title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: The hotel received electricity from three sources: a power generator in the building and two power stations outside of it. The hotel received steam from a nearby plant on 32nd Street, and the subbasement also contained a steam-driven generator. The hotel also received alternating current from a PRR substation in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens. Cables carried power from the substation to a room in the hotel's basement, which contained five banks of transformers. Two of the banks of transformers supplied the hotel's lighting system, while the other three banks supplied a set of rotary converters. The lights were operated from three sets of circuits, allowing some parts of the hotel to remain illuminated even if a blackout affected the entire hotel.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: The ventilation system contained 27 motors, which powered fans that ventilated the air from all of the hotel's bathrooms. In addition, a pair of motors powered a vacuum system that collected dust from 487 openings throughout the hotel. The hotel received water from the city's water supply system, which supplied ice machines, faucets, and mechanical equipment. The water-drainage system included sewers to the city's sewage system, as well as sump pumps that drained water from the basements.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: As built, there were two banks of six passenger elevators, which all ran from the basement to the roof. The elevators could be configured so that one bank only served the upper floors and the lobby, while the other bank only served the lower floors. The southeast corner of the hotel contained two elevators which connected the lobby to the subway and railroad stations. Closer to 33rd Street, two elevators ran from ground level to the ballrooms above. Three elevators, at the eastern end of the hotel, ran from the basement to the kitchen on the first mezzanine level, stopping at the driveway. There were also eight service elevators and six dumbwaiters. One of the service elevators operated at a slightly slower speed than the remaining service elevators and all of the passenger elevators.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: The public rooms were largely on the lower floors. The ground level was largely designed in an Italian style. The hotel also had for exhibitions and of ballrooms. Large portions of the interiors were clad in Mycenaean marble, including corridors, stairways, and elevator lobbies. Prior to the hotel's demolition, most of the interior spaces were substantially altered.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: There were three floor levels below the street. The first basement contained main and auxiliary kitchens, grill room, lunch room, barber shop, and bathroom. The grill room was designed to resemble an Italian garden with bright colors; its columns and walls contained sgraffito decorations. The sub-basement mezzanine only covered part of the site and contained the hotel's workshops, service dining rooms, and locker rooms. The sub-basement contained laundry rooms for staff and guests; refrigerating, pumping, and filtering plants; and machine rooms.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: The first basement level also contained a direct entrance to the 34th Street–Penn Station on the New York City Subway's IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line (later serving the ). In addition, there were underpasses leading to the railroad station at 32nd and 33rd Streets; these underpasses were outside of the subway station's fare control area. Under 33rd Street was a connection to the Gimbels passageway, which opened in 1920 and was shuttered in 1986. The Gimbels passageway led east to the 34th Street–Herald Square station and to the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad (later PATH)'s 33rd Street station. Further connections to Madison Square Garden and the current Pennsylvania Station were built in the late 20th century. The hotel also contained direct subway entrances from the street to the platform, though these entrances had deteriorated significantly by the early 1990s.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: At ground level were the main lobby, office, dining room, tea room, men's cafe, bar, and main serving pantry. There were various shops that could be accessed both from the street and from inside the hotel, as well as a florist shop, telegraph office, public telephones, and check rooms at ground level.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: The two-story main lobby was accessible from the main entrance on Seventh Avenue and from one entrance each on 32nd and 33rd Streets. The lobby, measuring , was described by the "New-York Tribune" as the largest in the city. It was surrounded by 16 fluted columns, designed in the Doric order. Both the columns and the lobby's walls were made of Botticino marble. In addition, the lobby originally contained multicolored carpets and walnut furniture, including a walnut registration desk near 32nd Street. The lobby's ceiling measured high and had a two-color steel-and-glass skylight, designed by G. Rae & Co. Above the skylight were reflectors, which provided gold-tinted illumination; workers replaced the reflectors using a set of trolley tracks. The lobby was flanked by a promenade to the north and south. By the early 21st century, the skylight had been removed and the columns had been reclad multiple times, but the floor was extant.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: At the mezzanine level was a gallery that surrounded the lobby. The mezzanine also contained the lounging and writing rooms, a library, a large exhibition space, a hairdresser's shop, and the maitre d'hotel's office. The writing room, opening off the southern side of the mezzanine, was designed in a Jacobean style and was paneled in oak. The writing room's bookshelves extended nearly to the top of the plaster ceiling, which contained molded centerpieces that represented 16th-century printers' marks. From the mezzanine's gallery, a short flight of steps led to the ballroom floor.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: The upper level of the two-story lobby was severed from the room by Hilton in 1960, during major renovations, which reduced the lobby to one story. The mezzanine level floor was extended over the lobby, creating 30,000 sq ft of new exhibition space for conventions, giving the hotel the largest such facilities in the country at the time. In the mid-1990s, part of the mezzanine became a Sports Authority store.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: The men's cafe was just south of the main entrance and could also be accessed directly from the street. It contained a chestnut-paneled ceiling, tiled floors, and Georgian- and Flemish-inspired light fixtures, as well as a fireplace and grill on one wall. Just north of the main entrance was a Tuscan-style bar, which had wood paneling, stone walls and ceiling, and a mosaic tile floor. Later known as the Penn Bar, the space had become a storefront by the mid-1990s. East of the main lobby was the tea room, designed in the Adam style with arches and murals on the wall, as well as mirrored panels, Chinese-style carpets, and a decorative plaster ceiling. The tea room was surrounded by an extension of the lobby's promenade, which contained Caen stone walls and Italian furniture.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: The main restaurant, later a nightclub known as the Cafe Rouge, was a double-height space to the south of the tea room. The Cafe Rouge measured approximately , with a ceiling height of approximately . It consisted of a central space flanked on either side by a terrace measuring high. At the end of each terrace was a colonnade of four columns. Both the wall base and door trim were made of terracotta, while the walls were artificial limestone. The beamed ceiling had various carvings in the Italian and French Renaissance styles, and the ceiling itself was painted to increase the perceived height of the room. The east end of the cafe had a large floor-to-ceiling fountain. A bandstand was located on the central floor of the room on the exterior wall.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: The easternmost of the first floor, under the eastern light court, contained two parallel driveways, as well as a service driveway with loading platforms. Elevators led to workshops on the upper floors and the storage rooms and kitchen in the basement, and a conveyor belt connected with a baggage storage area on the mezzanine. At the extreme east end was a driveway for the adjacent Gimbels store, which contained elevators and a loading platform. Between the Gimbels store and the Pennsylvania Hotel was a shopping arcade, which was built in 1919. Originally known as the Pennsylvania Arcade, it was known as Gallery 34 by the 1990s.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: The ballroom floor, above the lobby's mezzanine, contained a flexible entertainment area with a grand foyer and ballroom, two large parlors, banquet room and foyer, and three smaller dining rooms. The ballrooms had their own stair and elevator from 33rd Street, which led to a grand foyer flanked by parlors. The ballroom facilities covered and were high. Each of the ballrooms was a large, open space without columns.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: The main ballroom alone covered and was one of the largest hotel ballrooms in New York City, having been planned with a capacity of 1,200 people. The main ballroom was on the south side of the building, directly over the main dining room, and measured . It had a vaulted ceiling with Italian arabesques and was surrounded on three sides by a gallery with boxes. Two silk-and-crystal chandeliers illuminated the space. The banquet room, on the north side of the same floor, had white-oak floors and a foyer with artificial stone walls. The private dining rooms were designed in the Georgian style. The ballroom floor was served by a large banquet kitchen, and the ballrooms could host one large event or multiple smaller events simultaneously.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: In 1995, the main ballroom was converted into a television studio measuring across. The areas around the main ballroom were converted into offices, conference rooms, telecommunications facilities, and audience rooms. The studio was used to tape television shows including "The People's Court", "Idiot Savants", "Maury", "Sally Jessy Raphael", "2 Minute Drill", and "The Opposition with Jordan Klepper". In 2009, the studios in the hotel were rebuilt and consolidated into a new studio for the sitcom "Sherri." The television studios continued to operate through the 2010s.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: Half a story above the ground floor were hotel executives' offices, baggage and parcel rooms, a print shop, and staff dining rooms. A conveyor belt connected the baggage room to a service driveway on the eastern end of the building.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: The second mezzanine and the entire second floor contained service bedrooms, storerooms, sewing and linen rooms, and a telephone exchange. When the hotel opened, "American Architect" said the telephone exchange was "the largest of its kind ever built". The eastern end of the fifth floor contained two Turkish baths, one for men and one for women. The women's bath was accessed by a stair from the sixth floor. The hotel also originally contained a swimming pool with filtered water.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: Guestrooms started at the fifth story, above the roofline of the original Penn Station. There were 17 stories of guestrooms, each of which contained a central corridor flanked by bedrooms. Each story contained an average of 125 rooms, and the larger rooms were generally concentrated in the western part of the hotel. Each room contained its own bathroom; some of the larger guestrooms had bathrooms that faced outward toward the street, while other guestrooms had bathrooms that faced inward toward the corridor. Two of the guestroom floors contained living and reception rooms, dining rooms, pantries and bedrooms, which could arranged into different suites with three to ten rooms. In the two eastern wings, three of the upper floors contained large guestrooms with large closets. Each guestroom floor contained its own "floor clerk", stationed outside the elevators, which acted as concierges for their respective stories. There was also a pantry, as well as a fire lookout station and an electrical clock system, on each story.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: Each guestroom contained Servidor doors with compartments. These allowed guests to give servants their dirty clothes and unpolished shoes without opening the door, and it enabled servants to deliver newspapers, room service, and other food. The Servidor doors, novelties at the time of their construction, were still in place when the hotel was demolished. The guestrooms also contained Chippendale furniture; each room typically contained a bed, two chairs, a writing desk, and a dresser. Curtains were hung from cornices or rods, and there were radiators on the ceilings and walls. The bathrooms in each guestroom contained a shower. To reduce the complexity of the electrical equipment, each guestroom was originally equipped with a telephone that could only be used for room service. To send messages, guests had to contact their floor clerks, who then sent the messages using telautograph machines or pneumatic tubes.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: The hotel hosted multiple notable guests in its early years. On May 6 and 8, 1924, Harry Houdini debunked Joaquin María Argamasilla, a 19-year-old Spaniard who claimed he had X-ray vision. In December 1925, William Faulkner stayed at the Pennsylvania while writing one of his many novels; he subsequently received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Galveston crime boss Johnny Jack Nounes threw a $40,000 party at the Pennsylvania in the 1920s, inviting silent film starts Clara Bow and Nancy Carroll, who were said to have bathed in tubs of champagne. Herbert Hoover spoke before the Ohio Society of New York at the Hotel Pennsylvania in November 1935. The American Russian Institute presented its first annual award to the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Hotel Pennsylvania in 1946, and Edwin H. Land demonstrated his invention of an instant camera at the hotel in 1947.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: U.S. Army bacteriologist Frank Olson died after he crashed through a window on the 10th floor in 1953; the U.S. government first described his death as a suicide, and then as misadventure, while others alleged that he was murdered. Fidel Castro stayed at the Statler Hilton in 1959, shortly after he became the leader of Cuba. Gameel al-Batouti (who was first officer of EgyptAir Flight 990 when it crashed in 1997, killing all 217 people aboard) was reportedly sexually promiscuous with female staff and was nearly banned from the hotel.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: The Statler also hosted delegates during several Democratic National Convention meetings at Madison Square Garden. During the 1976 convention, the Statler allocated 80 percent of its rooms to delegates; In advance of the 1980 convention, the Statler spent $5 million just on preparations, which included a "fast food" delicatessen as well as a kitchen in an elevator. Other events at the hotel included Esto 92, an Estonian heritage festival that had booked the entire hotel at the beginning of the 1992 DNC convention, as well as the 1994 edition of the Gay Games. By the 2000s, the hotel hosted hundreds of dogs every year during the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. The hotel's other events in the 2000s included auditions for reality TV show "America's Next Top Model".


