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[horizondentaldesigns]

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[three--rings]

That poll about power outages is WILD to me. Most people are replying with like IDK an hour or less than a day or MAYBE that one time a day.

And my answer is 21 days. And it's just the extreme difference in living somewhere with a Natural Disaster Season and not.

So okay I'll tell the story of the 21 days. It's also my very first memory (collectively, a series of memories.) (To be clear I've had other power outages but not THAT long. I've only been ground zero for a big hurricane once. Remind me to tell you my Tropical Storm Alison story sometime tho.)

So Hurricane Alicia hit Galveston and then Houston in August 1983. I was four. It will be the 40th anniversary this year.

At the time my family was living close to the Port of Houston, because my dad worked in the power plants in that industrial area. So my very first memory is hunkering in my parent's bathroom, with an electric lantern and a radio, listening to the storm hit the port a few miles away. And then the radio stopped, just went to static. (Some of this is my mom's account blended with my memory, to be clear.)

The storm passed over us and at dawn we emerged to see the damages. I remember it vividly. The sky was purple and orange. The street was a river and there were entire trees floating down it. I've seen a lot of storms and I've never seen that kind of pure destruction. But it was only trees. We were lucky.

(Yes these photos being Black and White Historical Images makes me feel ancient thanks. I promise we had color film.)

Anyway, after that, the only problem was there was NO POWER. All the power lines were down, poles and all. And it was AUGUST in Texas.

I remember holding ice in a towel against myself as the only way to get cool.

Then power started being turned on in bits and pieces in the area. The first place to get power that we knew was a dentist office belonging to a friend of my parents. So we all moved into the dentist office. Like four sets of parents with eight or so kids. Sleeping on the floor of a dentist because it had air conditioning. Me in my Strawberry Shortcake sleeping bag.

Then my grandmother's apartment got power, so we moved out of the dentist to a one bedroom apartment. My parents, my grandmother, me and my teenage brother. All in two small rooms. I remember...arguing.

Then, finally, 21 fucking days later the power at my house was turned back on.

I'm tempted to say it's because it was 40 years ago or because it was Texas or because it was a poor neighborhood that it took so long.

But honestly, sometimes all the infrastructure gets knocked down and you have to rebuild the whole system from scratch and it takes time. I'm not sure it would be a whole lot shorter today.

My family was without power after Hurricane Ike for a week+ and that was a nice neighborhood without any significant damage. (I had left the city by then.) And most of my coworkers went without power for a solid week after that one and we are 100 miles further inland. (My electric co-op stayed up, though, because it came from another direction. Also stayed on during that terrible freeze that took the state out a couple years ago. Small decentralized community-owned power ftw.)

So yeah, losing power has always just been a thing. Like occasionally you just have a named storm come through and wreck your shit. It's wild to me that people live places where the planet doesn't just try to kill you occasionally.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Ohio was no stranger to deadly building fires. But none of the previous fires foreshadowed the 1930 Easter Monday fire as closely as the October 8, 1928, dormitory blaze at the State Brick Plant at Junction City, Ohio, where fifteen inmates died and twenty-seven were severely injured. Indeed, the day after the Columbus disaster, one journalist noted that the Brick Plant fire had called attention to the perilous conditions that reigned in prison farms and road camps and other related facilities, describing them as “firetraps” lacking adequate provision for the immediate release of inmates in the event of a fire.

Unlike the dangerously overcrowded Ohio Penitentiary, holding close to 4,500 inmates, the dormitory at the Brick Plant was a “barn-like structure of wooden frame and corrugated iron covering, erected upon a ten foot brick foundation,” with accommodations for 275 prisoners “sleeping in two-tiered bunks arranged in pairs with narrow aisles between.” Including 13 trusties, who did not sleep in the dorm, there were a total of 288 men at the Plant.

Several inmates discovered the Brick Plant fire at midnight, but by the time the alarm resounded through the dimly lit dormitory room it was too late. The fire spread quickly along the building’s floor and framework, leaping “from bunk to bunk across narrow aisles, while convicts cursed and screamed as they struggled to open doors and windows.” Making matters even worse, the fire hydrant did not work. As in the Columbus blaze in 1930, the convicts were awakened in time to escape, but upon reaching the nearest exits found them locked and barred. According to guards and convicts, it was probable that “many of the dead were trampled to death in a ‘mad rush for the exits.’”

Convicts who had made it out into the fresh air remembered looking back through windows “into the flaming interior,” where they witnessed sights that they would never forget, seeing fellow prisoners “wreathed in flames, rushing to  and fro” before disappearing in the smoke and flames that enveloped them as they fell to the floor. The roof and walls soon collapsed, showering ring the onlookers and writhing victims with burning embers.

As in the Columbus fire, stories of convict heroism abounded. Among the heroes was a convict overcome by smoke and burned to death as he tried to rescue his friend. Another prisoner, who had been responsible for the prison commissary, ran inside to fight the flames but perished “on his job.” One inmate, Andy Kiebert, who made it out safely, ran back into the burning building to rescue the convict mascot, a terrier named Tiny King. The animal lover suffered burns but fought his way back out, emerging with the relatively unscathed dog under his coat.

News reports would describe the fifteen fire victims as “charred bodies, part of them only small piles of bones,” with “few or none … possible of identification.”  A dozen of the more seriously burned were taken to the hospital at the Ohio Pen for treatment. A cursory identification of the dead was attempted, but remained tentative, their identifications being based for the most part on the location of the body when found. Prisoners aided in the task “to some extent,” but not with any degree of certainty. In the early going, the only ones identified were two African American inmates. A prison dentist examined the victims’ teeth to aid in the identifications. The remains were buried in the New Lexington Cemetery, where markers were set up for those whose identities had been established. Twenty men were missing, three of whom, officials believed, had seized the opportunity to escape during the confusion that followed the fire’s discovery. Others, including many cons, insisted none had escaped. Despite the opportunity for a learning moment, few lessons had been learned at the Junction City fire."

- Mitchel Roth, Fire in the Big House: America's Deadliest Prison Disaster. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2019. p. 89-90.

[maxwell-grant]

AIUI, Burbank is even more a question mark than The Shadow is; we don't know if that's a personal name, surname, or nickname, we no nothing of his past, his personal life, or even (again, AIUI) his personality. Is that something that should be kept in adaptations, or ought he be developed more?

Both.

The thing about developing a mystery is that you still need to have something in place to purposefully obscure or slowly reveal. You still need to give your audience tidbits and information here and there that makes them want to learn more and find out what the answer is, even if they know it's never really happening, even if the answer couldn't possibly live up to the hype.

Twin Peaks was able to delay the mystery of Laura Palmer's murder for an entire season and more partially because Laura Palmer had such an rich, troubled inner life and turmoil, that we could gradually receive snippets of information regarding it every episode and still not know the whole story, so much so that, even after we learned who did it, there were still many, many stories to be told within Laura Palmer's life and the city. This holds true for The Shadow, and it holds true for Burbank.

Gibson successfully created intrigue regarding Burbank because, not only was Burbank a crucially important figure in The Shadow's organization and therefore someone we'd want to know more about, but because everytime Burbank showed up to play a substantial role, you could gleam something new about him. Burbank is a great example of staging in The Shadow pulps because his scenes are often written as if we were watching a movie where the head of our main character keeps being blocked from view, until it's revealed, and it doesn't really help us understand him much better than before, even though we've come to learn more about what he acts and looks like.

In fact, The Shadow even seems to be aware of this, such as in the scene below when the narration goes to great lenghts to obscure Burbank's face, even in a scene when there is literally no one around but Burbank and The Shadow. Why go through this much trouble to obscure Burbank from no one but the reader? Why not just refrain from describing what he looks like instead of making sure we can't even imagine what he looks like in our heads in the scene? What's the mystery over what's ostensibly just an average quiet-faced man? And so Burbank doesn't become just a mystery, but a tantalizing one.

The fellow's back was toward the light; since the elevator was dark, it was impossible to distinguish his features. When he helped The Shadow carry the boxes to an open apartment, the bulky objects came in front of the man's face. Since the apartment was dark, too, the features of this silent companion remained as concealed as The Shadow's own.

The fact pleased The Shadow. The less people who saw Burbank, the better - Voice of Death

For example, we do know where Burbank's name comes from, and potentially his first name. In both “The Shadow Laughs” and “The Case Of Congressman Coyd,” Burbank is referred to as “Mr. Burbank,” which indicates it's a last name. In The Death Giver, Burbank hands Harry a business card

At three fifteen, the stenographer entered and tendered Harry a card. It bore the name:

L. BURBANK MOTION PICTURE OPERATOR

A later story specifically namedrops famous horticulturist Luther Burbank, and according to Will Murray, Walter Gibson did confirm to him personally that Burbank was named after Luther Burbank.

We know Burbank's main feature is that he's "quiet-faced" with a "soft, even-toned voice", and that characters can recognize Burbank by his voice even when his face is obscured, but his look isn't consistent. His sole appearence in a cover comes from The Lone Tiger, where he seems to be past his fifties and being semi-bald, but it's not how he looks in Edd Cartier's illustration where he's got a hairdo. Both seem to be somewhat based on Dr David Burbank, the New Hampshire dentist who founded the city. He's been said to be at least 40 once, and this in itself is at odds with some descriptions that place Burbank as younger than The Shadow and describe him as "a young man with a solemn look", which is more in line with how he tends to be depicted in comics, particularly the blonde man with the eyepiece designed by Michael Kaluta.

We know he was officially introduced after Harry Vincent and Claude Fellows, but that apparently he's known The Shadow for quite a while, as he (as Cranston) refers to Burbank as "an old friend" in his introduction (is he an old friend of Cranston as well?). Robert Sampson speculated that the two met in 1924 at a radio station, where as Rick Lai speculates that Burbank may have been recruited in an unrecorded adventure in Rio de Janeiro, mentioned in Gypsy Vengeance, that took place between the first and second novels.

We know that Burbank is at a rather unique position among the agents because he is maybe the most important figure in The Shadow's network, the main keeper of The Shadow's secrets, the one entrusted to run the organization on The Shadow's absence, the only one who can directly reach The Shadow in the Sanctum, and if anyone knows anything about whatever secrets there are in The Shadow's past, it's definitely him, but he's also the one we know the least about as a person, and contrary to the other agents, Burbank is often described in mechanized terms, which gives him a rather inhuman aura somewhat different than that of The Shadow's.

In a sense, Burbank was the mainspring of the machinery that The Shadow used in his warfare against crime.

As contact man, he kept in touch with all the active agents; there were times when he actually ran things, during The Shadow's absence. Tonight was one of those rare occasions when Burbank was needed on active duty.

Nevertheless, the human cogwheel had connected up a switchboard and had a short−wave radio set handy, so that he could continue his contact duties from this empty apartment - Voice of Death

When emergency demanded, Burbank served as he now was serving. Instead of making calls to the deserted sanctum, he was issuing orders in The Shadow's stead. - The Key

Everytime Burbank gets any sort of spotlight, we learn a little more about him, who he is, what he can't and can do. His methods, what he does to spend the time, some of the things he does for The Shadow outside of communications like planting recording devices in criminal hide-outs and devising or managing electrical devices and The Shadow's advanced technology (even if he doesn't fully understand it).

"Burbank began his own attempt to scale the wall. Ordinarily, his clutches would have been inadequate, and his toe holds were uncertain. But the wire was drawing upward under The Shadow's haul. It gave the needed support whenever Burbank floundered. The Shadow could actually sense his agent's progress by the varying strain upon the wire. At last, Burbank flopped over the roof edge like a landed fish" - Masters of Death

There were remarkable devices here. Burbank understood some of them, but the millionaire alone was familiar with all the equipment - Eyes of The Shadow

“To Burbank, long, lone vigils were nothing. He was not a man of action; he was one of endurance. Prompt, precise and always dependable, Burbank had served The Shadow well.“ - The Key

During his long hours of duty, he resorted to one methodical habit as he bided away the time. He always had a supply of chewing gum.” - The Killer

Burbank leaned back in his chair. His position was one of patient relaxation. While he awaited new telephone calls, his attitude was one of complete passivity. There was nothing excitable in the make-up of this man who sat with his back toward the light. Yet Burbank was a man of amazing endurance. In place of action, he exercised untiring vigilance. It was this quality that made him a most important factor in the affairs of that amazing personage known as The Shadow - The Killer

Burbank is, at once, the barrier between the agents (and by extension, us) and The Shadow, as well as the bridge that allows the agents (and us) to find and reach The Shadow.

And I do like it that Burbank's specifically said to not be cut for action, that he's not really a fighter or a marksman or even a super tech genius, on paper he's really just a guy who sits in a chair all day fiddling with radio equipment. But he is still cool and impressive by the standards of what matters most in The Shadow's world. He's patient and resourceful and vigilant and clever and trustworthy, and he's someone that The Shadow trusts more so than anyone else.

There was no sound of the door closing; no sound, indeed, to indicate that any person had moved in that direction. Yet Burbank knew, from experience, that his master, The Shadow, had departed, after giving him the sign that his vigil was ended.

Such word usually came from The Shadow’s sanctum. Tonight, being in the vicinity of Burbank’s present station, The Shadow had preferred to give his faithful agent fifteen or twenty minutes of extra respite by visiting him in person

Such was the way of The Shadow. Though none of his trusted operatives had ever seen his undisguised face; though his ways and actions were secret and mysterious to them; they received constant signs of The Shadow’s appreciation of their reliable cooperation - Death Triangle

In Suite 808, a figure was seated in front of the writing table. It was The Shadow, in his guise as Arnaud; Burbank was off duty, asleep in the other room.

The telephone buzzed; The Shadow answered it. He spoke in a quiet, methodical tone, a perfect imitation of Burbank's voice. Harry Vincent reported - The Case of Congressman Coyd

On one hand, I don't think the "mystery" of Burbank is ever going to be ruined, or should be ruined. But on the other hand, I definitely think there's a lot of room to explore more regarding what exactly is he as a person, as an agent, what kind of roles he plays, what is his connection to The Shadow or what relationship he has with other agents or other people he's meant to be in more direct contact with. I think it's a matter of balance.

There's a lot of room to work with particularly regarding how you could adapt Burbank into adaptations set in different time periods (not necessarily modern day), because with how communication technology had advanced beyond imagination, there's a lot of ways you could adapt or recontextualize Burbank, The Shadow's social network.

[kid-dies]

wannado city gothic

i cant be the ONLY person who is VERY VERY nostalgic for wannado city and its like this deep memory that only surfaces once in a while. it had such a specific feeling to it,,

the tracking devices in the bracelets you and your parents got so you could separate from them and find them again later

you inevitably got lost anyway and had to ask an employee for help, and then youd be shown how to use those trackers and be reunited

the black walls making the place seem almost endless and in a constant nighttime, yet contained within four walls

the fact that wannado seemed endless to begin with

the weird rave-style “club” on the third or second floor that no one really knew about and never many people were there

seeing the firetruck drive by with all those kids packed into it every 30 minutes or so

the pizza place! making your own pizza and eating it near town square....

the fake money. WONGAS.

the emergency vet

the recycling plant that looked SO SO HIGH TECH and was like, the peak of scifi to our little baby brains

the town square. it was more a circle tbh

the circus tent

the clown school

after you left the park youd get dinner at the rainforest cafe across the hall

and play in the playground just between them

the ambulance and the hospital. the baby dolls and the full-size medical dummy

grabbing all the fake plastic food in the grocery as you could

pretending you were trapped in the jail and yelling at ur parents outside to help you

the fashion show that was very elusive and you could barely EVER get in. it was on the second floor of one of the smaller buildings and it was always full when youd go over there. they had a little denim vest there.

the mine?? it was very weird. probably haunted

being a news caster and stumbling over your words

the fact that publix sponsored the grocery store and cnn sponsored the newsroom?

the dentist dummies with the bizarrely open mouths. mildly horrifying.

special events at town square

the ferris wheel

[newstfionline]

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Minneapolis Braces for Verdict in Floyd’s Death (NYT) MINNEAPOLIS—Around midday last Monday, Samir Patel received a phone call from his friend, a dentist: Gunshots had rung out, his friend told him, and the contractors who were rebuilding the office he lost in last year’s unrest had fled. He was boarding up, and he told Mr. Patel he should move quickly to protect his own business, a dry cleaning shop. Elite Cleaners, Mr. Patel’s shop, is on a side street, not far from the shell of the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct station house, which burned last year in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. The surrounding community of Lake Street, a corridor of immigrant-owned businesses—taquerias, furniture shops, liquor stores and cafes—was devastated by looting in the days of protests and the riots that followed. The city has said that the unrest led to $350 million in losses, with more than a thousand buildings either destroyed or damaged. As the trial of Derek Chauvin, the white former police officer charged with murder in the death of Mr. Floyd, a Black man, draws to a close, the city is on edge, fearing that a not-guilty verdict would bring anger, chaos and destruction once again.

New migrant facilities crop up to ease crowding, again (AP) For the third time in seven years, U.S. officials are scrambling to handle a dramatic spike in children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border alone, leading to a massive expansion in emergency facilities to house them as more kids arrive than are being released to close relatives in the United States. More than 22,000 migrant children were in government custody as of Thursday, with 10,500 sleeping on cots at convention centers, military bases and other large venues likened to hurricane evacuation shelters with little space to play and no privacy. More than 2,500 are being held by border authorities in substandard facilities. So many children are coming that there’s little room in long-term care facilities, where capacity shrank significantly during the coronavirus pandemic. As a result, minors are packed into Border Patrol facilities not meant to hold them longer than three days or they’re staying for weeks in the mass housing sites that often lack the services they need. Lawyers say some have not seen social workers who can reunite them with family in the U.S. Both Donald Trump and Barack Obama faced similar upticks in Central American children crossing the border alone in 2019 and 2014. The numbers have now reached historic highs amid economic fallout from the pandemic, storms in Central America and the feeling among migrants that Biden is more welcoming than his predecessor.

