text:
Marla Maples, Busy with Humanitarian Work, Didn't Watch Ex-Husband Donald Trump in First Presidential Debate
Maples was married to Donald Trump from 1993 to 1999
Charlotte Triggs
Managing Editor, PEOPLE Digital
and Natalie Stone
Updated on October 7, 2016 11:23 PM
Photo: Rabbani and Solimene Photography/Getty Images for Dujour
Marla Maples' ex-husband Donald Trump may be participating in televised presidential debates, but the actress isn't allowing that to interfere with her humanitarian work.
Maples, 52, was married to Trump from 1993 to 1999 and shares one child — daughter Tiffany Trump — with the businessman-turned-politician. In the time since she and her ex-husband split, the mother of one has focused her time and attention on humanitarian efforts, which includes her recently attending the Wonderful World Gala on Sept. 26 — the same night as the first presidential debate.
A source close to Maples tells PEOPLE that instead of traveling to the debate, "Marla attended the Wonderful World Gala (at the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine) on Monday, Sept. 26 and the Heart of Forgiveness Reception in lower Manhattan Oct. 4" and added that "Louis Armstrong is close to Marla's heart as she's seen personally how music can heal."
She also recently met with a survivor of Hiroshima and tells PEOPLE of the evening, "I was deeply moved by how Takashi used his pain and Samarai teachings of revenge, to instead share a message about the power of forgiveness … It's so very inspiring to meet someone who's faced one of the most critical issues of our time head on, and though it's had catastrophic results for him personally, he's retaliated by way of spreading peace."
Edward Fitzpatrick
Kunal Sood
The Dancing with the Stars contestant, who competed on season 22, also credits the dancing reality competition series for helping her "focus" on her passions.
"I loved doing Dancing With the Stars — it gave me the chance to focus on my passion for performing, and since then I've worked on other passion projects like my recent work with Waves for Water through the empowering work of Life Source Retreats," she tells PEOPLE. "I have also been able to take time with family and celebrate my little sister Danielle's wedding in GA. Now that I'm back in NY, I love connecting with people of all backgrounds and walks of life who are bringing attention to important issues for local communities and the world."
In April, Maples opened up to PEOPLE about her marriage and split from Trump. "I was never with him for his money. I wasn't there for the glamorous life or the riches," she revealed of being wed to her 70-year-old ex-husband.
Former President Donald Trump Mourns Ex-Wife Ivana Alongside Their Children at N.Y.C. Funeral Service
Inside Ivana and Donald Trump's Explosive — and Expensive — 1990s Divorce, Dubbed the 'Billion Dollar Blowup'
Ivana Trump's Life in Photos
Donald Trump Plans to Celebrate His 76th Birthday at Bedminster Golf Club: 'He Has to Keep Busy'
Tiffany Trump Shares Photos from White House Engagement Last Year, as Dad's Administration Ended
Tiffany Trump Takes a Break from Planning a Greek Wedding to Celebrate Birthday with Mom Marla Maples
Ivana Trump's Ex-Husband Rossano Rubicondi Dead at 49: 'I'm Devastated,' She Says
Donald Trump Is Elected 45th President of the United States in Stunning Upset
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez 'Will See Each Other When They Can' amid Busy Fall: Source
Marla Maples Says Ex-Husband Donald Trump 'Thought About' Running for President in the '90s
Donald Trump Supports Ex-Wife Marla Maples on 'Dancing with the Stars' : 'I'm Very Happy for Her'
Marla Maples' Past with Ex-Husband Donald Trump: 6 Things to Know
Ivana Trump Appeared on 'Dancing with the Stars' — After Mocking Marla Maples for Doing the Same
Trump's Two Ex-Wives, Ivana Trump and Marla Maples, Will Attend His Inauguration
Donald Trump's Prenup with Marla Maples Leaks, Reveals His 'Optimistic' Financial Figures
Marla Maples Opens Up About Surprisingly Modest Lifestyle After Her Split from Donald Trump: 'I Laugh When People Think I Walked Away with a Fortune'


text:
Ship owner 1st to sue over Beirut port explosion
Published:Friday | August 7, 2020 | 2:56 PM
The port area lies in devastation following this week's massive explosion in the port of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, August 7, 2020. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanon's state-run National News agency says a Lebanese businessman whose cruise ship was destroyed in the Beirut port explosion and who had some staff members killed and wounded has filed a lawsuit against those who will be found responsible for this week's blast.
Orient Queen owner Merhi Abou Merhi on Friday became the first person to sue over the Tuesday explosion that killed at least 154 people, wounded more than 5,000 and damaged wide parts of the Lebanese capital.
Two Orient Queen employees, a Syrian and an Ethiopian, were killed and seven others were wounded in the blast.
The news agency quoted Abu Merhi as saying there should be a "fair, quick and transparent investigation" and that the state should compensate people for losses to help the country's already suffering economy.
Meanwhile, the state news agency says the chief of the customs department has been questioned by a judge over this week's deadly blast, after which the judge placed him under arrest.
The agency says investigative Judge Ghassan Khoury decided Badri Daher should remain in custody after questioning him for five hours on Friday. Sixteen other port officials and staffers are also under arrest.
It gave no further details about the arrest, three days after large amounts of ammonium nitrate exploded at Beirut's port.
Daher told The Associated Press on Thursday that he and his predecessor sent six letters, the last of which was in 2017, to a judge, warning repeatedly that the huge stockpile of ammonium nitrate stored in the port was a danger. They had asked judicial officials for a ruling on a way to remove it.
Daher said it was his duty to "alert" authorities of the dangers but that is the most he could do.
Follow The Gleaner on Twitter and Instagram @JamaicaGleaner and on Facebook @GleanerJamaica. Send us a message on WhatsApp at 1-876-499-0169 or email us @onlinefeedback@gleanerjm.com or editors@gleanerjm.com.
«Plane skids off runway in India, 16 killed and dozens hurt
Last-ditch virus aid talks in US collapse, no new help for jobless»

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
//
//  NSStringPunycodeAdditions.m
//  Punycode
//
//  Created by Wevah on 2005.11.02.
//  Copyright 2005-2012 Derailer. All rights reserved.
//
//  Distributed under an MIT-style license; please
//  see the included LICENSE file for details.
//

#import "NSStringPunycodeAdditions.h"

// Encoding/decoding adapted/lifted from the example code in the IDNA Punycode spec (RFC 3492).
// For some other stuff, see RFC 3490 (Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications)

enum { base = 36, tmin = 1, tmax = 26, skew = 38, damp = 700, initial_bias = 72, initial_n = 0x80, delimiter = '-' }
;

/* basic(cp) tests whether cp is a basic code point: */
#define basic(cp) ((unsigned)(cp) < 0x80)

/* delim(cp) tests whether cp is a delimiter: */
#define delim(cp) ((cp) == delimiter)

/* decode_digit(cp) returns the numeric value of a basic code */
/* point (for use in representing integers) in the range 0 to */
/* base-1, or base if cp is does not represent a value.       */

static NSUInteger decode_digit(unsigned cp)
{
    return cp - 48 < 10 ? cp - 22 : cp - 65 < 26 ? cp - 65 : cp - 97 < 26 ? cp - 97 : base;
}

/* encode_digit(d,flag) returns the basic code point whose value      */
/* (when used for representing integers) is d, which needs to be in   */
/* the range 0 to base-1.  The lowercase form is used unless flag is  */
/* nonzero, in which case the uppercase form is used.  The behavior   */
/* is undefined if flag is nonzero and digit d has no uppercase form. */

static char encode_digit(unsigned d, int flag)
{
    return (char)(d + 22 + 75 * (d < 26) - ((flag != 0) << 5));
    /*  0..25 map to ASCII a..z or A..Z */
    /* 26..35 map to ASCII 0..9         */
}

/* flagged(bcp) tests whether a basic code point is flagged */
/* (uppercase).  The behavior is undefined if bcp is not a  */
/* basic code point.                                        */

#define flagged(bcp) ((unsigned)(bcp)-65 < 26)

/*** Platform-specific constants ***/

/* maxint is the maximum value of a punycode_uint variable: */
static const unsigned maxint = UINT_MAX;

/*** Bias adaptation function ***/

static NSUInteger adapt(unsigned delta, unsigned numpoints, BOOL firsttime)
{
    unsigned k;

    delta = firsttime ? delta / damp : delta >> 1;
    delta += delta / numpoints;

    for (k = 0; delta > ((base - tmin) * tmax) / 2; k += base) {
        delta /= base - tmin;
    }

    return k + (base - tmin + 1) * delta / (delta + skew);
}

@interface NSString (PunycodePrivate)

@property (readonly, copy) NSDictionary *URLParts;
@property (readonly, copy) NSString *stringByDeletingVariationSelectors;

@end

@implementation NSString (TWTRPunycodeAdditions)

/*** Main encode function ***/

#if BYTE_ORDER == LITTLE_ENDIAN
#define UTF32_ENCODING NSUTF32LittleEndianStringEncoding
#elif BYTE_ORDER == BIG_ENDIAN
#define UTF32_ENCODING NSUTF32BigEndianStringEncoding
#else
#error Unsupported endianness!
#endif

- (const UTF32Char *)longCharactersWithCount:(NSUInteger *)count
{
    NSData *data = [self dataUsingEncoding:UTF32_ENCODING];
    *count = [data length] / sizeof(UTF32Char);
    return [data bytes];
}

- (NSString *)stringByDeletingIgnoredCharacters
{
    static NSRegularExpression *regex;

    static dispatch_once_t onceToken;
    dispatch_once(&onceToken, ^{
        regex = [NSRegularExpression regularExpressionWithPattern:@"[\u00AD\u034F\u1806\u180B\u180C\u180D\u200B\u200C\u200D\u2060\uFE00-\uFE0F\uFEFF]" options:0 error:nil];
    });

    return [regex stringByReplacingMatchesInString:self options:0 range:(NSRange){.location = 0, .length = self.length} withTemplate:@""];
}

- (NSString *)punycodeEncodedString
{
    NSString *variationStripped = self.stringByDeletingIgnoredCharacters;
    NSMutableString *ret = [NSMutableString string];
    unsigned delta, outLen, bias, j, m, q, k, t;
    NSUInteger input_length;
    const UTF32Char *longchars = [variationStripped longCharactersWithCount:&input_length];

    UTF32Char n = initial_n;
    delta = outLen = 0;
    bias = initial_bias;

    for (j = 0; j < input_length; ++j) {
        if (basic(longchars[j])) {
            [ret appendFormat:@"%C", (unichar)longchars[j]];
            ++outLen;
        }
    }