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: The hotel's main dining room, later named the Cafe Rouge, was known for several decades as a major venue for big bands. Numerous acclaimed musicians performed at the Cafe Rouge, including Count Basie, the Dorsey Brothers, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, and Fred Waring. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the Cafe Rouge had a big band remote connection to the NBC Red Network (after 1942, the NBC Radio Network) and became known for the performances held inside.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: One evening in November 1939, while in the midst of a steady long-term engagement at the Cafe Rouge, bandleader Artie Shaw left the bandstand between sets and decided to quit his own band on the spot. Shaw's principal orchestrator from 1937 to 1939, Jerry Gray, was immediately hired by Miller as a staff arranger when Shaw deserted his band. The Glenn Miller Orchestra also had repeated long-term bookings in the Cafe Rouge from 1940 to 1942, when the band was broken up. Miller's orchestra broadcast from the cafe; some were recorded by RCA Victor. Les Brown's band, with its vocalist Doris Day, introduced their song "Sentimental Journey" at the Cafe Rouge in 1944. The cafe was closed for renovation during mid-1948.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: Other spaces in the hotel were also used for musical performances. Before air-conditioning became popular, major bands performed in the hotel's roof garden ballroom during the summer. In addition, Benny Goodman's band frequented the hotel's Room and started performing there in late 1936.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: In later years, the former Cafe Rouge space within the structure operated separately from the hotel business, with a separate address and entrance at 145 West 32nd Street. In 2007, for the Garden in Transit project, adhesive weatherproof paintings of flowers attached to taxicabs in New York City were painted inside the cafe. Numerous events from the 2013 New York Fashion Week were held in the Cafe Rouge. In 2014, the Cafe Rouge space was converted to an indoor basketball court known as Terminal 23, celebrating the launch of the Melo M10 by the Jordan Brand division of Nike. In its final years, the room operated as Station 32, a rental function/event space.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: Early in its existence, the hotel was assigned the phone number (212) 736-5000. The phone number was more commonly known as PEnnsylvania 6-5000, as written in the 2L+5N (two letters, five numbers) format that was common in the mid-20th century; the two letters stood for the telephone exchange. The number may have been assigned after the 2L+5N format was introduced in 1930. With the implementation of the North American Numbering Plan, the area code 212 was added to the number. Initially, all of the hotel's landlines used this number. During Glenn Miller's 1940 engagement at the hotel, Jerry Gray wrote the tune "Pennsylvania 6-5000" (with lyrics later added by Carl Sigman) that made use of the hotel's telephone number.


title: Hotel Pennsylvania

text: Although the hotel's owners claimed that (212) 736-5000 was "the oldest continuously in-service telephone number in New York", the veracity of this claim is disputed. Phone numbers in New York City existed as early as the 1880s, and the phone number may have been changed at some point before 1992. The hotel still carried the number when it became the Penta in 1983. A "Toronto Star" reported in 1993 that, when he dialed (212) 736-5000, a live operator at the Ramada Pennsylvania spoke to him while the song "Pennsylvania 6-5000" played in the background. By 1996, a writer for the "Chicago Tribune" reported that an automated voice was directing callers to press a button to access one of the hotel's departments. Steven Roth said in 2022 that Penn15 would retain the phone number (212) 736-5000, although he did not specify how the phone number would be reassigned.


title: Cut of pork

text: The cuts of pork are the different parts of the pig which are consumed as food by humans. The terminology and extent of each cut varies from country to country. There are between four and six primal cuts, which are the large parts in which the pig is first cut: the shoulder (blade and picnic), loin, belly (spare ribs and side) and leg. These are often sold wholesale, as are other parts of the pig with less meat, such as the head, feet and tail. Retail cuts are the specific cuts which are used to obtain different kinds of meat, such as tenderloin and ham. There at least 25 Iberian pork cuts, including jamón.


title: Cut of pork

text: The head of the pig can be used to make brawn, stocks, and soups. After boiling, the ears can be fried or baked and eaten separately. The cheeks can be cured and smoked to make jowls, known as "carrillada" or "carrileja" in Spanish-speaking countries. The face of Iberian pigs is known as "pestorejo" or "careta", and it includes the ears and snout ("morro"). The lower parts of the head are the neck ("papada") and the amygdalae ("castañetas"). The tongue, which weighs around 250 grams, is also eaten.


title: Cut of pork

text: Above the front limbs and behind the head is the shoulder blade. It can be boned out and rolled up as a roasting joint, or cured as "collar bacon". Also known as spare rib roast and joint, it is not to be confused with the rack of spare ribs from the front belly. Pork butt, despite its name, is from the upper part of the shoulder. The Boston butt, or Boston-style shoulder cut, comes from this area and may contain the shoulder blade. Mexican "carnitas" and Iberian "aguja" are also sourced from this part. Between the "aguja" and the "lomo" (loin) is the "presa", which is considered the finest cut of Iberian pork. Two well-marbled 600 g cuts of "presa" are obtained from each Iberian pig. Two smaller 100 g cuts known as "pluma" are obtained from beneath the "presa". The Italian "coppa" is obtained from the top of the shoulder.


title: Cut of pork

text: The arm shoulder can be cured on the bone to make a ham-like product or be used in sausages. The hands (or "paletas" in Ibérico pigs) refer to the front legs, as opposed to the hind legs, which are hams or "jamones". Between the "paleta" and the belly is a 150-200 g cut known as "secreto" which is very popular in Spain.


title: Cut of pork

text: The loin can be cured to make back bacon or Canadian-style bacon. The loin and belly can be cured together to make a side of bacon. The loin can also be divided up into roasts (blade loin roasts, centre loin roasts, and sirloin roasts come from the front, centre, or rear of the loin), back ribs (also called baby back ribs, or riblets), pork cutlets, and pork chops ("chuletas"). A pork loin crown roast is arranged into a circle, either boneless or with rib bones protruding upward as points in a crown. Pork tenderloin, removed from the loin, should be practically free of fat. It is known as "lomo" in Spain, where it is most often prepared as a "filete" or cured as a "caña de lomo". This high-quality meat shows a very ordered arrangement of muscle cells that can cause light diffraction and structural coloration.


title: Cut of pork

text: The subcutaneous fat and skin on the back (fatback) are used to make pork rinds, a variety of cured "meats", lardons, and lard. British pork scratchings and Hispanic "chicharrones" are also prepared from this cut.


title: Cut of pork

text: Spare ribs are taken from the pig's ribs and the meat surrounding the bones. St. Louis–style spareribs have the sternum, cartilage and skirt meat removed. The term "abanico" is used to refer to the ribs of Iberian pigs. It is very fatty and commonly barbecued.


title: Cut of pork

text: The belly, although a fattier meat, can be used for steaks or diced as stir-fry meat. Pork belly may be rolled for roasting or cut for streaky bacon. It is the source of Italian "pancetta" and Spanish "panceta".


title: Cut of pork

text: Although any cut of pork can be cured, technically speaking only the back leg is entitled to be called a ham. Legs and shoulders, when used fresh, are usually cut bone-in for roasting, or leg steaks can be cut from the bone. Three common cuts of the leg include the rump (upper portion), centre, and shank (lower portion). The ham of Iberian pigs is known as "jamón".


title: Cut of pork

text: The joint between the feet and the leg, known as ham hock or pork knuckles, is cooked in many European countries, including Austria ("stelze"), Czech Republic ("koleno"), Germany ("eisbein" and "schweinshaxe"), Hungary ("csülök"), Poland ("golonka"), Spain ("codillo"), Sweden ("Ffläsklägg") and Switzerland (wädli).


title: Cut of pork

text: Both the front and hind trotters can be cooked and eaten. They are colloquially known as "pigs feet" in the Southern United States and as "manitas de cerdo" in Spanish-speaking regions.


title: Cut of pork

text: The intestines (chitterlings) and other internal organs (offal) are often boiled or stewed. The testicles ("criadillas") are also eaten.


title: Cut of pork

text: The tail has very little meat as it is mostly composed of connective tissue. It can be roasted or fried, which makes the skin crisp and the bone soft. It has a strong flavour. Leonese "botillo" is made of chopped tail, ribs and bones, which are seasoned, stuffed in the cecum and smoked.


