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Natural Setting and Conservation
A Noted Tennessee orator used to declare: "Our great State is the multum in parvo of all the lands lying between the ramparts of the Alleghenies and the majestic currents of the mighty Mississippi. Within its borders flourishes every shape of beast and bug, every variety of tree and flower found from the blue waters of the Gulf to the somber snowladen forests of Canada." Couched in less sweeping language, this would not be the exaggeration it seems. A relief map shows Tennessee as a succession of mountain slopes, the worn-down remnant of the towering Appalachian chain of remote geologic time. From the crests of the Great Smokies the land drops westward in a series of ever lower ridge and plateau systems to the Mississippi bottoms.
Roughly a parallelogram in shape, with an east-west length of 432 miles and a width of 106 miles, Tennessee is bounded on the north by Kentucky and Virginia, on the east by North Carolina, on the south by Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, and on the west by the Mississippi River, which separates it from Arkansas and Missouri. Of the total area of 42,022 square miles, 335 are water surface.
The State divides naturally into three general regions: upland East Tennessee, Middle Tennessee with its foothills and basins, and low flat West Tennessee. Often called "three separate States within common boundaries," these "Grand Divisions," coincide with three rather distinct cultural and political units, and differ sharply in climate and natural life. In upper East Tennessee the climate, vegetation, and animal life approximate those of New England; in the plateau and basin regions of Middle Tennessee they parallel those of Ohio; West Tennessee, except for scattered hilly sections, is of the Deep South.
A more exact break-down on the basis of physiographic features divides the State into six regions. The first includes the Unaka and Smoky Mountains extending along the North Carolina border. The Smokies, reaching at some points an elevation of 6,600 feet above sea level and covering an area here of approximately 2,000 square miles, are broken by many coves and valleys along their length and breadth. The second region, flanking the Smokies, is the Great Valley of East Tennessee, thirty to sixty miles wide. The valley floor is composed of a succession of minor ridges and valleys, beginning on the northeast as a continuation of the Shenandoah Valley and slanting southwest into Georgia and Alabama. Viewed from the Smokies on the east or the Cumberland Mountains on the west, this bottom melts into a common plain, although its ridges rise 300 to 800 feet above the valley floor. A region of fat soils and prosperous farms, the valley covers more than 9,000 square miles, drained by the Tennessee River and its tributaries. Rising a thousand feet above the Great Valley, and forming an abrupt escarpment on its eastern edge, is the third region--the Cumberland Plateau. Many early settlers were turned back by this seemingly impassable barrier. The western edge is notched and scalloped by coves and valleys which are separated by finger-like spurs pointing toward the northwest. The southern half of this area of more than 5,000 square miles is deeply cut by the Sequatchie Valley. These three regions lie in East Tennessee.
Middle Tennessee includes the fourth and fifth regions. The fourth is the Highland Rim, which merges into the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau and includes the elevations bordering the western part of the Tennessee River. With an area of 9,300 square miles, this section is largely a plain, furrowed by ravines and traversed by streams. Within the Highland Rim is the Central Basin, the fifth region. It is elliptical in shape and covers 6,450 square miles. With an average altitude 400 feet lower than the highlands, it is one of the best agricultural regions in the State.
The plateau of West Tennessee, the sixth division, extends from the Tennessee River to the line of bluffs overlooking the bottomlands of the Mississippi. The valley of the Tennessee River has a broken and irregular surface of about 1,200 square miles, averaging twelve miles in width. The sloping terrain drops gradually toward the Mississippi River. The Bottoms comprise 950 square miles of low, flat terrain studded with lakes. The largest of these, Reelfoot Lake, in the northwest corner of the State, occupies a depression, sixty-five square miles in area, formed by the earthquake of 1811-12 In sections of the plain lying below the high water of the Mississippi, back-waters and underground seepage have formed many swamps and marshes. At Fulton, Randolph, and Memphis the river undercuts the foot of the upland to form protruding bluffs.
There are four principal iron areas in the State: the eastern belt extending along the slopes of the Great Smokies; the "dyestone," or red iron district which forms a belt skirting the eastern bases of the Cumberland Plateau and Walden's Ridge; the Cumberland Plateau; and the western belt, a wide strip of west Middle Tennessee from Kentucky to Alabama.
At present the leading minerals are: coal, phosphate, clay, zinc, copper, sand and gravel, marble, and sandstone. Of these, coal is the most important, with a normal yearly output of 4,000,000 tons. One of the largest coal areas in the United States is the Cumberland Plateau belt, comprising 4,400 square miles. The Copper Basin in East Tennessee produces more copper and sulphuric acid than any other region east of the Mississippi River. Marble and Crab Orchard stone (quartzite) are quarried in large quantities. In the production of phosphate rock Tennessee is second only to Florida. Clay suitable for brick making is found throughout the State. Gold and silver, although found in Tennessee, do not rank high in the State's mineral resources
Three great drainage basins are formed by the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Mississippi Rivers. The Tennessee is formed near Knoxville by the confluence of the Holston and French Broad Rivers and is joined by the Clinch River and countless smaller streams. Flowing southwest into Alabama, it loops north across the State again, absorbing the waters of Middle Tennessee's Elk and Duck Rivers. With its tributary web of streams, the Tennessee drains more than half of the State's total area. Northern Middle Tennessee is drained by the Cumberland River, which rises in Kentucky and empties into the Ohio above the mouth of the Tennessee. West Tennessee drains through a maze of sluggish streams, swamps, and lakes directly into the Mississippi.
There is an annual rainfall of 40 to 50 inches throughout Tennessee, and an average of 155 clear days, 100 partly clouded, and 110 wholly clouded. Few severe droughts occur, or rainy spells protracted enough to damage crops. In the east, the mountains turn the eastward flow of the upper air currents and redistribute their moisture. The long valleys between the highlands serve as flues for the main air currents, which in summer blow north or northeasterly and in winter reverse their directions. Although this topography tends to check the velocity of windstorms, Tennessee was subjected to a series of tornadoes between 1914 and 1933, two of which were violently destructive.
Lying on the border of the great continental air currents, the State-- except in Upper East Tennessee--never gets the full force of blizzard weather, or the extremely low temperature produced by the downrush of cold air fields from Canada. However, from the middle of December to the end of March, there are spasmodic periods, rarely more than a week in duration, when the temperature drops to 15 or 20 degrees above zero. During the winter months rain, sleet, snow, freeze, and thaw may occur in succession within 24 hours, and may be preceded or followed by springmild spells. The autumn rainy season rarely, if ever, causes flood, but the heavy rains of March and April swell the water courses and inundate the lowlands, causing considerable flood damage.
Some sections of Middle and West Tennessee are visited by periods of moist heat during the summer. But for the most part the surge of warm air from the Gulf and the southwestern plains is modified by the time it reaches the State. In East Tennessee, and to a lesser extent in hilly regions to the west, summer is a succession of pleasantly warm days and invigorating cool nights.
Rock strata in the State represent all geologic eras and almost every period within these eras. The high mountains along the northeastern border of Tennessee are composed of the oldest rock in the State. These formations, with their largest area in southeastern Carter County, date back to the pre-Cambrian period. The only volcanic heritage from ancient time is in the Norris Basin, where there are two small areas of eruptive rock, and a three-foot bed of volcanic ash in Middle Tennessee. Along the eastern and southeastern border is a belt of conglomerates, quartzites, and slates ten to twenty miles wide, extending from the point where the French Broad River enters the State to the Georgia line. These rocks are of unknown age, probably belonging to an early period in the Paleozoic era; their formation probably antedates the period of known vertebrate existence. Resistant to erosion, they constitute Tennessee's highest and broadest mountain mass. East of Maryville this formation, giving the Great Smokies their height and rugged outlines, begins to push upward over masses of dolomite (probably Upper Cambrian), which is exposed in several Townsend region coves. Cocke County has a peculiar granite, named unakite for the Unaka Mountains. It lacks mica content and contains an unusual mineral, epidote, that gives it a greenish tinge.
The Record in the Rocks
The rocks in the Great Valley of East Tennessee consist of sandstones, shales, limestones, and dolomites, all of which developed as marine sediment. These rocks represent the first three periods of the Paleozoic era--Cambrian, Ordovician, and Silurian. Together these periods form what has been called the "Age of Invertebrates," when the only life was shellforming sea animals and buglike crustaceans There are also rocks in the northeastern edge, near the Virginia border, that seem to constitute a slight development of the fourth period, the Devonian, known as the "Age of Fishes," and the Mississippian period. Along the west side of the valley runs a layer of fossil iron ore which belongs to the Silurian period, the third stage in the Paleozoic era and the period of the first air-breathing animals. In the center of the valley are long outcroppings of marble from the immediately preceding period, the Ordovician; and at various geological levels there are great quantities of chert, formed of sediment under sea water. Throughout the valley are rocks, mainly limestones and shales similarly placed but of different periods, as shown by the fossils in the various layers. The strata originally were laid down almost horizontally, but during subsequent mountain-building revolutions have faulted into folds, sometimes 300 miles long, running from southwest to northeast. Ridges in the valley with long even tops usually are of sandstone or chert; those that consist of a series of rounded knobs are shale. The ridges are frequently capped by shale. Between the ridges are limestone or dolomite formations.
Along the western edge of the Great Valley is a narrow belt of Devonian black shale, called Chattanooga shale, which is invaluable as a key rock. Resting against this Chattanooga shale, and exposed frequently along the eastern and everywhere along the western margin of the Cumberland Plateau, are rocks that date from the Mississippian epoch, a time when tree ferns, huge mosses, and primitive flowering plants were dominant. The lower formation, known as Fort Payne, consists generally of silica and chert; the middle and upper parts are largely sandstone, shales, and coal. Five-sixths of the Cumberland Plateau is composed of conglomerates, sandstones, and shales of the Pennsylvanian epoch, the next above the Mississippian. It was during this epoch that amphibious reptiles and primitive backboned land animals came into existence. The rocks of almost the entire area lie in relatively level strata and contain bituminous coal.
The Highland Rim is mostly limestone, similar in age and formation to the rocks of the Cumberland Plateau's western margin. All the formations lie flat, except those of Well's Creek Basin in Stewart County, where rocks dating back to the Cambrian and Ordovician periods are exposed.
