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Early one morning in June, 2003, two dozen police officers drew their guns and prepared to raid a stately three-story brick-and-concrete home on a corner lot in Everest Colony, a quiet residential neighborhood on the outskirts of the Indian city of Jaipur. Several khaki-clad officers scaled the imposing stone wall surrounding the house, disarmed a guard, and opened the gate. Under the gaze of a security camera, the rest of the team filed silently onto the property. The raid was the culmination of a yearlong investigation and months of surveillance, during which officers had posed as vagrants and fruit peddlers. They had timed the strike for dawn, hoping to startle the inhabitants.
The officers called out, "Open the door!" and banged on the locked front entrance. They waited, but no one came. Then someone spotted smoke billowing from a third-floor window. The superintendent of police, Anand Shrivastava, ordered his men to break down the door. They ran upstairs to the master bedroom, where they found the owner, Vaman Narayan Ghiya, standing in his pajamas, hurriedly throwing documents into an improvised fire on the floor.
"How dare you?" Ghiya shouted. "How could you enter my house?" He cursed at the officers who rushed to restrain him, struggling and shouting, "You cannot touch me!"
The police led Ghiya away, and gathered his wife, son, and two daughters, who had been awakened by the raid. Then Superintendent Shrivastava and his men searched the house, spending hours rummaging through the elegant rooms. Behind the wood panelling of Ghiya's private study, the officers discovered a set of secret cupboards, which held hundreds of photographs of ancient Indian sculptures: graceful stone figures of the deities Vishnu, Shiva, and Parvati and Parvati's elephant-headed son, Ganesha; Jain Tirthankaras and Chola bronzes; dancing goddesses with many arms and melon breasts, festooned with delicately rendered ornaments. The photographs were color snapshots, and the objects pictured sat outdoors, in patches of grass or mud. Many evidently had been roughly pried away from temple walls and were missing limbs or heads. The police also discovered sixty-eight glossy auction catalogues from Sotheby's and Christie's in London and New York.
This stash seemed to confirm Shrivastava's suspicion that Vaman Ghiya operated one of the most extensive and sophisticated clandestine antiquities rings in history, and that he had grown rich in the past three decades by smuggling thousands of Indian antiques to auction houses and private collectors in the West. The police found no sculptures in Ghiya's home. But, in the days that followed, Shrivastava's men raided half a dozen properties that Ghiya owned around Jaipur, his farm outside the city, and various godowns, or storage facilities, in Mathura and Delhi. They discovered antique paintings, swords and shields, marble panels, stone pillars, three hundred and forty-eight pieces of sculpture, and a dismantled Mogul pavilion the size of a small house.
Vaman Ghiya was an enigma in Jaipur's tight-knit art world. A handsome man with silvering hair, small, nervous eyes, and an aloof, imperious manner, he wore elegant suits and conducted business in Jaipur's nicest hotels. People who know him say that he spent much of the year travelling and maintained a single-minded focus on business. He distrusted even his closest associates. "He wouldn't make small talk. He just wanted to do the deal," one of his buyers told me. "He was totally opaque."
Ghiya's legitimate business was the Crafts Palace, a colossal handicrafts showroom on Jaipur's Amer Road. Jaipur is a prosperous city of nearly three million people, the capital of the northwestern Indian state of Rajasthan. With its picturesque old quarter—known as the Pink City, for its grapefruit-colored architecture—and elaborate Rajput palaces in the surrounding countryside, Jaipur has long been a major stop on the tourist route through India. It is the center of India's gemstone industry, and of a flourishing trade in handicrafts—small, mass-produced brass animals and other figurines that are sold to tourists and exported in bulk.
Ghiya's handicrafts business had many hallmarks of a front. India's Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, passed in 1972, is a particularly stringent measure, which requires that any privately owned work of art that is more than a hundred years old be registered with the government. Since it is generally illegal to export such objects, to be an antique dealer in India with an international clientele is also arguably to be a criminal. But Indian customs officers are required to check only ten per cent of any large shipment of exports, and smugglers frequently bury a single priceless statue in a giant case of bric-a-brac. Other Jaipur handicrafts dealers told the police that they knew nothing about Ghiya's buyers or suppliers. His ostensibly thriving enterprise seemed to have no connection to the local economy, and Ghiya spent very little time at the showroom; his son, who was in his twenties, ran the shop.
In the summer of 2002, posing undercover as antique buyers, Anand Shrivastava and his men had rounded up a gang of thirty-four temple thieves who were trying to sell looted Hindu idols on the black market. Although the statues had little artistic merit, and were not antiques, the thieves were demanding high prices. Shrivastava wondered whether some wealthy local buyer might be driving up prices; when interrogated, the thieves all told him that it was Vaman Narayan Ghiya. "He is the king of this world," they said.
Shrivastava, who is thirty-seven, has a sharp, vulpine nose and a neat mustache. "First, let me take out all the literature," he said when I visited him last summer at his new post, in Bharatpur, a town several hours northeast of Jaipur. The Indian police force is punctiliously hierarchical, and Shrivastava carries himself with an air of impatient authority. When we traversed the fifty yards from his official residence to his office, he insisted that we do so in a government-issue sedan, driven by an unsmiling chauffeur. We sat at Shrivastava's sprawling desk, in an office with two air-conditioners and four ceiling fans, and ate pomegranate seeds while a deputy unwrapped a series of large red blankets tied with string, revealing stacks of art-history books and monographs, photocopied articles and evidence reports, and dozens of auction catalogues.
"This is just a glimpse," Shrivastava said with evident pride. "All of my photographs and literature filled two rooms."
Officials at India's Central Bureau of Investigation told Shrivastava that they had suspected for decades that Ghiya was one of India's biggest antique thieves, but his operation was so sophisticated that they had never been able to gather sufficient evidence against him. "He's become stronger and bigger than the law," Shrivastava marvelled. It occurred to Shrivastava that Ghiya represented both an information vacuum for law enforcement and a portal through which India was slowly losing its cultural heritage. Operation Black Hole began in June, 2002, with an initial team of twelve policemen. "I told my chaps, 'Find out who that bugger is,' " Shrivastava said.
International antiquities smuggling is effectively a white-collar crime in India: it requires capital and education, and the participants use the wealth that the business generates to cultivate an image of social respectability. Worldwide, the looted-antiquities market could be as much as a multibillion-dollar industry, and in recent years several cases have revealed the role of smuggling in arts acquisition at the highest levels, causing a scandal in the art world. But the shadowy practices of the smugglers who supply the international market have rarely been detailed. When Ghiya was charged with multiple counts of possession of stolen property and trafficking in looted antiquities, and was thrown into Jaipur Central Jail—where he remains today, held without bail, and forbidden by the court to speak to anyone but his lawyers and his family—the story made national headlines. (Ghiya has pleaded not guilty and has instructed his lawyers not to speak with the press.) "People were shocked," Chandramani Singh, a Jaipur archeologist who knew Ghiya's father, told me. "But I think many of them knew he was doing such things."
Stone temples devoted to the major Hindu deities have been the focus of theistic cults on the Indian subcontinent since the fifth century, and these shrines, often full of carved images of major and minor gods, can still be found throughout the country, along with a profusion of Buddhist and Islamic antiquities. "There are too many things, too many sites," Singh said. "It is easier for a Westerner, because they don't have such an amount of history." In a populous developing country like India, state and national authorities have few resources, Singh explained, and demand for clean drinking water, irrigation, roads, and other priorities means that archeological preservation remains underfunded. The Archaeological Survey of India has been unable to create a comprehensive national register of every temple and archeological site, much less protect them all from incursion.
In February, 1998, a gang of thieves visited a secluded site called Baroli, near the confluence of the Chambal and Bamini Rivers, in eastern Rajasthan. Set back from the road and surrounded by trees, the ornate stone shrines at Baroli were erected between the eighth and the twelfth centuries. There are nine temples in all, one of them rising majestically out of a small pond, along with numerous stone pillars and lingas, often regarded as the traditional phallic symbol of Shiva's generative power. Hindu villagers still worship in the crumbling temples, but Baroli attracts few tourists, and there is little to deter enterprising scavengers.
For religious Hindus, images of the gods are not merely representational; they can be inhabited by the deity they depict. The faithful anoint the statues with oils, camphor, and sandalwood, garland them with flowers, and make offerings of food, incense, and music. (The word "idol," though largely abandoned by Western academics because of its perceived pejorative connotation, remains in use in India to describe these objects.) When, in 1986, the Indian government sued for the return of a twelfth-century bronze Shiva that had been looted from a village in Pathur, it did so on behalf of the offended god himself: Shiva was named as a plaintiff in the case. "In the south, people still don't tell lies in Shiva's temple," Ashok Shekhar, a former state arts and culture official in Rajasthan, told me. "These are very hotheaded deities."
Looting a temple, therefore, is a sacrilegious act—the province of an especially unscrupulous criminal element. In Baroli, the thieves approached one of the best-preserved of the temples, a fifty-eight-foot-tall beehive-shaped building devoted to Shiva and lined with dramatic sculptures: three-headed Brahmas, bejewelled Lakshmis, a dozen incarnations of Vishnu, and a parade of other deities and attendants. Along the sanctum's western wall, a jaunty stone Shiva danced atop a lotus flower. Dating to the tenth century, the statue was adorned with a tasselled belt and anklets, and clutched a serpent in one of his many hands. Shiva is a supreme god, and in Hindu theology he assumes several different forms; the sensuous contortions of dancing Shivas make them popular among Western collectors. Using a jack, the thieves dislodged the statue from the niche it had occupied for a thousand years.
According to Shrivastava, the thieves sold the piece to Ghiya, who smuggled it out of India. When the local villagers discovered the theft, they were outraged. Ghiya quickly commissioned a replica of the Shiva and ordered his men to deposit it by the side of the road near the local police station. The local authorities triumphantly announced its recovery. Fearing that the Shiva might be stolen again, they decided not to return it to the temple, and stored it in an Archaeological Survey facility in the nearby city of Chittorgarh.
Under interrogation, Ghiya admitted to the police that he had sent the original to England, where it ended up in the private collection of John Kasmin, a well-known figure in the London art world. After the magazine India Today ran a story following Ghiya's arrest which suggested that Kasmin now had the Shiva, Kasmin faxed Shrivastava, insisting that he had "legally and innocently" bought the statue in London, but also volunteering to return it to India without compensation. (Kasmin told me recently that he had bought the sculpture not from Ghiya but from a dealer in London.) After the local police at Baroli learned from Shrivastava that Kasmin was allegedly in possession of the real Shiva, a panel of archeologists was summoned to inspect the Shiva being held in Chittorgarh. The panel declared it a fake.
The Western market for Indian sculpture was slow to develop. During the colonial era, these objects were often considered mere curiosities. British visitors occasionally helped themselves: Lord Hastings tore out the marble bath in Shah Jahan's palace at Agra to send to George IV as a gift; George Curzon, the viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905, recalled how nineteenth-century picnickers brought chisels to the Taj Mahal and "whiled away the afternoon by chipping out fragments of agate . . . from the cenotaphs of the Emperor and his lamented Queen." But, by the mid-twentieth century, influential American collectors like John D. Rockefeller III and the canned-food magnate Norton Simon were beginning to develop collections, and museums that had already established strong Chinese and Japanese holdings were looking to South Asia as well. Just as India outlawed the export of antiques, demand for them—and the prices they could fetch—soared. Some American museums, like the Cleveland Museum, slowed their rate of acquisition of Indian objects after 1972, but others, according to a Cambridge University study, assembled the bulk of their collections at a time when it was illegal for such objects to leave India.
"Everybody knew all of these lovely Indian sculptures don't come from Malibu Beach or Indiana," Thomas Hoving, who was the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1967 to 1977, told me. "But people were willing to look the other way." In 1973, Norton Simon bought a beautiful tenth-century bronze Nataraja, or dancing Shiva, from a dealer in New York for a million dollars. But the Indian government intervened, saying that the statue had been stolen from a village in Tamil Nadu and smuggled abroad. "Hell, yes, it was smuggled," Simon told the Times. "I spent between $15 and $16 million in the last two years on Asian art, and most of it was smuggled." It was during this period that Vaman Narayan Ghiya entered the business.
