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Published December 10, 2012
The Larkin District and its development and planning team, including the School of Architecture and Planning, won an honorable mention at the prestigious National Award for Smart Growth Achievement ceremony held earlier this month in Washington, D.C.
The Larkin District was one of seven projects across the U.S. — and one of only two in the Main Street or Corridor Revitalization category — that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) award program recognized this year. The EPA recognition highlights the project's creative approach to building strong, sustainable communities while protecting human health and the environment.
Over the past decade, the Larkin District, located about a mile east of downtown Buffalo, has evolved from a largely abandoned industrial district with decaying infrastructure and contaminated sites into a thriving urban village and live/work/play community.
Anchored by the Larkin at Exchange Building — a former Larkin Soap Co. warehouse that the Larkin Development Group (LDG) restored in 2002 into one of Buffalo's most sought-after commercial addresses — the district today includes several other mixed-used projects in renovated historic buildings, green space, improved streetscapes, brownfield restoration and now residential development.
"The 2012 winners of the National Award for Smart Growth Achievement are taking innovative steps to realize a vision of American communities that are clean, healthy, environmentally responsible and economically resilient," says EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson.
Howard Zemsky, managing partner of LDG, which had no tenants lined up when it started the Larkin at Exchange project, notes that "what started out as an improbable vision has turned into the reality of a revitalized and reborn urban neighborhood. Our confidence rested largely on the principles of smart growth and a commitment to restore the district's historic building infrastructure, celebrate its legacy as a center of industrial innovation and extend the economic, social and environmental vibrancy of these developments into the surrounding neighborhood and city."
Zemsky adds that the Larkin District's success is tied closely to the project's diverse partnerships across the public, private and nonprofit sectors, from First Niagara Bank to the New York State Brownfields Cleanup Program to the Old First Ward Community Association.
Laying out the master plan for the Larkin District was the Urban Design Project (UDP) in the School of Architecture and Planning.
UB's involvement began in 2004, when Zemsky approached the UDP, a research center devoted to the critical practice of urban design, to develop a master plan for an urban neighborhood that would build on the success of the Larkin at Exchange project, with historically sensitive development, vibrant streets and public spaces, integration with the surrounding neighborhood and accessibility via multi-modal public transportation.
The resulting "Larkin District Plan" set the foundation for a series of investments, including two mixed-use developments — the Schaefer Building and the U Building — that have added commercial, retail and residential space to the district, mostly through the adaptive reuse of historic buildings.
"Our goal was to create a historically context-sensitive plan at the neighborhood, corridor and city-wide scales," says Robert G. Shibley, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning and director of the UDP, which partnered with the architectural firm Kevin Connors Associates and led a team of planners and students in carrying out the project. UDP team members included project manager Elizabeth Cheteny and architecture and planning graduate students Sean Brodfuehrer, Jajean Rose-Burney, William Smith and Steven Watchorn.
Adds Shibley: "With smart growth principles at the core of his vision, Howard Zemsky and his community partners have gradually fit together this place-making puzzle in a way that preserves and celebrates the district's history, and creates new spaces and amenities for a thriving commercial center and urban neighborhood."
LDG has acquired 30 properties for future residential development based on the master plan's recommendations for multi-use buildings along Seneca and Emslie streets. Such developments will include the expansion of first-floor retail and rental housing units on upper floors. Vacant properties in the central district are under design for a concentration of new cottage houses.
Recent investments in the Larkin District also include improvements to deteriorated streetscapes in the surrounding area to increase accessibility and establish critical gateways, a core tenet of the Larkin District Plan. These include $2 million in new sidewalks, street furniture, lighting, trees and plantings, crosswalks, bike lanes, signage and bus shelters — a project largely funded by Larkin at Exchange anchor tenant First Niagara Bank.
Additional elements of the plan that are being put into place include a network of green spaces in support of a pedestrian-friendly environment and stronger connections to the surrounding neighborhood.
This past summer, Larkin Square — a 34,000-square-foot gathering space for workers, residents and visitors — opened in the heart of the Larkin District. The multi-purpose public space features indoor and outdoor dining, seating areas, retail market stalls, public sculpture and a free concert series. Envisioned in the master plan, the project was developed by LDG working with The Neighborhood Workshop LLC and its principal, Tim Tielman.
"Our design challenge was to transform a railroad-era industrial superblock into humanized, smaller, multi-use blocks that were knit together by pedestrian-priority circulation paths," says Tielman. "The paths and future development sites were placed according to principles of human geography and wayfinding. All paths lead to Larkin Square, which itself connects into the city grid. The space was designed to attract office workers, visitors and local residents by evoking mystery, adventure and pleasure. The concept is 'Take space. Attract people. Stir.'"
Zemsky will continue to implement key elements of the master plan as the boundaries of the district expand. For instance, LDG has begun pushing for a traffic circle that would complement Buffalo's designed — but never fully completed — Frederick Law Olmsted Parkway System.
A land-use and transportation-planning solution, the traffic circle at Seneca, Fillmore and Smith Streets would link the northern and southern sections of the park/parkway system, calm traffic and establish a historic, interpretive gateway into the revitalized Larkin District.
LDG now has commissioned the Urban Design Project and its recently aligned research center, the UB Regional Institute, as well as Kevin Connors of Eco Logic Studio, to carry out a second phase of the master plan. This effort will consider the edge of the district and its connections to the neighborhood, enhance the district's transportation planning and offer recommendations for additional mixed-use neighborhood and commercial development.


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Nissan Teams With Sony PlayStation® For Second Season Of Nissan GT Academy Competition In U.S.
Season Two Begins November 1 On Spike TV
Oct 29, 2012, 11:00 ET
FRANKLIN, Tenn., Oct. 29, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Nissan GT Academy is back for a second season, seeking to determine which of America's best Gran Turismo® video gamers has what it takes to become a professional racing driver.
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20080506/NISSANBADGELOGO)
Nissan North America, in collaboration with Sony Computer Entertainment America and Polyphony Digital, is announcing the first of six episodes to air on SPIKE TV beginning Thursday, November 1 at 11:30 p.m. Eastern/10.30 p.m. Central. The remaining episodes will air at the same time each Thursday night and will be available on the Nissan YouTube channel the following Monday. GT Academy will also be screened on MTV2, one week after the original airdate on SPIKE TV. For a preview, visit the GT Academy web site, GTAcademy.com.
In July, after three months of online competition, the top 32 out of 400,000 registered Gran Turismo online gamers, met at Comic-Con in San Diego to determine the 16 finalists for GT Academy. Over two days of virtual racing competition on identical gaming sleds, the fastest 16 were invited to the legendary Silverstone Racing complex in England to begin an intense boot camp that combined physical and psychological challenges in addition to on-track driving in a variety of performance vehicles.
The six-week GT Academy television series, hosted by ex-NFL player, Dhani Jones, will capture every challenge and all of the human drama of a very intense week. At the end of each episode, competitors' performances are evaluated and critiqued by pro racers Danny Sullivan, Maryeve Dufault and Boris Said. Those who don't make the cut go home. One winner emerges and remains in the U.K. to undergo intensive professional racing training that will qualify them to earn their international competition license.
"GT Academy is a program that we are really pleased to be a part of. It reinforces our values of excitement, innovation and performance above all else, while giving 16 people the opportunity to fulfill their dreams – and for one of them to potentially change their lives for good," said Jon Brancheau, VP Marketing, Nissan North America.
A new addition for season two is a second-screen experience, Pit Pass, which puts the viewer at the center of the action, making them feel more like a participant than a spectator. Building on the concept of "Victory Is Anyone's," viewers can visit GTAcademy.us via their smartphone or tablet devices while watching the show and enjoy access to exclusive segment-specific content while the show is playing on SPIKE TV, all via the browser and without needing to download an app. Each episode will have unique companion content, including video, interactive maps, polls, tutorials and fun facts, to drive deeper viewer engagement and inspire social media sharing. In addition, using Facebook Connect, the fan becomes the hero, enjoying the ability to create his/her own custom, adrenaline-charged GT Academy hot lap video, as well as immersing themselves in a rich, panoramic first person experience on the GT Academy website, optimized for the iPad and iPhone gyroscope technology.
The GT Academy concept has already proven successful. Both European and North American GT Academy competitions have produced race winners and top qualifiers in professional racing programs around the world. Europe's GT Academy Season One winner Lucas Ordonez won the P2 Class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2011 in a Nissan-powered prototype, while a team of four GT Academy winners placed third-in-class in January at the 24 Hours of Dubai in a race-prepared Nissan 370Z.
The GT Academy program was developed by TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles and OMD. Critical Mass is responsible for the GT Academy website, Pit Pass second-screen experience and first-person Facebook video.
About Gran Turismo®
With more than 65 million units sold worldwide, the award-winning Gran Turismo® franchise for the PlayStation®, PlayStation® 2 and PlayStation® 3 is regarded as the best and most authentic driving simulation ever created due to its true-to-life graphics, physics and real-life cars and tracks. Since the inception of the Gran Turismo franchise, famed creator Kazunori Yamauchi and Polyphony Digital Inc. in Japan have revolutionized the racing category as we know it today. His offerings provide the gamer with the most true-to-life driving simulation within the industry and a unique medium for automotive manufacturers to showcase their products.
About Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC
Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC continues to redefine the entertainment lifestyle with its PlayStation® and PS one® systems, the PlayStation® 2 system, the PSP® (PlayStation® Portable) system, the ground-breaking PlayStation® 3 (PS3™) system and its online and network services the PlayStation® Network and PlayStation® Store.
Recognized as the undisputed industry leader, Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC markets the PlayStation family of products and develops, publishes, markets, and distributes software for the PS one, PlayStation 2, PSP and PS3 systems for the North American market. Based in Foster City, California, Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC serves as headquarters for all North American operations and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Visit us on the Web at http://www.us.playstation.com
About Nissan
Nissan Motor Co., Ltd., Japan's second-largest automotive company, is headquartered in Yokohama, Japan, and is part of the Renault-Nissan Alliance. Operating with more than 248,000 employees globally, Nissan provided customers with more than 4.8 million vehicles in 2011, generating revenue of 9.4 trillion yen ($118.95 billion US). With a strong commitment to developing exciting and innovative products for all, Nissan delivers a comprehensive range of 64 models under the Nissan and Infiniti brands. A pioneer in zero-emission mobility, Nissan made history with the introduction of the Nissan LEAF, the first affordable, mass-market, pure-electric vehicle and winner of numerous international accolades, including the prestigious 2011-2012 Car of the Year Japan and 2011 World Car of the Year awards.
For more information on our products, services and commitment to sustainable mobility, visit our website at http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/.
About Spike TV
Spike TV is available in 98.7 million homes and is a division of Viacom Media Networks. A unit of Viacom (NASDAQ: VIA, VIAB), Viacom Media Networks is one of the world's leading creators of programming and content across all media platforms. Spike TV's Internet address is www.spike.com and for up-to-the-minute and archival press information and photographs, visit Spike TV's press site at http://www.spike.com/press. Follow us on Twitter @spiketvpr for the latest in breaking news updates, behind-the scenes information and photos.
SOURCE Nissan North America

