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Jeanne Catherine founded Divine Play to provide a training space for the Charlottesville community and it's many personal and professional relationships. Professional women gather here to put down their busy lives and uncover the simple truth about how to live life effortlessly and thrive. By learning the basic principles behind the human experience, these women learn to play and work in new and unexpected ways that result in sustainable, productive and more enjoyable relationships with family, friends and colleagues. But more importantly, happier, healthier and more delightful lives!
We provide Three Principles training in a variety of formats, with both individual and group programs ranging from 1 day to 13 months. The most common programs are our 4-day individual coaching intensives and our 9-month group training programs. We also offer frequent workshops on various topics.
"In working with Jeanne Catherine, I've realized that the more I am deeply grounded in the understanding for myself of the Three Principles, the less I need tools and ways to grow my business. I have faith in my own ideas coming forward to do this. Jeanne has been profoundly effective in helping me see this. She has an uncanny sense of knowing what is needed in the moment. As a result of this course and our conversations, I feel I am in the best place to know what is best to work for me in growing my business than I have ever been and welcome the opportunities available."
Joanne Hillard
"To me it feels like complete divine intervention that caused me to be introduced to Jeanne Catherine (& Divine Play)! I feel so fortunate to have her as a mentor. Jeanne's warm, accessible, vivacious and gentle demeanor--in combination with her unbelievable ability to listen and crystalize what is really going on--is so incredibly helpful, and fun! Jeanne, you are a powerful helper and a magnet for many! I hope our paths cross often in the years to come!"
Joanna Hill, MSW, California,
"Jeanne Catherine-Gray has a highly developed skill set that transcends traditional notions of what the term skill set was devised for. Yes, she has all the necessary business acumen acquired from building a successful Three Principles-based enterprise; but, what seems to set her apart from others is her ability to connect a student's or client's heart to the heart of what's really important and impactful in pursuing a viable enterprise of one's own — that vital, ignore-at-your-own-peril wellspring of wisdom within each of us."
Joel Drazner
"I have just watched the 8th session of Business of 3 Principles. I loved it. I loved the whole series. I loved your honesty! For me it was …WOW…you just say how it is for you and bring examples from your practice to illustrate points."
Dorothy Martin
"Thank you, very helpful and enjoyable! The actual program focused on helping us see how formless spiritual wisdom and habitual thinking are playing in the arena of business. What was most impactful was observing Jeanne working with us, responding to people's questions. I learned a lot from Jeanne's honesty and inner comfort."
Karolina Galdych
"I hadn't realized how much more confident I was in sharing the principles until I actually went out and did just that to a group of people that had never heard of them before. It was so much fun to watch people engage with the material and glean insights from each other. Throughout the day there were times when a response to a question would come to me - and other times when it didn't - and both felt equally OK. This group [with Jeanne] has quieted down the noise in my head that there is a "right" way to share the principles and that I must find that right way."
Julie Gray
"When I think of Jen, I think of fun, playfulness, ease and grace. She is a supportive listener committed to my well being and aliveness and that of all peoples. Well worth the investment in time, energy, money. Jen offers a gentle approach that reflects my own clarity back to me." My experience during the four days with Jen was both profound and totally pragmatic. Things just look different, from how I handle a conversation at work to how I pray with my children at night."


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Ex-Sen. Rick Santorum entered the campaign against same-sex marriage in Washington state on Tuesday with an apocalyptic warning about its potential consequences on America's families and churches.
The former Republican presidential candidate spoke to a closed-door Spokane fundraiser for the Family Policy Institute of Washington. He was preceded to the podium by U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers, a leader in Mitt Romney's state campaign and member of the House Republican leadership.
"This is a turning point in American history and, yes, the state of Washington," Santorum argued. A video of Santorum's address was obtained by SeattlePI.com.
"The movement you are fighting is the most important movement to win," Santorum added. He said it is even more important that the movement to block abortion in America. He warned that marriage will "disintegrate" along with the American family if same-sex marriage becomes legal.
"This issue will destroy and undermine the church in American more than any other movement," said Santorum.
Washington, Maryland and Maine are voting on marriage equality in November. No state has ever approved same-sex marriage at the polls, but opinion polls in all three states have shown marriage equality in the lead.
Joseph Backholm, head of the Family Policy Institute of Washington, is the chief spokesman against Referendum 74, the measure which would make Washington the seventh state to adopt marriage equality.
Opponents are "on the side of truth," Santorum told his audience, "You folks are in the front line. You folks are in the foxhole."
Supporters of marriage equality have amassed an $8.9 million campaign war chest. They have aired TV spots featuring Methodist and United Church of Christ ministers. A group of 63 former Roman Catholic priests is scheduled to endorse Referendum 74 at a Thursday morning news conference.
As in California four years ago, hover, opponents are rallying late in the campaign. They have reserved $1.5 million in TV time. The Catholic Bishop of Yakima, the Rt. Rev. Joseph Tyson, issued a pastoral letter on Referendum 74, claiming: "It endangers our religious liberty and the right of conscience."
A longtime critic of gay rights — he even raised the issue of bestiality after the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 ruling that threw out Texas' anti-sodomy law — Santorum charged that foes of marriage equality are being "cast as bigots."
In Santorum's words, "a secular revolution, a Godless revolution" has swept across every Western European country, which he said "is why they are declining."
The revolution threatens to cross the pond, he argued. If successful, it will "destroy the institutions of America's foundation, destroy the American family," Santorum said.
The former Republican presidential candidate noted that the percentage of Americans who are married has declined from 72 percent to 51 percent in recent years.
He talked of a movement of "normalization, acceptance, tolerance" of the gay/lesbian lifestyle that has grown up since the mid to late 1990′s, aided by "elites" and the "popular culture."
"This will be the norm in America," he said. "This is what you are fighting. You are on the front lines."

subset: commoncrawl


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Russ Hersman remembers his first class at Multnomah like it was yesterday. How could you forget your professor shouting the entire Greek alphabet at you as he entered the room?
Everyone in Greek class felt intimidated that day. But despite the jarring welcome to higher education, Hersman was happy to find that professors didn't just dictate facts and walk away — they encouraged students to research and think for themselves.
"They would tell us to check things out on our own," said Hersman, MU's Alumnus of the Year Award Winner for 2014. "They'd say, 'Don't believe something just because you read it or heard it. Look at the Word to see what it says.'"
'I didn't want to go anywhere else'
Raised around the Church, Hersman was no stranger to Christianity. But what he learned in college changed him for good. "My faith got solidified at Multnomah," he said. "As a result, I really wanted to help other people get to know God."
In high school, Hersman had made a commitment to become a missionary. He knew he must prepare for the work, and he knew where he'd go. Like missions, Multnomah seemed destined for him. His church had several connections to the college, and his pastor was an alumnus. "It was a natural choice," Hersman said. "I didn't want to go anywhere else."
'What's a Wycliffe?'
Hersman was in his second semester Greek class when he heard something that would change his life forever.
In a class full of men, the only woman in the room struck his curiosity. "I asked her why she was taking Greek," Hersman said. "She told me she wanted to be a Wycliffe Bible translator. I asked her, 'What's a Wycliffe?'"
Once Hersman learned that Wycliffe was one of the largest Bible-translating organizations in the world, he knew where he wanted to work.
During his second year at Multnomah, Hersman met his wife, Lynda, who shared his desire to translate the Scriptures. The couple married in 1972. After he graduated in 1978, Hersman and his wife were working for Wycliffe and ready to move anywhere in the world.
'We've had an impact'
The Hersmans were sent to the Toposa community, a small town in Sudan, where they began the Toposa translation project. "We thought we were going to spend the rest of our lives there," Hersman said. "But a year into it, I felt like I was a square peg trying to beat myself into a round hole. We knew we were in the wrong place."
The couple spoke with their boss, who challenged them to stay in Africa for another six months and shift their focus to administration. "I just wanted to go home and lick my wounds," Hersman said. But he decided stay, and administration turned out to be a perfect fit.
While living in Africa, Hersman was as a linguist, translator, office manager, support services manager and branch director. He also served several terms on executive committees in Sudan and Kenya. "I got to work with several languages, not just one," he said.
The Hersmans still have a heart for the unreached people in Africa. They were honored to receive a certificate of appreciation from the Tira community for their support of the Tira translation. "It's very satisfying to know that we were a part of the big picture," he said. "By being faithful, we've had an impact on a global level."
'From the rainforest to the tundra to the highlands'
After 21 years in Africa, the Hersmans moved back to the States to take care of Hersman's mother. At the same time, Wycliffe's headquarters moved from Huntington Beach, Calif., to Orlando, Fla. The Hersmans decided to follow suit, and they've been living in Orlando ever since.
Hersman worked in the personnel office at Wycliffe's headquarters for five years, first as an administrator and later as the director. He then served as senior vice president until 2012, when he became chief operations officer. Hersman is responsible for leading Wycliffe's executive team as they mobilize prayer, people and funds for the greatest acceleration of Bible translation ever known.
"Right now, more Bible translations are being started each year than any other time in the Church's history," he said. "Within the past 14 years, 1,100 translation projects have been started. There are still 1,900 languages that need translations." Wycliffe's goal is to have a Bible translation project started for each of these languages by 2025.
"It's an amazing thing to be a part of," Hersman said. "I get up and go to work, and what I'm doing is having an impact from the rainforest to the tundra to the highlands."
'The glory goes to God'
Michelle Underwood, Multnomah's director of alumni relations, says Hersman's commitment to honoring God and putting others first is one of the reasons he was selected as MU's Alumnus of the Year.
"Integrity, transparency, honor and respect describe Russ Hersman and the life he lives," Underwood said. "His years at Wycliffe demonstrate to MU students a longevity and passion for biblical exegesis, literacy, training and translation. We are delighted to honor him this year."
Hersman said he's humbled by the recognition and grateful to be selected. "I'm rarely at a loss for words, but I was speechless when I found out," he said. "The glory goes to God."
For students wanting to get involved in Bible translation, Hersman has some words of wisdom: "Get in touch with us," he said. "Complete your studies and go! Multnomah was hugely important in preparing me for ministry. Looking back, I have no regrets."


