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mit lab brush
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rat rod report:
selling locally 1968 convertible vette. matching vins, recenlty rebuilt 327 350 hp. tru duel exaust ps pb no ac odometer showing 62k unverified milage. un restored interior, now dinged up daytona yellow but originally black. bidding started at $100.00 but im seeing it now at 7K with four days to go. similar cars going in the 20 - 25 k area. lets see where this one goes.
we went to the george nakashima woodworking compound in new hope yesterday. they have open house every saturday from 1 to 4:30 pm. we visited the three small cinderblock buildings that were open to the public. classic rocky hilly wooded bucks co landscape. a little bit opened up because of the leaves being off the trees. first stop is a show room (the closest thing to a gift shop) with books and a couple of small tripod endtable/stools (starter pieces at $550.00 that were looking pretty damn desirable) and nice larger pieces. then to a small woodworking building where we found a young aprentice hand sanding a detail on a restoration project. he told us that the set of six 40 year old captains chairs belonged to the rockefellers and needed work because they had been kept outside the whole time. some had fallen completely to pieces. but they had cleaned up real real nice considering and were almost ready to be returned back to the original owners. the small modern slightly industrial buildings all had oversized traditional japanese style windows. the plain unfinished grey cinderblock exterior and interior finishes did not have any dampness at all. the workshop windows were very large, some had pieces of cardboard in place to reduce the suns glare and drying effect on the stored wood. there is still a large inventory of wood on hand selected by the now deceased george. the last stop was the studio where two of georges children have kept the family craft trade going. mira is now considered the primary designer and she will hand select the wooden slabs with you and make you exactly what you want in a table, chair or cabinet. we spoke with the son kevin who sat in the middle of the room in a rocking chair. hell talk your ear of if you let him which is fine if your at all curious. we discussed the ben shahn prints on the wall. a very nice bs cats cradle print on japanese paper (two hands with a big mess of intertwined string laced through the fingers) looking like a take on pollock abstraction. warhol used that same funny pen and ink and stick drawing style in his early commercial work. kevin had his warhol story. firstly he recalled the famous cold fish hand shake. second warhol wanted to trade his work for a piece of furniture. george wouldnt have it (what am i going to do with one of those paintings?). eventually they chose the wood for a piece to be made but andy died before picking it up. they completed the piece anyway and its someplace.
i forgot my camera but next time im in bucks ill go back to take pictures and drool over those nice new mira nakashima $550.00 stools.
Take Back the Memorial Launches Campaign to Claim Snohetta Building for an Above Ground 9/11 Museum
Governor Pataki’s promise that the 9/11 memorial quadrant at Ground Zero would be reserved for 9/11 exclusively following the withdrawal of the IFC and Drawing Center left people asking: “What will happen to the Snohetta building now that it has no tenants?” The prevailing logic was that Snohetta would not be built, primarily because fundraising for the memorial was in disarray. Earlier this month, however, Governor Pataki announced he would set aside $80 million dollars to build a smaller version of the Snohetta building. This is surprising considering that the Governor himself has yet to make a donation to the 9/11 memorial. Not that we blame him. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) has allowed the design process for the memorial and museum to run amok.
Saying, "We cannot allow the trade center to be a construction site for the next 15 years," Mr. Bloomberg proposed that the leaseholder, Larry Silverstein, give up control of two of the five building sites, in exchange for a reduction in his rent. (Mr. Silverstein holds a 99-year lease on the site, which is owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.)
That would allow officials to seek other developers to build towers on the site while Mr. Silverstein focuses on developing the Freedom Tower.
"We need this now to advance our economy and pay tribute to those who died there," the mayor said, "not a decade and a half in the future when it fits a developer's financial plan."
Officials of the Port Authority have been pressuring Mr. Silverstein to accept a similar deal. In addition, the authority has signaled that it is amenable to the mayor's proposal that its headquarters, previously situated in the twin towers, be moved into one of the buildings Mr. Silverstein is being urged to relinquish, Towers 3 and 4.
Making JC more bicycle-friendly
The city has contemplated for a number of years a bikeway system that would encourage more bicycle use within the city and promote bike tourism.
The Planning Board approved at its Jan. 10 meeting the addition of a professionally-prepared Jersey City Bikeway System plan to the city's Master Plan. Bill Feldman, manager of bicycle and transportation for the RBA Group, the firm that prepared the bikeway plan, spoke at the meeting.
Under the bikeway system, the city would be broken up into five sections with signs pointing out various destinations within those sections. The five sections would be Downtown, The Heights, Journal Square, Lafayette-Greenville, and Liberty State Park.
The bikeway system would share public roadways and include route signage for bicyclists and warning signs for motorists.
Oonce signs are installed, a study will be conducted by the city's Department of Public Works to determine if the bikeway system could include actual bike lanes that would be placed in possible locations such as Mallory Avenue, Washington Boulevard, Washington Street, Christopher Columbus Drive, and Phillip Street.
There is also consideration to link the bikeway system to the East Coast Greenway, a 2,500-mile series of nature paths and roadways that runs from Maine to Florida.
Rebuilding waterfront park
The Planning Board also gave the city the go-ahead to start working on rehabbing the J. Owen Grundy Park. The waterfront park, located at the foot of Exchange Place, was built in 1985 and has seen a great deal of wear and tear in recent years.
Glenn Wrigley, the city's chief architect, spoke to the Planning Board about how parts of the park have deteriorated, such as the railings and plants around the park. Also, it had been determined that the seawall that protects the park from the Hudson River has been breaking down.
Wrigley said that the rehab project will replace the wooden decking on the pier, new tables and lights in the park, and the seawall.
Also, the performing stage at the end of the park will see a new cover and a new power system to facilitate performances.
"There are some very tough decisions that have to be made here, and no-one relishes making them," said Janet R Howard, chief executive of the Bureau of Governmental Research… "But to say that people should invest their money and invest their energies and put all their hope into rebuilding and then in a year we'll re-evaluate, that's no plan at all." In this sense, people's genuine fears of whether the city could cope with another flood, has combined with the general air of disquiet that New Orleans shouldn't be rebuilt at all in that location - and is impacting on the authorities' ability to impose clear guidance up on some core issues. Even though the practical discussion amongst recovery workers and political agents is slightly confused, it is still qualitively different to the line that Lord May took in his Anniversary Address to the Royal Society in 2005. 'It is conceivable,' he said, 'that the Gulf Coast of the US could be effectively uninhabitable by the end of century.' As a word of advice, he advocates that we stop building on floodplains and recognise 'that some areas should, in effect, be given up.'
