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Friday, May 27, 2011

The Craddock candidacy post-mortem

It was a matter of time before CM Michael Craddock was going to bow out of the race for Mayor. His campaign really was like running a pump car up against a locomotive. And Craddock simply did not have any progressive chops to pull votes away from Karl Dean. He simply waged one too many culture wars over the years. I like the guy personally, but if he didn't lose my vote several years ago over the Kay Brooks/School Board fiasco or over English Only or on his latest vote against non-discrimination, there are any number of other votes documented on this blog that would have given me pause before pulling the Craddock lever.

Even the council member's attempt to play the populism card was not enough. I needed a nobler brand of populism.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

11,000 Nashvillians leverage August referendum that could check Mayor's power to demolish Fairgrounds

Supporters of a measure that would require any plan to demolish the Fairgrounds to get a supermajority of council member votes (27) got the minimum number of petition signatures needed to leverage an August referendum (6,700), according to the Metro Election Commission. And then some.

Not only did Save My Fairgrounds almost double the required number of signatures by turning in 11,000, but they got 22 times the number of petition signatures that Neighbors for Progress got on their petition in support of Karl Dean's demo plans. NFP, captained by former Tennessean reporter Colby Sledge, has a lawyer and appears to be posturing toward a court challenge. But their previous claims that Nashvillians do not care that the Mayor intends to tear down and sell off public property look embarrassingly false and stupid now. And their argument that the opposition, which turned out 3,000 people for a public hearing a few months ago, comes largely from outside of Davidson County was also an utter fabrication.

So, Neighbors for Progress (and behind the South Nashville Action People) are big losers in the MEC decision.

VIDEO: this drama just happened at the Metro Election Commission

CM Jamie Hollin captured this shouting match over the District 29 candidacy of Isaac Okuri-Baah, who wanted to be listed on the ballot as Isaac Baah. CM Hollin noted it would place Baah first on the ballot. Baah and his wife accused the Election Commission of racism. Security was called but the Okuri-Baahs left before being taken out against their will.

Re-elect Karl Dean solicits journalists to join his community steering committees

An eyebrow-raiser:

Don't know how many other reporters received invitations to jump on the Mayor's campaign bandwagon, and surely the reporters are not at fault for getting solicited by Karl Dean's campaign. However, this does not allay concerns that news about Mayor Karl Dean is managed and filtered rather than reported, and it does not help the journos maintain a level of detached neutrality, if not objectivity.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Righting a past wrong and helping pay for environmental impact of growth

Two independent council members are bringing back up an initiative this Metro budget cycle that Mayor Karl Dean and his council marionettes fought the last time stormwater rates were considered:

Photo credit: EPA Smart Growth
Two Metro council members are working to help small businsses.

Emily Evans and Jason Holleman are working to restructure or remove a cap from storm water run-off fees that some businesses claim is hurting their bottom line. The fee covers the environmental concerns for disturbing nature by building.

There is currently a $400 cap for building above a certain size, which small business owners say is unfair, because it gives bigger businesses a break.

CM Evans already made an elegant case at her blog for why fair stormwater fees are good for all. Nonetheless "progressive" CMs like Megan Barry, Ronnie Steine, and Erik Cole voted against fairness and with Karl Dean on this. We will see if an election year and less than satisfactory budget conditions cause the Dean Machine to back off giving big business water big breaks and saddling the rest of us with carrying a larger portion of the weight for water treatment.

This issue proved to be somewhat of an embarrassment for Megan Barry. Will she risk that again or incline toward a greater sense of justice?

Another Salemtown storm damage photo from yesterday

Backyard on 6th Avenue North

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

More photos of Salemtown storm damage from overnight

When today's early morning storm blew in, winds knocked down the tree in the photos below. The tree uprooted sidewalks and landed on an elderly Salemtowner's house, also swallowing up the next door neighbors' yard. The disaster happened on 7th Avenue North.

Some of today's Salemtown storm damage

Sorry for the crappy quality of these photos. I departed from my habit of using a digital SLR for photos and used an iPad 2 camera, which is not exactly robust.

Limbs & power lines down in Morgan Park along greenway

Wind-destroyed tree on house on 4th Av N

Monday, May 23, 2011

Tennessee Chamber of Commerce: Wash, Rinse, Repeat

So, Tennessee's Republican Governor Bill Haslam has now quite predictably signed the Republican bill that quite predictably kills Metro Nashville's ordinance that would require all of its contractors to include sexual orientation and gender identity in non-discrimination policies. With the ballyhooed "twitter campaign" supplicating the Governor for a veto and thanking corporations for their support, things were setting up as another Democratic Party fight with the GOP with businesses, company-by-company, walking away from responsibility for the mess.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Ballpark brass tacks: Chatter Class blogger notes who will absorb financial blows of construction

The news media is not bothering to examine Mayor Karl Dean's line item for a new Downtown ballpark in his capital budget, despite the facts that:

  1. the Nashville City Paper christened a "grassroots" movement behind a new ballpark
  2. the Nashville Civic Design Center, a regular partner with Metro in planning capital projects, hosted a forum for stadium design "proposals"
  3. Worth some schools, parks, & libraries?
  4. the Mayor's Office has issued a Request for Proposals for a new stadium site that includes studies that constitute the planning process

For now only bloggers are honing in on the $55 million proposal in the Mayor's 2011-12 capital budget, given that the process is clearly moving along this year unlike it has in others. Nashville Chatter Class blogger Richard Lawson lays out the possibilities for how the bills would get paid (note the risk to schools, parks, or libraries):

Sorry, but I just can't play nice with Tennessee Democrats

The state Democratic Party didn't ask me, but if I were to have designed the poster for their "values summit" this weekend in Jackson, TN, I would have tweaked it:

Yeah, I know. I used to help these boys and girls out. Just got to be too much of an echo chamber where values are "framed" in limited ways. For all of their accommodations to the red state, they aren't exactly snowballing toward success.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Thanks for helping me reach this milestone

Quite a bit of web traffic over the past few years for a small, nondescript hyper-local blog in Nashville, TN:

$55 MIL ballpark included in Mayor Karl Dean's 2011-12 capital budget

The relevant excerpt from the 135-page budget before Metro Council:

No community plans. No neighborhood hearings. No assurances that Nashville can afford it.

Metro Council has until June 7 to amend the capital budget. If you have concerns I encourage you to contact your council members before then.

UPDATE: Is the City Paper's Metro beat reporter, Joey Garrison, who has latched on to the possibility of a new ballpark voraciously and breathlessly in the past couple of years, downplaying the 2011-12 stadium line item via Twitter? Nothing to see here, move along, eh?

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Improbable odds and double standards

  • Save My Fairgrounds, the preservationist group, was required to turn in almost 16,000 petition signatures from registered Davidson County voters to leverage a referendum on a charter provision that would simply increase approval for any demolition by half-a-dozen CM votes.
  • News reports a week ago said that SMF had collected over 10,000 signatures in a matter of weeks. They maintained last Monday that they have more than the required number.
  • Last December South Nashville Action People set a goal of 2,000 signatures on a petition expressing support for the Mayor's plan to start Fairgrounds demolition in order to motivate the council to vote to demo.
  • According to SNAP leaders a few weeks later, they had only collected 500 signatures while bound by no limitations, rules, or deadlines. Nonetheless, they lost the council vote to demo by a whisker.
  • SNAP announced this week the "hiring" of a lawyer to challenge the authenticity of SMF petition signatures, alleging that SMF brought in "disruptive" agitators to influence local politics.
  • The SNAP petition's legitimacy and authenticity never faced the same doubt or scrutiny that SMF's is. Despite the fact that SNAP never produced large public demonstrations or held transparent meetings, they received the benefit of the doubt in most cases, and very nearly pulled out a council win.

There is no way the preservationists should still be in the fight. The bar has always been set higher for them than for the South Nashville organization. In fact, the bar has been in perpetual motion, lofted higher every time SMF scratches out a victory.

The greater petition requirement is only the latest inequity. Assuming they got 10,000 signatures, they collected 20x more sigs than SNAP did. If they have enough to leverage a referendum they will have collected 30x more sigs than SNAP did.

But I tend to believe some other obstacle will be hoisted should they eek out another accomplishment. The small group on the other side shows no willingness to compromise and they have friends in high places.

We share no common frame of reference with 1961 thanks to the student catalysts of 1961

I have questioned before misguided attempts of some who misuse the Civil Rights Movement in the news media by comparing it to benign current events. A couple of weeks ago columnist Gail Kerr seemed to feel that the best way to honor the 50th Anniversary of the Freedom Rides was to compare the Nashville students who risked their safety, their lives by testing desegregation on interstate buses with Nashville student movements today as they editorialize in campus newspapers and demonstrate on uncomfortably cold days.

Hardly comparable to sending protest emails or tweets
As far as I know, none of the Vanderbilt, TSU, or Belmont students protesting lately faced the risk of injury, death, imprisonment or expulsion from their universities. It is not denigrating the protest of today's students to argue that the protests of 1961 faced longer odds and more dire consequences than anything students face in 2011. It does not take away from the importance of contemporary causes to argue that the memory of 1961 needs to be safeguarded against trivialization through apples-and-oranges comparisons.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

More on the Mayor's lunch with neighborhood leaders: Bellevue library, Fairgrounds, David Torrence, Public Schools, legal options on nondiscrimination, Sulphur Dell

Earlier today West Meade neighborhood leader Mina Johnson published a report to the Nashville Neighborhoods elist on her exchange with the Mayor a couple of days ago during the lunch I mentioned in the previous post. She gave me permission to republish some of her Q&A based on her neighbors' feedback here:

Q: Could you reinstate the former brush pick up schedule of four times per year instead of current three times a year? If not, can special arrangement be made especially after the massive storm damage like we had recently.
A: Currently no budget to increase the regular schedule. However the emergency clean up should be placed and I think they have dispersed those services right after the recent storm.