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It is possible, but unless you're an engineer, it's not recommended. Far too many people attempt to do this and end up damaging their DVD players. Also, by attempting to modify it yourself, you void any manufacturer's warranty.
Some of our DVD players do have the ability to play CDs. Consult the specifications on each model to find one suitable for you.
Yes, as long as recording part is concerned. No matter what type of Camcorder you have, PAL or NTSC, all Camcorders AC power ADAPTER/BATTERY chargers are designed to operate on any voltage worldwide automatically ranging from 120 volts to 220/240 volts 50/60 Hz. However you might need necessary plug adapter simply to fit in that country's electrical outlet. But to play NTSC recorded tapes overseas, either you need a multi system TV or multi system VCR built-in video system converter or multi system with a separate video system converter.
Your American system (NTSC) TV and VCR with appropriate voltage transformer can only be used overseas for playing back your U.S. home videos and video games. TV will not receive local broadcast channels and VCR will not play local tapes and record off the TV reception because most countries use PAL or SECAM TV system. We recommend multi system TVs and VCRs because they give you flexibility to use them with any TV and Video System and can operate on 120 VOLT or 220-240 VOLT 50/60 HZ in any country in the world. As with your NTSC Camcorder you need to replace it with a PAL Camcorder unless you have a multi system TV.
Yes, As long as total wattage of all your appliances do not exceed than the wattage capacity of a voltage transformer. Also consider only 80% wattage capacity of voltage converter than wattage rating of your appliance (s) to avoid damage caused by power fluctuation.


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San Diego: Italian Greyhound Breeders
Below is a sample search of our Italian Greyhound breeders with puppies for sale. The search tool above returns a list of breeders located nearest to the zip or postal code you enter. From there you can see photos of their pups, find detailed information on their web page and contact them by email, phone or even get driving directions.
(Detailed contact information has been omitted. Enter your zip or postal code above to access our up-to-date directory).
This is a FREE search tool! Use the form at the top to get complete listings for breeders in your area!
Services: Puppies
We are family owned and have top quality healthy pups. We do many different colors. We have pups available now Jan 2020
Aurelie's IG's
Services: Puppies,Adult Dogs,Rescue
Beautiful and healthy IGs: champions, AKC registered, shots, wormed, dewclaws removed, written health guarantee, vet certificate. Feel free to call or email anytime with questions. Pups available now.
Wahl To Wahl Italian Greyhounds
Services: Puppies
Call us at 937-539-1751. We have several puppies available. They were born on 4/5/19. Visit us on Instagram at wahltowahliggys. Visit our website at: Wahltowahlitaliangreyhounds.com
Services: Puppies,Adult Dogs,Stud Service,Rescue
Crosswinds Farm
Services: Puppies,Adult Dogs
We raise quality AKC Italian Greyhounds in our home with lots of TLC so you get a well started, healthy companion to be a member of your family. Beautiful puppies are available now from show lines.
Joyful's Italian Greyhounds
Services: Puppies,Adult Dogs
WE ARE COMMITTED TO RAISING WONDERFUL,IN HOUSE RAISED PUPS THAT ARE WELL LOVED. 1 pup available
Quality Italian Greyhounds
Services: Puppies,Stud Service
Puppies puppies and MORE puppies. Click on "more information" for photos and details.
Important: breeders.NET has not screened the listed breeders and accepts no responsibility for their reputation or quality. It is your responsibility to investigate. See How to Find a Dog.


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Stand Out, Go Beyond Ordinary
When it Comes to Your Business, Looks ARE Important.
You marketing materials - business cards, stationary, brochures, flyers, etc. - should portray a professional image, be consistent, and reflect the style of your business.
When your brochures contain outdated information, your business cards list the wrong contact information, and your letterhead is non-existent; you're sending a negative message to potential customers. It says you just don't care about your business or you don't have the funds to purchase new materials.
At Sytek we have graphic designers with the skills and experience your business needs. We can create outstanding essential-marketing materials (logos, business cards, letterhead, envelopes, brochures, etc.) that will make your business stand out from the crowd while also keeping money in your pocketbook. We know how to create unique designs from scratch or from your existing materials. Incorporating the colors you want, a photo you like, or even professionally creating an item you quickly pasted together, it's all second nature to our graphic designer team.
Our Professional Graphic Design Services Include:
- Bill Stuffers
- Rack Cards
- Newspaper, Magazine, & Print Advertisings
- Restaurant Menus
- And More!


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Another inspiration from The Barefoot Contessa... Peanut Butter & Jelly Bars. I highly recommend you only make these if you have someone or multiple people to share them with. They are good. Crave-able good. In fact, just writing about them right now is making me crazy for them. It is settled. I'll be making another batch of them today. I think I'll have one, save one for Mike, then take the rest over to the neighbor's so I don't finish them off before the end of the day.
Jenny : Should I add oats to these to make them kind of healthy?
Mike : Nahhh.
Jenny : Ya, you're right. Nahhh. But, then they would be sort of like breakfast bars. I could eat them for breakfast.
Mike : They're cookies, you won't want them for breakfast.
Jenny : Ya, you're right.
Guess what? I did want them for breakfast. Lunch and dinner....
They are everything you'd hope them to be. Dense, peanut buttery, and crumbly with a layer of sweet raspberry jam that has thicken in the oven. For a peanut butter fanatic, they are divine. Let me know if you try them with oats - I'd love to hear how it goes. I did nothing differently from the original recipe except I used chunky PB and added extra nuts to the top. I like the crunchy texture they add. Oh, and this is just half of the original recipe. There is no need to tempt yourself by an entire large pan of these. No need.
Peanut Butter & Jelly Bars
1 stick of butter, at room temperature
3/4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 extra-large egg
1 cup of crunchy peanut butter
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 cup of raspberry jam or other jam
1/2 cup salted peanuts, coarsely chopped
In a mixer, cream together butter and sugar for 2 minutes. Add vanilla, egg and peanut butter. Mix until well incorporated. Add flour, baking powder and salt. Mix together on low, just until incorporated.
Grease a 9x9 pan. Put 2/3 of the mixture in and press it into the bottom. Spread the jam over the dough layer. Add the chopped peanuts to the remaining 1/3 of the dough mixture. Mix it together (with your hands) until the peanuts are mixed in. Crumble the mixture over the jam layer.
Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Let it cool for 20 minutes before cutting to let the jam set.
It is basically a peanut butter cookie dough. Press 2/3s of it in the bottom of the pan.
Spread the jam. When it cooks, it bubbles up and thickens into a chewy gel. So good!


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They team over at the official BlackBerry HelpBlog have posted a handy How-To tutorial describing the process of installing applications to your BlackBerry device via BB App World from your desktop computer.
If you don't have a BlackBerry ID then you are going to need one to be able to install applications using the desktop storefront. You can obtain a BlackBerry ID by clicking the Register link at the top of the BB App World website, or by using the BB App World app on your BlackBerry device. Do you just want to check things out without having to get a ID? No problem, as you will still be able to browse the BB App World catalog without a BlackBerry ID.