subset: commoncrawl


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Students and faculty at City College of San Francisco staged an emergency protest today (Fri/24) after discovering that a generous salary increase had been proposed for top administrators and was headed to the desk of Special Trustee Bob Agrella for approval.
Since he was appointed and infused with the voting power of the full board of trustees in the wake of CCSF's threatened loss of accreditation, which the Guardian has covered extensively, Agrella can unilaterally decide on such matters.
But just as word of the proposed pay increase got out and angry protesters gathered to oppose it, Agrella announced that the item would be withdrawn from the action agenda.
The recommendation was to increase salary ranges for the college's Associate Vice Chancellor, Chief Information Technology Officer, and Vice Chancellor by a generous 19.25 percent, "based on the positions' level of responsibilities and duties."
"This is absolutely outrageous," said faculty union president Alisa Messer. "We have students being pushed out of classes, instructors losing jobs, and faculty are still 4 percent below 2007 level salaries. Giving 20 percent raises to the one per centers around here? This college administration's priorities are upside down."
Ona Keller, an organizer with the faculty union, said some classes had already been cancelled due to low enrollment. "Agrella came out and said it was a mistake," Keller said. "I think it was because there were so many people contacting him." She said roughly 100 protesters had turned out on campus between 2:30 and 3:30.
Student trustee Shanell Williams sounded a similar note. "The students aren't making a San Francisco minimum wage. … Everyone at the college is suffering. This is outrageous."
City College's communications director, Peter Anning, said he'd first learned of the proposal from a reporter. Seems that was right around the time protesters and news vans turned up outside.
Anning insisted that the proposal had not originated with Agrella and that the special trustee had not even seen it prior to the alerts going out that he would approve it.
The agenda went out Thu/23 around 5:30pm, Anning said, with the deadline for community input set for 24 hours later, at which point Agrella would make a final decision. "When Bob received it and saw it, he withdrew it," according to Anning.
However, the proposal seems to have been tabled for future consideration. Anning said he did not know whether Agrella had been holding any prior conversations about the proposed salary range increases before the recommendation found its way onto the action agenda.
Anning said the proposal originated with City College Associate Vice Chancellor of Human Resources Clara Starr. We called Starr's office to find out more, but her assistant told us she was taking the day off.


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As a setup for the demo, here's a synopsis of the game from Ubisoft:
With Far Cry 3, players step into the shoes of Jason Brody, a man alone at the edge of the world, stranded on a mysterious tropical island. In this savage paradise where lawlessness and violence are the only sure thing, players dictate how the story unfolds, from the battles they choose to fight to the allies or enemies they make along the way. As Jason Brody, players will slash, sneak, detonate and shoot their way across the island in a world that has lost all sense of right and wrong.Off you go:
Far Cry 3 is in development for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows PCs. The game is set for release sometime in 2012.
Sharkey says: I didn't know where Ubisoft was going with this demo when it opened with the lengthy Tony-Montana-meets-Sid-Vicious guy's monologue. But once it got going, it pulled me in, and I appreciated the full-circle ending. One to watch for 2012.


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Welcome to the Healthy eating module for children aged 5-8 years. This module supports primary school children learning about healthy eating, as depicted by the eatwell plate and is comprised of a comprehensive Teachers' Guide and three Key Facts;
Key Fact 1 - Food is a basic requirement for life;
Key fact 2 - People choose different types of food;
Key Fact 3 - We all need to eat a variety and balance of food to stay healthy, as depicted in the Eatwell Guide.
The Key Facts are the key messages and skills children need to know and ensure that children's learning is coherent and progressive. The Key Facts feature differentiated information for different aged children, including worksheets, PowerPoint presentations, food cards and photographs and interactive whiteboard activities.
Last reviewed: 02/08/2016
Next review date: 01/08/2019


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These are all the Logan History Blog posted in June, 2013.
Monday, 3
1875 Logan Bird's Eye View Map
While organizing and sorting through some historical materials, I found an article which appeared in the Deseret News newspaper in January 1973. It detailed some of the history behind a bird's eye view map of Logan which now hangs on the wall in our special collections.
The map was given to former Mayor Fjeldsted by then librarian Virginia Hanson. The map appears to be an original from the nineteenth century and has since been digitized by USU Special Collections for inclusion on the Mountain West Digital Library.
Come in to the library to view this interesting piece of Logan history or contact me with any questions.
~ Jason, Special Collections Librarian
Posted By Logan Library - Logan History at 3:15 PM / Category:History Tidbits
The Latest Tidbits!
Jul 17, 2018
» Logan Chapter - Service Star Legion Mar 15, 2018
» New Artwork Donation Sep 14, 2017
» Founding of Brigham Young College


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Over 100 years ago, Arlington Cemetery's original Board of Trustees envisioned this rural property in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania as a community cemetery where people could find comfort among ancestors.
Today, Arlington's 130 acres are a beautiful, noble resting place, providing permanent memorialization for the departed, and a source of serenity for visitors. Families come here to remember a loved one, to pay respect to an ancestor they never met, and to leave with a feeling of connection to their past and a sense of peace.
The services and options we offer have continued to expand. Everything you need for a funeral, cremation, and burial can now be arranged in one convenient location. Toppitzer Funeral Home is now located on the Cemetery grounds to assist with funeral arrangements. Our Greenhouse offers flowers. And memorials, mausoleums, and inscriptions can be purchased in our office.
American history is intertwined throughout Arlington Cemetery. It can be observed in the architecture, the people, and the events we commemorate. It is our desire to continue an association with our nation's past through the history of the families interred here.
Together, we can help you preserve your family history along with America's history.


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Personalized Round Self-Inking Stamp
Have you ever wanted to mark your books or create a round address stamp? Our Personalized Round Self-Inking Stamp produces thousands of consistent stamp impressions; it also provides a clear impression without requiring a separate ink pad. An identification window on the top of the stamp allows you to quickly recognize stamp and ensures a correctly facing impression. An open positioning window guarantees accurate alignment of your stamp on documents every time. Enjoy clean and easy ink pad replacement with the simple click of a button. This Personalized Round Self-Inking Stamp is limited to 3 lines, 35 characters per line.
NOT a Wyoming notary seal; visit Notary Stamps category.
Our highly skilled production department is committed to quickly and accurately producing the best quality notary products. Notary Public Underwriters has the capability to create custom stamp designs, contact our customer service team if you want more than text on your personalized round self-inking stamp.
This round stamp is part of a line of eco-friendly stamps. It consists of up to 65%* post-consumer recycled plastic. This helps save valuable resources and up to 49%* CO2 emissions.
Clean Ink Pad Exchange
An easy release button and pinching the sides of the ink pad allow a cartridge to be exchanged without touching the ink reservoir--for guaranteed clean fingers.
Modern Design
Many stamp companies offer preset designs for a round address stamp; we offer personalized lines of text!
Precise Imprint Positioning
The Personalized Round Stamp's open positioning window also enables accurately placed imprints. The transparent bottom edges allow for precise alignment.
If you own a personalized round stamp and it is running low on ink, visit our ink pad page to purchase a replacement ink cartridge for this specific stamp model.
*Eco-black. Lower percentage for other colors.
Product Specifications
Personalized Round Self-Inking Stamp


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Perhaps we should leave it to Bergkamp at the DJF - the one person left amongst us who still believes in Josh Towers - to discuss the recent news that the Jays are looking at offering arbitration to the Gas Can.
We're just puzzled.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
He may be a Gas Can, but he's our Gas Can
2 comments:
- Joanna said...
You guys need to photoshop a jays hat on that gascan.
- November 20, 2007 at 7:48 PM
- Andrew said...
Perhaps JP can sign then trade him to a nice NL park where he may experience some success. There's a good chance we could get back much of what we gave away for Scooter. I don't think this means he's going to be suiting up for the Jays... only that we may have to deal with him until about the 2nd week of spring training.
- November 21, 2007 at 1:14 AM
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Elisha Cuthbert has tied the knot with her longtime love Dion Phaneuf, according to Us Weekly.
The 30-year-old actress and the 28-year-old hockey player got married on Saturday afternoon (July 6) at St. James Catholic Church in Summerfield, Prince Edward Island, Canada.
The beautiful ceremony was followed by a reception at Dion's giant waterfront estate nearby where Elisha has said (via the National Post) is "a quiet place that we can be ourselves and not get bothered too much and have a real summer away from the hustle and bustle of our lives."
Elisha and Dion have been dating since 2008 and got engaged in September 2012. Congratulations to the happy couple on this great news!