Ghiya was born into a lower-caste family in 1948, the year after independence and partition. His father, Badri Narayan, owned a small photography shop near Jaipur's City Palace, where he sold Kodak film and did studio portraits; he also framed pictures and occasionally sold paintings. After graduating from Maharaja College, Ghiya went into business selling antique Rajasthani paintings. He made frequent sales trips to Bombay, and opened his own shop in Jaipur. He married, and started a family.
Ariane Dandois, a Frenchwoman who first visited Ghiya's shop in the late seventies, was one of his earliest Western clients. Dandois is tall, blond, and glamorous, the mistress of Elie de Rothschild. She owned an Asian-art gallery on the Rue des Saints-Pères, in Paris. She had first travelled to India as a student at the Sorbonne, and she began spending several months a year in the country, scouting for material. Dandois recalls visiting Ghiya in a small house in which his entire family slept together in one room, on the floor. Ghiya was eager to cultivate Western clients, and he was extremely polite and deferential—"like a serviteur," Dandois said. His wife dutifully refilled Dandois's teacup every time she emptied it.
Many maharajas had begun selling off their extensive art collections, and Dandois negotiated with the Maharaja of Bikaner to purchase his entire collection of marble furniture for twenty-five thousand dollars. Ghiya summoned a convoy of trucks to transport all sixty-four pieces of furniture back to Jaipur, and gathered nearly a hundred locals in a courtyard, armed with little bowls of water, to scrub the furniture. The job took a full year.
There were perhaps twenty Western dealers who visited Jaipur in those days—French, Italian, British, and American. They stayed at the Rambagh Palace Hotel, the sprawling former home of Jaipur's royal family, and they came to rely on a new generation of Indian dealers like Ghiya, who could spare Westerners the risk and the discomfort of venturing out of the major cities on their own. Chief among these new dealers, according to people who knew him, was a man named Baliram Sharma. Based in Delhi, Sharma was arrested on several occasions, but he was never jailed for long. He became so influential, one Indian antique dealer told me, that dealers throughout the country "worked under the blessing of Sharma."
"Nowadays, somebody farts here in New York and they know about it thirty seconds later" in Rajasthan, one dealer who had bought from Sharma and Ghiya told me. But, in the nineteen-seventies, "no one knew what we were asking for the pieces they sold us." Sharma and a few others "were supplying all of the Western trade," the dealer continued, and Sharma in particular was becoming extraordinarily wealthy. The dealer recalled running into Sharma at the airport in Zurich, and joking, "What are you doing? Visiting your money?" (When I contacted Sharma, who is now retired, he replied, "I think some unfriendly man gave you my name and e-mail address. I was never in the antique business.")
It was an indication of Ghiya's ambition that when he entered the business, in the seventies, he did so not with the blessing of Sharma but in direct competition with him. People who knew Ghiya say that although he lacked Sharma's well-trained eye, he made up for it by amassing a vast inventory. According to the police, he began targeting the same archeologically rich areas as Sharma, and poaching Sharma's suppliers by paying slightly more than he did.
"He was so ambitious I can't tell you," Jack Franses, a former Sotheby's employee who met Ghiya in Jaipur in the early eighties, said of him. Ghiya took him to a dusty warehouse filled with antique dhurries (a kind of woven rug) and looked on as he went through them. "I like the way you work," Ghiya said admiringly. He said that he could get anything for anyone. "If you want the Taj Mahal, I'll send it to you," he told Franses. "I'll take it down piece by piece."
Ghiya cultivated dozens of middlemen throughout India. Part of the durability of Ghiya's network, authorities say, was that any given link on the chain knew only the links on either side. What connected these discrete links, from the local thief to the London auction house, was photographs. When a statue was stolen from a temple or bought for some small amount from a local farmer, it was brought to a middleman, who photographed it. The photograph would then make its way, often through further intermediaries, to Ghiya. These photographs were sent to prospective buyers abroad, or taken by Ghiya on sales trips to London and New York. "He'd come with a big stack of Polaroids and you'd go through it," one Western buyer told me. "There was nothing selective about it. It was a ton of junk with some wonderful stuff mixed in."
One evening in Jaipur, I met Abhay Singh, who was Ghiya's driver from 1984 to 2000 and is now a major witness in the government's case against him. Singh is lanky, with pitted cheeks and a schoolboy part in his hair, and he told me about driving Ghiya into the countryside to rendezvous with middlemen and inspect their wares. Ghiya was extremely cautious, even paranoid, Singh said. Even when he wasn't engaged in a deal, he kept a close watch on the rearview mirror, fearing that their car was being followed. Having selected the pieces he wanted to buy, Ghiya would instruct the middlemen to pack the purchases in their cars and return with him to Jaipur. On the drive back, "he would carry two flags with him, one red and one green," Singh explained. "If there was any danger, he would show the red flag to them, and they would stop and change their route." In Jaipur, Ghiya stashed the objects at one of his godowns, or buried them at his farm, a secluded stretch of grassland dotted with gold and violet wildflowers, with several low-slung concrete buildings and a swimming pool. Ghiya often dug the holes for the sculptures himself. "He would tell the servants he was planting trees," Singh said.
"He was too scared and too suspicious," one Jaipur acquaintance told me. "He doesn't get along with anybody in his life. Not even his wife." When Ghiya wasn't travelling, he came home late at night; he invested his money in real estate; he had no hobbies; and everyone I spoke with agreed that his interest in the business was driven simply by the enormous sums of money to be made.
At times, his wariness bordered on superstition. "One day, I was frozen cold in Ghiya's house in Jaipur," Ariane Dandois recalled. "So I said, 'Come on, Vaman, take your car, you drive me to Delhi. I'm going to sleep in a decent hotel room.' " Ghiya was nervous about bandits on the Jaipur-Delhi road, but he agreed to drive her. As the two walked out to the car, a bird appeared and swooped in a peculiar pattern around the house. "This is bad luck," Ghiya announced, and said that he could not possibly undertake the journey. Dandois tried to reason with him, but he refused.
Ghiya's caution deepened after he narrowly avoided smuggling charges, in 1989. Customs officers in Mumbai had discovered twenty-one antique objects during a random check of one of his handicrafts shipments. According to the police, and other antique dealers in Jaipur, when the authorities reëxamined the container they concluded that the incriminating items were replicas, not actual antiques. That may have been true, or it may be that Ghiya had bribed the right official. But it is also possible that someone switched the real antiques for fakes. One common smuggler's tactic in India is to prepare a copy of a looted antique and present it to the Archaeological Survey; once the survey grants a certificate of "non-antiquity," the certificate accompanies the genuine antique out of the country.
At around this time, Baliram Sharma retired and, Shrivastava told me, Ghiya "started building an empire." But, while most dealers and smugglers of Indian antiques insist on inspecting an object before paying for it, Ghiya stopped travelling to the countryside, making his initial selections by examining photographs. The objects were then routed to godowns in Mathura and Delhi, eliminating the transshipment point in Jaipur. Periodically, Ghiya inspected items before sending them abroad, but he increasingly depended on middlemen and photographs.
"He would never leave the photos around," Abhay Singh told me. "The photos would come and he . . . would immediately mail those photographs to his buyers."
In 1991, the British journalist Peter Watson was covering the art market for London's Observer when he came into contact with a former Sotheby's employee named James Hodges. Hodges had worked at the auction house for more than a decade, until 1989. Later, it was discovered that he had removed an ancient bronze helmet and a terra-cotta bowl from the premises. He was charged with theft, forgery, and false accounting, and was facing trial. Hodges told Watson that corruption and crime were pervasive at Sotheby's. In the course of several years, he had assembled a dossier of papers, filling three suitcases, that he said documented a business environment in which smuggling and tax evasion were routine.
While Hodges was at Sotheby's, he said, a number of the auction house's biggest suppliers had prompted him to open fake bank accounts. These accounts operated as slush funds for a handful of dealers who consigned large amounts of unprovenanced antiquities. One of these dealers was Giacomo Medici, an Italian smuggler whose Geneva warehouse was raided by the authorities in 1997 and was found to contain several thousand archeological works. Medici, it turned out, was a prolific black marketer with extensive contacts in auction houses and museums. His subsequent trial in Italy implicated Marion True, the antiquities curator of the Getty, who is currently on trial in Rome. (Medici was convicted and is appealing the decision; True has pleaded not guilty.) Another beneficiary of the accounts, Hodges told Watson, was "a Mr. Ghiya of Jaipur."
Hodges explained that Ghiya was "a kind of Indian Medici," whose relationship with Sotheby's was so close that he would stop at Hodges's house in Shepherds Bush on his way into London from the airport to drop off antiques he had carried on the plane. After establishing contact with the auction house, in the early nineteen-eighties, Ghiya flooded the antiquities department with items. Hodges showed Watson a 1986 department memo that said, "We now have a clear understanding of what should be sent [by Ghiya] and have ruled out the lower end of the market." Brendan Lynch, one of Sotheby's Indian-antiquities experts, had met with Ghiya, and the memo proposed that Lynch begin visiting Ghiya in Jaipur twice a year to acquire objects. "Any visit by a Sotheby's expert will be monitored in India and justification for such a visit should be readily available," the memo said. "It is unconvincing to say every expert is there on holiday and even the pretext of 'writing a book' is wearing pretty thin!" In another memo, Felicity Nicholson, who was then the director of antiquities at Sotheby's, professed to find "the shady side of the antiquities market not uncongenial."
Some of these memos were produced by Hodges's defense team when his trial commenced at London's Knightsbridge Crown Court, in November, 1991. Hodges, who was ultimately convicted of theft and false accounting, testified that the fraudulent bank accounts were considered an "extra service" for clients like Ghiya, and that he kept cash from the accounts in a special cupboard in Sotheby's offices, because "one couldn't keep on popping down to the bank." Brendan Lynch, who had become Ghiya's closest contact at Sotheby's, fared especially poorly on the stand. When he was asked about his trips to India, he insisted that his purpose was not to acquire objects but merely to conduct "research and . . . valuations." But the defense produced an expense report from a 1988 trip, in which Lynch had written, under "Purpose of Visit," "To obtain property for the June 13 Indian sale." When Lynch was asked whether he had ever hidden in the closet at Vaman Ghiya's Jaipur home, he replied that he had not, but he conceded that on one occasion, when the police visited Ghiya, he did hide in the other room.
The trial was followed closely in the British press, but, even after Lynch's testimony, the auction house did not terminate its relationship with Ghiya. Watson's book, "Sotheby's: The Inside Story," was published in 1997, and had a more pronounced effect. Brendan Lynch left the company, and Sotheby's announced that it was closing its London antiquities department. "It has always been Sotheby's policy to be sensitive to issues of patrimony and heritage," a spokesman said at the time. He added that Sotheby's would continue to auction antiquities, but solely through New York.
When Shrivastava began his investigation, he knew nothing of Watson's book. In the first phase of Operation Black Hole, he dispatched officers around the country to pose as buyers. "The operation would be successful if I could catch hold of one branch at a time," Shrivastava told me. "The actual thief, then the transporter, then the first middleman, then the second, main middleman, then the packer who does the packaging in Delhi, then the exporter, then Ghiya." As it happened, Ghiya had a tendency to turn on business partners and subordinates, and to terminate relationships on the slightest suspicion. ("He had no friends," I was told on more than one occasion in Jaipur.) The caution and distrust that had enabled Vaman Ghiya to remain at large for so long had also produced a considerable number of disgruntled ex-employees. Before long, Shrivastava had located several who were willing to talk.
The testimony of these local thieves and middlemen was compelling, but inadequate as evidence. In some cases, the disappearance of idols had been registered with local police departments, but Shrivastava needed photographs of the pieces in the village temples from which they had been taken. Since the records of the Archaeological Survey and various state archeological authorities are woefully incomplete, Shrivastava began scouring libraries and archives in search of old photographs and archeological records. (Around this time, he also received a copy of Watson's book.) He sought out Ph.D. dissertations from the nineteen-sixties, many of which contained photographs of sculptures in their original temple settings. He concedes that his work became an obsession. "In my department, people said, 'You have gone mad! You are the man of archeology and art and culture.' And I was reading all the time and doing this bloody job," he said, chuckling. "This was my favorite hobby."