New Orleans could lose as much as 80 percent of its black population if its most damaged neighborhoods are not rebuilt and if there is not significant government assistance to help poor people return, a detailed analysis by Brown University has concluded.
C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans discussed the federal response to his city's disaster in a speech this week to fellow mayors, meeting in Washington.
Combining data from the 2000 census with federal damage assessment maps, the study provides a new level of specificity about Hurricane Katrina's effect on the city's worst-flooded areas, which were heavily populated by low-income black people.
Of the 354,000 people who lived in New Orleans neighborhoods where the subsequent damage was moderate to severe, 75 percent were black, 29 percent lived below the poverty line, more than 10 percent were unemployed, and more than half were renters, the study found.
The report's author, John R. Logan, concluded that as much as 80 percent of the city's black population might not return for several reasons: their neighborhoods would not be rebuilt, they would be unable to afford the relocation costs, or they would put down roots in other cities.
For similar reasons, as much as half of the city's white population might not return, Dr. Logan concluded.
"The continuing question about the hurricane is this: Whose city will be rebuilt?" Dr. Logan, a professor of sociology, writes in the report.
If the projections are realized, the New Orleans population will shrink to about 140,000 from its prehurricane level of 484,000, and the city, nearly 70 percent black before the storm, will become majority white.
fake bands - "Jake Austen's new book "TV-a-Go-Go" examines the fake but fascinating history of rock & roll on television. Jake drops by Music To Spazz By to discuss TV rock & rollers both historic and arcane. "
garbage scout
ust outta beta is Jim Nachlin's brilliant Google Maps mashup GarbageScout. Here's how it works: see something discarded on the streets of NYC; take a cameraphone shot then email it to GarbageScout; enjoy the detritus digitally from now until armageddon. And, in a touch residents of the Williamsburg waterfront might enjoy, the latest additions are represented by a flaming trash can. Awesome.from curbed
If you have been waiting on a trailer to live in and you wonder where it is, it is in Metairie.pls send more pictures!
All up and down those streets between the Lake Ponchartrain and Veterans Blvd. and the parish line and Bonnabel Blvd. the homes have trailers in front of them. I mean a whole bunch of them do.
I really don't know to what extent people are actually living in them (I have yet to see someone enter or leave one of them), but they are there, and unlike the few trailers dotted around New Orleans proper, they are hooked up to sewage, water, and electricity, all ready to go. I think many of the people who got them just couldn't resist how easy it was to get them and that in itself has nothing to do with how difficult it is for quite a few New Orleanians to get into trailers. Unless you are a conspiracy theorist and if you are you should give it up because believing in things you can never prove will only lead you to nocturnal outbursts as reported back to you by the person sleeping nearest. "You said 'shit' in your sleep numerous times last night."
Probably you could argue that people in need are people in need and Metairie residents are just as needy as some poor New Orleanian without a house, without insurance,or a pot to piss in. It's a good argument and you came to the wrong place if you're looking for someone to argue with. You should go home or into the other room and argue with your loved one about something that has nothing to do with what you are really mad about, have make up sex, and get back to me. Please don't tell me anything about the fight or the sex. I'm already bored and your frustrations and the heartfelt delivered explicit details about your love life might just push me over the edge.
I tried to buy beer at the Walgreens on St. Charles today. You wanna hear about frustration? Walgreens doesn't sell beer. Which to me, by itself, is worse than any conspiracy theory I could come up with, and let me assure you, I could come up with one regarding why Walgreens doesn't sell beer.
I'm spending a little more time Uptown than I normally would, and not just because this is where all the sex kittens are, but because I want to feel the pulse of the apoplectic Uptown hordes, and, I'm feeling it. Diagnosis. Simply, ya'll bitches need more beer, period. In Mid-City we may not have electricity or gas in most of the homes but we have a new convenience store opened at Canal and Galvez. If a store at that location tried to pull the "no beer" bullshit it would be the fuel for a neighborhood bonfire the next night. As for the Mid-City Walgreens, where that is? Jeff Davis and Canal? Ya'll can open up or not, I won't miss you or shop with you. Selling all those over and under the counter chemicals and getting uppity about a little alcohol...well...you make me want to...shop at Rite-Aid.
oh yeah, its in french.
Over 36 hours worth of lectures by Roland Barthes (1915-1980). The audio material available here represents the complete lectures given by Barthes during his first 2 years' teaching at the Collège de France in 1977 and 1978, and also his inaugural lecture about the question of power (and the way it is inscribed in the core of the language). [MP3s are in French] (via UbuWeb)
The initial question that he asks to himself (: « How to find the right distance between me and my neighbour in order that an acceptable social living may be possible for all of us ? ») finds a direct answer in Barthes' following proposal : the idiorhythmy as a way (as a fantasy) of living, i.e. a system in which everyone should be able to find, impose and preserve their own rhythm of life.
These lectures about living in community seem strangely refer to themes that Michel Foucault had previously dealt with. According to Barthes, power is precisely what forbids any idiorythmy because it imposes strict rhythms to individuals. The design of the paragon of an idiorhythmic way of living should be that of an anchorite or an ascetic stylite secluded on the top of his column (cf. Buñuel's Simon Of The Desert) ; on the other hand, the total rejection of idiorythmy is what will produce such communities as convents, monasteries or phalansteries (and we should also add two other types of communities that proscribe the possibility of idiorythmy to individuals, two main institutions in Foucault's works : psychiatric hospitals and prisons).
During his 1977's lectures, Barthes will apply himself to clear a path to a living-together (probably utopian), towards this fantasy of society he suggests : a society that would allow everyone to live according to his own rhythm inside the community but without being based on an extreme solitude for each individual (hard to reach, except in the case of the authentic extatic mysticism and in the case of a deep - pathological - feeling of dereliction), a society that wouldn't be based on the extreme alienation of individiuals by a power (whatever its forms) fixing strict rhythms.
via kenny g wfmu beware the blog
Other members of the committees said the executive branch communications were essential because it had become apparent that one of the most significant failures was the apparent lack of complete engagement by the White House and the federal government in the days immediately before and after the storm.
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The White House was told in the hours before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans that the city would probably soon be inundated with floodwater, forcing the long-term relocation of hundreds of thousands of people, documents to be released Tuesday by Senate investigators show.
