text:
What is included with this book?
"They used ?re, back in the day."
What the old cowboy meant was that folks who were inconsiderate enough to die in the Wyoming winter faced four feet of frozen ground between them and their ?nal resting place.
"They used to build a bon?re an' allow it to burn a couple of hours, melt through the frost, and then dig the grave."
Jules unscrewed the top from a ?ask he had pulled from the breast pocket of his tattered jean jacket and leaned on his worn shovel. It was 28 degrees outside, the jean jacket was all he wore, and he wasn't shivering; the ?ask probably had something to do with that.
"Now we only use the shovels when dirt clods roll into the grave from the backhoe." The tiny man took a sip from the ?ask and continued the throes of philosophic debate. "The traditional Chinese cof?n is rectangular with three humps, and they won't bury you wearing red 'cause you'll turn into a ghost."
I nodded and did my best to stand still in the wind. He took another sip and didn't offer me any.
"The ancient Egyptians had their essential organs removed and put in jars."
I nodded some more.
"The Hindus burn the body, a practice I admire, but we cremated my uncle Milo and ended up losing him when his top came loose and he fell through the holes in the rusted ?oorboard of a Willy's Jeepster on the Upper Powder River Road." He thought about it, shaking his head at the ignominious end. "That ain't where I wanna spend eternity."
I nodded again and looked off toward the Big Horn Mountains, where it continued to snow. Somehow bon?res seemed more romantic than construction equipment or Willy's Jeepsters, for that matter.
"The Vikings used to stick 'em a?re on a boat with all their stuff and shove out to sea, but that seems like an awful waste of stuff, not to mention a perfectly good boat." He paused, but continued. "Vikings considered death to be just another voyage and you never knew what you could end up needing, so you might as well take it all with you." The jackleg carpenter turned his ferocious blue eyes toward me and took another sip in honor of his ancestors, still not offering me any.
I buried my hands in my duty jacket, straining the embroidered star of the Absaroka County Sheriff 's Of?ce, and dropped my head a little as he kept on talking. I had seen Jules on a professional basis as a lodger at the jail when the nephew of the previous sheriff, and deputy of mine at the time, had picked him up for public intoxication and had beaten him. I had in turn beaten Turk, much to the dismay of my receptionist/dispatcher Ruby, and then turned him over to the highway patrol in hopes that a more structured environment might do him some good.
"The Mongols used to ride the body on a horse till it fell off."
I sighed deeply, but Jules didn't seem to notice.
"The Plains Indians probably had it right with the burial scaffolding; if you aren't up to anything else, you might as well feed the buzzards."
I couldn't stand it anymore. "Jules?"
I turned and looked down at him. "Do you ever shut up?"
He tipped his battered cowboy hat back on his head and took the ?nal swig, still smiling. "Nope."
I nodded my ?nal nod, turned, and tramped my way down the hill away from the aged cottonwood at the fence line, where I had already worn a path in the snow. Jules had been there on my three previous visits, and he knew my pattern.
I guess gravedigging got lonely.
You can tell the new graves by the pristine markers and the mounds of earth. From my numerous and one-sided conversations, I had learned that there were water lines running a patchwork under the graveyard with faucets that would be used in the spring to help soak the dirt and tamp the new ones ?at but, for now, it was as if the ground had refused to accept Vonnie Hayes. It had been almost a month since her death, and I found myself up here once a week.
When somebody like Vonnie dies you expect the world to stop, and maybe for one brief second the world does take notice. Maybe it's not the world outside, but the world inside that's still.
It took about ten minutes to get back to the IGA in the center of Durant where I had left my erstwhile deputy to shanghai prospective jurors for the local judicial system. I rolled into the parking lot, scratched my beard as I parked, and looked at the plastic-wrapped bundles of wood priced at two for seven bucks that were stacked at the entrance of the grocery store. We had been forced to act as the Absaroka County press gang about eight times during my tenure as sheriff, which itself had taken up almost a quarter of a century. The jury wheels used by the county were chocked so full of outdated records that a large percentage of the summonses were returned undeliverable, and the ones that did get where they were supposed to go many times got ignored. My advice that we simply put occupant on the things was dismissed out of hand.
I looked at the handsome woman at the entrance of the grocery store with the clipboard in her hands. Victoria Moretti didn't like being called handsome, but that's how I thought of her. Her features were a little too pronounced to be dismissed as pretty. The jaw was just a little too strong, the tarnished gold eyes just a little too sharp. She was like one of those beautiful saltwater ?sh in one of those tanks you knew better than to stick your hand into; you didn't even tap on the glass.
"Of all the shitty things you make me do, I think I hate this the most. I have an undergraduate degree in law enforcement, I've forgotten how many hours toward a masters, graduated from the Philadelphia Police Academy in the top ?ve percent. I had four years street duty, two ?eld commendations...I am your most senior of?cer." I felt a sharp jab at my midriff. "Are you fucking listening to me?"
I watched as my highly capable and awarded deputy accosted a middle-aged man in a barn coat, copied down information from his driver's license, and informed him that he needed to get over to the courthouse pronto or be faced with contempt of court. "Well, there's another notch on my Glock."
I watched as the hapless shopper balanced his purchases and wandered off to his car. "Hey, there are worse places for a stakeout, at least we've got plenty of supplies."
"It's supposed to snow another eight inches tonight."
I looked over at the neatly shoveled driveways. "Don't worry. You can go in and ?ush them out, and you can do some last minute shopping." I was tapping on the glass and getting my tarnished gold's worth. "How many more talis jurors do we need?"
"Two." She searched the automatic glass doors behind us. Dan Crawford stood at the far register, registering his annoyance at our of?cial abuse of his customer base. She looked back at me. "Talis jurors?"
"The process started in this country with the Boston Massacre. They pulled spectators out of the courtroom gallery to serve as jurors during the trial of a British soldier. It's from the Latin, meaning bystander. You're Italian, you should understand these things."
"I'm from Philadelphia, where we vote early and often, and everybody on the jury has a vowel on the end of his name."
I looked off toward the mountains west of town and at the broiling darkness that seemed to be waiting behind the range. I couldn't help but think that it would be a nice evening to sit by the ?re. Red Road Contracting had promised to have my triple-walled ?ume put in by last weekend, but so far all they had done was cut an opening in my roof the size of a large porthole. They said the ?rebox that mounted to the ceiling would cover the hole, but for now the only thing between the inside of my snug little log cabin and the impending great outdoors was ten millimeters of plastic and some duct tape. It wasn't really their fault. The coal-bed methane out?ts were paying close to twenty dollars an hour, roughly twice what general contracting paid anywhere on the high plains, so Danny Pretty On Top had signed on with Powder River Energy Exploration and had left Charlie Small Horse to pick up the slack.
"How about I go in and ?ush 'em out?" she said. I looked down at her. "I just want to get back and shoot your dog if he's shit in my of?ce again."
I had suspected an underlying motive. The beast did; it was true. I hadn't had him all that long, and he had decided that rather than go to the trouble of going all the way to the door and having Ruby let him out, he would just wander across the hall and unload in Vic's of?ce. "He likes you."
"I like him, too. But I'm going to shoot him in the ass if he leaves another little package for me."
I sighed and thought about how nice it would be to go back to the warmth of my of?ce. "Okay, go ahead." It was like turning loose the dogs of war; her eyes grew cold, the mouth curved lupine, and she turned and disappeared.
If it did snow tonight, the whole county would be thrown into a frozen panic, court would be canceled anyway, and my little department would likely be stretched to the limit. Jim Ferguson was only a part-time deputy and Turk was already gone to the highway patrol, so Vic pretty much made up the staff; but we had a potential candidate for Turk's job. He was a Mexican kid who had ?nished up at the Wyoming Law Enforcement Academy, had elected to begin his career in Kemmerer, and then had moved to the state's maximum-security prison. After two years there, it would appear that he had changed his mind and was looking for rosier pastures. He was supposed to drive up from Rawlins in the morning for an interview, but I wasn't holding out much hope. He would have to gun it over Muddy Gap at 6,250 feet through the Rattlesnake range and then up the basin to the foot of the Big Horns and Durant. It was a ?ve-hour trip on dry roads and, looking at the mountains, that didn't seem possible. It appeared as though we were going to get our third heavy snowstorm since fall: the ?rst had tried to kill me on the mountain, and the other I had enjoyed from a stool at my friend Henry Standing Bear's bar, the Red Pony.
It was just after Thanksgiving, and we had consumed the better part of a bottle of single malt scotch. When I woke up the next morning, Henry had already pulled a couple of leatherette chairs in front of a double ?fty-gallon drum stove. I slipped off the sleeping bag and swung my legs over the side of the pool table on which I had fallen asleep and tried to feel the muscles in my face. He had hauled his bag with him and sat hunched over the stove. I watched as steam blew out with my breath, and I scrambled to get the down-?lled bag back around me. "Heat's off."
He turned his head, and the dark eyes looked through the silver strands in the black curtain of his hair. "Yes." I joined him at the stove in my socks. The ?oor was cold, and I regretted not slipping on my boots. "Do you want some coffee?"
"Then go and make some. I am the one who built the ?re."
I found the ?lters and the tin of already ground coffee on the second shelf of the bar. I had lots of little bags of expensive beans that my daughter had sent me when she was a law student in Seattle. Cady was now a lawyer in Philadelphia, and I still hadn't gotten around to getting a grinder. Henry Standing Bear had a grinder. The Bear had a vegetable mandoline, and I didn't know anybody else who had one of those.
I started the coffee, hopped back over to the ?re, and grabbed my boots along the way. The windows had begun to freeze on the inside. "How come the water hasn't frozen?"
"Heat tape."
I pulled my boots on and gathered the sleeping bag back around me. "You out of propane?"
"The heater never works when it is really cold."
"That's convenient."
"Yes, in the summer it works perfectly."
We sat there for a while, the homemade stove just beginning to warm the northeast corner of the little building or at least the sixteen inches between it and us. I yawned and watched as he yawned, too. He was studying me again. We hadn't talked in the last few days; there had been too much to say. We watched as the bottom barrel began to tic and grow red.
"Dena go to that pool tournament in Vegas?"
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"
"I have not yet decided."
