#philadelphia welding schools

[pttedu]

In welding training, tools are essential for precision and accuracy. Master metal works effortlessly with the top tools every welder needs for success.

[pttiedu]

PTTI's Welding Program transforms students into skilled welding wizards. Through precision techniques, trainees mold steel into intricate designs. Welding sparks illuminate their dedication, forging a path to a future where they craft masterpieces from molten metal. At PTTI, they sculpt their dreams in metal.

[wheelscomedyandmore]

IMDb: Humanitarian and actor Richard Gere was born on August 31, 1949, in Philadelphia, the second of five children of Doris Anna (Tiffany), a homemaker, and Homer George Gere, an insurance salesman, both Mayflower descendants. Richard started early as a musician, playing a number of instruments in high school and writing music for high school productions. He graduated from North Syracuse Central High School in 1967, and won a gymnastics scholarship to the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, where he majored in philosophy. He left college after two years to pursue acting, landing a lead role in the London production of the rock musical "Grease" in 1973. The following year he would be in other plays, such as "Taming of the Shrew." Onscreen, he had a few roles, and gained recognition in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977). Offscreen, he spent 1978 meeting Tibetans when he traveled to Nepal, where he spoke to many monks and lamas. Returning to the US, on Broadway he portrayed a concentration-camp prisoner in "Bent," for which he received the 1980 Theatre World Award. Back in Hollywood, he played the title role in American Gigolo (1980), establishing himself as a major star; this status was reaffirmed by An Officer and a Gentleman (1982). In the early 1980s, Richard went to Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador (amidst ongoing wars and political violence); he traveled with a doctor and visited refugee camps. It is said that Richard was romantically linked with Tuesday Weld, Priscilla Presley, Barbra Streisand and Kim Basinger. In 1990 Richard teamed up with Julia Roberts to star in the blockbuster Pretty Woman (1990); his cool reserve was the perfect complement to Julia's bubbling enthusiasm. The film captured the nation's heart, and won the People's Choice award for Best Movie. Fans clamored for years for a sequel, or at least another pairing of Julia and Richard. They got that with Runaway Bride (1999), which was a runaway success (Richard got $12 million, Julia made $17 million, the box office was $152 million, which shows what happens when you give the public what it wants!). Offscreen, Richard and Cindy Crawford got married December 12, 1991 (they were divorced in 1995). Afterwards, Richard started dating actress Carey Lowell. They had a son, Homer James Jigme Gere, on February 6, 2000. Richard was picked by People magazine as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the world in 1991, and as their Sexiest Man Alive in 1999. He is an accomplished pianist and music writer. Above all, Richard is a humanitarian. He's a founding member of "Tibet House," a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of Tibetan culture. He has been an active supporter of "Survival International" for several years, a worldwide organization supporting tribal peoples, affirming their right to decide their own future and helping them protect their lives, lands and human rights (these tribes are global, including the natives of the Amazon, the Maasai of East Africa, the Wichi of Argentina, and others). In 1994 Richard went to London to open Harrods' sale, donating his £50,000 appearance fee to Survival. He has been prominent in their charity advertising campaigns.

[blogmaria123stuff]

Steps to a Professional Welding Career with Us – PTTI

PTT Institute is a leading provider of Welding Certification Training School for students seeking careers as technicians in Welding. You can accomplish Welding Certification Training in six months and it opens up golden opportunities for leadership roles, more earnings and high career challenges. At PTTI, you’ll be guided by expert technicians who have in-depth knowledge of their field. 

[outoftowninac]

I LOVE MY WIFE

1984

I Love My Wife is a musical by Cy Coleman (music) and Michael Stewart (book and lyrics) based on play by Luis Rego. It opened on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in April 1977 and played 857 performances. It starred Joanna Gleason (Broadway debut), Lenny Baker, Ilene Graff, and James Naughton. It was directed by Gene Saks. The original director and choreographer Joe Layton was replaced due to injuries sustained in a fall.

The pre-Broadway tryout opened at the Forrest Theatre in Philadelphia.

The production earned two 1977 Tony Awards (Baker and director Saks), and four Drama Desk Awards. 

The band consisted of four on-stage musicians who were among the friends and acted in the opening scene.

“The musicians are welded into the play, as a kind of Greek chorus." ~ CLIVE BARNES, THE NEW YORK TIMES

The musical takes place in Trenton, New Jersey, in the present day, where two married couples who have been close friends since high school find themselves contemplating a ménage-à-quatre.  

January 17 through April 8, 1984, the musical was presented at the Claridge Casino-Hotel’s Palace Showroom in Atlantic City, New Jersey - just 60 miles from where the show is set. The Claridge was built in 1930 and dubbed the “skyscraper by the sea”. In 1982, it added casino gambling. Shortly after, it began offering Broadway-style entertainment. The hotel and casino is still operating as of this writing. 

The show starred Joey Travolta, older brother of John Travolta. Continuing the Jersey theme, the Travolta brothers were raised in Englewood, New Jersey.  Joey graduated from NJ’s William Paterson University with a degree in special education. Sharing the bed with Travolta was Jerry Clark, Nancy Sinclair, and Martie Ramm. 

Interestingly, this was around the same time that Bob Fosse had expressed interest in collaborating with Coleman on a show based on the Coleman song “Atlantic City”, which he composed with Christopher Gore. Playwright Jack Heifner was engaged as the book writer, but before him, John Guare was approached. In 1980, Guare wrote the film Atlantic City, but denies that it was connected to his initial approach to write the book for Coleman’s musical.  

“I also felt, having gone down there, that Atlantic City was impossible to capture on stage.” ~ JOHN GUARE

Coleman got busy, Fosse grew disinterested, and Gore died, so the musical entered a sort of show biz limbo, where it remained. It has, however, generated a few “trunk” songs since released. Atlantic City itself was going through a sort of limbo - transforming itself from a footnote in history to an East Coast destination resort for casino gambling. 

But back to 1984... 

On New Year’s Day it was announced that unlike previous Broadway musicals at the Claridge, I Love My Wife would be a dinner-theatre presentation. 

The Claridge nearly had to look for another star attraction when on January 2, 1984, a small plane carrying Travolta had to make an emergency landing when its landing gear would not descend. Luckily, all walked away unharmed. 

Of course, it might have been mere typesetter coincidence that the ad for John’s new film Two of a Kind was right next to a plug for Joey’s musical - but maybe not!  Not to be outdone, during his stint in Atlantic City, Joey Travolta’s film The Prodigal opened. 

“Joey Travolta isn’t as handsome as his famous younger brother, John. And Joey's physique, while quite satisfactory, cant compare with his swivel-hipped brother's, especially since Sylvester Stallone helped build up John for 'Staying Alive.' But Joey has some things going for him. He is a more-than-adequate singer who has had a Top 40 hit More important, his on-stage personality is much more pleasant than John's onscreen persona. Which makes low-key, amiable Joey perfect for the starring role in a new Atlantic City production of ‘I Love My Wife,' an amusing and light-hearted 1977 Broadway hit musical that runs through April 8. Joey is believable as a bored Trenton, N.J., public relations man who wants to spice up his dull life by having a multiple love experience.” ~ DAVE BITTAN, DAILY NEWS

Speaking of John (and most people do when Joey’s name comes up), Joey’s younger brother was flown in to see the show during the run. His visit remained secret to everyone except Claridge management and his brother. The Travolta clan occupied most of the posh 24th floor of the casino-hotel during John’s quick visit.  

Nothing says success like a coupon!  To be fair, most people who see casino shows are comped anyway. The show will cost far less than the amount of cash dropped by 20,000 people in the casino!  