Students’ struggles pushed Peru teacher to run for president (AP) As schools across Peru closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, Pedro Castillo tried to find a way to keep classes going for his 20 fifth- and sixth-grade students. But in his impoverished rural community deep in the Andes, his efforts were futile. Seventeen of the students didn’t even have access to a cellphone. Tablets promised by the government never arrived. “Where is the state?” Castillo, 51, told The Associated Press after a day of planting sweet potatoes on his own land. It was the last straw for Castillo, who over 25 years had seen his students struggle in crumbling schools where teachers also cook, sweep floors and file paperwork. He’d already dabbled in activism with the local teachers’ union and helped lead a national strike in 2017. But now he went further, tossing his name into a crowd of 18 candidates in Peru’s presidential election. Defying the polls, the elementary school teacher came first in the April 11 voting, albeit with less than 20% of the overall vote. The stunning result gave him a place in June’s presidential runoff against Keiko Fujimori, one of Peru’s most established political figures and the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori. It is her third attempt to become president. Castillo’s unlikely campaign comes at a turbulent time for the South American nation that has suffered like few others from the COVID-19 pandemic. It recently ran through three presidents in a week after one was removed by congress over corruption allegations. Every president of the past 36 years has been ensnared in corruption allegations, some imprisoned. One died by suicide before police could arrest him.

New direction needed: EU launches website for citizens to discuss its future (Reuters) The European Union launched on Monday a website for citizens to debate the future of the 27-nation bloc as the exit of Britain, climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of nationalism force the EU to reflect on how it wants to develop. The website, available for contributions in the EU’s 24 official languages, is part of what EU institutions call the Conference on the Future of Europe—a forum for debate to help identify issues the EU needs to address in the changing global context. “The conclusions of the conference could be the backbone for reforms in the Union in the future,” one of the leaders of the initiative, member of European Parliament and former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt told a news conference. The website prompts debates on subjects including climate change, the environment, health, the economy, social justice and jobs, the role of the EU in the world, values and rights, the rule of law, security, digital transformation, democracy and migration. Citizens can also launch their own topics.

Cheating at Greek universities (Foreign Policy) Greek universities are experiencing a crisis of confidence in their students as remote learning takes the place of traditional education. Professors have noted surprisingly high marks from previously poor students, raising suspicions that the students may be using underhanded tactics. “Result averages are up, and people we haven’t seen in years are showing up for exams because the system makes it easy to cheat,” Kostas Kosmatos, an assistant professor of criminology at Thrace’s Democritus University told AFP. Sofia, a psychology student, admitted to have taken two exams “on behalf of two of my friends and nobody realized.” Resourceful students have created technological workarounds to boost their chances during exams, crowdsourcing answers in live chats with students at the University of Crete even enlisting a linguistic expert to help them during exams. “But even he got a verse wrong,” Angela Kastrinaki, dean of the University of Crete’s literature department, told AFP. “So I got 50 papers with the same mistake. It was funny.”

Russia Expels 20 Czech Diplomats as Tensions Escalate (NYT) A day after the government of the Czech Republic blamed operatives from Russia’s military intelligence agency for a series of mysterious explosions at an ammunition depot in 2014 and expelled 18 Russian diplomats, the Russian government announced on Sunday that 20 Czech diplomats would be ejected in response. The expulsions signal further escalation of tensions between the Kremlin and western governments, reaching an intensity not seen since the Cold War. The spat between the Czech Republic and Russia comes just days after the United States imposed heavy sanctions on Russian government officials and businesses in response to a large-scale hacking of American government computer systems. In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry called the Czech accusations “absurd” and accused the government of being an American puppet. “In an effort to please the U.S.A. following recent American sanctions against Russia, the Czech government in this instance even exceeded its overseas masters,” the Russian Foreign Ministry statement said.

Montenegro’s billion-dollar dilemma (NYT) Few Europeans thought it was a good idea for Montenegro to take a mammoth loan from China to build a highway. Now the tiny, mountainous country is asking the European Union for help to repay the debt—and the answer, so far, has been no. The situation in Montenegro is the latest skirmish in an escalating global push for influence by China, which has made inroads in economically weak countries by offering loans that demand loyalty to Beijing but otherwise have few strings attached. Montenegro’s first debt payments are due this summer. The $1 billion loan is nearly a fifth the size of the country’s entire economy. Montenegrin leaders say they won’t miss their loan payment this summer even if no E.U. aid is forthcoming. European officials said they wanted to help Montenegro but were searching for a palatable way to do so. Linking the aid to the loan too directly could be politically difficult, since many E.U. officials do not want to be in the position of effectively paying down a Chinese loan that E.U. leaders warned against in the first place. “China has been filling any opening it felt it could,” said Vuk Vuksanovic, a researcher at the Belgrade Center for Security Policy, a Serbian think tank. ���Local capitals were hungry for cash, particularly on big development issues like infrastructure. And the Chinese were willing to go places where Western institutions were not.”

Afghan Women Fear the Worst, Whether War or Peace Lies Ahead (NYT) Farzana Ahmadi watched as a neighbor in her village in northern Afghanistan was flogged by Taliban fighters last month. The crime: Her face was uncovered. People silently watched as the beating dragged on. Fear—even more potent than in years past—is gripping Afghans now that U.S. and NATO forces will depart the country in the coming months. They will leave behind a publicly triumphant Taliban, who many expect will seize more territory and reinstitute many of the same oppressive rules they enforced under their regime in the 1990s. The New York Times spoke to many Afghan women about what comes next in their country, and they all said the same thing: Whatever happens will not bode well for them. Whether the Taliban take back power by force or through a political agreement with the Afghan government, their influence will almost inevitably grow. In a country in which an end to nearly 40 years of conflict is nowhere in sight, many Afghans talk of an approaching civil war. “All the time, women are the victims of men’s wars,” said Raihana Azad, a member of Afghanistan’s Parliament. “But they will be the victims of their peace, too.”

Hard-line Islamists take 6 Pakistani security personnel hostage amid deadly clashes (Washington Post) A hard-line Islamist group on Sunday took six Pakistani security personnel hostage after days of deadly clashes in the northeastern city of Lahore over a French satirical newspaper’s publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad and the arrest of the group’s leader by Pakistani authorities. A senior police officer and two paramilitary fighters were among those taken after protesters surrounded a police station and stormed the compound, according to Lahore police spokesman Arif Rana. A week of violence across the country has left at least four dead, according to the protesters. Police officials say thousands have been arrested. The tensions driving the protests, led by the Islamist party Tehrik-e-Labbaik Pakistan, have been simmering for months after French President Emmanuel Macron honored a teacher who was beheaded last year in France after he showed a class the cartoons depicting Muhammad. For many Muslims, depictions of the prophet are blasphemous and deeply insulting. Macron’s comments sparked protests across the Muslim world last year.

India’s capital to lock down as nation’s virus cases top 15M (AP) New Delhi was being put under a weeklong lockdown Monday night as an explosive surge in coronavirus cases pushed the India’s capital’s health system to its limit. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said in a news conference the national capital was facing shortages of oxygen and some medicine. “I do not say that the system has collapsed, but it has reached its limits,” Kejriwal said, adding that harsh measures were necessary to “prevent a collapse of the health system.” Similar virus curbs already have been imposed in the worst-hit state of Maharashtra, home to India’s financial capital, Mumbai. The closure of most industries, businesses and public places Wednesday night is to last 15 days.

Pacific Ocean storm intensifies into year’s first super typhoon (Reuters) Strong winds and high waves lashed the eastern Philippines on Monday as the strongest typhoon ever recorded in April barrelled past in the Pacific Ocean, killing one man and triggering flooding in lower-lying communities, disaster officials said. More than 100,000 people were evacuated from coastal areas, according to provincial disaster agencies. The core of Surigae, or Bising as the storm is known locally, is not expected to hit land. But with a diameter of 500 km and winds reaching 195 km per hour, parts of the eastern islands of Samar experienced flooding, while several communities lost power. The first super typhoon of 2021 foreshadows a busy storm season for the region in the year ahead, experts say.

Lebanon’s crumbling capital (AFP) Beirut’s roads are riddled with potholes, many walls are covered in anti-government graffiti and countless street lamps have long since gone dark. At night, car drivers creep cautiously past broken traffic lights and strain their eyes for missing manhole covers, stolen for the value of their metal. Many parking metres have been disabled in protest over an alleged corruption scandal, while cars are parked randomly on sidewalks. To many, the dysfunctional capital has become emblematic of a country mired in its worst crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war after decades of mismanagement and corruption. Much of Beirut’s infrastructure started falling apart long before last August’s massive portside explosion killed more than 200 people, levelled the waterfront and damaged countless buildings. Amid the crisis, the Lebanese currency has collapsed and continues its downward slide at a sickening rate that in itself is deepening the problem. As the currency has dived by more than 85 percent on the black market, wary contractors are steering clear of any municipal repairs that are paid for in Lebanese pounds.

Eleven dead, 98 injured after train derails in Egypt (Reuters) Eleven people were killed and 98 injured on Sunday in a train accident in Egypt’s Qalioubia province north of Cairo, the health ministry said in a statement. The train was heading from Cairo to the Nile Delta city of Mansoura when four carriages derailed at 1:54 p.m. (1154 GMT), about 40 kms (25 miles) north of Cairo. More than 50 ambulances took the injured to three hospitals in the province, the health ministry said. The derailing is the latest of several recent railway crashes in Egypt. At least 20 people were killed and nearly 200 were injured in March when two trains collided near Tahta, about 440 kms (275 miles) south of Cairo.

South Africa wildfire (Washington Post) Cape Town ordered precautionary evacuations of communities living along the edges of city landmark Table Mountain on Monday as firefighters struggled to contain a fire that gutted historical landmarks, including the oldest working windmill in South Africa and a library housing African antiquities at the University of Cape Town. The fire started Sunday morning near the memorial to colonial leader Cecil Rhodes and quickly spread uncontrolled beneath Devil’s Peak in Table Mountain National Park in an area popular with weekend hikers and cyclists. By Monday morning, strong southeasterly winds, which were expected to reach more than 30 miles per hour (50 km/h) later in the day, had pushed the fire toward densely-populated areas above Cape Town city. Well-known tourist sites, such as the Table Mountain aerial cableway, were temporarily closed. Heavy smoke engulfed the city forcing the closure of a major highway and other nearby roads. Hikers, park visitors, visitors to the nearby Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden and hundreds of students from the university campus were evacuated on Sunday.

NASA’s Ingenuity Makes First Powered Flight On Mars (NPR) “Orville and Wilbur would be proud. NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has made the first-ever powered flight on another planet, 117 years after the Wright Brothers’ historic flight on this planet. The flight itself was modest. The 4-pound helicopter rose 10 feet in the air, hovered briefly, and returned to the Martian surface.

[lindoig4]

Now for Toronto

Our train to Toronto (actually two trains, one to Montreal and another from there to Toronto) didn’t leave until 5:30pm so we arranged a noon checkout and left our bags in the luggage room while we went shopping.  We needed lunch, but also food for the 24-hour train trip.  We stocked up, perhaps overstocked, with the necessaries, only to be told at the station that our meals were provided - contrary to the information we had been given previously.  Hopefully, we now won’t need to buy much in Toronto.

The meals on the train were quite good, but there was not a lot to see on the first leg because it was dark for a little more than half the trip.  Our cabin was cute with a bathroom at least as big as the one in our caravan, but it was a bit of a challenge for me climbing up to the top bunk without any sort of ladder.  It was pretty rocky at times during the night, but not enough to warrant seasick meds! The most impressive sight along the way was the St Lawrence Seaway.  It is MASSIVE and we crossed it twice - or was it thrice?  We got into a long conversation at breakfast with a Canadian woman who is on her way to Australia for another holiday - she has been there before - and I think I missed one of the crossings at that time.

Our second train was a little less luxurious, seats rather than a cabin and only meals to purchase, so we used some of the goodies we bought yesterday and only bought our drinks. This was a more varied trip as far as scenery went.  The first train went very largely though natural forest, but the second opened up into a lot more agriculture, corn farms mainly, but less trees adjacent to the track so we could see a lot more of the countryside, especially where it has been cleared. There are a lot more small towns, usually with very neat houses, with everything surrounded by green pastures, often sprinkled with clusters of yellow, white and pink wildflowers – very colourful.

Toronto!    (Just for the record, according to my (previous) dentist, I am now officially dead!  But I don’t believe it……  A couple of years ago, I had some outstandingly expensive dental work done, including some ultra-special porcelain fillings that he guaranteed would still be in pristine condition when I carked it.  I have had a series of problems with the work done, or not done properly, and a couple of night ago, one of my $1000+ fillings came out - so I am obliged to conclude that I am now officially/dentally deceased.  His guarantee obviously wasn’t worth much and I have long-since chosen a different dentist because of the other problems I have suffered so if anyone is thinking of using The Dental Company in Windsor, I suggest you consult widely before committing your superannuation fund to this practice.)

Toronto is a moderately big city – not sure what else I can say about it.  We quite enjoyed our stay, but the city itself didn’t leap out at us as having anything to really recommend it to us.

Our first day there was Father’s Day and I got some wonderful message from the kids – so thank you! We had a fairly busy morning with washing, unpacking, downloading and sorting photos and so on and after lunch we just strolled down to a nearby parkland that had some great gardens, mainly in hothouses.  There were several different areas with tropical plants, desert plants, orchids, and so on and we spent up to a couple of hours there browsing and photographing inside and outside.  I spied some cute squirrels there too – darker and smaller than the others we have seen so tried to photograph them too – without a lot of success.  I just love the cute little things.  They are almost fluid in their movements and glide along quite beautifully – Heather thinks I am a bit obsessive, but they are such lovely little creatures that I can’t help myself.  On the way back to the hotel, we found a supermarket and topped up a few supplies then went to the bar for Happy Hour drinks and a delicious snack.

Monday, we became uber-tourists (something we almost always eschew) and took a tour to Niagara Falls.  It was the Labour Day public holiday in Canada so there were even more people there than normal (13 million tourists each year and most of them were there with us). It was nearly 150km to get there and it didn’t start well.  One couple who were supposed to board the bus at the first stop with us never turned up – until more than half an hour later o the bus had to divert back to the starting point to collect them.  They sat behind us and were also late back on two other viewing stops along the way.  The also yabbered away in German right through the commentary, making it hard for us to follow what was being said.  They were not the only people constantly talking and I finally shouted out for everyone to quieten down and it did improve a bit after that – except for the German couple.

The bus ride was very bumpy.  I am pretty sure they left the suspension in the garage for repairs that day.  And the emergency escape window near my ear has to be the loudest rattliest window in North America, but we made the best of it and enjoyed the day.  The driver gave us a huge amount of information, talking almost continuously for the 90-minute trip to the helicopter field where a few of our number took a ride ($CA149 for 10 minutes) while the rest of us went a little further to the Whirlpool.  The river (a huge torrent) comes in over some rapids into a big basin where it swirls around quite dramatically before taking a sharp turn to starboard and thence races further along the deep valley.  While we were gawking at that, the bus went back to collect the helicopterists and we then went on to the actual Falls.

It is massive!  The border between the US and Canada runs down the centre of the Niagara River and divides just before the Falls making it two Falls – the American Falls and the Canadian or Horseshoe Falls – the latter being much bigger than the former.  The statistics are simply phenomenal – I think it was something like 20 million cubic feet of water a day – but looking at it, it might well be 2000 million!  It is basically indescribable – and the photos don’t even start to do justice to the magnitude, the noise, the power, the beauty, the sheer magnificence of it – and remember that more than half the volume is already diverted to generate hydro-power.

We strolled along the viewing area ,a few hundred metres of it, gaping and photographing as we went before returning to the bus to take us to lunch  We had a really nice 3-course meal in a restaurant that gave us a great view of the Falls – so out came the cameras again.  After lunch we drove through the town area to where we queued for a boat trip to the foot of the Falls.  You have to see the town to believe it.  It would put Disneyland to shame I think, loaded with stalls, rides, every imaginable theme house, glitz and razzmatazz like you wouldn’t believe – not the least attractive to us, but I am sure it all makes many people very rich.

We all got kitted out like pink lollypops with flimsy ponchos before being crowded onto the boat. There was quite a breeze, mainly generated from the massive volume of water crashing down around us, so half the time, my poncho was blowing around my shoulders instead of keeping me dry. Approaching the gigantic curtain of water was like standing outside in a huge downpour.  Even with my cape on and covering up as well as I could, my camera and one of my Hearing aids stopped working part-way through the 20-minute voyage. The noise was tremendous and floods of water assailed us constantly – so much so that a lot of the time, we couldn’t actually see a lot – we were too busy trying to wipe the gales of water out of our eyes.  Back on shore, we dried out as much as possible and I got my camera and hearing aid working again (thank goodness for that – I was dreading not being able to hear for the next 3 weeks) but we were back in Toronto before our clothes were dry again.  It certainly was an experience and I am glad we did it, but I am not sure I would rush to do it again – no matter how iconic the experience.

