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An American in Paris: Notes on a Parisian street

NJ Voices Guest Blogger/For By NJ Voices Guest Blogger/For The Star-Ledger
on May 24, 2009 at 5:24 AM, updated March 30, 2010 at 3:47 PM
A street in Paris, with the Eiffel Tower in the distance.

Walking around the cobblestone streets of the Marais in Paris earlier this month, I couldn't help but think of a conglomeration of neighborhoods in Manhattan, where I grew up: The orthodox Jews in black hats brought to mind the old Lower East Side; the ribald gay shops were a touch of Christopher Street, circa 1977; and the chic boutiques that attracted young shoppers reminded me of Soho today.

What made the spectacle remarkable was that all of these activities were contained in a few blocks of one Parisian neighborhood, the Marais. Late at night, one could see people young and old ambling along the cobblestone streets -- on the way to clubs or synagogue, to sit in a cafe or walk with a cheap falafel meal in hand.

The writer Jane Jacobs, in her 1961 classic "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," wrote about the importance of diversity or mixed uses in neighborhoods. Stores and homes and jobs and parks, museums and delis, historic buildings reimagined for modern use -- all feed a dynamic street life, drawing in residents and tourists. Those lessons come vividly to life in the winding back streets of the Marais.

The neighborhood, which runs into the city's 3rd and 4th arrondissements, is home to many glorious and well-trod tourist sites, including the stately Place de Vosges, the Musee Carnavalet, devoted to the history of the city of Paris, and Musee Picasso, which was established with works the artist left to the country after his death. But the streets that caught my eye were off-kilter -- filled with cafes, small theaters, parks and comedy clubs.

Taking it all in, a visitor can ponder those things that make a city street work beautifully, and come up with a checklist of lessons that apply beyond the boundaries of great cities like Paris or New York.

In addition to the famous cafes (which can be famously expensive) there were cheap falafel stands competing on the Rue de Rosiers, and many people walked and ate their baguettes, filled with jambon and fromage, purchased at one of the many boulangeries. You could order a house wine and know it would be cheap and very, very good. Different price-points for visitors and residents: Check.

The ambience was one of tolerance and openness. Same-sex couples walked arm-in-arm and displayed affection without fear. There was a pervasive sense of safety on the streets, without a heavy police presence. It wasn't uncommon to see an elderly man or woman walking a dog on a deserted street late at night, or to see a young woman strolling with a suitcase at the same hour. Feeling safe and secure: Check.

One of the impressive things we learned in the Marais had to do with something that wasn't genuine at all.

The apartment my husband and I stayed in looked old -- uneven wood stairs, cracked linoleum and walls that seemed papered to hide antiquity -- but we later found out the apartment house was built in 1985. Planners took care to keep the building consistent with other structures on the street, instead of squeezing apartments and people into it to maximize profits. Respect for the harmonizing profile of a street: Check.

It's easy for a city to celebrate its glorious history. In the Marais and elsewhere in Paris, we constantly found plaques commemorating not just where brave Freedom Fighters were arrested during the Occupation of World War II, but also where French collaborators had rounded up Jewish families and children, who were sent to death camps. A truthful history, however painful, told straightforwardly: Check.

A small park, surrounded by sculpture rescued from ancient buildings, is a place for nearby workers to eat lunch. And the stores are not selling tourist trinkets, but products that a middle class would find desirable: stylish clothing, handmade books, antique and vintage treasures. As always, the presence of a middle class is a fulcrum around which other communities may rise and fall away, without harming something essential about the place. A stable middle class that lives and shops in the neighborhood: Check.

It would be easy to say, well, that's Paris, for heaven's sake. To be sure, the city of lights has its own urban problems. The Metro is rife with graffiti, scratched on the glass, just like New York City, and the tunnels feature the florid balloon-lettered tags that reminded me of N.Y.C. in the bad old days of the 1970s. A short Metro ride away and I was whisked to a neighborhood that felt like a weedy, uninspired residential part of Queens I know too well. Warnings about pickpockets abound.

But in the Marais, there was a sense of -- to use a political term -- a big tent.

Jane Jacobs, as she did so well, got down to it best: "Without a strong and inclusive (Jacobs' emphasis) central heart, a city tends to become a collection of interests isolated from one another. It falters at producing something greater, socially, culturally and economically, that the sum of its separated parts."

For me, that inclusive heart was the great find on the streets of the Marais. That, and a great baguette.

Linda Ocasio is a member of The Star-Ledger editorial board.


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Louisiana ArtWorks is finally being put to regular use

Doug MacCash, | The Times-Picayune By Doug MacCash, | The Times-Picayune
Follow on Twitter
on June 05, 2009 at 5:28 PM, updated June 05, 2009 at 6:25 PM
Louisiana ArtWorks

ArtWorks at work

Saturday (June 6) open house will showcase building, artists.

Louisiana ArtWorks, the elaborate multipurpose studio space on Howard Avenue that has been in various stages of development for more than a decade, is finally being put to regular use.

Although still besieged with financial difficulties that call its near- and long-term future into question, the $24 million, five-story art-making complex near Lee Circle has finally begun to realize its potential as a Crescent City cultural resource.

An open house Saturday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. celebrates the anniversary of the first group of resident artists to occupy ArtWorks' private studios. The 21 cutting-edge sculptors, painters and conceptualists, including local stars Blake Boyd, Srdjan Loncar and Dan Tague, have marked the moment by scattering exhibitions throughout the architecturally splendid building.

One of ArtWorks' resident artists Darrin Butler

Visitors can wander the three finished floors, Thursdays through Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m., through June.

"It feels great to realize the mission of the project and to move forward," said ArtWorks President and Chief Executive Officer Shirley Trusty Corey, the guiding force behind the project from its conception.

Since ground was broken in 2003, the nonprofit institution has been locked in a constant struggle for survival. The grandiose, 93,000-square-foot design suffered chronic construction delays, crippling budget over-runs and false starts. The building sustained only slight damage during Hurricane Katrina, but the city's long, slow recovery has not improved ArtWorks' fortunes. The project remains mired in roughly $12 million in debt and according to a Dec. 31, 2007, financial statement, ArtWorks has not made payments on a $7 million loan from the city of New Orleans since 2003.

Those significant fiscal problems notwithstanding, Joy Glidden, who became ArtWorks' director in 2007, said the day-to-day operation of the still-incomplete structure is on solid ground. The approximately $1.2 million needed to operate the huge facility annually, including utilities, staff salaries and programs, is offset by grants from public and private art foundations, Glidden said. Among the donors: the Ford Foundation, the Warhol Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Louisiana Division of the Arts.

ArtWorks' director Joy Glidden

Money from individual and corporate donors, party rentals, retail store sales, individual studio rentals and benefits such as last week's Peoples Health ArtVenture gala (which raised roughly $130,000, Glidden said) also bolsters the bottom line.

"We're operating in the black," she said. "I'm talking to you about the programs and the actual activities in the building."

It was a $40,000 grant from the Ford Foundation that funded many of the resident artists, who occupied ArtWorks' sunny private studios for a year, and have created the current exhibits.

Marcus Brown, 26, an electronic media artist and part-time teacher at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, said the workspace was a godsend.

"I didn't have a place to work because of pure economics," he said. "I had a one-bedroom apartment that I share with my wife."

The wide open spaces in ArtWorks allowed Brown to create the large-scale "HUMs: Human Universal Musical sculpture" now on display in Washington Square Park.

Future rental fees from ArtWorks' state-of-the-art print, ceramic, metal and glass shops may edge the costly complex toward self-sufficiency. In addition, a Louisiana Recovery School District high school might occupy one of ArtWorks' unused upper floors beginning in 2010, adding an undetermined amount of rental income to ArtWorks' bottom line.

The focus of ArtWorks has changed since it was conceived more than a decade ago. Far from the rough-and-ready work places artists are accustomed to, the ArtWorks building is a giddy architectural confection, originally intended as a tourist magnet as well as an art-making facility.

In 2003, planners optimistically projected that 500,000 tourists would pay to stroll the raised walkways above the communal studios each year. A cafe and gallery were seen as added attractions. But in recent years, the arts tourism strategy has gone by the wayside, in part because of the post-Katrina tourist drought.

The public had rarely seen the inside of the five-story edifice until November 2008, when ArtWorks hosted exhibits by internationally known artists during Prospect.1 New Orleans, the free, citywide art extravaganza that ended in January 2009. Throughout the 11-week run of the show, about 4,000 visitors passed through ArtWorks' entrance. But Glidden does not believe that the Prospect.1 crowd translates to a regular tourist trade.

"It's a little bit unrealistic," she said, "to think that we're going to get traffic to see artist services."

Glidden says ArtWorks will welcome visitors, but she does not view them as a major income source. At present, ArtWorks admission is free.

Upper floors come to life

The complex has hosted numerous public workshops, panel discussions and other low-overhead events during the past year, and the resident artists worked in the warren of third-floor studios. But the upper floors remain unfinished and the costly state-of-the-art industrial workshops at the heart of ArtWorks have been used only rarely.

That is changing. Last week, five artists paid $325 each to take a seven-day bronze sculpture class from instructor Elijah Sproles, in which they learned to make sand molds and to pour molten metal from ArtWorks' 90-pound crucible.

ArtWorks' metal shop.

In the coming weeks, the artists will be able to rent the metal sculpture studio -- including bronze-casting, welding, and blacksmithing equipment -- to create sculptures on their own.

Sproles could think of nowhere closer than San Diego where a bronze casting facility like the one at ArtWorks was available for rent to the general public.

"It created an opportunity for people to actualize sculptural work they may not be able to do in other spaces," Sproles said.

Well-known New Orleans artist Sally Heller pioneered the use of the metal studio almost a year ago, when she and an assistant welded a massive, 16-foot sculpture titled "Scrap House" from sheet iron. "Scrap House" is now on display near the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

"You're talking to someone who has never done that," Heller said. "I wasn't all that aware of what equipment was needed. It's pretty great to have it at your fingertips."