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- Title: 01.05.10
- Artists: Kuwayama, Kijima
- Label: Alluvial Recordings
- Format: CD
- Price: €12,00EU (incl. 19% VAT)€10,08non-EU
Software Edition on SD card, silkscreen booklet, including a text by Jonathan Sterne, edition of 192 copies, text in French and English.
"JD Zazie (Side A) - Corrupted audio data, CDJs, Mixer
BNSU (Side B) - Drums, Electronics, Voice"
A1. JD Zazie - JD Zazie - Plattentektonik 05:03
"Microtub is the world's first and only microtonal tuba trio, exploring Just Intonation and the rich harmonic potential of the tuba.
"Given Jones' rather slack approach to track titles (both being consistent with and sometimes even just supplying them), it's a bit of a relief to realize that two tracks …
"l Mewt uL-Xebba" is a new joint effort by Ralf Wehowsky & Anla Courtis.
""Aral Sea Stories" explores the question, "What can we learn of water uses and abuses by listening to their sounds?" It is part of a larger project concerning the …


text: A custom-designed and built cedar home overlooks several acres of preserved nature reserve in East Hampton, New York. Vaulted ceilings and natural inlaid wood give a sense of warmth to the 3,000 square foot interior, which features a formidable stone fireplace and plenty of picture windows in the main living area; an impressive master bedroom-and-bath combo are equally inviting. An in-home gym is situated above the detached 2-car garage, while a heated, in-ground pool surrounded by a wooden deck completes this East Hampton hideaway. View the listing.


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As someone who loves to eat, you have no idea how happy I was when I found out I was placed in Hanoi for my Kiva Fellowship. Vietnam has some of the absolute best food in the world.
Vietnamese dishes commonly use lemongrass, fish sauce, ginger, mint, basil, bird's eye chili, and lime in all sorts of delicious combinations. These distinct flavors combined with French influences come together to create dishes so rich and varied in flavor that my stomach actually grumbled when I read the Kiva email saying that I would be spending the next few months in Hanoi. This may have been a mere coincidence, but I prefer to think that the human body just knows what's good for it and what will make it happy.
One of my favorite things to do in Hanoi is just wander around looking for new places to eat (pro tip: if a place is packed full of locals, then you should be eating there). What follows is a photo log of some of the foods I've eaten during my time here:
And finally, I'll leave you with a photo of the quintessential dining experience in Hanoi...fully grown adults sitting on little plastic stools that appear to be made for toddlers. It took a full month before I could comfortably sit on one for longer than 30 minutes, but now I wouldn't have it any other way.
Honorable Mentions: It feels wrong to not include bun cha and cha ca, but I was too busy feasting to take pictures. No regrets!
Jon is a member of the 20th Kiva Fellows class and is based in Hanoi, Vietnam. He is working with the Kiva field partner SEDA, which aims to alleviate poverty by offering financial services to underserved, rural populations around Hanoi. 70% of SEDA's total loans are made to low-income families, and 97% of its clients are women.
Join the Fans of SEDA and Binh Minh lending team and make a loan to SEDA's borrowers today!


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WASHINGTON — In 14 months as C.I.A. director, David H. Petraeus has shunned the spotlight he once courted as America's most famous general. His low-profile style has won the loyalty of the White House, easing old tensions with President Obama, and he has overcome some of the skepticism he faced from the agency's work force, which is always wary of the military brass.
But since an attack killed four Americans seven weeks ago in Benghazi, Libya, his deliberately low profile, and the C.I.A.'s penchant for secrecy, have left a void that has been filled by a news media and Congressional furor over whether it could have been prevented. Rather than acknowledge the C.I.A.'s presence in Benghazi, Mr. Petraeus and other agency officials fought a losing battle to keep it secret, even as the events there became a point of contention in the presidential campaign.
Finally, on Thursday, with Mr. Petraeus away on a visit to the Middle East, pressure from critics prompted intelligence officials to give their own account of the chaotic night when two security officers died along with the American ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, and another diplomat. The officials acknowledged for the first time that the security officers, both former members of the Navy SEALs, worked on contract for the C.I.A., which occupied one of the buildings that were attacked.
The Benghazi crisis is the biggest challenge so far in the first civilian job held by Mr. Petraeus, who retired from the Army and dropped the "General" when he went to the C.I.A. He gets mostly high marks from government colleagues and outside experts for his overall performance. But the transition has meant learning a markedly different culture, at an agency famously resistant to outsiders.
"I think he's a brilliant man, but he's also a four-star general," said Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "Four-stars are saluted, not questioned. He's now running an agency where everything is questioned, whether you're a four-star or a senator. It's a culture change."Continue reading the main story
Mr. Petraeus, who turns 60 next week, has had to learn that C.I.A. officers will not automatically defer to his judgments, as military subordinates often did. "The attitude at the agency is, 'You may be the director, but I'm the Thailand analyst,' " said one C.I.A. veteran.
Long a media star as the most prominent military leader of his generation, Mr. Petraeus abruptly abandoned that style at the C.I.A. Operating amid widespread complaints about leaks of classified information, he has stopped giving interviews, speaks to Congress in closed sessions and travels the globe to consult with foreign spy services with little news media notice.
"He thinks he has to be very discreet and let others in the government do the talking," said Michael E. O'Hanlon, a Brookings Institution scholar who is a friend of Mr. Petraeus's and a member of the C.I.A.'s advisory board.
Mr. Petraeus's no-news, no-nonsense style stands out especially starkly against that of his effusive predecessor, Leon E. Panetta, who is now the defense secretary.
Mr. Panetta, a gregarious politician by profession, was unusually open with Congress and sometimes with the public — to a fault, some might say, when he spoke candidly after leaving the C.I.A. about a Pakistani doctor's role in helping hunt for Osama bin Laden, or about the agency's drone operations.
Mr. Petraeus's discretion and relentless work ethic have had a positive side for him: old tensions with Mr. Obama, which grew out of differing views on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, appear to be gone. Mr. Petraeus is at the White House several times a week, attending National Security Council sessions and meeting weekly with James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, and Thomas E. Donilon, Mr. Obama's national security adviser. Mr. Donilon said recently that the C.I.A. director "has done an exceptional job," bringing "deep experience, intellectual rigor and enthusiasm" to his work.
"When Obama came into office, they were very suspicious of one another," said Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer and presidential adviser. "Clearly, over the course of the last four years, Obama has come to trust Petraeus."
Mr. Petraeus has managed the delicate task of supporting rebels in Syria's civil war while trying to prevent the arming of anti-American extremists. But when his C-17 Globemaster touched down in Turkey in September for consultations on Syria, the trip went all but unnoticed by the news media. He worked for months to address the complaints of Pakistani officials about drone strikes against militants, while keeping State Department officials abreast of likely future strikes, a policy called "pre-concurrence" that has prevented interagency squabbles. In his travels to the tumultuous post-Arab Spring Middle East this week, only a brief mention of his arrival in Cairo surfaced in local news reports.
Inside the agency, some subordinates say, he has largely defused the skepticism that initially greeted a celebrity general whose stated views of progress in the war in Afghanistan, among other things, were far rosier than those of C.I.A. analysts. But by comparison with Mr. Panetta, who wooed the work force and often did not question operational details, Mr. Petraeus is a demanding boss who does not hesitate to order substandard work redone or details of plans adjusted.
"I've never seen anyone with his drive — ever," said Michael J. Morell, the agency's deputy director. "He remembers what he asks for. Three weeks later he'll say at a morning meeting: 'Whatever happened to that? Is that done yet?' "
But the Benghazi crisis has posed an extraordinary test for Mr. Petraeus. After the killings, intelligence officials concerned about exposing the extent and methods of the large C.I.A. presence in the city would say little to reporters for publication. Conservative critics of Mr. Obama seized on a series of reports by Fox News and other outlets to make the incendiary charge shortly before the election that four Americans had died because of the administration's negligence.
Mr. Petraeus said nothing publicly, but that did not keep him out of the story. Some news reports faulted his secret testimony to Congress days after the attack for supposedly supporting the view that it was not a planned strike but a spontaneous response to an offensive anti-Muslim video. Then, last week, Fox News reported that agency officials had refused desperate requests for help from operatives under fire in Libya, and the agency issued a flat denial. "No one at any level in the C.I.A. told anybody not to help those in need," its statement said.
Far from ending the speculation, the statement added to it. William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, concluded that the agency was pointing its finger at the White House, which he suggested must have refused the requested intervention. "Petraeus Throws Obama Under the Bus" was the headline on the Weekly Standard's blog.
Perhaps worse for a former military commander like Mr. Petraeus, the father of Tyrone S. Woods, one of the security officers killed, accused the Obama administration in interviews of essentially abandoning his son and others to their fate and not caring about their deaths. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that some agency employees resented the fact that Mr. Petraeus did not attend the funerals of the two security contractors. Officials said he was concerned that his presence would confirm their agency connection, still officially secret at the time.
On Thursday, hoping to subdue the gathering public relations storm, intelligence officials invited reporters to a background briefing to, in their view, set the record straight. They offered a timeline of C.I.A. actions on the night of the attack, countering the idea that the besieged Americans were left alone under fire, and explaining why some would-be rescue efforts discussed in news reports were never feasible.
Notably, they also sought to rehabilitate Mr. Petraeus from some of the negative speculation that has surrounded him. The C.I.A. director, said one intelligence official, "has been fully engaged from the start of the agency's response, particularly in the rescue mission that was swift and aggressive."
"This idea that he is somehow not engaged is baseless," the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
For Mr. Petraeus — once pilloried in full-page newspaper ads as "General Betray Us" in the debate over the Iraq war — it is nothing new to be at the center of a political firestorm. "This is Washington, so naturally all controversies get caught up in the political jet stream," an intelligence officer close to Mr. Petraeus said.
Whatever the challenges of his first year, said Mr. O'Hanlon, his friend, "I'm confident in saying that he loves this job."
"He may miss the military at an emotional level," he added, "but he loves this work."
Mr. Petraeus's future has inevitably been the subject of rumors: that he would be Mitt Romney's running mate, or, more plausibly, that he was interested in the presidency of Princeton. In a statement in late September, he did not rule that out for the future, but said that for the time being he was "living the dream here at C.I.A." That was before the recriminations this week over Benghazi.Continue reading the main story


text: Wednesday, September 25, 2013 Help PTA Education Evolve: Join New APTA Task Force Here is your chance to roll up your sleeves and contribute to the future of PTA education. The Educational Programs for the PTA Task Force is ready to enlist volunteers with knowledge and experience in education, the scope of work of the physical therapist assistant (PTA), and data review and synthesis. This new task force continues the work of the PTA Education Feasibility Study Work Group, specifically in the area of data collection and collation. Interested members should respond to the call by completing a volunteer interest profile found on the Volunteer Interest Pool webpage. Once your profile is complete, click on the Apply for Current Opportunities button and select Educational Programs for the PTA Task Force. The deadline to apply for a position on this task force is October 9.