On the way back to Toronto ,we went to a winery – actually a wine college (4-year intensive degree course) for a tasting.  There were 3 wines, but the special one was icewine – a name like Champagne that is only legally used in 3 wineries in the world – one in Germany where it was ‘invented’ (but it now not producing) and two in Canada.  The grapes must be picked frozen after 3 successive days with temperatures between -8 and -15 degrees C – after 15 September each year and every part of the process must be completed within Ontario before the end of September to be called icewine.  It is quite low in alcohol (hard to crush or ferment at those temperatures) and is very sweet – and consequently produced in very low quantities (in small bottles) and it is very expensive, being sold in only a few outlets.  In Canada, all alcohol is sold and closely controlled by a government agency (you should see its huge HQ in Toronto) so if you want any booze at all, you have to find an store or outlet with LCBO splashed across it – we believe it stands for Liquor Control Board of Ontario.

We arrived back at our hotel after 7:30 so Heather just picked up some hot food at the supermarket and we ate in the room.  The supermarkets carry quite a range of ready-to-eat meals for one, or two, or a family and although not that cheap, they are quite affordable and very good tasty meals.

On Tuesday we ventured onto the Hop-On-Hop-Off bus for a tour of the city. The first bus we got on was pretty poor.  The woman giving the commentary spoke much too fast and had a heavy accent so it was very hard to make out what she was saying and this was complicated by the dreadful sound system onboard that converted everything to an unintelligible blur.  We got off at the next stop and waited for another bus, one with a pre-recorded commentary that was easy to follow.  I can’t say that Toronto grabbed me.  It doesn’t seem to have much that attracted me.  It wasn’t ugly, but just plain and with nothing that stood out to me – but maybe I wasn’t looking or listening properly.  The best part of the tour was that our tickets entitled us to a boat ride around the harbour and inner islands.  It was quite short (less than 30 minutes), but I enjoyed it and picked up 8 more new birds along the island shore.

One interesting note was that we saw a lot of pretty brown butterflies around the lake (and have seen more since).  When we asked about them, we were told that they are Monarch Butterflies, just starting their annual migration – to MEXICO!  These flimsy little bits of fluff fly well over 1000 kilometres to catch up with their boy- or girl-friends and make more new butterflies who do the same thing next year.  What a phenomenal feat of nature.  Must be equal to the beautiful Arctic Terns that fly close to 50,000 kilometres a year – about 3 times to the Moon and back in their lifetime.

We had a latish lunch at a lakeside restaurant before strolling along the harbour a way (more birds) and catching another HOHO back home.  On the way back, we stopped off at what National Geographic claims to be the world’s best food market!  Regrettably, they obviously haven’t visited many of the other ones we have because there was absolutely nothing to set it apart from many we have visited before. The appellation was certainly a mystery to us!

We had a short Happy Hour in the bar – only to be charged full prices because of their misleading information – but hopefully Tripadvisor might reflect our disappointment in due course.

[mcmansionhell]

Looking Around: Horizontal Space

If there is one truth about the second half of the 20th Century it is that, by all accounts, we started moving out rather than up; horizontal rather than vertical. Not only through the process of suburbanization, the building of massive highways, and the rapid capital flight from cities, but also in how we designed everything from our homes to our workplaces. 

It could be said that, since the development of major highways, America has flattened -- much in the same way that the invention of both the elevator and air conditioning brought skyscrapers to every major city in the first half of the 20th century. 

I-55 Under Construction, 1972. Public Domain. 

In his 1984 book Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, John Brinckerhoff Jackson observes this transition: 

“Who has not noticed...that in almost every American town the upper stories of the buildings flanking Main Street are being deserted?...Despite all the activity on the street floor, the second and third and fourth floors of the older brick buildings are no longer in demand. Not many years ago, they accomodated the offices of lawyers and dentists and doctors; dance studios and certified public accountants. Now the gold lettering has vanished from the windows, and even the street door leading to the stairs is blocked. Sooner or later, the buildings themselves will be torn down, to be replaced by one-story buildings or parking lots.” (68)

Jackson attributes this decline in vertical spaces to technological changes. Sprawling manufacturing plants with mile long assembly lines make more sense logistically than having workflow between stories. “An efficiently planned office,” he notes “is now seen as a system of information flow, most flexible, most effective when horizontal.” Even new skyscrapers are less like the ones from the recent past, described as “... a stack of large, uninterrupted horizontal spaces: vastly improved construction methods have made this spaciousness possible.” (69)

The technology of the car has created for us a new way of perceiving the environment around us. Jackson cites “increased mobility, and even more, an experience of uninterrupted speed...bring with them a sharpened awareness of horizontal space.” (70) Vertical space can’t be seen as easily from the car, the de facto way of getting around in America. 

Residential Horizontalization

This transformation began with the Federal Housing Act of 1934, which established the Federal Housing Administration. The FHA originally provided home loans to qualifying (read: white) families during the Great Depression, as part of the New Deal, in an attempt to stabilize the mortgage market. 

The FHA came to the forefront after WWII, when the Housing Act of 1949 began to systematically dismantle cities while simultaneously setting the guidelines of suburban sprawl. The Housing Act of 1949 worked in three parts: 

1.) Federal financing for slum clearance (often coupled with highway building) 2.) Promised 800,000 units of public housing (the act actually destroyed more units of housing than it built) 3.) Increased financing for rural home loans and gave the FHA more authority to issue mortgages. 

Poster from the 1940s.

This act had a devastating effect on cities. Not only did slum clearance destroy entire neighborhoods (often drawn along racial lines) and frequently replace them with highways (out to the suburbs!!), the process of Redlining (outlining areas deemed “high risk” and not worth issuing mortgages in, often in the inner city, almost always racially based) and the high preference for FHA-planned suburban communities over urban areas all but guaranteed a fully subsidized white flight from the cities. 

What little public housing was built quickly fell into decline, as maintenance costs were tied to tenant rents - this, coupled with resistance to forced integration after Brown v Board of Education (1954) from whites led to their rapid depopulation of public housing. As a result, the remaining tenants could not offset the costs of empty units. This, coupled with a high youth density (unsupervised youths were often the cause of many maintenance problems - even benign ones, like breaking the elevators playing games of ‘elevator tag’), meant that existing public housing was quickly deteriorating. It was this combination of socioeconomic circumstances that led to the decline, and ultimately, the failure of the infamous Pruitt-Igoe housing complex in St. Louis, Missouri. 

[For those of you who are interested in the policies and history of public housing, I recommend the books Public Housing Myths, and In Defense of Housing.]

The FHA and Suburb Planning

The FHA’s guidelines for issuing mortgages after the 1949 Housing Act centered around wide lots with driveways on streets organized to deter traffic, which had become a huge problem now that everyone had a car. 

These wandering neighborhoods were often attached to arterial roads, but built with few entrances to these busy thoroughfares. Zoning was a huge part of why the curvilinear streets and island-like neighborhoods developed: the FHA was more likely to sponsor home loans to those looking to purchase a home in single-family residential zoned areas as part of its goal to protect lots from “adjacent non-conforming uses.”

However, it wasn’t always this way. In the earlier post-war suburbs, the FHA suggested subdivisions that were close to school, churches, the occasional commercial unit, and parks. What changed this was the 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act, better known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, which subsidized the construction of over a million miles of local and interstate highways. After these roads expanded exponentially, planning for less traffic meant sprawling deep into the countryside and the beginning of entirely new horizontal landscapes. 

Garlinghouse Home Catalog insert from c. 1950

These policies imitated themselves in the architecture of common houses. The little post-war (white) working and middle-class Minimal Traditional house extended itself into the Ranch and Split-Level forms as lots grew larger and neighborhoods less dense. It was at this point that attached garages became ubiquitous, as car use had become increasingly necessary, cushioned by the increased lot size of the late 50s and beyond. 

Catalog from 1958. Via Archive.org 

Northern Homes Catalog, c. Mid 60s. Public Domain. 

For those who are curious, the origin of the McMansion lies in the Styled Ranches first popular in the 1930s in Hollywood and in more wealthier areas in the 1950s-1970s - these houses began the process of taking a basic built form (a Ranch) and applying various cladding materials and stylistic details to make it seem more elegant. For one-story McMansions, these houses are their predecessors. 

Styled Ranch (note the pitch of the roof) from the 1970s

The Split-Level ensured that two-story homes became hot commodities amongst middle class homeowners. By the early 1980s, (after the end of the Energy Crisis) homeowners rejected the low ceiling height of the ranches and split-levels, and, coupled with less expensive building materials and riskier mortgages, the McMansion had arrived. Their massiveness of scale was, perhaps, the only verticalization that occurred during this time.

Commercial Horizontalization

The depletion of urban density was not just a matter of people moving to little boxes on winding streets. Business moved as well. Factories, once located in dense urban settings, moved to the suburbs, where massive horizontal plants were created to streamline the work process. After all, the assembly line works horizontally. 

If you’ve ever traveled outside of Chicago, you pass through the exurb of Naperville. While also being a verifiable McMansion Hell (perhaps no group of people own more McMansions than the managerial class), the I-88 corridor from Naperville to Aurora offers one of the most spectacular arrays of office parks in existence. Uncommonly more than five floors and rarely more than ten, these monoliths languidly straddle the flat prairie landscape, neatly bundled up by ribbons of highway. 

Helmut Jahn’s interesting “N” Building off of I-88, Naperville, Illinois. 

After WWII, corporations began a new way of organizing their businesses in order to adapt to new means of national and later international expansion. The new system was called “managerial capitalism” described by Louise A. Mozingo as “a transparent, rationalized administrative hierarchy... Rather than conferring positions based on ownership or nepotism, corporations awarded management authority to a meritocracy of salaried, professional managers.” (3)

The bosses and managers needed a new space along the same highway as the new factory (perhaps deliberately away from the workers themselves) and more amenable to expansion and technological development. It was for them that the modern office park was born. 

It wasn’t just the office park - the highway also brought upon the world one of the most ubiquitous forms of building: the strip mall. 

But how did this sudden transformation come about? In her book about corporate campuses, Pastoral Capitalism, Mozingo details exactly how the entire commercial world was scattered across the formal countryside:

“At the city’s edge, an effective alliance of well-financed real estate investors, large property owners, local governments, federal loan guarantors, and utopian planners opened property for speedy development. Building along federal- and state-funded road systems that brought these large tracts of land into the economy of metropolitan regions, this alliance conceived of low-density, auto-accessed landscapes of highly specified uses with plenty of parking, and wrote these forms into stringent zoning and building regulations.” (8)

The car-oriented technocracy of mid-century urban planning, emerging global capitalism, and government policies, completely terraformed the American landscape and made it, well, a landscape - horizontal in shape and in scope.  Perhaps the most ironic aspect of these new developments is the appropriation of what they replaced. The banal, pastoral names of greenfield housing developments, malls, and strip malls, is but a memory of the eradicated landscape: Rolling Acres, Greenmeadow Heights, Slate Hills at Elysian Farms.

Photo by Sara Goth (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Re-Verticalization

In the cities, one by one, the lights of the old upper stories began to flicker out, entire avenues permanently for lease. The popularity of so-called “ruin porn” attests to the kind of nostalgic longing these old spaces engender in people young and old. 

But curiously enough, the edge is becoming the center once more. Old derelict factories become spacious lofts, skyscrapers repopulate, uses become mixed, the lights begin again to flicker in the upper stories. For those with the financial mobility, the city is becoming vertical once more. As for the rest of us?

There is an ongoing and heady discussion about the repopulation of the cities. This essay is not the place for this discussion. As the infrastructure of the suburbs begins to wither and fray; as the malls close and the For Lease signs begin to shift from the city block to the office park, it is an interesting time to witness the shift of the American landscape back into some semblance of verticality.

The 20th Century saw the simultaneous birth of skyscrapers in the first half, and the mass flattening of the landscape in the second half. This massive transformation occurred at such a blistering pace, it became the new normal within twenty years, the flattening process seen only in hindsight. We’re running out of folks who remember the world before the hegemony of the car. 

Abandoned Packard Auto Plant in Detroit. Photo by John Duce (CC BY-SA 3.0)

A few years ago, I woke up one day and read that the malls were dying. This news was shocking to me, despite the fact that I hadn’t been to a mall myself in years. Their sudden appearance and proliferation in the late 50s must have been seen as an equally surprising shock.

The purpose of Looking Around is to encourage people to take a critical look at the world they live in -- to appreciate its nuances, and take note of its changes. For those of us who pass by life at 45-80 miles per hour (often not by choice but rather necessity), it’s easy for these changes to blur into the fabric of endlessly horizontal scenery. For those of us in the cities, the news of the vacating office park surprises us, because we tend to believe that the edges - the burbs - are forever. Without taking a second to notice the day-to-day changes, one day we’ll wake up, flip on the news, and the whole world will suddenly be vertical again. 

If you like this post, and want to see more like it, consider supporting me on Patreon! Also JUST A HEADS UP - I’ve started posting a GOOD HOUSE built since 1980 from the area where I picked this week’s McMansion as bonus content on Patreon!

Not into small donations and sick bonus content? Check out the McMansion Hell Store ! 100% of the proceeds from the McMansion Hell store will go to help victims of Hurricanes Harvey & Irma

Copyright Disclaimer: All photographs are used in this post under fair use for the purposes of education, satire, and parody, consistent with 17 USC §107. Manipulated photos are considered derivative work and are Copyright © 2017 McMansion Hell. Please email kate@mcmansionhell.com before using these images on another site. (am v chill about this)

[jovencydotcom]

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[multipleservicelisting]

Caligula’s Garden of Delights, Unearthed and Restored

The fourth of the 12 Caesars, Caligula — officially, Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus — was a capricious, combustible first-century populist remembered, perhaps unfairly, as the empire’s most tyrannical ruler. As reported by Suetonius, the Michael Wolff of ancient Rome, he never forgot a slight, slept only a few hours a night and married several times, lastly to a woman named Milonia.

During the four years that Caligula occupied the Roman throne, his favorite hideaway was an imperial pleasure garden called Horti Lamiani, the Mar-a-Lago of its day. The vast residential compound spread out on the Esquiline Hill, one of the seven hills on which the city was originally built, in the area around the current Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II.

There, just on the edge of the city, villas, shrines and banquet halls were set in carefully constructed “natural” landscapes. An early version of a wildlife park, the Horti Lamiani featured orchards, fountains, terraces, a bath house adorned with precious colored marble from all over the Mediterranean, and exotic animals, some of which were used, as in the Colosseum, for private circus games.

When Caligula was assassinated in his palace on the Palatine Hill in 41 A.D., his body was carried to the Horti Lamiani, where he was cremated and hastily buried before being moved to the Mausoleum of Augustus on the Campus Martius, north of the Capitoline Hill. According to Suetonius, the elite garden was haunted by Caligula’s ghost.

Historians have long believed that the remains of the lavish houses and parkland would never be recovered. But this spring, Italy’s Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Cultural Activities and Tourism will open the Nymphaeum Museum of Piazza Vittorio, a subterranean gallery that will showcase a section of the imperial garden that was unearthed during an excavation from 2006 to 2015. The dig, carried out beneath the rubble of a condemned 19th-century apartment complex, yielded gems, coins, ceramics, jewelry, pottery, cameo glass, a theater mask, seeds of plants such as citron, apricot and acacia that had been imported from Asia, and bones of peacocks, deer, lions, bears and ostriches.

“The ruins tell extraordinary stories, starting with the animals,” said Mirella Serlorenzi, the culture ministry’s director of excavations. “It is not hard to imagine animals, some caged and some running wild, in this enchanted setting.” The science of antiquities department of the Sapienza University of Rome collaborated on the project.

The objects and structural remnants on display in the museum paint a vivid picture of wealth, power and opulence. Among the stunning examples of ancient Roman artistry are elaborate mosaics and frescoes, a marble staircase, capitals of colored marble and limestone, and an imperial guard’s bronze brooch inset with gold and mother-of-pearl. “All the most refined objects and art produced in the Imperial Age turned up,” Dr. Serlorenzi said.

The classicist Daisy Dunn said the finds were even more extravagant than scholars had anticipated. “The frescoes are incredibly ornate and of a very high decorative standard,” noted Dr. Dunn, whose book “In The Shadow of Vesuvius” is a dual biography of Pliny the Elder — a contemporary of Caligula’s — and his nephew Pliny the Younger. “Given the descriptions of Caligula’s licentious lifestyle and appetite for luxury, we might have expected the designs to be quite gauche.”

The Horti Lamiani were commissioned by Lucius Aelius Lamia, a wealthy senator and consul who bequeathed his property to the emperor, most likely during the reign of his friend Tiberius from A.D. 14 to 37. When Caligula succeeded him — it is rumored that Caligula and the Praetorian Guard prefect Macro hastened the death of Tiberius by smothering him with a pillow — he moved into the main house.

In an evocative eyewitness account, the philosopher Philo, who visited the estate in A.D. 40 on behalf of the Jews of Alexandria, and his fellow emissaries had to trail behind Caligula as he inspected the sumptuous residences “examining the men’s rooms and the women’s rooms … and giving orders to make them more costly.” The emperor, wrote Philo, “ordered the windows to be filled up with transparent stones resembling white crystal that do not hinder the light, but which keep out the wind and the heat of the sun.”

Evidence suggests that after Caligula’s violent death — he was hacked to bits by his bodyguards — the house and garden survived at least until the Severan dynasty, which ruled from A.D. 193 to 235. By the fourth century, the gardens had apparently fallen into desuetude, and statuary in the abandoned pavilions was broken into pieces to build the foundations of a series of spas. The statues were not discovered until 1874, three years after Rome was made the capital of the newly unified Kingdom of Italy. With the Esquiline Hill in the midst of a building boom, the Italian archaeologist Rodolfo Lanciani nosed around freshly excavated construction sites and uncovered an immense gallery with an alabaster floor and fluted columns of giallo antico, considered the finest of the yellow marbles.

