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This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. There's a new generation of boom towns across the American West sparked by the explosive growth of oil and natural gas. When these industries move in, small towns near the fields change almost overnight. Once-sleepy main streets suddenly boast improved schools, libraries and community centers. Quiet rural airports expand to take corporate jets. Restaurants and motels and hardware stores all thrive.
But the infusion of cash doesn't come without complications. Outsiders double or triple the population. Service industries include prostitution and drugs. The air and water can suffer. And then what happens when the wells run dry?
If you've lived in a boom town, we want to hear from you. Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email email@example.com. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. Later in the program, we continue our Oscar docs series. "The Invisible War" focuses on sexual assault in the U.S. military.
But first boom towns. Ann Chambers Noble is a longtime resident of Pinedale, on the edge of the gas fields in Wyoming's Green River Valley. She documented the town's history for a book on Pinedale's centennial and joins us now by phone from Rock Springs. Good to have you with us today.
ANN CHAMBERS NOBLE: Well, thank you very much for having me.
CONAN: And is there one moment for you that captures the rapid change that you saw in Pinedale?
NOBLE: Well, it did seem to happen awfully fast. And it was in about 2000, the year 2000 - our sleepy, quiet, dusty, isolated little cow town was changed really rather rapidly and stayed changed for several years, well over the decade.
CONAN: Well, what happened, for example?
NOBLE: Well, I think before - I'm going to give you a quick geography lesson that our county, for which this gas boom occurred, is Sublette County, and it is almost the size of Connecticut. So we're talking a very big, very isolated mountainous area in western Wyoming. And in this county, just before the boom, there were only about 6,000 people living there, half of them divided between two towns, Big Piney in the South and Pinedale in the North, and the rest of them were like myself and my family, on isolated little cattle ranches.
So when you only have 6,000 people in that kind of space, and when you suddenly double and triple the population, it has a huge impact on absolutely everything: our schools, our medical clinics, our streets, our housing. And it was a very stressful time.
CONAN: You raised four children in Pinedale. Tell us about some of the changes to the school.
NOBLE: Well, they were all girls, and when they were real little, they believed, and they did, live in a very, very safe community, very safe town, and they knew they could walk anywhere at any time, and it was never a problem. But when as a parent all of a sudden your children are about middle school or high school, and there's a tremendous amount of usually men coming to the community from different parts of the country, you're not sure you want your daughters walking all over town at any time.
Well, I also though refer to this time in our history, and it has ended, we - one thing about a boom, there is always a bust, and we're in the bust now, is that I always stole a line from Charles Dickens that it was the best of times and it was the worst of times.
The best of times is referring to the money and the jobs that were available It's nice to live in a community when you can have all the money you want. We have beautiful facilities, beautiful schools. And in the classroom are smartboards, every kid has a computer, our wonderful hot lunches cost us 50 cents, our breakfasts were 25 cents. And we're not on any aid, this is just the school covering everything for us because they have plenty of money. And we were paying our teachers very, very high salaries.
The downside was those teachers were really earning absolutely every extra penny they were earning because the classroom setting was perpetually changing. Every week there were new kids coming in, other kids leaving out. The population was constantly in transition during - for years, all through the 2000s.
And that's hard on us old-timers, that's hard on those new kids, and that's got to be very hard on those teachers.
CONAN: We're talking about boom towns. If you've lived in one, give us a call. Tell us what happened to your town, 800-989-8255. Email us firstname.lastname@example.com. Let's go to Scott, Scott's on the line with us from Fairbanks.
SCOTT: Yeah, hello.
CONAN: Hi.
SCOTT: Yeah, I've been here nine years. You know, I didn't live through the boom of the - building an oil pipeline, but I've sort of seen the aftermath. And, you know, what happens is that all the, you know, salaries are raised to get people to move up here, and then, you know, when the boom ends, you know, people - the state has to figure out how to attract people in the university and the hospitals without the same wage level.
And then the downtowns - the downtown of Fairbanks has really suffered. You know, you have all this infrastructure, a lot of it's vacant or rundown, and you've got to figure out what to do with abandoned buildings, and you're still paying, you know, for services on those things, but the city is left with a big price tag.
And it can hurt, you know, the local government. Even though you enjoyed a big tax base for a while, it can really hurt in the aftermath.
CONAN: I visited Fairbanks just last summer, and you're right, the downtown area, it looks like - a lot of shuttered storefronts.
SCOTT: Yeah, that's exactly right. So there's got to be - you know, the boom is great, but there has to be a lot of planning by the city fathers and mothers to make sure that they put money away and decide what's going to happen after the boom has passed.
CONAN: Well, thanks very much for the call, appreciate it. Ann Chambers Noble, any indication the powers that be in Pinedale have done that kind of planning?
NOBLE: I do have to take hats off to our government leaders, all the way from the mayor to the county commissioners to the governor. Our governor during the boom, Dave Freudenthal, visited all of the communities and really pushed us hard to be pro-active about this boom that was coming, to be proactive rather than reactive.
And hats off to, for instance, our county commissioners that built all these beautiful big structures. At the time they were making the budgets for building these - our buildings, they at the same time put in at least a 30-year maintenance fund for them. So we fortunately, because of the great leadership from the state all the way down to the mayors, we did put in some good safety belts for that.
But our whole state history has been boom and bust. So we've had a little bit of practice at this. Not Pinedale, but at least we tried to learn from our neighboring towns.
CONAN: Our former NPR colleague John McChesney recently stepped down as director of the Rural West Initiative at Stanford's Bill Lane Center for the American West, where he reported and wrote about boom towns. He joins us now from member station KRCB in Rohnert Park, California. John, nice to have you on the program. John, are you there? I guess we're going to try to re-establish contact with John McChesney at KRCB and see if we can get him set up and get him on the program.
Let's see if we get another caller in on the conversation. John's on the line, John with us from Rapid City.
JOHN: Hi, great to be on the program. It's kind of deja vu all over again with the oil boom in Williston. I lived there back in late '70s, early '80s, during the last boom, and I remember there being these large fields that used to hold trailer house complexes now being empty and kids in high school racing up and down the streets; there were no speed limits.
Apartment buildings that were, I mean row after row of apartment buildings that were abandoned and were later bulldozed because of the shoddy construction work. I'm kind of thinking, you know, is all that going to happen again in Williston?
CONAN: Well, have you been out there recently? Is it - is the building quality the same?
JOHN: You know, I was up there just last summer, and I didn't get off to see any of the additional apartment buildings that were built, but the growth was exponential, the traffic was frightening. And it was just - there was, like, shades of deja vu all over again.
CONAN: Well, thanks very much, we'll have to see what happens there in Williston. And Ann Chambers Noble, in Pinedale, part of the package that, along with the boom, came a lot of environmental damage.
NOBLE: Yeah, that was probably the hardest for us locals to accept. There is the immediate doubling of the population that was scary enough to deal with, but you could try to at least handle that. But when it really got scary for many of us is when our air quality became very, very poor. In fact we had ozone levels that matched really the poorest of inner city like Los Angeles. And it was very dangerous.