It felt good there with that strange feeling of being in a public place without the public. I was going to have to call and check in, but it was still early on a Sunday, our slowest day of the week. I was avoiding it, mostly because I would get caught talking to Lucian. He had a few strange ideas about some goings on out at the Durant Home for Assisted Living and had become a kind of Absaroka County Agatha Christie. I told him that if anybody shortened the span of any of the occupants they wouldn't be robbing them of all that much, and he reminded me that he would be happy to take me by my mutilated, half-century old ear and march me around the block. Ever since I had hired the retired sheriff as a part-time dispatcher on weekends, he had been gathering his salt.
I looked out through the haloed light of a high-plains winter at the falling snow with ?akes the size of poker chips. I had had inclinations that it was going to be a winter to remember, and so far I had been right. The day before Thanksgiving, Cady had been trapped at the Philadelphia airport; she had been trying to get back to Wyoming for a surprise visit. I hadn't been feeling well and, after getting through one of the toughest cases of my life, she could tell. Cady had called, ?lled with tears and frustrated fury at a two-fold snowstorm that had grounded planes on both the eastern seaboard and in Denver, the hub to our part of the world. They had assured her that even if she did make it there, she would be spending the holiday at DIA. We talked for an hour and forty-two minutes. She was laughing that heartfelt laugh of hers by the time we were done, the one that matched her deep rustic voice, and I felt better.
"Dena says she is moving to Las Vegas."
The coffee was done, so I pulled the sleeping bag up a little higher on my shoulders and towed it over to the bar with me; I must have looked like a giant praying mantis. I poured myself a cup and got the heavy cream the Bear kept in the bar refrigerator. I added the cream to his and dumped in what I considered a reasonable amount of sugar, dropped a spoon in, and carried it over to him; I ?gured the least he could do was stir the thing himself. I handed him the Sturgis mug and sat back down. "Things could be worse."
"And how is that?"
I took a sip of my coffee for dramatic effect. "You could have been dating a murderer." I watched as the big shoulders shifted, and he stared at me. It felt wrong, saying it like that. It was disrespectful of somebody I still cared a great deal about. "I guess everybody's a little nervous about talking to me, huh?"
His eyes were steady. "Yes."
"I'm okay." He didn't say anything. "I am."
I shook my head and looked at the stove. It was warming up a little in our corner of the world, so I shrugged the bag down off my shoulders. "Are you going to say anything in this conversation besides yes?" I quickly added. "Don't answer that."
The wind pushed against the wooden sides of the old Sinclair station that Henry Standing Bear had converted into the Red Pony bar. We were on the border of the Rez, and the wind was older here. I listened to the voices of the Old Cheyenne as they screamed from the northwest and disappeared toward the Black Hills. I had had some delusionary episodes during the ?rst really big snowstorm of the season, at least that's what I had decided to label them, but I kind of missed the Old Cheyenne. They weren't all I missed. I let the bitter taste of the coffee hold there in my mouth for a second. It wasn't anybody's fault; I was running under radio silence. My friends had spared me the crippling depth charges of understanding and, worse yet, advice, but I was going to have to come up for air; Henry was a good place to start.
"I don't think I'm going to date anymore."
"Yes." He took a sip of his coffee and nodded along with me. "It is not like women are any fun to be around, that they are soft, that they smell good, or that they..."
"Shut up."
He nodded some more. "Yes."
We had a wide-ranging conversation about Vonnie; we talked about love, fate, and everybody's inability to truly leave the past behind. It had been an ugly little case with two young men and one beautiful woman dead and, after four years of self-pronounced isolation, I had gotten my head and heart handed to me.
All Henry had said was yes. I guess that's when the valves opened, all the used air expended into the atmosphere, and all the fresh poured in. He made me run in the snow later that afternoon, and I have to admit that it felt pretty good.
Vic got two more and added Dan Crawford to the list for good measure. She handed me the clipboard after she had climbed in and shut the truck door. "Here, His Majesty's dutiful servants for the day." She leaned forward, and I watched as her slender neck tilted to look through the top of the windshield at the stony clouds that were bricking away the sky.
"What're your plans for tonight?"
She looked at me, and I noticed the small, etched, smile lines at the corners of her mouth. "Why?"
"You wanna go over and visit Lucian with me?"
The little lines quickly disappeared. "I'm washing my hair."
"He always asks about you."
"He always asks about my tits."
I did have ulterior motives. With her along the previous Tuesday, Lucian had been so distracted that I had won every game. "Maybe you should look at it as a visit to Pappy Van Winkle?" The only thing I really had going for me in persuading her to come was her taste in expensive bourbon, which was in ready supply in Room 32 at the Durant Home for Assisted Living.
"I can buy my own bourbon and not have to be ogled by that fucking old pervert." She shifted her weight and fastened her seatbelt. "I've got to tell you, as nights on the town go? That one was pretty lame. I haven't had a time like that since my grandfather took me to a vacant lot on South Street to drink wine and play bocce ball with his cronies." She looked at me. "I was six and a shrewd judge of a good time."
The little lines reappeared as she laid an arm along the door and looked out across the hood of the Bullet. I glanced down at the hand resting on her leg and noticed that she wasn't wearing her wedding band anymore. She and Glen had come to a parting of the ways back in November; he had gone to Alaska, and Vic was still here, thank God. She had turned down respective offers to ?aunt her honor, service, and integrity with the Philadelphia Police Department, where she had worked before, and the Department of Justice's Federal Bureau of Investigation. She was that good. Instead, she was the under-sheriff of the least populated county in the least populated state in the union, with an option to have my job come November.
I blinked, refocused, and became aware that she was looking at me. "What?"
"I asked how you were doing these days."
She waited. "You know I am available on a professional consulting basis for fucked-up relationships, right?"
"I've got your card."
By the time we got to the of?ce behind the courthouse, the smallest traces of snow had begun drifting down in a nonchalant manner. This one thought it could fool us by starting out slowly. There were times in Wyoming when you needed to know where to park your car so you could ?nd it in the morning.
I followed Vic and paused to scan my doorway for Post-its as she stopped and gathered her mail from Ruby's desk. The dog raised his eyes, looked between the two of us, and then settled the ?ve-gallon bucket-head back on his paws.
Vic nodded as she shuf?ed through her mail. "Yeah, I'd keep a low pro?le if I was you too, shit head."
I had inherited Ruby from Lucian. Fierce as a bobcat and as loyal as the Swiss, she kept a neon blue eye toward my moral development. She was sixty-?ve, going on thirty. I cut in quickly, before the real ?ghting started. "Post-its?"
Ruby continued to pet Dog. "Somebody dumped a bunch of garbage and an old refrigerator out at Healey Reservoir."
"Let me guess who found that." Our resident ?sherman and part-time deputy, the Ferg, kept us up to date on all the ?shing holes in the vicinity.
"He says they left some of their mail in the garbage bags, so he's gone over to the trailer park near the bypass to have a little chat with the suspectedoffenders. Oh, Rawlins called to con?rm his interview tomorrow."
"The Mexican kid?"
She turned. "He doesn't sound Mexican."
"What does he sound like?"
"Just different." She went back to her screen. "Lucian called to make sure you were going to be there tonight. Are you being mean to him? He usually doesn't call to con?rm chess night."
I picked up some of the general delivery stuff, ?ipped through the latest police garment catalog, and thought about replacing my duty coveralls. "He's been weird lately."
I decided to keep my old pair and closed the catalog. "Just odd, like he's got something on his mind." I tossed it into the wire wastebasket and started toward my of?ce. "Does that kid know that it's going to snow ass deep to a nine-foot Indian tonight?"
Her eyes drifted up to look at me over the computer screen. "Does your Native American friend know you use such descriptive terms?"
I paused at my doorway. "Where do you think I get 'em?"
"Where is the Bear these days?"
The women in my life always asked about Henry; it was irritating. "He's up on the Rez in the basement of some defunct Mennonite church." I leaned against the doorjamb and thought about what I would do if Ruby ever retired; I would have to retire, too. "They found a couple of old hatboxes full of photographs that the Mennonites must have taken a long time back."
"Mennonites on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation?"
I shrugged with one shoulder. "It didn't take."
"Sounds like a treasure trove."
"He's cataloguing and annotating something like six hundred photographs.
Her eyes returned to the screen, and the soft tap of the keyboard resumed. "That should keep him out of trouble for a while."
I missed Henry but ?gured he'd get back in touch when he got the chance. He was like a warm Chinook that blew in when you least expected it. I scratched my beard. "Anything else?"
Her eyes returned to the screen. "We're putting together a petition to get you to shave."
My desk was relatively clear for a Tuesday, and Santiago Saizarbitoria's ?le was on the top of the nearest pile. Santiago Saizarbitoria. What did she think, he was Norwegian? I didn't think the kid was going to make it, but I had ten minutes of the taxpayer's time to kill, so I ?ipped the manila ?le open and looked down at the cover sheet. I hadn't ever spoken to him. Ruby had gotten the application via priority mail with a letter of introduction and a résumé. All of the contact since then had been done by e-mail on Ruby's computer. I didn't have a computer; they wouldn't let me have one.
Vic would be responsible for half of the interview, which would probably resemble revenge for the Inquisition. If the kid was lucky tomorrow, he'd spend the day at the Flying J truck stop in Casper, go home to Rawlins, and continue his career in corrections.
He was married, and his wife's name was Maria. They had no children, and his starting salary had been $17,000, 18 percent less than the nationwide average. He was twenty-eight, ?ve feet nine inches, weighed 183 pounds, and had dark hair and eyes. He obviously had a facility with languages; he spoke Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German. I would have to check on his Cheyenne and Crow.
I ?ipped to the back page and locked eyes with the two-by-two photo. Swashbuckling. I guess that was the ?rst strong impression that I had of the young man Vic had already tagged as Sancho. He was a handsome kid with a Vandyke that gave him a rakish and mischievous musketeer quality. He was thick and looked strong, although his features were ?ne. I always concentrate on the eyes, and these were sharp with just a little bit of wayward electricity in them. I had the suspicion that not much got by Sancho and what did was viewed with quiet irony.
If we were serious about him, we'd have to call Archie, the chief of police in Kemmerer, and then the man who was his supervisor in Rawlins. He had lasted two years in the extreme risk unit in the high security ward at the state's penitentiary. That told me something. We are for the dark, indeed.
