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Holidays Hit Home with the Top 13 Chicago Traditions
When he was young, John Rivera used to think Santa Claus took up permanent residence in downtown Chicago, not at the North Pole.
"That's what it felt like," says Rivera, 47. "I'd see Santa on TV and at Marshall Field's, that was about it. What else would I think? Everything about Christmas took place downtown. The windows, the trees, the lights. I didn't even know what or where the North Pole was."
While elements of Rivera's holiday experiences are unique to his family, the Chicago resident's memories aren't that uncommon, especially to lifelong Chicagoans and suburbanites who know there's nothing quite like the holidays in the city.
Here are some of the top holiday traditions in Chicagoland:
1. "A Christmas Carol" at the Goodman Theatre: This 36-year tradition of the Charles Dickens classic has captivated audience members young and old. "When I was a kid, going to see this every year made me feel like a complete grown-up," says Roberta Ewing, a mother of three from Schaumburg. "My girls are the same way now. They know they get to get dressed up and watch a play. It makes them feel like little women." Ewing says she and her daughters usually make a day of their "Nutcracker" experience. "We'll do dinner in the Walnut Room at Macy's and them maybe a carriage ride downtown. You want them to have the same special memories you have."
For more information on the Goodman Theatre's "A Christmas Carol," visit http://www.goodmantheatre.org
2. ZooLights at Lincoln Park Zoo and Holiday Magic at Brookfield Zoo: Local animals get their own special holiday treatment, thanks to the amazing light displays set up at each of the Chicagoland zoos. "Most parents spend a lot of time in the zoos when it's warm outside but it's really neat to go at night, even if it gets a little cold," says Ewing. "We've been to both Lincoln Park and Brookfield and they really are true events." Ewing advises parents to bring two items: A camera and thermoses full of hot chocolate and coffee. "There are a lot of photo opportunities you don't want to miss, and of course, you and your kids will need a little something to keep warm," she says.
For more information on Lincoln Park Zoo's ZooLights, visit http://www.lpzoo.org/events/calendar/zoolights. For additional information on Brookfield Zoo's Holiday Magic, visit http://www.brookfieldzoo.org/CZS/magic.
3. State Street: With its vintage Marshall Field's clock, its window displays and its holiday horns overlooking the sidewalk, Macy's alone is enough to draw in festive patrons from the area, but the general vibe on "that great street" is all holiday all the time. "I proposed to my wife in front of the clock in 1998 on a snowy night in December," says Rockford resident Lawrence Wanton. "I didn't even have a ring with me or anything. I just got so caught up in the moment. It's like this magical corner."
4. Ice skating at Millennium Park: It's one thing to go ice-skating in the winter. It's something else entirely to do it in a place where the Chicago skyline provides the ultimate backdrop. Wanton says he and his wife are big fans of the outdoor skating experience, and have spent time at the rink at Rockefeller Center in New York. But even the Big Apple can't compete with Chicago's icy offering. "I think what's unique about Chicago is that there's a very diverse crowd there," Wanton says. "You feel like you're skating in a Christmas commercial or something. It's like a best-of of mankind."
For more information, visit http://www.cityofchicago.org
5. Caroling at Cloud Gate: OK, fine, caroling at the Bean. Whatever you want to call Anish Kapoor's iconic sculpture, it's become the place to be on Friday evenings in November and December if you're in the mood for a little holiday cheer. The free program offers up some of the area's top choral groups, including the Apollo Chorus of Chicago, the Chicago Children's Choir and the Windy City Gay Chorus. And it's not meant to be a passive event. Viewers are encouraged to sing along to help celebrate the season. Check out the full schedule at http://www.cityofchicago.org.
6. Museum of Science and Industry's "Christmas Around the World and Holidays of Light" exhibit: An iconic Chicago tradition, the MSI's Christmas tree experience has been a holiday staple for families throughout the area. "That's Christmas to me," says Janice Dunn, a retired Naperville teacher now living in New Buffalo, Mich. "I feel like I have to see those trees to get into the spirit of Christmas."
Of course, Dunn says it helps to have grandchildren to share the experience with. "My little guys are four and six, so that's the perfect age for stuff like this," says Dunn. "Anything that lights up is going to look cool. They just run around and soak everything in."
For more information on hours and admission, visit http://www.msichicago.org.
7. Let it snow: Children of all ages will enjoy the Chicago Park District's Winter Solstice Festival at North Park Village Nature Center, 5801 N. Pulaski Road, from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 14. Celebrants will welcome the coming of winter with live seasonal music, animals from Big Run Wolf Ranch, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, walks along luminary-lit trails and more. All ages. Registration not required; children must be accompanied by a responsible adult at all times. Cost: Free. Information: (312) 744-5472 or http://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com.
8. Celebrating Hanukkah: Chicago Botanic Garden, 1000 Lake Cook Road, Glencoe, invites one and all to celebrate Hanukkah with two one-hour concerts by Maxwell Street Klezmer Band. Tickets for the concerts in Alsdorf Auditorium are $17 in advance, $20 at the door. Members receive a $2 discount; children 2 and under are free. There is a charge for parking. Ticket price includes access to the Wonderland Express exhibition featuring trains and more than 80 Chicago landmarks. The Maxwell Street Klezmer Band will perform two one-hour concerts in Alsdorf Auditorium. Information: (847) 835-5440 or https://register.chicagobotanic.org.
9. Learning about Kwanzaa: Learn about the Seven Principles of Kwanzaa over a six-day event from noon to 1 p.m. each day from Thursday, Dec. 26, through Tuesday, Dec. 31, at DuSable Museum of African American History, 740 E. 56th Place, Chicago. Every day, a candle-lighting ceremony will highlight a different principle of Kwanzaa, culminating with the final two principles. Free and open to the public. Information: (773) 947-0600, ext. 255 or http://www.dusablemuseum.org.
10. Christkindlmarket Chicago: Looking for the all-senses Christmas experience? Then join the locals and tourists who flock to Daley Plaza, 50 W Washington St., each holiday season for the Christkindlmarket, a Germany-born tradition that fills the plaza with the sights and smells of the holidays. Rows of food booths and ornament vendors sharing space with the city's official Christmas tree and the legendary Picasso only adds to its picturesque state. "It's another thing we love about coming back to the city, one of those things my husband always insists we do because it's outside and he loves the food," says Dunn. "And on cold nights, there's hot cider, and everyone seems to be in a good mood."
For more information, visit http://www.christkindlmarket.com/.
11. The BMO Harris Bank Magnificent Mile Lights Festival: Need a little Mickey Mouse to get in the holiday spirit? Then you probably count this holiday-season kickoff event as one of your favorites. Featuring a parade down Michigan Avenue that ends at the river, where a powerful fireworks display takes place, the Magnificent Mile Lights Festival is where you'll find the bright-eyed faces of children and parents alike, pointing to Mickey as he brings the lights on Michigan Avenue to life.
For more information, check out http://www.themagnificentmile.com/events/lights-festival/.
12. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Welcome Yule!: What could be better than hearing some of the world's greatest musicians celebrate the season with a selection of traditional and unique holiday favorites? And these performances are as much a treat for the eyes as they are for the ears, thanks to the collective moves of some of Chicago's finest dancers. That's one of the main draws for Cheryl Farsalas and her husband, son and daughter, who just happens to be a student of one of the show's long-time dancers. "We attend the show every year as a family, spending the day together in the city," says Farsalas. "The fact that we know and love one of the performers adds even more excitement to the day."
The dancer Farsalas is referring to is Chicagoan Lizzie MacKenzie, artistic director of Extensions Dance Company and a performing member of Welcome Yule! for 13 years. For MacKenzie, performing in the show with the vast ensemble is an essential element of the holiday season. ""I know many families with grown children now who have made this a tradition since their children were small," says MacKenzie, who performed with River North Dance Company for several years "I cannot imagine my holiday feeling quite right, and fully bright without this show in my life," For more information, visit cso.org.