And we didn't quite know how to handle it. Do you not let your kids go to ski practice because breathing in this air is very bad when we live in these pristine mountains? And that was probably some of the hardest part to deal with.
And then there was also lots of concerns, which we still don't even know the effects yet, of whether all of this quick drilling, massive drilling, what impact it had on our water as well. I mean we're in the headwaters of the Green River. We're in the most pristine environmental part of the world, and yet we were horrendously impacted in the environment because of all this drilling.
CONAN: And that's the controversy over fracking, not just there in and around Pinedale, but of course up in North Dakota as well. I think John McChesney, is on the line with us. John, are you there?
JOHN MCCHESNEY: I hope so.
CONAN: Good to talk to you again. Hi John, how are you doing?
MCCHESNEY: Hi.
CONAN: We've had - as Ann Chambers Noble was saying, this is a long history of boom and bust, not just in Wyoming but throughout the American West, and depending on the industry, well, gold towns turned into ghost towns. And what's different about this round?
MCCHESNEY: Well, let's talk about North Dakota because North Dakota is a little different from what's going on right now in Wyoming. People in North Dakota think this new horizontal drilling and fracking boom up there is going to last 20 or 30 years. You have to re-frack these wells over and over again.
So normally you go through a place, a point where you stick a straw in the ground and suck oil out, and then it goes away, the production goes way down. But up in North Dakota they're expecting this to last for a considerable period of time, 20 to 30 years.
Now, no one really knows whether that's going to happen. If the price of oil drops below 70 or 60 dollars a barrel, the enthusiasm for drilling up there may drop off. But what happens in these situations is there's no forward planning ahead of time.
People in these areas know that drilling's going to happen, and you'll find very few people who are just totally opposed to drilling there. What you do find is: Why can't we plan ahead? Why can't we pace this so that the local governments can adjust themselves to the impact? And that doesn't happen.
Over and over and over again, everything, as Ann said, is overwhelmed. Local governments, what used to be part-time jobs suddenly become, you know, 12-hour-a-day jobs. And there's no pay for that. Schools are overwhelmed not only in terms of the number of students, but the wages that teachers earn are not commensurate with the rents that are in the area.
Schools up in North Dakota are thinking about building their own housing now in order to compete with the housing prices that the oil boom has created. Health care systems are overwhelmed. They're not only overwhelmed by numbers and the horrendous accidents that happen when an 18-wheeler chews up a passenger vehicle, which happens all the time in North Dakota, they're overwhelmed by bad debt.
The folks who move in there don't have permanent addresses, they don't have - they only have cell phones. I talked to...
CONAN: John? We have to take a short break, John. We'll have more with you and with Ann Chambers Noble in just a minute. Stay with us. This is NPR News.
CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News; I'm Neal Conan. This hour we're talking boom towns, oil and gas. These days, they're mostly the result of oil and gas discoveries. It's hardly a new concept, though. The Western gold rush in the mid- to late 1800s produced a number of boom towns like Bodie, California.
That little town in the Sierra Nevadas was formed in 1861 after William S. Bodey discovered gold. Miners didn't find much else until 1875, when a cave-in revealed a rich vein of ore. The rush was on, and Bodie's population swelled with families, miners, entrepreneurs, crooks and prostitutes. Then it was known as the most lawless, wildest and toughest mining camp the far West has ever known.
But two fires wiped out much of the town, and now Bodie is one of America's most famous ghost towns. If you've lived in a boom town, we want to hear from you. Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, firstname.lastname@example.com. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.
John McChesney, who just stepped down as director of the Rural West Initiative; and Ann Chambers Noble, author of "Pinedale, Wyoming: A Centennial History" are our guests.
I wanted to read this email we got from Bob in Seattle: I'm an experienced truck driver. I've heard about the job market in North Dakota for years. I was interested in working there but decided not to. That's the thing for me: What about winters there? What's the working conditions - the working conditions like? It would be one thing if after working there for five years I could retire at age 44, but that's not how it works.
Further, the cost of living is a big issue. A well-paying job working 70 hours a week that also comes with a very high cost of living still makes you poor. Why would I want to be poor? The same things apply to workers that earn less than truck drivers, like those working at McDonald's or cleaning people. What's the quality of life for them?
And John McChesney, you hear about these fabulous job opportunities in places like North Dakota. Is Bob right, or is it less than what it looks like?
MCCHESNEY: Well, I think there are fabulous job opportunities there and especially for truck drivers, but you're going to have to live in rather austere circumstances, probably in a man camp or - you know, which is temporary housing, where you live with a lot of male drivers and male oil workers. And the wages are good, and you can probably put money away.
The roads are terrible. The chances of accidents are very high. The hospitals are overburdened with accidents between 18-wheelers and passenger cars. So there's a - it's a mixed bag, but basically you can make good money there driving.
CONAN: Let's see if we can get another caller in. This is Teresa(ph), Teresa from Beaufort, South Carolina.
TERESA: Yes, hello, thank you. I lived in Pinedale for 17 years. I left it six years specifically because of the boom. It was - it hurt, Tom(ph), it just hurt. The nature - things - the degradation that I saw, there was a 13-to-one ratio of men to women with the man camps that came in. They're not just - they weren't, when I left, temporary structures. They're still up.
There was a huge - we called it big brown cloud that just, as I think was mentioned, the pollution that just never went away. The intrinsic beauty of the place was to me being raped and pillaged. Every day I watched an oil rig, another one, go up in the mesa and the roads and the trucks. And it was endless and ceaseless. It never stopped.
It was all for, I imagine, making money or the good of the country, but I who lived there did not feel that, and I left because it was not the place I knew it to be, and it would never return because once you take nature, once you tear it apart, you just can't get that back. It won't come back. And it saddens me because I really loved being in Wyoming.
And yeah, that's what I have to contribute to that. Thank you.
CONAN: All right, Teresa, thanks very much for the call. And Ann Chambers Noble, there are some of those trailer camps still around Pinedale.
NOBLE: Right. It - we have some big, beautiful, gorgeous structures as a result of the money from the gas fields, no doubt about it. But yes, there's definitely a lot of homes in foreclosures and buildings that are no longer in use. But could I just add a comment: You're talking about those wonderful high-paying jobs that the gas fields did bring to the community, and that is very true.
But that also became a huge burden for people like my husband and I, who have cattle ranches there, because we couldn't begin - we weren't getting any more for our cattle, and we couldn't begin to compete for wages with what the gas fields were paying. So we were very labor-starved. We couldn't begin to compete with the gas companies when it came to getting parts for our tractors, or if our trucks broke down, we couldn't afford - now the mechanic that used to be $50 an hour was now $200 an hour, and he was plenty busy with work out in the gas fields.
So that - those increased wages may have been great for those temporary workers, but for the local businesses, it was a huge burden, and it's one we still have not recovered from.
MCCHESNEY: And that, Neal, is true in spades up in North Dakota. The schools, the hospitals and the police and ancillary service workers cannot compete in the wage market created by an oil field. So teachers are being recruited in there and being housed - the last time I was up there, there was discussion of the schools buying housing for their teachers so that they could actually live there.