    NSUInteger b;
    NSUInteger h = b = outLen;

    if (b > 0) [ret appendFormat:@"%C", (unichar)delimiter];

    /* Main encoding loop: */

    while (h < input_length) {
        for (m = maxint, j = 0; j < input_length; ++j) {
            unsigned c = longchars[j];

            if (c >= n && c < m) m = longchars[j];
        }

        if (m - n > (maxint - delta) / (h + 1)) return nil;  // punycode_overflow;
        delta += (m - n) * (h + 1);
        n = m;

        for (j = 0; j < input_length; ++j) {
            unsigned c = longchars[j];

            if (c < n /* || basic([self characterAtIndex:j]) */) {
                if (++delta == 0) return nil;  // punycode_overflow;
            }

            if (c == n) {
                for (q = delta, k = base;; k += base) {
                    t = k <= bias /* + tmin */ ? tmin : /* +tmin not needed */
                            k >= bias + tmax ? tmax : k - bias;
                    if (q < t) break;
                    [ret appendFormat:@"%C", (unichar)encode_digit(t + (q - t) % (base - t), 0)];
                    q = (q - t) / (base - t);
                }

                [ret appendFormat:@"%c", encode_digit(q, 0)];
                bias = (unsigned)adapt(delta, (unsigned)h + 1, h == b);
                delta = 0;
                ++h;
            }
        }

        ++delta, ++n;
    }

    return ret;
}

/*** Main decode function ***/

- (NSString *)punycodeDecodedString
{
    NSUInteger b, i, j;

    NSMutableData *utf32data = [NSMutableData data];

    /* Initialize the state: */
    NSUInteger input_length = self.length;
    UTF32Char n = initial_n;
    NSUInteger outLen = i = 0;
    NSUInteger max_out = NSUIntegerMax;
    NSUInteger bias = initial_bias;

    for (b = j = 0; j < input_length; ++j)
        if (delim([self characterAtIndex:j])) b = j;

    if (b > max_out) return nil;  // punycode_big_output;

    for (j = 0; j < b; ++j) {
        UTF32Char c = (UTF32Char)[self characterAtIndex:j];

        if (!basic([self characterAtIndex:j])) return nil;  // punycode_bad_input;

        [utf32data appendBytes:&c length:sizeof(c)];
        ++outLen;
    }

    for (NSUInteger inPos = b > 0 ? b + 1 : 0; inPos < input_length; ++outLen, ++i) {
        NSUInteger k, w, t, oldi;

        for (oldi = i, w = 1, k = base; /* nada */; k += base) {
            if (inPos >= input_length) return nil;  // punycode_bad_input;
            unsigned digit = (unsigned)decode_digit([self characterAtIndex:inPos++]);
            if (digit >= base) return nil;             // punycode_bad_input;
            if (digit > (maxint - i) / w) return nil;  // punycode_overflow;
            i += digit * w;
            t = k <= bias /* + tmin */ ? tmin : /* +tmin not needed */
                    k >= bias + tmax ? tmax : k - bias;
            if (digit < t) break;
            if (w > maxint / (base - t)) return nil;  // punycode_overflow;
            w *= (base - t);
        }

        bias = adapt((unsigned)i - (unsigned)oldi, (unsigned)outLen + 1, oldi == 0);

        if (i / (outLen + 1) > maxint - n) return nil;  // punycode_overflow;
        n += i / (outLen + 1);
        i %= (outLen + 1);

        [utf32data replaceBytesInRange:NSMakeRange(i * sizeof(UTF32Char), 0) withBytes:&n length:sizeof(n)];
    }

#if __has_feature(objc_arc)
    return [[NSString alloc] initWithData:utf32data encoding:UTF32_ENCODING];
#else
    return [[[NSString alloc] initWithData:utf32data encoding:UTF32_ENCODING] autorelease];
#endif
}

- (NSString *)IDNAEncodedString
{
    NSCharacterSet *nonAscii = [NSCharacterSet characterSetWithRange:NSMakeRange(1, 127)].invertedSet;
    NSMutableString *ret = [NSMutableString string];
    NSScanner *s = [NSScanner scannerWithString:self.precomposedStringWithCompatibilityMapping];
    NSCharacterSet *dotAt = [NSCharacterSet characterSetWithCharactersInString:@".@"];
    NSString *input = nil;

    while (![s isAtEnd]) {
        if ([s scanUpToCharactersFromSet:dotAt intoString:&input]) {
            if ([input rangeOfCharacterFromSet:nonAscii].location != NSNotFound) {
                [ret appendFormat:@"xn--%@", input.punycodeEncodedString];
            } else
                [ret appendString:input];
        }

        if ([s scanCharactersFromSet:dotAt intoString:&input]) [ret appendString:input];
    }

    return ret;
}

- (NSString *)IDNADecodedString
{
    NSMutableString *ret = [NSMutableString string];
    NSScanner *s = [NSScanner scannerWithString:self];
    NSCharacterSet *dotAt = [NSCharacterSet characterSetWithCharactersInString:@".@"];
    NSString *input = nil;

    while (![s isAtEnd]) {
        if ([s scanUpToCharactersFromSet:dotAt intoString:&input]) {
            if ([input.lowercaseString hasPrefix:@"xn--"]) {
                NSString *substr = [input substringFromIndex:4].punycodeDecodedString;

                if (substr) [ret appendString:substr];
            } else
                [ret appendString:input];
        }

        if ([s scanCharactersFromSet:dotAt intoString:&input]) [ret appendString:input];
    }

    return ret;
}

- (NSDictionary *)URLParts
{
    NSCharacterSet *colonSlash = [NSCharacterSet characterSetWithCharactersInString:@":/"];
    NSScanner *s = [NSScanner scannerWithString:self.precomposedStringWithCompatibilityMapping];
    NSString *scheme = @"";
    NSString *delim = @"";
    NSString *username = nil;
    NSString *password = nil;
    NSString *host = @"";
    NSString *path = @"";
    NSString *fragment = nil;

    if ([s scanUpToCharactersFromSet:colonSlash intoString:&host]) {
        if (!s.isAtEnd && [self characterAtIndex:s.scanLocation] == ':') {
            scheme = host;

            if (![s isAtEnd]) [s scanCharactersFromSet:colonSlash intoString:&delim];
            if (![s isAtEnd]) [s scanUpToString:@"/" intoString:&host];
        }
    }

    if (![s isAtEnd]) [s scanUpToString:@"#" intoString:&path];

    if (![s isAtEnd]) {
        [s scanString:@"#" intoString:nil];
        [s scanUpToCharactersFromSet:[NSCharacterSet newlineCharacterSet] intoString:&fragment];
    }

    NSCharacterSet *colonAt = [NSCharacterSet characterSetWithCharactersInString:@":@"];

    s = [NSScanner scannerWithString:host];
    NSString *temp = nil;

    if ([s scanUpToCharactersFromSet:colonAt intoString:&temp]) {
        if (![s isAtEnd]) {
            username = temp;

            if ([host characterAtIndex:[s scanLocation]] == ':') {
                [s scanCharactersFromSet:colonAt intoString:&temp];

                if (![s isAtEnd] && [s scanUpToCharactersFromSet:colonAt intoString:&temp]) password = temp;
            }

            [s scanCharactersFromSet:colonAt intoString:nil];

            if (![s isAtEnd] && [s scanUpToCharactersFromSet:colonAt intoString:&temp]) host = temp;
        }
    }

    NSMutableDictionary *parts = [NSMutableDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:scheme, @"scheme", delim, @"delim", host, @"host", path, @"path", nil];

    if (username) parts[@"username"] = username;
    if (password) parts[@"password"] = password;
    if (fragment) parts[@"fragment"] = fragment;

    return parts;
}

- (NSString *)encodedURLString
{
    // We can't get the parts of an URL for an international domain name, so a custom method is used instead.
    NSDictionary *urlParts = self.URLParts;
    NSString *path = urlParts[@"path"];

    // "path" here is really "path+query", so we're allowing '?' as well as '%'.
    NSMutableCharacterSet *allowedCharacters = [[NSCharacterSet URLPathAllowedCharacterSet] mutableCopy];
    [allowedCharacters addCharactersInRange:(NSRange){'%', 1}];
    [allowedCharacters addCharactersInRange:(NSRange){'?', 1}];
    path = [path stringByAddingPercentEncodingWithAllowedCharacters:allowedCharacters];

    NSMutableString *ret = [NSMutableString stringWithFormat:@"%@%@", urlParts[@"scheme"], urlParts[@"delim"]];
    if (urlParts[@"username"]) {
        if (urlParts[@"password"]) {
            [ret appendFormat:@"%@:%@@", [urlParts[@"username"] stringByAddingPercentEncodingWithAllowedCharacters:[NSCharacterSet URLUserAllowedCharacterSet]], [urlParts[@"password"] stringByAddingPercentEncodingWithAllowedCharacters:[NSCharacterSet URLPasswordAllowedCharacterSet]]];
        } else
            [ret appendFormat:@"%@@", [urlParts[@"username"] stringByAddingPercentEncodingWithAllowedCharacters:[NSCharacterSet URLUserAllowedCharacterSet]]];
    }

    [ret appendFormat:@"%@%@", [urlParts[@"host"] IDNAEncodedString], path];

    NSString *fragment = urlParts[@"fragment"];
    if (fragment) {
        NSMutableCharacterSet *fragmentAllowedCharacters = [[NSCharacterSet URLFragmentAllowedCharacterSet] mutableCopy];
        [fragmentAllowedCharacters addCharactersInRange:(NSRange){'%', 1}];
        fragment = [fragment stringByAddingPercentEncodingWithAllowedCharacters:[NSCharacterSet URLFragmentAllowedCharacterSet]];
        [ret appendFormat:@"#%@", fragment];
    }

    return ret;
}

- (NSString *)decodedURLString
{
    NSDictionary *urlParts = self.URLParts;

    NSString *username = urlParts[@"username"];
    NSString *password = urlParts[@"password"];
    NSString *usernamePassword = nil;

    if (username) {
        if (password)
            usernamePassword = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@:%@@", username.stringByRemovingPercentEncoding, password.stringByRemovingPercentEncoding];
        else
            usernamePassword = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@@", username.stringByRemovingPercentEncoding];
    }

    NSString *ret = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@%@%@%@%@", urlParts[@"scheme"], urlParts[@"delim"], usernamePassword ?: @"", [urlParts[@"host"] IDNADecodedString], [urlParts[@"path"] stringByRemovingPercentEncoding]];