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nyt complete coverage storm and crisis
In the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, HBN launched GreenRelief to initiate and assist efforts that emphasize environmental and social justice when rebuilding communities and restoring the natural environment. HBN investigator Jim Vallette has traveled to the Gulf States region repeatedly to assess the opportunities and barriers affecting green rebuilding plans. This is the first of his occasional reports. More of Jim's work can be found at http://www.greenrelief.org.
underlined artifice - One point of style in her photographs is that she leaves the black edges of the negative visible on the print. This draws awareness that the image is a work of art and it underlines the artifice of the photograph as opposed to it being a window on the world.
real estate pornado alert:
Lockhart Steele
Wednesday, January 25th, 3pm - 6pm
on Intelligent Design with Kenny G
Join Kenny G and DJ Monica on Wednesday, January 25th between 5 and 6pm for an hour of red-hot real estate porn as they welcome guest Lockhart Steele, proprietor of New York City's hottest real estate blog curbed.com. Venturing into topics never-before heard on WFMU's airwaves, Steele will be slinging the same sort of mix of savvy gossip and speculative irony that makes curbed.com tick. We'll be taking calls from listeners, either drooling with envy or frothing with anger about the one subject that everyone in the tri-state area, one way or another, is forced to deal with.
Several years ago, I built my first homemade digital camera. The idea was simple - I would take an ordinary flatbed scanner, and use it in place of photo paper with a large format camera.
My first scanner camera was made from lots of duct tape, a cardboard box, and the cheapest flatbed scanner that I could find. I expected this to be a quick little art project, one that would take a week or two at the most. But when I got my first homemade digital camera to work, I noticed that some wonderful things were beginning to happen.
Les mésarchitectures de Didier Fiuza Faustino
La Ville oblique de Claude Parent
via frenchy pilou from pushpullbar
PushPullBar architecture + design forum
BLDG
BLOG
Proclaiming that art is null was not an aesthetic judgment on his part, but an anthropological problem. It was a polemic gesture towards culture as a whole, which now is simultaneously nothing and everything, being at once elitist and crassly materialistic, repetitive, ingenious, pretentious and inflated beyond human recognition. For Baudrillard art has nothing to do with art as it is usually understood. It remains a yet unresolved issue for post-humans to deal with – if anyone in the far-away future still cares organizing another exciting panel on the future of art.
Art doesn’t come from a natural impulse, but from calculated artifice (at the dawn of modernism, Baudelaire already figured this out). So it is always possible to question its status, and even its existence. We have grown so accustomed to take art with a sense of awe that we cannot look at it anymore with dispassionate eyes, let alone question its legitimacy. This is what Baudrillard had in mind, and few people realized it at the time. First one has to nullify art in order to look at it for what it is. And this is precisely what Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol respectively did. By now art may well have outgrown this function, although everyone keeps acting as if it still mattered. Actually nothing proves that it was meant to persevere, or would persist in the forms it has given itself, except by some kind of tacit agreement on everybody’s part. Baudrillard called it a “conspiracy,” but he might as well have called Disneyland “the Conspiracy of Reality.” And none of it, of course, was real, except as a conspiracy. Conspiracy too is calculated artifice. Maybe the art world is an art onto itself, possibly the only one left. Waiting to be given its final form by someone like Baudrillard. Capital, the ultimate art. We all are artists on this account.
Art is no different anymore from anything else. This doesn’t prevent it from growing exponentially. The “end of art,” so often trumpeted, never happened. It was replaced instead by unrestrained proliferation and cultural overproduction. Never has art been more successful than it is today – but is it still art? Like material goods, art is endlessly recycling itself to meet the demands of the market. Worse yet: the less pertinent art has become as art, the louder it keeps claiming its “exceptionalism.” Instead of bravely acknowledging its own obsolescence and questioning its own status, it is basking in its own self-importance. The only legitimate reason art would have to exist nowadays would be to reinvent itself as art. But this may be asking too much. It may not be capable of doing that, because it has been doing everything it could to prove it still is art. In that sense Baudrillard may well be one of the last people who really cares about art.
from : lotringers introduction to baudrillards conspiricy of art
Ho-Tah-Moie or Roaring Thunder (john stink)
Sainte-Bernadette du Banlay. Nevers, France (1966) Paul Virilio and Claude Parent
Foreword
by Paul Virilio
"Contemporary civilization differs in one particularly distinctive feature from those which preceded it: speed. The change has come about within a generation," noted the historian Marc Bloch, writing in the nineteen-thirties. This situation brings in its wake a second feature: the accident. The progressive spread of catastrophic events do not just affect current reality, but produce anxiety and anguish for coming generations. Daily life is becoming a kaleidoscope of incidents and accidents, catastrophes and cataclysms, in which we are endlessly running up against the unexpected, which occurs out of the blue, so to speak. In a shattered mirror, we must then learn to discern what is impending more and more often-but above all more and more quickly, those events coming upon us inopportunely, if not indeed simultaneously. Faced with an accelerated temporality which affects mores and Art as much as it does international politics, there is one particularly urgent necessity: to expose and to exhibit the Time accident.
paul virilio the accident of art
The fight ended without fanfare. For 123 of the most heavily damaged structures, almost all in the Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans officials have agreed to give seven to 10 days' notice before bulldozing. The city will publish an advertisement over three days in The Times-Picayune listing the addresses of the affected properties, will post a warning on the its Web site and will try to contact the owners by mail.
The warning will specify that officials intend to "demolish or haul away" the property. Owners have a right to challenge the demolitions in the seven- to 10-day window.
For 1,900 houses less seriously damaged, but still considered in imminent danger of collapse, the city will give 30 days' notice.
cedar creek treehouse
vw 1967 deluxe model so-44 campmobile
via zoller
portland oregon socialites 1955
series of 16 newly acquired images documenting an initiation into king neptunes court (a naval equator crossing ritual). 11 portrait format and 5 landscape format. the originals should work nicely into a 4 x 4 vertical grid.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation President Richard Moe responded to New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s Bring Back New Orleans Commission’s recently unveiled proposal that would give neighborhoods in the city’s low-lying areas from four months to one year to prove that they should not be bulldozed.
[The following includes excerpts from a letter Moe sent to Mayor Nagin last night in response to the commission’s recommendation. To read the entire letter click here (pdf).]
“At the very least, I would urge that building permits be allowed in the city's nineteen National Register Historic Districts, which contain 38,000 historic structures. We have concluded that every single one of these historic districts can and should be rebuilt, and that the overwhelming majority of damaged structures within their boundaries can be repaired. These are the Creole cottages, shotgun houses and historic bungalows that constitute the heart and soul of New Orleans. These are the neighborhoods most important to the identity of New Orleans, and they must be allowed to lead the city's neighborhood recovery effort.”
