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CHICAGO — Echo Global Logistics, Inc. (NASDAQ: ECHO), a leading provider of technology-enabled transportation and supply chain management services, announced today its selection by Transport Topics as the number four firm on the publication's "Top 25 Freight Brokerage Firms" list. The annual listing ranked freight brokerage firms by their net revenue. In 2012, Echo Global Logistics reported net revenue of $143.1 million and total revenue of $757.7 million for the year ended December 31, 2012.
"Every accolade we receive further cements our status as a leading transportation services firm," said Doug Waggoner, Chief Executive Officer of Echo Global Logistics. "Our freight brokerage business continues to grow year over year, and we are very pleased to achieve such a high ranking on Transport Topics' annual list. We are well positioned to continue this growth trend and look forward to boosting our revenue and our footprint in 2013."
The "Top 25 Freight Brokerage Firms" list is a part of Transport Topics annual "Transport Topics Logistics 50," an annual survey of the largest logistics companies, covering freight management and forwarding, brokerage services and warehousing and distribution. To view the entire Transport Topics Logistics 50 rankings, visit http://ttnews.com/log50/2012/2012log50.pdf.
Echo Global Logistics was recently named the 2012 Carrier of the Year by Monster Beverage Company, a leading marketer and distributor of energy drinks and various popular alternative beverages.


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We're sorry, but we currently have no tickets available for this event.
Tom Petty Ticket Information
Established in the mid-1970s, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers has long been at the forefront of the genre as evidenced by the numerous achievements attained by the group throughout its legendary decades-long run that's shown little sign of stopping. Equipped with the innate ability to produce catchy, fan favorite tracks virtually right from the start, the group arrived on the music scene with a self-titled album and top-40 track in "Breakdown." The first Platinum-certified record was secured a short time later via "Damn the Torpedoes," which proved to be just the beginning for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and notable milestones, as later down the road, the band's iconic 1993 "Greatest Hits" compilation earned the RIAA's prestigious Diamond certification thanks to the inclusion of classics like "American Girl," "I Won't Back Down," and "Free Fallin," just to name a few. Experience all the hits from the incredible discography live with a purchase of Tom Petty tickets from Vivid Seats.
- All dates included in the Tom Petty tour with tickets currently available in the marketplace can be found in the table above, typically displayed according to date or location. If you can't find what you're looking for while shopping for tickets to see Tom Petty live, call 866.848.8499 or connect over Live Chat to speak with an in-house customer service representative available seven days a week over extended business hours.
- To continue shopping online, once you've found the Tom Petty concert you'd like to attend, click the "Tickets" link to proceed to the next screen, which will house all listings for the show alongside a venue-specific seating map (when applicable). Listings for Tom Petty tour dates can be sorted as needed by price, quantity, section, or row.
- Advance to checkout by pressing the "Buy" button associated with the Tom Petty tickets that meet your needs. Both new and returning customers will be prompted to log in with an email address. From inside your profile, input all payment and delivery information needed to complete the order. Once the transaction has been received, we'll contact the seller for confirmation of the sale of your selected Tom Petty tickets.
Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers Tour
Since the late 1970s, Tom Petty tour appearances have offered prime opportunities to experience the work of this acclaimed singer-songwriter in person. This Florida native has been hailed as an exceptionally talented live performer, and with more than four decades' worth of experience on the stage, Petty knows how to keep an audience happy. Whether he's performing solo, with the Heartbreakers, or with an all-star lineup like his former supergroup, the Traveling Wilburys, each Tom Petty tour is designed to please his legions of fans around the world with greatest hits and deep cuts alike.
A complete schedule of all upcoming Tom Petty tour dates will be featured at the top of the page.
Tom Petty Ticket Prices
How Much Are Tom Petty Tickets?
No matter what you're looking to spend, Vivid Seats has tickets to fit your budget. There are always great deals to be found at Vivid Seats. Prices will fluctuate based on many factors such as inventory and demand, so be sure to get your cheap tickets to see Tom Petty live before it's too late!
Tom Petty Songs and Setlists
There are many Tom Petty songs that fans want to hear when they go to see him in concert. The biggest crowd-pleasers, and most-performed songs of Petty's career, include "American Girl," "Refugee," "Runnin' Down a Dream," "I Won't Back Down," "Free Fallin'," and "Mary Jane's Last Dance." Songs from side projects like the Traveling Wilburys are another common addition to Tom Petty setlists. The single "Handle with Care" is another of Petty's most-performed songs.
Other Tom Petty covers that have become popular features of his concerts include Them's "Gloria," The Byrds' "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n Roll Star," Fleetwood Mac's "Oh Well," and The Isley Brothers' "Shout."
Sample Tom Petty Setlist
Mary Jane's Last Dance
American Dream Plan B
Don't Do Me Like That
Forgotten Man
I Won't Back Down
Free Fallin'
A Woman in Love (It's Not Me)
U Get Me High
Yer So Bad
Learning to Fly
Shadow People
I Should Have Known It
If you often find yourself wondering when is Tom Petty touring again, watch this Rock and Roll Hall of Famer perform in the fan-filmed video below. When you're done, you can view the list of Tom Petty concert dates for the months ahead by scrolling back to the top of the page.
Tom Petty Tickets Information
2014 Tour Dates Announced for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
On May 20, after days of teasing via social media, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers confirmed dates for a 2014 North American tour with special guest, Steve Winwood. Regular summer outings have become a staple of the long-running group and for the first time in several years, the trek will coincide with the release of a brand new Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers album. The band's 13th studio album, which also will be the first since 2010, is reportedly entitled "Hypnotic Eye," and is set to be released on July 29, just a few before the start of the tour.
The venture will launch Aug. 3 from Viejas Arena in San Diego and from there, will hit just over 25 cities over a roughly two-month span. Many of the earlier dates will keep the band on the West Coast which also will coincide with its previously scheduled appearance at San Francisco's Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival on Aug. 9. While Tom Petty and Co. are scheduled to hit a wide variety of familiar sites along the way, such as Washington's The Gorge (Aug. 15), Chicago's United Center (Aug. 23), and New York's Madison Square Garden (Sept. 10), after decades of live performances, they also will finally make their debut at one of baseball's most iconic venues. On Aug. 30, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers will take the stage at Fenway Park in Boston for the first time ever and the date also marks the only outdoor stadium show lined up for the 2014 trek.

subset: commoncrawl


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New Quaker Oat Campaign, and the Dawn of an Oatmeal Trend
I first spotted the new Quaker oat campaign last weekend on a huge billboard in Manhattan facing the Hudson. "Go humans, go." Just three words next to a close-up face shot of the iconic William Penn. His smile is creepy, but I guess you can get away with creepy when you're a figurehead for warm bowls of breakfast goop.
Calling us humans though? That somehow brings him back to creepy status. Is he differentiating us from aliens? And where are we going? To a twisted oatmeal cult land where we all wear Quaker hats and have awesome cholesterol? (Not that I wouldn't mind checking that out.) Something about the wigged man's national campaign, which launched this month, seems apocalyptic—not a word usually associated with the fibrous flakes.
What is up with oatmeal these days?
It's all over the place.
Chains like Starbucks and Cosi are selling to-go bowls in the morning, with Jamba Juice (the best in my opinion) running a $1 promotion this month. An episode of Top Chef this season opened with an oat-themed Quickfire.
The Quaker Oats brand has a Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube pages. A glitzy Times Square ad. Oprah's former personal chef, Art Smith, has become a traveling spokesman for Quaker.
And New York Times columnist Mark Bittman cannot get enough of the little grain. He fearlessly plugs savory oatmeal (yes, wrap your head around that one), especially in his new book Food Matters.
Oatmeal is entering a golden age, and shoot, who's complaining? Cheap, easy, and stickable to your bones, oatmeal is like the best friend everyone wants. It's down for whatever (nuts, dried fruits, various milks), can get ready in a jiffy (at least in instant packet form), and isn't remotely pretentious (just a peasant food behind all the toppings). And with this new campaign, oatmeal has proven it's also a bit creepy. But really, who isn't?
It's the latest in the humble-to-haute comfort food revival trend, and if that means people will stop yapping about bacon and cupcakes for a second, I say, show us what you've got little oat.
Sesame-Crusted Oat Fritters with Chimichurri Dipping Sauce
Fast-Food Oatmeal: The Good, the Bland, and the Goopy
Oatmeal Is Starbucks' Most Popular Food Launch
All products linked here have been independently selected by our editors. We may earn a commission on purchases, as described in our affiliate policy.


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World of Goo 2 "a possibility," original coming to iPad
More goo for you, sir.
2dboy headlines
2DBoy details Goo "donations" over time
2DBoy's gone live with yet more stats from its well-judged pay-what-you-like World of Goo offer, this time showing how the average amount people spent on the game rose and fell with time.There's also a table there showing which countries were the most generous. Switzerland was most ready with its wonga, Turkey the least.
GDC: 2DBoy details how to succeed as an indie
2DBoy's Ron Carmel has just given a GDC talk on how to succeed as an independent game creator. It can be summed up as follows, according to Destructoid:1. Make a good game. 2. Get press by emailing indie-friendly outlets like Destructoid, Penny Arcade, RockPaperShotgun, or Destructoid to get exposure for your game. 3. Establish a […]
2DBoy to speak at Nordic Game
2DBoy's Kyle Gabler will deliver a speech at Nordic Game titled, "Developing your own game".It's actually part of the show's Career Expo bit, but it'll be a good look at the thinking behind making World of Goo, if nothing else.Nordic Game and it Career Expo will be held on May 19-20 in Malmö, Sweden.Press release […]


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House passes Rep. McNerney's Amendment to Fund Law Enforcement Technology ProgramsThe amendment would award grants to law enforcement agencies so that they can purchase needed technologies to help protect our communities.
Visiting with Local Students During Their Trip to Washington, DCCongressman McNerney meets with local elementary students from Stockton to discuss the importance of getting involved in public service.
Supporting our Veterans at a ParadeCongressman McNerney is committed to supporting those who have bravely served our country in the military by ensuring that they receive access to the quality benefits they have earned.
Home Page Tabs
From Jerry's Desk
Dec 4, 2014 Press Release
Nov 21, 2014 Press Release
In The News
Jul 3, 2014 In The News


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by Otessa #1 Happy Birthday to you, David Bowie. Bowie's b'day was yesterday, fyi. And the thin white duke has the distinct honor of being 1 of 300 people, to decline HRH, the Queen's offer of knighthood. In Ashley's words: … Continue reading
January 9, 2012
by Otessa
0 comments