title: Eric Metaxas

text: Eric Metaxas (born 1963) is an American author, speaker, and conservative radio host. He has written three biographies, "Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery" about William Wilberforce (2007), "Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy" about Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2011), "Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World (2017), If You Can Keep it" (2017)", Fish Out of Water: A Search for the Meaning of Life" (2021) and "Letter to the American Church" (2022). He has also written humor, children's books and scripts for "VeggieTales".


title: Eric Metaxas

text: Metaxas was born in the New York City neighborhood of Astoria, Queens and grew up in Danbury, Connecticut. He graduated from Yale University (1984, B.A., English). While there, he edited the "Yale Record", the nation's oldest college humor magazine. Metaxas lives in Manhattan with his wife and daughter. He is Greek on his father's side and German on his mother's; he was raised in a Greek Orthodox environment.


title: Eric Metaxas

text: Although he was raised in the Greek Orthodoxy and has not formally left the denomination (saying he has "great respect" for it), Metaxas has attended Calvary-St. George's Episcopal Church. He has spoken at Times Square Church. Metaxas describes himself as a "Mere Christian" in the words of C.S. Lewis. In 2007, he said his books "don't touch upon anything at all where Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians differ. They express just the basics of the faith, from a basic, ecumenical Christian viewpoint. They only talk about the Christian faith that they have agreement on." In his book "Martin Luther," however, Metaxas criticized the political power structures that had emerged from the medieval Catholic Church and that it was only with Luther that the "true Gospel" was rescued "from under its crushing welter of ecclesiastical and political medieval structures."


title: Eric Metaxas

text: Metaxas is the author of more than thirty children’s books, including the bestsellers "Squanto and the Miracle of Thanksgiving" and "It's Time to Sleep, My Love", illustrated by Nancy Tillman. His books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages.


title: Eric Metaxas

text: Metaxas's works "If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty" and "Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life" are both "New York Times" best-selling books.


title: Eric Metaxas

text: Metaxas's biography of Wilberforce, "Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery", was the companion book to the 2006 film.


title: Eric Metaxas

text: "Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy" was named the 2010 Evangelical Christian Publishers Association Christian Book of the Year. "Bonhoeffer" is a "New York Times" best seller, climbing to #1 in the e-book category. It also won the 2011 John C. Pollock Award for Christian Biography awarded by Beeson Divinity School and a 2011 Christopher Award. Although the book is popular in the United States among evangelical Christians, Bonhoeffer scholars have criticized Metaxas's book as unhistorical, theologically weak, and philosophically naive. Professor of German history and Bonhoeffer scholar Richard Weikart, for example, credits his "engaging writing style," but claims Metaxas has a lack of intellectual background to interpret Bonhoeffer properly. The biography has also been criticized by Bonhoeffer scholars Victoria Barnett and Clifford Green. Despite these widespread and substantial criticisms of his work by experts on Bonhoeffer, Metaxas' book has been praised by popular magazines as a "weighty, riveting analysis of the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer" which "bring[s] Bonhoeffer and other characters to vivid life".


title: Eric Metaxas

text: "Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World" claimed a "New York Times" Editor's Pick in December 2017. and became a best-selling book in January 2019. Like his book on Bonhoeffer, Metaxas' "Martin Luther" has not been received positively by historians. Carlos Eire wrote that the book was "full of overblown claims" and accused Metaxas of doing naive Whig history, portraying Luther as "a titanic figure who single-handedly slays the dragon of the Dark Ages, rescues God from an interpretive dungeon, invents individual freedom and ushers in modernity." Catholic church historian John Vidmar writes that Metaxas ignored more than a century of scholarship on Luther in order to write a "sweeping and largely uncritical endorsement for Martin Luther." In order to reach his conclusions, Vidmar writes, "Metaxas needs to misunderstand, denigrate, and then caricature centuries of human effort and achievement in language that is colloquial, casual, and often flippant."


title: Eric Metaxas

text: Other writing has been published in the "Atlantic Monthly", "The New York Times", and "The Wall Street Journal".


title: Eric Metaxas

text: Metaxas is a prominent supporter of Donald Trump. In 2019, Metaxas published two children's books called "Donald Builds the Wall" and "Donald Drains the Swamp" in a series called "Donald the Caveman". Other characters in the book include those Metaxas has called "an angry little girl who looks a little bit like AOC" and "an angry, crazy old man who looks a little bit like a guy named Bernie." In a November 2019 interview with Franklin Graham, Metaxas said that "screaming protesters" to Trump were "almost demonic".


title: Eric Metaxas

text: Leaving a speech at the White House in August 2020, Metaxas punched an unarmed protester in the back of the head. Metaxas claimed the protester had been "very menacing for a long time." The protester disputed this characterization, saying that he had been "talking [profanity]" but gave Metaxas no reason to attack. The protester stated his intent to press charges against Metaxas.


title: Eric Metaxas

text: After the 2020 presidential election, Metaxas endorsed Donald Trump's claim that the election was tainted by voter fraud, predicting on Twitter: "Trump will be inaugurated. For the high crimes of trying to throw a U.S. presidential election, many will go to jail." Metaxas also told Trump on Metaxas's radio show that "Jesus is with us in this fight" to overturn the 2020 election. "I'd be happy to die in this fight," Metaxas added.


title: Eric Metaxas

text: In April 2015, Metaxas began hosting "The Eric Metaxas Show". The show is a two-hour, daily, nationally-syndicated radio program broadcast from the Empire State Building in New York and syndicated by the Salem Radio Network. Notable guests have included Dick Cavett, David Brooks, Kirsten Powers, Kathie Lee Gifford, N. T. Wright, Peter Hitchens (brother of Christopher Hitchens), Jimmie "J.J." Walker, Andrew Garfield, Maria Butina, Milo Yiannopoulos, Ross Douthat, Tony Shalhoub, Morgan Freeman, Jeff Allen, Senator Rand Paul, Joseph Fiennes, Darryl Strawberry, and Suzy Welch.


title: Eric Metaxas

text: Eric Metaxas also broadcasts on the Salem News Channel. His show began streaming on the Salem News Channel in November 2021.


title: Eric Metaxas

text: Metaxas is the founder and host of a New York City event series called "Socrates in the City: Conversations on the Examined Life," where he interviews thinkers and writers, and is labeled as a forum on "life, God, and other small topics" in Metaxas' book about the series. Guests to SItC have been the likes of, and not limited to Francis Collins, Malcolm Gladwell, Sir John Polkinghorne, Kathleen Norris, Richard John Neuhaus, Dick Cavett, N. T. Wright, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Dm. Alice von Hildebrand, Peter Hitchens, Sir Jonathan Sacks, and Caroline Kennedy.


title: Eric Metaxas

text: In the late 1990s Metaxas wrote BreakPoint radio commentaries for former Richard Nixon aide and Prison Fellowship founder Charles "Chuck" Colson. Upon Colson's death in 2012, Metaxas, along with John Stonestreet, became the voice of "BreakPoint", which now airs weekdays on 1350 outlets across the country.


title: Eric Metaxas

text: On February 2, 2012, Metaxas was the keynote speaker for the 2012 National Prayer Breakfast. Metaxas has testified before Congress about the rise of anti-Semitism in the U.S. and abroad, and he spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2013 and 2014 on the issue of Religious Freedom.


title: Eric Metaxas

text: Metaxas was awarded the Becket Fund's Canterbury Medal in 2011 and the Human Life Review's Defender of Life Award in 2013. Metaxas has received honorary doctorate degrees from Hillsdale College, Liberty University, , Ohio Christian University, and Colorado Christian University.


title: Corrido

text: The corrido () is a popular narrative metrical tale and poetry that forms a ballad. The songs are often about oppression, history, daily life for criminals, the vaquero lifestyle, and other socially relevant topics. Corridos were widely popular during the Mexican Revolution, and in the Southwestern American frontier as it was also a part of the development of Tejano music and New Mexico music, which later influenced Western music. The "corrido" derives largely from the romance, and in its most known form consists of a salutation from the singer and prologue to the story, the story itself, and a moral and farewell from the singer. It is still a popular genre today in Mexico.


title: Corrido

text: Corridos play an important part in Mexican and Mexican American culture. The name comes from the Spanish word "correr" ("to run"). The formula of a standard corrido is of eight quatrains that have four to six lines that contain eight syllables. Corridos have a long history in Mexico, starting from the Mexican War of Independence in 1810 and throughout the Mexican Revolution. Until the arrival and success of electronic mass-media (mid-20th century), the "corrido" served in Mexico as the main informational and educational outlet, even with subversive purposes, due to an apparent linguistic and musical simplicity that lent itself to oral transmission. After the spread of radio and television, the genre evolved into a new stage and is still in the process of maturation. Some scholars, however, consider the "corrido" to be dead or moribund in more recent times (see e.g. Vicente T. Mendoza, "El corrido mexicano", 1954). In more rural areas where Spanish and Mexican cultures have been preserved because of isolation, the romance has taken on other forms related to the "corrido" as well. In New Mexico, for example, a story-song emerged during the colonial period that was known as an "Indita", which loosely follows the format of a "corrido", but is chanted rather than sung, similar to a Native American chant, hence the name "Indita".


title: Corrido

text: The earliest living specimens of "corrido" are adapted versions of Spanish romances or European tales, mainly about disgraced or idealized love, or religious topics. These, that include (among others) "La Martina" (an adaptation of the romance "La Esposa Infiel") and "La Delgadina", show the same basic stylistic features of the later mainstream "corridos" (1/2 or 3/4 tempo and "verso menor" lyric composing, meaning verses of eight or less phonetic syllables, grouped in strophes of six or less verses).


title: Corrido

text: Beginning with the Mexican War of Independence (1810–1821) and culminating during the Mexican Revolution (1910–1921), the genre flourished and acquired its "epic" tones, along with the three-step narrative structure as described above.


title: Corrido

text: Some "corridos" may be love stories. These are not exclusively male by any means, there are also "corridos" about women such as La Venganza de Maria, Laurita Garza, El Corrido de Rosita Alvirez and La Adelita, or couples such as La


title: Corrido

text: Fama de la Pareja sung by Los Tigres del Norte. Some even employ fictional stories invented by their composers.


