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A frosty, but sunny Saturday in December. Errands to run, people to meet and just enjoy your city. The streets are busy as hell these days, of course, but bearable, as Amsterdammers (and visitors) cover them on foot, by tram and…well, you know what this blog is all about.
Entering & leaving Albert Cuyp Market
Ugg and Company & panniers are for flowers
Smashing blue waiting for anti-abortion demonstrators to pass
Smashing green & absolutely nothing wrong with pink
Keeping tabs on friends & keeping tabs on accessories
Wonder whether he's a doctor & much needed shopping refreshment
Girls just wanna have fun & classy apparel
Who wouldn't smile on a day like this…
Oh, about that 'Cycle Chic' thing: many people online take that term too literally. It's not about dressing up to cycle (like you need to go on the cover of a magazine), but about not needing special gear. Dress like you always do and just hop on. It's really that easy. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. It would be the world upside down.


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9/11 Survivor Finds 'Purpose' by Helping Others
In 2001, Nicole B. Simpson was just another Morgan Stanley financial planner on the 73rd floor when the 9/11 attacks struck. She survived, but the emotional trauma left her old life in the wreckage. Eventually, though, she found a new purpose in helping others through traumas of their own.

subset: commoncrawl


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Style #: W119
For further details regarding our pricavy policies including the use of cookies please click here. For instructions on how to enable cookies please click here. If you need assistance one of our customer service representatives at 1-800-850-7463 would be glad to help.
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For thousands of years, rubies and sapphires have been revered for their beauty and perceived mystical powers. It was thought that rubies held the key to serenity and peace and could secure eternal love and happiness. The ancient Persians believed that the earth itself rested upon a great sapphire whose reflection caused the sky to be blue. Rubies and sapphires continue to captivate with their unparalleled beauty, and quality stones have become excellent investments.
Judging by their distinct color, it may be hard to believe that rubies and sapphires are actually the same stone, identical in all characteristics except color. Both are corundum and each derives their rich color from tiny amounts of different chemical impurities. These amazing corundum minerals are second only to diamonds in hardness, and in many cases, are a much better value.
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Miami, FL (Sports Network) - Dwyane Wade scored 24 points and the Miami Heat
pulled away in the second half to record a 103-92 victory over the Minnesota
Timberwolves at American Airlines Arena.
LeBron James amassed 22 points and 11 assists for Miami, which began the
fourth quarter with a 17-6 run to break open a relatively close contest en
route to its fourth win in five games. Chris Bosh tallied 15 points to help
the reigning world champions prevail.
The Heat came out on top despite being outrebounded by a 52-24 margin and
outscored in the paint by a 58-36 differential. However, Miami shot a sizzling
52 percent (13-of-25) from 3-point range on the night, with Mario Chalmers
hitting 4-of-6 long-range attempts in a 12-point effort and Shane Battier
going 3-for-7 from beyond the arc.
Andrei Kirilenko had 22 points to pace Minnesota and Nikola Pekovic racked up
18 points and 12 rebounds in the loss, the Timberwolves' second straight
following a season-best four-game win streak.
Kevin Love grabbed 18 boards for Minnesota, but went just 2-of-10 from the
field while ending with 11 points.
The Sports Network


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|More snow falls in Holyoke
|Written by Holyoke Enterprise
Holyoke received some more of the white stuff Wednesday night, Oct. 24. Nearly two inches was recorded by official weather observer Dan Kafka. As people awakened Thursday morning, they moseyed out to find vehicles needing to be cleared of snow and ice.
Temperatures dropped down to lows in the mid 20s for much of the week last week, making for some chilly nights.
—Enterprise photos
Holyoke Enterprise November 1, 2012


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The 2008 McCandless Mopar Classic Car ShowWritten by on October 8, 2008 One of the biggest little shows in the Country
Well, the days leading up to the Inaugural McCandlees Mopar Classic held at historic Piedmont Dragway had us all on edge as the weather man was threatening us with what he called a "chance of showers". Well, by the end of the day on Saturday, several "chances" occurred, but it didn't put a damper on any of the activities until the end of the day, and the final pairs of racers ended up splitting the pot. We were pleased to hear that even though the weather kept some of the racers away, the Piedmont officials didn't "pro-rate" the pay outs, they offered a payout, and they delivered.
The swap meet guys started filing in early, and we even found some good buys for ourselves, so that went well. Like we mentioned, the weatherman wasn't kind, but there was still a lot of show cars that came to spend the day.
But for many, the Sox & Martin tribute had to be the highlight of the show. Piedmont Dragway was/is Sox & Martin territory, so the turnout was unbelievable and I don't think there was a dry eye in the house during the tribute when several of the Sox & Martin cars made parade laps down the track.
Sunday brought even more racing, and this small-town, two-day event has already proven itself that it is definitely one you have to put on your schedule for next year--we did.
More Photos From This Article View Slideshow
If you wanted parts, the swap meet was the place for you. Vendors were waiting at the gate before it even opened trying to get in.We even found this '68 Valiant for sale and briefly thought about another project. It's already white with a two-toned blue interior.Here's something you don't see everyday, a sleeper four-door. The owner added a 440 with a Max-Wedge top end.
The event featured a tribute to Ronnie Sox and the Sox & Martin team, and in attendance was Ronnie's dad, brothers and sister.The gentleman on the right in the red shirt is Dave Christie, and the very nice lady sitting to his left is Ms. King, the late Jake King's wife. What stories she had to tell during the weekend. We especially liked the story about delivering sandwiches to the shop at Midnight while the crew worked on the cars.If the sight and sound of the Sox & Martin team cars driving on the track doesn't give you goose bumps, you need help. The tribute to the Sox & Martin team brought Ronnie's '65 Altered Wheelbase car, the '68 Super Stock Barracuda, the '70 GT! (Pro Stock) car, and Herb McCandless' Demon out on the track together.
Mike McCandless and the Scoobie Doo van called out a fellow racing van for a grudge match. When the sun set, and the race was finally over, Mike had to eat his words.


text: Here is what I believe to be the most thorough and accurate broadhead test out there. It is not biased and most heads were provided by the representing companies. There are some good mechanicals out there and some good fixed blades out there. There are also a lot in there that prove advertising can out sell engineering and the results speak for it. I will still stand by my stance that a good 3 or 4 blade fixed usually has quite a bit more cutting surface than any 2-blade mechanical can offer. Unless you get into cutting diameters over 2 1/2" with the mechanical, your not going to compete and you will almost 100 percent of the time deal with blade breakage at those extreme lengths. Won't exactly be slipping in between any bone with that kind of cutting diameter. Here are the results. If you have the time, look through the whole thread as it has a ton of info on multiple heads.


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|Krueger pulls for charity with pop tabs
|Written by Becca Brandt
Something as seemingly insignificant as saving the tab off the top of an aluminum can really can make a difference as Holyoke resident Joyce Krueger has discovered throughout the years. For the past 13 years, Krueger has been saving her tiny aluminum tabs to donate to Ronald McDonald House Charities.
Krueger first became aware of the project in October of 2000. She was hit with the devastating news that she had breast cancer and would need to undergo surgery and do chemotherapy. The next six weeks were spent undergoing five consecutive days of radiation followed by two days of rest.
Going to treatment at Memorial Hospital Cancer Center in Colorado Springs was a challenge for Krueger and her husband Jay Dean, as they lived so far away. The doctor at the center suggested the couple look into staying at the Ronald McDonald House about a block away.
Read the full story! Call the Enterprise about an e-subscription at 970-854-2811.
The Holyoke Enterprise Aug. 22, 2013