Q: How about tornado warning siren in our neighborhood?
A: There is a county-wide evaluation going on right now regarding sirens to determine where new one should go.

Q: What is the plan for Bellevue Center and library? Can Metro buy [Dillard’s] building to put library instead of building a new one to save the cost?
A: We would like to put library in the Bellevue Mall and it is still our plan and negotiation is ongoing. However, we don’t know what the Mall management team wants to do with the site at this time. It is a private company and the Metro cannot just buy Dillard’s building or tell them how to redevelop the site. We need to wait what they decide to do and hopefully pick the best location for the library to benefit both.

Q: Why does Metro want to sell the Fairgrounds which makes money and bought flooded airport in east Nashville?
A: The council voted to create a master plan for the fairgrounds site. It will be determined when the master plan has developed. Although I am not convinced that the Fairgrounds making money. Cornelia Airport in east Nashville was bought because it was flooded and unsafe. It will be made to Greenway as a part of Open Space/Green initiative.

Q: What can be done to the elected official David Torrence? The report was unacceptable.
A: Yes. It is very bad. He sent me a letter of apology right after the TV interview. I told him to do the right thing as I don’t have authority to remove him. He can resign or needed to be recalled. Don’t quote me on this but I heard DA’s office is looking into the way. Also the judge he works for might be able to request some kind of disciplinary action or dismissive. Something has to be done for sure and will be done.

Q: Why did Metro Public School System fired 300 teachers in part to make way of new project “Teach for America”?
A: Teach for America is the one of the best project in the country right now. They are not fired because of Teach for America. Each year Metro School System looses 400 to 500 teachers. We may not be able to rehire them because there is no more stimulus money coming in.

Q: It won’t be fair to the experienced teachers to be replaced by freshly graduated teachers?
A: We need to choose what works best for the students.

Q: Can Metro School System do better to retain good experienced teachers rather than losing them to elsewhere?
A: Yes, we need to do better in our School System. We have made quite a bit of improvement, the graduation rate is up in all area and the test scores are getting better. We are on a right truck but still a long way to go.

Mina also discloses that the Mayor says he has no plans to pursue a legal remedy to the Tennessee General Assembly's crack down on Metro's nondiscrimination ordinance. That's news to me.

On the subject of the ballpark, Mina writes:

The location of a new ball park stadium was asked. The Mayor responded RFP was issued a recently to study and compare new stadium site. He said he is somewhat biased towards Sulphur Dell site because the location is supported by a lot of neighbors and it will be great to energize North side of down town.

"A lot of neighbors" may or may not support a Sulphur Dell ballpark without any qualifications or assurances or attention to community character. However, until bona fide community meetings are held this baseball fan is not buying the vacuous marketing or the campaign fodder. If I had been present I would have asked Karl Dean why a construction timeline for a new ballpark should jump ahead of the one for the Museum of African American Museum of Music, Art, and Culture, which is no less important for North Nashville's economic development and has been planned for a much longer time. Although, I fully grant that museums are not as sexy during election campaigns as ballparks are.

Neighborhood blogger: Mayor waiting on surveys and studies before moving on Fairgrounds, limiting feasibility study to Sulphur Dell stadium

The Lincoya Hills neighborhood blogger had lunch with Mayor Dean a couple of days ago and reports on several issues, of which two stand out to me:

Mayor Dean continues to believe that the Fairgrounds is and will be in the hole financially, and that the area can be put to better use, however, he is waiting on the current surveys and feasibility studies that are being undertaken before making any further decisions.

Mayor Dean is also very much pro sports, and for a new baseball stadium. He stated that they have just recently put out a RFP (Request for Proposal) to look at the feasibility of doing a stadium at Sulphur Dell

The Mayor said last year after having his Fairgrounds redevelopment plan rebuffed that he was in a holding pattern, even as his staff continued to make "Plan B" types of moves behind the scenes, so I'm not convinced that he has not already made up his mind.

And maybe I misunderstood, but didn't news reports say that the ballpark RFP was to study the feasibility of several possible sites, not just Sulphur Dell? Has the decision on a ballpark site already been made at the top as well with the RFP as formality?

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

MDHA and its embarrassing mention in a WaPo story on dereliction at HUD

Little wonder that I crack open a Washington Post story--on how the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in Washington has squandered millions on plodding projects and failed to hold accountable local developers and housing authorities--and I find Nashville's Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency (MDHA) mentioned in connection with the dereliction.

MDHA has its own documented dubiosity in recent years, including:

  • allegations in an independent financial analysis that MDHA was either hoarding money, ripping off HUD, or underpaying its own workforce
  • the housing authority allowed a public relations firm to overtax the convention center marketing budget in order to sell the concept to taxpayers
  • hiring a Florida construction company for the new convention center with a record of being "most unproductive" and for generating an "inefficient mess" and an "uncoordinated nightmare"
  • dragging a streetscape out longer than the projected timeline by generally not staying on top of contractors, but entertaining shortcuts, and ignoring community input on lingering problems
  • regular inattentiveness to care and upkeep of Section 8 housing

So, reading that Nashville is among the communities that have black-hole housing developments and authorities that swallow up federal dollars while returning little for the millions concerned prompted no surprise. Here is MDHA's section of the infamous WaPo story:

$1.7 million in funding (2001)

Since 2001, the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency of Nashville invested $1.7 million in this delayed project, meant to provide about 40 homes for low-income families. Federal money was spent to buy land and put in roads and utilities, but there is no money to start construction. "We essentially kind of moth-balled it for the moment," said Joe Cain, director of development. "We are holding it."

It's bad enough that the federal government does not oversee, regulate, or track the money it sends these local agencies, but MDHA is a bad seed and probably should not be the agency HUD relies on to manage its money in Nashville.

The real goal of the charter provision cannot be so gainsaid

South Nashville Life blogger Jen Trail misrepresents the effect of changing the Metro charter's provision on the Fairgrounds:

A group of neighbors of the Tennessee State Fairgrounds have engaged with a lawyer* to hold accountable the petition to add a referendum to the ballot that, if passed, would make it more difficult to do anything with the fairgrounds property other than maintain the status quo.

Here is what the proposed change says:

all activities being conducted on the premises of the Tennessee State Fairgrounds as of December 31, 2010, including, but not limited to, the Tennessee State Fair, Expo Center Events, Flea Markets, and Auto Racing, shall be continued on the same site. No demolition of the premises shall be allowed to occur without approval by ordinance receiving 27 votes by the Metropolitan Council or amendment to the Metropolitan Charter

This provision does not stop the community planning process on the Fairgrounds started earlier this year by the Metro Council. It only says that any demolition that occurs on the premises requires a super-majority rather than a simple majority of the Metro Council to approve. I also wonder if it prevents a unilateral move by the Mayor to demolish (has happened before elsewhere).

During the past couple of years the chips have been stacked against those of us who opposed moving the flea market to Hickory Hollow, to hacking up the Fairgrounds and selling it to private developers, and to the Mayor's absolute power to make these moves unchecked by the community. The latest underhanded moves included stacking a neighborhood advisory group with representatives from demo-driven South Nashville Action People/Neighbors For Progress and giving them recommendation powers to an already Dean-friendly State Fair Board with unchecked fiat over the lease.

In that kind of scenario, it does not matter how many Nashvillians oppose Fairgrounds demolition. The game is rigged against broad, popular sentiment about a public property. What can bring balance to the process is the Metro Council, which can send any one-sided concepts back into the community planning process.

SNAP has had countless opportunities to try and influence the direction of Fairgrounds redevelopment, which can and should happen (in fact, it should have happened years ago while the powers that be were allowing it the property to deteriorate). Their lack of success should not place extra obligations on any one else with an opposing interest in the Fairgrounds issue. Likewise, It is not too much to ask that--whatever concepts eventually emerge from the community planning process--that they receive the support of 27 rather than 21 council members to verify that everyone had the chance to influence the final product.

I honestly fail to see why Jen and her SNAP cohort would be opposed to supporting the most democratic solution to a planning challenge, unless they believe that support for the Mayor's initiative for an office park is not popular to begin with.

Full disclosure: For the first time ever I signed a petition for a public referendum when late last week I signed and returned the petition to put this charter change on ballot the next election. I believe it encourages a more inclusive community planning process rather than narrowing the process to suit the exclusive ideas of those supporting Mayor Dean.

Vicksburg, Mississippi Flood: to crest on Thursday above 1927 record

Credit/Source: Marty Kittrell

Monday, May 16, 2011

Local Democratic Party official doesn't want issue decided by voters, alleges preservation group brings in outside agitators

With a new lawyer in tow, Colby Sledge, who leads the organization that lined up behind Mayor Karl Dean through each of his multiple attempts to sell off the State Fairgrounds as private real estate, told the media that he would not like to see the Fairgrounds issue decided democratically:

"Obviously, I'd rather not see it on the ballot," said Colby Sledge of Neighbors for Progress.

Sledge speaks for the neighborhood association.

If I only got 500 people to sign my petition in favor of demolishing the Fairgrounds speedway after aiming for thousands, I would not want to see a county-wide ballot initiative on preserving the Fairgrounds either. NFP does not have the numbers to win this.

In an NFP press release, Sledge also indicts opponents of Dean's redevelopment scheme as much less than homegrown talent:

the group involved with this petition has a track record of organizing protestors from outside Nashville and bringing them into our communities to be disruptive

I'll be interested to see how Sledge and his new lawyer substantiate the rash accusation that people who were interested in preserving the Fairgrounds brought agitators in to undermine the order of things.