After the show closed, the Claridge followed up a few weeks later with Sugar starring Joe Namath, which you can read about by clicking here. 

[blackkudos]

Angelina Weld Grimké

Angelina Weld Grimké (February 27, 1880 – June 10, 1958) was an American journalist, teacher, playwright and poet who came to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance. She was one of the first Woman of Colour/Interracial women to have a play publicly performed.

Life and career

Angelina Weld Grimké was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1880 to a biracial family. Her father, Archibald Grimké, was a lawyer and also of mixed race, son of a white planter. He was the second African American to have graduated from Harvard Law School. Her mother, Sarah Stanley, was European American from a Midwestern middle-class family. Information about her is scarce.

Grimké's parents met in Boston, where he had established a law practice. Angelina was named for her father's paternal white aunt Angelina Grimké Weld, who with her sister Sarah Grimké had brought him and his brothers into her family after learning about them after his father's death. (They were the "natural" mixed-race sons of her late brother, also one of the wealthy white Grimké planter family.)

When Grimké and Sarah Stanley married, they faced strong opposition from her family, due to concerns over race. The marriage did not last very long. Soon after their daughter Angelina's birth, Sarah left Archibald and returned with the infant to the Midwest. After Sarah began a career of her own, she sent Angelina, then seven, back to Massachusetts to live with her father. Angelina Grimké would have little to no contact with her mother after that. Sarah Stanley committed suicide several years later.

Angelina's paternal grandfather was Henry Grimké, of a large and wealthy slaveholding family based in Charleston, South Carolina. Her paternal grandmother was Nancy Weston, an enslaved woman of mixed race, with whom Henry became involved as a widower. They lived together and had three sons: Archibald, Francis and John (born after his father's death in 1852); they were majority white in ancestry. Henry taught Nancy and the boys to read and write. Among Henry's family were two sisters who had opposed slavery and left the South before he began his relationship with Weston; Sarah and Angelina Grimké became notable abolitionists in the North. The Grimkés were also related to John Grimké Drayton of Magnolia Plantation near Charleston, South Carolina. South Carolina had laws making it difficult for an individual to manumit slaves, even their own children born into slavery. Instead of trying to gain the necessary legislative approval for each manumission, wealthy fathers often sent their children north for schooling to give them opportunities, and hoping they would stay to live in a free state.

Angelina's uncle, Francis J. Grimké, graduated from Lincoln University, PA and Princeton Theological Seminary. He became a Presbyterian minister in Washington, DC. He married Charlotte Forten. She became known as an abolitionist and diarist. She was from a prominent family of color in Philadelphia who were strong abolitionists.

From the ages of 14 to 18, Angelina lived with her aunt and uncle, Charlotte and Francis, in Washington, DC and attended school there. During this period, her father was serving as US consul (1894 and 1898) to the Dominican Republic. Indicating the significance of her father's consulship in her life, Angelina later recalled, "it was thought best not to take me down to [Santo Domingo] but so often and so vivid have I had the scene and life described that I seem to have been there too."

Angelina Grimké attended the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics, which later developed as the Department of Hygiene of Wellesley College. After graduating, she and her father moved to Washington, D.C. to be with his brother Francis and family.

In 1902, Grimké began teaching English at the Armstrong Manual Training School, a black school in the segregated system of the capitol. In 1916 she moved to a teaching position at the Dunbar High School for black students, renowned for its academic excellence, where one of her pupils was the future poet and playwright May Miller. During the summers, Grimké frequently took classes at Harvard University, where her father had attended law school.

Around 1913, Grimké was involved in a train crash which left her health in a precarious state. After her father took ill in 1928, she tended to him until his death in 1930. Afterward, she left Washington, DC, for New York City, where she settled in Brooklyn. She lived a quiet retirement as a semi-recluse. She died in 1958.

Literary career

Grimké wrote essays, short stories and poems which were published in The Crisis, the newspaper of the NAACP, edited by W.E.B. Du Bois; and Opportunity. They were also collected in anthologies of the Harlem Renaissance: The New Negro, Caroling Dusk, and Negro Poets and Their Poems. Her more well-known poems include "The Eyes of My Regret", "At April", "Trees" and "The Closing Door". While living in Washington, DC, she was included among the figures of the Harlem Renaissance, as her work was published in its journals and she became connected to figures in its circle. Some critics place her in the period before the Renaissance. During that time, she counted the poet Georgia Douglas Johnson as one of her friends.

Grimké wrote Rachel – originally titled Blessed Are the Barren – one of the first plays to protest lynching and racial violence. The three-act drama was written for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which called for new works to rally public opinion against D. W. Griffith's recently released film, The Birth of a Nation (1915), which glorified the Ku Klux Klan and portrayed a racist view of blacks and of their role in the American Civil War and Reconstruction in the South. Produced in 1916 in Washington, D.C., and subsequently in New York City, Rachel was performed by an all-black cast. Reaction to the play was good. The NAACP said of the play: "This is the first attempt to use the stage for race propaganda in order to enlighten the American people relating to the lamentable condition of ten millions of Colored citizens in this free republic."

Rachel portrays the life of an African-American family in the North in the early 20th century. Centered on the family of the title character, each role expresses different responses to the racial discrimination against blacks at the time. The themes of motherhood and the innocence of children are integral aspects of Grimké's work. Rachel develops as she changes her perceptions of what the role of a mother might be, based on her sense of the importance of a naivete towards the terrible truths of the world around her. A lynching is the fulcrum of the play.

The play was published in 1920, but received little attention after its initial productions. In the years since, however, it has been recognized as a precursor to the Harlem Renaissance. It is one of the first examples of this political and cultural movement to explore the historical roots of African Americans.

Grimké wrote a second anti-lynching play, Mara, parts of which have never been published. Much of her fiction and non-fiction focused on the theme of lynching, including the short story, "Goldie." It was based on the 1918 lynching in Georgia of Mary Turner, a married black woman who was the mother of two children and pregnant with a third.

Sexuality

At the age of 16, Grimké wrote to a friend, Mary P. Burrill:

I know you are too young now to become my wife, but I hope, darling, that in a few years you will come to me and be my love, my wife! How my brain whirls how my pulse leaps with joy and madness when I think of these two words, 'my wife'"

Two years earlier, in 1903, Grimké and her father had a falling out when she told him that she was in love. Archibald Grimké responded with an ultimatum demanding that she choose between her lover and himself. Grimké family biographer Mark Perry speculates that the person involved may have been female, and that Archibald may already have been aware of Angelina's sexual leaning.

Analysis of her work by modern literary critics has provided strong evidence that Grimke was lesbian or bisexual. Some critics believe this is expressed in her published poetry in a subtle way. Scholars found more evidence after her death when studying her diaries and more explicit unpublished works. The Dictionary of Literary Biography: African-American Writers Before the Harlem Renaissance states: "In several poems and in her diaries Grimké expressed the frustration that her lesbianism created; thwarted longing is a theme in several poems." Some of her unpublished poems are more explicitly lesbian, implying that she lived a life of suppression, "both personal and creative.”

Wikipedia

[withastolenlantern]

They left the earl behind in his office as Santiago guided the detective toward his work-space in one of the auxiliary buildings. “They tried to give me an office upstairs but I can’t be bothered,” he explained. “Boss makes me put on a tie when the board comes around, but I really prefer to be down here in the labs. There’s something… sterile, about the upper floors, you know? Devoid of life. Which I guess is somewhat ironic for me to complain about, given that our entire business revolves around automation.”

“I see,” Chatham replied, bemused. The man could not have been much younger than her, but the arc of his life had very clearly taken a different path. “How did you come to join Ross?” she asked, more out of genuine curiosity than professional courtesy.