Whenever I read an application, I always found myself wondering what my answers to the questions would be. What impression would I have of myself, and would I hire me? I hadn't had to ?ll out a form when I had gone to work for Lucian: he hadn't had one.
We had been sitting at the bar in the lobby of the Euskadi Hotel on Main Street. It was late on a Friday night and Montana Slim sang "Roundup in the Fall" through his nose on the jukebox, and we were the only ones there. Lucian preferred the Euskadi, because the bar didn't have any video pong games or customers, in that order. It was late October, and I had a new wife and thirty-seven dollars in a checking account.
"So, you were a cop over there in Vietnam?"
"Yes, sir."
I had caught him in midsip. "Don't call me sir. I ain't yer daddy, far as we know." I watched him hold the glass tumbler and look at me from the corner of a webbed apex of sundried wrinkles and the blackest pupils I'd ever seen. He was about the age I am now; I thought he was ancient. "Is it as big a mess over there as I think it is?"
I thought about it. "Yep, it is."
He sipped his bourbon and carefully avoided the wad of chew packed between his lower lip and gum. "Well, ours was probably just as bad. We just didn't have enough sense to know it." I nodded, since I didn't know what else to do. "Seems to me with this Vietnam thing, you get yourself into trouble ?fteen thousand miles from home, you've got to have been lookin' for it." I nodded some more. "Drafted?"
"Lost my deferment."
"What the hell'd you do that for?"
He placed the cut-glass tumbler back in the small ring of the paper cocktail napkin and nudged it toward Jerry Aranzadi, the bartender, whom I did not know at the time.
"Where from?"
I took a sip of my Rainier and hoped my bank account would last through the interview. "University of Southern California." He didn't say anything. "It's in Los Angeles."
He nodded silently as Jerry re?lled his glass with at least four ?ngers. "Two things you gotta remember, Troop." He called me Troop for the next eight years. "A short pencil is better than a long memory, and you get to buy me my chew 'cause I'm a cripple." The last part of the statement referred to his missing leg, which had been blown off by some Basque bootleggers back in the ?fties.
"What brand?"
I closed Santiago Saizarbitoria, placed him carefully on the surface of my desk, and made myself the promise to remember the rube kid with the funny haircut who had sat in the Euskadi Hotel bar and wondered what the hell he was going to do if the old man sitting next to him said no.
"I'm going home."
I looked up from the surface of my desk to my deputy. "What's it doing outside?"
"Snowing like a bastard." Despite the fact that she was leaving, she came in, sat down, and folded her jacket on her lap. She nodded toward the ?le. "Is that Sancho?"
"Yep. What do you think?"
She shrugged, "I think that if he's got a pulse and a pecker, we put him on patrol." She continued to look at me. "What are you going to do about dinner?"
"I don't know, maybe go down to the Bee." The Busy Bee was in a small concrete-block building that clung to the banks of Clear Creek through the tenacity of its owner and the strength of its biscuits and spiced gravy. Dorothy Caldwell had owned and operated the Bee since Christ had been a cowboy. I ate there frequently and, due to its proximity to the jail, so had our infrequent lodgers.
"I bet she's gone home."
"I'll take my chances. If worse comes to worse, I can always catch the pepper steak over at the Home for Assisted Living."
She made a face. "That sounds appealing."
"Better than a plastic-wrapped burrito from the Kum and Go."
"Boy, you know all the hot spots, don't you?"
"I have been known to show a girl a good time, yes."
After Vic and Ruby had gone, the beast ambled in and sat on my foot. I was second string, but it was still good to be on the team. She was probably right; with the impending storm, Dorothy had most likely headed home for the night. I weighed my options and settled on a chicken potpie from the jail's resources. Dog followed me as I rummaged through the mini refrigerator and pulled out the freeze de jour. We didn't have any occupants, so I took my steaming little tin into holding cell 1 and sat down on the bunk with a can of iced tea. Dog curled up at the door and looked at me. I had taught him that begging was all right if it was done from at least six feet away.
There were no windows so I could ignore the mounting snow outside, but the phone that began ringing, I could not. I sat my half-eaten chicken potpie tin on the bunk and answered the extension on the wall of our kitchenette. "Absaroka County Sheriff 's Department."
"Is this the goddamned sheriff ?"
I recognized the voice. "Maybe."
"Well, if you ain't him then somebody better go out and ?nd the simple-minded son of a bitch and tell him to get his ass over here. I ain't got all night!" The phone went dead with a loud crack as the cradle on the other end absorbed the impact, and I stood there listening as my potpie was devoured.
I had talked Lucian into coming on as a part-time dispatcher on weekends, and I think he enjoyed it, but I would be the last one he would tell. He drove the rest of the staff crazy, but Dog liked him and so did I. I took the pie tin and threw it into the trash along with the plastic spork and my empty tea. I headed for the of?ce to grab my coat; Dog followed.
Vic was right. By the time we got outside, it was snowing so hard that you couldn't see across the street to the courthouse. I squinted against the sting, tugged at my hat, and took in the vague halos of the arch lights that ran the distance of Main Street. There was only one car, and it was parked about halfway between the Busy Bee and the Sportshop. The dog halted beside the truck and turned his nose into the wind with me. I opened the door and watched as he climbed across and onto the passenger seat. He turned and looked at me, waiting for me to climb in, but I looked back at the parked car. He stretched across the seat and settled in for a short nap, knowing full well what I was going to do before I did.
I walked down the slight grade to the parked vehicle, careful not to slip, stooped down, and wiped the snow from the front plate of the maroon Oldsmobuick: state plates, county 2, Cheyenne. I looked around at the storefronts, but the only one that showed any signs of retail life was the Euskadi Hotel bar where the Rainier and Grain Belt beer signs softly glowed in the two tiny windows.
Except for the Christmas decorations, the bar at the Euskadi hadn't changed much since Lucian had hired me there all those years ago. The jukebox was still there, playing an unintentionally ironic version of Sinatra's "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow." There was an ornate burl wood bar and bar back along the right side, whose ancient mercury mirror was tarnished and faded in its attempt to hold on to the glory of the age and it re?ected the blonde at the bar.
I pushed my hat back to its best Dashiell Hammett advantage and felt the slick of melted snow slide down between my shoulder blades and my sheepskin coat. As entrances, I'd made better.
"Hello, Sheriff." Jerry Aranzadi was still the full-time bartender. A small man with a stooped back and black-rimmed glasses, his narrow shoulders hunched as he scooped into the cooler and popped the cap on a Reindeer beer before I could stop him. It was at times like this that I wished my habits were a little more exotic. "What brings you out on a night like tonight?"
I sat a few stools down as Jerry placed a paper napkin on the bar along with the bottle of beer. He knew all my patterns, even the one about sparing the glassware. "It's chess night."
I took a sip of my beer. She didn't look at me but seemed absorbed in what looked to be an Irish coffee. He gently patted a hand in front of her cup to get her attention. "Miss Watson, this is our sheriff, Walter Longmire."
I always try to hold on to the ?rst impression I get of a person; usually it's a feature, but with her it was the energy that was there, an animation that couldn't be concealed by age, fatigue, or alcohol. Afterward, I noticed that she was just plain beautiful, with large, frank blue eyes and well-de?ned lips. "Sheriff, this is Maggie Watson, and I bet you can't guess what she does for a living."
"Ms. Watson works for the state." I took a sip and looked back at both of them. I really enjoyed watching those big blue eyes widen as they looked at Jerry and then back to me. I guessed mid to late forties; outdoorsy, and always had been from the face, nicely weathered to perfection. She had an athletic build, probably a skier. "The plates on the car outside. 'Elementary, my dear...' " The eyes narrowed. "Bet you wish you had a nickel for every time somebody said that."
"You have no idea." She had a nice voice, too. It was soft, but also strong and with just a touch of a southern accent. "State Treasury Department." She smiled a sly smile and took an elegant sip of her coffee. "Unclaimed property project manager."
It was her turn to look self-satis?ed. "We don't see many of those up in these parts." I nodded and looked over at Jerry. "Can't say we've seen any at all."
It got a laugh that was melodic but short. "I restore the contents of abandoned safe-deposit boxes to the owners or rightful heirs." She sat her mug down and gave me a sharp look. "At least I was, till I got stranded."
I thought about it for a moment, then felt duty call and sat the almost full beer back on the bar. "Gimme your keys, and I'll start it for you. I think we can get you a room, if we move quickly. Motels get to be at a premium when the weather gets like this." I tried to pay Jerry, but he just waved me off.
Back at my truck, Dog greeted me with a terri?c yawn and con?rmed my thoughts about his concern for my welfare while I was gone. I cleared the accumulated snow with the windshield wipers and turned on the cautions on the Bullet's light bar. A vague feeling of sadness always came over me in the presence of the lights: too many seat-belts that were unfastened, too many bald tires. I pulled in front of her car, snagged the long-handled scraper from under the seat, and pushed the majority of the snow off her vehicle onto the covered street. An hour from now, the car would have been a permanent addition to Main. She came running out and jumped in. She was taller than I thought, or else she just didn't sink into the snow like I did. "Follow me and drive in my tracks, okay?"
She nodded, and I closed the door.
She dutifully made the illegal U-turn and followed me back up the hill and around the courthouse as we slowly made our way toward the mountains. The red glow of the Log Cabin Motel's neon wasn't far and, if worse came to worse, she could walk to all the banks in town from there. I pulled up to the of?ce and got out, ignoring the no vacancy sign.
I ushered her to the porch and rang the buzzer on the intercom, pulled her in a little closer to the building, and blocked the majority of the wind with my back. She smelled really good. There was no response to the buzzer, so I pressed my thumb against the button and held it there. After a moment, an angry voice screeched at us through the yellowed plastic intercom. "No vacancy, can't ya read?" There was no more talk but presently a gaunt individual in a threadbare plaid bathrobe appeared around the counter in the tiny lobby and unlocked the door. "Jesus, Walt, what are you doing out in this?"
I ushered Maggie in before me. "This lady needs a room."
I took the key from Willis's wife, Erma, and trudged off into the snow to turn the lights and heat on in one of the cabins at the end of the short lane. It would be a cozy little place but, as I told her, the temperature wouldn't get above forty for about twenty minutes.
"I don't know how to thank you."
