text:
Robyne's Hood
Jon, this is Robyne Robinson. My next Exhibit show is coming up on the 15th. Now is my busiest time, which is great for you if you have the time to stop and observe. If you do have the time and you can get this message before 11 o'clock in the evening, I'm having an Exhibit meeting at my house. Just a bunch of us are going to sit together and have a glass of wine or coffee or something and talk about the show. This is our last meeting before I'm jetting to New York for the weekend. I have a speech to give Friday the 6th at the Marriott in Minnetonka to the Minnesota Student Association. Got a lot of little things I have to do all week in regards to this show, plus I'm working on a series, which is just about done. I wish I'd talked to you today, because I had Lori Barbero and Tina Schlieske out here doing interviews for "The Buzz" and for the series that I'm doing about the Billboard magazine article that's coming out on Minneapolis music by Jon Bream, and I am quoted in it, and I'm searching frantically for a Details magazine article on the hottest places to go out in the Twin Cities scene that I'm quoted in as well. I'm just dog tired, dude, and going crazy. I'm also working on my Web site tonight, late.
This is the story of the 9 o'clock news anchor on the fourth-rated TV station in the 15th largest media market in the country. Don't worry. It's better than that sounds.
Because she's black in a white-bread town. Because she's hip--or at least a hipster. Because she's smart--and, yes, pretty--and every night she steps out from behind her desk and gives you images you've never seen on TV news: the Asian-American DJ who spins records while wearing a bondage mask. The noise band that bangs on sheet metal. The industrial artist who turns unidentifiable found objects into found identity art.
The story is better because she says things like, "I came here in 1990 on a bus after losing my job in Baltimore, and now there's a billboard with my picture on it across from the bus station." It's better because she's talented and righteous and self-righteous and, maybe, good for the universe in a way few TV news people in this town have been.
And it's better because one afternoon, before a speaking engagement at the Downtown Marriott, she says, with face straight as a plumb line: "If I believed all the things people said about me, about Robyne Robinson, the myth would consume me." How many of you have ever worried that the myth might consume you? Thought so.
This is a story of a woman with power, money, and respect. Minnesota has never known a figure like Robyne Robinson. In 1998 she's not only a new kind of talking head, but a new kind of culture industry--her career a shuttle run between the Holidazzle and the hipoisie.
If you're the found-art artist, she's a shot at a big exhibit. If you're the found-art artist's publicist, she's a glimpse at the public life you'll never
have. If your RAV-4 has a "GO APPLE VALLEY EAGLES" sticker on its back bumper, she's the distillation of urban hip. And if you think you're hip and urban, she's the media queen that walks among you but can never, perhaps, be of you.
And if you knock on the door of her spacious townhouse behind the Walker Art Center on a cold autumn evening after trip-hoppers Brother Sun Sister Moon have just played a hugely successful show that she helped publicize, she'll answer in a black suit and black cropped top--she's tall, maybe 5'11", and casually composed--and she'll offer you a glass of wine, and introduce you to every coolster in town.
Look! At the arcane playing-card-size pictures of Jesus she has sitting on the mantel. The rosaries dangling from the CD shelves and end tables. "I think the iconography of Catholicism is very beautiful," she says. Hmmm, interesting. Hmmm, quirky. Hmmm, ironic. But not quite as interesting as her collection of 70-year-old Victrola phonographs, one an Edison original from 1911, with cartridges that look like ink wells, another with a megaphone amplifier that looks like a Venus flytrap.
If you ask, she'll crank one up, and it will be so loud as to nearly send her Siamese cat Oscar (as in jazz pianist Oscar Peterson) out the window. "Oscar, you stink, cat," Robinson remonstrates, then, spraying air freshener from a silver bottle to cover up the smell of her baby's offerings. She does it nonchalantly, because she does everything nonchalantly.
When she oversaw the hanging of paintings for the art show she recently curated through her arts-support organization, Exhibit, she did it nonchalantly. And when she bought a $900 digital camera to shoot the show, she did that nonchalantly, too. Okay, she got a tad flustered when the salesperson couldn't find the right model, but never testy. Always generous, polite, and smooth.
Smooth in dealing with other drivers. ("What's this brother want? Okay, bro', you can go.") Smooth when one of her shoes gets caught in the sidewalk and she very nearly almost half stumbles. Smooth when she's walking into the Metropolitan Learning Alliance, an alternative school for struggling high-schoolers in the bowels of the Mall of America, in order to meet The Kids. The Kids, who see more of themselves in this 37-year-old child of divorced parents who listens to Lauryn Hill and says "dude" with street inflection than they do in Diana Pierce.
Today's speaking engagement should be the usual hit-and-run. Coat comes off. On-screen persona gets demystified. Hands get shaken. And you're back in your shiny silver Benz before the seat goes cold. But that's not Robyne Robinson's agenda. Sitting in a plastic chair with the kind of pert posture that suggests crisp diction and pearly whites, she waits--only a bit nonchalantly now--as a busload's worth of the dwindling hopes and overactive imaginations that public education has never known what to do with spreads out around the classroom. Three feet to her left is a dry-erase board with the phrase "Catch 22" written on it in green marker. Directly in front of her is Kenny Johnson--a jostling, out-of-turn-talking, hormonal time bomb.
"I'm with you, Robyne," he says, almost yanking her up for a hug she doesn't flinch from one bit.
"OK," she responds, laughing. "But you gotta work." And so she works him. For the next hour, Robyne Robinson will make these 17-and 18-year-olds think.
First question comes from a girl in front: What is your racial background?
A: "I am African-American. Black people come in every color of the rainbow. We are the ultimate melting pot. This is my badge, and I wear it with pride."
Next question from a slouching white kid in the back: How do you feel about the way black people are portrayed in the media?
A: "TV news gives you a steady diet of 'be afraid of the person next to you,' when it should be creating a bond. We'll do stories on crime and pull out stock footage of two brothers on their knees in front of a squad car, and when people see that, they think: 'Crime equals black. Crime equals male. Crime equals young.'"
So what can you do about that? we all wonder as she pauses.
"It's hard for me to fight that fight," Robyne Robinson says, "and there's only one of me there to do it."
Hard to imagine Diana Pierce saying that.
Then try to imagine this. The home of Warith Dean Muhammad (son of the late Elijah Muhammad) on the corner of 38th and Woodlawn on the South Side of Chicago, which is no more a home than the Taj Mahal is a truck stop in Tampa. It's a palace.
Cream-colored marble walls and a clear glass dome on top and a courtyard in the center. It's 1975, and Robyne is sitting in the basement with her cousin Layla watching the Thrilla in Manila on closed-circuit TV. Near her on a couch, Khalilah Ali sits in quiet shock as her husband Muhammad gorgeously, spectacularly discombobulates Joe Frazier on the screen across the room. The 15-year-old Robyne is mesmerized, not with the cross between James Brown and Alkibiades halfway across the world, but with his wife 5 feet away. Her presence. Her stature. Like everyone else in the house, she's beautiful, unapproachable, larger than life.
Robyne's uncles by marriage, Warith Dean and Herbert Muhammad, are so enraptured by the fight they hardly notice when Khalilah rises and walks out of the room. But Robyne follows her upstairs, and there the girl sees her Aunt Shirley (Warith Dean's wife) and Khalilah, who is crying.
"He can't win," the queen to the King of the World is saying. "He can't win. If he wins, he'll think he's God." This is astonishing. This is the kind of thing Robyne is not supposed to see. But she can't turn away.