James Zadroga spent 16 hours a day toiling in the World Trade Center ruins for a month, breathing in debris-choked air. Timothy Keller said he coughed up bits of gravel from his lungs after the towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001. Felix Hernandez spent days at the site helping to search for victims.
All three men died in the last seven months of what their families and colleagues say are persistent respiratory illnesses directly caused by their work at ground zero.
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The New York Daily News has learned that an additional 22 men, mostly in their 30s and 40s, have died from causes their families say were accelerated by the toxic mix of chemicals that lodged in their bodies as they searched for survivors or participated in the cleanup after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
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Zadroga was far from alone, of course, at Ground Zero. Thousands of others, from across the city and across the country, had arrived at the smouldering crevice in Lower Manhattan to do the same, in what was a long, long clean-up and debris-trucking process. How many of them are ailing now? How many of them might die because of illnesses attributable to the contaminants they inhaled, or the particles absorbed into their skin, at a time when many frantic responders weren't even wearing proper protective gear or respiratory apparatus?
[....]
One survey, of 1,138 responders, from the period of July to December 2002, showed 60 per cent reported lower airway breathing problems and 74 per cent reported upper airway breathing problems.
Federal employees were told not to participate in the Mount Sinai program, that a separate monitoring agency would be established for them. But such an agency appeared and disappeared with fewer than 600 people seen, according to one of the 9/11 civilian watchdog groups.
In the 10 days immediately after 9/11, the Environmental Protection Agency put out five press releases reassuring the public that air and soil samples indicated no heightened levels of cancer-causing agents in the air or soil anywhere beyond the immediate Ground Zero area. Some EPA officials have since admitted those assurances were unfounded and may have been influenced by political pressure. Certainly the Sierra Club has alleged a cover-up of what was clearly an acute environmental disaster, even though the environment was hardly foremost in people's minds at the time, as relatives searched for loved ones and the White House planned a military response. What became quickly known as the "WTC cough" was prevalent among emergency responders. A later study undertaken by a private environmental firm — at the behest of a company contracted to perform some of the cleanup — found more alarming developments, with positive tests for significant asbestos levels. That firm suggested the sheer force of the tower explosions shattered asbestos into fibres so small they evaded the EPA's ordinary testing methods.
Ground Zero inhalation tests of ambient air showed WTC dust consisted predominantly (95 per cent) of coarse particles and pulverized cement, with glass fibres, asbestos, lead, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polychlorinated furans and dioxins.
"Freedom For The Stallion" (Allen Toussaint) Allen Toussaint, live, 4/9/1976
(LISTEN) "As I mentioned earlier, Allen Toussaint turns 68 this Saturday, the 14th; and I hope he has a great day and fine new year. After having lost his home when the levee broke, he needs them. I’ve picked this live performance of one of his songs for the weekend, since it ties in with the spirit of Martin Luther King Day, as well."
-from home of the groove
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more from home of the groove : "Don't Bring Me Down" (Allen Toussaint) Labelle, from Nightbirds, Epic, 1974 - and - A Toussaint Two-fer
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Every now and then I like to point you to other posts of New Olreans music I find. Hey, I can't post everything, as you may have noticed. Our hard bloggin' friend, AK, over at Soul Shower has two nice posts up now with tracks by Huey Smith and the Clowns, featuring Gerri Hall, and and by the Barons, about as obscure a New Orleans vocal group as you could want. Check 'em while they're hot. By the way, I enourage all mp3 bloggers to post more New Orleans music. The city needs the attention. The tunes need to be heard. And I need less pressure! Peace.
-from home of the groove
A conservative Republican congressman has proposed the federal government create a non-profit, federally-owned corporation, dubbed the Louisiana Recovery Corporation that would be authorized to buy out homeowners in the affected areas and to negotiate with lenders to pay off the balance of those mortgages.from LP Blog The official blog of the Libertarian Party
If passed, this House bill, proposed by Rep. Richard H. Baker, would make the federal government the largest landowner in New Orleans for at least a few years. This government corporation would be modeled after the Resolution Trust Corporation that was created by Congress in 1989 to bail out the savings and loans industry in wake of the S & L scandal. Baker's plan has even drawn support from liberal Democrat, Rep. William J. Jefferson who stated explicitly that he believes the bill's passage is important.
Some members of Congress are concerned with the potential cost to taxpayers from Baker's plan. The proposed non-profit corporation would offer to buy out houses from homeowners, at no less than 60 percent of their equity before Hurricane Katrina, while lenders would be offered up to 60 percent of what they are owed, according to the New York Times. The properties would then be sold to developers. The government corporation could end up spending up to $80 billion, according to current estimates. Baker admitted he could not promise that the corporation would break even financially. He added, "We'll pay back as much as possible."
A group of representatives were unsuccessful in mandating that the corporation break even financially by incurring revenues from developers. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R - Texas), stated, "We need to ensure that taxpayers are not asked again two or three years from now to pay for the same disaster."
The passage of the bill is still uncertain. The Senate is expected to begin debate on the bill once Congress reconvenes. The White House has show some signs of support for the bill, with the president's Gulf Coast recovery czar, Donald E. Powell, stating, he "was more comfortable" with the proposal.
President Bush sounded out of touch as usual this week when he called the still-ravaged city "a heck of a place to bring your family." Rather than conjuring up memories of Michael Brown, the erstwhile head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Mr. Bush could better spend his time increasing the pressure on Congress to act on some version of Representative Richard Baker's federal buyout legislation. Lawmakers in Washington should take up the bill.nyt editorial
note: bloglines
happy friday the thirteenth. i once had a great birthday on a "good friday" the thirteenth.
Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Renzo Piano, Steven Holl, Herzog & de Meuron, Santiago Calatrava, Rafael Moneo, Glenn Murcutt, Richard Rogers and Norman Foster are among the distinguished international architects who have been commissioned to build new wineries and the results are a fascinating blend of form and function.
The problem, asserts Marchand, is that the city is not using consistent methods to assess home damage, and that some of the homes they’ve tagged for removal may, in fact, be salvageable. “I live in the heaviest hit area,” she says, adding that, while she currently sleeps at a temporary residence in Baton Rouge, she has already gutted her Ninth Ward home after she and her neighbors were allowed back in on December 1. When inspectors arrived to assess her neighborhood and place red stickers on houses deemed irreparable, she says, “They didn’t even enter the homes. We have incorrect assessments being done. We can’t arbitrarily assume that a house should be demolished.” Certainly there are homes in the Ninth Ward that are safety risks, she conceded. But even in cases where homes have drifted off their foundations, “we need to give people a chance to see if they can be lifted and put back on their pilings-I have seen this happen.”lots of interesting pictures here also
[....]