Occasionally, Shrivastava's research produced vivid illustrations of what was lost when a religious relic was smuggled out of India. He stumbled across a series of beautiful Matrika, or mother goddess, statues from outside Tanesar, a village near Udaipur. Originally, there were a dozen of the statues, each about two feet tall, carved from dark-green schist, and dating to the fifth century. They depicted graceful, broad-hipped women, each in a different stage of motherhood: one pregnant, one breast-feeding an infant, one cradling a toddler, one walking a child. An Indian archeological journal had published photographs of the Tanesar Matrikas in 1961. Sometime thereafter they were stolen and smuggled out of the country. In the late nineties, one of the statues appeared in a Sotheby's catalogue, and in February, 2003, Shrivastava assembled some photographs of the sculptures and travelled to Tanesar.
When the police contingent arrived at the village, a crowd formed. Shrivastava's men asked whether anyone remembered a series of statues of women that had once stood nearby. "We got hold of a person who was now eighty years old," Shrivastava told me. "Long white hair. Old guy." Shrivastava asked the man if he remembered the Matrikas, and after a moment the man said, "Oh, yes, I recall, seven or eight idols were there of a lady, a lady feeding her child." Shrivastava took out the pictures of the Matrikas. The old man stared at them for a moment. Then he began to weep.
I asked what had become of the Matrikas, and Shrivastava told me that they had ended up in various museums in England and the United States. Today, one is at the British Museum, one is at the Cleveland Museum, and one is at the Met.
Vaman Ghiya's interrogation lasted ninety days. Initially, he was forced to share a cell with one of his middlemen, which he considered demeaning. He complained about the uncomfortable quarters and insisted on telephoning his doctor every day to discuss a number of ailments. Shrivastava was eager to carry out the interrogation, but Ghiya would break his silence only to say, "Why don't you tell me the name of your foreign bank account? I will send the money."
Shrivastava subjected Ghiya to long nights of questioning that began at 6 P.M. and continued until the morning. He describes his relationship with Ghiya during these sessions as somewhat jocular. "Obviously, he was doing illegal things. But it was art," he told me. "It was not a bank robbery, he was not Al Qaeda. He is a good conversationalist. But, at the same time, he's very hard, very hard." After several days, Shrivastava tried taunting Ghiya, saying that it was his impression that Baliram Sharma was Ghiya's superior in the antiquities trade. "He has been arrested by the police several times," Ghiya replied. "This is the first time I have." And when Shrivastava asked why the auction world continued doing business with Ghiya after Watson's book and the dismissal of Brendan Lynch, Ghiya snapped back that he was indispensable. "They can survive without Brendan Lynch," he said. "But not without me."
Two weeks into the questioning, Ghiya began to open up. His confession, from which Shrivastava read aloud to me, was recorded by hand in Hindi in a series of lined blue notebooks, and describes a staggeringly sophisticated operation. Because of the free-trade zone and lax inspections in Switzerland, Ghiya shipped items through Geneva, where he maintained three shell corporations. These companies would buy and sell the objects among themselves, to launder the provenance, before forwarding them to auction houses and collectors elsewhere. The auction houses could claim to be accepting antiquities not from India but from a Swiss company that had bought them from another Swiss company—even if the companies shared the same business address and the antiques had been on Swiss soil for less than a week.
James Hodges had shown Peter Watson documents with the letterhead of two Swiss companies used by Ghiya, Cape Lion Logging and Megavena. Between 1984 and 1986, these two companies alone had consigned some ninety-three lots to Sotheby's sales. Sotheby's often paid his commission through a dummy bank account, Ghiya explained. To get cash back into India, Ghiya used hawala, a paperless money-remittance system that is widely used in India and by diasporic South Asian communities throughout the world, and is virtually untraceable.
After Sotheby's closed its London antiquities desk, in 1997, it simply shifted the business to New York, Ghiya told the police. A regal Jain Tirthankara that the police say Ghiya's men stole from Krishna Vilas, an Archaeological Survey-protected site in Rajasthan, turned up as Lot 135 in Sotheby's September, 2000, catalogue, with an estimated price of twenty-five thousand to thirty-five thousand dollars. (A Sotheby's spokeswoman told me that the auction house has "not knowingly sold any items" consigned by Ghiya since 1997, and has "the most rigorous duediligence program in the art market." She also said that Lot 135 was consigned by a New York dealer who to her knowledge has no connection to Ghiya.) Christie's also continued to auction material that he stole, Ghiya said. The police had recovered a photograph in Ghiya's secret cupboard depicting a scuffed sandstone Shiva, crowned with an elaborate headdress, his hips thrust to the right and his four arms radiating around him. It perfectly matched the elegantly lit Shiva that Christie's auctioned in New York on September 20, 2000—down to the jagged right edge of the panel, where it had been pried from its original location. Ghiya said that he had met with representatives from Christie's as late as January, 2003. A Christie's spokeswoman told me that "Christie's does not comment on the identities of their clients." She added that the lot in question was consigned not by Ghiya but "by a reputable dealer," whose name she would not divulge, and maintained that Christie's "had no reason to believe that Mr. Ghiya had any connection" to the Shiva.
Ghiya eventually supplied Shrivastava with the names of dozens of his buyers in Britain, Switzerland, and the United States. He had an uncanny memory for the street addresses and collecting preferences of various prominent individuals with whom he had done business, and for the fate of many objects that had passed through his hands. Collectors often suggest that they are the custodians and preservers of antiquities that might otherwise suffer from neglect or mistreatment, but Ghiya described the callous mechanics that are sometimes required to smuggle a statue from one country to another. He recalled a squat stone Vahara—a depiction of Vishnu in his incarnation as a boar—that stood in the village of Attru, in southeast Rajasthan. The boar weighed more than a thousand pounds and its legs and torso were covered in a magnificent phalanx of tiny, intricately carved figurines. Ghiya's thieves stole the statue in the late nineteen-eighties, lacing a chain through the boar's open mouth and yanking it from its stone pedestal, shearing off its lower jaw and breaking its legs in the process. The piece was eventually sold to a private collector in Zurich.
Ghiya was charged with "habitually" receiving stolen property and with the illegal possession and export of antiquities. Indian courts operate at a sluggish pace, and the trial, which has been under way for more than a year, is expected to continue for at least another year. Journalists are barred from the courtroom, but Abhay Singh said that during the several days that he testified against his former employer Ghiya was alert and engaged, following every word. Despite his detailed confession, Ghiya pleaded not guilty. Torture and coercive interrogation are such a common feature of the Indian criminal-justice system that confessions given to police officers are not admissible in court. When I asked Shrivastava and another officer who was involved in the interrogations whether Ghiya had been tortured, they both dismissed any suggestion of cruel treatment as the timeworn refrain of criminal defendants everywhere. But Ghiya's supporters, and others who have followed the case, maintain that it would be more unusual if the police had not physically coerced Ghiya's confession than if they had.
"What Vaman did was he created a sort of aura," a Rajasthan textiles dealer told me. Ghiya awakened Indians to the value of their cultural heritage, the dealer explained, by demonstrating the prices that outsiders were willing to pay for it. "He made the market something fantastic."
We were drinking milky tea in the cramped back room of a small shop in Jaipur's old quarter, along with four other men. The men were jumpy. They peered suspiciously at several drivers lounging on their auto-rickshaws under a tree in front of the shop, and asked if I had been followed; they repeatedly insisted that I not use any of their names. Sandipan Sharma, an Indian journalist, had warned me that in the Jaipur art world antique dealing is "like doping in athletics"—everyone dabbles in it, and everyone denies doing so. Sure enough, none of the men would say that they dealt antiques. One told me that his main business was jewelry; another insisted that he was a goldsmith. "After this case, everybody says, 'I sell only handicrafts,' " one man joked. The others laughed nervously.
The antiquities law has many critics. "The law as it stands doesn't benefit anybody," said the scholar and curator Pratapaditya Pal, who came to the United States in the mid-nineteen-sixties and built several renowned collections, including Norton Simon's. The law is self-defeating, Pal believes, because it makes no distinction between a masterpiece and any generic antique. The result is a black market that the government lacks the resources to control. Pal prefers the model adopted by Japan, which identifies art works of national significance and keeps them in the country, while allowing everything else to be sold on the open market. The difference between what Walter Benjamin called "cult value" and "exhibition value" makes the issue particularly vexed in India. Indians who are involved in the art world frequently express frustration that their countrymen have little interest in the purely artistic value of religious art. "We may be very advanced in the Internet and outsourcing and all that," Pal said. "But I see absolutely no response to antiquities of any kind among any of the people I meet [in India], and I meet only the educated, upper crust."
It is not clear what will become of the thousands of art works that the police say Ghiya smuggled out of the country between the nineteen-seventies and his capture. A dispute between the Archaeological Survey and the state government in Rajasthan over who would underwrite the cost of returning the art seems to have stalled the prospect of recovery. Even if works are returned, it is not clear where precisely they would go. Pal pointed out that, even after the Indian government spent enormous sums to secure the return of Norton Simon's bronze Nataraja in the seventies, the sculpture—which is considered one of the masterpieces of Indian art—was neither restored to the temple from which it had been stolen nor displayed in a museum.
The police ultimately unearthed some nine hundred antiques in Ghiya's various godowns around India, and trucked them back to Jaipur. Today, they inhabit a storage space at Jaipur's Vidhyadhar Nagar police station. Officials have announced a plan to assemble all the recovered treasures into a permanent exhibit—a sort of Ghiya Collection of South Asian Art—which would be displayed at Hawa Mahal, Jaipur's beautiful, tapering Palace of Winds, in the heart of the Pink City. I visited Hawa Mahal, the façade of which is a lacy scrim of pink sandstone, perforated with hundreds of tiny windows through which nineteenth-century noblewomen could watch street festivals without being seen. There I met Zafar Ullah Khan, who has been assigned to curate the exhibit. Each sculpture had been photographed before being placed in storage, and, as we flipped through huge stacks of these black-and-white pictures, Khan told me that one day all of the sculptures would be on display. But, for the time being, they must stay in storage. The Palace of Winds needs a burglar alarm and closed-circuit security cameras. They couldn't possibly display so precious a trove of antiquities in so unguarded a space.
One enduring mystery is why a man of Ghiya's means has been unable to bribe his way out of prison. Ariane Dandois heard rumors in Jaipur that Ghiya had powerful enemies. "He had become very rich, very arrogant, and had problems with highly important people," she said. "You know, it's a mafia. Clearly, some people wanted him out of the market."
But the authorities may simply be sending a message. "When Ghiya was put behind bars, there was a lot of terror," Shrivastava told me late one night, as we sat on the deserted terrace of a sumptuous palace that had been reinvented as a posh hotel. The walls were hung with fading photographs of early-twentieth-century shooting parties: stern-faced maharajas and visiting British aristocrats standing triumphant over a mountain of slain ducks; a Rolls-Royce with a dead tiger splayed along its running board, and the caption "Silver Shadow and Tiger."
Ghiya's operation was the largest antiquities smuggling racket in India's history to be systematically dismantled and prosecuted, and, depending on the outcome of the trial, Ghiya could spend the rest of his life in jail. Shrivastava said that for three years after Ghiya's arrest other smugglers left the business and the outflow of antiquities had been stemmed. "But now I have come to know that again they have started," he told me. Bats made lazy figure eights in the air around us, splashing off the surface of the swimming pool. On a low rooftop in the distance, hotel employees spread out blankets and prepared to sleep beneath the stars. "This is a very specialized kind of crime. You have to have a lot of taste. You have to read a lot," Shrivastava said. "These new guys, they have taken all the lessons from Ghiya. They are taking more precautions." ♦