I've observed and been involved with neighborhood organizing in Nashville for almost 20 years now, but I'm not aware of any neighborhood initiative that Sledge has led until Mayor Dean's Fairgrounds plan came along a few months ago. So, I am skeptical about his claims of representing the community, especially when NFP only turned out about 35 people to speak at a public hearing on demolishing the racetrack last January, after making it seem like they had the support of thousands.

It also bears mentioning that Sledge's boss, Democratic State Senator Joe Haynes supports blocking voters from making a choice on the Fairgrounds. Did Sledge lead on any other neighborhood initiatives before he moved from being a Tennessean reporter to Senator Haynes' communication director?

CORRECTION: As pointed out by Braisted in the comments below, Sledge is Press Sec'y of the State Senate's Democratic Caucus, which means his boss is the Caucus Chair, not Democratic Senator and Caucus member Joe Haynes.

UPDATE: Note in the screen shot above that the Neighbors for Progress webpage states they have hired the lawyer to oversee the petition process. This is preying on my mind. How many neighborhood associations do you know that can afford to pay a lawyer on a petition issue by themselves?

Last chance to protect public land from being sold off to private companies

Even though the fix seems to be in on selling the State Fairgrounds property to wealthy real estate interests, CM Jamie Hollin continues to fight the good fight striking a populist note on today's Tennessean opinion page:

Many people I represent ... face daily difficulties putting food on the table, paying routine bills and finding affordable transportation and gainful employment ....

[T]hey are not “connected” to the comings and goings of government, except when they’re not receiving routine services, or as has been the case this year, when one of the few entertainment venues that they can afford to attend with their families is threatened with extinction.

The venue in question is the fairgrounds, which currently operates for their benefit at no expense to the taxpayer ....

[The farigrounds] has recently come into the cross hairs of an administration that sees it as property to be sold for unnamed office park development for an unknown benefit or cost ....

Meanwhile, think about the other Nashville entertainment venues that are not threatened with closure, despite the fact that they indeed come at great taxpayer expense: LP Field, Bridgestone Arena, the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, to name a few. Keep in mind that the majority of the taxpayers funding these venues cannot afford to participate in the activities held in these locations ....

I am struck not only by the sheer number of [flea market] attendees, but also by the diversity of the people in attendance: young, elderly, African-American, Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian, Middle Eastern, gay, straight and any other descriptive characteristic you can imagine ....

Nashvillians are fortunate to have a resource like the Tennessee State Fairgrounds, and we should not let the jobs and sales tax dollars that it generates annually be tossed aside for a land speculation deal.

Please consider signing the petition to put the fairgrounds referendum on the ballot, which if approved by voters would amend the Metro charter to stop the privatization of this public asset. The deadline for those petitions is today. Jump to the petition. Volunteers will also pick up your signed petition if you have not been able to get it in the mail; call 915-2118 to arrange a pick-up.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

You like me. You really like me.

I found this Re-elect Karl Dean Facebook campaign ad without really trying last week. I had added it as an update to a previous post on Sean Braisted's affinity for Hizzoner, but malfunctions at Blogger late last week deleted it. As I mentioned, Braisted seems to be trying to out-Kerr Gail Kerr on campaign boosterism. However, the ad sums up the whacked rationales for terms of endearment, since Mayor Dean did not himself overcome the flood or the recession.

By the way, any comments Enclave readers made late last week were stripped by the Blogger malfunctions, not by me. If you left a comment that disappeared, you will have to re-comment.

UPDATE: I suppose the days are over when Democrats identified with liberal blueprints like the New Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society. There was a time I can barely remember when being Democrat meant standing for social justice and civil rights more than economic expansion, when it meant singing protest songs like "This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land" instead of patriotic hymns like "God Bless America."

Now being Democrat seems to mean posturing as conservative as one possibly can without actually joining the GOP. Case in point, Sean Braisted's response to a special Facebook contest of Tennessee Democrats that encourages its friends to complete the sentence "I am a Democrat because ..."

When I was young, this is the kind of stuff we heard from Reagan Democrats. Now worker and consumer protection, distributive justice, and common access to resources are afterthoughts to untrammeled growth, concentrated wealth, and trickle-down benefits. I guess the days when Democrats self-identified with critiques of the injustice, the classism at the heart of wealth generation and waging war are gone.

Thursday, May 12, 2011

CRIME ALERT: rash of thefts in Hope Gardens

According to the Hope Gardens elist this morning there have been a string of car break-ins and storage-shed thefts along the 900th block of Phillips Street recently. Police advise residents to lock vehicles and hide valuables, particularly GPS devices. MNPD will be stepping up crime reduction activities in the neighborhood over the weekend.

There is always the chance that stepped up police patrols in one North End neighborhood can lead to criminals relocating to other parts of the community. Hope Gardens' outbreak of crime should be cause for all of us to be vigilant for overflow illegal activity and to report any suspicious activity we see to MNPD.

We learned a long time ago in East Nashville not to keep valuables in our vehicles, but I am torn on the question of locking up vehicles. I would rather have someone rifle through my car and not find anything to steal than to have them damage my car windows in order to rifle through a locked car. I'm not advising that others should keep their cars unlocked, but only saying that I don't lock my cars because when I have they have been damaged during attempted break-ins.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Local partisan blogger walks back insinuations about two very different CMs

He's been attacking Karl Dean's critics for so long that yesterday's salvo against CM Jamie Hollin should have come as no surprise to anyone, but partisan blogger and aspiring candidate for big cheese of Tennessee Young Democrats, Sean Braisted clearly overreached in his latest digs.

Those of us who actually paid attention to the Metro Council meeting debate on Hollin's co-sponsored non-discrimination ordinance (and make no mistake that he was one of the primary architects of the bill motivated by the sad episode at Belmont) recall that Michael Craddock made no effort to argue against the bill. Now, I've been as critical of the Madison CM since 2005 as any other local blogger; but Craddock not rising to speak on a polarizing and controversial bill is about as regular as an Alberta Clipper through Ashland City in August. So, you long-time council watchers will note that Craddock's silence on nondiscrimination when given a golden opportunity is remarkable.

But the facts didn't stop Braisted:

Hollin [is] working to help Michael Craddock become Nashville's next mayor.  Now, its no secret that there isn't much love between Hollin and Dean, but while the mayor might've been a bit slow walking up to the plate on the Contractor NDO, Craddock was actively working to oppose this, and other measures intended to give gay men and women a certain level of protection in their jobs.

Everything about Craddock indicates a deeply homophobic man.  Why Hollin, who clearly has a disdain for this element of our political society, would actively work to help make the man mayor, is beyond me.

Glory be. Hollin is working to help Craddock beat Dean. In other news, politics makes strange bedfellows. Take Craddock's fellow conservative Charlie Tygard, who also voted against Hollin's ordinance: Tygard is widely acknowledged to be one of Karl Dean's staunchest supporters even going so far as to say so in a recent Tennessean story. But he opposes nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. And yet, none of Braisted's blog trolls are going after Tygard or Dean.

Moreover, Braisted played the good soldier and soft-pedaled Dean's actual slow walk to nondiscrimination. The Mayor's original stand was to oppose based on the misguided notion that "less regulation is good." Dean's come-to-Jesus moment on Hollin's NDO afterwards was patently arbitrary: Mike Curb told him he supported it. So, if Mike Curb told him he was ambivalent on it or opposed it, the Mayor would have fought Hollin, and thus, sided with council conservatives like Tygard and Craddock (who voted against Hollin on NDO).

So after blogging, Braisted vouchsafed an audience with Hollin whereupon learning that his information was wrong. Instead of writing the standard "Correction," Braisted wrote an update indicating to me that it was Hollin, not the blogger correcting misinformation. Note the mealymouthed wording:

*Updated: After a lengthy and informative conversation with Councilman Hollin, he rightfully corrected this statement about Craddock actively working to oppose the contractor NDO. In fairness, he didn't speak out on the matter as some of the other conservative council-members did. He has, however, actively opposed other pro-gay rights measures on the council.

As did Karl Dean's "deeply homophobic" man, Charlie Tygard. But Dean gets a pass from Braisted.

A couple of years ago I couldn't convince Braisted about the importance for neighborhoods of council meetings and of zoning and planning meetings. Nowadays he's in with both feet, never having met a developer's tear-down plan or a Mayor's growth scheme he didn't like. My guess is that his newfound interest correlates to his party aspirations and helping his Dem friends out where he can. I'm sure the Mayor's Office honchos appreciate his willingness to play whack-a-mole on their critics because they've made it clear that the Mayor won't be taking this kind of low road.

I just wonder if we are going to see Braisted ask Re-elect Dean to pay him as a campaign consultant in the same way CM Jerry Maynard did. He is certainly putting in the hours at his blog.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

At what point is it okay to ask, "Is this non-profit endorsing a mayoral candidate?"

Second Harvest Food Bank or Second Term for Dean?

(For the record: in 2007, I questioned the appropriateness of Habitat for Humanity allowing its "brand" to be used supportively in CM Charlie Tygard's campaign commercials, especially when the non-profit was the recipient of financial benefit due to CM Tygard's council initiatives.)

This Metro contractor discrimination brought to you by your Tennessee Chamber of Commerce

Odd that private lobby groups, like the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce, so invested in bringing in more jobs from corporations outside the state have been so instrumental in pushing legislation sailing through the State Senate that increases the chances that companies that have progressive hiring policies might avoid us. Local author of a council bill that would have required Metro contractors to provide workplace protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity reflects on current events:

It wouldn’t be as embarrassing if any of the arguments in support of the legislation held even a drop of water. They don’t. It’s been a campaign for the record books contrived on homophobia.