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Sir Wilfrid Laurier, prime minister of Canada 1896–1911, lawyer, journalist, politician (born 20 November 1841 in St-Lin, Canada East; died 17 February 1919 in Ottawa, ON). As leader of the Liberal Party 1887–1919 and prime minister 1896–1911, Laurier was the dominant political figure of his era. A skilful and pragmatic politician with a charismatic personality, he unceasingly sought compromise. Above all, he was a fervent promoter of national unity at a time of radical change and worsening cultural conflict. Laurier also promoted the development and expansion of the country, encouraging immigration to Western Canada, supporting the construction of another transcontinental railway, and overseeing the addition of two provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Education and Early Career
While studying law at McGill, Laurier established close ties with radical members of the Parti Rouge, including one of his professors, Toussaint-Antoine-Rodolphe Laflamme. He also became vice-president (1864–1866) of the Institut Canadien, a literary society with Rouge links. After obtaining his law degree from McGill in 1864 and practising in Montréal, Laurier went in 1866 to live in L'Avenir and then Arthabaska, Québec, where he ran the newspaper Le Défricheur. Like the Liberals of Lower Canada, Laurier opposed Confederation, arguing both that the federal government would have too much power, and that French Canadians would be overwhelmed. In 1871, when the Catholic Church in Québec, led by Bishop Bourget, was ferociously attacking the Rouges and liberalism, Laurier became the Liberal member for Drummond-Arthabaska in the Québec legislature. In place of his earlier radical liberalism, he adopted a position of moderate liberalism, which he hoped would be more acceptable to the Catholic clergy. He also decided, like many other Liberals, to accept Confederation as a fait accompli and to work within the new system. In 1874, he resigned his provincial seat and ran for election to the House of Commons of Canada. Thus began an uninterrupted stay of some 45 years in Ottawa.
Federal Politics
In October 1877, some months after giving a vigorous speech in Québec City in defence of political liberalism, he was appointed minister of inland revenue in Alexander Mackenzie's Cabinet. The most prominent Liberal of his province, Laurier became the recognized leader of the Québec wing of the party. However, his party's defeats in the elections of 1878 and 1882 meant a curb to his ambitions, though he himself was re-elected in Québec-Est, and he took less interest in political debate. In 1885, his ardour was aroused by the hanging of Louis Riel and he vigorously defended the cause of the Métis leader and the need to unite the French and English in Canada. In 1887, Edward Blake, disappointed by the recent electoral defeat, chose Laurier to succeed him as leader of the Liberal Party, despite the opposition of a number of eminent Liberals. They believed he was too easygoing and too physically weak to be an effective leader (he suffered from chronic bronchitis for much of his life). They also feared that Ontarians would associate him with Riel, and that Catholic clergy in Québec still viewed him as a radical.
Leader of the Liberal Party
From 1887 on, Laurier devoted himself to building a truly national party and to regaining power gradually. His efforts were divided into two distinct phases. The first and less successful, 1887–91, emphasized the policy of unrestricted reciprocity with the United States; announced in 1888, the program was rejected in the 1891 general election. Perceived as a continentalist and as anti-British, Laurier was rejected by the Canadian electorate even though, for the first time since 1874, Québec gave a majority of its seats to the Liberals.
The second more fruitful phase took place between 1891 and 1896; this was the period when Laurier, more sure of himself, built a strong national Liberal Party while the Conservatives, after the death of Sir John A. Macdonald, were mired in difficulties. In 1893, Laurier organized an impressive political convention in Ottawa, which approved a new program and the basis for a truly national structure. In the 1896 election, the education rights of the Catholic minority in Manitoba became an important issue; in 1890, Manitoba Liberals had established a uniform school system in place of the separate school system enjoyed to that point, prompting protest from the Catholic minority (see Manitoba Schools Question). Laurier avoided taking a definite stand, but French Canadians believed he would be more supportive of minority rights than the Conservatives would. On 23 June 1896, Canadians chose Laurier over Conservative Charles Tupper to lead their country as prime minister.
Prime Minister of Canada
Contrary to the expectations of many French Canadians, Laurier did not champion the minority rights of Catholics in Manitoba. Instead, his focus as prime minister was on the country's development and on implementing policies designed to heal the wounds to national unity. In 1896, with the signing of the Laurier-Greenway agreement, the prime minister decided the fate of educational rights for Manitoba's Catholic minority: never again would this group have the separate schools it enjoyed prior to 1890, although it would be possible to obtain religious instruction during the last half-hour of the school day and instruction in a language other than English. (See also History of Education and Francophone-Anglophone Relations.)
In the name of national harmony and the politics of the "lesser evil," Laurier thus launched his policies of compromise, which kept him in power for many years but never completely redressed the wrongs committed against the Catholic minority.
He adopted a similar approach to relations with Britain. Shortly after becoming prime minister, Laurier began to reorganize the immigration system with Clifford Sifton, and, with William Fielding, he finalized the details of a tariff policy based on imperial preference. Not long after, Laurier went in 1897 to London, England, to participate in his first colonial conference and to receive a knighthood. Guided by his belief in the future independence of Canada, he resisted every effort the British Empire made toward federation of the empire in political, economic, or military terms. Nonetheless, in 1899, he agreed to help defray the costs of transportation and matériel of Canadians wishing to fight for England in the South African War; this conciliatory stance would bring reproach from those French Canadians fiercely opposed to any participation. However, Laurier and his Liberals easily won the 1900 general election, well supported by Québec, which gave them 57 of its 65 seats. His personal popularity in Québec likely played a role in this result.
After the 1900 victory at the polls, Laurier led his country forcefully. Within Cabinet, it was he who directed policy, and he did not hesitate to push aside dissenters such as the powerful Israël Tarte, who was forced to resign in 1902. In this year Laurier also commanded attention outside the country when, at the colonial conference in London, he again opposed all proposals to unify the Empire. In 1903, shortly after the failure of the Alaska Boundary discussions with the US, Laurier revealed the most important policy of his second term: the construction of a second transcontinental railway.
The Transcontinental Railway
The Grand Trunk Pacific would build the section from Winnipeg westward, while the government would undertake the construction of a line (called the National Transcontinental) from Moncton and Québec City to Winnipeg. Indeed, Laurier was so optimistic about the nation's progress that he allowed the Canadian Northern Railway to build a third transcontinental. By agreeing to this multiplication of railways, much of it at public expense, Laurier mortgaged the future with a heavy financial burden. At the peak of his prestige, Laurier allowed nothing to check his ambitions as prime minister. Moreover, the people agreed and re-elected him with a comfortable majority on 3 November 1904.
The Creation of Alberta and Saskatchewan
In 1905, Laurier succeeded in adding two new provinces to the Dominion of Canada: Alberta and Saskatchewan. However, the addition of these provinces also meant that a decision had to be made regarding the educational rights of the Catholic minority. Once again, yielding to pressure from anglophones and Protestants, Laurier took refuge behind the status quo of one uniform school system, thus depriving the minorities of separate schools. As a result, the last chance to establish genuine cultural dualism throughout Canada was lost.
Offended by this retreat, French Canadian nationalists bitterly criticized Laurier, whose prestige in Québec began to fade. Thus began the progressive decline of the Laurier government. In the years that followed, the prime minister sought chiefly to counter accusations of corruption and patronage within his administration and to rebuild his Cabinet. In the 1908 general election, Canadians once again entrusted him with their destiny. While his party's majority was somewhat reduced, it was still quite strong in Québec. After 1908, Laurier focused his attention primarily on two bills, which, in the final analysis, resulted in his defeat.
Controversial Policies and Defeat at the Polls
In 1910, the Naval Service Act established a Canadian navy of five cruisers and six destroyers, which would be ready to fight with Great Britain anywhere in the world. Insufficient in the eyes of English Canadian imperialists, excessive according to French Canadian nationalists led by Henri Bourassa, this moderate measure would cost Laurier precious support, especially in Québec.
The second bill concerned reciprocity with the US, the old Liberal dream of 1891. Brought to the Commons early in 1911, it permitted the free trade of most natural products but only a small number of manufactured products. . Despite the attractions of the plan, it raised the ire of Canadian industrialists and provided a target for the Conservative Party under R.L. Borden, who accused the Liberals of disloyalty toward England and of leading the country towards political annexation. To settle the issue the prime minister called a general election and, on 21 September 1911, suffered a bitter defeat.
Leader of the Opposition
Laurier was an energetic and vigilant leader of the Opposition. If he failed to adapt his liberalism as progressive Liberals would have wished, he kept his troops united until at least 1916, and relentlessly attacked the government's failure to address problems such as the rising cost of living. Laurier achieved some success in rebuilding the Liberal party. Prior to 1914, he fought mainly against the emergency contribution of $35 million offered to Great Britain to help strengthen its navy, and against the financial assistance given to the Canadian Northern Railway. In 1916, he defended the rights of Franco-Ontarians to bilingual instruction in schools, increasing his popularity among French Canadians.
Out of personal conviction, Laurier vigorously supported Canadian participation in the First World War. He ardently promoted voluntary enrolment and proposed a political truce. In 1915–16, at age 75, he held several recruiting meetings. In 1917, when the country was plunged into national crisis following imposition of military Conscription, Laurier again turned to compromise. To save Canada's threatened unity, he refused to support this measure, which was so repulsive to Québec, and proposed instead a referendum and continued voluntary enlistment. This time, because his proposal was not supported by the majority of English Canadians, the formula collapsed in general bitterness.
Opposed by English Canadians, but idolized by French Canadians, Laurier became a symbol of division within the country. Now even his party disintegrated when several eminent English Canadian Liberals crossed the floor to join the Union Govenment in which Laurier refused to participate. In the general election of December 1917, Laurier was overwhelmingly defeated by Borden's Unionist Party, with the vote divided along distinctly cultural lines. After the Armistice was declared on 11 November 1918 and the First World War brought to an end, Laurier began a courageous effort to restructure his party and to rebuild Canadian unity; he died on 17 February 1919.
Under Laurier's leadership, the country continued its industrialization and urbanization and was strengthened by the addition of two provinces and two million inhabitants. A clever and eloquent politician, a true legend in his own time, Laurier has been judged in a variety of ways. For some, he was the spiritual successor to Macdonald, who pursued and consolidated Confederation. For others, Laurier, in the name of national unity and necessary compromise, too often sacrificed the interest of French Canadian Catholics to those of a majority little inclined to support the ideals of Confederation. Conversely, some think he too often governed his country with only Québec's interest in mind. Support for each of these opinions can be found in Laurier's actions in Ottawa but the last view is most open to argument.


