, an excellent, statewide growth-management plan, limiting development mostly to existing population centers, would reduce the need to restore Program Open Space. But such plans exist more on paper than in reality.

Meanwhile, legislators who don't support restoration of the program are shortchanging the future big time -- not just water quality and agriculture, but the livability and charm of a rapidly suburbanizing state.

Our environmental progress has been characterized as "upstream at four knots, but the current's running at five." Program Open Space for once tied preservation to development, progress upstream to the current downstream. The neglect of POS is one more reason we are still playing catch-up.

There is one major change that should be made whether the program gets full funding or not. Over the years, local governments have been allowed to spend more open-space money on projects only marginally connected to preserving land.

Local expenditures, which amount to nearly half of the program's annual budget, include athletic complexes, skating rinks and even a minor league ballpark.

This does broaden political support, but POS never was intended as a public works program. Except for a couple of counties with huge holdings of public land, all jurisdictions in the state, including Baltimore City, should concentrate on purchasing open space.

* William P. Jensen, Maryland's tidewater fisheries administrator, complained that last week's column misrepresented him as playing politics with respect to regulating crabs and rockfish.

I agree that I should have called to get his side of things. I didn't, and I apologize for that.

Mr. Jensen's view is that in a recent meeting with legislators he did nothing to encourage speculation that declines in the crab harvest could be caused by too-strong conservation of rockfish.

He notes that results of studies countering this speculation were published by his agency in a newspaper circulated to watermen, many of whom would like to think that catching more rockfish, not regulating crabbers, is the key to conserving crabs.

Baltimore Sun Articles
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Beth Steel iron spill is fatal

April 19, 1994|By Melody Simmons and Ross Hetrick | Melody Simmons and Ross Hetrick,Sun Staff Writers

A 200-ton industrial ladle filled with molten iron spilled today at Bethlehem Steel's Sparrows Point plant, killing one worker and injuring another, the company said.

The accident occurred at 8:03 a.m. -- one hour into the day shift -- in the steel-making area of the plant, said Art Roth, a company spokesman in Bethlehem, Pa.

The spill also caused a single-alarm fire in the building, Baltimore County fire officials said.

Several workers were treated at Sparrows Point for smoke inhalation and minor burns, a company spokesman said.

Names of the dead and injured workers were not immediately available. Ted Baldwin, spokesman for the Sparrows Point plant, said the victim's relatives had not been notified of the accident.

But he said the man who was killed was 55 years old and a 34-year veteran employee at Sparrows Point.

Mr. Baldwin said Bethlehem Steel and the United Steel Workers Union are investigating the accident. The Maryland Occupational Safety and Health Administration also will investigate, he said.

Mr. Roth said the melted iron was in a huge ladle that was suspended on a pulley on its way to a furnace. Once inside the furnace, the melted iron is fired for 45 minutes until it is converted into hardened iron.

Bethlehem's Sparrows Point plant is one of the largest industrial operations in the state, with a 5,800-employee steel-mill work force and 1,200 workers at the adjoining shipyard. It is one of the largest steel mills owned by Bethlehem Steel, the second biggest steel maker in the country.

The last accident at the complex was on Feb. 20 when an electrician presumably fell into the water at the shipyard while installing a temporary light on a pier. The accident was not seen by other workers and his body was not recovered.

Last Oct. 31, a 59-year-old Bethlehem Steel Corp. foreman died after falling 16 feet from a raised concrete pad at the Sparrows Point mill. The victim, Fritz A. Schildt of Edgemere, was checking the motor on a piece of equipment before he fell.

Baltimore Sun Articles
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text:
Cop Indicted In Shooting Death

September 13, 1985|By Gabe Fuentes.

A Chicago police officer was indicted on two counts of voluntary manslaughter Thursday by a Cook County grand jury in connection with the shooting death of a Northwest Side hotel manager in July.

Officer Robert C. Fedanzo, 40, an 18-year police veteran assigned to communications, shot and killed Harry A. Panoutsos, 25, while Fedanzo was off duty July 3, police said after the shooting.

Fedanzo has told investigators that he shot Panoutsos after Panoutsos attacked him by pounding on his car and spraying him in the face with a chemical.

But Panoutsos` girlfriend, Carolyn Bonelli, 23, has said Panoutsos was shot while trying to question Fedanzo, who Bonelli said had made sexual advances to her as she stood in a telephone booth a block from the shooting, at 5627 N. Lincoln Ave.

Questions in the case arose from reports that Fedanzo waited more than an hour to report to a hospital for treatment of injuries.


text:
Another Texas Bank Fails

November 16, 1985

The board of directors of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. approved paying off insured depositors in the failed First National Bank of Teague, Tex. The FDIC said deposits in the central Texas bank amounted to $26.3 million in 5,400 accounts. The comptroller of the currency Thursday closed the bank, the 101st in the nation and the 11th in Texas to fail this year.


text:
Flight Attendants Strike Twa After Contract Talks Collapse

March 07, 1986|By United Press International.

WASHINGTON — The flight attendants` union representing 6,000 workers struck Trans World Airlines early Friday over a contract dispute, and pickets appeared at major airports around the nation.