Having first-class equipment at an artists' fingertips is the promise of ArtWorks. Glidden sees the facility as a natural extension of a university art education.

"The whole thing is about post-graduation. It's about career choice," she said. "They've spent $50,000 on an education; they leave that education and don't have anyplace to work."

Kyle Bravo, who teaches classes in ArtWorks luxurious printmaking studio, which rents for $25 per day, said the facility will allow artists to work without the need to invest in their own equipment.

"The real benefit of a place like Louisiana ArtWorks is having a $10,000 printing press, so that artists don't have to buy their own $10,000 printing presses," Bravo said.

Only ArtWorks' glass-making studio remains unavailable, because the enormous glass furnace is too costly for regular use. Glidden said it may eventually be replaced by a smaller portable glass furnace.

Overall, ArtWorks' studio equipment is valued at roughly $800,000.

Art and education

Glidden said that in addition to artist services, the educational aspect of ArtWorks is on the upswing. In fall 2008, teenagers from nearby Rabouin High School attended a nine-week after-school program, and middle school students from Algiers Charter Schools Association attended Saturday classes.

Glidden said she believes that for art institutions, education is a duty.

"We are really focused on underprivileged, underserved youths," she said. "There are a lot of 12- and 13-year-olds hanging out on street corners."

Glidden said exposure to professional-caliber art-making may inspire New Orleans youngsters to consider art careers.

In February, Recovery School District Superintendent Paul Vallas announced that the new International High School of New Orleans was slated to occupy the unused upper floors of ArtWorks and the nearby Contemporary Arts Center beginning in 2010. Corey called the possibility of a high school "a breakthrough" for the struggling project.

But Vallas said recently that the plan is on hold because of what he called "financial issues between ArtWorks and the city." Historic Rabouin, which is only blocks away, is being considered as an alternative site.

Corey said she was unaware of any snag in negotiations with the city.

Ernest Collins, director of the city's office of arts and entertainment, said $4 million in Community Development Block Grant funds have been earmarked to create the new school at ArtWorks and the CAC, but that the struggling ArtWorks needs to become more financially fit first.

"A part of the equation is ArtWorks getting to the point that they are a little more stable," he said.

Collins said the plan to place a school within ArtWorks is "such a great concept, everybody involved is doing what they can to make it come to fruition."

Read more about the history of ArtWorks here.

Arts writer Doug MacCash can be reached at or 504.826.3481. Follow him on Twitter.

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'21' star makes stop in the Big Easy

Mike Scott, | The Times-Picayune By Mike Scott, | The Times-Picayune
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on March 14, 2008 at 5:00 AM, updated March 14, 2008 at 5:16 AM
Jim Sturgess in 'The Other Boleyn Girl.'
Attendees of a local sneak-preview screening of the blackjack flick "21" last week at the AMC Palace 12 Clearview came up aces when budding British heartthrob Jim Sturgess -- the star of the film -- showed up for a post-screening question-and-answer session.

The 26-year-old star of "21, " who got his big break in last year's "Across the Universe, " was passing through town as part of a promotional tour and decided to drop in before leaving for Dallas.

The shaggy-headed Sturgess, who also has a role in "The Other Boleyn Girl, " currently in theaters, said during an interview earlier in the day that, despite having legions of shrieking teen girls show up at his public appearances -- as was the case during last week's showing of "21" -- his life has yet to change significantly as a result of his newfound stardom.

"It's sort of changing, I guess, " he said. "Certainly doing these press tours has opened my eyes to the fact that people have seen the films and are responding."

The trip was his first to New Orleans and, above all else, he said he was looking forward to sampling the local food, an itch he scratched with a trip to Dickie Brennan's Steakhouse.

Based on true events, "21" is the tale of a team of MIT students who hatched an elaborate card-counting scheme. Read more about Sturgess, and the film that opens March 28, in that day's edition of The Times-Picayune or online at

Sturgess is one in a string of stars descending on New Orleans recently, including Justin Timberlake and Noah Wylie, who are working on separate film projects, and actor-activist Danny Glover, who was at the Sheraton on Canal Street on Thursday for PolicyLink's recent Regional Equity '08 National Summit on poverty.


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Well no one told me about her...

Harry Esteve | By Harry Esteve | The Oregonian
on May 05, 2008 at 3:01 PM, updated May 05, 2008 at 3:43 PM
Candy Neviille, running a low-budget campaign for U.S. Senate, forgot to submit her info for the statewide Voters' Pamphlet

Don't bother looking in the state Voters' Pamphlet for information about Candy Neville, the only woman in the U.S. Senate race.

In the immortal words of The Zombies, "cuz she's not there."

Of the six Democrats running in the Senate primary, only Neville's information is missing. And, she says, she has no one to blame but herself.

"I messed up by a couple of days," says Neville, who is running a low-budget race to be the one to challenge Republican Sen. Gordon Smith. "I just got swamped filling out all the stuff that came to me. It just got right past me."

The Voters' Pamphlet is considered one of the cheaper ways for candidates to get information out about themselves. Some voters lay it next to their ballots when filling them out.

Neville says she's been featured in other guides, such as one put out by the League of Women Voters of Oregon and by The Oregonian, which can be accessed here (scroll down a tad).

-- Harry Esteve;


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Skimming the racks: Lights off at Lux, lights on at Clackamas H&M,

Laura Gunderson | The Oregonian/OregonLive By Laura Gunderson | The Oregonian/OregonLive
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on April 28, 2011 at 10:00 AM, updated May 17, 2011 at 11:15 AM
Lux Lighting.jpgView full sizeThe Pearl's Lux Lighting holds a going-out-of-business sale this week
After 19 years in business, Lux Lighting abruptly hung out its liquidation sign and plans to close as soon as possible.

The retailer based in The Pearl announced on its web site that it will hold a final sale from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Thursday and Friday and on Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

H&M announces Clackamas Town Center opening

Joining the growing H&M family in the Portland area, the Swedish chain's Clackamas Town Center location is set to open at 11 a.m. on May 12. The store is planned for the mall's lower level between Nordstrom and Macy's.

The fast fashion retailer, which typically offers opening-day specials and gift bags, unveiled its Washington Square store in February. The long-awaited first store at Pioneer Place opened late last year.

The company also has launched an online shopping site. Check out this cute dress for $14.95!

Haggen's Murray Hill property: Going, going, where?

So we've covered retail spots that are about to be empty and empty spots that are about to be filled. Here's one for the empty-spots-about-to-be-sold category. Becky Skaggs with the Bellingham, Wash.-based grocer Haggen Inc., said that a deal was struck on Wednesday with a buyer of the land where its Murray Hill store once stood.

The property, owned by a subsidiary of the Haggen family, has been mentioned in a number of rumors speculating on locations that Wal-Mart might be eyeing for its smaller, market concepts.

The Beaverton store closed soon after Haggen announced that it had been bought by a Florida-based private equity firm. In February, the grocer closed its Tanasbourne store in Hillsboro. Haggen still operates stores in Oregon City and Tualatin.

Skaggs said she expects to hear who the property's buyer is on Thursday. Check back here for details.

And speaking of Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., has begun testing an online shopping and grocery delivery business. But don't get your hopes up in PDX.

The pilot program is starting out only in San Jose, Calif., with aims to compete on the national level with Amazon and closer to home, with Safeway. Prices are the same at Walmart to Go as in stores, though customers must buy a minimum of $49 worth of produce, meat, baked goods and other typical grocery items. Orders can be delivered the next day for charges ranging from $5 to $10.

In a recent meeting with Wal-Mart representatives, I asked if we'd be seeing a similar program in the Portland area. The market, it seems, is more open -- New Seasons announced earlier this month that it plans to ditch its delivery business and though Fred Meyer had talked about launching one, it never materialized here.

Yet spokeswoman Jennifer Spall said the discounter had now plans to deliver here in the near future.

-- Laura Gunderson


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What can we learn from the French Revolution? | OUPblog

Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World

What can we learn from the French Revolution?

By Marisa Linton

The world has seen a new wave of revolutions; in North Africa, the Middle East, and beyond, we can see revolutions unfolding on our tv screens even if we’ve never been near an actual revolution in our lives. The experience makes us think anew about the nature of revolutions, about what happens, and why it may happen. Revolutions are born out of hope for a better future. People who participate in revolutions do so believing in the possibility that they can transform their circumstances. They may be ready to make immense personal sacrifices, even sometimes their own lives, in the struggle to create a genuine democracy, where government would be an instrument of the people’s will, rather than a source of power and enrichment for a privileged and corrupt elite.

The lion of Egyptian revolution at the Qasr al-Nil Bridge. Photo by Kodak Agfa from Egypt, 2011. Creative Commons License via Wikimedia Commons.
The lion of Egyptian revolution at the Qasr al-Nil Bridge. Photo by Kodak Agfa from Egypt, 2011. Creative Commons License via Wikimedia Commons.

Yet such a fledgling democracy born out of revolution can be fragile. Its leaders have to learn how to manage the new business of politics, often with very little previous experience. Revolutions are by their very nature unstable and perilous, often beset by internal conflict and outside intervention. State violence and militarism can bring a return to stability, but at a price. Revolutionary leaders who started out as humanitarian idealists, given certain circumstances, may adopt brutal methods; they may choose to use political violence, even terror, either to defend the gains of the revolution or, more cynically, to maintain themselves in power. The quest for liberty and equality can be a disheartening experience.

How does such a transformation from boundless hope to the nightmare of terror come about? Is there any way it can be avoided? One way to reconsider this problem is to look at revolution as a process, and to study how the process of revolution unfolded in previous revolutions. By taking a comparative approach we can throw light on how certain choices made by people in positions of power had particular consequences. Above all, we can consider what kind of circumstances could lead to revolutionary leaders choosing terror.

The French Revolution that broke out 1789 became a model for future revolutions. It was in the course of the French Revolution that the idea of political terror was invented; the words ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist’ were coined in late 1794 to describe the regime that had been overthrown the previous July, that of Robespierre and the Jacobins. We should be wary, though, of making simplistic comparisons; the Jacobin version of terror was different in many ways to the modern phenomenon. When we speak of ‘terrorism’ in the modern era we think of anarchic movements directed against the government and innocent bystanders, of bombs, of suicide bombers. The Terror in the French Revolution was different. It was not directed against the government; it was led by the government. It was a legalised terror.