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20 Habits That Make Your Anxiety Worse
Many Americans struggle with mental health dilemmas on a daily basis. While awareness of these conditions is ramping up, there are still many who are unaware of how to identify and treat what's going on with their mental health. Anxiety, for instance, is excessively common, and seems to be on the rise. In America, current estimates show that at least 40 million adults struggle with anxiety at any given time.
But perhaps just as prevalent as the anxiety disorders themselves are the habits than may make symptoms worse. While many of the causes of the mental health condition are largely unavoidable (which you likely know if you do live with an anxiety disorder), there are certain factors that can amplify or exacerbate some symptoms. The difference between a manageable anxious feeling and a full-blown debilitating anxiety attack may be somewhat within your control. Avoiding triggers of symptoms is a good place to start. Without even realizing what can induce these symptoms, people often fall into habits that give them the worried, jittery, anxious thoughts they wish they could avoid.
Symptoms of anxiety vary from person to person. But common signals you might experience the condition include rapid breathing, nervousness, feelings of panic or doom, sweating, and trembling, among other uncomfortable experiences. To mitigate the effect of these symptoms on your life, try to steer clear of these 20 habits that may make them worse.istockphoto.com
Always Checking Your Phone
Phones serve as tempting distractions from our daily lives, offering the promise of constant social interaction and stimulation. However, their effects might be more detrimental than beneficial. Social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook have been shown to increase symptoms of anxiety and depression in those who use them. Even checking your email too often could have a harmful effect, according to a 2017 report by the American Psychological Association. The habit of constantly checking for notifications was associated with higher reported stress levels across the board.istockphoto.com
Drinking Alcohol
People who experience anxiety are actually more likely to drink alcohol in general, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America - though that might not be the best thing for their mental health. A 2012 study showed that heavy alcohol use can actually change the wiring of your brain and make you more prone to experiencing symptoms of anxiety.istockphoto.com
Drinking Coffee
Coffee has its health benefits, but overdoing it could ramp up your anxious symptoms. Caffeine is a stimulant, meaning that it can increase heart rate and make people feel more alert. However, studies show the stimulant effects of caffeine can also make people with anxiety feel more restless and exhibit stronger symptoms. If you need a beverage with less caffeine, you might want to try one of these energizing alternatives to coffee in the morning.istockphoto.com
Eating Low-Carb
Do you crave carbs when you're sad? There could be some biological influence at play. According to the Mayo Clinic, carbohydrates are thought to increase the serotonin in your brain, easing anxiety and boosting your mood. Whole grains, such as quinoa, whole-wheat breads and pastas, and oatmeal, have essential nutrients that keep you energized throughout the day.istockphoto.com
Eating a Low-Fat Diet
Omega-3 fatty acids, found in foods such as salmon, walnuts, and canola oil, have been shown in studies to reduce damaging inflammation and calm down symptoms of anxiety. If you don't get enough of these healthy fats, you will likely feel the effects. Other reasons you should eat more fat? Fats help your heart, your brain, and numerous other organs in your body to function at their best.istockphoto.com
Eating Too Few Calories
People sometimes underestimate the number of calories they really need in a day, especially when they're calorie counting for the purpose of weight loss. But that's a really bad idea, both for your physical and mental health. When you're not eating enough, your body gets really stressed. In one famous study investigating the effects of a calorie-restricted diet, the repercussions of just one diet stretched to impact the remainder of participants' lives, even sending one to a psychiatric hospital for treatment. While the specifics of these effects are still unclear, we do know that dieting worsens existing mental health conditions - including anxiety.istockphoto.com
Getting Road Rage
Driving is definitely stressful - especially when you're running late or running into a particularly nasty concentration of traffic. But getting angry about whatever incident you drove through won't help. In fact, it will only serve to give you the physical symptoms of anger, such as an increased heart rate and muscle tension. These physical symptoms can actually end up making you more anxious after the fact.istockphoto.com
Negative Thoughts
Moderating your own negative self-talk can be tricky, especially in a society so prone to poor body image and worry. According to the Mayo Clinic, positive thinking is essential for mitigating stress. There are some simple things you can do to improve your self-image. Try a few of those out and focus on fostering gratitude to brighten the monologue going on in your head.istockphoto.com
Never Exercising
Skipping the gym one day isn't going to make much of a difference, and could actually be a good idea if your body is feeling sore or strained. However, if you're skipping it every day, your mental health could start to pay a toll. Studies have shown that a lack of physical activity - such as, for example, sitting all day - can lead to an increase in feelings of anxiety. Luckily, you don't have to work out intensely to mitigate these effects. Even low-intensity movement can make a drastic difference in your mood. Go for a walk after work or hop in the pool with your kids. Any movement, no matter how intense, is beneficial for balancing your stress hormones.istockphoto.com
Not Drinking Enough Water
Many people don't even realize it, but they fail to drink enough water every day. Think about it: Do you even know how much water you're supposed to be drinking? If you don't drink enough, a number of physical effects can happen. But dehydration can have effects on your mental health, too. Since dehydration ramps up your heart rate and can make you feel light-headed - both of which are symptoms of anxiety attacks - it can make people prone to panic attacks extra anxious.istockphoto.com
Not Eating Enough Protein
There's a wealth of evidence that suggests blood sugar plays a role in anxiety symptoms. When you don't eat enough protein and rely solely on carbohydrates for fuel, your blood sugar is likely to fluctuate. Cue energy crashes - and an uptick in your anxiety.istockphoto.com
Not Paying Bills on Time
Financial stress is a common trigger for people suffering from anxiety. By putting off paying your bills, you're letting those stressors pile up. Find an organization system that works for you so that you don't miss deadlines on important bills. They're not fun to pay, but they're even less fun to worry about while they remain unpaid.istockphoto.com
Taking time to rest and regroup, whether it's through meditation or taking time to laugh with friends, is crucial for managing anxiety. When you're overcommitted, you're less likely to have space for these rejuvenating activities. There are ways to fit mindfulness into even the busiest of schedules - but making sure you don't overcommit and stress yourself out is a good habit to get into.istockphoto.com
You might be procrastinating specifically because you're feeling anxious - but seriously, putting off that stressful task is not going to make it go away. The only way to get rid of the anxiety your to-do list is giving you is to plow through it, one thing at a time. If you're overwhelmed by the big picture of how much you need to get done, try compartmentalizing your to-do list into smaller, more manageable tasks. Every time you accomplish one, your brain actually will release a dose of dopamine, giving you a sense of achievement and fighting off those swirling anxieties.istockphoto.com
Skipping Meals
It might be a great way for millennials to save some cash, but that's about it. It's not a great weight loss solution and it's not a great habit for your mental health, either. Skipping meals can cause a dip in your blood sugar, which can crash your energy and your mood. It can also mess with your anxiety - make sure you eat consistent, nutritious meals throughout the day. If you're too busy in the morning to make breakfast, try one of these on-the-go options.istockphoto.com
Smoking cigarettes is a nasty habit for more reasons than one - cigarettes can affect your cancer risk, mess with your lung health, and put you at risk for tooth decay. But the substances in cigarettes can actually affect your mental health, as well. Though people often will reach for a smoke in a time of stress, this relaxing effect is temporary. In the long term, smoking is associated with increased anxiety and tension, according to the Mental Health Foundation.istockphoto.com
Spending All Day Inside
Sure, staying inside is nice and cozy, but you don't want to overdo it. Sunlight has a large number of health benefits and is necessary to balance your circadian clock. According to research reported by Time, fresh air and sunlight can boost feelings of vitality, help you fall asleep better, and even mitigate symptoms of depression and anxiety. A little fresh air can do a whole lot of good!istockphoto.com
Staying In Every Weekend
Especially if you're someone who struggles with social anxiety, staying in can sound like a breath of fresh air. And going out to socialize? Well that must make anxiety worse, right? But that's not always the case. No matter your levels of extroversion, isolation can make things worse. Social support has been proven to mitigate feelings of anxiety, and maintaining close relationships is a crucial component to anxiety treatment. Isolation, by contrast, only serves to leave you alone with your anxious thoughts - which may worsen your symptoms.istockphoto.com
Staying Up Late
Night owl or not, you should be paying attention to your bedtime. Sleep and your mental health go hand in hand, and when you don't get enough sleep, it can significantly worsen your depressive and anxious symptoms. One recent study showed that getting less than eight hours of sleep can worsen negative thoughts that lead to anxiety. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, a lack of sleep can make anxiety worse - which then leads to a more difficult time falling and staying asleep. It's a vicious cycle. Try to get those eight hours when you can.istockphoto.com
Taking Drugs
Many types of drugs can have side effects that cause anxiety. Some of these drugs are necessary to take due to another medical condition - ADHD, for example, or asthma. For medications that otherwise improve your quality of life, it may be worth enduring a little extra anxiety. However, illegal drugs and unnecessary supplements don't have many benefits to your overall wellness. Stop taking these immediately - and try and eradicate these other hidden sources of anxiety from your life, as well.istockphoto.com


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Dragon Mouth/Bad Blood Package Deal
This is a package deal for those that missed out on the Bad Blood split 7" the band did with Aeges last year. So we combined the debut EP Dragon Mouth, along with split 7" in one handy little package and knocked a few bucks off. So it contains:
- Dragon Mouth LP (translucent swamp green, limited to 300)
- Dust Moth/Aeges Bad Blood 7" (translucent red vinyl w/grey splatter, limited to 300)
"Following their split 7" with LA's Aeges released last October, Dust Moth now prepares to release their debut EP, Dragon Mouth. A dense, layered genre-defying statement in six distinct movements. The band is comprised of current & former members of such influential bands as These Arms Are Snakes, Minus The Bear, Narrows, Undertow, Aeges and XVIII Individual Eyes.
Taking the sound hinted at on their debut single "Toto," the band has upped the ante for themselves across the board. The songs are deceptively heavy while simultaneously lush with atmosphere, as Irene Barbaric's haunting croon floats effortlessly above it all. The album spans the emotional spectrum with some moments feeling unbearably morose and others feeling utterly triumphant. Few debut EPs sound this confident, this direct, or this special.
Dragon Mouth was produced, recorded, and mixed by Matt Bayles, who is also a full time member of the band (keys). His resume is no secret, and includes legendary bands such as Isis, Mastodon, Botch, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and many more. It was then sent off to be mastered by Chris Common (Palms, Pelican, The Sword). The album will be released on April 22nd via The Mylene Sheath."


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The Mathematica Edge
Mathematica Student Edition is a great investment because it will grow with you, and you can use it throughout your student and professional career. With Mathematica Student Edition, you will...
Get better grades
Mathematica can help you master concepts, so you'll do better in school (and after graduation).
Save money
You can use Mathematica for a variety of courses, homework assignments, and projects without needing to buy specialized software for each task.
Save time
Mathematica requires no time investment to learn, so you can start using it immediately.
Get prepared for your future
Using Mathematica means you'll be learning a software that is used by Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, research labs, and universities worldwide.