13. Home sweet home: For some, the best place to spend the holidays is right at home, where numerous memories are made. Although he loved seeing downtown Chicago lit up every December, Rivera says his fondest holiday memories took place within the walls of his own home. "As soon as Thanksgiving ended, the house would be all decked out for Christmas," Rivera says. "Nothing but Christmas songs on the stereo and pretty much a glass of eggnog with every meal until Christmas Day. Those were my favorite moments – sitting around with my dad and my brothers, reading books and listening to my mom sing Christmas carols on the piano. You can't beat that."
-Leigh Hanlon and Marco Buscaglia contributed to this story.
Copyright © 2014, Chicago Tribune


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The dramatic, charismatic, skeleton of Tintern Abbey in Monmouthshire, Wales, dating back to 1269 - was the backdrop for "Echoes In The Stones", a mixed media performance spectacle involving large format projection, pyro, lighting, sound and a cast of over 100.
The 10-performance event which involved thousands of individuals and groups from many local communities was staged over 3 weekends and enjoyed by up to 1400 people a night. It was produced by local potter Ned Heywood and Anne Rainsbury, curator of Chepstow Museum, and directed by TV and theatre director Nick Bamford.
Heywood and Rainsbury have pioneered son et lumières in the region since 1990, their first at the bi-annual Chepstow Festival. Their initial foray into the world of scrolling large format projections - and E\T\C UK - was in 1998 for the 350th anniversary of Chepstow Castle.
They first took their production concept to Tintern in 2000 for the Millennium. At the time, Tintern was their most ambitious show to date, and also proved one of the most successful and popular, so much so that it was decided to update, expand and re-stage it again this year.
Each time they produce a new spectacular, the show progresses technically, and now it would be unthinkable to produce a historical narrative show without large format projection as the key technical and presentational element. "The results are amazing," states Rainsbury "It gives us the ability to move the story forward in a totally unique way, and has become a local talking point."
This year, E\T\C supplied three PIGI 6Kw projectors, all with double rotating scrollers. They were rigged in on the control platform 100 meters away from the Abbey, with one beamed directly onto the Abbey itself. The scroll artwork was precisely masked to ensure the images fitted perfectly onto the contours of the majestic Gothic style building. Constructed from Welsh limestone, the Abbey took the light exceptionally well, exuding a uniform, iridescent glow that was consistent across a vast spectrum of colors.
The other two projectors were focused onto a custom built, three-arched white screen, measuring approx 20 x 20 meters, and built in the foreground of the large performance arena. The images going onto this tended to be more literal, while the ones onto the Abbey were more scenic.
"Echoes In The Stones" recounts the history of the Abbey and details the colorful past of the area, right up to the present day. The 2003 show was updated and expanded to 90 minutes with the addition of several pieces of film to the original scrolls. Each projector ended up utilizing over 30 meters of image film!
All artwork and graphics were created by a small team of local volunteers, using computer graphics, illustrations, paintings, sculpture and collage culled from an assortment of meticulously researched archive material, photographs and historical and contemporary images. E\T\C's Ross Ashton then processed these into the scroll artwork.
The get in-time was very tight, with just one over-night session to program the whole show before opening the next, a feat made much easier using PIGI's new PC-based Onlycue software.
The 2003 show also moved forward for all other technical departments. Very specific customized pyrotechnic effects were created by Fireworks & FX Advanced Pyrotechnics Ltd from Newbury. Lighting was designed by Ceri James and supplied by Theatre Production Services from Newport, and sound gear was supplied by Soundbase UK, also from Newport. The show's soundtrack was recorded by KBMF Audio at Llanvaches in Monmouthshire.

subset: commoncrawl


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Friday, March 25, 2005
Feeding Tubes
How are downtown Portsmouth and Terri Schiavo alike? Both downtown Portsmouth and Terri Schiavo are in a "persistent vegetative state." Both downtown Portsmouth and Terri Schiavo have been kept alive for a long time by feeding tubes that provide expensive sustenance for the comatose patient, sustenance paid for by tax-payer dollars. Finally, both downtown Portsmouth and Terri Schiavo have been exploited by cynical politicians and lawyers for political and financial gain.
Downtown Portsmouth has been kept on feeding tubes for so long by lawyers and politicians that the kind of initiative and vision that would be required to revive the patient has been bred out of most local politicians and business people. What a prophet Jesse Stuart turned out to be! (See my Jan. 29, 2004 blog.) The elite of Portsmouth have been on federal, state, and city feeding tubes so long that they have come to think of them not as an artificial temporary support but as the aorta of the local economy. Many local business and professional people have been abated so much they are a bit batty. They have been subsidized so long they are intoxicated by their own dependency, and perhaps nobody more than Neal Hatcher.
To continue the Terri Schiavo analogy, Clayton Johnson is the Bill Frist of Portsmouth. He claims that the downtown can be revived if only we don't remove the feeding tubes, as long as we don't cut ourselves off from public funding, as long as we don't stop the city government from moving in to the empty Marting department store and the empty former Adelphia Cable building.
How do Johnson and his cohorts explain the current dire state of downtown Portsmouth? According to the grim fairy tale he and others began spinning in 1980, and continue spinning twenty-five years later, downtown Portsmouth was about to be restored to its previous robust condition when three malicious councilmen prevented tubes from being hooked up to the area. Why did they do that? What did the councilmen have to gain by allowing downtown Portsmouth to continue in a comatose state? Were there any financial and political gains for them? Their accusers never claimed there were. The councilmen were supposedly just malicious men out to kill downtown Portsmouth.
The councilmen, in turn, claimed that the mall was never a realistic possibility. It was a fantasy, a scheme, a smokescreen, a scam. It was a crooked land grab deal worked out between then city manager Barry Feldman and the local elite. Johnson was an architect of the 1980 mall deal, just as he was of the Marting scam. A front-page story in the Daily Times back on January 23, 1980, described him as "an attorney who was instrumental in helping prepare the shopping center agreement . . . ."
The best evidence that the councilmen were right about the mall being a smokescreen was that the mall never materialized, even though the councilmen were recalled from office within the year and replaced by pro-mall supporters, while Barry Feldman was kept on as city manager. Neither in 1980 or in the twenty-five years since then has a mall ever been built in downtown Portsmouth. We are supposed to believe there was a brief alignment of the planets, back in 1980, and having failed to tap into the public and private monies that were available at that magic moment, the mall could never be built. As recalled City Council member Ann Sydnor explained this alignment of the planets to me, "The recall [of the three councilmen] was successful. They were removed from office. Three people that supported the revitalization of the downtown were appointed to their seats, but by the time this process took place the money had dried up." If Portsmouth were a realistic site for a mall, why would public and private funds dry up and dry up forever? There will always be public funds as long as there are feeding tubes.
If Johnson had been willing to admit in the beginning that Marting's was a commercially worthless white elephant, and had arranged to give it to the city in return for the Foundation's tax relief, he and the Foundation would have some right to a claim of philanthropy, although giving away something that is not only not worth anything to you but is costing you money in the form of taxes, does not make you a Mother Teresa. Johnson was "instrumental," to use the word used to describe his role in the 1980 mall shenanigans, in subverting Ohio's Sunshine laws to arrange the outrageous sale of the Marting building to the city for $2,000,000. Having a corrupt mayor and complaisant city council to work with, Johnson got greedy and overreached, and he and the city have been dealing with the political and economic consequences of his poor judgment ever since. The scuttlebutt is that when former mayor Bauer is down in his cups he blames Johnson for the miserable mess that led to the mayor's recall. So do a lot of other people in Portsmouth.