Marathon talks collapsed between the representatives of the airline and the union at a Washington hotel, and no further talks were scheduled.

Vicki Frankovich, president of the Independent Federation of Flight Attendants, told reporters, ``I`m sorry to announce that our process of negotiations has failed, and we are on strike.

``We have no further negotiations planned,`` she said.

The strike, called shortly after a federally mandated 30-day cooling-off period expired, was announced when the two sides were unable to reach an agreement on wages and work rules.

``We intend to close this place down,`` Frankovich said.

She accused TWA chairman Carl Icahn of being ``unreasonable at best, discriminatory at worst and, all told, (his offer was) unacceptable.``

The talks had been conducted since Saturday under the auspices of the National Mediation Board.

TWA carried about 21 million passengers last year, making it the nation`s fifth-largest airline.

Without a contract, the financially struggling airline would be free to impose wage and work-rule concessions.

Management had no immediate comment on the strike.

Earlier the union said it agreed to an average $5,000 salary cut for its flight attendants, who currently make up to $28,000 annually without overtime. The company had wanted to impose an $8,000 wage cut.

The TWA pilots were not expected to honor the picket lines, and the company said it would attempt to fly with supervisory personnel and recently hired attendants-in-training.

The negotiators had briefly averted a midnight strike deadline by continuing talks after a two-hour recess, but the process broke down again in about an hour.

Cynthia de Figueiredo, a member of the union`s negotiating committee, said the airline was demanding wage and benefit concessions amounting to between $88 million and $100 million. Company negotiators declined to discuss the talks.

Icahn had said the concessions offered by the union would only save the airline $30 million and a strike would inflict $75 to $100 million in additional losses.

TWA faces first-quarter losses of $125 million. Icahn, who took control of the company in early January, has raised the possibility of breaking up the airline if he fails to win the dispute with the flight attendants.


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2 Plead Not Guilty In Murder

October 02, 1987

Two suspects in the kidnap-murder of Kankakee businessman Stephen Small pleaded not guilty Thursday to formal charges in the case, and the state`s top law official deplored the crime as ``vicious and coldly calculated.``

Daniel Edwards, 30, and Nancy Rish, 25, entered their innocent pleas after each was named in 13 counts of murder and aggravated kidnaping in indictments returned by a Kankakee County grand jury.

The grand jury action, based on testimony from 33 people, authorities said, came almost one month to the day after the ill-fated abduction.

Small, 40, heir to a media fortune, was found dead Sept. 4, two days after he was abducted near his home by kidnapers who demanded a $1 million ransom for his safe return. Police said he died of suffocation after being buried alive in a 6-by-3-by-3 foot box in a wooded area southeast of Kankakee. Illinois Atty. Gen. Neil Hartigan, whose office is prosecuting the case, announced the indictments and named three assistant attorneys general, Michael Ficaro, Frank Nowicki and Timothy Reynolds, to prosecute the case.

He said Edwards and Rish would be ``prosecuted to the full extent of the law,`` including possible execution, if convicted.

The kidnaping and burial of Small were ``vicious and coldly calculated,`` Hartigan said.

Circuit Judge John Michela, before whom the indictments were returned, continued the case without setting the next court date. Edwards and Rish were remanded to the Kankakee County Jail. They have been in custody since Sept. 4, when they were arrested at their home in Bourbonnais.

Investigators disclosed Wednesday that the FBI examination of a tape recording found by police confirmed that it contained the voices of Small and Edwards. Kankakee police also said that they believe they now have the gun used to force Small to accompany the abductors. Kankakee Police Chief Timothy Nugent described the tape and gun as ``vital pieces of evidence.``

Nugent said on Monday Kankakee County Sheriff Bernie Thompson found a .357 Magnum believed to have been used by Small`s kidnapers in a ditch in the vicinity of Wichert Sand Hills, where Small`s body was found.


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N. Carolina Bests Ohio St. In Weird One

December 19, 1993|By Skip Myslenski, Tribune College Basketball Writer.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — No one would ever admit it, but somehow, in some manner, Tim Burton was surely involved in this one. He was the quirky genius behind the quirky movies "Edward Scissorhands," "Batman" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas." So, yes, surely he was involved in this one in some way.

That could be the only explanation for the bizarre proceedings that marked No. 2 North Carolina's 81-68 victory here over Ohio State (4-2). For this was a most unusual win for the Tar Heels (9-1), one in which both sides resembled master artisans one minute, Beavis and Butt-head the next.

Take the Buckeyes' play through the first nine minutes. They went 1 of 18, turned over the ball six times and looked generally like dazed and daunted travelers to some strange and exotic land. "I think we were a little nervous, no question about it," said their coach, Randy Ayers.

But after those nine minutes, they trailed only 13-3 because the Tar Heels were matching them folly for foible. Five of 17 is all they hit during this stretch, though their coach, Dean Smith, said, "The kinds of shots we were getting, we could have had a big lead."

Those minutes established the character of this game. Both teams were exerting pressure defense, neither team was establishing an offensive rhythm and the game resembled a horror film.