Police come in there, they've been recruited from academies across the country, they get there, and they discover they can make a lot more in the oil field than they can driving in a cruiser, and they leave. And in the hospitals, the support workers who, you know, do all the scut work in a hospital, the hospitals can't compete. It's a really difficult situation in terms of wages.
CONAN: Leanne(ph) is on the line with us from San Antonio.
LEANNE: Hi Neal, thank you for this program. Yeah, I live down in a tiny town called Falls City, right in the middle of the Eagle Ford Shale. And everything you all are saying, it's true. It's what we're living right now. And what's so frustrating to me is I say this and hear what's happening in the rest of the country, and I see it happening, but it's like the first time anyone's heard about it.
When you complain to the railroad commission about the environmental concerns, the traffic, the rent, all these costs to our little community, it's like it's the first time it's happened. And I don't understand. Why isn't there some sort of support? Where's the research, the evidence that we should use to say this has happened somewhere else? We know the chemicals are bad for our water supply, we know there's going to be air pollution.
We need help to fight. But it seemed like whatever happened in Pennsylvania doesn't apply to Texas. I just don't understand.
CONAN: And she's talking about the - some of the problems there have been with fracking in Pennsylvania and that of course it's going on in Texas, as well as in Wyoming and North Dakota and other places. John McChesney, talk about big field in California, as well, in Mendocino.
JOHN MCCHESNEY: I'm sorry, Neal, I'm having a little difficulty hearing you.
CONAN: Oh that's all right. We're just talking about the possibility not just in Texas, as Leanne was saying, and in Wyoming, which we've been talking about, North Dakota, Pennsylvania there have been problems with fracking, and they're talking now about opening a big field in California, as well.
MCCHESNEY: They are, and it's actually - there's discussion of Mendocino, but they're actually talking about a big shale formation down around Bakersfield, down in the southern San Joaquin Valley. And some people are saying that that could dwarf the Bakken up in North Dakota. So California is looking at the possibility of an oil boom, as well.
CONAN: Let's go next to Spencer(ph), Spencer on the line with us from Pinedale.
SPENCER: Hi, I just wanted to mention I've lived here in Pinedale for a few years and don't work directly in the gas industry but I actually work at the local airport, which has benefitted a lot from the increased traffic. But I've just noticed that the Pinedale area has kind of leveled off. We had the boom, but now things draw down. The community seems to be finding ways to make other income besides just the gas boom, trying to focus on tourism and use the money from the boom to make a sustainable, long-term economy.
CONAN: Ann Chambers Noble, you talked about some of the structures that Pinedale has benefited from, including the wonderful Sublette County Library there in Pinedale, and there's a beautiful aquatic center that any community would be proud to have.
NOBLE: Yes, for a community of only a couple thousand people, we have close to a $30 million aquatic center, a couple of swimming pools, beautiful indoor walking track. We have a couple of basketball fields. The best part about that, and this is definitely the upside of a boom, it's nice to live in a place that has a lot of money, is that as it - every single age group in our community benefits from that - what we call the PAC, Pinedale Aquatic Center.
There's day - in the morning, it's full of people that are 60 and older. We'll have our geriatric groups in there walking every day, and yet it's also full of preschoolers. Our school kids use it constantly. It's a wonderful facility that we have all benefited, and that never would have been possible without the boom.
And especially this time of year, you know, seven months of the year, we're in snow cover, and if you want to be able to exercise, you - if you're not on skis, you need to be inside.
CONAN: But are you going to be able to sustain that when the economy, if as people say, the boom flattens out and begins to ebb away, and the fields start drying up, with a tourist economy and with cattle ranching as Pinedale used to have?
NOBLE: Well, it's definitely already slowed down. We are definitely seeing the results of a bust, and we are seeing budget cuts, no doubt about it. I was telling someone just recently, my freshman in high school this year brought home for the first time ever a supply list. I had to buy her supplies for school. I've never done that. So we are beginning to see where - the decline in the income.
But as I mentioned earlier, we have some very smart city and county planners that did set money away. They found some legal way to set money away at the time the boom was at its peak to maintain these buildings. So we're not too worried about that at this point. But that was a case where we did do some planning. You could always have done more planning.
And what - an earlier caller mentioned about the importance of planning. I will say that it's very easy to say that and very difficult to do that because you don't know what you're in for. And we, in some ways, over-planned because we built this gorgeous elementary school clear out in a field that was going to be the next new neighborhood, and then the bust came. So now we have this beautiful elementary school out in the middle of nowhere with no neighborhood. So that was a case, potentially, of over-planning.
MCCHESNEY: Well, there are...
CONAN: Spencer, thank - go ahead, John.
MCCHESNEY: There are two levels of planning, and, as you know, one is what you do on the field in terms of where you drill and how you drill, and the other is the infrastructure planning that you do. And one of the Williams County supervisors up in North Dakota told me, he said when Hewlett-Packard or some big company like that comes to town, they come in and they say, we're going to need X number of houses.
We're going to need - we're going to bring in this number of students. It's a centralized operation, so it's easier to plan for. When an oil development happens, it's all over the place, and there are dozens and dozens of companies that are operating independently. So it's very hard for planners to get a grip on it and try to make it happen in a more orderly way.
But most people I've talked to said they'd much rather try to slow it down and get that orderly plan in place, rather than the rush that you've seen in North Dakota and I think you saw down in the Upper Green River Valley.
CONAN: And even in the service industries, there were motels in Pinedale and motels in Williston, main. As soon as they built it, the oil company would call and say, we will rent every room for the next three years. This doesn't teach people how to run a competitive business.
MCCHESNEY: Right. When I went to North Dakota, I had to stay in a private home. I could not find a motel room within a 100-mile radius of Williston.
CONAN: We're talking with John McChesney, just stepped down as director of the Rural West Initiative at Stanford's Bill Lane Center for the American West. Also with us, Ann Chambers Noble, historian and longtime resident of Pinedale, Wyoming. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
David's on the line with us from Willow River in Minneapolis.
DAVID: Minnesota.
CONAN: Minnesota. Go ahead.
DAVID: Yes. Yes. I worked in Williston on a frack crew for the last - for nine months last year. I was - went out in the field every day. It was 110 hours per week, two weeks straight, one week off, lived in a man camp. Two weeks ago, we buried one of my co-workers, died out there in a frack accident.
CONAN: I'm sorry to hear that.
DAVID: It was not a pretty place to work.
CONAN: I can't imagine that it was, but how was the money?
DAVID: Well, the money, it started out pretty good because we were getting well bonuses. Each well we drill that we were successful on without any sort of environmental mishap, we would receive $1,500, maybe $2,000 well bonus a month. And that was pretty much our, I would call, profit. The hourly wage was not bad, but so many hours, so we had a lot of overtime.
But I spent a lot of money driving back and forth to Minnesota, and it was a 700-mile drive, so I would spend four days driving back and forth. So I essentially had three days off per month. And eventually I broke down with anxiety. I had to see a neurologist. I - so I spent a lot of money on medical bills, and ultimately they would not reduce my hours, and I ultimately quit.