    NSString *fragment = urlParts[@"fragment"];

    if (fragment) {
        fragment = [fragment stringByRemovingPercentEncoding];
        ret = [ret stringByAppendingFormat:@"#%@", fragment];
    }

    return ret;
}

@end

@implementation NSURL (TWTRPunycodeAdditions)

+ (instancetype)URLWithUnicodeString:(NSString *)URLString
{
    return [NSURL URLWithString:URLString.encodedURLString];
}

- (NSString *)decodedURLString
{
    return self.absoluteString.decodedURLString;
}

@end

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Royals Oprah Winfrey 'Distancing Herself' From Prince Harry And Meghan Markle After Documentary Delayed?
Truth About Kristen Stewart's Personal Life
E Elyse Johnson
Kristen Stewart's personal life has been the subject of bogus rumors by the tabloids. From drinking excessively to her love life, the unreliable outlets have constantly claimed to have insight into the Twilight star. Gossip Cop, however, has proven multiple times the phony tabloids are not to be trusted when it comes to the actress. Here are the few times the tabloids were wrong about Stewart's personal life.
In May 2019, Star alleged Stewart's friends were worried about her partying and drinking. The magazine asserted the actress's friends feared Stewart "boozing" was putting her life in jeopardy. A so-called source added the actress' partying was the only way she could blow off steam but what she needed was to detox and sleep. There wasn't any truth to the paper's narrative. The outlet had zero evidence to back up its claim and Gossip Cop checked in with a source close to Stewart who assured us Stewart's inner circle didn't believe she was partying too hard.
Four months later, Star's sister publication, OK!, recycled the same story but this time, it threw Jodie Foster into the mix. The outlet insisted Foster was lecturing Stewart about her lifestyle. The paper suggested Foster was begging Kristen Stewart to stop partying and having romantic flings. A suspicious tipster told the publication, "Jodie's only gotten involved because she cares about Kristen and is concerned her talent is being stifled by what's going on in her personal life." Given the fact that Gossip Cop already corrected the narrative that Stewart was "out of control" from Star, it wasn't hard to disprove this phony story.
The following month, In Touch, asserted Stewart "secretly" hated Miley Cyrus. An unnamed source told the outlet, "They've run in the same circle for years, but Kristen has always had it out for Miley. She thinks she's a phony and that her 'edginess' is contrived." It was a little suspicious that the tabloid would concoct such a story, since Stewart's movie, Charlie's Angels, was being released in theaters around the same time, and Cyrus was featured on the movie's lead single. Stewart even praised the song Also, Gossip Cop proved the tabloids seem to have a strange fixation on Stewart and Cyrus' friendship, but has no evidence to show the two are enemies.
Last month, OK!, fell under our radar again for incorrectly stating Stewart's relationship with Dylan Meyer was hanging on by a thread. The repeatedly inaccurate magazine claimed the actress had become "tired" of their routine relationship with a supposed source adding Stewart "can't sit still" with one person. The entire story was made-up. Stewart and Meyer's relationship is just fine, despite what the fraudulent outlet tried to convey. Gossip Cop couldn't even find a trace of evidence to support this ridiculous tale.
The Panic Room star is far from being shy about who she is, but she certainly isn't an out-of-control actress like these bogus tabloids try to portray her to be.
What Happened To Jennifer Aniston Meeting Brad Pitt's Kids?


text:
Home > Thematic Areas: PARCC West Africa > General Project Information: A project in partnership
A project in partnership
A strong partnership of stakeholders was built to ensure the best use was made of the wide range of available experience and technical skills. This partnership was critical to the successful implementation of the project.
The key partners for the project included:
● National governments of the five core countries (Mali, Chad, Gambia, Togo and Sierra Leone) and the three additional countries (Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso) involved in some regional activities;
● UNEP agencies: UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) and UNEP Division of Environmental Policy Implementation (DEPI);
● IUCN: Programme for West and Central Africa (PACO, based in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso) and Global Species Programme (Cambridge, UK);
● NGOs: BirdLife (International and Africa Secretariats);
● Academic institutions: Durham University and the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE) at the University of Kent;
● Met Office Hadley Centre, UK; and
● National experts and consultants who worked alongside international experts on specific topics such as assessing the vulnerability of species to climate change, and the links between communities, PAs and climate change.


Even though Condo owners pay a mortgage and make their own repairs like any traditional homeowner would, they share some similar circumstances similar to those of renters. This is because their home is attached to other condo owner's homes and they share a building or complex. This creates some unique circumstances and risks. HR Hudson Insurance Agency can help build a Condo Owners policy that fits the needs.
Condo insurance provides coverage for your personal property and liability coverage if someone injured while on your premises sues you. Condo insurance also covers your personal property away from your residence, including in your car. Also condo policies provide additional living expenses. If a catastrophic event covered by the policy makes the property, which you are renting, uninhabitable, the insurance will pay some of the costs you incur to live somewhere else while the residence is being restored. Landlord's policy does not provide coverage for the condo property.


text:
Who Can You Trust? Records
VERY PARANOIA - s/t LP
Very Paranoia formed in 2018 with the express intent of delivering short, sharp shocks of electrified rock and roll that simultaneously heralded both a "war on music" and offered a way forward using the scattered shards left behind on the sticky, rickety fields of battle and trapped in the structurally unsound masonry memory of those walls still standing around us.
Composed of veterans of the sonic conflicts from the Annihilation Time/Lecherous Gaze/Hot Lunch/Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound divisions, the four of them huddled together in their San Francisco rehearsal room where they quickly hammered out an arsenal of crude missives designed to fire as roaring missiles into the heart of 2019.
After whetting their attack, Very Paranoia removed from their squalid hovel and harangued an unsuspecting, but susceptible public with 25-minute blasts set off around their local strongholds. The band then traveled nearly 1000 miles to the Sonoran Desert where they set up camp at Midtown Island Studio in Tucson, Arizona. The Island's sole occupant and aural wizard Matt Rendon of the Resonars captured 15 tracks over three 10-hour stretches. Twelve of these tracks were then transmitted to Tim Green at Louder Studios in the Valley of Grass, California, for mastering in early 2020 before being shipped abroad and stamped into this rasping document bearing the inscription of "WHO-42."
Having weathered the remainder of that seemingly inexorable year, with the dawn of 2021 comes the debut album by Very Paranoia on Who Can You Trust? Records.


Orca champions have joined forces with dam busters, bringing new energy to an old fight to take down the Lower Snake River dams.
ABOVE LOWER GRANITE DAM, Garfield County — The combine tracks are still fresh in this wheat field, like the marks in a just-vacuumed rug. The waters cruised by orca whales hundreds of miles away seem impossible to imagine, amid these waves of gold, rather than blue.
Yet the Snake River winding through these fields connects the critically endangered killer whales to this dryland wheat country. The river is home to some of the salmon orcas need: chinook, swimming home to the mighty Columbia and its major tributary, the Snake.
Now, a decades-long battle to take down the dams is finding new energy. The dam busters are seizing on a new star witness: mother orca whale Tahlequah. She swam with her dead calf through the Salish Sea for weeks in July, in a searing vision of loss watched around the world. Then came J50, a 3-year-old orca wasting away, the third orca dead in four months.
The losses galvanized orca champions now joining forces with those who have long wanted the dams gone because they hurt salmon. A new hybrid social movement is stirring. The word orca has become its own hashtag. Restaurants and markets have yanked chinook. Tahlequah is turning up in street art. On Friday, mourners staged an orca funeral procession in downtown Seattle, wearing black and white as they marched to the federal building, where they remembered Tahlequah and her calf and rallied for dam removal.
Pressure is also coming from changing power markets and shipping trends for wheat and other products, undercutting the benefits of the Lower Snake River dams and the reservoirs they create.
The dams have staunch advocates who say they are part of the economic lifeblood and way of life in the Northwest: wheat growers that use the waterway to get their crop to market, and farmers that use irrigation from one of the dams to grow grapes, apples and other crops. They also include barge and tug companies, ports, utilities — and their backers in Congress.
But each time an orca has died this summer, Ken Balcomb, founding director of the Center for Whale Research, has called for dam removal. Time is running out for the whales, now down to 74 animals and at grave risk of extinction, who need more food fast.
"We are looking at the twilight of this population," he said.
A tugboat twirls in the lake that once was the Columbia River, and a tanker truck used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to haul juvenile salmon past the dams is all shined up for display.
This recent rally for the dams in Kennewick drew more than a thousand people. At dozens of booths sponsored by utilities and agribusiness, dam boosters celebrated the benefits of the Federal Columbia River Power System — hydropower, irrigation and flood control.
First built beginning in the 1930s, the dams create hundreds of miles of slack-water reservoirs, including behind eight dams on the Columbia and Lower Snake that provide about 4,300 megawatts of power, enough to light about four cities the size of Seattle. The reservoirs also create a seaport in Lewiston, Idaho, 465 miles from the Pacific.
At a recent congressional field hearing in Pasco, at the center of dam country, schoolchildren kicked things off outside city hall with a sweet-voiced rendition of "Roll on Columbia Roll On," as a giant American flag, unfurled from a public-utility-district bucket truck, flew.
In a morning of testimony Marci Green, president of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers and a sixth-generation farmer, was among those praising the dams, particularly barging on the waterway to get wheat to market. "Barging is one of the lowest cost, most environmentally friendly modes of transportation we have," Green said.
Yet transportation on the Lower Snake has been decreasing over the years, as products increasingly move by truck and rail. Total tonnage shipped on the Lower Snake River dropped 37 percent in less than a decade, as of 2016, continuing a long-term trend.
Even as the waterway and the whales endure their own declines, the agency that sells power from the federal dams is struggling, too. Booming production of natural gas, and a surge of renewable energy, including wind and especially solar power out of California, has created an unprecedented glut of cheap power throughout the West.
That's a problem for the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), which sells electricity from the federal network of dams.
BPA used to cash in on the wholesale market, especially in the spring, as rivers swell with runoff, and Californians turn on their air conditioners. California's surge into solar-power generation has cratered the lucrative sales BPA used to count on. Today BPA sells power for about $34 a megawatt hour, while the price for the same amount goes for $20 on the wholesale market.
Tightening the revenue squeeze is the agency's worry that its customers under long-term contracts, including public-utility districts around the region and Seattle City Light, will flee BPA's higher prices when those contracts expire in 2028.
As both demand for its power and revenues plummet, the agency has blown through its cash reserves and hiked its rates four times in 10 years.
The utility is slashing costs, including its fish and wildlife program intended to address damage done by the federal hydropower dams all over the region. In the 1990s NOAA Fisheries listed the first Northwest salmon and steelhead under the Endangered Species Act. Eventually 13 stocks in the Columbia River Basin were listed as threatened or endangered. By now federal agencies spend $500 million a year on fish and wildlife programs to make up for environmental damage caused by the dams.
For more than 20 years, federal judges have called for an overhaul of dam operations on the Columbia and Snake rivers to boost salmon survival. For the fifth time the issue is back in federal court, and once again, a judge has called for federal agencies to take a hard look at the removal of Lower Snake River dams.
Those dams have long been a target because of the challenge they pose to fish. Shipping also has been in a steady decline on the waterway, and the dams provide only about 5 percent of the region's power, which today is easily replaced, if it's needed at all. The dams provide no flood control and irrigation takes place only at Ice Harbor dam, nearest the Columbia.
The issue, initially regarded as a long shot for zealots, is gaining traction among a wide range of citizens and scientists as a sound business decision and necessary ecological choice to help save the orcas and the salmon they depend on — and even help shore up BPA.
The critically endangered southern resident orcas eat primarily chinook, and some of their diet is born — and too often dies — right in Lower Snake River dam country. The Columbia and its tributaries was once the biggest salmon producer in the world, teeming with some 16 million fish. Today only about 1.1 million salmon come back to the river. They are smaller than they used to be, and mostly hatchery fish.
The billions of dollars spent to improve salmon passage at the dams has been partly successful, with an average of 97 percent of baby salmon migrating down river surviving as they pass each dam. But a whack is still taken at each of the eight dams. Then come predators in the slack reservoirs and the estuary before baby salmon even reach the sea.
Salmon still struggle for survival in the Columbia and especially the Snake, that much farther, and four more dams upriver from the sea. Climate change is adding to those long-standing problems, up-ending the ocean food chain, and raising reservoir temperatures to lethal levels for weeks at a time — killing salmon before they can get home to spawn.
In good years, wild-chinook returns to some Columbia tributaries, such as the Yakima and John Day, as well as the upper Columbia, are on target for recovery. But the rate of returning wild chinook from out-migrating baby Snake River chinook is still below what's needed to prevent extinction, let alone recover the species.
That's bad news for the orcas that depend on Columbia and Snake River chinook, amid a myriad of other fish runs they target throughout their seasonal year, in a wide-ranging foraging pattern that scientists are just now discovering.
Research tracing the DNA of fish caught by the southern resident family of orcas that cruise West Coast and trans-boundary waters of the Salish Sea shows that orcas mill offshore from the mouth of the Columbia each spring, eager for the nutrition of calorie-rich chinook. The whales need these fish to carry them until the summer runs from the Fraser River. They also depend on chinook from rivers all over Puget Sound.
Orcas are suffering unreliable and insufficient food across their migratory range. To be sure, they face other problems, including vessel noise and toxins. But lack of adequate food makes everything worse.
Beyond dam-boosting towns and dam-removal rallies in Seattle and Portland, another far more near-term solution to get more food to the orcas is quietly emerging. Negotiations are now underway among Gov. Jay Inslee, Bonneville and tribes to increase the amount of water spilled over dams on the Columbia and Snake, to help young fish in their migration to the sea.
Spill already has been shown to be among the best ways to boost salmon survival. Turning up the volume of spill is likely to be among recommendations expected Monday in a draft report from the governor's task force on orca recovery. Whether the task force eventually also will recommend dam removal on the Lower Snake is yet to be seen — but Inslee has instructed to keep it as an option during negotiations all summer.
Multiple federal agencies years ago concluded dam removal on the Lower Snake would actually deliver the biggest benefits for salmon. But James, the Bonneville deputy director, said BPA still needs the Lower Snake River dams in its empire of energy generation to help balance power supply and demand.
It's an old argument contested by many amid new market stresses, and ecological decline stark as dead baby whales.
"It's a new day," said Rebecca Miles, executive director of the Nez Perce Tribe, which advocates freeing the Snake.