Five of 27 is what the Buckeyes were when it was 16 minutes old, and when Tar Heels guard Donald Williams (26 points) hit a three with 3:55 left in the first half, they were down 29-15. They were staggered, rattled, heading for the count, but on this afternoon, nothing would unfurl so simply.

It was in this game's character, then, that the Buckeyes rallied. They scored on six of their next eight possessions after scoring on only six of their first 34. After that miserable 5 of 27, they proceeded to go 6 of 8.

Guard Jamie Skelton, who ended with a game-high 27 points, was their catalyst, and when this unexpected stretch ended at halftime, the Buckeyes were down only 33-29. "We were getting good shots early," Skelton said, "but they weren't falling. Coach felt we were rushing them, not using our quickness. Then they just started happening to fall."

That finally made this one a game, gave it a pattern befitting basketball. The Buckeyes were going to concentrate on defending Carolina's huge front line and on stopping 7-footers Eric Montross (six points) and Kevin Salvadori (four points). The Tar Heels, in turn, were going to attack and trap on defense and hope to negate Ohio State's quickness with constant harassment, which produced 19 turnovers and held the Buckeyes to 37.2 percent shooting.

That is the way they played it now, Carolina surging up by as much as seven, Ohio State always pulling the Tar Heels back. Then, with 7:08 remaining, a Derek Anderson baseline jumper finally pulled the Buckeyes even at 58 and had them poised for a finishing run.

But then, for the final time, this one turned on the brilliance of Williams, who immediately buried a 12-footer from the left corner. A Buckeyes turnover and a foul shot by Carolina forward Jerry Stackhouse (15 points) followed, and then came the play that set the stage for Williams.

Greg Simpson, the Buckeyes' point guard, stripped Stackhouse, but as he looked to pass, Stackhouse rolled into him and caused a turnover. Derrick Phelps, the Carolina point guard, picked it up, and then came a Williams three, a Skelton miss, a Williams layup, an Anderson miss and a three-point play by Williams.

That made it 69-58 Carolina with 4:45 remaining and set up these last stats: After that tie at 58, Williams scored 14 of Carolina's next 15 points and the veteran Tar Heels outscored the young Buckeyes 23-10.

"I thought our kids' inability to play down the stretch was the factor," Ayers said. "We've just gotta learn to finish."

"We knew that Williams was their go-to guy," said Anderson, his sophomore guard. "But he did a great job. He just took it to all of us."


text:
Book review.

An Author Still In Touch With His Past

March 02, 1994|By Reviewed by Ron Grossman, a Tribune writer.

The Bread of Time

By Philip Levine

Knopf, 296 pages, $23

A proletarian writer is a living contradiction in terms, as Philip Levine's wonderful collection of autobiographical essays reminds us. Which is not to say that literary genes don't run in blue-collar families. Or that, if factory whistles were the background music of his youth, an author can't recall that world in his writing.

But the act of picking up a pen with hands no longer lined by manual labor distances such an artist from a part of himself. Sitting in a sidewalk cafe in Barcelona at age 37, Levine couldn't take his eyes off a group of working men having a quick coffee and a few minutes of bantering before going off to their jobs.

"It was as though I'd known these men before I saw them, these men in their wool caps, smoking and hollering in their hoarse voices," Levine writes. "Their faces unshaven, rough, spare, worn down but not worn out, these were the men of my boyhood."

Still, he and they were separated by a gap even more unbridgeable than that between the languages he and they spoke. Levine had become a poet and professor, and thus his life was no longer chained to a time clock.

"Tomorrow morning the work week would begin again for all of these, a routine I no longer took part in," Levine noted.

Indeed, that poignant sense of separation from the street-corner kid he once was has inspired some of Levine's best verse. It appears again in "The Bread of Time," which traces his path from the factories of Detroit to the groves of academe.

Even without a background check we can be sure he actually made that trip, for he doesn't sentimentalize working-class life, the telltale sign of an intellectual forging proletarian credentials for the sake of literary fashion.

In a memorable passage, Levine recalls being appalled by Diego Rivera's famed frescoes, which celebrated assembly line workers by depicting them as doing their jobs with the grace of ballerinas.

"Rivera's great design, his beautiful dance was nonsense," Levine observes. "Automobiles were produced by a colossal accident that shattered men and women."

Having lived the life, Levine realized that no one puts in eight hours a day in an auto factory or steel mill for any reason other than a paycheck. Given an economically viable exit, all the workers would fly out the door.

Any writer who makes that escape takes along a load of guilt for having left workmates behind. In Levine's case, the pain can be heard in his wonderfully cutting descriptions of the banalities of the academic life: "administrators with titles like Dean of Steam or Vice President of Nonacademic Affairs and Nonsexual Relations."

For one faculty position, Levine was interviewed by a dean "with a face unfurrowed by thought."

Actually, Levine might be a little kinder to his academic colleagues, for he had an advantage denied them by their middle class upbringings. A blue-collar childhood is basic training in common sense.

His grandfather, Levine reports, loved to bet on politics. Once, he made a small fortune betting against Dewey, who seemed a sure thing to trounce Truman. Walter Lippmann should have had Grandpa Levine's political insight.