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At first glance, the wooden stake erected in the nondescript patch of dirt does not appear to be particularly remarkable in any way. But, if a wooden stake could tell its story, the original claim post at Bonanza Creek, where the first pieces of gold that ignited the Yukon Territory's Klondike Gold Rush were discovered, would surely tell a whopper.
Planted in the ground on Aug. 17, 1896, today the Discovery Claim National Historic Site preserves the spot on Bonanza Creek, 15 kilometres from its confluence with the Klondike River, where George Carmack and his fishing buddies, Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie established the first of their four claims.
According to the oral history traditions of the Tagish First Nations peoples, Jim, Charlie and Patsy Henderson were fishing with Jim's sister, Shaaw Tla, and her husband, George Carmack when they were approached by a seasoned gold hunter, Robert Henderson. Following the unwritten code of the miner that any knowledge of potential finds must be shared, Henderson told Carmack of some promising prospects he'd discovered in the Klondike River Valley.
Not long afterward, Carmack, Jim and Charlie made their way up Rabbit Creek, a short ways from Henderson's camp on Gold Bottom Creek. After panning yielded a few encouraging traces of gold, they inspected a place where the bedrock was exposed, and quickly unearthed a dime-sized nugget. Flipping over loose stones, they discovered layers of gold wedged between flakes of rock. The following day they staked their claim and renamed the creek Bonanza.
News of their find spread as fast as news did in those days — by ship — when wealthy Klondikers docked at San Francisco and Seattle many months later. Since few hungry prospectors could afford to travel by steamer from the Alaska Coast up the Yukon River to Dawson City, most sailed as far as Skagway then continued on foot via the Chilkoot or White Pass trails. Those who survived the gruelling wilderness trek and ensuing long winter layover at Lake Lindeman and Bennett Lake spent that time building boats for the 800-kilometre voyage to Dawson City.
In May 1898, an astounding 4,700 vessels of various shapes, sizes and degrees of seaworthiness ferried some 28,000 eager fortune seekers past a Northwest Mounted Police (NWMP) checkpoint at Tagish Post, en route to Dawson and the Klondike. While prospectors tended smoky fires in an attempt to thaw frozen ground to unearth their destiny, steamships stocked Dawson City with the finest French champagnes, oysters, linens and Parisian fashions. In two short years, the population of the Yukon Territory to exploded from 5,000 of the hardiest fur traders, prospectors, missionaries and NWMP members to 30,000 determined and optimistic fortune seekers. For a time, Dawson City was the largest city west of Winnipeg and north of Seattle. While the Gold Rush ended abruptly after two years, during that time more than $500 million in gold was recovered.
Today, the lure of the Klondike Gold Rush shimmers as brightly as ever. Enticed by tales describing glittering gold nuggets lining gravel streambeds, the Discovery Claim National Historic Site attracts 8,500 visitors annually. Following a self-guided trail that winds past the site where hundreds of men tore up creekbeds and hand-turned windlasses, visitors learn about the evolution of mining techniques and how the discovery of gold impacted the land and the peoples of the Yukon.
At Dawson City, folks enthusiastically immerse themselves in grit of the enduring gold rush ambience. Running May 18 to 19, the Dawson City Annual Gold Show www.dawsongoldshow.ca is a thoroughly modern industry and consumer trade show displaying the region's interconnected economical sectors, with mining at its hub. Celebrating Canada Day with a Klondike theme, the Yukon Gold Panning Championships www.dawsoncity.ca happen on July 1, with competitors from around the world racing to extract gold flakes from a bucket of dirt. And while many other parts of Canada celebrate a civic holiday on the first Monday of August, Yukoners celebrate their own Discovery Day with a uniquely northern—and gold-tinted—flair on the third Monday of the month, complete with historical street theatre.
Thanks to efforts by Parks Canada as well as non-profit groups and private individuals, much of Dawson's physical history is preserved in its dirt streets, wooden sidewalks and the distinctive turn of the 20th century architecture showcased in its Court House, heritage churches and even the homes of Pierre Berton and Robert Service. The colourful wild north ambience is joyously preserved in the kicks of can-can dancers at Diamond Tooth Gerties, where some rounds are still occasionally purchased by modern-day miners celebrating a lucky strike.
"The Gold Rush — it's still happening!" exclaims Paul Robitaille, of the Klondike Visitors Association www.dawsoncity.ca . "Gold will always hold a mystical power over people; we still have the amazing potential to find a gold nugget. Gold is still at people's fingertips."


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Ginger and crushed red pepper help round out the Thai theme of this quick dish.
- Yield
- Makes 4 servings
- 12 ounces pork tenderloin, trimmed, cut into 1 1/2x1/4-inch strips
- 4 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 1/2 tablespoons honey
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1/4 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
- 1 pound green beans, trimmed, cut into 1 1/2-inch lengths
- 1 cup matchstick-size strips peeled carrots (about 2 medium)
- 2 tablespoons canola oil
- 1 large red bell pepper, cut into 1 1/2x1/4-inch strips
- 1 tablespoon minced peeled fresh ginger
- 3 green onions, thinly sliced
- 1/4 cup finely chopped lightly salted dry-roasted peanuts
- Mix pork, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 1 tablespoon honey, half of garlic, and crushed red pepper in medium bowl. Mix remaining 3 tablespoons soy sauce and remaining 1/2 tablespoon honey in small bowl; set aside.
- Cook green beans in large saucepan of boiling salted water until crisp-tender, about 3 minutes. Add carrots to green beans in water; cook 1 minute. Drain carrots and green beans. Heat 1 tablespoon canola oil in wok or large nonstick skillet over high heat. Add pork mixture; stir-fry 1 minute. Transfer pork to dish. Add remaining 1 tablespoon canola oil to wok; add red bell pepper and stir-fry 1 minute. Add green beans, carrots, ginger, and remaining garlic; stir-fry 1 minute. Return pork to wok along with reserved soy sauce-honey mixture; stir until heated through, about 1 minute. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Transfer to bowl. Sprinkle with sliced green onions and chopped peanuts and serve.
Per serving: calories, 318; total fat, 16 g; saturated fat, 3 g; cholesterol, 56 mg; fiber, 6 g


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Despite a lagging economy and softness in the bike biz, Seattle Bike Expo 2010 drew its biggest crowds since the mid-2000s over the past weekend.
Around 9,300 attendees, including vendors and staff, crowded into the Expo's new venue at Smith Cove — a boost of 21 percent over the past two years.
The number is well short of the record of 12,871, set in 1995 when the show was at Seattle Center's Exhibition Hall and Mercer Forum Room. But given its recent downturn from the 10,000 level earlier in the decade, this year's show is a solid indication that Expo is back on the rebound.
"We got positive feedback from all quarters," said Peter Verbrugge, events promoter for the sponsoring Seattle-based Cascade Bicycle Club. Exhibitors "really liked" the new hall with its spectacular views of Puget Sound. ATMs ran out of money "twice, so you have to assume people were buying stuff," he added.
The show accommodated more than 3,000 cars on Saturday and more than 1,000 bikes in bike parking. Verbrugge said route signage to the new location will be improved next year as well as some tweaks on-site for exhibitors. (With more than 300 booths available, the number of exhibitors this year did break the show's all-time record of 144 in 2005.)
After years of moving around Seattle in search of a permanent home, Smith Cove appears to be a keeper for Expo. Verbrugge is already stoked over next year's prospects: "We'll be aiming for record attendance in 2011!" he said.


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Recommended Styles
About Our Rings
VAHAN Jewelry is designed and produced in New York.
Most rings are made with sizing bars to accommodate easy sizing.
Our diamonds are certified and ethically sourced.
All diamonds are SI1-SI2 clarity, and G-H color. What does this mean?
All stones are mounted in 14k gold to ensure the highest quality setting. Why?
VAHAN uses a variety of genuine precious and semi-precious colored gemstones.
Cleaning & Care
VAHAN bracelet bands have a limited lifetime warranty.
See our warranty information for details.


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Rainbow Paris offers furnished vacation apartments in Paris for the gay and gay-friendly community at affordable prices from 3 days to several months.With Rainbow Paris. you 'll live like a true Parisian in an apartment fully equipped with everything you'll need for your stay.:
- sheets
- towels
- stove
- refrigerator
- heating
- electrity
"Faites comme chez vous" - make yourself at home. You can shop in the local markets, cook your own meals and even invite your new found friends for dinner. You'll find clean towels and linen at your disposal and most of our apartments come with a free broadband internet connection.The Rainbow Paris. team is at your service before and during your stay to help you get the most out of your stay.:
Whether with friends or family, everyone can stay in the same apartment. No frustrations from renting separate, independent hotel rooms. You and your children will be lodged under the same roof, in same apartment. You no longer have to worry about ending up down the hall from your children or even on another floor.
La Notre Dame de Paris
Make yourself at home
Each apartment has its own character and ambiance. Your holiday apartment owner will give you tips about the best places to go in your area; she'll help you find the closest supermarket, the best restaurants and tastiest pastry shops. Feel free to ask questions. The flat owners are proud of their neighbourhoods and take delight in helping you discover the best addresses. This is your apartment, so make yourself at home. Invite guests over for a glass of wine. Settle down in your furnished apartment. Youre in Paris now, so be Parisian.
What can be more romantic than a holiday rental in the City of Love? Find an amorous hideaway for two. Whether you prefer to escape to a quiet, picturesque flat or jump into the party atmosphere in a trendy neighbourhood, Rainbow Paris has the short term rental for you.
La Bastille
Control your time and budget
Choose the location of your apartment that's best adapted to your wishes, needs and lifestyle. You'll discover that you get a lot more for your money than you would in a hotel in the same neighbourhood. All of the apartments have fully equipped kitchens. You can cook in your own vacation rental without having to worry about high priced restaurants or the quality of food at a low budget restaurant. If you have a special diet or allergies, you control the content of your meals. Arrival and departure times can be more flexible. As long as there's no conflict with another client, most owners will let you arrive at and leave your holiday flat when it's most convenient for you.
From 05 January 2019 to 01 March 2019 Rainbow Paris is offering a 20% discount on participating apartments. Click here to see the list of apartments at 20% off.
rue Mayran
9th District
105€ ⁄Night 735 € ⁄Week
Sleeps 2
rue du Temple
4th District
90€ ⁄Night 590 € ⁄Week
Sleeps 2
Renter Comments
Apartment 82: The apartment was perfectly located and exceeded our expectations in terms of what we saw when we booked it online. We loved the location and one of our highlights were the Rue Mouffetard market down the road - where one could buy the most amazing fresh produce! we would love to go back and stay in the apartment in future.
Apartment 2: Good view, comfortable apartment at a great price. A relaxing place after a day of sightseeing
Apartment 97: I stayed here my last visit. As always, everything was wonderful. Excellent location, close to Metro & bus, shopping, cafes. Quiet apt. off courtyard. Very well appointed.
Apartment 77: I definitely got my money's worth. Convenient location, quiet courtyard and decently equipped apartment. I especially appreciate its quietness. The real star however, is the neighbourhood. The Temple Park area of the Marais District is an absolute gem with great parks, cafes, shops and markets. And not too many tourists, unlike other neighbourhoods!
Apartment 285: We were very happy with the apartment and Jean Michel was prompt and welcoming on arrival. He went to exceptional lengths to help us with private parking for our motorbike to make sure we were not taken advantage of. The apartment itself was very clean and presentable with it's own cosy atmosphere