I am glad Nashville, for a limited time only, was able to show the world we are an inclusive city notwithstanding the acts of the majority of our state’s legislature. Options are being considered.

I look forward to the forthcoming data showing all the increased production of jobs and tax revenue as a result of its passage (at least the jobs saved as a result). The proponents of HB 600/SB 632 owe us that much.

The easy thing to do in this situation is to blame the Republicans. While they deserve a large part of the blame, they could not do what they do if it were not for a red-state culture that promotes or soft-pedals the regressive tendencies of growth and enterprise in Tennessee in the first place. But anyone who expects more from TNGOP is a socket-set short of a full toolbox.

Keep in mind that both the Nashville and Tennessee Chambers of Commerce, two of the more locked-in, mainstream lobbies, oppose the Metro initiative. That makes this prejudiced legislation legitimate. These bills are not just the anomalous products of fringe right-wingers on family and traditional values councils. They were belched from the very center of the wealthy business interests who fight every single regulation that comes down the chute, including ridiculously easy ones like requiring government contractors to obey some rules that nobody outside government has to follow.

On that score, Democrats share some of the blame, and not just those voting for the state bills. Social progressives, in particular, who refuse to see any inconsistency between their embrace of untrammeled, unregulated, unbalanced growth and the private sector's will-to-power that rejects obligations share the blame, too. Maybe if some Davidson County Democrats had fought for a few other healthy constraints on the "business community," the latter might not be so emboldened to do what they will. Naively given inches, they take miles.

GLBT community organizers have done nothing that I can see to work with other groups fighting discrimination and the ill-effects of growth on poor and minority communities. They have gone their own way and hitched their wagons to politicians who seemed to side with them even when they would not fight for others. As the Metro ordinance goes down at the hands of the General Assembly, they have no broad coalition to call upon for assistance. Don't pity them, because they've been good about taking care of themselves. Let them believe they can get along fine without the rest of us.

In the end, until we start approaching Chambers of Commerce as powerful special interests who lobby against workplace reform (that is to say, until we put them in check instead of deferring to their networking opportunities for individual achievement) they will continue to be brutish. Let's hope one day red-state Tennessee, excluding most Republicans, wakes up and reels in some of the latitude it gives these bullies.

Monday, May 09, 2011

Memphis Flood: The Mississippi River swallows Beale Street at Riverside Drive toward its historic crest

Credit/Source: Michelle at Notes from Memphis

It took a while but balanced minority opposition to the Mayor finally formed

Back in 2008 when it seemed like the only council member willing to take on Karl Dean publicly and assertively was Mike Jameson, I openly wondered whether this submissive Metro Council was even worse than the conservative-dominated previous council that battled former Mayor Bill Purcell at every turn. Then came the Dean plan (supersaturated with donor influence) for a convention center, which was not exactly popular, and more CMs stuck their necks out to oppose the Mayor. The Fairgrounds debacle, and the botched handling of it, finally made opposing Mayor Dean permissible and the council's minority opposition wing of liberals and conservatives solidified.

This morning's Tennessean ponders the unlikely coalition as it stands:

Hollin and Craddock are at the heart of a coalition of progressive and conservative council members who have regularly opposed Dean’s agenda on high-profile issues. It brings together pro-neighborhood, pro-environment council members like Emily Evans, Jason Holleman and Mike Jameson with social and fiscal conservatives like Eric Crafton, Jim Gotto and Robert Duvall, forming a vocal minority.

Evans said the pairing isn’t that surprising.

“The convention center (debate) was really about fiscal responsibility,” she said. “Being a fiscally responsible government tends to be a hallmark of both progressives and conservatives. I put myself in both categories. It’s just a common theme.”

The progressives Michael Cass lists in the story have generally been the ethical cream of the council bunch over time, even as unsubstantiated mud was slung at them in the print/online news media by the Courthouse innuendo hounds every time they dared to criticize a Dean plan. Cass also inventories the coalition--including the "progressives"--that appease and buckle to the Mayor's Office on every initiative that I can remember. Jerry Maynard and Ronnie Steine have had their ethical stumbles in the past and I'm not exactly inspired by the quality of their leadership even as the dogs of Dean give them a pass on any criticism.

That brings me to Dean spokesperson Janel Lacy's purported declination to "publicly criticize" the council's minority coalition. The Dean administration does not publicly criticize his critics because it does not have to. On just about every major policy initiative (the convention center being the most obvious), it has hired consultants and anonymous trolls to do the attacking for them. With a generally compliant news media, Karl Dean can take the high road and let the hatchet men do the dirty work. While the thugs and mercenaries have taken some below-the-belt shots at the council's independent progressives like Hollin, Jameson, Holleman, and Evans, the mud simply will not stick.

Friday, May 06, 2011

Ready to buy that Sulphur Dell ballpark idea? Nashville's neighbor to the north has a cautionary tale about new ballparks

Besides getting his open space plan back on track recently, another reason Mayor Karl Dean is paying part-timer and former Bredesenista Jim Fyke $60,000 is to recreate the appearance of progress on a proposed baseball field. Hence, this week's news from Southcomm's Field-of-Dreams reporter Joey Garrison that Mr. Fyke is leading a feasibility study that will explore possible sites in Riverfront Park, in SoBro, on the East Bank, and finally, at Sulphur Dell in the North End.

Word on the street is that the Mayor's Office is inclined toward Sulphur Dell and has been instrumental in fostering support in council and among some neighborhood leaders for it. Still unknown is whether Karl Dean's rumored support for the Sulphur Dell option is authentic or is a tactical position designed to leverage Nashville Sounds ownership either to make concessions or to quit pursuit of a new ballpark altogether. I'm hearing that the old thermal site at Riverfront is off the table because of preferences of wealthy donors for an amphitheater there.

This morning's front page of the Memphis Commercial Appeal on Mississippi River flooding

A Sharper image

Click, but it just says the author is hiding the sigs of Sharp's haters
For daring to lead an organization that opposed the Mayor's pet convention center project, Kevin Sharp was targeted by Dean (and Bredesen?) backers who started a petition against his nomination for a federal judgeship. The petition's list of 102 signers are currently hidden. But according to a media blog, signers of the petition included convention center lobbyist and Democratic Party consultant Dave Cooley, Cooley's associate Mark Brown (also well-known in party circles), Convention and Visitors Bureau president Butch Spyridon, and Marc Barclay, husband of convention center lobbyist Krissa Barclay.

Thursday, May 05, 2011

Top of the Charters

Reports the Tennessean:

Jeremy Kane, CEO and founder of LEAD Academy, one of Davidson County's earliest charter school organizations, said the school district came to him asking for a middle school in South Nashville. The original LEAD Academy is in North Nashville.

"We talked to the community and the district and felt we had learned a lot from our first school and had a lot of success there," Kane said. "The need was there for one in South Nashville."

Who from the school district asked him? Jesse Register? Alan Coverstone (who shares MBA connections with Kane)?

Public parks vs. pro sports stadiums

Charles Maldonado recently wrote one of the more important stories on the Metro budget that you will read from a local news source, but I want to draw one particular lop-sided comparison from his excellent article:

The land under LP Field was valued at $6.3 million at the beginning of the last decade, according to Metro Property Assessor records. It’s gone up to $6.9 million, an increase, but only 10 percent ....

On the other hand, the value of Riverfront Park went from $6.3 million to $23 million between 2005 and 2009. The largest individual infrastructure expense there was the $2.3 million station for the Regional Transit Authority’s commuter rail line the Music City Star, installed there in 2009.

Maintaining and improving public infrastructure that serves the broadest swath of Nashvillians is at least as important as serving the constrained and special interests of pro sports consumers. In this case, sustaining Riverfront Park has been a greater return for Nashville on property value than keeping up LP Field has.

Wednesday, May 04, 2011

Another compare and contrast of Hizzoner: Dean feels our pain now

A year ago this weekend Karl Dean appeared on NPR and he seemed to have relatively detached tones about the degree of the disaster of 2010 Nashville flood in an attempt to encourage tourists to come to Nashville:

Up Harbor Town and rising

Memphis Realtor Karen Soro took this photo of water rising in Harbor Town

Bennett is running as a red-state council member

So much for the idea that council members are nonpartisan candidates. Karen Bennett sent out invitations to a fundraiser sponsored by doctrinaire conservatives like Jim Gotto, Ron Ramsey, Jim Hodge, Robin Smith, and Lee Beaman.

What a difference a day makes

Compare and contrast our Mayor one day sounding all GOP-ish campaigning against the federal government, but then conceding the next day that the lion's share of the help of flood recovery did in fact come from the federal government.

Another great flood in 2011

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The Mississippi River bordering the western edge of our state is going to continue to rise to historic levels through Sunday due to heavy rains there and upstream in the past few weeks. Families and businesses have already been displaced and damaged. Having come through last year's flood, Nashvillians should have a keen appreciation of what many Memphians are facing the next few days. The good news I'm hearing is that the Army Corps of Engineers expects the Memphis levees to hold.

One of the previous historic flooding catastrophes Memphis and Nashville have in common is the Great Flood of 1927, which hit Nashville first, setting a record not broken even by our 1,000-year flood last year. Here is a silent short film made by the U.S. Army in 1927 on the effects on communities down river from Memphis:

Monday, May 02, 2011

When the local news media continues to rewrite catastrophic history to a national audience, hindsight of the Nashville flood is not 20/20

The most frustrating characteristic of the Nashville news media is that they rarely ask critical questions of their interview subjects regarding even the most commonly held fallacies. Last May as local feelings were festering in the wake of our 1,000 year flood that national media attention that was due us was too focused on the Gulf oil spill, a popular meme surfaced comparing Nashville's flood response in rather grandiose ways to the New Orleans response post-Katrina.