"Right after Hitler," the old man said, "the American people don't elect a little schmuck with such a mustache."


text:
Cnn Faces Contempt Trial For Airing Noriega Tapes

March 31, 1994|By New York Times News Service.

MIAMI — Cable News Network was charged with contempt of court Wednesday on the recommendation of a special federal prosecutor, who said the network had "knowingly and willfully" disobeyed a judge's order in 1990 not to broadcast tape recordings of Gen. Manuel Noriega while the former Panamanian dictator was in jail here.

The criminal complaint was announced nearly 3 1/2 years after Judge William M. Hoeveler first learned that CNN had obtained tape recordings of telephone conversations between Noriega and his lawyers and members of their staffs, his family, his mistress and her family, and former military subordinates.

The network eventually surrendered the tapes, but only after broadcasting excerpts for two days and fighting all the way to the Supreme Court.

At an arraignment before Hoeveler on Wednesday, CNN, through its lawyers, pleaded innocent to the charge. Because the charge was filed only against the company, it is punishable by a fine but cannot result in the imprisonment of the network's reporters or executives.

Trial was scheduled for July 11, with Hoeveler expected to hear the case, court officials said.

William Killian, a Miami lawyer who represents the network, rejected special prosecutor Robert Dunlap's contention that the network had intentionally violated the court's instructions.

"CNN acted in an informed way, on the advice of counsel," he said in an interview. "CNN never meant to violate what it understood to be the terms of Hoeveler's order."

Government lawyers were not available for comment.

When the recordings were broadcast in defiance of Hoeveler's order, network executives argued that the ruling was an unconstitutional prior restraint of its 1st Amendment right to disseminate the news.

But higher courts quickly upheld Hoeveler, saying it was up to him to "conduct the difficult balancing of constitutional rights required in these circumstances."

Under federal law, the telephone calls of prisoners in federal jails are routinely and legally taped to prevent their plotting crimes behind bars, and detainees are warned of the practice.

Noriega, apprehended in January 1990 after the U.S. invasion of Panama, was convicted in 1992 of drug trafficking, racketeering and money laundering. He is serving a 40-year sentence in Miami.


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Swingers Club Strikes Out With Town

Residents Want It To Pack, Leave

August 02, 2000|By Christi Parsons, Tribune Staff Writer.

NEW BERLIN, Ill. — Before this summer, this tiny town of 1,000 people and more churches than stoplights was best known as the site of the annual Sangamon County fair.

But dozens of out-of-towners this month have been making their way through the miles of cornfields for a different reason, called "lewd" and "lascivious" by local residents.

A new nightclub has opened in an old car dealership next to the Village Hall, inviting "lifestyle couples" interested in "playing together" with other consenting adult couples to come visit for fun, friendship and more.

Now they're swinging in New Berlin, and it has nothing to do with iced tea on the front porch.

Invited guests to The Klubhouse can either "indulge their fantasies," says owner Rich Egizii, or just sit around and throw darts if they feel like the $125 annual membership fee and nightly $40 "party donation" fee is worth it.

"There are so many couples clubs that have been around for years," said Egizii. "We just wanted to have a quiet, out-of-the-way place where people could get together around here."

But the Klubhouse has been anything but low-key since nightfall on a Saturday night last month, when a few cars made their way out for opening night. They were greeted by about 80 village residents in front of the building, studying the visitors' license plates and waving signs that read "Swing out of New Berlin."

A war has ensued between the Klubhouse and town residents in the meantime, putting the burg on the map in a way neither side appreciates. Egizii says he never wanted non-members to know where his club was located; now it's common knowledge.

Meanwhile, village residents think the sordid business is ruining their property values and quality of life, not to mention their image. When they brag about being a "bedroom community" to neighboring Springfield, a 15-minute drive away, this isn't what they mean."It's embarrassing," said resident Cheryl Pippin. "Now when you tell people you're from New Berlin, this is the first thing they think of."

She and her neighbors would rather their town be known as a community that in a long ago era banded together to run Jesse James out of town. They'd like to do the same to the swingers, devotees of a lifestyle associated with partner-swapping in the 1970s.

But the lifestyle has survived the era of AIDS and is still alive, well and supporting its own national association of sex clubs. Interested people find the clubs via the Internet and generally go through a telephone interview before being allowed to join a club, according to Egizii.

Inside the Klubhouse anything goes, says Egizii, a former engineering technician with the Illinois Department of Transportation.

"It's my place," he says of the club, which is decked out with used lounge furniture from a motel, an oak bar and silk trees strung with Christmas lights. "I can invite you and your boyfriend over, have you bring a six-pack and you can do anything you like. As long as I don't sell alcohol and as long as it's among consenting adults, it doesn't matter."

The problem, he believes, is not with his club members, who he says range in age from the late 30s into their 50s and are "affluent, articulate and mannerful." The trouble is with the "intolerance and bigotry" of angry residents, a contingent he contends is led by women of the town but which also includes men.

"Men against sex? What planet are they from?" Egizii asks. "They're nobody I ever ran around with."