Life at Layla's has never been boring. There's the Fruit of Islam security detail who frisk Robinson at the door. The waterfall in the middle of the house. All very weird, very cool. But this goddess in tears? This is harder to get one's 15-year-old head around.
There will be a moment when Robyne Robinson will look back and her visits to the Nation of Islam's National Compound ("The Big House," they called it) will make sense. A time when the dinners with Louis Farrakhan and the influence of the giants will be an ingrained part of her person. But as Khalilah Ali starts to break down, that moment has not yet arrived.
Tonight will be just another story to bring back to Mom. Mom, I was at the Big House and saw a lion...Mom, Layla asked her dad for the coolest birthday gift in the world. So her dad's gonna get Kool & the Gang to play at her party. Isn't that bad!"
Robyne, mom will respond. What time is it?
"It's, I dunno, 7:30."
Is your English homework done?
And why not?
"Do you understand me?
Yeah, I'll have it by 8:30. Yeah, I'll be home before midnight. Yeah, I'll study harder. Yeah. Yeah. A thousand times Yeah. Yeah to the inner-city summer camp her mother found to serve as a foil to the Morgan Park Academy, a military school where her daughter would be one of the first African Americans to be chosen for homecoming royalty. Yeah to the dates with the most eligible black bachelors in Chicago.
Until Yeah becomes a resounding Yes, as when Winnie Theodore the assistant principal of Morgan Park stops Robyne and her sister Angela in the hall and asks: Do you Robinson girls think you're gonna run this place? "Yes. Of course we are." And when Robyne gets home and repeats the exchange, Mom looks down coolly at her daughter. "That's the right answer."
Barbara Robinson was worried when her daughter decided to pursue broadcast journalism; 20 years ago it was not an "open profession." But she was there in her daughter's mind when Robyne Robinson became separated from her cameraman at a Klan rally. When she was stuck in South Bend covering southeast Michigan during the auto industry exodus of the '80s. When staff cutbacks left her out of a job in Baltimore (her last stop before coming here) in 1990.
And her father? "Robyne, what do Robinsons do?" Mr. Robinson would ask after his day's duties as principal at McCosh Elementary.
"Robinsons neh g'up," the brace-faced 13-year-old mumbles back.
What do Robinsons do?
"They nevegivup."
Robyne, what do Robinsons do?
"Robinsons never give up."
Now, if the square root of 128 is...
Ronald Robinson, who would one day become Chicago City Hall's first black Seargent-at-Arms, and Barbara, a second-grade teacher, split up when Robyne was 9. But Dad ate dinner at the house every night and took part in every decision until the girls were working in the world and old enough to make their own way. Calling on their father to liberate them from mom's home rule would have been a waste of energy.
We might assume that all our bringers of nightly news grew up under firm hands--the profession calls for a certain impulse toward ingratiation--but the people who think they see something different in Robyne Robinson are right. It's safe to bet that the young Don Shelby never had his house spied on by Nation of Islam guards as the Robinsons did each time Shirley escaped the Big House to have a smoke with her sister Barbara. Paul Magers's mom didn't put her son on the coffee table, slap on a Motown record, and say, "OK, do the Pony." And it's unlikely Colleen Needles has every word of the "I Have a Dream" speech committed to memory.
Robyne does. Barbara Robinson made sure of it. Just as she told those Nation soldiers to get off her porch. Just as she used to say, "I heard that click, I know you're tapping this phone, are you enjoying this conversation?" whenever she figured one of J. Edgar Hoover's jackals was listening in on her dinner plans--as they did, according to Robyne, for a short time in the 1970s.
Every Sunday morning Dr. King's words would fill the Robinson apartment, and they'd echo in Robyne's and Angela's heads as they piled into mom's Renault for their weekly trips to the projects. Barbara would take the kids there to sit. To watch people with dead eyes walk out of buildings with blown-out windows. To make the girls understand. They weren't just among the very few black students at Morgan Park. They weren't just the best tennis players, and the most dedicated cheerleaders, and the most voracious readers.
I want you to know why you're here, she would say. You're here so that you don't forget that your father and I worked hard to make a better life for you, and that you are not better than anyone here. You're just lucky. Robyne, don't fidget. So what goes through Robyne Robinson's head when she speaks at a high school, and some snot-nosed cultural-revolutionary-in-training demands: "How can you work in an industry that exploits the poor and minorities?" How can she respond when a white male lawyer approaches her after a speaking engagement, places an arm on her shoulder, and says, "Robyne, you are us."
How can I be them? she asks herself as the Benz blazes down 494 from Eden Prairie to Paisley Park. How do I stay true, how do I keep it real, when real and true are as conditional and as mutable as a Minnesota spring? Does that little punk from Jefferson High School understand the difference between Robinson and her peers--that, as she puts it, "Pat [Miles] will never be pulled over with her boyfriend for driving 40 and have a really awkward moment with a cop"?
Does it bother her to be the squarest hipster in town? The hippest square?
Is she scared by the story of the 60-year-old guy in Chanhassen who repeatedly told his family he was dating Robyne Robinson...that he was going to marry Robyne Robinson...that they should stop laughing, because they would soon see? Does she want to know that somewhere in Uptown there's a guy who has been telling friends that his most urgent fantasy is to sit across the table at Saji-Ya and watch her eat sushi? Not sleep with her. Not date her. Just Robyne and a plate of sushi and a lifetime's worth of memories.
At 1:30 p.m. on December 1, Robyne Robinson drives to Uptown, drops off her boyfriend John Murdoch (who is Prince's keyboard technician), stops by Tobacco Shop on Hennepin, buys a cute little pack of Nat Sherman cigarettes, and zips westward to Eden Prairie. Half an hour later, she's standing in a newsroom that pulses with the white-hot intensity of a General Motors management seminar. This is ground zero: where today's information becomes tonight's infotainment becomes tomorrow's amnesia. Sleeves are being rolled up, news wires are click-clacking. Or not.
Today is December 1, 1998: The Warmest December 1 in Minnesota History. The station's staff of reporters, editors, cameramen, directors, content compressors, and freelance semioticians crowds around the anchor's desk.
"Is this the day?" someone asks. "It might keep getting warmer?"
"The weather service says this day may be the peak," responds a colleague.
"I think we open with warm-weather news," says Alan Beck, the station's assistant news director. "Birds, bulbs, today is the first day of the snowmobile season and no one can snowmobile."
"And the squirrels," interrupts a reporter. "The Highway Patrol is reporting record numbers of dead squirrels, squirrels in people's garbage cans."
"Yeah," Robyne begins to offer. "I heard--"
"That's a great story!" chirps a woman in a yellow sweater before Robinson can finish her thought. "That is such a great story!" There are people who believe that TV news is evil. That its dim creators are yoked by advertisers who demand that all news stories--be it genocide in Rwanda or the arrival of panda cubs at the Minnesota Zoo--sound as blithe as the interview segment of the Miss America pageant. But the truth is even spookier. The truth is that zoos, squirrels, warm weather, and snowmobiles--"whether or not it's a good idea to put up your Christmas lights"--are what matters.
These are the stories that affect our lives. As one member of the crack news team blurts out at one point: "I want to know what to do with my lilacs!" The discussion that follows on how to cover World AIDS Day is hardly as passionate.