“Me? Oh, the same way anyone does really. I did my undergraduate at Penn in mechanical engineering, and then a Masters at MIT. My adviser was an old friend of Diaz’s from way back in the early printing days, and he gave me a recommendation. I came on board about twelve years ago, right when things were really hitting their stride. Diaz retired a few years ago, and I just sort of grew into replacing him. You know what they say, ‘it’s who you know, not what you know.’”

“Ah, so you must be fairly well connected, then” the detective stated with a hint of disappointment.

Santiago stopped dead in his tracks with laughter. “No, ma’am. Scholarship kid through and through. When the US government swung back from its dalliance with fascism, they rebounded with a bunch of “minority outreach” programs. But I’m one of the lucky few that got out. Dad still lives in a run down row-house back off Cottman Ave.”

“I’m afraid I’m not familiar with…” Chatham started to say, before her glasses overlaid a map of what appeared to be the northeastern United States, in particular the mid-Atlantic region; or what was left of it after the rise, anyway. “Ah, Philadelphia.”

“Yeah, northeast part. Only somewhat dodgy. Dad was a mechanic, back when that was still a people-job. He’s retired now. Cancer got mom back in high school. Thyroid, which is one of the things they can’t fab replacements for yet. I’ve been working on it for years, but the glands are still too complicated.”

“Yes, so I’ve heard,” she said with a small smile. This was the first person she’d talked to since returning to Wales that was neither artificial nor aristocratic. It was refreshing to speak with someone who’d had earned their position by virtue of effort, not birth.

“Ah, here we are,” Santiago said, opening an enormous set of double doors. They entered what to the inspector appeared to be some kind of laboratory or manufacturing space. Half-disassembled print injectors, welding arms and fabbing stamps were sprinkled throughout the area like shells across a beach, so much stainless and chrome reflecting the high overheard lights as to give the area a sparkle not unlike the shore after a light rain. “Don’t mind the mess, it’s always like this. I’m not exactly the most organized person ever.”

The engineer took a seat in front of a holo terminal set on one of the work benches and opened several program windows. Chatham pulled up a stool beside him, watching with some amazement as he navigated several database windows in what appeared to be a raw code interface. “Do you always work like this, or are you just showing off?” she teased lightly.

“No ma’am. We have UIs for the suits upstairs, but I find they just get in the way. Easier to run right at the root. I’m trying to run a log for all the fabs that were running in the eaastern Indian Ocean sector for the last week or so… here we go,” he said, displaying a map of the ocean off the horn of Africa. Strewn across the map were many colored dots, all of which she assumed to represent a fab unit.

“I take it these are all the operational units, but what do the colors mean?” she asked.

“Not much gets passed you, does it?” Santiago replied. “Green is units currently in process. Yellow is units that are operational but without current job queues. Red is units that have been idled, as per the board’s recent, uh, cutbacks,” he admitted sheepishly.

“Yes, I’ve heard about the proposed… scale down,” the detective said, summoning her inner politician. “Will anyone here be affected?”

“Probably soon,” he said, frowning. “I haven’t had to let anyone go, yet, but I suppose it’s inevitable. It’s a scary world out there for the unemployed. I’m not looking particularly forward to those conversa…”

“Why is that unit blinking?” Chatham interrupted him, pointing to a unit on the map that was vacillating between red and green.

“Wait, what?” Santiago said, following her finger. “I don’t, uhh… hang on.” He zoomed in on the unit she indicated, opening a new window that displayed what appeared to be information on its current condition. Geographical location, program commands, and manifest documents all scrolled across the screen. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

“What doesn’t” the detective inquired.

“Well, this unit is supposed to be idled, which is why it’s showing red, as it’s not receiving any program commands via the control satellite. But it’s also periodically sending back operation confirmation, which it shouldn’t be doing if it’s not running a program,” the engineer said, concern obvious in his voice.

“And that’s odd?” Chatham led.

“It’s not just odd. It’s supposed to be impossible.”

[togachipblog]

If It's Bell, It's Swell

What do Sandy Koufax, Marilyn Monroe and Beany and Cecil all have in common?  They were all promoted by Bell Potato Chips.  

Sometimes the history of various potato chip manufacturers (chippers) has been passed down from generation.  In an attempt to preserve and document the history regarding Bell Brand, I have included interviews of many people.  

The following is based on a statement by Craig Scharlin, grandson of the founder of Bell Potato Chips., Max Ginsburg.    

Bell Brand Potato Chips was a privately owned company started in the 1920's by Max I. Ginsberg. He was an immigrant from the Ukraine who came to the US on his own at the age of seven. He met up with his brother in Philadelphia and started selling hand made pretzels on the streets. He moved to Los Angeles in the teens and in the early 1920's started his own company named the L.A. Potato Chip and Pretzel Company which he eventually changed the name to Bell Brand Potato Chips. He named it Bell after the bells of the Spanish Missions of California and because he thought the name Bell made people happy. He created the slogan, "If it's Bell it's Swell" and also created the name Frenchie for the shoe string potato chip. Bell Brand Potato Chips was one of the sponsors of the Jack Benny Radio Show in the 1930's among many others. One of his best friends and founder of Ralph's Grocery stores, Mr. Lawry, also owner of the famous Lawry's Prime Rib restaurants of Los Angeles and the Tam 'O Shanter Restaurant in Glendale, was one of his major buyers. Max Ginsberg decided to retire in the 1950's.

My mentor, the late Donald Noss who was the son the the founder of the snack food trade association, gave me his extensive archive regarding the potato chip industry.  Among the items was the attached photo of four men.  The back of it was inscribed " J. Spurgeon Finney, Cy Nigg, James Hickey & Chas. Fuller.

Finney was Treasurer and Hickey and Fuller were vice presidents of Bell Brand.  Below, you will learn more about Hickey and Fuller and how they obtained their ownership shares.    Lizette  Gabriel of the Los Angeles Public Library provided me with the link to the oral history of Cyril Nigg as part of the research into the Tom Sawyer Foods.  When I read it, I was able to match three of the four people in the photo with their names.  In a true sense, a picture is worth a thousand words. 

Cyril Nigg had worked his way up the chain at Kellogg's, the cereal maker, by staying after other suppliers had left for the day to help grocers with their tasks such as inventory management, pricing inventory including items that he was not supplying, in a manner that developed great trust and strong relationships.  This enables Nigg to get the grocers to include his products in their ads, provide him with prominent display space for the Kellogg's brands.  He was a pioneer at creating combinations , trade promotions where he would put together two or three packages of Kellogg's cereals with a premium: cereal bowl, muffin tins, rag dolls.  Nigg created the cereal department that now is a standard department in all grocery stores.  He also conceived of quantity discounts for grocers.  He was also one of the first to sell the entire line of Kellogg's cereals, whereas most others only sold one or two.  