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Pistorius 'thought he shot burglar'
South African athlete Oscar Pistorius has denied murdering his model girlfriend and claimed he shot her thinking she was an intruder.
The gold-medal winner, known as the Blade Runner for his prosthetic legs, told a bail hearing the couple were "deeply in love" and he had no doubt the evidence would prove he was telling the truth.
But prosecutors accused him of premeditated murder, claiming he intentionally killed Reeva Steenkamp, 29, in his Pretoria home by firing four bullets through a closed toilet door, hitting her three times.
The bail hearing came as Miss Steenkamp's funeral was held in her home town of Port Elizabeth. Pistorius' lawyer read out a statement in court which gave his client's version of the events that led to her death in the early hours of Thursday morning.
The 26-year-old, who broke down in tears on several occasions, said the pair were in bed together when he woke up and went onto a balcony to bring a fan inside. On his return to the bedroom he said he heard a noise and thought an intruder had broken in through his bathroom window.
Pistorius claimed he was too scared to switch a light on, so he grabbed his 9mm pistol - which he kept under his bed after receiving death threats - and walked towards the bathroom, which contains a toilet with a separate door.
"On my way to the bathroom I screamed words to the effect for him/them to get out of my house and for Reeva to phone the police. It was pitch dark in the bedroom and I thought Reeva was in bed," he said.
"I believed that when the intruder/s came out of the toilet we would be in grave danger. I felt trapped as my bedroom door was locked and I have limited mobility on my stumps. I fired shots at the toilet door and shouted to Reeva to phone the police. She did not respond and I moved backwards out of the bathroom, keeping my eyes on the bathroom entrance. Everything was pitch dark in the bedroom and I was still too scared to switch on a light. Reeva was not responding.
"When I reached the bed, I realised that Reeva was not in bed. That is when it dawned on me that it could have been Reeva who was in the toilet. I returned to the bathroom calling her name. I tried to open the toilet door but it was locked. I rushed back into the bedroom and opened the sliding door exiting onto the balcony and screamed for help."
According to Pistorius he then smashed his way into the toilet using a cricket bat, finding her "slumped over but alive". He then phoned for an ambulance and carried her downstairs, but she died in his arms. The defendant said he was "absolutely mortified" by what had happened, but insisted the evidence would prove his innocence.
PA Media