title: Corrido

text: Prior to widespread use of radio, popular "corridos" were passed around as an oral tradition, often to spread news of events (for example, "La cárcel de Cananea") and popular heroes and humor to the population, many of whom were illiterate prior to the post-Revolution improvements to the educational system. Academic study of "corridos" written during the Revolution shows that they were used as a means to communicate news throughout Mexico as a response to the propaganda being spread in the newspapers which were owned by the corrupt government of Porfirio Díaz. Sheet music of popular "corridos" was sold or included in publications. Other "corrido" sheets were passed out free as a form of propaganda, to eulogize leaders, armies, and political movements, or in some cases to mock the opposition. The best known Revolutionary "corrido" is "La Cucaracha", an old song that was rephrased to celebrate the exploits of Pancho Villa's army and poke fun at his nemesis Victoriano Huerta.


title: Corrido

text: With the consolidation of "Presidencialismo" (the political era following the Mexican Revolution) and the success of electronic mass-media, the "corrido" lost its primacy as a mass communication form, becoming part of a folklorist cult in one branch and, in another, the voice of the new subversives: oppressed workers, drug growers or traffickers, leftist activists and emigrated farmworkers (mainly to the United States). This is what scholars designate as the "decaying" stage of the genre, which tends to erase the stylistic or structural characteristics of "revolutionary" or traditional "corrido" without a clear and unified understanding of its evolution. This is mainly signified by the "narcocorrido", many of which are egocentric ballads paid for by drug smugglers to anonymous and almost illiterate composers (more about this assertion here l), but with others coming from the most popular norteño and banda artists and written by some of the most successful and influential ranchera composers.


title: Corrido

text: In the Mestizo-Mexican cultural area the three variants of "corrido" (romance, revolutionary and modern) are both alive and sung, along with popular sister narrative genres, such as the "valona" of Michoacán state, the "son arribeño" of the Sierra Gorda (Guanajuato, Hidalgo and Querétaro states) and others. Its vitality and flexibility allow original "corrido" lyrics to be built on non-Mexican musical genres, such as blues and ska, or with non-Spanish lyrics, like the famous song El Paso by Marty Robbins, and corridos composed or translated by Mexican indigenous communities or by the "Chicano" people in the United States, in English or "Spanglish". The "corrido" was, for example, a favorite device employed by the Teatro Campesino led by Luis Valdez in mobilizing largely Mexican and Mexican-American farmworkers in California during the 1960s.


title: Corrido

text: "Corridos" have seen a renaissance in the 21st century. Contemporary "corridos" feature contemporary themes such as drug trafficking (narcocorridos), immigration, migrant labor and even the Chupacabra.


title: Corrido

text: Modern artists have created a modern twist to the historical corridos. This new type of corridos is called narcocorridos (literally "drug-ballads"). The earliest form of corridos emerged in the Mexican Revolution and told stories of revolutionary leaders and of battles. Narcocorridos typically use real dates and places to tell mainly stories of drug smuggling, but also include violence, murder, poverty, corruption, and crime.


title: Corrido

text: The border zone of Rio Grande has been credited with being the birthplace of Narcocorridos. This began in the 1960s with the fast growth of drug empires in the border states of Mexico and the United States. As drug lords grew, people idolized them and began to show their respect and admiration through narcocorridos.


title: Corrido

text: There are two main types of narcocorridos: commercial corridos and private corridos. Commercial narcocorridos recorded made by famous artists who idolize a certain drug dealer and release a song about him, while private narcocorridos are usually commissioned by the drug dealer himself. While commercial corridos are available to the public, private narcocorridos are restricted to night-clubs that are frequently attended by drug dealers, or through CDs bought on the street. Drug lords often pay singers to write songs about them, as a way to send a message to rivals. These songs are found to be most popular on YouTube, many that have a banner "Approved by the cartel". These type of corridos are changing from the formula historic and typical corridos would usually take. A first person voice is now being sung instead of the historic third person point of view.


title: Corrido

text: The Mexican government has tried to ban narcocorridos because for their explicit and controversial lyrics. Most of the Mexican public argues that crimes and violence are to blame for narcocorridos. However, despite the efforts of the Mexican government to ban narcocorridos, the northern states of Mexico can still get access to these songs through US radio stations whose signal still reaches the northern states of Mexico. Narcocorridos are also widely available on websites like Youtube and iHeartRadio. Today, narcocorridos are popular in other Latin American countries like Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Guatemala and Honduras.


title: Corrido

text: Narcocorridos have been growing in popularity in the United States and they have been targeted for the American public. More recent narcocorridos are even targeted towards the American public and some are even written in English. Like many artists, narcocorrido singers have chosen American cities to perform concerts because the American public can buy concert tickets for a higher price than the average Mexican citizen.


title: Corrido

text: In Reality, Gregorio Cortez, a Mexican man was born on a ranch near Matamoros, Mexico. Gregorio was born in 1875, as the "seventh child to a family of eight." However, Gregorio, his parents, and his eight siblings moved to Manor, Texas in 1887. In 1889, Gregorio joined is older brother, Ronaldo to Karnes county, near Gonzales, Texas. They were both working for the famers, ranch hands, and farmhands. They even worked as vaqueros. in 1900, Gregorio and Romaldo went to settle down and married. They were "inseparable".


title: Corrido

text: Then, on June 12, 1901, The Sherriff of El Carmen, W.T. Morris, came to Gregorio and Román in order to investigate a horse theft. Even though Gregorio and Román were innocent, they spoke Spanish. and the sheriff didn't. Sheriff Morris had relied on poor Spanish translations from his fellow Texas Rangers. Cortez and Romaldo got confused, and played along. The Sheriff was looking for a horse thief, and asked if the traded a horse. Gregorio said "no", and told the sherrif that he had a mare. After a while, Sheriff Morris assumed Gregorio and Romaldo were lying, and decided to place them both under arrest, all for a crime they didn't commit.


title: Corrido

text: However, when the sheriff tried to arrest the brothers, Gregorio stood up to him, saying "You can't arrest me for nothing". The Sheriff didn't understand his Spanish, and thought he said "No white man can arrest me"  Then, the Sherriff got out his pistol and open fired. and ended up shooting Romaldo, who ended up wounded.  Gregorio shot the Sheriff in retaliation. However, Gregorio left the scene, and headed straight towards the Austin-Gonzales vicinity. Cortez did a powerful walk to save his life.


title: Corrido

text: Gregorio walked eighty miles a day through difficult terrain just to get to the border. All the while the Texas rangers were following him. Gregorio even killed the Gonzales sheriff Robert M. Glover , who was leading the charge. Gregorio walked 100 miles to meet a friend named Ceferino Flores, who gave him a saddle. Gregorio eventually got a horse to ride 400 miles to the border. Eventually, Texas Governor Joseph D Sayers and Karnes citizens offered a reward of one-thousand dollars for Gregorio's capture. Gregorio eventually landed at the Abran de la Garza sheep camp on June 22, 1901. He started to say with a man named Jesús González. González., however led the rangers to find Cortez, and the rangers arrested him.  Many Tejanos would brand Jesús González as a traitor, and he would eventually be known as "EL Teco".


title: Corrido

text: Gregorio Cortez was put on trial. A formal letter written and signed by Mexicans of Mexico city, and the president of Mexico. Which in turn gave him the money to help fund his claim. Sadly, Gregorio was sentenced of life imprisonment for the killings of two sheriffs, and the supposed theft of a horse. However, he got an early release after a year. This verdict was a "victory" for Mexican Americans, and the unfair treatment of Mexican Americans. His name became immortalized, and his story became a corrido, where Cortez was portrayed as a hero.


title: Corrido

text: The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez is a corrido that is well known by Mexican Americans who live near the Rio Grande border between the United States and Mexico. It tells the story of a Mexican Man named Gregorio Cortez who takes up a pistol to defend his individual rights against 33 Texas Rangers from June 12 to June 22, 1901.


title: Corrido

text: The story of Gregorio Cortez ended up being made into a Corrido, and he would become a folk hero among people in the Texas-Mexico Border.


title: Corrido

text: In the story, Gregorio Cortez was a Mexican man with a kind heart and a diligent work ethic. He was described as "a man who never raised his voice to parent or elder brother, and never disobeyed." Most of the story is no different from his real life, but the story tells of him as a sharpshooter, and his brother Romaldo was renamed Román.


title: Corrido

text: Sherrif Morris still had Román and Gregorio question about the horses. But instead of Romaldo being wounded, his counterpart Román, was shot dead trying to protect this brother and collapsed on the ground. However, Gregorio got a gun and shot the sheriff in order to avenge his brother. The story fantasizes Gregorio as being an able bodied man who ran across the country with the Texas Rangers on his tail. The story tells that Gregorio walked 100 miles and rode more than 400 miles. Gregorio walked and walked until he reached the Rio Grande. However, as Gregorio arrived in Goliad, Texas, he met with his friend named "El Teco". However, El Teco betrayed him and turned him in to the police. The Police arrested Gregorio, put him on trial, and Gregorio was sentenced to prison for horse theft, despite never stealing a horse. Gregorio was sentenced for "ninety-nine years and a day" in federal prison.


title: Corrido

text: The story of Gregorio Cortez is a testament to the culture of Mexican-Americans who live in the southwest United States and of Mexican American Culture in general. Gregorio's tale was later made into a corrido and was passed on from person to person. Gregorio Cortez ended up becoming a folk hero. It helped inspire tales of heroism and told the "spirit of the border strife." Many people called Gregorio Cortez a hero because both stories of his real life and the corrido involve him ronning away from the "rinches", or Texas rangers, and he kept evading them until his capture. This gave Mexican-Americans the idea of a Hispanic hero who defended his rights from the American "outsiders".


title: Corrido

text: Both the story and the corrido tell of how Gregorio Cortez was strong because he ended up standing up against a legal system that didn't favor Mexican-Americans, and he became a hero to various people of Mexican descent in Texas.


