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How to Use a Pumice Stone (and How Not To)

Back in 2005 when I started my first blog and began dating Stoker, he had a run-in with a pumice stone. And I wrote a mildly decent post about it (linked, if you’re interested in reading the original), because why not?

It still cracks me up, that pumice stone incident. And I confess that I still find the improper use of pumice stones hilarious, especially when it involves Stoker, as an adorable 22-year-old.

Anyway, so apparently people really have a lot of questions about how to use these little chunks of sandpaper, because that post gets loads of regular traffic.

So, I’m revisiting the topic! And I’m also going to do everyone a solid and share new info, like the PROPER WAY TO USE A PUMICE STONE as well as give you the best clips of the old post here, because it makes a great format and I really like great things. Love the great things. Like, a lot.

Let’s get on with it. Let’s really dig into my in-depth tutorial on using a pumice stone! Here goes:

The other night Stoker scrubbed the inside of his elbow too vigorously with the pumice stone. He was taking a bath, reading his book on recording engineering, and he got this itch on his inner elbow. You know, the soft, pale part of your arm just below the bulge of round joint. I don’t know what he was thinking using a pumice stone there. But he did. He’s new to pumice stones, I suppose and didn’t realize that you should only use them on tough, calloused skin like the bottom of your feet and elbows.

    An innocent-looking pumice stone. Should be fine on my skin, like all over my entire body, right? WRONG.

The itch flared up and the light blue, foot shaped pumice stone was resting on the edge of the bathtub, innocently minding its own business. Stoker’s eyes fell on its white flecked beauty and the idea struck him. He grabbed the light stone and scraped it lightly across the tender skin. It felt good. Deceivingly good. With a sigh, he brushed the skin with the pumice stone, effectively eliminating the itch.

2. WHEN CONFRONTED WITH A POWERFUL ITCH, EVEN WHEN A PUMICE STONE IS PRESENT, DO NOT USE THE PUMICE STONE TO SCRATCH SOFT TISSUE. At first, of course you might slide the pumice stone across the skin and find relief. OK, one soft stroke is fine. But as everyone knows, an itch doesn’t often go away with just one scratch. In order to avoid the inevitable scenario of too much pumice-stone-scratching, do not even engage in JUST ONE SCRATCH.

Later, the skin turned red. Raw. That’s when the whole story came spilling out: itch… pumice stone…I scrubbed it and it was great, at the time. But now it hurt. Like a burn. Poor kid. I truly felt bad for him, felt a little guilty for not warning him about the potency of a pumice stone. Though, when you think about it, I’m sure he knew. How could you not? I mean, it’s like sandpaper. No one rubs their skin with sandpaper, right?

3. PUMICE STONE USE SHOULD BE RESERVED FOR PORTIONS OF THE BODY WITH THICK, TOUGH CALLOUSES, LIKE THE HEEL, THE BALL-JOINT OF THE BIG TOE, OR, WELL YEAH, THAT’S ABOUT IT. And you know, just rub the pumice stone on the callous. It’s not rocket science (although, it occurs to me now, that maybe it is, and I’m just ignorant of the highly complicated process of pumice stone operation. Maybe I should do a Google search!).

So, to sum up, this is a bad idea, even for body hair removal [Note: this statement is not backed by any peer-reviewed studies]:

You want to do that to remove all your HIDEOUS BODY HAIR? Fine. Go for it. But we all know this body-hair removing use of pumice stones was started by pumice stone companies looking to have a new way to market their callous-removing tool.

To be safe, reserve the pumice stone for officially sanctioned (by the Pumice Stone Society of America) pumice stone activities. You don’t want to denude the top layer of your skin in some weird effort to rid yourself of body hair. Accept it! You’re a mammal. A beautiful animal that grew hair for a billion biological reasons, and mother nature doesn’t make mistakes (except for when she does, like accidentally).

If you really want to get rid of your arm hair (and stuff), consider a safer alternative, like burning it off with a curling iron, ah! Wait!

New use of curling irons!

Just a second . . . I’ve got Revlon on the phone now . . .

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Nintendo Brings Black Wii to North America on May 9th

All Wiis to include Wii Sports Resort too

We first brought you this news the other day, but now Nintendo has followed-up with the first official announcement that North American gamers will soon be able to enjoy their Wii consoles in a darker shade, with the machine heading to stores on May 9th.

As we saw in Europe last year, the basic Wii package will also be revamped to include Wii Sports Resort and MotionPlus, remaining at the recommended retail price of $199.99.

Here's the official press release from Nintendo:

A great value in video games is about to get even better. Starting May 9, Nintendo will add new elements to the baseline Wii™ system package offered at retailers throughout the Americas. In addition to the intuitive, motion-sensing Wii Remote™ controller, Nunchuk™ controller and popular Wii Sports™ game that currently comes standard with each system purchase, every new unit will now also come packaged with Wii Sports Resort™ and the control-enhancing Wii MotionPlus™ accessory. In addition, consumers will be able to choose between two color schemes for the Wii console and included controllers: original white, or a new black option. The U.S. suggested retail price of the new system package will remain at $199.99. Pricing outside the United States will be established by the local markets, but offer similar consumer value.

“Nintendo leads the way in delivering rich motion-control gaming experiences at an accessible price point,” said Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime. “By including even more of our top-quality hardware and software in the basic Wii system package, we’re extending that commitment to entertainment and value. Now more than ever, consumers can count on Nintendo to deliver inclusive fun and advanced motion controls at a mass-market price.”

Wii Sports Resort expands on the active-play fun of the original Wii Sports, with resort-themed activities such as wakeboarding, archery and swordplay. What’s more, Wii Sports Resort features the rich control enhancements of Wii MotionPlus, which allows users to dive in and enjoy precision motion-control excitement right out of the box.

Wii MotionPlus has set the standard in precision motion control by delivering an immersive, social experience unavailable on any other system. As of May 9, when both the Wii Sports Resort game and a Wii MotionPlus accessory will come standard with every new Wii console, people who purchase the system can experience this leading-edge video game technology from the moment they plug in and power up.

Previously unavailable throughout the Americas, the black version of the Wii console will offer all the groundbreaking features and functions of its white counterpart in a stylish new color scheme. Whether they aim to color-coordinate with other devices or simply love the way it looks, consumers throughout the Americas can add a black Wii console with matching black Wii Remote and Nunchuk controllers to their home entertainment lineup. Additional black controllers and accessories can be purchased separately.

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Posts Tagged ‘gardening’

Playing With My Food

Friday, July 10th, 2009

Forgive me my pride – I grew today’s lunch myself. I have never had ripe tomatoes this early!

Holly & EvanJim Gaudet and the Railroad BoysCaffe LenaThe Cock'N'Bull RestaurantCartoonist John CaldwellAdvertise on Nippertown!The LindaArtist Charles HaymesAlbany PoetsBerkshire On StageLeave Regular Radio BehindHudson SoundsArtist and Musician Michael Eck


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BioReference Laboratories acquires Edge Biosystems service business

By ,

Elmwood Park-based BioReference Laboratories Inc. announced today it is acquiring the services business of Edge BioSystems. The acquired business is primarily a genetic sequencing service based in Gaithersburg, Md.

According to the announcement, GeneDx, a clinical diagnostic sequencing laboratory wholly owned by BioReference, will acquire the Edge BioServ genetic sequencing services business.

Dean Gaalaas, CEO of EdgeBio, will assume the position of COO at GeneDx, and will bring with him many of the R&D personnel, including experienced bioinformatics developers, BioReference said in a statement.

Digital content editor Joe Ross is @joeross on Twitter.

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Law Offices of Dennis J. Szafran

Client oriented, professional service. I stand by my work and guarantee your satisfaction! My offices are located in Clearwater, Tampa, and Orlando. I will not only meet, but beat any competitors price, that is in writing, for Estate Planning by 5%

Address: 401 corbett st Suite 460D-Clearwater FL 33756
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Kopp Law

Address: 360 Central Ave Suite 430-Saint Petersburg FL 33701
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Law Offices of Robert M. Geller, P.A

<b>Bridging You to a Brighter Future! </b>

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Call now for a Free Consultation with an attorney, we are available 24/7.

Address: 2202 N. Westshore Blvd Ste. 200-Tampa FL 33607
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The Independence Law Firm

Here at the Independence Law Firm, our goal is to grant you financial and personal freedom in every aspect of your life. Whether you have financial problems with creditors or personal issues affecting you, let us help to ease your burden.

Address: 4511 N. Himes Ave Suite 200-Tampa FL 33614
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Lawyer ASAP, LLP

LawyerASAP is in every major market throughout the State of Florida to serve you. Our practice's full range of legal services and ability to work with clients in multiple geographic locations has enabled us to constantly expand over the past decade.

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Nordson EFD

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The medical device and life sciences industry must meet stringent regulations for quality and product consistency, making process control a critical issue. Nordson EFD meets the demands of this sector by offering exacting, safe precision dispensing solutions.

As components get smaller, products and devices get more complex, regulatory compliance gets tighter, and more companies move toward flexible production lines, manufacturers need:

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Engine Kits

Pertronix 45111 Flame Thrower II
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Pertronix 45111 Flame Thrower II

Part #: 45111
List Price: $112.47
Our Price: $44.99
You Save: $67.48

Availability: In Stock

45111 is a 0.6 ohm Black, Epoxy Filled coil. Flame-Thrower II 45,000 Volt Canister Coils feature a super low resistance 0.6 ohms which make them a must coil for Ignitor II ignition systems as well as many other high energy ignitions.

Flame-Thrower II 45,000 Volt Canister Coils low resistance and improved turns ratio help to produce up to 45,000 volts. This higher voltage enables you to run larger spark plug gaps for added power and better fuel economy.