La Liberté guidant le peuple by Eugène Delacroix, 1830. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
La Liberté guidant le peuple by Eugène Delacroix, 1830. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

So what makes idealistic, humanitarian people choose terror? Too often the French revolutionary leaders have been glibly compared to twentieth-century dictators. The leaders of the French Revolution weren’t all-powerful dictators. Nor were they violent psychopaths. Most of them were genuine idealists, even if they also sought to derive personal advantage from events, by forging a career for themselves in revolutionary politics. They did not set out to become terrorists; it was a path that they took, step by step, making contingent choices along the way.

Political inexperience was a key problem. France had no tradition of representative politics — of the tactics, backroom deals, political image-making — all the rather cynical, sometimes frankly seedy, business that is day-to-day politics. The revolutionaries’ baptism of fire came through transformative politics — the politics of revolution — which they invented even as they practised it. After this tumultuous beginning, they found it hard to establish a stable politics. Revolutionary politics had been constructed in deliberate contrast to the system that had existed under the monarchy: a system that had been opaque, corrupt, venal and self-serving, with power concentrated in the hands of the king and a few powerful court nobles with their ‘behind closed doors’ influence. At the same time the French revolutionaries also rejected the corrupt party politics and cronyism that characterised the English parliament in the 1790s.

Instead, the French revolutionaries were committed to transparent politics. They believed that every national representative should think only of the public good; his public and private life should be an open book, reflecting the purity of his devotion to the patrie. This volatile political birthing process might well have settled down given time. During the early years of the Revolution a constitutional monarchy was established, along with a limited franchise based on property-holding, and to all intents and purposes the Revolution was over.

But a series of factors destabilised the new regime. Chief amongst these was the counter-revolutionary opposition of many leading nobles, who resented their loss of power and prestige; they would never accept the Revolution and did all they could to undermine it. The greatest betrayal of all was that of the king himself who, in June 1791, attempted to flee his country, getting close to the border before he was intercepted and brought back. The onset of war with the major foreign powers in April 1792 put France under increased threat, and ratcheted up the tension, making internal compromise all but impossible. War in turn led directly to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the first French Republic. Further betrayals took place as leading generals, Lafayette and later Dumouriez, attempted to turn the French armies on the representative assembly and to overthrow it by force. Suspicion, polarisation and renewed internal conflict were a consequence of such betrayals. A further factor was the anarchic violence of the people on the streets. This violence, and the threat of further popular violence, helped maintain the revolutionary leaders in power, yet the leaders were all too aware that this anarchic violence might at any time be turned on themselves if they failed to deliver.

It was largely in response to popular street violence that in September 1793 the revolutionary leaders set up a legalised system of terror, bringing violence under state control, though they preferred to think of it as justice — the swift and often brutal justice of a wartime government under pressure. Ironically, the revolutionary leaders were hardest on themselves; they too were subject to terror. Many revolutionary leaders were accused — in most cases falsely — of being the ‘enemy within’, secretly in league with the counter-revolutionaries and the foreign invaders to subvert the Revolution for their own benefit, even to destroy it. They had no parliamentary immunity, and were relatively unprotected whether from terror, assassination or any other form of violence that might be used against them. They had no personal defences, no bodyguards, and they were not hidden away behind palace walls. Most lived in lodging houses, hotels and private homes. Robespierre himself lived, not in a palace, but as a lodger in the house of a master carpenter.

In this, as in many other ways, the French revolutionary leaders were unlike Stalin and other twentieth-century dictators. In the Year II many of the leading revolutionaries fell victim to the Terror that they had helped to set up. The revolutionary leaders were afraid and with good reason. They were desperate to show their own integrity, that they could not be bought by the counter-revolution. And this very fear in its turn made them pitiless with one another. They dealt out terror in part because they too were terrorised. Paradoxically, the Terror emerged partly from the relative weakness of the revolutionary leaders. The Jacobins used coercive violence and the power of fear to subdue their enemies, including opponents from their own ranks, ‘the enemy within’. Terror was motivated less by abstract ideas, than by the gut-wrenching emotion of fear on the part of the people who chose it.

As a Jacobin leader, Robespierre had supported the use of terror. He made some of the key speeches seeking to justify its use in order to sustain the Republic. But he was far from alone, and very far from being the dictator of a Reign of Terror — that was a myth perpetrated by the revolutionaries who overthrew him out of terror for their own lives, not because they wanted to dismantle the Terror. These surviving former terrorists ensured that Robespierre and the group around him took the rap posthumously for the Terror; even whilst they opportunistically reinvented themselves as men who had kept their hands clean.

Robespierre himself remains a complex figure. He was known as ‘the Incorruptible’ — a quality almost as rare in contemporary politics as it was in his lifetime. He was that rare figure, a conviction politician. For nearly thirty years now, since long before I became a professional historian, I have been haunted by a question: what led a man like Robespierre (and others like him) who at the start of the Revolution was a humanitarian opposed to the death penalty, to chose terror four years later? I’m not the first person to ask this question. Many historians have asked it and come up with very different answers. But then historians always disagree with one another, and few people have divided historical opinion as much as Robespierre. Yet two things I do know: firstly that the answer has to be sought not in some warp of Robespierre’s personality, but in the politics of the Revolution itself; and secondly, that in addressing it there is no room for complacency.

To understand the French revolutionaries is to better understand ourselves. We have cause to be grateful that we have not been confronted with such choices, in such circumstances, and with such tragic consequences, as they faced in their own lives.

Marisa Linton is a leading historian of the French Revolution. She is currently Reader in History at Kingston University. She has published widely on eighteenth-century France and the French Revolution. She is the author of Choosing Terror: Virtue, Friendship, and Authenticity in the French Revolution (2013), The Politics of Virtue in Enlightenment France (2001) and the co-editor of Conspiracy in the French Revolution (2007).

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Recent Comments

  1. Debra Borchert

    As it was the peasants who drove many of the revolts leading up to the beginning of the French Revolution, such as the Day of the Tiles (Grenoble, France, June, 1788) and the Réveillon Riots (Paris, France, April, 1789), I wonder if the politicians who were able to harness the peasants’ anger were those who grew powerful.

    Debra Borchert, Author, “Not Our Blood,” one of many stories of the French Revolution.

  2. […] are some recent thought on the question of revolution and revolutions, by Marisa Linton, and Dave […]

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text:
Day on an island

MARY KLAUS, The Patriot-News By MARY KLAUS, The Patriot-News The Patriot-News
on February 21, 2010 at 3:44 PM, updated February 24, 2010 at 11:40 AM

DOS PALMOS ISLAND -- One of the most delightful scenes in "The Sound of Music" is when Max Detweiler says "I like rich people. I like they way they live. I like the way I live when I'm with them."

That scene came to mind today when the World Surgical Foundation headed to Dos Palmos Island for a day of sun and fun along the most beautiful beach and water I've ever seen. Tomorrow, it's back to surgery and work but today was our second day to recharge our batteries.

Dr. John Lazar, a Harrisburg Hospital surgical resident, and I took a tricycle to the Western Command hospital at the military base at 7 a.m. to do rounds and check on our surgical patients. I'm glad to report that all are doing well. Merly, the lady whose leg was amputated and the object of my special good deed (an artificial leg) in the Philippines, had a pleasant smile as I took her picture. (Yesterday, I spelled her name as Merry because the front of her chart spelled it that way. Today, I got to see the official government chart, and it's Merly.)

Then, our group took vans to the Stella Maria II, a large duel outrigger boat. We strapped on our orange life jackets and settled back for an hour-ride through the glorious jade-colored South China Sea. How relaxing it is to sit in a boat that is bobbing through the sea! Harrisburg seems worlds away. The Philippines is composed of more than 7,000 island -- and 1,000 or so of them are in Palawan, the province where we are working.

Warmed by the sun, refreshed by the breeze and mesmerized by the gentle waves, we arrived as the exclusive Dos Palmos Island for a day of relaxing. The delightful smell of the sea, the various species of birds, the waving palm trees and the clean sand called us.

There was much to do -- snorkeling, scuba diving, swimming, kayaking, biking and just relaxing on the beach. We had a fabulous lunch, a smorgasbord. I loved the grilled blue marlin and the mango and shrimp salad -- yum! The day passed quickly!

We came back here and I'm writing this, then plan to get plenty of sleep as we're back to surgery tomorrow. We have two days of surgery, then I'm with a group leaving Wednesday for Manila. The rest of the team will leave Thursday.

I'll be in Manila one overnight, then will break off from the World Surgical Foundation team to fly to Qatar, then to Nairobi, Kenya, where I'll get a cab so I can meet with my Volunteers in Medical Missions team at the missionary house, which is our home in Nairobi. We'll have one overnight together, then will fly in a prop plane to our mission in Sudan -- as different from Dos Palmos Island as a place could be!


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Rendell says Specter will 'kill' Sestak

The Patriot-News By The Patriot-News The Patriot-News
Follow on Twitter
on June 01, 2009 at 2:39 PM, updated June 01, 2009 at 2:45 PM

Ed Rendell on the Ed Show, talking about how ridiculous it would be for Joe Sestak to take on Arlen Specter:

"I'm a great admirer of Joe Sestak and worked hard to get him elected and re-elected," Rendell said. "And I'm going to work hard to get him re-elected when he runs for Congress next year. Not for the Senate. Joe should not run for the Senate in the Democratic primary. He would get killed."

Visit for Breaking News,


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Sheanon Williams training with the New York Red Bulls

Derek Meluzio | Special to PennLive By Derek Meluzio | Special to PennLive
on August 18, 2010 at 9:08 AM, updated August 18, 2010 at 10:39 AM

The USL-2 season has ended for the Harrisburg City Islanders. This is the time of year when some of the players earn the chance to train with teams from higher levels of play. A few Isles Guys may get their shot with the Union but one guy is already training with an MLS club.