Clayton Johnson exploits Portsmouth's romanticized memories of its putatively prosperous past, when Chillicothe Street teemed with shoppers who had real jobs and when Marting's was the downtown anchor store. Marting's is the anchor to a past that people want to remember and want to believe can be revived. Playing on people's nostalgia, exploiting their fond memories and their unrealistic hopes, the Marting Foundation is wrapping their gift to the city in the dearest of downtown memories. "Do not give up on downtown! Do not tear down the Marting building! Do not desecrate the past!" That is the Foundation's public relations propaganda. Who growing up in Portsmouth in the 1900s did not have some fond experience of buying a Marting's Christmas or birthday present? I've even been told people who might not be able to afford the prices at Marting's still managed to share in its prestigious name by using a Marting's box to wrap their gift in. Johnson is now wrapping the past in the Marting building, that undistinguished architectural box, and more recently, since Judge Marshall ruled the sale illegal, is willing to let the empty box go for only the $400,000 he did not return to the city.
And then there is the other Clayton, Johnson's cousin George. It is a shame that somebody did not make living wills for Marting's and Kenrick's. Think of how much the taxpayers would have benefited if they did not have to pay for the feeding tubes that are being attached to these private buildings when historic and architecturally important buildings like the N&W terminal and the Municipal Building don't have a prayer of surviving.
I have made a living will, and if the Marting Building was endowed with consciousness I think it would too. The Marting's building would be content to survive in the memories of the people who had happy experiences there, and not allow itself to be hooked up to a life-support system that would enable it to survive as a shell of itself when the millions to renovate it could have been spent on a new municipal building.
Terri Schiavo's parents naturally and understandably cannot give up the hope that she might miraculously recover. They have the pictures of their healthy daughter and their memories to sustain them in their faith, just as we have the floodwall murals as memories of Portsmouth's mythicized past.
The floodwall murals could not have come into existence and could not continue to exist without the feeding tubes through which it receives public monies. From the start, one of the chief justifications for the floodwall murals was the tourists it would attract. George Clayton's white elephant properties in Boneyfiddle were purchased to handle the flood of tourists that have not yet come but are still anticipated. The murals have been on the floodwall for about a decade, and the flood of tourists has not materialized. There is at best a steady trickle, but hardly enough to justify the millions of public monies that have already been, and will subsequently be, spent on the project, monies a good part of which will find a way into the pockets of Portsmouth's over-privileged. "If you build it, they will come," seems to be the message the Wall supporters spread. Who will be surprised if more historic buildings are torn down and new ones built with the abatements and other perquisites that will flow through the feeding tubes, all to accommodate the anticipated crowds of tourists who will come to see the murals?
Speaking of feeding tubes, 209 Chillicothe Street (pictured below), which is in the next block down from Marting's, offers food for reflection. A pet store struggled to make a go of it at this location before it was vacated to rejoin the number of forlorn empty downtown storefronts. Then a fly-by-night flea market occupied the premises, the hand lettered name of which can still be seen on the wall outside the entrance. The seedy characters who lingered about the flea market added a certain down-and-out authenticity to lower Chillicothe, and we could find some consolation in the fact that if pets could not make a go of it at that downtown location, at least fleas could. But then the flea market flew the coop, leaving a smashed front left door pane, which you can see in the photo below. Parts of Chillicothe St. is beginning to look like John St.
What about feeding tubes? This unprepossessing piece of commercial property was purchased for $45,000 in 1996. In 2005, less than ten years later, in spite of the failed businesses that have occupied it, 409 Chillicothe Street is assessed for $166,390, with improvements of course. And since assessment figures are usually lower than market value, the property is possibly worth appreciably more, on paper at least. How can that be? I suspect there is a feeding tube connected to it somewhere, somehow, because 409 Chillicothe is owned by a Hatcher. If there is any family in Portsmouth who knows about feeding tubes, it is the Hatchers.
Posted by Robert Forrey at 7:09 PM
Friday, March 18, 2005
Feldman's Legacy
. . . after being suspended by City Council
The 1980 newspaper photo above shows Barry Marvin Feldman after he was suspended by the Portsmouth City Council. Feldman was Portsmouth's city manager for 4 1/2 years, from Jan. 1977 to August 1981. Prior to coming to Portsmouth, he had been city manager in Lincoln Heights, a small, troubled community north of Cincinnati. He had been city manager of Lincoln Heights for only seven months, from April to November of 1975, but for some reason, somebody in Portsmouth thought he was qualified to be city manager of our much larger, much more politically volatile, river city.
Feldman's turbulent tenure as city manager illustrates two important lessons about Portsmouth's past. First, he proved that the head of any public agency or institution in Portsmouth – whether it be city manager, mayor, or president of Shawnee State University (think of Clive Veri)– no matter how inexperienced, unqualified, or dishonest he may be (I'm not suggesting Feldman was all three), could remain in his job just as long as he was part, or was at least willing to serve the interests of, Portsmouth's ruling clique. Because that clique controlled the local media in 1980, and thereby monopolized the news, they controlled the public's perception of who the good guys and the bad guys were. Right to the end, the Portsmouth Daily Times and WPAY and WNXT portrayed Feldman as a good guy, the heroic victim of three malevolent councilmen.
Those who saw things differently didn't have many ways of making their case publicly. Getting a letter-to-the-editor published was virtually their only hope. In a type-written draft of what appears to be an unpublished letter-to-the-editor, Andrew Clausing claimed that not long after he was first elected to the city council, in 1978, the supporters of a controversial mall project were meeting with Feldman without letting Clausing know. "Many times Mr. Feldman and his cohorts had secret meetings," Clausing wrote, "and your First Ward councilman [Clausing himself] was not even included." The City Solicitor Richard Schisler, obviously trying to protect Feldman, accused the City Council of firing him without just cause. Clausing claimed they had just cause: Feldman had failed as an administrator. "He is in fact a poor administrator," Clausing wrote in the draft of his letter, "and the end result will be that you and I will suffer by paying higher taxes, more welfare and less employment."
Making Fun of Feldman
Clever political cartoonists opposed to Feldman had to settle for passing their drawings from hand to hand, like a samizdat underground flyer in the Soviet Union. There was no chance they would be published in the Daily Times and there were no alternative publications at that time. One anonymous unpublished cartoon from 1980 shows the long-haired Feldman mauling the taxpayers of Portsmouth on behalf of Jacobs Visconti and Jacobs, the Cleveland developer.
[cartoon Feldman axing]
In 1980, the City Council fired Feldman not once, not twice but three times, but the city solicitor and a court of common pleas judge and the Citizens for Good Government, a front for Portsmouth's ruling clique, managed to keep Feldman in office through legal and political maneuvering. In another cartoon, Feldman and his backers are depicted as being protected from the wrath of the citizenry by the umbrella of the courts.
[Feldman umbrella]
In fact, the ruling clique used the media to turn the wrath of the electorate against the three councilmen and used legal maneuvering to keep Feldman in office long enough to recall the councilmen. Under the council-manager form of government, the city manager is supposed to serve at the pleasure of the council. "If the manager is not responsive to the council's wishes, the council has authority to terminate the manager at any time," as the Santa Ana, California, website puts it. The Ohio Supreme Court eventually ruled the City Council had the authority to fire Feldman, but by then Clausing, Daub and Price had been recalled and replaced by pro-mall council members who supported Feldman. Another cartoon shows four council members as puppets of Feldman and the powers-that-be.
[Feldman puppet]
In spite of being fired three times, Feldman could have stayed on for another four years, had he wanted to, because he had the support of the ruling clique and the media. He had proved how far he was willing to go and how much pressure he was willing to live under to further their interests. But perhaps in the interest of himself and his family, he chose not to remain in Portsmouth any longer than it took him to find another job. He was probably smart enough to know "the Mall" had become a fiction that nobody was going to be able to turn into a reality. Feldman was in a position to know that there was about as much chance of a big mall in downtown Portsmouth as there was of a National Football League franchise returning to play in Spartan Stadium.