“I don’t think that it’s one of the neighborhoods most at risk. Seven or eight flood wall and levee breaks caused the problem there.” He notes that, if executed, the levee bill President Bush signed in late December would mitigate the environmental problems in the Ninth Ward.
In the meantime, with no cohesive redevelopment strategy yet in practice, various groups on the ground are acting on their own. Grassroots housing advocacy organization ACORN, for example, is running a program to gut homes in low-income neighborhoods, including the Ninth Ward. ACORN’s New Orleans head organizer Steve Bradbury says that they hope to have gutted 1,000 to 2,000 homes by the end of March.
But the biggest problem in New Orleans right now, Bradbury told The Slatin Report, is that “the local and federal government should be taking greater responsibility for people receiving the clearest and most factual information possible-and they’re not.”
Marchand agrees: “The city needs to first find out who’s coming back before tearing anything down.”
A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit charging that the city's Office of Emergency Management helped cause the collapse of Seven World Trade Center on 9-11 by storing diesel fuel for its emergency generators in the 47-story building.
The Port Authority and developer Larry Silverstein are still on the hook in the suit, which was filed by insurers for Con Edison, which had a substation under WTC7 that was severely damaged.
The city Law Department hailed the ruling, which it says is the last property damage claim against the city related to 9-11. A statement from the department says the move by District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein "allows New York City to better plan for events like September 11th without being subject to liability based on hindsight."
WTC7 was the last building to fall on 9-11. No one was killed there. Compared to the twin towers it was a relative nobody among New York skyscrapers, but it has enjoyed posthumous notoriety because of the mystery of why exactly it fell. Thanks to the neat and sudden collapse of the building, WTC7 is central to alternative theories about what happened on 9-11—and particularly to the notion that the buildings in lower Manhattan were brought down by planned demolitions.
Mainstream inquiries also find puzzlement on WTC 7. The national investigation of Ground Zero building collapses has yet to issue its final report on building seven. An earlier study by the Federal Emergency Management Agency punted on trying to explain the collapse definitively. Not struck by planes, WTC7 appears to have collapsed solely because of fire—apparently a first for a steel-framed skyscraper. The diesel fuel was the most likely culprit, even though FEMA said this "best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence." The city's OEM command center used a 6,000-gallon diesel tank; this was one of several in the building. Hellestein's ruling doesn't delve into whether the diesel fuel caused the collapse, or if it was a particularly bright idea to have it there, but finds that the city is immune under a state law, the New York Defense Emergency Act:
more bush double speak on new orleans :
"It's a heck of a place to bring your family."
[....]
A buyout program proposed by Baker, R-Baton Rouge, is widely seen as a critical part of the city's rebuilding plan. The measure failed to pass Congress last month, but it enjoys near uniform support among Louisiana politicians here and in Washington.
But after Thursday's meeting, Nagin, who attended the powwow and sat on the president's left, said Bush remains skeptical about the bill in its current form. Nagin said the president's doubts center on the legislation's ultimate price tag, and on the unprecedented federal involvement in a local matter Baker's plan may represent.
Baker, who also was one of the meeting's dozen participants, said his plan did not arise as a topic of conversation. What's more, Baker said, Bush has never voiced those concerns to him in one-on-one meetings.
"Whenever I see him, he says, 'How's the grand plan going?' " Baker said.
[....]
But on what most city leaders consider the paramount issue for rebuilding -- the construction of a levee system that could withstand a hit from a Category 5 storm -- Bush remained coy. In fact, neither he nor Powell, who flew down on Air Force One with Bush and attended the meeting, have ever voiced support for Category 5 storm protection, which carries an uncertain price tag and could take years to complete. Asked directly about it on several occasions, both men carefully sidestepped the matter, and Bush did so again Thursday.
"The mayor has made it clear to me we need a strong federal policy on levees in order to encourage investors and investment," Bush said. He then promised a web of storm protection, "stronger and better than the previous system," but did not mention Category 5.
Nagin, it turned out, was not alone in reminding Bush about where the levee system stands in the local consciousness. As the president's motorcade made its way down Prytania Street, a resident held a cardboard sign aloft that said, "We Want Levey."
As he has from the outset, Bush insisted the recovery plan must be designed locally. Although he said the federal government "has a major role to play," Bush reiterated his stance that role would be supportive to the city's lead.
"We all share the same goal, and that is to have this city rise again and be a shining star of the South," he said.
180+ 9/11 'smoking guns' found in mainstream media
from the new orleans times picayune (PDF) map indicating :
<>areas where rebuilding allowed now
<> building moratorium until neighborhoods prove viability
<> approximate areas expected to become parks and greenspace
<> areas to be redeveloped, some with new housing for relocated homeowners ....................................................................................................................................................
Red Danger List : addresses of homes targeted for demolition
New Orleans on Thursday released to the Times Picayune the following list of 1,975 properties deemed 'in imminent danger of collapse,' and recommended for demolition by city inspectors. No timeline has been set for removal. More than 5,000 structures have received the red tags that indicate they are targets for demolition.
In previous interviews with the Times-Picayune and other media, HANO spokespeople expressed concerns about "looting," "troublemakers" and "squatters." Although it's true that there appears to have been massive theft from homes in these projects, in a recent visit to at least 20 homes that been broken into, most had their locks intact -- the apartments had been broken into by someone with keys and access. In several interviews, residents placed the robberies as having occurred within the last few weeks -- long after Mayor Nagin began urging people to return to the city, and weeks after the National Guard had finished breaking into homes to check for bodies.
[....]
More than four months after Katrina, public housing tenants are still facing displacement and victimization. Grass-roots groups such as NOHEAT (New Orleans Housing Emergency Action Team) and advocates such as the Loyola Law Clinic and grass-roots Legal Network are calling for justice for public housing tenants, but for many residents, the city seems to be sending them a louder message -- "stay out."
new orleans flood maps
I don't know you, but Mr. Canizaro, I hate you," Harvey Bender of the Lower Ninth Ward said as he pointed his finger. "You've been in the background scheming to take our land."
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"I'm ready to rebuild. I'm not going to let you take everything. I'm ready to fight to get my property together," one man shouted from the back of the room.