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Home Wellness Anschutz and Aurora SNOOZEFEST: 'Snoozeball' awakens seniors' physical senses
Anschutz and Aurora
Sentinel Magazine
SNOOZEFEST: 'Snoozeball' awakens seniors' physical senses
AURORA | The 2016 Olympic Games in Rio De Janeiro may be just about wrapped up, but there's a dash of Brazilian culture lingering in east Denver.
In the course of just about two months, a sleepy, quixotic sport has come to elicit a roomful of smiles, firing muscles and a constant chorus of chuckles.
Billed as a combination of foosball and soccer, "Snoozeball" has come to be the favorite sport of the city's Morning Star Adult Day Care participants.
And it's just as silly as it sounds.
Lori Sanchez, supervisor at the Morning Star Adult Daycare, instructs Chuck Coble on how the game Snoozeball is played on Monday Sept. 12, 2016 at Morning Star Adult Day Care. Photo by Gabriel Christus/Aurora Sentinel
Mary Barkley Vaughn laughs after scoring a point during a game of Snoozeball on Monday Sept. 12, 2016 at Morning Star Adult Day Care. Photo by Gabriel Christus/Aurora Sentinel
Chauntell Paul, CNA, plays goaltender as Donald Hammond tries to score a point duiring a game of Snoozeball on Monday Sept. 12, 2016 at Morning Star Adult Day Care. Photo by Gabriel Christus/Aurora Sentinel
Geraldine Forman tosses the ball towards the goal during a game of Snoozeball on Monday Sept. 12, 2016 at Morning Star Adult Day Care. Photo by Gabriel Christus/Aurora Sentinel
Mary Barkley Vaughn laughs during a game of Snoozeball on Monday Sept. 12, 2016 at Morning Star Adult Day Care. Photo by Gabriel Christus/Aurora Sentinel
Emily Turner, activities assistant, tries to block a shot during a game of Snoozeball on Monday Sept. 12, 2016 at Morning Star Adult Day Care. Photo by Gabriel Christus/Aurora Sentinel
During a recent matchup, participants used their hands, feet and canes to coax a multi-colored Wilson volleyball through two goals that were defended by smiling Morning Star staff members. Arranged back-to-back in three rows of three, the players batted the red, white and blue sphere among one another, tossing playful barbs throughout the outing.
Shouts of "pass it here," and feeble flails of various pieces of walking equipment were ubiquitous during the roughly half hour-long game.
The elderly-friendly activity was born at the Morning Star program about a month ago, after Emily Turner, an activity assistant with the city's Parks, Recreation and Open Space department, tweaked a similar concept she had learned while attending and leading youth outings with her church, Bethel Baptist Church in Aurora.
"I decided the human foosball idea would allow them to sit down and stay in the same position, but still have the same idea while using the soccer ball," Turner said. "And they liked it."
Turner adapted the game to honor the monthly, geographic theme of "Brazil" at Morning Star in August.
Morning Star participants, who range in age from 55 to mid-90s, have played "Snoozeball" several times since Turner rolled out the concept — occasionally for as many as two hours straight.
Officially started by a community task force in the spring of 1989, the Morning Star Adult Day Program now enrolls about 40 participants and serves about 16 people each day, according to city officials. On top of providing entertainment and some health care services for local adults over the age of 55, the program aims to keep people with memory loss issues out of long-term care facilities, as well as provide a respite for individual home-care providers. All of the attendees still live with relatives at home and only attend the program on weekdays.
"Aging in place is really popular right now and no one wants to go into an institution," said Lori Sanchez, center supervisor for Morning Star, which is located in the city's Lowry Intergenerational Center. "We've added more (healthcare services) as another benefit to our families because if they didn't have that, they might already be in a nursing home."
Center staff members help keep tabs on participants' health by monitoring their memory and providing regular check-ups regarding weight and blood pressure. About 70 percent of program participants suffer some sort of cognitive impairment like Alzheimer's, according to Sanchez. However, several Adult Day Program participants have been attending activities since the program moved from north Aurora to Denver in 2000.
"I have been here for 12 years, and there are some people who have been here longer than me," Sanchez said.
The vast majority of participants have their daily fees for the program — $62 for a full day or $45 for a half-day — subsidized by Medicaid or the Department of Veterans Affairs. Not technically a part of the city budget, Morning Star operates solely off participant fees and private donations, according to Sanchez.
Sanchez added that "Snoozeball" has provided a novel way for Morning Star patrons to get some much-needed physical — and mental — exercise. She said the game has even been popular among participants who often aren't interested in many other activities.
"They're doing exercise without even realizing it because they're having fun," Sanchez said. "So the whole thing became a huge, popular game with them, and you see people who don't always actively engage with some of the groups actually participate in this group. The engagement level has increased by doing this."
Donald Hammond, a Morning Star participant for the past two years, has emerged as somewhat of a "Snoozeball" star, netting the majority of points for Team II during a recent Monday morning match. Hammond, who moved to Aurora about 11 years ago from his native Chicago, said that he enjoys the game's mobile nature.
"It's a lot of fun and it'll keep you alert," the retired Campbell Soup Company worker said. "My strategy is to fake like you're going one way and go the other."
Hammond, 76, lives off South Havana Street with his sister and brother-in-law.
For the Morning Star attendees who are typically less active than Hammond, Turner said "Snoozeball" has appeared to ignite some long-dormant physical tendencies.
"You sit them there, they're right in the middle of it and everyone's cheering around them, so when the ball comes toward them, I think instinct takes over," she said. "They just get into it."
Sanchez echoed Turner's thoughts on the intrinsic nature of playing with a ball — regardless of age.
"Sometimes they need a little prompting from the staff to, you know, kick it, but every one knows how," she said.
"You don't ever lose that ability to hit a ball."
Bethel Baptist Church
Morning Star Adult Day Care
Morning Star Adult Day Program
parks recreation and open space department
snoozeball
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Illinois to Begin Work Plugging More Than 600 Orphaned Wells Through President Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
Funds will be used to measure methane emissions and contamination in ground water
Last edited 8/26/2022
Date: Thursday, August 25, 2022
Contact: Interior_Press@ios.doi.gov
WASHINGTON — The Department of the Interior today announced that Illinois has been awarded an initial grant of $25 million from President Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to begin work to plug, cap and reclaim orphaned oil and gas wells across the state. Millions of Americans across the country live within a mile of an orphaned oil and gas well.
The state of Illinois has indicated that it will utilize this funding to plug between 600 to 800 documented wells. Funds will also be used to measure and track methane emissions and contamination in groundwater and surface water. Additionally, this funding will allow Illinois to increase its well plugging capacity with the purchase of safety equipment, computers, vehicles, gas detectors, and a Forward Looking InfraRed camera, among other items, all of which will be used to plug documented wells and locate undocumented wells throughout the state that will be plugged with Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding in the upcoming years.
Millions of Americans across the country live within a mile of an orphaned oil and gas well, which are polluting backyards, recreation areas and community spaces across the country. Methane leaking from many of these unplugged wells is a serious safety hazard and is a significant cause of climate change, being more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. The historic investments to clean up these hazardous sites will create good-paying, union jobs, catalyze economic growth and revitalization, and reduce dangerous methane leaks.
"President Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is enabling us to confront long-standing environmental injustices by making a historic investment to plug orphaned wells throughout the country," said Secretary Deb Haaland. "At the Department of the Interior, we are working on multiple fronts to clean up these sites as quick as we can by investing in efforts on federal lands and partnering with states and Tribes to leave no community behind. Today's announcement is exciting progress toward what we will accomplish together through this historic Law."
Plugging orphaned wells will help advance the goals of the U.S. Methane Emissions Reduction Action Plan, as well as the Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization, which focuses on spurring economic revitalization in hard-hit energy communities.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law delivers the largest investment in tackling legacy pollution in American history, including through a $4.7 billion investment to plug orphaned wells. These legacy pollution sites are environmental hazards and jeopardize public health and safety by contaminating groundwater, emitting noxious gases and methane, littering the landscape with rusted and dangerous equipment, and harming wildlife.
Today's investment is part of an overall $1.15 billion in fiscal year 2022 funding announced in January by the Department for states to plug and remediate orphaned wells. States will receive additional formula funding dollars in the coming months. In addition, an initial $33 million was recently allocated to plug 277 wells on federal public lands. The Tribal orphan well grant program is being informed by ongoing Tribal consultations and listening sessions.
Secretary Haaland Spotlights Infrastructure Investments in Everglades Restoration During South Florida Visit
Interior Department Releases Draft Guidance for $500 Million in Formula Grants for States to Address Orphaned Oil and Gas Wells
Biden-Harris Administration Protects Boundary Waters Area Watershed