subset: commoncrawl


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Letters Policy
Letters to the editor must contain the writer's signature and address in order to qualify for publication. The writer's telephone number is also required. Letters should be a maximum of 300 words. We reserve the right to edit letters to conform to stylistic, grammatical and length requirements. Letters that contain libelous, obscene or other material deemed as offensive to readers will not be published. Form letters and mass mailing letters will not be used. All letters are submitted for consideration of publication only. The Courier-Times reserves the right to limit writers or reject any submissions.


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Between The Buried And Me:
Colors CD
Between The Buried And Me - Colors CD
Release Date: Steptember 18, 2007
VR351-CDBETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME have built their reputation as one of hard rock's most inventive and ambitious bands. Sharing a lineage with such luminaries as Pink Floyd, King Crimson and Tool, they continue to explore new territory with a genuine passion to push themselves and their audience. Colors, the band's newest record, is a sonic labyrinth of grand proportion. It's an organism completely in its own class and at the nerve center is a band that encourages the listener to take the bold ride from beginning to end. The record is a continuous movement of savage metal, lush prog-rock and stimulating mood that morphs into some of the most forward thinking music today. Yet for a record that is so fierce and complex, it is also engaging and comfortable. It challenges the myths of what we expect from modern rock, demonstrating just how much potential there is in a band and the people who experience their craft.
Release Date: Steptember 18, 2007
Price: $9.98 VR351-CD
Between The Buried And Me Colors CD comes with instant* digital download.
CD Tracklisting
|Foam Born (A) The Backtrack (2:13)
|(B) The Decade Of Statues (5:20)
|Informal Gluttony (6:47)
|Sun Of Nothing (10:59)
|Ants Of The Sky (13:10)
|Prequel To The Sequel (8:36)
|Viridian (2:51)
|White Walls (14:13)
Customer Reviews
Be the first to review this item!


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In 1937, Morris Fuller Benton designed Empire, titling capitals that became the headline style for Vogue.
In 1989, David Berlow revived it for Publish magazine, adding an italic and a lowercase, both unavailable in the original. He revisited Empire in 1994 with Kelly Ehrgott Milligan, adding two heavier weights, small caps, and an elegant set of Art Deco-flavored oldstyle figures, ultimately expanding it to a seven-part series.
Among other uses, Empire is recommended for Magazine use.


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With the huge numbers of members we have here it is quite easy to get lost. Here is the chance to get to know people better and for newbies to tell us what they're about and who we are, rather than starting a new thread every time someone else joins (we have enough threads in Off Topic already). So I'll start the ball rolling
I am James, 15 years old and live in Brisbane. I am passionate about cricket (Bangladesh) and football (Roosters and school rugby). I've been on this forum for a while now but only became a regular late last year.
And who might you be?


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FREE shipping over $100. 5 cents of each order donated to the ACCFB.
All products are printed in the USA.All cards and envelopes made with 100% recycled paper. Greeting Card 6-Pack:-- 6 cards, sized 4" x 5.5"-- Cards come individually packed in eco-friendly compostable cellos*-- All 6 cards are the same design-- Blank inside-- Cards made of 100% Post-Consumer Waste paper-- Comes with 6 brown kraft envelopes (envelopes made with 100% recycled paper)-- Printed locally in Berkeley, CA* Please use your city's composting service


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Chugach Commercial Holdings
From Alaska to Chicago to Hawaii, Chugach companies have the expertise to meet the specialized needs of commercial properties of all sizes and complexity, from schools and hospitals, to oil and gas facilities and sports centers.
Whatever your facility needs, we stand ready to take care of them so you can focus on what's important: your mission.
3800 Centerpoint Drive Suite 120099503 Anchorage, AK
Gerald Atol
Business Development Director
CPOS provides professional oilfield services to operators around the Cook Inlet and North Slope of Alaska. Our service lines include providing well site leaders and drilling foremen, completions engineering, production engineering, testing services, logistics coordination, well planning and rig design. Our collective experience in Alaska's oilfields allows us to provide operators with the best solutions and services possible. From planning wells to production, we have the capabilities to make a drilling program integrated and efficient for our customers.
Chugach Professional Oilfield Services, LLC is a subsidiary whose majority owner is Chugach Alaska Corporation.
Customer Base
Professional work was previously performed by All American Oilfield Associates, LLC (All American). Upon the acquisition of All American, Chugach made the decision to reorganize its professional oilfield services division under a new entity in order to allow All American to focus on its drilling services line. Customers served include BlueCrest Alaska Operating, Armstrong Oil & Gas, 70 & 148th, Cook Inlet Energy, Brooks Range Petroleum, SolstenXP, Hilcorp, XTO Energy, Aurora, Royale and NordAq Energy. CPOS is quickly emerging into the oilfield services market and offering services to these same operators around the Cook Inlet and the North Slope region.
Regional Alaska Native Corporation (ANC) subsidiary.
Oil and gas professional services.
Year Established


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do (someone or something) justice(redirected from does ourselves justice)
do (someone or something) justice
To describe or show someone or something accurately. Often used in the negative to emphasize that something is better than it appeared or was portrayed. You're a great writer—you just need to find a platform that really does you justice. I think you two will love this house once we get inside—the pictures really don't do its mid-century modern charm any justice.
do yourself justice
COMMON If you do yourself justice, you do something as well as you are capable of doing it. I don't think I can win, but I want to do myself justice. The selection panel was impressed but felt she did not do herself justice in the interview.


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The blog Scouting NY published on 4 March 2013 a rather interesting article, Stumbling On The Abandoned Ruins Of King Zog's Long Island Estate, which, as the title suggests, tells the story of King Zog of the Albanians' Long Island estate in text and pictures. King Zog (1895-1961), who was exiled after the Italian invasion in 1939 and never returned to his homeland alive, bought the Knollwood Estate at Muttontown, New York, in 1951, but never moved in. The blog article has been shared on Facebook, but is certainly worth sharing here as well!
The blog is written by Nick Carr, who works as a movie location scout and writes about what he discovers during his travels around the city and suburbs of New York.
I have also earlier recommended articles by Carr: The Three Private Graves in Manhattan, New York, USA (23 January 2011) and Scouting New York: Houdini's Final Vanishing Act in Queens, New York, USA (24 January 2011). His blog has been on my Selected blogs website ever since.
19 March 2013
Scouting NY: King Zog of the Albanians Long Island estate
Posted by Dag T. Hoelseth at 20:00
1 comment:
Really I donot have any idea of Albania Estate so if you could provide me some more details regarding the places and properties I will be very thankful to you for this thing.ReplyDelete
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Pollyanne Birge graduated from Portland State University in 2003 with a BS majoring in Sociology, and in 2011 as a Master of Public Administration.
(From the Independent Publishing Resource Center) —The IPRC is thrilled to announce the hiring of Pollyanne Birge as our new Development and Community Resource Coordinator (DCRC).
Pollyanne comes to this position with a very impressive background. From 2006 until 2010, she served as the Arts and Culture Policy and Outreach Coordinator for the Office of Mayor Sam Adams. She went on to earn a Master's Degree in Nonprofit Management from Portland State University, and since 2011 has worked as Development Coordinator for the vibrant nonprofit Know Your City. Her candidacy for the position was also greatly strengthened by her deep involvement with the IPRC: she previously worked as an Open Hours volunteer, and has served on the IPRC's Board of Directors since 2010, and as Board Chairperson since early 2012.
As we've witnessed over the years, Pollyanne is a community connector and an idea person; she's an inclusive collaborator and an innovative fundraiser. She also has very toned interpersonal communication and conflict resolution skills. These are all qualities that will serve the Center well as she takes over the role of coordinating IPRC volunteers, community resources, and development efforts. Please join us in giving Pollyanne the warmest of welcomes, and look for her to begin training in late July and early August. She can be reached after her July 29 start date at firstname.lastname@example.com.


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A new feature has been added to the Retro Image Tool: creating Spectrum 512/4k images. Just set "Colours" to "Spectrum 512/4k" and choose either "512 (ST)" or "4096 (STE)" for the palette option, also please set the dither option to "Floyd-Steinberg 75%".
Now the original images will be resized to fit the 320x200 pixels resolution when loaded. Recommended source pictures should have a 16:10 aspect ratio like 1280x800 or 1920x1200 pixels. It's still not perfect but probably a neat tool to play around with.
The images in this post can be found in this Spectrum 512/4k demo archive.
Some notable results with the ST version left and STE version on the right side (click on the image to download the Spectrum 512/4k format image):


text: When I was little, every year one corner of the living room was taken over by "the platform". My dad would bring up the saw horses to hold the large piece of plywood that fit into the corner. The "skirting" around the outside was "brick" coragated paper. Then the top of the plywood was covered with the green sand paper for the giant Lionel Trains to go on. And we had the giant buildings to make up the town and the farm. In the middle of it all was the tree that Santa brought. the big memory I have was on Christmas morning, sitting at the top of the steps waiting for my parents to come home from 6 AM Mass. My Uncle had guard duty. He had to keep my sister and I at the top of the steps until they came home. I can still remember sitting up there and the wonderful smell of the tree coming up the stairs. It just added to the excitement and anticipation of it all!


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Starting MSRP from * $77,695
Discover the 2018 Cadillac Escalade ESV at Cadillac of Portland
Find the all-new 2018 Cadillac Escalade ESV at your local Cadillac dealer, Cadillac of Portland. Our Cadillac showroom is stocked with the newest Cadillac models, available for you to test drive through the streets of Beaverton, Hillsboro, and Gresham. Contact us today at (503) 200-2533 for more information.


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|California Law Enforcement Raid Five CD Plants Suspected Of Producing and Selling Counterfeit Music
|Friday, 17 December 2004
what was the largest law enforcement operation ever against CD
manufacturing plants producing and selling counterfeit music on the
side, officials from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
executed five separate, simultaneous raids on CD replication businesses
in Southern California on Wednesday.
In early morning raids involving more than 65 detectives from the
Southern California High Tech Task Force and the L.A. County Sheriff's
Department, "Operation Final Release" targeted five different optical
disc replication facilities in Los Angeles and Orange County that were
also illegally churning out millions of unauthorized music CDs. Illicit
CDs from these plants were found sold and distributed in stores and
flea markets throughout the United States.
Preliminary estimates of the counterfeit product seized include 120,000 music CDs. Additionally, 79 unauthorized "stampers", which contain the actual data that is pressed on a CD, were confiscated. The average "stamper" can press up to 50,000 CDs. The cumulative value of the confiscated stampers and CDs is approximately $50 million.
Search warrants for the five plants -- located in North Hollywood, Baldwin Park, Pomona, Costa Mesa and Santa Ana -- were obtained following an investigation and forensic analysis, which traced counterfeit CDs back to the facilities. Investigators with the RIAA and IFPI, the trade organization for the international record industry, provided technical and forensic assistance to law enforcement officials during the investigation.
In addition to today's sweep, the RIAA's West Coast anti-piracy office has undertaken a number of enforcement operations in the Southern California area during the holiday season. Since Thanksgiving, approximately 250,000 illegal CDs and DVDs offered for sale have been confiscated.