Flame-Thrower II 45,000 Volt Canister Coils Features:

  • 45,000 volts
  • vailable chrome plated or black for that "stock look".
  • For use with inductive or CD ignition systems.
  • Super low 0.6 Ohm primary resistance.
  • Legal in all 50 states and Canada. (C.A.R.B. E.O. #D-57-10)
  • Warranty: 90 Days

These Flame-Thrower II 45,000 Volt Canister Coils are also compatible with most capacitive discharge boxes

Ballast Resistor Included No
Brand PerTronix
Coil Color Black
Coil Internal Construction Epoxy
Coil Shape Round
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Coil Wire Attachment Female/Socket
Coil Wire Included No
Diameter (in) 2.155 in.
Height (in) 6.000 in.
Height (in) 5.450 in.
Inductance 5.5 mH
Inductance 7.2 mH
Maximum Voltage 45,000 V
Mounting Bracket Included No
Notes For use with the Pertronix Ignitor II ignition. Can also be used with other Capacitive Discharge (CD) induction ignition systems.
Part Type Ignition Coils
Peak Current 7.2 amps
Primary Resistance 0.600 ohms
Product Line PerTronix Flame-Thrower II Ignition Coils
Quantity Sold individually.
Secondary Resistance 10K ohms
Secondary Resistance 7.3K ohms
Spark Duration 1.5 mS
Turns Ratio 108:1
Turns Ratio 110:1


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Northumberland Tales header 800 px

An Introduction to the Bastle houses of Northumberland

By Julia Grint

ISBN 978-0-9557510-2-8

Published by Ergo Press

Printed in 2008 this small book ( some 150 pages) splits the Bastle houses into 4 areas:-

Allendale Bastle houses. Housty,Low Bishopside, Nine Dargues,Rowantree Stob,West Side and Monk Farm.

Tarset Bastle houses. Black Middens,Shilla Hill and Barty's Pele

Redesdale .. Hole and Low Cleughs

and Otterburn Bastle houses. Shittleheugh, High Rochester,Raw,High Shaw,Iron House and Woodhouses.

The notes are drawings are good. Most images are B&W.


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Northview Stallion Station Sat, 25 Feb 2017 15:50:15 +0000 Joomla! - Open Source Content Management en-gb Uncle Mo son Uncle Lino to stand at Northview PA

F7098EA3 44EE 4F72 8478 EA24F92488DATrack record-setting, Grade 1-placed Uncle Lino, the first son of red-hot young sire Uncle Mo to stand in the Mid-Atlantic region, is set to enter stud at Northview PA in Peach Bottom, Pa. His stud fee is $4,000 live foal.

“Northview has been looking extremely hard for a son of Uncle Mo,” said Northview president and CEO Richard Golden. “Uncle Lino has checked all of our boxes. We are very excited to be able to offer Uncle Lino to our breeders for 2017.”

Uncle Lino retires with six wins or placings in eight starts for earnings of $316,160. He ran six times from January through May 2016, and set a track record in winning the California Chrome Stakes at Los Alamitos in April. Leading at every call, he completed the 1 1/16-mile distance in 1:40.82, breaking the previous mark set by Dortmund. He finished second earlier in the year to Mor Spirit in the Robert B. Lewis Stakes-G3 and was third in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby to Exaggerator and Mor Spirit.

]]> (Super User) Featured News Fri, 10 Feb 2017 16:05:25 +0000
Buffum yearlings have strong showing at Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Fall Yearling sale

85000 FTMid yealring. Lydia A. WIlliamsThe only two yearlings from Buffum’s first crop to go through the auction ring turned heads at the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Fall Yearling, held Tuesday, Oct. 4 at the sales pavilion in Timonium. One sold for $85,000, the other was a buyback at $100,000.

“This should open people’s eyes to the potential this horse has,” noted Northview general manager and director of sales David Wade. “He represents a great value for this region.”

]]> (Super User) Featured Buffum News Mon, 10 Oct 2016 14:06:11 +0000
Graded Stakes Winner GOLDEN LAD to Stand in 2016

Golden Lad Inside actionGolden Lad, a multiple graded stakes-winning son of leading sire Medaglia d’Oro from the female line of champion Eliza, has been retired to Northview Stallion Station in Chesapeake City, Md., for the 2016 season. The 5-year-old dark bay, currently being syndicated into 40 shares, will stand for $5,000 live foal, payable when the foal stands and nurses.

“We couldn’t be more excited to bring a horse of Golden Lad’s caliber to Maryland,” said Northview’s general manager David Wade. “He has the sire power, a wonderful family, an impressive race record, and his conformation is outstanding. Rarely does a stallion prospect like this get introduced into a regional market. We can’t wait for our breeders to see him.”

Bred and campaigned by E. Paul Robsham Stables and trained by Todd Pletcher, Golden Lad won eight of 15 starts, earned $645,320 and retires off back-to-back stakes wins in 2015. He concluded his career in the Prairie Meadows Cornhusker Handicap-G3, winning as the favorite over a field that included Tapiture, Page McKenney and Carve.

In his previous start, Golden Lad captured Penn National’s Mountainview Handicap by five lengths.
“This horse has a lot of heart and determination,” said Pletcher. “Given his level of talent and pedigree, I was certain he would end up at stud in Kentucky. This is a major score for Maryland and the Mid-Atlantic region.”
Racing exclusively in stakes company this year, he scored his first win of the year in Oaklawn Park’s Essex Handicap. All three of his victories resulted in triple digit Beyer Speed Figures.

Golden Lad won four in a row from his 3 to 4-year-old seasons, capping the streak with a dominating six and three-quarter-length victory in the Grade 3 Razorback Handicap at Oaklawn in his stakes debut. One race earlier he set a track record at Gulfstream Park for a mile and a sixteenth.

Out of the stakes-winning Seeking the Gold mare Broadway Gold, Golden Lad is a half-brother to $521,500-earner Broadway’s Alibi, winner of four of six starts including the Grade 2 Forward Gal and Grade 3 Comely Stakes and second in the Grade 1 Kentucky Oaks. Another half-sister, R Gypsy Gold, won multiple stakes and was Grade 1-placed in the Mother Goose Stakes. Both mares sold at the E. Paul Robsham Stables’ breeding stock dispersal in 2013 - Broadway’s Alibi for $2.15 million and R Gypsy Gold for $625,000.

]]> (Super User) Featured Golden Lad News Mon, 05 Oct 2015 20:10:31 +0000
FAIRBANKS son wins rich Commonwealth Derby-G2

OneGoAllGoFacing a Grade 1-winning favorite and making just his second start of the year, ONE GO ALL GO grabbed the lead at the start, set every fraction and then kept going, winning the $400,000 Commonwealth Derby-G2 at Laurel Park on Sept. 19, formerly run as the Virginia Derby, by a length. The 3-year-old son of FAIRBANKS trained by Pavel Matejka recorded his first stakes victory in the one and an eighth-mile turf feature and took home the $235,200 winner’s share of the purse for Preston Stables and Prestonwood Racing.

ONE GO ALL GO was stakes-placed last year at 2 when third in the Arlington-Washington Futurity-G3 in just his second start. The colt, bred in Virginia by Albert P. Coppola out of the Marquetry mare See Ashleigh Run, won his only other start of 2015, an allowance at Indiana Grand Race Course in August in his turf debut, but was disqualified and placed second for interference.

FAIRBANKS is the sire of four stakes horses in a four-week span from mid-August to mid-September. His stakes-winning 5-year-old daughter Vielsalm just missed in a thrilling finish in the All Brandy S. at Laurel on Aug. 22 and his 2-year-olds Gala’s Bank and Jeezum Jim hit the board in Delaware Park’s Small Wonder S. and First State Dash S., respectively, on Sept. 12.

Currently ranked sixth in the Mid-Atlantic on the leading sires list, with the fewest number of starters of the top six, FAIRBANKS has 11 stakes performers in his first four crops, five in 2015.

]]> (Super User) Featured Fairbanks News Mon, 21 Sep 2015 14:32:49 +0000
Another Gr. 1 Winner for JUMP START!

5 3 Seresta 14 The Southern Hemisphere has a new Gr. 1-winning juvenile, and she is a daughter of JUMP START! The sensational filly SERESTA made light work of the Estrellas Juvenile Fillies-G1 at San Isidro, one of the features on Argentina’s “Breeders’ Cup” card on June 27, scoring as the favorite by two and a half lengths in the one-mile test on the turf. Rated as the best horse competing in Argentina this past year on El Turf, it was SERESTA’s sixth win in seven starts. Earlier in the season she captured Gr. 2 Raul Aristegui, Gr. 3 Derli A. Gomez, Gr. 3 Fortunato Damiani and Gr. 3 Andres S. Torres.

Out of the Carson City mare Serata, SERESTA represents a Werk Nick Rating of A+++ *Triple Plus*. And the numbers continue to grow: 13 foals by JUMP START out of Carson City mares, 10 have started, eight are winners, and three are Gr. 1 stakes winners, including millionaire RAIL TRIP!

SERESTA is one of three stakes winners in the Southern Hemisphere for the 2014/2015 season for JUMP START, joining Gr.1-winning older runners IDOLO PORTENO and LIVINGSTONE.

JUMP START is the leading active Mid-Atlantic sire of 2015 by progeny earnings, has four stakes winners through June 29, and his half-dozen stakes-placed runners include graded runners PANTS ON FIRE, PRAYER FOR RELIEF and On the Loose Again. Just another sensational year for the region’s top sire!

]]> (Super User) Featured Jump Start News Tue, 30 Jun 2015 17:06:50 +0000
Another Juvenile GSW for Jump Start!
SerestaNorthern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere - the results are the same. JUMP START gets 2-year-old winners all around the world! His latest juvenile star is the Argentina-bred SERESTA, winner of La Plata’s Gr. 3 Derli A. Gomez at six furlongs on March 1. The dark bay filly scored her second win in three starts and is JUMP START’s third group winner in the Southern Hemisphere, joining Gr.1-winning older runners IDOLO PORTENO and LIVINGSTONE.
SERESTA, out of Serata (by Carson City), is also the latest stakes winner from the cross between JUMP START and Carson City mares. To date, JUMP START has sired 13 foals out of 10 different Carson City daughters. Nine have started, seven are winners, and three are stakes winners! And not just any stakes winners - one is $1.5 million-earner and Gr. 1 winner RAIL TRIP; the second is LIVINGSTONE, winner of the Estrellas Mile-G1 in 2014; and now SERESTA!
]]> (Super User) Featured Jump Start News Thu, 05 Mar 2015 12:11:31 +0000
Exciting weekend for EL PADRINO!