title: Corrido

text: The Corrido has been adapted to other media as well. In 1958, Américo Paredes wrote the book "With his pistol in his hand: a border ballad and its hero". This book details the corrido and the story of Gregorio Cortes in expressive detail and has become a "classic of Mexican-American prose." In 1982, A film titled "The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez" was created and had Edward James Olmos star as Gregorio Cortez.  Overall, the story of Gregorio Cortez and the corridos that were inspired by it are a timeless tradition for Mexican-Americans everywhere.


title: Corrido

text: "Corridos", like rancheras, have introductory instrumental music and "adornos" (ornamentations) accommodating the stanzas of the lyrics. Like rancheras, "corridos" can be played in virtually all Regional Mexican styles. Also like rancheras, corridos are usually played in Polka, Waltz, or Mazurka mode.


title: Isatis tinctoria

text: Isatis tinctoria, also called woad (), dyer's woad, or glastum, is a flowering plant in the family Brassicaceae (the mustard family) with a documented history of use as a blue dye and medicinal plant. Its genus name, Isatis, derives from the ancient Greek word for the plant, ἰσάτις. It is occasionally known as Asp of Jerusalem. Woad is also the name of a blue dye produced from the leaves of the plant. Woad is native to the steppe and desert zones of the Caucasus, Central Asia to Eastern Siberia and Western Asia but is now also found in South-Eastern and Central Europe and western North America.


title: Isatis tinctoria

text: Since ancient times, woad was an important source of blue dye and was cultivated throughout Europe, especially in Western and Southern Europe. In medieval times, there were important woad-growing regions in England, Germany and France. Towns such as Toulouse became prosperous from the woad trade. Woad was eventually replaced by the more colourfast "Indigofera tinctoria" and, in the early 20th century, both woad and "Indigofera tinctoria" were replaced by synthetic blue dyes. Woad has been used medicinally for centuries. The double use of woad is seen in its name: the term ""Isatis"" is linked to its ancient use to treat wounds; the term ""tinctoria"" references its use as a dye. There has also been some revival of the use of woad for craft purposes.


title: Isatis tinctoria

text: The first archaeological finds of woad seeds date to the Neolithic period. The seeds have been found in the cave of l'Audoste, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. Impressions of seeds of "Färberwaid" (Isatis tinctoria L.) or German indigo, of the plant family "Brassicaceae", have been found on pottery in the Iron Age settlement of Heuneburg, Germany. Seed and pod fragments have also been found in an Iron Age pit at Dragonby, North Lincolnshire, United Kingdom. The Hallstatt burials of the Hochdorf Chieftain's Grave and Hohmichele contained textiles dyed with woad.


title: Isatis tinctoria

text: Melo and Rondão write that woad was known "as far back as the time of the ancient Egyptians, who used it to dye the cloth wrappings applied for the mummies." Skelton informs us that one of the early dyes discovered by the ancient Egyptians was "blue woad (Isatis tinctoria)." Lucas writes, "What has been assumed to have been Indian Indigo on ancient Egyptian fabrics may have been woad." Hall states that the ancient Egyptians created their blue dye "by using indigotin, otherwise known as woad."


title: Isatis tinctoria

text: Celtic blue is a shade of blue, also known as in Welsh, or in both the Irish language and in Scottish Gaelic. Julius Caesar reported (in "Commentarii de Bello Gallico") that the Britanni used to colour their bodies blue with , a word that means primarily "glass", but also the domestic name for the "woad" ("Isatis tinctoria"), besides the Gaulish loanword (from Proto-Celtic ). The connection seems to be that both glass and the woad are "water-like" ( is from Proto-Indo-European ). In terms of usage, Latin is more often used to refer to glass rather than woad. The use of the word for the woad might also be understood as "coloured like glass", applied to the plant and the dye made from it.


title: Isatis tinctoria

text: Due to this and other Roman accounts of them painting (or possibly tattooing) their bodies, northern inhabitants of Britain came to be known as Picts (), meaning "painted ones" in Latin. Gillian Carr conducted experiments using indigo pigment derived from woad mixed with different binders to make body paint. The resulting paints yielded colours from "grey-blue, through intense midnight blue, to black". People with modern experiences with woad as a tattoo pigment have claimed that it does not work well, and is actually caustic and causes scarring when put into the skin.


title: Isatis tinctoria

text: It has also been claimed that Caesar was referring to some form of copper- or iron-based pigment. Analysis done on the Lindow Man did return evidence of copper. The same study also noted that the earliest definite reference to the woad plant in the British Isles dates to a seed impression on an Anglo-Saxon pot. The authors theorize that vitrum could have actually referred to copper(II) sulfate's naturally occurring variant chalcanthite or to the mineral azurite. A later study concluded the amount was "not of sufficient magnitude to provide convincing evidence that the copper was deliberately applied as paint".


title: Isatis tinctoria

text: Woad was an important dyeing agent in much of Europe and parts of England during the medieval period. However, dye traders began to import indigo during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which threatened to replace locally grown woad as the primary blue dye. The translation of vitrum as woad may date to this period.


title: Isatis tinctoria

text: Woad was one of the three staples of the European dyeing industry, along with weld (yellow) and madder (red). Chaucer mentions their use by the dyer ("litestere") in his poem "The Former Age":


title: Isatis tinctoria

text: The three colours can be seen together in tapestries such as "The Hunt of the Unicorn" (1495–1505), though typically it is the dark blue of the woad that has lasted best. Medieval uses of the dye were not limited to textiles. For example, the illustrator of the "Lindisfarne Gospels" () used a woad-based pigment for blue paint.


title: Isatis tinctoria

text: In Viking Age levels at archaeological digs at York, a dye shop with remains of both woad and madder have been excavated and dated to the 10th century. In medieval times, centres of woad cultivation lay in Lincolnshire and Somerset in England, Jülich and the Erfurt area in Thuringia in Germany, Piedmont and Tuscany in Italy, and Gascogne, Normandy, the Somme Basin (from Amiens to Saint-Quentin), Brittany and, above all, Languedoc in France. This last region, in the triangle created by Toulouse, Albi, and Carcassonne known as the Lauragais, was for a long time the most productive of woad, or "pastel" as it was known there, one writer commenting that "woad […] hath made that country the happiest and richest in Europe."


title: Isatis tinctoria

text: The prosperous woad merchants of Toulouse displayed their affluence in splendid mansions, many of which still stand, as the Hôtel de Bernuy and the Hôtel d'Assézat. One merchant, Jean de Bernuy, a Spanish Jew who had fled the inquisition, was credit-worthy enough to be the main guarantor of the ransomed King Francis I after his capture at the Battle of Pavia by Charles V of Spain. Much of the woad produced here was used for the cloth industry in southern France, but it was also exported via Bayonne, Narbonne and Bordeaux to Flanders, the Low Countries, Italy, and above all Britain and Spain.


title: Isatis tinctoria

text: The woad produced in Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire in the 19th century was shipped out from the Port of Wisbech, Spalding and Boston, both the last to northern mills and the USA. The last portable woad mill was at Parson Drove, Cambridgeshire, Wisbech & Fenland Museum has a woad mill model, photos and other items used in woad production.


title: Isatis tinctoria

text: A major market for woad was at Görlitz in Lausitz. The citizens of the five Thuringian "Färberwaid" (dye woad) towns of Erfurt, Gotha, Tennstedt, Arnstadt and Langensalza had their own charters. In Erfurt, the woad-traders gave the funds to found the University of Erfurt. Traditional fabric is still printed with woad in Thuringia, Saxony and Lusatia today: it is known as "Blaudruck" (literally, "blue print(ing)").


title: Isatis tinctoria

text: The woad plant's roots are used in Traditional Chinese medicine to make a medicine known as "banlangen" ( ) that purports to have antiviral properties. "Banlangen" is used as an herbal medicinal tea in China for colds and tonsular ailments. Used as a tea, it has a brownish appearance and (unlike most Chinese medicines) is mildly sweet in taste.


title: Isatis tinctoria

text: The dye chemical extracted from woad is indigo, the same dye extracted from "true indigo", "Indigofera tinctoria", but in a lower concentration. Following the Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India by the navigator Vasco da Gama in 1498, great amounts of indigo were imported from Asia. Laws were passed in some parts of Europe to protect the woad industry from the competition of the indigo trade. It was proclaimed that indigo caused yarns to rot: "In 1577 the German government officially prohibited the use of indigo, denouncing it as that pernicious, deceitful and corrosive substance, the Devil's dye." This prohibition was repeated in 1594 and again in 1603. In France, Henry IV, in an edict of 1609, forbade under pain of death the use of "the false and pernicious Indian drug".


title: Isatis tinctoria

text: With the development of a chemical process to synthesize the pigment, both the woad and natural indigo industries collapsed in the first years of the 20th century. The last commercial harvest of woad until recent times occurred in 1932, in Lincolnshire, Britain. Small amounts of woad are now grown in the UK and France to supply craft dyers. The classic book about woad is "The Woad Plant and its Dye" by J. B. Hurry, Oxford University Press of 1930, which contains an extensive bibliography.


title: Isatis tinctoria

text: A method for producing blue dye from woad is described in "The History of Woad and the Medieval Woad Vat" (1998) . In France, woad was treated with human urine, by a profession known as pisseurs, who would drink large quantities of beer to provide a sufficient supply.


title: Isatis tinctoria

text: Woad is biodegradable and safe in the environment. In Germany, there have been attempts to use it to protect wood against decay without applying dangerous chemicals. Production of woad is increasing in the UK for use in inks, particularly for inkjet printers, and dyes. The plant can cause problems, however: "Isatis tinctoria" is classified as an invasive species in parts of the United States.


title: Isatis tinctoria

text: In certain locations, the plant is classified as a non-native and invasive weed. It is listed as a noxious weed by the agriculture departments of several states in the western United States: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. In Montana, it has been the target of an extensive, and largely successful, eradication attempt.


title: Series A round

text: A series A round (also known as series A financing or series A investment) is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exchange for their investment. It is usually the first series of stock after the common stock and common stock options issued to company founders, employees, friends and family and angel investors.


title: Series A round

text: Series A rounds are traditionally a critical stage in the funding of new companies. Series A investors typically purchase 10% to 30% of the company. The capital raised during a series A is usually intended to capitalize the company for 6 months to 2 years as it develops its products, performs initial marketing and branding, hires its initial employees, and otherwise undertakes early stage business operations.


