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Architects, Designers and Specifier? Download this for free - register now
Wooden architrave is used as a decorative door surround. This architrave is available as a softwood architrave and hardwood architrave and can be produced in a number wood options.
Learn more about this product - CLICK 'View Detail Sheet'. The dimensions shown are the overall, finished sizes.
Architrave 999 is a custom product - this is produced to order and available in many types of wood.
Useful links to help you - About wood, Care and Decoration, Moisture Content, Durable Wood, Pricing, Match your design, Why wood is so good, Our blog, About us, Get in touch
Architrave is used around door linings or window/opening surrounds. To provide a decorative detail and/or to cover joints between plastering/wall finishes and door frames or door linings.
This item is recommended for internal application
When choosing an architrave to go with a skirting - consider a slightly thicker architrave as this helps break the joint where they meet. Alternatively choose an architrave block
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Here's an opportunity to get involved, by creating promotional materials for our Driver Safety Program in Kansas. The job allows use of creative ideas geared to increase volunteerism for the state and... Read More »
Be out in the community, Interact directly with clients, Work independently while supporting the lifesaving mission of the American Red Cross by becoming a volunteer transportation specialist and... Read More »
Simply by using your vehicle you can save animals - Volunteer your time to transport animals along what is called a "Rescue Relay Transport". Each week there are hundreds of animal rescue transports... Read More »
These volunteer listings are provided by AARP's Create the Good. Visit Create The Good to search more volunteer opportunities or post your own opportunity.
Find ways to help directly in the Grantville area, whether you have 5 minutes, 5 hours or 5 days to give. Read More »
Monday, Dec 16, 2019 at 8:00am
Kansas Traffic Safety Resource Office
Topeka, KS
Wednesday, Mar 4, 2020 at 2:00pm
Suburban Lawn and Garden
Lenexa, KS

subset: commoncrawl


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Oct. 23, 2007
Senior libero Ann Mullins broke the all-time Atlantic Sun Conference career record for digs, but the Lady Bisons couldn't take a home a win against Belmont.
"I think it was bittersweet for Ann," said Lipscomb coach Brandon Rosenthal. "It was a great moment.
"Obviously, we knew this was within her sight. I imagine she is a little relieved to get it done and move on. The first thing Ann will say is only the wins matter."
Tuesday night at the Curb Center in the volleyball version of the "Battle of the Boulevard" the Lady Bisons won game one of their match 31-29 before falling 30-21, 30-21 and 30-20.
"This is a perfect example of us not playing to our capabilities," Rosenthal said. "Unfortunately, it came on the wrong night. This was a little bit of a hiccup.
"I thought Belmont did a great job getting to us early. We didn't play well at all in the first came but we came out with a win. I thought that might spark us a little bit, but we just continued to struggle."
The loss ended a school record eight-match winning streak for the Lady Bisons.
"Ball control has been one of our keys throughout the year and we got burned by it," Rosenthal said. "There is nothing to hang our heads about.
"I told the players this is one of those things. We lost a good match. This will fuel us into the next match for sure and for the next several matches without a doubt."
Senior middle blocker Alex Scruggs paced the Lady Bisons offensively with a team-high 14 kills.
"I thought Alex did a great job," Rosenthal said. "Our players in the middle did a fantastic job. Unfortunately, it was one of those things where I didn't think we controlled the ball well enough to get it to them enough. And on the outside we came up short."
Senior outside hitter Ashley Cox added 10.
"I was proud of Ashley coming off the bench and really doing a nice job," Rosenthal said. "She played her heart out. That's what I ask for all the time."
Mullins broke the record for digs of 1,843 formerly held by Liz Kane of Mercer. Mullins, who transfered to Lipscomb after her freshman season at the University of Tennessee, surpassed the mark in only three seasons. She entered the match needing only four digs to break the record. She finished with a team-high 15 for the match. Belmont stopped the match to make the announcement of the milestone.
"Belmont was very classy in recognizing her the way they did," Rosenthal said. "That takes a lot to do that."
Defensive specialist Jessica Turner came off the bench to make 11 digs. Also in double figures were Stefine Pease and Grace Gilmore with 10 each.
Belmont's Cat Mundy made a match-high 24 kills. Megan Clements recorded a match-high 21 digs.
Both Lipscomb and Belmont are already qualified for the Atlantic Sun Tournament.
"There is some comfort in the fact that we are going to get to see Belmont again," Rosenthal said. "There is a lot for us to learn right here. We were riding an eight-match winning streak, but we didn't play consistently in this match."
The Lady Bisons are 14-10, 6-3 in the A-Sun. Belmont is 18-7, 7-2 in the conference.


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Airborne Interactive Ltd specialises in development and integration of embedded software on interactive video systems installed on passenger aircraft.
Our software is installed on hundreds of aircraft and used by thousands of passengers every day in every corner of the world all in their own languages.
Products we have developed allow passengers to watch on-demand video or audio, play games, go shopping, reserve a hotel, car or taxi or just browse for information all from 30,000ft.
Our main facility is in Chichester, West Sussex on the south coast of the UK, 90 minutes from Heathrow airport and 60 minutes from Gatwick airport.
In addition we have an expanding facility in Lake Forest, California to provide local development capability to our customers in Orange County.