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Wednesday news, September 5
Storm Knocks Down Trees and Power Lines
(Le Mars) -- Last evening's storm was a double edge sword for people living in northwest Iowa. It produced up to an inch of rain at Le Mars, but also caused several power lines and trees to be blown down. There were reports of isolated power outages in Le Mars, Remsen, Kingsley and Merrill. Both the
Kingsley Fire Department and the Merrill Fire Department responded to emergencies caused by the strong winds and thunder storms. Kingsley had a tree catch on fire from the lightning and due to a power line that was down. Merrill was called twice within a half hour to put out small fires as a result of the storm. Mid-American and Rural Electric Cooperative crews have been working through the night to restore power. As of 6:30 a.m. this morning, there were 450 homes still without power in Sioux City.
Branstad Appoints Petersen As Judge
(Des Moines) -- Governor Terry Branstad has appointed a judge for the 3A Judicial District. Lyon County Attorney Carl Petersen of Lester has been tapped to replace the vacancy left by Judge Duffy as a result of retirement. Those counties served in the third judicial district include: Buena Vista, Cherokee, Clay, Crawford, Dickinson, Emmet, Ida, Lyon, Kossuth, Monona, O'Brien, Osceola, Palo Alto, Plymouth, Sioux, and Woodbury.
City Council Rejects Bids For Former IDOT Property
(Le Mars) -- The Le Mars City Council took the action Tuesday during their regular meeting to reject all of the submitted four bids for the city owned property located on North Business Highway 75. The property in question is the former Iowa Deparment of Transportation maintenance sheds. The city is asking a total of $50,000 for the one-point forty-four acres of property. There was a difference of opinion from council members as to whether the council should sell the property. Councilman Ken Nelson suggested the city reject all offers and wait for a better offer.
Listen to
Meanwhile, Rex Knapp and Delana Ihrke both thought the offers were good and asked the city council to consider selling the property.
Listen to
Nelson believes since the property is of close proximity to the recreation trail and to the Floyd River,it may attract a recreational type business.
Listen to
Interested buyers had until August 28th to offer the city a bid for the land and buildings. Two of the submitted bids were for $40,000 and a third offer was for $30,000. The fourth bid was for the amount of $7,500. Councilman Knapp made the motion to accept the bid offered by Wayne Kolbeck for $40,000 with a $5,000 down payment, but the council turned thumbs down the motion by a 3 to 2 vote. Shane Sitzmann, representing the Sitzmann Real Estate Company, and acting as a contractual agent for the city, informed the council members that they have had 40 showings of the property. Sitzmann asked the city officials for clarification as to what is next step?
Listen to
City attorney Joe Flannery informed the city council and Sitzmann that they would be forbidden to make any counter offers.
City Lifts Water Conservation Measures
(Le Mars) -- In other action taken by the city council, the city has now lifted the mandatory water conservation measure.
Gehlen To Hold Informational Meeting On Wednesday
(Le Mars) -- The Gehlen Catholic Board of Education is inviting parents, alumni, benefactors, and the community to join them Wednesday evening, September 5th, at 7 p.m. at the Reardon Family Gym for an important public announcement that has come about through the school's Long Range Strategic Plan. The Gehlen Board of Education says the announcement will be short and it will deal with the future of Catholic education in northwest Iowa.
Knights of Columbus To Hold Phone-a-thon
(Le Mars) -- For more than 30 years, the Knights of Columbus clubs of Plymouth County have raised money through the means of a phone-a-thon for the mentally challenged residents living in Plymouth County. Today, the Knights of Columbus will again be soliciting funds. Dr. Jeremy Bollin is one of the coordinators of the annual event.
Listen to
Bollin says the local K-C members hope that you will share your cell phone number with the organization so they can ask for your donation.
Listen to
Bollin says the Knights of Columbus hope to raise at least $48,000 this year.
Listen to
The phone-a-thon will be coordinated from the Knights of Columbus Hall in Le Mars and will begin at 9:00 a.m. and continue for twelve hours until 9:00 p.m.
Monona Residents Upset Over Taxes
ONAWA, Iowa (AP) - Landowners in Monona County are complaining about a big increase in their property taxes.
The landowners gathered Tuesday at the county courthouse to discuss what they could do about the tax increase and to question county assessor Tim Peters and county board members.
Castana farmer William Brink says his taxes have increased by $9,000 in one year.
Officials say the change is because of a new way counties value land based on the ability to produce crops. If soil is more fertile, it's taxed at a higher rate.
The new system also applies to more land, causing increases on property once overlooked.
Some counties adjust taxes for property not used for row crops, but Monona County is among 50 counties that doesn't make adjustments.
"Field Of Dreams" Expansion Gets Approval
DYERSVILLE, Iowa (AP) - The Dyersville City Council has approved a development agreement with an organization that plans to build a 24-field youth baseball and softball complex at the Field of Dreams
The Telegraph Herald of Dubuque reports the council voted 3-1 on Tuesday to approve the deal with Go the Distance Baseball, LLC.
Under the agreement, the city will rebate up to $5.1 million in property tax revenue to Go the Distance Baseball over 15 years.
The Iowa Legislature earlier this year passed a law that provides a $16.5 million tax rebate for the project.
The $38 million complex will be at the site where the 1989 movie "Field of Dreams" was filmed and where a baseball field carved from a cornfield remains.
Former Teacher Pleads Guilty To Sexual Exploitation
ATLANTIC, Iowa (AP) - A retired southwest Iowa teacher accused of sexual conduct with a student has pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor by a school employee.
KJAN radio in Atlantic says 65-year-old William Foulkes pleaded guilty on Tuesday in Cass County
District Court. Sentencing is set for Oct. 1.
Foulkes was accused of exploiting a teenage girl from August 2009 until November 2010 while teaching the student in a math program.
Foulkes resigned in November 2010. He was arrested last March.
Harvest Underway Across The Nation
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - The U.S. corn harvest continues ahead of schedule with some states nearly half-finished at a time when they usually are just getting started.
The USDA said Tuesday in its weekly crop update that little has changed in the condition of drought-damaged corn and soybeans. That's because the plants are too far along for recent rain to make a difference.
Corn was planted several weeks earlier this year and matured more quickly in the summer heat, allowing farmers to start harvesting early.
Tennessee has 49 percent of its corn in, compared to the usual 21 percent. Missouri is at 44 percent, ahead of the average 8 percent.
Nebraska is at 7 percent, and Iowa, the nation's leading corn producer, is at 5 percent. Typically those farmers haven't begun yet.
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|Don't forget to subscribe to the Enterprise's E-edition
|Written by Darci Tomky
Paid online subscriptions begin the first week of March.
Get the E-edition on your computer for only $29.50/year!
Call the Enterprise at 970-854-2811 to set up your account with an email address, username and password.
Web surfers check the weather online, follow their favorite celebrities on Twitter and even order pizza delivery from a website. So, what's next?
The Holyoke Enterprise is adding a new element to their internet features: E-editions. This electronic version of the paper will allow readers to browse the entire paper—all from their computers!
While the internet will never replace Holyoke's timeless print edition, up-to-date technology is now giving readers the Enterprise like never before.
Powered by ReadOz, the program displays pages exactly like they are seen in the paper copy—stories, advertisements and everything in between! Subscribers can flip pages, zooming in to read stories.
Go to www.holyokeenterprise.com and click on the E-edition tab at the top right corner. Readers are encouraged to take some time to explore unique features the new electronic version has to offer.
The E-edition can be viewed on the website page or with a computer's full screen. Readers can zoom in and drag the screen to different parts of the page. Portions of a page can be printed, and readers can even "clip" a section of the paper to email to a friend. Use the search button to look for things like names or places listed in stories in that edition of the paper.
The Enterprise's E-edition will be updated each week when the paper is printed, eliminating the time it takes for a newspaper to be delivered by mail. Subscribers will log in using an email address and password.
A free look at the E-edition is offered for a limited time through the month of February. After that, a one-year online subscription will be the same price as a regular local subscription.
The Enterprise's original website will now be eliminating some content. Select stories, obituaries, births and reader classifieds will still be provided.
Call the Enterprise office at 970-854-2811 for more information about the E-edition and online subscriptions.


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BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) - Arsenio Hall is eager to get back in the late-night talk show game, minus the big hair and shoulder pads that marked his initial foray nearly 20 years ago.
Joking to the Television Critics Association on Monday that he's "been away making turkey bacon," Hall says the challenges are much bigger now than when he was a pop-culture hit on his old show that ran from 1989-94.
He gave away few details on the format and style of the new "Arsenio Hall Show" other than the old theme song is coming back with a new bit of music that Hall wrote added to it.
Hall says no guests have yet been booked for the syndicated show debuting Sept. 9. More than 200 outlets have signed up to carry the show.
(Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)


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text: First public appearance of Justin Bieber on stage since the breaking news of his photo scandal where he was holding a smoking object in his hand at a private house party, and also the tragic incident involving a cameraman that was hit and killed by a car, while he was looking for Justin's car. Justin was on stage in Utah in Salt Lake City and played to a sold out crowd. He paused and wanted to thank them for all of their support over the years. He then took off his shirt without a care and gave them all a showing off his body. January 05, 2013.


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Green Bay, WI (SportsNetwork.com) - Jordan Aaron poured in a game-high 28
points, as the fifth-seeded Milwaukee Panthers upset the No. 1 seed Green Bay
Phoenix in overtime, 73-66, in the Horizon League Tournament at the Resch
Aaron shot 4-of-8 from 3-point range and 6-of-7 at the foul line for Milwaukee
(20-13), which also beat Green Bay at the Resch Center on Feb. 8 (73-63). Matt
Tiby tallied 15 points and 10 rebounds, Kyle Kelm and Austin Arians netted 14
and 12 points, respectively, and Steve McWhorter also hauled in 10 boards.
The Panthers will take on Wright State in the championship game on Tuesday.
Greg Mays logged 17 points and nine boards for Green Bay (24-6), which will
wait and see if its resume is strong enough for an at-large bid to the NCAA
Tournament. Keifer Sykes chipped in 15 points for the hosts, while Carrington
Love scored 12.
Milwaukee shot only 39.4 percent from the field in the first half, but Green
Bay was even worse a mere 22.2 percent, as the Panthers carried a 28-19 lead
into intermission.
The Phoenix battled back in the second half and held a four-point lead with
1:15 left, but the Panthers answered with four straight points to close out
regulation, capped off by an Aaron layup with 13 seconds to play to tie it up.
Mays missed a jumper in the waning seconds and the game went to overtime.
Milwaukee never trailed in the extra session and pulled away with a 5-0 run.
The Panthers sealed their fate by shooting 6-of-6 at the free-throw line over
the final 18 seconds.
Green Bay, which came into the contest shooting 47.8 percent from the field on
the season, netted a mere 35 percent of its tries on the evening.
The Sports Network


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In men's cross country, all seven varsity runners finished among the top 10 as the team dominated the 35-team field at the UW-Oshkosh Brooks Invitational Oct. 17. The victory was the Cardinals' sixth invitational win, as the top varsity squad has yet to be defeated this season. More The football team continued its prolific scoring output on Oct. 17 in a 63-48 victory over Carthage College.
North Central College prepares students to be informed,
involved, principled and productive citizens and leaders over their lifetime.