"Well, if you come up with any Declarations of Independence in any of those boxes..."
"It's doubtful, but I could buy you lunch."
The trip over to the Durant Home for Assisted Living didn't take all that long, just a couple of blocks of backtracking. When I got there, there was an EMT van waiting at the main entrance, not a completely novel experience at the place but still a little unsettling. The doors were closed, but it was still running and the amber lights made racing, yellow ghost-wolves that darted across the brick surface. I pushed the doors of the building open, only to be audibly driven back by Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians singing "Ring Those Christmas Bells" at an ear-piercing volume; most of the residents at the home were deaf as fence posts. Dog followed me in. As we went past the Christmas tree behind the abandoned front desk and rounded the hallway leading to Room 32, a slight sense of panic began to set in. The door was ajar as we approached, and I quickened my step, but the place was empty. The chess set was out on the folding table, and it looked as though Lucian had already consumed the better part of a tumbler full of bourbon. Dog looked around with me and followed as we quickly made our way out of the room, back down the hallway, and again toward the front desk.
The Pennsylvanians were still singing as we turned the corner. I caught a glance of the EMT van pulling away, but my attention was drawn to a white-clad attendant. He was being held against the far wall by what I knew to be the strongest grip in the county.
I took the direct route behind the counter, which turned out to be something of a mistake in that my legs got tangled with Dog and the hammer of my .45 snagged the lights on the fully decorated tree, lurching it from the wall in a short spark of holiday exuberance.
It took both hands and all the weight I could leverage to tug Lucian's hand free from the choking assistant whom I recognized as Joe Lesky. "Well, it's about goddamned time." He rolled off me against the far wall and pushed himself up with his arms; he glared at Joe who was massaging his throat and coughing as Dog, who had escaped unscathed, continued to bark.
"Shut up!" Dog stopped and went over and sat beside Lucian as if nothing had happened. I was not so forgiving. I pushed the tree off me. "What the hell is going on around here?"
It was mostly directed at Lucian but, after a coughing ?t, Joe was the ?rst to respond. "Mr. Connally was interfering with the transport of a departed client." He coughed some more and leaned against the opposite wall.
"I want the room behind me sealed up as a crime scene, and I want a full autopsy arranged immediately."
I stared at him as he looked at the battle-weary tree that lay between us. "Lucian, have you lost your mind?"
It was a bad time for Joe to talk, but he didn't know that. "Sheriff, I was explaining to Mr. Connally that we couldn't hold the body of the deceased without the permission of next of kin."
He wouldn't look up from the tree. "You got it."
I disconnected the electric light string from my holster and gave the tree one last kick for holly-jolly good measure. "Lucian, you can't."
The dark eyes came up slowly, and the world was swallowed. "Hold your peace." He looked old just then; small, old, and tired, as I had never seen him before. His eyes returned to the dead lights of the tree. "She was my wife."


text:
Hey Guys,
I've been working on this project for some time now, knowing it will take some time to complete, like all my other projects, but I thought I would share it with you guys anyways...
So, as the title says, I'm building a 10x10 brushless E-Maxx with steering on the 4 front wheels...
The lower chassis is going to be made from a long 4mm aluminum sheet... Total lenght 47 inches...
Is curently at the CNC shop and hopefully will be ready this week... As you can see it has the space for 5 bulkheads which I got from New Era Models and modified 3 to accept a chassis on both sides...
About the differentials, I needed five, 2 stock and 3 custom, so, I got 3 custom made alumium dual diff cases...
They came from France (not cheap) made by a forum member, but I haven't heard from him in a long time now... And, this is how it looks assembled...
My idea is to use a cheap brushless combo as I'm not going to run this truck more than a few times and I didn't want to use a Titan 775 on it... I will use four 2070 servos and with a little luck it will be finished soon...
I have all the parts ready to assemble it, but before that I need to send the 5 upper chassis to the CNC shop, but before doing that, I need to assemble the bulkheads on the chassis and meassure the exact length for each of them...
About chassis braces, I drew the holes for them on the lower and upper chassis but I won't make them, at least for now, I'll see how it handles and how much the hole truck flexes without them... Probably I will end up making them, but that's the last step...
Well, nothing else from now, crazy project right? I haven't seen a 10x10 E-Maxx before with this length and hopefuly will be fun to watch and run... I'm very curious about the turning radius without rear steering...
Hope you like the idea, subscribe and enjoy it!
Last edited by carraig042; 09-24-2013 at 09:41 PM.
He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins.
I recently finished a 6x6 T Maxx with rear steer and love it. 10x10 would be amazing. Those diff cases are awesome (I had to use the Revo diffs). What tires are you running? Are you worried about shredding the center diff?
that is going to be awesome can't wait to see it when it is finished
subscribed this is going to be cool cant wait to see the body you do
He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins.
several bodies fabricated to look like a moon rover....will it be a solid chassis or will it have knuckles that allow it to bent and twist?
It's a solid chassis... Like a 10x10 Oskosh Army truck...
He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins.
Interesting...I will be watching .
Rock n Rolla !
you could do a unimog front with a flat bed or a box to cover the shock towers and wires
I like that idea...
He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins.
Nice, and interesting...Surcribed...I know is too soon, but What batteries are you going to use? just curiosity
Sl4sh MM2
T-Maxx 3.3
Summit 1/10
Sl2sh VXL
Nothing fancy, it's a show off truck, two 2S 5000mAh LiPo...
He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins.
Very interesting build you attempting. Can't wait to see the finished product.
Always get a 2nd Opinion!
wow sounds awesome. i need one of those custom diffs. i likey.
I'm not krazy. My mother had me tested.
What are you doing to reverse rotation of the output of a middle differential before it goes into the next diff?
I could be mistaken; but I think if the input of a middle diff is spinning clockwise, the output would be spinning counter clockwise.
Whatever it is I just typed... could be wrong.
Flip the diff and the rotation is reversed. You flip the diffs to get the correct rotation. On my 6x6 the first ring gear is on the right 2nd=left 3rd=right. I believe on a 10x10 like this it would be 1st=left 2nd=right 3rd=left 4th=right 5th=left (assuming the transmission output rotation direction is the same as a T Maxx).
Hey Jimmie, it's like NathanM said... Just flip the diffs...
He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins.
Sometimes the simplest of solutions evade me.
Whatever it is I just typed... could be wrong.
would it be possible for you to comment with the name of the forum member from France that fabricated these double sided diffs? i wanna build a 6x6 e revo.... if you cant list please pm me the name....
Anyways, why a 10x10? instead of something like a 8x8 or something along the lines of that? and for body, i vote a semi with a car trailer, that way you can haul all your other rc's...hehehe- subscribed!
kawasaki summit, revo& slash; regular rusty, pede
But, you don't need these diff cases for an E-Revo, just join two output sides of the stock diff cases...
He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins.
You could paint a long body to look like a centipede
Sig edited for awesomeness. NC
Well, the chassis was ready today but the shop had a broken printer and couldn't print the invoice, and it's not near by, so I decided to go next Monday. It's going to be a long weekend!
He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins.
can't wait to see this build go through, from reading this thread i came up with an idea to make a 4x6 slash! make a custom mount to attatch another rearend to the rearend already existing on the car. and with the 2 2x4 rear ends you wouldnt have to make a custom double sided differential case, you could put paddles all the way arround on the rear two axles, and the skis for the front, that thing would be terriffic in snow!
P.S. thanks for the link
kawasaki summit, revo& slash; regular rusty, pede
Cool! Another thing I forgot to mention, I'm using all titanium hex screws,,,
He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins.
Lower chassis is at home!
I have to work a little on the edges, drill a few holes and start working on the upper chassis...
Last edited by danielhr77; 12-18-2012 at 05:59 PM.
He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins.
holy cow! Subscribed!
X-Maxx Max6 | EB48.3 | ET48.3 | Axial Grave Digger
i would of done the song from star wars when that really long ship is going by.... anyways, its really cool; now only if you could have the rear 4 axles have steering too, that would be pretty cool!
kawasaki summit, revo& slash; regular rusty, pede
when i see 4 front tires and 4 rear tires turning in different directions i just picture it ripping in half
With great brushless comes great responsibility.
I wanted to make it more like a real truck where the front 4 tires turn and the rear 6 tires are locked...
He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins.
From what I saw, all tires where locked. lol
Whatever it is I just typed... could be wrong.
its going to be sweet what tires are you going to be running. I expect some lighter tires, with big joes it would be like 30lbs
With great brushless comes great responsibility.
Thanks! Stock E-Maxx tires with 14mm hex... I got them cheap sometime ago from a seller that had too many in stock... And, you know, the inside of the rim came in white and black, so, I have a mixed set...
He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins.
so the old school chevrons
With great brushless comes great responsibility.
Yup, wanted talons, but these were cheaper for a project like this one...
He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins.
im certainly tuned in on the project, i keep getting goosebumps when i see all the parts for the build... wish the machine shop here didn't over charge and take too long to fabricate parts... otherwise i would do a out of the box project like this, i see another project like this coming to mind... but still with the foundation of the 4x6, fabricate the same adapter in this kit: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Aluminum-Dua...item2ec46a87aa and install it on the rear two axles, then install a new bright semi body- so you would have, a semi! not trying to hijack your thread, i deeply apologize if it is coming off that way
kawasaki summit, revo& slash; regular rusty, pede
No problem... I just wanted to have the longest E-Maxx ever built so far, and I haven't seen any with 10 wheels... It's just for fun... Not trying to make it perfect or super nice, just trying to make it work right now...
He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins.
Man this thing is going to be a beast! I thought my 6-wheeler was big and heavy! After seeing your many projects, clearly, you just have too much time on your hands...
Slash BL-Pede-E 4Tec-FLM EMAXX-Wraith-AX-10-SCX-10
Thanks! Wish I could have too much time! But I don't, that's why all my projects take so long (this one is more than a year old since I started working on it). Well, have some bad news, the guy from the CNC shop used an older version of my drawing that I sent a few months ago when I was talking to them for the first time about making the chassis and the 4 holes to mount each bulkhead don't align quite well. My updated version fixed that problem. They offered me to make it again for free but I don't have aluminum to send it to them, so, now I have to go and buy an aluminum sheet, send it to them again and hopefully this time it will be perfect. So, I'll have to wait like two more weeks to continue working, the Holidays don't help much.