At this point you may want to stop for one second to look at Robyne Robinson. Yes, she's nonchalant. She's there, and yet she's also floating somehow. As she stands at the periphery of the squirrel exchange, she seems apart from it--like she's of a different ilk from the Oxford shirts and creased skirts she works among. Have you ever had one of those dreams where you're in color, but everybody else is in black and white? It's like that. It isn't a beauty thing, or a black thing. It's an I may or may not be here in two years thing.
So when "Buzz" producer Pat Lund observes, "Robyne brings something different to the station," she isn't alluding to stunts like the time Robinson and some female co-workers went around the office placing THIS PROMOTES VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN stickers on anything they felt deserved one.
"We have different lifestyles," says Lund. "I'm a mother of two, she goes to the clubs." Ah yes, The Clubs. They are alluring and mystical places, these clubs.
Robinson is very good at what she does, and she'd like to be doing it in a larger market (or so she says, with the diplomatic caveat that she "still has a lot to learn here.") Her on-air realness--smart ad-libs, the femme-cum-feminist charisma--has been widely acclaimed. "She understands what she's reading," writes columnist Doug Grow of the Star Tribune.
Away from the mic, Robinson tries to find time to respond to every voice mail she gets (one recent day that number was 60), take notes on every CD she receives in the mail, and--until recently--pen a monthly column for the Minnesota Women's Press. She's similarly engaged in local civic life. "Downtown is a police state," she says. "As an African American, I don't feel safe walking alone down there."
I AM NOT A SHOPLIFTER, reads the sticker on the wall of Robyne Robinson's cozy KMSP cubicle. Next to it is a cutout of a work by influential black artist Jacob Lawrence, whom she interviewed in 1994 for a piece that was ultimately rejected by Vibe ("Who's he," they told Robinson). To the left of that is a photo of a Michigan man who locked his three children in an abandoned bus in the dead of winter. Robinson's story on him for a tiny South Bend, Ind., station was picked up by CNN. Soon, Robinson was picked up by an ABC affiliate in Norfolk, and then another in Dallas, where she won her first award, a Texas Broadcasting Association distinction for her news-talk show, Weekend.
The list of awards has grown ever since: An Emmy for her recently canceled interview show Talk with Robyne. "Best Female Anchor" (Minnesota Women's Press and Mpls. St. Paul). The 1996 "Broadcaster of the Year" (Minnesota Broadcasters Association). Minneapolis NAACP Television Industry Award in 1996 for "outstanding contributions to broadcasting." Hubert H. Humphrey Public Policy Fellowship in 1998 from the University of Minnesota; a Minnesota Music Award in 1998, for "Best Local Music Program"; Minneapolis Community and Technical College 1998 "Humanitarian of the Year"; 1998 "Best Celebrity, Skyway News. Robyne Robinson, it can be presumed, is comfortable with the format of the acceptance speech.
That is to say: She's used to the praise. The young Robyne Robinson was a clinically precocious, Salinger- and Siddhartha-reading girl who split her time between decrying social injustice at the dinner table and joining every club she could find in the yearbook. At 16 she saw Carole Simpson anchoring the national ABC weekend news. "She was so poised and well-spoken," Robinson remembers. "And she knew a little about everything. Here was a black woman that wasn't shaking her ass, or singing." At 17 she worked at the famous black paper the Chicago Defender. (At 18, Robinson developed lupus, a chronic immunological disease that remains with her in adulthood.)
Robinson was accepted at Dartmouth, where she hoped to study art, but financial considerations kept her close to home. "My parents couldn't weather the idea of spending an exorbitant amount of money. I was in tears. My father sat me down and said, 'Here is the reality of it. If you go, you must have a job, and you can come home once a year.' That was just not acceptable to me at that time. My sister was going to Northern Illinois on a scholarship at the same time. They couldn't afford to have two girls in college and let one make all these sacrifices and get scholarships and pay through the nose for the other one."
She went to Marquette, the Jesuit university in Milwaukee. But the journalism program there lacked hands-on course work, and after a year a frustrated, homesick Robinson transferred to the smaller Loyola University in Chicago. There she divided her time between course work and interning at NBC's Chicago bureau.
"The only reason I went to college was because I wanted to be a journalist," she remembers. "That was my attitude. Being in that newsroom fascinated me. The energy, the characters, stories: It was all at a heightened level of energy that I found infectious. It was exciting to see how the pitch built from midday to evening and then calmed down again.
"I was incredibly eager. I'd be in their face, going, 'Hi, I'm going to be a reporter,' and it was kind of like, 'Yeah yeah, OK, sure.' But they saw that I was doggedly determined, and after a while they started helping me. They saw I was passionate about it. I'd talk to reporters and they'd help me with my script-writing and give me techniques for how to carry myself on the air. Photographers would let me come out on shoots with them, and at the end, they'd start calling me at my desk and say, 'Listen, we're going to be on the Wacker bridge about 3:00. We're only staying 15 minutes, and if you don't show up, we're leaving.'
"I'd get out there in my little suit that I would bring to work so I would be ready in case they had some time to shoot a stand-up for me, and I'd go and do my little stand-up, and then I'd try to get editing time. And they never had time. And I said, 'Listen, if I go and get dinner for you, will you edit this thing for me?' I'd come and bring them a bottle of wine, a bottle of champagne as a way to say thank you."
One of her mentors was Roger Brown, an African-American producer at NBC's Chicago affiliate, WQAM, which was right down the hall from the national bureau's offices. "I could tell she knew what she wanted from the day I met her," Brown recalls. "Some kids will come in here looking like they just got out of English class, but she dressed in a way that was acceptable in an office environment." Brown took Robinson under his wing. He helped her write scripts, facilitated the recording of her first demos, and generally encouraged her.
"I came into the business in 1970 and there was nobody there to take my hand and it made it very difficult for me," he says. "So I kind of vowed that if I ever had a chance to help somebody out, I should be more than happy to. And I think she could relate on a number of levels because of the experience of being black."
A job in NBC's financial department soon led to a gig in South Bend, Ind., covering economically depressed southeastern Michigan, which led to Norfolk, covering military affairs, and later Dallas, where she covered City Hall. In 1990 she was working for a station in Baltimore when it went bankrupt, prompting Robinson to take a gig as a weekend reporter at KMSP. In 1992 she started anchoring, and in 1994 she was asked to be the station's full-time entertainment reporter.
"When I first was asked to do 'The Buzz,' I fought it," she says. "'I have an extensive résumé, I'm not gonna do this fluff reporting.' And they said, 'It won't be. Do it well, and no one will think it's fluff.' So I saw it as a chance to get out from behind the anchor desk and do the best work I could do."
"I can't be pretentious about it," Robinson says later. "I'm not Ted Koppel. This is the local news. But it's an important job."
Initially, the segment was underfunded and difficult to manage, and Robinson often had to fill it without the assistance of camera crews. "I'd call record labels, get publicity stills, and use old interview footage," she says. "I was very resourceful." Soon, "The Buzz" began to gain, well, a buzz, and the Cities' top-secret alternative culture that she'd been assigned to cover began to warm to her presence.
"I think that when she first started coming around, I saw things she would do to fit that made me very aware that she wanted to be perceived as cooler than her media role," remembers Rachel Joyce, a Walker Art Center independent publicist and scenester-at-large.
"I think the general consensus was 'Why is she here?' When I started working with Brother Sun Sister Moon and I sent out promo tapes, she called me back and she started hanging out at the Hakatak studios where they recorded. I like to hang out in studios, to feel what's been done there and what could be done. She's very into that as well, and we bonded over that." Today, that initiation period when Robinson pledged the club scene is only a memory.