El-Padrino45.2013.LivingstonThe weekend of Jan. 17 kicked off with EL PADRINO, The most popular first-year stallion standing in the Mid-Atlantic region in 2014, showing off his impressive physique at the Northview PA stallion show on Saturday. The next day, the stunning chestnut officially became a sire when his daughter out of the Great Notion mare Great Storm was born at Sycamore Hall Farm in Chesapeake City. Bred by Sycamore Hall, she is the first foal out a half-sister to graded stakes winner Shrike and multiple stakes winner and course record-setter Second in Command.

Sycamore Hall and Northview Stallion Station’s farm manager David Wade described the new arrival as “a bay filly with a large diamond shaped star and white on three pasterns. . . [she] is large and stout, especially for a first foal from a mare, nice head, very good bone. We’re quite happy with her.”

Also on Sunday, EL PADRINO’s superb family made news once again as his full sister Sweet Corine drew off to win a Gulfstream Park maiden special weight at a mile and a sixteenth by four and a half lengths. The dazzling score marked her as a “TDN Rising Star,” a designation earned previously by her half-brother Verrazano and three-quarter sister La Madrina.

Out of the Giant’s Causeway mare Enchanted Rock, EL PADRINO is his dam’s first foal, became a graded stakes winner and won or placed in six of eight starts for earnings of $326,770. Second foal was millionaire and multiple Gr. 1 winner Verrazano. Third foal La Madrina won three of five starts and earned $136,934 last year at 3. Sweet Corine is the fourth foal. EL PADRINO’s second dam, Chic Shirine, and third dam, Too Chic, are Gr. 1-winning graded stakes producers. What a family!

]]> (Super User) Featured El Padrino News Tue, 20 Jan 2015 17:14:01 +0000
Northview's Open Houses in Maryland and Pennsylvania

The hottest roster in the Mid-Atlantic region will be on display two different weekends when Northview PA hosts an Open House on Saturday, Jan. 17 in Peach Bottom, and Northview Stallion Station in Chesapeake City, Md., opens its doors for an encore on Sunday, Jan. 25. Light fare and refreshments will be available at both events from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The region’s 2014 leading active sire, JUMP START, and active 2-year-old sire, BULLSBAY, stand at Northview PA. JUMP START enters 2015 off his best year ever, with the earners of nearly $6 million worldwide and 10 stakes winners, three graded, two G1 winners!

BULLSBAY was not only the leading freshman sire in the region, but with his first modest-sized crop of 23 foals, he ranked first among all Mid-Atlantic active sires! Half of his winners were stakes horses, including stakes-winning $161,620-earner MISS BULLISTIC.

And there is so much more at Northview PA. Standing his second season is the most popular first-year sire of 2014, EL PADRINO. . . SMARTY JONES, who needs no introduction, after another sensational season as the sire of 13 stakes horses, including G1 winner SMART D N A and multiple GSW CARY STREET. . . FAIRBANKS, ranked in the top 10 nationally among leading third-crop sires. . . and MEDALLIST, one of the region’s best sources of winners!

An added bonus will be the chance to see NORTHVIEW’s most recent addition, BANDBOX. The graded stakes-winning son of leading sire TAPIT will travel from the Maryland division just for the show.

]]> (Super User) Featured News Fri, 02 Jan 2015 19:50:01 +0000
BULLSBAY: The leading active Mid-Atlantic 2-year-old sire of 2014!

Bullsbay-FINAL2The first runners by BULLSBAY put on quite a show in 2014. Two stakes performers. . . debut maiden special weight winners at Saratoga and Laurel. . . combined earnings of $357,325 (an average of nearly $40,000 per runner). With his modest-sized first crop of 23 foals, BULLSBAY was the Mid-Atlantic region’s leading active 2-year-old sire of 2014!

BULLSBAY’s first crop wrapped up its initial season with stellar performances in December.

• His daughter and leading earner MISS BULLISTIC finished second in the $125,000 Maryland Juvenile Filly Championship on Dec. 26 after capturing the Selima S. and Donna Freyer S. earlier in the fall. A leading candidate for Maryland-bred 2-year-old filly championship honors, she earned $161,620.

• Bullheaded Boy, a winner first time out at Saratoga, was four-times stakes-placed from August through December in five stakes starts. In his most recent outing, Bullheaded Boy finished second in Aqueduct’s Damon Runyon S. on Dec. 14.

• Last Confession made his debut on Dec. 20 at Laurel Park a winning one after a gritty stretch battle to the wire in the 5 1/2-furlong maiden special weight.

The offspring of BULLSBAY have displayed the same determination and grit as their sire, a Gr. 1 winner of nearly $1 million. From a family of precocious runners, BULLSBAY is the latest son of emerging sire of sires TIZNOW to make his mark on the leading sires lists. And it’s only the beginning!

]]> (Super User) Featured Bullsbay News Fri, 02 Jan 2015 19:36:55 +0000
LION HEARTED: Leading 2-year-old sire again!

LionHearted2015From the moment his first runner stepped onto the track, LION HEARTED has been a sensational 2-year-old sire. He was the top freshman sire of 2004 and is a two-time Maryland 2-year-old sire leader, most recently in 2014!

LION HEARTED’s 21st stakes winner, SPOTTED HEART, sprung away from her rivals to take the $125,000 Maryland Juvenile Filly Championship S. at Laurel Park on Friday, Dec. 26. Bred by Charles and Cynthia McGinnes, the filly owned by Copper Penny Stables and trained by Mark Shuman is one of seven juvenile winners of 2014 for her sire, who leads the 2014 Maryland juvenile sires lists by earnings and number of winners.

One-third of LION HEARTED’s 42 lifetime stakes performers won or placed in stakes at 2, among them ROARING LION, who not only captured the Maryland Juvenile Championship at 2, but was a stakes star through age 7; ASPENGLOW, a stakes winner each year she competed from 2 to 4; Maryland Million Lassie winners LIL KIARA and HEAR US ROAR and Maryland Million Nursery winner CREVE COEUR; and his very first winner and stakes winner, CHOCOLATE BROWN, victress of Belmont’s Fashion S. for her second win in as many starts by June of her 2-year-old season. CHOCOLATE BROWN has since become a juvenile stakes-producing broodmare.
LION HEARTED - more than a decade of juvenile success!

]]> (Super User) Featured Lion Hearted News Thu, 01 Jan 2015 13:39:33 +0000
A championship season in Argentina for JUMP START

Idolo-Porteño-151With back-to-back Group 1 wins in Argentina this fall, IDOLO PORTENO has become the talk of South America, and leaps up as a major contender for Argentinean Horse of the Year. The 4-year-old distance-lover is the second Group 1 winner for JUMP START in Argentina in the past six months, joining top miler LIVINGSTONE among the country’s elite.

IDOLO PORTENO won the famed Gran Premio Carlos Pellegrini-G1 on Dec. 13 at Hipodromo San Isidro by an impressive four lengths over last year’s winner and 2013 Argentine Horse of the Year Soy Carambolo, getting the mile and a half over the turf in a snappy 2:28.11. In his previous start he captured his first Group 1 race, the Gran Premio Dardo Rocha, at Hippodrome de La Plata on Nov. 19 by an eyecatching five lengths on the main track, also at one and a half miles. The Thoroughbred Daily News reports that “Idolo Porteno could potentially be sent up North and be aimed at an international campaign with Hall of Fame trainer Ron McAnally in Southern California.”

JUMP START has five crops of racing age in the Southern Hemisphere. Adding in his stakes performers from those crops, he is the sire of 43 stakes winners, 12 of them graded/group winners, and 33 additional stakes-placed runners. In addition to his Southern Hemisphere Group 1 performers, his Grade 1 runners in 2014 include Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile-G1 third-place finisher PANTS ON FIRE, top 3-year-old sprint filly and Grade 1 Test S.-placed MISS BEHAVIOUR, Woodward S.-G1-placed millionaire PRAYER FOR RELIEF, and Ballerina S.-G1-placed WILLET.]]> (Super User) Featured Jump Start News Wed, 17 Dec 2014 16:12:06 +0000 SMARTY JONES has rising star with NASA!

NASAThe Pennsylvania Nursery showcased the extraordinary talents of SMARTY JONES in 2003, and 11 years later his son NASA adds his own exclamation point, leading throughout to take the most recent edition of the $100,000 stakes by two and a quarter lengths at Parx Racing on Dec. 6.

The Smarty Jones team of Pat Chapman’s Someday Farm and trainer John Servis are also responsible for NASA, the 25th career stakes winner for SMARTY JONES. The bay colt out of Shootforthestars (by Seattle Slew) has now won or placed in all four of his juvenile starts for earnings of $99,050. NASA is a full brother to four other winners, including Gr. 1-winning sprinter CENTRALINTELIGENCE.

SMARTY JONES is the sire of 13 stakes horses in 2014, with two others in action on Dec. 6. His stakes-winning son FRANCOIS missed adding the $110,000 Iron Horse S. on Claiming Crown Day at Gulfstream Park by a neck when finishing second, and increased his earnings to $283,428. Veteran CONCEALED IDENTITY, a stakes performer from ages 2 to 6, was third in the Jennings H. at Laurel Park, his 11th on-the-board finish in stakes company and third time in the Jennings, while earning $435,915.

With international earnings in excess of $3.3 million in 2014, SMARTY JONES is the second-leading active sire in the Mid-Atlantic region. And his runners get better with age: among his recent stakes-performers are Gr. 1-winning SMART D N A, two-time graded winner CARY STREET and four-time stakes winner ISN’T HE CLEVER, all from the crop of 2009, which has yielded nine stakes winners to date.

SMARTY JONES is rocketing as a stakes sire, with juveniles and beyond!

]]> (Super User) Featured Smarty Jones News Thu, 11 Dec 2014 20:34:11 +0000
Open House on Saturday, Nov. 15

Bandbox-confTime is fast approaching to make those all so important decisions for the upcoming breeding season. Come out to Northview Stallion Station on Saturday Nov. 15 to see the most accomplished stallions in the state, ask questions, meet the newest arrival, Tapit's son Bandbox, and consider the best options for your mare!