He later stumbled upon a rich deposit of classical sculptures that, at some point in the horti’s history, had been deliberately hidden to protect them. The treasures included the Lancellotti Discobolus, now housed at the National Museum of Rome; the Esquiline Venus and a bust of Commodus depicted as Hercules, now at the Capitoline Museums. In short time, the sculptures were carted off, the foundation of an apartment building was laid, and the ancient ruins were reburied.

The latest excavation of the horti unfolded under the detritus of the residences, which had been evacuated in the 1970s in the wake of a building collapse. Much like the 2012 exhumation of Richard III in Leicester, England, the unburying involved a modern parking site.

Sixteen years ago, the three-and-a-half-acre property was purchased by Enpam, a private foundation that manages pensions for Italian doctors and dentists. Exploratory core drilling for a new headquarters and a six-level underground garage brought forth a wealth of first-century relics, from the type of window glass described by Philo to lead pipes stamped with the name of Claudius, Caligula’s uncle and successor.

As construction crews erected the five-story office building, archaeologists in a trench 18 feet below street level gingerly screened and scraped away soil. In a study lab across town, paleobotanists and archaeozoologists analyzed fragments, and researchers painstakingly repaired a 10-foot-high wall fresco painted with pigment made from ground cinnabar. The entire $3.5 million conservation and restoration project was underwritten by Enpam.

Ground was broken for the Nymphaeum Museum in 2017. “The new space, in the basement of Enpam, brings to light one of the mythical places of the empire’s capital, one of the garden residences loved by the emperors,” said Daniela Porro, the museum director.

What all of this does for Caligula’s seemingly irredeemable reputation is an open question. He emerges from Suetonius’s “The Twelve Caesars,” written 80 years after the emperor was bumped off, as utterly depraved: having incestuous relationships with his sisters, sleeping with anyone he liked the look of, using criminals as food for his wild beasts when beef became too pricey and insisting that a loyal subject who had vowed to give his own life if the emperor survived an illness should carry through on his promise and die.

Mary Beard, a professor of classics at Cambridge University, posited that while Caligula might have been assassinated because he was a monster, it is equally possible that he was made into a monster because he was assassinated. In “SPQR,” her rich history of ancient Rome, she argues that “it is hard to resist the conclusion that, whatever kernel of truth they might have, the stories told about him are an inextricable mixture of fact, exaggeration, willful misinterpretation and outright invention — largely constructed after his death, and largely for the benefit of the new emperor, Claudius.”

Whether Caligula got a raw deal from history is a subject of hot and unyielding debate. “There is clearly some bias in the sources,” Dr. Dunn allowed. “But even without that, it is difficult to envision him as a good emperor. I doubt these new discoveries will do much to rehabilitate his character. But they should open up new vistas onto his world, and reveal it to be every bit as paradisiacal as he desired it to be.”

from Multiple Service Listing https://ift.tt/3bDBxNi

[secretradiobrooklyn]

HALLOWEEN RADIO | 10.31.20

Secret Radio | Halloween special 10.31.20 | Hear it here.

Artwork by Paige, Liner notes by Evan except * means Paige

1. Sam the Sham - “Little Red Riding Hood” *

I had to make the case to Evan that this was a Halloween song, but I justify with the fact that 1.) this song uses the phrase “spooky ol’ woods” and 2.) many years ago, Sleepy Kitty played a festival on Cherokee Street that wasn’t a Halloween show but it happened to be the Saturday before Halloween. Recognizing our responsibility, we scrambled to throw together costumes and realized that if we just got a wolf mask and paws we already  had everything in our wardrobes to throw together the Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs LP cover drawing of Red and the wolf. Evan says he doesn’t like Halloween but it’s only because once he commits, he commits completely. One of my favorite moments of the night was spotting Evan that night, several hours after our set in the afternoon, having a completely serious and sincere conversation with a friend – wolf nose and paws still intact. This was pre iPhone days, but I tracked down an image and I’m gonna put it on our fake radio insta. Thus, Little Red Riding Hood is in fact a Halloween song. 

2. Roky Erickson - “I Walked with a Zombie”

Every year, reliably, Paige’s dad Ned tells us we should cover “I Walked with a Zombie,” and each year we somehow don’t do it. So this live version of the song is for him, just in case this is the closest we ever get. 

Halloween tag

3. Steve Martin - Little Shop of Horrors soundtrack - “Dentist!”

Sure, an alarmingly large and hungry, sharp-toothed plant is scary. But is it as terrifying as a dentist who delights in the pain he inflicts? “I thrill when I drill a bicuspid” — shiver!

4. Hocus Pocus soundtrack - “Sarah’s Theme”

Our definition of a good Halloween movie is way less horrifying than it is lightly spooky, so “Hocus Pocus” is just about ideal for our purposes. This is the sound of Paige’s delighted Halloween youth… though we also just watched it again. Holds up! 

5. The Beatles - “Mr. Moonlight”

Paige pointed out that this is essentially a religious song to the moon — a song of praise, devotion, and submission to a greater power. 

6. Quasi - “Ghost vs. Vampire”

I know that Quasi has had a long and illustrious career, but my fandom is frozen at this pinnacle of mystical bummerness. I learned so much about being creatively sad from Sam Coomes.

7. Rocky Horror Picture Show - “Sweet Transvestite” 

8. The Velvet Underground - “The Gift”

Didn’t realize this was a Halloween song until tonight. If Hitchcock is proper Halloween, which I vote a definite yes, then “The Gift” is ultra Halloween.

9. Bauhaus - “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” 

I feel like I have to say psychic hello to my friend Joseph Grady, who first introduced me not just to the coolness of Peter Murphy but to the allure of vampires generally. I wore my nails and my coats long. We talked about what the vampires were up to that night. We had some truly perfect nights together.

10. The Bitter Tears - “Murdered at the Bar”

An invaluable prize from being in a certain scene in a certain set of years in Chicago with the School of the Art Institute crowd — grad and undergrad. We all loved this song, and 15 or so years later, “we all” turns out to be a very specific and much-loved crew of people I miss and love. Except for Chris Shea, who I love and get to hang out with here in the city. This song is for him especially. 

11. Phantom of the Opera - Korean cast - “Point of No Return”

We had this epiphany accidentally. As I recall, we watched the movie version of “Phantom,” and I was distinctly not impressed, but then Paige put on the French-Canadian version and we were both fascinated by how different it was. That led us into Phantom Internationalé, wherein we just looked up versions from all over the world. It is amazing: each version is both militantly like and distinctly unique from the others. The Korean Phantom emerges as the most singular from among the versions we heard, and “Point of No Return” an emotional height.

Meet Me in St. Louis - “Tootie the Horrible”

One of the greatest Halloween scenes in the history of cinema in our book. 

12. Donovan - “Season of the Witch”

13. “The Dweller of the Cave” * I Found this tape at my parents’ house this summer while we were delayed in Illinois between March and whenever the van got fixed and we drove back. Rediscovering this tape may be why you’re listening to this whole fake radio spooktacular tonight. Hi to Stewart and Jill. 

14. Science Fiction Double Feature *

15. Dr. Who Theme Song*

16. Red Dwarf Theme Song* 

The previous 3 songs were woven into a medley for Sleepy Kitty’s KMNR Freaker’s Ball. It’s one of life’s great pleasures for a band to play Freaker’s Ball, we literally wound around a wooded road to find some Elk’s Lodge or something full of college kids DECKED THE HECK OUT in EPIC COSTUMES ready to freakin’ get down. Never have I been closer to being the band in the prom scene of a 90s movie than at a Freaker’s Ball. We met some rad folks through the KMNR scene, and if I’ve ever told you about my custom vocal pedals, Colin of CroyTone Audio was one of those rad folks we met one of those magical nights. Also, raise your hand if your love Red Dwarf!

17. Ghostbusters 

Paige: “I had this reflector, this flat reflector that was some scrap of something that Ned got from Honeywell. I would play Ghostbusters, and I was like: ‘This is a ghost trap.’ It was SO REAL to me. It was this flat reflector, like a bike reflector, and I would like, like, set traps. And I’d be like, ‘Don’t move my ghost trap!’ I would set the ghost trap, and it was like fishing for ghosts. But that was me playing. I would, like, wait. …I don’t know if it worked or not.”

“I’m not sure if this is me imagining this or not, but I’m pretty sure there was a day where I was like, ‘I feel like this trap’s not working.’ But I also feel like I was like, ‘But how would I know? They could be all inside. This is either full — or empty.’”

Vertigo soundtrack

18. The Fall - “Frightened”

“I don’t wanna dance, I wanna go home” — Fri-dund! 

19. Goblin - “Zombi” Title Theme

20. Karen Elson - “The Ghost Who Walks”

I think we got this record at Third Man Records when we were playing in Nashville. Sean’s new residence! 

Paige: “Karen Elson is tall, beautiful, an interesting musician, AND she has red hair. That’s crazy. What are the chances that you would have all of those things? Talk about a blue moon!”

21. Eartha Kitt - “I Want to Be Evil”

“The only etchings I’ve seen have been behind glass.” 

22. Jeffrey Lewis & Los Bolts - “The Pigeon”

“Old skies you flapped through are no more.”

We would like to give a heartfelt hello to Yona Schimmel, mostly out of reach for now. We mourn every missed knish.

23. Scott Walker - “The Seventh Seal”

Paige didn’t know this was a movie, she thought this was just a cool song about a guy playing chess with death.

24. Groovie Ghoulies - “(She’s My) Vampire Girl”

I love that he puts two Bazooka Joe jokes right in the middle of the song.

25. Black Sabbath - “Paranoid”

Sometimes you need priests to summon spirits. 

26. Fantasia - “A Night on Bald Mountain”

This is a song that seriously disturbed Paige when she was young. She thought that they did this whole demon thing every single Saturday. For me, it made such an impression that, when each of my young friends and I improvised who we were — “I’m Darth Vader!” “I’m a Cylon Raider!” my take was “I’m Night on Bald Mountain”! And I would open my arms wide and pretend that I was an entire sharp mountaintop transforming into a giant demon with wings, and I would always be the biggest and baddest and scariest creature of all, no matter what they thought. Bald Mountain beats Batman every time.

29. “Jump in the Fire”

Or as I say whenever the occasion warrants: “Jump in the show-AHH!” 

28. Rogers & Hammerstein “Pore Jud Is Daid”

29. Barry Adamson - “Something Wicked This Way Comes”

I cannot recall what brought this album to my ears… I suspect it was something I got in my inbox when I worked at The Rocket. This whole album is full of heavy musical grooves and heavy mental movement. It’s a rare pleasure in 

30. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “I Put a Spell on You”

This is straight-up one of my favorite recordings of anyone ever. And when I eventually saw it enacted in “Stranger than Paradise,” I was blown away by how fundamentally Eastern European it sounds. Every sound he makes with his voice creates new characters. 

31. The Shining, “Midnight, the Stars & You”

Happy halloween my friends, I wish we were all at an otherwordly dance together.

[antalyaveenersdoctor1-blog]

Ideas On How To Discover The Best Dental Clinic

It is really good to be a dentist. This is among the most honorable and rewarding professions out there. It is actually crucial for individuals to focus on their dental and oral health. It is of the essence for them to truly speak with dentists. You would really have a nice profession and you would likewise be getting good monetary advantages from this aside from being able to control your schedule if you are a dentist. If you have your own practice, you would actually get the opportunity to own your own service in essence. Simply like with any service, it is important that you develop an excellent design for your place. A nice dental workplace design ought to then be made. Learn some pointers for this.

If you think oral cancer is most likely among the "less major" kinds of the disease, believe once again. Your dental expert can tell you that the implications stemming from oral cancer can result in some extremely severe issues, consisting of death. The problem with oral cancer is that those who are unfortunate adequate to contract it don't often capture it early. Sores go neglected or undetected, which allows the cancer to spread. Regular oral consultations and an abundance of caution can avoid this scenario.

A better suited target market for the Dentist is a regional PTA group for the school around the corner; that would be a great choice. You know that within the membership of that group there will be individuals that might use your services and the decision makers to make that choice exist as well.

Please note one thing; working with a coach, to help you improve the different locations of your life, requires commitment! The process is most likely to take numerous months and you should be prepared to "do the work" that supports affecting modification in your life. If you are not totally antalya dental clinic dedicated to the procedure, the outcome will be disappointment (for both of you) and failure, not to mention a lot of money spent on nothing! Impacting significant modification will require time. Old practices will require to be broken and brand-new, encouraging practices produced. It took you years to get where you are today, so it is unreasonable to anticipate that achievement of your goals will take place in just a couple of weeks!

If the pain is really excruciating, an extremely severe condition might exist, and it is no longer a concern of if you can't pay for a dentist. At this point, you can't pay for NOT to see a dental expert or the emergency situation space. Of course, if you can't pay for a dental practitioner, you probably can't pay for an emergency situation space check out, however you would likely seek help if the pain were in other places in your head. Try some other alternatives if you don't feel the pain warrants such a trip.

This is one law McDonalds must take all the way to the Supreme Court. They have the cash. When last figures were readily available in 2006 McDonalds spent $520 million dollars on marketing and toys for the children. McDonald's has enough cash to settle the national financial obligation. Is this another of those "spread the wealth things?" McDonalds İmplant is one of the largest business in America that hires teenagers when most business do not.

Moving into a brand-new city or community? Are you unhappy with your present household dentistry practice? In any case, you require to start looking for a new medical professional soon. To start your search, the very best thing anyone can do is to ask around. Speak with colleagues, friends, next-door neighbors, and anyone close for their advice on the service they are getting. Ask those with households, and be sure to discover if they have any pointers or suggestions on the kind of services you will need in your household. This will get you entering the ideal instructions, and it will be nice to have people's viewpoints on practices in the location.

Even if you need to speak with the plants in your house, do so. The more you talk with them in, the more most likely you are to get utilized to the method they feel. They really are not likely to fall out, though when you initially get them you might feel as though this is taking place all the time. Practice makes ideal and talking, even to your family pet, can help you to ideal the procedure.

Have you been delaying your appointment with the dental practitioner for the longest time due to the fact that simply the really believed fills you with fear? If you have been then quicker or later on that do not have of guts to go to the dental expert is going to haunt you and it will pass by the time or the place. You might suddenly awaken in the middle of the night with the most agonizing pain coming from your tooth. Since it is the middle of the night and there is not a single Dental Clinic that is open at this hour then your only choice is to call an.

Bleaching Gels. Because they're much easier to use and are handier to carry everywhere, these come in pen kind and are much more efficient than the gels that are used with trays. You merely brush and floss like you typically do, and then apply the gel onto your teeth. Leave the service for 60 seconds, and after that rinse.

Keeping these things in mind while looking for your new family dental professional can ensure that you are supplying them with the very best care possible. For such a crucial thing as oral health, taking these actions prior to choosing will make your experiences far more enjoyable.

[paulbenedictblog]

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Usa today Cricket fries, the seats of government, bighorn release: News from around our 50 states

Usa today

Usa today Alabama

Birmingham: Months of complications for day-to-day commuters, long-haul drivers and downtown companies grasp reach to an halt with the reopening of Interstate 59/20 by town. Workers grasp nearly carried out finishing touches esteem yellow striping and placing in signs on a mile-long a part of the toll road that used to be demolished and rebuilt after the dilapidated boulevard used to be shut down just a few three hundred and sixty five days previously. The project forced east-west visitors to fetch alternate routes by Birmingham. Officials opened the westbound lanes Friday night after a ribbon-reducing ceremony, and all facets were launch by Sunday night. The land under the elevated boulevard will be aged for community areas along side parks and meals truck parking in what planners hope will be a technique to tie together the north and south facets of town, the place a unusual outside football stadium is being constructed come I-59/20.

Usa today Alaska

Anchorage: A dentist who won notoriety after he used to be seen in a video utilizing a hoverboard and pulling tooth used to be convicted Friday of defrauding the Alaska Medicaid program. Seth Lookhart used to be convicted of 46 counts, along side felony medical assistance fraud and scheming to defraud, as successfully as misdemeanor counts of illegally practising dentistry and reckless endangerment, prosecutors acknowledged. The conviction adopted a five-week bench trial earlier than Anchorage Superior Court Exhaust Michael Wolverton, who acknowledged in a written discovering that he chanced on the articulate’s evidence “merely overwhelming.” He also acknowledged Lookhart’s grasp textual relate material conversations were persuasive. Friends had requested Lookhart how he obtained away with about a of his practices. “Dr. Lookhart responded, in pause, that until any individual used to be standing loyal subsequent to him on the time, no one would ever know,” Wolverton wrote.

Usa today Arizona

Phoenix: The articulate’s budding hemp-growing business is suffering growing disaster as phases of THC which would possibly maybe per chance be too high force some farmers to assassinate crops in plan of harvesting them. About 41% of hemp flora tested for THC, the compound that offers marijuana its high, grasp failed, in response to the Arizona Division of Agriculture’s Plant Products and companies Division, which oversees this system. Growers in a bunch of states spherical the nation grasp had points managing the THC relate material of hemp flora, however none as much as in Arizona’s early months. The articulate began issuing hemp-growing licenses to farmers in 2019, and harvesting started later that three hundred and sixty five days. “At 40%, that’s off the charts,” Sully Sullivan, govt director of the Hemp Industry Alternate Association of Arizona, acknowledged of the articulate’s THC findings. “I’m a good deal surprised by that. That’s grand.”