He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins.
tell them to find the aluminum they messed it up and make it snappy .its the little set backs you work thru that amke the prodject that much cooler in the end
They told me they will make it again and will give me a discount on the top four chassis... They don't sell aluminum, they are just a CNC shop and I had to buy more anyways for other projects...
He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
The package contains 18 wood background patterns in different kind of wood and different dark colors. The color scheme is made to be useful for different purposes.
- 18 JPG backgrounds 3000 x 2250 px / 300 ppi
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I'd really appreciate it if you could rate my file.
Feel free to contact me through my profile page if you have any questions, feedback, or need assistance.
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text:
No. 11/11 Dartmouth (5-1-2) vs. No. 1/1 Boston College (9-1-0)
- Saturday, Nov. 24, 2012 - 4 PM - Chestnut Hill, Mass.
- Kelley Rink at Conte Forum (7,884)
- All-Time Series: Boston College, 61-30-0
- Last Meeting: Nov. 30, 2008 (Home) - L, 2-1 (OT)
- Streak: 0-2-0
|Live Stats
|Live Video ($)
|Live Audio
Chris Garret (PbP)
Brett Drucker (Color)
Dartmouth will begin a stretch of five straight non-conference games on the road Saturday at No. 1 Boston College. The Green are coming off an 0-1-1 weekend with hard-fought games at Colgate and No. 10 Cornell. The Big Green and Eagles will meet at Conte Forum for the scheduled 4 p.m. puck drop.
Dartmouth and Boston College are two of the four remaining one-loss teams in the country to this point. After dropping its first game of the year, the defending national champs have rattled off wins in their last nine for the longest streak in the nation this season. The Big Green began 2012-13 without a loss in its first six games (5-0-1) to hold on as the final team in the nation to suffer its first defeat. No. 2 Denver (9-1-0) and No. 3 New Hampshire (8-1-1) are the other two programs that have just one blemish to their record thus far.
The Green and White had a 4-1 lead early in the third period against Colgate Friday night in Hamilton, but suffered their first defeat as the Raiders stormed back with four-unanswered tallies to end the game. Although viewed as a devastating loss to take, Dartmouth moved on to Ithaca the following night and battled for a hard-earned point in the standings with a 1-1 tie. With the extra attacker on in the final minute, captain Mike Keenan's slap shot from the point found space inside the right post for the equalizer.
Playing close games with the Big Red have become customary the last few years for the team in Green and White. In the last 10 games between the two programs (including Saturday's 1-1 draw), nine have been decided by either one goal or have ended in a tie. Seven times one of the two teams have left the building a one-goal victor, while twice the teams have been unable to determine a winner through 65 minutes. The only game decided by more than a single goal in that stretch was Cornell's 3-1 Game 2 victory in last season's quarterfinal series. The first game of the weekend was a double-overtime thriller that ended in heartbreaking fashion for the visitors.
Even without taking a win on their two-game Central New York road swing, the Green were able to move up one spot in each of the two national polls this week. Dartmouth is now ranked No. 11 in both the USCHO.com Division I Poll as well as the USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine rankings. The No. 11 position matches the team's best ranking since the poll began in the fall of 1997. The last time the Big Green were as high as No. 11 came during the preseason of 2004-05 (September 27).
With two games in hand over Quinnipiac, Dartmouth enters its non-conference winter stretch as the leader in the ECAC Hockey standings with nine points. The Bobcats' four-game win streak against league foes has them second with eight points, while No. 8 Union and No. 17 Harvard sit tied for third with six points apiece.
For the first time all season, junior Eric Robinson and sophomore Tyler Sikura were held without a point in the team's tie at Cornell. Robinson had actually scored at least once in each of the team's first seven games before being denied by the Big Red. Sikura opened the season on a seven-game point streak that saw the sophomore post nearly half of his total output from his freshman season (25 points in 34 GP) in a fifth of the games as he has 12 points (5g/7a) to start 2012-13.
Freshman Charles Grant was back in the Dartmouth net against Cornell for his first appearance since Nov. 2. Making his conference road debut in the toughest rink in the league for visiting goaltenders, Grant stopped 26 shots, including seven in overtime, to help Dartmouth to the 1-1 tie. Matching one of the league's top goaltenders at the other end in the Big Red's Andy Iles, Grant was up to the task of stopping nearly everything the opposition threw his way in front of the sold-out Lynah Rink crowd.
For the second time this season, the Big Green used a late goal in the third period to force an eventual tie. Robinson did it with 3:04 left against Yale in the season opener in Providence and Keenan did it against the Big Red with 51.4 seconds left. Keenan's blast was the first non-empty goal scored in the final minute of the third period since Feb. 6, 2010 when Adam Estoclet scored with 29 seconds left and the extra attacker on to pull Dartmouth even with Brown, 5-5, forcing OT and earning the one league point.
Last season, Dartmouth's penalty-killing unit ranked 52nd of 58 teams in Division I (111-143; 77.6%). Things have changed greatly since then as the Big Green currently rank as the best penalty killers in the nation to this point. The Green and White have successfully killed off 28-of-29 power plays this season for a rate of 96.6 percent. Following the weekend, Dartmouth has now killed off the last 19 opportunities opponents have had with the man-advantage dating back to a Nov. 2 game with Yale. That PK unit will be tested Saturday as BC has the nation's third-best power play at 27.5% (11-40).
- A former league opponent, Dartmouth and Boston College have had an interesting past against one another. The Eagles nipped the Green, 4-3, in just the second national championship game played back in 1949. In the all-time series, Boston College holds the decisive edge over the Big Green, 61-30-0.
- The Eagles have won the last two meetings between the programs, including a 2-1 overtime victory in Hanover on Nov. 30, 2008. The last game at Conte Forum was a 4-1 decision in favor of the home team.
- Dartmouth's last win against Boston College came on Nov. 26, 2002 (Also when the Eagles were ranked No. 1), when Mike Ouellette scored 2:39 into overtime for the 5-4 victory. Hugh Jessiman and Lee Stempniak were credited with assists on Ouellette's winner. Playing that night for the Eagles was Ben Lovejoy, older brother of current Big Green defenseman Nick Lovejoy and a future Dartmouth player himself, transferring to the Upper Valley following the end of the season.
No. 1 TEAMS
Saturday's matchup with the top-ranked Eagles will mark the first time any Dartmouth team has met up with an opponent ranked No. 1 in their respective sport since the women's lacrosse team beat Maryland in overtime, 9-8, on May 1, 2011. The women's lacrosse team played four opponents ranked in the top five last season, while the field hockey team just wrapped up a fall campaign that saw it play three opponents ranked in the top three, including the eventual national champion from Princeton and the national runners-up from North Carolina. The men's hockey team will play a team ranked in the top-10 for the third consecutive Saturday when it takes to the ice in Chestnut Hill.
Although he's been back in the lineup for three weeks, it wasn't until this past weekend that senior and alternate captain Dustin Walsh looked like himself on the ice. His second-period goal at Colgate was his first since New Year's Eve when he found the back of the net against St. Lawrence in the Ledyard Classic title game. He added an assist against Cornell as his feed from the goal line to the point set up Keenan for the game-tying score.
It's been the sophomores and the juniors that have garnered all the attention this season, but freshman Brad Schierhorn has been doing his job on a nightly basis. Since cracking the lineup the second weekend of the year, Schierhorn has been one of the toughest players for opposing teams to play against. His physical style that sees the first-year forward from Alaska crashing the net resulted in a goal against Colgate as he received a pass from classmate Jack Barre at the side of the net to bury a low shot for the two-goal lead. He is the only freshman with more than one goal through the first eight games of the season.
With his eighth goal of the season early in the third period at Colgate, Robinson still is the nation's leader in goals per game at 1.00. Although failing to score at Cornell, his eight goals are an impressive figure as the 12 goals in 34 games last season were a career high for the Foxborough, Mass., native. Only Niagara's Giancarlo Iuorio has scored more than the Dartmouth forward, with nine in 13 games.
The goaltending tandem of Grant and junior Cab Morris has been one of the strengths for head coach Bob Gaudet's team this season. The duo is the only two goaltenders from the same team to rank in the top 15 nationally in both goals-against average and winning percentage. Grant ranks second with a GAA of 1.55, while Morris is 14th, boasting a 1.97 figure. Grant's .833 winning percentage (2-0-1) is tied for third, while Morris is 15th at .700 (3-1-1). After his 26-save performance in Ithaca, Grant's .944 save percentage is fifth among qualifying netminders.
As it stands now, Dartmouth's 1.88 goals against per game ranks third in the nation. However, that defensive unit will have its hands full against Boston College, a team that ranks eighth in the nation in scoring offense at 3.40 goals per contest. The Eagles' team defense is also eighth in the country, allowing just 2.00 goals against. Dartmouth's offense features a potent attack as its 3.38 goals per game are just back of Saturday's opponent for 10th in the nation.
The Big Green take fewer penalties than any other team in Division I. The Green average just 8.2 penalty minutes per game to rank 59th of 59 teams. Combine that ability to stay out of the box with the nation's best penalty-killing unit and it's clear that the coaching staff has preached discipline to this group of players.
Dartmouth has played with a lead an astonishing 54% of the time this season (197:13). Add in 128:19 (35.2%) for when it is tied with an opponent and the Big Green have only trailed for a combined 39:28 (10.2%) of play. Union is the closest team to Dartmouth, trailing opponents 21.1% of the time. In contrast, BC, the No. 1 team in the country, has been out in front in 40.7% of its games and trailed for 22.7%.


text:
Death notice published Feb. 11, 2013 in The Mexico Ledger
Virginia Beavers, 90 of Center, died Saturday, Feb. 9, 2013 at King's Daughter's Home in Mexico.
Funeral services will be at 2 p.m. Wednesday, at the Adiel Baptist Church. Burial will be at Salem Cemetery in rural Center.
Visitation will be from 5 to 7 p.m. on Tuesday at the James O'Donnell Funeral Home in Hannibal.


text:
Midcoast veterans and military families honored | News
TOPSHAM, Maine (NEWS CENTER) -- Veterans and military families in Midcoast Maine received a special recognition Saturday afternoon.