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When it came to dealing with newspapers, PR man Brian Tierney was known as a bare-knuckled advocate who would bully and intimidate if thats what it took to get his way. Now hes the CEO of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News. Rather than running for cover, journalists are hoping his energy, optimism and connections will breathe new life into the long-suffering former Knight Ridder papers.
Rachel Smolkin
Brian P. Tierney, the head of an investors group that in June purchased the whipsawed Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, understands the importance of image. When I meet him in late June in a windowed 12th floor conference room in the newspapers' shared building, he speaks passionately yet carefully about his new purchase, politely countering his detractors "with all due respect," pledging for perhaps the thousandth time that he will not interfere with news stories and insisting he'll be particularly sensitive to staying out when coverage concerns one of his numerous former public relations and advertising clients, from Verizon to the Pennsylvania State Lottery to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
The image he puts forth this afternoon is one of a responsible steward whose privately held company can be trusted to guide two important civic institutions into the future. He also projects three qualities that in recent years have often been absent in discussions about newspapers' future: energy, optimism and ambition. Tierney is a dreamer stepping into an industry so shackled by its despair that it often seems more preoccupied with writing its obituary than imagining its future. If bold business vision and vigorous marketing provide the antidote to this torpor, then Tierney's stewardship could not only revitalize Philadelphia's papers but also provide a model for other owners struggling to reposition their newspapers and reinvigorate advertising in an era of transformation.
If Hollywood is searching for a compelling newspaper script and there hasn't been a decent newspaper movie since Michael Keaton and Glenn Close came to blows in "The Paper" in 1994 it could hardly do better than Tierney taking over the Inquirer. Consider: The Inquirer, once a Pulitzer Prize-winning colossus, and its rival sibling, the Daily News, a gritty tabloid legendary for its sports and sauciness, suffer mightily under harsh budget cuts as corporate owner Knight Ridder struggles to meet Wall Street's unceasing demands for higher returns. Restive shareholders force a Knight Ridder sale, and McClatchy, the buyer, immediately announces that it will shed 12 papers in stagnant markets, including Philadelphia. Demoralized journalists brace for more bad news.
Enter Brian Tierney, a Philly PR and ad maven, a Republican activist, a force in the city's corporate, civic and religious communities, and a sometime Inquirer nemesis. Savvy, dynamic and aggressive, a brawler in a city overflowing with brawlers, Tierney is unabashed in advancing himself and the institutions he represents. In the past he has clashed bruisingly with the Inquirer and its reporters to promote his clients' interests. Now he proposes to make representation of the paper and its journalists a full-time mission.
Tierney forms a group of local investors, diverse in backgrounds, gender, race and politics, with ties to some of the largest business interests in the region, including luxury homebuilders, car dealerships, a diet-food company and a union pension fund. They form Philadelphia Media Holdings, with Tierney as chief executive and spokesman. On May 23, they pull off a dramatic victory portrayed by the group's advisers and the media as a major upset by the underdogs against five out-of-town suitors. In a city that prides itself on its parochialism almost as much as its cheesesteaks, Tierney's group wrests control from an outside corporation and brings it back home. The group agrees to pay $515 million in cash and assume pension liabilities of $47 million in exchange for the 350,457-circulation Inquirer, the 116,590-circulation Daily News, the papers' shared Web site (Philly.com) and a variety of weeklies and community publications.
Tierney holds a masterful press conference, telling assembled staffers, "I really do believe from the bottom of my heart that the next great era of Philadelphia journalism begins today right here in this room." He confronts concerns about conflicts of interest and his tumultuous history with the Inquirer, announces that the investors have signed a pledge not to interfere "with the editorial policies or decisions of the publisher" and promises a new era of investment. His candor and enthusiasm give many staffers hope.
How does the script end? Hard to say. Option 1: The investors succumb to their worst impulses. They tamper with the news and squeeze greater and greater financial returns out of their new properties, further diminishing the papers. They install more pliable newsroom leadership. Tierney's penchant for advocacy proves incompatible with the neutrality and fact-gathering so essential to journalism. He is unable to shift his energies from controlling news even suppressing news to championing aggressive coverage.
Option 2: In classic Hollywood style, the hometown team saves the day against the odds, rescuing the Inquirer from desperation and the Daily News from obliteration. The investors remain faithful to their pledge, create buzz about the papers among their neighbors, boost circulation, invest in the Web site and attract advertisers. They usher in a new era of vitality in the Philadelphia media and create a model for an industry in the throes of transition.
Achieving success will require a dramatic change in attitude, in presentation, in spin , an area in which Tierney excels and newspaper people traditionally do not. "Oh, my God, I think you guys just beat the hell out of yourselves," Tierney says, when I ask if the industry has done an ineffective job marketing itself to the public. "For whatever reason, broadcast journalists don't beat up their business the way print journalists do. I know you're all journalists, but sure I'll tell you what..we really enjoy knocking the stuffing out of ourselves and our business. We talk about, 'We're losing circulation.' We're gaining eyeballs " when the growing online readership is factored in.
That prevailing expectation of doom, Tierney says, "becomes the reality."
Tierney, 49, is the fourth of five brothers. He spent his early childhood in Upper Darby, a largely blue-collar Philadelphia suburb; his family moved to the more affluent suburb of Springfield when he was seven. His father, James, was a claims adjuster until he was pushed out of his job in 1969. He then worked in a delicatessen during the day and drove a cab at night until he gathered enough money to open a window-glass company with one of Brian's older brothers. Tierney's mother, Claire, worked as a waitress and owned a coat check concession. Tierney talks warmly of his parents' influence, their always affirming message, "Yes you can; yes you can; you should try it, Brian."
His younger brother, Michael, a partner at the Philadelphia-based law firm Dilworth Paxson, which advised Tierney's investors group on the acquisition, recalls, "There was a lot of love in the household. Mom and Dad were definitely the center of everything." Now that both parents have passed away, Brian plays a leading role in family gatherings, which include Maud, his wife of 26 years, and their sons, Brian Jr., 23, and Bill, 20.
Tierney, who loves to cook, learned by watching his mother. When I meet him, he delightedly rattles off the secrets to a successful hoagie sharp provolone is a must and to spaghetti gravy, as red sauce is known in Philadelphia (see sidebar). He revels in the craft of cooking and the closure it offers, a punctuation mark so different from his own work. "[Y]ou go out, you start fresh, you go buy your ingredients, you have some fun going through the market, you come back, you chop, you mince, you sauté, you have good conversation as you're doing it, you're tasting, tasting, trying it. You put this thing out, and everybody enjoys it, as a family you [gather] around. Then you clean up, and the kitchen's clean and I help with the cleanup, too..and then, it's over."
Tierney attended private schools, first Waldron Academy (now Waldron Mercy Academy), a Catholic elementary school in Merion in the city's Main Line suburbs, and then Episcopal Academy. During his senior year at Episcopal, he ran for Springfield Township commissioner and lost with 34 percent of the vote. That was Tierney's first and last run for public office. Michael Tierney says that in the past, a political bid was always "in the back of [Brian's] mind because he does love politics; he loves civic affairs. Now, it's a lot different because he's in a different role."
Tierney majored in political science at the University of Pennsylvania (his wife and son Brian also are Penn graduates; Bill is a student there). At 22, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked for the Republican National Committee, and then returned to the Philadelphia region as a Reagan appointee in the U.S. Small Business Administration's public affairs office. He also picked up a law degree from Widener University.
At 27, he launched the first of three successful public relations and advertising firms, each of which he eventually sold to larger, publicly traded corporations. He started his second with four people in 1989, absorbed a sluggish advertising business in 1994 and built the combined firm into one of the mid-Atlantic region's largest and most influential. His team created the award-winning ad campaign for Verizon featuring actor James Earl Jones. They wrapped a giant hoagie around Philadelphia's City Hall to promote the heretical idea of buying hoagies not from one of the city's ubiquitous and beloved hoagie shops but from a convenience store the region's popular Wawa. They coined the slogan "Philadelphia: The place that loves you back" for the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation.
Tierney recalls with particular relish a campaign he handled for PECO Energy (now part of Exelon), which was being threatened with a hostile takeover by Enron. His agency put together a TV campaign featuring David Leisure, known for his smarmy "Joe Isuzu" character, the lying car salesman in a series of Isuzu ads. Leisure appeared in a cowboy hat and chaps the ads included every outrageous stereotype of Texas that Easterners could conjure to announce he'd been hired by an out-of-state energy company, and employees would be better off with him. Tierney's team also dug up a little-known quote from now-infamous Enron CEO Jeffrey K. Skilling declaring the way to take over a company is to buy the assets and get rid of the employees. They put the quote on a 30-foot-wide banner and hung it in PECO's lobby.
"He is kind of scrappy; he can be very intense; he's relentless," says Mary Stengel Austen of her former boss. Austen is president and CEO of what is now called Tierney Communications, although the firm is currently owned by Interpublic Group in New York and no longer associated with Tierney himself. Austen says Tierney is adept at assembling teams, has high expectations for his staff and little patience with laziness or inadequate preparation. "He likes people to challenge him," she says. "He can sniff it out pretty quickly if people are trying to blow smoke and make him feel good. He really doesn't like that." Austen enjoyed Tierney's self-deprecating sense of humor and his boyish, contagious enthusiasm. "He is very good at rallying people around a common sense of direction," she says.
In 2003, Tierney founded another public relations firm, which he then sold to the credit card company Advanta, a former client. He became vice chairman at Advanta, but his tenure there was brief; he says the position didn't work out the way he had hoped. "I think part of life is when something doesn't [work out], you know, when you come to that realization, to just move on and do the next thing." (Advanta Chairman Dennis Alter declined to comment.)
As he built his publicity businesses, Tierney remained active in Republican politics. He has contributed more than $200,000 to state and national campaigns in the last decade, according to the Inquirer. (Tierney says he'll end his political giving in his new role as chief executive of Philadelphia Media Holdings.) He landed a regular spot as the conservative voice on "Inside Story," a weekly public affairs show on WPVI-TV, the local ABC affiliate.
Tierney also became a fiery defender of the archdiocese, a role that strengthened his political clout. In 1998 Pope John Paul II honored his service by naming him a Knight of the Order of St. Gregory the Great, and in 2000 Tierney spearheaded George W. Bush's outreach to Catholics during the presidential campaign. "With the adman's help, Bush tallied almost two million more Catholic votes than Bob Dole got in 1996, leading to victories in key states like Ohio and Missouri," Philadelphia Magazine wrote in a 2001 profile. "Even more significantly, Tierney played a pivotal role, maybe the pivotal role, in Florida."
In 2003, Tierney chaired the third unsuccessful mayoral bid of local Republican businessman Sam Katz, who was doomed by revelations that the FBI had wiretapped the office of his opponent, Mayor John Street, an African American Democrat in a heavily Democratic city where the Bush administration is decidedly unpopular. Street hammered Katz, 58 percent to 41 percent.
Tierney's involvement sparked a highly publicized tiff with Democratic political consultant Neil Oxman, who had worked on the 1999 bid of Katz, his longtime friend, and had planned to do so again in 2003. Instead, Oxman left the campaign and declared he would rather chew broken glass than work with Brian Tierney. "I realized after a month of going to meetings that Brian was essentially full of bullshit," says Oxman. He had thought from watching Tierney's TV punditry that "things he said on the show were silly and cartoonish some of the time, and he knew really not very much about elective politics... When I got to work with him on the campaign that corroborated what I felt about him."
Oxman calls Tierney an "incessant, shameless self-promoter" but also credits him for his long-standing charitable and civic work and for building a successful ad agency during a period when the advertising industry in Philadelphia was languishing. He is pleased to see local ownership of the papers but warns against turning the Inquirer into another Union Leader, the famed conservative mouthpiece in Manchester, New Hampshire. If "these guys start, whether six months or a year from now, trying to exert editorial control over the papers, they should be publicly beheaded and their heads stuck on a pole outside the town gate," Oxman proclaims with vintage Philly bluster.
Katz himself speaks fondly of his former campaign chairman, praising Tierney's "unbridled sense of optimism... Brian, at the worst moments, always found something to be optimistic about, and I think that's a tremendous asset for him."
The former candidate recalls a lousy day early in the campaign. He was getting sued; he had been ambivalent about whether to run; he had proposed an overhaul of Convention Center authority that had infuriated the unions; his dog had run away. He was on the verge of dropping out of the race.
Katz showed up at Tierney's office at 3 p.m., and Tierney told his candidate that he was scheduled to appear on conservative radio talk-show host Michael Smerconish's show that afternoon. "I said, 'Brian, the dog is missing. I can't go,'" Katz recounts. "He must have thought his candidate was just a wacko. He says, 'Look, suck it up. You can drop out, but you can't not go on the show.'" Tierney rallied his shaken candidate, telling him, "'You're going to be great; you're going to go over there and kick the crap out of them; you know this stuff,' all the things that Brian Tierney can do and that he well may be able to do for the Philadelphia papers," recalls Katz, who pulled himself together for the broadcast and the race.
Tierney also used his energy and unyielding optimism to galvanize the board at Episcopal Academy to buy 223 acres in Newtown Square in suburban Delaware County and move the school there from the campus it has occupied on the Philadelphia border since 1921. The Academy's strategic plan called for acquiring additional land, but some board members felt the roughly $30 million needed for an available parcel of farmland was unrealistic.
"Brian, a relatively new board member, stood up and said, 'Why can't we dream?'" recalls board member and past chair Rush Haines. "He was very articulate and very emotional about it. I can't say it was the most popular position. It was received respectfully, but everyone said, 'That's nice, but we don't have $30 million.'"
But Tierney, who speaks often about his alma mater's influence on his own life, wouldn't let it go. "Brian was essentially saying, 'If we don't make this decision, we have abdicated our duties to the school. The future will be bleak. Now is an opportunity that we have to take. We can raise the money; we can do it,'" recalls board member Fred Haab.
And they did. Tierney and local developer Brian O'Neill assembled a group that worked tirelessly to raise the money (the Academy agreed to sell roughly 100 acres of the new land to a local homebuilder). As the project moved forward, Haines watched Tierney, his cochair on the planning committee, create consensus over sometimes contentious issues such as selecting designers and architects. "He has a very conciliatory style," Haines says. "Brian does not demean people because he disagrees with them."
Some journalists, particularly at the Inquirer, have seen a much different side of Tierney. Many reporters who have interacted with him through the years found him to be a natural schmoozer and a good source. But in his role as client advocate, he also was quick to call high-ranking editors to complain about coverage, at times accusing reporters of being biased, unprofessional, unethical and inept.
The most searing clashes, widely publicized at the time and revisited endlessly since the announcement that Tierney's group would head the papers, involved the Inquirer's coverage of the Catholic Church. Although Tierney describes his representation of the archdiocese as "one-tenth of one percent" of his business, his confrontations throughout the 1990s with then-Inquirer reporter Ralph Cipriano and his editors have come to symbolize Tierney's elbows-out style.
"Reporters, we go looking for the truth. This guy, he goes looking for a wrestling match, and the stronger advocate prevails. If he has to pop your shoulder out of its socket, so be it," Cipriano says. "He doesn't understand what we do. He doesn't respect what we do, and he doesn't think we should be doing it... I don't see how a guy like that can run a newspaper and not just turn it into another extension of the spin machine."
Cipriano describes his former foe as "always the loudest voice in the room. He's very domineering." In one encounter involving Tierney, his associates, Cipriano and senior Inquirer editors, Cipriano recalls Tierney "literally had the floor for the whole meeting, which went on for hours. He was speaking 20 or 30 minutes at a time without anyone saying anything... He's got this fire-and-brimstone preacher way of doing things."
The battles over Cipriano's coverage wrenched apart the close-knit Inquirer staff. Cipriano believed his editors caved in to Tierney's demands to kill stories, and said so. Then-Editor Robert J. Rosenthal told Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz that Cipriano "has a very strong personal point of view and an agenda... There were things we didn't publish that Ralph wrote that we didn't think were truthful. He could never prove them." (See "Out of Control," October 1998.) Cipriano sued Rosenthal, the Inquirer and Knight Ridder for libel; got fired; and later won a reported multimillion dollar settlement.
Asked whether Tierney's handling of that episode typified his tactics, Inquirer columnist Tom Ferrick Jr., the Newspaper Guild's chief steward in the newsroom, offers this assessment: "I think he's expansive, bright, aggressive for his clients, and I think that is true to a power of three or four when it comes to the Catholic Church and the archdiocese because he is a devout Catholic... It wasn't out of the ordinary for the church's aggressive approach toward what it considers to be hostile news coverage, and you add on top of that Brian's aggressive approach for his clients."
Tierney complained, too, about a story Inquirer reporter Nancy Phillips wrote about a hotline established for victims during the height of the priest sexual abuse scandal. Phillips revealed that the toll-free hotline rang in the office of a lawyer the church had hired to field the complaints. In an e-mail to the Inquirer's then-editor, copied to its then-publisher, Tierney called the story "stupid and inaccurate."
"I have to say it was neither," says Phillips, adding that Tierney, an able and passionate advocate, never complained to her personally. "After the story, the diocese agreed to install a separate phone line. The story caused, I think, a positive change."
That June 7, 2002, e-mail also lambasted what Tierney called the "sneaky tactics" of then-Inquirer reporter Maria Panaritis ("Maria something or other," Tierney dubbed her), who was on the team covering the abuse scandal. "I speak with truth when I tell you there is a clear feeling among Catholic leaders that the Philadelphia Inquirer, singularly among all the various news organizations extending from Harrisburg, through Allentown, Trenton, South Jersey and Delaware, has a continual, pervasive and corrosive hostility to the Church. Much to the chagrin of your colleagues, we don't have a 'Boston' type problem here. Please don't try to falsely convey otherwise," Tierney wrote.