In fact, maybe it never happened. Just check out Robinson's Star Tribune profile, from March 26 of this year. "When she hits the clubs after work," entertainment writer Neal Justin enthuses, "she hugs and kisses her way from one to the next as if she's auditioning for homecoming queen."
But, in truth, she doesn't need to be auditioning; she's already on the stage wearing the tiara. Since 1996 "The Buzz" and Robinson have given Channel 9 its best ratings ever. Station manager Stu Schwartz credits his "great team" (Robinson and co-anchor Jeff Passolt) with a 20 percent increase in the station's overall Nielsen ratings share, including a 28 percent increase with viewers 18-49; the station beats out one of the three network affiliates one out of every eight to 10 nights. And so what began as an entr'acte has turned into the main attraction.
In the spring of 1997, Cigar magazine put Robyne Robinson on its cover with the headline "TV's Urban Girl." But then "urban" is probably a slippery concept to grasp for the humidor crowd. Look at the national hip-hop magazine Blaze instead, which named her Minneapolis's "Ghetto Superstar," asking, "How many other local news anchors show up at local hip-hop shows and remember the MCs' names?"
The most interesting coverage on Robinson, though, might have come in Mpls. St.Paul. The magazine named her "Best Female Anchor" in its October "TV News" issue, noting that, "she gives you the feeling she thinks for herself." In the issue's blurb-length profiles of TV talking heads, readers learned that Robinson's 9 p.m. co-anchor Jeff Passolt recently "quit his late-night hockey league because he was getting home too late," and that WCCO's Amelia Santaniello "loves disco." On the matter of Robinson, readers were informed, "She has been told, 'You're a tool of the white man, you're a sellout,' from kids on the street."
This She's Black/She's Young/She's Hip/She Thinks/She's Ours treatment speaks to a media trend among TV stations--especially third- and fourth-rated stations--nationwide. When KMSP decided to change its focus from Rod "My Life Is a Crusade Against Fun" Grams to Robyne "I'll See You at Paisley Park" Robinson, it was like passing a torch from Colonel Klink to Erykah Badu.
"Channel 9 used to be atrocious, and I'm not ashamed to say it," Robinson says. "Watching it was like waiting for an air bubble to rise to your heart and kill you, because that's how slow it was. It was plodding and it catered to a very mature audience. And one day we decided we were going to get in the game. We were going to be competitors, and that meant sacrificing a large part of that mature audience.
"A lot of stations were trying different things. There was more balls-out live-all-the-time-from-wherever type stuff. We took a lot...from those stations. Not the salacious part, but the fact that they were in your face, moving fast, constant graphics, constant change. We knew we had to appeal to a faster-moving target audience. So we went with those ideas.
"It was more natural for me to focus on things geared toward a younger, hipper audience. That was the mantra for three years: younger, hipper audience, younger, hipper audience, younger, hipper audience. And...that's what I had to do."
By 1996, local hipsters could turn on the TV and see Robyne Robinson begin a story with the phrase, "If you remember your rock history, Brian Eno left Roxy Music to start a solo career..." Hard to imagine Ted Koppel doing that.
"A lot of the newer, smaller networks smell an opportunity to break into the business," says Paul Klite, director of Rocky Mountain Media Watch, a Denver-based think tank. "Television is struggling to attract younger viewers with disposable income. Screenwriters over 35 can't get jobs. We have a youth fascination, and obviously TV news does not look like 'America.'"
Stations around the country have inaugurated arts-and-entertainment segments called "The Buzz," says Klite, while adding that he knows of none that, like Robinson's, cover local events. So, too, Klite describes myriad other "alternative" formats: news of the weird, gossip reportage--anything cooler than squirrels and less real than global warming.
So if this nouveau news is getting increasingly hot, why haven't any of the local network affiliates tried to snatch Robinson up? "Our identities are just different," says Channel 5 news director Scott Libin. "We're not as into 'The Buzz' as our friends at Channel 9. Our audience tells us with consistency that it wants solid hard news coverage and breaking news."
That Robinson does hard news, too, and has for most of her career, seemingly hasn't made an impression.
And maybe what Robyne Robinson is ultimately best at is being Robyne Robinson. That is, being possibly the most visible black woman in Minnesota--and perhaps, for this reason, also that chick from TV your former girlfriend's ex-roommate, incredibly, swears she saw, like, totally high as shit at a party last weekend. As well as the star who's afraid the myth will consume her.
It's probably worth saying here that the myth of Robyne Robinson is in some ways more real than The Real Robyne Robinson, who is sort of unknowable--and not just in that way we're all unknowable, like deep down inside. Robyne Robinson becomes less poised and more amicable and endearingly geeky as an interview wanders away from her character to the things she loves--the Lauryn Hill record, her days interning at NBC, her mother. And none of a half-dozen Friends of Robyne seems either willing--or able--to decode The Real Robyne Robinson, either.
"It's all about keepin' real and what that real is to you," says F.O.R. Rachel Joyce. "It's stressful for her to be true to herself and make everyone happy at the same time. She's so different from other people in her field--the way she lives, who she hangs out with. And she's very aware of this."
It's an awareness of this role that's at the root of Robinson's worries about, as she puts it, "being perceived as a fake," about "being a stereotype for hip," about "being taken seriously." Because her celebrity is rooted in the illusion of authenticity, of being a human being in a plastic medium, of giving Us an image of Us. Because she nevertheless believes she can form bridges among the people who glare at her between 9:00 and 9:30 p.m. five nights a week. Because she desperately wants to be both a persona and a person--and it's hard to have it both ways.
"I represent everybody," she tells me one afternoon. And that is a great responsibility.
Robyne Robinson picks up her fork, stabs a piece of sausage, rubs it in some syrup, and passes it through the most desired pair of lips in local TV news. It's a Sunday morning in late October, and we're having breakfast at the Bryant-Lake Bowl, talking about her Talk with Robyne chat with the Artist last year.
"We were ready to start the interview," she recalls, "and when I asked the first question, he propped up and said, 'Wait. Why are you using that voice?' And I said, 'This is the voice I use on TV. You have a stage persona--when the camera switches on, this is the voice I use.' 'You scared me,' he said."
Five minutes, three sips of tea, and one-and-a-half theories on the dissolution of the New Power Generation later, our check comes (we split it); and two hours later Robyne Robinson is at the Minneapolis airport picking up the boyfriend, John, who has been on tour with Prince. Then she's at the pARTs gallery checking out the exhibit...then at a friend's to pick up a CD...then the Jaycees club...the International Conference on the Status of Women...the Yalta summit...now she's arguing uncertainty with Heisenberg...sitting in with Oscar Peterson on sax...walking all over George Foreman...God, it's beautiful! Look, now she's a bird...wait, now she's a plane...wait!...in the sky! She's Underdog!
Back on earth it's 11 o'clock at night, and she's out for a night of independent research into the practice of hedonism in the Upper Midwest. The shiny silver Benz is sitting outside the Cabooze, or the Front, or some place with big speakers and big men at the door. And the big men nod her in--she's Robyne Robinson, after all--and inside she watches who-knows-which nth-rate bar band recreating some half-remembered "funky" moment from Prince's descent into Artistry.
And, as Robyne has said before, "you can't fake the funk."