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Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis will be playing his last NFL game in Sunday's Super Bowl against the San Francisco 49ers. While the future Hall of Famer is one of the most high-profile players to make the big game their last, he's not alone. Sporting News takes a look at Lewis and nine other players who retired after playing in a Super Bowl.
Ray Lewis to join elite club of players who walked away after Super Bowlnfl January 30, 2013 2:43pm EST January 30, 2013 1:09pm EST Sunday's game will be Ray Lewis' last before retirement. While the Ravens linebacker is one of the most notable men to play a Super Bowl finale, he's not alone. SN looks at nine others who left the NFL on its biggest stage.
2 Ray Lewis, MLB, Ravens (Super Bowl 47)
Lewis, 37, has said that Sunday's Super Bowl against San Francisco will be his last NFL game after 17 pro seasons, all of them with the Ravens. The 13-time Pro Bowl pick will be seeking his second Super Bowl title and game MVP after winning both in Baltimore's 34-7 win over the Giants in 2001. As a linebacker, his 10 All-Pro selections tie him with the player he's most often compared with, Lawrence Taylor.
3 John Elway, QB, Broncos (Super Bowl 33)
After playing bridesmaid in three late-1980s Super Bowls, Elway and the Broncos separated themselves from the other perennial runner-ups in the AFC during that era—Buffalo and quarterback Jim Kelly—by winning Super Bowls 32 and 33 to close out the 1990s. Elway threw for 336 yards and accounted for two touchdowns in winning MVP in his last pro game at age 38, a 34-19 win over Atlanta in 1999.
4 Jerome Bettis, RB, Steelers (Super Bowl 40)
"The Bus," the sixth-leading rusher in NFL history, has perhaps the most poetic of stories for the players on this list. After 13 pro seasons and no rings at age 33, he led the Steelers to Super Bowl 40 in his hometown of Detroit against the Broncos in 2006. He rushed for a key touchdown in Pittsburgh's 21-10 win over Seattle and announced his retirement while holding the Vince Lombardi Trophy atop the podium at midfield immediately after the game. "I'm a champion," he said, "and I think the Bus's last stop is here in Detroit."
5 Michael Strahan, DE, Giants (Super Bowl 42)
Another longtime star who chose to leave the game on top after winning a championship, a 36-year-old Strahan retired four months after his Giants upset the then-undefeated Patriots 17-14 in 2008. The seven-time Pro Bowl selection still holds the NFL record for sacks in a season with 22.5 in 2001.
6 Jackie Smith, TE, Cowboys (Super Bowl 8)
The five-time Pro Bowl pick was known for his great hands but dropped the biggest would-be catch of his career and, as a result, lost out on his lone chance to win a Super Bowl in 1979. With Dallas trailing Pittsburgh 21-14 midway through the third quarter, Cowboys QB Roger Staubach found his 38-year-old tight end alone in the middle of the end zone, and Smith inexplicably let the pass ricochet off his chest. The play, known simply as "The Drop" in NFL lore today, is mentioned in the same vein as Bill Buckner's game-losing error in the 1986 World Series. Smith recovered nicely 15 years later, however, getting inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
7 Randy Cross, C, 49ers (Super Bowl 23)
Cross spent every day of his 13-year NFL career in a 49er uniform, including January 22, 1989, when he won a third Super Bowl ring in San Francisco's 20-16 win over Cincinnati. Despite playing guard the nine seasons before that game, the versatile six-time All-Pro spent his final campaign, at 34, playing center.
8 John Hannah, G, Patriots (Super Bowl 20)
Considered by some to be the greatest offensive lineman to ever play the game, this nine-time Pro Bowl selection became the first Patriot to be inducted into the Hall of Fame five years after his retirement. Unfortunately, his last game, at 34, was New England's embarrassing 46-10 loss to the Bears in 1986.
9 Jack Reynolds, LB, 49ers (Super Bowl 19)
After spending a decade with the Rams, "Hacksaw" left Los Angeles in 1981 for the division-rival 49ers and won two Super Bowls in San Francisco. The two-time Pro Bowl pick and former University of Tennessee great ended his career at age 37 by winning a championship in what was close to a home game, as the 49ers beat Miami 38-16 at Palo Alto's Stanford Stadium in 1985.
10 Max McGee, TE, Packers (Super Bowl 2)
Despite seeing reduced playing time over his last two seasons in Green Bay due to age and injuries, McGee produced the biggest highlights of his career during the first two Super Bowls. Playing with a hangover and a borrowed helmet (McGee left his in the locker room), he caught seven passes for 138 yards and two touchdowns in the Packers' 35-10 win over Kansas City in 1967. He came back a year later—sober and remembering his helmet at age 35—to make a key 35-yard catch that set up a touchdown in a 33-14 victory over the Raiders in Super Bowl 2. He retired shortly after that game.
11 Leslie Frazier, CB, Bears (Super Bowl 20)
The current head coach of the Minnesota Vikings is the only player on this list who didn't make the Super Bowl his last game as a matter of choice. As a 26-year-old cornerback who led the 15-1 Bears in interceptions during their dominating 1985 season, his career ended with a knee injury while returning a second-quarter punt in Chicago's 46-10 Super Bowl blowout of the Patriots in 1986.