Having been focused on New Orleans doggedly during those dark days of Katrina and having witnessed problems in with emergency response in Nashville as they unfolded, I felt compelled to write a minority report rather than join self-congratulations and the revictimization of our wayward neighbors to the south:
Implicit in this preoccupied reaction is a response to the old nemesis, New Orleans. It’s a slam against another American community by placing ours on a higher moral plane ....

What is most striking in the Nashville narrative is that at its base it is a disingenuous re-write of history. It is a judgment call based on a fabricated all-things-were-equal scale ....

The rub, the difference here between these two cities is precisely evacuation. Mayor Ray Nagin declared a state of emergency and a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans two days before Katrina’s landfall and the failure of the levees. Consequently, 1 million people fled from the Big Easy in those 2 days. There was no evacuation in Nashville in advance of our 1,000 year storm event. Nobody knew what to do. Metro government was hamstrung because, unlike New Orleans and its recent history of hurricanes, we only had 2 or 3 other years in the last century to compare this event to. And hurricanes are not just big rain events. They are approaching monsters to coastal cities and the risk is certain.

We are here to take care of ourselves. And my suspicion of undue arrogance leads me to believe that had 1 million New Orleanians stuck around the Big Easy, they would probably be more competitive in showing a volunteer spirit. The people of New Orleans, outside of the lower classes who had no choice, would not be waiting on FEMA, which kept failing them so miserably, so spectacularly in spite of federal promises about rebuilding New Orleans to the contrary. Many would have been able to serve their community as enthusiastically as Nashvillians are serving theirs.

Source: National Geographic
Behind the Nashville hand-wringing is a tale of two cities, one moral and self-sufficient, the other unforgivable and incapable.

There were even more spot-on comments to my reflections on these fabrications last May:

This is really a tale of four cities. You are right on target with the implicit comparison of Nashville and New Orleans. But don’t ignore the explicit claim that people are nicer to each other here than in Los Angeles and New York City. This shows a fundamental ignorance of how people interact in those places. NYC is notable not only for people holding doors for each other; but you haven’t seen anything in casual neighborliness and helpfulness to strangers until you’ve seen how automatically passers-b help mothers with strollers up and down the steps to the subway there. But it, too, fits a narrative: the narrative that real human values can’t be found on the coasts.

Nonetheless, some in the local news media mark this anniversary of our disaster by continuing to implicitly transmit the grandiose meme that somehow, when the chips are down, Nashville is a cut above everyone else. The apples-to-oranges comparison with New Orleans continued over the weekend past to a national audience on public radio, and this time local reporter Blake Farmer maintained that Nashville serves as an inspirational "model for Alabama and other states" suffering under brutal weather.

There is a whole field of research out there called "non-profit and voluntary association studies" with social scientists without skin in the game who can be objective about why people feel motivated to volunteer in crisis situations. Volunteers have noble reasons; volunteers have less than noble reasons. The common denominator that they share is not their reasons, but their availability.

Likewise, there is no one reason why 20,000 Nashvillians volunteered to aid in flood relief last year. Some didn't want to wait for government. Some believed it was their moral duty. Some wanted to fight their own depression. Some wanted to feel useful making progress. Some wanted the networking opportunities. Some wanted to positively brand their business. Some were following the crowd. Some had ulterior motives of gaining an advantage over the less fortunate. Some wanted to maintain a favorable status with their employers who partnered with charities. Again, what these thousands shared was not their rationale for joining in the effort, but their availability. The NPR report reduced the reasons down to one and oversimplified local voluntarism to support the grandiosity of Nashville's flood narrative.

Full disclosure: I was among the 20,000 who volunteered. My family worked in two different aid distribution sites. When we heard that a South Nashville Egyptian community was suffering, we went out and bought supplies and nonperishable food, and helped their local leaders allot and distribute our donation door-to-door. I did not blog about this, because it seemed like self-promotion at a time when the attention needed to be focused on them.

But I blog on my own contributions a year later to say that I don't want to be a model for anyone else. As one of the volunteers "celebrated" by Metro government and the non-profit community today, my views ought to weigh in on this remembrance, too.

And in my opinion, it is presumptuous for NPR and self-aggrandizing for Nashville to trot us out nationally as a shining beacon for others who are suffering calamity right now. The last thing that Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, Rome, Ringgold and everywhere in between need now is a celebration of Nashville's recent past. They just had a single history-making, beastly supercell tear through each of their communities. Memphis is about to be engulfed by one of the grand rivers of the world, the Mississippi. And yet, today, we're focused on us. It amounts to vacuous, hollow symbolism that draws our gaze away from our beleaguered neighbors.

If anything, our experience of coming out the other side of the hells of destruction that other people are in or just entering ought to give us pause, the humility to figure out what we can do to support them, not promote ourselves. And using New Orleans again as our own personal foil is both ignoble and revolting. We should expect more from ourselves and demand better from local journalists.

Sunday, May 01, 2011

Remembering the Great Nashville Flood: unpublished photos from May 2-3, 2010

Today is the anniversary of the day it started raining to such a historical degree that the flooding around Middle Tennessee in the days that followed was referred to as a 1,000-year deluge. Last year I published a large number of pictures I took in my inundated north-by-northwest community during those days. Here are some that did not make on to the blog until today:

Country Music Marathon 2011 photos: North End spectators


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Sunday, February 6, 2011

St. Mary's Cathedral and St. Michael's Church at Hildesheim

Card no. 103
Another UNESCO postcard from postcrossing

The Church of St. Michael (German: Michaeliskirche) in Hildesheim, Germany, is an early-Romanesque church. Abbey Church of St. Michael's was constructed between 1001 and 1031 under the direction of Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim (993-1022) as the chapel of his Benedictine monastery. Bernward named the church after the archangel Michael, the Christian angel of protection who carries the deceased to heaven, because he planned to be buried in the Michaeliskirche[citation needed]. Bernward's plans were spoiled by his death in 1022, eleven years before the completion and consecration of the church in 1033. Bernward's successor, Godehard, transferred Bernward's remains to the crypt following its completion.
St. Michael's Church was destroyed in an air raid during World War II on 22 March 1945, but reconstruction was begun in 1950 and completed in 1957. In 1985, the church became a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site, along with the Cathedral of Hildesheim, its collection of medieval treasures and its 1000-year old rosebush. Read more
Information Obtained From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Meet The Newest Bite-Sized Batch Of Home Cooks On The Season Premiere Of "MasterChef Junior" Friday, November 6, On FOX

September 17, 2015 - From New York to Arizona to Tennessee and beyond, the kids are back in the kitchen and ready to add their signature flare to every dish! Season Four of the hit culinary competition series MASTERCHEF JUNIOR returns on Friday, Nov. 6 (8:00-9:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. Host, judge and award-winning chef Gordon Ramsay, along with his fellow judges, acclaimed chef Graham Elliot and renowned pastry chef Christina Tosi, welcome 24 of the best junior home cooks in the country between the ages of eight and thirteen to the MASTERCHEF JUNIOR kitchen, where they will compete for the MASTERCHEF JUNIOR trophy and the $100,000 grand prize.

After a nationwide search, 24 of the best junior home cooks in the country will compete in the MASTERCHEF JUNIOR kitchen. They will face exciting challenges, including catering a party for more than 50 boys and girls, a tag-team challenge, a cupcake frosting face-off and the fan-favorite pop-up restaurant, until one talented kid is named America’s next MASTERCHEF JUNIOR, taking home the MASTERCHEF JUNIOR trophy and $100,000 grand prize.

In the premiere episode, 24 junior contestants enter the kitchen for the first time. Upon meeting the judges, they are tasked with preparing a signature burger and one side, using only ingredients in their first mystery box challenge. The winner of the challenge will have a significant advantage and will select the main ingredient that the remaining contestants have to use in the season’s first elimination round. The junior home cooks with the best dishes will advance in the competition.

Watch/share a first look at this season, as well as these content pieces featuring the MASTERCHEF JUNIOR Top 24:

First Look – YouTube:

Get to know Chad, Derek, Ian, Jaeclyn, Sam and Vivian –

Get to know Addison, Alexander, Annabelle, JJ, Kyndall and Mia –

Get to know Cory, Jesse, Kade, Kaitlyn, Kamilly and Zac –

Get to know Adam, Amaya, Avery, Kya, Nate and Tae-Ho –

Meet the MASTERCHEF JUNIOR Top 24 and find out their signature dishes:

Age: 11

Hometown: Brooklyn, NY

Signature Dish: Pan-Seared Pepper Steak

Age: 9

Hometown: River Forest, IL

Signature Dish: Fresh Pesto Pasta with Garlic Bread

Age: 10

Hometown: Phoenix, AZ

Signature Dish: Crab Sushi Roll

Age: 10

Hometown: Bergenfield, NJ

Signature Dish: T-Bone Steak with Asparagus and her “Special Sauce”

Age: 10

Hometown: Cookeville, TN

Signature Dish: Filet Mignon Topped with Pomegranate and Cuban Salsa

Age: 9

Hometown: Baton Rouge, LA

Signature Dish: Grilled Rosemary Lamb Chop over a Sweet Potato Mash with Sautéed Asparagus