Feldman's Rapport with People
In a sympathetic article in the Daily Times on the eve of his departure for a new job as assistant city manager in Sterling Heights, Michigan, Feldman said that the thing that pleased him most about his 4 1/2 years in Portsmouth was his "rapport with people and involvement of citizens in the community." "Involvement of citizens" was Feldman's euphemism for parades, protests, petitions and demonstrations that took place while he was city manager. As for his "rapport with people," there was not much evidence of that while he was city manager. While he had strong supporters among those with money and influence, many others disliked him intensely by the time he left. But he had probably never enjoyed good rapport with ordinary folk anyway. Well-groomed and coiffed, modishly dressed, with two college degrees, the pipe- smoking Feldman raised the hackles of some of the non-elite in Portsmouth, who accused him of being the vain leader of the "Mod Squad," whose motto might have been "Have blow dryer, will travel."
The second lesson to be learned from Feldman's tenure as Portsmouth's city manager is that he was living proof that a city manager could be as much of a devious politician as any mayor or council member. No person in the twentieth century did more to sour Portsmouth on the city manager form of government than Feldman, and anybody writing a Ph.D. dissertation on the subject might study his 4 1/2 years as city manager in Portsmouth as an example of just how politically compromised a city manager can become. When the voters of Portsmouth chose to return to the mayoral form of government in 1985, after 55 years of the city manager form of government, the failure of Feldman as city manager was the best argument that the pro-mayoral advocates had going for them.
Feldman's Mayoral Complex
Feldman did not stay long in Michigan before he moved on in 1985 to West Hartford, Connecticut, where he has been town manager ever since. He eventually earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Connecticut, where he is an adjunct instructor. Nobody ever questioned Feldman's intelligence, but he still occasionally shows that he suffers from a mayoral complex. He is still involved in politics and still not very good at it. A few years ago he invited a strong opponent of same-sex marriage to speak at a Martin Luther King commemoration. That invitation brought down a hail of criticism from a lesbian organization that claimed Dr. King would not have been opposed to same sex marriages. A spokesperson for People of Faith for Gay and Lesbian Civil Rights told the Hartford Courant that the selection of a homophobe as keynote speaker was "an immense insult to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community of West Hartford and Connecticut." Feldman pleaded ignorance, telling the Hartford Courant, "It certainly would have given me lots of reason for pause. . . . This is a very difficult issue and there's lots of sympathy all around." Feldman responded to the criticism by doing the politically correct thing: he invited a lesbian activist to speak at the same celebration. So West Hartford ended up with the two political extremists at the commemoration instead of the one moderate speaker that the occasion seemed to call for. As an administrator Feldman may know what he's doing, but as a politician he manages to put his foot in it.
Leading a Double Life
But politician is what Feldman believes city managers have to be if they are going to be effective leaders; and politician is what Feldman has been throughout his career, as the people of Portsmouth painfully learned twenty-five years ago. If he couldn't admit at the beginning that he was a politician, he apparently can now, as he nears the end of his career. In the "Introduction" to his 1998 Ph.D. dissertation, "Reinventing Local Government: Beyond Rhetoric to Application," Feldman wrote, "The successful [city] managers who have tenure in their current positions know how to lead what Stillman calls a double-life: officially neutral while in fact . . . scrambling for their share of political influence in order to achieve success for themselves and their programs" (8). Feldman believes city managers should not only implement but they should also make policy, which was what he was trying to do, secretly, in those meetings from which the president of the City Council, Andrew Clausing, claimed he was excluded. Feldman apparently tried to lead a double-life as Portsmouth's city manager and the consequences for the city and himself were traumatic. Perhaps that is why in his otherwise thorough dissertation on the evolution of the city manager form of government never Feldman once found occasion to mention that he had been city manager in Portsmouth.
If one of the hopes Portsmouth voters had in changing to the council-manager form of government in 1930 was to keep at least one official in city government out of politics, Feldman's tenure as city manager a half century later dealt a death-blow to that hope, for he was up to his neck in politics, according to his critics. "We were recalled [in 1980] not because we were opposed to a downtown mall," Harold Daub, one of the recalled councilmen, told me, "but because we were opposed to the actions of the City Manager [Barry Feldman]." And because Feldman is a politician, he continues in West Hartford to be a polarizing figure who rubs some people the wrong way, as he did in Portsmouth.
In an online Connecticut forum back in 2003, an incensed woman posted the following unflattering observation about him: "West Hartford town manager Barry Feldman crawled to a public meeting the other day. All that smarmy over inflated greasy bag of ego did was allow the attendees to admire his grasp of all things meaningless and his arrogant mouthings of whatever platitudes he assumed the great unwashed needed to hear from the top of his lofty self constructed mountain of his sweet smelling excrement." There are those who feel he left behind a similar smelly legacy in Portsmouth. According to Greek myth, a king named Augeas had failed to clean up his stables for thirty years. It was one of Hercules' labors to clean up the mess. Anyone looking at Portsmouth's history for the last thirty years is faced with a similar mess, to which Barry Feldman contributed more than his odoriferous share.
Posted by Robert Forrey at 11:22 AM
Labels: Barry Feldman, City Manager, Portsmouth OH
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Quotes from RECALL
Ex-Mayor Bauer at his final Council meeting
Next Wednesday evening, March 16, at 7PM in Flohr Hall of the SSU library, there will be a showing of Recall, a 60 minute video on the recall of Mayor Bauer. The showing will be followed by an open forum on the recall and on the issues that prompted it, including the sale of the Marting's building.
What follows are a some quotations from the video.
Asked if he had ever seen a more intense division in the city than the one developing during the recall campaign, Jeff Barron replied, "No, I haven't. For years there were maybe four of five people in City Council meetings. Now, there are maybe sixty to seventy people."
Jeff Barron, Portsmouth Daily Times
"The guy at the top [Mayor Bauer] is actually a bottom dweller."
Lee Scott, Recall organizer
"The most significant thing about a recall is if that person is recalled . . . they cannot run for that office for a period of time."
Frank Gerlach, former mayor of Portsmouth.
"We were recalled [in 1980] not because we were opposed to a downtown mall but because we were opposed to the actions of the City Manager [Barry Feldman]."
Harold Daub, former City Council member
"Lawyer C. Clayton Johnson, a foundation trustee involved in the sale [of the Marting building] could not be reached for comment and did not return calls."
Reporter for the Columbus Dispatch
"He [Mayor Bauer] misled council on the value and condition of the [Marting] building. It ain't worth anything."
Marty Mohr, current City Council member
"If people were upset and concerned about the Marting building, one would think that when it was being discussed in council meetings that citizens would have come forward then. So to give you a valid reason why it's become a factor now, I don't know."
Ann Sydnor, former City Council member.
"I'm writing a letter to the editor right now trying to figure out why in the world a man would pay three times the amount for the [Marting] building. When we could've got it for $800,000, we paid $2,000,000. It don't make sense."
Tim Loper, current City Council member
"My council person Mr. Baughman and I have not seen eye to eye on a lot of things, and I refuse to go to him when I have a problem. I call somebody else."
Dee Penix
"The city lost out on that stretch of land [15th St. Viaduct] because it was reported that the property had been contaminated, but when it was sold there was nothing on the deed that said it was contaminated. The buyer started selling the property off in sections . . . and we're finding out the city sold it to him for $60,000 and he has already sold one parcel for about $150,000 and another parcel for roughly $150,000 and another for a few hundred thousand . . . The city lost out on a lot of dollars that were going into someone else's pocket."
Bob Mollette, current City Council member
"He [Mayor Bauer] has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar . . . He's kind of stealing and just turning around and laughing about it. . . . So we're recalling him."
Joe Ferguson, Ward 1 resident
"I've even had people come to me and tell me they're his [Bauer's] drug-dealer – that he came to them to score cocaine and his wife buys marijuana from them. But they've never come to me. I've never seen them do anything. . . . But, yes, it's very well known in the city."
Lee Scott
"I think the recall movement is a divisive way of tearing down the community. But I do feel our prayers have somewhat given a positive side to the entire situation."