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Mom was right: School makes you smarter
(Page 3 of 3)
The cap is especially tough on lower-income districts, because they, traditionally, have had the hardest time passing school budgets. Under the law, a district must pass its annual budget with a supermajority of 60 percent or greater if it wants to override the cap and spend more to stave off cuts. Jericho, a wealthy school district by any measure, can easily garner 70 percent of the "yes" vote. But too many districts in less affluent areas aren't so fortunate.
Who suffers? The children.
When will we, as a society, get it? Education isn't about cost-effectively churning out widgets. It's an enormously complex, often expensive process.
If we make that investment, though, the rate of return is huge. When it comes to children's education, we are, after all, talking about the future of our nation.
Scott Brinton is senior editor of the Bellmore and Merrick Heralds and an adjunct professor at the Hofstra University Graduate Journalism Program. Comments? firstname.lastname@example.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 203. Brinton's profile and posts can be found at facebook.com/scottabrinton.
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College crush
Books | Charles Murray says America has an irrational love for the Bachelor of Arts degree, and he offers a way to get over it
Charles Murray has done it again. Murray is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., but he is best known for books that are scholarly yet readable and provocative: Losing Ground, which eviscerated the American welfare system; The Bell Curve, co-authored with the late Richard Herrnstein, which analyzed the role of IQ in American society; and now Real Education (Crown Forum, 2008), which offers conventional U.S. educators a dose of reality.
Q: Why this book?
The definition of educational success in this country is, you've got to get a B.A. That is drummed into kids from the time they're young. Let's face it: If you don't have a B.A. at this point in this country you are in some sense a second-class citizen. That's the driving force behind a lot of kids struggling to get B.A.s, to achieve this status. Also, they read all the econometrics studies that say that the average B.A. makes x dollars more. So the book is in some sense a crusade to destroy the B.A. as a measure of educational success.
Q: The statistics that say, "Get a B.A., get a million dollars more," don't take into account individual attributes and talents . . .
That's an average. Suppose that you have enough intellectual ability to get through a college today and get a B.A., and you want to be a business executive. But suppose you have very average interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, and not great intellectual ability. You can't look at the average for business executives, because in the things that make great business executives you're going to be competing against people who are a lot stronger than you are, in terms of charm, perseverance, intelligence, and everything else.
Q: The better alternative is . . .
Look at the lower end of business people salaries, and suppose you have it in you to be a great electrician. You're plenty smart enough, plus you've got great small motor skills, you've got great visual-spatial skills, you could be a terrific technician. You look at the top of the scale for electrician salaries, and guess what-top electricians make a lot of money, on the order of 90 grand a year average for the top 10 percent. And that's a reasonable aspiration for you. So the average premium for the college degree is extremely misleading.
Q: But there's been a move back to craftsmanship, at least in theory-to be a carpenter or a furniture maker. Is that catching on?
Being a fine cabinetmaker is a cool thing to do in some circles, but that's not what we tell high-school kids. This figure came out of a major survey: 90 percent of high-school students are told by their high-school counselors that they ought to go to college. When I've interviewed these counselors, sometimes they say, "If we tell kids they're not suited for college, we get angry reactions from parents, who desperately want their kids to go to college, and from the kids themselves, who don't want to hear that." The counselors are telling people what they want to hear, and that goes back to the question of, why is it that we have this terrible reluctance to tell a child, "Find some things that you really like to do, and we will teach you to do those things really, really well. If you want to learn philosophy, we'll teach you philosophy. If it's cabinetmaking, we'll teach you cabinetmaking. If what you want to do is be a first-rate long-haul truck driver, we will help you become a first-rate long-haul truck driver."
Q: Any chance that your anti-B.A. crusade will succeed?
Employers mostly use the B.A., if they're interviewing social science and humanities graduates, as a screen for IQ and for perseverance. But as more and more people go to college, as college gets more and more dumbed down, as it gets harder and harder to interpret grades because of grade inflation, the B.A. is a noisier and noisier signal, and employers know it. They still use it because so many people are going to college that they aren't screening out too much talent if they require a B.A., but they know it's a bad signal. So that's important. Then you've got students who say, "This is really expensive, and do I really have to do this?"
Q: How does the online education industry fit into this potential change?
It's growing in sophistication-with podcasts and all sorts of interactions with professors. But the online industry understands that even though they grant B.A.s, they know their B.A. can't relate to a Ph.D. with the prestige of a brick-and-mortar institution. They would love to have some other way. So you have all these people who would benefit. Here's the solution-and I actually for once have a solution that is feasible: certification. The model is the CPA [Certified Public Accountant] exam. Fourteen hours long, I think four different segments; it's an extremely thorough exam, and if you get a high score on that, every employer of accountants knows that this kid knows a lot of accounting.
Q: Are there people now who get CPAs without going to college?
A lot of places insist that you have a B.A. before you take the exam. But the exam exists, and an employer wouldn't particularly care if there's not a B.A., if there's a really high score. It gives a way for a kid who's learned accounting online to compete with the kid who learned accounting at the University of Virginia, or wherever. Because if he has a high score and the kid from the University of Virginia has a low score, that employer is no longer going to be all that worried about the degree.
Q: How does the revolution begin?
Here's a scenario for you: Suppose that you take the information technology industry-let's start with Microsoft. The educational testing service decides that it's going to get into the certification business-it already is, actually-and create the gold-standard test for certification in computer programming. It develops a test which Microsoft agrees really is predictive: If a kid gets a high score on that, he is a crackerjack programmer. It's very easy to imagine Microsoft, which has always openly gone after talent rather than credentials, starting with Bill Gates, saying, "From now on, we are going to require of our programming applicants that they take this certification test. We don't really care about the B.A." If just Microsoft did it, everybody in the industry would do it. You'd already have a tipping point there. Certifications already exist for all sorts of things, but once you get the gold standard, where all employers know that this certification test is predictive of real performance by the employees, all the market forces that I talked about earlier would be in to that. Online is going to be delighted to have certification, because it can promise to train students to get good scores on certification tests.
Q: Now college for everybody is largely seen as a civil-rights issue: If you tell some kids they shouldn't go to college, maybe you're keeping down black kids. Can we flip this? The requirement that you can only take a CPA exam if you have a B.A.: Could eliminating that requirement become a civil-rights issue?
Yeah. I hadn't thought of that, but I think it's very persuasive. It would be real easy to write some powerful op-eds saying, there's this black youngster who took online courses and got a great score, and he can't get his foot in the door because they insist he have a B.A.-it would be great to have that kind of a story. That cuts to the core when you put it in terms of this slogan: "Kids need something to show what they know, not where they learned it, how long it took them, or who they know." Get rid of the halo effect that goes with attending a well-known college.
Q: The ACLU in 1925 went out to recruit a person to take on the Tennessee anti-evolution statute . . .
Get the Institute for Justice to do it. That'd be great. This is a whole new strategy.
Q: It'd be interesting.
It'd be beautiful.
Q: The interest groups that oppose this are . . .
Well, the colleges.
Q: Except the elite colleges, right, because they would still be in business?
The elite colleges are going to be in business no matter what. But the system I'm envisioning would look very much like the system now: We'd still have all the college campuses open, we'd still have kids going to universities to study accounting. The difference is that the ones who are studying accounting and know that's what they want to do might be there for two years or two and a half years, not four years. They'd be there until they learned what they wanted to know. There'd be other kids who stay four years, maybe because college is fun if your parents are paying for it. Lots of kids will still want to get four years of a college education. What you will have done is taken off this straitjacket which says, "You've got to be four years in residence at this expensive institution to get a piece of paper."
Q: Some might portray this as going against our democratic ethos, but it could also be portrayed as powerfully egalitarian: a Lincoln learning law by reading by the light of the fire.
Factually, the whole notion of certification actually could be applied to the traditional academic disciplines. If somebody has a degree in English Lit from a no-name school, I have no idea whether that person has even read George Eliot. You can get a degree in English Lit reading nothing but crap from the 20th century. Suppose you had certification tests in English Literature, in Russian History, in Greek Philosophy. They would be tests whereby, if I were running admissions for a law school, I would know a lot more about whether my applicants had gotten a broad liberal education if I had a set of four or five certification tests rather than rely on the B.A.
Q: But who controls the certification tests? For example, in literature you could have the Modern Language Association in charge . . .
And that's the problem. When you have certifications being taken for employers, there's no problem because if the tests are not predictive of high performance in that field, the employers aren't going to use them. Let's say you have certifications in English Lit and you're being sent to law school. Law schools want kids who have precision in verbal expression, they want kids able to deal with complex text. If the MLA is sending them a Maya Angelou touchy-feely thing, they may behave like employers, and say: We want to know about English Lit.
Q: How many fields have certifying exams now?
You have certification tests for building inspectors. There are lots of tests for technical specialties-for example, when you go get your blood tested, there is a specialty that takes about a year and a half or two years that the person who's sticking that needle in you has gone through. There's a certification test for brain surgeons. And you don't have to think in terms of multiple choice and bubbles: Both brain surgeons and master cabinetmakers are often judged on work samples. You can overcome the deficiencies of tests. The techniques are out there. It's not a technological problem.
What the colleges have to say is, "There is a world of the mind out there that we want to impart to students, and here's the problem: It is tough." Not everybody can read and understand Nicomachean Ethics, not everybody is capable of the rigor and verbal expression that's necessary to write a good term paper about it. It's tough. It's difficult material that a small percentage of the population is intellectually equipped to do.
Q: I hear you saying that if high schools are doing what they should, the time from age 18 on becomes the time for students who are intellectually gifted to delve into intellectual questions. For others we say, "It's time to learn something that will help you make some money."
And not only that. We must get over the idea that this choice is a second-class choice. I disagree with Aristotle-I don't think the life of the philosopher is intrinsically better than the life of those who take other routes in life. So you aren't asking the kids to settle for second best. What you're doing is recasting the goal of education so it no longer is, "get the B.A." The goal is to bring young people to adulthood with their having discovered things they enjoy doing and that they know how to do well. It is generically the same process for everyone: In every profession, you start out as an apprentice. If you become competent, you are a journeyman. If you get really good at it, you become a master craftsman. That has been true of me in my profession, it is true of you, it's true of the long-haul truck driver, it's true of the carpenter-we all go through the same trajectory. And you want to treat post-secondary education as being that process for everyone. The kid who's studying philosophy is an apprentice, and so is the kid who's studying to become an electrician. They're both doing things that, because of their different configurations and personalities, are right for them.
Q: What does it take for those occupations no longer to be considered second class?
It takes the upper-middle class to quit playing the pernicious role it plays. Upper-middle-class parents, when it comes to shopping for education for their children, act like drugged-up pop stars on Rodeo Drive. They buy by brand name, they don't check the quality of the product, they pay outrageous premiums, and they don't bother to check later to see if the product was actually delivered. I see no signs of that cracking. I do not know of middle-class parents who cheerfully say "that sounds good" when their son says what he really wants is to be in the merchant marine.
Q: So is the place to crack this Microsoft, or do we need novelists and poets to make fun of the Rodeo Drive mentality?
That would help. But it also helps to have a lot of rich people outside of the entertainment business who don't have college degrees. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs-throughout the software and computer hardware industries there are lots of millionaires who have IQs of 145 and never got a college degree. So you want lots and lots of those folks, but you also want to get them into other fields. Right now, if you go to the CEOs and the top people in big corporations, they in fact almost all have B.A.s, and oftentimes M.B.A.s. It would be really nice if we had the ability to get a certification for business administration. You start getting senior executives in corporations who just get the certification and don't have the B.A. You need to have visible examples, because not only will they be role models, but they will be talking differently to their children about what they need to do.
Q: And they're going to be open to other people with the same background as theirs.
The elephant sitting in the corner is the degree to which America is becoming more and more a class society, and that scares me. The upper-middle class is reproducing itself in its children, and social mobility is quietly just disappearing.
Q: Could we have a popular groundswell? Maybe, "You can't discriminate on the basis of the B.A." as part of our civil-rights code. You can't advertise, "B.A. required."
Wouldn't that be a great idea? Employers can discriminate based on the ability of the kids, but not on the B.A. You know they did this with IQ tests. There was a famous court case back in the late '60s where employers were prohibited from giving cognitive tests that were not directly related to job qualifications. So that's illegal. And, guess what folks, the B.A. is not directly related to job qualifications!


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Single-game tickets on sale Saturday, February 26; wristband procedure for sales at The K starts Thursday
Single-game tickets for the Kansas City Royals 2011 season, including a limited number of Opening Day tickets, will go on sale on Saturday, February 26 at 10 a.m. Tickets will be available on-line at royals.com, by phone at 1-800-6ROYALS, at the Kauffman Stadium Box Office and at metro-area Hy-Vee stores. Please note that Opening Day tickets will not be available at the Hy-Vee stores.
All fans planning to purchase tickets at Kauffman Stadium on February 26 must enter the Truman Sports Complex through Gate 2, located off of Blue Ridge Cutoff on the east side of the complex, or Gate 6, off of Stadium Drive on the west side. All other gates will be closed to fan traffic. Fans should park in Lot M and proceed to the Kauffman Stadium Box Office located at Gate C. Overnight camping will not be permitted. The complex will open at 7 a.m. on February 26. The I-70 exit at Blue Ridge Cutoff is closed due to construction. Fans should follow detour signs to access Blue Ridge Cutoff.
The Royals will implement a random drawing procedure for purchasing tickets at Kauffman Stadium on February 26. Fans wishing to take part in the random drawing must obtain a wristband at the Gate C lobby on Thursday, February 24 (noon to 6 p.m.), Friday, February 25 (noon to 9 p.m.), or Saturday, February 26 (7 a.m. to 9:15 a.m.) There is no advantage to collecting a wristband early within this time frame. On February 26, any fan that does not have a wristband will be in a second line behind the fans with wristbands. The drawing to determine line order will be held at 9:15 a.m. on Saturday and tickets will go on sale at 10 a.m. Fans taking part in the random drawing will be able to purchase up to four Opening Day seats, while supplies last.
The Kauffman Stadium Box Office will be open on Saturday, February 26 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Sunday, February 27 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Beginning February 26, phone operators will be available from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., seven days a week. The Royals Majestic Team Store will open for fans at 8 a.m. on Saturday and remain open until 2 p.m.
Season ticket packages are currently available at royals.com and by calling (816) 504-4040. Fans can guarantee Opening Day tickets with any Full Season, Half Season, 21-game or Pepsi Max Pick 15 plan (while supplies last).