The floor of the Central Basin, also, is formed mostly of flat-lying limestones and shales of the Ordovician periods, to which the Great Valley marble belongs. In the upper levels these rocks contain commercial phosphates. On the northern and western sides of the basin, as also in the western valley of the Tennessee River, there are also limestones of the later Silurian and Devonian periods.
Overlapping the western edge of the Highland Rim, basal rocks of the Cretaceous period outcrop in a belt, twelve to thirty-five miles wide, along the edge of the Western Tennessee plain from Mississippi to Kentucky. This belt dips west at a low angle beneath the succeeding Tertiary rocks, which were formed in the Cenozoic (Recent Life) era prior to the glacial epoch. The Tertiary rocks are initiated by a belt of leaden gray clay, a few miles wide and one hundred to two hundred feet in thickness, running north from Middleton to Huntingdon and Paris and on into Kentucky. The formation is cut across by sandstone dikes that give evidence of earthquakes in one of the epochs of the Tertiary period.
Over the leaden clays, to a depth of a thousand feet or more, lie soft light-colored sands, with layers of white pottery clays and occasional beds of lignite, in which the texture of fossilized wood can often be discerned. These sands are covered by a widespread layer of yellow gravel, twenty feet or less in thickness, topped by a layer of sandy or loamy soil that thickens westward. Along the bluffs that border the Mississippi flood plain, this soil grades into typical loess--a wind-laid deposit from glacial times--becoming as much as forty to eighty feet thick. Still more recent alluvial deposits form flood plains and terraces along the streamways of the State.
Because of the lack in formational representation from several periods of the Mesozoic era, there is written in Tennessee rocks no record of the thousands of years during which early marine life disappeared, and the dinosaurs and flying and swimming reptiles reigned supreme. Nor is there evidence in the State of the first appearance of birds. The second period of the Paleozoic era, the Ordovician (said to go back 62,000,000 years), is well represented in the Great Valley of East Tennessee and the Central Basin. In fossil remains and in mineral composition the Ordovician rocks of these two areas are dissimilar, although a few formations and species are common to both. The lower rocks of this period in the Great Valley are rich in molluscoid snails and slugs, of which many species have been collected. In the Central Basin these rocks have long constituted a classic collecting ground. Nearly the entire invertebrate kingdom is represented in the area in the vicinity of Nashville. The corals and bivalve shellfish are especially notable. Here the middle rocks are almost ideally exposed and are actually crowded with fossils. Numerous highway and railroad cuts, quarries, and hillside slopes afford excellent exposures.
The Silurian, or third, period in the Paleozoic era is represented especially in parts of the western valley of the Tennessee River. This age was dominated by shell-forming sea animals, but saw also the rise of fishes and of reef-building corals. Scientific investigation of the area uncovered the fossil territory in Hardin, Decatur, and Perry Counties, and the sponges found here are well known to paleontologists. Waldron shale in Middle Tennessee has yielded fossilized aquatic marine animals, corals, seashells, and mollusks. A small part of the Devonian period is recorded near Camden, in Benton County, in one of the best exposed sections in North America. Almost perfect specimens have been collected in the chert of this region. Bivalve shellfish were the most numerous, and the Birdsong shale is prolific in mollusk forms. The Carboniferous period, the last in the Paleozoic era, has left some interesting marine animal forms--starfish and sea urchin types--in the region about Nashville. Fossilized Carboniferous plants include ferns, club-moss, and reed-like growths
Of the Mesozoic era, Upper Cretaceous fossils are unusually numerous in the western part of the State, particularly in Hardin, McNairy, Chester, and Henderson Counties. The sands of Hardin County have yielded a few excellent plant impressions and partly or completely silicified wood. Chalk knobs in eastern McNairy and Chester Counties are frequently covered with specimens of large mollusk-like snails. Particularly in the McNairy County sand formations, perfectly preserved animal fossils of this period are found to an extent so far unequaled in any other single North American region. At one site on Coon Creek more than 350 species were collected from a single horizon. The fauna of the McNairy sand formations is essentially molluscan, but there are vertebrate remains. Notable among them are the mosasaurs, large marine lizards with long snake-like bodies lizard-like heads, and paddle-shaped limbs.
The Cenozoic (Recent Life) era is represented in Tennessee principally by the Eocene, the first epoch of the Tertiary period, and by the Pleistocene, or glacial, epoch of the Quaternary period. The remains of the Eocene--the epoch during which the higher orders of plants began to develop, and birds and mammals to displace the giant reptiles--are mainly centered in West Tennessee. They are found in the Porters Creek clay near Middleton, the Holly Springs sand at Puryear, and the Granada sand in the Somerville vicinity. Collectors report excellently preserved fossils of plants and some mammals in this area, as well as in the Reelfoot Lake region and in Shelby County.
The Pleistocene also is represented in the western part of the State. This epoch, popularly known as the Ice Age, brought about great changes in animal life. Many mammals became extinct; man began to dominate the earth. The ice sheet stopped many miles north of Tennessee, but huge hairy mammoths, long-tusked mastodons, and giant sloths, driven southward by the advancing glaciers, ranged the State, and may have remained until the coming of prehistoric man. At least bones and teeth of these animals, found in caves and alluvial deposits, may be taken as evidence of their existence in this area during the glacial epoch--the opening scene in the Age of Man.
When Boone and Scaggs hunted in Tennessee, great herds of bison grazed in the river bottoms; elk and Virginia deer ranged through the forests and canebrakes; black bears were plentiful everywhere; and wolves, panthers, and lynxes followed the trails of the hoofed animals. Beaver colonies built their dams and mud houses in some of the smaller streams and there were vast flocks of birds and game fowl. So rich in game was, the region that parties of Iroquois from the Great Lakes and Choctaw from the Gulf Coast, as well as Cherokee from the Great Smokies and Chickasaw from the Mississippi bottoms, came here for months of summer hunting. Tennessee was the Land of Peaceful Hunting, a neutral ground where ancient tribal hatreds were temporarily forgotten. The Indians were not wasteful hunters; they killed only for food and clothing--and even then they ceremoniously asked pardon of Uncle Bear or Brother Bison. The white settlers had little of the Indians, fellow feeling for wild things. They slaughtered them as prodigally as they slashed and burned the forests and squandered the wealth of the soil.
Animal Life
Today, of all the hoofed animals, only the Virginia or white-tailed deer remains. Ranging wild in the East Tennessee mountains and protected by law, they are now on the increase. Black bears also live in the high Smokies and the southern or bay lynx is fairly numerous in heavily wooded sections of the State, where it manages to hold its own in spite of intensive hunting.
The red fox and the gray are still common in all parts of the State. Next to the fox, the skunk and opossum are probably the best known of the fur bearers and are found even in the woodlots close to towns. Other fur bearers are raccoons, minks, and muskrats; cottontail rabbits, in almost any brier patch or brush pile; and gray and red squirrels, in the oak and hickory woods. All the smaller mammal--such as field and wood mice, gopher rats, weasels, woodchucks, and chipmunks--are numerous. The otter, once a valuable fur animal in the State, is now rare.
A newcomer to the forests of East Tennessee is the Russian wild boar, locally called the "Rooshian" wild hog. These large and savage hogs are believed to have escaped from a North Carolina estate during a forest fire in 1910. Since that time they have spread through the mountains to the headwaters of the Tellico and Citico Rivers.
Some of the birds once plentiful in the State have completely disappeared. The passenger pigeon, the Carolina parakeet (sometimes called the Cumberland parrot), the ivory-billed woodpecker, and the prairie chicken, which the pioneers shot by the wagonload, are now extinct. Notwithstanding this wholesale slaughter, bird life is still plentiful, and perhaps more varied in Tennessee than in any other inland State. This is due in part to the diversified character of the land and the many different kinds of climate, but the chief reason is that thousands of birds cross Tennessee on their migratory flights between the North and the South. Ornithologists have recorded 316 species in the State; of these, 163 are summer residents, about 100 are found only in winter, and the rest live here the year round.
The American national bird, the bald eagle, lives in the wild regions of the Cumberland Plateau and the marshes of the Reelfoot Lake area. The golden eagle, which the Cherokee called the "king of birds," is rare, but a few still find sanctuary in the Great Smokies. The northern raven, vanished from most of the eastern States, also inhabits the ridgecrest of the Smokies.
The great blue heron, slate-gray rather than blue in color and more than four feet in height, is fairly common along the water courses, where it builds untidy-looking nests of sticks in the treetops. Living in large colonies, herons return year after year to the same nests. In a huge heronry at Reelfoot Lake thousands of nests are visible in the tops of the high cypress trees. Reelfoot Lake is also visited during the year by nearly all species of North American wading or swimming wild fowl. Numerous along all the State's water courses is the green heron, known variously as "shikepoke," and "fly-up-the-creek."
The largest game bird of Tennessee is the wild turkey, still to be found in the eastern mountains. Protected by game laws and reared in State hatcheries, this bird is now assured a permanent place among the game birds of the State. Grouse and quail are also raised and distributed in many areas. The ruffed grouse, often called "pheasant," is fairly plentiful in the scrub oak forests of the Cumberland Plateau, and in most East Tennessee counties. Recently the ring-necked pheasant has been introduced in several areas. The bobwhite, swiftest of the quail family and the most numerous game bird, is widely distributed throughout the State, as is the dove.
The official State bird is the mocking bird, found in all parts of the State, and often called "the singin'est bird in the world." The robin, another famous songster, is even more numerous. The northern variety winters in the South, returning to its nesting places in early spring; a subspecies lives in Tennessee throughout the year. Other birds which remain in Tennessee the year round are the bluebird, killdeer, meadow-lark, cardinal, towhee, screech owl, red-tailed and sparrow hawk, Carolina chickadee, whip-poor-will, flicker, various kinds of woodpeckers (locally known as peckerwoods), and the Carolina wren, whose ringing voice is most often heard at dawn and twilight.
In season, most American migratory birds east of the Rockies visit the State. Of the geese, the Canada type is the most numerous, but snow and blue geese also come through. Ducks of twenty-three varieties are abundant in autumn. Among the winter visitors from the North are the horned lark, and the junco, or "snowbird," one of the most numerous of this group, which nests in the high mountains along the eastern border. Spring migration brings from farther south more than half the total number of birds that nest and raise their young in Tennessee. A number of local breeding birds travel to South America to spend the winter. One of the most punctual migrating birds is the purple martin, which leaves for the South about August 25, and returns between the first and tenth of March.