Panaritis, who left the Inquirer last year to pursue projects outside journalism, says that she and her colleagues had been trying unsuccessfully to gain an interview with then-Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua. She says Tierney falsely characterized her reporting. "We used utter discretion," she says, "and yet we felt obliged to not compromise the journalistic principle that any high-profile story impacting the public welfare would require." On September 21, 2005, a Philadelphia grand jury issued a stinging rebuke of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, saying its former archbishops, including Bevilacqua, had "excused and enabled" abuse of children for decades.
Two days after the Tierney group's winning bid for the papers was announced, Inquirer columnist Monica Yant Kinney recounted a chilling 2002 lunch with her new boss. Tierney was angry over two columns Kinney had written about "little guys claiming they had been trampled" by Commerce Bank founder Vernon Hill, a close friend of Tierney's. "At lunch, Tierney made it clear he wasn't being paid to bully me. This one, he was doing for free," Kinney wrote. "He barked; I listened. I explained the role of a free press in a democratic society. He barked some more, complaining that I was picking on Hill."
Donna Shaw, a former Inquirer business reporter (and now an AJR contributor), remembers Tierney as patronizing, willing to try anything to make reporters "miss a step, doubt yourself. This is a tactic that he took further than anyone else I encountered in 25 years as a reporter," she says. "From my experience with him, he's not as interested in the facts and responding to the facts as he is in spinning the facts. There's a recasting of facts and an effort to demean you and your work." But Shaw also saw another side of Tierney, his "incredible passion for Philadelphia and Philadelphia institutions."
Tierney's relationship with the irreverent Daily News generally was less contentious than with its more serious sibling. "He's a bare knuckles player in a bare knuckles town, and the Daily News was a bare knuckles kind of newspaper," says Zack Stalberg, its editor for 20 years. "So it took a lot to offend us, frankly. The Inquirer culture was different, and they tended to be more troubled [by] the fact that he would question their judgment or come on strong."
Stalberg, who now runs a civic watchdog group called the Committee of Seventy, wasn't bothered by Tierney's combativeness. "It's true that he didn't play the conventional game of trying to win over the reporter in the trench. He'd do that to a point, but if he felt it wasn't getting him anywhere, he'd climb up the hierarchy," the former editor says. "My sense, and this was one of the reasons I happened to like him, he'd tell you straight out, 'You're screwing me. I'm going to talk to your city editor or managing editor or whoever.'"
Former mayoral candidate Katz's perspective on Tierney's bullying of reporters is one undoubtedly shared by many clients. "He's a heavy-duty guy, and they're just reporters," Katz says. "What the hell do they do? You stick your neck out and run for public office. Some guy comes up to you and asks you all kinds of stuff. You want to bite his head off..... Who cares whether reporters feel like he bullied them, really? They don't mind kicking the shit out of you on the front page of the paper." Katz says he generally has been treated fairly by Philly's papers but adds that the "press has a decidedly double standard about these things, and it stems from the view that they're doing the public's good, and the subject of their inquiry has done the public bad."
What bearing, if any, do Tierney's old spats with reporters have on his future leadership of them? Tierney says he was a vigorous advocate for his past clients, and now will be a tireless promoter of the Inquirer and Daily News.
"I've had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, if not maybe even a thousand, instances of contact with reporters in this building. There have been two or three times that there has been anything that would be considered contentious," he says when we talk in the papers' 12th floor conference room.
I read him Cipriano's wrestling match comment. "With all due respect, I disagree," Tierney replies. "And I mean that. As a lawyer, obviously, you know, I take a particularly strong view of the importance of the Constitution, the First Amendment, all these sorts of things. These are not just words. These are something that as an attorney you swear to live by, number one, and number two is, I think I have enough humility to know that my truth is not necessarily The Truth. And when I go into situations with people and I disagree with them, I try to always listen to the other side and to realize that I'm not walking down with tablets of stone, and my truth is the only truth."
I ask if he's comfortable having reporters on staff whose coverage he disliked in the past, or called biased. "I'm happy to have them on staff," he begins.
("I don't think many of them are still here," interjects Jay Devine, who helped Tierney start his second business and now has his own public relations shop. Devine is handling the onslaught of press requests for Tierney and Philadelphia Media Holdings and sits to my left as I interview Tierney, who sits at the head of the conference table.)
Tierney adds: "There's nobody in this building who I've said I didn't think they were honest, but there's people I've had disagreements with. I've been around this building for just a couple weeks now. I see these reporters have had disagreements with each other, too... Sometimes people disagree. Certainly in my work environment, in the advertising business, I really valued people who would have principled disagreements with me... I've always been of the attitude that hey, we can have a disagreement today, and as long as you fundamentally respect me, and I respect you, let's go and have a cup of coffee tomorrow. Let's get on with life."
Butch Ward, a former Inquirer managing editor who is now on the faculty at the Poynter Institute, says Tierney's success as a newspaper owner will depend on future performance, not past interactions. "I didn't always approve of Brian's methods because I thought that they became too personal. His attacks sometimes included accusations that reporters were unprofessional, that they were biased," Ward says. "I don't necessarily believe that the methods he used to do his job as a public affairs professional necessarily mean that he cannot be a good newspaper owner." Tierney will need to demonstrate "that he is the CEO of a news organization that values independence and truth- telling in service to the public. Take it from someone who worked in journalism and PR: Serving the public is a different focus." Ward spent three years as vice president for corporate and public affairs for Independence Blue Cross, the largest health insurer in southeastern Pennsylvania.
Former Editor Rosenthal, now managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, says that private ownership is the best possible outcome for the papers, and that if Tierney brings the same passion to the Inquirer that he showed for his clients, it could be a great asset. "The big question for everyone is, what kind of distance will he keep in terms of his own very clear interests?" Rosenthal notes the potential challenges that come with Tierney's many connections to the power centers in Philadelphia. "A good owner or a good publisher is going to have story ideas. How they're then carried out by the journalists is another issue. When journalists are looking into something, they frequently find things that no one knew were there."
Jane Von Bergen, an Inquirer business reporter who covered advertising during Tierney's market prominence, describes Tierney as good at his PR job, funny, a schmoozer. "That being said, his job is different from our job. A public relations person has a different goal. We can't fault a public relations person for having the goal that they have, just like you can't fault a defense attorney for representing a mass murderer," she says. "The question will be whether this public relations personality, which I think is deeply embedded in him, will benefit us or hurt us."
Asked about his past tactics in dealing with journalists, she replies that dwelling on those exchanges is "like saying the hunter shoots the deer. Well what do you want? He's the hunter, and there's the deer."
Daily News reporter Kitty Caparella frames the uncertainty this way: "I don't know if a leopard can change their spots. And that's the thing. He's used to creating a buzz, and he'll do it about the paper." Whether he'll want to "put his hands in the paper is something else."
Most striking, though, is how urgently the journalists interviewed for this article, including some reporters who have tangled with Tierney in the past, yearn for him and his group to succeed.
At the Daily News, employees are sick of hearing about their anticipated imminent demise. Tierney, a longtime subscriber, says he loves the tabloid. "He's convinced us that he's going to keep the papers in business and help strengthen them," says Jack Morrison, a Daily News editor and rewrite man. "All the other bidders, they were all out-of-towners. They didn't know anything about Philadelphia, the culture, the character. We were happy to have [Tierney's group] come in."
Wendy Warren, an assistant managing editor at the Daily News, says, "I think we're really excited... All we ask down here at the Daily News is a chance to get in there and compete for readers and win readers' hearts. We're not asking for foreign bureaus or anything like that."
At both papers, staffers are weary of turmoil, of budget cuts, of Wall Street, even of Knight Ridder "the cold, dead hand of Knight Ridder and the relentless commitment to mediocrity," as the Inquirer's Tom Ferrick puts it. There is a widespread perception among journalists that marketing and promotion of their papers had been distressingly lethargic. They also are eager to see some investment and a plan for growth, and hope that the relentless quarterly demands for high profit margins will ease somewhat under private ownership. At a staff meeting following the May 23 news conference, one employee was heard to exclaim, "Free at last! Free at last!"
"I think that's true because they [Knight Ridder] hated us," Karl Stark, an Inquirer deputy editor for health and science, says of his former corporate owner. "They made it clear in so many ways. We were kind of a real outlier in the company, because of our size, because of our history, because of our abilities. If you talk to any of the corporate managers from Knight Ridder, feelings I think were palpable that we were an arrogant, self-righteous, cocky, money-spending drain on their corporate lives, and I don't believe any of that's true."
Stark drew a laugh from his new boss at the staff meeting by quipping, "So you used to be an S.O.B, now you're going to be our S.O.B.?" But, citing Tierney's record as a creator and a builder, Stark says he hopes Philadelphia Media Holdings will provide a new model for newspaper ownership.
Inquirer reporter and music critic Peter Dobrin provoked Tierney's ire with his hard-hitting coverage of the Philadelphia Orchestra; Tierney's confrontational response included complaints to Dobrin's editors. But Dobrin, too, hopes Tierney will provide much-needed leadership. "If the newspaper needs to change, if we need to develop the Web site, if he has great ideas about how to bring advertising back, let's get on with it," Dobrin says.
"I feel like the newspaper's been in limbo for a while, and for the entire time I've been here" he joined the staff in 1994 "we've only known how to make cuts, and I'm really looking forward to rebuilding resources. I'm a lot less concerned about interference in editorial matters than I am about their ability to make this a viable enterprise from a business standpoint. I think that scrupulous attention will be paid to making sure that inappropriate influence is not applied to the newsroom. I just hope they're good at making money and running a viable business."
Inquirer Editor Amanda Bennett says that in some ways, the paper "has been the poster child for everything that's going on in the newspaper business, and in some ways, our challenges have been a little bit more extreme." She ticks off the industry hurdles that her paper encountered perhaps a bit earlier and more publicly: What are the pressures of Wall Street? What is the nature of a metro paper, and what do its readers want? How many journalists can a paper afford to support? What happens when national advertising dries up?
"We at the Philadelphia Inquirer staff here have been through hell in the past decade," Bennett says, "and they want this paper to succeed."
On the week of April 24, five separate suitors visited the 12th floor of 400 N. Broad Street to learn about the business and editorial operations of the Inquirer and Daily News. Wednesday was designated for the home team.
Publisher Joe Natoli was struck by the group's passion, interest, energy, even its numbers. Tierney came in with some 25 investors, lawyers, bankers and advisers, including three former employees of Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., the parent of the Inquirer and Daily News Sam McKeel, a former general manager and publisher; Bill Sabatino, a past labor relations chief; and Jerome Tilis, a former advertising executive. The sessions ran longer and took on a more impromptu feel than the others, knocked off schedule by the number of questions the group asked. At one point, Tierney turned to Natoli and said, "We're gonna do this."
Gary Pruitt, McClatchy's chairman and CEO, also was impressed by the group's commitment to the papers' future. "Whether both papers would stay open, the interests of the employees and the community, and the future of the papers were all factors in the decision, as was price and speed and certainty that the deal would be completed," Pruitt says. "We felt their hearts were in the right place, and they had the interests of the papers in mind."
On June 29, when Philadelphia Media Holdings assumed control, Tierney and his team were focused on the countless details that come with taking over a company and disengaging a newspaper from a chain: Do the credit cards work? Do the cell phones work? What happens to the employee benefits plans? Who provides newsprint? Who runs Philly.com?
When I meet him, he talks enthusiastically about improving the Web site, in part by adding more video and more sound. Knight Ridder took a "corporate, cookie-cutter approach to the Web," Tierney says, and Philly.com is not up to the standards of washingtonpost.com, boston.com (the Boston Globe's site) or even the much-lauded site of the Journal-World in Lawrence, Kansas (ljworld.com). While Philly.com won't be a paid site, Tierney believes some business audiences and interested citizens would be willing to pay to get what he calls the "deeper dive" more transcripts, audio feed and other features.
"I have 530 gifted journalists who are experts in everything from foreign wines to foreign affairs," he says. "The information, insights and knowledge they have can be repackaged in a variety of ways to make it even more relevant to the consumer, so if you're really interested in the Philadelphia Flyers, which is our hockey team, or the Eagles, or sports in general, I should be able to think of some creative way to give you more and more of what you're interested in, in a way that you'll want it and you'll be willing to pay to get it...
"We're in an environment where people are spending $3 for a cup of coffee, and we're charging 60 cents for the Daily News and 50 cents for the Inquirer, and we're somehow worried that, you know, 'Are we worth it?' I mean it's crazy. My cable TV bill, my phone bill, my cell bill, all of these different things which you're spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month on because they're valuable. So I think there's a way for me to say to somebody, you know, 'Subscribe to the paper, that's approximately $225 for the year. Hey, and for $500 a year, you can have access to reporters' further insights, appropriately developed notes, you know, you can get the whole transcript from that press conference, you can get the whole audio feed from the mayor's or the governor's press conference...you can hear everything that went on in the Flyers' locker room afterwards.'.... So what we become then is more and more an aggregator of all the information in the community.... And that's something we can do better than a Google could ever do it.... Our strength is we know this community better than anyone."
Even before the sale was completed, Tierney had committed to upgrading the 14-year-old software that runs the presses and was considering a $15 million to $20 million investment to add more color to the papers. He planned to commission detailed audience research, including on what sections readers would like to see added or expanded.
Tierney also has union talks to navigate, the first great test of his leadership. All union contracts expire at midnight August 31. Tierney hopes to secure long-term contracts, but rather than negotiate directly, he plans to have Natoli and Sabatino, who will serve as a consultant, handle the bargaining sessions. Early in the process of pulling an investors group together, Tierney contacted Henry Holcomb, a longtime Inquirer reporter and president of the Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia.
"We're going to listen to hear what his perspectives are, what he perceives his needs to be," Holcomb says. "Our members, through the latter Tony Ridder years, have gone too long without a meaningful raise, and there are some agreements, because they were negotiated in a hostile environment, that don't work for either side."
Tierney is moving aggressively to reinvigorate advertising, in part by increasing the papers' visibility with a $5 million marketing campaign. He is busily courting advertisers, meeting them at breakfasts, lunches and dinners "I've already gained 12 pounds through this process," he quips and inviting them to join him and Natoli in the company box at a Phillies game.
"There was a smell of death that started to form around PNI, which helped to drive away advertising," former Daily News Editor Stalberg says. He recalls a similar smell clinging to the now-defunct Philadelphia Bulletin in the 1970s and early '80s. Advertisers started to dump the Bulletin in favor of the Inquirer and Daily News because they wanted to be with the winner. "There are intangibles that go into the advertising sales," he says. "I think Brian will be particularly good at making the advertising world, which of course drives everything else, particularly good at at least making them think twice about where they're investing their money."
In Stalberg's civic role, he experienced frustrations with PNI's advertising department firsthand. He tried to place an ad for a ballot question strengthening the city's ethics code on behalf of a group of nonprofits and public-spirited citizens. "In my case, they didn't want to engage in a commonsense negotiation about what our price should be. It was, 'Here's our rate,' and [their] rate was excessive... I believe that in the Tierney era that there's just going to be more flexibility and a willingness to go hard after revenue, even if it's a violation of the existing rate card."
Stalberg says Tierney wants to triumph on this large, high-profile stage, and predicts dramatic changes ahead in both operations and personnel. "He's sending different signals at the moment because he has got to get past union contracts and calm everybody down... His priority here is to be not threatening. Over the next six months or a year, we're going to see a wildly different result," Stalberg says. "He's really success-oriented, and he's going to do what it takes to make that place successful."
Tierney's thirst for success is cited often when friends and associates explain why he wants to lead these papers, as are his zest for gambles that engage his interest and intensity; his appreciation of a promising business opportunity; and his love for the city.
"Brian is at his best when he knows it's a challenge and people are going to be watching him," former coworker Mary Austen says. "He's at his best when he's under pressure, when he knows that the stakes are high. He can be a little bit of a bulldog. He likes to take things on that other people would say, 'There's no way you can do that.'"
Mark S. Schweiker, a former Pennsylvania governor who now heads the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, has known Tierney for 15 years and says he is "truly putting everything on the line here, and I do mean personal wealth and personal reputation... Too many people see Brian through one prism, through one lens. There's a complexity to Brian that has been missed. They see him as Brian the spokesperson, Brian the dealmaker. There's a whole lot of thoughtful work that went into this. This was months in the making. It required a lot of technical help from some pretty prestigious companies. It also required Brian to look at the business and say, 'Can I really be a major force in its regrowth?'"
It is easy to imagine how Tierney's stewardship could be disastrous for the two papers, given the vast potential for conflicts of interest, Tierney's prior battles over coverage and questions about his respect for the role of an aggressive press. Philadelphia's history of local ownership is a discouraging one: Before he sold the Inquirer and Daily News to Knight Ridder's predecessor in 1970, local owner Walter Annenberg used the Inquirer to exalt his friends and pummel or ignore his foes.
Even if Tierney and the other investors honor their pledge and support hard-hitting watchdog reporting on their region's institutions, they may stumble over the same business challenges that have flummoxed others in the industry, unable to revive and sustain local and national advertising, reverse circulation losses and/or counter competition from the Internet.
Their lack of newspaper experience could be fatal, but it also could be transformative, bringing a fresh, bold vision that embraces newspapers' future. When I ask Tierney about his campaign to move Episcopal Academy westward, he tells me that "people get excited about a big idea." He's a traditionalist in some ways, he says, but "you have to have the courage to make a big change if that's what's needed."
Rachel Smolkin (email@example.com) is AJR's managing editor. Editorial assistant Jessica Meyers contributed research to this report.