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Real news. Real funny.
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Zach Galifianakis Gossip
Zach Galifianakis gossip, latest news, photos, and video.
Joaquin or Zach?
FameFlynet, Michael Buckner/ Kevin Mazur/ Kevork Djansezian/ Getty Images
Zach Galifianakis was at the SAGs the other night with the Birdman team and I kept thinking it was Joaquin Phoenix. Doesn't he look like Joaquin Phoenix now? The real Joaquin Phoenix was probably very happy to not be at the SAGs on Sunday but still had to be in Rome yesterday to promote Inherent Vice and is maybe growing his hair into a Javier Bardem No Country For Old Men bob. Full Story
Bradley Pitts Between Two Ferns
Brad Pitt really wants you to see Fury. The small details are what get me initially. Like how they Scotch tape the microphones on this show. It's a slow build. The first two minutes aren't all that exciting. But then. Zach Galifianakis goes for it. I mean, sure, it's not hard to go for it when both of you are in on it. Full Story
The Hangover slow motion walking
Besides Bradley Cooper's hair, my favourite part of The Hangover 3 comes at the end, when Todd Phillips montages together all the shots of the guys slow motion walking from the entire franchise. Can't remember what song he cut it to but it looks good. They slow motion walk down the hotel corridor in the first movie. Full Story
Coop & Zach
Wenn, Mirrorpix/ Splash, Gareth Cattermole/ Getty
There's a new two part Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis interviewing several Oscar nominees. The clothing tells me it was shot just after the Oscar Nominees Luncheon. It's good. I've included both below. If you hate Anne Hathaway you'll be annoyed. I worry that Anne Hathaway is becoming a hate-watch. Full Story
Far away from January
This is Matthew Vaughn. At least that's what the photo agency is telling me. You wouldn't know it to look at him because his is not the most recognisable celebrity face, being a director and all. But you probably know the name because he's made headlines recently for vehemently denying that he's the father of January Jones's baby. Full Story
You don't need a description but you do need a laugh. Photos from INF Full Story
The Hangover 2 Trailer
Here's what I like about it: I like opening with Kanye West. I like looking at Bradley Cooper all sweaty, with shades on, and an open neck shirt, walking in slow motion in front of two other guys. I also like some of Ed Helms's reactions. And when Galifianakis says "PF Chang's", I laughed. Full Story
Owning up, try hards & detaching from mom
Written by Sasha Dear Sasha! Very recently I started an affair with an ex. And I really don't feel guilty about it. So here is the background: I've been married for 13 years. My husband is not perfect; he cheated on me very early in our relationship. Full Story
Long hair and you look so young
SO young. Doesn't he look young? With his hair rakishly long, even though there's salt and pepper in his beard, it's the most youthful RDJ we've seen in years. To me, anyway. And he's hot. And so f-cking charming. And other than Johnny Depp, who's as cool as Robert Downey Jr? Imagine them together in a movie? It could be a Michael Bay movie, I don't give a sh-t, I still would. Full Story
Bruce and The Wasp
I'm kinda over Bruce Willis's I'm-the-chillest-badass-motherf*cker-on-the-block bullsh-t. Dude, we get it. You speak softly because your dick is big. You don't react to anything because your balls are weighing you down. I mean it's so obvious. But sometimes it seems forced. Full Story
No thanks Mr Chow but I'll take Renee
Here's Bradley Cooper in LA beginning work on The Hangover 2 this weekend. Writer/Director Todd Phillips has already confirmed that the sequel will take place in Thailand. Great. Well that's original. And yes, the token Asian Mr Chow played by Ken Jeong will be along for the ride too with his small penis and his ching chong accent and kung fu shoes. Full Story


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If you find yourself hiding your curves away due to cellulite, you're not alone. Roughly 80 to 90 percent of all women have some amount of the dimpled flesh somewhere on their bodies. Although roughly 80 percent of the content of cellulite is fat cells, cellulite appears on women of all fitness levels and body types. Cellulite stems from the female body's natural predisposition to store pockets of adipose or fatty tissue to insulate the pelvic cavity for the purposes of childbirth. Your genetics and lifestyle both affect how much cellulite you have and can make it difficult to banish the unsightly tissue. The Kerstin Florian Firming and Cellulite collection was designed to safely firm and tighten the skin to reduce the appearance of cellulite.
As an alternative to plastic surgical procedures, the Kerstin Florian Firming and Cellulite line is highly effective for all skin types. The products in the Kerstin Florian Firming and Cellulite line employ natural ingredients to bring you the best results. The items in the Kerstin Florian Firming and Cellulite range are safe for use everywhere.
Don't let cellulite make you shy about your beautiful body. If orange peel flesh is affecting your self-esteem, fight back with the safe, effective formulas found in the Kerstin Florian Firming and Cellulite collection. These products contain natural ingredients and can be applied anywhere that cellulite occurs, including the arms, chest, hips, stomach, thighs and buttocks. With regular use, the anti-cellulite products form Kerstin Florian help your body metabolize the fatty tissue that makes up most of cellulite, while toning and strengthening the tissue to prevent the unwelcome return of orange peel skin.
Kerstin Florian Rejuvenating Firming Extract with Phytolene is especially formulated to tighten the skin in the facial area. Natural horsetail extract contributes greatly to the incredible results obtainable from the serum; rich in silica, horsetail improves skin elasticity to prevent sagging and drooping while creating a more even tone. Rosemary and pine cone extract in the formula contain antioxidants, which help slow down the aging process by limiting the effects of environmental impurities.
Kerstin Florian Thalassotherapy Marine Firming Body Creme relies on principles developed in the natural healing art of thalassotherapy, which uses the natural minerals in saltwater to improve the health and attractiveness of the body. The cream contains a generous dose of mineral-rich laminaria algae. By rubbing its luxurious formula into areas affected by cellulite, you effectively increase circulation and blood flow to the area, assisting with the metabolism and destruction of orange peel skin. The anti-cellulite cream is safe for daily use.


text: Anyone have any idea how the moose areas in 3 and 4 are? Thinking about putting in for a cow and was wondering how the access was in area 4. Its a blue chip unit but seems to be in the valley, which leads me to believe there is a lot of private land. Was also thinking about putting in for unit 98 or 97 for elk just to see if I could pick up an elk as a bonus. How many grizzlies and wolves are there? Want to go moose hunting with my dad and he wont be able to draw a bull tag with his low PP totals. He is a bit nervous about the bears. Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.


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The Secret Service has confirmed to USA TODAY that it is investigating a potential massive data breach involving shoppers' personal credit card information and Target retail stores.
"The Secret Service will confirm it is investigating the incident at Target," spokesman Brian Leary said in a telephone interview Wednesday night. "We don't have any further comment because it's an ongoing investigation."
The potential breach began around Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and the busiest shopping day of the year, according to the Krebs on Security website. The breach involves the theft of information stored on the magnetic stripe on the backs of cards used at nearly all of Target's stores around the country, Krebs reports.
KrebsOnSecurity.com is the site of Brian Krebs, a national computer security expert and former Washington Post reporter.
Target is based in Minneapolis and has almost 1,800 stores in the United States and 124 in Canada, according to its website.
The discount retailer did not respond to a telephone message left Wednesday night at its corporate offices.
James Issokson, vice president of MasterCard communications, said in an e-mail to USA TODAY that a question regarding the potential breach "at this point is best directed to Target."
An expert with a global firm that helps companies respond to and mitigate breaches said while he could not address the Target situation specifically, many companies - large are small - are typically underprepared when they face a breach.
Most important is that the potential breach be addressed quickly, to help get information out to those affected and to regulators, to bring in the right experts to address the breach (such as forensics experts who can stop cyber attacks) and to help preserve the public's trust in the company, said Mike Donovan, Global Focus Group Leader for Beazley Breach Response, headquartered in London.
"We see breaches across all sizes of companies," said Donovan, who is based in San Francisco. "You see the stories about the big ones in the news, but breaches are affecting companies all across the board."
Beazley recently responded to its 1000th breach and the company has seen a "significant number" of large breaches in the last four or five years, Donovan said.
It happens all the time, every day, with retailers, health care organizations, schools and other operations, he said.
"Any company that handles personal data is vulnerable," Donovan said.
Krebs reports its sources initially thought the breach took place from just after Thanksgiving to Dec. 6, but now believe it took place until as far as Dec. 15.
The potential breach does not appear to involve online purchases, Krebs reports. It appears the type of data stolen would allow thieves to create counterfeit credit cards and, if pin numbers were intercepted, would also allow thieves to withdraw cash from ATM machines, according to Krebs.
Visa did not respond to e-mails or telephone messages left with its corporate office.
Melanie Eversley, USA TODAY


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KU baseball pulls upset after talk by Buck
The Royals aren't the only area team playing games in Surprise. KU's baseball squad had a weekend set against perennial national powerhouse Arizona State.
On Saturday, the Jayhawks received a tour of Royals camp. Catcher John Buck fashioned a KU baseball hat and gave pointers to a few members of the KU squad, who proceeded to defeat the 4th-ranked Sun Devils, 3-2.
Earlier in camp, Buck sported Florida Gators gear as a prank toward Ryan Shealy, a former Florida standout.
Now, John has adopted another prominent university. Buck proudly took bragging rights over teammate and ASU alum Willie Bloomquist.


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Hospital medicine is a medical specialty dedicated to the delivery of comprehensive medical care to hospitalized patients.
Practitioners of hospital medicine include physicians known as "hospitalists" and non physician providers who engage in clinical care, teaching, research or leadership in the field of general hospital medicine. In addition to their core expertise managing the clinical problems of acutely ill, hospitalized patients, hospital medicine practitioners work to enhance the performance of hospitals and health care systems.


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Choosing Your Next TV At A High-End Ottawa Electronics Store
Your big screen CRT television was a top of the line model twelve years ago; you bought it with a bonus cheque from your first job out of college. It's followed you to four different apartments since then, though it is a brute to move. Now the picture is starting to go and, as your current lease is up at the end of next month, you are wondering if you really want to have to muscle the thing into and out of another moving truck. You've been looking at the new flat screens out there for a while and you're pretty much convinced that a new HDTV and a Blu-Ray player are on the horizon. The question is what type of TV are you going to buy?