According to's Mike Bullock, Sheanon Williams is currently training with the New York Red Bulls. Sheanon has some history this season playing against New York as he faced them in the U.S. Open Cup with Harrisburg and also faced them in the pre-season as a member of USSF D2 club Miami FC.

Hopefully I can have more on this topic soon. Good luck Sheanon, the Harrisburg fans are behind you all the way!

Any Red Bull fans wondering what Sheanon is capable of? Check out the video of his insane bicycle kick goal earlier this season.


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Wm. Henry Cornwright PDF Print E-mail
Written by
Tuesday, June 05, 2007

LEWIS - Wm. Henry Cornwright, better known to all as "Hank," a fun-loving, well-liked entrepreneur, passed away on June 4, 2007. He lived his life in an area he loved as much as life itself.
Hank was born in Lewis, N.Y., on July 7, 1924, to Grover and Lydia (Sangbusch) Cornwright. His mother passed away when he was 1 month old and his paternal uncle and wife, George and Myrtie Cornwright, raised him.
He was an outstanding athlete during his school years and served in the U.S. Army during World War II in the Pacific theater. He was a third generation war veteran.
He married Barbara Gibson of Elizabethtown, N.Y., in 1950. He started his own business, Cornwright Lumber Corp., in 1954 and he was a charter member of the Lewis Fire Department and the American Antique Car Club. He was an antique car enthusiast and loved to drive and restore them. He was a member of many organizations, including the Mt. Fay Fish and Game Club, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion and the Keeseville Elks Club. He was also a supervisor for the Town of Lewis for several years.
He is survived by Barbara, his wife of 57 years; his son, William Henry Cornwright IV and daughter-in-law Elizabeth (Miller) Cornwright of Lewis, N.Y.; and his daughter, Terri Jo Brock and son-in-law Timothy Brock of Saratoga Springs, N.Y. He is also survived by his grandchildren, Tina and her husband D.J. Belzile of Willsboro, N.Y., Todd Cornwright and his wife Laurie of Lewis, N.Y., and Mark Henry Morris and Barbara Carolee Morris of Saratoga Springs, N.Y. He leaves behind four great-grandchildren, Joselyn, Katherine and McKinley Belzile and Brianna Rose Cornwright; and two stepgreat-grandchildren, Tyson and Cole Fernandez. He also leaves behind a sister, Barbara Coolidge of Connecticut; a sister-in-law, Etta Cornwright and her son Ed of Westport, N.Y., a sister-in-law, Marion Williams of Glens Falls, N.Y.; and many nieces, nephews; cousins; and friends that he held dear to his heart.
He lived his life as full as he could make it and enjoyed every moment. "It was a good ride."
Calling hours will be held Thursday, June 7, 2007, from 6 to 9 p.m. at W.M. Marvin's Sons Funeral Home in Elizabethtown. A memorial service will be held Friday, June 8, at 10 a.m. at the Lewis Congregational Church. A reception will follow in the parish hall.
Memorial donations may be made to the Lewis Fire Department, the Elizabethtown-Lewis Emergency Squad or High Peaks Hospice in Saranac Lake, N.Y.

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The Art of the Memoir

I recently visited Chesterfield’s Clover Hill High School, which has a PIA Award this year for a project called “Paths.” Students in the tenth through twelfth grade are working with a writer and a visual artist to interview local World War II veterans and their families to create literary and visual depictions of their stories.

The project team consists of Clover Hill creative writing teacher Barbara Bingham, history teacher James Triesler, and fine arts teacher Donna Stables. The visiting artists are painter Kendra Dawn Wadsworth and writer Erica Orloff. Kendra is a former student of Donna’s, which makes her a great role model for any young person who has a passionate interest but is not sure if it is okay to pursue that passion as an adult. Barbara has created a blog about the project and Erica has recently written a post for it. Barbara has also contributed a post to PIA’s blog, where she writes about the importance of learning from other teachers.

I sat in on a senior class that was working with Erica on the meaning, structure and making of memoir. This is a genre I feel very close to (perhaps because I like to talk about myself) and Erica laid out her information and insights in a compelling way. She asked the students to make a list of ten important events or transitional moments in their lives. Not just getting your driver’s license, for example, but what that meant to you. I joined in with the list-making and was surprised by what I came up with.

Erica then asked the students to do 15-20 minutes of free writing on one of the topics they had listed. With this approach, you try very hard not to edit yourself but to keep writing and let it take you where it will. I did this as well and once again was surprised that my pen seemed to be in charge. I appreciated that Erica and Barbara did not ask the students to share what they had written; their work was still private, something to think about and develop. Writing a little of their own memoir will help the Clover Hill students understand how personal experiences can have universal significance. And that is a lesson in itself.

Learning from Other Teachers

A guest post by Barbara L. Bingham, Chesterfield County Public Schools, Virginia

After three years of education courses and five years of teaching, I thought I knew a lot about teaching. I had participated in graduate-level classes and enthusiastically jumped into any staff development offered, but it was five years into my career as an educator that I learned my greatest lesson: other teachers know more than you do. I know this sounds contradictory for some experienced teachers and obvious for young teachers but it’s true for all of us.

That year I had been inspired to switch from general classroom teacher to exceptional educator for students with learning disabilities and I was tapped to collaborate in high school Algebra and Algebra 2. Never having taught math in high school before, I had to interact very closely with both of the teachers I worked with, two of the best teachers I have ever seen. That was when I learned my lesson: after watching them teach, I learned lessons and skills that I continue to use in an English class almost ten years later. It wasn’t that they had so many years more experience than me; it was that each of those teachers used skills and techniques that I hadn’t seen before. Every teacher has something they have developed that works really, really well. If we could just teach each other these things, all of us would become stronger, better and more inspired.

The best training a teacher can have is found in the classroom of another teacher, teachers of the same subject and of different subjects. It is this practice which sets the standard for student teaching. If you want to learn how to teach, then you need to work with someone who does. Unfortunately, in our busy careers as educators, we become too hyper-focused on our classes and distracted by red tape or requirements. If I told you there was staff development that was guaranteed to reach all of your teachers, which would bring improvement to every classroom and would raise camaraderie between all teachers across curricula, every school would pounce on it, particularly when they found out the cost was minimal. So why don’t we do it more? If the consensus is that inexperienced teachers can learn from experienced teachers, why don’t we make the leap to believe experienced teachers can learn from other experienced teachers?

Here’s what I propose: this year, make a commitment to learn at least one skill from another classroom. Schedule a time during your planning time to sit in on another classroom and ask someone you admire to share their skills with you. If you can, go in a few times and watch, learn. You will be thankful you did and, at the same time, you will learn to admire your colleagues and their skills anew. Both of you will be grateful you did.

Storytelling in RVA

A guest post by Jane Crouse of the National Storytelling Network

We live in story like a fish lives in water. We swim through the words and images siphoning story through our minds the way fish siphons water through its gills. We cannot think without language, we cannot process experience without story. Christina Baldwin, StoryCatcher: Making Sense of Our Lives through the Power and Practice of Story

The National Storytelling Network (NSN), based in Jonesborough, TN, brings together and supports individuals and organizations that use the power of story in all its forms. We advocate for the preservation and growth of the art of storytelling. With the theme of Story: Seed of Creativity, the 2013 National Storytelling Conference will be held in Richmond this year on August 1-4. The conference will examine and celebrate “the power of story in all its forms,” honoring our collective and diverse creativity through story. Plant a story seed, grow a dance, a film, a symphony, a video game…the possibilities are endless! Story is the foundation of all the arts, the seed of creativity. Storytelling is the root of film and theatre, dance and music, visual arts, and, of course, literature and the spoken-word tradition.

The annual conference provides opportunities for story practitioners to share and learn a myriad of ways in which the use of story can strengthen and transform communities and lives in the diverse fields of education, health care, historic and cultural preservation and business, to name a few. The Youth, Educators and Storytellers Alliance (YES!) pre-conference will be of particular interest to educators. The Alliance advocates for and offers support and resources in storytelling to mentors, educators and storytellers who work with young voices from early childhood through adolescence. Educators can integrate storytelling into reading, language arts, math, science and social studies while teaching the Virginia Standards of Learning.

Do you have a workshop or panel idea that explores the conference theme of Story: Seed of Creativity? If so, please consider submitting a proposal. The guidelines are available on the conference website, given above. The deadline for workshop proposal submission is November 15, 2012. Perhaps your interest leans more toward performance. Then you might consider applying for the NSN Conference Fringe, where you can present your most compelling, riskiest, experimental or work-in-progress storytelling.

Be part of the National Storytelling Conference this summer. Come discover that the shortest distance between two people is a story. Muriel Rukeyser said that ‘the universe is made of stories, not atoms.” A universe awaits you at the National Storytelling Conference. Come grow with us. We Grow Storyellers!

Tomahawk Creek Middle School-thanks and congrats!

Thanks to the team at TCMS for letting me sit in on a Bluescreen in MovieMaker training session for their teachers.  Autumn Nabors, Coordinator for Instructional Leadership, gave me a great tour and Principal Jeff Ellick also was very generous with his time.

I was able to check out the Digital Book Jam prizes which Ms. Parson had just received.  One of her students’ digital book reports, “Yellow Star”, was a finalist.  Congrats on the great use of integrating arts with literature and technology.

PIA Awards: Woodville Elementary School

It’s good for the soul to spend time with creative teachers and their students. Today I visited Richmond’s Woodville Elementary, where art teacher Teresa Coleman is leading a PIA-funded project called Woodville: A Community of Promise.  Integrating visual arts, music, language arts and social studies, the teachers and visiting artists are helping fourth and fifth graders create an original musical production that will feature notable figures in Virginia’s past and present.  Rosalind C. Taylor is the principal of Woodville, a school full of positive energy and evident commitment to students’ academic and personal development.