A member of a prominent Springfield family, Egizii says he joined a band as a youth and later traveled the U.S. and Europe before returning to central Illinois.

But his neighbors are less than happy to see him back in New Berlin--pronounced not like the German capital but rather New BUR-lin, with the emphasis on the first syllable.

About 30 of the residents, who are tentatively calling their movement Citizens Against Klubhouse Evils or CAKE, got together one recent night in the high school library to devise a plan to send Egizii packing.

The meeting was called to order by a young mother named Christi DeGroot.

"We gather around family and friends and church," DeGroot told the others. "To me, this shadows everything our town stands for, and we need to fight for what's morally right."

How best to do that, though, was up for debate. They planned a potluck and a picket. DeGroot suggested raising money to hire a lawyer. Others proposed asking village officials to scrutinize the establishment for compliance with such codes as the Americans with Disabilities Act.

But even village trustees lacked the power to find out for sure what's going on in the club on Saturday nights, the residents groused. And that makes it hard to craft a challenge to the legality of the club.

Some residents hope the business will fail on its own.


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Around the world.

Airport Is Open For The First Time Since Gulf War

August 18, 2000|By From Tribune News Services.

BAGHDAD, IRAQ — After 10 years of a UN ban on flights to Iraq, the international airport in Baghdad has reopened for business.

Transport and Communications Minister Ahmed Murtada Ahmed Khalil said the Saddam International Airport and its facilities opened Thursday. He said Iraq is "expecting the arrival of aircraft" from friendly countries.

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez got a red-carpet welcome there last week when he was ferried from the Iranian border in President Saddam Hussein's helicopter.

Chavez was the first head of state to visit Iraq since the 1991 gulf war. A 1990 UN Security Council resolution imposing, among other things, a ban on flights to and from Iraq has been disputed but observed. Chavez did not violate the UN sanctions because he crossed the border with Iran in a car.

The airport was last used for a commercial flight hours before the outbreak of the gulf war. Since then, only a few planes have landed, mainly carrying humanitarian aid.

With no aircraft, the national carrier has kept its 2,300 staff busy by selling food and drinks to the public or using airport facilities to repair equipment for the state and private sectors. Iraqi Airways offices in Baghdad are now communications centers and food stores.


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Across the nation.

Gas Pipeline Explosion Kills 6, Injures 6 Others

August 20, 2000|By From Tribune News Services.

CARLSBAD, NEW MEXICO — An underground natural gas pipeline exploded and sent a giant ball of flames into the air Saturday, killing six people who had been camping nearby. Six other campers were in critical condition.

The victims killed were four children and two adults, said state police Capt. John Balderston.

They were members of at least two families camping along the Pecos River 200 to 300 yards from where the blast occurred, he said.

Balderston said the cause was not known, but he speculated that the 30-inch pipeline had ruptured.

El Paso Natural Gas Co. spokeswoman Norma Dunn said the explosion could have been ignited by anything from a spark from striking rocks to someone lighting a cigarette or coal for a barbecue.

"We saw a large ball of flames," Balderston said. "The fire department was able to find six people in the river, walking west of the incident."

The six injured were taken to a hospital in Lubbock, Texas, about 160 miles from Carlsbad.

"All are in very critical condition," spokeswoman Kim Davis said. "It's very grave."


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Ask Tom Why.

Dear Tom, If 1 inch of rain fell over the entire...

August 24, 2000|By Tom Skilling, chief meteorologist at WGN-TV.

Dear Tom,

If 1 inch of rain fell over the entire surface of Lake Michigan, with negligible rainfall in the lake's drainage basin, would the surface level rise by 1 inch?

Glen Franklin

Dear Glen,

While noting the improbability of a rain so uniformly distributed over Lake Michigan's surface alone, Detroit-based U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hydrologist Adam Fox tells us it is indeed likely lake levels would rise around 1 inch. But such an increase, he is quick to point out, would be temporary. That's because of the flow of water between Lakes Huron and Michigan. Fox estimates it would take only two days for that rainwater, transported at the rate of about half an inch per day, to become evenly distributed between the two bodies of water. He also says that in the context of the entire moisture budget of the two lakes--what's called the net basin supply--a 1-inch rain is but a pittance. Corps of Engineers estimates for this month (August) suggest all the water flowing into the two lakes from all sources probably amounts to 20,000 to 30,000 cubic feet per second. To put that in context, Fox points out the Chicago River carries 3,200 cubic feet of water per second out of Lake Michigan.

Tom Skilling is chief meteorologist at WGN-TV. His weather forecasts can be seen Monday through Friday on WGN News at noon and 9 p.m.