Northview Stallion Station will host an open house from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. It's a great opportunity to mingle, discuss and enjoy the anticipation of selecting the right stallion. The roster at Northview offers a wide-range of tremendous opportunities, with great pedigrees, solid production records and sensational talent. And being introduced for the new season is graded stakes winner Bandbox, a son of the hottest stallion in the world today.

Light fare and refreshments will be available. Come out, relax and enjoy a few hours in Chesapeake City. It's definitely worth the trip.

]]> (Super User) Featured News Tue, 04 Nov 2014 17:07:13 +0000
SMARTY JONES's CARY STREET takes show on the road!

CaryStreetDistance-loving CARY STREET took his show on the road to California, and the Kentucky-based son of SMARTY JONES kicked off the stakes action on Breeders' Cup weekend at Santa Anita with a stunning performance in the $200,000 Las Vegas Marathon S.-G2.

The 5-year-old gelding, owned by Brendan Walsh and Marc Detampel and trained by Walsh, was extremely patient in the one and three-quarter-mile Marathon under Miguel Mena, at one point nearly 20 lengths behind a solid pace. But soon the charge was on! Gobbling up ground he swung wide in the stretch and strolled home easily to win by more than nine lengths.

"This horse runs all day, so I wasn’t worried about it when they went out there so quick. . . I started looking for the leader at the five-eighths pole and he started to kick on for me," said Mena. "He finished great, he was rolling. . .”

]]> (Super User) Featured Smarty Jones News Sat, 01 Nov 2014 22:22:58 +0000
A splendorous Maryland Million!

Eighttofasttocatch-2014-Maryland-Million-ClassicNorthview sired runners once again dominated the Maryland Million Day card, as two-thirds of the runners hitting the board were conceived at Northview Stallion Station. And leading the way was Maryland Million's all-time leading sire Not For Love.

For the third time in the past five years, Not For Love had a record-tying four winners on the day, all in six-figure races. The $150,000 Classic was won for a record third time by Not For Love's son Eighttofasttocatch, who dominated the mile and an eighth feature to win by more than four lengths. The victory pushed Eighttofasttocatch's earnings to just shy of $1 million for owner Sylvia E. Heft and trainer Tim Keefe. The chestnut gelding bred by Dark Hollow Farm and Herringswell Stable is now being aimed for the Jennings Handicap, a race he won the past three years. Not For Love is the sire of the winners of a record six Classics: in addition to Eighttofasttocatch winning in 2011 and 2013, Not Abroad won in 2012, Cuba in 2008 and Presidentialaffair in 2004.

Other winning Not For Love offspring in 2014 were Nursery hero Golden Years, bred in West Virginia by O'Sullivan Farms and now undefeated in both his starts for owner Hillwood Stable; TomRus LLC's D C Dancer, bred in Maryland by Katharine M. Voss and Robert T. Manfuso and the fifth Not For Love son to capture the Sprint; and Classy Coco, bred in Pennsylvania by Jonathan Thorne and Mr. and Mrs. Rick Abbott and a previous Lassie winner who this year scored in the Distaff, which Not For Love fillies have now won five times.

]]> (Super User) Featured Not For Love News Wed, 22 Oct 2014 20:20:05 +0000 Freshman sire BULLSBAY gets first stakes winner!

MissBullisticFour starters, two stakes horses! The first crop of BULLSBAY is off to a powerful start!

His first stakes winner is MISS BULLISTIC, who captured Laurel Park's time-honored $100,000 Selima S on Saturday, Sept. 27 with a powerful performance. Kathleen Willier's 2-year-old filly, bred in Maryland by Graham Motion, has shown an affinity for the turf. Trainer Hamilton Smith sent her out first time on the grass on Sept. 6 to break her maiden by more than two lengths. Stepping up to face a dozen rivals in the five and a half-furlong Selima S., she powered home in the stretch to win by a length and a half. “The main thing that happened to her is that we moved to grass," said Smith. "She has more speed on grass. She’s bred for grass. Her mother (Miss Lombardi) won the Maryland Million on grass. I hope she’s the same. She’s done a fine job sprinting so far but I want to test her long. Her daddy was a long runner. I have no definite plans but something in the Maryland Million (Oct. 18 at Laurel). I suspect a bright future. She can’t do anything but go up from here.” Sold as a yearling at the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic fall sale for $30,000, MISS BULLISTIC has now earned $90,120 in four starts.

BULLSBAY is also the sire of Bullheaded Boy, a winner and twice stakes-placed in three starts! Gary Barber's colt trained by Todd Pletcher won his debut at Saratoga in July, finished third in the Funny Cide S. at the upstate New York track in August, and was second in the Bertram F. Bongard S. at Belmont Park on Sept. 21. The dark bay, a $115,000 Ocala 2-year-old sales horse bred in New York by Zeke Kobak and Danny Bramer, has earned $93,800.

The sire of 23 foals in his first crop, BULLSBAY remains solidly atop the leading freshman sires list in the Mid-Atlantic region. The Grade 1-winning son of Tiznow is from a family of precocious runners, and his first runners are proving just as precocious!

]]> (Super User) Featured Bullsbay News Sat, 27 Sep 2014 19:17:49 +0000
JUMP START runners making headlines!

MissBehTwo of JUMP START’s richest runners competed on “Race for the Ribbon” evening, Sept. 20, at Charles Town. And both dominated their competition with sensational efforts!

The beautiful 3-year-old filly MISS BEHAVIOUR led at every call in the richest race of the night, the $500,000 Gr. 3 Charles Town Oaks, and won laughing over nine rivals by nine and three-quarters lengths going seven furlongs. It was the second graded stakes win, and fourth stakes win overall, for the filly bred in Pennsylvania by her owners Cal MacWilliam and Neil Teitelbaum. And the lucrative win pushed her earnings to $548,000 for the year, and $790,000 for her career. Trained by Phil Schoenthal, MISS BEHAVIOUR has a record of five wins, four seconds and a third from 11 lifetime starts.

About an hour earlier, JUMP START’s millionaire son PANTS ON FIRE drew off to take the $100,000 Wild and Wonderful S. by more than two lengths, and earned a sensational 106 Beyer Speed Figure! Bred by owner George and Lori Hall’s K & G Stables, 6-year-old PANTS ON FIRE has won at least one stakes each of the past four years and now has earnings of $1,327,635. The Kelly Breen trainee was a multiple graded winner at 3, in the Gr. 2 Louisiana Derby and Gr. 3 Pegasus Stakes; and again at 5 - the Gr. 2 Monmouth Cup S. and Gr. 3 Ack Ack H. In four starts this year, all stakes, he has never been worse than third.

Earlier on Saturday, JUMP START’s ultra-consistent 5-year-old daughter WILLET hit the board for the 17th time in 19 career starts when she finished third in the $300,000 Gr. 2 Gallant Bloom H. at Belmont at six and a half furlongs, and his 3-year-old son BUMP START finished third in the rapidly-run $300,000 Gr. 3 Gallant Bob S. at Parx Racing going six furlongs.

MISS BEHAVIOUR is JUMP START’s richest runner this year and fourth richest overall. PANTS ON FIRE is one of three millionaires for his sire, behind PRAYER FOR RELIEF ($1,907,938) and RAIL TRIP ($1,516,520). JUMP START is the sire of 42 stakes winners, 11 (26 percent) graded winners. His eight stakes winners this year include Gr. 1 winning miler LIVINGSTONE, and among his stakes competitors are Gr. 1 performers PRAYER FOR RELIEF (3rd Woodward S.-G1) and WILLET (3rd Ballerina S.-G1).
For graded action, look no further than JUMP START!

]]> (Super User) Featured Jump Start News Wed, 24 Sep 2014 17:34:33 +0000
FAIRBANKS' stakes runners down to the wire!

VielsalmTwo stakes, two blanket finishes, two FAIRBANKS stakes performers on Saturday, Sept. 6.

VIELSALM, making her stakes debut, got upon in the final strides to win the $100,000 All Brandy S. for Maryland-bred fillies and mares by a neck at Laurel Park. The 4-year-old filly owned by Brooke Bowman and trained by Dylan Smith has been on the board in four of her six starts this year. Out of the Opening Verse mare Merriweather, VIELSALM upped her career earnings to $173,516. Her full brother Open the Bank is also a six-figure earner and was second in the $100,000 James W. Murphy S. earlier this year at Pimlico.

A few hours following VIELSALM's exciting score, the 2-year-old colt ONE GO ALL GO made his second career start in the Gr. 3 $125,000 Arlington-Washington Futurity at Arlington Park. The time-honored juvenile test saw a dogfight to the wire, with the top three finishers just heads apart, as FAIRBANKS' son just missed to finish third. Owned by Feel The Thunder Stable and trained by Michael Stidham, the colt was bred in Virginia by Albert P. Coppola.

FAIRBANKS is the sire of six stakes horses this year and is the region's leading third-crop sire with more than $1.4 million in progeny earnings. Seventy-five percent of his stakes horses showed their stakes potential at 2, including stakes-winning SYNAPSE.

]]> (Super User) Featured Fairbanks News Wed, 10 Sep 2014 12:35:27 +0000
Smarty Jones Son Graded Win at Parx

CaryStreetThe Labor Day holiday was a superior day of racing at Parx, and included the co-featured Smarty Jones S. And what could make it better but a win by a SMARTY JONES son in his own graded stakes!

Making his stakes debut in the marathon mile and a half Gr. 3 Greenwood Cup S., CARY STREET got a ground-saving trip in the 10-horse field and dueled to the line to win by a length.

The 5-year-old, bred in Kentucky by Darley, is owned by JBL Thoroughbreds LLC and Walsh Racing LLC and trained by Brendan Walsh, who claimed the gelding for $10,000 in February 2013. This year alone, CARY STREET has won or placed in six of seven starts and has earned $180,165.

SMARTY JONES is the sire of 10 stakes horses in 2014, among them Gr. 1 Panama winner SMART D N A and veteran stakes performer ISN’T HE CLEVER, who has been on the board in all six of his starts this year while pushing his lifetime earnings to $644,085. Later in the day on Sept. 1, ISN’T HE CLEVER hit the board in the Ruidoso Downs Thoroughbred Championship H., his fourth stakes win or placing in his last five starts!