Usa today Arkansas

Pine Bluff: Penal advanced officials acknowledged Sunday that a articulate penal advanced inmate has died after being chanced on inserting in his cell. The articulate Division of Correction acknowledged in a recordsdata liberate that David Shabazz, 53, used to be chanced on by guards about 6: 30 p.m. Saturday in his one-man cell, inserting from a mattress sheet that used to be wrapped spherical the cell’s bars. The division acknowledged Shabazz used to be taken to a Pine Bluff health facility, the place he used to be pronounced tiresome almost instantly earlier than 7: 30 p.m. The division acknowledged Shabazz used to be sentenced to 20 years in penal advanced in 2002 following a drug-associated conviction in Miller County and used to be later paroled however used to be abet in custody for being a parole absconder. Shabazz’s physique used to be despatched to the articulate medical examiner to search out out the placement off of loss of life, and the loss of life will be being investigated by Arkansas Direct Police.

Usa today California

San Francisco: The San Francisco Zoo is retaining a web-based contest to name its latest koala, and it’s pledging to donate the proceeds to put flora and fauna tormented by Australia’s deadly wildfires. The San Francisco Story experiences the two-three hundred and sixty five days-dilapidated male arrived from the Los Angeles Zoo, the place he used to be diagnosed as Flin. He will get to plan halt a unusual id in his unusual home, on the opposite hand, following the San Francisco Zoo’s fundraising tradition of allowing donors to name unusual arrivals. The winner of the name-the-koala contest will be chosen subsequent month, and proceeds will be despatched to an emergency flora and fauna fund organized by Australia’s Zoos Victoria. Australia’s unparalleled wildfires season has to this level charred extra than 40,000 sq. miles of brushland, rainforests and nationwide parks – killing by one estimate extra than a billion wild animals.

Usa today Colorado

Denver: A proposal to rewrite the articulate’s rules for plan of labor harassment claims is expected to be launched almost instantly on the Capitol. It would substitute things for employers by limiting utilizing confidentiality agreements in courtroom and would doubtlessly create companies liable even supposing an person doesn’t reach ahead internally earlier than filing a lawsuit. The invoice would also substitute things for group by allowing impartial contractors, subcontractors and unpaid interns to file harassment claims, Colorado Public Radio experiences. All workers would be given two years to file a complaint, up from six months now. “With the gig financial system that now we grasp on the display time, increasingly folks don’t grasp usual jobs in the dilapidated sense,” acknowledged most definitely the most invoice’s foremost sponsors, Bag. Susan Lontine, D-Denver. “And in addition they don’t grasp any methodology to address after they’ve been harmed by harassment.”

Usa today Connecticut

New London: Extra than $56 million has been raised to manufacture a Flee Guard museum. The Day newspaper experiences the National Flee Guard Museum Association has secured $15 million in federal funds, $21 million in internal most donations and $20 million by articulate borrowing for the downtown New London waterfront project. Wes Pulver, the museum affiliation’s president and a retired Flee Guard captain, says the tranquil fundraising tally is a “foremost” accomplishment. The newspaper says the museum to repeat the story of the Flee Guard is projected to worth on the very least $100 million. Building used to be supposed to originate up early this three hundred and sixty five days however has been pushed abet toward the halt of 2020, The Day experiences. The 80,000-sq.-foot, five-story, in part glass building is expected to fetch four years to manufacture.

Usa today Delaware

Wilmington: Prolonged-proposed plans to outfit police in the articulate’s largest city with physique cameras can also goal now hinge on negotiations with the police union later this three hundred and sixty five days. The union that represents Wilmington officers has told the mayor’s administration any disciplinary procedures or consequences stemming from a physique camera program would constitute a condition of employment that needs to be negotiated earlier than officers originate up wearing them. The union’s labor contract with town expires June 30. The occasions grasp now not but begun negotiations. Proposals to outfit officers with physique cameras were mentioned since 2015. Activists grasp renewed the demand them in the aftermath of two police shootings final three hundred and sixty five days. The collection of municipalities across the nation utilizing physique cameras has grown drastically following high-profile police shootings of unarmed sunless men.

Usa today District of Columbia

Washington: Amtrak has apologized to civil rights prison knowledgeable Sherrilyn Ifill after she acknowledged she used to be requested to present up her seat on a put together on the beginning up of Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. Ifill described the incident – which sparked outrage from observers who drew comparisons of the indignities sunless civil rights icons confronted – in a series of tweets over the weekend. “I’m being requested to head away my seat on put together 80 which I appropriate boarded in D.C. There are no assigned seats on this put together. The conductor has requested me to head away my seat because she has ‘a bunch of oldsters coming who she wants to present this seat.’ Are you able to please level to?” she tweeted tiresome Friday afternoon to about a 166,000 followers. The internationally diagnosed prison knowledgeable, pupil and activist wrote in but any other tweet: “is it 1950?” Jason Abrams, an Amtrak spokesman, told The Baltimore Solar the firm apologized for the incident and its leisurely response.

Usa today Florida

Tallahassee: Direct lawmakers are transmitting a recordsdata bulletin: The telegraph skills is over. Sooner than there used to be instant messaging, emails and even corded telephones, there used to be the legit telegraph to instantaneously transmit messages in all locations. Now, folks turn to the fetch, textual relate material messaging, Twitter, gifs and emojis to write their long-distance notes. While thumbing by a volume of Florida prison pointers, articulate Bag. Tommy Gregory and a colleague got right here upon dilapidated statutes regulating the telegraph business. “I puzzled if they were now dilapidated,” acknowledged Gregory, a former lieutenant colonel in the Air Power who has moved to bound the prison pointers out of the articulate’s books. A articulate Home committee on Wednesday agreed unanimously to repeal Chapter 363 of the Florida Statute in its entirety. One lawmaker cheekily registered his vote by utilizing his fingers to faucet into the dais as if utilizing Morse code.

Usa today Georgia

Atlanta: A articulate agency says dozens of counties statewide will part $166,000 in grant money to bewitch child automobile seats. The Georgia Division of Public Health acknowledged in a recordsdata liberate that automobile seats will be distributed among 107 counties utilizing money awarded from the Child Passenger Security Mini Grant program. “Motor automobile crashes are a number one location off of loss of life for children, and it’s up to all of us to enact the total lot we are in a position to to protect our children on the boulevard,” Public Health Commissioner Kathleen Toomey acknowledged. “Buckling up our children is the most productive methodology to put lives and cut accidents.” Funding for the security grants comes from the Governor’s Place of business of Motorway Security. The grants also red meat up community applications that educate fogeys and caregivers learn how to properly discover about, install and spend child automobile seats.

Usa today Hawaii

Honolulu: Tax collections in the articulate were up by about 5% final three hundred and sixty five days, a document says. The articulate Division of Taxation despatched the annual document in December to Democratic Gov. David Ige and the Legislature, Hawaii Tribune-Herald experiences. The document showed $8.2 billion used to be aloof in fiscal three hundred and sixty five days 2019, which ended June 30, in contrast to $7.9 billion aloof the three hundred and sixty five days prior. Earnings from the frequent excise tax and income tax accounted for a good deal of of the expand, division officials acknowledged. Hawaii County obtained $10.2 million from its frequent excise tax of 0.25% however is expected to expand its fetch after the tax went up to the most 0.5% on the beginning up of the unusual three hundred and sixty five days, the document says.

Usa today Idaho

Boise: Boise Fry Co. is along side crickets to the want of seasoning-salt combos it affords customers to sprinkle on their french fries. The in the community owned restaurant chain debuted four unusual salt blends final week that comprise pulverized crickets at its three areas in Boise and one every in Meridian and Nampa, the Idaho Statesman experiences. The response has been overwhelming, with reactions mostly particular, though some folks are a little little bit of alarmed, CEO Brad Walker says. “Some were ‘right here's icky,’ and others were ‘right here's awesome,’ ” Walker says. “It’s fascinating to enact one thing a bunch of.” The crickets reach from Orchestra Provisions, a miniature business in Carmen, a hamlet north of Salmon, that produces eight spice combos with crickets that it sells at retail. They fluctuate from curry powder to a Mexican-inspired combine, from a chai spice to a Sichuan pepper.

Usa today Illinois

Chicago: The Museum of Science and Industry is marking the 50th anniversary of a program honoring the achievements of African People in science, skills, engineering, art and capsules and intelligent youngsters to fetch into story those fields. The Black Creativity program began in 1970. This three hundred and sixty five days’s match is targeted on innovation. This map, which began Monday and runs by March 1, entails hands-on activities for faculty groups and a museum display featuring extra than 200 works by sunless artists. The museum also has scheduled a occupation match Feb. 29 highlighting sunless artists, scientists and engineers working in Chicago.

Usa today Indiana

Indianapolis: The articulate has appropriate seen the ideal decrease in its little one mortality price in six years, officials issue. In 2018, 7.3 out of every 1,000 babies born in Indiana died in their first three hundred and sixty five days of lifestyles – most definitely the most very best charges in the nation. Final three hundred and sixty five days, the price dipped to 6.8 per 1,000. In all, 559 infants died in 2018, in contrast to 602 the outdated three hundred and sixty five days. “Pretty truthfully right here's a fruits of a collection of years of very intensive efforts from just a few articulate companies and Gov. Eric Holcomb,” acknowledged Dr. Kristina Field, Indiana articulate successfully being commissioner. “I grasp an supreme time those babies that were saved, however we peaceable grasp a long methodology to head.” In point of fact most definitely the most initiatives the articulate took to wrestle its little one mortality price used to be an OB navigator program that offers private, at-home red meat up for ladies folk living in the 20 counties with the very best little one mortality price. This map follows mother and little one for six months to a three hundred and sixty five days after delivery.

Usa today Iowa

Des Moines: The articulate’s industries recovered from the Broad Recession at a price much less than half of that of the nationwide life like, in response to a unusual Iowa Direct College paper. From 2007 to 2018, the articulate added about 92,000 jobs. Nonetheless economist Dave Swenson says Iowa would grasp added many extra jobs if industries right here grew on the the same price they did in the relaxation of the nation. Iowa also would grasp added extra jobs if its combine of companies were nearer to the nationwide life like. “We’re merely shedding flooring,” he acknowledged. “Our competitiveness is waning.” Swenson’s paper measures how Iowa’s recovery from the Broad Recession compares to a bunch of states. He acknowledged Iowa’s industrial combine has been a “breeze” on enlargement, because the articulate depends carefully on industries the place job mumble is either growing slowly or anxious, comparable to agriculture and manufacturing.

Usa today Kansas

Lawrence: A role force has urged steps for the Greek organizations on the College of Kansas to fetch to receive rid of hazing and to place extra with the community. The 27-member job force established in November 2018 to fortify security and efficiency in the Greek community on the Lawrence campus now not too long previously released its ideas. In a public message, Chancellor Douglas Girod acknowledged the job force strongly supported Greek lifestyles despite nationwide issues about hazing and substance abuse at fraternities and sororities, The Lawrence Journal-World experiences. The neighborhood directed its ideas to the Greek community at big. In point of fact most definitely the fundamental ideas used to be to invent a partnership aloof of Greek students, alumni, college representatives and representatives from the Lawrence community.

Usa today Kentucky

Louisville: Researchers are launching a three-three hundred and sixty five days see of elk in the Bluegrass Direct. The College of Kentucky and the Kentucky Division of Fish and Natural world Sources are teaming up on the see, which begins this month and would possibly maybe per chance goal give attention to elk replica and survival, WFPL radio experiences. The animals were native to Kentucky earlier than being wiped out earlier than the Civil War by unregulated hunting. They were reintroduced in jap Kentucky about 20 years previously, and the population has grown since then to about 10,000 animals spread over 16 counties. “We know plenty has changed. When we regarded at this recordsdata, these were elk that were born into the west and brought into the east,” acknowledged Gabe Jenkins, deer and elk coordinator with the Kentucky Division of Fish and Natural world Sources. “Now nearly all of those animals from the west are tiresome. Now we grasp nearly a actually unusual Kentucky bred, Kentucky-born population.”

Usa today Louisiana

Lafayette: The National Endowment for the Humanities will provide up to $125,000 to support restore the oldest building on the College of Louisiana at Lafayette. The Center for Louisiana Stories must elevate but any other $375,000 over the next four years to receive the burly amount, Director Joshua Caffery acknowledged in a recordsdata liberate. “The Roy Home is over 100 years dilapidated, and we want to create obvious it’s right here in but any other 100 years,” Caffery acknowledged. The heart began restoring the Roy Home final three hundred and sixty five days. In-constructed 1901 by landowner, businessman and Lafayette Parish College Board member J. Arthur Roy, it’s the one college building on the National Register of Historic Places. Restoration plans comprise a reading and listening room the place scholars and a bunch of patrons can access the heart’s audiovisual archives, plus a book shop the place UL Press titles will be provided.

Usa today Maine

Portland: The articulate’s smelts, a miniature fish loved by ice fishermen, appear to be continuing a rebound in population after years of decline. Rainbow smelts reach to shallow freshwater streams to spawn every spring, making them a preferred purpose of ice fishermen in the winter. Ice fishing shacks on frozen rivers are a frequent glimpse in some Maine cities, the place fishermen sit down for hours in the hopes of catching the fish and ingesting them fried and with the head on. Nonetheless the successfully being of the fish’s population is in quiz, because the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration listed it as a federal “species of field” in 2004. The Maine Division of Marine Sources has described the explanations for the decline as now not successfully understood. Lack of habitat is one probability. Maine made it extra complicated to fish for the smelts about five years previously with unusual restrictions, and fresh years grasp shown particular signs.

Usa today Maryland

Annapolis: In 1962, Verda Freeman Welcome used to be a civil rights pioneer, a trainer and the foremost sunless girl in the nation elected to a articulate senate. Final week, she became the foremost sunless person to grasp a portrait hung in a chamber of the Maryland Direct Home. Her likeness replaced a 115-three hundred and sixty five days-dilapidated canvas depicting a white man – and former governor – who used to be born when slavery used to be peaceable excellent and had been honored for overseeing improvement of the Senate chamber. Welcome, who represented Baltimore, fought for interracial marriage, equal pay for girl, banning harassment of welfare recipients and barring racial discrimination in public areas. Her daughter, Mary Sue Welcome, attended the portrait unveiling and recalled spending time along with her mother spherical the Senate chambers extra than half of a century previously. “This is improbable,” she acknowledged.

Usa today Massachusetts

Springfield: The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame is closing to the final public for nearly two months in early February for the final segment of a $23 million renovation project. The Springfield facility’s interactive Jerry Colangelo Court of Needs will be completely redeveloped throughout the closure. In addition to, the 2nd flooring will be deconstructed for a burly transformation, the Hall of Fame acknowledged in a observation. The renovation entails the refurbishment of the hall’s dome, the addition of unusual skills and customer experiences, a actually redesigned “Excessive Above Center Court” ride and a unusual Honors Ring. The renovations are privately funded and are expected to be completely carried out by June 1. Many of the contractors employed for the project are from the region. The Hall of Fame will be closed to company from Feb. 3 till March 25.

Usa today Michigan

Lansing: Some articulate lawmakers imagine the federal govt can also goal peaceable launch Isle Royale National Park to moose hunters. MLive.com experiences the Home Natural Sources Committee heard testimony final week on a option supporting a restricted moose hunt on the Lake Superior island. A vote can also reach on the next meeting. There will be extra than 2,000 moose on Isle Royale. Wolves are the foremost predator, however the wolf population is struggling. “That you would be in a position to continue to put that wolf pack, however why now not enact a moose hunt in the duration in-between to support cull the herd the total vogue down to support organize that population, so you don’t assassinate the vegetation on the island,” acknowledged Bag. Steven Johnson, a Wayland Republican. Any hunt would be up to the National Park Provider. A 2018 document disregarded the premise, MLive experiences. The park is on the market only by boat or seaplane.

Usa today Minnesota

Duluth: Snowplow drivers in northeastern Minnesota ended their strike with St. Louis County on Monday when union contributors voted to approve a unusual contract. Teamsters Native 320 contributors went on strike Wednesday afternoon over differences about successfully being care and collected ailing scurry away. On Monday morning, union officials posted on Fb they'd reached an agreement “both occasions can also even be proud of.” They peaceable wished to vote on it, on the opposite hand, and did so later in the afternoon, in response to KBJR-TV. The ratification meeting befell in Eleveth. The snowplow drivers planned to reach to work Tuesday at 7 a.m. Public Works supervisors and a bunch of licensed and qualified group from a bunch of divisions and departments operated the plows throughout the strike. St. Louis County spokeswoman Dana Kazel acknowledged the replacements had 70% of the roads plowed by the time they completed Saturday.

Usa today Mississippi

Hattiesburg: The mayor is shifting ahead with a realizing to install a camera surveillance system across town as a technique to cut crime. WDAM-TV experiences Mayor Toby Barker brought up the premise of a partnership with Mission NOLA throughout a Fb video message to his constituents throughout which he also mentioned a fresh crime spree. “This partnership will deploy high-definition cameras throughout town. These cameras can detect gunshots and browse license plates. Cities that grasp aged these cameras grasp seen foremost decreases in violent crime over time,” he acknowledged. Mission NOLA is a New Orleans-basically basically based group that works with cities and cities, organizations and folks to place cameras and gunshot detectors in wished areas. The video is transmitted to a heart in New Orleans, the place an analyst then affords recordsdata to officials on the flooring.