As Mrs. Coleman wrote so beautifully in her proposal, “Our primary goal is to use the arts to show students how they are a part of the continuum of history, how history includes the famous and the lesser known, and how history — ‘his story’ — is actually their stories.” To that end, students are learning not only about well-known Virginians but also about family members and people significant to their school and the Church Hill community.  Woodville Elementary’s origins are deep, going back to the early 19th century, when classes were first held in Mount Tabor Baptist Church.

In Mrs. Coleman’s art room, I sat opposite a young girl who was clearly gifted.  She was using what I saw as sophisticated strategies to follow instructions while creating a unique piece of art.  I thought about the fact that when I went to school (talk about the early 19th century) there were no art classes.  I was very, very fortunate to have a family and family friends who valued creativity and all forms of art.

Afterward, I dropped in on Latasha Lee’s music class, where students were practicing a lively routine for “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing).”  Much more is to come as the students swing through the semester, and it will all mean a thing.

Draw Art from Your Beautiful Heart   Student work at Woodville Elementary: “Draw art from your beautiful heart.”

PIA Awards: Greenwood ES Learning Garden Progress

Update on Greenwood Elementary School’s Learning Garden: The clay (which is not mud) mural has colored underglaze on most of it and will be cut and fired soon.

I had a great time with the third grade class that was working with artist David Camden and art teacher Mrs. Slinkman.  As you can see by the music choice in the video it was a high speed YEEEE-HA type of day.

I was also struck by how little time students get to be creative and innovative.  Art teacher Anne-Marie Slinkman could have had those kids in there for a couple of hours and I know they would have learned not only a lot about art but biology as well.  Her side project for students not working on the mural was to create a bug, making sure that no matter how far-out and wild it was it had “what three components?”.  If you put a science teacher in with the art teacher and the visiting artist for more than a 45-minute block I guarantee they would not only reach, but surpass, any SOL goals.  Learning, learning creativity and 21st century skills are all…I’m going to stop here.

There is a lot of buzz about changing educational paradigms as seen in an animated version of Ken Robinson’s talk from February 2010, and maybe this multi-teacher, longer scheduling block is the beginning of the answer.  I will continue my learning diatribe in some other form and align it with gobs of research.

Until then enjoy the video update, notice the engagement of the students, the artist engaging both the group and individuals and see if you can spot the “bug” assignment instructions.

PIA Awards: Greenwood Elementary School

I love visiting schools and seeing all the students’ art work on the walls.  On Monday, January 10, I visited Greenwood Elementary School in Henrico to see the work 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders are doing on a large mural for Greenwood’s Learning Garden, and while there I saw some fantastic work all along the hallways.  It’s no wonder these students are doing so well on their mural.

 Greenwood ES Fish HatGreenwood ES house  An art hat and a building design by students at Greenwood Elementary.

Anne-Marie Slinkman is Greenwood’s art teacher and the coordinator of this PIA-funded project, which allows students to work with ceramics artist David Camden to create a circular mural, about 5 1/2 feet in diameter, that depicts animals, birds and fish native to Virginia in an outdoor setting.

The fifth graders first prepared work sheets with information about each animal as well as words, ideas, and feelings they associated with each one.  Along with this, the fifth graders made drawings of the animals which were then transferred to the paper drawing of the mural, and which will next be depicted in ceramics on the actual mural.  The fourth graders drew the rocks, plants, trees and streams to create the landscape in which the creatures will be situated.  With David and Anne-Marie’s guidance, the third graders pressed the clay base into the big wooden frame that will hold the mural.

Greenwood ES turtle  Drawing of a diamondback terrapin for the Greenwood Elementary mural.

I saw the site where the finished artwork will be placed: a sunny wall facing a grassy area near the entrance to the school library.  Native Virginia plants will be cultivated in the garden, and each grade level will get a plot to plant what they choose.  A whiteboard will be installed and parents and other volunteers will help build benches.  PIA cannot provide funding for these kinds of equipment, but since Greenwood has already secured two sources of funding for the learning garden it is very likely to secure more.

In addition to Anne-Marie and David, the team working on this project includes Kindergarten teachers Ginger Hudson-Banta, Nicole Barker, and Krystina Stansbury; Grade 2 teacher Nicole Hunter; and Special Education teacher Courtney Gibbons-Plowcha.  Greenwood’s principal, Dr. Debra Smith, is, of course, the person who sets the tone for such creative teaching at her school.

“We had fun today, Mrs. Slinkman!”  That’s what the children had told Anne-Marie as she helped them onto the bus just before my visit.  Who wouldn’t want to spend a little part of their school (or work) day creating magic out of clay?

Greenwood ES Teacher

Art teacher Anne-Marie Slinkman standing before the drawing of the circular mural being created at Greenwood Elementary.

From Blank to Bank

A big part of my current work is going through the 16 years’ worth of Summer Institute (register now) Unit Plans and our previous Awards for arts integration projects, then reformatting them as a resource available online.  As technology advances have been rampant over the last 16 years I have an assortment of media formats to deal with and of course the issues that arise with each.  The “Blank” was the CD of images I received from Courtney Howard of Salem Church Middle School.  The Final Report binder was good but I had no images, which as a visual person I really wanted.  A quick e-mail to Ms. Howard and I had a CD full of images within a week.  The “Bank” is my response to the project that they implemented, as in “take it to the bank”.  As far as our mission of using Arts Integration across the curriculum…they nailed it!  Teaching artist Dylan Pritchett provided the professional development for teachers, Poetry Alive! did residencies with classes, George Turman did a performance followed up by workshops, field trips….well anyway here’s some of the visuals.

Salem Church Reliving the Depression

Congratulations to Henrico’s Mike Gettings

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Michael C. Gettings, Instructional Specialist for Art in Henrico County Public Schools, has been named Visual Art Educator of the year by the Virginia Art Education Association!  This honor reflects Mike’s great commitment to fostering art education resources and opportunities in his school system as well as his leadership roles in the VAEA.  The Henrico Citizen has a nice article — which I cannot find online — about Mike receiving the award that lists his many contributions to art education.  It also lists some of his previous awards, which include 1999 Teacher of the Year at Swift Creek Middle School, 2004 Virginia Secondary Art Educator of the Year, and 2006 Southeastern Regional NAEA Secondary Art Teacher of the Year.

We are privileged to have had Mike as an instructor at Partners in the Arts’ Summer Institute (by the way, early registration for the 2011 institute is now open), where he regularly teaches a print-making workshop.  Mike’s own creative work has been shown in many venues.

Mike is just one of the dedicated arts specialists upon whom we rely to get the word out about PIA school awards and the Summer Institute.  Of course, this is just a small part of what they do for the teachers, students and schools with whom they work.  We are all indebted to them for their commitment.

PIA Awards: Swansboro Elementary School

“How did they get the jail underground?” This was the question a fourth grader at Swansboro Elementary asked Selden Richardson last week, following the latter’s presentation about significant sites in Richmond’s history, including the notorious Lumpkin’s Slave Jail.

The question was excellent in a straightforward way. How did Lumpkin’s Slave Jail end up buried so far under the surface of today’s streets? But it was also a metaphor for how often history, especially history that is uncomfortable to think about, is obscured below the surface of official records, textbooks, and public memory.

Mr. Richardson, an architectural historian and author of the book Built by Blacks: African American Architecture and Neighborhoods, is one of the visiting artists working this year with Swansboro teachers Erin Conmy and Mary Ann Gryboski on a project called Studying the Past to Embrace the Future, which explores the history of Richmond and of the students’ own south Richmond community. The project integrates Virginia Studies with an examination of the city’s architecture and monuments, as well as less familiar sites, considering how these may tell varied stories about the past. Working with visiting author Jeannette Drake, students are exploring a range of literary genres as they read and write about Richmond history. Visiting photographer Brian Barker is helping students create images for their journals. Digital cameras for the students were generously provided by Richmond Public Schools.

Dorothy Rice, the Literature and History Resource Teacher at the RPS Arts and Humanities Center, dreamed up this project based on her deep interest in the history of Richmond.  At first she thought it might be best for older students, but Mary Pierce, Swansboro’s principal, suggested it would be perfect for her school’s fourth graders.  And so it has been, as seen by the enthusiasm, curiosity and imagination Swansboro students are bringing to Studying the Past to Embrace the Future.

Yesterday morning, Mr. Richardson led the fourth graders on a walking tour of some of the sites associated with Richmond’s history as a major slave market. We walked through a passage off Main Street to an area — now a parking lot — where slave auctions once took place. “You are walking in the footsteps of the men, women and children who were sold as slaves,” Mr. Richardson told the students. Soon we were at the site of Lumpkin’s Slave Jail, where Mr. Richardson used a box full of sand and some Lego blocks to illustrate exactly how the jail was buried as a result of hill-grading and highway construction.

Fourth grade students from Swansboro Elementary School learn from Selden Richardson how archaeological sites get buried.

There was a lot more to come, including a visit to the African Burial Ground on Broad Street, the Civil Rights Memorial in Capitol Square, and finally the Reconciliation Statue at Main Street. I had to go back to work, but I remembered Mr. Richardson pointing out to students the words at the base of the Reconciliation Statue during his Swansboro presentation.

Acknowledge and forgive the past, embrace the present, shape a future of reconciliation and justice.

“Shaping the future,” Mr. Richardson said to the fourth graders.  “That’s your job.”

More information about the sites on the Slave Trail can be found at the Richmond Slave Trail Commission website.


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A Look Back at the Fall Release Event at Monte Bello (i.e. Event pics!)

With all the excitement of harvest looming on the horizon, and all the forward looking this involves, it does indeed seem as if a proper “look back” at the Monte Bello Fall Release Event is in order; even though it was only last weekend!

Anyhow …

On behalf of all of us here at Ridge, and most especially the team here at Monte Bello, I wish to thank everyone who attended this extraordinary happening; I don’t know who was happier, our guests, or us!

I drove up that morning nervous, exhausted, stressed, and unhealthily focused. A huge event afoot, and all responsibilities on my shoulders. I was deranged.

What paused me, and fully recalibrated my psyche, was this:

That’s what I was looking at as I was unlocking the driveway gate. I was instantly unwound.