Age: 9

Hometown: Poughkeepsie, NY

Signature Dish: Shrimparooni

Age: 12

Hometown: Surprise, AZ

Signature Dish: Brown Trout with Sautéed Vegetables and Couscous

 Age: 11

Hometown: Yardley, PA

Signature Dish: Chicken Parmesan with Caprese Salad and Shirley Temple

Age: 8

Hometown: Beverly Shores, IN

Signature Dish: Thai Curry Mussels

Age: 9

Hometown: Philadelphia, PA

Signature Dish: Buffalo Chicken Tacos with Celery and Blue Cheese

Age: 11

Hometown: New York, NY

Signature Dish: Homemade Pasta with a Caprese Salad Appetizer

Age: 12

Hometown: Santa Fe, TX

Signature Dish: Pork Medallions with Grilled Zucchini

Age: 9

Hometown: Morgan City, LA

Signature Dish: Shrimp and Grits with Crumbled Bacon

Age: 11

Hometown: Yorktown Heights, NY

Signature Dish: Steak with Potatoes, Molasses and Kimchi

Age: 10

Hometown: Santa Ana, CA

Signature Dish: Grilled Chicken Sandwich with Goat Cheese and Cranberry Sauce

Age: 8

Hometown: San Marino, CA

Signature Dish: Chicken Kiev

Age: 9

Hometown: Philadelphia, PA

Signature Dish: Salmon with Roasted Potatoes

Age: 11

Hometown: Leander, TX

Signature Dish: Orange-Glazed Shrimp with a Spicy Sauce

Age: 10

Hometown: Philadelphia, PA

Signature Dish: Baked Tilapia with Rice and Asparagus

Age: 10

Hometown: Charleston, SC

Signature Dish: Chicken Wrapped in Bacon with Fettucine Alfredo

Age: 12

Hometown: Chula Vista, CA

Signature Dish: Hong Kong Sing-Song Chilean Sea Bass

Age: 11

Hometown: Avendale, AZ

Signature Dish: Celery and Beef on Top of Cabbage

Age: 12

Hometown: Orlando, FL

Signature Dish: Paprika Chicken Medallions with Crispy Noodles and Vanilla Orange Juice

MASTERCHEF is produced by Endemol Shine North America and One Potato Two Potato, and is based on a format created by Franc Roddam and Endemol Shine. Elisabeth Murdoch, Eden Gaha, Robin Ashbrook, Gordon Ramsay, Adeline Ramage Rooney, Patricia Llewellyn and Ben Adler serve as executive producers.  “Like” MASTERCHEF JUNIOR on Facebook at Follow the series on Twitter @MasterChefJfFOX and join the discussion with #MasterChefJunior. Follow the judges on Twitter: Gordon Ramsay - @gordonramsay; Graham Elliot - @grahamelliot; Christina Tosi - @christinatosi.

About One Potato Two Potato
Renowned for award-winning original programming, One Potato Two Potato produces high-quality TV shows on both sides of the Atlantic, including the smash-hit HOTEL HELL, the blockbuster MASTERCHEF and irresistible spin-off MASTERCHEF JUNIOR, all for FOX; as well as “Best New Restaurant” and competition series “Food Court Wars.” In the U.K., OPTP produces “Gordon Ramsay Behind Bars” and “Gordon Ramsay’s Great Escape,” for Channel 4; food biography and nostalgia series “My Kitchen,” for UKTV’s Good Food Channel; and “Matilda and the Ramsay Bunch,” starring Tilly Ramsay for U.K. children’s channel CBBC. OPTP has also produced two instructional cookery series featuring Gordon Ramsay, “Ultimate Home Cooking” and “Ultimate Cookery Course,” both of which have sold all over the globe.

About Endemol Shine North America
Endemol Shine North America delivers world-class content and compelling storytelling to multiple platforms in the U.S. and across the globe. Endemol Shine North America is part of Endemol Shine Group, the newly launched global content creator, producer and distributor with a diverse portfolio of companies in the U.S. that are behind some of the most prominent hit television formats and series in the world. Its Endemol Shine Latino division oversees all Spanish-language sales and development in both the U.S. and Mexico. And subsidiary production companies include Authentic Entertainment, Original Media, True Entertainment and 51 Minds Entertainment. In addition, Endemol Shine North America has a strategic partnership with Ryan Seacrest Productions.

Endemol Shine Group’s companies in North America are behind hit series, including “Below Deck” (Bravo), “Big Brother” (CBS), “The Biggest Loser” (NBC), BULLSEYE (FOX), “Fake Off (TruTV), “Hell on Wheels” (AMC), “Ink Master” (Spike), “It Takes a Church” (GSN), “Kingdom” (DirecTV), “Knife Fight” (Esquire),  MASTERCHEF (FOX), MASTERCHEF JUNIOR (FOX), “Restaurant Startup” (CNBC), “Swamp People” (History), “The Island” (NBC), “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” (Bravo), “Steve Harvey” (NBCU),”T.I. & Tiny: The Family Hustle” (VH1), “Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Challenge” (CMT), “Wipeout” (ABC) and many more.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: For information on MASTERCHEF JUNIOR, please visit]

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  • Phone: +1-747-529-8000
  • [email protected]
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Individual Performance for Season

Player Andrew Ball

Season :

Fixture Batting Bowling Fielding Wicket-Keeping
ViewDateHome - vs - AwayTypeInnRunsOversMdnsRunsWktsCtROsCtSt
08/06/2014Ashcombe Park CC - 2nd XI Vs Wood Lane CC - 2nd XICup11621210000


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William Himmelfarb
  William Himmelfarb
  June 19, 1927
  March 16, 2003

He was born Wolf Himmelfarb ... June 19, 1927 and died March 16, 2003.
William Himmelfarb was the eldest of three children born to Yiddish speaking, religious Jewish parents in Koprzewnica, a small town in southern Poland.  His father ran a grocery store where his mother would help out on Thursdays.  The store was located in the house of William's grandmother and William, his brother Izik and sister Chana would play in a large yard in the back.
From an interview to the holocaust museum:
"I started attending school a year late, at 8 so that my younger brother and I could share the same books.  In the third grade, Jewish and non-Jewish families were separated.  I finished only four grades before the Germans invaded in September 1939.  I was on the street when German troops entered our town.  They emptied all the homes and had everyone assemble in the central square.  After about five hours the let everyone go home."
"In February 1942 Koprzewnica's Jews were forced to move into a ghetto.  That year, just before my 15th birthday, the Germans sent me to work at a munitions factory in Skarzysko.  I, who had never seen electricity before, had to operate a fast moving machine.  My supervisor in Camp A, an elderly German who walked with a cane, shot any prisoner who looked tired.  He would address his dog as a person and a prisoner as a dog.  Pointing to a prisoner, he would say to the dog, "'Man, Take this dog.' "
William was subsequently deported to camps Czestochowas, Buchenwald and Schlieben before being liberated in Theresienstadt in May 1945.
August 14, 1945, he flew to Manchester, England where he learned to be a tailor.  He had an uncle in the US who, in 1950, invited him over.  He took jobs as a tailor until he joined the army on March 5, 1951, to March 5, 1953, where he served in Massachussetts and upstate New York. On December 16, 1951, he married Ruth Auerbacher.
After the war he took several different jobs.  He worked as a cloth cutter for "White Swan" a nurse uniform manufacturor and later on became a pocket book salesman.
From 1955 to 1962 he ran a candy store in the Bronx, NY, where he lived.  From 1962 to 1968 he worked as a foreman for American Portfolio.  He left there to be a foreman at Pre Pack for a year and returned to American Portfolio from 1970 to 1972. From 1972 to 1998 he worked at Globe Specialties as a foreman.
He had a strong religious faith and was very family oriented.  He served as the president and cantor of Kingsbridge Heights Jewish Center from 1988 to 2002.  When the building was sold in 1999 he moved the entire congregation to another location in the nearby Kitay house.
He had 2 children: Stuart born March 24, 1956, and Jo Ann born April 11, 1957.  Stuart has a son, Max, born November 27, 2001, and Jo Ann has a son Alex born October 27, 1990, and daughter Rachel born March 22, 1993.


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Questions and Answers About Billing and Payment

I don’t understand my hydro bill — what do the different numbers mean?

To see a graphic of an Alectra Utilities bill and an explanation of the charges for customers in Mississauga, see Understanding your bill. You can also email your questions or call Customer Service at 905-273-7425. You may also find the next section helpful.

What are the different rates and charges for each item and how are they calculated?

Time-of-Use Electricity Prices

With TOU, the price of electricity depends on when you use it. There are three different prices for electricity:

Peak Hours Chart

(Nov 1 – April 30)

7 p.m. – 7 a.m.
All day Weekends & Holidays
6.5¢ / kWh
11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
9.5¢ / kWh
7 a.m. – 11 a.m.
& 5 p.m. – 7 p.m.
13.2¢ / kWh

Electricity commodity charges

This is the cost of electricity supplied during the billing period and is calculated on the adjusted kilowatt hours (kWh) used. Alectra Utilities collects this charge and passes it directly to our electricity suppliers. Please be aware that if you choose to buy electricity from an electricity retailer instead of Alectra Utilities, the prices you pay will be different. They will be listed in the contract you signed.

Two-Tiered Electricity Prices as of Nov 1st, 2017

Electricity prices in Ontario are set by the Ontario Energy Board, through its Regulated Price Plan (RPP). Most customers will pay the TOU prices for their electricity. Certain customers may remain eligible for Two-Tiered RPP Pricing. These rates are as follows:

  • 7¢/kWh for the first 1000 kWh used per month and;
  • 0¢/kWh for all kWh used above 1000 kWh per month

RPP prices are based on a 12-month forecast. They help make pricing stable, predictable and fair both for users and for generators.

Delivery Charges

Delivery Charges effective January 1, 2018*

*Alectra Utilities’ 2017 electricity distribution rates are declared interim as of January 1, 2018, until Alectra Utilities’ proposed 2018 rates are approved by the Ontario Energy Board.

Delivery is the cost of bringing electricity from generating stations to your home or business and is calculated using the readings on your meter that record your usage. Delivery charges include:

Transmission Charge: $0.0139/kWh

The Transmission Charge covers the costs of transmitting power from electricity generation stations to Mississauga.