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March 3, 2002
SAN DIEGO, Calif. - Senior guard Becki Ashbaugh scored eight points in 9.1 seconds to keep the contest close, but it wasn't enough as the Santa Clara University women's basketball team fell to Pepperdine 81-77 in the West Coast Conference Tournament Championship, held this afternoon at the Jenny Craig Pavilion. It marked the Waves' first tournament title.
Santa Clara is now 21-9 overall, while Pepperdine moves to a 23-7 mark. The Broncos now await the NCAA selection show, which will take place on Sunday, March 10. SCU has advanced to the postseason the past four seasons, with two NCAA and two WNIT appearances.
Ashbaugh led the Broncos with 20 points, making four of five from beyond the arc. She finished with nine assists as well. Junior forward Tammy Annas added 15 points, while frontcourt teammate Kendra Rhea finished with her seventh double-double of the season, with 10 points and 11 rebounds.
Pepperdine was led by Nadja Morgan, who posted 22 points and 13 rebounds. The Waves' entire starting lineup reached double figures in scoring.
For their efforts the entire weekend, Ashbaugh, Rhea and senior guard Caroline Gruening were named to the All-Tournament Team.
Pepperdine took the early lead, but it was a game the entire half. The Waves were hot from long range and had six three-pointers at intermission. Pepperdine built its largest lead at 21-14, but six straight Broncos scores pulled SCU to within one. A couple of possessions later, reserve Jennifer Bradley picked off a pass and converted the lay-in to tie the score at 24 with 8:30 remaining. A three-pointer by Gruening gave the Broncos their first lead at 27-26, but they were held without a field goal for almost five minutes, as Pepperdine rebuilt a slim for-point advantage. Tammy Annas ended the drought with her own score from long range to restore the Bronco lead at 32-31 with just over two minutes remaining. Rhea's 17-footer tied the score at 34 heading into halftime.
Rhea and teammate Julie Butler posted solid first periods, with 10 and 8 points respectively and combining for 12 rebounds. Shannon Mayberry had a strong first half for the Waves defensively, with three blocks and six boards.
In the second half, plays seemed to be going the Broncos' way, with two huge three pointers from Ashbaugh, as well as a three-point play by Annas and an outside jumper from Courtney Cushing to give SCU a 53-44 lead with 13:56 remaining. Pepperdine had two unforced turnovers and three missed jumpers to force Wave head coach Mark Trakh to call a time out. All-Tournament team member Morgan responded with eight of her team's nine-point run to wipe the deficit and tie the game at 53 with 10 minutes left on the clock.
Cushing regained the lead for the Broncos another lead at 64-61, but Tournament MVP Damaris Hinojosa hit two threes down the stretch to keep Pepperdine in the game. Combined with a Bronco turnover that Pepperdine converted for an easy lay-in and the Broncos were down five with 2:25 remaining.
The Waves made seven of 10 free throws down the stretch, but an Ashbaugh three on the right wing and two free throws followed by a long score from the left side that rattled in put the Broncos within one with 3.2 seconds, at 78-77. Pepperdine's Shandrika Lee and Morgan combined for three final scores from the charity stripe for the final score.


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New York, May 10, 2013 - The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Pakistan's interim government to reverse its decision to expel New York Times bureau chief Declan Walsh from the country. The order comes on the eve of national elections that will bring about the first successful change of civilian government in Pakistan's history.
"The expulsion of Declan Walsh shows just how much the authorities fear independent media coverage," said Bob Dietz, CPJ's Asia program coordinator. "The vagueness and the late night delivery of the expulsion order smack of a need to intimidate foreign and local journalists on the eve of historic elections that could herald the growth of democracy in Pakistan. Instead, Walsh's expulsion only mars the event, and undercuts hopes for a free press."
Journalists in Pakistan face deteriorating security accompanied by a lack of justice. Authorities have failed to prosecute a single suspect in the 23 journalist murders over the past decade. On May 23, CPJ will publish a report analyzing the state of press freedom in Pakistan.