Once inside the Old Winery Barn, it was down to my office. That’s when things started to heat up again. So much to do, so little time. Staff began to arrive, the catering team arrived, the parking team arrived. So many people. I was beginning the routine that would be mine the rest of the day; running laps around the property. I was frenzied.

But pause was soon again given. It was tasting time.

You probably know by know just how good these new vintages are showing. I was happily rediscovering. Point scores are nice, and we’re happy to receive good ones, but at the end of the day, the wines have to perform when it matters most; when YOU’RE tasting them. I mean, sure the new issue of Wine Advocate had just simply showered down praises on these wines (97 points for the 2008 Monte Bello, and 95 points each for the 2009 Lytton Springs and the 2008 Monte Bello Chardonnay!) …

… but what were YOU going to think?

After tasting the line-up, I felt very good. Very, very good. And I felt that you, too, were going to feel very, very good.

Which was good, given that the first arrivals were starting to arrive, and as expected, the event had drawn out a hearty crop of serious Ridge-o-Philes. And believe you me, these weren’t the only two seriously vintage Ridge shirts I would see, though these are certainl two classic and excellent examples:

So it was go time, and we were ready. We had a great team on hand, the wines were showing beautifully, and some very key members of the winemaking team were in the house:

Paul Draper & Eric Baugher talking Monte Bello winemaking ...

Shun Ishikubo pouring 1992 Monte Bello out of magnum ...

Tara pouring below the ghosts of founders past ...

Zani expertly enacts the art of wine tasting merriment ...

Pete pours cool as a cucumber in the face of hot demand ...

No discussion of the Fall Release Event at Monte Bello is complete without acknowledging the presence of Pizza Politana. Not only did they manage to actually drive a wood-fired pizza oven up our mountain, but they then proceeded to serve some of the most delicious (and PERFECTLY paired) offerings we’ve ever had the pleasure of placing alongside our wines.
But a great idea (wood-fired pizza oven truck!), great ingredients (local, sustainable, organic, NorCal farmer’s market fare), and great pairing do not a great event make. It takes great staff, and the folks from Pizza Politana were tops.
 Things were definitely getting intense. You know when you’re starting to golf-cart the guests in that the event is really starting to happen.
Then suddenly this …
 … becomes this!
Fortunately, there was this to adjourn to (once the collective tummy was full up on pizza and wine!) …
Yeah, that’ll do …
 What a day, what a day …
When I began assembling the components of what have become this post, I was looking for one image, something that could somehow capture the magic of it all; I found this, and figured I had it …
Pizza and Monte Bello. Perfect.
But in looking through all the images I’d shot over the day, there was another idea that I just couldn’t shake, and in the end, it’s what I’ve decided to go with; the bookend.
After all was said and done, and I was coming down the mountain …
… I knew, finally and for certain, that all was well.

Categories: Bordeaux varietals, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Events & Photographs, Food & Wine Pairing, Lytton Springs, Monte Bello, Paul Draper, Ridge Memorabilia, RIDGE Staff, Special Offerings, Tasting Flights, Tasting Rooms, Varietals & Blends, Zinfandel

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2 replies

  1. What a fantastic event! Perfect weather for it, and the pizza was amazing. The wine, as usual, was outstanding, too. I’m so glad you’re starting to do more events like this, but, selfishly, I hope they don’t get too much more crowded!

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Probably one of the best guides out there for starter players is rinsama’s blog.

Her guide for the Sanrio Harbour quest is very complete and an excellent beginners guide, see it here.

The other place to look is in the forums.

A problem with the HKO installer can result in a desktop shortcut for HKO that does not launch the game.  If your game won’t start, please run the Client Shortcut Hotfix and follow the instructions.

1.  Download and run the Client Shortcut Hotfix from the Hello Kitty Online Download Center.

2.  When the program runs, you will need to enter your HKO installation directory. The default is:

C:\Program Files\SanrioTown\Hello Kitty Online

Unless you installed your game to a non-default directory, the above will be correct. Click “Next” when done.

3.  Enter the Windows Start Menu folder where you want HKO to appear. The default is:

SanrioTown\Hello Kitty Online

If there is no need to change this entry. Click “Next” when done.

4. Review the settings and click “Install”.  The hotfix program will now update your game.

5. Click on “Finish” and your HKO installation should be updated and in working order.

Thank you for your support in helping us prepare the game for Open Beta and we are sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you.  If you encounter problems with the game, please send us an email at with a description of what happened and we’ll be glad to help you.

See you in Hello Kitty Online!

Hello Kitty Online “Happy Hearts” Valentine’s Day Event
Hello Kitty MMORPG invites all players to rescue Cupid,
see enhancements"

Hong Kong – February 3, 2009: Sanrio Digital today announced that Hello Kitty Online will open to the public from February 14 to February 17, 2009, allowing new players to participate in the Valentine’s Day “Happy Hearts” event. To play, simply sign up to and start downloading the game client from All players will be able to log in to the game starting from February 14, 2009 20:00 (8pm) Eastern Standard Time.

The “Happy Hearts” event for Founders of Hello Kitty Online will run from February 12 to February 17, 2009. New players will be accepted from February 14 until the end of the event. Happy Hearts will feature exclusive new content and several enhancements to the game:

Special Valentine’s-themed quests
Valentine’s Day under threat! Cupid is missing and so are the romance and friendship of the season. It is up to players of HKO to save Valentine’s Day and prevent the collapse of the greeting card industry. Exclusive items will be awarded to the first players to complete the quest chain.

Improved user interface
User interface enhancements include a higher supported resolution, movable windows, re-sizable chat box, and an improvement to the local area map.

Revamped farming system
The new HKO farming system introduces 8 new and unique farm types while allowing players to participate in cooperative farming. Day cycles and related effects on your plants have been implemented. Plant growth times have been adjusted.

Keyword chat filter
The new chat filter blocks offensive language from private and public chat to ensure a safer and more enjoyable gaming experience for players.

HKO Founders will be able to log in the game on February 12, 2009 at exactly 22:00 EST.  All Sanriotown members will be able to log in from February 14, 2009 at exactly 20:00 (8pm) Eastern Standard Time.  The event will end on February 17, 2009 at 23:59 EST after which Hello Kitty Online will be taken down for further work. To play, users must sign up for a free account at and download the HKO game client from

About Hello Kitty Online
Hello Kitty Online, developed by Sanrio Digital, is the official Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) of Hello Kitty and friends, and the first MMORPG to integrate social networking web services into the game experience. In addition to standard features such as customizable avatars, guilds, skill systems, and player economy, Hello Kitty Online offers a social networking platform including blogs, video sharing, and email services. For more information please visit

About Sanrio Digital
Sanrio Digital is a joint venture between Typhoon Games (HK) Ltd. and Sanrio Co. Ltd. Sanrio Digital is responsible for the expansion of Sanrio intellectual property assets into various digital and online media, leveraging an extensive library of original material that includes world-famous brands such as Hello Kitty, Badtz Maru, My Melody, and others. For more information please visit

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Mrs. Awesome Planet
Slice of Manila’s Hidden Places. Food and Travel Secrets through Word-Of-Mouth. Shared with a Mommy Twist :)

All-Day Makati Parking at P45

New Glorietta Parking

How much do you pay for all-day parking in Makati? P40 for 4 hours then P10/ hour for the succeeding hours right? So, if you go the the office by 7.30am and leave at 5.30pm, you will pay for P100 per day. Nowadays, it is costly to bring a car not to mention gasing it up huh! That’s why I also plan my day properly as not to waste gas, money and time going around the metro. If not for my kids, I would still be commuting to and from my destination because at times, I find it more convenient than driving.

Anyway, I just want share with you what I’ve just discovered. There is a cheap parking fee in Makati! It is even right at the mall area! Do you know the new Glorietta builidng where the new Anson’s is? The building beside Makati Shangrila and right across Landmark? The building which occupied the open parking lot before.

Well, GOOD NEWS to people out there who loves to stay in Glorietta the whole day or goes to office near the area (such as 6750 bulding), that new building which they now call the new Glorietta building just charges P45 all day! Woohoo! Isn’t that cheap for a parking fee in Makati?!

Here’s the catch…they inform you when you get your ticket from the machine that it is unmanned. In short, no guards to look after your cars (although at the time I was there, I saw a guard or two). So there! Would you prefer to pay P100 per day with guard roaming around and “looking after” your car or P45 per day?

Oh by the way, this is only until 14 February 2008! You’ve got at least 3 weeks of low parking cost until you find another affordable parking fee once again.

3 Responses to “All-Day Makati Parking at P45”

  1. fran Says:

    woohoo! this is great news! i agree…parking is always one of the main concerns of makati “yuppies” like myself imagine having to shell out an average of P500 a week for parking? yipes!! good thing though our admin has decided to rent more parking spaces along jupiter for the growing number of employees who drives to work everyday. thanks for sharing the good news rache!

  2. Sophie Says:

    It’s been raised to 50 already! I don’t know if it’s flat rate for weekends only since there’s a new rate that was flashed there - 45 bucks for the first four hours! Eep!

  3. makati offices for rent Says:

    Informative article. Readers can get ideas about the article posted.

Leave a Reply


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Tag Archives: medicine

‘Doctor, are you willing, to try this Penicillin?’

Selina Hurley, Assistant Curator of Medicine, takes a look at the story behind a new addition to our collections.

One of the most enjoyable parts of a curator’s job is acquiring objects which become part of the national collections. Not only do we go out and actively seek objects but we also get offered some real gems. Recently arrived at the Science Museum is this rather wonderful object.

Wooden chest used by Major Scott Thomson, RAMC, to transport penicillin supplies to North Africa during the Second World War, 1939-1945.

Wooden chest used by Major Scott Thomson. Credit: Science Museum

Major Scott Thomson (1909-1992), a bacteriologist, used this chest was used to carry supplies of penicillin to combat gas gangrene during the Second World War.