CONAN: Well, David, again, sorry to hear about your loss, and we wish you the best of luck.
DAVID: Thank you.
CONAN: Thanks very much. Let's see if we can get Nadine with us, Nadine with us from Rock Springs, Wyoming.
NADINE: Yeah. Hi.
CONAN: Hi. Go ahead, please.
NADINE: I was just calling to say that, you know, my family moved here in '71 into Rock Springs at the end of a boom, and at the end of that boom ended up with a whole generation of children coming up with alcohol and drug problems, with nothing to do and nothing to look forward to in the future, you know?
CONAN: Because there's - Rock Spring's a mining boom there.
NADINE: Yeah. Well, we had mining in the (unintelligible), you know? They all overflow and come living there, and then we boomed out and everybody moved away. The smaller class sizes made the teachers know you very well, but your parents no longer have the income coming in to maybe send you off to school somewhere, you know? And at the time, when you're going to school, you're thinking that you're going to be in the mines or the oil fields.
CONAN: And those jobs then go away. And, John, I just wanted to ask you. The - those ancillary problems, I guess, of drugs and prostitution, those happen a lot of places.
MCCHESNEY: They do. I mean, you had the history of Gillette, Wyoming much earlier where the - it became the Gillette syndrome, which was an influx of prostitution and so on. I don't think North Dakota - North Dakota does have those problems but that they're not anywhere near on the scale of the earlier rough days of the '70s and '80s. You do have a lot of gun permits being issued up there, particularly to women. It's a little rough. The male versus female proportion is way out of balance, so it gets a little rough for women up there.
One of the things I wanted to mention is that there's a lag, there's a revenue collection lag between the beginning of production and when the revenue starts flowing, and that doesn't match the impact on these local small towns. They don't get any revenue for two, three years. And so the impact piles up and you're trying to catch up afterwards, and that's still happening in North Dakota, and there's no guarantee that that money that's coming into the state gets back into the local towns that are being impacted because the states really have to go hat in hand, I mean, the towns - I'm sorry, have to go hat in hand to with the states to get special grants to mitigate the damages to their roads and everything else.
CONAN: John.
MCCHESNEY: So there's a real problem in that revenue collection and I won't get down on the weeds on it but it's a real problem and collecting tax revenue for the rainy day, as you pointed out earlier, when these non-renewable resources run out.
CONAN: John McChesney with us, and also Ann Chambers Noble. Thanks to you both. This is NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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Then let's get started!
First, nothing says "Halloween!" like a sprinkling of candy corn:
Or, since studies* have shown that customers prefer plastic over pastry nearly 37 to 1, far better to reach for your trusty Flotsam Bugs®!
* We asked our marketing team.
Flotsam Bugs® are grrreat for turning any design into a Halloween one. Can your bakers only make roses? Nooo problem. Just add a Flotsam Bug®, and poof!
Or, how about turning a birthday present into a Halloween birthday present?
Why, just pipe a few ghosts on, silly!
Hm? What's that? How do you pipe ghosts?
Ever see a cactus?
And finally, what about all those doggy cupcakes you're required to pump out by the pound? Well, a little Flotsam will soon have you seeing eye-to-eye with your customers!
Or, if you want to go the extra mile, give Patches some patches!
Good dog that's awful.
I mean, uh, look how cute!
And remember, bakers, once Halloween is over it's easy to convert your cakes back, too:

subset: commoncrawl


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This may be SoSG's most flexible post to date. As you will soon see, not only are there multiple uses for it, but there are two categories of uses:
Use Category 1: Master Post for College FB Games. There are a number of big games featuring top-10 opponents:
- #3 TCU vs New Mexico - I guess I'll root for TCU just to create more controversy over the BCS system.
- #5 LSU vs Arkansas - Go Razorbacks! I'm actually indifferent towards both teams, but for DB's and P Ditty's sake, I'll root for Arkansas (plus, see next bullet)
- Oregon State vs #6 Stanford - Go Stanford! It would be sweet to have two Pac-10 teams end up in the top 5, especially after last year's conference meltdown (and this year's predicted sad showing in hoops).
- Northwestern vs #7 Wisconsin - Go Northwestern! I like purple and am trying to avoid cheese.
- Michigan vs #8 Ohio St - I guess I'll root for Michigan. It wouldn't mind seeing an upset featuring the Yankees of college football as victim.
- #13 Oklahoma vs #9 Oklahoma St - If every there were two top-15 teams heading into an arch-rivalry game that I truly didn't care about, this is it.
- #10 Michigan St vs Penn St - Go Spartans! Why? Because 10 years ago I won an NCAA hoops pool thanks to Michigan State's victory. Or was it Orel that won? I can't remember. But I hate Penn St. Ok, that's the real reason.
Use Category 2: Postmaster General Discussion. As we all know, on December 3, Patrick R Donahoe will be taking over as Postmaster General after 9 years of John E Potter. No doubt the postal service is facing major challenges - it recently reported losses of $8.5 billion over the last fiscal year, despite cost reductions of $9 billion over the past 2 years. And volume of mail delivered dropped to 170.6 billion from 176.7 billion the previous year (no word on how volume of mail sent matched up with these numbers). But Donahoe, educated at Pittsburgh and MIT, and COO of the Postal Service the past 5 years, is ready for the challenges. "The Postal Service is my bitch," I imagine him saying in lieu of any actual quotes I could find. "I hope she's ready, cuz I'm headin' in!"
Good luck Patrick. And C'mon everyone else...do your part and mail stuff!!*
So there are your two use categories. Enjoy the freedom and enjoy the rest of the long weekend.
*"C'mon everyone - mail stuff!!" - that's my proposal for the Postal Service's new slogan. Please support me in this cause. Donahoe, are you listening??
Photo of Kellen Moore from AP/Cathleen Allison


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At this point in time, wireframing has established itself as a critical component in every designer or developer's process. Hopefully that's the case, anyway. Whether you're part of a global agency superpower or operating as a solo code-slinger, the concept of visually outlining the information and interaction of your site before you start designing or coding has probably found its way into your workflow in some form. Maybe it's simple sketches in a notebook or a complex set of clickable HTML wireframes that describe your site in every detail—the point is, you're doing it. And with such widespread adoption of wireframes, a myriad of products have appeared with claims of making the task of wireframing faster, easier, and more useful.
Which One to Choose?
So which wireframing product has the features that actually make your job easier? Features that let you to quickly put together layouts are, of course, important, but so too are others that allow you to duplicate, export, and share your wireframes. For the purposes of this review, these features can be grouped into the following categories:
- Speed & Accessibility: What devices and platforms are supported and how is the overall speed?
- Shapes, Components, & Attributes: What tools and options do you have when constructing layouts?
- Templates & Workflow: What features save you from having to duplicate work?
- Interactions: How can you manipulate wireframes to simulate responses?
- Reviewing & Sharing: How can you collaborate and share with teammates and clients?