  He was told that he would be groomed to be the President of Kellogg's by moving every couple of years to different parts of the county to learn the diverse markets.  With children in high school and both his and his wife's family in Los Angeles, he decided that he would prefer to stay in the Los Angeles area.   Taking a job with another large employer would most likely also require him to relocate.   Because of his relationships within the food industry, he agreed to chair the Red Cross Appeal within the food industry division.  Based on an oral history from the California State archives in 1993, Nigg tells the story of how he entered the potato chip business in his own words: 

NIGG: I had one [Red Cross Appeal] card, a guy by the name of Max Ginsberg, who I knew real well, who owned the [Los Angeles] L.A. Saratoga Chip and Pretzel Company. He was a member of the sales managers club. I knew him well. He had given $500 the year before, and in those days $500 was a pretty good contribution for Red Cross. I didn't want to miss him. I called two or three times, and he's not in. Finally I say to the girl at the telephone, "Well, when will Mr. Ginsberg be there? I'm working for the Red Cross drive." "Oh," she said, "Mr. Ginsberg is just horne from the hospital. He's been very ill." Oh, I was sick. Here's my 500-buck contribution, and he's not going to be able to corne in. So I thought, "Well, maybe I can go by his house." I knew him pretty well. I thought, "I'll go by his house and see how he is, and maybe I can say something about the Red Cross drive." So I go by. He lived up in the Los Feliz area. His wife lets me in. He comes in, and he looks like walking death. God, it was a shock to me! I knew him, and here's this guy looking so terrible. I said, "Max, what's wrong with you?" "0h," he said, "I go down to the plant, I get all upset. Nothing is going right." Now, again, the war is on. You can't get help, you can't do this. So he gets all upset. He was the kind of an owner-manager who had to be in on everything. [If they] bought a new typewriter, he had to say what one they'd buy. So he goes down, and he gets all upset. He says, "My doctor says get rid of the business or get a new doctor. II So he said, "I guess I'm going to have to sell my business." Without thinking, I said, "Max, I'd like to buy iL" And he said, "Cy, everybody wants to buy my business, but my wife and I worked so hard to build it. They'll ruin it, I know. There's nobody I'd rather have than you. 

So just that easily I bought that business. We came to an easy agreement. I paid him $100,000 for the business, plus the inventory, plus the accounts receivable. Inventory and accounts receivable were each about $25,000, but I could finance that easily. So my only thing was the $100,000, and I made arrangements. It was easy to get the money. The first person I told was a boy by the name of [James P.] Jim Hickey. [He had] been in Loyola High School with me, same class. He'd gone on to studying medicine back at Saint Louis and ran out of money. He was running a Standard Oil [gas] station at Olympic [Boulevard] and Fairfax [Avenue], kind of a training station, and working like the dickens. Oh, he was good. So I said to Ted Von der Abe, my friend whose office was right across the street, "You ought to hire that Jim Hickey. Boy, he's good." But Ted didn't do anything, so I hired him, and he came to work for the Kellogg Company. By now he's my assistant, he's my supervisor. So we're still working Saturdays, and Jim and I go to lunch, and I tell him, "Jim, I'm leaving the company. I'm  going to buyout Max Ginsberg." He said, "I'll go with you." I said, "Jim, are you crazy? You'll get the job. This is what you've been working for. I'll recommend you." "No," he said, "we've always been together. I'll stay with you." Well, I said, "Jim, that wouldn't be right. I can't hire you. I'm taking a gamble. For you to come to work for me, that would be crazy. You stay with Kellogg's." "No," he said, "we've always been together. I like working with you. I'll stay with you." So I said, "Jim, I would love to have you, but I just can't hire you. I'm paying $100,000 for this business. If you could raise $10,000, you'll have a 10 percent interest. Then you have the same chance I have." He said, "I think my Uncle Tom would help me. will you go with me to see him?" I said, "Sure." So we go out to see Uncle Tom. Uncle Tom is Tom Hickey, Hickey Pipe and Supply Company, who's been very successful. He likes Jim; they're very close. So we go out, and I tell Tom what I'm going to do, and Jim wants to buy a 10 percent interest and he needs $10,000. Tom says to Jim, "Is that what you want, Jim?" And Jim says, "I think it would be such a great opportunity." Tom says, "I'll arrange it." So Tom got Jim a loan for $10,000 from the bank, and so he's my partner. I'm going to be the general partner, and he'll be a limited partner. 

The next week, a fellow by the name of [Charles] Charley Fuller, who had worked for me, who is now the general manager of a little honey company.. And, of course, in those .. War's on. You can sell all the honey you can get. The job was to get it and get it bottled, that sort of thing. So Charley comes to see me. He said, "I hear you and Jim are buying out Max Ginsberg." I said, "That's right." He said, "Well, look. I don't know much about production, but I know more than you guys do. How about taking me and letting me be the production manager?" I said, "Charley, I'll give you the same deal I gave to Jim. You raise $10,000, you'll have a 10 percent interest." Well, Charley didn't have an Uncle Tom. [Laughter] So he had to work awfully hard. But he went to all of his friends, and he'd borrow $100 here, $1,000 here. Ted Von der Abe gave him $5,000. That was his big one. He borrowed on his insurance; he borrowed on his house. Finally he gets his 10,000 bucks. So now it's the three of us. We took over February 1 of 1945. The war's still on. We have all these friends in the food industry who know us and love us, want to help us. The first month, we doubled the volume. The first month we did twice as much business as Max had done in January. The next month, March, we almost doubled it again. So we had this rapid, tremendous growth. 

We recognized that we needed the money in the business. We're expanding so rapidly, we need all the money we can keep in the business. And as partners, individuals, at the end of the year weld have to payout all this money in taxes. So I go down to see my friend Tom Deane at Bank of America, tell him the problem, where we are. He gets on the phone and calls upstairs  to the eighth floor to Claude A. Parker Company and says, "Cy, go up and visit with them. They're real experts." So I went up to see a man by the name of Theo Parker, and I told him the whole situation. "Well," he said, "are you building this business to sell it?" I said, "Oh, no, no. We just want to build a business." "Are you building it to maybe sell stock?" "No, we want to keep it. It's our business. We want to keep it." "Oh," he said, "okay, then this is how we'll do it. We'll expense everything we can. Rather than buy something, we'll repair something. You own it, so it doesn't make any difference. If you're going to sell the business, you want assets. If you want to sell stock, you need assets. But that isn't going to be your situation. You're just going to own this thing, it's going to be yours, so we'll expense everything we can." So that's the way we did it. We built that business, had great growth.

The war ended, men came out of the service, and we were able to have such a great choice of young men for our sales department, for our production department, for everything we did. We put together this great organization. Now, as we put together this great organization, that freed me so that I could be out in other activities, be active with UCLA alumni. When I became president [of the Alumni Association] and became a [University of California] regent, I gave five days a month to the university. For two years I gave five days a month. One of those days went to committee meetings, the second day was to regents meetings, the other three days were just to university activities. There were all kinds of things I had to be active in, but I was free to do it because I had this great organization. 

TRELEVEN (Dale E. Treleven of the Oral History Program University of California, Los Angeles Who Is the Interviewer): Okay. Now, the name of the company remained the same or ?

  NIGG: No, no. His name was L.A. Saratoga Chip and Pretzel Company. His trademark was a mission bell. We liked the bell, so we called our company Bell Brand Foods, Limited--Limited because it was a limited partnership to begin with. We never changed that. We kept that name, Bell Brands Foods, Limited.

TRELEVEN: Where does Tom Sawyer come in? Your regents 68 biography said you were chairman of the board of Tom Sawyer Foods, Incorporated. 

NIGG: Tom Sawyer was a competitor, and, I don't know, five, ten years down the line we bought them out. So we now own Tom Sawyer Foods. Tom Sawyer Foods was a competitor in potato chips. They had a big nut meat department and a big candy department, so

  TRELEVEN: So that's what you did. And that's not all you did, but in terms of the business in which you were engaged, that you kept at until what year? 

NIGG: Let me give you the background of that now. We were successful from the day we took over, highly successful. It grew and it grew, and we built this great organization. I put Tom Deane, the manager of the head office of Bank of America, on our board of directors.

* * * 

By now I had made my son chairman of our board and my son-in-law [Leon Doty] president of the company. 72 They were a couple of young, dynamic guys. They went to the UCLA School of Business Administration that, you know, you worked in .... What do you call that program? 

TRELEVEN: Well, is it an internship program? Or is it the MBA [masters of business administration] program, perhaps? 