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Fire guts Kansas City family's east side home
At least 6 people live in the home
An early morning fire gutted a Kansas City family's east side home.
Firefighters were called to 33rd Street and College Avenue about 4:30 a.m.
KMBC's Brenda Washington reported that flames were shooting from the home's windows and doors when fire crews first arrived at the scene.
A family of six lives in the house. The homeowner said he was at work and his fiancee was at the hospital when the fire broke out. Other family members were staying elsewhere.
Firefighters were able to bring the blaze under control. No injuries were reported.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation. The homeowner said fire investigators told him that it appears the fire started in the kitchen, and that the oven door was open.
Live coverage continues on KMBC 9 News right now.


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Essex community reacts to closure of Currier investigation
Police: Serial killer confessed to murder, killed himself
Neighbors of Bill and Loraine Currier say even with answers on what happened to the couple and the man who police say killed them, dealing with the situation is not easy.
"You don't know how to wrap your head around it," said neighbor Paula Poulin.
She says even with the suspect gone, she'll never really be at ease knowing that a couple was kidnapped three houses down.
A man who lives right next door to the Curriers' old house said he wants to know more about the suspect, Israel Keyes -- specifically about who he was, what his motives might have been, and why the crime happened in this community.
Since police couldn't share information until now, the questions and lack of information left people to start imagining their own answers.
"We have many different ways of dealing with it. When we have a consensus -- the truth -- then we, as a community, can go forward," said Christine Wilkens, a licensed clinical mental health counselor.
Wilkens directs Azimuth Counseling & Therapeutic Services in Essex.
She says getting answers and learning that the community is safe again is vital. She also says the people closest to the case need support.
"Everyone in the community -- our hearts have been with the Currier family, and they will still be with the Currier family," said Wilkens.
As for those down the street from where it happened, they say some things will never be fully understood.
"Why somebody would do this is just beyond me. I just -- I'll never get over it, I guess," said Poulin.


text: Course "All in one hour" Introduction to using the library and Metasearch Library introduction "all in one hour" Objective We show you how to find books and magazines in the Metasearch and the library catalogue. You will learn where to obtain them in the library and how to borrow them yourself. You will know our borrowing regulations and your user number, which you need to reserve documents in the catalogue. Content The library's range of media, borrowing conditions, Metasearch, library catalogue: - searching for authors, titles, keywords - your user account, reservations, book orders from the Speicherbibliothek - swissbib, IDS courier, e-books A tour through the library: - rooms, workstations, computers, scanners/photocopiers, rules - fetching a document you found in the Metasearch from the shelf - self-service checkout terminal Date Follows Time Follows Location Room information upon registration Instructor Elisabeth Bischof Remarks Please register with the instructor. If our offered course date is unsuitable for you, we are happy to organise a course date more convenient (minimum 5 participants). Please contact the instructor.


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To beer or not to beer. Qingdao, China officials decided that the International Beer Festival is more important than the Izod IndyCar series race that was scheduled there for Aug. 19th.
Having looked at photos of the beer festival we think they may have made the right call.
Race promoters said they didn't have enough time to reschedule to a date that didn't interfere with a crazy beer fest or other events, prompting their decision to pull the plug. It would have been the first event of its kind in the city that hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics sailing race.
In its place, there's been talk that another race could could be held at Pennsylvania's Pocono International Raceway, or at the Texas Motor Speedway.
The series is on its way to a couple of stops in Canada, and has already raced in Brazil. Regardless of whether or not a new venue is chosen to fill the gap in this year's IndyCar schedule, there will be no race in Asia for the first time in a decade.
Photo credit: Getty Images


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Copyright 2015 – 2016
All Rights Reserved.
Website: http://www.kimboed.com /
Activity Submitted by Elaine
Numeral Dance
Tune: Do Your Ears Hang Low?
Directions: Give each child a magnetic numeral or numeral card to hold in their hand. Ask children to name the numeral they are holding. Demonstrate each of the movements called for in the song (wiggle, tap, twist, and so on). Invite children to listen carefully for their numeral and then move as directed by the lyrics.
The numeral dance is fun.
It starts with numeral one.
There's a move for you,
and that's all you have to do.
So gather near;
your numeral you will hear.
Then you can dance with me.
Can you wiggle numeral one?
It's time to have some fun.
Can you tap numeral two?
You know what to do.
You can dance with me.
Can you twist numeral three?
As twisty as can be.
Can you float numeral four?
Can you soar across the floor?
Can you spin numeral five?
Let's all do a little jive.
Can you slide numeral six?
Show us all your little tricks.
Come and dance with me.
Can you snap numeral seven?
Let's keep the party revvin'.
Can you shake numeral eight?
You're lookin' really great.
Can you shimmy numeral nine?
You're lookin' mighty fine.
The numeral dance is fun,
but now it time to run.
So let's move once more;
spin and slide across the floor.
Let's all shimmy. Let's all soar.
Let's all wiggle. Let's all shake.
Let's all snap. Let's all tap
Now let's take a break! Whew!
Make a set of numeral cards using numerals cut from sandpaper. Encourage the children to trace the numerals with their fingers.
Challenge pairs of children to shape their bodies to create an assigned numeral.
Literature: One, Two, Three to the Zoo, By Eric Carle
Activities for Celebrating "America Through Song" by Elaine Murphy
These activities are excerpts from the guide written by Dr. Kathryn A. Short, for Kimbo'snew CD release: "Songs About America," Celebrating America Through Song.
Blow Ye Winds – a sea chantey about whaling ships and clipper ships from the late 1700's into the 1800's.
Show children pictures of whaling and clipper ships.
Gather children around the perimeter of a parachute, instructing them to hold onto the edge. Have children walk around in a circle while singing the lyrics (if you do not have the recording, this can still be good, imaginative play set to any music.) On the chorus (or on cue), stop and face the center while gently shaking the parachute up and down to symbolize the blowing wind on the water.
Paddle Wheeler – Students recognize that there are various kinds of transportation used in different time periods. In this case, the song is about a paddle wheeler that was used to ply the Mississippi back in the early 1900's.
Show a picture of a paddle wheeler, perhaps the most famous of all, The Delta Queen!
Using a map, locate the cities of Baton Rouge and New Orleans, and follow the path of the Mississippi.
Erie Canal – Boats traveled the Erie Canal in New York State, beginning in 1825. This marvel of engineering and human labor opened up the American frontier and made westward expansion inevitable. The song was written in 1913 as a protest to the coming of the mechanized barge, which would replace the mule.
This familiar, old favorite song, can be acted out. Have children divide into two groups to simulate the canal, and face each other. Another group become the barges, and travel through. On the chorus, "Low bridge, everybody down," the canal partners join hands to form a bridge, so the "barges" have to duck down to travel through.
Wabash Cannonball – The first Wabash Cannonball was a mythological train, dreamed up by a hobo in the 1880's. The song about this imaginary train became so popular that the Wabash system in the Midwest named its express run the Wabash Cannonball. It ran between Detroit and St. Louis.
Everyone can sing the song while the children line up to simulate a train. The first child can wear an engineer's cap, and the teacher can blow a train whistle for sound effects. Pretend to go to some of the places mentioned in the song, e.g., Atlantic and Pacific oceans, New York, St. Louis, Minnesota, and Chicago, woodlands and more.
About Kimbo
For information on purchasing this very special recording, "Songs About America," Celebrating America Through Song, please call Kimbo Educational, 800-631-2187.
Several of the songs on this recording have a transportation theme, providing a unique way of reflecting America's history. Children will also learn about geography from the lyrics and the activities.
Visit http://www.kimboed.com to discover the other fine products available through Kimbo Educational.
For more lesson planning ideas http://www.amonco.org


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3e Emprunt de la Défense Nationale, Crédit Lyonnais : souscrivez.
Description: A soldier holds a flag that says "LIBERTE" over a large globe as if to plant the flag on France. Red liquid drips from Europe and down the exterior of the globe to the ground.
Date: 1917
Creator: Faivre, Abel, 1867-1945.
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department


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Thank you, person who made this compilation of skips screaming from the women's curling matches in Sochi. (For the unfamiliar: A skip is essentially the captain of the team who—vocally—directs the other members. Here's a better explanation.) It's evidence that regardless of a skip's nation, they all yell proficiently, and loudly.
H/t to Extra Mustard


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Huawei MediaPad 7 Lite
Hot on the heels for that brand new Nexus 7? You might want to take a look at this one. Huawei is hitting the affordable 7-inch tablet market with the MediaPad 7 Lite. This little guy will cost you the same as a Nexus 7 or a Kindle Fire, but we still have some major details to learn about it, as it seems Huawei is keeping them well hidden.
Huawei is not known for making the best devices in the market, but the company is certainly improving. We would like to at least see a processor comparable to the Nexus 7's Tegra 3. Other specs include 3G compatibility (which is definitely a plus). a 7-inch IPS LCD display and dual cameras.


