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Summary: If you park at Austin Pass, take the Bagley Lakes trail down to the lakes. Cross the stone bridge and stay left. The trail travels around the lake and up through the bowl. When I went in late July, there was still plenty of snow in this bowl, and it was fairly easy to lose the trail. You'll get to a ridge with tremendous views of the surrounding lakes and mountains. Drop down to Iceberg Lake (yes, there were Icebergs), which is an incredible shade of blue-green. Again, I had trouble finding the trail in the snow, but you'll want to head for the right side of the lake. You will hit trail eventually. The trail takes you behind Iceberg Lake, then curves back. You are now heading towards Artist's Point. You'll skirt Table mountain. Once at the parking lot, follow the Wild Goose Trail to get you back to your car. I found this by walking a short way down the road to a gravel parking lot and finding a big rock cairn with a wild goose on it.
Trailhead: Take Highway 542 (Mt. Baker Highway) from Bellingham to the end of the road (Mt. Baker Ski Area). Stay to the right at the large map. Park about halfway up to Artist's Point at the Austin Pass picnic area. You can also park at either Artist's Point or Bagley Lakes. If you park at Bagley Lakes, you'll add another mile to this trip (as well as lots of confusion). (Lat:48.854 Lon:-121.686)
Trail Guides for Chain Lakes Loop:
100 Hikes in Northern Cascades
by Ira Spring (The Mounaineers)
North Cascades
by Cathy Copeland (Wilderness)
Best Seasons: Fall, Summer,
User Groups: Hikers, Dogs,
Ranger Contact: US Forest Service -- Mt. Baker Ranger District (360) 856-5700
Localhikes Reporter: This hike was submitted by Marybeth Dingledy, who has posted 8 other hikes on this site
Trail Reviews Page 1 of 2 Submit your own review
Reviewed by mk on 10/2/2012
Washington Trails Association website states 'dogs not allowed'. This needs to be answered correctly on your site & not just state your preferences.
Reviewed by NR on 8/31/2010
Error: Reserved Word Found: --
Reviewed by JM on 10/5/2009
Loved this trail, really beautiful. Also, tons of huckleberries at the end of September, eat'em or they'll freeze and rot 2 weeks later. Extremely scenic the whole way.
Reviewed by AFM on 9/21/2009
Great Views of Shuksan, Baker, and all the alpine lakes. All of the icebergs were gone for the season. We also hiked it in reverse starting at the visitor center - getting the Wild Goose trail climb out of the way first.
Reviewed by bryce on 8/15/2006
LOVE IT UP THERE!!! took some people who had never been there, and they were extatic! carried my daughter the whole way in the backpack carrier and was remarkably easy. little snowy spots, and melting chunks of ice look RAD! crystal-clear lakes look inviting, if not for their chilly temps. tranquility abounds, yet somewhat crowded at the top. would recommend this one to anyone!
Reviewed by MJC on 2/21/2006
Tiring but easy passage on all parts of this trail. Took more than 4 hours at good clip but with a few water/photo stops. Lots of friendly people on Artist's Point to Table Mountain section of trail. Fabulous scenery.
Reviewed by stanya on 9/30/2005
I prefer to do it in the opposite direction than described here: Park just before the up loop to Lake Ann trail and take the little trail & stairs to Artist Point- then go right and at the intersection drop to the valley, leading around the lakes, up the pass & then down. This way the unattractive part is over and you can enjoy the scenery.
Reviewed by Chuck on 10/5/2004
This is a beautiful, short hike (actually more like a vigorous walk). Fall is absolutely gorgeous with the changing colors. Do it mid-week unless you like malls during Christmas season. Million dollar views of Shuksan until you get to the first pass (elevation approximately 5,100 ft) and then beautiful alpine lakes and meadows with a big snowy Mt. Baker as an exclamation point. Start at Lower Wild Goose Trailhead to get the most bang for your buck and, although it can be done as a loop, I would suggest turning around and going back the way you came before ascending to Artist's Point (after the last of the lakes). The scenery is pretty much over by then and you really need "seconds" on this sumptuous trail.
Notice: Traveling in the backcountry can be hazardous. You are responsible for informing yourself about these hazards and taking necessary precautions. Information on this web site comes from volunteer reporters and may contain errors or omissions. A current guidebook and proper equipment are essential for safe enjoyment of the hikes posted on this site.
Keys: Washington Hiking, Washington Trails, Washington Hikes, Whatcom County Hiking, Whatcom County Trails, Whatcom County Hikes


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subset: commoncrawl


text:
An attorney for former Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard said today he received a target letter describing charges that the federal government is pursuing against his client.
Julian Murray said the letter, delivered to his Metairie office, lists wire fraud and two conspiracy charges relating to misuse of federal money.
Broussard's ex-wife, Karen Parker, also received a target letter, said her attorney, David Courcelle.
Coming 15 months into the FBI's inquiry into Jefferson Parish political corruption, the letters represents official notice that the government intends on seeking criminal charges. They serve to declare that the letter's recipient, in the government's view, is no longer merely a "subject" of investigation but is now, according to the Justice Department's U.S. Attorneys' Manual, "a person as to whom the prosecutor or the grand jury has substantial evidence linking him or her to the commission of a crime and who, in the judgment of the prosecutor, is a putative defendant."
A dominant figure in Jefferson politics over a 35-year career in five different offices, Broussard abruptly resigned as parish president in January 2010. Four days earlier, his chief administrative officer, Tim Whitmer, had quit amid scandal. Two months later, parish attorney Tom Wilkinson also resigned.
Broussard's departure made for an uncharacteristic exit from the public stage by a man who had seemed extremely comfortable in the spotlight and shown a knack for communicating with, and persuading, fellow politicians and the public alike.
His political career began on the School Board in 1974 and took him to the Parish Council, the mayor's office in Kenner, back to the Parish Council as its chairman and, in 2004, the parish presidency.
Since slipping out of that office, Broussard, 62, has been practicing law in Kenner.
The investigation was triggered by news media stories detailing how Whitmer owned an insurance agency, Lagniappe Industries, that was doing business with government agencies and parish contractors. Broussard has admitted doing $5,000 of "legal work" for Lagniappe.
Soon the inquiry expanded into payroll fraud with disclosures that the parish attorney's office was packed with unqualified or overpaid employees, including Parker.
Whitmer's attorney, Pat Fanning, and Wilkinson's attorney, Ralph Whalen, could not be reached for comment tonight.
. . . . . . .
Richard Rainey can be reached at email@example.com or 504.883.7052.


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The Accidental Mistressby Tracy Anne Warren
He will expose her masquerade, but she will expose his heart. To escape an arranged marriage, spirited Lily Bainbridge has staged her own death, and, disguised as a boy, she fled to London and a life of freedom. Yet her plans to live masquerade as an independent widow are thwarted by an encounter with a powerful and dangerously attractive marquis who wants to make her his mistress. Lily is afraid that if she gives him her innocence, he'll steal her heart. Having agreed to a marriage of convenience to honor his family duty, Ethan Andarton, the Marquis of Vessey, has no intention of abandoning his rakish ways. Then fate intervenes in the guise of an impetuous young lady-a woman bold enough to scheme her way to London, who tempts him with her mystery and her sensuality. Kiss after kiss, caress after tender caress, Ethan vows to discover all of Lily's hidden secrets. For beneath the layers of her clever ruse lies a burning passion that will ignite a tempestuous love neither of them can deny.
The Bed and the Bachelorby Tracy Anne Warren
Everyone knows the Byron brothers are "mad, bad, and dangerous." But the devilishly desirable fourth son, Drake, is too scholarly to misbehave . . . or is he? Lord Drake Byron has no time in his busy life to worry about taking a wife. He is more interested in the unbreakable code he has developed to defeat Napoleon's forces. Little does he know that the irresistibly lovely new housekeeper he's hired is really a French secret agent. Sebastianne Dumont is not at all who she seems to be. Forced to spy to save her family, she embarks on a mission that takes an even more dangerous turn when she falls in love with the surprisingly tempting man she must ultimately betray. And if she succeeds in her mission, will she also break Lord Drake's heart, while leaving her own behind?
The Bedding Proposalby Tracy Anne Warren
From New York Times bestselling author Tracy Anne Warren, the first of a new trilogy about the most dashingly dangerous men in London. Pay a call to the most seductive address in London and meet the Rakes of Cavendish Square....Lord Leo Byron is bored with the aristocratic company he keeps; he needs a distraction, preferably in the form of a beautiful new female companion. So when he sets eyes on fascinating and scandalous divorcée Lady Thalia Lennox, he's determined to make her intimate acquaintance. But the spirited woman seems to have no intention of accepting his advances no matter how much he chases--or how hard he falls....Once a darling of Society, Thalia Lennox now lives on its fringes. The cruel lies that gave her a notoriously wild reputation have also left her with a broken heart and led to a solemn vow to swear off men. Still, Leo Byron's bold overtures are deliciously tempting, and, for the first time, she finds herself wondering whether it just might be worth the risk to let the attractive rake into her life--and her bed....
Four Dukes and a Devilby Tracy Anne Warren Cathy Maxwell Jeaniene Frost Elaine Fox Sophia Nash
Fall in love with the unpredictable and irresistible dukes (and one dog named Duke) of Four Dukes and a Devil. Join New York Times bestselling authors Cathy Maxwell, Jeaniene Frost, and Tracy Anne Warren, along with USA Today bestselling author Elaine Fox and RITA® Award winner Sophia Nash, for tales of noble danger and devilish desire. Delicate young ladies must be protected from him. First he steals her clothes, then he steals her heart. Most would be terrified of this powerful vampire--but not him. He's "the catch of the century". . . but she's the only one he can't have. A young miss demands a kiss. But he won't rest once she's touched her lips to his. With four dukes and one devil, there's no limit on love.