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"Please let us build our own homes," said Charles Young, a homeowner in Lakeview, a largely white middle-class neighborhood. "Let us come back on our own time. Let us spend our insurance money, which we paid for on our own."
digital camo
canadian digital camo
sculldana
In an exclusive Bayoubuzz online interview, U.S. Congressman Richard Baker describes his real estate-mortgage and New Orleans reconstruction plan that he has been proposing since October and which requires the vote of Congress. Many people believe it is the most comprehensive vehicle to deal with the myriad problems facing New Orleans and Louisiana and has been overwhelmingly supported by many editorials. With President Bush visiting New Orleans on Thursday and with the Mayor Nagin’s Bring Back New Orleans Commission plan for the city being released today, ironically, the interview comes at a time when President Bush’s support and the public backing of the plan is critical. Here is the BayouBuzz.com online interview with U.S. Rep. Richard Baker, R-Baton Rouge.
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President Bush is coming to New Orleans for the ninth time since Hurricane Katrina swamped South Louisiana, but Thursday's visit will be the first since he succeeded in getting $2.9 billion for levee repairs.
He will find a community profoundly grateful for the promise of stronger levees. He will find a community in the throes of recovery. He also will find many people still worried about the future.
They worry that the White House isn't committed to protecting the region from the fiercest hurricanes. They worry about whether their neighborhoods will be safe in the long run. They worry about whether they -- and their neighbors -- can afford to rebuild.
His career began in the early sixties with long forgotten bands the Rainmakers, Rockin' Vicars and Opal Butterfly. After being a roadie for guitar legend Jimi Hendrix, Lemmy joined psychedelic rock band Hawkwind in 1971, playing bass and occasionally singing. You can hear him on their 1972 'Silver Machine'.
In 1975 Lemmy was sacked from the band when he got caught in possession of drugs at the Canadian border while on tour. But a year later he had formed Motorhead, named after the last song he ever wrote for Hawkwind (and also British slang at the time for a speed freak), although Lemmy had wanted to call the band Bastard at first!
(New Orleans Has Big Rebuilding Dreams) What the resulting master plan will look like is far from clear. The mayor can accept or reject any of the recommendations, a process that could take weeks. Of course, the plan's final shape will be determined to a large degree by Congress and President Bush, because they hold the purse strings.
The commission devising a blueprint to reconstruct the city will propose on Wednesday a complete reorganization of the troubled school system, the elimination of a 76-mile shipping channel that was a prime cause of flooding after Hurricane Katrina and the creation of a new jazz district downtown.
The commission report, several members said, will also advocate building a 53-mile light-rail system crisscrossing the city, connecting neighborhoods with the airport, downtown and other commercial centers. That system would be in addition to a separate heavy-rail system that would link New Orleans with Baton Rouge and the rest of the Gulf Coast.
The light-rail system, estimated to cost $3 billion, is intended to help spark redevelopment in areas of the city that were flooded.
Toward that end, the plan calls on the city to enlist developers to build at least four communities of 1,000 or more houses at stops along the proposed light-rail lines.
So, you want to build yourself a modern house? No problem, help yourself. Planning officers will fall over themselves to be supportive. On one condition - that no one can actually see the house you build.
For all too many planners, particularly in the fussier London boroughs - where those with the money to build something modern tend to live - new architecture is seen as a sort of contagion that needs to be kept firmly under control. But when the neighbours cannot complain, there is not much they can do, which is why the craftiest modern architects are becoming masters of the invisible house.
The trick is to find a site, almost invariably a backland site behind a house or shop, perhaps a yard or a redundant light industrial building or warehouse, with no outside walls, just a discreet entrance off the street. Buy it, knock down whatever is on the site, and the planners will leave you pretty well alone to build what you want.
" 'I am,’ I said, to no one there, and no one heard at all, not even the chair.”
A young police detective who spent nearly 500 hours sifting through rubble at Ground Zero has died of a lung disease connected to his cleanup efforts, police union officials said yesterday.
James Zadroga, 34, who died Thursday at his parents' New Jersey home, retired from the NYPD in July 2004 because of his deteriorating health. He is the first emergency worker to die from constant exposure to the Sept. 11 wreckage at the World Trade Center, said Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives' Endowment Association. ......................................................................................................................................................
Health studies indicate that many if not most of the thousands laboring at Ground Zero received neither proper respiratory masks nor warnings about airborne hazards. A survey of exposed iron workers by New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center revealed that in the first week, 74 percent had only disposable dust masks or no protection at all. A survey by New York City Fire Department of 319 firefighters showed that on the day of the disaster, nearly 80 percent had similarly inadequate protection.
While more firefighters obtained proper respiratory gear over the next two weeks, about half said they wore it only rarely. According to environmental scientist Paul Lioy’s report on the government’s emergency response, Ground Zero workers -- lacking proper training and accurate official safety information --had little incentive to wear the "uncomfortable and unmanageable" respiratory gear.
While city hall frets about politics, though, a new map of New Orleans is already being drawn.
In a sense, it's an old map. The wealthy strip of high ground alongside the Mississippi River that didn't flood -- the French Quarter, the central business district, the Garden District, Uptown -- resembles the footprint of the city circa 1850. They call this strip the Island, and while life there hasn't quite returned to normal, it's close enough for people to spend time devising new post-disaster routes for the upcoming Mardi Gras parades.
Out in what was marshland in 1850, much of the Lower Ninth is ruined. Some houses were swept off their foundations into the streets; others were simply pulverized into jagged piles of debris. Politics or no politics, whatever happens there will have to start with bulldozers.
The real problem lies in the endless city blocks, mile after mile after mile, that were flooded but not erased. You can start on the Island and drive north, toward Lake Pontchartrain, and soon you are in a silent, empty wasteland where all the houses have a visible waterline, sometimes at the windowsills, sometimes all the way up to the eaves. These vast neighborhoods aren't destroyed, but they aren't habitable, either.
The city's official blueprint for redevelopment after Hurricane Katrina, to be released on Wednesday, will recommend that residents be allowed to return and rebuild anywhere they like, no matter how damaged or vulnerable the neighborhood, according to several members of the mayor's rebuilding commission.
The proposal appears to put the city's rebuilding panel on a collision course with its state counterpart, which will control at least some of the flow of federal rebuilding money to the city.
The primary author of the plan, Joseph C. Canizaro, said teams of outside experts would try to help residents of each neighborhood decide whether to rebuild or relocate. Those teams would help increase the odds of success for those residents who decided to return, Mr. Canizaro said.
The commission will propose that the city should discourage homeowners from rebuilding in the hardest hit areas until a plan can be hammered out, but will not forbid them from doing so.
But ultimately, the areas that fail to attract a critical mass of residents in 12 months will probably not survive as residential neighborhoods, Mr. Canizaro said, and are likely to end up as marshland as the city's population declines and its footprint shrinks.