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Testimony in the Jammie Thomas-Rasset file-sharing re-retrial concluded today as Thomas-Rasset took the stand and told the jury that she considers herself a big supporter of the music industry (read our coverage of day one). "I was buying my music," she said. "I wasn't getting it for free off KaZaA."
But the jury in this case was tasked with deciding damages, not liability, which has already been assumed from her previous trial. Could Thomas-Rasset convince them this time around to hand out a lower damage award than the last $1.92 million decision? Or would the RIAA win out with its argument that distributing music freely through the KaZaA peer-to-peer network causes more harm than charging for it?
(Update: a verdict has been reached.)
Owning up
The recording industry, like stern parents, wants the wayward defendant not just to pay up but also to take responsibility for her actions.
Universal Music Group rep Joan Cho was asked if the statutory minimum of $18,000 would be acceptable. It would not, Cho argued, due in part to "the lack of acceptance by the defendant for what she'd done." Another label rep blasted Thomas-Rasset's "avoidance of responsibility," adding that "the minimum is probably low considering her behavior."
In his closing statement, recording industry attorney Tim Reynolds banged the point home. Thomas-Rasset "still refuses to accept responsibility," he told the jury. "The only reason she's not pointing the finger [at someone else] is because she can't."
Thomas-Rasset tried to walk the Responsibility Tightrope in this case, agreeing that a previous jury had found her liable and that she accepted that conclusion, but without agreeing that she had in actuality committed the file-sharing in question.
Thus, when Thomas-Rasset took the stand and was asked whether she "did it," she answered, "I have no choice. I've been found liable." When asked again about whether she did it, Thomas-Rasset again deflected the question. "I don't think that's an issue at this point... I'm liable. I'm responsible."
This was a balancing act. The defense doesn't want to admit that Thomas-Rasset actually engaged in file-sharing, but neither does it want to play into the recording industry's narrative that Thomas-Rasset shirks responsibility. So she took responsibility and simply bracketed the question of liability... most of the time (see her first quote above).
Sympathy for the devil
Having the liability question settled made Thomas-Rasset's defense simpler. Rather than look evasive on the stand, she tried to accept (some) responsibility and instead make a case for a minimum damage award based on her personal circumstances.
She told the jury about life on the Ojibwe reservation here in Minnesota. She described her four children. She talked about meeting her husband on Match.com. She stressed the length of this case, the "huge impact" it has made on her life, the way "I have been passed up for promotion because of the publicity of this." Her kids' teachers even ask them about the progress of the case.
Then came the money. Thomas-Rasset said she lived (and still to some extent lives) paycheck to paycheck. She rang up $100,000 in fees from her first attorney, who eventually bailed on her case but did forgive the debt. Her current lawyers are working pro bono. She told the jury that a $36,000 damage award, one twice the bare minimum, would be "roughly my salary from my job every year" and that even the $18,000 minimum would "devastate my family."
Thomas-Rasset even positioned herself as something of an antipiracy crusader. Her neighbor, the "sweetest old man," would get some of his music "free" from LimeWire. Thomas-Rasset says she told him, "No, it's not free. It's not." There are, she says, "so many other options out there for buying music."
One could sense the collective gag reflex from the recording industry lawyers, who even dragged out old interviews Thomas-Rasset had done with the CBS Early Show and others in which she had said nothing about the illegality of her file-sharing, but the clear plea for sympathy was effective; when the jury finally retired to consider the question of damages, they sent out a question only ten minutes later: could they consider Thomas-Rasset's finances when deciding on a damage amount?
The judge called the jury back into court and said that yes, they could.
Heads on pikes
The theme of Thomas-Rasset's closing statement: this case is a brutal witch hunt. Lawyer Kiwi Camara blasted the recording industry for crucifying Thomas-Rasset in order to get the bogeyman story it wants to frighten others. They "plucked her out to make headline news," he charged. "They want a big headline."
But that desire doesn't mean it's fair for the music labels to hack off Thomas-Rasset's head and "put it on a pike" to send a message to others. Millions of college students still share files, and the record labels still dash off letters to universities, asking the infringement to stop. Under what conception of fairness was it right that so many people would get a letter, while Thomas-Rasset would have her life trashed?
Label lawyer Tim Reynolds was having none of it. It's "ludicrous" to suggest the RIAA was mining the case for publicity, he countered. After all, who was going around giving interviews to the CBS Early Show and many others?
In the end, he said that Thomas-Rasset needed to take responsibility, that she was not the innocent victim she claimed, and that in fact "giving music away for free causes more harm" than charging people for it—at least the real pirates help keep the perceived value of music up.
And with that, the case was handed to the jury. (Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson's amicus brief regarding jury instructions? Denied.)


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Some Thoughts On This Snow
An Essay on The Changing Impact of Snow on One Reporter
The talk of snow throughout the evening broadcasts Thursday surprisingly excited me. After all, I haven't been on skis since I was 16 years old and badly fractured my ankle and my reliable Flexible Flyer sled was passed on to a niece or nephew many years ago. For decades, snow in my life has meant little more than extended broadcast days standing along frozen roads, shivering between live reports. Still, there I was Thursday filled with anticipation as Tom Messner showed maps covered with gigantic blue blobs representing the approaching storm.
Maybe, I thought, the fact that I recently bought a house and 10 acres of wooded land a few miles from Lake Champlain had changed me. The previous owner did leave behind two sets of antique snowshoes perfect for exploring the snow-covered landscape. It also occurred to me that the long broadcast day associated with this storm would be spent in a heated television studio, not a frozen live truck. Surely that had an impact on my feelings about snow. There are some advantages to being the evening anchorman, but that wasn't it. Although I liked to complain about long days reporting in frozen conditions, I have to admit there was often an element of fun to it.
It wasn't until I got home late Thursday night that I realized what has changed my perspective on a major winter storm. His little voice cried out as I climbed the stairs in our farmhouse.
"Da, da, da, lu, la, ma," his rhythmic chant began. "Ah, aaah, ah," it continued.
I walked into the nursery and found him standing in his crib reaching out to me. It was well after midnight, but his bright blue eyes were wide with anticipation of being carried into the master bedroom to join his mother.
I cradled his sturdy 23-pound frame in my arms and carried him into his mother. I slipped him beneath the flannel sheets and quilt right next to her. With his pacifier still in place, he rolled contentedly toward her and settled into a soft snore.
When we woke Friday morning, I carried little Colt to the large picture window facing the woods to the northeast of our home. As the dog barked beside us, I held Colt up to the glass so he could survey the snow-covered countryside.
The weekend is here and over the next two days, the snowshoes will be strapped to Dad's boots and the boy will be strapped to Dad's back. We'll explore the snow-covered hills above Lake Champlain with a new appreciation for a beautiful February snow.


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Set your parental controls for the heart of the sun.
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February 10, 2005: Fill-in for Diane Kamikaze with guest The Hunchback
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Just got the Department of Justice's (DOJ) response to the Log Cabin Republican's proposed injunction.
We'll have more, but a quick read shows that DOJ wants to limit the injunction to the "Plaintiff and Its Members." It actually sounds like DOJ wants to out gay servicemembers, "without the names of LCR's members, defendants would have no way of knowing whether a particular servicemember who is subject to the actions set forth is in fact a bona fide LCR member."
The DOJ also objects because "Plaintiff's Proposed Injunction Would Foreclose the United States from Litigating the Constitutionality of DADT in Other Courts." Yes, DOJ wants to keep arguing that DADT is constitutional. And, DOJ wants to be able to move for a stay.
Finally, the DOJ seems awfully concerned that if LCR wins this case, then the Obama administration will no longer be able to find that gay servicemembers hurt morale and cohesion. Why is the Obama administration so concerned about losing the "right" to discriminate against gay and lesbian servicemembers? This lead reader BeccaM to make the following observation:
They're saying you can only bring a case if you're in the military and out yourself, then you can begin the years-long process of seeking injunctive relief, but in the meantime they'll throw your ass out for being gay. Which then makes you ineligible to bring a case because you're not in the military anymore and therefore lack standing.
This is not the brief of a party that wants to find a way out of this mess. The Obama administration is aggressively defending DADT when the Obama administration doesn't have to do this. See here, here and here.
DADT: DOJ response to LCR's proposed injunction http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf


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Netherlands-Costa Rica: Second Most-Watched FIFA World Cup Quarterfinal Match on ESPN, ESPN2 or ABC
· 1.1 million Unique Viewers on WatchESPN
ESPN's presentation of Saturday's Netherlands vs. Costa Rica match, a 0-0 tie in which Netherlands advanced after extra time in a shootout at Arena Fonte Nova in Salvador, was seen by an average audience of 5,791,000 viewers based on a 3.4 fast national rating, according to Nielsen, making it the second most-watched FIFA World Cup quarterfinal match on ESPN, ESPN2 or ABC. The television audience fell behind only Friday's Brazil vs. Colombia, seen by 6,349,000 viewers based on a 3.6 fast national rating.
On WatchESPN, the match reached 1.1 million unique viewers and 60.4 million total minutes, and Argentina vs. Belgium reached 756,000 unique viewers and generated 31.9 million total minutes.
Top-10 markets for Netherlands-Costa Rica: San Francisco (6.6), Washington, DC (6.4), Miami-Ft. Lauderdale (6.2), San Diego (5.8), Baltimore (5.6), Las Vegas (5.6), Los Angeles (5.4), New York (5.4), Tampa Bay-St. Petersburg (4.6) and Hartford-New Haven (4.5).
Argentina vs. Belgium:
The earlier match on Saturday (Argentina vs. Belgium on ABC) delivered an average audience of 5,183,000 viewers based on a 3.2 rating. Top 10 markets: Miami-Ft. Lauderdale (5.5), Los Angeles (5.4), Washington, DC (5.3), San Francisco (5.2), San Diego (5.1), New York (4.8), Atlanta (4.7), Albuquerque-Santa Fe (4.5), Columbus, Ohio (4.3) and Richmond-Petersburg (4.3).
Quarterfinal Average Audience:
In all, two of the four 2014 FIFA World Cup quarterfinal matches rank among the top five matches in the round by audience across ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC. Brazil 2014 quarterfinal matches averaged 5,582,000 viewers, reflecting increases of 29 percent vs. 2010 (4,337,000) and 68 percent compared to 2006 (3,318,000). The 3.3 US household ratings average for 2014 are up 18 percent vs. 2010 (2.8 US HH rating) and 43 percent over 2006 (2.3 US HH rating).
Most-watched World Cup Quarterfinal Matches on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC:
Date Matchup Viewers Network
July 4, 2014 Colombia vs. Brazil 6,349,000 ESPN
July 5, 2014 Netherlands vs. Costa Rica 5,791,000 ESPN
July 3, 2010 Argentina vs. Germany 5,714,000 ABC
July 10, 1994 Romania vs. Sweden 5,666,000 ABC
July 9, 1994 Brazil vs. Netherlands 5,580,000 ABC
Significant Television Viewership Increases Over 2010 and 2006
Through 60 matches of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC are averaging 4,190,000 viewers based on a 2.6 US household rating per match. The 2014 audience reflect increases of 42 percent and 114 percent (vs. 2,947,000 in 2010 and 1,961,000 in 2006) in viewers, and 37 percent and 86 percent in ratings (vs. 1.9 in 2010 and 1.4 in 2006) (Note: Ratings and viewership numbers are based on the specific match windows, not including pre-match studio coverage)
The highest-rated markets for World Cup matches on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC: Washington DC (4.6), New York (4.3), San Francisco (4.1), Los Angeles (3.7) and San Diego (3.7), Hartford/New Haven (3.6), Orlando (3.5), Miami/Ft. Lauderdale (3.5), Richmond (3.4) and West Palm Beach (3.3).
WatchESPN, ESPN.com and ESPNFC.com Growth Over 2010
· Through 59 matches, WatchESPN is reached on average 835,000 unique viewers and generated 37.3 million total minutes per match, reflecting increases of 168 percent and 167 percent respectively from 2010
· ESPN.com and ESPNFC.com are averaging 13 million and 4.4 million avg daily unique visitors to-date through the World Cup, up 38% and 43%, respectively, compared to 2010
· ESPNFC.com is averaging 5.4 million video starts per day, up 877 percent from 2010.
· In addition, SportsCenter App is averaging 3.6 million unique visitors per day, an increase of 402 percent from 2010.
Semifinals Kick Off
ESPN's coverage of the 2014 FIFA World Cup will continue with the semifinals on Tuesday, July 8, with Brazil vs. Germany (3:30 p.m. ET, ESPN) and Wednesday, July 9, with Netherlands vs. Argentina (3:30 p.m., ESPN). Each semifinal match will be available on ESPN3, WatchESPN or WATCH ABC, and ESPN Radio.
Semifinals on ESPN:
Date Time (ET) Network Matchup Site
Tue 7/8 3:30 p.m. ESPN Brazil vs. Germany
TV: Ian Darke and Steve McManaman
Radio: JP Dellacamera and Tommy Smyth Belo Horizonte
Wed 7/9 3:30 p.m. ESPN Netherlands vs. Argentina
TV: Jon Champion and Stewart Robson
Radio: Dellacamera and Smyth Sao Paulo