Penicillin sample, London, 1943 ( Science & Society Picture Library )

Penicillin sample, London, 1943 ( Science & Society Picture Library )

Scott Thomson’s career during the Second World War began as Pathologist to various military hospitals until 1943 when he was appointed by the War Office to be bacteriologist to the Penicillin Research Team. Thomson was posted to Algiers in May 1943 with surgeon Ian Fraser after under going special training at Oxford with Howard Florey.

On returning to Britain with the successful results of his trials, a decision was taken by the MRC Penicillin Committee to concentrate supplies of penicillin in one area of main battle activity in Italy. In December 1943 he was posted to Monte Cassino and according to his obituary in the Journal of Medical Microbiology he was responsible for all of the world’s supply of penicillin during those months – a fact his daughters remember him retelling.

Manufacturing penicillin, 1943 ( Science and Society Picture Library )

Manufacturing penicillin, 1943 (Science & Society Picture Library)

Like many of his contemporaries, Scott Thomson talked little about his time during the Second World War. However, I was lucky enough to meet Major Scott Thomson’s family who delighted me with the snippets of information that they had about his experiences.

Consisting of just five people, the Penicillin units were often at the back of every march, considered at the lower end of the army hierarchy. The lines between Allied and Axis forces were often so blurred that senior Axis officers wandered into the Allied camp.

Scott Thomson believed that the medical profession’s job was to cure and bacteriology was the main way of doing this and focussed his research into antibiotics. In the late 1960s, his daughters remember him talking about the overuse of antibiotic resistance – a subject which is always in the news.

By far, my favourite snippet the family were kind enough to share was the lyrics to Song for Penicillin which may have been penned by a German friend of Thomson with German, English and Italian lyrics. Although the tune is not known, but believed to be based a popular German oompah song. I’ll leave you with the chorus of the song:

German Doctor, are you willin’?

Go and try this Penicillin

This is something else than killin’ – Penicillin!

Penicillin! Penicillin!

Surgery behind the scenes at Buckingham Palace

Katie Maggs, Curator of Medicine blogs on a rather special surgery performed at the Palace.

One of the amazing things about working at the Science Museum is the number of extraordinary people you get to meet who give a unique insight into our collections. A few days ago I made a trip to the South Coast to interview Sarah Minter – a retired nurse and spritely 96 year old. Not only has she lived through some incredible changes within medicine during her career, she played a vital role in a high-profile operation performed on this table displayed in our Health Matters Gallery – more than 60 years ago.

Adjustable operating table by the Genito Urinary Manufacturing Co., London, 1950s. At the time this operating table was the latest model for chest surgery – multiple attachments helped to better position the patient during surgery. Image credit: Science Museum.

In September 1951, Sarah – then Senior Theatre Sister at Westminster Hospital – was about to go on holiday when Clement Price-Thomas (later Sir) a renowned Chest Surgeon came into her office. After carefully closing the door, he informed her that he had to perform a major chest operation on King George VI – and at the Palace’s insistence the operation would take place at Buckingham Palace. Sarah was tasked with coordinating the equipment and nursing team that would be needed for the operation. Cancelling her holiday, Sarah set to work. Absolute secrecy was essential.

Sarah Minter and her fellow nursing team being thanked by Westminster’s Matron Lavina Young in 1951 for their role in the King’s operation. Sarah started training as a Probationer Nurse at Westminster Hospital in 1939, on a salary of £20.00 paid quarterly. Her responsibilities gradually expanded until she became Divisional Nursing Officer in the 1960s. She retired in 1977.

From sterilising to lighting apparatus - Sarah selected what equipment she could from Westminster’s surgical theatres including the operating table, in order to create a replica theatre inside the Palace. Part of the challenge was to ensure enough of the right surgical equipment remained at the hospital so that operations could continue uninterrupted by what was happening at the Palace.

Crowds awaiting news of King George VI’s operation outside Buckingham Palace, 1951. The King’s operation began around 10am on the 23rd September 1951. Sarah recalled the thrill of looking out at the crowds from a window in the Palace, as a press notice about the operation was posted to the gates. Image Credit: BBC.

King George VI recovered from the surgery but died later in February 1952. The operating table went back to the hospital into normal usage. Sarah received a signed photograph of the King and Queen thanking her for her part in the procedure. Her name is listed with the members of the surgical team on a stained glass window commemorating King George VI in the chapel of Westminster Hospital.

Speaking with Sarah, I gained a real sense of the professionalism shown by nurses like her and an insight into the conditions in which she was working and the operation which took place. Whilst proud of her part in such notable surgery, it was medical advances Sarah recalled – such as the first dialysis machine used at Westminster Hospital or the shift from being a voluntary to an NHS Hospital – that made more of an impact on her and the patients she cared for.

The Addictive History of Medicine: Explorer Beware: Hazardous chemicals in Captain Scott’s Antarctic Medicine Chest

Many museums and organisations have been celebrating the centenary of Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s expedition to the South Pole. But have you ever wondered what kind of medicine Scott and his party brought with them to the ends of the earth? Here at the Science Museum we know because we have one Scott’s original aluminium medicine chests. The chest, dated to 1910, was carried by Scott and his party when they set out for the pole in November 1911. This chest was originally kept at the Lower Glacier Depot on the way to the Pole, however it was picked up when Scott’s second in command Lieutenant Edward Evans began his return journey to the Cape. It was only recovered in 1912 when a search party set out to find Scott and his comrades, whose bodies were discovered 11 miles out from the One Ton Depot.

Aluminium medicine chest brought by Captain Scott to the Lower Glacier Depot c. 1910 (Credit: Science Museum).

This medicine chest can tell us about the kind of drugs indispensible to Scott and his comrades. Plastic bottles containing Paregoric Elixir (Camphorated Tincture of Opium) and Aromatic Powder tablets (chalk and opium) are to be found within this chest. Opium was a useful sedative and pain reliever. Additional phials of hypodermic tablets of cocaine and morphine would have been administered by injection in cases of extreme trauma.

Hazardous Substances from the medicine chest made by Burroughs Wellcome and Co. c. 1910 (Credit: Science Museum)

The chest contains other hazardous chemicals such as strychnine, belladonna, arsenic, and mercury – medicines that would have been used as irritants to bring on a sweat; a common nineteenth century remedy for fever.

Scott and his party at the South Pole, c.1912 (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Although it is worth considering how modern medicines may have aided early explorers, we know that even the most efficacious of drugs could not have helped Scott or his team survive the Antarctic storms.

Written by Kristin Hussey and Luke Pomeroy, Collections Information Officers

The addictive history of medicine: Opium, the poor child’s nurse

The Ebers papyrus tells us the Ancient Egyptians had an interesting way to deal with noisy crying babies: just give them a draft of opium. This practice was still very much use in the Victorian era, when it gained notoriety for the dangers the use of children’s opiates posed to general health.

Opium - The Poor Child's Nurse

"The Poor Child's Nurse" from an 1849 issue of British humour magazine Punch. Source: HarpWeek.

We know in this era opium was readily used as a cure for a bad cough, or aches and pains, but it is less well known that opium was also given to children, and even babies. Restless or teething babies and small infants would be given concoctions such as Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, which contained morphine (an opium derivative). There were at least ten brands of mixtures aimed at children and infants including Atkinson’s Royal Infants’ Preservative, and Street’s Infants Quietness. The most famous preparation of children’s opiates was Godfrey’s Cordial, which was a mixture of opium, treacle, water and spices.

Advertisment for Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup

A glamourised and seemingly tranquil card advertisement for Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup. Source: University of Buffalo.

Medical Officers during this period were convinced that opium was a major cause of infantile death, with the use of opium becoming widespread amongst working class families. Opium was often described as the ‘Poor Child’s Nurse’, due to its ability to stop hungry babies from crying. Attitudes towards the administering of opium to children were often casual, with preparations such as laudanum and paregoric stating recommended doses for children and infants on the labels of bottles.

Bottle of Stickney and Poor's Paregoric with dosages for children

The label on the back of this bottle of Stickney and Poor's Paregoric states dosages for infants as young as five days old. Source: University of Buffalo.

One Manchester druggist even admitted to selling between five and six gallons of “quietness” every week. That’s around 24 pints! Opium caused infant mortality through starvation rather than overdose; as one doctor stated that infants ‘kept in a state of continued narcotism will be thereby disinclined for food, and be but imperfectly nourished”. The scale of infant mortality at the time was not fully known, as coroners often recorded the cause as ‘starvation’. Lozenges or pastilles containing opium were often displayed within pharmacy shop cabinets in rows, very much like a candy shop.

Jar for 'Licorice & Chlorodyne' Pastilles

Rows of jars for pastilles with various ingredients, including one for 'Liquorice & Chlorodyne', on display in the Gibson & Son Pharmacy at the Science Museum, Lower Wellcome Gallery. Source: Science Museum.

 This article was written by Kristin Hussey and Luke Pomeroy, Collections Information Officers.

C. OPII: Drugs in the 19th century pharmacy

If you have ever seen the Gibson & Son Pharmacy display at the Science Museum, then you know it’s not always easy to tell what is inside the numerous and bewilderingly labelled shop rounds. Pharmacists really had to know their abbreviated Latin as many of the medications sold in in the nineteenth century contained opium.

Late-nineteenth century glass shop rounds in Gibson and Son's Pharmacy. (Credit: Science Museum, London)

But how can you spot a bottle which contains opium? There are many ways to say opium on shop rounds. Bottles like we find in Gibson’s might say OPII., OPIO., RHOEA. PAPAVER. or even just the letter O!

Early 19th century stoneware drug jar for the storage of opium preparations. (Credit: Science Museum, London)

If you think that’s confusing, you aren’t the only one. It was a common occurence in the nineteenth century for pharmacists to confuse medicines, sometimes with fatal results. For example, a pharmacist in 1858 mistook PULV OPII TURC OPT (Turkish Opium) for Turkish Rhubarb (RHEI TURC) causing a patient to die of an overdose, and was faced trial for manslaughter. Opium sales weren’t tightly controlled either. Until 1868, anyone could buy or sell opium regardless of whether they were a qualified chemist or not

Late 19th or early 20th century green glass ribbed poison bottle for morphine hydrochloride. (Credit: Science Museum, London)

Opium was not the only dangerous drug in the pharmacy. Most glass bottles containing potentially poisonous drugs were made to look and feel different as a warning to potential users. We call these poison bottles, and they are usually made of ribbed, coloured glass. There are many other substances we now consider dangerous lurking in old medicine bottles, like mercury or arsenic, that we wouldn’t dream of using today.