The Tennessee Ornithological Society, founded in 1915, publishes in Nashville a quarterly journal called The Migrant. Its members take a bird census each Christmas at Nashville, Memphis, Reelfoot Lake, Knoxville Johnson City, and other points in the State. In 1933, the society sponsored the publication of Albert F. Gainer's A Distributional List of the Birds of Tennessee, the only comprehensive study of birds in the State
Because of the many different types of water areas in Tennessee, there are many places suitable for the propagation of all common American inland fishes. In the Cumberland and Duck Rivers are found catfish, buffalo fish, drum, and bass. While most of the species of game fish are native to Tennessee waters, the rainbow trout was brought from the mountain streams of the western United States and the brown trout from Germany and England. The rainbow and brook trout thrive in the deep clear pools of the mountain streams. Polychrome garters and dice are found in these waters during the spring and summer months, their bright colors disappearing after the spawning season, which lasts from late March to early June.
Waters throughout the State are well stocked with the large-mouth black bass which, with the small-mouth bass and pike, frequent the Tennessee River and its tributaries, the Holston, and the French Broad. The blue, or channel, catfish, weighing as much as thirty pounds and found in all waters, is most prolific in the streams and lakes of West Tennessee. The "yellow cats" grow to enormous size. Some weighing as much as one hundred pounds have been caught in the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers and their tributaries. Other fish are the jack salmon, red-horse, spoonbill cat, crappie, rock-bass or goggle-eyed perch, bream, German carp, and several species of sunfish and catfish. There are several hatcheries where bass, trout, and other desirable fishes are propagated for restocking purposes. This work is carried on by the State, in cooperation with the Federal government and the Tennessee Valley Authority.
The common reptiles of the State are lizards, turtles, frogs, and thirty kinds of snakes. Only the rattlesnake, the copperhead, and the cottonmouth moccasin are venomous. The common rattler, called diamondback, is found throughout the State, especially in the wooded areas on rocky outcrops near timber or on the "balds" of the lower altitudes. The copperhead generally inhabits bush regions. The pilot black snake, one of the swiftest of serpents, often attains a length of from six to seven feet. King snakes, including the red and scarlet king and the brown king, are prevalent in all sections, and perform valuable service by destroying venomous snakes, rats, mice, and moles.
Great forests once covered most of Tennessee, but today less than one tenth of the primeval stand remains. Scattered over the State, however, are patches of virgin timber, mostly hardwoods; these huge oaks, tall elms, and stately beeches testify to the great size of the original stand. Second growth forests are coming up on the cut-over lands. Sycamore, basswood, cherry, walnut, hickory, locust, and maple grow in practically all sections of the State except the high Appalachians. Widely distributed are the hackberry, a small-leaved hardwood, and the persimmon. The conifers appear only in certain areas. The consumption of walnut for gunstocks during the World War and the present demand by cabinet makers have almost exhausted the supply of this tree in Tennessee.
Forests and Plant Life
The largest stands of virgin timber are in East Tennessee. Here are hemlock, pine, spruce, southern balsam (Frazier fir), and many hardwoods such as oak, maple, silverbell, and cherry. The tulip tree, or yellow poplar, Tennessee's State tree, reaches its largest growth in this region, often attaining a height of 200 feet.
Middle Tennessee has two principal forest growths-the cedar glades of the Highland Rim, where the soil is shallow, and the scrub oak barrens of the Cumberland Plateau. Growing in low places and along the banks of streams are sweet gum, poplar, willow, and sycamore.
In the swampy bottomlands of West Tennessee the plant life is similar to that of the Deep South. Here remain some stands of the magnificent first-growth timber that originally made Memphis a leading hardwood market of the Mississippi Valley. The largest species of tree in this area is the cypress, which lives to a great age and reaches a height of one hundred and fifty feet. It grows in water-covered places, "breathing" by means of hard, hollow, tumor-like growths called "knees" which are sent up from the roots. The river birch, the pecan tree, the water elm, the water maple, the swamp locust, and the tupelo, or cotton gum, are found in the western lowlands. The chinquapin, a rare tree, with fruit closely resembling the chestnut, also grows here. This region is the natural habitat of the catalpa or "catawba," a fast-growing tree with purple, yellow, and white flowers and large heart-shaped leaves.
Towards the end Of the nineteenth century timber which had hitherto been considered commercially worthless-gum, cypress, chestnut, elm, and persimmon-came into demand. Tennessee, with more than one hundred and fifty varieties of trees, has supplied the lumber market with these types of wood for many years.
Fire and wasteful lumbering have taken their toll of the timber regions. Protective grasses have been uprooted from the slopes by overgrazing and by the plow. Erosion has resulted from these careless methods, and today (1939) fourteen million acres in the State need reclamation. Much of this land is now unproductive, but most is suitable for reforestation. Planting of hickory, persimmon, walnut, honey locust, and mulberry is encouraged, since these trees produce commercially valuable timber and also provide food for hogs and chickens during most of the year. State nurseries are producing millions of seedlings, principally black locusts, for use in erosion control. These will develop into a new kind of forest, widely distributed.
Forests are being established by the State forestry division, working in cooperation with the U. S. Forest Service, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and other Federal agencies. These forests provide demonstration areas for fire control, wildlife replenishment, water and soil conservation and reforestation. Unwisely cleared and depleted agricultural lands are also being reforested by farmers, with technical and financial aid from State and Federal agencies.
The redbud and the dogwood, small flowering trees, add splashes of pink and white to the green hillsides in the spring, the blooms lasting for several weeks. Throughout the woodlands are wild grape vines, climbing to great heights among the tree trunks. The summer grape grows on dry or rocky ground, the winter variety on rich moist lands, especially along river banks. Other vines are the pink wildbean, the passionflower, and the trailing arbutus. Woodbine and poison ivy are widely distributed.
Tennessee,s wild flowers range from the violet, growing on a tiny stem, to the large blossoms of the magnolia, a popular lawn tree in many parts of the State. From summer to late fall the fields bloom with dandelions, daisies, black-eyed Susans, goldenrod, wild asters, gentians, and Jerusalem artichokes. Flowering early in the moist woods, where they are protected by leaf mold, are the saxifrage, hepatica, anemone, dutchman's breeches wild bleeding-heart, bloodroot, firepink, and blue phlox (sweet William). Later appear the jack-in-the-pulpit (Indian turnip), bluebell, shooting star, wood sorrel, and wild geranium.
More than three hundred of Tennessee's 1,500 plants are used for medicinal purposes; about one hundred have commercial value. Goldenseal, hepatica, digitalis, and ginseng are among the best known; they are found in many parts of the State, particularly in the mountain regions. Johnson grass, a quick-spreading, hardy grass much detested by farmers, sod the common varieties of weeds grow in all sections.
Perhaps the best known of the mountain flora is the rhododendron, ranging in color from white to deep purple. At Roan High Bluff (6,287 altitude), is a rhododendron garden, an outstanding display of the shrub in its natural setting. There are fifteen known species of trillium (wake robin) in the Smokies. The earliest to bloom, and the most vivid, is the ; variety with a dark crimson V at the base of a white petal. The yellow trillium, indigenous to the Appalachians, is common in the shaded foothill forests. Flame azalea, varying from red to orange and from gold to light yellow, the white and pink azalea, and the wild honeysuckle touch the mountain slopes with spots of color. Here, also, grows the sand myrtle, native of the sandy pine barrens of New Jersey, and found nowhere else in Tennessee. Mountain laurel covers many miles of mountainside and borders the streams. Peculiar to the highlands is the "burning bush"' called by the mountain folk "hearts-a-bustin'-with-love," because of its brilliant berries in autumn. The evergreen holly with its scarlet berries grows in profusion.
Lush grass and weeds cover the mountain glades and even flourish on the high slopes, giving to the rounded tops of some of the mountains the name "grassy balds." Ferns are numerous and grow very large.
The soil of Middle Tennessee is ideal for the cultivation of the State flower, the iris, and the Nashville Iris Association was formed in 1931 to foster its planting and cultivation. Along the boulevards and streets, and in parks and gardens, the blue, white, and purple blossoms appear by the millions annually, justifying Nashville's designation as the "Iris City."
The yellow jasmine, celebrated in the literature of the South, thrives in the southern parts of Middle Tennessee and as far east as the Great Appalachian Valley. Over much of the Central Basin grows bluegrass, which inakes the Middle Tennessee region one of the finest grazing lands in the country. Muscadines, as well as the other varieties of wild grapes, grow in the central and western portions of the State.
Interspersed with the oaks of the Plateau region are numerous shrubs. Itea, a member of the willow family, large-flowering hydrangea, Carolina allspice, narrow-leaf crabapple, hazelnut, buttonbush, chokeberry, arrowwood, and southern buckhorn grow where the gravelly soil supports a poor growth of larger trees. On the rock outcrops of the cedar woods are crustose lichens, simplest form of plant life.
Native here, also, are the pink stonecrop and pitcher's sandwort, and the taller plants, such as the daisy fleabane, wild senna, and coralberry. Among the vines are the trumpet honeysuckle and the Virginia creeper. Wild flowers common to much of Middle Tennessee are the spring-beauty, dragonroot, firepink, Indian-tobacco, lamb's lettuce, ground cherry, Venus' looking-glass, hop clover, wooly-leaf dutchman's pipe, shepherd's purse, horse-nettle, mouse-eared chichveed, dwarf evening primrose, violet wood sorrel, Illinois mimosa, common yarrow, and the flameflower, which blossoms only on clear days.
In the moist woodlands of West Tennessee are lilies and orchids, of which one species, the pink ladyslipper or moccasin flower, is said to be fast disappearing because of ruthless picking. There are water lilies in the lagoons; and Indian rye, formerly harvested by the aborigines, furnishes food for the migrating flocks of ducks and geese. The common grasses of the region are rushes, cattails, and swale grasses.
The story of Tennessee cannot be understood without reference to the types of soil that have determined the development of the State's three natural divisions. East Tennessee's early political dominance was due solely to first settlement. Although there were many fairly rich farmland pockets in the uplands, much of the soil was so thin that the people were able to force from it only the barest subsistence. The stream of immigration turned toward Middle and West Tennessee, where soils were deep and rich. Here a prosperous agricultural economy came into being. Inevitably Tennessee's cultural and political center also shifted westward.