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Here in New York, we're just beginning to cruise into the worst phase of the season's cold weather, and that's the nicest time of year to see some color. Around now, the city turns into a sea of black wool or nylon coats, and remains that way until at least March, so the Mexico City-inspired reds and pinks of Kate Spade's Pre-Fall 2017 bags were exactly what I wanted to lay my eyes on this morning.
The Mexican aesthetic flourishes of this collection aren't hard to spot, but there's at least one other influence that jumped out at me: Kate Spade is introducing a design that looks a heck of a lot like the now-discontinued Dior Bar Bag. While it's a little too similar for my tastes, it is a great-looking bag that Dior has chosen to retire, and this much less expensive version will surely find a lot of excited owners who never knew about the Dior version to begin with.
Check out the neo-Bar Bag and all the others from the bright, modern collection below.
[Photos via Vogue Runway]


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Hello dear blogfriends. I had a setback. My back had a bad spasm and during the day I mainly rearrange the pillows trying to find a position that gives me a few seconds of relief. But eft and meditation help a lot to manage the pain and I will be on my feet in no time.
On a magical note I created a new magical space for me, in my balcony. I buried Solomons Seal in the four corners and marked them with pentagrams and a drop of my blood. I burned rosepetals and white candles and in return I found in one of the pots a huge four- leaf clover, that I dressed in wax.
One of these days I want to do a reading to see how my thyroid is reacting to all the different treatments I bestow upon my body. Also, it has been a while since I had a water cleansing(and to those not so magical out there, that doesn't mean showers,lol).
This period feels like getting back to the basics even in a magical sense. I am trying to get to my core, ground myself and focus on me after a very long time. It doesn't come naturally to me to do those things so it feels somewhat clumsy and weird, but also right.
So, blow some rosepetal dust in the wind for me and wish me luck and healing and may the Goddess 's blessings brighten your lives and your hearts.
Blessed be.
Getting it done
Hello dear blogfriends. I had a setback. My back had a bad spasm and during the day I mainly rearrange the pillows trying to find a position that gives me a few seconds of relief. But eft and meditation help a lot to manage the pain and I will be on my feet in no time.
Shrinking the nodule one tea at a time!
So, I started acupuncture yesterday. It went very well. I also begun supplementing with selenium, magnesium, calcium, d3 and fulvic acid. And soon I will also be taking guggul, and omega 3. I also want to start daily sessions of eft and meditation. I think it is about time to let myself heal and grow strong.
Western medicine is wonderful but right now needs to join hands with an eastern path. I also make every night masks of green argyle to apply to my neck, while I chant a Gaia spell. Grounding in all forms and lots of wonderful singing vibrations to heal my thyroid and shrink my nodules.
Diet wise I have accepted the fact that my body doesn't work like most people's so I eat under 800 calories and I have no carb, including fruit, no dairy, and no eggs. I work out every day. And I will kick this nodules' ass. Also I drink everyday ginger and elderflower teas.
I am keeping this strict program for 3 more months and then I will get everything checked out again to see the amount of improvement size wise and of course hormone wise. The most basic goal is to beat the stress of it all and by taking control I am feeling better and better.
At least if it doesn't work I can say I tried everything. But I feel that it will work.
Wish me luck!
Brightest blessings to you all!
My trampoline....
I tried running but it hurt too much. I read about trampolines and people with back-joint issues and i was very hesitant at first but full of hope. Turns out jumping up and down on a bouncy surface can be really good for your back. I could not believe it until i tried it. Not only it did not made me worse, but on few occasions it even loosened me up a bit. Who could have thought. i could have worked out for an hour and not turn into a hot mess of pain.
Of course at the beginning i was n't even jumping, i was sort of balancing first on one foot and then on the other in very slow motion. But in just days i got quicker and stayed on longer and pretty soon i was jumping up and down like a maniac. By the way, my neighbors no longer watch tv, they just watch me.
When i read that according to NASA trampolines burn more calories and are easier on you than jogging, i did not believe it but i really wanted it to be true I needed a solution.So, i bought it out of hope and wishful thinking and it was the best purchase i ever made. In case you are wondering, no, i am not selling those damn things.
So, if you are amazed by the fact that this crazy witch rants on about a trampoline in the middle of the night, it is only because it helped change my life. I got stronger, lighter and i hurt less, so i want to give thanks to the Universe and the Goddess for providing solutions to me when i needed them the most.
Once again, i do not own a trampoline company!
Be blessed, be loved and be very energetic!
Weight loss- diet rant...Beware
Greetings to all the blogland. I missed you terribly. I have been so buzy lately that i have n't had the time to do so many things i wanted. Blog, and by blog i mean stalk you silently in the creapiest of ways, study music and by study i mean once again stare silently various sopranos do their thing, since i am so tired. I did not get exhausted just by all the work, but mostly because of one more visit to my endocrinologist. She once again urged me towards a surgical solution and pointed out how little weight i have lost while resolving on such desperate measures. I have been on Atkins and Orlistat with a daily vigorous cardio routine and in 2 months i only lost 3 kilos.Which was very little considering that i am rather heavy. So, she gave me a list of hormones to check out and she basically told me she could not help me any further. She wanted to give me a pill that is usually prescribed in diabetics that helps you metabolize carbs but i am hypoglycemic, which makes it impossible. I lost all hope after that visit. I spent the afternoon on my office floor crying. I can't keep facing the dilemma of surgery every other month. So, i called my nutritionist to give me an extremely low cal-low carb-low fat diet(basically no food) in hope that it will jumpstart my metabolism. I told her i called her because i could not do it safely by myself but the truth was, i just could not bear the responsibility alone anymore. This way, if it failed it was somebody else's failure.
Thankfully though, being under 900 calories while on Orlistat and still working out like crazy was more effective and in 2 weeks i lost almost 1.5 kilos. I hope that while i lower my body fat my thyroid function will get better and my nodule will stabilize. I am not giving up. I have to avoid surgery. Especially now that i am studying heavier roles of dramatic voices and thriving.
On a more magical note, this Beltane we celebrated our 5 years anniversary with one more handfasting in front of some of our closest friends. Unfortunately very few could make it since it was a holiday and everybody went away on a long weekend. We were only 10 people and we had it at home, because we were afraid for the weather, but we had so much fun. They were all curious about the ceremony, but very open about it. I promise i will post some pictures very soon. There was a lot of drinking so i will show you the early stages because later everybody sort of melted on the floor, but at least there was a lot of laughter. As always someone slept on our couch and everybody was cursing us the next day for providing so much alcohol.
I am so happy we exchanged our vows again this year. I feel everytime it brings us closer and binds us in the deepest of levels.
Be blessed, be loved and be magical!


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'It's a fantastic book!' - Welcome to New Zealand, a pictorial essay on the way our towns say 'hello' through their signs.
'Perfect for a lazy afternoon read.' - Fishermen's Tales, by Peter Jessup.
'The quality of the publication and the speed with which it was produced are a credit to editor Josh Easby.' - FANZ: The Football Magazine (Winner, Publication of the Year, NZFMA Awards).
'The evolution of New Zealand ... can be traced through the significant speeches collected in this handsome volume.' - Speeches that Shaped New Zealand (1814-1956).
'A volume that will have your ears ringing for days.' — LIVE: Gigs that Rocked New Zealand, by Bruce Jarvis and Josh Easby.
'Plenty of humour and wit . . . should be in every angler's collection . . . a book to saviour and enjoy . . . a must buy . . . highly recommended.' -- Tangled Lines, by Anthony Swainson.
'Stories that will make you laugh and others that will shock and surprise.' - Boaties' Tales, by Peter Jessup.
'This coffee–table page–turner captures the magic.' — LIVE: Gigs that Rocked New Zealand, by Bruce Jarvis and Josh Easby.
'Beautifully presented with great recipes . . . an innovative slant on reinvigorating some classic Kiwi dishes.' -- The Kiwi Beer Lover's Cookbook, by Sam Cook.
'A humourous and provocative look at New Zealand and the way we see ourselves today.' -- Myth New Zealand, by Justin Brown.