NIGG: Well, you went to school nights. You worked daytimes. In other words, they stayed on the job but went through that whole program. Harvard [University] had started the thing. They did it, and then UCLA took it up. Anyhow, they did that program. They're sharp young guys. They really are sharp, working hard, really know their stuff. So I said to Peter, my son, "Now, your job as chairman is to see that we continue the rate of growth we've always had." "I understand." "Leon, my son-in-law, you're going to be the president. You just run this company like you .... Just make it go." And he did. He was a terrific guy. So we're growing, we're very successful. But about 1967, my son comes to me and says, "You told me to keep it growing. We can find new  products, we can find new territory, we can maintain the growth, but we're going to run out of money. We won't generate money fast enough to keep up that rate of growth." Now, at that time, everybody wanted to buy us. It was a time of mergers. Every month I just had somebody corning and wanting to buy us. And I'd always say, "We're just not interested at all. Forget it." Well, a friend of mine [Harry Bleich] at Sunshine Biscuit [Company]--and they had quite a few plants around the country--had said to me, "Cy, if you ever want to sell, corne to see me. I know you don't want to now, but maybe sometime in the future, corne to see me." So when my son said to me, "This is what I recommend," we held a board meeting. He explained the situation, and everybody agreed, well, maybe it's the time to look around. Let's see what we can do. So I go back to New York and talk to my friend at Sunshine Biscuit. I said, "Maybe now is the time. We're at least ready to talk." He takes me into the president of the company, and the guy says, "When will you be back in Los Angeles?" And I said, "Tomorrow." He looks at his calendar, and he said, "I'll be there next Tuesday." This was the American Tobacco Company. They later changed the name to American Brands, but it was the American Tobacco Company. They've got to diversify; they know this. They're in the tobacco business. All this talk against tobacco companies and the tobacco industry, they've got to diversify. And they had Sunshine Biscuit. So this fellow comes out. I show him around, tell him what we've got, what we can do. He's very impressed. They want to buy us, but they want to buy us for cash. Well, we couldn't sell for cash. We start with zero, and now we're up into the millions, and the whole thing would be taxable. So I said, "No. I want common stock. If we can't have common stock, there's nothing to talk about." Well, this was a big concession for them, but they made it. So they bought us for common stock. I agreed to stay on, which I did. On the board? On the board and as.... They now are making me in charge of all of their snack food businesses around the country. So I got in, and I worked pretty hard, did pretty well. But then in a big company like that you've got all these internal politics going on, and somebody else was coming up into power, and I didn't like it. Yeah, and you were about in your early sixties. No, I'm sixty-five. So I said, "I'm sixty-five. Time to retire." So I retired. My son quit immediately. My son-in-law stayed on, but by now you've got to report to New York, and then you.. Before, he could just do anything he wanted to do. Now you've got to get permission. So he got tired of it, and he left. We were fortunate; we had that American Brands stock. It paid a good dividend year after year after year. It doubled, I'm going to say, six times. So we did very, very well. I still own a bunch of it, and now it's going down, but over the years it did very, very well. So that's that.

You can read the entire oral history of Mr. Nigg's remarkable career at

http://archives.cdn.sos.ca.gov/oral-history/pdf/nigg.pdf

The attached article entitled "3 Ingredients for Success Freshness, Quality, Flavor, Plus Wuse Management Tell the Story Behind Growth of Bell Brand Foods" in the September 1953 Los Angeles Times provides some of the company's history as well as its corporate philosophy:

HUGE BUSINESS INCREASE

Thirty-three years ago [1920] production began as Bell Brand potato chips in Los Angeles.  "production" meant that at the start only two people worked to slice the potatoes, cook them, package them, and deliver them.

But although the plant personnel was small, the product was good from the start and business grew steadily though not spectacularly from year to year.  

Eight years ago Cyril C. Nigg, nationally known food products merchandiser, took the helm of Bell Brand foods Ltd..  In these few swiftly rolling years Bell Brand potato chip sales increased eight times over the sales of 1944, the year before he became president.   . . . 100% increase over the the original figure for each eventful year.  

Trained experienced leadership and TEAMWORK by executive personnel are the decisive factors in the Success Story . . . a product of the American system of individual initiative and free enterprise.  

Cyril Nigg had been Southern California manager for one of the largest manufacturers and merchandisers of breakfast food products.   Not only as a leader in his specialized industry, but as an expert of food problems,  he recognized the place that properly prepared and delivered potato chips would have on Southern California dining table.  

That is why he and his associates placed their resources of mind and experience and finance behind Bell Brand.  

FRESHNESS, QUALITY, FLAVOR

Cyril Nigg and his organization knew that the words "Potato Chips " are like the name of any other product . . . they do not in themselves spell quality or satisfaction; three other very important "ingredients" are required:

Freshness, Quality, Flavor

These words proclaim the standard of production aimed at and achieved by Bell Brand.

Mr. Nigg and his notable executive "team" Charles F. Fuller and James P. Hickey , vice presidents, and J. Spurgeon Finney, treasurer, knew from the start what it takes to please the great American customer.    

Bell Brand potato chips MUST be delivered fresh and sold fresh.

Top quality must be accomplished by using selected potatoes and finest cooking oils only.

Just the right truly delicious flavor must be attained.  This is delivered by a combination of selected potatoes, pure golden vegetable oil, PLUS exactly right timing in the frying process. . . timing that results in building the flavor and creating rich golden shade for the chips.

Finally, Bell Brand Potato Chips are delivered in double waxine packages, heavy enough  for protection against sunlight, heavy enough in keep air out and keep in freshness, flavor and aroma.  

Bell Brand packages are marked by a special code indicating when delivery was made and any not sold promptly are reclaimed by the plant.

QUALITY KNOWS NO SUBSTITUTE

It is splendid to have a product that will please everybody.  It is another thing to get everybody to buy and enjoy it.  

Enterprise and sustained advertising and merchandising and advertising have keynoted Bell Brand's campaign.  Hundreds of thousands of Southern Californians are familiar with the appetizing pictures of Bell Brand Potato Chips in the Times Home Magazine and with the Bell-sponsored TV show Western Varieties on KTLA.  Results have been not only in spread sales through most every city and town and small community in Southern California, but to make Bell Brand potato chips a "best seller" from San Diego in the south to Bakersfield and san Luis Obispo in the north (Properly managed potato chip plants reach in sales territory only so far as they can supply fresh products.)

Under the banner of Bell Brands, six other taste-tempting products are sold in ever-increasing quantities.  "Frenchies" (shoestring potatoes), peanut butter, corn chips, pretzels, "Cheez Puffs," and Ruffles.

Quality knows no substitute and to insure that unvarying quality, Bell Brands maintains a laboratory and a chemist is in charge.

DEMOCRACY AT WORK

Only under our free American plan of industrial life can real democracy operate, and it is the belief of Cyril Nigg and his executive team that Bell Brands offers one of the best demonstrations of this activity.

Last February, a junior executive board of executives was created, consisting of ten members.  All supervisory and administrative staff are eligible for selection to this board.  A carefully planned system of of rotation ensures "new blood" for the board each year.

Regular meetings are held at which company policies are discussed and individual members submit new ideas for adoption.  If any idea is unanimously voted for, after discussion, it is then submitted to president Nigg and the senior board.  The senior board carefully considers it and then announces immediate adoption of the idea. or if not considered wise at the time a detailed report of the "reason why" is written and given the younger executives.

The junior board has already created enough sound and feasible ideas, adopted and now in practice to ensure the continuing success of this adventure in democracy.  . . .representing the thoughts and activities and loyalties of the 250 Bell Brand employees.