First Lady Anne LePage, along with representatives from the Maine Bureau of Veterans' Services, presented medals of honor and blue star banners to veterans and their families at the Topsham American Legion.
Families with a relative serving on active duty received a blue star banner, along with a letter from the First Lady.
"I would like to thank them for being strong for their loved ones," said Ann LePage. "I think it's important to have the family strong back home so that they can carry out their mission safely, and then return home safely."
Director of the Maine Bureau of Veteran Services Peter Ogden said the bureau needs help locating and honoring Maine's veterans.
"Maine has 150 thousand living veterans today, and we're trying to recognize all of them," said Ogden. "It's a little bit of a challenge to find them all."
Living veterans, surviving family members, and blue star families are asked to contact the Bureau of Veterans Services to receive recognition.
The office can be reached by phone at 430-6035, or by email at firstname.lastname@example.com.


text:
Reviewed By Jonathan J (Covina, CA) Reviewed for a 1999 Lexus GS 400 —1/20/2008 4:58 PM
Easy Installation. This intake really improves flow and you can feel the a more touchy accelerator. At, wide open throttle, its sounds like a beast under the hood. Also makes a great little hissing sound when it surges for air. Very satisfied customer here. -John from Los Angeles


text:
Why Erlang?
Erlang is a concurrent programming language and its approach to concurrency is the actor model. It has very lightweight processes (not OS processes) and built-in message passing semantics among processes. Spawning a process takes a few microseconds and an Erlang VM can have thousands of these lightweight processes running simultaneously. Sending a message from one process to another is in the order of nano seconds. Each process is well isolated from others, and a rouge process does not bring the whole system down. Process can be externally managed and killed if it skews.
Furthermore, Erlang has a shared nothing programming model, which avoids locking issues. The processes are isolated and a process crash can be captured as a message and send to the parent process. The process-spawning model has built in support for distribution, an Erlang node can spawn a process on an authorized remote Erlang VM and send messages to it like a local process. Errors from remote nodes are also reported like normal local process failures.
Erlang is a soft real-time system, with a pre-emptive scheduler among the processes. Garbage collection (GC) is implemented in a simpler manner with cleanup happening at a process level. Since nothing is shared among the processes GC cheaper as no object traversals are involved. This made it possible for us to meet strict SLA needs.
This process and messaging model enables us to run more feeds per box, drastically reducing the resource required per feed. Manageability and isolation at the process level allows us to reliably co-host multiple feeds.
Open Telecom Platform
The Open Telecom Platform (OTP) is a framework and set of principles for how to structure Erlang code in terms of processes, modules, and directories. A common pattern along which process are structured in an OTP application is the Supervision tree. This is a model based on the idea of workers and supervisors. Workers are encouraged to fail if it encounters a situation that it cannot handle. The architecture of Harvester is such that every Worker or Foreman spawned in Harvester is associated with a Supervisor. This ensures that if a worker ever crashes during a fetch, its supervisor can decide on restarting it. Since the restart functionality is already found in the standard library, no extra code was required to be written.
The OTP framework standardizes application patterns for concurrency-oriented applications. It defines patterns like gen_server for client server model, gen_fsm for finite state machines, gen_event for event handling, and so on. It also defines a release and packaging specifications for deploying and upgrading applications. The error-handling semantics are also abstracted in the OTP framework. Building Harvester following the OTP principles meant we get to reuse the well-tested framework for building and packaging Erlang applications.
Erlang comes from a telecom background where zero downtime is the norm. Consequently it has features for live code upgrade, which blends well with our objectives. Having almost zero downtime is essential to Harvester since it's a hosted platform with critical feeds from different properties and getting a downtime window is not easy. The release packaging and upgrade model of OTP gives us easy access to the live code upgrade features in Erlang.
There are other benefits as well. Erlang is a functional programming language that uses pattern matching for many tasks. It's used for extracting values from data structures, control-flow within functions, for receiving messages, and the like. The libraries that come with Erlang make extensive use of lists and higher order functions.
The Erlang prototype required that we write it in a purely functional style. Although the initial learning curve turned out to be steep, the effort reaped rich dividends. This allowed us to code in a more expressive and succinct manner.
To avoid database contention, the Erlang Harvester prototype assigns feeds to an Erlang node and the node is responsible for its lifecycle. If the node fails, the feed is reassigned to a different node by the monitoring component. The monitoring piece is lightweight as all it does is monitor status of the harvester nodes, and shuffles feeds to a node that is alive.
Since Erlang is a non-standard platform at Yahoo!, its interoperability with the existing software stack is a concern. Erlang has a well-defined model for interacting with external applications with Erlang ports. An Erlang port talks to an external program running in a separate OS process via STDIN and STDOUT. We integrated with internal libraries via a simple Perl wrapper communicating with an Erlang port.
Erlang is not the perfect platform. It has it shares of weakness and most of it comes from the design goals behind the language. Erlang does not have a string data type, a string in Erlang is a list of integers. Distinguishing between a list of integers and a string is not possible. It provides a module for basic string manipulation, and regular expressions but they pale in comparison to Perl. The latest version of Erlang R13 has Unicode support and libraries to convert between various encodings.
Records are the Erlang equivalent of C structs, but it is implemented like an after-thought on the Erlang tuple data type which are static in nature. This does not fit well with the dynamic nature of Erlang run time. The Erlang syntax can take some getting used to, but when you've got it you can appreciate the power it hides.
Performance Comparisons
Table 1 presents the results of a comparison between the current Perl implementation and the Erlang prototype. Note that quad-core test machine was 100% loaded on all four cores when processing the above-mentioned loads. The prototype was more reliable with supervisor trees doing most of the error handling part (the errors are logged and workers die). The supervisor decides if an error is to be retried or flagged for operations to intervene.
Erlang provides a set of programming constructs that fit well for a certain set of problems. Within Yahoo!, Erlang is being successfully used in BOSS, Delicious, MyBlogLog and FireEagle. Understanding the features and benefits of the Erlang model and having it on the list of tools available when designing your systems will help you to pick the right stack for your system.
- Erlang for Concurrent Programming, Jim Larson, Google
- The Erlang Reference Manual
- Making Reliable Distributed Systems In the Presence of Software Errors
- A History of Erlang, by Joe Armstrong


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Warren Haynes (born April 6, 1960) is an American rock and blues guitarist, vocalist and songwriter of Gov't Mule and long time member of the Allman Brothers Band. Haynes also founded and runs Evil Teen Records, and is a member of the Dead.
Haynes is primary singer, guitarist, and songwriter for the band Gov't Mule, which he founded with fellow Allman Brother Allen Woody and Band drummer and bandmate Matt Abts. In addition to the Allman Brothers and Gov't Mule, Haynes has recorded and toured extensively with former members of the Grateful Dead, while also maintaining a solo career. In 2004, he was ranked 23rd on Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, along with fellow Allman Brothers Band guitarists Duane Allman, Dickey Betts, and Derek Trucks.
Warren Haynes got hisfirst break joining David Allan Coe's touring and recording band in the early 1980s. David Allan Coe Bass Guitarist Mickey Hayes first saw Haynes performing at a nightclub called "The Brass Tap" in Asheville, NC. Coe and the band had just finished a movie called "Lady Grey", and the lead guitarist was going to be let go. Hayes went to Coe and told him of a promising guitarist he saw and recommended Haynes be hired ASAP to join the band and fill the spot. Upon Hayes advice, Coe called and asked Haynes join the band. He joined that night and played in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.


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Angel Pagan, CF on the New York Mets, hit an inside-the-park homerun and was the primary fielder responsible for a triple play last night against the Nationals.
The Nationals won the game 5-3.
Also, the title is not meant to be taken literally.
Angel Pagan, CF on the New York Mets, hit an inside-the-park homerun and was the primary fielder responsible for a triple play last night against the Nationals.
The Nationals won the game 5-3.
Also, the title is not meant to be taken literally.
When I read about that, I figured that had to be the first time that ever happened. Amazingly, no. Baseball (and Elias) is awesome like that.
Who else has done that?
And not since Ted Kazanski of the Phillies did it in '55 had a player hit an inside-the-parker and helped turn a triple play in the same ballgame.
Wait, Ted Kazanski? Could he be the dad of Tom "Iceman" Kazanski from "Top Gun"?
He certainly has a great NAME as well.....
Although I personally like Rick Wise's 2 homer-No hitter game.
How about Mickey Lolich, Game 2 of the 1968 World Series.
On the road in Busch Stadium St. Louis. Lolich starts for Detroit, pitches a complete game, allows 1 run on 6 hits with 9 strikeouts. Detroit wins (they'd otherwise have lost the Series, no doubt)... And best of all, Lolich hit a home run, which turned out to be the game-winning run.
Nevertheless, I will do so. From my post:
Also, the title is not meant to be taken literally.
I wasn't arguing, or denouncing your OP. I like baseball oddities. I like your post. But what else can anybody say about Angel Pagan after about two posts? The .281 lifetime (2 yrs.) hitter for the Cubs-Mets-Cubs-Mets?
Jack Morris scoffs at Lolich's NINE inning playoff shutout. Real men go ten.
she said. ZING!
I'm a Mets fan, and that was a great performance. I'm a huge fan of Angel Pagan. I know Carlos Beltran is an all star, but Pagan belongs in the lineup. If Beltran ever recovers from that surgery, I'm curious to see how Manuel plays it. If Bay can't step it up, he might be riding pine.
I'd imagine they'd sit Francouer way before they'd sit Bay.
You may be right (offensively) but I like Francouer in RF. Perhaps that is where Angel would have to go if/when Beltran gets back.
Actually, there's a chance that when Beltran comes back, he'll have to go to right because his knee won't take the rigors in center. That would clearly mean Francoeur's the odd man out.
if he were a little more intuned with what was happening. I was at the game and he was probably only two or three strides from second when he caught the ball. With the original runner (Livan Hernandez) on second already around third and the original runner(Nyjer Morgan) on first, standing confused on second, all Pagan needed to do was jog to second, step on the bag, and tag Morgan for an unassisted triple play. And, that my friends, would have been a first: there've been about a dozen unassisted triple plays, but never one by an outfielder.
I'd be willing to bet he would trade in both the triple play and the inside-the-park HR for a win.