Happily Bedded Blissby Tracy Anne Warren
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Bedding Proposal comes a seductive new novel about the most devilishly dangerous men in London...When Lady Esme Byron happens upon a gorgeous naked man sleeping beside a secluded country lake, she can't resist the impulse to sketch him. But when her highly improper drawing is mistakenly revealed at a party, she finds her once-pristine reputation in tatters. Gabriel, Lord Northcote, may be a notorious rakehell, but he is still stunned to find himself accused of despoiling a duke's sister--especially since he's never set eyes on her. When Esme's six irate brothers demand a hurried trip down the aisle, he has no choice but to comply. He thinks he can forget about his inconvenient bride but Esme Byron is no ordinary woman and Gabriel is about to learn just how unforgettable she can be.
Her Highness and the Highlander: A Princess Brides Romanceby Tracy Anne Warren
From New York Times bestselling author Tracy Anne Warren comes the second novel in an enchanting new trilogy about three princesses brought together by friendship and fate. This is Princess Mercedes's story... While journeying home from Scotland, Princess Mercedes of Alden's coach is set upon and her personal guard killed. Barely escaping with her life, she seeks help at a nearby inn. But with no money and looking little better than a beggar, the townsfolk think her claims of being a princess to be nothing more than a far-fetched tale. Utterly forsaken, Mercedes wonders what is to become of her. After years of soldiering, dispossessed Laird Daniel MacKinnon is finally coming home. At an inn he is confronted by a bedraggled young woman claiming to be of royal blood. Daniel doesn't believe her wild tale, but when she asks for his protection, he agrees to serve as her bodyguard--in turn she promises to reward him handsomely once they reach London. But Mercedes is still being pursued by ruthless hunters whose motives remain unclear. As the danger increases, so does the desire she and Daniel feel for each other, until the two of them must face the greatest danger of all--falling in love. .
His Favorite Mistressby Tracy Anne Warren
More romantic mischief among the gentlemen and ladies of Regency England is in store in the concluding novel of Warrens sprightly new trilogy. Original.
The Husband Trapby Tracy Anne Warren
Here comes the substitute bride. . . . Violet Brantford has always longed for the passionate embrace of Adrian Winter, the wealthy Duke of Raeburn. Problem is, he's set to marry Violet's vivacious, more socially polished look-alike twin sister, Jeannette. But when Jeannette refuses to go through with the ceremony mere minutes before it is to begin, soft-spoken Violet finds herself walking down the aisle and taking vows in her sister's place. Soon shy Violet is a high-society wife, trying to keep her real identity a secret while living out the fantasies of her wildest dreams. Adrian thinks he knows exactly what he's gotten himself into: Jeannette may be flighty and, well, a bit self-involved, but she's the picture-perfect wife to carry on the Winter name. Yet this marriage of convenience brings the groom more than he bargained for when he finds his sweet, innocent wife surprising him at every turn. And though he never planned on true love, Adrian is definitely in danger of losing his heart.
The Last Man on Earthby Tracy Anne Warren
"A truly satisfying romance" --The New York Times Book Review From New York Times bestselling author Tracy Anne Warren comes a sexy and romantic new contemporary series about corporate combat in the boardroom and under-the-covers passion in the bedroom... Idealistic good girl Madelyn Grayson believes in doing what's right. Even as a high-powered executive in the mad world of advertising, she doesn't cut corners, making her ad campaigns sizzle without having to burn anyone along the way. Rival exec Zack Douglas never wastes an opportunity to land the next big deal--especially when it benefits him. A bad boy with a reputation to match, he has no qualms about doing whatever it takes to get ahead, no matter who gets in the way. When a hot promotion pops up at their company, both Zack and Madelyn wind up on the short list for the position. But as the two square off, they discover that being heated rivals in the office makes for scorching bed play behind closed doors. Will Madelyn's steamy, secret affair with Mr. Vice make her compromise her ideals--or worse, lose her heart? FIRST IN A NEW SERIES!
Mad About the Manby Tracy Anne Warren
"Few things are more fun than an enemies-to-lovers romance, and Warren delivers...a truly satisfying romance."--The New York Times Book Review on The Last Man on EarthAfter a devastating love affair broke her heart-and derailed her career-it's taken Brie Grayson a while to recover. Now she's back at a top New York City law firm, determined to rise above it all. And she'll have to--especially when a major new client turns out to be the boy who made the seventh grade a living hell.Luxury hotel magnate Maddox Monroe has clawed his way out of the ruins of his former life to build an empire. He knows what he wants and how to get it. But he couldn't have anticipated reconnecting with the girl of his boyhood fantasies--all grown up and more alluring than ever.But once Maddox breaks through Brie's barriers to find the fiery woman hidden underneath, will lust lead to something lasting? Or will past heartache and fresh betrayals tear their future apart before it even has a chance to begin?
The Man Planby Tracy Anne Warren
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Man on Earth comes a delicious new novel about a young woman's dreams of finding grand romance and success in the big city--and her schemes to make both come true.... What's a girl to do when the man she's loved her entire life thinks of her as a little sister? Worse, her own big sister was the one who broke his heart years earlier. For Ivy Grayson, the chance to get him to see her in a different light comes when she receives an unexpected invitation to move into his luxury New York apartment building. Manhattan also just happens to be the perfect place to pursue her wish to become a successful artist. But how many dreams can one woman expect to come true? Billionaire financier James Jordon has everything a man could want--except love. When Ivy's family asks him to keep an eye on their "little girl" in the big city, he agrees. But the innocent girl he knew is now a dynamic woman who knows what she wants, and how to get it. He may have promised himself to keep things platonic, but ignoring the game of love isn't an option. Especially when Ivy is so eager to play.
My Fair Mistressby Tracy Anne Warren
He drives a hard bargain, but the pleasure is all hers. London financier Rafe Pendragon has a reputation for ruthlessness, and exotic beauty Julianna Hawthorne is determined to clear the debt her brother owes him. Captivated by Rafe's virile good looks, weakened by his intoxicating mix of danger and sensuality, Julianna boldly agrees to Rafe's shocking terms: six months as his mistress. As Rafe's intense green eyes pierce her body and set it afire, Julianna can only imagine what emotions his kiss may...
The Princess and the Peerby Tracy Anne Warren
From New York Times bestselling author Tracy Anne Warren comes an enchanting new trilogy about three princesses brought together by fate. This is Princess Emma's story... When a royal summons from her brother arrives, Emma knows it's time to embrace her duties as the princess of a small European kingdom, and marry the man her brother has chosen for her...a stranger she has never met. Instead she does what any self-respecting princess would do--she runs away. All she wants is one week in London. One week to experience everything life has to offer, before she is locked away in a loveless marriage forever... Former naval captain Nick Gregory has inherited a title he never wanted. As the new Earl of Lyndhurst, he chafes against his landlocked existence--until fate brings a mysterious young beauty across his path. Believing she's an unemployed governess, Nick offers shelter and protection to the captivating girl, never guessing her true identity. Emma falls hard for Nick, but knowing they have no future, she flees once more--this time back to her royal responsibilities. But when she and Nick unexpectedly meet again, she learns that against all odds, he's determined to make this princess his bride... .
Seduced By His Touchby Tracy Anne Warren
He Had to Marry Her Everyone in London agrees the Byrons are just as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" as their poetic non-relation. But Lord Jack Byron is facing a predicament that is scandalous . . . even for him! Marry a young woman because he lost a bet? Unreformed rake Lord Jack Byron would do anything to get out of it. But the rich merchant who holds his debt insists Jack lead his on-the-shelf daughter to the altar . . . and make her believe it's a love match. With no options, Jack agrees, thinking he'll be shackled to a closed-in spinster. But Grace Danvers is no milk-and-water miss. When he first encounters her in a London bookstore, Jack is struck by her tempting sensuality and soon becomes determined to bed--and wed--her (in that order!). Yet though he plans to seduce her with his touch, he never dreams he'll also want to win her with his love.
Tempted By His Kissby Tracy Anne Warren
London society knows the Byrons are "mad, bad, and dangerous" and every bit as fascinating as their poetic non-relation. Join the fun as New York Times bestselling author Tracy Anne Warren presents the first tale of this tempestuous family--famous for scandal and legendary at love . . . Orphaned beauty Meg Amberley never planned to pose as Lord Cade Byron's fiancée. Caught in a snowstorm, she takes refuge at his estate. Stranded together, Meg soon finds herself falling under Cade's spell. When the roads clear, she intends to leave, but fate intervenes. Haunted by his past, Cade Byron has buried himself in the country. Then Meg--with her lush curves--invades his house and his life. With her reputation compromised, he proposes a pretend engagement and a London season where she can find a husband. But as their charade deepens, Cade can't let her go . . . vowing to tempt her with a kiss that just may lead to forever.
The Trouble With Princessesby Tracy Anne Warren
From New York Times bestselling author Tracy Anne Warren comes the conclusion of an enchanting trilogy about three princesses brought together by friendship and fate. This is Princess Ariadne's story. . . . On the threshold of receiving her royal inheritance and tired of the London Marriage Mart, Ariadne has decided to defy convention and declare her independence. She will not seek a husband-she will take a lover instead, no matter how notorious she may become. The prince of a small European kingdom, renowned bachelor Rupert Whyte, is in London to enjoy a last bit of freedom before choosing a wife. When he learns about Ariadne's scheme to take a lover, he decides he must prevent her from embarking on such a ruinous course. What begins as a well-deserved reprimand quickly spins out of control when Rupert agrees to give Ariadne a few lessons in lust. But just how far will their passion go? And will their forbidden liaison lead them too far astray to turn back? .