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I have to admit I am a skeptical Google+ user. Coming at it from my easy, breezy Twitter perspective, I find Google+ clunky and cumbersome, particularly because I don't like staying logged into my Google account all day unless I'm using it.
So one day when I found myself in a Twitter conversation with a colleague (who I met through LinkedIn, mind you) debating the merits of Google+, I got to thinking that--if nothing else--I ought to see if there are other devotees out there, and why they adore the platform. (I don't think Google's own Google+ Learn More site does it much justice.) I posted a Google+ query on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and the website Help A Reporter Out. I discovered that I have a lot to learn when it comes to Google+, and thought you'd be interested in my findings too.
'G+ Force' is out there.
I received more than 30 responses to my query, "Seeking passionate Google+ business users," in 72 hours. Because it's Google, I expected responses from SEOers and online or social media marketers (which was the case) but I also heard from a surprisingly diverse collection of other types of business users, all with stories of their own. I then posed a series of questions to these users (which I posted on my own Google+ page to help facilitate responses), and culled their answers for this article.
Facebook is the past; Google+ is the present and future.
When I asked, "Do you value Google+ above other social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn and--if so--why?" I got many responses like this one, from food industry social media strategist Michele Martin: "Facebook is my past; Google+ is my present and future." Comparing social networks, respondents view Facebook as mingling with people you knew in high school, whereas Google+ is where you find people who have similar interests today.
Like Twitter, Google+ has open and transparent attributes, but users like it better because you can write more than 140 characters and posts have longer shelf-life and nested comments. Power users find the "quality of conversations more thoughtful and engaging on Google+," so says space and astronomy news publisher, Fraser Cain.
Favorite (and least favorite) Google+ features.
"I believe Google+ is the best collaborative environment on the Internet," claims former brick-and-mortar retailer turned 100% e-commerce business owner, Bob Shirilla. "It has all the features that I want."
Google+ fans rave about all its features, particularly Circles (Google+'s way of letting you organize and segregate people), Hangouts (Skype-like private video conferencing), and Hangouts On Air (live streaming broadcasts for all the world to see). Digital marketer Corey Vandenberg also gives a big thumbs-up to Google+ Local, through which local businesses can share consumer reviews to help grow their businesses.
A few users also mentioned the use of hashtags, since they were already accustomed to using them on Twitter, and Authorship, which allows you to link your Google+ profile to the other content you create. Several respondents also commented that they liked the lack of tolerance for spammers, a subtler alert and notification system, and no interference by advertising.
Sean Grace of CoupSmart focused on other finer details like: the ability to edit font faces to "bold or italic type, hyperlinks in the About section, ability to edit posts whenever I want to, integration with other Google Apps and products."
As for least favorite features, techie types complain that they're still waiting for Google to make its API available so they can build out applications upon it. Some folks also complain about the poor integration with other outside social networks and tools makes it more difficult to use (which should be remedied once the API becomes available). Still others wish for little things like vanity URLs.
What's your Google+ strategy?
Mostly I got the feeling that Google+ users were motivated to build Google+ into their social media strategy because they want to ensure the health of their own search rankings since social sharing has become an ever more important criteria in search algorithms.
Other Google+ strategies ranged from nothing more than building networks by adding people to circles and "+1'ing" (Google's version of the "Like" button) content and comments, to distributing company news and information, intelligence gathering, and "creative experimentation," as attorney Michael Cavendish explained. "The core of the Google+ community is a thoughtful one, but one that has deep experience with the Web," he says. "As content consumers, they want offerings of substance, but they also appreciate being surprised, or following a new way of presenting something."
Michele Martin provided these helpful resources to find and connect with new users on G+:
- Find People On Plus (filter down by gender, occupation, location, etc)
- Women of Google+
- Recommended Users (based on topicality)
How is Google+ better or worse than other social networks?
Google+ wins points for its internal search engine (particularly compared to Facebook's), big photos, its mobile app, Pages for business, and the responsiveness of the Google+ team. Several of my respondents like Dotty Scott noted the audience on Google+ skews "older and more professional."
As to Google+'s weaknesses, I heard repeated squawking about Google+'s comparatively small audience. That said, most devotees seem to have the patience to wait. Many of these same folks like being the early adopters in this space.
Chad Wiebesick, director of social media and interactive marketing at Pure Michigan, points out that, "Google+ could do a better job with helping business pages run social media contests and promotions...but with its recent acquisition of social media promotion company Wildfire, this will likely change."
Google+ advice for business owners and entrepreneurs.
Overwhelmingly, most of my respondents encouraged Inc. readers to just dive in and get going. Several reminded that you get out of any social media platform what you put into it so don't expect Google+ to work wonders for you if you're not really utilizing it.
And Alan K'necht of Digital Always Media has some other sage advice: "For what it costs [nothing], setting up a Google+ business Page, you need to claim your real estate now before someone else does. Don't assume there isn't another company with your name somewhere else in the world... especially if you're a small business."
To read the full transcript of all the responses I collected, download the PDF.


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YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan -- Snow and runways aren't usually a good combination, but a melting flight line has kept the plows busy at the main U.S. base on Antarctica this year, according to a National Science Foundation representative.
Pegasus Field, used by U.S. Air Force LC-130 ski planes and wheeled C-17 Globemasters, is little more than a groomed and marked section of permanent ice shelf across the bay from McMurdo Station, the largest of three bases that the U.S. has built to facilitate scientific research.
Wind-blown dust that absorbed heat during the Antarctic summer's 24-hour-a-day sunlight caused so much degradation that wheeled aircraft couldn't land there for a month, said the NSF's George Blaisdell, who is overseeing U.S. research on the frozen continent this season. But adding large amounts of snow, combined with cooling temperatures, has allowed the C-17s to resume work.
Alaska Air National Guardsman Master Sgt. Tyler Sutton, who spent a month maintaining cold weather survival gear for airmen in Antarctica this season, said melting ice made commuting from McMurdo to Pegasus a challenge.
"It would take a minimum of an hour and as long as three hours depending on the weather just to get to the flight line," he told the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson Arctic Warrior newspaper last week.
Despite the difficulties, six LC-130s from the New York Air National Guard's 109th Airlift Wing and an Air Force C-17 out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., spent several months transporting more than 1,200 scientists and workers and millions of pounds of supplies to camps all over Antarctica.
One hundred twenty Guardsmen are flying the LC-130s to move personnel and supplies.
The LC-130s transported two disassembled helicopters from McMurdo to Pine Island Glacier, a research site 1,000 miles away -- a treacherous trip for choppers over featureless terrain, Blaisdell said.
The LC-130s also transported autonomous underwater vehicles that scientists plan to use to explore some of more than 250 lakes discovered beneath Antarctic ice sheets.
On Jan. 28 U.S. scientists announced that they had penetrated Lake Whillans, a half-mile under the ice.
They think it may contain undiscovered life forms that have survived in one of the world's most extreme environments.
With the perpetual darkness of the Antarctic winter drawing near, 80 sailors will man a floating ice pier at McMurdo to unload a cargo ship bringing supplies for next season, Blaisdell said.
(c)2013 the Stars and Stripes
Visit the Stars and Stripes at www.stripes.com
Distributed by MCT Information Services