Usa today Missouri

Arnold: A couple who had been together for nearly 65 years grasp died on the the same day at a St. Louis-space nursing home. Jack and Harriet Morrison’s beds were placed subsequent to every a bunch of in their final hours, allowing them to retain hands, the St. Louis Put up-Dispatch experiences. Jack, 86, died first. Harriett, 83, died later Jan. 11. “I’m unhappy. Nonetheless I do know they’re at peace, they assuredly’re abet together,” acknowledged Sue Wagener, a niece raised by the Morrisons. “It truly used to be a love story for the books.” The couple went on their first date on Halloween of 1955. “They went to a little little bit of diner and never separated from that day on,” Wagener acknowledged. They married about six months later. They met as Harriett accompanied her father on a scurry to with the drum and bugle corp wherein he played. Jack used to be in the abet of the wheel of a charter bus that drove the neighborhood to about a of its concert occasions.

Usa today Montana

Helena: Contributors of the articulate Home of Representatives and legislative staffers grasp evaluated two chair designs to substitute the seating that has been aged by lawmakers for added than a century. “Now we grasp to enact this loyal because these chairs will be spherical but any other 100 years,” Home Speaker Greg Hertz, R-Polson, acknowledged Thursday, along side that the chairs can also goal peaceable fit the historic atmosphere of the Home. Lawmakers location aside $200,000 to bewitch 106 wooden chairs for the Home along with furniture for the Senate. The tranquil chairs in the Home are uncomfortable, unstable and grasp broken as soon as in a whereas, sending a lawmaker tumbling to the flooring. The designs reviewed Thursday included a rounded-abet chair from Appleton Furnishings of Helena and a high-backed chair manufactured by Montana Correctional Enterprises on the penal advanced in Deer Hotel. Appleton furniture’s variety got right here out ahead in Thursday’s scoring.

Usa today Nebraska

Ogallala: The Sport and Parks Commission is delaying motion on a location of restrictions that can maybe per chance drastically restrict overnight campers and beachgoers on the articulate’s largest reservoir, Lake McConaughy in western Nebraska. Commission Director Jim Douglas acknowledged Saturday that the commission is going to fetch time beyond law to fetch into story your total solutions provided by a total bunch of oldsters who showed up for a listening to on the proposed rules final week. Most folk at Thursday’s meeting acknowledged they wished extra regulations enforcement and bigger attention to checkpoints, now not a crackdown to restrict access to the lake. The proposed restrictions the commission had been location to fetch into story were developed following complaints about overcrowding and rowdy behavior final Fourth of July. The collection of annual company to Lake McConaughy has grown drastically from 500,000 in the 1990s to extra than 1 million in 2012 to almost 2 million final three hundred and sixty five days.

Usa today Nevada

Pyramid Lake: Direct flora and fauna officials and the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe teamed up final week to liberate 20 bighorn sheep into the hills above the desolate tract lake on tribal land in issue to reintroduce the species to segment of its native habitat for the foremost time in nearly a century. One by one, the bighorns bolted out of the gates Monday, all however ignoring the handfuls of supporters who quietly cheered them on, in response to the Las Vegas Overview Journal. Previous the crowds, they hoofed it by the rocky hills jutting out above the picturesque waters of Pyramid Lake, some 50 miles north of Reno, at a frenetic breeze because the solar location in the abet of the snow-capped mountains. It marked the foremost time for the rationale that early 1900s that the species has been spotted on the fluctuate there. As segment of a reintroduction program several years in the works, the Nevada Division of Natural world captured the animals earlier in the day in the Sheep Creek Vary come Fight Mountain.

Usa today New Hampshire

Harmony: The articulate’s Democratic congressional delegation says New Hampshire will receive extra than $700,000 in federal funding to support adolescence suicide prevention efforts. Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan and Reps. Annie Kuster and Chris Pappas acknowledged the articulate will receive $735,844 that can scurry to the the National Alliance on Mental Illness New Hampshire. The funding will be aged to preserve awareness about adolescence suicide, educate the final public and be obvious those in crisis can receive the support they want. Pointing to recordsdata that displays suicide used to be the 2nd-most-frequent location off for loss of life among younger People in 2017, Shaheen acknowledged the advise “demands our burly attention.” Pappas described adolescence suicide as a “psychological successfully being emergency” and acknowledged that “we must guarantee our children right here in New Hampshire receive the support and red meat up they want.”

Usa today New Jersey

New Brunswick: Rutgers College is planning to name Jonathan Holloway, the tranquil provost of Northwestern College, as its 21st president on Tuesday, in response to NJ Advance Media. A former Stanford football player, Holloway, 52, will be the articulate college’s first sunless president. A joint meeting of the college’s Board of Governors and Board of Trustees has been referred to as for 9 a.m. Tuesday. Rutgers spokesperson Dory Devlin confirmed the session’s agenda is to vote on an govt-level space topic. Holloway would substitute President Robert Barchi, who has served in his publish since September 2012. Barchi announced in July that he'll step down on the halt of the 2019-20 faculty three hundred and sixty five days. Gov. Phil Murphy tweeted about the expected hiring Sunday, saying Holloway has “the imaginative and prescient & ride to place the needs of students first & lead Rutgers to the next level.”

Usa today New Mexico

Albuquerque: Plans are in the works to redevelop but any other ancient hotel along the longest city stretch of historic Route 66, however this project on the threshold of downtown Albuquerque will be bankrolled in a a bunch of methodology. ARRIVE Resorts & Restaurants, the California-basically basically based hotel and entertainment firm in the abet of the disaster, is partnering with funding platform NextSeed to preserve $6 million by native crowdfunding to pay for segment of the project. At nearly $25 million, the work will grasp updating rooms at The Hotel Blue, altering the property’s name, and along side unusual meals and drink choices. The methodology to funding is frequent in the skills world however rather unproven on this planet of Albuquerque exact estate. Serene, NextSeed CEO Youngro Lee told the Albuquerque Journal the funding affords native investors a probability to invest in trends which would possibly maybe per chance be nearer to home than most tech startups.

Usa today New York

Albany: Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday announced a unusual Census Council that can oversee outreach and a bunch of efforts to create obvious the upcoming census counts as many New Yorkers as attainable. The Democrat acknowledged Lin-Manuel Miranda, Lucy Liu and Martin Luther King III were tapped to co-chair the unusual council, which he acknowledged will retain conferences and work in hard-to-reach communities to create obvious they’re counted. “Sadly, folks of color are those most assuredly undercounted, which ends in negative consequences for his or her communities,” King acknowledged in a observation. Cuomo acknowledged he also plans to suggest but any other $10 million for the articulate’s census efforts in this three hundred and sixty five days’s rate range, which if permitted would bring articulate funding efforts up to $70 million.

Usa today North Carolina

Raleigh: The articulate’s online archival protection force collection now entails set up camp newsletters and newspapers that grasp little-diagnosed facts about lifestyles in the articulate throughout World War II. The collection is on hand as segment of a two-three hundred and sixty five days digitization project that the Direct Archives of North Carolina began in 2018 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of WWII. The project entails newsletter points from installations comparable to Camp Lejeune, Camp Davis, Morris Self-discipline and Elizabeth City Naval Air Station. Of us were ready to spend the newsletters for research since 1947, however they needed to enact that on the Direct Archives in want to online. Direct officials issue the newsletters provide important recordsdata, along side names of folks in protection force units, civilian group in a bunch of departments on inappropriate, feminine civilian and protection force personnel working on the installations, and data of casualties of oldsters formerly stationed at those bases.

Usa today North Dakota

Bismarck: Ten communities in the articulate will spend segment of a settlement with Volkswagen to manufacture electric automobile charging stations. The North Dakota Division of Environmental Quality will ship $2.7 million to the native governments and companies for clear automobile tasks, along side 17 charging stations statewide. All however one are like a flash chargers that can payment vehicles in about 30 minutes, in response to the Bismarck Tribune. True 187 electric vehicles are registered in the articulate, and North Dakota has no Level 1 like a flash chargers. Plenty of dozen Level 2 chargers exist in the articulate, on the opposite hand. They are more cost-effective to install, however they fetch hours to present a burly payment. The stations will be a little little bit of spread across the articulate, with the Interstate 29 corridor in the Purple River Valley having the very best focus.

Usa today Ohio

Nelsonville: The ongoing theft of historic bricks has pissed off officials in this miniature city who spent a good deal of time monitoring down the bricks for downtown sidewalks. Not much less than 50 so-referred to as Nelsonville Vital person Bricks were taken since early January, city supervisor Chuck Barga says. The bricks are a legacy of Nelsonville’s brick-making history and won first prize on the 1904 World’s Resplendent in St. Louis. Every has a fundamental person imprinted in its heart. Not much less than three brick producers as soon as referred to as Nelsonville home due to very big clay deposits in the gap. Although millions of Vital person Bricks were manufactured between the tiresome 1800s and about 1920, the bricks are now now not made, which makes the thefts your total extra irritating, Barga told The Columbus Dispatch. The city tracked down the bricks for a renovation of Nelsonville’s downtown about a years previously.

Usa today Oklahoma

Oklahoma City: A high Republican legislator wants to receive rid of the articulate Board of Corrections after a former board member allegedly overstepped his authority. Sen. Roger Thompson, R-Okemah, pre-filed regulations to receive rid of the nine-member board first formed roughly 50 years previously. In mid-September, gang-associated inmate fights broke out at six articulate prisons, leading the Oklahoma Division of Corrections to lock down the prisons for days. Late the scenes, then-duration in-between director Scott Crow and a bunch of corrections officials were discussing learn how to address the field. That’s when a board member tried to step in, Thompson acknowledged. “We had a board member in that retain watch over room seeking to present orders and seeking to be in payment, and we’re facing public security,” he acknowledged. “We are in a position to retain the folk protected without board contributors truly seeking to intervene.” Thompson declined to name the person.

Usa today Oregon

Portland: Marijuana gross sales in Oregon along the Idaho articulate line are 420% the statewide life like, in response to a articulate document. Idaho residents are shopping recreational marijuana in Oregon because it is illegal in their very grasp articulate, says the document released Friday by the Oregon Place of business of Financial Evaluation. “The gross sales in counties along the Idaho border were much stronger than I anticipated,” analyzer Josh Lehner acknowledged. “Obviously recreational marijuana is now not excellent in Idaho, however even after throwing the solutions into a tough border tax model that accounts for incomes, collection of outlets, tax charges and the esteem, there stays a gigantic border pause.” A border pause happens when two neighboring jurisdictions grasp a bunch of rules prompting residents to scurry back and forth to inner reach regions to fetch advantage of the a bunch of regulations, experts acknowledged.

Usa today Pennsylvania

Philadelphia: The union representing public faculty lecturers in town is suing the district over its facing of asbestos contamination in colleges, the union acknowledged Monday. The Philadelphia Federation of Lecturers’ scurry neatly with comes after town faculty district used to be forced to halt a north Philadelphia classic faculty for a 2nd time Friday after assessments demanded by lecturers and union leaders showed elevated phases of asbestos, a diagnosed carcinogen, in the air. The Philadelphia Inquirer experiences district leaders had assured lecturers a day earlier that McClure Elementary College used to be protected to enter. “Over and over, the College District has claimed that their actions are out of an abundance of caution,” union president Jerry Jordan acknowledged in a observation. The college district acknowledged in a observation that it would possibly maybe per chance “completely overview” the most piquant filings whereas final targeted on fortify environmental stipulations in colleges.

Usa today Rhode Island

Providence: A articulate representative is pushing for a invoice that can maybe per chance allow faculty districts to preserve money for extracurricular activities, along side self-discipline journeys and dances. Bag. Joseph McNamara, a Warwick Democrat, acknowledged many faculty districts canceled self-discipline journeys final three hundred and sixty five days after the articulate’s former training commissioner established a policy stating that faculty departments can also goal now not payment students to participate in public faculty self-discipline journeys. Colleges interpreted that to intend no fundraising will be carried out either, McNamara acknowledged. The invoice he now not too long previously launched would add a provision to articulate regulations to tell that faculty districts are now not prohibited from soliciting for money from students, their fogeys or excellent guardians to support pay for faculty-backed self-discipline journeys, dances, clubs and a bunch of activities, provided the district pay the prices to meet any deficit.

Usa today South Carolina

Columbia: The neighborhood that awards accreditation to the College of South Carolina has determined Gov. Henry McMaster had undue affect on final three hundred and sixty five days’s behold a unusual president. The option by the Southern Association of Colleges and Colleges methodology the college must publish a document and be visited by a particular committee from the accreditation neighborhood, The Direct newspaper experiences. The neighborhood has already told the college it won’t receive any extra punishment from the president search. Universities that lose accreditation cannot receive monetary back from the government, crippling the establishment. The group opened an investigation into the college after the tumultuous hiring as president of Bob Caslen, a retired Military frequent who used to be the superintendent of West Level for five years.

Usa today South Dakota

Immediate City: Arrests for capsules, aggravated assaults and automobile thefts are the very best they’ve been since 2012, town’s police chief says. Drug arrests in inform are at an all-time high and grasp extra than doubled since 2012, Chief Karl Jegeris says. The Immediate City Journal experiences police officers made 1,567 drug arrests in 2019, in contrast with 734 in 2012, in response to police recordsdata. Jegeris says the expand is due to the articulate’s meth crisis and repeat offenders. He wants lawmakers to expand funding for meth medication applications and originate picks to penal advanced. Nonetheless he also wants repeat meth offenders to receive more difficult punishments. Referring to aggravated assaults, police recordsdata displays officers handled 389 aggravated assault circumstances final three hundred and sixty five days, the very best since 2012 and up from 379 in 2018.

Usa today Tennessee

Memphis: Vice President Mike Pence gave a speech Sunday in remembrance of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at a carrier on the Holy City Church of God, the day earlier than the federal holiday named after the civil rights chief. “I’m right here to pay a debt of honor and admire to a man who from walking the dirt roads of the Deep South, to talking to an total bunch of hundreds on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, touched the hearts of the American folks and led the civil rights movement to triumph over Jim Crow,” Pence acknowledged. Sooner than the carrier, Pence toured the National Civil Rights Museum on the Lorraine Motel, the place King used to be fatally shot April 4, 1968, whereas standing on a balcony. Native church leaders successfully-known commonalities between their religion and Pence’s, with Bishop Vincent Mathews Jr., COGIC World Missions president, calling Pence “most definitely the most persecuted Christians in The USA.”

Usa today Texas

Bellaire: Police grasp chanced on the gun they imagine a 16-three hundred and sixty five days-dilapidated pupil aged to fatally shoot his classmate final week inner a Houston-space high faculty, officials acknowledged. Police characterized the shooting in an ROTC room at Bellaire Excessive College final Tuesday as an accident. Nineteen-three hundred and sixty five days-dilapidated Cesar Cortes used to be killed, and the teenage gunman, who fled after the shooting, used to be captured extra than three hours later and charged as a minor with manslaughter. The city of Bellaire announced Monday that authorities grasp recovered the weapon. Lt. Greg Bartlett declined to tell when or the place the gun used to be chanced on. Bartlett acknowledged final week that the younger pupil took a semiautomatic pistol out of his waistband and pulled the placement off, killing Cortes. There were four a bunch of students in the room on the time however no adults. Police can also now not bag the gun for days.

Usa today Utah

St. George: A rockfall in tiresome August dumped 435,712 cubic toes of particles onto Weeping Rock path and inner reach trails at Zion National Park, and a unusual document from the Utah Geological Look for finds the same rockfalls can also occur at any time in the gap. “With annual visitation exceeding 4.3 million in 2018, the probability of geologic hazards affecting park company and infrastructure continues to upward push,” the see says. The rockfall Aug. 24, 2019, injured three company. A a part of Navajo sandstone weighing extra than 31,000 plenty broke off Cable Mountain, about 3,000 toes above Weeping Rock. The rockfall triggered an avalanche of particles to tumble on the Weeping Rock trailhead automobile car parking zone, the path itself, Hidden Canyon path and East Rim path, with some rocks flowing across the Zion Canyon Scenic Pressure to the Virgin River.

Usa today Vermont

Montpelier: The articulate Senate permitted a paid household scurry away invoice by ample votes to override a potential veto by Gov. Phil Scott. The regulations used to be permitted by a vote of 20-9 in the Senate on Friday and is now headed to the Home. The invoice affords up to 12 weeks of paid scurry away for the delivery of a unusual child or an adoption. Of us caring for an ailing cherished one would be eligible for eight weeks of benefits. The everyday Vermont resident will receive 70% of their pay throughout their scurry away reckoning on how much cash they devise. The invoice would spend a 0.2% payroll tax on most group in the articulate to fund the paid scurry away advantage. It’s unclear how Scott feels about the invoice, however he has acknowledged he prefers a voluntary paid scurry away program that group can also opt into.

Usa today Virginia

Fortress Belvoir: Plans are underway to entirely dismantle the foremost nuclear vitality facility that provided electrical energy to the U.S. vitality grid. In December, the U.S. Military Corps of Engineers proposed completely weeding out the SM-1 Reactor Facility at Fortress Belvoir in Fairfax County, Virginia, WTOP experiences. The project will now exit to suppose and is expected to originate up in 2021 with a projected halt date of 2025. The reactor opened in 1957 and used to be decommissioned in 1973. Dismantling began over 40 years previously when the Military Corps eradicated a majority of the radioactive field topic, which used to be taken to a storage region in South Carolina. Final constructions comprise the reactor plant as successfully as many labs that were on the region. They'll all be eradicated along with any radioactive contamination exceeding regulatory level, the place experiences. The Military Corps of Engineers says there is little to no possibility of radioactivity on the region as soon as the skill is eradicated.