The Wedding Trapby Tracy Anne Warren
From ugly duckling to beautiful swan Eliza Hammond has always been quiet and reserved-hardly the best qualities for finding the man of her dreams and living happily ever after. A new heiress, Eliza is financially secure, courtesy of her aunt's fortune, but even great wealth has its drawbacks since every greedy, fortune-hunting bachelor suddenly finds Eliza irresistible. To help her best friend, Violet takes Eliza's romantic dilemma into her own hands, enlisting the social skills of her brother-in-law, Lord Christopher "Kit" Winter. Kit helps transform Eliza into a stunning belle, certain to attract a worthy beau. There's just one problem: Eliza has always been head over heels in love with Kit, the very man who is trying to find her a husband! But during Eliza's sometimes-comic extreme makeover, and with a few secret love lessons from Kit on the side, sparks-and passionate kisses-begin to fly. Kit soon finds himself completely overcome by an all-consuming desire for Eliza. But if he fails to realize his true love for her, he may lose this fair lady forever.
Wicked Delights of a Bridal Bedby Tracy Anne Warren
To her surprise, Lady Mallory Byron finds herself walking down the aisle with the last man she ever expected to ask for her hand . . . . Everyone knows the Byron brothers are "mad, bad and dangerous." Now their sister shockingly discovers she's the newest talk of the Ton when she marries the scandalous Earl of Gresham. Faced with a tragic loss, she'd sought comfort from him as a family friend. But soon consolation turned to passion, scandal-and a wedding! In the bridal bed, she finds pleasure beyond her wildest dreams. But can nights of wicked delight change friendship into true love? Charming rakehell Adam, Earl of Gresham, has secretly loved Mallory for years. He lost her once to another man, but now he has a second chance to win her love-and plans to do so by any means necessary. Will Mallory's heart give him what he so dearly desires? Or is the past too much to overcome?
The Wife Trapby Tracy Anne Warren
Your presence is requested at a wedding deception. After orchestrating a scandalous high-society ruse, Lady Jeannette Brantford is banished from her family's estate in England and sent to live with boring elderly cousins in the Irish countryside. But Jeannette's exile is surprisingly eventful. En route to her dreaded destination, she encounters Darragh O'Brien, a devilishly handsome architect who transforms Jeannette's punishment into a delicious whirlwind of wits, words, and undeniable passion. Although no less than a duke could satisfy a lady of her status, Jeannette is unable to extinguish the burning desire she has for Darragh's smoldering looks and sizzling kisses. Little does she know, her dashing Irishman is no commoner. He's the eleventh Earl of Mulholland-and he's thoroughly enjoying the irresistible game of hard-to-get. But before he reveals his true identity, a little temptation and trickery are in order to teach his fair lady a lesson or two about love.
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- Home
- Parliamentary Business
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- Start of Business
- Social Security Amendment (Parenting Payment Transitional Arrangement) Bill 2011
Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2011
- Second Reading
- Consideration in Detail
- Third Reading
- Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care Financial Viability) Bill 2011
- Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2011-2012
- Aged Care Amendment Bill 2011
- Flinders Electorate: Worley Hospital
- McEwen Electorate: Legends of Racing Gala
- Boothby Electorate: Club Marion
- Kennedy Electorate: Economic Development Program
- Manufacturing
- Leeding, Senior Constable Damian
- Chapman, Mr Philip
- Quarantine
- Girl Guides NSW & ACT
- Launceston General Hospital
Carbon Pricing
(Abbott, Tony, MP, Gillard, Julia, MP)
(Thomson, Craig, MP, Swan, Wayne, MP)
Carbon Pricing
(Baldwin, Bob, MP, Gillard, Julia, MP)
Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme
(Wilkie, Andrew, MP, Gillard, Julia, MP)
(Neumann, Shayne, MP, Albanese, Anthony, MP)
Carbon Pricing
(Bishop, Julie, MP, Swan, Wayne, MP)
Social Inclusion Agenda
(Rishworth, Amanda, MP, Plibersek, Tanya, MP)
Emissions Trading Scheme
(Robb, Andrew, MP, Swan, Wayne, MP)
Tobacco Products
(Georganas, Steve, MP, Roxon, Nicola, MP)
Carbon Pricing
(Ramsey, Rowan, MP, Swan, Wayne, MP)
Carbon Pricing
(Murphy, John, MP, Combet, Greg, MP)
- Carbon Pricing
- Slipper, Peter, MP
- Flynn Electorate: Medicare
- Middle East
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- Syria
- Syria
- Petition: Public Holidays, Calwell Electorate: Broadmeadows Superclinic, Community Radio
- Rural and Regional Health Services
- Syria
- Hungary
- Paterson Electorate: Australian Noise Exposure Forecast
- Australian Books
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Main Committee
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- Hinkler Electorate: Private Health Insurance
- Neighbourhood Watch
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- McMahon Electorate: Festival of the Italian Republic
- Wright Electorate: Beetroot Industry
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- Margaret Ives Community Children's Centre
Content Window
Wednesday, 1 June 2011
Page: 5639
Page: 5639
Mr ALEXANDER (Bennelong) (10:46): We have a national epidemic of obesity. We have gone from the fittest country in the world to one of the fattest. There are any number of television shows, with titles such as The Biggest Loser, which dramatically tell the story of the desperate actions required to address situations of obesity—the hardship, the heartbreak and the humiliation. Today I am talking about our government's obesity and the radical action that will be required to address this country's problems of excess and waste. The parallels between the two are worth noting because, in the days when our sportsmen and women dominated the fields of endeavour, virtually all Australians would try to emulate their sports stars on the weekend, resulting in their wellbeing, health and fitness. At this time, we enjoyed lean government and we were a creditable nation.
No truer words have been spoken than those contained in the warning by Senator Barnaby Joyce when he said that he had never seen a big problem that did not begin as a small one and that if this rate of waste and misguided spending continued there would come a time when we would not be able to pay back our debt. Credibility and trust borne out of honesty should be the currency that a government or a political party trades on. Broken promises and treacherous behaviour do not build a sense of trust. The promise to build the Epping to Parramatta Rail Link, devoutly made in the heat of battle to win government during an election campaign, fades on even the most casual examination and exposes the fact that this promise to build would be dependent on the government winning a second term, the government being in surplus and the state government putting up the first $500 million. The very people who lose our trust and confidence with such transparently ingenuous undertakings deserve serious scrutiny when they make other promises. The promise made during the recent budget of a $3 billion surplus to come in the third year would be equally dependent on a number of factors and so has equal 'substance' to the promise made by the federal government to build the Epping to Parramatta railway line. Setting this aside, the government's representations put the promise of a $3 billion surplus into perspective. It will follow two more years of excessive deficit—$55 billion last year, followed by $50 billion, followed by $23 billion, and totalling $107 billion of debt. To have the audacity to say that a $3 billion surplus in year 3 is some kind of triumph beggars belief. This is a government that has come to dine at our table. They take more and more every time they need it. They go to their favourite dish—more taxes—creating the weight of debt to fund their lazy, misguided and, above all, wasteful practices. What could have nourished families, small business and industry has been squandered by inept government and criminal waste. It is so plain to see that history is repeating itself. The Howard government when elected inherited some $96 billion in debt. The Abbott government, when it is elected, will inherit a greater debt. The hallmark of the Rudd-Gillard government is that of quick-fix fast food, not the nutrition that our country needs. When we were crying out for vital infrastructure that would build our country and add value we got pink batts, and we got school halls when classrooms and libraries were needed, coated with lashings of waste.
Julia Gillard has justified this by saying that in large projects there will always be waste. This is an extraordinary position to take and it is difficult to imagine that somebody who has found their way to the position of Prime Minister could not understand the dynamic that when building more than one school hall, with a high level of architectural design and requiring no variations during construction, the marketplace will effect lower prices with greater quantity.
And we have the situation of pink batts in roofs, where those who entered the industry after promises and undertakings from the government committed themselves, their businesses and their assets to this new industry, then mercilessly had the rug pulled from under them after more empty reassurances. The government, which should be in the practice of building industries, was setting these poor souls up for a brief boom and an inevitable bust. In the solar industry we had the same scenario. And all the while the government was feasting on taxes, growing bureaucracies, growing inefficiencies and growing the obesity of debt. The next competitor in the Biggest Loser will be Australia after the final great feast—a carbon tax.
Personal obesity accounts for more than 50 per cent of our health costs—combined with other lifestyle choices, an imposition of over 70 per cent of our total health cost. The single best thing that you can do for your physical health or mental health is to exercise. When you exercise in the form of participation in a sport, the component of socialisation is added, which is a key component in the prevention of mental illness.
In the budget there was a promise of $1.5 billion for mental health. A little examination will tell you very quickly that sadly those who need help most are denied. The reduction from 12 appointments with a psychologist to 10 might not have been a devastating blow to many but on a little further examination we learn that those with more acute need for psychological intervention, who would previously have had the right to a further six visits, have now lost those visits.