Fulfilling expectations - SMARTY JONES, Pennsylvania’s favorite son, siring winners on the Pennsylvania’s biggest racing days!

]]> (Super User) Featured Smarty Jones News Wed, 03 Sep 2014 13:07:11 +0000
Graded Stakes Winner by TAPIT to Northview Maryland for 2015

bandbox2BANDBOX, a four-length winner of the 2014 General George H.-G3 and a son of Leading sire TAPIT, will stand his first season at stud in 2015 at Northview Stallion Station, in Chesapeake City, Maryland, according to an announcement from the farm. His stud fee will be $2,500 live foal and he is now available for inspection at the farm.

“We’re extremely excited to stand BANDBOX here in Maryland and, as far as we know he is the first Graded Stakes Winner by TAPIT to stand outside of Kentucky,” said Richard Golden, President/CEO of Northview Stallions.

In the $250,000 General George H.-G3, BANDBOX got away well and was sitting in sixth down the backstretch, about four lengths off the lead. He began his rally around the final turn but found himself behind a wall of horses as they neared the top of the stretch. BANDBOX swung six-wide into the stretch and then accelerated away from the field to win impressively registering a 102 Beyer Speed Figure.

Raced by Ellen Charles’ Hillwood Stable and trained by Rodney Jenkins, BANDBOX won his first three starts at two, including a 9 1/2-length runaway win in the $100,000 Charles Town Juvenile S. He also rallied, after stumbling at the start, to take Belmont’s Sleepy Hollow S. as the heavy favorite, and in his debut he put in a rally to win on the turf. In the fourth and final start of his juvenile year, BANDBOX finished on the board in the Remsen S.-G2 behind To Honor and Serve and Mucho Macho Man after a troubled trip throughout.

]]> (Super User) Featured Bandbox News Thu, 28 Aug 2014 21:20:00 +0000
Summertime fun with JUMP START!

Graded stakes, winning streaks. . . 3-year-olds and older runners. . . distances short, long and in between. . . JUMP START runners have been having great fun during this summer season!

The JUMP STARTs were jumping the last week of July into the early days of August. His millionaire son PANTS ON FIRE returned to the races for the first time since a December trip to Japan, and hit the board in the Gr. 2 Monmouth Cup S. at Monmouth Park on July 27. It was the dark bay 6-year-old’s 11th time on the board in a stakes race, his eighth in graded company. George and Lori Hall’s handsome homebred now has earned $1,217,635.

It was a Grade 1 effort for JUMP START’s 3-year-old daughter MISS BEHAVIOUR, who finished second in Saratoga’s Gr. 1 Test S. on Aug. 2. Seven times in nine starts Cal MacWilliam and Neil Teitelbaum’s pretty bay filly has earned black-type. And she has also earned $442,000.

Sprinting is the name of the game for UNCLE TODD, a 5-year-old JUMP START son who earlier this year captured the four and a half-furlong Webb Snyder Charles Town Dash S. and on Aug. 2 finished third at the same distance in the West Virginia Legislature Chairman’s Cup S. at Mountaineer for owner Robert L. Cole Jr.

]]> (Super User) Featured Jump Start News Tue, 05 Aug 2014 13:08:32 +0000
BULLSBAY’s first winner is tough and game!

bullheadThere was no bullying this BULLSBAY! Making his first start at historic Saratoga

on Thursday, July 31, 2-year-old BULLHEADED BOY survived being banged around at the start, a quick pace, going wide around the far turn and a stretch battle to win by a half length going five furlongs! He is the first winner from the first crop for BULLSBAY.

Owned by Gary Barber and trained by Todd Pletcher, BULLHEADED BOY, who last sold for $115,000 at the Ocala Breeders Sales Company 2-year-olds in training sale, completed the distance in :58.67 over a sloppy (sealed) track while defeating seven others as the 3-to-5 favorite. The colt, bred in New York by Zeke Kobak and Danny Bramer, is eligible for many lucrative programs – in addition to racing in New York, he is from a Maryland-sired crop of BULLSBAY and can also target the Maryland Million.

BULLSBAY stood his first three seasons at Northview Stallion Station in Maryland before moving to Northview PA for the 2014 season. One of the best of Tiznow’s runners at stud, BULLSBAY also proved his love for Saratoga with a win in the Gr. 1 Whitney Handicap in 2009.

]]> (Super User) Featured Bullsbay News Fri, 01 Aug 2014 14:06:03 +0000
JUMP START's Argentine sensation!

livingstoneLIVINGSTONE, an Argentina-bred 3-year-old son of JUMP START, has become one of the best milers in South America after taking the Gr. 1 Gran Premio Estrellas Mile, the Argentine version of the Breeders’ Cup, while facing older runners on Saturday, June 28 at Hipodromo Argentino de Palermo. The striking blaze-faced dark bay defeated a field of 10 while stopping the clock in a dazzling 1:33.41 on the main track. Rated patiently off swift fractions of :21.86, :44.02 and 1:07.89, he swept past the pacesetter in midstretch, drew off quickly and held the lead safe to win by a length.

LIVINGSTONE's Group 1 win comes hot on the heels of his obliteration of the field in the Gr. 2 25 De Mayo De 1810 in May, which he won by 21 lengths! LIVINGSTONE now has five wins from 13 starts. JUMP START is the sire of 11 graded stakes winners, and is the leading active sire in the Mid-Atlantic region this year by number of stakes winners, with seven.

]]> (Super User) Featured Jump Start News Thu, 03 Jul 2014 14:10:56 +0000
ORIENTATE'S son DECLASSIFY wins Grade 1 battle!

DeclassifyORIENTATE'S 4-year-old son DECLASSIFY did not back down and did not give up as the lightly-raced Bob Baffert-trained colt battled down the stretch to win the $300,000 Gr. 1 Triple Bend Stakes at Santa Anita on Saturday, June 28. After leading early and being passed on the far turn, the Kaleem Shah Inc. colorbearer caught Cyclometer in the final strides to win by a nose in his stakes debut.

“I thought I was beat at the top of the stretch,” said rider Martin Garcia. “My horse was trying everything, every step of the way. He never gave up. Cyclometer moved into me a little bit in the stretch and my horse was intimidated. He responded again though, he’s such a good horse.”

Final time for the seven furlongs was a snappy 1:22.03.

]]> (Super User) Featured Orientate News Mon, 30 Jun 2014 00:38:28 +0000
JUMP START and GREAT NOTION fillies charge to stakes victories at Pimlico!

Miss BehaviourThe sun appeared and brightened the day, and so too did the girls by Northview sires, as MISS BEHAVIOUR and OUR EPIPHANY led the way in their respective stakes to score on Black-Eyed Susan Day!

Stepping up first was MISS BEHAVIOUR. The filly from the first Pennsylvania-sired crop by JUMP START was seeking her first win of the year after a spectacular juvenile campaign as graded stakes winner and Pennsylvania-bred champion.

Cal MacWilliam and Neil Teitelbaum’s homebred filly ran a solid third in the Stormy Blues S. in her sophomore debut in April. On one of the biggest stages of the year she ran fantastic in the $100,000 Miss Preakness S. Taking command from the start, the pretty bay blistered through fractions of :22.74 and :46.03 and still had plenty left to hold off eight other fillies. She cruised home by nearly two lengths in 1:10.85 for six furlongs over a drying out track rated good after torrential rains in the morning. Trained by Phil Schoenthal, MISS BEHAVIOUR now has a record of four wins from seven starts, plus a second and a third, for earnings of $312,000.

]]> (Super User) Featured Great Notion News Sat, 17 May 2014 13:06:17 +0000
Kentucky Derby-winning connections visit Not For Love

CoburnWhen in Maryland, how can you not visit the "Big Guy"?

Steve and Carolyn Coburn spent an early afternoon during Preakness week visiting Not For Love, the sire of their mare Love the Chase, dam of Kentucky Derby winner California Chrome. Making the trip the morning of May 15 to Chesapeake City, they got up close and personal to Maryland's leading sire. The Coburns and Perry Martin and his family, who make up DAP (Dumb-Ass Partners) Stable, purchased Maryland-bred Love the Chase as a 3-year-old from a partnership they had once been involved. The first foal Coburn and Martin bred is California Chrome.

]]> (Super User) Featured Not For Love News Fri, 16 May 2014 14:10:38 +0000


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Healthy Homes

On average, we spend 90% of our time indoors, mostly in the comfort of our own home. But when home is unhealthy and unsafe, it can lead to disease, injury, or even death. The Healthy Homes Initiative (HHI) is a holistic and comprehensive approach to address the connection between housing and health. The National Center for Healthy Housing tells us there are 7 tips for creating a healthy home. Click on any of the links to learn more about that topic.

The HHI defines a healthy home as a home that:

1.) Supports the physical and mental health of its residents,
2.) Promotes good health and quality of life for all individuals and families,
3.) Is structurally sound, free of environmental hazards, and complies with all applicable housing, building, and fire safety codes, and
4.) Is located in a healthy neighborhood

The Connecticut Department of Public Health launched HHI with the vision that “every Connecticut resident lives in a healthy and safe home environment”. The Norwalk Health Department is helping with this vision by providing services and programs that help to prevent and control the spread of disease, promote a healthy environment, and protect the quality of life within our changing community.

Additional information:

National Center for Healthy Housing
CT Department of Public Health - Healthy Homes


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Monday, April 19, 2010

Jacques Maritain's Christian Art

Born in Paris in 1882, Thomistic philosopher Jacques Maritain was a tremendous influence on authors such as Flannory O'Connor, and their ideas of beauty, truth and Christian art. Below are excerpts from Maritain's essay, "Christian Art" from his collection, Art and Scholasticism.