title: Series A round

text: Because there are no public exchanges listing their securities, private companies meet venture capital firms and other private equity investors in several ways, including warm referrals from the investors' trusted sources and other business contacts; investor conferences and demo days where companies pitch directly to investor groups. As equity crowdfunding becomes more established, startups are increasingly raising their Series A round online using platforms like Onevest and SeedInvest in the US. These blended rounds include a mix of angel investors, strategic investors and customers alongside the offline venture capital investors.


title: Series A round

text: Smaller investment amounts are usually not worth the legal and financial expense, the burden on a company of adjusting its capital structure to serve new investors, and the analysis and due diligence on the part of institutional investors. A company that needs money for operations but is not yet ready for venture capital will typically seek angel capital. Larger amounts are usually unwarranted given the cost of business in fields such as software, data services, telecommunications, and so on. However, there are routinely series A rounds in excess of $10 million in fields such as pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and real estate development. They all share a similar legal and financial framework, but specific terminology, deal terms, and investment practices vary according to business customs within different countries, business sectors, investor communities, and geographical regions.


title: Series A round

text: In the United States, Series A preferred stock is the first round of stock offered during the seed or early stage round by a portfolio company to the venture capital investor. Series A preferred stock is often convertible into common stock in certain cases such as an initial public offering (IPO) or the sale of the company.


title: Series A round

text: Series A rounds in the United States venture capital community, particularly in Silicon Valley, are widely reported in business press, blogs, industry reports, and other media that cover the technology industry. Series A rounds also occur in non-technology industries and receive investment from investment banks, corporate investors, angel investors, public agencies, and others, that receive less press coverage than technology startup funding rounds.


title: Series A round

text: In Britain, Series A equity funding is typically structured by the issuance of preference shares, redeemable shares, redeemable preference shares, ordinary shares (possibly split into different classes, for instance A ordinary shares and B ordinary shares), or some combination thereof.


title: Shakey Graves

text: Shakey Graves (born Alejandro Rose-Garcia; June 4, 1987) is an American Americana musician from Austin, Texas.


title: Shakey Graves

text: His music combines blues, folk, country, and rock and roll. Rose-Garcia received his stage name at Old Settler's Music Festival in 2007 after a stranger, apparently high on LSD, rambled "spooky wagons". Then he and his friends jokingly gave each other Native American guide names over a campfire. After an inspired night of playing music, he decided to keep the name.


title: Shakey Graves

text: Before being known as Shakey Graves, Rose-Garcia had acting roles in "Friday Night Lights" and the "Spy Kids" franchise.


title: Shakey Graves

text: Shakey Graves became known for his one-man band set up and most of his 2011 self-released debut album "Roll the Bones" features him playing solo. This set up originated after he grew tired of having to borrow kick drums and high hats in order to perform. His solution consisted of a modified suitcase that functions as both a kick drum and a tambourine stand built by a close friend.


title: Shakey Graves

text: His unique style of performance led to him being asked to be the official “busker” for the Edward Sharpe and Mumford & Sons Railroad Revival Tour in 2011, where he played music for patrons entering each venue.


title: Shakey Graves

text: His follow-up EP "The Donor Blues" was released in 2012, and features a collection of recordings from 2009.


title: Shakey Graves

text: After being courted by multiple labels, Shakey Graves signed with Dualtone Records. When he began working on the album, he added other musicians to his recording process and live set, including multi-instrumentalists Patrick O'Connor, Jon Shaw, and Chris Boosahda, who produced the album. Three songs are duets with ex-Paper Bird member Esmé Patterson. The album, titled "And the War Came", was released on October 7, 2014.


title: Shakey Graves

text: Shakey Graves then began touring as a three-piece band. The band made their television debut on October 14, 2014, on "Conan", and then appeared on the "Late Show with David Letterman", performing "Dearly Departed" with Patterson. The band performed their next single, "The Perfect Parts", on "Late Night with Seth Meyers". On May 6, 2015, the band performed on Austin City Limits.


title: Shakey Graves

text: In September 2015, Shakey Graves won the Best Emerging Artist award at the 2015 Americana Music Awards.


title: Shakey Graves

text: On February 9, 2012, Lee Leffingwell, the Mayor of Austin, proclaimed a "Shakey Graves Day". Every year on February 9 through the 11th, Shakey Graves offers all of his music, including unreleased albums "The State of Texas vs. Alejandro Rose-Garcia", "Story of My Life", "As Per Request", and "West of Calgary" on Bandcamp for pay-what-you-want prices.


title: Shakey Graves

text: On June 30, 2017, the band released "The Donor Blues" and "Nobody's Fool" as a collection titled "Shakey Graves and the Horse He Rode In On" on vinyl and streaming services under the Dualtone label.


title: Shakey Graves

text: Shakey Graves released their third studio album, "Can't Wake Up", on May 4, 2018, on Dualtone Records.


title: Shakey Graves

text: On April 2, 2021, Shakey Graves re-released his debut album "Roll the Bones" on Dualtone Records for its 10-year anniversary. The album was originally self-released on CD-R. Entitled "Roll the Bones X", the re-release includes additional songs not included on the original. The album reached number 136 on the US "Billboard" 200.


title: Shakey Graves

text: On May 31, 2022, Shakey Graves appeared on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" performing "This Town" with Trixie Mattel.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The Great Basin Desert is part of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and the Wasatch Range. The desert is a geographical region that largely overlaps the Great Basin shrub steppe defined by the World Wildlife Fund, and the Central Basin and Range ecoregion defined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and United States Geological Survey. It is a temperate desert with hot, dry summers and snowy winters. The desert spans large portions of Nevada and Utah, and extends into eastern California. The desert is one of the four biologically defined deserts in North America, in addition to the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan Deserts.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: Basin and range topography characterizes the desert: wide valleys bordered by parallel mountain ranges generally oriented north–south. There are more than 33 peaks within the desert with summits higher than , but valleys in the region are also high, most with elevations above . The biological communities of the Great Basin Desert vary according to altitude: from low salty dry lakes, up through rolling sagebrush valleys, to pinyon-juniper forests. The significant variation between valleys and peaks has created a variety of habitat niches which has in turn led to many small, isolated populations of genetically unique plant and animal species throughout the region. According to Grayson, more than 600 species of vertebrates live in the floristic Great Basin, which has a similar areal footprint to the ecoregion. Sixty-three of these species have been identified as species of conservation concern due to contracting natural habitats (for example, "Centrocercus urophasianus", "Vulpes macrotis", "Dipodomys ordii", and "Phrynosoma platyrhinos").


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The ecology of the desert varies across geography also. The desert's high elevation and location between mountain ranges influences regional climate: the desert formed by the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada that blocks moisture from the Pacific Ocean, while the Rocky Mountains create a barrier effect that restricts moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. Different locations in the desert have different amounts of precipitation depending on the strength of these rain shadows. The environment is influenced by Pleistocene lakes that dried after the last ice age: Lake Lahontan and Lake Bonneville. Each of these lakes left different amounts of salinity and alkalinity.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: Scientists have different definitions of the Great Basin Desert, which are often defined by negatives. J. Robert Macey defines the "Great Basin scrub desert as lacking creosote bush." The Great Basin Desert includes several arid basins lacking "Larrea tridentata" (chaparral) such as the "Chalfant, Hammil, Benton, and Queen valleys," as well as all but the southeast portion of the Owens Valley. Conversely, the "Panamint, Saline, and Eureka valleys" have creosote bush, unlike the Deep Springs Valley which includes part of the Great Basin scrub desert.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The study and definition of ecoregions can also indicate the boundaries of the Great Basin Desert. In 1987 J.M. Omernik defined a desert ecoregion between the Sierra Nevada and Wasatch Range, naming it the "Northern Basin and Range" ecoregion. In 1999, the U.S. EPA renamed the "Northern Basin and Range" the "Central Basin and Range" and the "(Snake River) High Desert" the "Northern Basin and Range". The World Wildlife Fund adopted the Basin and Range ecoregions from Omernik, but excised a small region of high-altitude areas which contain Holocene refugia, from the former "Northern Basin and Range" ecoregion and renamed it the "Great Basin Shrub Steppe". Although the EPA had refined the boundaries of the Central Basin and Range ecoregion by 2003, when USGS geographer Christopher Soulard wrote his reports on the region, his maps used the 1999 boundary for the "Central Basin and Range", which is essentially the same as the "Great Basin Shrub Steppe". He states that the Great Basin Desert is "encompassed within" that area.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: This article describes the general ecology of the region, including the high-elevation areas, and does not rely on minor differences in the definitions of the ecoregion or desert. See Great Basin montane forests for more specific details on the high-elevation ecoregion.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The climate of the Great Basin desert is characterized by extremes: hot, dry summers and cold, snowy winters; frigid alpine ridges and warm, windy valleys; days over followed by nights near . This is the climate of the high desert.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The Great Basin desert climate begins with the Sierra Nevada in eastern California. Rising above sea level, this mountain range casts a large rain shadow over the desert. Weather coming in from the Pacific Ocean quickly loses its moisture as rain and snow as it is forced up and over the steep mountains. By the time it reaches the east side of the mountains, little moisture is left to bring to the desert. The rain shadow effect is more pronounced closer to the Sierra Nevada, with yearly precipitation in the Great Basin desert averaging in the west and inches in the east. Moisture that manages to reach the ecoregion tends to precipitate as rain and snow in higher elevations, primarily over the region's long, parallel mountains. Ultimately, any precipitation that falls within the desert fails to drain either to the Atlantic Ocean or to the Pacific Ocean (thus the term "basin"). Instead, precipitation drains to ephemeral or saline lakes via streams, or disappears via evaporation or absorption into the soil. The desert is the coldest of the deserts in North America.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: On any given day, the weather across the Great Basin desert is variable. The region is extremely mountainous, and the temperatures vary depending on the elevation. In general, temperature decreases 3.6 degrees F for every 1000 feet gained in elevation. This translates to as much as a difference between mountaintops and valley floors on the same day at the same time. In the heat of summer this difference can be even more pronounced. With some exceptions wind generally increases with elevation or altitude and thus strong winds are often encountered on mountain tops and ridges.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: This dry climate and rugged topography proves too harsh for many plant and animal species; however, genetic adaptations to these conditions have led to reasonably high species richness within the ecoregion.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The Great Basin National Park, located in a central part of the Great Basin desert, provides perhaps the best example of a typical climate for the region.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: Fallon's climate is typical of lower elevations in the western part of the Great Basin desert. Located in the Forty Mile Desert, precipitation is rare, and summers are hot, though temperatures are more moderate than those in deserts like the Mojave and Sonoran, due to the region's higher elevation and latitude. Winters in this section of the basin are still cold, however.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The Great Salt Lake Desert, located near the northeast corner of the Great Basin desert, is an excellent example of a cold desert climate. Although still arid, it is worthy to note that this portion of the desert receives more precipitation than the similar playas and salt pans on the western edge of the Great Basin desert.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The pattern of 'basin and range' with adjacent basins and ranges in this region results in incredible biological diversity. Climate, elevation, soil type, and many anthropogenic variables greatly influence the diversity and distribution of shrubland, grassland, and woodland communities in the desert. Across the high desert there are numerous sub-climates correlating to the varied elevations. Heading from the valley bottoms to the mountain peaks one will encounter constantly changing combinations of plant and animal species making up some 200 distinct biological communities. These communities can be generally grouped into six general communities or “life zones”.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: In the lower valley bottoms where mountain run off evaporates to create saline soils is the shadscale zone. Plants in this community are adapted to living with very little precipitation, high heat, and saline conditions. The amount of water and the soil type in any one area will determine exactly which plants will live there. Certain areas of the valley floors may harbor no life. These parched areas that flood periodically are called playas. On the shores of the playas, shadscale is the dominant plant, but is kept company by iodine bush, saltgrass, spiny hopsage, winterfat, four-winged saltbrush, and green rabbitbrush. Trees are not found in this community. Big greasewood is the dominant shrub in more saline areas or where the water table is high. These shrubs and associated grasses typically produce abundant small seeds that are harvested by rodents and insects. The soil salinity and lack of moisture in this zone is not very conducive to most agriculture; however, livestock grazing and grain farming have historically contributed to a decline in the already scattered vegetation.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The drop in soil salinity and increase in moisture as elevation increases leads to a transition to sagebrush (Artemisia) and grasses just above the shadscale zone. This expanse, called the sagebrush zone, constitutes the largest amount of land in the desert (38.7 percent) and is dominated by big sagebrush ("Artemisia tridentata") shrubland. The sagebrush zone occurs on the lower mountain slopes, alluvial fans, and bajadas. Areas in this zone that have wetter and less saline soils are dominated by big sagebrush. Low sagebrush or black sagebrush dominate areas with steep rocky slopes and shallow soils. Introduced annual grasses such as cheatgrass ("Bromus tectorum") and halogeton ("Halogeton glomeratus") also characterize this zone, although native bunchgrasses once thrived amongst sagebrush. Historical fire suppression, adjusted fire frequency following the introduction of annual grasses and widespread livestock grazing have contributed to contraction of the sagebrush zone. According to Noss, 99 percent of the sagebrush-grass zone has been damaged by livestock, with major damage in 30 percent of the zone. Other shrubs commonly found in the sagebrush zone are rabbitbrush, bitterbrush, snowberry, and Mormon tea (ephedra).