David Malone, minister and current City Council member
"A lot of people are angry here, and I think the angry people will be out and vote. They have a reason to go to the polls this time."
Austin Leedom, editor Shawnee Sentinel
"People have computers. Twenty years ago they may have gotten away with it. But today computers will tell on them. . . . David just slew Goliath.
Bob Mollette
"I think the city, the community, has spoken, and right now Bauer does not have control. His people, who have had him as their puppet these many years, do not have control right now."
Teresa Mollette
"This is probably the turning point in this town. These men threw everything they could at us. They tried to change the attention away from the issues to our past records. I think it speaks volumes that the people of this town decided to come to us, people they knew they could trust, to find out what the truth was."
John Welton, "Doug Deepe"
"Mayor Bauer was recalled last night. Voters decided to give him the boot by quite a large margin."
WSAZ Channel 3
"I still stand behind our record. We've done a good job. We've been very successful in preparing the city for future industrial expansion. I think we've done a good job. . . . I will survive in one form or another. I had a business in Portsmouth before I became mayor, an advertising and design business, a background in printing also. And we have opportunities out there that we'll follow up on. We will survive."
Mayor Bauer, speaking to a reporter after he was recalled.
Headline in the Daily Times the morning after the recall of Mayor Bauer.
Bauer Graphics, still closed as of March 2005
Posted by Robert Forrey at 10:15 AM
Friday, March 04, 2005
In Flohr Lecture Hall in the Shawnee State University library on Wednesday, March 16, at 7:00 PM, I will show RECALL, a 60-minute video essay on the 2004 recall of Mayor Greg Bauer. The showing will be followed by a discussion period. Because I am a novice videographer, with much to learn about the technology, RECALL has its flaws, but those who have already seen it believe the public will find it worth watching.
Several months before the recall election, which took place on June 22, 2004, I began trying to get those on both sides to give their views. Mayor Bauer and his assistant Jamie Tuggle declined to be interviewed, and City Councilman Kalb and Police Chief Horner could not find the time. But two City Council members did agree to talk to me on camera. Ward 1 councilwoman Ann Sydnor defended the city's purchase of the Marting Building and the city's decision to reject the N&W railroad terminal as a possible municipal building. She also shared her knowledge of the history of recalls in Portsmouth, which she has been on both sides of, having actively pushed for the recall of three councilmen back in 1980, and, subsequently, in 2004, having been recalled herself. The other city council member I interviewed was Rev. David Malone. He did not support the recall movement, which he called "divisive," but he did conduct prayer sessions with recall supporters on the steps of the Municipal Building, asking God's help in purifying Portsmouth. I also interviewed former mayor Frank Gerlach, who pointed out some of the legal ramifications and political consequences of recalls. Jeff Barron of the Daily Times provided a reporter's perspective.
Among the supporters of the recall, Lee Scott, Austin Leedom, John Welton, Teresa and Bob Mollette, Dee Penix, Harold Daub, Joe Ferguson, and Tim Loper agreed to be interviewed. There are several interviews with voters who asked that their last names not be used.
Making RECALL was an educational experience for me, not only because of what I learned about digital videography but also what I learned about Portsmouth politics. I am ashamed now at how little I knew in spite of having lived in the river city for fifteen years. I was deeply involved in the politics of Shawnee State. I served four terms as president of the faculty union and attended many trustee meetings, and published articles about the shenanigans at Shawnee State in The Shawnee Sentinel, but I had never attended a city council meeting. Though I heard doubts expressed about his character and competence, I knew little about him and had no strong views on the recall when I began interviewing people.
What I learned about Bauer and Portsmouth politics as I conducted my interviews surprised me and made me sympathetic to the recall. For one thing, I came to see that the problems of Shawnee State mirrored the problems of Portsmouth. "You will not really understand Shawnee State until you understand the politics of Portsmouth," a senior SSU professor and native of Portsmouth had told me, and how true that proved to be.
And I discovered another important truth while putting together RECALL – you cannot understand the Portsmouth of today without understanding the Portsmouth of yesterday. "How long has this been going on?" More than once I asked myself that question. The answer is, "It's been going on a long time." If most people don't realize it, it is because up until the last ten years or so their idea of the past was largely what they had derived from local media. The local media had reported what the present was and that present had become the past, the past that people carry around vaguely in their heads. The past you will find if you look back at old copies of the Portsmouth Daily Times or dig up some old editorials from local radio stations is a past that distorts local history, a past that was created to make the people who controlled Portsmouth look good and those who challenged them look bad.
In one way things have not changed: the Marting's scandal is the Mall scandal of twenty-five years ago all over again. Clayton Johnson was deeply involved in both of them. But there is this all-important difference between then and now – the local media have lost their monopoly on the public's perceptions of what the present and the past are. Twenty-five years ago Portsmouth's privileged class created a myth about the Mall, and the obedient attack-dog media went after the three councilmen, accusing them of having maliciously killed the Mall and destroyed Portsmouth's future. The frustration and anger of a city that had been in decline since the 1950s was directed in 1980 at the demonized "Mall killers."
Twenty-five years ago the kept media blamed the Mall-killers for all that was wrong in Portsmouth. Now they are blaming The Shawnee Sentinel and those of us who are using the new technology to expose the corruption and porking in Portsmouth. We are accused of viciously tearing down the city and defaming philanthropic leaders such as the developer Neal Johnson and his lawyer Clayton Johnson. I discovered in talking to people that Johnson and Hatcher are the two most distrusted and disliked men in Portsmouth, excluding politicians, of course. Twenty five years ago the over-privileged of Portsmouth would have gotten away with the Marting rip-off. Twenty-five years ago Mayor Bauer would not have been recalled, just as City Manager Barry Feldman was not removed from office in 1980 even though the courageous city council led by Andrew Clausing had fired him not once, not twice, but three times. If it were 1980, editorials and slanted reporting in the Daily Times and editorials on the radio stations would have been enough to keep Bauer in office. But the days when the local media could monopolize the news is over.
Money still talks, but fewer and fewer people listen. If you make a distinction between readers and subscribers, far more people read the online Shawnee Sentinel than the Daily Times. The past is not what it used to be. Neither is the present. The recall of Mayor Bauer was not a destructive act that would lead to chaos, as Bauer had predicted, but an inspiring expression of democracy, a triumph of ordinary people over the over-privileged. The Portsmouth Daily Times and the Community Common and a local radio station urged voters to keep Mayor Bauer in office. RECALL shows why a large majority did not follow that advice. Whatever side you were on, come Wednesday night, March 16, and take part in the ongoing dialogue.
Posted by Robert Forrey at 11:05 PM
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Authorities uncovered a scary hoarding situation overnight in northeast Philadelphia.
A man was found unconscious among dead and alive cats. Mountains of debris, mice and rats were also present inside of the house located inside of the Bickley Street home. There was no air conditioning as well.
The man was rescued only after his family went to check on the him. He is said to be in his 70s and was taken to a local hospital.
George Bengal, from the PSPCA told Fox 29, "We had tons and tons, buckets and buckets and buckets and buckets and buckets of cat feces everywhere at this property. I have been doing this job 20 years and I keep saying that every one of these houses that I go in possibly the worst I have seen. this is at the top of the list."
Fox 29's Steve Keeley filed this report on Good Day from the scene.
It is unclear of the rescued animals will be able to be adopted out.
L & I is also on scene to check on the livability of the house.
WHBQ-TV | Fox 13 485 S. Highland St.Memphis, TN 38111Main Station: (901) 320-1313Newsroom: (901) 320-1340


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Style Map
Daily Dispatches From The Global Scene
Our new feature, which was unveiled for the Fall/Winter 2009 season, was designed to take advantage of our incomparable runway coverage and to give our discerning readers, such as yourself, the opportunity to shop the hottest trends right from the runway.
Our editors have carefully selected 36 of the biggest trends in fashion, running the gamut from boho to minimal and everything in between. Each runway image from the shows we cover is categorized as reflecting one of these 36 looks.