She pushes her way through the bustle of bodies--nonchalantly--and meets the half-glances of recognition: Aren't you...? their eyes say, and Robyne's eyes say: Yes. But then there are the chuckleheads, like the man in the leather jacket back at the Bryant-Lake Bowl.
"Hey...aren't you Angela Astore?" he said, referring to KSTP's perky blond anchor from a few years back. What's funny about that joke? Robinson asks herself. Is that funny at all?
Robyne Robinson just smiles now, thinking about it, because she's nice like that. And she turns to her man. He nods. Five minutes later and the Benz goes vroom, and in 20 minutes she's standing in the upstairs hallway of her spacious townhouse, smelling the smoke in her hair, thinking about all the phone calls she still hasn't returned tonight, listening to the ringing in her ears, wondering: Why Angela Astore? Why not Jane Pauley, or Connie Chung, or, while we're at it, why not Khalilah Ali? Why not Khalilah Ali? And she laughs out loud and turns to catch herself smiling in the hallway mirror.
Can you tell me what she sees?
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Putting together ideas for next seasons t-shirts. I have a couple of solid ideas I'll be running with but looking for some feedback on this one. You can see the attachment for different tee's and color schemes. The concept is dual meaning, "Spirit" meaning figuratively(way of life - the soul of the mountain people) and literal(booze);0) Thanks!
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MTI Journey
Retailers' Descriptions
Here's what other sites are saying:
The Journey by MTI is a real lightweight. No, really. It weighs less than a pound. Totally open sides and soft shoulder straps with reflective tape make the Journey a cool choice for hot days and hot bodies. But don't be fooled that this is just some dumb entry level jacket. 3D contoured front foam panels provide outstanding fit: surprisingly sophisticated for a lightweight. Perfect for SUP, sailing, and quiet water canoeing and kayaking.
- CampSaver.com
The all-purpose MTI Journey PFD provides reliable comfort for canoeing, kayaking, rafting and other recreational watersports.
CLOSEOUTS . An incredibly lightweight design with soft, low-profile shoulder straps, the MTI Adventurewear Journey PFD life jacket is perfect for hot days on the water. Available Colors: OLIVE OIL/BLUE. Sizes: L/XL, 2XL/3XL.
- Sierra Trading Post
MTI Journey PFD - New USCG approved Type III designed to enhance the experience of the recreational paddler. Outstanding comfort through complex contoured shaped foam panels. Simple shoulder straps highlighted with reflective trim are slim, comfortable and well designed. Perfect for both paddling or sailing. Open sides provide freedom of movement and cool venting. Front zip and belted waist with clip closure complete this straight forward yet immensely comfortable PFD. Non PVC Eco-Foam. The sensible choice for first time buyers. USCG: Type III. Buoyancy: 15 lbs. 5 oz. Colors: Blue, Mango. Sizes: S/M (30-40), L/XL (40-50), XXL. XXXL (46-56).
- Massey's Outfitters
MTI Journey
previously retailed for:
$18.00 - $48.95
$18.00 - $48.95
The MTI Journey is not available from the stores we monitor. It was last seen March 24, 2016 at CampSaver.com.
If you're looking for a new life jacket/pfd, check out the best reviewed current models.


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2 reasons off the top of my head: weight in armament. The Dame is caryinng more guns than the charlie may weigh!!!! lol (sarcastic) The overall weight of Dame should hinder it to being slower than charlie. plus... the mass part of your equation doesn't work out. First, the Dame would have a much deeper draft than the Charlie, but this cannot be represented because the floor or table is the waterline. this draft would slow it down considerably.
I think unfortunately an equation that uses mass or size of hull to calculate speed for lego ships can never be quite accurate. Though I am glad you tried, maybe i am wrong... but can you post some of the sizes and speeds of the real ships that you used so we can see?
phred, on Apr 26 2007, 10:52 PM, said:
Instead of using a linear formula I'm using an inverse tangent function where a ship has to be very very efficiently built to have a top speed of 20 knots or more.
Here's the formula:
atan is the inverse tangent in radians (atan is what needs to be typed to work in Excel).
L is the length of the ship in length (not including the bowsprit).
B is the beam or width of the lego ship (not including fancy details on the sides).
(doesn't matter what unit is used to measure length and beam, but they must be measured in the same units like studs, cm, in, etc.)
SA is the sail area of the ship in cm squared.
M is the mass of the lego ship in grams.
(any questions pm me or post on here :-) )
Here are the speeds (in knots) of the official released sets done so far:
(if not in bold, then i don't have exact numbers yet)
Row Boat w/ sail: 18.2 knots
Row Boat w/ 2 sails: 20.2 knots
Imper. Trad. Cutter: 14.9 knots
Emporer's Ship: 6.5 knots
Crossbone Clipper: 6.5 knots
Imperial Flagship: 16.2 knots
Armada Flagship: 11.5 knots
Carribean Clipper: 11.1 knots
Viking Long Boat: 16.6 knots
Black Seas Barracuda: 12.5 knots
Here are the speeds of my MOCs:
Chinese Junk: 14.6 knots
HMS Charlie: 12.6 knots
Xebec: 20.7 knots
Dame du Loupe: 17.0 knots
Will be editing more finalized details later.


text: Should doctors be prescribing cannabinoids? by BMJ talk medicine published on 2014-04-25T14:35:58Z Michael Farrell, professor and director of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, talks to Mabel Chew, The BMJ's practice editor, about prescription of cannabinoids. They discuss the latest evidence on nausea and appetite, when cannabinoids may be effective for chronic pain, and which common problems to watch out for. Read the full article: http://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.g2737 Genre medicine


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So many GREAT books, so little time!
A well written book is like a warm blanket on a cold night or a fine wine that lingers in your memory long afterward. If you are interested in reading (or revisiting) the greatest books of all time, then this book club is for you! We read books widely regarded as the best novels ever written.
The Classic Novels Club will meet in the north metro area, on one Thursday every month from 7:00- 8:30. Meetings will be very casual. All you need to bring is your curiosity and willingness to share your thoughts, ideas and perhaps a favorite paragraph.
Discussions are focused on the book, so please try to read the book prior to attending if possible, but you are welcome to attend either way.
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Hotel Caneva
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Saturday After our flight from split to Rome was delayed over 45 minutes, we had 30 minutes to clear customs, get our bags & get to our train!! Got to customs, the line was huge. Yet another sprint through an airport, to luckily catch our train with 1 minute to spare!! Arrived into Venice, strolled around & found pharmacy to try to fix my …
All work and no play make crazy pizza...?
... again, she sucks just as enthusiastically on the zipper of her coat, so who's to say? After taking a swing at the playground, we decided to go for lunch. Enjoying the sunshine, we decided a pizza at an outdoor restaurant would be ideal for lunch and we could just do sandwiches for dinner, so we chose a place on the waterfront. Knowing these are more expensive, and that Italians charge an extra fee for both ...


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Faculty of Arts
PAS building, room 2401
Dean of Arts Office:
Tel 519 888-4567 x 38246
Arts Undergraduate Office:
Tel 519 888-4567 x 35870
If you would like to arrange a personalized visit to the Faculty of Arts or have questions about our programs, please contact our Arts Recruitment Team using this form. You can also book general campus and residence tours through the University's Visitor's Centre.
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when stinky air comes out of your bum.
when i was at school i let the biggest fart in class.
Patrick Mcmillenによって 2004年11月22日(月)
A loud honking noise emitted from the anus, originating from the colon. It is made of of heaved gases and ass-smell.