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Senate Bill 61 says guards not liable in use of force
RALEIGH � A bill introduced last week seeks to give security guards at nuclear power plants the same liability protections as a police officer when it comes to the use of force.
The bill, Senate Bill 61: Nuclear Security Guards No Liability, was introduced by freshman Sen. David Curtis, R-Iredell, after one of his constituents, a security guard at McGuire Nuclear Station in Mecklenburg County, brought up the issue and asked him to address it.
�My constituent asked me to do it,� Curtis said. �He was not sure he would not be sued if an intruder penetrated the perimeter of this nuclear plan and he shot them. This basically gives a nuclear security plant officer the same protections as a police officer. He can perform his duties without wondering.�
If the bill becomes law, a security officer, his employer and the owners of a nuclear generating facility will not be �civilly or criminally liable� for use of force, including deadly force. The bill was referred to the Senate�s Judiciary II committee for consideration.
Curtis� bill is a first, and could fill a gap in the laws, said Howard Hall, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Tennessee.
�This is the first case I�ve seen of a law like this,� Hall said. �I don�t know that anyone has thought too deeply about this in the past.�
Duke Energy would not disclose, for security reasons, how many officers it has guarding three nuclear plants in North Carolina, including the Brunswick Nuclear Plant near Southport. Tim Pettit, a spokesman for Duke Energy, said the officers are well trained and qualified to protect the plants.
�These officers, in combination with a vast array of security systems, physical barriers and the robust design ensure the safe, secure operation of these facilities,� Pettit said. �We have a highly trained security force that like law enforcement officers is routinely trained in a wide range of scenarios to ensure the appropriate response in protecting our nuclear facilities and the health and safety of the public.�
Pettit said the plants use a mix of contract security personnel and officers hired by Duke Energy employees.
�Our security management team is direct Duke Energy employees,� Pettit said.
Pettit said neither Duke Energy nor the nuclear power industry requested any change in the law, and he did not comment on the merits of the bill.
�We are reviewing the language in the bill,� Pettit said.
The North Carolina Sheriffs� Association said it has not reviewed the language of the bill or talked to Curtis about his intent.
The bill has gained some support in the House. Rep. Frank Iler, R-Brunswick, said last week the guards should have the same protections as police officers. The Brunswick Nuclear Plant near Southport is in Iler�s district.
�They need to know they can protect themselves without being sued,� Iler said.


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Please select further products to compare.
Technical Specification
Norbar has devised easy-to-use online calculators that support the correct application of torque in three key areas:
NORBAR TORQUE TOOLS LTD. Wildmere Road, Banbury, Oxfordshire, OX16 3JU, United Kingdom
Registered Office as above - Registered in England No. 380480 - VAT No. GB 119 1060 05


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Ask Kagan about ObamaCare
Senate Judiciary Committee members should be sure to ask Solicitor General and Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, during her upcoming confirmation hearings, whether she or her office played any part in crafting ObamaCare or the administration's defense to the lawsuits challenging that law. If Kagan helped to craft either, that would present a conflict of interest: when those lawsuits reach the Supreme Court, she would be sitting in judgment over a case in which she had already taken sides.
Though the Solicitor General deals with appellate matters, it is certainly possible that Kagan was consulted during the drafting of the law or the administration's legal strategy for defending it.
The Senate Democrats who drafted ObamaCare took pains to protect it from a constitutional challenge. The law contains several pages of findings designed to show that the Constitution's commerce clause authorizes Congress to force Americans to purchase health insurance. It would have been prudent for Senate Democrats to ask the government's top appellate lawyer, who belongs to the same political party, whether they had done all they could to protect the "individual mandate" from a constitutional challenge.
Opponents began filing legal challenges to ObamaCare just minutes after President Obama signed it into law, and seven weeks before he announced Kagan's nomination. On Tuesday, the Obama administration filed its first response, to a private lawsuit. According to the Associated Press, that filing "is to be followed in coming weeks and months by federal government court responses to lawsuits filed by many states." Regarding the case filed by 13 (soon to be 20) state attorneys general, The New York Times reports, "Some legal scholars, including some who normally lean to the left, believe the states have identified the law's weak spot and devised a credible theory for eviscerating it." It is not certain, but it is certainly possible that the Office of the Solicitor General was consulted on the government's response to lawsuits that would likely reach the Supreme Court.
If Kagan played a role in drafting ObamaCare or formulating the administration's legal defense, and is confirmed by the Senate, propriety would dictate that she recuse herself from any challenges to that law that reach the high court. Supporters and opponents alike should be interested to know whether the Court will judge ObamaCare with nine justices on the bench, or eight.