Soil Conservation
In the Great Smoky Mountains there are still numbers of good small farms where the mellow sandy soil is similar to that of the Gulf Coast while in the East Tennessee Valley the soil, formed of disintegrated limestone-marble and shale with an admixture of flint-like chert, yields well to careful farming methods. Thousands of tiny "patch-farms" are scattered through the uplands and, in spite of wasteful lumbering operations, the poorest ridge soils still support fine stands of timber. Two thirds of the Cumberland Plateau is covered with forest, mostly secondgrowth scrub. The soil is thin, porous, and unproductive. Possibly the poorest land in the State is found on the inner part of the Highland Rim. Here a skim of earth overlies porous siliceous limestone through which the vitality of the soil "leaches out." The tenacious cedar grows well in these barrens and there is fair pasturage for cattle, but the land can never be made valuable for farming.
About 40 per cent of the Central Basin, which has been called "The Garden of Tennessee", is used as bluegrass pasturage. The soil has been formed of rich, soluble limestone, and is remarkably productive. The valley of the Tennessee River is given over to medium-sized farms on moderately fertile soil.
The West Tennessee slope differs from the other divisions in that it lacks stone outcrops or free rock. Although the hill section is subject to gully and ravine erosion, there are many large and productive farms. The soil is light, siliceous, and fertile. The flat alluvial bottom lands of the Mississippi, composed of sand, silt, and clay, possess great fertility. The soil is light, porous, and many feet deep. In most of the area large plantations produce enormous yearly crops of cotton and corn with no apparent sign of exhaustion. Much swampy forest land has not yet been cleared
As early as 1854, the State agricultural bureau warned that excessive "mining,' or one-crop cultivation of the soil would finally lead to economic disaster. Farmers following this practice grew one crop year after year without letting the land lie fallow or rotating crops to build up the soil. In 1857 Charles Dod, Jr., predicted that erosion would doom Tennessee agriculture. Two years later Commodore Matthew Fontaine Maury urged erosion control. However, the period was one of prodigal short sighted waste and little was done to check the menace. Today 85 per cent of all land in the State has been damaged to some extent by erosion. In 1935 the State planning commission made a survey which revealed that three million acres had been practically ruined for cultivation by deep gullies, and that 75 to 100 per cent of the surface soil had been taken from eleven million acres by sheet erosion. In sheet erosion a thin cover of topsoil washes away during heavy rains. The severity of sheet erosion, which occurs on all lands not protected by a crop of heavy-rooted vegetation, depends on the degree of slope to the terrain and the type of soil. Shoe-string erosion is also responsible for much damage. Gullies, started by little rain rills, are gouged out to such a depth that it becomes almost impossible to fill them. Slip or landslide erosion, Tennessee,s third principal type, is frequent where shale soils predominate. Water accumulates between soil and bedrock until the undermined soil slides downhill, or collapses into sink-holes.
Contour cultivation, hillside terracing, and planned crop rotation (with careful selection of crops that hold the soil) constitute the best method of fighting sheet erosion. Winter cover crops like clover and grasses have been found beneficial. Gullies, which rarely occur in forest lands or in fields growing alfalfa or Japanese clover (lespedeza), are best fought by building wooden, metal, wire, brush, or stone check dams at proper intervals. Black locust trees are frequently planted to hold the soil. Japanese clover, serving as a legume to enrich the soil, is an effective cover crop. Nothing can be done to remedy landslide erosion, once it has occurred but landslides can be prevented by proper ditch drainage of susceptible areas.
Soil conservation and erosion control in Tennessee now embrace nearly 100,000 farms with a land area of nine and one-half million acres, or about half of the farm acreage in the State. The university,s extension service and the three Federal agencies--the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Soil Conservation Service--are collaborating in what is considered the most comprehensive conservation program ever attempted in the United States.
A principal land program of the TVA is that of erosion control, carried on in cooperation with farmers. Civilian Conservation Corps boys, supervised by the watershed protective section (the forest division of the TVA) do much of the control work on private property; owners must furnish teams and materials, and sign an agreement to maintain the project for five years. So actively have Tennessee Valley farmers cooperated that by 1936 more than one hundred thousand check dams had been built and eighteen million seedlings planted. Reforestation is employed only in the most badly eroded sections. Elsewhere the first two steps of control suffice--the building of check dams and diversion ditches, and the planting of cover crops.
Where cotton and other crops requiring cultivation between the rows are grown, terracing is advocated in addition to readjustment of the crop cover. Terracing associations, usually underwritten by responsible local agencies, purchase large motor-driven grading machines which are operated on a communal basis.
Much of the soil in the eroded areas is too far gone to support even grass crops without plant food. The manure of horses, mules, cattle, and sheep is scrupulously conserved, but this source of home fertilizer has been greatly reduced in recent years with the increased use of motorized farm machinery. Cotton seed hulls, a valuable home product, are rarely used because the farmers prefer to sell them and buy commercial fertilizer. The best home method of fertilizing the soil consists of growing legumes and other plants to be turned under as green manure in a carefully planned rotation of crops. Perhaps one-tenth of the farmers in the State allow a field to rest every third or fourth year, as part of their rotation system. But very few, during this rest period, plant a cover crop which is to be turned under. The common practice is to let the selected field lie fallow producing the common weeds and grasses indigenous to the region.
To meet the need for cheap phosphate in the valley, Nitrate Plant No. 2, at the Muscle Shoals project of the TVA, produces a new triple superphosphate and a still newer metaphosphate from the raw phosphate rock found in Middle Tennessee. Farmers throughout the valley have organized soil conservation clubs and are demonstrating the value of this fertilizer in growing the most effective control crops--grasses for pasturage or hay, legumes in mat planting, and small grain. In demonstration areas farmers receive fertilizer free through the State agricultural extension service and farm organizations.
Erosion control not only saves reservoirs and checks flood damage, but helps the farmer escape the one-crop system which has impoverished him and exhausted his land. Reforestation provides nut and fruit crops and a continually renewed supply of timber. A cover crop of grass or legume in eroded fields provides pasture for livestock. The change from a one-crop method of farming means less silt in the river, more money in the farmer's pocket, and better food for folk who have too often existed on corn pone, sorghum, and sowbelly the year around.
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Artists as Reality-TV StarsLong before the American Idolization of every art form on the planet, the great humorist S. J. Perelman imagined a gnarly New York painter being asked by a vulgarian Hollywood movie producer: what exactly do you artists do in the studio when you get an idea? "I usually smite my forehead," the painter replies sarcastically, "and shout 'Eureka!'?"
The End of Political ArtThere's a double-gallery exhibition still up in New York called The Visible Vagina. It's another one of those didactic anthology shows purporting to bring some issue that artists think regular folk have either thought about incorrectly, or have repressed entirely, out into the open and, in the patois of today's art world, "address," "confront," "deconstruct," "unpack," and "interrogate" the hell out of it. Naturally, one of the galleries hosted a panel discussion. The participants included one male, Walter Robinson, an artist and editor of an online art magazine. (A few men, including Picasso and Robert Mapplethorpe, are represented in the show.) When his turn came to speak, Robinson said that, in the art world at least, the war with patriarchy is over, everybody knows all about vaginas—as well as penises—and nobody thinks anymore that women are mere sex objects subject to the infamous male gaze. From the audience—and this was a mild surprise—there arose only faint murmurs of...
Museums Suffer the Art World's Biggest FalloutWhen the art market collapsed along with everything else last year, the general public's first reaction was a resounding "Who cares?" After all, what skin was it off their noses if a Jeff Koons failed to sell at Sotheby's or some snooty London gallery shut its doors?Art museums, however, are another matter. People visit them by the tens of millions—often taking along the kids—and consider them markers of cultural cachet. When museums lay off staff, curtail hours, cancel shows, and start to look a little unkempt, people notice. The Great Museum Cutback is the second—but far worse—body blow delivered to art by the latest global recession.The most salient drama was played out in Los Angeles. The Museum of Contemporary Art dipped into its endowment's principal to pay expenses (the biggest no-no in the nonprofit world), flirted with closing or being absorbed by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and was temporarily rescued by $30 million from billionaire patron Eli Broad. But MOCA is...
Harvey Kurtzman: The Matisse of Mad MagazineHarvey Kurtzman was the founder of Mad. Everybody who loved the magazine should get their hands on a new book of his art.
Nauman's Own--ArtSome people say that Bruce Nauman is the most influential American artist since Andy Warhol, but when Nauman arrived at art school way back in 1964, he had almost no idea where he was headed. Fresh from being a math and science student back in Wisconsin, the tall, laconic young Nauman painted the most mundane of subjects: landscapes. "I thought art was just something I'd learn how to do, and then I would just do it," he says. He'd landed almost by chance at the University of California, Davis, home to the most rebellious, irreverent artist-teachers around. (One of them, ceramist Robert Arneson, would have his officially commissioned monument to assassinated San Francisco Mayor George Moscone rejected in 1981 because it depicted the Twinkies from the assassin's "Twinkies defense" right there on its pedestal.) The faculty gave Nauman an empty room in a temporary building and told him simply to go to work. "I knew then," he says, "that I'd have to start out every day and figure out...
Art: The Renaissance Men Who Invented ModernismNo one sold the world on modernism like Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese.
Peter Plagens: Art and the RecessionThe recession has been disastrous for the contemporary-art market. That may turn out to be good for the art.
Jeff KoonsArt and culture in the Bush era.
Catherine Opie: Photography ReviewHow even radical artists can develop stage fright when the world begins to notice their work.
Art: Louise Bourgeois Retrospective at GuggenheimLouise Bourgeois gets a retrospective at the Guggenheim. At 96, she's got a lot of retro to show.
Rauschenberg: The American Artist of the 20th CenturyHonoring the pre-eminent American artist of the 20th century.
Art: Kennedy's New FrontierThe main family business may be politics, but Robert's boy Chris is the art world's new favorite son.