Oh golly! That fart you did stained my jacket!
B-Dracによって 2003年08月12日(火)
Something my girlfriend likes to do way too much!
She loves to fart.
Rubber1232によって 2003年08月02日(土)
A small explosion coming from between the inner thighs.
"I do believe I just heard a fart."
JiimJamによって 2008年12月20日(土)
A hissing sound coming from your ass.
I love farting on my mirror.I spread my ass wide open and let go, and then watch the gas marks on the glass. I love it
I love farting on my mirror.I spread my ass wide open and let go, and then watch the gas marks on the glass. I love it
My chair stinks farty. I fart every minute and the stink has gotten into the fabric.
Methaneによって 2004年05月15日(土)
A fart, despite the horrific smell (see doornob), is FUNNY! I don't care what you say, IT IS FUNNY! When god made humans (or what ever higher being you believe in) he could have taken all that gas and passed it through anywhere in the human body and no one would have noticed but he passed it through the hugest flabs of fat in the human body; the ass cheeks and the result is a HALLARIOUS noise and if you don't think that it is funny the you are disrespecting THE LORD! (or Buddha,Sheeva,or Elron Hubbard...actually screw Elron Hubbard.
Farts are fricken funny.
anonymasによって 2008年01月03日(木)
A Cloud of death gas escaping from your ass, sometimes bringing bits of poop or diarrhea with it, resulting in what is called a Hershey Squirt
Shit Man! That fart sounded like it had a little hershey squirt goin on!
Isaac Allenによって 2006年12月16日(土)


text:
Kafka in Loveby Jacqueline Raoul-Duval
View All Available Formats & Editions
Kafka was an attractive, slender, and elegant mansomething of a dandy, who captivated his friends and knew how to charm women. He seemed to have had four important love affairs: Felice, Julie, Milena, and Dora. All of them lived far away, in Berlin or Vienna, and perhaps that's one of the reasons that he loved them: he chose long-distance
Kafka was an attractive, slender, and elegant mansomething of a dandy, who captivated his friends and knew how to charm women. He seemed to have had four important love affairs: Felice, Julie, Milena, and Dora. All of them lived far away, in Berlin or Vienna, and perhaps that's one of the reasons that he loved them: he chose long-distance relationships so he could have the pleasure of writing to them, without the burden of having to live with them. He was engaged to all four women, and four times he avoided marriage. At the end of each love affair, he threw himself into his writing and produced some of his most famous novels: Amerika, The Trial, and The Castle.
In this charming book, author Jacqueline Raoul-Duval follows the paper trail of Kafka's ardor. She uses his voice in her own writing, and a third of the book is pulled from Kafka's journals. It is the perfect introduction to this giant of world literature, and captures his life and romances in a style worthy of his own.
Editorial Reviews
"Kafka in Love will be of interest for any Kafka fan; the book's gorgeousness alone makes it worth having, with the dreamy color combinations and delicious paper texture." —The Coffin Factory
"As a biography, the book follows in chronological order through Kafka's early middle years until his death in 1924 at age 41. It is filled with intimate details of the food he ate, the cafés and theatres he went to, his dreams, his insomnia, his illnesses, and above all, his tortured, guilty obsessions with truth, sex, and writing." —Historical Novel Society
"Raoul-Duval does a fabulous job of separating her voice from Kafka's, but at the same time seamlessly flowing them together. If you enjoy Kafka's work, or just want to read a tragic love story, this is your new book." —The Examiner
"Through Kafka's turbulent personal life, the reader can see the themes of his most enduring works of fiction taking hold in the forefront of his mind; humiliation, fatalism, and trial." —The Daily Beast
"This window into the tortured and torturing Franz Kafka parallels the tragic and absurd characters he so expertly wrote about, and while we have long taken his subjects to be only mildly hidden reflections of self, Kafka in Love reinforces the concept with fantastic results." —Leo Weekly
"Just like Kafka, this book is brilliant, difficult, and alternates between nightmares and unpleasant dreams." —City Book Review
"[Kafka in Love] does a better, more moving job than any...straightforward biographies in showing us the flesh-and-blood Kafka...Raoul-Duval expertly captures this and every other aspect of the writer– the movie buff, the diarist, the fantastic correspondent, the office worker, the dreamer, the oddball– and the perennial victim of boredom...a perfect reminder not only of fiction's power to shape fact but also of Kafka himself in all his...path-breaking genius." —Open Letters Monthly
Product Details
- 9781590515419
- Publisher:
- Other Press, LLC
- Publication date:
- 11/13/2012
- Pages:
- 288
- Sales rank:
- 1,222,651
- Product dimensions:
- 5.66(w) x 8.08(h) x 0.92(d)
Read an Excerpt
Kafka in Love
By Jacqueline Raoul-Duval
Other PressCopyright © 2012 Jacqueline Raoul-Duval
All right reserved.
One day as Franz entered through the gates of the park, he saw a young girl sobbing. He walked up to her. She was one of those little blond flowers with white skin and red cheeks that grow so abundantly in these parts. He asked her:
"Why are you crying?"
"I've lost my doll."
"You haven't lost it," he says.
"Did you find it?"
"No, no, I didn't find it. Your doll went off on a trip."
"How do you know that?"
"She wrote me a letter."
"Show me."
"I left it at home. But if you want, I'll bring it tomorrow, at three o'clock. In front of this bench."
"What's your name?"
"Franz. And yours?"
Once back at his house, he asked himself what his sister Ottla would say to her eldest daughter if the child ever lost her doll, Lolotte, which she kept clutched to her heart even in the soundest sleep.
The following day at the appointed time, Malou and Franz met in front of the bench. He raised his hat in greeting and handed her an envelope, on which he had written her name and stuck a canceled stamp.
Malou shrugged. "I don't know how to read."
He read it for her. The doll ended her letter with the words: "Hugs and kisses, I'll write you every day."
Malou thought for a moment before asking: "Does that mean you'll bring me another letter tomorrow?"
Excerpted from Kafka in Love by Jacqueline Raoul-Duval Copyright © 2012 by Jacqueline Raoul-Duval. Excerpted by permission of Other Press, a division of Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Meet the Author
Jacqueline Raoul-Duval is an editor, translator, and novelist. She is the author of Le Charme discret de l'adultère (The discreet charm of adultery) and Un amour amer (A bitter love).
Willard Wood has translated extensively from the French, including The Last Rendezvous by Anne Plantagenet (Other Press) and the novels of Goncourt Prize–winning author Jean-Christophe Rufin. A recent NEA Fellow in Translation, he lives and works in Norfolk, Connecticut.
Customer Reviews
Average Review:
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This is a moving story, especially since it's true. To see someone struggle so much to find something that some take for granted is heart wrenching. Raoul-Duval does a fabulous job of separating her voice from Kafka's, but at the same time seamlessly flowing them together. If you enjoy Kafka's work, or just want to read a tragic love story, this is your new book.


text:
On a traditional menu, if you mousedown on the menu title, drag down, then release on a menu item, it will trigger that menu item immediately, e.g. in Notepad:
- Left mouse button down on File
- Drag down to New
- Release mouse button
will start a new file without requiring an additional click.
However, when dragging out a Jump List on Windows 7, you must additionally click the desired item to launch it. Is there any way to change this behavior?


text:
This cutout back, easy care crepe top offers feminine flavor with lots of versatility. Pair it with suiting for an altogether elegant ensemble.