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Sanchez fine with getting more seasoning in Minors
Despite hot start in Spring Training, catcher likely heading to Triple-A Indianapolis
TAMPA, Fla. -- Tony Sanchez is getting a lot of love -- from the people his bat hurts the most. This must be one of the unwritten rites of Spring Training: unconditional support.
Coming off McKechnie Field on Tuesday, Sanchez got a big hug from Jay Jackson -- off whom he had smacked a three-run homer a bit earlier in the Pirates' Black-Gold intrasquad game.
Shedding his catcher's gear in the locker room on Wednesday, Sanchez got the hug from Russell Martin, the Bucs' regular catcher who had had a quiet game against the Yankees before Sanchez took over to go 2-for-2, with another three-run home run.
Yet, the next hug Sanchez gets could be from Pirates bench coach Jeff Banister -- after informing him that he is being optioned to the Triple-A Indianapolis Indians.
The Pirates programmed Sanchez for a third year of Triple-A seasoning by swinging an early December trade with the Yankees for Chris Stewart. Two veterans in camp in an era teams do not carry three catchers sealed Sanchez's short-term fate.
"We are not going to carry three catchers," Pirates manager Clint Hurdle confirmed following Thursday's 8-2 Grapefruit League victory here over the Yankees.
"And that's fine," Sanchez said. "I've learned so much from Russell, just by watching and being around him. And now I get to have an eye on another defensively strong guy [Stewart]. They want me to have more development? OK, Indy is a great city and Pittsburgh is too cold in April and May, anyway.
"So, see you in June."
Sanchez may not have to wait that long. The Bucs may need only two catchers, but they also need one designated hitter for road Interleague series -- the first of which crops up on the schedule on April 29-30 in Baltimore. Coincidentally, that was the role in which Sanchez had made his big league debut last June.
Sanchez, possibly as a sign of things to come, was back in Thursday's lineup as the DH. He drilled a first-at-bat double that improved his perfect spring line to 5-for-5, including the 2-for-2 in Tuesday's practice game. He went hitless the next three at-bats, so Sanchez now has a Grapefruit League average of only .500.
"It's only a short window of time," Hurdle said of the likelihood of flipping the roster to add someone to DH in Interleague games, which now are scattered throughout the schedule. "But you always look to explore, and we thought enough of [Sanchez] last year to bring him up for that exact reason."
It wasn't extensive. More than the proverbial cup of coffee, so maybe a pot: In three separate stints, Sanchez got to make a dozen starts behind the plate and totaled 60 at-bats. It was, however, long enough to make Sanchez feel like he belonged, and to inspire the inner calm that could be responsible for this current torrid spring start.
"That was huge for my confidence," Sanchez said, "and for my mental state coming into this Spring Training. This is my fifth big league camp, and in the first four, I never had anything under my belt.
"Just knowing that I finally went to war with these guys. Albeit I was a small part of the first playoff team in 21 years, I was there, and the fact I finally put in some contribution to a real meaningful season meant a lot to me coming in."
The Pirates' No. 1 Draft pick in the 2009 First-Year Player Draft -- and the fourth overall selection -- is in a unique situation to have to face a sixth season mostly in the Minors. No. 1 Draft picks typically arrive far quicker -- Pedro Alvarez, drafted the year before Sanchez -- is entering his fifth season with the Bucs.
Yet, if it weren't for his No. 1 status, Sanchez may not have gotten the opportunity he did to rehabilitate his image after some regrettable early episodes in the Pittsburgh organization.
The process teaches you patience. It also teaches you to read the tea leaves: Martin is entering the second of his two-year, $17 million contract; he isn't likely to break his own record for the richest deal ever given a free agent by the Pirates.
Sanchez's time, thus, could come a year from now. By then, he will have paid a lot of dues for the opportunity.
"We work too hard not to reap the rewards of what we do," he said. "The fact that I put myself in this position to have this success early means a lot to me. Making this type of contact this early makes it even better.
"Anytime you feel comfortable enough to get the barrel on the ball like I have been doing, it's a good feeling."