The 2019 STC Family Week was a great success!
Over 1,000 people participated in an activity or performance, and over 400 students from DC elementary schools saw a free abridged Shakespeare play this year.
Join us again next Spring for this beloved STC tradition.


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Lecture Experience
Lawyer Rating Methodologies
Tom Parrott has been selected for The Best Lawyers in America©, and has a "AV Preeminent" rating in Martindale-Hubbell® and a 5.0/5.0 rating from Lawyers.com – the highest ratings awarded by those historically respected organizations – based on confidential surveys of other top-rated practicing lawyers. These are ratings you must earn from your work, that you can't buy.
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I had a complicated fiduciary duty concern with other shareholders-owners in an engineering services LLC and related corporation... Read More
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The decision to sell our 48 year old family food manufacturing business was difficult. Tom, our corporate attorney for many years, helped us form a strategic plan... Read More
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Tom worked with me to negotiate and resolve a membership dispute with the minority member of my niche cyber LLC. The issues and documentation were complex... Read More
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It is usually in the best interests of an entrepreneur to start with an attorney who is a deal maker. Transaction attorneys are experienced in negotiating and accurately documenting business deals – litigators spend their time primarily with court and evidence rules and proof issues. Most shareholder disputes can be resolved on a business basis, using contracts negotiation skills, and the objective should be to avoid the opportunity cost and expense of litigation. If you can't resolve the dispute on a business basis and a suit is necessary, then bringing in litigation counsel is appropriate.
Calling on skills developed in mergers and acquisitions work and in fiduciary duty counseling, Mr. Parrott has represented dozens of entrepreneurs in negotiating with their other owners and in effectively documenting the resolution of internal shareholder and member disputes, company break-ups or split-ups, and company buy-outs to meet his clients' objectives.
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Mr. Parrott has represented companies in over 100 transactions for sales of entrepreneurial businesses, purchases of entrepreneurial businesses, and mergers of entrepreneurial businesses, ranging in size from the low hundred thousands to over $100 million. He represents both sellers and buyers, so he knows the issues from both points of view, which is valuable in negotiating the deal, drafting the deal documents, and in getting the deal to closing.
CONTRACTS AND CORPORATE/LLC LAW EXPERIENCE
Mr. Parrott has analyzed, negotiated, and documented many hundreds of business transactions and contracts, as well as many hundreds of corporate, limited liability company, and partnership matters, from start-up transactions to transactions over $100 million. For numerous companies, he has handled the organization and structuring of their businesses and has advised upon and documented the relationships among the holders of the companies' equity, including articles, by-laws, operating agreements, shareholder agreements, governance agreements, buy-sell agreements, indemnification agreements, stock and membership redemption agreements, and the documentation required to maintain corporate formalities required by Virginia law.
Mr. Parrott advises many clients' boards of directors and executive officers on an ongoing basis. He often acts as clients' principal legal advisor to quarterback the fulfillment of the legal needs that serve their businesses.
Mr. Parrott has substantial expertise in the Virginia Stock Corporation Act and the Virginia Limited Liability Company Act.
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Mr. Parrott holds an A.B. in History from Duke University, 1969, and a J.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Law, 1973.
Mr. Parrott has been invited to lecture on business matters by the Virginia Society of Certified Public Accountants, the United States Department of State, the Association for Corporate Growth, the Virginia State Bar, the Fairfax County Bar, the National Business Institute, the Exit Planning Exchange, George Mason University, the Capital Executives Board, the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association, and the American Wholesale Marketers Association (now Convenience Distribution Association). Learn More
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Category: Work
What a Tangled Tweet We Weave When First We Practice to Get Outraged
A "good job" according to whom? May I ask when exactly was the last time you were in an elementary school and sat through an entire school day with first graders? I ask because my mother makes this same argument frequently, yet has not been in an actual elementary school building since 1976. Her grandchildren were taught at home so she, therefore, has no experience either visiting a school or evaluating a public school education since 1976.
I ran across a «Twitter thread» that really ground my gears. So I wrote a response, but it's too long for Twitter. It's just much ado about nothing. But here is my response; since I haven't written much in a long time here, this will give me some new content.
I am reading this bandwagon fallacy-laden thread through the lenses of being an English major, a former newspaper reporter/editor, a school public information director, a published author, and an elementary teacher with a master's degree with 32 years of experience. Also, I get really tired of these old hasty generalizations, equivocation, and causal fallacies on social media. Also, we're very much fellow-travelers in the political sense, so, especially if you're humor-impaired, take the following as if it were a grain of salt on the tip of my tongue firmly in my cheek. I love everyone.
"U.S. schools are not doing a good job in that regard. And it's been going on for a long time. I shouldn't be hearing so many basic grammatical errors from politicians, teachers, newscasters, authors, and pundits or see so many in published materials."
A "good job" according to whom? May I ask when exactly was the last time you were in an elementary school and sat through an entire school day with first graders? I ask because my mother makes this same argument frequently, yet has not been in an actual elementary school building since 1976. Her grandchildren were taught at home so she, therefore, has no experience either visiting a school or evaluating a public school education since 1976. This makes it difficult to accept this line of argument from either of you. I do indeed see many errors in oral and written discourse and when it occurs, it is irritating. However, I tend to hold the individual responsible for the errors rather than their elementary school teacher in 1989. Any errors I have made in these replies are my own and have multiple sources, including exhaustion from teaching during this epidemic, the speed of my written response, distraction, etc. They are not the fault of Clovis NM Public Schools, Lockwood Elementary School, and/or Mary Beth Wright, my fourth-grade teacher. I was afforded the instruction and supporting materials, which have sustained me for decades. My use or disuse or those is my responsibility, not theirs.
'Stinginess toward investing in education."
"Towards" is the preferred form. And, strictly speaking, you don't "invest in education." You invest in the systems created by adults to educate students. Systems and humans are very imperfect. Teachers like me know that more investment is needed, but how much? Where should it go? Who was stingy?
"Half of the country is nuts. How did this fucking happen???"
"Nuts" is slang and not used in persuasive discourse. Do you perhaps mean "insane" or the less hyperbolic "uneducated" or "misinformed"? "Fucking" is not used in polite, civil discourse. Its use on social media is a separate debate. But we are not discussing social media discourse here. We are discussing grammar and spelling in other forums. Finally, ending an interrogative sentence with three question marks is improper punctuation. One question mark will do.
"[Some sort of logo with "100" on it] rarely do people talk about the education system being off the rails for decades. My niece is a teacher. They no longer teach grammar or spelling because of spellcheckers, and I can only imagine what is happening in math."
A sentence properly begins with a capital letter. Avoid dying metaphors such as "off the rails" which is, as Orwell pointed out, a "worn-out metaphor[s] which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves." How can an educational system be like a derailing train? We still teach Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" in U.S. public schools. It's unfortunate that your niece is a teacher, yet makes no effort to supplant the required curriculum with grammar and spelling lessons of her own. I do this every school day.
The fact that you can "only imagine what is happening in math," is indicative that you haven't been in a public school in decades. We are currently teaching pre-Algebraic concepts to kindergarteners; I taught fourth graders two weeks ago how to solve "x + 100 = 120", an equation I was not taught to solve until ninth grade in the 1980s.
Our students are indeed taught grammar and spelling (one first/second grade class I had last week had a spelling test on Tuesday). Our students use notebooks and pencils and have no access to spellcheckers.
Your anecdote suggests your local school is deficient in curriculum and appears to be unable to ban the use of spellcheckers, but please don't over-generalize all of this into an attack on the entire American education system.
"As if spelling and grammar checkers are correct 100% of the time…"
"As if" is trendy slang a few years out of date and diminishes the point you are trying to make. Your sentence should end with a period, not with an improperly spaced ellipsis. If you are using spelling and grammar checkers, perhaps your improper use of an ellipsis does indeed prove your point that you should not rely on them. I suggest either adding a punctuation checker or referring to Strunk and White or the AP Stylebook if you need a reference for proper use.
"Yeah, we know"
Persuasive discourse shuns slang words like "Yeah." A sentence is properly ended with a period. And what are we supposed to know? If you are referring to the comment above implying students improperly rely on spell checkers, I know no such thing. During my experience in 32 years of education in five U.S. states, my colleagues and I have taught students to refrain from relying on spell checkers for grammar or Google for research. How did you come by your knowledge that you agree with teachers that spell checkers are unreliable?
"The grammar, for one thing, is amazing. Even professors say things like, "There's two reasons." I've heard Noam Chomsky make errors in basic grammar. In math, Chinese teens make us all look like morons."