This is another graphic example of short-term thinking, small savings and long-term cost. Tragically, the cost in this scenario is measured not just in dollars. Headlines this week—a week where there has been many major news events—have found the manner in which the Gillard government attempted to lure FIFA's affections in a bid to host the Soccer World Cup was consistent with their poor ability to manage and ensure value for our tax dollars. We have heard allegations of bribery. There are allegations of $11.4 million of the $45 million given by this government having gone missing and of two sets of books being maintained by the FFA. Despite an inquiry on this reporting back in March, this report has still not seen the light of day and it seems another $39 million has now been sent down the same rabbit hole. On reflection, what is fundamentally wrong with the way in which we attempted to win the World Cup bid is that it was largely contrary to our sporting heritage, which is such a vital part of our nation's history. The building of our character and what we stand for has always lain in the fact that we have previously put all our efforts into excelling in sports on the field, not in fancy hotels and restaurants. We host cricket tests with the greatest cricket nations in the world because we are one of those great nations. We host a grand slam tennis tournament because when the grand slam was declared we were one of only four nations who had won the Davis Cup—we earned our position on the court. We have hosted the Olympic Games twice, punching way above our weight, because we have always punched way above our weight. Australian sportsmen more than anything else have been the epitome of sportsmen: modest in victory and gracious in defeat, playing by the rules and playing fairly.
Without a knowledge of the past and an appreciation of history we are vulnerable not to learn from the past and to allow history to repeat itself. There is a great cost, whether for the individual or for the government, in becoming obese, and there is a great price to be paid for getting back into shape in order to be fully productive and enjoy a long and healthy life. To achieve this goal, an individual needs to take personal responsibility for their diet in the same way as a government needs to take responsibility for the economy and an obese way of living.
If history repeats itself, this government will leave office with a massive debt to be repaid. No doubt this will be undertaken by a lean and fit-for-the-purpose Abbott coalition. The path we then embark upon should be sustained, and we should learn from the past and not repeat the mistakes that have been made. With our dollar at record highs, there has never been a better time to undertake immediately the repayment of our debt.


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Heidi Klum Teams Up With Babies R UsMichelle Horton
Heidi Klum is taking the logical transition from designing maternity clothes to designing baby gear.
In a somewhat unexpected collaboration, Heidi is releasing an entire line of affordable baby products with Babies 'R Us — from furniture to bedding to gear.
And, yes, of course there will be a baby clothes collection. Word is that she'll be designing for newborns up to 5 years.
Considering Heidi seems to have the golden touch with every entrepreneurial idea she has, I'm sure Babies 'R Us is hoping she'll bring her respected design aesthetic and warm mom-friendly image to their brand.
See what Heidi has to say about Babies 'R Us:
"Over the years, I've made countless shopping trips to Babies"R"Us looking for the coolest gear, trying out the newest toys and shopping for fun clothes. Babies"R"Us is the ultimate authority in baby products," said Klum. "I'm so excited to partner with them to create a fun, magical and unexpected collection that is also affordable. I know how important it is for moms to make smart purchases when it comes to shopping for their ever-growing children. My friends always joke that I'm the go-to person for advice on gifts and gear. Now, I get to bring my ideas to moms everywhere that offer function with a fashionable flair. My designs for Truly Scrumptious have really been inspired by all the adorable children who are just that truly scrumptious and deserve to have nothing but the best!"
They couldn't release product images just yet, but expect an update in a couple of months.
Heidi's "Truly Scrumptious" collection will launch in Fall 2012.


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Featured Golf News
Jamie Farr Classic to Take One-Year Break
LPGA Tour and tournament officials have announced that the Jamie Farr Owens Corning Classic will not be held in 2011. The event will return in 2012 for at least three more years.
LPGA commissioner Michael Whan made the announcement at a dinner Tuesday night in Toledo, Ohio, before this year's Farr Classic. Now in its 26th year, the event begins today at Highland Meadows Golf Club in suburban Toledo.
In making the scheduling change, Whan said tournament organizers will be running the 2011 U.S. Senior Open in Toledo and they had concerns whether it would be economically viable to stage two major golf events in the area at around the same time.
The commissioner says the LPGA has signed a deal to continue the Farr Classic in 2012, '13 and '14.
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|Klein (left), here with brother Kyle, played WR and special teams before he was KSU's QB. (Getty Images)
A Kansas State player could win the Heisman. Just wrapping my brain around that concept makes my head hurt.
A Kansas State player from Loveland, Colo., who essentially had to prove himself to two coaches before getting on the field. A Kansas State player who at the beginning of 2011 was an afterthought. Since the kickoff of that season, Collin Klein has accounted for 64 touchdowns and is 17-3 as a starter.
Klein could win the Heisman because, to this point, two things keep happening -- defenses can't stand up to him and Heisman challengers keep dropping off the map.
|More on rankings
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The Geno Smith we fawned over earlier this season is done, kaput as a candidate, a victim of a one-trick philosophy at West Virginia. Alabama's AJ McCarron has yet to throw an interception, but there is a sizable portion of the population who believe even you or I could quarterback the nation's No. 1 team. Manti Te'o is a fine story -- Notre Dame's best offensive weapon in some games -- but does anyone really believe a defensive player is going to win the Heisman?
As we enter Week 9, the Stiff Arm is Klein's to lose -- and that is amazing. Alabama players are supposed to win Heismans. Kansas State players are supposed to show up for weekly Tuesday interviews in slacks and blazers. Nevertheless, K-State should be favored in every game it plays the rest of the way. The Wildcats also have a legitimate shot to make the championship game.
Yes, all of it comes with the usual disclaimer. The fall can be quick and precipitous. Those two L's in Klein's Christian name? Same number of L's on West Virginia's season all of a sudden.
This happened once before at Kansas State. QB Michael Bishop led the Wildcats to the Big 12 championship game in 1998. In a regular-season game between the top two Heisman vote getters, K-State trounced Texas 48-7 while smothering Ricky Williams. Williams still won the Heisman. Bishop was second.
But to this day, that's not what bothers Bill Snyder. Halfway through the fourth quarter 14 years ago, the Wildcats were comfortably ahead of Texas A&M in that Big 12 title game. With a conference title and national championship shot minutes away, Bishop fumbled and everything changed. The Aggies rallied, tied it in regulation and won in overtime. They made a movie about the guy who caught the winning touchdown pass -- Sirr Parker.
Snyder called it the worst thing he's ever had to endure.
So no one in Manhattan is making reservations for New York or a BCS bowl just yet. The painful memories remind them that it can all blow up in a second. But for now, Klein is doing what neither defenses nor Heisman challengers have been able to do -– keep his feet under him. West Virginia on Saturday night looked like it spent the week on fall break instead of breaking down film. And clearly there is enough film of the Mountaineers now that they have been outscored 104-28 the last two weeks.
Was it any different when Tim Tebow was around? That seems to be the best comparison at this point. You know what's coming and still can't stop it.
They are/were both bulldozers. They are both deep thinkers. They are equally spiritual. The difference? Klein wasn't a five-star schoolboy recruit. Klein was coveted by Utah and Colorado State. No one really knows how much. Former Kansas State coach Ron Prince took him as a drop-back quarterback, then he was fired. Snyder 2.0 gave Klein a shot only after he paid his dues as a receiver and special-teams player.
There are no doubt great stories behind Klein. His dad Doug gave up college coaching to raise his children. Doug Klein had once coached with a young Bob Stoops at Kent State.
"There are pieces and parts of it I miss a lot," Collin's dad said of coaching. "The people, the kids. You cannot duplicate game day. You cannot duplicate a locker room. You can search the ends of the earth and you will never find what those guys have at Kansas State now."
Other great stories we would love to unearth: The co-offensive coordinators -- Dana Dimel and Del Miller -- are each in their third go-round with Snyder. But the head coach doesn't allow his assistants to talk to the media -- maybe not at all, for all we know. Bishop was sequestered in a similar way in '98.
Klein will have to let his play speak for itself. And that might be enough because he and the Wildcats are good enough. With six weeks to go in the season, they have to avoid becoming a 1998 re-run.
This week's Power Poll is preceded by a numbers roll call:
- 4: The number of MAC teams with one or fewer losses (Ohio, Toledo, Northern Illinois, Kent State).
- 5: Number of teams in the Power Poll that aren't bowl eligible. Meanwhile, Duke is.
- 6: Number of TDs thrown by USC's Matt Barkley vs. Colorado to set the Pac-12 career record.
- 7: TDs accounted for by Klein vs. West Virginia.
- 14: MAC wins against non-conference FBS opponents, tying a conference record.
- 18: Years since Duke was in a bowl game.
- 42: Number of points scored by Houston vs. SMU -- only to lose by 30.
- 48: Number of TDs Saturday in the Big 12, one more than the number of punts (47).
- 50: The most points ever given up by Texas in a win (over Baylor).
- 1952: Last year Auburn had a worse start than the current 1-6, with Alabama, Georgia and Texas A&M left on the schedule.
|Dodd's Power Poll
|Team (Previous)
|Alabama (1)
Overall: 7-0
Conference: 4-0
|The No. 1 team wins by 31, its QB throws for four TDs -- and it gets overshadowed? You bet. It's gotten to the point where Bama is competing against itself for headlines. Within its own conference right now, Florida is a better story. Meanwhile, we already knew a) Tennessee stinks and b) McCarron isn't just a game manager.
|Florida (3)
Overall: 7-0
Conference: 6-0
|The Head Ball Coach called Saturday's result "sad" and "embarrassing" for South Carolina. Florida fans called it The Next Step. There may be only one defense better in the country (See No. 1) after the Gators smacked down the Gamecocks.
|Kansas State (4)
Overall: 7-0
Conference: 4-0
|Coach of the year? Player of the year? Team of the year? Klein led the Cats to scores on their first eight possessions to make a national championship a valid talking point in Manhattan.
|Oregon (2)
Overall: 7-0
Conference: 4-0
|Reality bites. The Ducks drop two spots because the three teams above them have accomplished more to this point in the season. Hard to compare a win at Arizona State with Kansas State's triumph at West Virginia or Florida's bombing of South Carolina.
|Notre Dame (5)
Overall: 7-0
Conference: N/A
|No Golson? No problem. At least for a week, Tommy Rees is an answer, not the answer. The Irish continued to patch it together in a close win against BYU. They will need plenty more offensive spark this week against Oklahoma.