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A range of revolutionary stereo microscopes without eyepieces,
provide superb imaging without fatigue.
Conventional eyepiece systems offer quality and high value.
Exceptional Dynascope™ optical measuring microscopes allow you to see
what you want to measure - more details, more clarity.
Range of video measuring machines provide high accuracy
non-contact measurement of complex manufactured
components and materials.
Vision Engineering's routine microscope range includes patented wide-angle eyepieces,
providing exceptional user ergonomics and efficiency. Dedicated laboratory and
metallurgical microscopes.
Utilise the power of digital imaging...
Digital inspection solutions for general and industrial magnification tasks.
Vision Engineering's software solutions include image capture and documentation
software, as well as a suite of powerful dimensioning and measurement solutions.
Tailor and enhance your system to meet individual application requirements.
Vision Engineering has a range of microscope accessories and options,
plus a wealth of experience to help you get the most out of your system.
Mantis Elite is an ergonomic eyepieceless stereo microscope, offering superb optical performance with magnification options up to 20x, making it a perfect alternative to more traditional inspection stereo microscopes.
Mantis Elite is a patented 'eyepieceless' stereo microscope, offering truly superb 3-D imaging and unparalleled levels of comfort, reducing operator fatigue and increasing quality and productivity.
Winner of numerous industry design awards, the outstanding ergonomic design is unrivalled by other inspection stereo viewers.
With magnification options up to 20x, Mantis Elite is the high performance stereo viewer of choice for a wide range of precision tasks requiring magnification.
Patented optical technology removes the need for restrictive eyepieces of a conventional microscope, allowing operators freedom of head movement, providing superb ergonomics and hand-eye co-ordination, plus the ability to wear glasses, if required.
Mantis Elite is a perfect alternative to traditional stereo microscopes, in use throughout the world for a wide range of inspection, preparation and manipulation tasks requiring hand-to-eye co-ordination.
The floor stand (for use with articulated arm) is specifically designed for stereo inspection where subjects are immobile or require a standing position. Mobile and highly stable, the floor stand provides a versatile option for Mantis operators.
Since its introduction, Vision Engineering's Mantis has become the accepted standard for ergonomics and high performance magnification with over 150,000 installed units worldwide.
"Wow!" The most common reaction when looking into a Mantis for the first time...
Patented eyepiece-less technology provides the Mantis Elite with truly exceptional 3-D imaging, plus a significant ergonomic advantage over conventional stereo microscopes, minimising operator fatigue and allowing the greater freedom of head movement, leading to increased quality and productivity.
Mantis Elite offers a large field of view and generous working distance to allow for a wide range of inspection, preparation and manipulation tasks, all with exceptional hand-eye co-ordination.
Mantis incorporates the most modern advances in optical design with LED illumination and a small footprint, giving a superb price / performance ratio.
Advances in optical design allow your eyes and hands to work together resulting in increased throughput, accuracy and reduced scrap and rework.
2x – 20x magnification options with quick change turret allows users to switch between low magnification inspection and high magnification fine detail tasks.
Increased head and body freedom for the operator leads to greater productivity, increased throughput, improved quality control and less fatigue.
Mantis Elite offers simple 3-dimensional viewing, with the apparent distance to the viewed object image identical to that of the real object, eliminating re-focussing of the operator's eye; thus reducing the likelihood of fatigue.
The new Mantis Elite-Cam variant comprises of a standard Mantis Elite, with a factory-integrated digital camera, bringing image capture capabilities to the outstanding eyepiece-less optics of Mantis Elite ... read more »
The Mantis stereo inspection system is a popular solution for inspecting and manipulating samples under magnification
A range of accessories provides extended reach, increased height and larger working distances to reduce the difficulties of inspection tasks.
The Episcopic illuminator provides a concentration of light through- the-lens (TTL) to illuminate the bottom and sides of component features, which would otherwise be difficult to view.
With an iris feature to allow focusing of the light, the Episcopic Illuminator is ideal for the inspection of complex internal/external features, such as bores, pipes, tubes, slots, holes and connectors.
Mantis Elite UV is a variant of Vision Engineering's Mantis Elite stereomicroscope, offering clear, magnified imaging of UV fluoresced cracks, flaws and coatings.
The dedicated variant incorporates switchable UV/white light illumination for the combined benefits of stereo magnification and UV inspection, making it ideal for a wide range of specialist and general UV inspection tasks.
Provides smooth and sensitive control allowing for samples to be accurately inspected. For use with bench stand only.
2x, 4x, 6x, 6x SLWD (Super Long Working Distance), 8x, 10x, 15x and 20x objective lenses are available, to suite different application requirements.
Mantis Elite houses 2 objectives in a quick rotate turret, so you can inspect at lower magnification, then switch to higher magnification for detail work.
With a 112mm working distance, the 6x SLWD objective is an ideal solution for precision applications requiring both inspection and detail tasks, such as hair restoration and dental laboratory work.
Disposable lens protection caps are available to protect your objective lens from damage when soldering, or in similar aggressive environments.
To discuss your particular requirements in further detail, please contact your local Vision Engineering representative.
* cannot be used together with 2x or 20x objective lens
Universal Stand
A = 593mm - 802mm
B = 352mm - 622mm
C = 415mm - 624mm
D = 103mm - 312mm
Bench Stand
A = 487mm - 620mm
B = 300mm
C = 380mm
D = 330mm
E = 255mm max, less working distance
Articulated Arm
A = 880mm
B = 430mm
C = 510mm
D = 650mm
= 800mm with secondary link (optional)
Floor Stand
Mantis is a true stereo microscope, without eyepieces. Twin optical paths pass through the patented optics of Mantis, exiting the single viewing lens as separate (stereo) optical paths, just as they would with a conventional stereo microscope. There is no magic, no electronic manipulation, just a high contrast, high resolution microscope image, without the hassle of microscope eyepieces.
Yes. The working distance of fixed objective lenses reduces as you increase the magnification. Mantis uses fixed objective lenses.
* cannot be used together with 2x or 20x objective lens.
Zoom stereo microscopes have a fixed working distance across the entire zoom range.
Depth of focus is the depth of the subject being viewed that is in sharp focus.
We do not quote depth of focus for the Mantis objective lenses, as exact figures are dependent on many external influences, not least being the user's eyes. In general, depth of focus is larger at low magnifications and reduces as you increase magnification.
All Mantis Elite uses twin LED arrays for surface illumination, containing 24 bright white long-life LEDs. Replacement LED arrays are available (left and right).
LED substage illumination is included with the bench stand.
Switchable UV/white light surface illumination is also available.
The 6x SLWD (Super Long Working Distance) objective, increases the working distance from 68mm (for the standard 6x objective), to 112mm (for the 6x SLWD lens).
Many customers find the 6x SLWD objective lens ideal for dissection of hair follicles (in hair transplant/hair restoration), dental laboratory work, plus many other activities where the user performs manipulation tasks for prolonged periods of time.
Mantis Elite uses two objectives in a rotating turret, so you can switch between lower magnification inspection and higher magnification detail work. Choice of objective lenses depends on individual application requirements, but also user preferences.
When viewing or inspecting objects, it is advantageous to see more of the sample (i.e. larger field of view), with more of the sample in focus (i.e. larger depth of focus). So typically, Mantis users might inspect at 4x, or 6x magnification.
When manipulating samples, the same rules apply, so users might manipulate at 4x, or 6x magnification. Lower magnifications mean that the sample remains in focus, you can see more of the sample (so you can see visual references), plus you can even hold the sample by hand without the image appearing distorted.
For detail work (e.g. electronics rework/soldering etc.), higher magnifications is typically preferred, dependent of application requirements.
Users typically inspect at 4x, or 6x magnification, then perform detail work at 8x, or 10x.
You might expect that higher magnification is always better, but in fact users tend to prefer 8x, or 10x magnification for detail work, since as you increase magnification (15x or 20x), the field of view reduces (so you view less of the sample, which can make orientation more difficult).
Additionally, the depth of focus reduces, so less of your sample would be in focus (especially if your sample had tall features). Reduced depth of focus would not be an issue if your sample was fairly flat.
The 15x and 20x objective lens is recommend for use with a Mantis Elite bench stand, as the bench stand incorporates a focus adjustment, plus is more rigid than the Universal stand.
The 15x and 20x lenses will work fine with the Mantis Elite Universal stand, but depending on your work environment you may experience slight movement in the viewing head, caused possibly by nearby working machinery, floor movement etc.
The cost of Mantis Elite depends on configuration requirements. You will need to choose a Mantis Elite optical head, a stand option (Universal stand is a popular choice), plus at least one objective lens (but typically users choose two objectives – one for lower magnification inspection and one for higher magnification detail work).
LED surface illumination is included with the Mantis Elite head. A universal power supply (suitable for all plug configurations) is included in every stand option. A dust cover is also included.
To find out prices, or to discuss your specific application, why not talk to one of our experts?
We have used the stereo microscope Mantis in our speciality hair transplantation practice for many years. The brilliance of the representation, as well as the ergonomic quality of the device is greatly appreciated by our staff." Dr. Frank G. Neidel, Surgery, Dusseldorf
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Spring Training Checkpoint — Part 2
On March 11, I posted an article reviewing spring training and how it might affect the prospects.
Now that we're further down the road, it's time to take another look and see how things stand.
FIRST BASE — Casey Kotchman has locked down the first base job. He's batting .341 with three homers and two doubles. More importantly, he's healthy. Give him a full season of good health and all the naysayers will be proven wrong.
Howie Kendrick is lighting up the Cactus League.
SECOND BASE — Howie Kendrick is batting .400 with three doubles, two triples and two homers. Neither Kotchman or Kendrick are eligible for the Rookie of the Year award, but by September many Angels fans will wish they were.
SHORTSTOP — Orlando Cabrera will be the shortstop barring injury, with Maicer Izturis the backup. The Angels are giving Erick Aybar every opportunity to make the roster as a utility player, viewing him as the possible eventual successor to Cabrera.
THIRD BASE — Chone Figgins broke a finger and it's estimated that he'll be out five to six weeks. Maicer Izturis and Robb Quinlan will hold the fort, with an outside possibility you'll see Shea Hillenbrand there once or twice. Brandon Wood and Matt Brown are not an option; they still have work to do in the minors.
LEFT FIELD — Garret Anderson is batting .458. Those who've been trashing him because his numbers dropped due to injury are going to look pretty foolish if he stays healthy all year. Erick Aybar played LF in a game earlier this week, giving him another opportunity to make the roster as a utility player.
The Angels are giving Erick Aybar every opportunity to make the Opening Night roster.
CENTER FIELD — Gary Matthews Jr. is 11 for 40 with three extra-base hits (all homers). Now that he's issued the "statement" demanded by Arte Moreno regarding the report he once ordered human growth hormone, the media seems to have lost interest and Matthews is free to concentrate on baseball. Aybar, Reggie Willits and Tommy Murphy have been competing for what were thought to be only two available slots, but with Figgins' injury all three might make the Opening Night roster.
RIGHT FIELD — Vlad Guerrero is only 9 for 36 with one homer but all he has to do is get ready for the season. Murphy and Willits have a little RF experience, with veteran Curtis Pride in the mix if he's needed.
CATCHER — A news story surfaced suggesting the Angels might be shopping Jose Molina, but I doubt it. That would leave Mike Napoli and Jeff Mathis as the big-league catchers, and neither has proven he can handle the job over the long haul. I still think it'll be Jose Molina and either Napoli or Mathis; at this point, it looks like Napoli's bat will trump Mathis' superior defense, so look for Jeff to return to Triple-A Salt Lake where he'll play full-time. Mathis needs to step it up at the plate; with Molina slated for free agency after the season, the Angels will need him in 2008.
STARTING ROTATION — John Lackey, Kelvim Escobar, and Ervin Santana remain healthy. Jered Weaver has been building up his pitch count, but it looks like he'll miss one or two starts before he'll join the parent club in April. Bartolo Colon seems to be ahead of schedule, but Joe Saunders will be in the rotation until both Weaver and Colon return. News reports have either Dustin Moseley or Hector Carrasco the leading candidates to fill the fifth slot until Weaver and Colon are ready.
BULLPEN — Many candidates remain for the one available bullpen slot. Moseley and Chris Bootcheck would seem to be the leading candidates, although others such as Chris Resop and Marcus Gwyn remain in the mix. This one should go down to the wire.
Hopefully this weekend I'll start posting photos from my minor league camp trip. When you include hotel, gas, and other expenses, it probably cost me somewhere around $700. If you enjoy all the content on FutureAngels.com, please consider a donation or voluntary subscription. So far I've received $150 in donations for 2007, which is exceptionally generous. The donations not only help with the travel costs but also the addition of new features such as this blog, the bulletin board and the polls. Sales of the photos help a little but it's never enough. So if you want to see more, please consider helping out.
This article is copyright © 2007 Wordsmith Resources and FutureAngels.com. It may not be used elsewhere without the prior expressed written permission of the author.