How can grammar be amazing? Oral discourse is often incorrect and filled with slang. If you have heard professors write sentences with improper subject-verb agreement, are you referring to professors in English or education departments? If so, then they should be more correct. If you are referring to professors of higher mathematics or physics, perhaps their first consideration is the content of their discipline, not proper subject-verb agreement. Perhaps these professors were instructors at Trump University, but without more information, your readers are not precisely informed. I would also be curious to read or hear Professor Chomsky's use of "there's two reasons." Can you point me to those instances?
As for math, there are many levels and many sub-disciplines. What authoritative sources are you using to suggest "Chinese teens make us all look like morons"? I'm almost 57. What "Chinese teen" would make me "look like a moron" in elementary mathematics, which I teach? I will be the first to attest that a 16-year-old "Chinese teen" would make me look uneducated in calculus, a course I've never taken. As for "moron", see Orwell's comment above on worn-out metaphors. Also, "moron" formerly referred to a person of "mild mental retardation" and is now considered offensive.
"My husband's cousin is an elementary school teacher in Park City. Every year, without fail, her Christmas card grammar is horrendous. She encloses an entire letter that makes me cringe."
This is known as the "appeal to authority" logical fallacy. "Person (or people) P makes claim X. Therefore, X is true." What is "Christmas card grammar"? That would be a discipline with which I am unfamiliar. In which school does your husband's cousin teach? Perhaps that school should be alerted to her shocking offenses against the English language. Is she a first-grade teacher or a high school English teacher? It makes a difference. Perhaps you should circle her errors in red and return the card to her and suggest she avail herself of the education system's multiple access points for remedial grammar and spelling.
"It took learning a foreign language for me to really learn grammar."
You imply that you learned a foreign language that uses English grammar. Perhaps Professor Chomsky could enlighten me, but I am unaware of another language that uses English grammar and syntax. I am curious: Why did you not learn English grammar until you learned a foreign language? If you went to an American school for grades K-12 and did not learn English grammar, why? We do not know which language you learned, but how did learning Spanish or Japanese or Swahili, etc., teach you English grammar? This is intriguing.
"It's unbelievable. The entire education system is a joke now. The last book I read, I found in excess of 400 errors. There were many more, but I stopped marking the ones that were the same error repeated numerous times."
Would you mind specifically defining "joke" as it applies to "the entire education system"? Are you including charter schools, private schools, home schools, libraries, museums, educational programming on television, government departments, the state education boards, the local boards, the superintendents, custodians, maintenance, clerks? How are millions of people who dedicated their lives to educating young Americans "jokes"? I would ask you to remember that systems are made of imperfect people.
"The last book I read, I found in excess of 400 errrors." The sentence is improperly formed and wordy. "I found over 400 errors in the last book I read" is the proper formation. I am curious: Do you often make notes of errors in books you read and enumerate them? As an elementary teacher, i would tell you that if you are not enjoying a text for any reason, you are justified in abandoning that text long before you did to find a more enjoyable one. I'm curious: "in excess of 400" means how many errors? 410? 1,526? I share Orwell's irritation with the imprecise use of the English language. If you mean 425, write "425", not "in excess of 420". Also, you have two spaces between "were" and "the same". One space between words and after periods is the currently proper usage.
"Years ago I wrote to complain about the numerous errors in the Web pages of Webster's Dictionary. Their one-sentence response, claiming to be from the dictionary's editorial department, had four errors. It's like reporting chicken theft to the fox."
"Years ago" needs a comma after it. Would you care to share the errors committed by Webster's dictionary with us? It would add to the credibility of your discourse. Do you have any contrary information that the response was not from the editorial department? Would you care to share that response and point out the four errors? And again I refer you to Orwell's worn-out metaphors quote above. The metaphor is actually "the fox guarding the henhouse," so you have mangled it a bit, which at first confused me, the reader. Your discourse should be clear, concise, and free of worn-out, hackneyed language.
Why does that not surprise me at all?"
Perhaps the social media milieu makes not only slang but also acronyms acceptable, but many of your readers will not know what "LOL" means. It also has varied meanings: "Laugh out loud" or "lots of laughs" or "laughing out loud" or "lots of love". Here is how "LOL" is noted on the Urban Dictionary. This is not an "appeal to authority" on my part, since the Urban Dictionary is not an authority and does not claim to be one. I am pointing out how "LOL" is often seen by those engaging in social media discourse:
"Depending on the chatter, its definition may vary. The list of its meanings includes, but is not limited to:
"1) 'I have nothing worthwhile to contribute to this conversation.'
"2) 'I'm too lazy to read what you just wrote so I'm typing something useless in hopes that you'll think I'm still paying attention.'
"3) 'Your statement lacks even the vaguest trace of humor but I'll pretend I'm amused.'
"4) 'This is a pointless acronym I'm sticking in my sentence just because it's become so engraved into my mind that when chatting, I MUST use the meaningless sentence-filler "lol".'"
As for "Why does that not surprise me at all?" What exactly doesn't surprise you and why not? Again, imprecise written language causes the reader to devalue your writing.
And let's not even discuss the final reply:
"Sounds like Webster's needed better websters."
I have to go to bed so I can get up in the morning and give first graders (virtually) their new weekly spelling list to learn. I don't have time to deal with that one or waste any more time on this.
Sigh, double sigh, triple sigh.
Author AirBeaglePosted on 29-Nov-20 29-Nov-20 Categories Education, Hubris, Meaningful Labor, Politics, Professionalism, Public Domain, Quotable, Random Shots, Rants, Society, WorkTags Grammar, Spelling, Young 'uns Today
Movie Night: Thieves' Highway
"Thieves' Highway is a classic Noir tale of truckers and apples and greed and sex and San Francisco and California and highways and death."
["Let me smoke your butt, Nick!" Valentina Cortese and Richard Conte in Thieves' Highway. Take that Bogie and Bacall!]
4 3/4 Stars!
From 1949: «Thieves' Highway». We weren't really planning to watch, but were drawn in immediately. I think we had seen it before, but it's been a long while. Glad we watched. Ironically, Valentina Cortese just passed away on 10-Jul of this year. Watching her performance here was fitting, and showed just how big of a loss was her passing.
Thieves' Highway is a classic Noir tale of truckers and apples and greed and sex and San Francisco and California and highways and death. Besides the fabulous Valentina Cortese and Richard Conte, it features Lee J. Cobb in a dress rehearsal for his role in On the Waterfront, Jack Oakie and Millard Mitchell, who would be seen six years later in the classic Singin' in the Rain, as the movie producer R.F. Simpson.
The synopsis:
"Nick Garcos comes back from his tour of duty in World War II planning to settle down with his girlfriend, Polly Faber. He learns, however, that his father was recently beaten and burglarized by mob-connected trucker Mike Figlia, and Nick resolves to get even. He partners with prostitute Rica, and together they go after Mike, all the while getting pulled further into the local crime underworld."
TMDb
Michael Sragow, writing in an essay for the Criterion Collection «Thieves' Highway: Dangerous Fruit» has some nice observations:
"Like the movie's rattletrap trucks lurching down the highway as they carry way-too-heavy loads, the characters in Jules Dassin's brilliantly volatile Thieves' Highway struggle under psychological and moral baggage until they can lay their burdens down. Working from a novel and script by A.I. Bezzerides, Dassin made this swift, fluid melodrama in 1949, after Brute Force and The Naked City. … it has a rich sensuality all its own.
"All the symbols in this movie are rock-hard and understated. The white military star on Nick's truck makes a mute, omnipresent comment on postwar disillusion. And each time you hear "Golden Delicious," the image it conjures of Olympian delight contrasts sardonically with the perils of the road and the savage competition of the San Francisco marketplace."
Michael Sragow, The Criterion Collection
(I love how Sragow introduces Nico: "Garcos … has sailed around the world without ever getting worldly." HA!)
He then notes the inner workings of the film and places it in context:
"Dassin … is just as deft as Kazan in Boomerang! (1947) or Panic in the Streets (1950) at using real locations for knifelike verisimilitude, then catching their most far-out and surprising emotional repercussions."
"Dassin begins scenes with compositions that border on cliché–whether of a cheerful Fresno suburb or the bustling streets and crowded pier-side haunts of San Francisco's marketplace. But each time, he punctures the cliché with cascades of complex details emerging spontaneously from the conflicted drives of the characters and the life-or-death stakes of their situations."
IBID
Sragow, writing 1-Feb-05, then notes something that is culturally a hot button right now: toxic masculinity:
"Under Dassin's direction, Conte here minted a fresh leading-man archetype-a rough-edged, virile naïf, containing equal amounts of violent distrust and gallantry. And Mitchell brings deep-grained orneriness to Ed, a summa cum laude from the school of hard knocks, willing to rook others to satisfy his sense of justice. What gives this movie its charge isn't just the physical danger of the road and the injustice perpetrated when fixers like Figlia use dirty tricks on truckers and buyers—it's the psychological drama of men tossed off balance by want and need as they strive to achieve equilibrium."
"Ed pulls Nick out from under his truck after Nick botches a tire change and gets his face buried in sand. When the older man bandages his neck, and these two finally forge a bond, Nick mutters that passersby might get the wrong idea."
Pretty advanced for 1949, but like the ending, it gets set right: Nothin' but manly man hetero stuff … 1949's equivalent of "No Homo."
And just so we're clear that Conte/Mitchell and Oakie/Pevney are just no homo bros, in comes Rico to keep the men manly. Curiously, she's rather butch, both in her toughness and her physical, trenchcoat-wearing appearance. In fact she's sporting a short Italian haircut (which would be the focus of an I Love Lucy episode in a few years), which accentuates her Italian "earthiness," (also the focus of an I Love Lucy episode in a few years). AND her character was originally named "Tex." (See the paragraph about Hope Emerson below for more on this stuff.) Sragow sums it up:
"Played by Valentina Cortese with dazzling emotional clarity and erotic warmth, she's at once this film's beating heart and the center of its existential concerns–she dares Nick to trust his instincts and trust her, despite her shady deal-making and background."
The review is also interesting because it delves into the writing:
"Bezzerides' writing at its peak boasts a dynamic blend of iconoclasm and bitterness–an ideal combination for the intersection of kinetics and moodiness that is film noir.
"Bezzerides objected to several alterations to his book and deplored the casting of Dassin's then-girlfriend Cortese in a role originally called "Tex." But in movie terms, he was incorrect on every count–to use his phrase, the only truly "chickenshit change" was a studio-inserted scene in which cops berate Nick for taking the law into his own hands. Cortese's sometimes comical, sometimes poignant, always live-wire oomph makes this proletariat adventure unique and gives it the ravaged soul and earthy glamour of a demimonde romance. No gal in movies has ever looked sexier or more good-humored drying her hair after a shower. When Nick says Rica has "soft hands," she says she has "sharp claws." She uses them only to play tic-tac-toe on his chest–a fitting game for a film in which one false move can turn ethical and commercial triumph into disaster."
In a shorter review, «John Chard» agrees with Sragow, and adds that the chicken shit ending, tacked on to appease the Production Code's moralists, is ridiculous:
"Revenge, hope and desperation drives Dassin's intelligently constructed noir forward. It's a film very much interested in its characterisations as it doles out a deconstruction of the American dream. … Dassin and Bezzerides push a revenge theme to the forefront whilst deftly inserting from the sides the devils of greed and corruption of the California produce business.
"The trucks' journey is brilliantly captured by the makers, both exciting and exuding the menace of the hard slog for truckers. … [once in San Francisco] underhand tactics come seeping out and the appearance of prostitute Rica (Cortese) into Nico's life adds a morally grey area that pings with sharp dialogue exchanges. Real location photography adds to the authentic feel of the story, and cast performances are quite simply excellent across the board.
"The code appeasing ending hurts the film a touch, inserted against Dassin's wishes, and there's a feeling that it should have been more damning with the economic tropes; while the fact that Nico's father is more concerned about being robbed of money than losing the use of his legs – is a bit strange to say the least. However, from a graveyard of tumbling apples to the fact that more than money is stolen here, Thieves' Highway is sharp, smart and engrossing stuff."
John Chard, TMDb
Sharp, smart, engrossing … and for us LGBTQ+ viewers, chock full of forbidden fruit.
We loved this one. Having spent many years in the Bay Area, we could relate to much of the scenery and sensibilities and subtext.
And speaking of subtext again, worth noting is the appearance of the wonderful Hope Emerson, a career character actor with a long list of credits, including Adam's Rib in the same year as Thieves' Highway. In Adam's Rib, she played a very talented gymnast in a courtroom, in a role that noted both how big and butch she was, in an era when that kind of thing was invisible. She is somewhat the same in Thieves' Highway, minus the gymnastics, as a very tough female fruit buyer. Dassin pretty much broke the Code in multiple ways throughout the movie; although the Code had the last say with its smarmy cop platitudinal lecturing about not taking the law in your own hands, the weight of his film said, "Nuts to you!" to the Code.
A good pairing for this would be The Grapes of Wrath, which starts with starving Okies hitting Route 66 in search of fruit picking work. Follow that with Thieves' Highway and you get a clear picture of what it takes to get an apple off a tree into the teeth of someone wanting to cheat a doctor a day.
Sadly, much is unchanged in this process, except the grower, the picker, the trucker and the distributor-to-grocery-stores are all corporate behemoths and conditions may, if anything, be worse than 1940's Grapes of Wrath and 1949's Thieves' Highway. We've let much slide since Reagan, who married anti-New Deal propaganda with our generation's laziness and produced massive rollbacks of workers' rights (and the current occupant of the White House), and our grandchildren will have to fight three times as hard as their ancestors between 1870 and 1950 did for decency, living wages, respect, clean air, clean water, and safe working conditions. Whether they will do it remains to be seen.
Best quotes:
Nico 'Nick' Garcos: [to Rica] "You look like chipped glass."
Thieves' Highway
Nick: "Hey, do you like apples?"
Rica: "Everybody likes apples, except doctors."
Nick: "Do you know what it takes to get an apple so you can sink your beautiful teeth in it? You gotta stuff rags up tailpipes, farmers gotta get gypped, you jack up trucks with the back of your neck, universals conk out."
Rica: "I don't know what are you talking about, but I have a new respect for apples."
My rating: Four 3/4 stars; Not a full five because of the Code-appeasing ending, tacked on against the director's protests.
Thieves Highway. 1949. TCM. English. Jules Dassin (d); A.I. Bezzerides (w); Richard Conte, Valentina Cortese, Lee J. Cobb, Barbara Lawrence, Jack Oakie, Millard Mitchell, Joseph Pevney, Morris Carnovsky, Tamara Shayne, Kasia Orzazewski, Norbert Schiller, Hope Emerson (p). Alfred Newman (m). Norbert Brodine (c).
Author AirBeaglePosted on 27-Jul-19 01-Sep-19 Categories California, Capitalism, Cinemagic, Classic Cinema, Entertain Me, Greed, Hubris, LGBT, Movie Night, Movies, San Francisco, Society, TCM, United States, WorkTags A.I. Bezzerides, Apples, Fruit Picking, Golden Delicious, Hope Emerson, Jack Oakie, Joseph Pevney, Jules Dassin, Lee J. Cobb, Millard Mitchell, Richard Conte, The Grapes of Wrath, Trucking, Valentina Cortese
Movie Night: Desk Set
"Not only is it hilarious, it has fabulous midcentury (ugh, that word) interiors, jokes only librarian/book/research nerds understand, an awesome supporting cast including EMERAC and Kate gets to get blotto and talk about the "Mexican Avenue Bus" (the Lexington Avenue Bus, that is)."
["Curfew shall not ring tonight!" Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in Desk Set. A RomCom about 30somethings played by 50somethings falling in love under the benevolent gaze of EMERAC.]
4 ¾ Stars!
From 1957: «Desk Set», my personal favorite among the nine Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy films. Not only is it hilarious, it has fabulous midcentury (ugh, that word) interiors, jokes only librarian/book/research nerds understand, an awesome supporting cast including EMERAC and Kate gets to get blotto and talk about the "Mexican Avenue Bus" (the Lexington Avenue Bus, that is).
"A computer expert tries to prove his electronic brain can replace a television network's research staff." TMDb
I'm beginning to think The MovieDb folks need better synopsis writers.
Movie Metropolis' James Plath «wrote this review» in 2013:
"Desk Set catches them 15 years into their affair and 10 years before Tracy's death. You can sense their level of comfort with each other—something that actually works against them in a romantic comedy in which opposites and antagonists are supposed to eventually attract. Tracy plays Mr. Sumner, an efficiency expert hired by the Federal Broadcasting Company to find departments in which his new-fangled computers (the size of a room, by the way) might save work-hours. Hepburn is Bunny Watson, who runs the research department rather than the always-absent boss (Gig Young) with whom she's been having a seven-year relationship … waiting for a ring and running out of patience. … "The formula is pretty basic, but it's the characters (and the actors) that make "Desk Set" fun to watch. It might also be one of the best films to document those legendary wild office parties from the '50s and '60s, with everyone imbibing so much Christmas cheer that they all start to get a bit of a Rudolph nose. "Desk Set" weaves machines vs. humans and gender-role themes into a pleasant battle-of-the-sexes film that feels more leisurely than most gender bender scripts that come out of Hollywood. This adapted screenplay, interestingly enough, comes from the pens of Henry and Phoebe Ephron, whose daughter, Nora, would receive Oscar nominations for her own work ("Silkwood," When Harry Met Sally…," "Sleepless in Seattle"). The script gives Tracy and Hepburn just enough to work with, and whatever charm that "Desk Set" has comes from the two stars and their interaction with each other and a decent supporting cast. Joan Blondell is particularly funny as Bunny's sometimes abrasive co-worker, with Dina Merrill and Sue Randall also cutting up in the research department."
James Plath, Movie Metropolis
Joan Blondell is fabulous as always and the film marks an appearance by Sue Randall, who would later play Beaver's teacher on Leave It to Beaver. Neva Patterson is awesomely uptight and Dina Merrill is far too glamorous to be a research assistant, but it works. The would-be pairing of Gig Young and Katharine Hepburn is a bit far-fetched, and both Kate and Spencer seemed just a little long in the tooth for a RomCom, but those are quibbles. It works and works raucously well.
A short bit about a rainstorm and a guy from legal and his wife, kids and mother-in-law is hilarious and reminds you of I Love Lucy. But the best bit is a silent one by Ida Moore, an unnamed "Old Lady" who wanders in from time-to-time, checking out a book or enjoying the spiked punch at the office Christmas party. Supposedly, she was, way back in the day, the original model for the giant sculpture which is Federal's logo, and she has had the run of the place ever since. Ida Moore does this with such aplomb and excellence that even Kate seems to be in her shade.
Besides the "Mexican Avenue Bus," there are many great lines/bits:
Bunny Watson: "Have some tequila, Peg."
Peg Costello: "I don't think I should. There are 85 calories in a glass of champagne."
Bunny Watson: "I have a little place in my neighborhood where I can get it for 65."
Richard Sumner: "Hello? Santa Claus's reindeer? Uh, why yes I can… let's see, there's Dopey, Sneezy, Grouchy, Happy, Sleepy, uh Rudolph, and Blitzen! You're welcome!"
Bunny Watson: "Just for kicks. You don't have to answer it if you don't want to. I mean, don't dwell on the question, but I warn you there's a trick in it: If six Chinamen get off a train at Las Vegas, and two of them are found floating face down in a goldfish bowl, and the only thing they can find to identify them are two telephone numbers – one, Plaza Oh-Oh-Oh-Oh-Oh, and the other, Columbus Oh-1492 – what time did the train get to Palm Springs?"
Richard Sumner: "Nine o'clock."
Bunny Watson: "Now, would you mind telling me how you happened to get that?"
Richard Sumner: "Well, there are eleven letters in Palm Springs. You take away two Chinamen, that leaves nine."
Bunny Watson: "You're a sketch, Mr. Sumner."
Richard Sumner: "You're not so bad yourself."