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Trudell - Golden Brown - Round Dining Room Table & 6 UPH Side Chairs
$1,349.00 $1,459.00
Brand: Signature Design by Ashley
All solid Pine wood construction, finished in a weathered golden-brown hue with subtle wire brushing and varying natural distressing. D658-35 has robust leg posts and an 18" leaf. D658-01 features all solid wood construction and a scooped seat. D658-02 is upholstered in a dark gray fabric with a tufted back and cabriole legs. The server features ample storage with several framed doors and drawer. Island/counter table has storage on one side. D658-124 stool features all solid wood construction and a scooped seat.
|Round DRM Pedestal Table Base:
|39.00" W x 39.00" D x 24.13" H
|Round DRM EXT Pedestal TBL Top:
|48.00" W x 66.13" D x 30.25" H
|Dining UPH Side Chair (2/CN):
|19.75" W x 26.00" D x 40.25" H


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Get the Glow
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It takes less than a minute for chemicals from skin care products to get into your blood stream. That is why we set out to develop a super effective, free of harmful chemicals skin care line. This line produces such significant results that women and men all over the country are switching to LimeLife and not only are they looking better on the outside, they are healthier on the inside as well.Shop Now
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At LimeLife, we empower people to achieve their goals and dreams and to inspire others to do the same. Our family-owned company was founded in 1952 to provide professional makeup to the stage and film industry. Now we are expanding our reach to help women and men everywhere look their best every day with our all natural skincare line and personalized makeup palettes.
Be Amazing Every Day with LimeLife! Xoxo
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Co-Founders | Aunt & Niece


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MARSHALL COUNTY, OK -- Two men commit two separate murders. Now one of the suspects is dead and authorities say the other has confessed. We brought you the story on First News Weekend at 6.
Amanda Brown spoke with Marshall County law enforcement and brings us the newest details.
Investigators say Joshua Mahaffey and Joshua Scott broke into 20-year-old Ashleigh Marie Lindsey's home in the 13000 block of Cardinal Ln. in Kingston around 2 p.m. Friday afternoon.
"It looks like one of the individuals entered though the back door the same time the other entered through the front I believe Mr. Mahaffey was armed at the time the individuals went inside and resulted in Ms. Lindsey being shot killed and Mr. Mahaffy shooting himself," Jones said.
Lindsey was four months pregnant. Marshall county Sheriff's deputies arrested 21-year-old Joshua Scott in connection with Lindsey's murder then they say he admitted to killing another Marshall County man, 43-year-old Chad Page, earlier that same day hiding his body at Fobb Bottom Rd.
Scott told deputies he stole Page's car before picking up Mahaffey and breaking into Lindsey's home.Scott faces charges for both murders.
"First case is for murder of Mr. page which first degree murder charges will be filed in addition to stolen vehicle charges. Second case first degree murder charges will be filed for Ms. Lindsey's death and felony murder charges for the death of Mr. Mahaffey," Jones said.
Deputy David Jones says that's because after Scott killed Page he gave the gun to Mahaffey who shot Lindsey then himself.
Jones says they had been looking for Mahaffey for several weeks because he had threatened Lindsey and attacked her before.
The case is still under investigation.
Scott is being held without bond.


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John Parish has been around seemingly forever in some incarnation or other - whether as a backing man and co-producer in PJ Harvey's band, or helping out the ever-more-hairy Eels frontman E, or releasing occasional solo records in his trademark low-key fashion. A high point might be Dance Hall At Louse Point - a mid-90's album made collaboratively with PJ Harvey that allowed his distinctive style of musicianship to come to the forefront with PJ's voice acting as a perfect foil.
Once Upon a Little Time features echoes of that album's grainy textures and creative approach to musicianship, but misses the drama provided by PJ's vocals - Parish's voice is a soft, quiet mumble, and the songs are all quite sensible and sedately paced and grown up. It hardly makes for the most exciting record of the year (despite the lo-fi, catchy "Sea Defences" and the welcome tatty shuffle of the Beefheart-esque "Even Redder Than That" and "Even Redder Than That Too"). But it is clearly a very accomplished album, similar in some respects to E's recent forays into folksy experimentalism, and I've a feeling that repeated listening will produce slow rewards.
7John Brainlove's Score


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Sulfide Oxidation with Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2) - Water and Wastewater - Chemical Water Treatment
Sulfide Odor Control Sulfide is found throughout the environment as a result of both natural and industrial processes. Most sulfide found in nature was produced biologically (under anaerobic conditions) and occurs as free hydrogen sulfide (H2S) - characterized by its rotten egg odor. We are most likely to encounter biogenic H2S in sour groundwaters, swamps and marshes, natural gas deposits, and sewage collection/treatment systems. Manmade sources of H2S typically occur as a result of natural materials containing sulfur (e.g., coal, gas and oil) being refined into industrial products. For a variety of reasons - aesthetics (odor control), health (toxicity), ecological (oxygen depletion in receiving waters), and economic (corrosion of equipment and infrastructure) - sulfide laden wastewaters must be handled carefully and remediated before they can be released to the environment. Typical discharge limits for sulfide are < 1 mg/L. Sulfide Treatment Alternatives There are dozens of alternatives for treating sulfide laden waters, ranging from simple air stripping (for the low levels present in groundwaters) to elaborate sulfur recovery plants (used to treat several tons per day at refineries and coal burning power plants). There are processes based on biology (using compost filters, scrubbing media, or inhibition/disinfection), chemistry (oxidation, precipitation, absorption, and combination), and physics (adsorption, volatilization, and incineration). Each process occupies a niche which is often defined by the scale and continuity of treatment, whether the sulfide is in solution or is a gas, the concentration of sulfide involved, and the disposition of the sulfide containing medium. However, for reasons relating to convenience and flexibility, chemical oxidation (using hydrogen peroxide) continues to grow in its scope of application. Treatment with Hydrogen Peroxide While other peroxygens such as permonosulfuric (Caro's) acid, peracetic acid, and persulfates will oxidize sulfide, their use for this application is overkill. Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is considerably simpler and more cost-effective. H2O2 may control sulfides in two ways, depending on the application: Prevention - by providing dissolved oxygen which inhibits the septic conditions which lead to biological sulfide formation; and Destruction - by oxidizing sulfide to elemental sulfur or sulfate ion.