"THE PLANT THAT POTATO CHIPS BUILT"

Bell Brand Foods Ltd. today is based in the big plant on Pacific Boulevard.

But the annual sale of much more than 15,000,000 pounds of potatoes . . . in the deliverable shape of many more millions of Bell Brand chips . . . has forced expansion into larger and up-to-the-minute headquarters.  

Construction is now under way and will be completed the first of the coming year as a million-dollar plant.

The new plant will occupy eight acred of ground at Millergrove Drive and Los Nietos Boulevard, purchased a year ago.  The main structure consists of precast concrete tilt-up walls supporting tapered steel girders.  

The whole plant will be semi-automatic with five different systems of conveyors.  A very important and modern detail is the fact that the entire floor will be steam-cleaned every day.

There is to be a dining room for employees with exterior terrace adjoining.  

The great new headquarters truthfully could be "christened" "The Plant that bell Brand PotatoChips Built."

"IF IT'S BELL IT'S SWELL"

President, senior and junior boards are striving in every way to show Californians how Bell Brand Potato Chips are as desirable in DAILY enjoyment as are meat and vegetables and fruit.

More and more folks will learn the surprisingly large number of ways the crisp chips can supplement other units in the daily menu.  Recipes are printed on the neat waxine packages.  

By sustained perfection of quality, by controlled distribution, by brilliant advertising  through newspapers, television and direct work, people are realizing that "If It's Bell It's Swell."

Bell Brand Snack Foods, Inc. was a Southern California-based manufacturer of snack products including potato chips, tortilla chips, and corn chips.  The company's headquarters were located in Santa Fe Springs, California.  The history of the company is continued by the nephew of Mr. Nigg, Tim Armstrong.  

Cyril C. Nigg, who purchased Bell Brand from Max Ginsberg in 1947, was my uncle (mother's brother). My uncle Cyril sold the business to Sunshine Cracker in 1968, about 13 years after building the "Million Dollar Plant" in Santa Fe Springs. My father, Gene Armstrong, managed the distribution center in Loma Linda until we moved to Alhambra in 1950. Dad retired from Bell Brand in 1983 as the Plant Security Chief, following 36 years with the company. I left California for Alaska in 1975, my Dad passed away in 1994 and my uncle in 2000 (at age 95). I grew up around potato chips, peanut butter, Frenchies and corn chips, and have fond memories of everyone associated with Bell Brand.

G.F. Industries which also owned Sunshine Biscuits put Bell Brand up for sale in 1995 due to the company's financial issues. However, Bell Brand went out of business on July 7, 1995 after G.F. could not find a buyer for the company.  Sunshine was sold to Keebler and then to Kellogg's. The only remnant of Bell Brand's product line left is Padrino tortilla chips which are still produced by Snyder's Lance Brands, which is now owned by Campbell's  

View the photo of the bag of Bell Brand Potato Chips from the movie "The Seven year Itch" starring Marilyn Monroe.  

See the Cecil and Beany (note the names are in reverse order) ad.  It is followed by the Bell Brand logo.

See the back of the Sandy Koufax Bell Brand baseball card.  

See also the bacon flavored potato chip stand photo from the June 1963 edition of the Potato Chipper

 and the article about Cyril Nigg's retirement from the April 1970 edition of the Potato Chipper

.   An article from the September 1953 edition of the Potato Chipper describes the new plant. 

Enjoy the gallery of Bell Brand ads and the gallery of photos.  View some 1950's Bell Brand grocery store displays.  

http://mistertoast.blogspot.com/2006/03/bell-brand-potato-chips.html

.  Finally see the photo of a woman and her child with a Bell Brand tin of potato chips and the photo of both sides of a bag of Bell Brand potato chips.

Enjoy the First Lady of Song, Ella Fitzgerald, sing the Gershwin classic, "Thou Swell."

The Toga Chip Guy

[bloomsburgu]

BASTL helps account manager prove to herself

Nicole Morrissey always felt she was “lacking a bit’’ by not having her degree and was concerned that she would soon hit the ceiling in her career.

As an account manager for outside sales at Airgas with a $5 million territory, the 34-year-old Spring Township resident had always planned on going to college but didn’t see how she could afford it. When she heard about Airgas’ tuition reimbursement program, she knew it was time.

Morrissey first earned an associate degree in business management from Reading Area Community College. Then her husband, Nick, heard a news report about Bloomsburg teaming up with RACC, she found out more about the Bachelor of Applied Science in Technical Leadership (BASTL).

“For myself and most of my classmates, it was exactly what we needed,’’ said Morrissey, who also has to balance the needs of her 1-year-old son, Rory. “The majority of us were working while going to school and having the same struggles with time management and the flexibility to have classes taught at RACC and online was important.’’

Morrissey, who received her BASTL degree in May 2017, added that Bloomsburg’s acceptance of her RACC credits helped seal her decision.

The skills she learned relating to developing presentations were immediately useful as she handles training sessions for customers in which Airgas professionals talk about topics such as welding and safety. She said the leadership and communication courses also helped her look at her work style and learn how to better communicate and deal with time management issues.

Looking ahead, Morrissey said she wants to complete a graduate degree and keep advancing, though she’s still considering what the “next level’’ will be in her career. Whatever it is, she said the BASTL program helped her develop her confidence and skills.

“This is a great program, but you have to personally have to want this to be a goal and something you want to achieve,’’ she said. “I think it’s important always to have an open mind about learning.’’

After consulting with employers who are looking for skilled managers, Bloomsburg University created its Bachelor of Applied Science in Technical Leadership program especially for individuals with associate degrees who are working and need flexibility.

Up to 60 associate degree credits are accepted and half the BASTL classes are online and the rest taught at Bloomsburg’s partner institutions: Bucks County Community College, Community College of Philadelphia, Harrisburg Area Community College, Lehigh Carbon Community College, Northampton Community College and Reading Area Community College, and the State System campus in Center City Philadelphia.

[pttedu]

Explore cutting-edge welding technology shaping today's welding work. From automation to sustainability, discover the future of fabrication with precision.

[pttiedu]

As a beginner, welders need to learn the different types of welding that make their work smooth and easy. Read on to learn about the techniques in detail!

[kristinsimmons]

Viruses on Motorcycles

By ANISH KOKA

The most recent fiction dressed up as science about COVID comes to us courtesy of a viral Washington Post article.  “How the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally may have spread coronavirus across the Upper Midwest” screams the headline.   The charge made is that “within weeks” of the gathering that drew nearly half a million visitors the Dakota’s and adjacent states are experiencing a surge of COVID cases.  

The Sturgis Rally happens to be a popular motorcycle rally held in Sturgis, South Dakota every August that created much consternation this year because it wasn’t cancelled even as the country was in the throes of a pandemic.  While some of the week long event is held outdoors, attendees filled bars and tattoo parlors,(and that too without masks!), much to the shock and chagrin of the virtuous members of society successfully able to navigate life via zoom, amazon prime, and ubereats.

This particular Washington Post article’s sole source of data comes from a non-profit tech organization called The Center For New Data that attempted to use cellphone data to attempt to track spread of the virus from the Sturgis rally.  Unfortunately, tracking viral spread using cellphone mobility data is about as hard as it seems.  The post article references only 11,000 people that were able to be tracked out of a total of almost 500,000 visitors, and isn’t able to assess mask wearing, or attempts at social distancing. How many bars are there to stuff into in Sturgis anyway?? And so it isn’t surprising that even in an article designed to please a certain politic, this particular sentence appears:

“But precisely how that outbreak unfolded remains shrouded in uncertainty.”