Overall: 7-1
Conference: 3-1
|The Tigers made Johnny Football look like Johnny Turnover in College Station. Now there are two weeks to prepare for Alabama. "Looking forward to the open week and the next opponent," Miles said. What, Lesticles can't say their name? That would be That Team Back East.
|Oklahoma (7)
Overall: 5-1
Conference: 3-1
|Back in the national title picture? The Sooners tuned up for Notre Dame by slapping Kansas 52-7. Don't know quite how to evaluate that. Dangerously close to being a bye.
|Oregon State (8)
Overall: 8-0
Conference: 4-0
|The Beavers are 6-0 for the first time since '07. That would be 1907. Best college football story in the state?
|Ohio State (10)
Overall: 8-0
Conference: 4-0
|The words "miracle worker" and "Urban Meyer" have seldom appeared in the same sentence. But, wow, what was that against Purdue? Down, out and done, the Buckeyes fought back against the Boilermakers. Hearts are warmed. The NCAA's is not among them. The Ineligibowl (vs. Penn State) looms.
|Florida State (11)
Overall: 7-1
Conference: 4-1
|A methodical trouncing of Miami. Say it with me again: Where. Was. That. Against. North. Carolina. State? Also, another disturbing outbreak of nerd glasses on the sidelines by LeBron and D-Wade.
|Mississippi State (15)
Overall: 7-0
Conference: 3-0
|Pardon the Bulldogs if their heads are spinning. They go from middle-of-the-pack Sun Belt (Middle Tennessee) to No. 1 in the country (Alabama) this week. Dan Mullen attempts to validate a 7-0 start and extend a nine-game win streak.
Overall: 6-1
Conference: 4-1
|Matt Barkley's joy of six (TD passes) makes him the USC and Pac-12 record holder with 102 in his career. Let's hope his NFL career surpasses the man he surpassed, Matt Leinart.
|Clemson (17)
Overall: 6-1
Conference: 3-1
|Held to its lowest output of the season (295 yards), the Tigers' defense claws Virginia Tech. "We don't have to play like Alabama yet," D-coordinator Brent Venables said. "But we'd like to." What?
|Rutgers (16)
Overall: 7-0
Conference: 4-0
|It must be the helmets. Sounds cheesy, but the Scarlet Knights are meant to look like knights in shining armor with those new lids. Works so far as Rutgers roared back with 35 unanswered against Temple.
|Georgia (14)
Overall: 6-1
Conference: 4-1
|How not to get ready for the Cocktail Party: have an extended hangover against Kentucky. Aaron Murray threw for four TDs, but there was little else to indicate Georgia is ready to knock off Florida.
|Texas Tech (18)
Overall: 6-1
Conference: 3-1
|Tommy Tuberville provided the defensive blueprint on how to stop WVU. Now he's thinking about a BCS bowl. A 56-53 triple-OT win over TCU would suggest it's possible. Seth Doege gets in the Heisman line behind Klein with seven TD passes.
|South Carolina (7)
Overall: 6-2
Conference: 4-2
|Now there's a quarterback controversy. Steve Spurrier wouldn't say who will start this week vs. Tennessee after Connor Shaw stunk up the Swamp. Good to see the HBC still has a special place in his heart for his QBs.
|Stanford (19)
Overall: 5-2
Conference: 3-1
|Not a tuba player in sight in the Big Game. "This is a blueprint. This is what we want to do," David Shaw says of the 21-3 thumping of Cal.
|Boise State (20)
Overall: 6-1
Conference: 3-0
|What in the name of Kellen Moore has happened? The Broncos are suddenly a defensive giant, giving up 13.6 points per game. The last five opponents have been shut out in the first half.
|Louisville (22)
Overall: 7-0
Conference: 2-0
|The Cardinals had to rally against South Florida to score the winner with 1:35 left. Louisville is off to its best start since 2006.
|West Virginia (12)
Overall: 5-2
Conference: 2-2
|Thank you, Geno Smith, for playing the Heisman game. Here are some lovely parting gifts. The Mountaineers have been exposed -- and overrun -- having been outscored 104-28 the last two weeks.
|Penn State (NR)
Overall: 5-2
Conference: 3-0
|This is not the look of a program that should be hanging its head. The Nittany Lions have outscored opponents 66-0 in the first quarter. They won in Iowa City for the first time in 13 years.
|Louisiana Tech (NR)
Overall: 6-1
Conference: 1-0
|Idaho shouldn't count, should it? Anyway, Tech ran up 839 yards and 70 points on the aptly named Vandals (they're stealing WAC bowl money), a week after a brave try against Texas A&M.
|Ohio (25)
Overall: 7-0
Conference: 3-0
|Bobcats had a bye week while getting ready for Miami (Ohio). Meanwhile, (the MAC) is (really) good with (14) wins against (FBS) schools, tying that (conference) record.
|Duke (NR)
Overall: 5-1
Conference: 2-0
|Yeah, Duke. You got a problem with that? The Dookies beat North Carolina for the first time since 2003 and got their first home win over the Tar Heels since 1998. Coach Cut deserves this.


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How much snow will drop on your Michigan neighborhood?
The National Weather Service on Sunday updated its map showing how much snow may drop on the Lower Peninsula by Tuesday.
West Michigan is under a winter storm warning while a blizzard warning affects the Traverse City area. Mid Michigan is under a winter weather advisory.
Here are other updates issued Sunday afternoon by NWS forecasters for West Michigan:
--Lake effect snow will develop in intensity throughout the day and into tonight. Strong winds will create deteriorating driving conditions especially near and west of U.S. 131 tonight and Monday.
--Inland locations begin to dry out later Monday morning and overall conditions will begin improving.
-- Lakeshore communities will continue to deal with the lake effect snow through Monday. Difficult driving conditions will persist. Brief periods of blizzard-like conditions possible Sunday night and early Monday mainly near the lakeshore.
--Strong wind gusts today in the 45-55 mph range inland and near 60 mph at the coast could bring down some branches and lead to scattered power outages.
-- Drivers beware: Icy roads, strong winds to complicate commutes
-- Blizzard warning for Traverse City area
-- NWS forecast updates.
-- UP forecast from the NWS Marquette office.
-- Lack of December snow shatters records in Michigan
E-mail Julie Hoogland: email@example.com and follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/JulieHoogland


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The flags carried the logo of the terror group Hezbollah. The rhetoric was the kind you'd normally hear in Tehran or Gaza.
Yet the scene occurred in Washington, D.C, just minutes from the White House.
"We must stand united to defeat, to destroy, to dismantle Israel--if possible by peaceful means," Kaukab Siddique said. "Perhaps, like Saladin, we will give them enough food and water to travel back to the lands from where they came to occupy other people."
Siddique is an associate professor of English at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.
He used his time outside the classroom over Labor Day weekend to address radical Muslims and leftists at an anti-Israel rally in Washington, D.C. marking "Al Quds Day."
"For the Jews, I would say see what could happen to you if the Muslims wake up," Siddique warned. "And I say to the Muslims, dear brothers and sisters, unite and rise up against this hydra-headed monster which calls itself Zionism."
The Investigative Project on Terrorism captured footage of Siddique's Washington rant.
"This is not a one off deal, this event Labor Day weekend," IPT Executive Director Ray Locker told CBN News. "This is something he has said at similar events over a period of at least a dozen years, as far as we can tell."
CBN News found e-mail exchanges posted online in which Siddique called the Holocaust "a hoax" that was "invented," saying there is "not even one document" to prove it happened.
He's also written that Jews have "taken over America" by "devious and immoral means."
Despite a history of anti-Semitic statements, Siddique maintains a job teaching literature at Lincoln University and sits on at least two school committees.
Lincoln is the nation's oldest historically African-American college. Since 2003, it's received almost $200 million in Pennsylvania state money towards various projects.
Lincoln University administrators declined to appear on camera with CBN News. But the school's executive vice president, Michael Hill, told us they in no way agree with or support Siddique's comments on Israel. However, Hill added that Siddique is tenured and has freedom of speech, and the school cannot control what he does or says on his time as a private citizen.
Siddique has also advocated for two convicted terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda -- including the cleric behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
"It's one thing to have strong beliefs," Locker said. "It's another to advocate violence and go to bat for people who are established terrorists."
Hill told CBN News the school will make sure that Siddique's political comments are not part of his classroom curriculum.
Siddique declined a CBN News request for an on-camera interview. But in an e-mail response to our questions, he denied that he was anti-Semitic and said his "speaking out" about Israel, "conform(s) to the ideals and principles that founded Lincoln University."
He added, "When I refer critically to the 'Jews' I am referring to the current leadership of the 'State of Israel' and to their major supporters, not to the Jewish race as a whole."
Siddique's recent statements in Washington, however, appear to suggest otherwise.
"The Koran says drive them out from where they drove you out," he declared. "There's no question of just dismantling the settlements. These settlements are only the tentacles of the devil that resides in Tel Aviv."
Fighting the 'Blame Israel First' Crowd
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Are you seeking answers in life? Are you hurting? Are you facing a difficult situation?
Find peace with God, discover more about God or send us your prayer request.
Call The 700 Club Prayer Center at 1 (800) 823-6053, 24 hours a day.
A caring friend will be there to pray with you in your time of need.