This article was written by Kristin Hussey and Luke Pomeroy, Collections Information Officers.


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November 12th, 2013 | By | 346 Comments

Back in Stock | Surf Grass Mats A Surf Essential for Wetsuit Protection and Keeping a Clean Kit

Shoes off kook! No dirt allowed in the new Poler Tent. Surf Grass Serves as a sick Welcome Mat

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Surfing sucks in an itchy wetty. Wipe your hoofs while you suit up for a session

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Thank you for visiting the Swell blog. Visit us on for more exclusive fan offers, giveaways and more.

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Every Patient's Advocate: Successful body repair may require a different specialist

Amber Smith By Amber Smith The Post-Standard
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on August 03, 2010 at 12:02 AM
torrey.jpgTrisha Torrey is Every Patient's Advocate, in The Post-Standard.
There's a leak underneath your kitchen sink. Will you call the electrician?

Your car makes a whining noise when you accelerate. Will you take it to a body shop?

You probably answered no to both questions. So consider this: just like the wrong home or car specialist cant repair the problem, the wrong medical specialist may not be able to fix whats wrong with your body.

I know someone who, several years ago, was diagnosed with spinal stenosis, a painful condition that results from the discs in his spine squeezing against his spinal cord. In addition, this man suffers from neuropathy, a burning tingling in his feet, likely a result of the stenosis.

In 2008, he visited a neurologist who told him nothing could be done to relieve his pain, that he would just need to live with it, even as it became increasingly painful. Earlier this year, through some Internet research, this man learned there might be alternatives after all. He went to see an orthopedic surgeon who suggested he undergo a nerve block, an injection that could help relieve that excruciating pain.

Why didn't the neurologist mention a nerve block? We don't know.

Another person I know suffered for months from stomach pain, bloating and cramps. Her primary care doctor sent her to a gastroenterologist who ran tests, but concluded there was nothing wrong. The woman continued to suffer intermittently. Then, a few months later, she was admitted to the hospital with an intestinal blockage, only to learn that she had stage IV ovarian cancer. She died a few months later. Had she been seen earlier by a gynecologist, maybe her cancer could have been successfully treated.

If your symptoms just wont go away, or your prescribed treatment doesn't seem to help, or your pain continues without relief, ask your primary care doctor what other specialists might look at your situation differently.

That may sound odd. Our primary doctors should know exactly which specialist to send us to. Most of the time, they do. But sometimes a doctor makes the wrong choice. Unless we speak up, they wont even know to make another recommendation.

If your doctor has no suggestions, then do some research on your own. After all, its your body. Its up to you to keep pursuing the repair that fixes the problem.

Trisha Torrey is Every Patients Advocate, host of Upstates HealthLink on Air radio program and patient empowerment expert at She is the author of You Bet Your Life! The 10 Mistakes Every Patient Makes.


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Weekend Magazine | The Post-Standard By | The Post-Standard The Post-Standard
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on June 26, 2008 at 5:40 PM, updated June 26, 2008 at 5:42 PM

What's hot?
Check out the features below to find out...

Best Bets
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The Seen

» Complete guide


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Poll: Which team would you like to see join the ACC next?

Katie Kramer | By Katie Kramer | The Post-Standard
Follow on Twitter
on September 19, 2011 at 3:30 PM, updated September 19, 2011 at 4:21 PM
sp_110919_texasfootball.jpgWill Texas quarterback Case McCoy and the Longhorns be joining Syracuse in the ACC?

After announcing Syracuse and Pittsburgh's addition to the Atlantic Coast Conference, commissioner John Swofford said the ACC was 'very comfortable' at 14 teams. But that doesn't mean they won't add two more teams. Since the announcement Sunday, rumors have been swirling about a number of teams being interested in joining the league, but who would be the next ones to join?

Sources told ESPN that Connecticut was strongly pursuing membership in the ACC. And a source told The Star Ledger's Tom Luicci that it could be one of a couple combinations of teams, including the Huskies.

"A person familiar with the league’s thinking says the ACC has three scenarios it is looking at, and all involve getting to 16 teams. Plan A is John Swofford’s latest swing at the fences — Texas and Notre Dame. Plan B is Texas and Texas Tech. Plan C is Rutgers and Connecticut."
ESPN's Mark Schlabach says, if it's not Texas, look for a couple more Big East teams to jump ship.

"The ACC seems to be waiting to learn Texas' fate. If the Longhorns bolt the Big 12 for the Pac-12 or independence, the ACC might be inclined to grab two more Big East schools: Connecticut and Rutgers. The Huskies are the defending NCAA men's basketball champions, and their women's basketball team has won two of the past three NCAA titles. The UConn football team won the 2010 Big East title and played in a BCS bowl game. Rutgers has struggled recently in football, and its basketball program has never been very competitive, but its position in the New York/New Jersey TV market makes it very attractive."

Baltimore Sports and Life agrees, with Connecticut and Rutgers.

"However, again assuming that WVU to the SEC happens; I think the ACC should be finalizing plans to add Connecticut, and Rutgers. According to the US News & World Report rankings, UConn is tied for 58th, and Rutgers is tied for 68th. So both Universities have an academic standing similar to the existing members. The addition of both schools would give the ACC a dominating presence up and down the East Coast, and present the opportunity for true 'North,' and 'South' divisions."

According to Fox Sports, one combination is Notre Dame and Penn State. The two teams would solidify the league as a super power.

Andrew Jones writes: "Obviously, adding Penn State and Notre Dame would give the league an explosion in the number of households it can get an ACC network into. ACC teams would then reside in the third-most populated state (New York), fourth-most (Florida), sixth (Pennsylvania), ninth (Georgia), 10th (North Carolina), 12th (Virginia), 14th (Massachusetts), 16th (Indiana), and 19th (Maryland). Cash registers at the ACC offices in Greensboro would break."

The Austin American-Stateman says Texas has three possible choices for realignment.

"But the Longhorns aren't set on heading west. They're not set on anything, yet.

They don't want to be independent, and the one thing they do know is their conference options are about to be reduced by one. If the Big 12 implodes, Texas would have to decide between pushing for membership in the Pac-12 or Atlantic Coast Conference or turning independent, an option (Texas AD Deloss) Dodds has always strongly opposed."

Which two teams would you most like to see join Syracuse and Pitt in moving to the ACC? Vote in the poll and leave your comments below.

» ESPN: Texas' Mack Brown: Think about the players, parents
» NY Times: UConn and Rutgers Keep Options Open Amid Big East Upheaval

Get the latest ACC News on


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What Makes the New York Media, the New York Media?

Daniel J. Parkins By Daniel J. Parkins
on February 27, 2009 at 5:14 PM, updated February 27, 2009 at 6:30 PM

New York City is the media capital of the world. Tomorrow night on Sportsnight, Steven Gelbs and I will take a closer look at the sports media in the Big Apple.

Would this have been the scene if Alex Rodriguez did not play in New York City?

New York is the toughest place to be an athlete. More people cover its teams than in any other city, players are subject to contant scrutiny, and the fans are some of the most passionate in the nation.

When it was discovered that Alex Rodriguez tested poistive for steroids in 2003, it created a firestorm in New York CIty. Sure it's a huge story when the game's biggest star takes steroids, but would it have been as big of a deal if A-Rod was still on the Rangers or the Mariners?

Guests who will weigh in on the discussion include:

-Kenny Albert, radio voice of the New York Rangers and broadcaster for the NFL on FOX

-Mike Vaccaro, lead sports columnist for the New York Post

-A professional athlete who played in New York City

You can hear audio from the show after the jump...

Kenny Albert talks about the fact that the New York media can be tough, but says there is no better place to play if you win.

Kenny Albert bite.mp3 -

So be sure to tune in to Sportsnight tomorrow night at 8 on WAER 88.3 FM, or log on to


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The Bump Meets and Mingles With Baby Pros in NYC

On September 20, The Bump hosted an event for big names in the baby industry. Located at The Bump headquarters, the soiree was a chance for NYC’s baby pros to chat and connect with each other — and for us to get to know them! They also got a behind-the-scenes look at our office and chat with The Bump editor-in-chief Carley Roney!

But it wasn’t all work. Guests snacked on some savory bites from Cocktail Caterers and indulged in sweet treats from Lisa’s Candy Buffet. They were also treated to massages from Dasha Wellness & Spa and photos from Podpix! It was a fun night, as you can see from the photos below, courtesy of Jane Goodrich Photography.

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Did you attend The Bump Meet and Mingle? Let us know what you thought!

Plus, more from The Bump:

Register for Baby

Baby Shower Ideas

The Best Baby Gear


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MP3 of the Week: Fedavees "Self of Light"

Following last year’s fuzzy 12-track Night Cows, Cambridge psych-rock trio FEDAVEES return with a new 7-inch single, Solar Flower, due out in early 2012. Until the wax is pressed, its two spooky, psyched-out tracks (recorded by Carter Tanton of Lower Dens and, formerly, Tulsa) are available for free on their Bandcamp, backed by the local Middlesex-night-turned-music-blog-turned-DIY-label pRIMORDIAL SOUNDS. (They’re the dudes behind new jams from ex-Doomstar!/Ketman project Creaturos as well as the Beat Awfuls.) The A-side, “Self of Light,” is just under four minutes, with a surfy bass line, double-time drums, and a meandering guitar riff; it’s equal parts spacey ’60s garage and contemporary out-there goth-wave grit. The noisy vocals are nearly inaudible under a woozy wall of distorted lo-fi jamming, but the memorable melody sticks. B-side “Freedom Freezes Over” is a reworking of the mid-tempo head-bopper that appeared on Night Cows.

DOWNLOAD: Fedavees “Self Of Light” [mp3]
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