Building on coastal land below sea level, no matter where, is fundamentally a bad idea. Soil subsidence, coupled with rising ocean levels and increased storm activity caused by global climate change, will make existing lowlands even lower and ever more vulnerable to storm-induced flooding in the future.understood, but this guy fails to really address historic preservation and huge social issues in this essay. it makes you wonder if hes ever been down there. also sceptical of how houses on poles would withstand cat 4-5 hurricanes.
Building on coastal land subject to hurricanes and severe storm surges, at the mouth of the mighty Mississippi, is a bad idea made worse. Constructing miles of levees at great expense to make low-lying coastal land habitable is yet more absurd. It only compounds our collective foolishness, as does providing flood insurance for properties in chronically flooded areas.
An Ithaca College dean is encouraging students to instead think small -- and she's offering a $5,000 prize to do it. The school has invited high school and college students across America to submit a 30-second movie shot entirely with a cell phone.
It may come off like a gimmick, but Dean Dianne Lynch has no doubts about the contest's academic value.
In today's media marketplace -- where cell phones can take pictures, play music and games and connect to Web sites -- it's all about thinking small and mobile.
There are times when Norman Foster looks like two entirely different kinds of architect. Which one you get depends on which side of the Atlantic you happen to be. In London he has become a ubiquitous, monochrome presence, dressing everything from Wembley stadium to the Asprey jewellery store in the uniform of self-confident corporate modernism, like a reliable machine. But in New York, where he still has something to prove, and is operating at the top of his game, he is unbeatable as a brilliant architectural innovator.
In the city that perfected the skyscraper then repeated the formula endlessly, he is the European who has taken on the apparently impossible task of rescuing the high-rise from creative exhaustion. His just-completed new headquarters for the Hearst magazine empire, on Eighth Avenue, close to Central Park, succeeds in doing that, and deservedly is getting astonishingly enthusiastic coverage.
The New Yorker's architecture critic, Paul Goldberger, not normally overawed by Foster, calls him 'the Mozart of Modernism', and describes the tower as the most beautiful high-rise to be built in Manhattan since 1967. Goldberger is putting him in almost the same category as Mies van der Rohe and the Seagram tower, and he is right to do so. He is even more enthusiastic about the interior. He calls the lobby as much of a surprise as the spiral at the heart of Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum.
two columbus circle "recherché" - HM
Shelter Documenting a personal quest for non-toxic housing
everybody's an art critic...
A 76-year-old performance artist was arrested after attacking Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" _ a porcelain urinal _ with a hammer, police said.from here where they refer to more here
Duchamp's 1917 piece _ an ordinary white, porcelain urinal that's been called one of the most influential works of modern art _ was slightly chipped in the attack at the Pompidou Center in Paris, the museum said Thursday. It was removed from the exhibit for repair.
The suspect, a Provence resident whose identity was not released, already vandalized the work in 1993 _ urinating into the piece when it was on display in Nimes, in southern France, police said.
During questioning, the man claimed his hammer attack on Wednesday was a work of performance art that might have pleased Dada artists. The early 20th-century avant-garde movement was the focus of the exhibit that ends Monday, police said.
metro shed
Earlier this year John Gusto, a retiree, gave his 1939 house by Richard Neutra in Los Altos, Calif., to that city after nobody else would take it. In Florida, a house by Paul Rudolph was offered with a $50,000 bonus to anyone who would move it. In Quantico, Va., the Marine Corps, as part of a redevelopment of its base, is offering a group of metal Lustron houses from the 1940's for the cost of transporting them.
At a time when furniture by prominent 20th-century designers is selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars, these houses appear to be bargains. But even not-so-old houses come with problems. Moving a house can be costly, because any structure wider than a flatbed truck has to be cut into pieces before it can be transported. And midcentury houses are often tiny by today's standards. Dr. Ho, who is married with two children, said the house was not big enough for his family.
weve been getting traffic from the initials HM form here. they miss him. we are happy with NO.
NEW YORK -- One of the most famous delis in New York City may have served its last corned beef on rye.
The owner of the 2nd Avenue Deli said he closed the restaurant Sunday after a lease dispute with the building's new owners.
"My current rent is $24,000 a month for 2,800 square feet," Jack Lebewohl told The New York Times. "They want $33,000. I can't afford that."
Kisho Kurokawa
Nakagin Capsule Tower
Tokyo, Japan
The Nakagin Capsule Tower was the first capsule architecture design, the capsule as a room inserted into a mega-structure, built for actual use.
The Capsule Tower realizes the ideas of metabolism, exchangeability, recycleablity as the prototype of sustainable architecture.
Even before Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Dawdy had found ways to return to New Orleans. In 2004, she made an intriguing discovery while researching a possible archaeological site under an old French Quarter parking garage slated for demolition. Property records and advertisements from the 1820's said that the site had been the location of a hotel with an enticing name: the Rising Sun Hotel.
This month, workers are dismantling a rare steel house built in Charlestown Township, Pa., in 1946, saving it from being demolished for a subdivision.
The pieces of the three-bedroom, 900-square-foot house will be stored until the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia, which raised the $20,000 to dismantle the structure, can find a new owner. The house is free to anyone who promises to rebuild it.
The Acropolis in Athens made it, as did Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia, China's Great Wall, the Colosseum in Rome, the Inca temple of Machu Picchu in Peru, Stonehenge and the Moai - the Easter Island statues.
Less immediately obvious choices in a final shortlist of 21 contenders for the New Seven Wonders of the World, announced in Switzerland yesterday, included the Kremlin in Moscow, the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty.
When the Ouroussoff article came out I had just made my second visit to the revamped MoMA. My first visit involved one of the many opening galas when, sometime late in the evening after several vodka and sodas, two self-proclaimed "bloggers" asked me how I liked the new building. I told them I loathed it. "What do you mean?" one sputtered. I couldn't articulate an answer, but what I meant is I hated the grandeur of the place, how much it seemed to celebrate not the art or the objects but the exalted cultural role of the institution.
On my second visit I made peace with the building. I still don't care for the bombast of the communal spaces, but I'm happy with the contents of many of the galleries, especially the smaller ones housing prints and drawings, architecture and design. Granted the design gallery is no longer a sparsely populated hideaway on the top floor of the museum. And I'm nostalgic about the days when I would have the collection all to myself, but the bigger, brighter space surely reflects the new status of design in American popular culture.