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This question comes out of curiosity. I have seen some people mention you just divided by zero. For example,
http://thxforthe.info/2007/12/02/you-son-of-a-bitch-you-just-divided-by-zero-didnt-you/ The title says "YOU SON OF A BITCH – You just divided by zero, didn't you?"
A comment posted at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL0QGn4lx_Y : K4Kendetta says -"Donno what it is about this song, but it gets to me. As jjared said, I feel happy and sad at the same time...somehow. Loquat....I believe you just divided by zero..."
These two cases may or may not be in different contexts, but is there any meaning to the expression? I guess it means you did a difficult task. Is that true?


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KEY MOMENT: With Houston leading, 4-3, in the eighth inning, Angels reliever Cam Bedrosian — who made his big league debut Tuesday — walked the bases loaded. Fernando Salas replaced him and immediately gave up a two-run double to Jose Altuve and a two-run single to George Springer, widening the Astros' lead to 8-3. "It's pretty frustrating, but it's something I've got to bounce back from," Bedrosian said.
ON THE MOUND: The Astros mostly used a small-ball attack of infield hits, bunts and stolen bases against Angels starter Tyler Skaggs, who gave up four runs and seven hits in five innings. Kevin Jepsen continued to pitch stellar relief; he retired the side in the seventh inning and now has not given up a hit or a run in his last 11 appearances covering eight innings. Springer, Houston's highly touted rookie, struck out looking at Jepsen's 97-mph fastball. "I'm trying to do the same thing I've been doing all season, just throw strikes and attack guys," Jepsen said.
AT THE PLATE: Mike Trout had a run-scoring double and Albert Pujols' sacrifice fly provided another run. Erick Aybar singled home Chris Iannetta, who had doubled off the left-field wall, in the fifth inning and Aybar picked up another run batted in when he walked with the bases loaded in the ninth inning. Iannetta had his first three-hit game of the season and David Freese had two hits.
EXTRA BASES: The Angels chose left-handed pitcher Sean Newcomb of the University of Hartford (Conn.) in the first round of the amateur draft; he was the 15th pick overall. The 6-foot-5, 240-pound Newcomb went 8-2 with a 1.25 earned-run average at Hartford this season, striking out 106 in 93 1/3 innings. Angels scouting director Ric Wilson described Newcomb as "a four-pitch pitcher with two solid breaking pitches. We're elated to get him." It was the first time since 2011 that the Angels had a first-round draft pick. The Angels used their second-round pick and 53rd overall selection on Joe Gatto, a 6-4, 215-pound right-hander from St. Augustine Prep in Richland, N.J. Gatto, whose fastball has touched 97 mph, went 7-1 with a 0.94 ERA and 65 strikeouts in 52 1/3 innings this past season.
UP NEXT: As the Angels return to Angel Stadium to play the Chicago White Sox, Angels ace Jered Weaver (6-4, 3.33 ERA) faces Andre Rienzo (4-2, 4.26) at 7 p.m. Friday. TV: Fox Sports West. Radio: 830, 1330.


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Don't be surprised if baby cradles of the future come equipped with trays to hold computer keyboards.
A new study indicates that 82 percent of children under 2 years old in 10 Western countries have some sort of Internet presence. And in the United States that figure spikes to 92 percent, the highest number among the countries studied.
Proud parents, it seems, are posting photos of their offspring faster than you can say "ba ba black sheep."
New Zealand ranks just behind the U.S. with 91 percent and Canada and Australia both hit 84 percent. Of the countries polled, only Japan has fewer than 50 percent of its under-2-year-olds online.
Does this foretell an entire generation is going to grow up with serious privacy and identify theft concerns? Possibly, says the German company AVG, which administered the study.
"Obviously there's a privacy issue," AVG spokeswoman Siobhan MacDermott told CNN. "It's a matter of being aware of what you're doing. When you're posting it to a public forum like Facebook, use privacy settings."
In conducting the study AVG, which is primarily an anti-virus software firm, polled 2,200 mothers from the 10 nations. Of those polled, 33 percent said they've uploaded photos of their infants to a website. This means other friends and family are doing much of the posting.
And with each post, the Internet gets just a little bit cuter.
Selected Reading: CNN, Gawker.com, CuteBabyFix.com.


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The Obama administration is contemplating an unprecedented cyber covert action against Russia in retaliation for alleged Russian interference in the American presidential election, U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.
Current and former officials with direct knowledge of the situation say the CIA has been asked to deliver options to the White House for a wide-ranging "clandestine" cyber operation designed to harass and "embarrass" the Kremlin leadership.
The sources did not elaborate on the exact measures the CIA was considering, but said the agency had already begun opening cyber doors, selecting targets and making other preparations for an operation. Former intelligence officers told NBC News that the agency had gathered reams of documents that could expose unsavory tactics by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
U.S. & World
News from around the country and around the globe
Vice President Joe Biden told "Meet the Press" moderator Chuck Todd on Friday that "we're sending a message" to Putin and that "it will be at the time of our choosing, and under the circumstances that will have the greatest impact."