Three Decades In MadridIf Antonio Lopez-Garcia's "Lucio's Balcony" were not a great painting on its own, then the circumstances of its creation would clinch the matter. It took the 72-year-old Spanish realist 28 years to complete, from 1962 to 1990. That's partly due to his painting method: on site, same time of day, same season for each session. But it's also because he began the picture—which is now on view in a retrospective of his work at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts—as the setting for a portrait of friends, who soon moved away. Then the apartment changed hands three times. The most recent owners allowed López-García to set up his easel in the same spot and, decades later, finish.The result is a brilliant combination of the artist's early "magic realism" and his mature style of planar symphonies dedicated to the architecture of his beloved Madrid. The work looks restrained, but López-García gets more chromatic melody out of his muted, chalky palette than most artists do from primary colors. When he...
Still Life with Beach TowelThe gift shop at the new Museum of Contemporary Art in New York doesn't sell standard museum fare—no Monet neckties or Jackson Pollock jigsaw puzzles. Instead, the NCMA, which just opened its new building in November, carries much edgier stuff. There are $540 smocks from a pattern by Andrea Zittel, an artist known for living out in the desert in mobile survivalist cabins. You'll also find $30 canvas totes by pop-noir draftsman Richard Pettibon and $68 beach towels by fey portraitist Elizabeth Peyton. "I've always thought that every artist ought to have a cheap line," says conceptual artist John Baldessari, who has a coffee mug inscribed with his cheeky aphorism TIPS FOR ARTISTS WHO WANT TO SELL available at the new Broad Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.Artist-made museum merchandise is on the rise. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art are all getting into the act, striking deals with...
A Modern Master's Modest ArtSometimes I find it's best not to pay too much attention to the label. The one for "Railway Tracks," for instance, in the wonderful "Georges Seurat: Drawings" exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art, on view through Jan. 7, touts the "deep perspective of a winding road" and the "sensation of the earth in upheaval." While there is a bit of road at the bottom, and the drawing does depict a changing suburban area outside late-19th-century Paris, the beauty of Seurat's art lies elsewhere. In a current art world filled (to invoke an old Little Richard lyric) with a lot of womp-bomp-a-loo-bomp installations and video, this little miracle is the most economically poetic combination of technique, composition and sense of "being there" I've ever seen. Poor Seurat, who died of diphtheria in 1891 at 31, was only 23 when he finished it.As the poet-critic Gustave Kahn put it, Seurat was "a young man crazy about drawing." He worked in conté crayon (a kind of greasy charcoal) on toothy...
Is Photography Dead?How is that even remotely possible? The medium certainly looks alive, well and, if anything, overpopulated. There are hordes of photographers out there, working with back-to-basics pinhole cameras and pixeled images measured in gigabytes, with street photography taken by cell phones and massive photo "shoots" whose crews, complexity and expense resemble those of movie sets. Step into almost any serious art gallery in Chelsea, Santa Monica or Mayfair and you're likely to be greeted with breathtaking large-format color photographs, such as Andreas Gefeller's overhead views of parking lots digitally montaged from thousands of individual shots or Didier Massard's completely "fabricated photographs" of phantasmagoric landscapes. And the establishment's seal of approval for photography has been renewed in two current museum exhibitions. In "Depth of Field"— the first installation in the new contemporary-photography galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, on display...
Caniff: American Cartoon GeniusMilton Caniff's cartooning genius not only evokes midcentury America—it's imprisoned there.
Picasso: No. 1 With a PaletteWe all know who's the most celebrated artist of the century. The question is: why him?
Unknown Modern Master: Gerald MurphyA few months after moving to Paris in 1921, Gerald Murphy happened to walk by the gallery of the pioneer modern-art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who was holding a kind of clearance sale of cubist paintings by Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris and Georges Braque. Murphy was the heir to the ritzy Mark Cross luggage company, and he and his wife, Sara, had come to France to escape the doldrums of life in the States under Prohibition and Warren Harding's "return to normalcy" after World War I. Young and rich, they'd planned to soak up culture and enjoy the good life. But that fortuitous gallery drop-in changed Gerald's life. "If that's painting," he told Sara, "that's the kind of painting I would like to do." He studied for six months with Natalia Goncharova, the Russian-revolutionary expat abstract painter and set designer, and then plunged in, exhibiting in the famous Salon des Indépendants of the early '20s. All told, he produced 14 pictures. Only seven survive. And for only the second time...
Which Is the Most Influential Work of Art Of the Last 100 Years?A. Black Square by Kazimir Malevich; B. 'One (Number 31) ' by Jackson Pollack; C. 'Fountain' by Marcel Duchamp; D. 'Campbell's Soup Can' by Andy Warhol; E. 'Les Demoiselles D'Avignon' by Pablo Picasso.
Artist Slugs It Out With MuseumThe early-20th-century American critic Sadakichi Hartmann famously said, "If you think vaudeville is dead, look at modern art." Hartmann wasn't a reactionary. He just thought, about 75 years ago, that the game of avant-garde leapfrog had gotten pretty predictable. Hartmann was right, but in the years since, the gambit of an artist proving his chops by shocking—or at least inconveniencing—the bourgeoisie has worked, careerwise, like a charm.Take the current imbroglio involving Christoph Büchel, a Swiss installation artist, and that capacious reclamation of derelict industrial space, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (a.k.a. MASS MoCA) in North Adams, in the western part of the state. MASS MoCA invited him to do a large installation piece called "Training Ground for Democracy." The artist accepted, apparently on a handshake, and promptly asked the museum to fetch him, among a long list of things, a police car, a voting booth and a two-story house that could be disassembled...
'The Dinner Party' Gets a HomeLots of people think that Judy Chicago's "The Dinner Party" is lousy art. Chicago (and a few hundred disciples/volunteers) made the restaurant-size work in the '70s as a kind of feminist encyclopedia. The tables are decorated with elaborate place settings for 39 women, from an archetypal "Primordial Goddess" to Susan B. Anthony, and each plate is decorated with a motif deemed particular to that honoree—or at least to a part of her anatomy. If you only dimly suspect that Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings resemble female genitalia, then you ain't seen these dishes yet. The whole thing looks like an R-rated banquet at an overdressed Trump hotel. All art, of course, is to some degree political. But can something this blatantly didactic still be any good?The fact is, "The Dinner Party" is one of the most influential pieces of the last 50 years. Without it, there would be no art-star Cindy Sherman, no "Vagina Monologues," even, in a way, no Hillary Clinton. Chicago obviously wasn't the...
'Glitter and Doom': Art to Make You WinceIn the first world war, Germany suffered 5 million dead. When the war was over, the country was left with 2 million orphans, a million widows and a million invalids. In the waning days of 1918, it underwent a revolution in which the kaiser abdicated and fled to Holland. Soon thereafter, the victorious Allies imposed a staggering reparations burden on Germany. Unemployment skyrocketed, and inflation reached such insane proportions that paper currency made better firewood than money. German cities became, simultaneously, pits of poverty, starvation and disease and dens of drug-fueled high life. The painter Max Beckmann, who'd been flung out of the Army and the war in 1915 by a nervous breakdown at the front, said, "We must take part in the whole misery that is to come." He meant that he and his fellow artists mustn't avoid the grotesque subject matter that history had placed in front of them. They must paint it with all the realism—emotional and psychological, as well as physical—at...
An Old-School RadicalAt 68, Brice Marden is still a trim, handsome man with knowing eyes. Which must be why--since abstract painters aren't usually celebrities--he's recently appeared in a Gap ad. Even while installing a show in black jeans, long-sleeved T shirt and stocking cap, there's an elegance to the man, and a boxer's looseness in the way he moves.But today he's nervous. This "show" is "Brice Marden: A Retrospective of Paintings and Drawings"--in the august Mu-seum of Modern Art, where it will be on view Oct. 29 through Jan. 15. True, he's long been represented by such top-o'-the-heap galleries as Pace, Mary Boone and Matthew Marks, and a drawing of his once fetched half a million dollars at auction. But he's never seen many of these 56 canvases and 50 drawings together before. Something might go wrong. Like what? "Someone will prick the bubble," he says, "and say it all looks like bulls--t."With this show, however, there's more than just an artist's reputation at stake. In an art world...
Mortality, Morbidity And MoreFor someone with all the trappings of a severely intimidating modern artist--long, insane-asylum-gray hair, all-black garb and hieroglyphic tattoos--Kiki Smith is awfully considerate with an interviewer. She talks slowly, enunciates precisely (her mother was an opera singer and actress) and takes a genuinely noncombative view of art. "To me," she says, "it's like a wind. It's not something that should be about one thing or another. Different things are always moving you, or telling you to pay attention."That may sound hippie-ish--and Smith, 52, did drop out of art school when she was 21 and make for San Francisco, where she lived communally with a rock band called The Tubes. But she's an almost maniacally productive artist--"A Gathering," her retrospective of more than 200 works, just opened at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston and will arrive at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art in November. And she's one of the most important sculptors working today. In the 1980s,...
A Car You Could FrameWhile you've been shopping around for a fuel-efficient hybrid, a new Bugatti has hit the market. It's called the Veyron, and costs $1.3 million. Its 1,001-horsepower engine can make the car go 250mph and get you a piddling 3mpg doing it. At slower speeds, the Veyron still gulps gas at 7mpg in the city, 10 on the highway. If you want to cruise at a mere 60mph, this particular Bugatti can get you there from a standing start in a little over three seconds. But none of this wretched excess really matters, of course, because the Bugatti Veyron is a work of art. As a matter of fact, it's art precisely because of its wretched excess.First of all, the machine is beautiful, a piece of organically aerodynamic sculpture more good-looking—and a lot sexier—than most Henry Moores. The rear half of the Veyron embraces the front portion, cuddling it between crescent-shaped side air ducts while affectionately reaching (the gesture denoted by a lovely two-tone paint job) over the passenger cabin down...
Blockbusters: Mass AppealWhile it's great to take the road less traveled, especially during the summer months, there are always a number of exhibits that are well worth their wait in line. Here are our top picks for the season's best and biggest draws: ...
East of the LouvreDuring the Cold War, it was called "Eastern" Europe. Since the fall of the Berlin wall, "Central" has become the designation of choice. Tourism marketers prefer "The Other Europe" to set off such countries as Poland, Slovakia and Hungary from heavily Americanized Western Europe. Save for the fact that spoken English is more common on the streets of Warsaw, Bratislava and Budapest than in, say, Paris, they have a point. As for art, it's here in abundance--familiar faces and startling discoveries--and more than reason enough to take this year's tour a bit off the beaten path.Since war, occupation and dictatorship ravaged the region through much of the 20th century, it's practically obligatory to start any visit with some serious historical grounding. Warsaw was 85 percent destroyed during World War II, but the salvaged artifacts in its History Museum give you a glimpse into the depth of the culture; the Warsaw Uprising Museum--interactive to a fault and punctuated with such unintended...