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PASTOR DANIEL AJAYI-ADENIRAN is coming for your soul. It doesn't matter if you are black or white, rich or poor, speak English or Spanish or Cantonese. He is on a mission to save you from eternal damnation. He realizes you may be skeptical, put off by his exotic name — he's from Nigeria — or confused by his accent, the way he stretches his vowels and trills his R's, giving his sermons a certain chain-saw rhythm. He suspects you may have some unfortunate preconceptions about Nigerians. But he is not deterred. He believes the Holy Spirit is working through him — aided by the awesome earthly power of demographics.
Africa is the world's fastest-growing continent, and Ajayi-Adeniran belongs to one of its most vigorously expansionary religious movements, a homegrown Pentecostal denomination that is crusading to become a global faith. In the course of just a few decades, the Redeemed Christian Church of God, founded in a Lagos shantytown, has won millions of adherents in Nigeria while building a vast missionary network that stretches into more than 100 nations. "The rate of growth," Ajayi-Adeniran says, "is becoming exponential." As the man coordinating the Redeemed Church's expansion in North America, the pastor spends his days shuttling from his home base, a storefront church in the Bronx, to the denomination's continental headquarters, a 550-acre compound in Texas, and to mission outposts scattered from Vermont to Belize. This places him at the vanguard of a revolution in worldwide Christianity, one that it is quite literally changing its face, as a faith that was once exported by white missionaries from Europe and America comes to draw its strength from the peoples of the Southern Hemisphere.
Revival is an eternal theme in the history of Christianity. Time after time, evangelical fervor ignites, burns itself out and then re-emerges in some altered and surprising form, in constant cycles of migration and renewal. The ferment of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation sent Puritans to New England, Quakers to Pennsylvania and Jesuits into the wilds of South America. The missionary movements of the 19th century inspired pious adventurers to travel to Africa and spread, in the famous formulation of David Livingstone, "Civilization, commerce and Christianity." Today the process is reversing itself, as the population of churchgoers dwindles in Europe, remains fairly static in the United States and erupts in the "global south" — a geopolitical term that encompasses Africa, Latin America and much of Asia. Seven years ago, in a book titled "The Next Christendom," Philip Jenkins, a Penn State religious scholar, predicted that the global south would eventually come to represent Christianity's center of gravity. Now it appears that phenomenon is starting to manifest across a broad spectrum of Christian belief, challenging patterns of leadership and notions of religious identity that in some cases have stood for centuries.
Take, for example, the Anglican Communion. Spread along with the British Empire, its membership now tilts heavily southward: Nigeria alone, with some 20 million adherents, makes up around a quarter of the entire Anglican Communion. The church's recent schism over gay rights, which pits liberal white bishops against traditionalist counterparts from Africa, has upended old colonial lines of authority, leading to the odd spectacle of dissident conservative ministers in America formally shifting their affiliations to authorities in faraway countries like Uganda.
The story is similar within the Catholic Church, the world's largest Christian denomination. Roughly a third of the College of Cardinals currently hails from the global south, lending support to predictions that someday, perhaps quite soon, they will elect a non-European pope. If that were to occur, it would only echo what is happening in Catholic parishes throughout the developed world. In the United States, where a shrinking number of young men are willing to accept the sacrifices required for ordination, one in six of all diocesan priests, and one in three seminarians, are now foreign-born. The world's largest Catholic seminary is in Nigeria. When I went to my childhood home in South Carolina for the holidays last year, a visiting Nigerian priest celebrated Christmas Mass at my own family's parish, surprising his passive audience with an upbeat, stemwinding, almost evangelical homily on God's glory.Continue reading the main story
Christianity is practiced differently in the global south, and especially in Africa, where it has been invested with cultural values that long predate the first missionary efforts. During the 20th century, the population of Christians in Africa grew from 10 million to around 360 million, and that could double by 2025, by which time demographers project the continent will be home to a quarter of all believers. These Africans are making Christianity their own, in ways both subtle and profound. This is evidenced in political debates over subjects like homosexuality, which is scorned throughout the continent, or condom distribution, which — despite the current pope's opposition — some local Catholic bishops have countenanced as a practical response to AIDS. But it can also be seen in a style of worship: colorful, musical and suffused with a belief in the presence of the supernatural in everyday life.
This Africanization is obvious in Pentecostal sects like the Redeemed Christian Church of God. Here again is a story of revival. The Pentecostal movement is said to have begun in 1906, in a rundown church in a Los Angeles ghetto, where a black preacher gathered a multiracial congregation to pray in a fashion that contemporary critics saw as radical and strange, maybe even possessed. Today there are around 600 million Pentecostals worldwide, the vast majority of them in developing nations, and Africa is a hotbed. Pentecostalism is not so much an organized religion — it has no central authority — as a set of beliefs and practices that can be adapted by local entrepreneurs. It is perfectly suited to harness the modern forces of global crosspollination.
American televangelists like T. D. Jakes and Benny Hinn are received like rock stars when they fly into African capitals, where they preach to crowds estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands. Their African counterparts, meanwhile, are moving in the opposite direction, winning converts in Europe especially. In Kiev, a Nigerian minister leads a predominantly white Pentecostal church that claims a membership of 30,000, including the city's mayor. Four of the 10 largest megachurches in London are run by Africans. Of all the many new sects, however, none are as organized as the Redeemed Christian Church of God. "I always cite the R.C.C.G. as the best example of a rising church that, probably by the time I die, is going to be a global denomination," Philip Jenkins said. "It really is pushing so hard in all possible directions."
The Redeemed Church offers a case study of the crosscurrents that are drawing Christianity southward. Its leader and guiding force, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, sums up the church's history this way: "Made in heaven, assembled in Nigeria, exported to the world." He preaches that his followers — known as the Redeemed — are a chosen people and have a special covenant with God, one that promises that the church will one day claim an adherent in every family on earth.
The Redeemed mission to the United States represents perhaps the greatest test to date of these immense ambitions. The church is still in its infancy here, with only around 15,000 active members, most of them Nigerians, but its goal is to make gradual inroads into the wider culture, at first aiming at members of immigrant groups — other Africans, Caribbeans, Latin Americans, Asians — and then moving on to African-Americans and whites. They are filled with the confidence of miraculous faith, though they realize they are contending with cultural impediments. "Initially, it may be rough," says Pastor James Fadele, head of the church's operations in North America. "But some of our children grew up in America, and they are affiliated with the church, and they have white friends, they have African-American friends, they have Asian friends. They will come to the church. It's a matter of time."
Fadele has entrusted the task of increasing the number of Redeemed churches to Daniel Ajayi-Adeniran. Reed-thin at 44, the minister carries himself with the earnest conviction of someone who has already surmounted many obstacles. He came to this country in 1995, without a job or a place to live. At first he slept in homeless shelters and subways until he landed a job at a Brooklyn car wash, where the owner let him bed down in a hallway. He now presides over a parish with around 400 members and branches in other cities. "I believe that when there is raw power, when the lame come to church and can walk, when the blind can come and see . . . when things begin to happen like that, people will come," the pastor told me. "It's going to be very, very explosive."
THE BEST EVIDENCE OF THE REDEEMED CHURCH'S outsize aspirations, at least in this country, lies in the prairie lands of Hunt County, Tex., about an hour northeast of Dallas. Down a gravel road, past barns, a white clapboard Methodist church and flat fields of dark, freshly turned soil, a large brick-and-glass auditorium appears from behind grain silos. A sign points the way to Redemption Camp, the church's North American headquarters. From this unlikely base, in the course of less than a decade, the Redeemed have spawned nearly four hundred parishes. Over the long term, church officials plan to develop the site as a mixed-use community, with homes, stores, a university, a commercial fish farm and perhaps even a water park.
In January, Ajayi-Adeniran traveled to Redemption Camp with other church leaders to celebrate the end of a month of fasting. Several hundred people, most of them Nigerian, gathered in the auditorium for a service that began in the morning and went well past midnight. It was televised live on the Internet for a global audience. A succession of evangelists asked God to heal sickness, to keep the faithful from harm, to cancel debts "supernaturally" and, most of all, to multiply the ranks of the Redeemed. Wearing a white linen jacket and clutching a crinkled Bible, Ajayi-Adeniran stood in the front row, hands raised and eyes closed, his head bobbing, his face fixed in an ecstatic grimace.
Even by the passionate standards of Africa, the Redeemed are renowned for the intensity of their prayer. In Nigeria, it has been called "the weeping church." During services, members of the congregation will clap, whoop and break into glossolalia — speaking in tongues — which Pentecostals believe to be the verbal expression of the Holy Spirit. They will collapse to the floor, burying their faces in the carpet, and writhe in the throes of divine communion. "I don't know how to explain it," Ajayi-Adeniran once told me when I asked him what he felt when he prayed. "There's a kind of aura that comes from above that envelops you."
It is this spiritual zeal that the Redeemed Church hopes to bring to Americans. Though its successes so far are tentative and anecdotal, they appear to be real. In my visits to many Redeemed churches in different parts of the country, I encountered non-Nigerians at every turn. That night in January at Redemption Camp, I met an African-American woman named Della Faye Sowunmi. A native of Indiana, Sowunmi is married to a Nigerian and was first exposed to the Redeemed by her sister-in-law. "I just wasn't getting what I was after spiritually in the Baptist Church," she said, explaining her conversion. "To watch people praise and worship like that, it touched my heart."
Enoch Adeboye, the Redeemed Church's leader, calculates that there are countless Americans who feel such spiritual longing. "There is an emptiness in man that can only be filled by God," Adeboye told me in October. Adeboye was visiting Baltimore to preside over a conference of the church's ministers and activists. We met in a high-ceilinged Marriott hotel suite, which was guarded by two mountainous security men. Adeboye sat in a wingback chair, next to a gilt fireplace, dressed casually in black slacks, a collarless African patterned shirt and white sneakers.
To understand what the church plans for America, it is crucial to appreciate what it has become in Nigeria, largely because of Adeboye's personal charisma and sophisticated appeals. Born into a family of poor cocoa farmers, Adeboye taught mathematics at the University of Lagos before he became a full-time minister. His followers, who revere him as a patriarch, call him the General Overseer, or Daddy G.O. The church he has built echoes his personality: it is disciplined, nurturing, systematic. Back in Nigeria, Adeboye claims to have at least five million followers, including some of the country's most influential figures. As general overseer, he presides over financial ventures, including private schools, a bank and a media business. He's innovative at developing methods to spread the word, as well as coming up with fresh revenue streams. The church produces inspirational movies on DVD, which are big sellers, and offers a service that sends daily text messages, believed to offer divine protection, to subscribers' cellphones.
In our interview, Adeboye began to talk, as he often does, about his own personal journey to salvation. It is a story with the usual Augustinian elements: prestige, women, booze. But Adeboye's distinctive weakness, one he also glimpses in this society, was what he describes as an idolatrous reliance on reason. "It begins to give man the impression that man is the almighty, that man can do anything," the pastor said. "He can go to the moon, go to Mars, perform operations with a laser beam without spilling blood. The problem, the way I see it, is that because of the advance of technology, science and investing, the Western world began to feel that they didn't need God as much as before. Whereas in Africa, we need him. We know we need him to survive."
Nigeria's evangelical surge dates to the late 1960s, when university students formed campus prayer groups. Christian students, rejecting their parents' less-vigorous beliefs, became born again and embraced Pentecostalism, which had long been present in Nigeria but previously was considered lower class. Political factors spurred the revival, too, particularly in later years, as Nigeria suffered through a series of military dictatorships dominated by Muslims from its northern region. Though Adeboye seldom mentions Islam, Nigeria's other proselytizing faith, it is clear that religious tension fueled the awakening. Like everyone on campus, Adeboye was exposed to Pentecostalism, but he says he didn't give himself over wholeheartedly to God until he was in his 30s. Seeking a cure for a daughter's persistent illness, he wandered into a modest church overseen by an aging pastor who was reputed to be a miracle worker. According to Redeemed lore, the moment Adeboye appeared, a vision told the old man that he'd found his inheritor.
The pastor, Josiah Akindayomi, founded the Redeemed Church in the 1950s, with God's promise, according to doctrine, that it would eventually reach "the ends of the earth." But the faith had not spread very far by the 1970s, in part because Akindayomi spoke only Yoruba, which limited his ability to evangelize beyond the bounds of his tribe. The next leader of the church, he knew through prior revelation, needed to be "a man of books," capable of reaching the wider world. And so, in 1979, Akindayomi unveiled his succession plan.
Adeboye recently celebrated his 67th birthday — with a huge revival held at Redemption City, the church's worldwide headquarters, located 30 miles north of Lagos. The model for the Texas site, Redemption City is built on land that was formerly occupied by animist shrines. Since the 1980s, Adeboye's followers have constructed homes all around the grounds, along with schools, supermarkets, banks and a water-treatment plant. Every December, inside a mammoth hall, Adeboye holds a six-day event called the Holy Ghost Congress. Crowd estimates — never an exact science, especially in Africa — are in the millions.