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As I copied files off the D200 into my Photos folder, I realised that I had not taken a single shot with my Nikon since January. Looking back at the keepers, I'm glad I made the effort to shoot some of the Farnborough Airshow 2014 fly-bys.
This picture was taken with the D200 and a manual everything Sirius 70-210mm f/4-5.6. I had to force myself to check the metering every so often as the lighting conditions fluctuated so much. The trick, I found, was to spot-meter on the clouds at +2 as dictated by the zone system and leave the exposure in the rest of the frame to take care of itself.


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In March, Chen Qigang, a Chinese composer who is supervising the music program for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics, received a National Spirit Achievers Award at a press event in Beijing. He was one of ten artists and businesspeople to receive the prize, which came courtesy of the Chinese magazine Life and of Mercedes-AMG, the high-performance-vehicle division of Mercedes-Benz. The award ceremony, typical of modern China in its mixture of nationalist bombast, materialist excess, and cultural bizarrerie, took place in the 798 art zone—a cavernous factory complex that has been converted into exhibition space. Four AMG vehicles were on display, surrounded by models clad in silver-lamé outfits, in presumably inadvertent homage to "Goldfinger." Projected on the walls and the ceiling of the factory were the words "Will," "Power," and "Dream," with Chinese characters to match. "We believe that Mercedes-AMG will infuse powerful new vigor into China's national car culture," Klaus Maier, the head of Mercedes-Benz China, said. Chen stood to one side, a quizzical expression on his face. Before the ceremony began, he had said to me, "I have no idea what is happening."
While classical musicians around the world fight for a glimmer of media attention, their counterparts in China have no trouble drawing the spotlight. Western classical music is big business, or, at least, official business. Chen Qigang, a mild-mannered fifty-two-year-old whose works elegantly fuse Western-modernist and traditional Chinese elements, was reminded of this last year, when he moved from Paris, where he had resided since 1984, back to Beijing, where he had lived during the Cultural Revolution. In a conversation at his Beijing apartment, he recalled the world of his youth as a repressed, violent place, where classical music was forbidden. Then, in Paris, he had grown accustomed to a culture in which the same small cohort of connoisseurs attended new-music concerts night after night. On a visit to Beijing last year, Chen was summoned to meet the film director Zhang Yimou, who made "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers," and who is in charge of the Olympic ceremonies. Zhang inquired if Chen had any "free time" in 2008. The next day, the composer met with Olympic officials, who asked him to cancel future plans. Chen agreed, and accepted an offer to run the music program, not only because he felt official pressure but because he relished the challenge of directing a retinue of fifty composers, from both classical and popular genres, to entertain a global audience. In America, he noted, no classical composer would be given such a task.
"For the past fifteen or twenty years, classical music has been very à la mode in China," Chen told me, in French. "The halls are full. There are many students. There might also be some difficulties. But there is a very powerful phenomenon at work in the education system. When I visited my old primary school, I found that, out of a class of forty students, thirty-six were studying piano. This points to the future."
Western musicians, administrators, and critics who visit China have lately come away murmuring observations along the lines of "classical music is exploding" and "the future of classical music lies in China." Between thirty million and a hundred million children are said to be learning piano, violin, or both, depending on which source you consult. When the New York Philharmonic was in Beijing last February, on the eve of its heralded visit to North Korea, the Associated Press offered this summary of a press conference given by Lorin Maazel: "Facing dwindling popularity in the West, classical music could receive a boost from a large Chinese population that is increasingly interested in other cultures, the music director of the New York Philharmonic said." Chinese virtuosos and composers crowd New York halls. In April, the Philharmonic presented the première of Tan Dun's Piano Concerto, with Lang Lang as the soloist; shortly afterward, the Metropolitan Opera revived Tan's 2006 opera, "The First Emperor," with Plácido Domingo in the title role.
After a recent visit to Beijing, I had some doubts about China's putative lock on the musical future. Concert halls may be full and conservatories mobbed, but classical music is hobbled by commercial and political pressures. The creative climate, with its system of punishments and rewards, still resembles that of the late-period Soviet Union, which heavily influenced the development of China's musical institutions. At the same time, the wider soundscape of Beijing is as chaotically rich as that of any Western city: nights of experimental music, indie-rock shows soaked in hipster attitude, pop idols cavorting on HD monitors in malls, retirees singing Peking opera in parks. In the "Li Chi," or "Book of Rites," it is written, "The music of a well-ruled state is peaceful and joyous . . . that of a country in confusion is full of resentment . . . and that of a dying country is mournful and pensive." All three kinds of music, together with others that might well have confounded Confucian scholars, intersect in the People's Republic.
The most outwardly impressive symbol of China's musical ambition is the National Center for the Performing Arts, a colossal, low-slung, titanium-clad dome west of Tiananmen Square. Representations of the well-ruled state surround it: the Great Hall of the People is next door, and Zhongnanhai, the Party-leadership compound, lies across the avenue. An inscription above the center's entrance bears the signature of Jiang Zemin, who was China's President from 1993 to 2003, and made a show of admiring classical music. (After the death of Deng Xiaoping, Jiang told the press that he had consoled himself by listening to Mozart's Requiem through the night.) The president of the center, which Beijingers call the Egg, is a local potentate named Chen Ping, who has developed deluxe shopping malls in the eastern part of the city. The complex was originally scheduled to open in 2004, but Paul Andreu, the architect, had to reëvaluate the design after another of his projects, a terminal at Charles de Gaulle International Airport, partially collapsed. At the opening, which finally took place at the end of last year, Chen Ping described the building as a "concrete example of China's rising soft power."