Hot PropertiesFor the past few weeks, the smooth, ghostly and haunting face of Zhang Xiaogang's "Bloodline Series: Comrade No. 120" (1998) has been almost as ubiquitous in contemporary-art circles as, say, an Andy Warhol "Marilyn" or a Damien Hirst pickled shark. Gracing the cover of the catalog for Sotheby's recent New York auction of contemporary Asian art, the discreetly blemished portrait of a young party functionary in a Mao suit also found its way onto the pages of practically every periodical that so much as mentioned the sale. Which, by the way, raked in $13.2 million (against a presale estimate of $8 million). "Comrade No. 120" brought the gavel down at just under $1 million, more than three times the auctioneer's estimate. These sales are the latest proof that Chinese contemporary art is hot, hot, hot, and the latest must-have accessory for the cutting-edge elite.Why? Partly it's a function of China's growing liberalization, which has allowed visual artists in particular greater freedom...
An Irishman Goes Back to His RootsFor more than 30 years Brian O'Doherty has lived just off New York's Central Park in a landmark building built about a century ago with sunlit two-story studios especially for artists. His wife is the renowned American art historian Barbara Novak, and he paints on an easel bequeathed to him by the pioneer American modernist Stuart Davis. So it's perhaps no surprise that when asked what his Irish roots have to do with his career as an artist, he answers, "Nothing, I hope." But O'Doherty was born in Ballaghaderreen, County Roscommon, in 1934 to a mother whose family included the notorious rebels the Brennan boys. Sent off to boarding school "to become a man," he was initiated in the national pastimes of fighting bullies ("I got clobbered, but he didn't pick on my mates again") and rugby ("I was good at 12, so they sent me in against 15-year-olds, and I got beaten up there, too"). When British troops opened fire on Roman Catholic demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in 1972, O'Doherty...
Warning: Graphic ContentWhether illegibly psychedelic or starkly simple, boomer graphics spoke volumes
Graphic ContentFrom their arrival after World War II to their imminent retirements, baby boomers have been the most prosperous and protected generation in history. But since coming of age in an era of turmoil and rebellion--from rock and roll to drugs to the Vietnam War--they have always had a hard time wearing their fortune without guilt. They've struggled to balance economic pride with humility, self-fulfillment with social responsibility. Perhaps nowhere is this reflected more than in their taste in graphic design, which over the decades has ranged from lyrical incoherence to antiseptic order.Today their whims are defining the art market. Boomers are now the ones old enough to have accumulated the money--yet young enough to maintain the energy--to collect modern and contemporary art. The fortuitous combination of boomer collecting power and a new desire on the part of young artists to engage a wider audience has driven the market for contemporary art to unprecedented levels. From New York's...
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text: Prev Next God's Littlest Angels focuses on three primary areas of ministry to the people of Haiti: our Adoption Ministry, our Medical Ministry, and our Outreach Ministry. God's Littlest Angels was founded with its primary purpose being the provision of medical care to premature, malnourished, and abandoned infants in Haiti. This purpose still forms the core of our Ministry. However, we are regularly called upon to care for children of all ages who have been abandoned by their families, or have been given up by their families due to economic, medical or other circumstances. In order to address the needs that these children have for homes, God's Littlest Angels began our Adoption Ministry - placing the children in Christian homes in North America and Europe. God's Littlest Angels has assisted many children needing medical care that is not provided in Haiti. We have had children travel to the United States, Canada, Germany, and Spain for medical treatment and surgery. Most of these children returned to live with their biological families once treatment was finished. We also offer assistance to other orphanages in the community with children who are ill and need more intensive medical care. We work with the orphanage staff to train them on how to care for these children who come to them sick and malnourished. Another area we help in is a yearly sponsorship program that sends almost 350 local children to school. Only 1 out of every 3 children in Haiti attend school. It is very expensive and out of reach of the average Haitian family. We hope to influence the spiritual lives of Haitian families as they see Christians from other countries giving so freely to help improve their lives.


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Diane Kruger's Chanel beauty shoot unveiled
Diane Kruger's Chanel cosmetics campaign images have been revealed.
The actress was announced as the new ambassador for the luxury label's skincare line in April.
In a first look at the advertisement, the German star looks bronzed and natural as she poses against a faded beach backdrop.
The blonde has been casually styled, with her hair loosely tousled and swept back away from her face.
Diane exposes one shoulder in the promo picture and is wrapped in a neutral-coloured shawl.
The products Diane fronts are the brand's Resynchronizing Collection, which features the Le Jour de Chanel, La Nuit de Chanel and Le Weekend de Chanel creams.
These are all made to reenergise the skin, which is shown by Diane's smooth and bright complexion.
In the statement released about the signing, Chanel explained that Diane's beauty and elegance made her perfect for this campaign.
"Attracted by her sophistication and artistic spirit, the House of Chanel chose her for its Allure fragrance advertising campaign, then again for the Paris-Biarritz handbag advertising campaign, shot by Karl Lagerfeld," the statement explained. "Now an ambassadress for Chanel, Diane Kruger will be the face of a new skincare advertising campaign, due to be unveiled in 2013."
Chanel frontman Karl Lagerfeld has also been working on a new project featuring more of his favourite celebrities.
Karl is set to make a mini movie documenting the period in the mid-Fifties when Gabrielle Chanel hit America.
British-American actress Geraldine Chaplin is to portray the legendary designer with a host of famous faces including Rupert Everett joining the cast.
© Cover Media


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Andreas Mitisek
Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson Artistic Director
Andreas Mitisek is Artistic and General Director of Long Beach Opera (since 2003) and the Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson Artistic Director of Chicago Opera Theater (since 2012). He is the driving force behind every new COT concept and production. He creates the vision for each production and reaches out to artists to shape each work.
He is conductor, stage director and designer of many LBO productions. His site-specific productions in parking garages, swimming pools, night clubs, warehouses and the Port of Los Angeles have become a successful hallmark of LBO. Andreas Mitisek became LBO's principal conductor in 1998 and Artistic and General Director in 2004. Under Mitisek's leadership, LBO grew from 2 to 5 operas per season, and the supporting operating budget has expanded from $430,000 in 2003, to $1,5M in 2013, season subscriptions have increased by over 500%. By exploring unorthodox venues, he has been able to attract new audiences for opera and uphold LBO's artistic vision by presenting 20th century and rare works.
He has been named by Opera News as one of the 25 people that will be a major force in the field of opera in the coming decade. Mitisek was names LA Tastemaker by LA Times Magazine in 2009, Arts Leader of the Year by the Long Beach Arts Council in 2009 and was highlighted as one of the "2012 People" by LA WEEKLY. In 2014 he was awarded "Chicagoan of the Year in Classical Music" by the Chicago Tribune for his work with COT.
A native of Austria, he served as Music Director of the Wiener Operntheater from 1990 – 1997, the foremost contemporary opera company in Austria. Mr. Mitisek has conducted at the Wiener Volksoper, the Komische Oper in Berlin, the festival "Wien Modern", the Wiener Konzerthaus and Musikverein, and others. He is also sought after as a guest conductor in North America, leading productions for the Seattle Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Vancouver Opera, Austin Lyric Opera, Hawaii Opera Theater, Opera Theatre of St. Louis amongst others.
Mitisek's Recent COT credits: stage director/production designer for The Love Potion, stage director/production designer for Lucio Silla, conductor, stage director and production designer for Thérèse Raquin, conductor for Maria de Buenos Aires, and conductor for The Fall of the House of Usher.
Coming up next Mitisek will be the director/production designer for The Love Potion opening Sept. 30, 2016.


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|« Date » · « Thread »
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|"Tim Koop" <tvk...@hotmail.com>
|JVM crashes when using JSSE
|Fri, 23 Aug 2002 15:08:17 GMT
I have Tomcat working fine, but when I try to get the SSL working using JSSE, by uncommenting the lines in server.xml, Java crashes on me. I installed Tomcat 4.0.4 with the tomcat4-4.0.4-full.2jpp.noarch.rpm rpm. I installed Java SDK 1.3.1 with the IBMJava2-SDK-1.3.1-2.0.i386.rpm rpm. It all works fine till here. Then I found the following files and put them in /opt/IBMJava2-131/jre/lib/ext/ jcert.jar jnet.jar jsse.jar Then I ran the keytool, just like the instructions said and put the .keystore file in the tomcat4 directory. Then I uncommented the following lines in /var/tomcat4/conf/server.xml <!-- Define an SSL HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 8443 --> <Connector className="org.apache.catalina.connector.http.HttpConnector" port="8443" minProcessors="5" maxProcessors="75" enableLookups="true" acceptCount="10" debug="0" scheme="https" secure="true"> <Factory className="org.apache.catalina.net.SSLServerSocketFactory" clientAuth="false" protocol="TLS"/> <keystoreFile>/var/tomcat4/</keystoreFile> </Connector> When I restart at this point, I get the following error, which I concluded was a JVM core dump: stackpointer=0xbfffeda8 Writing Java core file .... Written Java core to /tmp/javacore9253.1030108102.txt I'm using a fresh install of Linux Red Hat 7.3 Can anyone give me any ideas on how to get this working? Thanks in advance. Tim Koop -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:email@example.com> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:email@example.com>
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Director Marc Levin
Writers Marc Levin, Sonja Sohn, Bonz Malone, Richard Stratton, Saul Williams
Stars Saul Williams, Sonja Sohn, Bonz Malone, Beau Sia
Certificate 15
Running time 1 hour 39 mins
Made US, 1997
Read The Wolf's review of "Slam"
What was previously a personal pasttime becomes an urgent mode of communicating with others when Ray attempts to sidestep prisoner violence with a virtuouso performance in the prison recreation yard. Real prisoners were used for the jail scenes in which anger and bitterness are palpable. Jail marks the fork in the road for Ray, as he must decide what to do with his life when he is released on bail. Lauren (U.S. poet Sonja Sohn), having fought the odds herself, encourages him to pursue his talent for positive change, while the reaction from his neighbourhood friends is mixed.