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THE SQL Server Blog Spot on the Web
You may have heard of the 'First Rule of Holes'. It goes something like this:
"When you suspect you might be
in a hole, stop digging."
That seems like obvious, and good advice, but what does it really mean? How does the Rule of Holes apply to you? How does it apply to your job?
When things are not going right, stop doing the "same ol', same ol'"
The point is to explore doing things differently. Your solution should be a rational decision for the problem at hand, at this moment, in this environment. Not what worked last year, or even last month, or on a different server. Avoid digging holes, and when you realize that you are in one, stop digging. Do something different.
I am in the process of compiling a more complete list of 'Rules of Holes', and in upcoming weeks, I'll share them with you. And if you have developed your own 'Rules of Holes', i invite you to share them with us.
Meanwhile, stop digging.


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About "Come to the Waldorf-Astoria"
Langston Hughes
In the midst of that depression, the Waldorf-Astoria opened. On the way to my friend's home on Park Avenue I frequently passed it, a mighty towering structure looming proud above the street, in a city where thousands were poor and unemployed. So I wrote a poem about it called "Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria," modeled after an ad in Vanity Fair announcing the opening of New York's greatest hotel. (Where no Negroes worked and none were admitted as guests.)
The hotel opened at the very time when people were sleeping on newspapers in doorways, because they had no place to go. But suites in the Waldorf ran into thousands a year, and dinner in the Sert Room was ten dollars! (Negroes, even if they had the money, couldn't eat there. So naturally, I didn't care much for the Waldorf-Astoria.)
from The Big Sea: An Autobiography by Langston Hughes. Copyright © 1940 by Langston Hughes
James Smethurst
A recognizably African-American voice was not entirely subsumed in the vision of an essentially raceless America that characterized Hughes's work appearing in the journals of the literary Left during the early and middle 1930s. Hughes's Left poems during this period often feature a racially ambiguous generically "hard-boiled" working-class speaker whose diction derives as much from pulp fiction and the movies as from any actually spoken English. But frequently an African-American voice erupts from within the address of the "hardboiled" speaker, as it does in a section of "Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria":
Oh Lawd, I done forgot Harlem!
Say, you colored folks, hungry a long time in
35th Street they got swell music at the Waldorf-Astoria. It sure
is a mighty nice place to shake hips in, too. There's dancing
after supper in a big warm room. It's cold as hell on Lenox
Avenue. All you've had all day is a cup of coffee. Your
pawnshop overcoat's a ragged banner on your hungry frame.
You know, downtown folks are just crazy about Paul Robeson!
Maybe they'll like you, too, black mob from Harlem. Drop in
the Waldorf this afternoon for tea. Stay to dinner. Give Park
Avenue a lot of darkie color--free for nothing! Ask the Junior
Leaguers to sing a spiritual for you. They probably know 'em
better than you do--and their lips won't be chapped with cold
after they step out of their closed cars in the undercover driveways.
Hallelujah! under-cover driveways!
Ma Soul's a witness for the Waldorf-Astoria!
As in "Scottsboro Limited" there is a satire on African-American vernacular language and cultural forms rooted in the rural South, notably that of the rural black church. The narrator adopts a pseudo-folk voice shouting about the glory of the Waldorf-Astoria, which he follows with the bracketed recitations of the harsh economic realities of African Americans and the subaltern peoples of European and American colonies. However, the satire is obviously in the first place a comment on the cultural consumption of wealthy white people who love spirituals and Paul Robeson and only secondly on the rural folk culture. Thus the overall effect of the poem is similar to that of Sterling Brown's "Cabaret," where a commercialization of the folk for white consumption, both simultaneously marketing and obscuring the actual life of the folk is followed by what might be thought of as riffs or fragments of the actual experience of the rural black poor. The difference is that Hughes is more ambiguous here about the rural folk culture that underlies his satirical verses than Brown, who is unabashedly a partisan of that culture. Hughes also makes a connection between the experiences of Africans on rubber plantations, black railroad workers in the South, and unemployed Harlem residents that Brown does not. Unlike the narratorial voice in "Cabaret," the speaker of "Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria" locates himself among the black folk, albeit in Harlem rather than the rural South. It is at this moment ("And here we stand, shivering in the cold, in Harlem") that Hughes's speaker steps out of a generic working-class vernacular American role and into a specifically African-American identity, using the pronoun "we" for the first (and virtually the only) time instead of "you." It is notable that in these bracketed passages in which the speaker identifies himself (or possibly herself, though the speaker's male-identified "hard-boiled" diction invites the reader to cast him as male) racially and situates himself in a specific urban Aftican-American community, the work is most formally "poetic" and least "prosaic." The bracketed passages employ much alliteration, assonance, near-rhyme, and internal rhyme, and (with the notable exception of the word "nigger") a relatively "standard" diction. These devices are virtually absent in the unbracketed prose passage of this section of the poem. Thus, as in "Scottsboro Limited," there is an interrelation between plain truth, self-realization, and poetry cast in an unequivocally "poetic" form, as well as a sense that the African-American vernacular derived from southern black culture is something to be transcended even as a specifically African-American voice remains distinct.
From The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930-1946. Copyright © 1999 by Oxford University Press.
Robert Shulman
Several contexts animate "Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria," another of the poems Hughes wrote during the fall of 1931. He published it in New Masses in December, so that the "CHRISTMAS CARD" ending is, like "Merry Christmas," seasonal. Another occasion for the poem is that, two years into the depression and in the midst of the fight to save the Scottsboro Boys, Hughes read a two-page advertisement in Vanity Fair, the most elegant magazine in America. Along with ads for luxury cars, furs, and expensive clothing--the depression did not exist in the world of Vanity Fair--Hughes encountered an advertisement announcing the opening of the new Waldorf-Astoria "where," as Hughes noted, "no Negroes worked and none were admitted as guests." In his poem, in place of the bold-faced headings in the ad--"PRIVACY," "FREEDOM FROM RESPONSIBILITY," "MODERN CONVENIENCES"--Hughes substitutes such headings as "LISTEN, HUNGRY ONES," "EVICTED FAMILIES," and "NEGROES."
In a prose format like the ad's, Hughes opens up the absurdities and contrasts between his down-and-outers and the luxury of the rich in their new hotel. His approach is to parody the ad, sometimes by using a left language, sometimes an idiomatic language instead of Vanity Fair formality and by directing his flophouse clientele to take advantage of the amenities the hotel provides, to "ankle on down to 49th Street at Park Avenue." Hughes summarizes the "PRIVATE ENTERTAINING" and "PUBLIC FUNCTIONS" the ad describes by intoning of the Waldorf,
It will be a distinguished background for society.
So, when you've got no place to go, homeless and hungry ones, choose the
Waldorf as a background for your rags--
(Or do you still consider the subway after midnight good enough?)
Under the heading, "ROOMERS," "take a room at the new Waldorf," he advises them, "sleepers in charity's flop-houses where God pulls a long face, and you have to pray to get a bed."
For their edification Hughes reprints a luncheon menu of "GUMBO CREOLE CRABMEAT IN CASSOLETTE / BOILED BRISKET OF BEEF / SMALL ONIONS IN CREAM / WATERCRESS SALAD / PEACH MELBA." Then he adds, "Have luncheon there this afternoon, all you jobless. Why not?" To provide an answer, Hughes departs from his dominant tone of high-spirited satiric indignation. He reanimates the left imagery of hands, some cutting coupons while others, exploited by the rich, do hard manual labor. Parodying the ad writer's invitation, Hughes tells his people, "dine with some of the men and women who got rich off of your labor" and then in the emotionally charged, pile-driver rhythms and imagery of left discourse he adds,
who clip coupons with clean white fingers because your
hands dug coal, drilled stone, sewed garments, poured
steel to let other people draw dividends and live easy.
(Or haven't you had enough yet of the soup-lines and the bitter bread of
Walk through Peacock Alley tonight before dinner, and get warm, anyway.
You've got nothing else to do.
In one of his most irreverent sections, under the heading "NEGROES" Hughes shifts from the language of left social protest to the language of black vernacular, a language especially incongruous in the upper-class white world of the Waldorf and Vanity Fair. "Oh, Lawd, I done forgot Harlem!" Hughes breaks in, using "I" for the first time. Then, in the perfectly rendered idiom of the street, Hughes goes on to contrast the reality of hunger on 135th Street with
the swell music they got at the Waldorf-Astoria. It sure is a mighty nice place to shake hips in, too. There's dancing after supper in a big warm room. It's cold as hell on Lenox Avenue. All you've had all day is a cup of coffee. Your pawnshop overcoat's a ragged banner on your hungry frame.
Does the last line heighten the emotional impact not only through the contrast between ease and pawnshop poverty but also through the reinforcing contrast between the street idiom of "shake hips" and " cold as hell" and the more formal, literary metaphor, "a ragged banner on your hungry frame"? Hughes often achieves his effects by juxtaposing contrasting languages, although readers unsympathetic to his literary and political project may respond negatively to the slight elevation of the metaphor of the pawnshop overcoat as "a ragged banner on your hungry frame."
In any case, in the pages of New Masses, writing explicitly to "you colored folks" within the poem but also to a radical white reading audience, Hughes goes on to subvert the upper-class fascination with things Negro. "You know," he writes, "downtown folks are just crazy about Paul Robeson! Maybe they'll like you, too, black mob from Harlem." Of course. Through the comic and slightly ominous incongruity of the "black mob," Hughes deconstructs the 1920s cult of Harlem, "When the Negro Was in Vogue," as he phrased it in a chapter heading of his autobiography, The Big Sea. Hughes cuts even deeper when he invites his "black mob" to
Drop in at the Waldorf this afternoon for tea. Stay to dinner. Give Park Avenue a lot of darkie color--free for nothing! Ask the Junior Leaguers to sing a spiritual for you. They probably know' em better than you do--and their lips won't be so chapped with cold after they step out of their closed cars in the undercover driveways.
Hallelujah! Undercover driveways!
Ma soul's a witness for de Waldorf-Astoria!
At his most acute, Hughes enters taboo territory and deflates the mix of class privilege and racial condescension at the heart of society's affair with the Negro. At the end he perfectly uses black vernacular to diminish those symbols of class and racial inequity, the underground driveways and the Waldorf itself. In the process, Hughes undercuts the religiously tinged Uncle Tom language he himself turns into a vehicle of hard-hitting comic protest.
In the "CHRISTMAS CARD" that ends the poem, Hughes intensifies his irreverent religious satire. Looking ahead to "Goodbye, Christ" and back to "Christ in Alabama," "Merry Christmas," and "A Christian Country," Hughes exuberantly, provocatively sends his radical greetings:
[ .]
The censors who a decade later hounded Hughes because of "Goodbye, Christ" somehow overlooked the ending of "Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria." In "CHRISTMAS CARD" Hughes's cultural politics are as radical as his politics. In presenting Mary as a "little girl--turned whore / because her belly was too hungry to stand it anymore," Hughes vividly connects depression hunger and poverty and that of the Holy Family. He does so with a blasphemy--Mary as whore--that he compounds in relating the immaculateness of the Immaculate Conception to the clean bed Mary needs and the manger of the Waldorf can supply. Hughes's radical politics reinforce and are reinforced by his irreverent cultural politics. The brash announcement that "the new Christ child of the Revolution's about to be born," the injunction "kick hard, red baby, in the bitter womb of the mob," and the final imperative, "listen Mary, Mother of God, wrap your new born babe in the red flag of Revolution" are examples of the radical spirit of 1931, hopeful, optimistic, unintimidated. In "CHRISTMAS CARD" and "Goodbye, Christ," Hughes handles communism as the new religion with more verve and idiomatic force than anyone in the decade.
In "Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria" Hughes is also one of the pioneering left poets who incorporated and put to unconventional uses the language of the media--advertising, in this case, the documentary in Muriel Rukeyser's, the movies in Kenneth Fearing's. These poets engaged and tapped into the energy of influential "low" forms and turned them from their prevailingly commercial to left uses. As with the black vernacular and jazz rhythms and improvisation that animate his work, Hughes as much as any modernist delights in "low" forms typically excluded from the "high" art of traditional poetry. They contribute to the immediacy, energy, and accessibility of his work, reinforced in the New Masses by the drawings that frame "Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria." The drawings are fanciful satiric line sketches of limousines, upper-class dowagers and top-hatted gentlemen, and decadent partygoers above a panorama of grim-faced working people.
From The Power of Political Art: The 1930s Literary Left Reconsidered. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2000. Copyright © 2000 by The U of North Carolina P.
Heather Zadra
If "The Bitter River," written at a time of disillusionment for Hughes in the early '40s, suggests no lasting vision of mass revolution, "Come to the Waldorf-Astoria" demonstrates a point in Hughes' career when such possibilities seemed not only feasible, but likely. I'd like to add to Shulman's observations about the poem's last "Christmas Card" section which, as he points out, takes on similar subject matter and tone as the later "Goodbye Christ"--the section that fully acknowledges his hope for an emerging revolutionary "salvation" which, Shulman also notes, presents communism as a new "religion" in itself. Let me start by talking about how Hughes tries to draw a revolutionary response from the oppressed subjects he writes about.
The entire piece, of course, works as a stinging social commentary on the "fruits" of capitalism--the satiric descriptions of the "swell board," the "Apartments in the Towers," the "undercover driveways," all of which are paid for by "the men and women who get rich off of [the poor's] labor." Hughes intends every bit of the poem's inflammatory tone. His representation of an utterly hypocritical yet heretofore unaccountable "upper crust" targets as its audience not only the rich and privileged within the capitalist system, but also those whose indignation is most warranted: the potentially powerful, dynamic "mob," those hit hardest by the Depression or other circumstances who have the potential to effect real change. Though Hughes divides this "advertisement to action" into distinct sections, addressing the "Hungry Ones," "Roomers," "Evicted Families," and "Negroes" alike, the penultimate heading, "Everybody," unites them in a common cause. The implicit threat--the possibility for strength in numbers--that exists in organizing those who should be able to "draw" their *own* "dividends," rather than reliquish them to the ones "who clip coupons with clean white fingers," can be seen in the class juxtapositions satirically offered throughout the poem.
The unseen observer-speaker presents a stark realism in conjunction with the absurdity of "Tak[ing] a room at the new Waldorf," "choos[ing] the Waldorf as a background for your rags," and inviting black Harlem to "Drop in at the Waldorf this afternoon for tea." Certainly the most invasive image for the privileged readers against whom the poem is directed would be that of "Mary, Mother of God . . . turned whore because her belly was too hungry to stand it any more" birthing her child in a "nice clean bed" at the Waldorf (though, as Shulman notes, critics of the later "Goodbye Christ" overlooked this seemingly volatile image). What does Hughes intend with these improbable juxtapositions? The image of an oppressed poor enjoying the luxuries of the rich they support, perhaps even spoiling or remaking those goods, "de-sophisticating" them (as the Harlem mob "shak[ing] hips" at the Waldorf would change the tenor of the dance, and the soiled bedclothes of the new Conception would literally and spiritually dim all surrounding grandeur), works as an intentionally threatening vision of unified change, one which foresees a *new* "background for society." Class lines are simultaneously blurred and reinforced through this technique; the reality of a capitalist nation sharpens those lines (imagine what would happen if black Harlem really *did* come to the Waldorf to dance), while the potential for a Communist future erases them, bringing the destitute within reach of what has long been their due.
The conversational, yet bitingly sarcastic, tone of the speaker's voice--juxtaposed with black vernacular under the section entitled "Negroes"--comes to its peak in "Christmas Card," the final stanza of the poem. Here the speaker of "Goodbye Christ" is, in some sense, born, rejecting the "old" Christ and offering himself as the new secular Messiah ("Make way for a new guy with no religion at all-- / A real guy named / Marx Communist Lenin Peasant Stalin Worker ME--"). The "new born babe" wrapped "in the red flag of Revolution" will start anew for a better cause, minus the capitalist "baggage" associated with the former Savior: "nobody's gonna sell ME / To a king, or a general, / Or a millionaire." This child, too, must be born in "the best manger we've got" right now, the finely wrought arches of capitalism--but arches, the speaker hopes, that the child will one day perhaps demolish or appropriate for different uses.
The speakers sees a new day dawning, and the "Christmas Card" attempts to send a powerful message of potential redemption and rebirth to those who would receive it--the decision must be to "follow him" or, more broadly, to follow the revolutionary impulse.
Copyright © 2001 by Heather Zadra
Return to Langston Hughes