"It is the largest prayer meeting in the world, and there is not another prayer meeting in the world that is a close second," said Dr. James O. Davis, a Pentecostal minister based in Florida and the founder of the Billion Soul Network, an organization devoted to spreading Christianity around the world. "Everything that the Redeemed Church does is huge."
UNLIKE MANY PENTECOSTAL DENOMINATIONS, the Redeemed Church is a tightly regimented organization, with authority flowing down from the general overseer through geographic zones and into individual parishes. Adeboye, for all his talk of blind belief, is still a numbers man, and he has shown a strong preference for delegating authority for overseas missions to leaders who have training in business or science. Pastor James Fadele, the head of the church in North America, is a former automotive-design engineer as well as a close relative of Adeboye. Fadele left a job at the Ford Motor Company to run the church full time from Texas. He holds an M.B.A. and has some practical business experience — he used to own a Wendy's franchise in Detroit — and he says he has to think like a marketer when it comes to his mission here. "Everything," Fadele told me, "is Americanized."
That applies, in a narrow sense, to things like the books the Redeemed Church uses in its American Sunday schools, which have been purged of parables about market women and chickens, and more broadly, to the way the church positions itself in society. In Nigeria, church leaders speak out against corruption and make efforts to fight AIDS, while here they've assimilated the political rhetoric of the Christian Right, condemning abortion and pledging to take prayer back to public schools. The most Americanized aspect of the church, though, is its missionary strategy, which bears a striking resemblance to the business plan of a successful corporate chain — like Wendy's, for instance. For now, in the United States, the emphasis is as much on erecting infrastructure as on making converts. Enoch Adeboye would prefer to have many small parishes rather than a few megachurches. So the Redeemed spread through a process similar to mitosis. When a parish reaches a certain size, it is encouraged to divide in two, with part of the congregation moving to a nearby location, usually with a newly ordained pastor, a process that the Redeemed, adopting a bit of American evangelical lingo, call "church planting."
Last fall, I saw James Fadele give a presentation on missionary strategy to a gathering of church leaders. A short man with big voice and an endearing sense of humor, he spoke over a series of PowerPoint slides, in which Venn diagrams and bullet points alternated with pictures of the targets: black, white, Hispanic and Asian faces. "How do we love people?" he asked rhetorically. "We love people by planting churches."
One slide, a bar graph, showed a set of ambitious growth objectives. Each of the church's 22 zonal coordinators in North America, he said, had been charged with planting seven churches during the previous year. He announced an award for Pastor Daniel Ajayi-Adeniran, who, in addition to overseeing the overall effort, had also managed to consistently hit his numbers in the zone he administers, which encompasses New York and Vermont. Other coordinators reported less success, and Fadele cheerfully scolded them.
"Last year in October, we had 297 parishes in North America," he said. "As of September of this year, we have 374. Praise the Lord!"
There was a round of applause, and Fadele's voice turned stern.
"To Daddy G.O., that's a failure," he snapped. The number of parishes had increased by 25 percent in just a year, but Adeboye had asked for twice that.
One way that the church promotes growth in this country is by encouraging successful congregations to start satellites in other cities. Della Faye Sowunmi belongs to a church called the Holy Ghost Zone, in Irving, Tex., which grew out of a similarly named mother church in London. Both are led by female pastors. Victory Temple, based in Bowie, Md., has spun off outlets around the Southeast. Probably the most successful example is Jesus House, which was established by a large Redeemed church in Lagos. It now has branches all over the world. The Jesus House brand signature is "empowerment," and the churches cater to the well-to-do, including businesspeople and others who have benefited from Nigeria's recent oil boom. Jesus House's Washington outlet is located in the Maryland suburbs, in a glass-fronted building that looks like a software company's headquarters. "Our congregation is 90 percent professional," said Ghandi Olaoye, the pastor. "We create avenues to give knowledge to people so that their lives can be better." Olaoye's church offers computer classes and hosts weekly business networking meetings. A recent celebration, "Empowerment Week," featured American and African preachers and the motivational speaker Willie Jolley.
Church leaders are quick to contest any suggestion that they preach the "prosperity gospel" extolled by American evangelists like Creflo Dollar, which teaches that God will grant material wealth to those he favors, but whatever distinction they're making is small. ("I am not a prosperity preacher," James Fadele said at one sermon I attended, "but I am rich!") Redeemed pastors routinely petition God to transform their followers into millionaires, members are encouraged to tithe and the Sunday collection is accompanied by joyous fanfare. At various events I attended, I heard Fadele ask members to raise money to help Adeboye buy a private jet (which duly arrived in March) and to sign up to accompany the general overseer, at a cost of up to $8,500 a person, on a coming pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which is to feature luxury hotel accommodation and a re-enactment of the Last Supper.
A sizable portion of the money collected in the United States is directed back into the North American organization's centerpiece project, the expansion of the camp in Texas. Since 2000, Redeemed officials have been buying up large parcels of farmland around a rusty rail-stop town called Floyd (population: 220). They picked the spot, they say, in accordance with a vision Enoch Adeboye had many years ago, after a layover at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. Progress on the project has slowed, at least temporarily, since a $20 million loan was delayed. But in mid-January, when I visited, Fadele told me that construction would soon begin on a hall that seats 20,000.
The larger quarters are necessary, Fadele said, to accommodate the many thousands that flock to Redemption Camp for an annual June revival ministered by Adeboye. The event, which goes all night, has caused some consternation among neighbors. Some cities in Texas, especially Houston, have large Nigerian communities, but the area around Floyd is pickup-truck country — very rural, with a long history of racial prejudice. Until the 1960s, a banner hanging over the main road in downtown Greenville, the county seat, read, "The blackest land, the whitest people."
Over time, however, the Redeemed have become accepted — if a bit warily — as a part of the community, says John Horn, the Hunt County judge, its highest elected official. "I came from the law-enforcement field prior to running for judge, and I had heard some of the issues regarding the Nigerian Internet scams," he told me. "I think there were probably some preconceived notions about that." But Horn said the church had made efforts to reach out, inviting him, for example, to attend Fadele's 60th birthday party. Fadele explained that the Redeemed had tried to bring all their neighbors to the camp for such public occasions to show them "we are a Christian church," he said, "not a cult."
The Redeemed Church has made a similar effort to quell any suspicions that American evangelical leaders might have, portraying itself as firmly within the Pentecostal fold. American evangelists are routinely invited to preach at the church's revivals both here and in Nigeria. Those who have gone to Nigeria have come home with the impression that the Redeemed Church is a force to be respected — a potential partner, not a competitor, in a common struggle to revive Christian worship. "I often say," says Bishop Bart Pierce, a white Pentecostal minister from Baltimore, "that the African is the midwife for next great move of God in America."
RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION IN AFRICA is an omnipresent element of life: pastors are celebrities, waiters quote Scripture, gospel music plays in government offices and secular newspapers report miracles with the same credence they extend to soccer scores. Salvation is never too far away. When Daniel Ajayi-Adeniran woke up on Christmas morning in 1989, on the floor of his house in a town near Ibadan, hung over and convinced he had to make a change in his life, he knew where to find the Redeemed Church. There was one across the street, with a loudspeaker mounted on its roof, through which sermons bombarded the neighborhood every Sunday.
As an educated man with a civil-service job, Ajayi-Adeniran was a prime recruit, and within five years he was ordained an assistant pastor. Committed as he was to the church, he couldn't endure Nigeria, which was then under the rule of Gen. Sani Abacha, a particularly nasty dictator. He immigrated to the United States, part of a wave of African migration that has come to many American cities. At the time Ajayi-Adeniran arrived, the Redeemed Church was just getting started in the United States. He began attending its first parish in New York, on Roosevelt Island. When some Nigerians from the Bronx decided to start their own church, he became its pastor.
The parish subdivided several times, according to the Redeemed model, before Ajayi-Adeniran settled at his current location, a yellow-painted, two-story brick building. When he first leased the property, it was derelict and gutted. Gradually, Ajayi-Adeniran renovated and built a substantial Sunday following, directing his proselytizing toward the souls available in the neighborhood. "My focus here is the black Americans, Caribbeans, Africans and Spanish," he said. "For me to get whites in the church, it will take a miracle."
His parish's population has fluctuated over time because new churches keep splitting off. There are 13 so far, in locales as distant as Syracuse, Buffalo and Burlington, Vt. Some require more nurturing than others. The parish in Burlington, for instance, has been a particular struggle. "Vermont is 96.2 percent white," Ajayi-Adeniran points out. But the general overseer wants the Redeemed to have a presence in every state, so a few years ago Ajayi-Adeniran drove to Burlington, scoured phone books for African names and eventually located some Congolese and Sudanese refugees. "Now they have maybe two or three Nigerian families, and the rest are Congolese, Sudanese, then black Americans and whites," he said. "They're not too many, but they average 40, 45" attendees on Sunday. "It will definitely work," he predicted. "But it will take time."
You might reasonably question why a church with limited resources would expend effort and capital in such an unpromising location, but that misses the point of Enoch Adeboye's vision of ubiquity. He is preparing to meet a demand that so far exists only in prophecy. "If it appears as if initially our church is sent to target the immigrants from Africa and so on, it's because you have to start somewhere," Adeboye told me. "But then, later on, the people who are natives of this land will sooner or later come to the realization that they need God, and we will be on the ground when that time comes to present God to them."
The Redeemed Church believes that this country has fallen into the thrall of wickedness. With an adoptive boldness that seems quintessentially American, Redeemed preachers talk of restoring a bygone God-fearing era. In their sermons, they invoke the founding fathers — many of whom had no problem with buying and selling people from Nigeria. "Right now there is moral decadence," Ajayi-Adeniran said. "Things are not the way they used to be. All kinds of things: pollution and watering down of the Gospel — the gospel of convenience, the gospel of tolerance. You want to please people rather than pleasing God. That is one of the purposes, why we are here, to bring sanity to the church."
Like many evangelists, Ajayi-Adeniran sees this as a particularly ripe moment: hard times are good times for belief. His flock in the Bronx, full of people at the margins of the work force, looks to him for spiritual guidance. On a snowy Sunday morning in January, two days before Barack Obama was to be inaugurated president, Ajayi-Adeniran strode to a clear glass lectern as his church band played an African-tinged rendition of an old American gospel hymn. In one hand, he clutched a white handkerchief; his sermons are full of sweaty exertion. "We're going to pray for our nation, the United States of America," he said, as he opened his Bible to the Book of Zechariah. He read a passage commanding God's chosen people to rebuild Jerusalem's razed temple.
"This is our Jerusalem!" Ajayi-Adeniran shouted, as he began to jump and swing his arms in loose-limbed fervor. "You want to talk to God?" he asked. In response, his congregants dropped to their knees and began to speak in tongues, which to the uninitiated sounds like a babble of sharp syllables. Above the din, Ajayi-Adeniran voiced a series of petitions to God, seizing certain phrases and repeating them, almost as if he were chanting an incantation. "Father, restore the old glory back to our nation," the pastor said. "The old glory. The old glory." Ajayi-Adeniran jabbed a finger toward heaven, his sermon crescendoing in a high-pitched, swooping cry: "Churches are in pain. Children of God are in pain. People are losing their jobs. Many are losing their jobs. Marriages are breaking up. God — God almighty — come and heal our land. Come and heal our land! Come and intervene. Move! Move! Move!"
IT IS A TENET OF PENTECOSTALISM that the divine is an active force, which is revealed through signs and wonders. The broad movement, however, encompasses a wide variety of practices. All the Americans I met who had gravitated to the Redeemed Church described their motivations similarly: they were searching for something that they felt was missing from this society, a feverish engagement with the worship of God. "I've seen in other churches such a laid-back sophistication," said Keith N. Green, who drifted through a number of African Methodist Episcopal and nondenominational churches before joining a Redeemed parish in Columbia, S.C. "When I came here I didn't see that. I saw a congregation of people who really enjoyed praise. I didn't see any shyness in here about dancing for Jesus."
The Redeemed see God as a magical presence in their lives. Like most Pentecostals, they believe that when the Holy Spirit inhabits them, they can perform miracles and see the future. Enoch Adeboye is said to have publicly prophesied the untimely death of General Abacha in 1998, three days before it actually happened. In "Let Somebody Shout Hallelujah!" a hagiographic biography of Adeboye written by his former secretary, the general overseer is credited with using his God-given powers to raise the dead, avoid traffic jams, foresee coups, restore hair to the balding and cure kidney disease, depression and H.I.V. Bart Pierce, the Pentecostal minister from Baltimore, says he witnessed such miracles while attending Adeboye's services in Nigeria. "We watched people get right out of their wheelchairs and walk," he told me.
"They move — 'they' being the Africans — in the supernatural," said Cheryl Broadus, who attends the same multiethnic South Carolina parish that Green belongs to. Born in Brooklyn, Broadus said she happened into the church after she moved to Columbia to work for a local public television station. "They have brought those miracles that we read about in the Bible, that we know Jesus performed," she said. "This is what really drew me and a lot of the Americans."