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The pinyon-juniper community is adjacent and above the sagebrush zone. The main plants in this community are singleleaf pinyon pine and Utah juniper, often with a sagebrush and bitterbrush understory. Other species of junipers also occur in this zone, including "Juniperus communis" and "Juniperus occidentalis".


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The elevational range of this zone varies, but it is usually found between , with lower limits determined by lack of moisture and the upper limits determined by temperature. The pinyon-juniper community consists of short evergreen trees that rarely grow over 20 feet in height. This zone of dense vegetation, made possible by thermal inversions and increased precipitation, is important to a wide variety of isolated animals that rely on this vegetation interface for survival (for example, "Eutamias palmeri").


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The trees are widely spaced and have an understory of a mixture of shrubs and herbaceous plants, often with nearly bare ground. These characteristics have led this zone to be named the “pygmy forest” by many scientists. The lower end of this zone is dominated by juniper; the middle is a combination of both species, and the upper end is dominated by pinyon.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The taller ranges of the Great Basin desert have a montane community. Due to the great distances created by basins between these small forest habitats, various rock substrates, and local climates, montane forests are tremendously varied across the desert.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: Isolated from one mountain range to the next, montane communities in the region have long individual histories, each one affected differently by chance factors of migration over vast expanses of desert. Smaller communities are also vulnerable to adverse effects of climate change and to genetic drift.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: White fir, Douglas fir, and ponderosa pines are found in the middle elevations of some mountain ranges, while limber pine, subalpine fir, Engelmann spruce, and bristlecone pines occupy the higher elevations, continuing to the upper tree line. Mountain mahogany often dominates drier, warmer south-facing slopes. Pure stands of aspen are also common in this community.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The bristlecone pine is an important species that is indicative of the Great Basin desert. Bristlecones live a long time, some for thousands of years. The harsh areas they occupy are often devoid of other plant life, so there is little competition and reduced risk of fire. The trees grow very slowly, producing very dense, disease-resistant wood. These factors contribute to the bristlecone's long life.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: Some mountain ranges in the Great Basin desert are high enough to have an alpine community; a community of low growing plants above the treeline. Treeline is generally found above in the Great Basin desert, moving downslope with higher latitudes. The plants that grow above treeline are separated from other such areas by miles of foothills and valleys. This “island” phenomenon produces many endemic species - species that have evolved while isolated on a particular mountain peak or range and are found only in that one place. Grasses, sedges, low perennial herbs, and wildflowers grow above treeline.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The riparian communities of the Great Basin desert cut across all elevations and life zones. In the Great Basin desert surface water is rapidly lost by evaporation or infiltration. However, areas around streams where plant life is abundant constitute a riparian area. Water-loving plants like willow, narrowleaf cottonwood, choke cherry, wild rose, and aspen are found along these wet areas. The willow has a spreading root network that allows it to reach all around for water and it also helps streams by slowing erosion. These plants provide wood for beavers. In this community, silver buffaloberry often provides shelter for North American porcupines.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency defines its Central Basin and Range ecoregion as Level III: it is at the third level of a tree of ecoregions that cover North America. It further defines sub-ecoregions at Level IV, which describe differences in the ecoregion at different locations. The map shows the Level IV EPA ecoregions in Nevada. The low-elevation ecoregions lie in the Great Basin shrub steppe, while the high-elevation ones lie in the Great Basin montane forests (as defined by the WWF).