CBN News Correspondent
Erick Stakelbeck is a sought after authority on terrorism and national security issues with extensive experience in television, radio, and print media. Stakelbeck is a correspondent and terrorism analyst for CBN News. Follow Erick on Twitter @Staks33.
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2007 Galante Vineyards Almond Flat Pinot Noir
Mission Codename: A Cowboy's Burgundy
Operative: Agent White
Objective: Return to our friends at Galante Vineyards and secure an exclusive allocation of their fantastic Almond Flat Pinot Noir..
Mission Status: Accomplished!
Current Winery: Galante Vineyards
Wine Subject: 2007 Almond Flat Estate Pinot Noir
Winemaker: Greg Vita
Backgrounder: Our Operatives know that we arehuge fans of Galante wines. We have featured a handful of Galante wines in the past, and today marks the return of their delicious Almond Flat Carmel Valley Pinot Noir. Monterey County in general, and the Carmel Valley specifically is rapidly emerging as an ideal climate for exceptional Pinot Noir. The Wine Spies have featured several Monterey County Pinots and, every time, our Operatives have scooped them up enthusiastically.
Wine Spies Tasting Profile:
Look – Dark ruby red with a slight garnet tint. Brilliantly clear in its heart with bright streaks when held to the light and when swirled, tightly spaced thin legs hang on the side of the glass before slowly descending to the wine below.
Smell – Remarkably complex on the nose with the spiced red fruit including red and Bing cherry hitting first but lingering just underneath are earthy undertones, hints of black tea and cola, wild anise and other green herbs and toasted oak that reveals a touch of vanilla creme and caramel.
Feel – Smooth and supple on the initial attack with this wine's fine tannins and balanced acidity hitting mid-palate along with a soft textured mineral character.
Taste – Tart and spiced red cherry lead the way and are followed by notes of hot and exotic spice. Complex earthiness, wild anise and black tea emerge and are followed by hints of toasted oak.
Finish – Ultra clean and medium-long in length with hints of tart and spiced red fruit lingering on the palate as the textured minerals and finely grained tannins dry the palate and invite another sip. As this wine fades, the other complex flavors and aromas linger.
Conclusion – Once again, The Wine Spies are greatly impressed with this Cowboy Pinot! The2007 Galante Vineyards Almond Flat Estate Pinot Noir is a classic at a very affordable price. Great aromas and flavors, soft on the attack but still well structured with enough acidity to hold up as a great wine to pair with food. And clean on the finish to boot. Enjoy this wine today with your appetizer course or cellar for a few years and see how it continues to evolve.
Mission Report:
Wine Spies Vineyard Check:
The approximate location of the Galante Vineyards in Carmel Valley can be seen in this satellite photo.


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Definition of Ferroniere
Ferroniere: A jewel held to the forehead by a chain worn by women in France and Italy in the 16th century to hide the marks of syphilis. The ferronière returned in the 19th century when syphilis was epidemic in Europe. Named for Madame Ferron, mistress of the French king François I.
Last Editorial Review: 9/14/2016
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My work centers around race, education, urban history/legal studies, civil rights history in from 30s-50s, so if you see any remote connection to your work, then let's talk!
We will have to beat an approaching deadline, so it'd be great to have your proposal by Feb. 12th.
Please forward this to anyone who might be interested!


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Anne franks life on a time line
Created by eeastman
on Mar 10, 2011
Last updated: 03/28/11 at 01:38 PM
Anne frank By kate has no followers yet. Be the first one to
Otto Frank Anne's dad re-marrys with Elfriede Geiringer after learning the death of both of his daughters. And then he published annes diary.
The poor living conditons , lack of food , dirty ,thin ,lice & flea infested clothing , cold weather, unsanitary living conditons; they all are to much for Anne and Marot Frank .sicknesses carryed by the fleas and lice at the young age of 16; they die of Typhus. A Sickness carryed by fleas and lice causes severe head ache , rash spots and high fever.commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anne-frank-gr.
A famly frend descovers riped out shets of Anne's diary and hopes to give them back in person with out nowing the tragity to come ...
Anne Frank and her sister Margot Frank were sent to a "concentraton camp" with poor liveing conditons.Barly any food and water , dirty thin cloths and there heads shaved bald in the cold of winter.commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Children_in_t...
Augest 3rd 1944 the Franks hinding place was descovered. they were turned in by some one .No one knows who but famlys in the secret annex were betrayed and turned in. And the nazis took them all to a concenttraton camp.
After geting a deprtation notice ; the Frank famly panics and a day later they go into hideing in the secret annex. It has a secret book case door that hides the annex.commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_
In her diary anne frank wrote she cryed her self to sleep on this night after the stressfull move leaving alll her friends behind.
Anne Frank receved a diary as a gift on her thirteenth birthday and she named it "kitty" and writes to"kitty" in her diary .commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_
Shortly after Anne frank is born Aldalf hitler causes problems for the Frank famly.All the jews are orderd to go to a concentraton camp for labor work.The jewish work payment is decreased, jews are killed ,and punished.
Anne frank is born to Edeth Frank and Otto Frank on June 12 1929 Frankfurt main amhttp://www.sptimes.com/annefrank/graphics/anne-...


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Saturday, February 28, 2009 |
Source code
Direct3D 10
One of the least advertised features of shader model 4.0 is that temporaries are indexable. This means you can declare an array in your shader and arbitrarily read and write to it. This opens up for lots of interesting algorithm. What this demo does is to use this feature to do recursion. An array of temporaries is used to emulate a stack, together with an index that's used as the stack pointer. The actual algorithm implemented recursively here is perhaps not the most exciting, it's just a simple tessellation of a sphere. More interesting is that fact that it's possible.
A couple of notes about the implementation. HLSL does not support recursive function calls. If it did, the code would have looked very straightforward. In fact, HLSL hardly ever creates function calls at all. The only way I've found to convince it to do so is to use a switch case with the [call] directive. And even in that case it only works from main(), not from any subroutine. So what I had to do was to emulate the whole function calling mechanism manually in a while-loop.
The end result is a shader that does tessellation up to three levels. It could've gone much higher if geometry shaders didn't have an output limitation of 1024 floats. The demo renders the base geometry with tessellation levels 0, 1, 2 and 3.
It should be noted that while indexing into temporaries is cool and sometimes also convenient it's a feature that should be used sparingly because the performance implications could be very nasty. One reason is that it's harder for the compiler to optimize since indexed reads and writes are hard to analyze. The other reason is that the number of temporaries your shader needs could go up dramatically, which reduces your GPU's ability to hide latencies. Even a small array could easily double or triple the temporary count your shader needs.
One cool thing about recursion though is that you don't need a very deep stack to get a lot of stuff done. In this demo I only need a stack of 12 registers. The shader as a whole needs 25 registers according to GPU Shader Analyzer. One could have implemented the same algorithm in a flat matter where it would tessellate the results from the previous pass in a loop. However, this would require that the array is large enough to fit the entire results of a pass, which in this demo would've meant 192 registers.
This demo should run on Radeon HD 2000 series and above and GeForce 8000 series and above.
Deferred shading 2
Tuesday, October 21, 2008 |
Source code
Direct3D 10.1
While my previous deferred shading demo showed deferred shading at its best using an extreme amount of lights this demo shows a more real-world scenario. Hence it's also implemented differently.
The main bullet point of this demo versus the previous one is that multisampling is supported. In D3D10 we have full access to the samples in multisampled surfaces, and in D3D10.1 this is extended to depth buffer as well; however, it's still tricky to make it work and perform well. Since the geometry for the lighting (which in this demo is a sphere) is separated from the underlying buffers we don't automatically get any information about which pixels belong to edges and need to be evaluated for all the samples and which pixels only need a single sample evaluated. This demo separates these two cases using a stencil mask.
First the scene texture, normal and depth is rendered into multisampled render targets. Pixels that are partly covered are detected using centroid sampling on the SV_Position register. If the sampling position shifted from the center, it's an edge pixel. This is written to the alpha channel.
An ambient lighting pass is then rendered as a fullscreen pass to the backbuffer (which is not multisampled) and the resolved edge flag comes out in the alpha channel.
The backbuffer is then sampled as a texture in a pass to create a stencil mask from the alpha channel by writing 1 to stencil and discarding fragments where alpha is zero.
The lighting is then rendered as two passes using the stencil mask to select pixels. One pass with a simple shader that only uses the first sample to compute the lighting, which is used for the vast majority of the pixels, and one that computes the lighting for all samples, which is used for edge pixels.
Using keys F5-F7 you can compare this technique (F5) to the naive approach of evaluating the samples on all pixels (F6) and that of using single sample shader on all pixels (F7). On F8 you can see what's in the stencil mask.
This demo should run on the Radeon HD 3000 series and up. Since this demo uses Direct3D 10.1 you need to have Windows Vista SP1 installed.
Interior Mapping
Sunday, August 3, 2008 |
Source code
Direct3D 10.1
Interior mapping is a technique that renders the interior of buildings without requiring additional geometry. Everything is done in the pixel shader. The advantage is that when you're rendering large cities you can draw all those buildings as simple boxes.
The idea was to my knowledge first proposed
My implementation is somewhat different. To begin with, I represent the room with a cubemap. In DX10 this has the advantage that it'll filter across cubemap faces, making the edge between walls/floor/ceiling antialiased, unlike the original implementation. It also means you only need one texture lookup, rather than separate for floor planes, walls and ceiling. Finally, with cubemap arrays in D3D10.1 it's also possible to have several different types of rooms which can be selected by the shader. I have implemented this, although due to lack of artwork (it was time consuming enough to produce a single room) I'm simply shuffling the walls around in 8 different combinations.