- Double V neckline
- Stitching detail on shoulder straps
- Cutout back
- Semi-tapered hem
- Polyester
- Machine wash
- Imported
Shipping and Returns
We ship anywhere in the U.S. and to over 55 international destinations.
Free Standard Shipping on orders $125+ placed online at Express.com for U.S. or Canada.
Simple Returns. Up to 90 days. Get the full details on Returns & Exchanges.


text:
DC digs up lessons in history: The story of one of America's earliest Muslims unfolds
Our take: Thousands of Muslims were brought to America in the 18th century during the slave trade. But historians have little information about them. One of the few for which there is some documentation is Yarrow Mamout. Here's a story about efforts to locate his remains, which were believed to have buried in Washington, D.C.'s historic Georgetown district.
For most Muslims, what happens to the body of a deceased person is not quite as important as what happens to that person's soul. Still, historians of all backgrounds are scrambling to locate the body and belongings of a Muslim buried in Washington, D.C., nearly 200 years ago, for it touches the soul of early American history.
The deceased, Yarrow Mamout, was among tens of thousands — if not millions — of Muslims brought to America during the slave trade, but one of few for which historians have much information.
Historic documents suggest Yarrow may be buried on the property he purchased after gaining his independence in 1797. That land is located in Washington's historic Georgetown neighborhood where homes now sell for several million dollars. Its owner, real estate developer Deyi Awadallah, hopes to build and sell a new residence on the property. He knew nothing of Yarrow when he purchased the land last spring, but he's willing to give archaeologists a chance — a few weeks or months — to investigate before he finalizes his plans.
Copyright 2016, Deseret News Publishing Company


text:
Join GayCities, the fun way to discover the worldSee where your friends and people like you are going and what they say about places and events worldwide.
Ed Lugo Resort
Gay-Friendly Guesthouse
The rooms are very nice, and some feature full kitchens and living rooms, but it's all about the beautiful pool at Ed Lugo Resort. Enjoy the view from your tropical shower. Not a men-only resort, but located in Wilton Manors and very gay-friendly.
Mixed Gay/Straight,
Outdoor Patio,
Wi-Fi Internet,
Bed & Breakfast,
Pet Friendly,
Air Conditioned
Is this your business? CLAIM IT » Report Incorrect Info / Closed » Verified on: Jun 6, 2016
2404 NE 8 Ave (Wilton Drive and NE 8 Ave)
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33305
Wilton Manors
(954) 275-8299
Join GayCities and share your take
Excellent Location; Gorgeous Hotel.Upon my arrival the very friendly owner of this resort, Ed, welcomed me to his hotel with an alcoholic drink of my choice. A genuinely lovely person. My room was very spacious, including a dining area and a kitchen. The bathroom was very modern and I felt at home. The bed was SUPER comfortable and the Christmas decorations outside were fabulous. The beautiful waterfall pool was heated to the perfect temperature and I couldn't help but have several swims a day. It was wonderful! I really enjoyed my stay at this hotel and can't wait until I come back. You know it's a good hotel when you can't wait to come back. :)
jayness loves Ed Lugo Resort
JeffM64 loves Ed Lugo Resort
Jconley001 loves Ed Lugo Resort
Mark and Alan's review.Me and my partner Alan stayed here for three nights at the end of January before going on the Atlantis Caribbean cruise from Port Everglades. We had a great time. All the apartments are different and are very nicely furnished. Fridge, snacks and coffee in your room. Lots of room in the grounds for sunbathing and there is a wonderful pool with a fountain and a hot tub too. The resort is located 5 minutes walk to the shops, bars and restaurants of Wilton Manors. Very nice stay. Thanks Ed. We hope to come to come back.
Mark111 loves Ed Lugo Resort
mikebardet loves Ed Lugo Resort
- more (70)
Island Sands Inn
2409 NE 7th Ave
Inn on the Drive
2405 NE 7 Avenue
Manor Inn
2408 NE 6th Ave
You Love This Place, Now Tell us Why
So you like Ed Lugo Resort? Write a review and tell everyone why.
YOU ARE NO LONGER A FAN OF utpmwgo Resort
You are no longer a fan of Ed Lugo Resort.


text:
Wireless Sensors for Equipment Health and Condition Monitoring in Nuclear Power Plants
Award Information
Small Business Information
Analysis And Measurement Services Corporation
9111 Cross Park Drive, Building A-100, Knoxville, TN, 37923
Principal Investigator:
Hashem Hashemian
(865) 691-1756
(865) 691-1756
Business Contact:
Darrell Mitchell
(865) 691-1756
(865) 691-1756
Research Institution:
AbstractWireless sensors are becoming very popular in industrial processes for process measurement and control, condition monitoring, predictive maintenance, and management of accidents and mishaps. Over the next few years, these wireless sensors are targeted for full implementation in nuclear power plants, for equipment health and condition monitoring applications. However, to date, little work has been done in screening, qualifying, and analyzing the avalanche of data that will come from wireless sensors. This project will develop techniques for cleaning the data of extraneous effects and other anomalies, qualifying the data for such characteristics as Gaussian (normal) distribution, synchronizing the data, analyzing the data in both time and frequency domains, interpreting results, and reporting to the end user. In addition, guidelines will be developed to determine to the optimum location and installation of the wireless sensors, in order to provide the best data for equipment health and condition monitoring. Phase I will involve an experimental effort to employ wireless sensors in an existing laboratory loop. The loop data will be screened, qualified, and analyzed, in order to evaluate the algorithms and software packages and to establish baseline signatures for determining the condition of equipment in the loop. Commercial Applications and other Benefits as described by the awardee: In addition to nuclear power plants, the techniques should be useful to a wide array of industrial plants such as chemical refineries, power plants, manufacturing facilities, as well as the aerospace industry, military, government laboratories, and many other installations, especially those with heavy equipment and large machinery. The result will be more efficient process operation and maintenance, and improved safety of workers and the general public.
* information listed above is at the time of submission.
An Official Website of the United States Government


text:
14 Reviews
These are SO GOOD. I've been craving a good black bean burger for while now and decided to try making my own. They turned out delicious. I added adobo spice mix and a bit of fresh cilantro, then I topped them with ketchup, jack and cheddar cheese, tomato, onion, and sliced avocado on a french hamburger roll and I DIED. These rival my favorite restaurant's black bean burgers. I keep them separated into patties by wax paper in tupperware in the fridge and fry them up when I'm ready to eat. They'll go in the freezer for later once I tire of eating them for every meal!
We loved these black bean burgers! They hold together great, are inexpensive and very yummy! Preparation time made an easy meal for our family.
Used only salsa (no green chili sauce on hand) and made 6 smaller patties. Did take me a bit longer than the estimated 20 minutes to make! Otherwise, a great recipe and will make again. Thanks for sharing.
These were fantastic! I added a bit more cumin after giving it an initial taste, and served them on whole wheat Slimwiches buns with pepper jack cheese as suggested, as well as with lettuce, miracle whip, and banana peppers. Filling and delicious!!
I am in LOVE with this recipe! It is so quick and easy to prepare, and it tastes awesome. I nixed the onion since I don't like onions and added jalapenos to add some more spice. UPDATE: I have been making these without the green chili sauce. I added water, extra salsa, cayenne and jalapeno or serrano peppers. These are pretty spicy, but always hit the spot. I have been cooking an extra one for dinner and packaging it for work. tastes great reheated in the microwave! Thanks again for such a great recipe.