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Colleen Gawley and her daughter, Elizabeth, were overwhelmed and honored when they were entertained by a community of 400 sponsored members and their families during a trip to the Philippines.
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/4241800 w=500&h=350]
Watch more trip testimonials
Margaret Looper discovers how important a bag of groceries really is.
Hunter Hardin get to know his friend during a day of fun in Honduras.
Learn how you can go on a CFCA mission awareness trip and what to expect.


text: Light up your brand by imprinting your company name and logo on one of our promotional candles! So many people enjoy these items because of the relaxing qualities of the scent that emits from the flicker of the flame. A relaxed environment can lead to better productivity so help your employees keep a calm mind and deliver their best work. At Pinnacle Promotions, we have a wide selection of promotional candles from square glass jars that come packaged in elegant gold gift boxes with ribbons, to aromatherapy items that come in silver heart-shaped push top tins. And when your wick burns out, recipients will still have the jars or tins, allowing the visibility for your brand to continue. In addition, these items can also make quite the impression as tradeshow giveaways at marketing events.


text:
Paper Airplane Mint Footie / PJs
a lovely universe
Cozy and stylish from head to toe, our patterned non-slip soles are designed to keep your little ones safe without slowing them down. Versatile fold-over cuffs keep little hands warm and help prevent scratching, while hassle-free snap closures make diaper and outfit changes a breeze.
Our luxurious, long-lasting fabric offers superior softness with just the right amount of stretch. With an assortment of signature prints available in various colors, there's a footie for every style.Designed for sleep and play
- Made from a Viscose/Spandex blend for superior softness & stretch
- Crafted with overlock stitching for durability
- Hassle-free front snap placket extends down the leg
- Signature Clover patterned non-slip soles
- Fold-over cuffs at sleeve hem
- Scratch-free printed label
- Machine wash cold, tumble dry low
- Designed in Los Angeles. Made in India.