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Join us on Tuesday, February 19 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT for the livestream of ISA4: the 4th Annual Indie Soap Awards from New World Stages in New York.
If you would like to attend ISA4 in person, there are still guest passes available for purchase.
You can follow the event on Twitter using hashtag #ISA4.


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(WMC-TV) – The excitement about football is in the air in Oxford, Mississippi.
The Rebels are just hours away from a highly anticipated gridiron showdown against the University of Texas.
Dozens of people camped out so they can find the best spot to set up their tents at The Grove. The area does not officially open until 9 p.m. Friday.
Some people have been out waiting since 7 a.m.
Texas has never played in Oxford and rumors are already flying about the most hyped up game of the season.
"I heard Coloniel Reb is going to ride Bevo into the stadium at halftime," said one fan.
The longhorn's mascot may not be in the grove, but plenty of Texans will. Several Texas students drove all the way from Austin for the big showdown.
"Not a lot of bad blood between the two schools, which is really interesting," said another fan. "Okay, maybe a little bit of bad blood."
But fans from both sides seem to agree on something.
"It's going to be absolutely insane, we're all very excited."
People are tossing the football, reading, and catching up with friends until 9 p.m. Friday when they can begin setting up their tailgating tents.
Copyright 2012 WMC-TV. All rights reserved.
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According to a new study by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the NOAA forecasts of Hurricane Sandy's track could have been hundreds of miles off without information from polar-orbiting satellites. Rather than identifying the New Jersey landfall location within 30 miles five-days before landfall, the models would have shown Sandy remaining at sea.
"This study shows the value of polar-orbiting satellites in developing life-saving forecasts with longer lead times," said Dr. Kathryn Sullivan, assistant secretary of commerce for environmental observation and prediction, and deputy NOAA administrator. "Had we thought the brunt of the storm was going to stay out in the Atlantic, or if residents had only a day to prepare or evacuate, the results would have been even more devastating."
The ECMWF is an independent, intergovernmental organization supported by 34 European nations, providing global medium-to-extended range forecasts.


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Veterans Affairs Learning University: Optimas Award Winner for Service
For empowering employees to shape their own careers and identify opportunities for development, Veterans Affairs Learning University is the 2012 winner of the Optimas Award for Service.
For years, the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department has been struggling to keep and promote its best people.
Despite substantial investment in training opportunities, only 39.7 percent of its 320,000 employees were "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with their opportunity for promotion, according to a 2011 survey. And exit interviews showed that lack of support for development was the main reason for attrition.
"VA employees were unaware of the diversity of jobs and career opportunities within the department, and they were unaware of how to progress in their careers once they were in a job," says Carrie Tuning, learning consultant at the VA Learning University, or VALU.
To reduce high turnover and meet soaring demand for VA services, in October 2011 VALU launched MyCareer@VA, a project including a website, which provides employees with customizable career-mapping tools, internal job boards and recommended training programs for different career paths. It also gives supervisors tools to help employees structure their development so they can improve work performance and career growth. "Before MyCareer, employees had to rely on other people to help them map a career path and identify opportunities," Tuning says.
Within a year, 10 occupational groups had access to the technology, with new employee populations added every month. The VA expects all 50 occupational groups to have access to the tools by April 2013. The team focused on mission-critical roles first, which included benefits administrators.
Since its launch, use has been steadily growing. The site gets about 10,000 visitors weekly, and the VALU team will be tracking attrition rates and internal promotions as a measure of its long-term success.
While it's too soon for numbers, the team has already heard many anecdotes, including a young VA employee who used MyCareer@VA to find a management analyst position and get assigned a mentor to guide her down that career path.
For empowering employees to shape their own careers and identify opportunities for development, Veterans Affairs Learning University is the 2012 winner of the Optimas Award for Service.
Sarah Fister Gale is a writer based in the Chicago area. Comment below or email email@example.com.
Workforce Management, November 2012, p. 30 — Subscribe Now!


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Original URL: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/06/review_game_star_wars_the_old_republic/
Star Wars: The Old Republic
In a galaxy far, far away...
Posted in Personal Tech, 6th January 2012 12:00 GMT
Review Star Wars: The Old Republic is a massive game with hundreds of hours of game play, so this review is just a chicken scratch on the surface of something we will see develop and grow over months, if not years. Undoubtedly, SWTOR has a solid foundation but does it have enough successful constituent parts to be enduring?
Why, holo there...
So, is this World of Warcraft with lightsabres? Sort of, and considering WoW's success that's probably not such a bad thing. Indeed, the arrival of SWTOR is a welcome, if not particularly innovative, addition to the monthly subscription MMORPG genre.
Cue scrolling text...
What first caught my attention are the cinematic intros, the likes of which I have never seen. They showcase the playable classes in a polished, exciting and just plain awesome montage that slaps you awake more than it sets the scene. The pure nostalgia for Christmas (been there, done that) and Star Wars gets me all excited. Indeed, its Yuletide release was a marketing coup.
Pull your trunks up
It's been 200 years since the events of the Knights of the Old Republic but only a couple of weeks since I was locked out of the beta. In either case, it's back to the Sith academy.
Choosing a busy PVP although not over-populated server was important, in order to stay away from some nasty server waiting times. It's not true what they say about the British and queuing.
Even though I missed my Sith witch, this time I thought I might mix things up and rolled Imperial agent. I did try to roll smuggler but ended up looking the splitting image of Princess Fiona from Shrek.
Friends always got your back
As an Imperial agent I'm a ranged character and I start with a sniper shot and the ability to roll into cover. I wondered why there so few races are available; who doesn't want to play the Gamorrean (Space Orc) to level 50? I was also slightly disappointed by the limited character customisation – just four body types that all races share. I spent some time in character creation playing with my piercings and tattoos – looking ready for an evening at Slimelight. After the time I spent fiddling in Skyrim purely with the shape of my chin, I felt robbed. As far as character creation goes, the word 'mediocre' comes to mind.
A class of its own
Whether playing Republic or Imperial, I have four basic classes available. My class choice decides my abilities and also my main storyline. The narrative is open to variation depending on the chosen dialogue options during conversations. Just how much variation there is I have yet to fully explore. And what's this? No pet classes?
Shuttle down
The class system will be recognisable conforming to the Ranged, Tank, Healer and overpowered force lighting broker. Alas, no dual spec either. I felt disappointed that there was no engineer class with a cutesy pet droid. Yes, at level 15 I can have a droid as a companion but he isn't very helpful; seemingly scared of a fight and only useful for creating items.
While playing The Old Republic it becomes apparent that Bioware has constructed each class as a game in itself. My class determines not only how I play but my game experience, each class story has a unique impact on the central narrative.
You can't cross me
The first thing I noticed was how familiar the controls are – an unashamed clone of the UI seen in WoW or Rift. But there is definitely a clear KOTOR design ethos with streamlined blue and sans serif fonts. I really like the inventory and character windows and am struck by how easy it is to use, overall.
Smooth maps make life in SWTOR much easier to navigate. The starting world for the Imperial agent is the desert planet Hutta. I complete the usual low level tasks until I level enough to leave the planet and explore the galaxy. These tasks are made more enjoyable because they are introduced with stunning and immersive cut scenes (for an MMORPG) that help capture the feel of the Star Wars Universe.
Talk to the bars...
These first few levels will be a comfortable start for noobs. Every time you gain enough experience to level, you have to find a trainer. I pay them a small amount of money to gain different skills such as cover which is basically my own personal futuristic shield.
Dark times be comin'
When it comes to allegiance, I always felt it better to stick with the dark side to stay true to my black heart. I make every choice as spitefully and viciously as possible to rack up those dark side points.
Fixed in front
One major disappointment was the lack of roaming from mobs – they just seemed to wait around in groups to be slaughtered. Now where is the fun in that? Being able to AoE loot bodies was really helpful, though who wants to pick their way through a pile of corpses? Be sure to keep an eye out for oft times well hidden datacrons, for welcome stat increases. The Old Republic is divided up into planets and other celestial bodies. While I can't visit any planet I like early on, I can later with the help of a starship (along with my lame ass droid) that I will obtain during my main quest. Watch out for contested worlds in PVP servers, as these can make the missions extremely hard if you're not accompanied by your friends.
Red guy district
There is vast and epic scale for creating completely different atmospheres on the varied planets of the Star Wars universe, which made me question: why they are all so samey? In essence, if you've seen one city you seen them all.
Once I get to level 10 I get to specialise and open up my skill tree and customise my character. I chose to be a sniper. This gives me three the skill trees, Lethality, Engineering and Marksmanship. Plus one per cent marksmanship for one skill point seems a ludicrously small increase, so much that it didn't seem to make any difference in combat. In retrospect sniper class isn't the most powerful class to choose and I often felt like I was missing out not having a light sabre or force lightning at my disposal.
Swamp thing...
To commit to this game you have to pay attention to Crew skills and make sure to read about their different synergies before making your decision. I chose cyber tech for my crafting skill and then salvaging and underworld trading to obtain the materials I needed to build amour mods and upgrades, which I could use for myself or sell on the global marketplace.
Friends 'til the end
Companions play a large part in making your life less fraught. Kaliyo was my first companion at level 8. She is a pretty cool chick whom I met at a nightclub working for some Hutt mafia types. She is the same level character as me, and helps in a fight which makes soloing a lot easier and less lonely.
Join the race
There are several things that make this game immersive and pull you into the epic storyline. The obviously enormous amount of voice and dialogue production that went into creating this corporeal, organic world makes it clear that having scrolling quest text, breaking your suspension of disbelief, like that in found in WoW is a thing of the past. The fact I now have to listen to everything, is an instant attention grabber.
I am invariably a pussy when it comes to dungeon crawls and often shouted at for aggroing the mobs. Just call me Leroy... The Old Republic has instances, renamed Flashpoints, where there are bosses and higher value drops. These have guild written all over them but being a lone wolf I have to put out a shout and join up with a PUG to enjoy some interactive dialogue scenes and gain social points.
Time to jump ship
I simply click an icon to line up for PVP action. Warzones are a nod to Capture the flag and football but I didn't really enjoy these, hardly FIFA.