The Contenders
To further narrow the scope of this review, the contenders were limited to web-apps, which offer the most accessibility by being, you know … on the web. Thus, MockFlow, ProtoShare, and HotGloo were chosen as the challengers. They're all in the same weight-class in terms of features and are, more or less, all centered around creating interactive website wireframes. So, now that we have our picks, let's get into the ring.
In the Blue Trunks: Protoshare
Stand-Out Strengths
One of Protoshare's strengths lies in its ability to comprehensively design a website at a high level. You'll notice the sitemap panel on the left side of the UI and features that enable the manipulation of hierarchy, including easy drag-and-drop pages, quick duplication, and info panels—all the tools that make this phase of wireframing easier with Protoshare.
Along with the sitemap creation features, Protoshare has templating tools that allow page elements to be duplicated across the site, but also independently and on the fly. Contextual sub-menus, for instance, can be easily created by dragging and dropping the desired pages from the sitemap panel. This makes creating menus easy without all the typical accordion fly-out nonsense.
Protoshare also offers tools for increased wireframe fidelity for the more technically capable, such as adding classes and custom CSS to elements and even inserting your own drop-in components such as date-pickers and other widgets, all thanks to its simple HTML/Javascript platform.
Notable Weaknesses
Another weakness is Protoshare's export and sharing functionality, which is critical when dealing with clients—especially non-technical ones. Protoshare unfortunately has no PDF export option, and requires reviewers to log in before reviewing wireframes (no public URL to share).
Speed & Accessibility (2/5)
Shapes, Components, & Attributes (3/5)
The ability to customize elements with CSS allows for a lot of flexibility, but some basic components such as icon placeholders are missing.
Templates & Workflow (5/5)
A versatile template system makes it easy to duplicate elements with the addition of "smart" variable elements like contextual navigations, labels that automatically display a page's name, and functional breadcrumbs.
Interactions (4/5)
Good set of interactions for show/hide and the ability to insert custom Javascript option allows for additional functionality.
Reviewing & Sharing (3/5)
Clickable review mode is good and features push-pin notes and threaded conversations, but no PDF or additional output option, nor a quick and easy public review link.
In the Yellow Trunks: MockFlow
MockFlow takes a less-is-more approach to wireframing with its minimal Flash-based UI. The wireframe canvas itself takes precedence in the UI and workflow centers primarily around making per-page wireframes extremely quickly, with less emphasis put on the site as a whole.
Stand-Out Strengths
Speed is definitely MockFlow's strongest feature. The snappy web-based interface is complemented with an Adobe Air desktop app that is even faster—syncing changes to your online account. Overall the point-and-click UI is very responsive with little delay and the combination of other functions, such as a quick search for components and a simple, fast WYSIWYG editor, lets you build pages as fast as you can physically work with no barriers in the way.
A large set of components also saves designers from having to create increasingly common page elements from scratch. Components such as tabbed-containers, alert boxes, maps, charts, and date-pickers are all available by default. More user-generated components can also be imported into your UI from the MockFlow Store, including complete kits for Facebook or Android apps.
Other features that illustrate MockFlow's emphasis on the visuals are the review and export functions. Public links are available for clients to see, and the entire wireframe can zoom and scale within a window—an especially helpful feature when presenting over a web meeting. Per-page exporting is also available and supports formats including PDF, HTML5, PowerPoint, and Excel, as well as exportable sitemaps in traditional tree-style format.
Notable Weaknesses
The biggest feature set missing from MockFlow is interactive components. Despite the wide range of elements available, there are no options to simulate interactivity beyond simply hyperlinking pages together. This is where MockFlow's dedication to the visual presentation of a wireframe works against it and forces a designer to create static variation pages that are hidden in the navigation in order to show how an element may change.
Another weakness of MockFlow is from a user management and organizational standpoint. Users (both internal and clients) are all piled in the same global list and must be added manually to each project. Roles and permissions are also applied per project, rather than per-user, which can become exponentially cumbersome as the number of clients, collaborators, and projects increases.
Speed & Accessibility (5/5)
The combination of a fast Flash-based web app, a companion desktop app, and an HTML5 mobile version make editing and viewing speedy on any platform.
Shapes, Components, & Attributes (4/5)
A wide selection of components with basic options (color, size, etc.) can get you most of the way there quickly, although fine-tuning options are limited.
Templates & Workflow (2/5)
Templates are limited to one master template per-page, requiring cutting-and-pasting between pages for additional elements that are shared (but not universal).
Interactions (1/5)
No interactivity for elements that incorporate changing states or visibility; pages are rendered relatively flat.
Reviewing & Sharing (4/5)
Multiple formats as well as different types of output (project-wide, per-page, sitemap tree, page comparison) as well as public review links; though non-threaded commenting can make complex discussions confusing.
In the Pink Trunks: HotGloo
HotGloo is another Flash-based product that seems to straddle the line between complex, technical wireframes and purely visual layouts with additional emphasis on responsive interactivity that adapts to different users.
Stand-Out Strengths
HotGloo's most notable features revolve around elements that respond to user interactions. Sets of components can be grouped together and each group's visibility can be triggered by the type of user viewing the page, clicks, hovers, or other variables. Entire sets of variations can be reflected across multiple elements on a single page (logged in versus not logged in, for instance) for wireframes that more accurately represent real functionality.
HotGloo also offers a very lightweight yet powerful template system that allows you to build full-page layouts to be used across a site or small, singluar elements (like an ad, for instance) that can be placed on various pages in different locations, but edited from one central spot. These template components can also be double-clicked and edited on the canvas (similar to symbols in Flash or clipped elements in Illustrator) keeping you in-context.
Contextual palette menus in HotGloo also allow for an excellent amount of control over an element's appearance without the need to resort to writing CSS. Common attributes include CSS3-supported effects such as rounded corners and strokes as well as gradients.
Notable Weaknesses
The biggest drawback to HotGloo its use of Flash, making reviewing wireframes through a browser on an iOS device impossible (for most clients, anyway). Although PDF exporting is still an option, you lose all the interactive components that make HotGloo great, especially when designing for the iPad or iPhone.
Another complaint about HotGloo is that annotations are never consolidated in a comprehensive, easy-to-review format in-context with the wireframe. Notation pins, similar to Protoshare, capture per-feature comments but are only found in an overall chronological list of activity, or on the wireframe itself. This forces you to either read notes in reverse order from the activity feed (while not looking at the wireframe), or to find and click every note icon throughout the site, which can result in a very frustrated developer.
Speed & Accessibility (3/5)
Overall performance is fast through a browser thanks to the Flash platform, but lacks support for iOS devices.
Shapes, Components, & Attributes (4/5)
Although not as comprehensive as other products, the available components are quickly and easily customizable with CSS3-supported attributes.
Templates & Workflow (4/5)
A simple template system (similar to Flash symbols) allows the flexibility to create pages that combine various types of templates together with edit-in-place functionality.
Interactions (5/5)
Powerful action/reaction controls allow you to trigger events such as an element's visibility via click events or by a reviewer's user role.