The other striking feature of the article is the timing of this ptome to journalistic excellence. The article is published in the latter half of October precisely because South Dakota is documenting its highest numbers of new cases now.  It doesn’t seem to matter that the Sturgis Rally was held in early August, more than 2 months prior to the recent spike in cases. The Post article spends the majority of its time meandering through a few anecdotes from rally attendees who have finally seen the error in their ways, but provide no other data points to substantiate the condescension of the blue-checkmark twitterati that were all too happy to amplify the article.

In fairness, this isn’t the first time a scarlet C has been attempted to be hung on Republican Governor of South Dakota, and the band of deplorables she leads.  The unabashed Trump supporting Governor has had the conventional public health experts on mute for much of the pandemic.  The South Dakotan approach has emphasized private personal responsibility and was one of only eight states to eschew stay-at-home, or safer-at-home orders.  The really annoying aspect of this approach to public health autocrats was that it seemed to work really well, as new COVID cases leading up to the Sturgis rally numbered in the 5o’s and 60’s per day while other, admittedly larger states, had outbreaks in the tens of thousands per day.

The current attempts to tie increasing cases to a gathering that took place months earlier is squarely in the realm of politics, not science.  After almost eight long months the citizens of the globe are weary, and are restarting life out of necessity.  Schools are opening, traffic into cities is building, and grandparents are hugging their grandkids again.  Tracking spread of the virus as this happens is simply a reflection of the social interactions that have come to define life.  Testing for COVID is ubiquitous enough at this point to have largely become a meaningless exercise used primarily to support shoddy scholarship that generates a clickbait headline.  If it was politically expedient to connect France’s recent spike in COVID case to the Sturgis Rally, some ‘researcher’ would find a way to make science say it was so.

An earlier, more scholarly attempt to make the Sturgis Rally the nation’s largest super-spreading event provides a particularly good example of how science bends to politics.   In September, economists tried to use another cellphone dataset to show that counties across the nation that contributed more travelers to the Sturgis Rally saw a much higher rise in COVID cases than those that sent relatively few travelers.  A closer read of the paper finds the wheels start coming off this particularly poorly constructed narrative almost immediately.  One would think that researchers intent on demonstrating a COVID apocalypse triggered by a mass gathering would use deaths, but instead COVID cases are used.  The authors explain that their reason for using cases is because of the relatively low level of mortality since the Sturgis event.  At the time the article was published September 2nd, there had been one recorded death since the rally. 

It is true that South Dakotans appear to obey the natural laws of viral spread.  As people gather and socialize doing the things they value, whether that be at motorcycle rallies or the local Target, cases rise.  Two weeks after the Sturgis rally, South Dakota goes from seeing fewer than a 100 new cases per day to almost 400 new cases per day.

To put these numbers into context, one need only look at the rise in cases in California, Washington and Florida, all seemingly quiet until a few weeks after massive gatherings in major cities during the Memorial Day Weekend.

Fascinatingly the same researchers confident about the link between national superspreading and the Sturgis Rally also found no link between widespread Memorial day protests and a spike in cases 2 weeks later. 

The data in early September, almost one month after the Sturgis Rally actually suggests S. Dakotans had a reasonably small uptick in cases that was already beginning to dissipate according to the snapshot available from the South Dakota COVID dashboard.

And its not just PCR positivity, even the weekly influenza like illness reporting trends year-over-year, shows no significant spike compared to prior years.

The danger of superspreader events is that they create a conflagration that overwhelms hospitals, yet the hospital occupancy data In South Dakota shows almost 50% of regular hospital beds, and 36% of ICU beds were empty one month after the Sturgis Rally.

The real meat in this scholarly work, of course, is the proposition that Sturgis spread the virus far and wide.  The paper sought to demonstrate this by by showing counties across the country that contributed a high number of attendees to the Sturgis Rally saw higher rates of COVID spread in the weeks that followed. 

The following national map shows the counties that were noted to contribute a high number of travelers to the sturgis rally.  The deepest blue are high inflow counties, that were found to have an increase in cases between 6-12% after the Sturgis Rally.  Conversely, low inflow counties appeared to have no increase in new COVID cases.

This would appear to be concerning, visual evidence of COVID spread directly as a result of the Sturgis rally, until one actually uses the nice map to take a look at outbreaks in high inflow counties.  Here is one of the graphs of COVID cases in the deep blue high inflow Weld County, Colorado.  Even an electron microscope wouldn’t be able to manufacture a meaningful spike three weeks after the Sturgis even in early August..

Weld County, Colorado

The next high inflow county of interest is the home of Las Vegas, which also shows absolutely no visual evidence of chaos unleashed after the August gathering. The spike in cases here instead seems to time out well with casino openings in mid June.

Clark County, Nevada

Campbell County, Wyoming, another high inflow county, is perhaps more promising for the Sturgis superspreader narrative on first glance.  There appears to be a spike in cases about 2 weeks after Sturgis, but a closer look at the y-axis shows the spike in cases was 8 new cases in one day.  Not 80, not 8000, but eight cases.

Campbell County, Wyoming

But as cases rise across the nation in October in multiple disparate states, somehow the edifying narrative the Washington Post and other social media influencers are latching onto is that the Sturgis rally was the unique event that set fire to the midwest. Never mind that non-contiguous Alaska and Sturgis-adjacent North Dakota have new case/hospitalization peaks that appear to mirror each other by both accelerating in October, well after one would expect Sturgis to be responsible. 

Alaska

North Dakota

On the other hand, Hawaii appears to have some cause to blame its epidemic on the irresponsible Dakotans from Sturgis based on the timing of its new case and hospitalization peaks.  It’s just too bad motorcycle traffic between Hawaii and South Dakota is of the non-existent variety.

Even casual observers at this point should realize that Science is in the process of being shaped by politics. Perhaps this has always been so, and it just took COVID to make the contortions transparent.  Nonetheless, we live in a world where the answers are known before the research begins and the headlines are written before journalists put pen to paper.  This goes well beyond the garden variety cherry picking of research that is the hallmark of all debates, whether they be scientific or political.  This is utilizing the research enterprise to manufacture science that suits a particular politic. And so we get a particular focus on Sturgis two whole months after the event because the point is to shame deplorables in states with Republican leadership 3 weeks before a Presidential election.  In this brave new world, the science tells us that massive Memorial Day protests don’t trigger viral outbreaks, but motorcycle rallies in South Dakota do.  “Science” careens towards science fiction. 

Anish Koka is a cardiologist in Philadelphia.  He is co-host of the Accad & Koka report.  Follow him on twitter @anish_koka.

Viruses on Motorcycles published first on https://wittooth.tumblr.com/

[lauramalchowblog]

Viruses on Motorcycles

By ANISH KOKA

The most recent fiction dressed up as science about COVID comes to us courtesy of a viral Washington Post article.  “How the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally may have spread coronavirus across the Upper Midwest” screams the headline.   The charge made is that “within weeks” of the gathering that drew nearly half a million visitors the Dakota’s and adjacent states are experiencing a surge of COVID cases.  

The Sturgis Rally happens to be a popular motorcycle rally held in Sturgis, South Dakota every August that created much consternation this year because it wasn’t cancelled even as the country was in the throes of a pandemic.  While some of the week long event is held outdoors, attendees filled bars and tattoo parlors,(and that too without masks!), much to the shock and chagrin of the virtuous members of society successfully able to navigate life via zoom, amazon prime, and ubereats.

This particular Washington Post article’s sole source of data comes from a non-profit tech organization called The Center For New Data that attempted to use cellphone data to attempt to track spread of the virus from the Sturgis rally.  Unfortunately, tracking viral spread using cellphone mobility data is about as hard as it seems.  The post article references only 11,000 people that were able to be tracked out of a total of almost 500,000 visitors, and isn’t able to assess mask wearing, or attempts at social distancing. How many bars are there to stuff into in Sturgis anyway?? And so it isn’t surprising that even in an article designed to please a certain politic, this particular sentence appears:

“But precisely how that outbreak unfolded remains shrouded in uncertainty.”