Distribution Charge: $0.0071/kWh (RPP) $0.0071 (non-RPP)

*The Distribution Charge helps pay for delivery of electricity to your home, as well as the cost of designing, building and maintaining the power-distribution system. You will pay a different charge if you are signed up with a retailer.

Customer Charge: $41.00 per regular billing period (2 months)

The Customer Charge is based on fixed costs such as meter costs and administration. It is not affected by how much energy you use. It includes meter reading and billing. The customer charge is prorated based on days of service over an average month.

In the spring, all residential accounts are being transitioned to monthly billing. Learn more about what this means for you (link to new All Changes web page)

When Mississauga customers are transitioned to Monthly Billing in spring 2018, fixed charges will be based on 30 days, instead of approximately 60 days when billed bi-monthly.

Wholesale Adjustment Factor 1.0360

When electricity is delivered over a power line, it is normal for a small amount of the electricity to be consumed or lost. This is because equipment such as wires and transformers consume power before it gets to your home or business. The adjustment factor helps make up for these losses.

* Delivery charges may also include temporary riders or other adjustments. To view Alectra Utilities’ current approved tariff sheet for Mississauga customers, please view –

Alectra Utilities Tariff of Rates and Charges Effective January 1, 2017 for Mississauga Customers

Regulatory Charges

Wholesale Market Service: $0.0039/kWh

This charge covers costs such as market regulation and the management of the electricity system. It is calculated on the adjusted kWh used.

Standard Supply Service (SSS) Rate: $0.25/month

The Standard Supply Service is an administration charge of $0.25 per month. The SSS is prorated based on days of service over an average month. Please note that this charge does not apply to customers who purchase their energy from a retailer.

What if my bill is higher than I think it should be?

Different seasons and different types of electrical equipment can cause electricity use to increase. For example:

  • During hot summers when your air conditioner is used more frequently, it can be as much as 50% of your total electricity bill.
  • If your air conditioner is older, it may be less efficient and use more energy.

Here are some other changes around your home that could affect your bill:

  • Did you buy any new or larger appliances or electronics like a big-screen TV?
  • Did you renovate your home?
  • Were you at home more than usual during the summer? If so, your air conditioner might have been running more than it normally would.
  • Did you have visitors stay with you? They might have used appliances like your washer and dryer.
  • Are you using equipment like a dehumidifier that runs all the time?
  • Do you have a pool? If so, does it have a heater?
  • Is your electrical equipment working properly? Fans or pumps that go on and off constantly use a lot of electricity.

How can I pay my bills online?

Mississauga customers can pay their bills online through the Alectra Utilities site. It’s easy to make a credit card payment, set up one-time payments or pre-authorized payments. You can also go online to your bank’s website, go to the Pay Bills page, and enter Enersource as a payee. You’ll need the first 10 digits of your account number to identify your account.

How can I pay bills automatically?

We also offer other easy and convenient options for automatic bill payment:

Regular Billing

You can have each bill amount withdrawn from your bank account when you receive the bill.

Equal Billing

You can have 12 equal payments — one per month — withdrawn from your bank account.

Mississauga residents can also mail a cheque in the provided return envelope or deliver it in person and deposit it into our drop box:

Alectra Utilities
2185 Derry Road West
Mississauga, Ontario
L5N 7A6

What happens if I’m late paying my hydro bill?

Your payment is due 16 days from the statement date on your bill. If the payment is late, a charge of 1.5% per month will be added to the balance. We allow four extra days after the due date before applying late-payment charges.

You should know that:

  • Payments made online or by phone can take up to five days to process
  • For payments sent by mail, the postmark on the envelope is considered the payment date.

For complete details on our policies related to late payment and connection/ reconnection services, please see Section of the Enersource Conditions of Service

Can I pay my e-bill with a credit card?

E-bill is not a credit card payment program. However, we offer a credit card option through One Time Payments and a convenience fee will apply. (add link to Payments page)

THE SERVICES BELOW ARE BEING DISCONTINUED IN MAY 2018. Please ensure you do not schedule any payments after May 15. Learn more about changes coming in the spring (link to All Changes web page)

How do I know if I have scheduled a payment?

After scheduling a payment, you will receive a confirmation email that your payment has been scheduled. You may also click on the “View Payments” link to view payments.

Can I schedule a payment after my due date?

Failure to pay by the due date will result in late fees.

Can I cancel a scheduled payment?

Yes, you are able to cancel a payment as long as it is in a “scheduled” status on the “view payments” screen.

This service is being discontinued at the end of May 2018. Please ensure you do not schedule any payments after May 15.

What happens to scheduled payments if I cancel my enrolment?

Scheduled payments will still be processed. If you do not want this to happen, cancel any scheduled payments prior to cancelling your enrolment.

This service is being discontinued at the end of May 2018. Please ensure you do not schedule any payments after May 15.


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text:
Hawthorn - Crataegus monogyna Crataegus monogyna
Species: Rosaceae
Type: Deciduous
Height: Up to 16' (5 m)
Fruit: Red berries (haws)

Common Hawthorn, sometimes called May, is a large, deciduous, thorny shrub. It is common in hedgerows and parks.

The leaves are small and glossy with deep lobes. It bears clusters of white flowers in May and red berries, or haws, in September and October.

The wood is hard but not usually used as timber except for walking sticks. It makes very good firewood.

Hawthorn - Crataegus monogyna
    Hawthorn Leaves

Hawthorn - Crataegus monogyna Hawthorn - Crataegus monogyna
Hawthorn Flower - May

  Hawthorn berries - Crataegus monogyna
    Hawthorn Berries

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Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Melvin Schwartz Dies at 73

Terrible day, the world losing both Naguib Mahfouz and Melvin Schwartz. Schwartz was many things, a professor at Columbia, Nobel-prize winner in 1988 for the discovery of the muon neutrino, and a major figure in the history of Brookhaven. He was both a scientist there (i.e. the neutrino work) as well as an administrator (overseeing the RHIC project in its early stages!).

Just a point left out of the obituaries: I never met him (he had left the field again by the time I got my PhD), but I always enjoyed his book on electrodynamics. It was one of the more elegant descriptions of the physics and mathematics that I had seen up to that time (1991). And it was cheap -- god bless Dover.

Betty (Schwartz) Marcon said...

Thank you for your comments about Mel's book. As a child, people often explained to me that my father's experiments were "elegant". He had a real passion for his field which showed up in other ways with the many interests he had. We will always remember him that way

Dr. Jay I. Glat said...

I would like to extend my sincerest condolences

I am trying to determine if your father was my classmate at P.S. 76 and the Jewish Center of Williamsbridge, both in the Bronx.

Diana (Schwartz) Bodell said...

My son found this posting while doing research on his grandfather. I just wanted to also thank you for your comments about his book and his teaching. Steve jobs, who audited my father's physics classes at Stanford (he wasn't enrolled), said that he was one of the best teachers he had ever had. He taught as elegantly as he wrote and experimented. He was a pretty good father, too. An all around great guy.
Dr. Glat, my father went to Bronx High School of Science and I don't think he attended either PS 76 or the Jewish Center of Williamsbridge.


text:
Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Six Physicists in a Room, Talking About TV

I know I'm way too late on this one, but I was dumbfounded by this piece in New York magazine's Fall Preview a couple of weeks ago. It's a TV show about physics graduate students ending up on prime time TV (Big Bang Theory, on CBS, premiering Monday). And I bet they're all theorists.

OK, grumbling aside, how great is this interview with six real graduate students? It includes our own (heavy ion theorist) Azfar Adil, who gets both first -- and last -- word.
Was the physics on the show accurate?
Azfar Adil (age 27, high-energy particle physics): Not at all.
David Kagan (27, theoretical physics): Some of it was loosely accurate.
AA: What really bothers me is that it’s somehow okay to not know science in this country. Nobody would have, like, a piano prodigy on a show and have him talk about Mozart while Beethoven was playing.
AA: But really, the show has nothing to do with physics. It’s more like Beauty and the Geek in sitcom form.
We'll have to see for ourselves, on Monday (or Tuesday, if it ever shows up on iTunes -- I gave back my cable box almost a year ago...)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This site is stealong your content:

(Scroll down a little, you'll see it.) You should complain to Blogger and get his account revoked.


text:
watermark Graceville Location and extent

The location and extent of the Locality streets in the Graceville Suburban Centre Improvement Project (SCIP) are identified in Figure and in the Streetscape hierarchy overlay map.