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Mango and Coconut Creme Caramel
Bee from Rasa Malaysia was kind enough to ask me to post a recipe on her site. Rasa Malaysia is an exquisite Asian food blog, and if you haven't checked it out before, you absolutely should. Bee is currently working on a cookbook, and I can't wait to get my paws on it.
The dish I prepared is a mango and coconut crème caramel. I love how the mango combines with the richness of crème caramel. To get the full recipe, read more at RasaMalaysia.com.
Related Posts
Desserts | sweets | French | Dessert | coconut | caramel | fusion | caramel sauce | mango | creme caramel | flan | elegant dessert | creme | French caramel | recette caramel | flan caramel | milk caramel | caramel sugar | caramel vanilla | French desserts | French dessert | delicious dessert | creme au caramel | creme caramel recette | caramel cremes | cream caramel | caramel dessert | caramel pudding | International desserts | easy French dessert | French desert | easy French desserts | simple French desserts | exotic ingredients |


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Many religious denominations and individual religious leaders have issued statements acknowledging the occurrence of evolution and pointing out that evolution and faith do not conflict.
"[T]here is no contradiction between an evolutionary theory of human origins and the doctrine of God as Creator."
— General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church
"[S]tudents' ignorance about evolution will seriously undermine their understanding of the world and the natural laws governing it, and their introduction to other explanations described as 'scientific' will give them false ideas about scientific methods and criteria."
— Central Conference of American Rabbis
"In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points…. Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis. In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies — which was neither planned nor sought — constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory."
— Pope John Paul II, Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, October 22, 1996.
"We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as 'one theory among others' is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God's good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator…. We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth."
—"The Clergy Letter Project" signed by more than 10,000 Christian clergy members.
From Science, Evolution, and Creationism, National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine. © 2008 National Academy of Sciences


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Been with s2s for over 2 years now and have had no problems. The software and features are all up-to-date, and the customer service has been great.
The Star2Star service works well enough. We experienced disjointed levels of service. Out local 3rd party representative charged us for products covered by Star2Star and used the excuse that we should have known. We actually stopped using Star2Star in the middle of a 60-month contract. We still paid for there service. We could not get out of paying any of the line items on our invoice: Invoice Processing Fee: $4.99 per month E911: $2.99 per month Maintenance: $37.90 per month Bandwith Optimization per line: $2.50 per month Watch out for their cancelation policy. You can cancel your account for the day your contract expires providing you do it 180 days before and no less than 60 days before your contract expires. The penalty for missing this is an auto-renewal of 12 more months. The "reward" for canceling your account for the day your contract expires is a $150.00 "Early Contract Termination Fee." Up to this moment, no one can tell me how to cancel the contract on time. I admit, that I "cut off my nose to spite my face" when I stopped using Star2Star in the middle of our contract. Again, note that I stopped using their service. I did not stop paying for it. After getting nowhere with their "You are covered for this repair/part under our maintenance agreement ($37.90 per month) but our dealer charged you" issue, I did not want to continue using a product from this company. Again, "Cutting off my nose...". I was ready to let "bygones be bygones" until I got hit with my $150.00 early termination fee. The whole experience seems like a ripoff to me. Buyers beware! Charles


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Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu (Hebrew: בִּנְיָמִין "בִּיבִּי" נְתַנְיָהוּ (help·info) Binyamin Netanyahu; born October 21, 1949) is the Prime Minister of Israel. He serves also as the Chairman of the Likud Party, as a Knesset member, as the Health Minister of Israel, as the Pensioner Affairs Minister of Israel and as the Economic Strategy Minister of Israel.
Netanyahu is the first and only Israeli prime minister born in Israel after the State of Israel's foundation. Netanyahu joined the Israeli Defense Forces in 1967 where he served as a team leader in the Sayeret Matkal special forces unit, taking part in many missions including the hostage rescue mission from the hijacked Sabena Flight 571 in 1972. He fought in the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and achieved the rank of captain before being discharged. Netanyahu served as the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations from 1984 to 1988, member of the Likud Party, and was Prime Minister from June 1996 to July 1999.
Netanyahu withdrew from politics after a corruption scandal related to gifts from a government contractor. In 2002 he returned as Foreign Minister (2002–03) and Finance Minister (2003 – August 2005) in Ariel Sharon's governments, but he departed over disagreements regarding the Gaza Disengagement Plan. He retook the Likud leadership on December 20, 2005. In the 2006 election, Likud did poorly, winning 12 seats. In December 2006, Netanyahu became the official Opposition Leader in the Knesset and Chairman of the Likud Party. In August 2007, he retained the Likud leadership by beating Moshe Feiglin in party elections. Following the 10 February 2009 parliamentary election, in which Likud placed second and right-wing parties won a majority, Netanyahu formed a coalition government. He is the brother of Israeli Special Forces commander Yonatan Netanyahu, who died during a hostage rescue mission, and Iddo Netanyahu, an Israeli playwright.