This demo should run on the Radeon HD 3000 series and up. Since this demo uses Direct3D 10.1 you need to have Windows Vista SP1 installed.
GPU Texture Compression 2
Sunday, July 6, 2008 |
Source code
Direct3D 10.1
This demo is very similar to the first GPU Texture Compression demo. The difference is that this demo compresses to DXT1 or BC1 as it's called in DX10. BC1 textures have a wider range of uses than BC4 because they are color rather than grayscale, but on the other hand they are more complex to compress to. This demo implements a fairly quick and quite decent compression which is good enough for realtime use. The tricky part in DXT1 is to choose the two base colors for a tile. The algorithm basically looks for which channel of RGB has the greatest contrast and uses that as the base. Then it does a least squares fitting of the other two channels against the base channel to find the most suitable values. Once the base colors are chosen it loops over the 16 colors and matches each color to whichever of the two base colors or the two interpolated colors is the closest.
In addition this demo has a more trivial implementation which simply uses the maximum and minimum of all channels as the base colors. It produces surprisingly useful results. I would have expected nasty discolorations, but this appears to not be nearly as much of a problem as one might have thought. Quality is somewhat lower than the above method though, but on the other hand it's somewhat faster as well. You can toggle between the two with F6.
This demo should run on the Radeon HD 3000 series and up. Since this demo uses Direct3D 10.1 you need to have Windows Vista SP1 installed.
GPU Texture Compression
Saturday, April 12, 2008 |
Source code
Direct3D 10.1
Compressed textures is one of the most important features and have saved us a lot of memory and bandwidth over the years. However, its use has long been practically limited to static textures only because the compression is slow and there's no compression hardware, just decompression. Even with a simple compression algorithm the bottleneck of transferring GPU data to the CPU for compression and then transferring compressed data back makes it impractical for most uses to compress render targets.
Direct3D 10.1 introduced the ability to do a copy to block compressed formats from integer formats of the same size as a compressed block. For instance, a 256x256 RG32_UINT texture can be copied into a 1024x1024 BC4 texture. This allows an application to write a compression shader rendering to an integer render target and then copying the results into a compressed texture and thus keeping the entire texture compression process on the GPU.
This demo compresses a texture (although static) on the GPU to a BC4 format. Because this is a single channel texture I also use the Gather texture fetch method (AKA Fetch4) that was also introduced in Direct3D 10.1 to reduce the number of texture fetches from 16 to 4. The shader is surprisingly short at 49 ALU instructions on a HD 3870, which for a 4x4 block is barely over 3 instructions per pixel.
For render targets that stay the same across many frames it's likely that compressing it will improve performance. Even compressing every frame is definitively practical, although whether you get a performance increase or not depends on how many times you read it for each compression cycle. Another interesting use is to avoid the harddrive bottleneck when reading textures from disk, which you can do by storing textures as jpegs on disk and recompressing to a GPU format on the fly. Having it on the GPU ensures the compression process will be fast, although an implementation would be likely to do the jpeg decompression on the CPU.
This demo should run on the Radeon HD 3000 series. Since this demo uses Direct3D 10.1 you need to have Windows Vista SP1 installed.
Custom resolve
Thursday, March 27, 2008 |
Source code
Direct3D 10
One of the more interesting features of D3D10 is access to individual samples in a multisampled texture. This has a lot of uses and one of the most obvious is to implement a custom resolve of the multisampled buffer. This allows an application to combine the samples in the buffer in any way it likes in a shader. One reason an application may want to do that is because of HDR rendering. Any decent tonemap operator will have a non-linear response, which makes regular resolves that average samples produce low quality antialiasing. In fact, even with just relatively modest contrast ratios the effect of antialiasing will diminish or even disappear. The solution to this problem is to make a custom resolve shader that tonemaps all samples individually and average the results after tonemapping, rather than before, which will be the case with a regular resolve.
For a more in-depth explanation of this technique check out my article "Post-tonemapping resolve for high quality HDR antialiasing in D3D10" in
This demo should run on Radeon HD 2000 series and above and GeForce 8000 series and above.
Order Independent Translucency
Tuesday, December 11, 2007 |
Source code
Direct3D 10
This demo implements order independent translucency using a Stencil Routed A-Buffer, which is explained in this
exemplarily short paper
. The basic idea is that you hijack MSAA for the purpose of storing multiple incoming fragments in each pixel. Each stencil sample is initially cleared to a separate value and then the geometry is rasterized with multisampling disabled. The stencil test will then route the incoming fragments one by one to each of the available samples, as long as there are unwritten samples available. This allows up to 8 layers to be stored with current hardware. Once the buffer has been filled it is sorted in back-to-front order and blended. The paper suggests using bitonic sort; however, this demo uses odd-even mergesort instead because that requires fewer compare-and-swap operations to be performed (19 instead of 24).
This demo uses D3D10, but it could have benefited from D3D10.1 in at least two ways. First of all, multisampled depth buffers can't be used for texturing in D3D10, so this demo uses a separate render target for this purpose. Also, now the depth bits of the depth-stencil buffer is entirely unused, which is wasteful. Secondly, and probably more important, is that multisampled buffers can't be CopyResource'd in D3D10. Currently a significant chunk of the frame time is consumed just initializing the stencil buffer. A better way to handle this would be to initially set up a stencil clear-buffer just once, and then clear the active stencil buffer by copying that stencil clear-buffer into it. A copy is likely a good deal faster than 8 fullscreen passes with a sample write mask, which is required now.
The advantage of using this technique compared to depth peeling is that you don't need multiple passes. If you want up to 8 layers, you need 8 passes with depth peeling, whereas this technique only needs a single pass, plus a sort pass. The disadvantage is that once the buffer is full fragments will be discarded. If you limit yourself to 8 layers with depth peeling, you'll get the 8 front-most layers, whereas with this technique the layers are destroyed based on the order they arrived, meaning that the front-most layer could be the one that got discarded if you're unlucky, which of course is a lot more disturbing than dropping layers in the back, which may not be noticable at all.
This demo should run on Radeon HD 2000 series and up and GeForce 8000 series and up.
Deep deferred shading
Monday, November 26, 2007 |
Source code
Direct3D 10
One of the main drawbacks of deferred shading is that it doesn't handle blended objects very well, and typical rendering scenes include at least some translucent objects. The usual solution to this problem is to render translucent objects using traditional forward rendering on top of the deferred rendered scene. This is obviously far from ideal since it forces you to write and maintain a forward rendering path in addition to the deferred shading path, and it also has negative performance implications.
This demo shows a way to solve this problem such that translucent objects can be used with deferred rendering. This is done by using a deep buffer approach. Instead of having a single buffer containing the attributes such as diffuse and normal this technique stores several layers of these attributes in a texture array. Similarly, the depth buffer is also a texture array. In this demo three layers are used, which allows for up to two translucent layers in front of an opaque surface. More layers may be needed in more complex scenes; however, it would still typically suffice to maintain only a few layers. The different layers are extracted using depth peeling.
In the deferred lighting passes the lighting contribution from each layer is computed. However, the cost will not multiply with the number of layers, but instead be only somewhat more expensive than traditional deferred shading since we can stop once we hit an opaque surface, and typical scenes will have a lot more opaque surfaces than translucent, so the majority of the pixels will only have to evaluate the first layer.
The drawback of this technique is naturally in the memory consumption. Deferred shading already consumes a large amount of memory for the render targets, and this technique multiplies that with that number of layers. This may not be much of an issue on PC, but on consoles it could be more problematic. The cost of the light rendering passes also increases, although not too bad. However, the cost of filling the buffers in the beginning increases by a larger number.
This demo should run on Radeon HD 2000 series and up and the GeForce 8000 series. Since it's Direct3D10, Vista is also required.
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Some of the things you need to know about the battle for Bank Reform.
Is the public in favor of regulating Wall Street?
A national survey conducted in March by the nonpartisan Pew Economic Policy Group found that 68% of the public have an unfavorable opinion of big banks. Two-thirds of the public blame either the big banks or Congress' failure to regulate banks for the current financial crisis. Seventy-nine percent think it is important for Congress to take action quickly to reform Wall Street's abuses.
But don't the banks control Congress by contributing millions of dollars to their campaigns?
There are two kinds of power: organized money and organized people. While the banking industry and its corporate allies have the crude influence of campaign contributions and lobbying clout, ordinary, people, if well organized, can counter the banks by voting, marching and mobilizing public opinion. That's why a coalition of major community organizations, unions, and religious groups have launched a campaign this week to challenge political influence of giant banks, beginning with a series of protests in San Francisco, Kansas City, Charlotte, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and New York.
If you favor of strong financial reform legislation, what is the best way to frame the issue so the public will pressure Congress to act?
According to a recent Gallup poll, if you ask voters whether Congress should pass "new financial regulations on large banks, voters are evenly divided pro and con. But if advocates call for new financial regulations on Wall Street, voters favor new regulations by a 14 percentage point margin. The poll showed 50 percent of voters in favor of new regulations and 36 percent in opposition. Voters are outraged by the huge bonuses that big banks gave to their top employers after taxpayers had bailed them out.
Voters are also outraged by how Goldman Sachs and other mega financial institutions are making huge profits but failing to make loans to main street. They are angry, too, at the ongoing epidemic of foreclosures and the persistently high levels of unemployment caused by the banking industry's irresponsible and greedy practices.
If you are a Republican and you don't want to rein in Wall Street, but want to get their money and oppose Obama, then what do you do?