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Men's ASICS® Game Point™ 7" Short :: Made of 4-way stretch microfiber fabric, to ensure ease of motion. We've added zippered security side pockets with lock down zippers for carrying extra tennis balls on the court and valuables off. Not just a great tennis short, but a great all-around short.
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Cyclone Defense Has A Leader In George
AMES, Iowa – Jeremiah George received a taste of success last season and he liked it. Subbing behind NFL linebackers A.J. Klein and Jake Knott for his first 2 ½ seasons as a Cyclone, George seized an opportunity mid-season of the 2012 campaign when Knott went down with an injury.
Knott, who was in the midst of an All-American season and All-American career at Iowa State, valiantly played his final game of his career against Baylor (Oct. 27) with a shoulder that needed surgery. After leading the Cyclones to victory for one final time, he exited stage left and relinquished the reins to George.
The results were quite impressive.
The Clearwater, Fla., native led all Cyclones by racking up a career-high 17 tackles vs. Oklahoma (Nov. 3) in the next game. A star on the field had arrived.
"The Oklahoma game was a huge boost to my confidence," George said. "That was an up and down game. It felt good looking at the stat sheet, but then going back into the film room and seeing how many tackles I did miss, I think that helped me more than the 17 tackles. I was like, 'if I'm doing this at a high rate while not understanding why I missed those tackles, wait until I do understand, and I'll be able to do more.'"
If you haven't noticed, George is a student of the game. He's one of the strongest and hardest workers on the team. Preseason pundits have paid attention, too. His name has popped up on many preseason All-Big 12 lists. He's ready to fill the big shoes of Knott and Klein and lead the new Cyclone linebacking crew.
"I'm very excited because it's going to be different," George said. "Changes are good sometimes. It hurts to lose guys like Jake and A.J., with their experience, the amount of games that they've played and the amount of success they had. Now we have a bunch of young guys that have to take that over and try to fill that void."
Jevohn Miller and Jared Brackens will help George fill that void. Brackens, a junior, switched positions, converting over to linebacker from defensive back. Miller, another talented junior, has been Knott and Klein's understudy and is eager to show his skills.
"If you look at Jared Brackens, he has so much speed to be playing that SAM/Nickel position that he is able to cover ground in the Big 12, and that's what you need," George said. "I got to play more last year, I learned more what other offenses are trying to do, so I'm able to be more free spirited and run around and do my thing. All the linebackers are really fighting for a position and trying to show that they can do what Jake and A.J. did at the same kind of level. You're always trying to meet new levels."
With the all-important summer training in full session, George and his teammates are benefitting from their first off-season in the brand new state-of-the-art Bergstrom Football Complex.
"It has impacted us in a very big way," George said. "The time management improvements could be the most important aspect. We can do everything at one place efficiently. There isn't a weight room in the country better than ours, and you can get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, just like on the football field."
The emergence of George as a team leader is confirmed. The senior relishes his new role as the sage veteran of the squad, but he has one more goal to accomplish this offseason: being named captain.
"It would mean everything in the world to me," George said. "Growing up, you want to be a guy that everybody looks up to. You want to be a positive influence on younger people. You want the team to really trust you. Our captains are voted by the team and for this team to look at me as a captain, I would love that and I would cherish it and I would not take it for granted."


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- 16 Tue Jul 2013
TUTS-How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying
Opening July 16th and performing on alternating nights, HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING, written by the talented Frank Loesser, filters the era of "Mad Men" through a wonderfully comic lens, and features some of the best songs ever written for the musical theatre. Recent revivals on Broadway have featured Matthew Broderick, Daniel Radcliffe and Nick Jonas. The creative team for HOW TO SUCCEED will include TUTS alumni Sarah Rodgers (director of previous TUTS hits such as ANYTHING GOES and THE MUSIC MAN), choreographer Shelley Stewart Hunt (BYE BYE BIRDIE, SINGIN IN THE RAIN) and music director Chris King (THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE, THE MUSIC MAN).