The other striking feature of the article is the timing of this ptome to journalistic excellence. The article is published in the latter half of October precisely because South Dakota is documenting its highest numbers of new cases now.  It doesn’t seem to matter that the Sturgis Rally was held in early August, more than 2 months prior to the recent spike in cases. The Post article spends the majority of its time meandering through a few anecdotes from rally attendees who have finally seen the error in their ways, but provide no other data points to substantiate the condescension of the blue-checkmark twitterati that were all too happy to amplify the article.

In fairness, this isn’t the first time a scarlet C has been attempted to be hung on Republican Governor of South Dakota, and the band of deplorables she leads.  The unabashed Trump supporting Governor has had the conventional public health experts on mute for much of the pandemic.  The South Dakotan approach has emphasized private personal responsibility and was one of only eight states to eschew stay-at-home, or safer-at-home orders.  The really annoying aspect of this approach to public health autocrats was that it seemed to work really well, as new COVID cases leading up to the Sturgis rally numbered in the 5o’s and 60’s per day while other, admittedly larger states, had outbreaks in the tens of thousands per day.

The current attempts to tie increasing cases to a gathering that took place months earlier is squarely in the realm of politics, not science.  After almost eight long months the citizens of the globe are weary, and are restarting life out of necessity.  Schools are opening, traffic into cities is building, and grandparents are hugging their grandkids again.  Tracking spread of the virus as this happens is simply a reflection of the social interactions that have come to define life.  Testing for COVID is ubiquitous enough at this point to have largely become a meaningless exercise used primarily to support shoddy scholarship that generates a clickbait headline.  If it was politically expedient to connect France’s recent spike in COVID case to the Sturgis Rally, some ‘researcher’ would find a way to make science say it was so.

An earlier, more scholarly attempt to make the Sturgis Rally the nation’s largest super-spreading event provides a particularly good example of how science bends to politics.   In September, economists tried to use another cellphone dataset to show that counties across the nation that contributed more travelers to the Sturgis Rally saw a much higher rise in COVID cases than those that sent relatively few travelers.  A closer read of the paper finds the wheels start coming off this particularly poorly constructed narrative almost immediately.  One would think that researchers intent on demonstrating a COVID apocalypse triggered by a mass gathering would use deaths, but instead COVID cases are used.  The authors explain that their reason for using cases is because of the relatively low level of mortality since the Sturgis event.  At the time the article was published September 2nd, there had been one recorded death since the rally. 

It is true that South Dakotans appear to obey the natural laws of viral spread.  As people gather and socialize doing the things they value, whether that be at motorcycle rallies or the local Target, cases rise.  Two weeks after the Sturgis rally, South Dakota goes from seeing fewer than a 100 new cases per day to almost 400 new cases per day.

To put these numbers into context, one need only look at the rise in cases in California, Washington and Florida, all seemingly quiet until a few weeks after massive gatherings in major cities during the Memorial Day Weekend.

Fascinatingly the same researchers confident about the link between national superspreading and the Sturgis Rally also found no link between widespread Memorial day protests and a spike in cases 2 weeks later. 

The data in early September, almost one month after the Sturgis Rally actually suggests S. Dakotans had a reasonably small uptick in cases that was already beginning to dissipate according to the snapshot available from the South Dakota COVID dashboard.

And its not just PCR positivity, even the weekly influenza like illness reporting trends year-over-year, shows no significant spike compared to prior years.

The danger of superspreader events is that they create a conflagration that overwhelms hospitals, yet the hospital occupancy data In South Dakota shows almost 50% of regular hospital beds, and 36% of ICU beds were empty one month after the Sturgis Rally.

The real meat in this scholarly work, of course, is the proposition that Sturgis spread the virus far and wide.  The paper sought to demonstrate this by by showing counties across the country that contributed a high number of attendees to the Sturgis Rally saw higher rates of COVID spread in the weeks that followed. 

The following national map shows the counties that were noted to contribute a high number of travelers to the sturgis rally.  The deepest blue are high inflow counties, that were found to have an increase in cases between 6-12% after the Sturgis Rally.  Conversely, low inflow counties appeared to have no increase in new COVID cases.

This would appear to be concerning, visual evidence of COVID spread directly as a result of the Sturgis rally, until one actually uses the nice map to take a look at outbreaks in high inflow counties.  Here is one of the graphs of COVID cases in the deep blue high inflow Weld County, Colorado.  Even an electron microscope wouldn’t be able to manufacture a meaningful spike three weeks after the Sturgis even in early August..

Weld County, Colorado

The next high inflow county of interest is the home of Las Vegas, which also shows absolutely no visual evidence of chaos unleashed after the August gathering. The spike in cases here instead seems to time out well with casino openings in mid June.

Clark County, Nevada

Campbell County, Wyoming, another high inflow county, is perhaps more promising for the Sturgis superspreader narrative on first glance.  There appears to be a spike in cases about 2 weeks after Sturgis, but a closer look at the y-axis shows the spike in cases was 8 new cases in one day.  Not 80, not 8000, but eight cases.

Campbell County, Wyoming

But as cases rise across the nation in October in multiple disparate states, somehow the edifying narrative the Washington Post and other social media influencers are latching onto is that the Sturgis rally was the unique event that set fire to the midwest. Never mind that non-contiguous Alaska and Sturgis-adjacent North Dakota have new case/hospitalization peaks that appear to mirror each other by both accelerating in October, well after one would expect Sturgis to be responsible. 

Alaska

North Dakota

On the other hand, Hawaii appears to have some cause to blame its epidemic on the irresponsible Dakotans from Sturgis based on the timing of its new case and hospitalization peaks.  It’s just too bad motorcycle traffic between Hawaii and South Dakota is of the non-existent variety.

Even casual observers at this point should realize that Science is in the process of being shaped by politics. Perhaps this has always been so, and it just took COVID to make the contortions transparent.  Nonetheless, we live in a world where the answers are known before the research begins and the headlines are written before journalists put pen to paper.  This goes well beyond the garden variety cherry picking of research that is the hallmark of all debates, whether they be scientific or political.  This is utilizing the research enterprise to manufacture science that suits a particular politic. And so we get a particular focus on Sturgis two whole months after the event because the point is to shame deplorables in states with Republican leadership 3 weeks before a Presidential election.  In this brave new world, the science tells us that massive Memorial Day protests don’t trigger viral outbreaks, but motorcycle rallies in South Dakota do.  “Science” careens towards science fiction. 

Anish Koka is a cardiologist in Philadelphia.  He is co-host of the Accad & Koka report.  Follow him on twitter @anish_koka.

Viruses on Motorcycles published first on https://venabeahan.tumblr.com

[emilyparkerus]

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[overheadphiladelphia]

Tips for Choosing a Rolling Counter Door for Small Openings Commercial Settings in Allentown, PA

What is a rolling counter door? 

“Counter doors are made from interlocking slats of formed steel, aluminum, or stainless steel that will roll up to store in coil above a wall opening. They provide security against entry and weather protection at both interior and exterior wall service openings commonly utilized in cafeterias, concession stands, and ticket booths,” according to Cornell.

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For rolling fire door consultation, installation, and service in Philadelphia, you may reach Overhead Door Company of Philadelphia at 215-352-4805 or send your details in our contact us or service request page.

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[jobsaggregation2]

Field Service Tech - CNC Sheet Metal Machine Tools - Philadelphia, PA

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