Usa today Washington

Seattle: The Washington Direct Ferries seen ridership tumble 3.2% final three hundred and sixty five days, held down by February’s blizzard and ongoing waterfront improvement and replacement ferry carrier from Kitsap Transit. The Seattle Cases experiences the ferry agency tallied 23.9 million passengers in 2019, down about 800,000 from 2018. With out reference to the decrease, officials acknowledged there’s no location off for field. “We’ve had a seven-three hundred and sixty five days scurry of going up and up. It’s now not a gigantic red flag for us,” acknowledged Ian Sterling, spokesperson for Washington Direct Ferries. Final February seen a 19% decline in ferry ridership throughout the story-environment blizzard, and the numbers never caught up throughout the relaxation of the three hundred and sixty five days. With out a doubt, every month apart from January and April had fewer passengers than in 2018. The Seattle-Bremerton route recorded the ideal drop, with ridership down by 15%.

Usa today West Virginia

Fortress Homosexual: The community has handed a option declaring itself a “Second Amendment sanctuary.” The Fortress Homosexual town council handed the option Friday night, recordsdata shops document. Supporters issue it is a protection against attainable federal or articulate regulations that can also restrict access to firearms, ammunition or gun accessories. Mayor Joetta Hatfield says Fortress Homosexual is the foremost municipality in West Virginia to adopt this form of option. She says the switch used to be made in response to fresh occasions in Virginia, the place the unusual Democratic majority leadership plans to attain a slew of gun restrictions. Fortress Homosexual is positioned in Wayne County along the West Virginia-Kentucky border. Final week the Putnam County Commission handed a the same option.

Usa today Wisconsin

Madison: Gov. Tony Evers announced Sunday that he wants articulate lawmakers to scurry a package of funds geared toward curbing adolescence vaping and teaching the final public about vaping’s potential dangers. The funds that Evers, a Democrat, is soliciting for would ban vaping and vapor products on Ok-12 campuses and expand the definition of public successfully being emergencies. One other invoice would fund a public successfully being campaign to address adolescence vaping in the articulate, and a fourth proposal would expand the enforcement capability of the Departments of Earnings and Agriculture, Alternate, and Particular person Protection to prevent vaping products from being provided to minors. The governor’s plan of labor acknowledged vaping products pose crucial successfully being dangers to younger users for the rationale that nicotine contained in e-cigarettes can inconvenience facets of the brain that retain watch over attention and discovering out.

Usa today Wyoming

Cheyenne: Direct regulators grasp issued a one-time enable for a firm to study whether its skills to treat oil drilling and manufacturing wastewater can support vegetation grow on a farm. The Wyoming Division of Environmental Quality enable issued this month allows Encore Inexperienced Environmental to note about 7,000 barrels of the handled water to internal most farmland launch air Pine Bluffs come the Nebraska articulate line by the halt of the three hundred and sixty five days. The Wyoming firm’s co-founder, Marvin Nash, told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle the enable marks the project’s transformation to actuality after several years of planning. “Stock growers grasp acknowledged they behold how this can also work and that it’s going to be a probability for agriculture to fortify,” Nash acknowledged. The firm says on its web region that it wants to resolve the advise of an excessive amount of oil and manufacturing wastewater being produced at industrial websites whereas inner reach agricultural lands are in want of water.

From USA TODAY Community and wire experiences

Be taught or Fragment this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/recordsdata/50-states/2020/01/21/cricket-fries-seats-govt-bighorn-liberate-recordsdata-spherical-states/41036383/

[veniceleaks]

Alejandro Reyes

  NAME: Alejandro Reyes

((In-Game Handle: CyberFox))

ALIASES: None

BIRTHDATE: August 16, 1986

FACTION: Manticore, Orochi Group

TWITTER HANDLE: @a_flying_fox

KNOWN ASSOCIATES: D’ante Lewis (QR, Faust Capital, Orochi Group), Unknown R&D team (Manticore, Orochi Group)

KNOWN ANIMOSITIES: I’ve noted a lack of true hostility towards Filth-infected individuals, the Dreamers, and Atenists in Reyes’ current stint in Egypt. Reyes shows more hostility towards betrayal from within Orochi Group than he does towards outside threats. He seems to treat outside threats as a job, more than a personal attack, but betrayal from within strikes a nerve with him. The Free Judges on Twitter seem also to have struck a nerve with him, though I have noted a lack of any true action to follow up his words on the matter.

EARLY LIFE: Alejandro Reyes is the son of Filipino-born dentists Carlos and Malaya Reyes. He, his brother Marco, and his sisters Shelley and Alisha were born and raised in Pasadena, California. Reyes trained as a helicopter pilot in the US Army straight out of high school under a program called “High School to Flight School”. He was deployed as a UH-60 Black Hawk pilot to Afghanistan in 2005. After a helicopter accident, Reyes was given an honorable discharge from the US Army in 2008. Reyes was recruited shortly after by Orochi Group’s Manticore Research Group as a pilot. Per negotiated terms of his employment, he was employed locally in Los Angeles by Manticore from 2008 until 2015 and used GI Bill funds to get a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering. He was transferred to Manticore’s New York City R&D facility in 2015 and though currently listed as a test pilot and member of Manticore’s R&D staff, performs other duties for Manticore and Orochi Group as needed.

CIRCUMSTANCES OF ANIMA INFUSION: Though the circumstance surrounding Reyes’s anima infusion have been sealed by both the US Army and Orochi Group, the Council of Venice was able to get a rough outline of events from Orochi Group’s representative. The incident in question happened in early 2008. Reyes’s UH-60 was shot down by insurgent forces over a lake in southern Afghanistan while ferrying equipment and troops from a base in Saudi Arabia. The helicopter was completely destroyed and all troops aboard were killed, with the exception of the pilot, WO1 Reyes. Reyes, initially declared deceased by attending Army medics, regained consciousness three hours later. An Orochi representative, in the area to discuss hardware needs with Army field personnel, alerted his superiors in Tokyo to the incident. Orochi Group put pressure on Washington to seal the details of the incident and discharge Reyes. The US Army complied with Orochi’s wishes, and Reyes was given an honorable discharge in June of 2008.

ANIMA INFUSION SIDE EFFECTS: Orochi files note that Reyes is resistant but not completely immune to the effects of the Filth. Whether or not he realizes this is debateable, since his containment protocol when he thinks he’s alone in the field has been next to nil. He’s been acting slightly more erratically since he was deployed to Egypt and complaining of unusually vivid dreams. I recommend keeping a close eye on Reyes, particularly since Orochi has been disinclined to share his status as a bee-infused agent.

Otherwise, Reyes shows a lot of talent with blood magic and elemental magic that he sometimes hides by using one of Manticore’s next-gen assault rifles. His real use at Manticore seems to be his knowledge of computer software and hardware, combined with bee-infused healing and his experience as a pilot, which makes him valuable to R&D teams needing to field test Manticore’s new tech.

CURRENT REMIT: Reyes is attached to a Manticore R&D team working on an experimental drone AI that includes, among other things, medic protocols and enhanced security protocols. Beyond his duties at Manticore, Reyes is also an independent agent within Orochi Group, tasked with various sensitive and difficult assignments that Orochi has been reluctant to share. One that I was able to uncover involved a search and recover/destroy mission on Solomon Island involving a rogue Filth-infected Orochi agent and several million dollars of Orochi property.

EXTRACURRICULARS: Due to intersecting interests in Egypt, Reyes has been assisting Orochi Group’s Kusanagi Initiative, led by D’ante Lewis. Although, per Council of Venice agents in al-Merayah, Reyes’ loyalty to the group is questionable. He has been seen ferrying Plethron and Vali-marked cargo to and from al-Merayah in one of Manticore’s experimental attack helicopters, not the cargo helicopter recovered from the Ankh site and dedicated to supply runs for the Kusanagi Initiative.

ACTIVITIES IN THE SECRET WAR: Reyes has actively worked against Templar, Illuminati, Dragon, and Phoenician agents in the past in pursuit of Orochi goals. Most recently in Egypt, in the City of the Sun God, he was filmed by an Illuminati agent disrupting the agent’s work in order to secure Orochi mainframes from Illuminati interference. Though the Illuminati have complained to the Council of Venice, Orochi maintains that since the Orochi camp in question was in lockdown, Reyes’ actions were standard operating procedure and the Illuminati were illegally taking advantage of an emergency situation. The matter has been referred to committee.

MICE: This one might not be as innocent and happy-go-lucky as he appears. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, and he takes no prescription or illegal drugs, as per his hiring contract with Orochi, so he can’t be leveraged with any of those vices. He displays an ability, perhaps learned during his military service, to distance his own beliefs from his orders from higher up. He seldom truly questions orders from higher up the chain of command at Orochi, except where his safety or that of the mission is at stake. While his professed beliefs seem to indicate a high level of respect for life and morality (as evidenced by a recent spat with the Free Judges on Twitter), that seldom translates into an unwillingness to do Orochi’s dirty work. I have noted communication from Reyes within Orochi Group’s networks that indicate a high level of respect for Orochi CEO Samuel Chandra. The easiest way to flip Reyes would just be to negotiate with Orochi for his services. Beyond that, he seems at the moment to be a poster boy for corporate ideals. He could possibly be flipped by presenting or planting evidence of Orochi’s betrayal, of Reyes or the world in general, but the likelihood of such evidence making an impact is 50/50 due to Orochi training.

Special note: Depending on how dirty someone wanted to get in flipping Reyes, offline he shows a deep connection to his family, particularly his two younger sisters. Introducing one or more family members to Council service might influence Reyes. Difficulty being that none of Reyes’ family members have shown any signs of anima infusion or knowledge of the secret world. This would need to be done carefully, as noted before Reyes is particularly sensitive to betrayal.

[hotvideo]

RUSH IT (1977)

COMEDY LEGEND HENNY “TAKE MY WIFE, PLEASE” YOUNGMAN HAS A SON NAMED GARY. I’M GONNA GO OUT ON A LIMB AND SAY THAT GARY WAS ONE OF THOSE FREE-SPIRITED CELEBRITY KIDS OF THE 1960s/70s, YOU KNOW THE KIND. AN AGITATOR, EVER PLAYING HIS PAN FLUTE FOR THE PEOPLE, JUST HIM AND HIS TRUST FUND AGAINST THE WORLD. THE WORLD, IN GARY’S CASE, WAS NEW YORK CITY. BUT OFF-OFF BROADWAY WASN’T HIS BAG, SO GARY CROSSED OVER INTO FILMMAKING. OLD MAN YOUNGMAN GAVE HIM THE GREEN LIGHT, LINED UP THE FINANCIERS AND GARY SHOT RUSH IT WITH ALL HIS NEW YORK ACTOR FRIENDS, IN HOPES OF USING THE MATERIAL LIKE A 78-MINUTE TALENT REEL. THE CAST INCLUDES FUTURE HOLLYWOOD HEAVYWEIGHTS LIKE TOM BERENGER (THE BIG CHILL), JOHN HEARD (CUTTER’S WAY) AND JILL EIKENBERRY (TV’s “L.A. LAW”).  AFTER VIACOM ACQUIRED RIGHTS TO THE FILM, RUSH IT PLAYED A LOT ON MOVIE CHANNELS LIKE SHOWTIME. THE SOLE VIDEO RELEASE OF RUSH IT CAME IN THE FORM OF A BIG OL’ CLAMSHELL VHS FROM UNICORN VIDEO, MARKETED AFTER TOM BERENGER’S CAREER TOOK OFF. I TRACKED DOWN A COPY OF THE TAPE AT EDDIE BRANDT’S SATURDAY MATINEE.  

RUSH IT IS ABOUT A CAREFREE FEMALE BIKE MESSENGER (JUDY KAHAN) MAKING HER WAY IN THE CITY. SHE’S GOT THAT QUASI-ANNOYING ANNIE HALL THING GOING ON, IF A LITTLE MORE JEWISH AND, WELL, BASICALLY HARMLESS BECAUSE SHE’S IN HER TWENTIES AND ISN’T ANYONE’S MOTHER YET. SHE RIDES AROUND MANHATTAN IN A DUMB HAT, SMILING AT EVERYTHING WHILE BUZZY LINHART’S EBULLIENT SONGS BLAST OVER THE SOUNDTRACK. COULD BE WORSE. I MEAN, THE WORLD DIDN’T COMPLETELY SUCK BACK THEN. SURE, WE THOUGHT IT DID. OH, DID WE EVER! WE THOUGHT IT WAS OVER, MAN. THE SIXTIES WERE OVER. THE SIXTIES WERE GREAT! THE SEVENTIES WERE FAR WORSE. THESE WERE THE POST-WATERGATE YEARS. NEW YORK WAS ONE BROKE-ASS TOILET, AND YET IT WAS KIND OF MAGICAL, TOO.

DISCLAIMER: NO ONE WHO APPEARS IN RUSH IT WAS EVER A BIKE MESSENGER. REAL BIKE MESSENGERS DON’T KICK THEIR FEET UP WHILE TRAVERSING DANGEROUS METROPOLITAN TERRAIN, THEY RUN RED LIGHTS, FLIP STRANGERS THE BIRD AND DRINK FORTIES IN THE PARK. IF ANYONE HAS ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT THAT, A GANG OF THESE CATS WILL APPEAR OUT OF NOWHERE, UNBUCKLE THE SEATBELT STRAPS ON THEIR MESSENGER BAGS, MOVE FOR THEIR CHAIN WALLETS AND REENACT A SCENE FROM THE ‘96 X-GAMES. REMEMBER PUCK FROM MTV’s “THE REAL WORLD”? THAT’S A FUCKING BIKE MESSENGER! INCORRIGIBLE, UNREPENTANT B.Y.O.B. PUNKHOUSE SNOTROCKET RASCALS.  

“How ‘bout a date tonight, bimbo?”

THIS LUNATIC PLAYS THE PERVED-OUT DISPATCHER AT THE MESSENGER SERVICE. APPARENTLY JOE SPINELL WAS NOT AVAILABLE FOR THE ROLE, SO GARY CAST SOME ELEVATOR MAN WITH A CHECKERED PAST INVOLVING MANY INCIDENTS OF PUBLIC MASTURBATION. HE’S THE MOST AUTHENTIC SLICE OF THE APPLE IN THIS TURKEY. WHY CAN’T THE MOVIE BE ABOUT HIS TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS? LET’S FOLLOW HIM AROUND WHILE HE’S HAGGLING OVER THE PRICE OF A PAPAYA AT HIS LOCAL BODEGA OR CHECKING OUT THE SNATCH ON 42nd STREET.

HERE’S TOM BERENGER DOING HIS BEST BOTICELLI POSE FOR SOME LITTLE CHINA GIRL. BERENGER’S CHARACTER IS A STALLION WHO PREYS ON CITY CHICKS WITH HIS LOOKS, ESCHEWING ALL STRINGS IN THE CLASSIC LOVE ‘EM AND LEAVE ‘EM STYLE. HIS PREFERENCE, ADMITTEDLY, IS FOR “MORE MATURE WOMEN... ESPECIALLY MARRIED ONES.” YEP, IN THE END, HE’S JUST A GIGOLO. OH, BUT WHAT HE REALLY WANTS TO BE IS A FAMOUS PAINTER!

BERENGER TRIES TO PICK UP JUDY, BUT SHE’S HIP TO HIS ACT AND SPEEDS OFF ON HER BIANCHI. THEN SHE BUMPS INTO AN OLD BOYFRIEND, SOME SUIT WITH A FOXY ITALIAN BROAD ON HIS ARM. JUDY CALLS HIM A HEEL AND KEEPS ON PUSHING. SHE DELIVERS SOME SHIT TO SOME ECCENTRIC IDIOTS, INCLUDING A DRUGGED-OUT TALENT AGENT (ANTHONY HOLLAND, ALL THAT JAZZ) AND GAGGLE OF SUFFRAGETTES WHO’VE BEEN CRYOGENICALLY FROZEN IN A GREENWICH VILLAGE APARTMENT SINCE 1917. JUDY TAKES A BREAK AND GOES HOME. HER PAD HAS SOME FABULOUS TOKENS OF SEVENTIES SINGLE GIRL CHIC, INCLUDING HANGING HOUSE PLANTS, CINDER BLOCK BOOK SHELVES AND FRAMED PICTURES OF JANE AUSTIN. SHE RECEIVES A VISIT FROM HER NEIGHBOR, BYRON (JOHN HEARD), WHO’S JAZZED ON SOME GIRL HE JUST MET. JUDY AND BYRON ARE PLATONIC FRIENDS BECAUSE JUDY, WE’RE LEARNING, IS KIND OF A DYKE; NOT SO MUCH IN THE SEXUAL SENSE, BUT IN THE CULTURAL ONE. SHE’S TOTALLY FINE BEING ONE OF THE GUYS UNTIL THE RIGHT ONE COMES ALONG.

THE SUMMER I EXCAVATED RUSH IT FROM THE TOMB-LIKE STACKS AT EDDIE BRANDT’S, I WAS OBSESSED WITH THE ACTOR JOHN HEARD’S EARLY CAREER. IT STARTED WHEN I SAW HIM IN CHILLY SCENES OF WINTER, THEN GREW WITH BETWEEN THE LINES AND CUTTER’S WAY, THEN CONTINUED ON THROUGH A SLEW OF EXEMPLARY ROLES IN NOT-SO-GREAT FLICKS LIKE FIRST LOVE, ON THE YARD, BEST REVENGE, HEART BEAT, AND CAT PEOPLE. DUDE HAD CHOPS, CHARM AND AN IRRESISTIBLY SELF-EFFACING WIT. BY THE TIME HE WAS CAST AS JACK KEROUAC IN HEART BEAT, STARRING OPPOSITE NICK NOLTE AND SISSY SPACEK, HEARD WAS WELL ON HIS WAY TO BECOMING A LEADING MAN. BUT I SUSPECT HE NEVER FELT COMFORTABLE WITH THE  HOLLYWOOD MACHINE, HAVING COME OUT OF THE LESS BULLSHIT-Y WORLD OF NEW YORK THEATER. IN THE EARLY EIGHTIES, HEARD ATE AND DRANK HIMSELF OUT OF THE RUNNING. THANKS TO THIS SELF-SABOTAGE, TODAY HEARD IS BEST KNOWN TO THE IDIOTS WHO COMPRISE 99% OF THE MOVIE-GOING PUBLIC FOR PLAYING MACAULEY CULKIN’S DAD IN THE HOME ALONE FLICKS.