By the words "Christian art" I do not mean Church art, art specified by an object, an end, and determined rules, and which is but a particular -- and eminent -- point of application of art. I mean Christian art in the sense of art which bears within it the character of Christianity. In this sense Christian art is not a species of the genus art: one does not say "Christian art" as one says "pictorial" or "poetic" art, "Gothic" or "Byzantine" art. A young man does not say to himself "I am going in for Christian art," as he might say "I am going in for agriculture." There is no school where one learns Christian art. Christian art is defined by the one in whom it exists and by the spirit from which it issues: one says "Christian art" or the "art of a Christian," as one says the "art of the bee" or the "art of man." It is the art of redeemed humanity. It is planted in the Christian soul, by the side of the running waters, under the sky of the theological virtues, amidst the breezes of the seven gifts of the Spirit. It is natural that it should bear Christian fruit.

Everything belongs to it, the sacred as well as the profane. It is at home wherever the ingenuity and the joy of man extend. Symphony or ballet, film or novel, landscape or still-life, puppet-show libretto or opera, it can just as well appear in any of these as in the stained- glass windows and statues of churches.

But, it may be objected, is not this Christian art a myth? Can one even conceive of it? Is not art pagan by birth and tied to sin -- just as man is a sinner by birth? But grace heals wounded nature. Do not say that a Christian art is impossible. Say rather that it is difficult, doubly difficult -- fourfold difficult, because it is difficult to be an artist and very difficult to be a Christian, and because the total difficulty is not simply the sum but the product of these two difficulties multiplied by one another: for it is a question of harmonizing two absolutes. Say that the difficulty becomes tremendous when the entire age lives far from Christ, for the artist is greatly dependent upon the spirit of his time. But has courage ever been lacking on earth?

If you want to make a Christian work, then be Christian, and simply try to make a beautiful work, into which your heart will pass; do not try to "make Christian."

Do not make the absurd attempt to dissociate in yourself the artist and the Christian. They are one, if you are truly Christian, and if your art is not isolated from your soul by some system of aesthetics. But apply only the artist to the work; precisely because the artist and the Christian are one, the work will derive wholly from each of them.

Do not separate your art from your faith. But leave distinct what is distinct. Do not try to blend by force what life unites so well. If you were to make of your aesthetic an article of faith, you would spoil your faith. If you were to make of your devotion a rule of artistic activity, or if you were to turn desire to edify into a method of your art, you would spoil your art.

The entire soul of the artist reaches and rules his work, but it must reach it and rule it only through the artistic habitus. Art tolerates no division here. It will not allow any foreign element, juxtaposing itself to it, to mingle, in the production of the work, its regulation with art's own. Tame it, and it will do all that you want it to do. Use violence, and it will accomplish nothing good. Christian work would have the artist, as artist, free.

Art requires much calm, said Fra Angelico, and to paint the things of Christ one must live with Christ...

It would therefore be futile to try to find a technique, a style, a system of rules or a way of working which would be those of Christian art. The art which germinates and grows in Christian man can admit of an infinity of them. But these forms of art will all have a family likeness, and all of them will differ substantially from non-Christian forms of art; as the flora of the mountains differs from the flora of the plains. Consider the liturgy: it is the transcendent and supereminent type of the forms of Christian art; the Spirit of God in Person fashioned it, so as to be able to delight in it.

Christianity does not make art easy. It deprives it of many facile means, it bars its course at many places, but in order to raise its level. At the same time that Christianity creates these salutary difficulties, it superelevates art from within, reveals to it a hidden beauty which is more delicious than light, and gives it what the artist has need of most -- simplicity, the peace of awe and of love, the innocence which renders matter docile to men and fraternal.

  1. Wow, Noel, there is so much here for the Christian who is writing novels - whether for the CBA or ABA markets. I so wholeheartedly agree with "and to paint the things of Christ one must live with Christ..." To adequately and realistically - I emphasize both 'adequately' and "realistically" - portray the spiritual journey with Christ taken by our characters we simply must live with Christ ourselves.

  2. Noel, this is a fantastic post! "Everything belongs to [Christian art], the sacred as well as the profane. It is at home wherever the ingenuity and the joy of man extend. Symphony or ballet, film or novel, landscape or still-life, puppet-show libretto or opera, it can just as well appear in any of these as in the stained- glass windows and statues of churches." Wow! How different from our current definitions of "Christian art." Heading to Twitter and FB for linkage!

  3. Noel, not sure where you found this, but I loved it. Maritain really understood the goal, that what makes our art 'Christian' is the artist living out a relevant relationship with Christ, and letting his art flow naturally from that vs trying to fit into some artificial form or imposed set of standards. I love his honesty, too, the way he spoke of how hard this would be to pull off. I guess things like this are true in every generation.

  4. I know, isn't he great? The bit about all Christian art having a family likeness, and the last bit, and ... I can see how O'Connor was inspired.

  5. And I think I'm going to start using his photo for my author bio. I'd sell way more books, I think, if I looked like him. :)

  6. Great post! Thanks, Noel, for uncovering another gem.

Don't be shy. Share what's on your mind.


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EU Commission Proposes that Companies Store Gas in Ukraine

Business » ENERGY | May 16, 2014, Friday // 12:05| Views: 1306 | Comments: 1
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Bulgaria: EU Commission Proposes that Companies Store Gas in Ukraine The EC's latest proposal comes amid tensions between Ukraine and Russian energy company Gazprom over Kiev's refusal to pay gas debts. Photo by EPA/BGNES

The European Commission has made a new proposal that could prevent gas supplies from disruption in case of a prolonged Russian-Ukrainian standoff.

Its idea involves purchases of Russian gas by Europe's top consumers (which means leading companies) and storage of the resource into Ukraine's depots, according to Russian agency RIA Novosti.

Deliveries would thus be ensured for next winter, according to EU officials.

Gas flow via Ukraine is now put into question, as Kiev refuses to pay its mounting debts to Russia's energy concern Gazprom. The country therefore runs a risk of becoming unable to receive even transit supplies.

In April, it stopped pumping gas into storage facilities on its own.

In response to EC's proposal, some companies were reported by Novosti as demanding guarantees that the gas they would buy from Russia could not disappear from inside the depots. Brussels has not yet provided them, according to the source.

Ukraine and Russia's dispute over gas payment has come to a deadlock, as Kiev does not have at disposal the necessary funds to pay the debt.

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Thailand Under Martial Law

World | May 20, 2014, Tuesday // 09:38| Views: 6588 | Comments: 0
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Bulgaria: Thailand Under Martial Law Thai soldiers with their weapons guard from a military vehicle after declared martial law at the Ratchaprasong shopping intersections in Bangkok, Thailand, 20 May 2014. Photo by EPA/BGNES

Thailand's army has declared a state of martial law to "preserve law and order" amidst the ongoing political and social crisis in the country.

Earlier in May, Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra was relieved of her powers by the Constitutional Court, over abuse of powers. Since the decision was made, tension has been high as pro-government and opposition supporters have taken to the streets to hold demonstrations.

The country's caretaker Prime Minister Niwatthamrong Boonsongpaisan had not been consulted about the military's decision, the BBC reported.

Soldiers have now taken over television stations. In one announcement, they urged the public "not to panic and live their lives as normal". However, supporters of all political fractions will be banned from holding rallies.

Thailand's opposition is demanding that power is handed over to an interim government which would be tasked with rewriting the constitution. Meanwhile, the Shinawatra family enjoys the firm support of many rural areas.

In 2006, the military ousted Shinawatra's brother Thaksin, in a coup d'etat. This time around, the army says it is not conducting a coup, but simply protecting the public order.

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Bulgaria news (Sofia News Agency - is unique with being a real time news provider in English that informs its readers about the latest Bulgarian news. The editorial staff also publishes a daily online newspaper "Sofia Morning News." (Sofia News Agency - and Sofia Morning News publish the latest economic, political and cultural news that take place in Bulgaria. Foreign media analysis on Bulgaria and World News in Brief are also part of the web site and the online newspaper. News Bulgaria


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Blake Lipthratt/NPR

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The band makes the Tiny Desk accommodate its booming sound rather than the other way around.

Bleached performs "Electric Chair" for a Field Recording at the 12th Street Soular Food Garden in Austin, Texas, during SXSW 2012. Mito Habe-Evans/NPR hide caption

toggle caption Mito Habe-Evans/NPR

Field Recordings

Bleached: Picnic Table Punk

The Clavin sisters perform a stripped-down "Electric Chair" at a food-truck parking lot in Austin.

Hot Chip performing at Celebrate Brooklyn. Ryan Muir for NPR hide caption

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Read more breaking news

Pronova has blockbuster hopes for high-dose omega-3 supplements

1 commentBy Shane Starling , 14-Nov-2011
Last updated on 22-Nov-2011 at 19:02 GMT2011-11-22T19:02:43Z

Pronova has blockbuster hopes for high-dose omega-3 supplements

Pronova BioPharma, the high-dose omega-3 supplier of pharma blockbuster drug Omacor/Lovaza, is moving into the food supplements space with patent expiration looming.

The Norwegian company says it will invest €7.3m in the next 12 months to bring high-dose omega-3 supplements to European and international markets under its just formed Consumer Healthcare division.

The move comes as a method-of-use patent for Omacor/Lovaza expires in 2013, along with a composition patent that expires in 2017. At that point the market can open to generic versions.

Pronova licenses its high-dose omega-3 drug to pharma companies like GlaxoSmithKline, which markets the product as Lovaza in the US, where 65% of $1.25bn, 2010 global sales are accounted for, according to IMS Health.

Lovaza is approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat those with very high triglyceride levels. The drug goes by the name Omacor in Europe. Together the two are sold in 57 countries with other companies licensing the product like Pfizer and Abbott.

Not about the patent

Morten Jurs, Pronova CEO, told NutraIngredients no partners had yet been confirmed with the food supplements project, and therefore no launch market, which “will depend on their strategy”.

Jurs played down the significance of the patent expiration in the decision.

“Omacor has been off-patent in Europe since August 2009 and there is still no generic product on the market so it is not about that. It is part of a diversification strategy and is possible now because of the capacity expansion we engaged in last year so we can produce 2500 tonnes per year. There is 900 tonnes excess we can devote to supplements if we want to.”

Products would have EPA/DHA doses of 60-75% of a 1g pill, meaning 600-750mg per pill.