I really liked the spice of these, with the green chili sause, but I would have liked way more beans. When I have black bean burgers, I'd like them to be more like 60/40 rather than 50/50. Maybe next time I'd try two cans of beans. They had good flavor, though.
YUM!! I've been looking for a good Black Bean Burger for a minute, this one is by far the best I have come across. My husband and 2 yr old son absolutely loved them. Very quick and easy, I also love how cheap this meal is to make. Thanks for a great recipe!
This is a new family favorite for us! We eat the patties on whole grain bread with vegan mayonnaise, avocado, salsa, tomatoes, and alfalfa sprouts. Yum!!
Very good! I didn't have the green chili sauce so I just added a little extra salsa. Great flavor, easy and frugal....thank you!
I just realized I posted the wrong review for these the first time! These were good, and very easy to make! Thanks for the recipe!


text:
Sir Alex Ferguson retired this summer having won a total of 38 trophies - from Charity Shields to Champions League - to leave his successor with a tough task to follow.
Many believe it is unrealistic to expect the 50-year-old Scot to be able to maintain his countryman's golden streak at Old Trafford.
But Giggs, who has won 25 major honours and played more than 1,000 matches for club and country, believes there is no reason why anything should change.
"I think it is a challenge and as a player you always want challenges," said the Welshman as he prepares for an unprecedented 24th season at Old Trafford, albeit his first without Ferguson.
"First and foremost, there are great players there and we have just won the league, so everything is in place for it to carry it on."
- Sports & Recreation
- Sir Alex Ferguson


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On Tuesday the 148-guest National Geographic Explorer once again made history when it became the first passenger vessel to call at Harlingen in the Netherlands. A large crowd of onlookers and the mayor, Roel Sluiter, turned out to watch the ship arrive and greet Captain Ben Lyons. He was presented with a port of call placard to commemorate the first visit by an expedition ship in the medieval port. About two-thirds of our guests chose to enter the town by Zodiac and explore its historic canals, while those who stayed aboard were met by a local news crew. See the footage here (the action starts at about 2:00 with the local pilot coming aboard Explorer).
Mysterious "Ocean Quack" Solved
For five decades scientists and submariners have reported odd quacking sounds in the Southern Ocean, nicknaming the phenomenon "the bio-duck." New recordings created by NOAA researchers have attributed the sound to minke whales. The researchers say they'll be able to use this knowledge to help track the migrations of the minkes, of which little is known, though our guests have found them to be curious enough to approach our Zodiacs around the Antarctic Peninsula. See the BBC story on minke vocalizations, and if you'd like to hear them for yourself, join us in Antarctica next season.
What's Odd About This Penguin?
Galápagos penguins are the only penguins found in the tropics, but this one is especially special—our naturalists and guests spotted him at the island of Genovesa in the far north of the Galápagos archipelago—and there aren't supposed to be any penguins here.
The sighting was made by our naturalist Patricio Maldonado, who also snapped the photos, and it was confirmed by the Charles Darwin Foundation.
So why is this significant? Our expedition leader Carlos Romero explains:
"This event is very, very rare. We are talking about an endemic vertebrate that by itself is considered rare in number, latitude, longitude, and distribution. This sighting, the first ever on this island is amazing! In all scientific literature and in books like field guides, the distribution range will have to be corrected once this new sighting is formally published."
Journey of Giants, Exhibit in Mexico City & Miami
The Journey of Giants ("Ruta de Gigantes") is an exhibition that features a series of large format photographs and videos telling the story of whales and their annual migrations from places like Alaska to Baja California, Panama, and more. Initially installed along a busy foot-trafficked avenue in Mexico City, the exhibit was adapted for the halls of the Miami International Airport. For the next six months it will share the story of sustainable whale tourism to travelers passing through Miami Airport's South Terminal. Directed by Alejandro Balaguer (Albatros Media Foundation), the bilingual exhibition is sponsored in part by Lindblad Expeditions. Additional funding comes from Copa Airlines, Fondo Mexicano para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (Mexican Fund for the Conservation of Nature), Ecosolar, and Intinetwork.
Next time you find yourself in the Miami airport bound for – or returning from – a new adventure, we hope you'll discover a bit of inspiration as you transit through the South Terminal. And, if your travels don't take you to Miami, catch a glimpse of the video exhibition.
Great White Shark Feasts on Dead Sperm Whale
Guests aboard the National Geographic Sea Bird sailing in the upper Sea of Cortez had a rare sighting on Wednesday morning. What our naturalists mistook for a distant boat turned out to be the carcass of a medium-sized sperm whale drifting in the current.
Our naturalist Alberto Ferrer explains what they saw next:
"We could see some motion, which was quite confusing, since the leviathan was evidently not alive. Suddenly, a fin broke the surface of the water and the tail of the deceased cetacean shook violently. By now we knew that we were witnessing something that none of us had ever seen before. A great white shark feasted on the sperm whale."
"We realized that this type of sighting is a true expression of a wild place. Sadly, a sperm whale had died, but in a way, nothing dies in nature. The life of this giant of the depths was now giving life to one of the most fascinating creatures in the ocean."
Lemurs Are Amazing
Perhaps Madagascar is already at the top of your travel list. If not, fair warning, it will be after you see this video. Island of Lemurs comes out this month in IMAX. And if you'd like to see them for yourself, join us in Madagascar in 2015.
Welcome Aboard Teachers!
Meet the Grosvenor Teacher Fellows for 2014! From a pool of 1,300, these 25 Fellows were selected to travel in groups of 2 and 3 aboard National Geographic Explorer in Svalbard, Iceland, Greenland, the Canadian High Arctic, the Canadian Maritimes, and Antarctica. Thanks to generous support from Fund for Teachers, Google, and individual donors, we were able to more than double the size of the program from last year. These K-12 educators will enhance their geographic learning through direct, hands-on field experience and bring that knowledge back to their classrooms and communities.
Chasing Ice in Antarctica with James Balog
Explorer James Balog's Antarctic plans began in 2012, after a conversation he had with Sven Lindblad at the premier of his film Chasing Ice:
Sven said, "You know, this is the time when you really ought to get down there with us and use the ship to deploy some cameras and see these landscapes down there." …I'm really, really glad that I finally took him up on this amazing offer because it has been so much fun, a fantastic voyage with some really memorable moments.
James Balog has just returned from his expedition, but while aboard National Geographic Explorer in Antarctica and in the midst of his camera deployments, he made time connect with the CBC for an interview on the changing ice conditions and the project.
Welcome Aboard National Geographic Orion
Under bright blue skies on Friday in Auckland we inaugurated the newest ship in the Lindblad-National Geographic fleet, the National Geographic Orion. Jeremy Lindblad, Captain Mike Taylor, and underwater filmmaking legend Valerie Taylor shared a few words from the bow of the ship, as guests watched with champagne in hand on the quayside. Valerie tossed the champagne bottle, as we all snapped our photos and raised our glasses for a toast to the National Geographic Orion and all who sail on her.
Our inaugural expedition is underway right now. You can see the photos and read the reports online.
Follow Sven Lindblad in Galápagos
Sven Lindblad is in Galápagos right now shooting photos and sharing them on Instagram. Follow along on Instagram, and you can see his shots even if you don't have an Instagram profile.


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The adjusting screw of a water pressure reducing valve appears to be corroded, so can it be replaced?
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