Reviewing & Sharing (3/5)
Reviewing interactions are excellent for simulating functionality for user testing, but again, lacks iOS support and comprehensive documentation tools
The Winner, By Unanimous Decision (Well, Sort Of)
After a brutal 15 rounds, this judge's scores have HotGloo coming out ahead with 19 out 25, Protoshare in second with 17 closely followed by MockFlow with 16 points. But there's a rather large caveat that goes along with these rankings: mainly that it's obvious that each of these products caters to a certain way of creating interactive wireframes and thus prioritizes different aspects of this process. None of them are perfect by any means, but there may be one product that works better for you.
Protoshare, for instance, seems more developer-centric. Accessibility, site-architecture and technically-oriented features allow for a lot of control, if you know how to use them. Mockflow, on the other hand, appears to be designed for one person or a small team to quickly churn out simple, visual-focused wireframes for a non-technical audience. HotGloo, however, represents a best of both worlds. With strong layout and component features, good template functionality, and the added benefit of easy-to-use interactions, HotGloo is this reviewer's wireframing tool-of-choice and is considered, at least at the moment, the heavyweight champion of the wireframing world. But if Mr.T in Rocky III taught us anything, it's that a new challenger is always waiting in the wings.
Kickboxing photo courtesy of Shutterstock


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In many years, family offices, which consist of a staff of professionals who manage the assets of one or more families, allocated a portion of those assets to investing in either fund of funds for private equity firms — those firms that would invest in a number of private equity firms under one fund umbrella — or directly in individual private equity firms. Today, a new situation is evolving. Many large family offices have made the decision that investing in either fund of funds or individual private equity firms is not desirable in that one is investing in blind pools that seldom make any investments from the new funds at the time of the investment. The thought is why invest in a blind pool, even if the private equity firm has a historically excellent return record, rather than directly investing in companies? To go it alone, larger family offices have been hiring away from private equity firms many of their best managing directors to run direct investments. Our own firm, very active on a national basis in private equity firm representation both in fund formation and transactional work, has seen a number of managing directors take these new positions despite the fact that they have had very successful careers with their private equity firm. The optimal execution of such a plan by a family office is to have the infrastructure not only to make the investment directly and work with the target business (be it on a control or non-control basis), but also to have enough assets dedicated to these direct investments to compensate and incent these managing directors. The alternative to creating this infrastructure, and a circumstance that we are seeing more, is for the family office not to undertake this costly endeavor but rather to make it known to the investing world that it will entertain the approach of fundless sponsors (now known as independent sponsors) who do not have a committed capital fund but do have ongoing deal sourcing abilities and will be looking for two or three funders of their deals. As a result, we've seen many more independent sponsor groups spawned in the past several years and we have introduced some of these groups to those family offices who are receptive. What can private equity firms do to counter this ongoing trend? Obviously, historically excellent cash-on-cash returns will cause a family office to think twice about going to the managing director mode. Another structural change we have seen in certain private equity firms that we represent is to change from a committed capital fund to a pledge fund, the difference being that rather than committing the full amount of capital to invest over a five-year period after fund formation, the investor commits a much smaller amount of annual capital and is allowed to choose to invest in each deal presented to it. As such, it is not a blind pool. We have seen this prove successful for certain private equity firms, including new private equity firms. The vast preponderance of those limited partner investors in the pledge fund commit to each deal as it arises. So what does this do to private equity firms that have grown up with committed capital raises that are usually blind pools? It creates more bidders for a company where an auction process is taking place, but there are already many, many bidders given the amount of uninvested cash from both strategic and financial bidders. It also will take some of the investors away from fund of funds or committed capital funds as family offices opt to invest directly. What remains to be seen is whether these family offices will have the infrastructure and industry expertise to really actively participate in the sellers' market given that many private equity firms are very bench strength strong as experts in certain industries. And remember, many firms have a solid core team of investors who have worked together for many years. That is a large advantage.
Guest Blogger
In potential sea change, some family offices are becoming competitors to private equity


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My grandmother used to say "Sundays are good for apple tart". I have to agree, and add that any day is good for apple tart. But also, days begging for a warm embrace, a soft kiss and a little balm to the soul are greatly improved with a slice of my grandmother's apple tart. Especially when shared with friends.
I believe our friends have heard my stories about my grandparents and family a million times over. That's part being proud to be of their flesh and blood, part being away and nostalgic, part keeping connected across the miles with some basic traditions. Such as gathering with friends and listening to their stories as well.
This past week has been trying for my family back home, leaving me with the need to get in the kitchen and cook and bake comforting family recipes. The one that were never handwritten, passed down from mother to daughter. The ones that were shared among friends around a cup of tea. The ones prefaced with a simple phrase "well, that's just one way of doing it…"
I often think of the recipes I was given by family members as the backbone for what I am doing today. I always think about who, among my family members, would enjoy a few gingerbread cookies, who would come share a little seafood pasta for lunch on a last minute notice? The stories associated with food or gatherings always fuel my own photoshoots as much as the actual dishes already do.
It can be a tough navigating act to keep balanced, energized and creative during the holiday seasons while navigating the million gazillion things we all have to do. Writing, crafting, keeping kids busy, baking goodies to share, etc… I find it helpful to balance nutritious, health boosting main courses with sweet little indulgences here and there.
A big bowl of crab soup and a little chocolate rice pudding. A big salad and a scoop of ice cream or sorbet. You get the idea. Find balance in what makes you happy.
Last week, a bowl of linguine with parsley lime marinated scallops and roasted beets followed by a slice of my grandmother's apple tart was key to my own peace. A typical thin crumbly French crust, topped with a layer of vanilla bean applesauce then covered with thin slices of apples. Crispy and buttery smooth at the same time.
And if it's having dessert first once in a blue moon or a little extra pasta on your plate…by all means, do.
Thin Apple Tart:
Note: my grandmother used to say that the only good thing about Golden Delicious apples was that they made great applesauce (apple compote). I tend to follow her thought and much prefer this way than fresh. The flesh and skin become so soft and buttery that you don't have to peel them (but feel free to if you prefer, especially if using non organic apples or a different kind). My grandma's applesauce is something of a family remedy with us…
Serves 6 to 8
For the crust:
2 tablespoons (20gr) slivered almonds
1/2 (60gr) cup powdered sugar, unsifted, divided
1/2 stick (57gr) unsalted butter, at room temperature
pinch of salt
3/4 cup (90gr) Jeanne's gluten free all-purpose flour mix
1 egg yolk
Place almonds and 1 tablespoon powdered sugar in a food processor. Pulse until the nuts are finely ground. In bowl of electric mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter, ground nuts and salt on medium speed until well-combined. Slowly add remaining powdered sugar and flour and mix well. Add the egg yolk and mix until incorporated. Shape dough into a ball and flatten into a disc. Wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for two hours or overnight.
Place the dough in between two sheets of plastic wrap or parchment paper and roll it out to about 1/4-inch thick round.
Place in a 9-inch tart pan, trim the edges. Prick the dough with a fork and refrigerate 30 minutes up to 2 hours. (you can even freeze the dough in the tart pan at this point and let thaw in the fridge overnight when you are ready).