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Sunday, the New York Times ran a piece by Florence Fabricant in the Magazine section on white wine paired with cheese. The fundamental argument is sound (and has been made before), but several details along the way made me very disgruntled.
1. Name-dropping + absurd reductionism:
"Ever since I was taught, by none other than Aubert de Villaine, an owner of the esteemed Domaine de la Romanée-Conti in Burgundy, that good red wine is not flattered by cheese, I have been annoying restaurateurs and friends on the subject. With cheeses, de Villaine pours Le Montrachet, a buttery white Burgundy, never his top-of-the-line reds."
So, Le Montrachet is just a trifle, alongside the reds? Um?
2. Fabricant's conclusion:
"My personal theory is that the fixation on red wine with cheese is a Victorian English conceit. Dinners in which women participated were usually served with white wine, typically riesling. At the end of the meal, the men retreated to the library to drink clarets and ports with cheese, none of which were considered proper comestibles for fine ladies."
Yet, at the beginning:
"Christine Salsedo seemed somewhat surprised. 'Most of the time people drink red with cheese,' she said. 'We're French, so we definitely prefer red.'"
Claret with cheese is a British invention? Yet the accusation is that the country that makes the cheese is traditionally interested in pairing with reds? Quelle disconnect.
3. "The selection included a St.-Marcellin, one of my favorites. 'Do you have any white wines by the glass?' I asked."
Whatever the validity of whites with cheese, St-Marcellin is not one of them. It cries out for Beaujolais.
Please, please, just make this woman go away.
End of extremely annoyed post.
When we woke up at 9am on Sunday morning, it was icy outside in Tours. A half-hour later, we were walking down a stone staircase to the banks of the Loire, where our car was on a curb next to a full parking strip. We used a pocket mirror to scrape down the ice and got in.
Forty-five minutes of winter wonderland by the banks of the Loire river led us toward Bourgueil, then we turned to Azay-le-Rideau and took the long, smooth, hilly road straight for Chinon.
We drove the car into Yvon's cave, where eight people – three of them Arnaud's cousins – were standing by a big vat, with Yvon filling bottles and different participants moving filled crates toward the corking instrument. The bottling of the 2006 would go fairly quickly. We tasted a glass of the 2007 rosé, but it was still in some fermentation stage and we spat it, laughing. The 2006 was cold but rolling around on the tongue gave notes of perfect Chinon-ness; violets and light sour cherries.
Then we turned the car around in the different pits and valleys of the cavern and drove off with five clanking cases toward Arnaud's family cave in Beaumont-en-Véron, beneath the vineyards. We would have to make room for the 2006 amid the other years and other regions on his concrete shelves, right across the way from his father's very orderly rows of Saint-Emilion, Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil and Morgon.
The yearly bottling and stocking of the Chinon is a ritual you get through as quick as you can, because it's cold – it was colder outdoors than in the 12°C caves – and because afterward, the whole clan gets together around a long table in a local restaurant to feast on coq au vin de Chinon.
But as we corked bottles with the plunging metal apparatus and then clacked cases into our cars, we were far from those steamy, suave aromas of stewed wine and mushrooms and pearl onions.
You have to work for your pittance! And so we did, assiduously, and with great self-abnegation, not touching the wine that flowed from the spout into bottle after bottle that we would cork. And so, after driving to the cave and storing the new wine among the old, as we refilled a case with mismatched years to take back up to Paris for daily consumption, my stomach growled.
I looked over at Arnaud, who smirked at me. "Come on," he said, as we rounded up two passengers – Benjamin and Anne, who had been meticulous in arranging their stash – and revved up the car to go meet our happy reward, washed down with some 2006 Chinon. And damn if it wasn't delicious.
Nah, I haven't become a rap star. And I have to admit that in my wine drinking life, I have never quaffed a bottle of Domaines Ott Rosé.
But yesterday we had the Blanc de Blancs. That I had had before. It was during the summer a couple of years back, and Hervé was the most generous of hosts - as soon as night fell and the temperatures cooled, three or four of us would gather on his sprawling roof deck in Paris. And during these evenings, he once told me about the legendary Blanc de Blancs d'Ott. Of course, since Hervé's tales include half-mad cousins living in castles in the Pyrenees, lesbian antique collector friends tromping through Thailand's brothels, and other highly colorful vignettes, he made that wine, with its wafting dry herbs of Provence, sound so enticing, with cliffs overlooking the hot sea. So I found a bottle, that summer, in a wine store on the rue du Bac, and brought it one night.
Of course, it's now cold and drizzly in Paris.
Yesterday, after a photo exhibition opening, Arnaud and I found ourselves on the thin line between Paris's first and second arrondissements at right about apéro time. After ambling through the little streets around the rue Montorgueil, we alighted at the wine bar Wine & Bubbles.
Finishing a couple of glasses of NV Thiénot Brut (had never had this champagne before; it wasn't memorable but drank fine, with a good bitter kick at the end - better, in any case, than the Mumm Cordon Rouge they were serving at the opening beforehand), we ordered some rillettes, jambon de pays, foie gras and my eyes fell upon a bottle of 2005 Ott Blanc de Blancs on the list.
The nose was absolutely mute. Vigorous swirling sent a bit jetting out of the glass (oops), but no aromas seemed to beckon. On the palate, though, there was some complexity, and as the bucket chilled the bottle (it was a touch too warm in the beginning) it started to express its very minerally, iodine notes, with a measure of roundness from its mostly semillon body. No fruit, just mineral, saline, and dried herb notes.
I think this is a wine that needs more age (or a boat off of Hyères, or a roof garden with a rhapsodic host) to be truly expressive, but it was enjoyable. And as the room filled up with young skinny-jean-clad urbanites and a thick haze of cigarette smoke, it did start to seem almost like a rapper scene.
Loving wine is about loss.
Flip the coin and you might also argue that loving wine is a voyage of discovery; every wine tasted - every single one, even brother bottles from the same case - is different, because it is tasted on a different day, at a different stage of its maturity, opened for a different length of time and sipped from different stemware with a different number of people imbibing it and different foodstuffs accompanying it, or not.
But this is why, to me, mélancolique de l'automne that I am, I see it also as a certain sense of loss. You can never wet the rim of your lip with the exact same 1990 Figeac or 2005 Thomas Sancerre Cuvée Spéciale. And that very first taste of Selosse Substance that had me laughing will have me sit back, maybe, at some future point, and furrow my brow, wipe my lip and take another bite of lobster bread pudding.
Wine is an alchemical substance more than a simple draught. It is a philter, and a filter for our experience and our emotions.
So maybe I should be glad it is so unrepeatable. I hate repetition.
I'm in no danger, here.
Just when I didn't think my wine dinners could get more eclectic, they did. The only thing homogeneous about the night was the fact that nearly all of us were Americans. A rare occurence in this Left Bank apartment building. Yet we were thus, Trip, Kathy, Ken, Jodi, Sharon... and Arnaud, just for kicks. (And of course, Arnaud is always a kick and not to be missed on any pretext.)
We assembled ourselves and some wines at my place. As my kitchen is too small for collaboration, I manned it solo...
1999 A. Margaine Blanc de Blancs 1er Cru "Spécial Club" - My opinion on this has changed. I was immediately struck by the dosage, which seemed a little too marked. Beneath it was a classy, yeasty champagne with a nice mouthfeel and length. Good crisp blanc de blanc qualities. But maybe it would have been better with a gram or two less per liter?
1994 Buisson-Charles Meursault - the first time I have had a wine from this producer. The color, while a slightly golden yellow, was not at all worrisome. The nose was pure Meursault: buttery, nutty, delicious chardonnay aromas. In the mouth, it was a little thin, at first, but it was sprightly and very young-seeming. (It turns out that would be the order of the evening: two other wines we would go on to drink would taste far younger than their years.) As it warmed in the glass, it showed itself to be classically styled, nice but somewhat light, as the vintage would suggest. It was drinking very well; Trip commented he would have thought it was a 2001, blind.
I brought out bread and butter - and as it was starting to be devoured, I realized I should get into the kitchen and sear the foie gras. (Yes, indeed, it's a hard life.)
Pan-seared foie gras with pear chutney
1998 Domaine Weinbach Clos des Capucines Tokay Pinot Gris Altenbourg "Cuvée Laurence" - A completely elegant, viscous, wondrous wine that paired perfectly with the foie gras and slightly piquant chutney. Full and lush in the mouth but with a pinot gris delineation and almost offhand nobility, which is so different from gewürz's spices or riesling's wicked minerality and petrol. What a great bottle.
Shepherd's pie with lamb and sweet potatoes, raisins and onions
1993 Ridge Monte Bello - I'd told Ken I was on a Ridge kick, and he went above and beyond. This was an intense wine. Young, incredibly precise and well-crafted, I think this will be even better in ten years. But it already gave a lot of pleasure, with notes of dark fruits and a strong mineral streak.
1973 Sterling Vineyards Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon - Another preternaturally young wine. The fill level was just below the capsule, impeccable storage since its release (thank you, Trip), and a very Bordeauxish Napa cab. I would even give it more time... With some currant and tobacco, very well-structured, as well.
Cheese platter: Reblochon, Comté (24 mo.), Crottins de Chavignol, Langres, Fiancé des Pyrénées (a goat's milk cheese not unlike a Reblochon in shape and style)
Now we were out of American wines... What to do? I grabbed the keys to the cellar, and said, "What do you like from France?" I think I did hear "Burgundy!" I'm not imagining it...
2001 Lignier Charmes-Chambertin - Hey, this is open for business. Smooth, light-handed and very pure pinot fruit, with a bit of a tannic bite at the end that to me signals 2001, as opposed to the more sultry 2002s. This had some luscious strawberries and dried rose petals.
Raspberry, apple and chocolate tarts
I think the remaining Pinot Gris went best with the apple tart, but I am kind of a fan of reds, sometimes, with dessert.
Rather than shun champagne, the only solution, of course, is to embrace it even more!
Yesterday at the crack of dawn, I jumped in the TGV, and 45 minutes later, I was in Reims. Fellow wine fanatics Michaël and Guillaume picked me up - in a rented Mercedes big enough to hold cases and cases of wine, which is always reassuring.
In the early afternoon, after a morning visit to Raymond Boulard (to be described soon here; stay tuned), the three of us drove down to taste Jacques Selosse champagne in Avize.
Anselme Selosse is absolutely fascinating; he just holds you in some kind of cusp with his presence, with his bright blue eyes, and with a very imaged way of talking about things. He's got a kind of visionary/idealist streak, but isn't at all dogmatic. Just impassioned, and completely, utterly persuasive. And then, his wines speak for themselves, directly and unabashedly above-and-beyond.
He's also simple, down-to-earth. Wears jeans and a polar fleece jacket. He used a comparison for the soul of his wines, which he says is in the nature of the vines: "If I changed my clothing, it wouldn't change who I am."
After talking for some time, we moved deeper into the vast barn that is his chai. Bottles from all around the world lined the top of one wall (those were empty) and a long trestle table (there, they were unopened). My friends had brought a bottle of Donhöff German riesling, which was cradled for a while in Selosse's arms while we discussed it, then set down with the unopened bottles on the table. There were the bottles, too, of Jacques Selosse to be tasted from.
So, he poured some of his champagnes for us. We took our time, talking in depth - but here, I'll jump the gun: each one was more unreal than the previous. These are wild champagnes. Aside from the cuvée Contraste and the rosé, they're all blanc de blancs. None have more than 2g/l of dosage, making them pretty much all extra-brut. If I were shooting off to a distant planet, I would pack my spaceship full of Jacques Selosse...
Brut 1998 - He started us with the vintage Brut 1998, which was astoundingly rich, walnutty and buttery. He raises everything en barrique - apparently with barrels he gets from the Domaine Leflaive after they have used them for a few years. The 1998 was exceptional; very mature, and with great depth to it.
Brut 1990 - Next, he opened a bottle of vintage Brut 1990, which was fascinating to taste, because it was made before he switched to his "oxidative" style. It was a pure, refined champagne, very young seeming, with great balance and acidity, but not at all "Selosse." I asked him when he started to work in the oxidative style and he said in 1995, after being inspired by winemakers like Overnoy in the Jura.
Contraste - the blanc de noirs is called Contraste, and was also one of those times where you didn't think it could get better than the 1998, but it did, this was an amazing champagne - rocking, on fire. Its beautiful, biscuitty notes and lush mouthfeel were overwhelming. It was long and full of walnut, biscut, and ripe fruit tastes. It seemed to go on forever, just taking over the palate.
Substance - this is his top-end wine, which is made in the Portuguese "solera" method of having two enormous barriques stacked atop each other, and each year the juice from those vines (an old vine parcel in Avize on the Côte des Blancs) is put in the top barrique along with the rest, and the pressure sends a mixture down; the wines are drawn progressively from the bottom barrique - so that the cuvée is a perpetually evolving product of many different years.
Selosse himself is fabulous, brilliant and swift with a metaphor. It was interesting to hear him describe that even though in Champagne, vintage champagne is considered the top of the line, that is only like a snapshot of a given year with its climatic variation, and that is not what interests him most in winemaking. What he would rather do is give a portrait of the earth, the rootstock, more "essential" things to those particular vines that come through in the Substance cuvée.