This film is driven by a fantastic soundtrack, and dynamic camera work that avoids being too obtrusive. Williams and Sohn give incredibly raw poetry performances and much of the dialogue has an improvisational feel. Without being naive, the film is a powerful illustration of people refusing to be beaten by the system, and fighting back against poverty and racism. This isn't a fairytale where suddenly everything is made alright, but neither is it a nightmare: if the individual hasn't given up, then there's hope for the community. This message is supported by the independent poetry careers of Williams and Sohn, who are using their talent to shake things up.
For more information on using iofilm content please visit our syndication page.


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On this day in 1843, Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol first went on sale. Since that time, it's become an iconic frame of reference for everything from the cartoon Mr. Magoo to Doctor Who to Blackadder (and many more beside, of course).
Many have their favorite version of Dickens's classic, whether it's a straight interpretation of the story or a riff; what's yours?


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Nancy Grace's twins were heavy on her mind during Monday night's Dancing with the Stars performance. The former prosecutor and opinionator extraordinaire danced to Moon River with partner Tristan MacManus in an artistic tribute to the fight for life she and twins John David and Lucy Elizabeth faced nearly four years ago.
On November 4, 2007 Nancy Grace gave birth to twins prematurely. Shortly thereafter the new mom landed herself back in the hospital with a pair of blood clots in her lungs. Nancy Grace, now 51-years-old, said at the time, "I just visited Lucy Elizabeth and John David last night in the neonatal unit. They were worth every ache, every pain, and every risk."
After Monday night's Dancing with the Stars performance, to the song Nancy Grace says is the first lullaby she ever sang to her children, the mother of two exquisitely healthy children reflected, "I very rarely look back on those times because they were so difficult. It was really touch and go for a long time trying to keep Lucy alive. The joyful part is I looked over at them tonight … and it all seems like kind of an odyssey we went through."
"It went on and on and on," Nancy Grace tells People of her long struggle to return to what she deems normal after her health struggles. "It was months after that when I finally got out of a wheelchair. Even up until about a year ago I still couldn't walk correctly, much less run the way I used to."
She added, "It's only … been the last year and a half I could … walk correctly after the delivery. This is a huge, huge stride forward for me. I really owe the dance tonight to Tristan because he knows the twins, and they love him, and he choreographed the entire thing to tell the story."
Check out Nancy Grace's Moon River tribute to the twins here:
At this point I'm not even going to pretend I'm a big Nancy Grace follower, nor do I quite feel the sentiment intended in Monday night's DWTS performance. It's not exactly that I'm not a fan — it's simply that my day is currently all filled up on opinion (thankyouverymuch) — enough that I need not tune into a cable news network for another voice to listen to. If I were in need of such a thing? Nancy Grace may just be my go-to gal. May.
As it stands I am, however, quite interested in the story of the traumatic birth of Nancy Grace's twins, specifically the idea that the event affected her long after the initial scare was over.
After giving birth to my first child I felt, possibly, as if I were going through symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
I'm embarrassed to even admit that, to be quite honest. Who am I to say such a thing when surely those diagnosed with the disorder by real medical professionals ought to receive due sympathy and not just a woman who eventually gave birth to a healthy child? My experience was difficult for sure, but not extremely excessive in comparison to the issues others have faced.
In hindsight I still feel a little silly saying such a thing. And yet, night after night — for many weeks afterward — my exhausted mind obsessively replayed the events of my giving birth like a tormented looped film. The pain, the worry, the fever, the hours of endurance. On and on…
In the years since I've been able to let the birth trauma go, thankfully.
Today, unexpectedly thanks to Nancy Grace's tribute, I'm reflecting on what I felt at the time. While still embarrassed a tad to stake a claim on a label I'm not sure I deserve, I also seek to do those feelings justice. Damn right that was the most traumatic thing I'd faced at the time!
Why doesn't anyone talk about this? I'd love to hear your story, if you're willing to share.
Have you felt traumatized by giving birth as Nancy Grace and I have?
Photo: PR Photos


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vintage postcard - matchbook - modern travel
wedding wednesday - save the date!
vintage postcard - matchbook - modern travel
27 comments
Oh my goodness what a great idea! I bet it captured your genuine excitement right after the fact, so that makes it special too! There are so many unique options out there for save the dates.ReplyDelete
Ohhh I love that idea!!! I bet they are adorable. So glad you shared!ReplyDelete
All of these are so great!ReplyDelete
One of the things I'm looking forward to most one day, is picking out save the dates, there are just so many fun things you can do with them these days :)
So glad you went for the photobooth! Do we get to see them sometime soon???! I bet they are adorable!ReplyDelete
Love the Madly in Love one! So fun!ReplyDelete
Great price! I've already been looking at save-the-dates even though I won't be sending mine out until like June. Your post made me think about our cute photobooth pics from his brother's wedding! Hmmm...ReplyDelete
I love the photo booth idea. And what a fantastic deal!! :)ReplyDelete
I love the Madly in Love idea! Too cute. The photobooth is really fun & I love magnets- we used one for ours after getting a couple. Easy to stick on the fridge & it lasts, unlike a paper one :)ReplyDelete
Such a cute idea! Can't wait to see what you come up with!ReplyDelete
Ah these are all adorable I love save the dates!!ReplyDelete
Love that idea!! Photobooth pictures are seriously the best!ReplyDelete
love your photobooth pictures! they are going to be fab! yay!! xoReplyDelete
I love all of these choices!!! Especially loving your photobooth idea :) {very familiar with that photobooth in the ACE!} You must show us your save the dates!!! I just kind-of, sort-of unveiled mine today {just a little glance} :) XO brynnReplyDelete
Love the photobooth strip Save-the-Date idea!ReplyDelete
adorable filmstrip layout!! will make a beautiful addition to all your guests' fridges :)ReplyDelete
I love love love the madmen themed save the date! I want to use this for something.ReplyDelete
"the perfect match"-- that is so cute!ReplyDelete
i love all of these. the photobooth idea is great!ReplyDelete
I used magnets from Magnet Street too for our save the dates! They turned out amazing. I'm sure yours will too!ReplyDelete
Can't wait to see how they turn out!ReplyDelete
adoreee the magnet photo booth idea!! very very cute. <3ReplyDelete
Good for you, Jillian! Such a great idea - that's where I put my photobooth strips anyway!ReplyDelete
Such a cute idea!! :)ReplyDelete
I'll have to dig our little fancy stamp picture up from somewhere & blog about it. It was a lot of fun to make too!
Love, Leigh
Love all these ideas–but yours is going to be so perfect for the two of you!ReplyDelete
I love Save the Dates because you can really let your personality shine through, since there is no "traditional" STD. And while I love all of these, I think the photobooth idea is perfect for the two of you and your engagement story! Do we get to see them any time soon???ReplyDelete
Thanks for linking up my dear! I hope to see you again next week!
Love the Mad Men inspired one. So clever & cute!ReplyDelete
The matches are brilliant!ReplyDelete
Love the magnet idea too:)


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Duquesne board rejects transfer plan
Duquesne City School District's board of directors voted 8-0 with one abstention on Thursday to reject a financial recovery plan presented by state-appointed chief recovery officer Paul B. Long.
"We did not get a chance to digest that plan," board president Dewayne Tucker said.
No one in an audience of approximately 50 in attendance spoke in favor of the plan.
Now Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas will appoint a receiver to implement Long's scenario of voluntary transfers of elementary students to other districts.
The court is expected to take the case on Tuesday.
Pennsylvania Department of Education spokesman Tim Eller said state education secretary Ronald Tomalis will petition the county court within five days, as required by the School District Financial Recovery Act 141.
The Duquesne board's next regular meeting is scheduled for Tuesday at 7 p.m.
Voting no were Tucker, board vice president Calvina Harris and Sonya Chambers, Laura Elmore, Rosia Reid, Cedric Robertson, Maxine Thomas and Theresa Thomas. Reid voted by telephone.
Director Burton Comensky abstained.
"I didn't particularly want to vote it down," Comensky said, "and I didn't want to vote against the board."
Long proposed sending Duquesne students to a district where schools meet Adequate Yearly Progress on Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests and accept a tuition of $8,000 each.
He had 11 districts in mind:
• East Allegheny and West Mifflin Area.
• Elizabeth Forward and South Allegheny, both of which have rejected the plan.
• Pittsburgh, whose administrators ran Duquesne's operations during 2006-07.
• West Jefferson Hills, where Allegheny Intermediate Unit director Linda Hippert is interim superintendent. AIU ran Duquesne operations from 2007 to 2011.
• Baldwin-Whitehall, Brentwood, Gateway, Norwin and South Park Township.
"This is not in our children's best interest to send (them) that far," resident Lina Washington said.
"East Allegheny is far enough," Whitmore said. "And every road going out to South Park is screwed up."
"Why don't we send them to a private school?" asked parent Keith Whitmore. He suggested that Serra Catholic High School in McKeesport might be a cheaper option.
"I would rather my daughter go to (a) charter school," parent Keith Thomas said.
"They have done no research on the effects this will have on our children," charter school advocate Connie Lucas said. "We refuse to have our children exported miles and miles from their parents, where they can't get to them if there is an emergency."
If the Duquesne receiver can't get other districts to accept the city's students by fall, Long said, "then we will need to continue to plan to have (kindergarten through sixth grade) here."
The Rev. Carolyn Perrin reiterated arguments she and her husband, the Rev. Archie Perrin, made at public forums and before the board on Tuesday.
She decried "gross negligence" in "this so-called recovery plan." She pointed again to how Duquesne scores are not counted in the PSSA ratings of East Allegheny or West Mifflin Area high schools. Duquesne youngsters have been sent to those schools by state mandate since 2007.
"You could have educated them better yourself here for less money," Carolyn Perrin said.
Her husband Archie Perrin, the outgoing Wilkinsburg superintendent, a former Duquesne administrator and pastor of Macedonia Baptist Church, was unable to attend the meeting.
"We are talking about people's lives here and their children's lives and their future," Archie Perrin said on Wednesday. "They have not considered the short-term or the long-term effect."
Robert Stump, a retired AIU consultant who raised seven children in Duquesne, suggested that the board "take a little more time before you vote."
Solicitor Andrew Evankovich said there was no time, because under the financial recovery act the board was at the end of a 10-day period for considering Long's plan.
Eller also said Act 141 "states that the district shall not be eligible for a financial recovery transitional loan and technical assistance from the department."