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The Oakland Press (theoaklandpress.com), Serving Oakland County News
Economy forces workers to reinvent themselves
Sunday, June 27, 2010
By KAREN WORKMAN, The Oakland Press
Michigan has been shedding jobs like it's going out of style.Job loss has hit the county's residents hard, creating a chain reaction that has impacted nearly every part of the economy.Some residents, though, are finding ways to turn their bad luck into good."In a way, I feel it was meant to be," Bloomfield Township resident Dave Irwin said a of losing his job.Irwin was 47 years old and well established in his career as a sales manager for a company that sold personal and business checks to banks, when he received notice his job was being eliminated in February 2009.He wasn't alone — a total of 80 people from the company were terminated at once."I kind of feel like the universe makes things happen and it kind of directs and guides you; it makes events happen in your life that push you toward what you really should be doing," Irwin said.While Irwin enjoyed his career as a sales manager, he's also always enjoyed his lifelong hobby of doing genealogy research."Sometimes people seem naturally born into being a doctor or something; I feel I was born into being a family historian because ever since I was a little kid, I liked hearing about family history," Irwin said. "My grandmother was kind of the family historian and I used to spend quite a bit of time with her when I was young."Now, Irwin is running his own business, called Your Ancestral Family, online at http://www.yourancestralfamily.com/.
Becoming an entrepreneur was not the first thing on his mind when he lost his job, though."I was worried — how was I going to pay my bills, and that kind of thing," Irwin said. "I just decided it was time, that maybe because of the job market — it was so bad that there were like 10 people for every one job — it was time to become an entrepreneur and do what I do best." While he admits he had his doubts about striking out on his own, he dipped into his savings to launch his business and decided to follow his instincts.Irwin is now available for hire, offering three different packages of genealogical research for people. The service is valuable, he says, because getting started in genealogy can be difficult. He compared it to doing taxes without professional help."On the one hand, you can do your own taxes, but it's almost like you'd rather trust having it done right by a professional," Irwin said.Even with websites such as ancestry.com — where he is listed as professional genealogist for hire — Irwin said it can be difficult for someone without experience to dig up all the records available."There's a lot of little tricks that professional genealogists know," he said.Irwin launched his business in May last year and does have educational training that qualifies him as an expert in the field. "We fully research your family tree online and provide you a view so you can watch as your tree grows and we'll document your tree and go back as far as records allow us, plus give a research report with a narrative, family tree charts and all the records we find," Irwin said.
Contact staff writer Karen Workman at (248) 745-4643 or email@example.com.
URL: http://www.theoaklandpress.com/articles/2010/06/27/news/doc4c269be7b5c77858101073.prt
© 2010 theoaklandpress.com, a Journal Register Property
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Patrick Edward Reilly born 1670 in Ireland immigrated to Pennsylvania, USA
In medieval times, Cavan was known as East Brefnie, or Brefnie O'Reilly after its ruling Gaelic family since it was a major part of the 11th century Irish Kingdom of Breifne
Posted by Genealogy Mysteries Solved at 7:39 PM No comments:
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A Touch Screen You Can Really Feel
One of the most unusual demos I saw at Mobile World Congress last week was of a touch screen that really offered tactile feedback.
Senseg, a Finnish startup whose concepts I first saw at an SID conference a few years ago, showed me a tablet with a display whose surface you can really feel. It can feel like it has a rough surface in some areas or a sticky one in others, and you can "feel" objects on the screen such as in a demonstration of an application for playing with marbles.
Of course, we've seen haptics technology before from firms such as Immersion and Synaptics, but this is something different. Instead of a mechanical device that vibrates when you touch the screen, this uses a thin transparent film on top of the display that changes its feel. Senseg's David Rice explained that Senseg will just be selling the electronics that control this, with panel makers applying the film to the displays. This film, which he called a "tixel layer" (for tactile pixel), goes above the cover glass but below a protective coating. It can be added to a display fairly inexpensively.
I tried this out in a number of demonstrations and while I can't say grass really felt like grass, I was clearly able to feel significant differences on different "textures" and feel things like bumps on a tile. I can imagine it making virtual keyboards better to type on.
The startup was originally focused on medical devices, but has been focusing on sensory displays since 2008. Rice said that while the company has yet to sign up any partners, it hopes that commercial products will be in the market by early 2013.
It's a different and quite interesting approach, one that might make the virtual world a bit closer to the real one.


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Could someone give me the basic - what goes where - when you use a State Manager.
A GameState would be a virtual class with all the needed to be overloaded methods (i.e. Init(), Update(), Render(), etc).
A StateManager would swap through the different States as they are called.
What is causing me some confusion would be the information that all the seperate states would need to work off of, such as the Screen/Window or say images/sounds you want to reuse but not reload every time.
Lol, programming likes to slap me upside the head ("Hey stupid, look where your design has got you! You should have done it THIS way"). I'm on my 3rd unfinished game now and would like to actually fix this one to finish.


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The show: "Hello, Dolly!" at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam.
What makes it special?: First revival of the show at Goodspeed.
First impressions?: All is well in American Musical Theater again because Dolly Levi is back, this time at the era-appropriate Goodspeed Opera House in a delightful, full-throttle production that reminds you of the charms, joys and heart of the original.
Klea Blackhurst makes a funny, warm and down-to-earth Dolly who would make not only Jerry Herman, but Thornton Wilder, proud. It's the feel-good show of the season and if it slips here and there and overplays its sweet schtick, no mind. You'll still have a special spring in your step as you walk down Goodspeed's grand red staircase on your way out.
But do they have a grand staircase on stage for title song number?: You bet. (Though I thought they'd be forced to use a Stairmaster on that minuscule stage.) But designer Andrian W. Jones did a largely successful job in transforming the itsy-bitsy stage into 1890's Yonkers and Manhattan
Kelli Barclay works wonders, too, evoking Gower Champion's original iconic choreography while making it her own, too. ("The Waiters' Gallop" remains a killer combo of dance and traffic control.) But she — as well as director Daniel Goldsten — are smart enough to expand their performing real estate by going beyond the footlights.
In what way?: Take Dolly's first entrance. She comes barreling down the aisle from the back of the house and up to the stage as if she were Mama Rose in "Gypsy." It's a nice nod to Ethel Merman, who was the last Broadway Dolly in the original run and it's doubly apt because Blackhurst, who pays tribute to Merman in her own series of concerts, has the Merm's boldness and belt.
But Blackhurst has her own humor, singing style and personal connection to the audience. She certainly gets great help from Wilder, who wrote the play from which the musical is based. Letting his characters step out of their scenes and speak directly and sincerely to the audience about life, love and how "the world is full of wonderful things" melts the crust off any cynic.
It's also something that Herman's upbeat, heart-felt songs have at their core and why folks inevitably succumb to the shows essential humanity and optimism. The cakewalk strut in "Put on Your Sunday Clothes," the anthem of transformation in "Before the Parade Passes By," and the sweet nostalgic sway of the title song, wrap their musical arms around the audience in a virtual hug.
The performances?: Tony Sheldon, as "well-known, half-millionaire" Horace Vandergelder hits all the fussbudget, cranky, penny-pinching, cartoon-sexist notes of the character. But he also adds another element not usually associated with the part: silver-haired sexiness. Sheldon even makes his all-too quick transformation from misanthrope to potentially human spouse not only inevitable, but believable
Ashley Brown as Mrs. Irene Malloy brings an intelligent playfulness to the role, not to mention a gorgeous soprano to Herman's beautiful ballads. This widow, along with Dolly and Vandergelder, are smart, independent and surprising survivors who mate in unexpected ways. Mrs. Malloy's romantic choice in Vandergelder's head clerk Cornelius Hackl (a lanky, quirky Spencer Moses) is blissfully off-center, again adding to the show's knack in finding charms in unexpected places.
Lending able support are Jeremy Moss as Barnaby, Catherine Blades as Minnie Fay and Brooke Shapiro as Ermengarde and an appealing, hard-working ensemble.
Who will like it?: Fans of the show, and who isn't? Those who like smart, funny, old-fashioned book musicals. WALL-E.
Who won't?: Anti-nostalgia sourpusses.
For the kids?: This is a good, family-friendly show to introduce not-yet-too-hip youngsters to musical theater. It was one of the first shows I saw on Broadway as a kid and I still remember it with deep fondness.(My Dolly was Ginger Rogers.)
Twitter review in 140 characters or less: It's so nice to have this show back on stage where it belongs.
Thoughts on leaving the parking lot?: A fitting production for the 50th anniversary season, tapping into a classic from the last days of the Golden Age of Musical Theater — and reminding us of the sublime multiple effect that craft, art and heart can have on an audience.
The basics: The show runs through Sept. 12 at the Goodspeed Opera House, 6 Main St., East Haddam. Running time of the show is 2 hours and 20 minutes, including one intermission. Performances are Wednesdays at 2 and 7:30 p.m.; Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. (and matinees at 2 p.m. starting Aug. 1); Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 3 and 8 p.m. (and on Sept,. 14 at 2 and 6:30 p.m.) and Sundays at 2 p.m. (and evenings at 6:30 p.m. through July 28). Tickets are $29 to $77 at the box office and $32.50 to $81.50 on line (including fees). Information: 860-873-8668 and www.goodspeed,.org.


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Michael's Portrait
As a "Baby Boomer" Michael grew up on the Mississippi river using it as his front yard, work place and playground. He served in the Air Force and has always been a solitary sort preferring the outdoors to being in a crowded function.
Content: Air Force Wings, Dog Tags, Gun Cylinder, Tug Boat, Fishing Boat ID, Bait, and Fish Nets, Plumber Tools.
Rosella Margaret's Portrait
As child of "the Greatest Generation" Margaret lived through both World Wars and the Great Depression. She was a homemaker and as such was called upon to use what resources that were available responsibly which she did by re-‐using plastic bags until they had holes in them, making quilts and children's clothing from those worn out by adults. She also took great care to look after to her family's other needs for food both of a physical and spiritual nature.
Content: Quilts, Cookie Jar, Old Plastic Bags, Personal Rosary, Baby christening gown from granddaughters wedding dress, and African Violets.
The whole gang, Rosie, Nixen, Dolley and Harley. Just too cute.
Hank is a French Bulldog
Teddy Bear Tea
The Greatest Generation
A generation that fought for a cause with no concern for personal glory or fame.
Mountain Men
A time of exploration of the western half of our nation where men lived off the land and at peace with it.
Rams standing on a rocky outcrop.
Dr. Pepper Stadium of the Rough Raiders baseball team in Frisco, TX
A country church in Colorado
Lake Tahoe, Nevada on a cold, stormy afternoon.
Western Expansion
Reflection of the general and his wife in the window of his old administrative building.


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