About that same time I was also thinking about how hard it is to mount a really innovative contemporary industrial-design show these days. The problem--and it's not specific to MoMA--is that the products one can find on the shelves of almost any store are likely to be as varied, sophisticated, and inventive as the objects a museum can pull together. Stores can change inventory faster and with much less planning than a curator burdened with two-year lead times. When I visit the Cooper-Hewitt now I spend more time in the shop than in the galleries. Director of retail Gregory Krum was once the product manager at Moss, a Soho design shop that appropriated the aesthetic of a museum design gallery. Because he is a merchant, Krum can put his ideas into action without sitting through countless committee meetings. As a result the store is generally a better place to view fresh design.
It may be true that talents like Ms. Hadid and Mr. Koolhaas have sucked some of the oxygen from members of a younger generation struggling to find their footing in a celebrity-driven profession. The jury is still out on that one. But either way, these buildings prove that architecture is in the midst of a renaissance. Whatever one imagines about the egos of their architects, these projects exude a social dynamism and freedom - a thriving democratic ideal.
What's more, such buildings force us to re-examine corners of Modernist history that once seemed relegated to the scrapheap. Their architects are clearly influenced by talents as far ranging as Kevin Roche, Hans Scharoun and Oswald Mathias Ungers, whose tough, sometimes brutal forms were once excluded from the Modernist canon.
The problem is how few people seem capable of such a generous view of history. Recent landmark preservation battles in New York suggest that the civic powers-that-be insist on defending a narrow view of the past and of Modernism in particular. That became apparent during the crusade to preserve Edward Durell Stone's so-called lollipop building at 2 Columbus Circle, a landmark of late Modernism, when the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission refused to schedule a public hearing to consider its designation. As a result, the facade is being utterly revamped.
no top ten this year in memory of the town of my birth, new orleans louisiana
Can a mass-produced object become like an artwork? Die Welt's Uta Baier considers the question by looking at the recent legal battle over Marcel Breuer's B9 table, first made in 1925-26. As Baier reports, two German firms—Tecta and Knoll International—asked a Dusseldorf court to decide which company has the right to reproduce the table for the contemporary market. B9 has become a cult object because it is the first piece of furniture that Breuer made with steel tubes. (After experimenting with Duralumin pipes, a material used in the ‘20s in Dessau for aircraft construction, the Bauhaus architect decided upon steel tubing because it was cheaper.)
"The table's cult status means that a mass product became an expensive piece of design, a work of art that has stories to tell, justifying its high price," writes Baier. For the courts, the only story that counts is the contract that gives a firm the right to reproduce a design. While Breuer himself signed the contract with Knoll International in 1968, Tecta earned the right to reproduce B9 from Berlin's Bauhaus archive, which cooperated with Breuer's widow. As Baier notes, a lower court has decided in favor of Knoll because the company's contract is older. A higher court will decide the case on January 24.
“Entertainment is part of our culture, and as consumers of music we need to continue to support artists. Go out to a concert; on payday, go to your favourite music store and if you like that song that you burned off the Net, buy the album. As a creative city, let’s demonstrate our cultural values.”
What Galera’s letter to the editor underscores is a new reality for music lovers and the music industry: Buying an album is now a political act.
As with many contemporary thinkers, Eisenman rejects the redemptive notion of collective memory and its unexamined links to the sacred, which unite its celebrants in a reassuring cult of remembrance. Memorials, Eisenman has noted, are not about memory but about nostalgia. In this case, architecture becomes a hermeneutic, probing, questioning, withholding solace and thus closure. However challenged or troubled by the work, visitors are never overwhelmed nor reduced to anxious impotence. Nothing affects them without their active, willed participation. By avoiding an iconic design, Eisenman has ensured that the whole cannot be apprehended from any single vantage point. There is no center, no resting spot for the eye or the body, no therapeutic catharsis. The tight weave of the project never loosens its grip on visitors, or allows them to yield attention to apperception. They have to negotiate the narrow fissures between the somber stelae virtually in single file. Anamnesis becomes a personal rather than a collective endeavor, and the injunction to remember is left the responsibility of each individual spectator.
The Hurricane Katrina crisis began for Bruneau on Monday, August 29th, shortly after the storm had passed through. A young woman lay dead in the middle of the 1900 block of Jackson Avenue. Her skull was crushed, and a fallen street light, blown down by the ninety-five-mile-an-hour winds, lay beside her. Along Jackson Avenue, people were emerging from shotgun shacks into a world of smashed oak trees and downed power lines. Some of them knew the woman. She had gone out during the storm to buy drugs.
plastic fantastic
albini desk from retromodern
Television producers Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson came up with the idea of casting a rock-and-roll band that could star in its own televison series on NBC. They ran an ad in Variety and selected four young men to serve as members of the band: Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork, Davy Jones, and Micky Dolenz. They produced a pilot and called the group the Monkees. It was Boyce and Hart who did the songs for the pilot in 1966, including the singing. When rock impressario Don Kirschner was brought in to handle the music for the show, he told Boyce and Hart they didn't have a proven track record as producers and they were off the project, except as songwriters. As the show's first air date loomed, one music producer after another was acquired and then rejected for the project, while Tommy Boyce kept telling Kirschner that he and Bobby could handle it. Kirschner finally gave them a chance, Boyce and Hart recorded vocals and backing tracks for the first album, and then the Monkees recorded lead vocals.
But there are plenty of buyers, with some seeking investments and others just needing a place to live after losing a home. Most people are buying "high and dry," to borrow the term on every broker's lips since Katrina, but even that seems a surprising vote of confidence in the long-term prospects of New Orleans and the surrounding parishes. In the West Bank area, which lies west of the Mississippi River, November sales were up 99 percent, in dollar terms, over November 2004, according to data provided by Latter & Blum. And in the high-priced Garden and Warehouse districts, the firm's November sales more than doubled.
stern strike fist
"anybody die yet?"
also available : dennis, jeanne, frances, ivan, charlie, floyd, gorges, rita, bonnie, fran, bertha, andrew...
Uncle Tom's Cabin will one day be open to the public.
The owner of an 18th-century Colonial in Bethesda, Md., listed a three-bedroom house and attached 205-year-old log cabin for sale for $995,000 in October. Josiah Henson, a slave who lived on the former tobacco plantation for 30 years, inspired the Uncle Tom character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel.
Located on a one-acre site surrounded by McMansions, the house was not protected as a local landmark, so Montgomery County officials sprung into action, raising money to match a $1 million offer. Owner Greg Mallet-Prevost, whose mother owned the house since the 1960s, accepted the county's offer on Dec. 23.