Pronova BioPharma referenced Global Organisation for EPA and DHA Omega-3s (GOED) data that predicts a food supplements market twice its current size in five years.

$500m investment

The company noted it had invested $500m in its Norwegian and Danish manufacturing facilities and was working on other lipid extractions for pharma and supplement applications.

“The company will spend the next 12 months building the Consumer Healthcare organisation, adjusting the manufacturing processes for consumer products, initiating small clinical trials and developing distribution channels,” it said in a statement.

“The board of Pronova BioPharma believes the potential for continued growth of differentiated, high quality omega-3 supplements supported by clinical data is significant as awareness of their health benefits continues to expand in both developed and emerging markets.”

In a statement Jurs added: ”The combination of aging populations, changing lifestyles and the increasing awareness of the importance of omega-3 in maintaining good health are expected to drive strong growth in both pharmaceutical grade and high quality consumer-focused omega-3 products in the coming years.”

“Having established a dominant position in the omega-3 pharmaceutical market, we are well positioned to leverage our existing infrastructure, knowledge, research, regulatory and partnership capabilities in order to drive a highly successful consumer business targeting a different segment of the population.”

After the US, the biggest markets for Omacor/Lovaza are the US, Italy, the UK, France, Greece, Spain, Germany, and South Korea.

1 comment (Comments are now closed)

There can be a difference between what you and a health insurance company consider healthy. Some insurers will say that you have a health condition if you smoke, are overweight, are taking prescriptions, or had a medical condition in the past.

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Posted by JessicaPeck
14 November 2011 | 13h582011-11-14T13:58:52Z

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Version: 1.0-7185
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text:
She started as a pin-up, that medium of titillation most popular in the 1940s and 1950s. Marilyn spent hundreds of hours in front of the still camera; such was her appeal that the accomplished photographer Richard Avedon reached for superlatives when he spoke of her: “She gave more to the still camera than any actress—any woman—I’ve ever photographed….She was able to make wonderful photographs with almost any photographer, which is interesting—and rare.”

Cecil Beaton Studio Archive/Sotheby’s
Marilyn Monroe in her favorite photograph of herself, taken by Cecil Beaton at the Ambassador Hotel, New York City, 1956

In MM—Personal there is an interesting example of her extreme photogenicity, a shot of her taken from the rear—we don’t see her face at all. She is wearing a black dress and has her hair up. All you see is a rear view of her shoulders and neck, and yet the photograph is as arresting as any in the book. MM—Personal is filled with wonderful photographs, perhaps none finer than the set Cecil Beaton made of her in 1956. (Beaton, himself involved with Greta Garbo, had plenty of practice with superstars.)

In film Marilyn’s talent shows most strongly in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire, Some Like It Hot, Bus Stop, and The Misfits. The director Billy Wilder quarreled with her on Some Like It Hot—but Wilder was no dummy and had this to say about her: “I think she was the best light comedienne we have in films today, and anyone will tell you that the toughest of acting styles is light comedy.”

She was almost always photographed smiling, her lips slightly parted, her skin aglow with an aura all its own, and yet there was usually a curl of sadness in her smile: sadness that just managed to fight through; sadness that was always considerable and sometimes intense.

Consider: she was born in a charity ward of Los Angeles County Hospital in 1926, as Norma Jeane Mortenson (sometimes Nortenson). Her mother, Gladys, worked in lowly film editing jobs; there she met Marilyn’s probable father, Charles Stanley Gifford. Of Gladys, Marilyn said:

I was a mistake. My mother didn’t want to have me. I guess she never wanted me. I probably got in her way. I know I must have disgraced her. A divorced woman has enough problems getting a man, I guess, but one with an illegitimate baby…. I wish, I still wish, she had wanted me.

Gladys’s friend Grace McKee became legal guardian of the little girl as well as Gladys herself after she was diagnosed with schizophrenia; in 1935 Grace put Norma Jeane in the Los Angeles Orphan’s Home (later Hollygrove).

A childhood like that is a feast for Freudians, and explains why, all her life, Marilyn longed for a family and sometimes lived with couples; instead of a family she got endometriosis and three miscarriages. Not knowing your real father and only briefly living with your mother would be a miserable fate for most of us, but for an actress might make it easier to convincingly move into a character, once you’re cast. At last you have somebody to be, somebody an audience will want.

Of the three books under review, easily the most accessible is MM—Personal. Marilyn Monroe, particularly during the decades of the 1940s and 1950s, was arguably the most famous woman on earth. In Korea during the Korean War—of which she was the dominant pin-up—she drew ten thousand soldiers at her appearances. She wrote and received many letters. Here’s a response to one she wrote Somerset Maugham:

Dear Miss Monroe,

Thank you for your charming telegram of good wishes on my birthday. It was extremely kind of you to think of me; I was touched and much pleased.
I am so glad to hear that you are going to play Sadie in the T.V. production of “Rain.” I am sure you will be splendid. I wish you the best of luck.

Yours very sincerely, W. Somerset Maugham

Imagine Marilyn Monroe, the star commonly thought to be an airhead, keeping up with Somerset Maugham’s birthday and taking the trouble to send him a telegram.

This greeting emerged from one of the two tall filing cabinets that, for many years, were thought to be the Rosetta Stone of Marilyn Monroe scholarship; they were in the possession of Inez Melson, Marilyn’s business manager in the mid-Fifties. They contained every scrap of paper Marilyn kept: letters, telegrams, programs, clippings, contracts (even one with Ben Hecht). Inez, who claimed to love Marilyn on sight, said she reminded her of “a fluffy toy.”

There are about ten thousand items in the cabinets, and a selection of them has now been meticulously edited by Lois Banner and photographed, file folders and all, by Mark Anderson. Taken together they provide an appealing overview of Marilyn’s life and the friendships that kept her going. Given her reputation, it is refreshing to see what good taste she had. As soon as she could afford to she wore excellent clothes and kept the receipts, allowing us in some cases to follow the designers.

She was not tight, either. She had a Rodin and a Degas, a 1930s-era fur coat, and was constantly receiving gifts from her admirers: emerald earrings from Frank Sinatra, pearls and jade from the Emperor of Japan, expensive-looking dice from John Huston, who took her gambling in Reno during the filming of The Misfits; Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh didn’t like her but nonetheless gave her a pricey watch.

Her books—she had about four hundred—she mostly kept plain: all her Hemingways were from the Modern Library. Most of the time she wrote a good hand; it is to be hoped her letters will be collected someday.

Like many a woman with a troubled childhood and uncertain parentage, as Lois Banner delicately puts it, Marilyn had trouble with men. Her first husband, James Dougherty, vanished into the Merchant Marine. Arthur Miller drifted off. Joe Dimaggio was rough with her. At her death Miller is reported to have said, “Poor Marilyn, with a little luck she might have made it.” Myself, I should have thought she did make it. Men, perhaps jealous of her fame, said unkind things. Tony Curtis famously said that kissing Marilyn was like kissing Hitler. He later explained that he had made the remark flippantly, in response to a workman’s query, which doesn’t make it any less of a rotten thing to say. (There is a photograph of him about to kiss her; he seems anything but reluctant.)

At the height of her fame an issue of Life with her picture on the cover sold 6,300,000 copies, and she was getting 20,000 fan letters a week.

That Marilyn Monroe had an abiding interest in writers, writing, and literature is made plain by more than her telegram to Maugham. There is also the famous photograph, taken on Long Island, of her reading James Joyce’s Ulysses—she appears to be at the very end, which is the Molly Bloom soliloquy: the world’s leading sex symbol reading English literature’s sexiest passage.

She did a lot of jotting herself, wrote down recipes, bits of poetry, and the like. Though she was a smart woman, her scribblings as recorded in Fragments are strangely flat and disappointing:

About My Poems

Norman—so hard to please
When all I want is to tease
So it might rhyme?
So what’s the crime—
after all this time
on earth

Norman is the poet and novelist Norman Rosten, her good friend. Her unrhymed verse is frankly just terrible and the many pages that reproduce the scrawls themselves are so much wasted paper. There are a few appealing pictures of her reading—Leaves of Grass, Death of a Salesman. There is an interesting double-page spread of her books: Sister Carrie, Winesburg, Ohio, The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, Tortilla Flat, On the Road, Invisible Man, The Fall.

Two photographs in Fragments are worth mentioning. One is of Marilyn dancing with Truman Capote—Truman looks as if he’s fleeing execution. The other is of Marilyn sitting with Edith Sitwell; it’s the only photograph I’ve ever seen in which Edith Sitwell looks attractive.

We hear enough, in these pages, about her relationship with Frank Sinatra. Personally I would have liked to hear more about her time, during the making of The Misfits, with the aging, weary Clark Gable. Though her tardiness vexed him, Gable loved her, and used his contractual power to keep Arthur Miller from slowing down the shooting with endless rewrites. In many still pictures from that shoot Gable’s fondness shows through, as does John Huston’s.

Two years before she died, Frank Sinatra gave Marilyn a Maltese terrier that she named Maf. Andrew O’Hagan knows a great deal about Marilyn Monroe, and he has chosen to write about her from the point of view of her canine companion Maf the dog—certainly a daring, even a cheeky thing to do. He has made Maf into a very well-read dog. On each of the 277 pages we are likely to find a number of literary references, perhaps to Bloomsbury, perhaps to the German exile community:

Thomas Mann understood how strange it was for a dog to watch everything and say nothing and to live a life of wan good nature, worn out with resting. The German pointer Bashan used to lie beside Mann, the blood-heat of his body pleasing the master and making him feel less lonely. “A pervasive feeling of sympathy and good cheer invariably comes over me when I’m in his company and looking at things from the dog’s angle,” Mann wrote in the middle of his life. As we drove onto the freeway I recalled the story of Theodor Adorno, who pondered the liquification of the individual from a house in the glades of paradise, a house in Malibu that looked into the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean. He may have been a creature of the war years, but his moment came with the 1960s, a decade that really began for us with the fading brightness of Marilyn.

Maf’s story begins at Charleston, the Bloomsbury Charleston of Vanessa Bell, not the one in South Carolina; then, very soon, we’re with Natalie Wood’s mother, a Russian exile; then we come to a passage by Cecil Beaton—to be quoted later—about Marilyn after he took her favorite picture of herself.