In the meantime, prepare the applesauce.
Apple Compote: (you can prepare it up to 2 days in advance)
1/2 vanilla bean
2 tablespoons sugar
6 medium Golden Delicious apples
1/4 cup to 1/3 cup (60 to 80ml) water
On a flat surface, cut the vanilla bean in half lenghtwise without cutting all the way through and scrape the seeds from the pods with a pairing knife. Place them in a large saucepan along with the sugar. Set aside.
Core and roughly chop the apples. Add them to the vanilla and sugar mixture along with the water. Bring the mixture to a simmer over medium heat. Turn the heat down, cover and let the apples stew for about 1 hour. Check every 20 minutes to and add water to the mixture if the liquid evaporates faster than the apples can cook. Remove from the heat and let cool to room temperature. Scoop about 1 1/2 cups applesauce inside the prepared tart pan.
Apple Topping:
2 tablespoons (15gr) granulated sugar
zest of half a lemon
2-3 medium apples
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, cut in small pieces
Preheat oven to 350F and position a rack in the middle.
In a small bowl, rub together the sugar and lemon zest so that the citrus natural oils can flavor the sugar.
Core and thinly slice the apples. Decoratively arrange the slices over the compote and sprinkle evenly with the sugar. Scatter the butter over the tart shell.
Bake for 35-40 minutes or until the top appples are golden brown.
Linguine With Roasted Beets and Lemon Parsley Scallops:
Serves 2
juice and zest of one lime
1/4 cup parsley leaves, finely chopped
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 to 6 sea scallops
4 mini beets or 2 medium/large (color of your choice)
1 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 pound linguine (I went with gluten free but use the pasta of your choice)
In a glass or non reactive bowl, place the juice and zest from the lime, the parsley, garlic cloves and olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Mix briefly with a spoon and add the scallops. Spoon some of the marinade over the scallops and refrigerate for about 30 minutes.
In the meantime, preheat the oven to 375F and position a rack in the middle.
Place the beets in a baking dish, add the teaspoon of oil, some salt and pepper and roast for about 20-25 minutes. Let cool, peel and cut in halves or quarters depending on the size.
When about ready to eat, place a large pot of water on the stove and cook the linguine until al dente according to package directions.
In the meantime, heat a large non stick pan over medium heat. Remove the scallops from the marinade (do not throw it away), cook the scallops about 2-3 minutes on each side.
In a large bowl, toss the pasta with a spoonful of the marinade, divide the pasta among 2 bowls, add the beets and scallops and serve.


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For his directorial debut, actor Ralph Fiennes brings William Shakespeare's work to the big screen with a modern adaptation of Coriolanus. Fiennes also stars as the eponymous Roman general, a role he played on the stage 11 years ago.
The original play, Fiennes tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz, is complex.
"I had this feeling that if you were to clear away a lot of the denser passages, and shorten it and edit it, you are left actually with a very visceral, sinewy political thriller," Fiennes says.
Fiennes worked closely with screenwriter John Logan, best known for co-writing the Academy Award-winning Gladiator and writing Hugo, on interpreting the play and turning it into a modern-day tragedy for the big screen. Remaining loyal to Shakespeare's original language and verse was seen as a risk by many in Hollywood.
"Some producers and people did ask me would I rewrite the project," Fiennes says. "I carry a flag for Shakespeare's verse. It was the reason I became an actor, because I was moved and excited by Shakespeare's language and Shakespeare's stories."
Fiennes' career as an actor is impressive and extensive, but he'd never directed himself in a film. Coriolanus forced Fiennes to watch himself closely, analyzing his acting in a way that he never had before.
"You are confronted with all kinds of facial takes, vocal mannerism, things that make you embarrassed, recoil," Fiennes says. "That was painful and I still feel slightly awkward when I see myself up there, but I felt I learned a lot about acting."
In both the movie and the play, the character of Coriolanus is filled with an enduring rage. Fiennes says this rage, both thrilling and terrifying, makes the role difficult.
Fiennes has played some of the most critically acclaimed villains on screen. In Schindler's List, he earned an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Amon Goth; in recent years, he made his mark as Lord Voldemort, the dark wizard in the Harry Potter movies. But when NPR's Raz asked Fiennes about his dream role, his answer veered from the roles for which he's known.
"What I really would love is the unknown part, the part that's going to be written," Fiennes says. "I guess I'd love to be surprised by something I had never thought of."
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Felt like the right boy and right girl announced their engagement to the joy, relief and surprise of the part of the world who so cared it would happen and so knew it wouldn't.
In case you wondered, Felix Hernandez was the blushing bride, creating a high tide of tears that dampened the pants cuffs of everyone in his presence Wednesday. Hell, shirt cuffs were wet.
Since none of us is likely to receive $175 million for our services — certainly, no baseball pitcher in major league history had — Hernandez was free to set the standard for grateful appreciation. He may have retired the trophy.
"You see I am shaking," said Hernandez, who paused for 20 seconds, searching for a grip. "To all the people of Seattle, who trust me and believe in me — I will not let you down.
"I do this because I love this city and want to be here. I don't want to to go nowhere else. It was a decision I've made for a long time."
No cynicism, sabermetrics or common baseball sense could stand against Hernandez's simple sincerity. Dude wanted to play baseball in Seattle for the rest of his career, and the only ones who wanted it more were the Mariners owners and staff, sick to death of a decade of emotional bludgeoning.
The club doesn't care how it looks to the baseball world or the real world; it cares that Felix cares and many fans care. This deal wasn't about getting better as a team; the man was already under contract for two more years. This was about try to get well by stopping the bleeding from wounds self-inflicted.
The man most vilified for the condition of the Mariners, CEO Howard Lincoln, made a rare public appearance to say, essentially, he was thrilled to have his operation wanted.
"I think it's important more than anything that he wanted to be here," Lincoln said. "He was expressing this over and over and over. That's pretty unusual. How many players tell you to your face, 'I'd really like to stay here'? That makes you feel pretty good."
The feel-goods Thursday started with Hernandez's emergence from the elevator on Safeco Field's ground floor. He was greeted by chants and cheers from dozens of Mariners employees dressed in the yellow T-shirts from the "King's Court" marketing masterstroke. He teared up immediately, saying later the moment "will always be there in my mind my whole life."
He continued to the press conference, where his voice wavered from the start following a grand intro from GM Jack Zduriencik, who in his remarks said, "You run into people in your life who are special people. I haven't met a guy with this man's character. His loyalty and dedication to his teammates and city is unbelievable. He's a great man."
Hernandez begins his ninth major league season this month as hugely accomplished pro, yet he has zero inclination to try something new, a contention regularly disbelieved by many locals who had been backhanded by dozens of eagerly former Mariners.
"I don't want to go to a place I don't feel happy, I don't feel comfortable," he said. "I want to be in a place I feel great, I feel comfortable, I feel good around the people, and Safeco Field, around the city of Seattle. That's why I do this."
He even kidded Zduriencik that he wanted the GM to start work on a contract extension. Imagine what he might have said if the Mariners had kept Safeco Field's fences where they were.