View Image Locality street specifications

(1) The design specifications for footway surfacing for the Locality streets in the Graceville SCIP are identified in Table
(2) These locality guidelines are to be read in conjunction with Chapter 3 – Road corridor design of the Infrastructure design planning scheme policy.
(3) Footway upgrades are to include new surfacing, new or reinstated kerb and channel, driveways, pedestrian kerb crossings, tactile markers, roof water drainage line connections, service pit lids, street trees, garden beds, furniture and pedestrian lighting applicable to the streetscape type.
(4) The scope, layout and detail of the footway upgrades are to be agreed on a site by site basis through the development assessment process.
Table—Graceville SCIP Locality streetscape type and specifications
Design specifications
Verge width
As existing.
Full width pavement
Unobstructed pavement width
Paving materials
Type: Exposed aggregate concrete
Supplier: Hanson or approved equivalent
Colour: Victoria Falls
Tactile markers
(consistent with BSD-5218)
Type: Concrete paver
Supplier: Chelmstone or approved equivalent
Colour: CCS 'Voodoo'
To match adjacent footpath finish.
All furniture is to be located outside of the unobstructed pavement area.
Finish: Powdercoat
Paint colour and finish: Dulux ‘Metropolis Storm Pearl’ (88471) in ‘Satin’ finish or approved equivalent.
Urban stools
Finish: Precast grey concrete
Supplier: Urban Fountains and Furniture, or approved equivalent
Colour: CCS ‘Smoky Blue’, CCS ‘Daffodil’, CCS ‘Golden Bronze’
All tree centrelines are 750mm from the nominal face of the kerb and a minimum of 600mm from the edges of the pavement.
Streets trees include:
(a) a mix of tree species laid out in an informal manner with clusters of trees;
(b) medium and small crown trees to be planted at minimum 2m spacing, if within garden beds, or minimum 6m spacing outside of garden beds;
(c) large crown feature trees to be planted at minimum 10m centres.
(a) a mix of species, in a single row at the rear of kerb;
(b) to be planted as singles and in pairs or clusters.
Planting: Trees are planted in garden beds or tree grates (1.6m x 1.2m minimum).
Garden beds
A garden bed located adjacent to the kerb has a:
(a) 1.5m minimum spacing between garden beds;
(b) maximum length of 10m;
(c) layout and length to accommodate car parking and other kerbside allocation.
Garden bed minimum width: 1.2m Preferred plant species

The preferred plant species for the Locality streets in Graceville are stated in Table

Table—Plant species
Shrubs and groundcovers
Backhousia citriodora
Buckinghamia celsissima
Harpullia pendula
Stenocarpus sinuatus
Syzygium tierneyanum
Tabebuia palmeri
Agapanthus africanus ‘Albus’
Dietes grandiflora
Ixora coccinea ‘Coral Fire’
Liriope ‘Evergreen Giant’
Myoporum parvifolium
Nandina domestica ‘Nana’
Ophiopogon japonicas
Philodendron ‘Xanadu’
Rosmarinus officinalis ‘Tuscan Blue’
Tulbaghia violacea
Trachelospermum jasminoides
Westringia ‘Aussie Box’
^ Back to Top


text:
Items where Author / Artist / Editor is "Goodman, Claire"

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Group by: Item Type | No Grouping
Number of items: 2.

Traynor, Michael and Drennan, Vari and Goodman, Claire and Mark, Annabelle L. and Davis, Kathy and Peacock, Richard and Banning, Maggi (2008) 'Nurse entrepreneurs' a case of government rhetoric? Journal of Health Services Research and Policy, 13 (1). pp. 13-18. ISSN 1355-8196

Mark, Annabelle L. and Goodman, Claire and Davis, Kathy and Drennan, Vari (2007) Entrepreneurial nurses and midwives in the United Kingdom: an integrative review. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 60 (5). pp. 459-469. ISSN 0309-2402

This list was generated on Sat Mar 24 04:41:01 2018 GMT.


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Browse by Creator

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Export as [feed] Atom [feed] RSS 1.0 [feed] RSS 2.0
Group by: Item Type | No Grouping | Creators | Date
Jump to: Other
Number of items: 1.

Harcourt, D., Frith, H. and Fussell, A. (2007) Anticipating an altered appearance: Women undergoing chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer. European Journal of Oncology Nursing.

This list was generated on Thu Jul 18 03:24:26 2013 BST.


text:
Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Friendship is Magic Season One DVD Box Set US Available Today

For those who like disc versions and commentaries of their favorite shows, we've got some good news.  The Shout! Factory US Release of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Season One is now officially released! All twenty six episodes are available across four discs including commentaries on several episodes. I'm sure many stores near you will have them in stock, but for those who would like to purchase it online, they can go here. Thank you  TRS for the heads up!


text:
County Fair

Equality Matters Picks Of The Week, June 13-17, 2011

June 17, 2011 6:30 pm ET by Equality Matters staff

Equality Matters staff offers our picks for the most interesting, outrageous, or thought provoking stories of the week:

  • Obama Spokesperson Claims 1996 Questionnaire Was Filled Out By “Someone Else”: During an interview conducted at Netroots Nation on Friday, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer claimed that “someone else” signed Barack Obama’s signature on a 1996 questionnaire favoring marriage equality. Windy City Times, which first reported on the survey 2009, is standing by its original story.
  • UN Passes First Ever Resolution Supporting Equal Rights For All, Regardless Of Sexual Orientation: The United Nations voted 23-19 to pass the first ever resolution on the human rights of LGBT people, calling for an end to violence based on sexual orientation and gender.
  • Tim Pawlenty Gets Glittered Over Gay And Women’s Rights: Representatives from CODEPINK and Reproductive Rights showered GOP presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty with pink confetti during a book signing event in San Francisco. The activists scolded Pawlenty for failing to have the courage to stand up for gay rights and women’s reproductive rights.
  • New York Senate One Vote Away From Approving Marriage Equality: The New York State Senate is one vote away from approving a same-sex marriage bill after three Democrats and two Republicans announced that they would be switching their votes to “yes” this year. Republican holdouts are concerned about the bill’s religious protections as well as with threats from several conservative groups.
  • Momentum Builds To Get Rid Of DOMA: A bankruptcy court in California ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was unconstitutional. 19 other judges signed the decision, even though they weren’t required to. Meanwhile, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has filed an ethics complaint against House Speaker John Boehner for violating the Anti-Deficiency Act by pledging to pay for DOMA’s defense with funds that have not yet been appropriated for that purpose.
  • DADT Repeal Gets A Boost, But Work Remains To Be Done: The Senate defense panel approved its version of the 2012 defense authorization bill without any of the anti-gay amendments that had been included in the House’s version of the bill. The Senate version also seeks to repeal a military law classifying sodomy as a crime. Meanwhile, House GOP members asked Obama to hold off on certification of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) repeal until Congress has a chance to review Defense Department policy changes. Albert Pisani, the service member most recently discharged under DADT, revealed in an interview with The Advocate’s Andrew Harmon that he asked to be discharged after being subjected to anti-gay comments.
  • Judge Rejects Motion To Vacate Walker’s Prop 8 Decision: U.S. District Court Judge James Ware denied a motion to vacate Judge Vaughn Walker’s 2010 decision striking down Proposition 8. Ware rejected the claim that Walker should have recused himself from the case because he was in a long-term same-sex relationship. Prop 8’s proponents have vowed to appeal Ware’s decision.

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We Have A True Passion For Bringing People Together And Creating Personal Experiences That Will Last A Lifetime

Service Areas

Equinox Serves our Clients all over the US

Equinox headquarters is based in San Diego CA, but we can travel to any location to host events for our Clients. Equinox has the ability to bring our Amazing Cast to any venue and create memorable experiences.

Below is a list of some of the more popular areas that we host events.

  • San Diego

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  • National City

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  • Lakeside

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  • Temecula

  • Murrieta

  • San Juan Capistrano


text:
Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Fraction Encounters

Well, I saw another one. Custom license plates sure are plentiful these days.

This one is a little different than the past few I've posted. It wasn't difficult at all to figure out what they were trying to say. BUT trying to figure out why they said it proved fairly entertaining.

Take a look:

Here's a few of the possibilities I came up with:
1. They have five kids. One made it to college - just barely - and they are holding their breath as the other four navigate the wiles of middle and high school.
2. The car is being driven by a hit man/woman. They are out to exact revenge on a gang of five playground terrors who made middle school a living nightmare. They "took care of" one of them. Only four more to go.
3. They watch The Office and feel real connection with Creed. Since Creed wants three chairs, they decided to up the ante and go for five.
4. They are over-zealous and instead of just wanting to win an EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony) they have come up with a fifth prestigious award. Probably and Okie or something equally awesome and made up. They have secured the fictional award, now there's just four biggies to go.
5. They own a hotel and have earned one star. While this is certainly an accomplishment, they really need to get the other four. I mean, who wants to stay at a one star hotel?

I could go on for days, but I'll spare you.

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Strong quake shakes Indonesia's Sumatra; no major damage

Sunday, August 13, 2017 - 10:12 in Earth & Climate

A strong earthquake struck Sunday off the coast of southern Sumatra in Indonesia, causing panicked residents to run from their homes but no major damage.

Read the whole article on Physorg

More from Physorg

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Aging out of place

posted in: Italy | 7

Recently I was contacted by Erica Manfred a journalist for Senior Plant an online publication.  They are doing a series called Aging out of Place. It is about people over 65 who have picked up roots and moved to a foreign country by themselves.  Sounds like me so we did a phone interview.

It was lots of fun and Erica did a great job.  To read the interview click here.

7 Responses

  1. Christopher Bogush
    | Reply

    I like your statement “You create what you want, it doesn’t come and knock on your door. ” Words to live by!

  2. Efrat Blum
    | Reply

    I loved the article, Sally!!! You’re famous, congratulations!!

  3. DAVID
    | Reply

    really liked reading the article with all the details. Atl show (busy) going on now….we miss you.

    • Christopher Bogush
      | Reply

      Agreed. Our neighborhood isn’t the same without Sally and Zoe seen trekking the streets of West Hollywood.

  4. Michele
    | Reply

    Such a great article Sally. You are my hero! We still miss you but we are so happy for you. I have a feeling you might be the new adviser for relocating seniors. xo

  5. MaryPat Scorzetti
    | Reply

    I just read the article about your reimagined life in Florence. Your adventurous spirit and success in relocating was a call to action for me.
    So glad you have Zoe as a trusted companion. Best of luck in your new home and new life!

  6. Richard
    | Reply

    Guess Who??
    I read you interview, it was if you were talking to me.
    I want to do something but I am stuck in that rut you so perfectly spoke about.

    Yes I am the person that thinks about everything you mentioned. I sit on my ass and do nothing, Inbusiness I got out and did it. I just can’t get out of my own

    Maybe this gets me thinking to do something.
    Thanks … I hope it sets a fire under me and I take the bull by the horns.

    Thanks. Much love …. your doing great

Leave a Reply


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