Overall, this game has substance and polish and convinces me I am immersed in the Star Wars universe. Having decided to invest my time and monthly sub for the immediate future, I can only hope Bioware has anticipated what it will need to do to keep me hooked.
Need a little pick me up
SWTOR isn't my dream Star Wars game, it isn't even my dream MMORPG but I did enjoy playing it. Even though it doesn't add anything new to either of these genres it brings on dewey-eyed Star Wars nostalgia. Having reached level 21, Bioware has me hooked like an Alabama meth-head and, for the meantime, I will continue to play to see how SWTOR develops. I guess Bioware hopes that's what 30 million other gamers have in mind, considering its hefty budget. ®
More Games Reviews
|Need for Speed:
The Run
|Saints Row:
The Third
|The Legend of Zelda:
Skyward Sword
|Assassin's Creed
|Halo: Combat Evolved
Anniversary Edition


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Note to readers – Sauk Valley Media reprints editorials from the past as a regular Monday feature. The following editorial appeared in the Telegraph on April 25, 1963.
1963 Congress;
heroes needed
Not much doubt exists that Congress generally is held in fairly low esteem today. The question is why.
A considerable group argues that Congress needs major reform of both its structure and functions to equip it for the faster pace of late-20th century change.
The many reform proposals are a subject for separate discussion. But even the surface evidence of cumbersome, repetitive, outmoded [practices indicates some semblance] of reform does indeed seem in order.
It is also contended that Congress has a "bad image" because its political balance is so close as to produce stalemate rather than vigorous action.
This, too, is evidently true. Even quite moderate legislative proposals can be blocked by a conservative coalition that has existed, in one form or another, continuously since 1939. Right now the combine contains more Republicans and somewhat fewer southern Democrats than it did two years ago.
But since this particular condition is not new, and since, in any event, it is probably reasonably reflective of divisions within the nation itself, the political stalemate hardly seems the best explanation for the decline in congressional prestige.
A third suggestion is that Congress today simply does not have the forceful, colorful leadership it requires to play a more vital role in national affairs.
In business, there is a saying that a company, whatever its status and reputation, is only as good as the men who make it up. This would appear to hold for Congress, for an executive agency of government, or for practically anything you choose to name.
The stirring figures can't be found on Capitol Hill today. The Democrats have no one with the authority of a Sam Rayburn, the endearing qualities of an Alben Barkley, the maneuvering skill of a Lyndon Johnson.
Republicans have no Robert Taft the elder with his mastery of the legislative process. Nor have they an Arthur Vandenberg, with his late-blooming ability to command a following for great causes.
Some would argue that Congress is filled with faceless men because that is what our society produces in these postwar decades. But perhaps any age which for a time develops no heroes is charged with being unable to do so.
However it is, the fact remains that Congress does not have heroes in 1963. Whether there are any "potentials" below the topmost power rungs is not wholly clear – and is worth exploring.
In the meantime, at a stage when the nation seems to demand little or no sweeping action from its lawmakers, Congress offers "leadership" well suited to stalemate. And surely this contributes heavily to the dull, gray image it now projects.
All those kids are potential voters
President Kennedy's family is producing a population explosion all its own.
The offspring of the First Family, plus the children of the president's brothers and sisters, come to a present total of 20.
His wife, Jacqueline, will have another child in August, and by then there also will be newcomers in the families of his brothers, Bobby and Ted.
The existing 20 already have something of a "community" life at Hyannis Port in summertime. Soon they may have to establish their own suburbs.
For those who have been complaining that there are too many Kennedys, the word is clear. You ain't seen nothin' yet!


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Britain is set to avoid the feared 'triple-dip' recession, according to a new survey.
Business confidence has now strengthened to the highest level since the second quarter of 2011, the ICAEW/Grant Thornton Business Confidence Monitor (BCM) report has suggested.
The BCM survey suggests GDP will expand by 0.4% in the first quarter of the year, after the 0.3% contraction in the last quarter of 2012.
ICAEW chief executive Michael Izza said: "There was a risk that, combined with the traditional January blues, the bad weather and some high profile retail collapses, talk of a triple-dip recession could become self-fulfilling.
"These results show that we are set to avoid a third period of technical recession, but no one should be complacent.
"There is only one way out of our economic malaise, and that's to increase our economic output. Such a task isn't going to be easy, or indeed quick."
Firms have seen a 1% increase in staff in the last year and plan to increase headcount by another 1.5% over the next 12 months.
One in 10 firms say the availability of management skills is a greater challenge than a year ago, suggesting that companies may struggle to recruit the right people to lead the recovery.
However, although business confidence appears to be widespread, it is most optimistic in Wales and the South East.
The report added that the construction sector, which has been hit hard in recent reporting periods, has renewed confidence along with IT and telecommunications.
Grant Thornton LLP chief executive Scott Barnes said: "Export growth rose slightly this quarter as the global economy picked up.
"This is coupled with an improvement in both profit and turnover growth, which companies expect to increase in the year ahead.
"Despite a rise in confidence though, companies' modest plans for capital investment are a worry as this is crucial to a strong and sustained recovery."


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Shenandoah National Park
Shenandoah National Park [5] is a United States National Park located in the state of Virginia. The park is one of the most popular touristic destinations in the eastern part of USA visited by well over one million people a year. Although hundreds thousands drive along Skyline Drive in mid-late October to admire vibrant fall foliage, the park is no less spectacular (and a lot less crowded) in spring when the wildflowers and trees are in full bloom.
The oldest rocks in the Blue Ridge Mountains were created over a billion years ago as magma deep within the earth's crust moved upward. Over eons it cooled, fractured, and was joined by younger metamorphic rocks formed from sedimentary deposits. All were altered and eroded to shape today's granite peaks and sylvan hollows.
Around 8,000-9,000 years ago, but seconds in geologic time, the first traces of humans were recorded on the land that would become the park. Native Americans seasonally visited the area to hunt, to gather nuts and berries, and to find sources for and to make their stone tools.
Europeans first experienced the beauty of these mountains less than 300 years ago. First came hunters and trappers, and soon after 1750 the first settlers moved into the lower hollows near springs and streams. Over the next century and a half many hundreds of families built homesteads, mills and stores and planted orchards and crops. The mountains were logged and minerals were mined. Vacation resorts were established to allow guests to experience the mountain views, healthy water, and cool breezes. And American Society became urban, industrial, and yearned for special places for recreation and refuge.
In the early 20th century the first calls for National parks in the east were heard in the United States Congress. It would be two decades before Shenandoah National Park was authorized and another ten years before it was established. During that time President and Lou Henry Hoover established their Summer White House on the Rapidan River, the construction of Skyline Drive began, the Civilian Conservation Corps was established and moved into the park area, and over 450 families of mountain residents were relocated from the Blue Ridge.
With the establishment of the park in December 1935, the CCC began to build visitor facilities throughout the mountain, areas that were initially racially segregated. The core of the park's development was completed by the beginning of WWII and, to a great extent, the mountains were released to nature.
Shenandoah National Park includes 300 square miles of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the central Appalachians. The park rises above the Virginia Piedmont to its east and the Shenandoah Valley to its west. Two peaks exceed 4,000 feet. The range of elevation, slopes and aspects of mountain and hillsides, rock and soil types, precipitation conditions, and latitude interact to create a mix of habitats.
The park's biota and natural features include: well-exposed strata of the Appalachians, one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world; diverse animal and plant populations and habitats; migratory bird stop-over points; and forested watersheds that perpetuate numerous streams flowing from uplands to lowlands.
Shenandoah is the largest fully protected area in the mid-Appalachian region.
Flora and fauna
Shenandoah serves as a refuge for many species of animals otherwise pressured by human activities, development and other land uses. There are over 200 resident and transient bird species, over 50 species of mammals, 51 reptile and amphibian species, and 30 fish species found in the park.
The Atlantic Ocean, and in particular the Gulf Stream, plays an important role in Virginia's precipitation regime. Winter storms generally track from the west to the east and in the vicinity of the east coast move to the northeast paralleling the coast and the Gulf Stream. This shift to northeast results partly from the tendency of storms to follow the boundary between the cold land and the warm Gulf Stream. When sufficiently cold air comes into Virginia from the west and northwest, frontal storms can bring heavy snowfall. Thunderstorms occur in all months of the year, with a maximum in September and minimum in February. Storms and high runoff conditions can occur year-round in Shenandoah. Most locations receive 100-150 cm of precipitation per year. The average annual precipitation at Big Meadows is 132 cm, which includes about 94 cm of snow. South to southwest winds predominate, with secondary maximum frequency from the north. Lower elevation areas of the park experience modified continental climate, with mild winters and warm, humid summers. The mean annual temperature in the lowland area at Luray averages 12 degrees C, and average annual precipitation is 91 cm, with about 43 cm of snow.
Higher elevation areas of the park experience winters that are moderately cold and summers that are relatively cool. The mean annual temperature at Big Meadows averages about 9 degrees C. Mean maximum daily temperatures in July average about 6 degrees C cooler at Big Meadows then in the lowland areas of the park. Temperatures in January range from about –7 degrees C to 4 degrees C and in July from about 14-24 degrees C. Snow and ice are common in the winter, but they usually melt quickly, leaving the ground bare. Occasional major snow or ice storms can cause considerable damage to the trees within the park.
Get in
There are several ways to get into the park:
Shenandoah National Park is one of the NPS units that charge an entry fee. The following fee types are available:
Get around
With over 500 miles of hiking trails, including over 100 miles of the Appalachian Trail, the park is also a premier destination for hikers.
The park has 6 picnic grounds and an uncountable number of spots where people can eat their own food, but build fires only in designated areas with grates. There are camp stores at or near all designated camp grounds, and only a few places where food is being served:
There are three lodges in the park located at Skyland, Big Meadows and Lewis Mountain. These lodges are about the only accommodation in the park and they can be fully booked for months, especially during high season. Be careful about making reservations. There is a company called National Parks Reservation Service that charges a 10% booking fee and a cancellation fee of $15. Reservations should be made with Aramark [6] which runs the park hotels.
There are four campgrounds that offer sites on a first-come, first-serve basis and by reservation at phone number 877-444-6777:
There are also cabins:
A free permit is required for backcountry camping. You can get the permit at the visitor contact stations during business hours. Alternatively you can download a permit application from the park website [7].
Stay safe
Get out