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The Salt desert ecoregion is composed of nearly level playas, salt flats, mud flats, and saline lakes. These features are characteristic of the Bonneville Basin: they have a higher salt content than those of the Lahontan and Tonopah playas ecoregion, below. Water levels and salinity varies from year-to-year, during dry periods, salt encrustation and wind erosion occur. Vegetation is mostly absent, although scatted salt-tolerant plants, such as pickleweed, iodinebush, black greasewood, and inland saltgrass occur. Soils are not arable and there is very limited grazing potential. The salt deserts provide wildlife habitat and serve some recreational, military, and industrial uses.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The Shadscale-dominated saline basins ecoregion is arid, internally drained and gently sloping to nearly flat. These basins are in, or are characteristic of, the Bonneville Basin: they are higher in elevation and colder in winter than the Lahontan salt shrub basin ecoregion to the west. Light-colored soils with high salt and alkali content occur and are dry for extended periods. The saltbush vegetation common to this ecoregion has a higher tolerance for extremes in temperature, aridity, and salinity than big sagebrush, which dominates ecoregion 13c at somewhat higher elevation. The basins in Nevada, in contrast to those in Utah, are more constricted in area and are more influenced by nearby mountain ranges with extensive carbonate rock exposures, which provide water by percolation through the limestone substrate to surface as valley springs. Isolated valley drainages support endemic fish, such as the Newark Valley tui chub.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The nearly level and often barren Lahontan and Tonopah playas contain mudflats, alkali flats, and intermittent saline lakes, such as the Black Rock Desert, Carson Sink, and Sarcobatus Flat. Marshes, remnant lakes and playas are all that remain of Pleistocene Lake Lahontan, which was once the size of Lake Erie. Playas occur in the lowest elevation of the Lahontan Basin, and represent the terminus or sink of rivers running east of the Sierra Nevada. The playas fill with seasonal runoff from the surrounding mountains, providing habitat for migratory birds. Black greasewood or four-winged saltbush may grow around the perimeter in the transition to the salt shrub community, where they often stabilize areas of low sand dunes. This ecoregion has limited grazing potential. Windblown salt dust from exposed playas may affect upland soils and vegetation. The Lahontan and Tonopah playas are important as wildlife habitat, as well as for recreational and military uses.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The Lahontan salt shrub basin is an expansive dry plain that was once below Pleistocene Lake Lahontan. The Lahontan Basin, compared to the Bonneville Basin to the east, is lower in elevation and warmer in winter. Although there is a direct connection to the south to the Mojave Desert, winters are cold enough in this ecoregion to discourage the northward dispersal of Mojavean species into the Lahontan Basin. In addition to shadscale, other salt-tolerant shrubs, such as Shockley's desert-thorn and Bailey greasewood, cover the lower basin slopes. These shrubs distinguish the Lahontan salt shrub basin and the Tonopah Basin from other Nevada salt shrub ecoregions. Sand dunes may occur where windblown sand accumulates against a barrier; dune complexes support a specialized plant community and diverse small mammal populations. The Carson and Truckee Rivers, originating in the Sierra Nevada, provide water for irrigated farming. Riparian corridors along these rivers support the only trees found in this ecoregion.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: Hills, alluvial fans, and low mountains comprise the Lahontan sagebrush slopes ecoregion. These areas are rock controlled and their soils lack the fine lacustrine sediments that are found in lower parts of the Lahontan Basin. Because moisture increases and alkalinity decreases with elevation, the shrub community grades from the greasewood-shadscale community on the basin floor, to a shrub community dominated by Wyoming big sagebrush and the endemic Lahontan sagebrush at higher elevations. Understory grasses increase the productivity towards the northeast, outside the rain shadow influence of the Sierra Nevada. The low hills and mountains of the Lahontan Basin experience frequent summer lightning and fire. The introduced cheatgrass tends to replace the shrub community and provides fuel for recurrent fires.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The Lahontan uplands are restricted to the highest elevations of the mountains ranges within the Lahontan salt shrub basin. Slopes vary in elevation from and are covered in sagebrush, grasses, and scattered Utah juniper. Pinyon grows with juniper on the Stillwater Range and on Fairview Peak in the southeast portion of the Lahontan Basin, but it is otherwise absent from this ecoregion. Low sagebrush and black sagebrush grow to the mountaintops above the woodland zone. Cool-season grasses, including bluebunch wheatgrass, dominate the understory in the north, but are replaced by warm-season grasses, such as Indian ricegrass, in the south.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The Upper Humboldt Plains ecoregion is an area of rolling plains punctuated by occasional buttes and low mountains. It is mostly underlain by volcanic ash, rhyolite, and tuffaceous rocks. Low sagebrush is common in extensive areas of shallow, stony soil, as are cool season grasses, such as bluebunch wheatgrass, Idaho fescue, and Sandberg bluegrass. The ecoregion is wetter and cooler than other Nevada ecoregions in its elevation range. The ecoregion is transitional to the Northern Basin and Range ecoregion that spans the Nevada-Oregon border. However, as in the warmer Lahontan Basin to the west, lightning fires are common and a post-fire monoculture of cheatgrass tends to replace the native grasses and shrubs. Grazing is the major land use, though there is some agriculture near the Humboldt River.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The basins and semi-arid uplands of the Carbonate Sagebrush Valleys surround the carbonate ranges of eastern Nevada. These valleys are underlain by limestone or dolomite. The combination of summer moisture and a limestone or dolomite substrate affects regional vegetation, particularly in terms of species dominance and elevational distribution. The substrate favors shrubs, such as black sagebrush and winterfat, that can tolerate shallow soil. Even in alluvial soils, root growth may be limited by a hardpan or caliche layer formed by carbonates leaching through the soil and accumulating. As a result, shrub cover is sparse in contrast to other sagebrush-covered ecoregions in Nevada. The grass understory grades from a dominance of cool season grasses, such as bluebunch wheatgrass, in the north, to warm season grasses, such as blue grama (an indicator of summer rainfall) in the south.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The Central Nevada high valleys ecoregion contains sagebrush-covered rolling valleys that are generally over in elevation. Alluvial fans spilling from the surrounding mountain ranges fill the valleys, often leaving little intervening flat ground. Wyoming big sagebrush and associated grasses are common on the flatter areas, and black sagebrush dominates on the volcanic hills and alluvial fans. This ecoregion tends to have lower species diversity than other sagebrush ecoregions, because of its aridity and isolation from more species-rich areas. Saline playas may occur on available flats. Less shadscale and fewer associated shrubs surround these playas than in other, lower more arid ecoregions in the west, including the Lahontan salt shrub ecoregion and the Tonopah Basin ecoregion. Valleys with permanent water support endemic fish populations, such as the Monitor Valley speckled dace.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The Central Nevada mid-slope woodland and brushland ecoregion at of elevation is analogous in altitudinal range to other woodland areas in Nevada. However, continuous woodland is not as prevalent on the mountains of central Nevada as in other woodland ecoregions, such as ecoregions 13d and 13q. Pinyon-juniper grows only sparsely through the shrub layer due to combined effects of past fire, logging, and local climate factors, including lack of summer rain and the pattern of winter cold air inversions. Where extensive woodlands do exist, understory diversity tends to be very low, especially in closed canopy areas. Areas of black and Wyoming big sagebrush grade upward into mountain big sagebrush and curlleaf mountain-mahogany, which straddles the transition between this mid-elevation brushland and the mountain brush zone of the higher Central Nevada Bald Mountains.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The Central Nevada Bald Mountains are dry and mostly treeless. Although they rise only east of the Sierra Nevada, they lack Sierra species due to the dry conditions. These barren-looking mountains are covered instead by dense mountain brush that is dominated by mountain big sagebrush, serviceberry, snowberry, and low sagebrush. They contrast with the High-elevation Carbonate Mountains to the east, where the mountain brush zone is too narrow to be mapped as a separate ecoregion. Scattered groves of curlleaf mountain-mahogany and aspen in moister microsites grow above the shrub layer. A few scattered limber or bristlecone pines grow on ranges that exceed . The Toiyabe Range (west of Big Smoky Valley) is high enough to have an alpine zone, but lacks a suitable substrate to retain snowmelt moisture. The isolation of these "sky islands" has led to the development of many rare and endemic plant species.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The Tonopah Basin lies in the transition between the Great Basin Desert and the more southerly Mojave Desert. The basin shows varying characteristics of both deserts. The west side of the Tonopah Basin is a continuation of the Lahontan Basin, while the lower and hotter Pahranagat Valley on the east side is more like the Mojave Desert. Similar to basins further north, shadscale and associated arid land shrubs cover broad rolling valleys, hills, and alluvial fans. However, unlike the Lahontan salt shrub basin and Upper Lahontan basin, the shrubs often co-dominate in highly diverse mosaics. The shrub understory includes warm-season grasses, such as Indian ricegrass and galleta grass. Endemic fish species, including the Railroad Valley tui chub, Pahranagat roundtail chub, Railroad Valley springfish, and the White River springfish are found in valleys with perennial water.


title: Great Basin Desert

text: The topography of the Great Basin desert (“island” mountain tops separated from one another by vast expanses of desert valleys) renders it vulnerable to extinctions. Populations that occupy the high peaks are isolated from one another; therefore, they cannot interbreed. Small populations are more vulnerable to the forces of extinction - generally small populations have less genetic diversity and therefore a lesser ability to adapt to changing conditions. Groundwater pumping, road and home construction, grazing, and mining are all activities that alter habitat; as more habitat is affected, the threat of extinction increases. The Great Basin desert is home to many threatened and endangered species:


title: Post Consumer Brands

text: Post Consumer Brands (previously Post Cereals and Postum Cereals; also known as simply "Post") is an American breakfast cereal manufacturer headquartered in Lakeville, Minnesota.


title: Post Consumer Brands

text: The company, founded in 1895 by C. W. Post, owns a large portfolio of cereal brands that include Bran Flakes, Chips Ahoy!, Golden Crisp, Grape-Nuts, Honeycomb, Oreo O's, Pebbles, and Waffle Crisp, among others.


title: Post Consumer Brands

text: C. W. Post established his company in Battle Creek, Michigan, having lived there since 1891, when he was a patient at a holistic sanitarium operated by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. Dr. Kellogg, with his brother W. K. Kellogg, had developed a dry corn flake cereal that was part of their patients’ diet. Post's first product, introduced in 1895, was not a cereal, however, but a roasted, cereal-based beverage, Postum. Having developed an aversion to coffee during his time in the sanitarium, Post positioned Postum as a healthy alternative. Its advertising slogan, which he coined himself, was, "There's a Reason." Postum's main ingredients were naturally caffeine-free wheat grain, bran, and molasses. Initially, Postum had to be brewed like coffee, but in 1911, Post introduced a powdered, instant formulation. This version of the product was manufactured in Battle Creek until it was discontinued in 2007. As of January 2013, Eliza's Quest Food had succeeded in returning Postum to many grocery stores across the United States and Canada.


title: Post Consumer Brands

text: In 1897, Post introduced his first dry cereal, a crunchy blend of wheat and barley, which he called Grape Nuts. His first corn-flake product was introduced as "Elijah's Manna" in 1904. Owing to consumer resistance to the (inaccurate) biblical reference that was so great that even Great Britain flatly refused to register the name as a trademark, it was renamed Post Toasties in 1907.


title: Post Consumer Brands

text: C. W. Post was an astute businessman who believed that advertising and aggressive marketing were the keys to a successful enterprise. Within 10 years of its incorporation, his Postum Cereal Company had more than $10 million in capital and was spending $400,000 a year on advertising, sums which were remarkable for the period. Although he vigorously opposed labor unions, his employees were the highest-paid in his industry and working conditions at the Post factory were exemplary. He even developed a factory town in which he sold homes to his workers at favorable rates.


title: Post Consumer Brands

text: Postum Cereal Company lost its founder in 1914. C.W. Post underwent an apparently successful appendectomy at the Mayo Clinic, but shortly after returning home to recuperate, he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Post had for years suffered from bouts of illness and depression. While his death was without warning, his company was not left rudderless. His daughter, Marjorie Merriweather Post, had been raised in the business and was familiar with virtually every aspect of its operations. She assumed control of the now $20-million Postum Company and managed its affairs for the next eight years. While she did not oversee major product innovations, she did have a good feel for business and for promoting talented managers. In addition, her second marriage, in 1920, was to Edward F. Hutton, the founder of a brokerage firm on Wall Street.


title: Post Consumer Brands

text: Gross revenues in 1921 were $17.75 million. In 1922, Hutton took the newly incorporated Postum Cereal Company public by issuing 200,000 common shares. The 1920s was a period in which common stock was still considered highly speculative, and consequently the newly issued shares carried a dividend at the rate of $5.00 per year.


title: Post Consumer Brands

text: Revenues in 1922 were essentially the same as in 1921, but in 1923, they were $22.25 million and a stock split, in the form of a 100% stock dividend, increased the authorized shares to 400,000. These shares also earned a $3.00 annual cash dividend, representing a 20% increase over the presplit rate. In 1925, with revenues now at $27.4 million, the stock was split once again and the dividend was increased to $4.00 per new share.


title: Post Consumer Brands

text: Starting in 1925, under the leadership of financier (and at one point, son in-law to the founder), E. F. Hutton as chairman and Colby M. Chester as president, Postum Cereal made the first of a series of corporate acquisitions which would within a few years transform it into the dominant U.S. packaged grocery products manufacturer.