Send your questions to:

ASK TOM WHY, 2501 Bradley Place, Chicago, IL 60618


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September 05, 2000

Marilyn Carlson, nee Cuny, of Des Plaines, beloved wife of the late Donald; loving mother of Keith (Linda), Brian (Jorie), Sharon Carlson and Michele (Abe) Arredondo; loving grandmother of Jamie, Jake, Tyler, Matt and Scott; dear friend of Helen and Al Rodig. Visitation Wednesday 5 to 9 p.m. at the Oehler Funeral Home, 555 Lee St., Des Plaines. Funeral Thursday 9:30 a.m. from chapel to All Saints Cemetery 10 a.m. In lieu of flowers, memorials to Save a Pet Foundation, 31664 N. Fairfield Rd., Grayslake, IL 60030 would be appreciated. Info 847-824-5155


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September 16, 2000

Casimir G. Dombkowski, beloved husband of the late Jenne; loving father of David (Cindy), Geri (Brian) Gravander, brother of Ceil Wronciewicz; grandfather of five. Visitation Sunday 1 to 5 p.m. at Kristan Funeral Home, 219 W. Maple Ave (Rte 176) Mundelin. Mass of Christian Burial 10 a.m. Monday from, Sainta Maria Del Popolo Chapel. Interment Ascension Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, Memorials to WWII memorial Fund American Battle Monument Commission. Attn: Gr048 P.O Box 96074 Washington DC 20090-6074847-566-8020


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September 28, 2000

Eugene J. Rudnik, 80, of Glenview, formerly of Lincolnwood and Ft. Lauderdale, FL, Sept. 25, 2000, beloved husband of Dolores M. Rudnik, nee Wolniak; loving father of Barbara (Thomas) Filippini, Eugene Jr. (Carol), Nancy (James) Kelly, Michael (Sharron), Robert (Mary), John (Nancy) and Mary (Curtis) Stollings; proud grandfather of Megan, Tom (Emily), Scott, Lori and Matt Filippini, David, Andrew, Steven and Annie Rudnik, Jim, Kristin, Jill and Susie Kelly, Jordan and Katie Rudnik, Shane and Ryan Wolf, Molly, Emma and Grace Rudnik, Joe and Nick Stollings; dear brother of Dolores (Theodore) Dubas; fond brother-in-law of Rita Garrity; fond uncle of many nieces and nephews. Mr. Rudnik was an attorney for 57 years. He was past President of Peerless Federal Savings and former executive Vice President and General Counsel of Southeast Toyota Distributors, Pompano Beach, FL. Visitation Thursday, 3 to 9 p.m. at N.H. Scott & Hebblethwaite Funeral Home, 1240 Waukegan Rd., Glenview (2 blocks South of Lake Ave. on West Side), Family and friends will meet for funeral Mass Friday, 10 a.m. at St. Catherine Laboure Church, 3535 Thornwood, Glenview. Interment St. Adalbert Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, memorials to Passionist Monastery, 5700 N. Harlem Ave., Chicago, 60631, appreciated. Funeral info. 847-998-1020


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Channeling Her Energies

Mindset, Muscle Fuel Manchester Woman's Swim

July 10, 1994|By LORI RILEY; Courant Staff Writer

Less than an hour after Mike Oram met Marcy MacDonald, he issued a challenge.

``If you can recite `I'm a total failure' three times, you can get out [of the water],'' said Oram, the burly, bearded captain of the Aegean Blue.

Then, the man who would guide MacDonald in her attempt to swim the English Channel added: ``But we don't have failures on this boat.''

Dawn pinkened the famous White Cliffs surrounding Dover Harbor. MacDonald, 30, a podiatrist from Manchester, sat in a deck chair on the 33-foot boat and digested Oram's words.

She would remember them some six hours later, as she struggled to become the 411th person to swim the Straits of Dover, a 21-mile stretch of the English Channel between Dover, England, and Cap Gris Nez, France. No matter how frustrated, disoriented or exhausted she became, MacDonald refused to give up.

MacDonald, a swimmer since she was 7, knew she had what it took for a successful Channel swim: physical conditioning, mental toughness and a knowledgeable captain to guide her. All she needed was her luck -- and the Channel's quirky weather and ever-changing tides -- to hold as she crossed.

So when Oram spoke of failure or a possible 14-hour swim, it made MacDonald wonder, although she knew less than 10 percent of the 6,000-plus attempts on the Channel had been successful in 119 years. Was he warning her, or simply practicing an English Channel captain's version of pop psychology?

If so, it worked.

It made her mad.

``Fourteen hours?'' MacDonald muttered to herself, as the Aegean Blue rocked through the heaving sea from Dover Harbor toward Shakespeare Beach below the White Cliffs, where she would begin her swim. ``What does he think I am -- 70 years old?''

At 3:47 p.m., June 30, an undertow tried to tug at MacDonald's body as she clambered onto a rock near Pointe du Riden, France. She had completed her swim in 10 hours, 33 minutes. She raised her arms triumphantly, looking back to the boat. She had beaten the odds.

Take that, Mike.

The beginning

When Ken MacDonald was 11 and his sister Marcy 8, she told him she wanted to swim the English Channel. He didn't know whether to believe her.

The MacDonald family was attracted to water; father John and brother Ken both served in the Navy, and Marcy and her twin sister Beth swam.

Their Manchester Recreation swim coach, Mel Siebold, was a distance swimmer. You couldn't pull Marcy out of the water, Siebold remembered. She loved it.

When Marcy was 12, she completed a 1-mile swim in Westport harbor. At 14, she won a national 4-mile race for juniors.