And that wine is just unbelievable. I felt this surge of hilarity rising in me, it was just so unfathomably, improbably good. I couldn't believe it. Immensely layered, as its creation suggests, it goes through a full, round phase in the mouth, with toast and hazelnut notes, and then you think it's gone. About a quarter of a second later, a note of orange zest suddenly hits your palate, and then the finish comes sweeping in, and lasts forever. This made me burst out laughing.
Brut Rosé - I didn't know how we could go anywhere else after that. We hung around in the chai talking with Anselme. He told us about his upcoming single-parcel wine which will be a rosé de saignée, but not labeled a rosé, bottled in a dark green bottle, and we tasted it from the fût. Then, he looked around and wondered what else we could taste. He went for the non-vintage rosé. A first bottle he opened was a recent bottling (10 days before); it was disjointed, but fine for a nice rosé, for which I don't have high expectations in general. But he wasn't happy with its stage, so he went and got one that had been disgorged in June. It was a completely different drink. Utterly, suavely harmonious - like no other rosé I have ever had. Almost like a white wine but with some extra layers to it, though the whole thing was beautifully harmonious.
I have to say, this was one of my most incredible tasting experiences ever.
One of us asked Selosse if he thought of himself as an artist. He said absolutely not; he was if anything like an orchestra conductor working with an unruly group of self-centered musicians. It was his job to bring them all together, making some become more disciplined and others loosen up, making the flashy ones mesh better into the group, coaxing out the shy ones, so that in the end, the performance would go well. "But I'm not the composer," he said.
Well, that's what he says.
OK, my back's to the wall. After giving Arnaud no end of grief about the fact that all of his friends (or their girlfriends or live-ins or wives) have a steady supply of champagne in their fridges, to open at whim - or in some cases, perpetually open, drunk, and replaced - Arnaud has assured me that I am getting if not my fill of champagne, then at least a goodly amount, as a general rule.
We were in London when this issue cropped up again. I was laughing over the fact that while waiting for him to finish up a meeting, I went to a wine bar in the City and ordered a glass of champagne. The barman said to me, completely serious, "Are you sure you wouldn't like the whole bottle?"
Yes, I was laughing a little over the excesses of wine and alcohol consumption in England - even I felt out of my depth, which is saying something... but also talking about how it was nice to have champagne, ostensibly "for a change."
Arnaud put me to the challenge. "When we get back to Paris," he said, "You are going to write a little 'C' on the calendar each time you have champagne."
So I held myself to it. We've been back in Paris for nearly a week. And to my shame, I have to admit that the C's are starting to roll in...
A nice bottle of NV A. Margaine Brut 1er Cru, by the way, last night with some friends...
Well, it's raining in Paris, and chilly, so what better way of cheering myself up after a sunny trip to Rome this week than heading over to Augé for a little tasting of a couple of Krugs.
Standing under the awning by a barrel - I love Augé's everyman attitude: even Krug just gets a barrel out front! - getting the backs of my legs splashed by the rain, I tasted two different cuvées of Krug, in the sole presence of one other taster - an eighty year old man with a band-aid on his nose. Serving us was a Krug representative, a young and engaging guy. Then one of the Augé fellows came out and we all had a chance to banter.
MV Krug Grande Cuvée - This is my second time with this wine. The other time was a much older bottle - it was at François Audouze's vins anciens dinner, so the bottle was from the mid-1980s. But I digress. I hate to think of myself as "less open" to certain types of wines than others, but for champagne, I am just unavoidably a blanc de blancs fan. So this one came across as pungent, a little bitter, full-bodied, with the kind of push-and-pull between a nutty depth and an easygoing shortbread taste. Seamless, completely invisible dosage. A nice wine, obviously well-bred, but more like Dante's Purgatorio as compared to the Paradiso of blanc de blancs...
1995 Krug - The nose! It smells like... cake batter. But in a good way. Like cake batter with peeled, sliced pears thrown into it. In the mouth, it was sprightly, quick, then bloomed out into a kind of flashy white flower that evolved nicely with green apples and rocks and some dough, and ended with a little tight acidity. Not a "pleasurable" wine, but certainly something to keep an eye on.
Afterward, I ducked inside. When the Augé guy came in, we reconnoitered. Laughing, we talked. I think we were on the same page, as it were. We nodded seriously and discussed. Sure, Krug is legendary, but what we wouldn't give for a glass of Selosse....
It was unbelievably beautiful in Normandy this weekend, where we went once again, this time for Marc and Sarah's wedding.
After a failed attempt to participate in the wedding - there were about 60 guests too many to fit into the town hall meeting room where the mayor of Blonville-sur-Mer presided over the ceremony, and unfortunately, we were among the stragglers - we threw rose petals, kissed the bride and groom, and then repaired to our manor house hotel outside of Pont-l'Evêque for a nap.
At 7pm, we drove through a dipping, winding road back to Blonville-sur-Mer for the reception.
Marc's parents' country manor has a name, which I learned because it was on the invitation. When we had parked up the road and walked to the entrance gates, I saw there was a large tent for the dinner, which would come later - but for now, among the apple trees, several white-canopied stands studded the vast lawn. And on the stands, here, some canapés, there, a caterer slicing foie gras and topping it with spoonfuls of mango chutney. And, oh, on three of the stands, gigantic punch bowls full of water, ice, and bottles of NV Pierre Gimonnet Brut 1er Cru "Cuis".
I love this precise, elegant, utterly harmonious grower brut. Light tastes of unbaked bread, white flowers, and apple. It was delicious, and went well with the seafood hors d'œuvres caterers were walking around and offering us, from prawn beignets to bass samossas to smoked salmon puffs. So, we dawdled. We commingled. We laughed and talked. Alexandre cited Shakespeare in charmingly accented English.
And, as the evening fell, we sipped flute after flute, until it was almost too dark to see, and then we headed for the tent.
This time, I'm not going to write about wine, per se. I'm going to write around wine. That is, write about the reaction you might have when you taste wine with knowledgeable friends. You wouldn't think so, but tasting wine with other winos can in fact be treacherous territory.
Yes, I'm talking about tasting envy. No, not the jealous grip in your gut when you read about a bunch of the happy few drinking 39 vintages of La Tâche - no, I mean the uncomfortable sensation of looking over the rim of your glass with narrowed eyes when someone you're tasting with "gets it"... maybe better than you do.
We were sitting in a ridiculously sun-filled apartment high over the quai de Grenelle, where a generous and somewhat eccentric wine-lover had invited a tiny cluster (read: 3) of us over for a Burgundy tasting.
Michel sniffed the 2003 Yves Darviot Beaune 1er cru "Clos des Mouches"... and the rest of this paragraph is not a tasting note, because he got it and I was slow. Sure, maybe by the time the wine started to open up in the glass I was catching up, but it was mostly thanks to his tip-offs.
Another day, I tasted a white Burgundy with Neil. "A little watery on the attack, and there's a strange kind of butterscotch spiked with lemon rind on the finish," he mused, before my brain had started processing what was going down my throat. Well, damn. Yes, that's right. Thanks. I'm going to go hide behind this stack of Veuve-Clicquot cases.
We can't always get there first, I know. I smile and nod. And of course, in the end, my only consolation is to think that maybe sometimes, somewhere, someone is thinking, "Damn, how did she get that?"
Ask me and I'll be the first to tell you that if I have a blind spot in wine, it's situated somewhere in the gaping hole a map would show to bear the Gironde and Dordogne rivers. I.e. Bordeaux.
Yet this week, intrepidly out on the Atlantic coast to visit Arnaud's parents in their new home near Fouras, we just as intrepidly embarked on a journey to none other than the Missing Region. Swing out of the autoroute at Saint-André-de-Cubzac and sidle along through Libourne until all signs point to Saint-Émilion.
What a charm of a town! We wandered, we admired, we strode on cobblestones, we gaped at overpriced wine stores with the Right Bank's finest, the kings of Merlot - then Arnaud's stomach grumbles got too loud and we sat down to lunch.
A thin, green 2004 Saint-Émilion was not the meal's highlight, but we were happy. Tasty homemade foie gras and some of the juiciest and best french fries imaginable alongside my duck breast consoled me.
We wandered around and bought macarons. Then we drove out, ignorantly, past vineyards (still full of plump, dark grapes) marked with the name of Ausone and arrows pointing down roads toward Pavie and Canon la Gaffelière. We didn't know where to go, so we went to the Union des Producteurs de Saint-Emilion.
Aha, the happiness was not in this large warehouse of a building, either. The reception was nice, and at a modern bar we were served tastes of any and every cru we could ask for. But they were all wan, lackluster and very short on the palate, even their luxury cuvées. I was reminded a little of a trip to Chablis on a Sunday, where out of desperation we went to La Chablisienne. Committees (i.e. some 60 producers) tend not to make the best wines, in fine.
So we got back in the car and were going to leave. I'm stubborn, but one ox does not drive the cart.
Until we passed by a small sign. Château Petit-Gravet. Hey, wait, that name rang a bell. Oh, yes, I tasted their 1929 at François Audouze's Académie des Vins Anciens dinner.
I pleaded with my companions to make another stop. And so we did, despite dubious sentences, such as, "It might have changed in the past 80 years..."
A small cabin of a tasting room, and just one cru to taste: 2005. And damn us all if we weren't smiiling in the sunshine a half hour later when we walked out again, with bottles to put in the trunk. The best experience of Saint-Émilion we'd had, and a rich, generous wine. Thank god for Petit-Gravets!
I feel as gleeful as if I were going to pop a bottle of Jacques Selosse VO... You see, an article on wine blogs by the savvy scribe Sao Anash, "The Web's Gift to Wine Lovers," has just appeared in The Santa Barbara Independent. She singles me out (oh, OK - "eights" me out, which isn't too shabby, either) for praise.
So we went back up to Marc's summer home on the Normandy coast near Deauville last week. Of course, knowing Alain would be there, I was well aware that our vinous choices would be somewhat limited. Alain knows what he likes, and he doesn't like (list non-exhaustive): red Burgundy, Northern Rhône, Southern Rhône, white Burgundy, white Loires or any rosés.
Marc, however, likes Bollinger Spécial Cuvée, so that was in the cards. And, whoops, Marc also does like red Burgundy, and since he's the host... we just had to bring him some kind offerings.
2002 Philippe Amiot Chambolle Musigny - light as cranberry juice, but far more nuanced, with ethereal aromas of gooseberry and juicy raspberry. I loved this when I first tasted it in 2005, and it's still an approachable beauty, but probably should be drunk in a year or two.
Alain, however, said, "It's too light for me."
I had made pan-seared duck breasts from a local farm, along with a crushed green-peppercorn sauce with shallots and armagnac and a touch of crème fraîche. There was no way we were going to dive into some square-shouldered Bordeaux or other.
1999 Hudelot-Noellat Nuits-Saint-Georges - I knew this would be heartier, and it was. More rustic than the lacy Chambolle, it was brambly, young and somewhat tannic.
I looked down the table at Alain. Strike two. "Still too light." Huh?
So it was something of a provocation the next day at lunch when I went for a third. (Ah, but it was our last day, and I was too curious to taste the third Burgundy we had already picked up days earlier - too curious, that is, to leave it to the overheated closets of Marc's summer home.) So away went the capsule and out popped the cork when we sat down to feast on pork and lamb skewers. Alain strode out to the patio and plunked his contribution to the meal down on the table: a magnum of 2004 Château Something-or-Other Médoc.
The table was cleft in twain, or rather staggered, with some sipping Bordeaux and others, what Arnaud termed "the good stuff":
2002 Catherine & Claude Maréchal Pommard "La Chanière" - far more dense and robust than their Savignys and Volnays, but still a vin de plaisir, as are the best Maréchal wines. Dark fruits, pinot-y nose, a suave swath of some secondary aromas sliding over the mid-palate, and very harmonious: the picture of classicism and balance.
And so everyone kept coming back to this bottle, until it was no more... At which point, we finally did discover that the magnum of 2004 Château Whatsit was actually pretty good.
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About Swarlos
Hello dear stalker! I'll ease your life a bit. Swarlos is a Biomedicine student with Minors in both Psychology and Biology who loves to represent his university by means of its varsity judo team. He also listens to a wide variety of music, and enjoys movies of all sorts. He reads books every now and then when he is not studying, which is rare now with the MCAT looming over the horizon. His passion in life is learning; driven by his innate curiosity about everything, he aims to use all of the knowledge he can obtain to help others have a better quality of life.
A couple quotes he read not too long ago that have been stuck in Swarlos's head:
"Love is rehabilitated slavery". -Anonymous
"Da más fuerza ser amado que ser fuerte." Goethe
I haven't added this to my profile yet


text:
Beth Moore's Texas Sheet Cake
Grease a sheet cake pan.
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups sugar
Bring to a boil:
2 sticks butter (1 cup)
1 cup water
4 Tblsp. cocoa
Pour hot mixture over dry ingredients and mix in:
2 eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. vanilla
Bake at 400 degrees, 20-25 minutes.
For Icing, Heat:
1 stick butter (½ cup)
4 Tblsp. cocoa
6 Tblsp. milk
Add anywhere from 1/2 to 1 box of powdered sugar to achieve desired consistency (Beth prefers close to 1 box). Add 1 cup pecans. Spread on cake while it's hot.
Terri's notes: For those of you who can't quite get over the amount the butter, this is almost exactly the same recipe my mom-in-law's been wowing family with for 60 years and her recipe only calls for 1½ sticks of butter in the cake and ½ stick in the frosting. Like Beth, I use the 4 cups of powdered sugar. Melt the butter and make up the frosting just as the cake comes out of the oven, so it's gooey and spreads easily over the hot cake.