Her pastor, Kwesi Ansah Jr., describes himself as a "pioneer missionary." A few days before Christmas, he pulled up in a Nissan Pathfinder — its license plate reads, "Fear This God" — and led me into his church, which is located in a building vacated by a defunct mortgage broker. A jovial, pie-faced man, Ansah told me that in contrast to most Redeemed pastors, he is not a Nigerian but a Ghanaian, and he has spent his life preaching the Gospel in locales as disparate as Israel, Australia and Spain. His current posting, he says, is one of his most difficult. There's a lot of evangelical competition in South Carolina, and not many Africans. But Ansah has managed to establish a congregation of around 100, with satellite parishes in other South Carolina cities.
"It was the Westerners, Europeans and Americans that brought the Gospel as missionaries to us on the dark continent of Africa," Ansah said. "So the seed was sown, is grown, germinated, and it is now bearing fruit. So we're now here to also give back."
The Redeemed often cast their mission as a recapitulation, but the reality is that their church did not originate, in any meaningful sense, as a Western import. Its founder, Josiah Akindayomi, was born around 1909, into a family that worshiped Ogun, the Yoruba god of iron and war. According to "A New Paradigm of Pentecostal Power," a study of the church by the Nigerian scholar Asonzeh Ukah, Akindayomi may have been a babalawo, a priest and healer in the indigenous tradition, before his conversion to Christianity. He started off as an Anglican and briefly attended a mission school but left that church to follow a local prophetess who belonged to a grass-roots Christian movement called aladura, or "owners of prayer."
The aladura movement began in western Nigeria around 1920. Though its teachings and style of worship bear a resemblance to American Pentecostalism, which sprang up roughly contemporaneously, many scholars believe the aladura churches were an entirely independent phenomenon, probably a response to cataclysms like the 1918 flu pandemic. Philip Jenkins, whose most recent book, "The Lost History of Christianity," is a study of missionary movements, points out that charismatic practices have a long history and arose with eerie similarity in places like Los Angeles and Brazil. "A lot of the stuff they're getting, they're getting from the Book of Acts," he said, referring to the portion of the New Testament that describes the miracles the apostles performed during the early spread of Christianity. To scholars, this coincidence is evidence of a theological undercurrent, and to sociologists it speaks of a deep human need, but to believers it's simply proof that some truths are everlasting.
The aladura movement incorporated elements of traditional belief systems, which revolved around a diverse pantheon of natural and ancestral spirits. For its first generation of followers, like Akindayomi, aladura represented a bridge between two worlds. "There's a lot of homegrown material in these churches," said Elias Bongmba, a Rice University religious-studies professor. "The members — though they may not accept it — actually share a similar worldview with the indigenous religions."
Akindayomi, as an itinerant preacher, wandered the roads of western Nigeria in all-white garments, ringing a bell and winning converts through his healing abilities. Eventually he formed the Redeemed Church in 1952. By this time, Akindayomi had communicated with some Pentecostal missionaries who were based in South Africa, and he became convinced that the aladura tradition had gone astray. He banished the most obvious remnants of the indigenous religions, along with any suggestion of worldliness. Men and women were strictly separated at services, where there were no musical instruments, and Akindayomi refused to take up collections for fear of the corrupting influence of money. He also banned polygamy, an accepted practice in Nigeria.
Many aladura churches still exist in Nigeria, but the Redeemed now distance themselves from them. "Even though they love to pray, they are not sound biblically," James Fadele said. The same adaptive process that produced the church in the first place has, more recently, moved in a homogenizing direction. Adeboye, who has made a close study of American evangelists, has altered some teachings to conform to biblical orthodoxy while simultaneously loosening Akindayomi's more strident prohibitions. Music had become an integral part of worship, patriarchal restrictions on women have been lifted and the asceticism on which the church was founded has been replaced by a joyous embrace of materialism.
The Redeemed following, which was small, poor and uneducated when Adeboye became the general overseer, is now full of members of Nigeria's elite. Adeboye has made an explicit effort to recruit the upper classes and prominent government figures by setting up what are called "model parishes," churches where, in the words of the general overseer's biographer, the affluent are able to "have the company of their likes at fellowship." Adeboye enjoyed a close relationship with President Olusegun Obasanjo, a professed born-again Christian who ruled between 1999 and 2007, and though Adeboye often speaks out against corruption, the church has clearly profited from its relationship to powerful figures. Recently it has come in for criticism in Nigeria for securing lucrative government concessions and for making extravagant expenditures, like Adeboye's new plane.
For all its transformations, however, the Redeemed Church's primary appeal is still what it was in Akindayomi's day: it offers its followers the chance to harness otherworldly forces. The Redeemed don't deny that the gods of indigenous religions exist and possess real powers. But they say such spirits are satanic. A major theme of Redeemed teachings, to its Nigerian audience especially, is that becoming saved protects you from the curses, spells and sorcery that Africans, even Christian ones, commonly blame for all manner of misfortunes, from car accidents to impotence. Church officials in the United States are somewhat averse to talking about this aspect of doctrine. They are well aware of the ridicule that was heaped upon a Kenyan preacher after a video clip of his prayer to protect Sarah Palin from "the spirit of witchcraft," offered during a guest sermon at her Alaska church, fell into the hands of bloggers. In fact, like many elements of Africa's indigenous cosmology, the belief in evil spirits is entirely consistent with mainstream Pentecostal teaching, which holds that God and the Devil — an actual being — are engaged in continual "spiritual warfare."
At services I attended, James Fadele frequently prayed aloud against "divination" and "enchantment." When I asked him what he meant by that — if he thought witches were real — he replied, cautiously, "Some people don't believe it." Then he quoted St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians, which refers to "powers" and "principalities" and calls on Christians to "stand firm against the tactics of the Devil." "So there are enemies around us," Fadele said. "Because our eyes are not open doesn't mean they are not there."
Redeemed pastors often attribute afflictions like poverty and addiction to demonic possession and preach against "generational curses," which can explain everything from inherited illness to family dysfunction. Cheryl Broadus, the South Carolina follower, told me that Kwesi Ansah had proved his effectiveness in combating evil by performing an exorcism on a woman at her church. "She was slithering on the floor like a snake," Broadus said. "My pastor was sound, firm, using the word of God as a weapon."
One winter night, in the poor southern part of Dallas, I attended a prayer service at a tiny Redeemed church overseen by a slight, earnest man in a blue hooded sweatshirt, Pastor Raphael Adebayo. A biting ice storm was on the way, and rain was already falling as wet and shivering people started filtering in. Every one of them was American, most of them were black, some were homeless and all of them were grasping for some kind of deliverance. Adebayo, who has made it his mission to win Dallas's most desperate people over to the Redeemed Church, did what he could to offer it. One member of the congregation after another stood up to testify. One man said the church had helped him to stay out of trouble since he'd gotten out of jail the previous April. Another said Adebayo helped him to reconcile with his wife, who had sent him to the hospital by throwing scalding water into his face. "I am battling a huge addiction that I know is the Devil," said a young woman in a gray puffy coat.
Adebayo called for anyone else who was dealing with addiction to come to the altar, and almost everyone in the audience moved forward. He told the congregation to repeat after him: "Say: 'Lord Jesus, I know by the way of Scripture, you did not create my life for disaster. You did not make me for shame. I am not an American by chance. I am in this country of plenty because you have a plan for me.' " The pastor pulled a bottle of olive oil from beneath his lectern and anointed each person's forehead.
After the prayer service, the pastor offered free fried chicken, and some members of the congregation began rummaging through boxes filled with secondhand clothes and odds and ends donated by a Nigerian-owned supermarket in Plano, Tex., that was going out of business. "I am from Africa," the pastor told me. "So I know I have a lot obstacles. But I know one thing: If I give them clothes and food, they will come to me."
A convert from Islam, Adebayo was brought into the Redeemed Church by his wife, and he started ministering in south Dallas because he knew the place, having worked there as a gas-station attendant when he first came to America. "We don't want to start from the top," he said. "We want to start from beneath."
There has been some resistance to this bottom-up approach. Adebayo was one of several Redeemed pastors who expressed the opinion that some elements of the church may have become too focused on fund-raising and wealth-building and with creating a community for immigrant Nigerians rather than exporting the religion to others. Kwesi Ansah, a Ghanaian, told me that some non-Nigerians did not feel completely accepted by certain Redeemed pastors, who mostly still come from the Yoruba tribe. "Some of them think: let us keep it to ourselves," he said. This is a common tension in young churches: St. Peter and St. Paul, after all, initially disagreed about whether the salvation of Christ was available only for those who followed Jewish law or, as Paul decisively argued, was meant for all believers. The experience of pastors like Raphael Adebayo suggests that if the church is serious about spreading its message among Americans, its best approach would be the one it had in the beginning, offering help to the needy.
"The vision of the church is to reach out, but some people want to stay in the comfort zone," Adebayo said. "That was not the original plan."
THE MOST IMPORTANT FIGUREin the early history of Christianity in Nigeria was a Yoruba named Samuel Ajayi Crowther. Born at the turn of the 19th century, he was captured by slave raiders as a boy, only to be freed from bondage by the British Navy and transported to the free colony of Sierra Leone, where he was converted and schooled by Anglican missionaries. In the early 1840s, Crowther returned to his homeland as a leader of the first Protestant missions. He translated the Bible into Yoruba and began the ponderous work of persuading his skeptical people to give up their gods, measuring success in terms of tiny footholds and handfuls of souls. Those few initiates who learned the Scripture, who were called "readers," were often dispatched into the interior to preach in untouched regions. But every bit of progress was accompanied by many more frustrations, setbacks, even martyrdoms.
Mission work has always been an exercise that pits faith against futility. At the time of Crowther's death, his biographer wrote that the vast majority of Africa remained "utter heathen, living in the densest darkness of superstition and sin." To contemporaries, the idea that the continent could ever become Christianity's redoubt would have seemed as far-fetched as the Redeemed Church's vision of an African-based world church.
The Redeemed are fully aware of how impossible their mission appears: that's why they speak in terms of miracles. Like the missionaries of old, they have put a great deal of effort into recruiting Americans who show interest in being trained as pastors — their own "readers." Della Faye Sowunmi leads a volunteer group in her congregation, in which she urges the sometimes reluctant Nigerians to reach out to other African-Americans, and she says she hopes to one day lead a church herself. Kwesi Ansah told me that he hoped that Keith Green, one of his American parishioners, would become an effective emissary to the local black community. And last fall, when I first met him, Daniel Ajayi-Adeniran said he had particularly high hopes for one member of his congregation, a half-French, half-Dominican Bronx resident named Patrick Darge.
Darge joined Ajayi-Adeniran's church in 2003. At the time, he was facing a long jail term on federal narcotics-distribution charges. He attributes his relatively light sentence, three years, to God's intervention. In prison, Darge was born again and became the head of the Christian fellowship, and when he got out he came back to the Redeemed Church. He is now one of Ajayi-Adeniran's assistants and a constant sidekick. A slight, mild-mannered 36-year-old, Darge recently started ministering his own Spanish-language service, held on Sunday afternoons, which he has tailored with a mind toward breaking down what he calls "cultural barriers." When I visited one Sunday, there were around 10 people in attendance, and Darge struggled valiantly to shake them out of their torpor, exhorting them to sing and shout as the Nigerian Pentecostals do.
On an evening in October, shortly before Enoch Adeboye was to take the stage to preach at a revival in downtown Baltimore, Ajayi-Adeniran told me that, from this modest start, he hoped to soon plant Darge in his own church. Then that would divide, and divide again, and soon enough the Dominicans and Puerto Ricans wouldn't view the Redeemed Church as African but as something their own. "I see us making a major breakthrough in the neighborhood," the pastor said. "I can see new things happening now."
We were sitting at a Starbucks. Before we left, Ajayi-Adeniran made sure to chat up the fellow sitting at the table next to us, a Cameroonian as it turned out, and he invited him to see Adeboye speak. Later, the pastor took a seat on the floor of the First Mariner Arena, a 13,500-seat venue that is the home of Baltimore's professional indoor soccer team. Around the subterranean dressing room where the general overseer was granting audiences, a phalanx of suited ministers and bodyguards were furiously tapping on their BlackBerrys. By 10 p.m., when Adeboye finally made his way to the stage, accompanied by a pair of American guest ministers, the arena was getting close to full, with an audience of mostly black faces.
In his sermon, Daddy G.O. was his usual self. He spoke in a honeyed baritone, mixing talk of proofs and equations with colloquial parables, both biblical and African. Periodically, a startled expression would pass across his squarish face, and he would say, "Thank you, Father," an indication of that he had received a message from above. The revelations were general and irrefutable. "Somebody here today, you will never lack again" went one. Another was: "This very night, the activity of witches in your family will come to an end." As the clock approached midnight, Adeboye gave the audience a prophecy: "You will yet make history in this nation — amen!"
Adeboye wrapped up with the altar call, in which those who are not yet saved are called forward to become members of the Redeemed. Hundreds of people streamed to the foot of the stage.
"In Africa, we get excited when people give their lives to Jesus," Adeboye instructed his flock. "Go ahead," he said, "talk to the almighty." And then it came, in a roar like a wave, thousands of voices raised in the unknowable language of heaven.Continue reading the main story