Siebold said Marcy was an above-average swimmer, but not quite college scholarship material.

Instead, MacDonald attended American International College in Springfield on a softball scholarship. Swimming faded into the background. A career in podiatry beckoned.

But she never stopped her distance workouts.

Fitting the mold

Five years ago her dream of swimming the Channel resurfaced.

After she swam a 28-mile race around Manhattan Island in 7 1/2 hours last summer, she knew she was ready to go to England. She began to swim 25 to 30 miles a week as training.

A Channel swimmer needs to be strong, rugged -- and slightly overweight. MacDonald fit the mold.

She's no Janet Evans. MacDonald's 5-foot-8, 180-pound frame would dwarf the 105-pound Olympic swimming gold medalist.

Yet Evans probably couldn't handle the Channel. MacDonald's body type is perfect for a Channel swimmer, since fat serves as insulation, keeps swimmers buoyant and provides a reserve from which they can draw.

The day Marcy swam, the Channel's gray-green water registered a chilly 54 degrees.

To prepare for the cold, MacDonald trained in 53-degree Columbia Lake in April and the 57-degree waters of Long Island Sound in early June.

As she trained in Dover Harbor the week before the swim, she scoffed at those who mentioned the cold. It's not cold, she would say. It's all in your head.

In fact, the coldest MacDonald felt was at 4:30 a.m. Thursday, as the Aegean Blue chugged toward the starting point on the beach below the White Cliffs. She yawned and huddled deeper into her winter coat. A black button on her hat read: ``I Can't Wait.''

``Let's go,'' she said.

Jo, the cheerleader

As the boat heaved in the waves 100 yards off the beach, Marcy's older sister, Joanne Davila, dug a rubber-gloved hand into a jar of lanolin and began to slap the shiny cream-colored grease on her sister's body. Marcy had already greased her body under the black bathing suit to prevent the elastic from chafing.

The lanolin helps keep the swimmer warm, since no wetsuits are allowed.

Jo, a nurse, paused to admire her handiwork. Marcy looked like a birthday cake.

``Can I frost a body or what?'' asked Jo, 39.

At 5:14 a.m., Marcy ran into the surf. ``Cheerio,'' she yelled. Her swim had officially begun.

Fifteen minutes into the swim, Jo -- Marcy's official froster, feeding helper, spiritual adviser and cheerleader -- got seasick.

This was not good.

Hartford Courant Articles
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2007!! Wow!

by Roni Luther
2/04/2007 / Christian Living

2007! God's will done, God's glory seen in our lives & on the earth! Year of completion, restoration and the open door ! I have had a wonderful expectancy about this year! It started the last few months of last year. God is up to some glorious things this year for the body of Christ!! Hallelujah! Glory to God! We must all Press into God and Press On in the power of the Holy Spirit! God is establishing His will, purpose and plan on the earth & in each one of His children. Stay focused on God. We must all Seek him with all our heart and keep sensitive to His voice and the leading of the Holy Spirit. These are very exciting times we live in. Love, Peace and Grace to you, Roni

Hi there. God called me to write and sing for Him in 1976. Alot of things have happened since then and all I can say is thank you Lord for You and all you have done in me, for me and through me. He's an awesome God and Father. He is always faithful, loving, merciful & full of grace.

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YOU ARE HERE: LAT HomeCollections

Council to Settle Wrangle Over Route : Beach Bikeway Debate in L.B. Rolls to Finish

September 01, 1985|ERIC BAILEY | Times Staff Writer

LONG BEACH — It seemed the most innocent of ideas: to build a paved bicycle path along a three-mile stretch of quiet city beach.

As proponents billed it, the path would plug a missing link in the network of bikeways that stretch from Santa Monica to Newport Beach while opening up Long Beach's pristine sands to scores of bicyclists and other health-conscious Californians.

Who could argue with that?

Plenty of folks. Since the bike path was first proposed in the late 1970s, the idea has been blocked by residents of neighborhoods atop the coastal bluffs overlooking the beach. Opponents have argued that the concrete path would create an environmental eyesore, increase littering and pose a hazard for people trying to reach the water.

Undaunted, supporters of the project have once again raised the issue. On Tuesday, the City Council is to decide, perhaps once and for all, whether the bike path will be built. The council will vote whether to ask for state money to help pay for the bike path and to order its staff to begin drawing up construction plans.

Sharp Words Exchanged

In the meantime, the matter has sparked sharp words between the two sides and renewed the debate over public access to the coast.

Backers of the bike path, which would stretch along the sand from Alamitos Avenue to 54th Place, say that opponents are jealously trying to prevent widespread use of the beach.

"I think they're being unfair and they're trying to keep the beach to themselves," said Matt Sloan, an ophthalmologist and avid bicyclist who is helping to lead the push for a bike path. "They seem to think this is Malibu and that the beach is their own private backyard."

The opponents counter that it is the bike path proponents who are truly being selfish. As they perceive it, a bike path would be used by a few, to the detriment of the hordes of residents who flock to the sand to swim and get a suntan.