To use this feature, simply click on the Shop the Looks link located to the right of the runway image, and you will be directed to dozens of similarly themed items from a range of top designers and retailers. We continuously curate the 36 looks so the best and newest items are available—no matter the season—and so you have a successful and enjoyable shopping experience.
It is also possible to access these pages from the Shop the Looks blog. Choose from the list on the left-hand side and start shopping.
How do I shop the blog?
Our new Shop the Looks blog is where we recommend our favorite shopping finds on a daily basis. We pick the must-have item of the day, whether it's fall's hottest boots or the newest designer fragrance, so you can purchase our obsessions immediately. To shop our on-trend picks, click the image within the post and you will be taken directly to the e-tailer. Check back regularly for best sellers, sales, and great finds.
Is it possible to shop for items from Style.com not categorized under one of the 36 looks?
Yes, you can begin at Style.com's customized ShopStyle homepage, for all your shopping needs. Click from our recommendations there, or use the search bar in the left-hand corner to find exactly what you want.
What is the Shop the Looks weekly newsletter, and how can I sign up?
Each week, we highlight our favorite finds and must-have items from the season's leading runway looks. From goth to tribal, each trend is wearable with our well-edited selection of clothing, accessories, and beauty products.
You can sign up to receive our weekly shopping e-mail by entering your e-mail address on our newsletter page, here—it's that easy!
*Shop the Looks is powered by ShopStyle.com. Style.com receives a commission on each sale.
Shop the Looks seems really awesome! I really like it, but I was wondering if you guys have any maternity swimwear?
Thanks for answering most of the questions I have. I love that you can directly shop the blog. Whenever I look at fashion blogs I always want to do that, but most of the time they don't even tell you where you can buy the clothes and accessories they feature. You guys take it one step further, and it's awesome. Do you guys just do clothes, though, or do you have posts on accessories like chandelier earrings as well?


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Having been in the food business "too many" years I congratulate them on their professionalism. Food quality, presentation and service were excellent. Though the speciality restaurants are greatly hyped, you would be hard pressed to find a bad meal or poor service anywhere.
If your going for the casino action be aware the machines are "tight" and the service and hospitality are horrible. High speed sarcastic dealers and grumpy pit bosses offered an attitude of total indifference. Upon complaining at the service desk, found out they are not employees of Oceania but a sub contractor. Suggest they do a little "mystery shopper" work.
Having been to Europe many times we didn't feel the need to book excursions. But, having heard from many others, its best to check around. We did book a private car in Livorno and had a fantastic time touring small cheese, ham and wine producers as well as the historic town of Voltaire at a fraction of the cost.
Embarkation was a breeze, professional, quick and very accommodating. The little wait for the staterooms to be ready was a perfect time to enjoy a leisurely lunch.
A couple of suggestions to future cruisers
Take a sweater, most of the dining rooms are chilly.
Take earplugs, seems most of the music venues try to test volume ability of their amplifiers.
All things being considered, I bought ear plugs, a new sweater and tickets for a Caribbean cruise on Riveria this winter.


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I can't wait to take my husband Daniel for his birthday! He spent the last two years in Japan and Qatar listening to Jason Mraz to get him through the loneliness. I was so excited to tell him I cried and couldn't hold it in.
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Dimitrova Leads Volleyball Past Jacksonville State, 3-0
Oct. 5, 2001
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -
Jacksonville State (4-9, 0-1 A-Sun) 28 28 25 JU (3-10, 1-1 A-Sun) 30 30 30
Sophomore outside hitter Radka Dimitrova (Sofia, Bulgaria) led a potent Dolphin attack with 11 kills and a team-high 15 digs as JU captured its first Atlantic Sun conference win of the season, in a 3-0 (30-28, 30-28, 30-25) win over Jacksonville State, Friday evening at Swisher Gymnasium. The win was the third in four games for the Dolphins, improving their record to 3-10 overall and 1-1 in A-Sun play. The Gamecocks drop to 4-9 with a 0-1 A-Sun conference record.
JU's offense shined as junior middle hitter Brooke Ahrens (Benson, Ill.) had a game-high 16 kills and junior outside hitter Alesha Rodriguez (Cleveland, Ohio) added 14 kills as the two combined with Dimitrova for 41 of JU's 54 kills. Senior setter Carrie Bosworth (Centreville, Mass.) contributed with 46 assists and three of the Dolphins' nine service aces.
The Dolphins return to action on Saturday, October 6, when they take on A-Sun competitor Samford at 4 p.m, at Swisher Gymnasium.


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North Carolina lawmakers headed home Friday after late-night and early-morning sessions that saw a final push to pass Republican-backed bills capping what all sides agree was one of the most transformational legislative sessions in state history.
The House adjourned shortly before noon, following the Senate's 2 a.m. adjournment.
The last bills to win approval included a sweeping measure loosening environmental regulations, legislation allowing new restrictions on abortion providers and numerous changes to state elections laws that critics say are designed to help GOP lawmakers retain power.
Items left on the table included an effort to speed up fracking for natural gas and a bill that Republican Gov. Pat McCrory wanted, to remake the state Department of Commerce as a public-private partnership focused on job creation.
McCrory now has 30 days to either sign the bills on his desk or allow them to become law without his signature. At a media conference at the governor's mansion following the adjournment, McCrory expressed concern about two bills he said may trigger his first vetoes - a measure requiring state employers to electronically verify the immigration status of those they hire and a bill requiring those applying for public food and housing assistance to first pass a drug test.
On the whole, however, McCrory said he is "very pleased" with the session, which he said accomplished 20 of the 22 objectives he laid out at the start of his term in January. He confirmed he would sign the voting changes into law, as well as the bill many see as a betrayal of his campaign pledge not to support additional restrictions on abortion providers.
"We've had more reform in this state government in the last six months than this state has seen in the past 30 years," McCrory said. "And now, more than ever, we need reform, because people in North Carolina are hurting and they continue to have a broken government we have to fix."
McCrory says he will sign two controversial bills into law. The first tightens regulation on abortion clinics, the second requires voters to show a valid ID before they can vote. Both bills have been met with intense debate and protests.
Women's rights groups are calling the governor a liar, for going against a campaign promise that he would not sign legislation that restricts women's access to abortion clinics.
"I disagree with the critics and I think they're misleading the people, " McCrory said. "We're not limiting access to these facilities, we're going to increase the safety of those facilities."
The North Carolina NAACP called the passage of the voter ID bill the "most extreme voter restriction laws in the nation." During a moral Monday protests they said they would take legal action against the state if this bill became law. They said they're prepared to take it all the way to the Supreme Court.
"I said it in 2008, and again in 2012, I think it makes common sense to show an ID when you vote." said McCrory.
Supporters say the laws will help prevent voter fraud. Opponents say there is no proof of fraud and say it's just an attempt to keep the poor, and minorities from voting.
Democrats, environmental groups, voting rights advocates and many public educators all saw it differently.
"We end this session knowing we did nothing to create jobs, we don't have that prosperity," said House Minority Leader Larry Hall, D-Durham. "We created a tax cut for the millionaires and raised the taxes on the least of these."
Republicans took control of the North Carolina Legislature in 2010 for the first time since Reconstruction and cemented full control of state government with the election of McCrory. That put them in prime position to implement a conservative platform focused on rewriting the tax code and rolling back government regulations they claim impeded prosperity.
The GOP tax plan passed last week cuts taxes for corporations and reduces the state's tiered personal income tax brackets into one flat 5.8 percent rate. Previously, high income earners paid the maximum 7.75 percent - meaning the biggest share of the new tax cuts go to the wealthy.
Meanwhile, the $20.6 billion state budget that McCrory signed into law Friday included no cost-of-living raise for state employees, cut pay for teachers with graduate degrees, ended teacher tenure and included a measure that for the first time will allow taxpayer money to be used to pay tuition at private schools.