As architecture, the building may live up to its pompous billing, but, as a place for music, the Egg is problematic. There are two main halls: the opera house, which seats twenty-four hundred, and the concert hall, which seats two thousand. The concert hall has reasonably clear acoustics but lacks warmth. In the top gallery of the opera house, where the sound should be best, the orchestra comes across as tinny and colorless. There is little evidence that musical considerations played a role in the design. No serious acoustician would have approved the halls' pockets of extra space, where sound bounces around and gets lost.
The performances themselves suffered in comparison with what you hear on even a so-so night in New York. They showed the inevitable limitations of a classical culture that is less than a century old and has been periodically roiled by political upheaval. China's music-education system may yield notable soloists, but it has yet to develop the breadth of talent and the collaborative mentality that engender great orchestras. Strings are generally polished; winds and brass threaten to puncture the ears. On my first visit to the Egg, I saw a production of "Turandot" featuring the orchestra and the chorus of the Shanghai Opera House. The trumpets let out a piercing flubbed note in the first bar, and many misadventures followed; at times, it sounded as though a civic orchestra had been augmented by members of a high-school marching band. Yet the raucousness was oddly arresting. The idea of the production was to reclaim Puccini's Italianized, Romanticized fantasy of imperial China; Chen Xinyi, the director, emulated the values of traditional Chinese theatre, and the composer Hao Weiya supplied a fluid if somewhat watery ending for the opera, which Puccini left unfinished at his death. In that sense, the rawness of the sound added to the effect, though it wasn't an experience I'd want to repeat.
Near-capacity crowds attended "Turandot" and other events I saw at the Egg. This was impressive, considering the cost of the tickets; for a seat in the uppermost gallery of the opera house, I paid four hundred and eighty yuan—about seventy dollars. That price is considerably higher than for an equivalent seat at the Metropolitan Opera, and vertiginously high when you consider that a low-level white-collar worker at a Chinese firm earns only about four hundred dollars a month. But not everyone has to pay to get in. Large blocks of tickets are set aside for politicians, diplomats, C.E.O.s, and corporate clients; some fail to show up, resulting in rows of empty seats at allegedly sold-out events, and others make an early exit to attend another function or to escape boredom. One Beijing composer told me scornfully that much of the audience was "scouting real estate," and that it would disappear once its curiosity had been satisfied.
It was encouraging, however, to see so many young people in the house—many more than you see on an average night at the Met or the New York Philharmonic. At a performance by the China National Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Michel Plasson, I watched as a cluster of teen-agers, outfitted with bejewelled BlackBerrys, A.P.C. jeans, and other tokens of new wealth, grew excited by the orchestra's noisily energetic rendition of Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique," leaving aside their text-messaging to applaud each movement. In general, listeners behaved more informally than I was used to: some older people, following the looser etiquette of Peking opera, talked among themselves, pointed at the stage, or read newspapers. The hubbub was distracting at times—ushers largely failed to prevent the taking of pictures and videos—but it was refreshing in comparison with the self-conscious solemnity that encroaches on Western concert halls. The music wasn't taken for granted; Berlioz still had shock value.
The youthfulness of the audience at the Egg reflects the real wonder of the Chinese classical scene: the staggering number of people who are currently studying music, whether in schools or with private tutors. The Sichuan Conservatory, in Chengdu, is said to have more than ten thousand students; Juilliard, by contrast, has eight hundred. An American high-school student who practices piano several hours a day is apt to be pegged something of a freak; in China, such a routine is commonplace.
The violist Qi Yue, a young professor at Renmin University, explained to me the various factors that are driving the surge in music lessons. For one thing, students who demonstrate musical gifts can get away with scoring fewer points on the gaokao, China's college-admissions test, not unlike athletes in the United States. Also, the conservatory system has a history of fostering pop stars, who prompt legions of imitators. Cui Jian, the founder of Chinese rock, played trumpet in the Beijing Symphony in the nineteeneighties before embarking on a pop career. The Sichuan Conservatory famously produced the pop singer Li Yuchun, who, in 2005, entered as a contestant on "Super Girl," a Chinese version of "American Idol," and won the competition with a hip-hop-flavored, gender-bending style. (With hundreds of millions of votes cast in the form of text messages, "Super Girl" has been called China's largest democratic election. Perhaps for this reason, the show was cancelled after the 2006 season.)
Qi took me on a tour of the Central Conservatory, China's flagship music school, in the company of his former teacher, the violist Wing Ho. Familiar airs wafted out of the practice rooms—Chopin from the pianists, Rossini from the singers, Tchaikovsky from the violinists. When I looked in on a composition class, though, it turned out to be a lesson in pop-music arranging. A shaggy-haired, T-shirt-clad student named Zhang Tianye was leaning over a computer terminal, working on a mix of drums, guitar, piano, and bass. When I asked him what music he likes, he said he listened "mostly to pop, sometimes classical." Another student, Qu Dawei, sat down at the piano to execute a half-Romantic, half-jazzy solo somewhat in the manner of Gershwin. In other words, attending a conservatory in China doesn't automatically equate with interest in classical music. Yet the intermingling of genres may have the healthy effect of integrating European tradition into the wider culture.
Like most serious Chinese musicians, Qi Yue politely rejected the notion of China as a classical paradise, although he predicted that it would become a major market in twenty or thirty years. Long Yu, China's most prominent conductor, felt much the same way. "On the outside, newspapers are saying that China is the largest musical country in the world, or that millions of kids are learning piano," he told me. "I'm not that optimistic. The thing is, I do my best to serve the people who really need fine arts and classical music. I do not have the duty to make everyone like it." A German-trained musician who operates with a kind of bulldozer charm, Long Yu directs the Beijing Music Festival, has built the China Philharmonic into China's finest orchestra, and holds posts in Guangzhou and Shanghai. To maintain political connections, he serves on the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Nonetheless, he keeps a certain distance from the notion of classical music as "official culture"; he has sought funding from private sources and tried to keep ticket prices down. Notably, he has yet to appear at the Egg.