Skip now to the dog’s-eye view of Roddy McDowall:

The two women laughed. I gathered Mr McDowall was a great friend to women. They all adored him because he cared in an offhand way about the things that mattered to them. He once said that the French must truly love women because they invented the bidet, and that was the kind of thing women loved him for observing. “This one’s friendlier,” he said, not quite looking at me. “I have to tell you, Lassie was something of a diva.”

To say that the dog Maf has come up with a truly dizzying number of literary references would be to understate. O’Hagan has combed world literature for references to writers and their dogs, and picked up scores. Here, for example, is Vita Sackville-West, who “once spoke of her admiration for a certain French tapestry showing Ulysses being met on the doorstep by his dog, Argos.”

George Silk/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
Marilyn Monroe and Edith Sitwell, London, 1953

I wish I could claim to have a firm handle on Andrew O’Hagan’s novel, but I don’t. It’s probably safe to call it a tour de force, and less safe to call it a 277-page conceit, which the reader either buys into or doesn’t. Curiously, MM—Personal includes a charming series of letters Marilyn wrote to Arthur Miller’s children from the point of view of their basset hound:

Some terrible insects by the name of ticks have been getting on me lately and Janie it’s just terrible but I am managing the problem pretty well because when I get one on me I just run to Daddy or Marilyn and they get them off me in a hurry.

It’s not clear whether O’Hagan knew of these letters, but he has certainly immersed himself about as deeply as anyone in the world Marilyn inhabited, and its characters. Here’s Kenneth, the once famous 54th Street hairdresser:

They didn’t like dogs at Kenneth’s, the hairdressing salon on 54th Street. Not that it bothered me a great deal. Kenneth was one of those men with a mind like a pecan pie, sticky and dense…. Kenneth always imagined he was about four minutes away from ruling the world…his scissors ready to dive osprey-like into the hair of some turbulent matron….

The novel is full of passages like that. Who actually remembers Kenneth today? Who remembers Roddy McDowall? Plenty remember Frank Sinatra, an important character during the early part of O’Hagan’s book.

Read together the three books remind one of what a lot went out of American life with the passing of Marilyn Monroe; the important thing about her was her spirit, not whether she went to bed with a president and his brother.

Marilyn’s favorite photograph of herself was made by the British photographer Cecil Beaton in New York on February 22, 1956. She liked it so much that Josh Logan, who had just directed Bus Stop, had it framed for her, between two notes from Beaton. Marilyn had dozens of prints of it made. What struck Beaton was her ability to endlessly transform herself—without inhibition but with a real uncertainty and vulnerability:

She had rocketed from obscurity to become our post-war sex symbol, the pin-up girl of an age. And whatever press agentry or manufactured illusion may have lit the fuse, it is her own weird genius that has sustained her flight. Transfigured by the garish marvel of Technicolor cinemascope, she walks like an undulating basilisk, scorching everything in her path…. Perhaps she was born just the post-war day we had need of her. Certainly she had no knowledge of the past. Like Giraudoux’s Ondine, she is only fifteen years old, and she will never die.

The photograph—like many of her photographs—is stunning, but she doesn’t look fifteen and, six years later, she did die, after saying this to a reporter:

It might be kind of a relief to be finished. It’s sort of like you don’t know what kind of a yard dash you’re running, but then you’re at the finish line and you sort of sigh—you’ve made it! But you never have—you have to start all over again.

Richard Avedon said:

Her ideas were always dominated by what she felt her public image should be. She would pore over the contact sheets for hours. She was always looking for what she called an “honest” picture, a “real” or “right” picture.

Marilyn Monroe is buried in a modest little mortuary in Westwood, California. There are several more talent-picked burial places in this world—Westminster Abbey, Père Lachaise, and even Forest Lawn—but none move me as much as that homely little acre in Westwood, where people I might actually have worked with lie. There’s Natalie Wood, ridiculous in full makeup, running down a sand dune that wouldn’t have been there in The Searchers. There’s my own agent, Irving Paul “Swifty” Lazar, there’s Truman Capote, no doubt come to be near Marilyn, there’s Jack Lemmon, there’s Dean Martin, and, greatest of all, there’s Marilyn Monroe, who once said of herself:

Little Norma Jeane, the servant girl. The only way she could be sure people wanted to see her was to make them wait.

How sad is that?


text:
Alley Pond Park

Nesting**    Spring Migration***    Fall Migration***    Winter**
(no star = birding is not very productive, * = somewhat productive, ** = productive, *** = very productive)

Click here for a park map.

Alley Pond Park is the most ecologically diverse park owned by the City of New York/Parks and Recreation in Queens. The northern border touches on Long Island Sound’s Little Neck Bay. It contains an entire watershed; kettle ponds in a mature oak and beech forest on the terminal moraine, fresh water wetlands supported by ground water seeps and artesian springs on the outwash plain, and abundant salt-marsh along Alley Creek and its confluence with Little Neck Bay. The two best birding areas are in the Alley Wetlands and Upper Alley Woodlands.

© NYC Parks Avila

Alley Pond Park’s 635 acres are crisscrossed by the Grand Central Parkway, Cross Island Parkway, Long Island Expressway, and the Long Island Railroad, slicing the park into many segments, some of which comprise athletic fields, tennis courts, and playgrounds. The nationally recognized Alley Pond Environmental Center (APEC)is located just off Northern Boulevard in the Alley Wetlands section of the Park. With a dual mission of education and restoration, APEC offers birdwalks, nature hikes, and an annual Urban Bird Arts Contest. Here you can pick up the NYC Parks Department's publication Alley Pond Park Trail Map and Travel Guide whichprovides detailed information about the trail system for the Wetlands and the Woodlands.

Alley Pond Park Marsh

by S. Walter

The Alley Wetlands
The meadows and old fields, on either side of the salt marshes flanking Alley Creek, are nesting habitat for American woodcock, willow flycatcher, warbling vireo, yellow warbler, and Baltimore oriole. In some years, orchard orioles may also be found.

Yellow-Rumped Warbler

by D. Speiser

The Cattail Pond Trail from APEC leads to an observation deck overlooking Alley Creek and associated wetlands. Breeding birds often seen or heard here include barn and tree swallow, the latter using nesting boxes situated in the salt marshes. Marsh wrens can usually be heard singing and on occasion seen popping up in the reeds across the creek. Spotted sandpipers have nested here recently and may even land on the boardwalk. In mid summer, numbers of semipalmated and least sandpipers highlight the variety of shorebirds and wading birds that feed on the exposed mudflats. Killdeer, snowy egret, and black-crowned night-heron are frequent.

Semipalmated Sandpiper

by D. Speiser

Surprisingly, forster’s and common terns are not rare sights patrolling over the creek. In winter, a flock of green-winged teal is present in the creek. The brushy areas south of the environmental center building have become fairly reliable for small numbers of fox sparrow in recent winters. These can be looked for at the building if the feeder is active.

A larger, less accessible, salt marsh is situated at the confluence of Alley Creek and Little Neck Bay. Follow Joe Michael’s Memorial Mile from APEC to search for nesting saltmarsh sparrow and swamp sparrow. In 1998, fourteen acres of intertidal marsh were restored, in an area previously dominated by Phragmites. During construction, an osprey platform was erected and, in the spring, was immediately occupied. The ospreys fledged chicks in 1998 and in 1999. Until this time, ospreys had not been observed nesting on the north shore of Queens for 80 years or more.

Horned Grebe

by D. Speiser
© NYC Parks Avila

During the winter, Little Neck Bay is visited by wintering waterfowl, including horned grebe, greater scaup, bufflehead, common goldeneye, red-breasted merganser, and ruddy duck. In November, migrants have included red-throated loon, common loon, all three scoters, Bonaparte’s gull, and storm-blown northern gannet.

© NYC Parks Avila

by D. Speiser

The Upper Alley Woodlands
The Woodlands (at the southern end of the Park, west of Cross Island Parkway) comprises 100 acres of continuous forest canopy. Many trees here are 200 years old. This is the best spot in the park to look for spring and fall migrating songbirds. On fallout days in May, the woods may seem engulfed with sounds of songbirds. The songs of yellow-rumped warbler, ovenbird, northern parula, and blackpoll warbler dominate and a keen observer will be able to detect many other species. Sought after rarities may include, prothonotary, Kentucky, and hooded warblers in spring and Philadelphia vireo and Connecticut warbler in fall. Common breeding songbirds in the woodlands include eastern wood-pewee, gray catbird, American robin, wood thrush, red-eyed vireo, and American redstart. More diligent searching may lead to nesting pairs of great crested flycatcher, scarlet tanager, and rose-breasted grosbeak. Since 2000, great horned owls have nested most years in the vicinity of Decadon Pond. In winter and early spring, rusty blackbirds can sometimes be found around the kettle ponds. The west end of Oakland Lake, however, may be the most reliable location in the New York area for the blackbirds in winter.

Great Horned Owl

© NYC Parks Avila

Personal Safety

It is best to bird with someone else or a group at Alley Pond Park.

Poison ivy is found here and there throughout the Park. It is not a problem if you stay on the trails. Dog ticks may be encountered from mid-April through June in field areas. Again, stay on the trails to avoid them. Mosquitoes breed in the wetlands June through September. They are usually not a problem on cool, dry days with wind.

Getting There
For Alley Pond Environmental Center (Alley Wetlands) Google map click here
For Upper Alley Woodlands Google map click here

Gray Catbird

by D. Speiser

For Additional Information on Alley Pond Park

Alley Pond Environmental Center, 718-229-4000, www.alleypond.com
Queens County Bird Club, 718-229-4000, www.qcbirdclub.org
Urban Park Rangers, 718-846-2731, website - click here.

Resource Persons For Alley Pond Park Birding; 2012- Steve Walter, Queens naturalist. 2001- Aline Euler, past NYC Audubon Board of Directors, and Education Director of Alley Pond Environmental Center; Mike Feller, Natural Resources Group, City of New York/Parks and Recreation; and Larry Plotnick, Queens County Bird Club

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