The legislature also passed measures that allow concealed handguns to be carried in bars, restaurants, parks and playgrounds. Armed volunteers will also be allowed into public schools as unpaid safety officers.
The sharp rightward turn in Raleigh prompted weekly protests at the legislative building that drew thousands from across the state and prompted about 930 arrests. The changes also garnered national media attention.
For their part, House Speaker Thom Tillis and Senate leader Phil Berger praised the legislative accomplishments.
"We have worked tirelessly over the course of six months to enact reforms critical to providing greater opportunities to our state's citizens," said Tillis, R-Mecklenburg. "We lived within our means to provide a fiscally responsible and economically sustainable budget, enacted a comprehensive tax reform plan to bring financial relief to all North Carolinians, and eliminated burdensome regulations to promote economic development in our state."
Berger praised GOP lawmakers for instituting policies that he said would empower the private sector to create jobs. North Carolina's unemployment rate has hovered for months around 9 percent, the fifth-highest in the nation.
"Despite fierce resistance and overblown partisan rhetoric from the left, we did exactly what millions of voters asked us to do," said Berger, R-Rockingham.
To advance their agenda, Republican leaders sometimes reverted to using many of the same legislative tactics and parliamentary procedures that they had lambasted Democrats for just a few years ago, such as passing bills in the dead of the night and slipping controversial changes into wholly unrelated legislation.
The session also saw examples of the GOP supermajority seemingly going against its stated ideological principles of smaller government and local control. Examples included the passage of bills seizing control of the state's busiest airport form the city of Charlotte and ordering Durham to annex and provide services to a proposed mega-development in the sensitive Jordan Lake watershed that's opposed by the city council.
Environmentalists warned that the effects of numerous GOP-backed measures could be felt for generations. They pointed to the removal of key scientists and environmental experts from state oversight boards, rollbacks of clean water protections and a measure making it easier to build landfills near parks and wilderness areas.
"In the blink of an eye - just six short months - many of the legislators at the General Assembly have attempted to rewrite or repeal almost every common sense law and regulation on the books impacting the environment," said N.C. Conservation Network Executive Director Brian Buzby, representing a statewide coalition of more than 60 groups.
Voting rights and civil rights groups also had harsh criticism for the GOP-backed voter ID law that was amended this week to include more than 50 additional elections-related provisions - shortening early voting by a week, ending same-day registration, and eliminating a high school civics program that registers students in advance of their 18th birthdays.
Republicans maintained the changes will restore faith in elections and prevent voter fraud, which they claim is endemic and undetected. Nonpartisan voting rights groups, Democrats and Libertarians say the true goal is suppressing voter turnout among the young, the old, the poor and minorities.
The measure also weakens disclosure requirements intended to make clear who is underwriting campaign ads, increases the cap on individual political donations to $5,000 and enables political parties to rake in unlimited corporate donations.
"The legislature chose to pass a fundamentally flawed and potentially damaging piece of legislation that will likely limit voter access to the polls and open the door to increased special interest money in our elections," said Brent Laurenz, executive director of the nonpartisan N.C. Center for Voter Education.
The elections bill is one of several new GOP-backed laws likely to face legal challenges. In a telling move, legislative leaders added a provision late Thursday night giving the House speaker and Senate leader equal standing with North Carolina's attorney general to defend their laws in court. The current attorney general, Roy Cooper, is a Democrat. A separate provision moved 19 lawyers out of the Democrat-run Justice Department to executive-branch agencies controlled by McCrory.
Lawmakers are set to return to Raleigh for their biennial "short session" in May 2014 before facing voters at the polls in November, more than 15 months from now.


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A friend of mine who is just as fanatical about the Angels as I am said to me, "And who the hell is Jim Eppard, anyway?!" He was giving me his opinion as to what the Angels' Organization should to do to turn things around, and his suggestion was to fire the coaching staff, or at least the hitting and pitching coaches. I had to admit his reasoning seemed sound, and after a little research, I was convinced he was probably right.
So let's take a look at a few key members of the staff:
- Jim Eppard Currently the Hitting Coach for the Angels. According to BaseballReference.com, Jim's batting average was a respectable .281, but further examination shows that over the 4 seasons he played in the Majors, his average steadily declined, making that average rather misleading. Of course, he only played in a total of 82 games in his career. He never hit a HR in the Big Leagues. Ever. He's your damn hitting coach and he never hit a home run in the majors?
- Mike Butcher Currently the Pitching Coach for the Angels. Mike's numbers aren't horrible; his W/L record is 11-4. But the W/L is a fairly meaningless stat. His ERA over the 4 seasons he played is 4.47, and his WHIP is 1.54. Guess that means he was letting the team's defense help him out.
- Rob Picciolo Currently the Angels Bench Coach. In his nine seasons in the majors, his OBS average is .246 and his OPS is .558. I have only one thing to say about that: :(
- Steve Soliz Currently the Angels Bullpen Coach. Played nine seasons in the Minors; never played in the Majors.
I decided not to list Alfredo Griffin, nor Dino Ebel, since they are not directly responsible for hitting and pitching. I also decided not to list Mike Scioscia's career numbers: we're all too familiar with that information, and this post is really only addressing Mike's coaching staff.
So I guess the argument is how important is Major League experience when coaching at the Major League level? My friend argues that a coach at that level needs more than sub-average to average numbers in order to command any respect from his players in the first place, and if the experience of a coach is lacking, than how good can his advice be, anyway? Valid points, to be sure, however, there are some very good managers whose resumes as players are really no better than the coaches mentioned above. Joe Maddon comes to mine, for one. But is that the exception and not the rule?
I thnk the proof is in the winning, or lack thereof in the case of the Angels. When you look at the sheer frustration over the last 2-3 seasons this team has produced, it's hard not to hold the coaches accountable as player after player has struggled just to meet minimal expectations. I believe, as my friend does, that the team has some very talented players who should be more than able to put together at least a winning season, which is why we agree that it is time for at least some of the coaching staff to go.
With that said, I'd be very interested in hearing some suggestions for hitting and pitching coach replacements. My friend suggested Garrett Anderson and Scot Shields, respectively. We couldn't do any worse. Any suggestions?


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Pyramid Apricot Ale - Pyramid Breweries, Inc.
Displayed for educational use only; do not reuse.
Ratings: 929 | Reviews: 458 | Display Reviews Only:
Reviews by ThaHealer:
4.25/5 rDev +24.3%
07-04-2014 21:15:09 | More by ThaHealer
More User Reviews:
North Carolina
3.53/5 rDev +3.2%
Pours a yellow/orange color with very little head to speak of,the aroma is very up front of apricots or apricot puree.The taste is also very apricot like with a slight wheaty taste in the finish.A little light in the body but also very drinkable.Iam not a big fan of these kind of beers but it was worth trying.
08-17-2003 19:17:46 | More by oberon
3.5/5 rDev +2.3%
11-10-2012 23:40:59 | More by Turbo
2.11/5 rDev -38.3%
Pours a slightly off-orange color, very nearly the color of an apricot, ironically enough. Hazy, almost fully opaque, and topped with a wispy white head that doesn't stick around for very long. The smell is certainly not the best; a very artificial and forced apricot aroma makes its way to my nostrils and immediately I can tell this beer is probably not going to be great. The smell is very chalky, medicinal, and contrived. Oh boy. The beer finally hits my palate and you get this ever-so-slight taste of an almost tart apricot with some sweet, pale malty sugar, but before you have time to appreciate it - it's gone. Before long, your palate is engulfed with an artificial tasting mess. Medicinal flavors abound, metallic notes - yuck. That chalky, astringent aroma comes up full force in the flavor and makes the aftertaste almost unbearable. After taking a healthy sip, it tastes like you just got done chewing a Flintstone's vitamin. Musky, chalky, and not very sweet at all. Thin and watery mouth feel doesn't do much to help the cause, either.