"It seems like a crime to me to spend all this money for a relative ly few people at the expense of the majority," said Seymour Rabinowitz, a shoreline resident. "What they're proposing is to literally lay a freeway down the beach. They're talking about putting a strip of concrete right in an area where children, pregnant women and families are trying to get down to the water."

Such sentiments are nothing new.

In 1979, the bike path was approved as part of the city's local coastal plan. As planners saw it then, the bikeway would improve public access to the beach in areas where there is little or no room to park cars. In addition, it would tie together two regional bicycle trails, which run along the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers.

Oceanfront residents were unable to keep the path out of the coastal plan. That, however, did not stop them.

'We Backed Off'

To pay for the bike path, the city planned to tap state funds. But when the decision came before the council in 1980, seaside residents packed City Hall to protest. The council failed to muster the two-thirds vote needed to request the financing.

After that, the path appeared to be a dead issue. "We just backed off it," said Robert Paternoster, city planning director. "There seemed to not be the council support for it, so we just went on to other things."

In June, Sloan and other supporters asked that the council again consider the bikeway, prompting Tuesday's public hearing.

Bud Crow, an advanced planning officer with the city, said there is $283,000 in state money to build the bike path, which has an estimated price tag of more than $1 million. It will take a two-thirds vote of the council to request the state funds, he said.

Other Funds Sought

In addition, city planning officials are asking the council for permission to seek other state or county money to help defray the cost of building the bikeway, Crow said.

If approved by the council, Crow said, it would probably take at least a year to find further funds and draw up plans and specifications for the bike path.

For Sloan and other supporters of the path, that would be none too soon.

Currently, there is no safe place to ride along the coast in Long Beach, he said. Ocean Boulevard has become "like a freeway" and is unsafe for bike riders, he said. In the meantime, police have begun more vigorously enforcing restrictions on bicycling along the sidewalks atop the seaside bluffs.

"We're not saying it's wrong to keep bicycles off the sidewalk, but there's no alternative for people on bikes," said Donna Holtz, another supporter.

Citizens Group Backing

Supporters of the bikeway recently gained what may be a valuable ally--the 500-member Beach Area Concerned Citizens.

The citizens group, which played an instrumental role during a fight to block high-rise construction along the coast during the 1970s, voted last week to support the bike path.

Luanne Pryor, president of the group, said the organization's backing will hinge on assurances from the City Council that the bike path would be relatively narrow, well maintained and adequately patrolled by police.

Los Angeles Times Articles


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Brioni Now Adding Made-to-measure Jeans @ Maus & Hoffman Stores

February 2, 2010|Posted by Rod Hagwood on February 2, 2010 01:14 PM

You know Brioni as a top suit-maker.

But now the tailored menswear designer label based in Milan is now rocking it's casual jean look...and you can find them exclusively in Maus & Hoffman stores in Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach.

But not just any ol' pair of denims.

These are made-to-measure jeans that you can have tailored to you individual measurements, made in your choice of fabric.

You can even add whatever hardware you like and choose the color of the thread.

Brioni representative Catherine Uy will be in the stores today and tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Uy will help you select from over 10 denim fabrics in varying colors, weights and washes (as well as ten other cotton fabrics including corduroy, moleskin and twill.

You can also chose from 7 leather belt patches, add leather piping, detail with a range of hardware materials from nickel to enamel-coated buttons.

But after Uy has left, the made-to-measure program will continue to be offered.

Delivery is from 6 to 8 weeks. Prices range from $450 to $695.

For more information on Brioni's made-to-measure jeans or to make an appointment with Catherine Uy, call:

Maus & Hoffman on Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale (954) 463-1472

Maus & Hoffman on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach (561) 655-1141

Or visit

Sun Sentinel Articles
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Tips from the NFL on how to avoid counterfeits

Make sure your Super Bowl goods are the real deal

February 4, 2010|By Rachel Hatzipanagos, Sun Sentinel

Buy from a reputable retailer. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Holograms on price tags have a unique code written across the front.

Be familiar with the look and style of the NFL logo.

Pay attention to the quality of the stitching of the fabric on the merchandise.

The Vince Lombardi trophy on the front of the ticket is embossed, feeling slightly raised to the touch.

The hologram on the back of the ticket includes two-channel artwork, which switches from the image of a player to NFL logos.

A stamp on the back of the ticket is printed in a special ink that turns invisible when rubbed.

Sun Sentinel Articles
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Wedding Picture Show | Carmina & Neal from Artäge Pictures on Vimeo.

Check out some awesome images of Carmina's wedding in September, courtesy of Steve from Artäge Pictures. I love the details (especially Carmina's dress!!), which were all class just like the lovely bride herself!

Congratulations Carmina and thank you for letting me take part in your Big Day. For more information on the photographers behind Carmina's wedding, be sure to check out Artäge Pictures!

It's hard to believe that 40 weddings are nearly behind me for 2009...just 3 more to go this year before we get started again in January - what an amazingly busy time!! Thanks to everyone for making this my biggest year yet. Can't wait to see what 2010 brings :)

Posted by Rhia Amio, Make-up Artist | 11:09 PM | , , , | 0 comments »

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