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Tineke Postma
Tineke Postma (Heerenveen, 31 August 1978) is the most successful Dutch female saxophonist after Candy Dulfer. Even before graduating with honors from the Amsterdam Conservatory in 2003 she releases her debut album First Avenue, wins several prizes and gains international recognition. By now she is known from New York to ... Read more


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This site is designed to provide high school and middle school science teachers access to the materials and resources that I have collected during my 37 years of teaching in the field. Some of the materials are of my own design, but many are those I have borrowed from others and refined for my own use. They include:


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Women will go to great lengths to stay looking young, but, unfortunately, not everyone ages gracefully. So how do these Latina celebs continue to age without looking a day over 25? We know we have good genes, but biology can only take us so far. Check out these beauty secrets from some of your favorite Latina celebrities who continue to sizzle over the age of 40!
1. Over 40 Beauty: Sofia Vergara
Sofia Vergara, 41
When it comes to beauty, Modern Family star Sofia Vergara goes to her most trusted source for tips: her mom! The Colombian actress' mother always told her to make the last water in your shower really cold to help the skin. What's another beauty secret from the head of Vergara's house? Never leave home without lipstick, because as long as you have that you always look well put-together!
2. Over 40 Beauty: Jennifer Lopez
Jennifer Lopez, 44
JLo always seems to glow, so what's her secret for decades of healthy looking skin? The superstar mother of two doesn't get her luminescent complexion from the sun. "We've always worked with bronzers and self-tanners," Jennifer Lopez has said of herself and her makeup artist, Scott Barnes. "It's been over 10 years now that Scott has been telling me to stay out of the sun, and it has saved my skin."
3. Over 40 Beauty: Salma Hayek
Salma Hayek, 47
Stunning Salma Hayek has a secret to keeping her skin looking young that's a little more unconventional. The Frida star doesn't wash her face! Okay, she doesn't wash her face in the morning. "Always wash your face at night," Hayek says. "Don't wash it at all in the morning. Ever. Because at night your skin is rebuilding the oils that you need to keep your skin young."
4. Over 40 Beauty: Cameron Diaz
Cameron Diaz, 41
Cameron Diaz has dated some of the hottest men in Hollywood, and we're certainly not surprised. Diaz is one hot Latina! So what is one of her go-to beauty secrets? This Charlie's Angels and Bad Teacher actress wears MAC's White Frost eye shadow on her brow bone to make her blue eyes stand out!
5. Over 40 Beauty: Stacey Dash
Stacey Dash, 46
She may have starred in the movie, but actress Stacey Dash certainly isn't clueless when it comes to staying fit into her 40s! To keep her curves in check, the half-Mexican looker follows a strict diet. She doesn't eat bread but instead consumes a lot of protein and vegetables like brown rice, greens and fruit in an attempt to eat clean.
6. Over 40 Beauty: Mariah Carey
Mariah Carey, 43
Do you want perfectly plump lips? Singer Mariah Carey has a beauty tip that can help give you an edge when it comes to kissing! The "Hero" singer mixes mint extract into her gloss to get some great blood flow to her lips to pump up her pout.
7. Over 40 Beauty: Daisy Fuentes
Daisy Fuentes, 47
Palmers Coconut Oil is Daisy Fuentes' product of choice. "I even use Palmers moisturizers as under eye moisturizer," the striking entrepreneur explained. "I don't think a product needs to claim that it's for the eye area to show good results."
8. Over 40 Beauty: Nina Garcia
Nina Garcia, 48
Nina Garcia isn't a model on Project Runway (though we secretly think she could pull it off!), but her skin does need to hold up under bright lights. What does this fashionista do to keep her face looking firm? Garcia practices a regimen of deep cleansing, microdermabrasion and oxygen facials before and after filming.
9. Over 40 Beauty: Paulina Rubio
Paulina Rubio, 42
Singer Paulina Rubio does her best to keep her body clean of toxins, and it shows! If you want a rocking bod like Rubio's (and who wouldn't?), taking a few tips from the woman herself isn't a bad idea. Rubio says that less is more when it comes to snacking on salty foods, and in regard to sugary treats, try swapping for pure substitutes like agave and honey.
10. Over 40 Beauty: Soledad O'Brien
Soledad O'Brien, 47
Broadcast journalist Soledad O'Brien gives a big thank you to good genes when it comes to her still stunning looks. Unfortunately, there's no easy way to claim O'Brien's genes as our own. Luckily, she has another secret for staying young. "The best skill I have is the ability to fall asleep anywhere, anytime," states the Cuban "I find that there is nothing that makes me look better than catching some sleep however I can get it."