Blech. I love apricots, but this beer is far from it. The aftertaste is very near the point of being downright nasty, and the beer really has no redeeming qualities. Stay away from this one.
01-21-2013 12:47:22 | More by tectactoe
3.13/5 rDev -8.5%
This is an orangish beer with a thin brittle white head that basically smells like peach air-freshener. The taste is a light, but nonetheless artificial tasting candy (reminds me of jolly ranchers!) peach, apricot flavor that overwhelms any discernable malt flavors. Very floral hops enhance the trick nicely and a hint of yeast in the finish makes a futile attempt to dry things. This beer is a bit artificial tasting for me but the fact that I tasted both hops and yeast in it impressed me somewhat. Lifting carbonation is pleasant. Cloying qualities kept me from wanting more. Some people love this stuff. You should try it once.
04-06-2006 06:21:01 | More by JudgeRoughneck
3.55/5 rDev +3.8%
Thanks to my dad for tossing this one my way. Best by 030806 lasered on the neck. Pours from the stubby brown bottle a nice somewhat bright cloudy orange with a big two finger head of white foam atop the brew. The head lingers and leaves sticky lace across the glass. Aromas initially reek like opening a bag of freshly cut or dried apricots. There's an underlying grainy, wheat husk aroma as well. You'll have to like apricots to appreciate the nose here!
First sip brings some pale, wheat grain maltiness that is a little bit grating. The fresh apricot flows through with a sweet/tart fashion across the tongue. Finishes with a lingering apricot flavor that's quite nice and not at all artificial. Hints of yeast poke in and out as well. A tasty fruit beer if I say so myself.
Mouthfeel is medium bodied with a subtle creaminess and plenty of carbonation...quite refreshing really. I could see this going great on a hot summer day, it reminds me of O'Fallon Wheach. Worth looking into if you're a fan of fruit beers, apricots or both. Unfiltered as well!
11-30-2005 04:40:56 | More by orbitalr0x
3.25/5 rDev -5%
03-25-2012 02:50:32 | More by acelightning80
1.6/5 rDev -53.2%
Orangish apricot color with a very minimal head that quickly dies away. Looks okay, but looks are (extremely) decieving.
Sicky-sweet artificial nose. Ugh. I do not look forward to the taste.
Difficult to drink. Somewhat sour, very artificial fruitiness. Not as bad as the scent, but not fun to drink.
Nasty, foul aftertaste that will not go away until you have a different beer, or eat something.
Drinkability? Total drain pour. I give the drinkability rating a little leeway, because I think I am drinking an outdated (possibly oxidized?) bottle. The bottling date on the label is blurred, so I do not know how old this is.
01-27-2006 23:28:31 | More by chOAKbarrell
3.45/5 rDev +0.9%
Pours a medium apricot (who would have thought) with little to no head. Virtually no carbonation, no fizzle, no lacing.
Smells a hearty apricot (who would have thought).
Carbonation and alcohol initial, non-sweet apricot. Very nice that it didnt end up syrupy. Dry, yet appealing. Doesnt taste like it smells.
This beer gets pluses for staying true to what it was trying to accomplish. I think the appearence could use some help though. Overall I think its nicely complex for being a simply apricot beer.
01-01-2007 21:17:12 | More by JasonA
3.25/5 rDev -5%
08-15-2012 04:12:37 | More by danthehopslamman
3/5 rDev -12.3%
04-07-2014 23:17:19 | More by heddar33
4.28/5 rDev +25.1%
Served up in a stubby pilsner and poured a golden wheat color with heavy carbination. Very light head reduced to a light ring. Heavy fresh apricot scent- WOW! Tastes of frest fruits and of apricot nectar, but not too sweet. The flavor stays with you. Yeah, it is kind of girly sounding and may scare of alot of the guys, but if you buck up and try it, you may find that you actually like it. If you are one for the fruit beers it could work as a nice session beer.
05-31-2004 17:51:12 | More by shapudding
2.5/5 rDev -26.9%
04-10-2013 02:30:22 | More by SmellsofMahagony
3.5/5 rDev +2.3%
12-31-2012 02:47:48 | More by TimoP
3/5 rDev -12.3%
03-11-2013 17:49:49 | More by Beerswag
North Carolina
3.5/5 rDev +2.3%
02-17-2013 22:37:21 | More by anjah
3.43/5 rDev +0.3%
12 oz dark bottle says "Enjoy by 12/12/03". Pours a murky golden color into the glass. Head quickly leaves. Aroma of fresh apricots is very pronounced. Mouthful is very well balanced between apricots and carbonation. Some hoppy tingles as well. No lacing on the glass. This is a very good tasting wheat beer that matches well with the fresh apricot dominance. Not at all syrupy or cloying. Don't bother with this one if you don't like apricots. The hops continue to tingle the tongue to the very end. Clear finish and pleasant aftertaste. Feels light like a summer weiss. Very drinkable. This would be an excellent summer ale.
11-14-2003 21:37:07 | More by merlin48
3.7/5 rDev +8.2%
Appearance: hazy, huge head, apricot color
Smell: apricots and cream
Taste: apricots, cream, and a small bit of hops
Mouthfeel: smooth, light bodied, medium/high carbonation, sweet
Drinkability: Excellent apricot flavor. This is sweet without being overly sweet and a nice fruit beer. I could have three of these, but a six would be a bit much.
10-29-2009 17:46:22 | More by tigg924
4/5 rDev +17%
06-16-2013 22:39:55 | More by steelshell
4.25/5 rDev +24.3%
08-01-2012 07:19:55 | More by Jovo
3/5 rDev -12.3%
The beer pours a clear yellow color with a white head. The aroma is heavy on the wheat with some apricots. Somewhat one-dimensional and not that impressive. The flavor is is more of the same. Other than apricots and wheat there is nothing else going on. I guess that is what you get from a beer named Apricot Ale. Medium mouthfeel and medium carbonation.
08-04-2011 01:07:52 | More by Mora2000
3.2/5 rDev -6.4%
Opened 12 fl oz bottle, poured into a Weizen glass.
Formed large foamy head of 3". dies down to nice hazy light golden/amber hazy brew.
Smell, of course, is Apricot. A tad bit fruitier than I normally like, but not bad. Some wheat and malt. Good finish, OK beer.
01-10-2008 08:19:14 | More by mattster
2/5 rDev -41.5%
01-29-2014 01:50:26 | More by cbradio
3.6/5 rDev +5.3%
12oz. amber bottle with a best by date of 11/25/04. This was a purchase by the wife-type unit during our recent (rain-soaked) vacation to North Carolina.
Pours a clear and bright golden-orange in color. Fizzy layer of dying white head clings to the glass. Aromas are pronounced apricots, maybe with a spoonful of sugar on them. Not much else, but the smell sure didn't need it. Very nice. Flavor is also loaded with apricots, with a bready/doughy finish to it. There's barely any bitterness to this beer. Apricots remain on the palate long after the finish. Decent mouthfeel and drinkability. Great summer beer.
10-01-2004 23:17:13 | More by OldFrothingSlosh
North Carolina
4.61/5 rDev +34.8%
I first had this beer when one of my nephews and I did a tasting of about 14 beers. It was the only one we both liked. I loved it and he said "this would be great on a hot day" (which, in NC, is common).
This beer looks beautiful. It's sudsy and peachy colored. In a sense, it doesn't look real. It looks like a high dollar TV ad that has been heavily doctored up.
The taste is great. It's as peachy as it is apricot...y(?). And, as my nephew suggested, it is exactly the type of beer you'd want to drink 12-15 of on a beautiful summer day after frolicking in the outdoors.
For some, it might get too peachy after a while. It also might be a little too carbonated for some (it feels a little like Mountain Dew, at times). It's really purely subjective if either is too much, or just right for you.
05-27-2014 15:04:25 | More by seymourcox
Pyramid Apricot Ale from Pyramid Breweries, Inc.
78 out of 100 based on 929 ratings.