You follow the play book of message maven Frank Luntz, who wrote a memo for Republicans last year. In his memo titled "The Language of Financial Reform," he wrote, "The single best way to kill any legislation is to link it to the Big Bank Bailout." Luntz went on to lay out a strategy urging Republicans to describe a measure that makes Wall Street foot the bill for future rescues as imposing the cost on taxpayers. Luntz, the Republican master of Orwellian doublespeak, is hoping to insulate Republican who are more in the pockets with greedy bankers than even Democrats.
Who do voters trust to carry out new financial regulations?
Democrats are favored over Republicans by eight percentage points.
How much is Wall Street spending to defeat new regulations?
About $1.4 million a day so they can do what they want and some day drive us into another deep recession.
What is the name of the House financial overhaul bill ? "Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009."
What about the Senate bill?
Banking Committee Chairman Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) refers his financial legislation as the, "Wall Street Reform Bill."
Does the business community support Goldman Sachs?
Much of the business community, in solidarity with their greedy corporate brothers, oppose financial regulation. The Chamber of Commerce, the business community's umbrella group in Washington, strongly opposes the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). But even business leaders are concerned. A recent poll shows that a majority believe Goldman has been guilty of fraud.
Barron reported that Argyle Executive Forum conducted a survey among its senior corporate leadership community. The survey question asked:
As Goldman Sachs Group is currently at the center of a legal maelstrom triggered by the SEC's fraud charge last week, we want to ask you how you currently feel about the charges. Please select one of the below:
I feel the firm is innocent
I feel the firm is guilty
I am currently unsure
The result:
55.2 percent of business leaders feel Goldman Sachs is guilty
20.7 percent of business leaders feel Goldman Sachs is innocent, and
24.1 percent of business leaders are currently unsure
So what can you do?
Everyone knows that banks like Goldman Sachs engage in irresponsible and excessively risky actions, abuse and deceive consumers, and are responsible for lost jobs and homes. If you think we need a financial system that works for Main Street, not just Wall Street; if you support strong financial reform legislation that puts an end to the casino economy on Wall Street, and creates an effective, independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and ends the era of taxpayer bailouts. WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?
Answer: Join the massive rally and march on Wall Street today, Thursday at 4 p.m. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will join more than 10,000 union members, and activists from National Peoples Action, New Jersey Working Families Alliance and others who are sending a message to Wall Street: Good Jobs Now! Wall Street Must Pay.
">For information contact the New York City Central Labor Council at 212-604-9552 or www.nycclc.org.


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Dick Au |
So, you have been keeping discus (Symphysodon spp.) for a while, and they seem to be growing and doing well. But how can you tell whether they are actually in top condition and look as good as they can? And how do you assess your own skills as a discus hobbyist?
You may get your answers by trying to breed your discus. They will spawn and raise young only if they're in prime condition and have grown up in the best environment. They look their best during courtship, when they stretch their fins and display their best colors to impress potential mates. If conditions are right, they may even reward you with the sight of hundreds of discus fry swarming and feeding on the sides of their bodies. If you're able to raise multiple spawns of discus fry, you can be proud of an accomplishment few discus hobbyists achieve.
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Star Tracks: Monday, May 16, 2016 42 years, 2,191 covers and 55,436 stories from PEOPLE magazine's history for you to enjoy
Latest News!
- How to Bake the Cupcake of Your Dreams
- Read the Cover Story: Brad & Angelina Split After 12 Years: It's Over
- How Mother of a Missing Teen Helped Bring America's Oldest Suspected Serial Killer to Justice
- Bachelor Alum and NFL Veteran Jesse Palmer Donates Recess Equipment to New York City Students: 'Sports Gave Me Confidence to Pursue My Dreams'
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People Top 5
LAST UPDATE: Tuesday February 10, 2015 01:10PM EST
PEOPLE Top 5 are the most-viewed stories on the site over the past three days, updated every 60 minutes
- January 10, 2005
- Vol. 63
- No. 1
Blood, Secrets and Money
After His Grandmother's Deathbed Revelation, Texas Doctor Ray Fernandez Declared Himself a Rightful Heir to One of the Lone Star State's Biggest Fortunes—and He Plans to Dig Up a Body to Prove It
But now, after many shakes of a family's tree, a court has ordered the exhumation of a man dead 56 years, and Fernandez finds himself fighting to prove if he and his elderly mother are heirs to one of the most storied fortunes in Texas history: the Kenedy ranch empire, whose holdings are estimated to be worth as much as $1 billion. "Almost every piece of land in that part of the country could be affected by this case," says Texas historian and author Hugh Aynesworth. "It's just amazing."
At issue is whether Fernandez's mother, Ann, was the out-of-wedlock child of Mary Rowland and Johnny Kenedy, the hard-drinking playboy scion of the powerful family. But for officials of the Kenedy estates' beneficiaries, who have fended off dozens of challenges over the years from people eager' to claim a share of the fortune, this latest skirmish is really a matter of greed. "It's all about the money," says Jorge Rangel, a lawyer for a family foundation. "It makes no legal sense and no common sense to exhume a body in conjunction with a will that was legally executed and resolved many years ago."
The saga begins in the mid-19th century, when Mifflin Kenedy began amassing the family fortune by running steamboats up the Rio Grande. "They made a ton of money and had a monopoly," says Don Graham, who has written a history of the era. Kenedy and his partner Richard King went on to become the state's first great cattle barons, with Kenedy buying up 400,000 acres of land south of Corpus Christi. Kenedy left his entire fortune to his son John G. Kenedy Sr., who in turn had two children: Sarita, who died childless in 1961, and Johnny Kenedy, a ne'er-do-well womanizer and boozer who married but never had children with his wife. In a book historian Aynesworth wrote on the family, he tells of the time Johnny read a story on Mormonism and—confusing polygamy with promiscuity—promptly set off for Salt Lake City in search of female companionship. "Johnny was the original playboy," says Aynesworth.
Growing up in Corpus Christi, Fernandez had no idea that his grandmother Mary, who was part Hispanic, had worked as a teenage maid at La Parra, the Kenedys' 1,000-acre ranch. While employed there in 1925, she quietly went off and gave birth to Ann, eventually Fernandez's mother, who is now 79 and who Fernandez says never gave any indication of suspecting that Johnny was her father. Two years after giving birth, Mary married Desiderio Peña, who raised Ann as his own.
In the months after his grandmother made her deathbed remark, Fernandez thought nothing more of it. Then, while routinely gathering up family documents, he received his mother's baptismal certificate from a church in Waco, and found that the father's name was left blank. "That was the fuel for the fire," he says. "It was a blank I wanted to fill in." He and his wife, Marie, started to do a little digging. He found the 1948 obituary for Kenedy, who had died at age 62. The resemblance between Kenedy and Fernandez—the same wide face—was intriguing. "We always joked about how tall and light-complexioned Ray is," says Marie, who has a 12-year-old son with Fernandez. "It was a joke, but then we saw that picture."
Of course mere resemblance proves nothing. But in 2001 Ray located two relatives of his grandmother's who gave sworn depositions stating that they knew that Johnny Kenedy had gotten Mary pregnant and that the liaison had been covered up by both families to avoid scandal. A year later Fernandez was able to track down a 90-year-old grand-nephew of Mifflin Kenedy's who provided a DNA sample. A test of the sample showed that Ann Fernandez was likely a Kenedy relative, but it was not conclusive. "Every time we get another piece of the puzzle it makes us want to get another piece," says Fernandez.
For the most part the overseers of the Kenedy estate offered Fernandez little help when he approached them for cooperation with his initial research. But in 2002 he filed a court request to have Johnny's body exhumed so that a definitive test could be performed. Lawyers for the estates reacted with furious indignation. Among other things, claims the Kenedy camp, Johnny was sterile as a result of a childhood case of the mumps, making it impossible for him to have fathered a child. "Dr. Fernandez has produced a very interesting western romance novel," says Rev. Francis Kelly Nemeck, the director of the monastery that is now located on the Kenedy family estate, "and he's passing that off as fact or history." But in June an Austin judge disagreed, ordering that Johnny's body, which is buried on the family land, be dug up. (The Kenedy family appealed, with the Texas Supreme Court scheduled to review the case in January.)
Fernandez insists that he is not just after money, and he says he has not even explored how much his mother might be in line for. While he acknowledges that he could use some of the fortune to pay for the care of his mom, who suffers from dementia, he is more interested in having a say in how the funds are distributed. He would like to see more aid, for instance, go to the poor in local Hispanic communities instead of just the Kenedys' primary beneficiaries, the local Catholic charities. "It comes down to having a voice," says Fernandez. "We are like ghosts." Above all, he maintains that what he wants is rightful recognition of his family's place in the Kenedy family tree. "Our concern is our heritage," says his wife, Marie. "Our son has a right to know his lineage."
Not surprisingly, the dispute has touched a nerve in the Mexican-American community in south Texas, where the case has taken on a racial cast. "This case shows what the rich were doing with their servants," says Victor Lara Ortegon, 80, a former newscaster in Corpus Christi who is a leader in the Hispanic community. "There are powerful forces against Fernandez, but we are praying for him."
Even if it is established that Johnny Kenedy is his grandfather, Fernandez faces an uphill battle if he wishes to stake a claim on behalf of his mother. One sticking point might be if Johnny knew that he had a daughter and chose to ignore her in his will. Further, the statute of limitations for filing a claim against Johnny's estate may well have run out, one loophole being if it can be shown that Ann Fernandez had no reason until now to believe that Johnny was her father. "If she chose not to assert her claim, that could be fatal," says Prof. Mark Ascher of the University of Texas Law School. But the resistance he has met has only fortified Fernandez's desire to stay on the trail. "The more I see them try to put it off," he says, "the more it makes me certain that I am right."
Bill Hewitt. Kevin Brass in Corpus Christi
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