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Here are some important reasons why I share MOXXOR so often with you as it helps to cancel out these damaging non-foods should you eat them now and then by balancing the pro-inflammatory Omega-6 oils with the anti-inflammatory MOXXOR .
Eating just a tiny amount of these nasty vegetable oils can increase your risk of heart disease and promote accumulation of visceral fat – a dangerous kind of belly fat that's almost impossible to get rid of.
Well, believe it or not, MANY of the foods that show "Zero Trans Fat" on the label actually contain a TON of it.
Thanks to the FDA, manufacturers are allowed to label ANY food, even so-called "healthy" ones, with less than .5g of trans fat per serving as "Trans Fat-Free". Almost every manufacturer lowers their portion sizes on the labels to hide their claims on their products while filling them with this dangerous and fattening ingredient.
Vegetable Oil
Here's a powerful, eye-opening example. When you eat just ONE handful of "Zero Trans Fat" crackers you poison your body with a couple grams of toxic, fat-storing trans fat – WITHOUT even being aware of it.
But wait. It gets even worse. There's one common food in particular that's probably in your pantry, right now, and it contains loads of trans fat that don't appear ANYWHERE on the label.
That's right. NOT on the ingredients list, NOT in the nutrition facts, and not even on your favorite Internet food database. Nowhere. Keep reading and you will see what it is!
Very few people know this, but vegetable oil (made from fat-storing corn, soybeans or canola) has to go through an extreme 5-step processing method before it ends up on your supermarket shelves.
This high pressure, high temperature process destroys all the "heart-friendly" fats originally contained in the oil and transforms it into dangerous trans fats.
According to a shocking study by the University of Florida at Gainesville, your vegetable oil can contain up to 4.6% hidden trans fat that's not on the label. These are all pro-inflammatory problems waiting to make you sick and in pain!
Sometimes we're at a party or at a restaurant and we'll eat this stuff… so what do I do? I take MOXXOR to provide the balancing that this powerful Omega-3 anti-inflammatory fish oil alternative offers me. I give you all the reasons I chose MOXXOR over all other Omega-3 products in this blog post entitled What on Earth is a Greenlip mussel? here on my Celestial Musings Blog. See http://MoxxArt.com/


text:
doTERRA Essentials Product Catalog Product Guide 2018Jan 7, 2017
The doTERRA Essentials catalog 2018 Click HERE to view as PDF.
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Month: August 2014
5 Can't Miss Events This Week in NYC:
Cool art, free concerts and E Zoo are what NYC is all about this week:
Observe the Jeff Koons: A Retrospective exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art Wednesday, Aug 27-31
See Brad Paisley perform at Good Morning America Summer Concert Series at Rumsey Playfield in Central Park Friday, Aug 29
Or you can see Ariana Grande at The Today Show's Summer Concert Series at Rockefeller Center Friday, Aug 29
Grab your unicycle and celebrate The NYC Unicycle Festival Friday, Aug 29-31
Electric Zoo Festival hits Randall's Island Labor Day Weekend Friday, Aug 29-31
44 Reasons to Be Excited About Fall 2014 in NYC
Fall is the season for beautifully burnt colors, the first chill of the season, football, tailgates, pumpkin spice added to all of our favorite beverages and giant piles of leave that are always more fun to demolish in theory than in practice. In NYC,, the autumn season is really about so much more than that. It's about festivals of food and film and music and wine. It's about brand new exhibitions flooding our museums- the greatest in the world. It's about Broadway shows – 8 of them – opening the curtains for the first time. It's about the beginning of the holiday season with Christmas Trees and giant turkeys and Rockettes and Nutcrackers. Here are 44 reasons to be excited about Fall 2014 in NYC:
- New York Film Festival is back in town (September 26-October 12)
- So is the NYC Independent Film Festival (October 15-19)
- And don't forget the Big Apple Film Festival (November 5-9)
- There's even a Horror Film Festival in NYC this Fall (November 13-16)
- But it's not just about movies… The New York Wine and Food Festival comes this Fall (October 16-19)
- The Prospect Park Food Truck Rally is live on every first and third Sundays of the month (until October 19)
- New York Comic Con hits the Javits Center (October 9-12)
- The Global Citizen Festival is a free* concert with Jay Z and Carrie Underwood and more awesome people (September 27)
- And the CBGB Festival highlights younger bands with lots of free and cheap shows (October 8-12)
- The Village Halloween Parade is one of NYC most extravagant annual events (October 31)
There are 6 new exhibitions at MoMa
- Robert Gober: The Heart Is Not a Metaphor (October 4)
- Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs (October 12)
- Sturtevant: Double Trouble (November 9)
- Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities (November 22)
- Modern Photographs from the Thomas Walther Collection, 1909-1949 (December 13)
- The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World (December 14)
And 3 new exhibitions at the Guggenheim
- Zero: Countdown to Tomorrow, 1950s-60s (October 10)
- V. Gaitonde: Painting as Progress, Painting as Life (October 24)
- Wang Jianwei: Time Temple (October 31)
And 2 new exhibitions at Brooklyn Museum
- Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond (October 3)
- Judith Scott—Bound and Unbound (October 24)
And 7 new exhibitions at The Met
- Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age (September 22)
- Thomas Hart Benton's America Today Mural Rediscovered (September 30)
- Grand Design: Pieter Coecke van Aelst and Renaissance Tapestry (October 8)
- Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire (October 21)
- Bartholomeus Spranger: Splendor and Eroticism in Imperial Prague (November 4)
- El Greco in New York (November 4)
- The Art of Collecting Arms and Armor: Notable Acquisitions, 2003-2014 (November 11)
And 8 Broadway Premieres
- On The Town (October 16)
- Disgraced (October 23)
- The Last Ship (October 26)
- The Real Thing (October 30)
- The River (November 16)
- Side Show (November 17)
- A Delicate Balance (November 20)
- The Elephant Man (December 7)
Plus, it's the start of the Holiday Season!
- Thanksgiving means the Macy's Day Parade (November 27)
- And what comes the first Wednesday after the fourth Thursday of November? The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting (December 3)
- Our annual Holiday Lights Double Decker Bus Tour begins (December 4)
- Bryant Park Holiday Shops will be open once again (November)
- As will the Central Park Ice Rink, which is just beautiful with the burnt orange of the trees (November)
- The Salvation Army posts up all across the city with dances and songs (December)
- And the Radio City Christmas Spectacular is back for another year (November 7-December 31)
- Last but not least, The Nutcracker takes Lincoln Center by storm (November 28-January 3)
Fall in NYC has so much to offer! What are you most excited for this coming season? Tell us on twitter at @GrayLineNewYork
5 Can't Miss Events This Week in NYC
This week in NYC is highlighted by weekend festivals and outdoor film!
See movies in Central Park every night this week during the Central Park Conservatory Film Festival beginning Monday, August 18-22
The Met Opera Summer HD Festival kicks off Friday, August 22-September 1
The AfroPunk Festival comes to Brooklyn Saturday, August 23-24
The Charlie Parker Jazz Festival comes to Marcus Garvey and Tompkins Square Parks this weekend Saturday, August 23-24
Head over to the US Open Site in Queens for Arthur Ashe Kids Day leading up to the big tournament Saturday, August 23
When is the 2014 Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting?
And a few other far-too-early-to-be-talked-about questions about the holiday season in NYC.
It's the most wonderful time of the year! Christmas in NYC, it doesn't get much better than that. What's that, it's 92 degrees out today? Summer still has another month left? Yes, these things are true, but right around the beginning of August is when we begin consistently receiving questions about Christmas in NYC, so it's time we start planning our holiday vacations while we answer your questions in a special holiday edition of NYC FAQ:
When is the 2014 Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting?
This year's Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony will be held on Wednesday, December 3 beginning at 7 p.m. Remember, get there early if you want a good spot of the show.
When does the NYC Holiday Lights Bus Tour begin?
Each year, Gray Line New York turns our Night Tour into a specially themed Holiday Lights Tour catered to the incredible sights and sounds NYC puts on during the season. Between the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, 5th Avenue's awesome holiday decorations, Macy's light show, and so much more, we had to dedicate a tour to the season. This year, the Holiday Lights Tour begins on Thursday, December 4th, the day after the Christmas Tree Lighting.
Where is the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree?
The easy answer is Rockefeller Plaza.
The more appropriate answer is that the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree can be found between 5th and 6th Avenues on the plaza that connects 49th and 50th streets. You can approach the tree from the side by walking down one of those blocks and entering the plaza, or you can go to 5th Avenue between 49th and 50th streets to enter with the traditional view of the tree. There will almost always be a crowd on 5th Avenue taking pictures during the holiday season, so just look out for them.
How long will the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree be lit?
The tree will be lit for the first time on December 3rd and remain lit until January 7th, 2015. Aside from a few special days during this stretch, the tree will remain lit until 12 a.m. each night.
Will there be any other tree lightings in NYC during the holiday season?
Yes! Most people are only familiar with the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, but there are quite a few trees in NYC that have lighting ceremonies and remain lit for an extended period of time. Here are just a few:
- The American Museum of Natural History has an Origami Holiday Tree on display
- Bryant Park hosts one of the best trees in Manhattan at the top of their skating rink
- Winter's Eve in Lincoln Square is on December 1 this year
- The New York Stock Exchange Tree will rise for the 91st time this year
- The World's Largest Menorah can be found on 59th and Central Park South
Where can I go ice skating in NYC?
There are a few places to go ice skating underneath the cold, night sky in NYC. The most popular spot is Rockefeller Center, right below the big Christmas Tree. The Bryant Park Ice Rink is another beautiful park to go skating, surrounded by the Holiday Shops. Our third recommendation goes to the Central Park ice rink, which has some incredible views of the skyline.
The holiday season in NYC is truly as good as it gets. Decorations hang high, music and lights serenade the city streets, smiles will cover the faces of all and holiday cheer will capture will our hearts. Are you coming to NYC for the holidays? Do you have more questions that we didn't cover? Let us know about it on twitter @GrayLineNewYork.
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5 Can't Miss Events This Week in NYC
This week in NYC act like you live in the 1920's, watch the next big internet sensations perform live and get in that last great meal before it's too late!
Jesse McCartney will play Irving Plaza Tuesday, August 12
Gavin Degraw takes on SummerStage Wednesday, August 13
The OMG Music Fest is coming to NYC Friday, August 15
Restaurant Week comes to a close Friday, August 15
The Jazz Age Lawn Party is back on Governers Island this weekend Saturday, August 16, 17
5 Can't Miss Events This Week in NYC
Children's Jazz, Giglio di Sant' Antonio and Luke Bryan highlight this week's main events in NYC:
Take the kids to an 'All Jazzed Up' performance at the Children's Museum of Manhattan Wednesday, August 6