Bunny Watson: "I don't smoke, I only drink champagne when I'm lucky enough to get it, my hair is naturally natural, I live alone… and so do you."
Richard Sumner: "How do you know that?"
Bunny Watson: "Because you're wearing one brown sock and one black sock."
And of course my personal favorite, Curfew Shall Not a-Ring Tonight!:
Richard Sumner: [Watching the computer result on "Corfu", which is mistaken as "curfew"] What the devil is this?
Bunny Watson: [Also having a look] It's the poem, "Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight." Isn't that nice? [reciting] "Cromwell will not come till sunset, and her lips grew strangely white… as she breathed the husky whisper, curfew must not a-ring tonight."
Miss Warriner: [while Bunny goes on] Mr. Sumner, what can I do?
Richard Sumner: Nothing. You know you can't interrupt her [the computer] in the middle of a sequence.
Miss Warriner: Yes, but, Mr. Sumner…
Richard Sumner: Quiet! Just listen.
Bunny Watson: "She had listened while the judges read, without a tear or sigh, at the ringing of the curfew, Basil Underwood must die."
Richard Sumner: Uh, how long does this go on?
Bunny Watson: That old poem has about 80 stanzas to it.
Richard Sumner: Where are we now?
Bunny Watson: "She has reached the topmost ladder. O'er her hangs the great dark bell, awful is the gloom beneath her like the pathway down to hell. Lo, the ponderous tongue is swinging. 'Tis the hour of curfew now, and the sight has chilled her bosom, stopped her breath and paled her brow."
[telephone rings]
Bunny Watson: "Shall she let it ring? No, never! Flash her eyes with sudden light, as she springs and grasps it firmly…
[answers the phone]
Bunny Watson: …curfew shall not ring tonight!"
[audible click]
Bunny Watson: They hung up. And I know another one! "Out she swung, far out, the city seemed a speck of light…"
My rating: 4 3/4 stars for, ironically, casting.
Desk Set. 1957. TCM. English. Walter Lang (d); Phoebe Ephron, Henry Ephron, William Marchant (w) Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Gig Young, Joan Blondell, Dina Merrill, Sue Randall, Neva Patterson, Henry Ellerbe, Nicholas Joy, Diane Jergens, Merry Anders, Ida Moore, Rachel Stephens, Don Porter, Sammy Ogg (p). Cyril J. Mockridge (m). Leon Shamroy (c).
Author AirBeaglePosted on 14-Jul-19 01-Sep-19 Categories Books, Cinemagic, Classic Cinema, Entertain Me, Meaningful Labor, Movies, New York, New York City, News Media, Professionalism, Quotable, Society, TCM, Touchy Feely, WorkTags 1950s, comedy, Cyril J. Mockridge, Desk Set, Diane Jergens, Dina Merrill, Don Porter, EMERAC, Gig Young, Henry Ellerbe, Henry Ephron, Hepburn-Tracy, Ida Moore, Joan Blondell, Katharine Hepburn, Leon Shamroy, Lexington Avenue, library, Merry Anders, midcentury, Neva Patterson, New York City, Nicholas Joy, office, Phoebe Ephron, Rachel Stephens, research, RomComs, Sammy Ogg, Spencer Tracy, Sue Randall, Walter Lang, William Marchant
Movie Night: Hot Millions
"There's a lot more than just smiles to recommend this one–ts droll English humor, its glimpse at fashions and designs and trends of 1968, the fantastic acting of everyone, including the performance of Bob Newhart, whose movie outings are often forgotten, the sarcastic wit and the satire–it's a long list and will need a second viewing to get it all."
[How veddy British! Peter Ustinov and Maggie Smith in Hot Millions. Also, how veddy Sixties!]
From 1968: «Hot Millions». Some fun British fun from Peter Ustinov and Maggie Smith.
True story. The very first time I ever went to a theater and saw a movie was in February 1968 at the Plains Theater in Roswell, NM. Which is sadly now the "International UFO Museum and Research Center" 1947 alien landing tourist trap and that's upsetting and rather terrifying. But upsetting and terrifying is what my first movie experience was; my four-year-old self bawled all the way through it and I think my sister had to take me to the lobby.
The list of things that scared me was long in those days; well into my teens, I was pretty much scared of everything. No reason; I had a good childhood, wasn't abused or anything. But movie theaters, especially high ceilings and balconies, terrified me. So did fire engines, police cars, motorcycles, Walt Disney, sirens, fireworks, Carlsbad Caverns, roller coasters, teachers and teenagers.
But what was the most terrifying of all was the first movie in a theater: Blackbeard's Ghost, starring Peter Ustinov. It was a funny kid's Disney movie, typical of the time, with Dean Jones, Suzanne Pleshette, Elsa Lanchester, Elliot Reid, Richard Deacon and Michael Conrad, in his pre-Hill Street Blues days.
And the worst scene was Ustinov as Blackbeard, riding a police motorcycle with siren blaring, invisible to everyone except Dean Jones. I really bawled at that. Even if it was about the funniest one in the movie. Sirens, invisible pirates, a huge theater, yeesh.
At any rate, Hot Millions is what we're actually talking about here.
"A con-artist (Peter Ustinov) gains employment at an insurance company in order to embezzle money by re-programming their "new" wonder computer."
It's a lot more fun than it sounds, although «Roger Ebert's impression» is probably spot on as usual:
"Today I would like to bow to another critic for my opening thought. Writing about Hot Millions in the New Republic, Stanley Kauffmann observed that it didn't make him laugh out loud, but at the end of the film he realized he'd been smiling for nearly two hours. That says it very well: Hot Millions, which is not a hilarious comedy, is a pleasant, warm one.
"The warmth comes because the characters are developed rather more than is usually the case in movies about (a) embezzlers or (b) eccentrics. The British comedy tradition accounts for these two genres quite completely; eccentrics are usually Terry-Thomas whistling through the gap in his teeth, and embezzlers usually try for a sort of efficient anonymity.
"This is not, I suppose, a great comedy. But Ustinov and Miss Smith act with a sort of natural appeal, and there are moments you will enjoy very much. Especially recommended for computer programmers, their accomplices and their molls."
I personally don't need my sides to split when I watch a "comedy," but that's just me. There's a lot more than just smiles to recommend this one–ts droll English humor, its glimpse at fashions and designs and trends of 1968, the fantastic acting of everyone, including the performance of Bob Newhart, whose movie outings are often forgotten, the sarcastic wit and the satire–it's a long list and will need a second viewing to get it all.
Carlton J. Klemper [talking about his corporation taking over the whole world]: "Yes sir! When the time comes, I may even put in a bid for all of England."
Marcus Pendleton: }Hadn't you better wait till it's solvent?"
Hot Millions
Prison Governor: "You should be in politics, not in prison."
Marcus Pendleton: "Well, in a way, I was, wasn't I? When they caught me embezzling at the Conservative Central Office."
Prison Governor: "Yes, I could never understand why you chose that of all places."
Marcus Pendleton: [after a pause, says sternly] "I'm a Liberal."
Prison Governor: "Oh."
Elderly Gentleman card player: [Irritated by all the talk] "If this keeps up, I shall violate a lifetime principle and play bridge with women."
Patty: "What does he want?"
Marcus: "Assets."
Patty: "What are they?"
Marcus: "Young female donkeys."
Hot Millions. 1968. TCM. English. Eric Till (d). Peter Ustinov, Ira Wallach (w). Peter Ustinov, Maggie Smith, Karl Malden, Bob Newhart, Robert Morley, Cesar Romero, Peter Jones, Ann Lancaster, Patsy Crowther. (p). Laurie Johnson (m). Kenneth Higgins (c).
Author AirBeaglePosted on 14-Jul-19 01-Sep-19 Categories Capitalism, Cinemagic, Classic Cinema, Entertain Me, Great Britain, Greed, Hubris, Movie Night, Movies, San Francisco, Society, TCM, WorkTags 1960s, Ann Lancaster, Bob Newhart, Britcoms, Capers, Cesar Romero, Embezzlement, Ira Wallach, Karl Malden, Maggie Smith, Peter Jones, Peter Ustinov, Robert Morley
Remembering Bill Schock on his 100th birthday … and the 52nd anniversary of Braniff 250 in Falls City. Also … feeling old from … time flying and stuff.
Since the AM2431 crash in Durango a few days ago appears to be from weather-related causes, never forgetting the lessons of BN250, as well as CO426, OZ809, EA66, PA759, DL191, and US1016 is as important as ever. Hope today's flight crews are paying attention.
Author AirBeaglePosted on 06-Aug-18 07-Sep-18 Categories Airlines, Bill Schock, Braniff Flight 250, Braniff International Airlines, Deadly Turbulence, Falls City, Grief, History, Hope for the Future, Loss, Memories, Nebraska, Touchy Feely, Up in the Air, WorkTags Anniversaries, Bill Schock, Braniff 250, Falls City, History
Trees, Part Deaux
(cont'd) … but it fell onto the neighbors' yard, barely missing their porch and stuff.
Its carcass…
Posted by Steve Pollock on Friday, July 1, 2016
Author AirBeaglePosted on 06-Jul-16 Categories Weather, Work
Trees, Part Une
Trees, Part Une:
"I think that I shall never see
"A nasty devil like a tree.
"They always fall over on me,
"Leaving a…
Ole Yeller
His Imperial Highness, #IAmTheRoux, and His Imperial Clown Prince, #GooseIsLoose, wish it known that They do not exert…
Posted by Steve Pollock on Thursday, June 30, 2016
Author AirBeaglePosted on 30-Jun-16 Categories Hermitage, Work
I Am The Roux!
I Am The Roux.
I am a loud basset.
A proud basset.
A messy basset.
A hungry basset.
A loving basset.
As a puppy, I got lost and couldn't find my way home.
I was very, very hungry. And scared.
I ended up in a sad place. The concrete was very hard.
But then someone saw my long sad face behind the chain link fence.
I was rescued!
Author AirBeaglePosted on 06-Sep-14 Categories I Am the Roux, Work
Bad Beginnings
I'm sitting in a chair in an airport. Waiting on yet another flight. Taking a drag on a cigarette, trying to read the States-Item. Hard to concentrate since it's been such a long day.
The best routing at the best price the travel agency could give me home to Minneapolis is a Braniff hop via a torturous route: Shreveport, Fort Smith, Tulsa, Kansas City, and Omaha. At least it's a pretty comfortable jet, not one of the old prop jobs, which is why I went for it. If you have to hop around the midwest, might as well do it in style. It's a brand new British type, a BAC 1-11. The one sitting on the tarmac, my ride home, is painted a kind of weird tan that the airline refers to as "ochre," but it glows like an orange fireball in the early evening steamy Louisiana sun.
The intercom in the boarding area crackles to life. 'Mr. Donnelly, Mr. Sean Donnelly, please see the Braniff ticket agent at gate 12,' a disembodied voice pronounces.
Author AirBeaglePosted on 06-Sep-14 Categories Stories I Tell Myself (SITM), Work


Palo Santo is a mystical tree that grows on the coast of South America. In Spanish, the name literally means "Holy Wood".
Palo Santo is energy cleansing and the healing properties are similar to Sage and Cedar. It creates a pleasant, fresh smoke that works well in keeping away mosquitoes and other flying insects which is one of the prime uses for the people who live in Ecuador and Peru. It provides an uplifting scent that raises your vibration in preparation for meditation and allows for a deeper connection to the Source of all creation. It is also said that Palo Santo enhances creativity and brings good fortune to those who are open to its magic.