BYRON INVITES JUDY TO SOME GET-TOGETHER AT HIS GIRLFRIEND’S PAD. MERRILL (JILL EIKENBERRY) IS A SECRETARY, ER, ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT WHO’S REAL HUNG UP ON THAT POST-ROTHKO ABSTRACT SHIT AND ITS MARK ON THE THEN-EMERGING BOURGEOIS HOBBY KNOWN AS DECORATING. FROM THIS INTRODUCTION ONWARD, WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT BYRON SEES IN MERRILL. HE SHOULD REALLY JUST GO FOR JUDY, WHO WEARS OVERALLS TO PARTIES AND IS CLEARLY A GAS. 

JUDY MEETS A CHARMING 28-YEAR-OLD JEW NAMED MARK, WHO’S, OF ALL THINGS, A DENTIST. WOW! EDGY! SO THIS GUY STARTS PULLING A LOT OF NUMBERS WITH JUDY, AND SHE’S KINDA DIGGIN’ IT. THEY MINGLE AND GET COZY. THE COMBINATION OF GOD’S EYE AND CARLO ROSSI IN THE ABOVE FRAME IS FABULOUS. 

MARK’S “BLEEPER” GOES OFF, AN EMERGENCY BACK AT THE OFFICE, AND HE LEAVES JUDY WITH A SEMI.

THEN MERRILL MENTIONS TO JUDY THAT MARK IS MARRIED. JUDY’S LOOKING GOOOOOOD IN THOSE OVERALLS, AIN’T SEE? I WONDER IF LENA DUNHAM EVER SAW THIS MOVIE.

THE NEXT MORNING, BYRON COMES OVER TO GET A RECAP OF JUDY’S EVENING. THE USZH, SHE’S STILL 25 AND SINGLE.

THIS IS WHAT A DOOR IS SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE. IF YOU’RE UNDER 30 AND THE DOORWAY OF YOUR BIG CITY APARTMENT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE THIS, YOU’RE WASTING YOUR PARENT’S MONEY. THIS BARE BONES ASSEMBLAGE IS ALL YOU NEED TO PARTY LIKE A TRUE BELIEVER: OLD TERMITE-INFESTED WOOD PAINTED A MILLION TIMES OVER, QUESTIONABLY SECURE, DIRTY AND DELIGHTFUL. MY OLD SPOT LOOKED LIKE THIS. THEN I MOVED. NOW, FOR A MERE $1,000 MORE A MONTH,  I GOT ONE OF THEM NEW CHINESE JOBS MADE OUT OF RECYCLED AMERICAN REFUSE AND PARTICLE BOARD, PLASTIC WINDOW SLATS FROM HOME DEPOT (ALSO MADE IN CHINA!), THE WHOLE PATHETIC PACKAGE.

BYRON’S NEW GIRL STARTS GETTING UPPITY ABOUT BYRON’S ASSOCIATION WITH JUDY. JUST WHAT TYPE OF PERSON CHOOSES TO BECOME A BIKE MESSENGER, PRAY TELL? BYRON REVEALS JUDY HAS HER MASTER’S DEGREE, SHE’S JUST DOING THE BIKE GIG COS HER DEGREE IS TOTALLY WORTHLESS AND IT’S FUN RIDING A BIKE IN A CITY YOU CAN SMILE AT COS YOU REFUSE TO BELIEVE THAT ALL MEN ARE RAPISTS, DESPITE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM AND SECOND WAVE FEMINISM STATING OTHERWISE. 

BACK AT THE BIKE SHOP, THESE TWO JOES PRACTICE THEIR HIGH NOTES FOR SOME FUTURE “CATS” AUDITION.

JUDY SPOTS BUZZY LINHART BUSKING. ALRIGHT! BUZZY KNOWS WHERE IT’S AT.

BERENGER FINALLY GETS THE BEST OF JUDY. HE WRITES HIS NUMBER ON HER BACK AND TELLS HER TO CALL HIM. THAT NIGHT, SHE HAS TO READ IT IN A MIRROR AND INVERT THE DIGITS. TWICE SHE CALLS THE WRONG NUMBER, FIRST IT’S SOME PEPE PERSON AND THEN A PHILIPINO WITH CATFISH WHISKERS. SO JUDY AND BERENGER GO OUT AND BALL. PRETTY SOON, THEY’RE AN ITEM.

BERENGER SHOWS JUDY HIS WORK. HE’S INTERRUPTED BY THE TELEPHONE. IT’S TOM’S OF FINLAND CALLING, ASKING WHERE THE SAILOR’S CAP WENT.

BERENGER TELLS JUDY A BUNCH OF SHIT ABOUT WHAT A SHITTY, SELF-ABSORBED PERSON HE IS -- JUST A SLAVE TO THE MUSE, MAN. BUT HE’S A STALLION, SO JUDY DIGS HIS FEARLESS HONESTY AND ACCEPTS BERENGER IN SPITE OF HIS MANY SHORTCOMINGS.

BERENGER ALSO TELLS JUDY HE’S BROKE AND MIGHT BE MOVING TO PENNSYLVANIA TO LIVE ON A FARM WITH AN AMISH COUPLE HE MET AT NIAGARA FALLS. THAT IS, UNLESS JUDY WILL LET HIM MOVE HIS ART STUDIO INTO HER APARTMENT.

MORE SUPERFLUOUS BERENGER PORN.

JUDY BUMPS INTO BYRON OUTSIDE THEIR BUILDING. HE’S WEARING A SUIT, WHICH INDICATES HE HAS A REAL JOB, PROBABLY IN AN OFFICE WHERE THE EXECS WITH THE GRAYING SIDEBURNS DRINK ALL DAY AND GRAB-ASS WITH THE LITTLE CHIQUITAS IN THE TYPING POOL.

BACK AT HER PLACE, JUDY RAPS TO BYRON ABOUT HER NEW STUD AND HOW TO KEEP HIM. BYRON SUGGESTS A FAKE PREGNANCY.

THEN, APROPOS OF NOTHING,  BYRON DOES A REALLY BAD BRANDO IMPRESSION. THIS IS IN NO WAY INDICATIVE OF JOHN HEARD’S TALENT AS AN ACTOR.

BERENGER COMES OVER AND STARTS MOVING JUDY’S STUFF AROUND.  JUDY DIGS BERENGER’S TAKE-CHARGE ATTITUDE. 

BYRON AND MERRILL HELP MOVE THE REST OF BERENGER’S SHIT OVER. JUDY, MEANWHILE, IS GROWING WARY OF BERENGER’S OPPORTUNISM.

THE NEXT EVENING, BYRON AND MERRILL INVITE JUDY AND BERENGER OVER FOR SUPPER. BERENGER WEARS SOME GONDOLIER’S SHIRT WITH A FUCKING POCKET ON THE ARM FOR HIS SMOKES. AFTER SOME WINE, MERRILL STARTS HITTING ON BERENGER. SHE ASKS HIM IF HE’LL DIG HER PAINTINGS AND LET HER KNOW WHAT HE THINKS. THEY REALLY SUCK. NO ONE SAYS THAT, BUT OF COURSE THEY DO. THEN MERRILL ASKS BERENGER IF HE GIVES PRIVATE LESSONS.

BACK AT WORK, JUDY DELIVERS SOME FILM TO A CASTING AGENCY. THE MANIAC WHO RUNS THE PLACE FLIRTS WITH JUDY. I DON’T KNOW WHY THIS SCENE IS IN THE MOVIE, EXCEPT TO FLESH OUT ITS ALREADY TOO-SHORT RUNNING TIME.

AT HEADQUARTERS, JUDY JOKES AROUND WITH THE HORNY DISPATCHER, WHO SAYS HE WON’T ASK HER OUT ANYMORE SINCE HE KNOWS JUDY’S BERENGER’S OLD LADY. 

WE GET TO SEE BERENGER RUSH IT A BIT, TOO. HE DELIVERS A PACKAGE TO SOME OFFICE, WHERE AN OLDER, STILL-FOXY SECRETARY REPEATEDLY ASKS HIM WHAT SHE CAN DO FOR HIM. ALL HE NEEDS IS HER SIGNATURE, BUT HE ASKS HER OUT FOR AN EGG McMUFFIN. GUESS WHO’S BUYING?

THEN BERENGER CRASHES SOME ART OPENING, APPROACHING THE OWNER OF THE GALLERY WITH HIS SLIDES IN TOW LIKE A TOTAL ASSHOLE. THE OWNER TELLS BERENGER HE’LL HAVE TO SPEAK TO HIS WIFE (CHRISTINA PICKLES, THE WEDDING SINGER), WHO, IN FACT, RUNS THE GALLERY.

WHEN THE GALLERY GASH FEASTS HER EYES ON BERENGER, SHE QUICKLY STARTS ASKING ABOUT HIS WORK AND ITS DIMENSIONS.

WHEN SHE’S SATISFIED, THEY MAKE A DATE FOR A STUDIO VISIT.

BERENGER RETURNS TO JUDY’S PAD ELATED WITH THE GOOD NEWS. JUDY’S HAPPY FOR HIM, BUT ALSO KIND OF BUMMED THAT HE DIDN’T TAKE HER TO THE OPENING.

JUDY AND BYRON HAVE A CHAT ON THE WAY TO THE LAUNDROMAT. BYRON REVEALS THAT HE’S PLANNING TO BREAK UP WITH MERRILL.

WHILE JUDY’S OUT DOING HER OLD MAN’S WHITES, SAID OLD MAN SLAVES AWAY IN THE STUDIO THAT USED TO BE JUDY’S APARTMENT. DIG BOWIE’S PINUPS IN THE THE BACKGROUND!

BERENGER RECEIVES AN UNEXPECTED VISIT FROM MERRILL, WHO’S BEEN SUNBATHING ON THE ROOF. SHE ASKS BERENGER IF SHE CAN WATCH HIM PAINT. HE TELLS HER TO COME BACK WHEN IT’S A BETTER TIME TO PARTY, HE’S ON A DEADLINE. 

JUDY AND BERENGER GRAB SOME MALTS AND PARK IT ON THE CURB. THE LIGHT’S REAL NICE AND THE WIND’S BLOWING SOFTLY, MAKING THE SCENE PLAY MORE NATURAL THAN THE OTHERS. IF I WAS ONE OF THESE TWO PEOPLE, I’D CHOOSE THIS SCENE FOR MY ACTING REEL.

WHEN JUDY TELLS BERENGER THAT BYRON’S CUTTING MERRILL LOOSE, HE ISN’T SUPRISED. HE TELLS JUDY HE’LL NEVER LET SOME CHICK COME BETWEEN HIM AND HIS PAINTING.

“Don’t EVER buy me a strawberry shake again. I said VANILLA.”

BERENGER PICKS A CONVENIENT TIME FOR THE GALLERY GASH TO STOP BY -- i.e. WHEN JUDY AIN’T AROUND. SHE DIGS BERENGER’S WORK AND BEGS FOR A CLOSER LOOK.

JUDY AND HER GIRLFRIEND FROM THE MESSENGER OFFICE (HARRIETT HALL) GET TOGETHER IN THE PARK TO RAP ABOUT BOYS AND WHAT HEELS THEY ARE.

WHEN JUDY GETS HOME, SHE FINDS BYRON MOROSE AND CARRYING A BOX OF MERRILL’S SHIT TO DELIVER BACK TO HER. BYRON ASKS JUDY IF SHE’LL COME WITH HIM.

WHEN THEY GET TO MERRILL’S, BYRON TELLS JUDY HER COMING WITH HIM WAS JUST A PLOY TO GET HER TO ACTUALLY DELIVER THE SHIT HERSELF SO BYRON WON’T HAVE TO SUFFER THE AGONY OF SEEING MERRILL’S STUPID FACE ONE MORE TIME. JUDY, EVER THE GOOD SPORT, OBLIGES HIM.

“Oh... it’s you. Where’s Byron? OH. Okay. Well, can you tell him he still owes me $4.37 for his portion of the Con Ed bill from July? Thanks!”

AS JUDY AND BYRON RETURN TO THEIR BUILDING, THE GALLERY GASH IS JUST LEAVING.

B-B-BUSTED! WHEN JUDY ENTERS THE PAD, BERENGER’S IN THE PROCESS OF CHANGING HIS SHIRT TO ONE NOT SOAKED IN SWEAT AND SCENTED VAGINAL OILS. HE TELLS JUDY HE GOT THE SHOW. SUDDENLY, WITH THE HELP OF A SHORT FLASHBACK, JUDY KNOWS THE SCORE.

AFTER A LONG, CATHARTIC RIDE AROUND THE CITY, JUDY VISITS THE GALLERY WHERE BERENGER’S GONNA HAVE HIS SHOW. THE PAINTINGS IN THE BACKGROUND REMINDS ME A LOT OF THE KIND OF WORK ALAN BATES’ CHARACTER MADE IN AN UNMARRIED WOMAN, OR THAT ARTIST JEREMY BLAKE WHO ESSENTIALLY MADE THE SAME KIND OF SHIT IN THE EARLY 2000s, ALBEIT DIGITALLY, BEFORE HIS TRAGIC DOUBLE-SUICIDE WITH HIS CRAZY WIFE AFTER THEY DID TOO MUCH COCAINE AND CONVINCED THEMSELVES THEY WERE BEING HUNTED BY THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY. IF THIS REVIEW HAS TAUGHT YOU ANYTHING, IT’S THAT I KNOW FAR TOO MUCH BULLSHIT ABOUT CONTEMPORARY ART AND NOT ENOUGH ABOUT MAKING LOVE. ANYWAY, JUDY WINS.

SHE GOES FOR ONE LAST DELIVERY. ONCE AGAIN, BUZZY LINHART’S MUSIC COMES ALONG FOR THE RIDE.

FINALLY, BYRON TELLS JUDY HE’S FOUND THE PERFECT GUY FOR HER: IT’S BYRON!!! WELL, ALRIGHT! JUDY LAUGHS. HARD. THE END.

[phgq]

6 more GenSan front-liners, 14 others positive for Covid-19

#PHnews: 6 more GenSan front-liners, 14 others positive for Covid-19

GENERAL SANTOS CITY – More villages here have been placed under localized lockdown after 20 more residents, including six front-liners, tested positive on Sunday for the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19). The additional cases—the highest surge in a single day for the city since March—were among the 21 new infections in Region 12 (Soccsksargen) that were confirmed on Sunday evening by the Department of Health in Region 12 (DOH-12). The lone case outside the city is a 24-year-old female locally-stranded individual from Surallah town, South Cotabato province, who returned home from Metro Manila on Sept. 4. Arjohn Gangoso, DOH-12 health education and promotion officer, said massive contact-tracing and surveillance activities are ongoing for the additional cases. “Six of them were traced to have had exposure to Covid-19 patients,” Gangoso said in an advisory. Gangoso said the exposure of 14 others, one of whom expired in a private hospital here Sunday morning, is still subject to “further investigation.” The latest fatality, which was reported as a resident of Barangay Bula, is a 54-year-old male who succumbed to “acute respiratory disease syndrome, high-risk community-acquired pneumonia, and critical Covid-19,” he said. Since last week, the city already recorded five confirmed deaths due to locally acquired Covid-19 infection, with three patients expiring over the weekend. A report from the city’s Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging and Reemerging Infectious Diseases said five of the new cases are medical personnel while one is a member of the civil security unit assigned at the local government-run Dr. Jorge P. Royeca Hospital. It said the direct contacts of two medical workers of a private hospital were already identified while the extensive contact-tracing for the other patients was still ongoing. Among the reported new infections include a dentist and midwife assigned in a barangay rural health unit, two canning plant workers, and a priest.  The additional areas placed under zonal, street, and home lockdowns for at least 24 hours over the weekend to facilitate the containment and contact-tracing activities were portions of Barangays Lagao, Bula, Calumpang, and San Isidro. Two churches and a barangay hall complex were covered by the lockdown in Barangays Bula and San Isidro. As of Sunday evening, the confirmed Covid-19 cases in the city already reached a total of 128, with five deaths and 49 already recovered and discharged or a recovery rate of about 38 percent. The City Health Office said the 73 active patients are currently undergoing treatment and quarantine in six private hospitals, two isolation facilities, and one public patient care center. One of the patients who earlier tested positive after arriving in Metro Manila remains under isolation in an undisclosed facility. Since March, it said a total of 768 confirmatory reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction tests were already conducted in the city, with a positivity rate of about 17 percent at 128 positive cases. (PNA)

***

References:

* Philippine News Agency. "6 more GenSan front-liners, 14 others positive for Covid-19." Philippine News Agency. https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1114574 (accessed September 07, 2020 at 09:26PM UTC+14).

* Philippine News Agency. "6 more GenSan front-liners, 14 others positive for Covid-19." Archive Today. https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1114574 (archived).