As to the contract, Zduriencik reported that the $175 million amount was correct, the deal was fully guaranteed and included a no-trade clause, a club first. He also reported that the medical and training staffs signed off on Hernandez's health-worthiness. But there was indeed concern about his pitching elbow, enough to prompt inclusion of an unusual clause a little.
FoxSports.com reported that he cluase provides a conditional club option for a salary of $1 million in 2020, which would be applicable if Hernandez is on the disabled list for more than 130 days in any 183 consecutive major-league days for right elbow surgery or any other procedure to fix his right elbow.
"We got a complete medical from our doctors," Zduriecik said. "Our doctors were very satisfied with it. He got a clean bill of health. (Team doctor) Ed Khalfayan was very comfortable. H said this guy could pitch his whole career and never have an issue.
Hernandez gets a $6 million signing bonus, then his salaries will be $19M in 2013, then $22M, $24M, $25M, $26M, $26M and $27M.
Asked whether this deal would have been possible had the Mariners signed free agent outfielder Josh Hamilton to a reported deal of $100 million over four years, with two options years at $25 million each. HE signed with the Angels for five guaranteed years at $125 million.
"Yeah, I do believe it would be (doable)," Zduriencik said. "I really do. It's a great question. I tried to say this, and sometimes people think you say it just because you're supposed to say it, but that was a real deal we had on the table."
"I've read some (disparaging remarks from Hamilton), and I was like, really? It makes me shake my head a little bit. Those were substantial dollars. I don't think it would have affected this deal, because this ownership has said, for the right player at the right time, we will invest. I think that commitment there, although it didn't work out.
This commitment to Felix really says they will spend, and they have."
They did spend, because they discovered their money was good with Felix Hernandez. Now if Felix Hernandez is as good for the Mariners, Seattle will be taken seriously for more than the guts to write a check from the heart.
Visit Crosscut.com for an exclusive video of Art Thiel


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Nineteen-year-old Army Pvt. Cody Dollman has a look in his eyes that makes you think he probably used to fight much bigger kids on the playground back home in Wichita, Kan. He says he always wanted to be a soldier — both his grandfathers served in the military — but he's the first in his family to see action overseas.
"I love it. It's what I signed up to do, you know?" says Dollman, who had been patrolling the battle-scarred villages around Kandahar, Afghanistan. "I get to go back home and tell stories. That's one of the coolest things. What did you do on Christmas? I got blown up."
He isn't joking. Since he deployed last April, Dollman has been "blown up" three times by roadside bombs that hit his convoy of armored trucks. The third time was the worst.
"We were rolling on a mounted patrol," he says. "I was in the lead vehicle, which hit an IED [improvised explosive device]. I hit my head, blacked out for a little bit."
At first Dollman shook it off as his platoon pursued the insurgent fighter who set off the bomb. Within an hour he was feeling the aftereffects of the blast: He threw up and his head hurt.
The medic said Dollman was a sure bet for traumatic brain injury. TBI is often caused by blasts: A roadside bomb explodes and the concussive effect violently shakes the brain inside the skull. Sometimes there are symptoms. Sometimes there are not.
Dollman wanted to stay with his platoon, but the medic wasn't having it. A chopper flew him to the hospital at Kandahar Airfield.
"It's one of those things that if you're treated, it shouldn't be anything to worry about, as long as you're not stubborn like me," he says.
Diagnosing TBI
The problem is, most soldiers — and many of their leaders — are a bit stubborn like Dollman. Soldiers don't like being taken away from their unit, especially for an injury they can't see.
The Army, in particular, has had a mixed record treating soldiers for TBI. Now it is trying to spot the injury close to the battlefield and get soldiers out of the fight.
Everyone wants a pregnancy test for TBI.
Medics began carrying a laminated quiz that tests a soldier's ability to concentrate, but they soon found that soldiers were memorizing the answers. Now the medics carry several different versions of the quiz.
But that touches on a challenge with TBI: how to diagnose it.
The symptoms aren't always as obvious as Dollman's — sometimes there aren't any obvious symptoms at all.
"Everyone wants a pregnancy test for TBI," says Maj. Gen. Richard Thomas. The surgeon has just finished a tour as lead medical adviser to U.S. forces in Afghanistan. He says someday a blood test or brain scan may be able to indicate whether a soldier has TBI; the Army is researching both. But Thomas says those tests could be years away.
"While that's working, that takes time. What are we going to do immediately? Immediately we gotta identify these guys as soon as we can, get them out of the fight," he says. "Because we know that for concussion, the best thing to do immediately is take them away from the insult, rest them, let their brain recover."
TBI Vs. PTSD
That's what happens at the newly completed concussion care center at Kandahar Airfield, where Dollman is currently on bed rest. The facility has neurologists and occupational therapists; there's even an MRI machine in a trailer — a first in military field hospitals.
Once the soldier is here, it's easier to start tackling symptoms, but that's another tricky thing about TBI. Navy Cmdr. Greg Caron, a clinical psychiatrist, says the symptoms for TBI are easily mixed up with symptoms for other battle injuries, like post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
"What's interesting about blast-related concussion is that it impacts the same region of the brain that is implicated in anxiety disorders and mood disorders," he says. "About a third of the folks who are diagnosed with MTBI or concussion actually have other psychiatric diagnosis, whether that's depression or PTSD."
The challenge for doctors is to figure out which symptoms are from TBI and which aren't. Like with PTSD, some victims don't feel any effects until months after their injury. In fact, the Army's own studies show that as of a couple of years ago, most cases of TBI in Iraq went undiagnosed. Critics say the military took a long time to realize the enormity of the problem. That raises another issue, though: For the majority of both wars, the Army kept little data on concussions.
Returning To The Battlefield
The Kandahar concussion care center is trying to correct the military's course on TBI.
Dollman undergoes brain scans regularly. He takes cognitive tests almost every day. He recently got the news — bad news, if you ask him — that he can't go out on any more patrols.
"I'm not allowed to leave the wire as of now, just because it's my third [concussion]," he says.
That's one rule military doctors have come up with since they've been looking at TBI close to the fight. It's arbitrary — no one knows whether it's one concussion or five concussions that leads to the long-term problems — but doctors think it's a good rule of thumb. Dollman decided he would probably lose an argument with the neurologists here in Kandahar.
"It is hard, but I know it's for a reason, because I know I need to get treated," he says. "That way I'm not hurting my platoon, because when we go on missions they can't be worrying about me. ... I'm more of a danger going out to the line with TBI, so it's a big thing I get treated here before I go back out."
That argument works with soldiers: They'll do it for the guys in their unit. Another argument may be winning over their commanders. According to Thomas, the new procedures — getting soldiers to take a break and rest up, but stay in Afghanistan — is actually getting troops back to the battlefield sooner.
Before, many soldiers thought to have TBI would be flown all the way to Germany for treatment. Many would never get back to their units in Afghanistan.
Keeping soldiers healthier — but also getting them back in the fight — is the kind of result that may help senior military leadership embrace the new approach to TBI.
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