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Portals @ Extreme! Lab
The Extreme! Computing group is involved in several Grid Portal projects that aim to create problem solving environments that allow scientists to program, access and execute distributed Grid applications from a conventional Web Browser. In one class of Grid portals, which we will call science portals, scientific domain knowledge and tools are presented to the user in terms of the application science and not in terms of complex distributed computing protocols. The goal is to allow the scientist to focus completely on the science problem at hand by making the Grid a transparent extension of the their desktop computing environment. Another class of Grid portals, which we call user portals, provides the user with direct views of Grid resources and services. These portals require the user to have a greater understanding of Grid technology than application-oriented science portals, but they often form the foundation of these more advanced tools.
Main ContributionsThe project works closely with the Open Grid Computing Environment and that release is our current release of the portal. In addition there are a number of special web services tools that we provide that can work with this portal at one level or another.


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"I love the Phonathon because it gives me a chance to connect with our amazing alumni. I know that what we do here not only makes a difference for us, but for every student attending a Utah State campus statewide. I also love the people I work with; we are like a family!"
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The USU Aggie Connection Phonathon program reaches out to alumni, parents, faculty, staff, and friends of Utah State University. The Aggie Connection is staffed entirely by USU students who provide a firsthand perspective on the difference a gift can make and why the annual fund is crucial to USU's success. The Aggie Connection is used to increase alumni participation and support as well as to keep our alumni and friends connected to the University. A gift given through the Phonathon goes to support student programs and activities that are not fully supported by tuition and student fees. To ensure your gift is available to use right away, PAY YOUR PLEDGE right here on this page. If you have already made your gift, please accept our sincere thanks.
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Jeter homers in return, while Soriano and Matsui come full circle
Derek Jeter's home run off of Matt Moore was the 256th homer of his career. (Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
With one appearance in the Yankees' first 104 games this season, Derek Jeter has had to play the waiting game for longer than anyone might have expected when he was carried off the field during the American League Championship Series last October due to a fractured left ankle. In his first game back from his second disabled list stint of the season, he didn't take long to make an impact.
With his typical flair for the dramatic, Jeter came to bat in the first inning of Sunday's game against the Rays and crushed Matt Moore's first-pitch fastball for a solo homer to right centerfield:
[mlbvideo id="29214171" width="600" height="360" /]
Prior to his previous return on July 11, Jeter admitted that he planned to swing at the first pitch he saw, and he collected an infield single. So it was hardly a surprise that he swung at Moore's first pitch, and hardly out of character that he bashed a homer, the 256th of his career. Though power isn't his calling card, Jeter homered for his 3,000th hit back on July 9, 2011 against the Rays' David Price.
Sunday's shot was the first by a Yankee since July 14; they had gone nine games without a homer, losing six and scoring just 28 runs. It was the first homer by a right-handed Yankee hitter since Jayson Nix hit one on June 25. When newly acquired Alfonso Soriano followed with a two-run blast in the third, the pair of homers equalled the number hit by Yankee righties since May 22, and enabled the team to tie Royals righties with 26 homers, still the lowest total in the majors. With just a .221/.283/.310 line coming into Sunday, Yankee righties ranked dead last among all 30 teams in both on-base and slugging percentages. Soriano's homer was just one of his four hits during the game -- including a game-winning RBI single to give the Yankees the 6-5 victory.
Jeter broke his left ankle back on October 13, and needed surgery to implant a metal plate and screws. He received a clean bill of health to return to action in early March, but played in just five Grapefruit League games before suffering a setback. As of Opening Day, the Yankees had hopes that their 39-year-old, 13-time All-Star shortstop would return around May 1, but on April 18, he was diagnosed with an additional crack in his ankle.
Having played just four rehab games and not completed one in the field, he was activated ahead of schedule on July 11. While serving as the Yankees' designated hitter, he suffered a right quad strain running out a groundball, sending him back to the DL. Saturday was the first day in which he was eligible to return; instead he played a simulated game in Staten Island while his teammates were being two-hit by the Rays' Chris Archer. Sunday's game marked his first appearance at shortstop for the Yankees.
Soriano's homer, which also came off Moore, marked his first hit since being reacquired by the Yankees on Friday. According to the YES Network, the last time he and Jeter homered in the same game was on July 17, 2003. Also homering in that game for the Yankees — hitting a ninth-ininng walkoff homer, at that — was Hideki Matsui, who was in his first stateside season with the team after coming over from Japan. Matsui, whose seven-year career with the Yankees ended with him being named MVP of the 2009 World Series, was honored prior to Sunday's game. After spending full seasons with the Angels and A's, he played 34 games with the Rays last year before being released. He signed a one-day contract so he could officially retire as a Yankee. Here's the video from those festivities:
[mlbvideo id="29216215" width="600" height="360" /].