Before the vote, however, Long said the district would not get a $6,785,000 transitional loan that was in his plan because the department told him the money was not available. Eller did not have an response at presstime.
Had the board voted yes, Long said he also would have pursued $1 million in state funds for technical assistance.
Patrick Cloonan is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-664-9161, ext. 1967, or firstname.lastname@example.com.


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Last Updated: June 3, 2013
June 3, 2013-added Reopen Menu
Created: April 6, 2009
There are five (5) events available for use to file a Motion to Reopen a Case;
Reopen Chapter 11 Case
Reopen Chapter 12 Case
Reopen Chapter 13 Case
Reopen Chapter 15 Case
Reopen Chapter 7 Case
Select the event according to the chapter of the case.
If you are reopening the case for the Judge to rule on a specific matter, you also need to file that specific motion.
Examples: Motion to Avoid Lien, Motion to Vacate Discharge or Dismissal, Motion for Sanctions, etc.
You can file a Multi-part motion in one document with one proposed order.
Reopen Case Filing Fee
A filing fee is required as outlined below.
Step-by-Step Procedures:
Select [Bankruptcy>Motions/Applications]
Enter case number and click Next
Select Appropriate Reopen event from pick list and click Next
Select Party from party pick list
Click Next
REMINDER: The title of your proposed order should match the title of your motion. Please remember to attach your proposed order and select the category Proposed Order. If attaching more than 1 proposed order, please add the specific title in the description field. Example Proposed Order - Relief from Stay Proposed Order - Dismiss Case.
IMPORTANT! If you are reopening the case for the Judge to rule on a specific matter, you also need to file that specific motion. Examples: Motion to Avoid Lien, Motion to Vacate Discharge or Dismissal, Motion for Sanctions etc.
The PDF Document selection screen will display.
A fee screen may display. If yes, click Next. If no, Skip to Step 10.
The Hearing Screen will display.
The Modify Text screen will display.
Click Next
The Final Text screen will display. This is your final opportunity to modify the entry before submitting the filing.
Verify the accuracy of the docket text
Click Next to complete filing process
The Notice of Electronic Filing will display. It is the verification that the filing has been sent electronically to the court.
Copies of this notice and the document filed are emailed to all participants who receive electronic notification in the case. You have a period of 15 days for a one time free look at the document filed.


text:
LLT Group serves as a branding house that outputs amazing, visual appealing graphic designs for your Schaumburg IL. Design itself does not just stay in the local market. The image of your company carries throughout wherever your clients and prospects take it. For this reason our firm believes strongly in creating high resolution, lasting graphic design packs that will allow your branding to stand the test of time. With so much change in the world we set up Schaumburg IL companies to evolve with time as need be.
We do not simply focus on the here and now of creating you a logo design or print layout for the immediate term. Our graphic design is created with brand evolution and consistency in mind. The more consistent your graphic design the more recognizable your brand is in Schaumburg and beyond. Graphic design provides your company with a best foot forward in the marketplace and allows clients to more easily gravitate towards your strong Schaumburg graphic design elements.
LLT Group is a Chicago based organization. While we do not reside directly in Schaumburg that does not mean that we do not truly understand your graphic design needs. Our team is devoted to individually researching each clients competition, advantages and disadvantages regardless of the physical location. With a fully staffed graphic design department our team strive to provide successful branding campaigns. Call us today at (800) 883-3426.


text:
PAR 310 is a general purpose classroom scheduled by the U.T. Office of the Registrar with classroom technology managed by Liberal Arts ITS.
This Classroom has one data projector and one screen. It has no wireless microphone.
The technology suite has a height-adjustable, fixed, media desk. Additional components include:
a Document Camera and laptop connections integral to the desk, and a dual-boot Windows / Mac OS-X computer with USB connections in an adjacent equipment rack. External A/V inputs are located on the rack.
Please consult the Common Questions About Technology Classroom Operation for answers about using "smart classrooms". Although there are several variations of classroom technology deployed, across the College of Liberal Arts, you'll find them intuitively similar.
If you have general questions about the College of Liberal Arts classroom technology at The University of Texas, please consult our Frequently Asked Questions, or call our Classroom Help Desk at 512•471•9666. If you like, you may open a help-desk service request using this convenient form.


text:
Ridley Scott Talks The Counsellor
'It's classic Cormac McCarthy darkness'
With the finishing touches being applied to Prometheus, Ridley Scott's thoughts are already turning to his next project, The Counsellor. The great Cormac McCarthy is the man behind the script - his first original screenplay to date - and the director is gearing up to start shooting in mid-June, almost as soon as he's finished with his Prometheus press duties. No sunbathing and sangria for this man.
"We start a week after Prometheus comes out," says Scott, who's been speaking to Empire about the dark-hued crime thriller McCarthy has penned. "It has a classic Cormac McCarthy darkness which makes you sick to the pit of your stomach. It's really frightening. It's saying: 'Don't play with the devil, don't step across the line, don't think you can do it and get away with it. You can't'."
Shades of Prometheus' playing-with-fire theme perhaps? Like No Country For Old Men, McCarthy's novel that was turned into a mod-noir Western to such terrific effect by the Coen brothers, The Counsellor pitches a venal man in deep and over his head. That man is a respected lawyer (Michael Fassbender) who dips a toe into the drug business without preparing himself for the bleak consequences.
It's well-trodden McCarthy turf but something of a departure for Scott, who talks enthusiastically about the identity parade of good, bad and ugly characters the writer has created: "There are five wonderful characters with honestly some of the best dialogue I've ever read."
For more Sir Ridley exclusives on The Counsellor and Prometheus, check out Empire's May issue. It's on sale from Thursday, March 29.


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Rackable iSCSI system stacks up
S3118-iSCSI box makes for a smooth and simple SAN or a Windows or Linux storage server
Meeting growing storage requirements is no longer just a matter of accommodating a few more files. Thanks to legislation that mandates the archiving of e-mail and customer records and to the increased use of multimedia and VoIP apps, storage needs can double or triple in a very short time.
Although FC (Fibre Channel)-based SAN technologies offer easy-to-scale, high-performance solutions, there's also a place in enterprises for less-expensive, high-capacity systems. To that end, iSCSI SANs offer an easy, flexible, low-cost way to add storage for servers in situations where maximum throughput is not required.
Rackable Systems is best known for its blade server systems and Linux-based clusters, but its iSCSI appliances also show a good grasp of what the market wants. The S3118-iSCSI appliance system I received for review was a no-frills 3U storage system that holds as many as 18 250GB or 400GB SATA RAID Edition drives. The S3118 doesn't include storage management software, but the configuration software is excellent, performance is good, and the price is hard to beat.
Nuts and bolts
The Western Digital RAID Edition drives are engineered to run continuously -- rather than intermittently, as workstation drives are designed -- and are rated at a million hours MTBF (mean time between failures). The RAID Edition drives counter the objection some administrators have about SATA drives, namely that they are not as reliable as SCSI or FC drives. Only time will tell, but the RAID Edition drives should be reliable enough for most server applications.
In addition to slots for 16 drives in front, the S3118 has two additional drive slots in back, as well as an Ethernet management port, two Gigabit Ethernet network ports, and the standard assortment of server ports. The S3118 can function as a dumb iSCSI target or be configured as a Windows or Linux server using the two rear drives as mirrored boot drives. This requires installing the OS and then configuring the storage system to work with it, but it gives you a full server for the same cost as the basic appliance. A NAS version of the same hardware is also available.
The system I received had 18 250GB RAID Edition hard drives, an AMD Opteron 248 processor, 4GB RAM, two 3ware RAID controllers, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, and the management processor with a separate out-of-band Ethernet management port. Along with the dual controllers, redundancy features include dual power supplies and dual Ethernet interfaces. Naturally, multiple boxes can be clustered as well.
As an iSCSI appliance, the system is very easy to set up. It is configured with a default IP address on its embedded management interface, so a serial terminal or KVM connection is not necessary to make the initial configuration, just a Web browser. After the initial network configuration has been completed, the rest of the configuration is handled through the Wasabi Storage Builder 1500i for iSCSI Appliances software that Rackable uses for iSCSI services. The system comes with a default configuration, but changing the RAID configuration or volumes is simple and straightforward. In addition to software iSCSI clients, the S3118 supports Intel and Alacritech iSCSI accelerators.
If you've ever built an IP SAN, you know that configuring iSCSI can sometimes be problematic. Getting the necessary iSCSI credential, portal, and node settings, permissions for servers, and security settings to work on both ends isn't always easy or well documented. I found the Wasabi software did an excellent job, however -- everything worked the first time, both with Windows and Linux servers. The documentation is clear and concise, leading even an inexperienced user through the necessary steps to add storage to either a Windows or Linux server.
An iSCSI portal functions as the network that accesses the system. Wasabi offers excellent control over the configuration while providing a basic setup that will suffice for most users. The node settings determine the amount of disk space to be made available to a particular server. After you have set these, however, they can't be changed -- you can't expand the size of a node attached to a server dynamically. Wasabi supports iSNS (Internet Storage Name Service), an auto-discovery protocol for iSCSI, and it worked well.
What it is
You don't get many bells and whistles in the Wasabi software. You can create disk sets and volumes, set the RAID level to 1, 5, or 10, and make the volumes available to your servers. Volume spanning is supported, so if you want to make all 16 drives into one large volume, it can be done. But additional functions such as replication, virtualization, or dynamic expansion of volumes would require additional, third-party software.
What the S3118 does, it does well. It sustained server connections on two separate Gigabit Ethernet ports with transfer rates of 91MBps, which is about as good as you're going to get from iSCSI over Gigabit Ethernet.
The S3118-iSCSI is a basic iSCSI system that provides good performance, ease-of-use, and great value. The flexibility of converting the appliance to a server simply by installing an OS makes this system even more attractive. If you're looking for sophisticated storage management features, you won't get them here, but at less than $20,000 for a 7TB system, you shouldn't expect extras. Rackable Systems should be on the short list for anyone looking for a simple way to add storage to existing servers.
|InfoWorld Scorecard
Reliability (20.0%)
Performance (20.0%)
Interoperability (10.0%)
Management (20.0%)
Value (10.0%)
Scalability (20.0%)
Overall Score (100%)
|Rackable Systems S3118-iSCSI