For a musician on Long Yu's level, politics is unavoidable. Since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the Party has discouraged dissent not just by clamping down on rebellious voices but by handsomely rewarding those who play it safe. Richard Kraus, in his book "The Party and the Arty in China," writes, "By 1992, the Party had given up trying to purge all dissident voices and opted instead for the strategy of urging all arts organizations to strive to earn more money." Those who work within the system may be expected to reach a stage where they can win prizes, obtain sinecures, hold illustrious posts, and be well paid for teaching. Artists end up censoring themselves—a habit ingrained in Chinese history. Behind the industrious façade is a fair degree of political anxiety. Reviews often read like press releases; indeed, I was told that concert organizations routinely pay journalists to provide favorable coverage. Critics feel pressure to deliver positive judgments, and, if they don't, they may be reprimanded or hounded by colleagues. One critic I talked to got fed up and quit writing about music altogether.
"If you are not free yourself, how can you interpret music freely?" the former music critic told me. We met in the lobby of the Grand Hyatt Beijing, above Oriental Plaza, the most opulent of Chen Ping's malls. Businesspeople negotiated deals at neighboring tables while Norah Jones cooed on the speakers. "It's very sad," the critic went on. "Freedom is the biggest thing and it affects everything. People are scared, and they act in a way that scares others. I'm not just talking about music; I'm talking about many professions. There is a lot more to say, and sometimes I don't know where to begin. Many things are stuck in my head."
Western music formally arrived in China in 1601, when the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci presented a clavichord to Wanli, the longest-ruling of the Ming emperors. As Sheila Melvin and Jindong Cai relate, in their absorbing book "Rhapsody in Red: How Western Classical Music Became Chinese," the Emperor's eunuchs experimented with the instrument for a little while and then set it aside. It stayed undisturbed in a box for several decades, until Chongzhen, the last of the Ming rulers, discovered it and sought out a German Jesuit priest to explain its workings. Of succeeding emperors, Kangxi and Qianlong showed the most enthusiasm for Western music; the latter, who ruled China for the better part of the eighteenth century, at one point assembled a full-scale chamber orchestra, with the eunuchs dressed in European suits and wigs.
Only in the nineteenth century did Western music really spread beyond the walls of the imperial palaces, often in the form of military and municipal bands. The first true orchestra was the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra (later the Shanghai Symphony), which began playing in 1919, under the direction of an expatriate Italian virtuoso named Mario Paci. At first, the orchestra had only foreign players and stayed within the bounds of Shanghai's colonial settlements, but Paci eventually reached out to the Chinese population. In 1927, Xiao Youmei, a German-trained pianist and composer, founded the Shanghai Conservatory, the first Western-style music school on Chinese soil. The growth of the Shanghai musical scene profited from a lively community of adventurers, exiles, and, with the rise of Nazism, German-Jewish refugees; on the faculty of the Shanghai Conservatory were associates of Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg.
Mao Zedong, on assuming power, in 1949, initially encouraged the imported music, although he kept it within strict ideological bounds. In the library of the Central Conservatory, I looked at back issues of People's Music, a house journal whose first issue appeared in 1950, the year that the conservatory was founded. There were lyrics for songs called "We Are Busy Producing" and "The Little Song of Handing in Your Grains." Each article, my companions pointed out, began with an automatic spasm of revolutionary rhetoric: "Our musical workers must develop people's musical activities with limitless zeal." Nonetheless, composers made fitful attempts to modernize their art, especially during the Hundred Flowers period, when Mao permitted them to "apply appropriate foreign principles and use foreign musical instruments."
The onset of the Cultural Revolution, in 1966, effectively shut down the Central Conservatory. Western classical music was pushed out, along with most of the native traditions from the imperial era. To replace the extant repertory, Jiang Qing, otherwise known as Madame Mao, commissioned a group of eight "model" scores on revolutionary topics. The most famous of these was the ballet "Red Detachment of Women," which has a kitschily charming score in a light-classical vein, with an array of native-Chinese sounds. Composers had to work within the often peculiar stylistic boundaries that Jiang Qing set up; on one occasion, she extolled Aaron Copland's film score for "The Red Pony," and another time she outlawed the tuba.
The operatic bass Hao Jiang Tian, who, while I was in Beijing, was singing the role of Timur in "Turandot," described to me what it was like to study music amid the delirium of the Cultural Revolution. His first musical performances were as an accordionist and singer in the Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Team of the Beijing Boiler Factory. (He relates these experiences in an engaging memoir, "Along the Roaring River.") Tian's father and mother worked for the People's Liberation Army Zhongzheng Song and Dance Ensemble, as conductor and composer, respectively, but they came under suspicion and eventually had to leave Beijing. One day, Tian's father said that the family had to get rid of its record collection. With a shudder, Tian remembers the childish glee that he felt as he smashed the albums.
After the death of Mao and the fall of Jiang Qing, classical musicians emerged from hiding. When the Central Conservatory reopened, in 1978, eighteen thousand people applied for a hundred places. Present in that first class was a group of composers who define contemporary Chinese music today: Tan Dun, Chen Yi, Zhou Long, Chen Qigang, and Guo Wenjing. Under the guidance of various visiting mentors—among them the ex-patriate modernist Chou Wen-chung, who had gone to America in 1946 and later taken a position at Columbia University—these composers Westernized themselves at high speed, consuming serialism, chance procedures, and other novelties. In so doing, they came up with fresh and vital combinations of sounds, especially when they added to the mix the clear-cut melodies and jangling timbres of traditional Chinese music. Almost all the students had been forced to perform manual labor or study folk music in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, and they arrived at the school with a strong grasp of Chinese heritage.
A diaspora followed. Chen Qigang went to Paris to study with Olivier Messiaen. Tan Dun, Chen Yi, and Zhou Long travelled to New York to work with Chou Wen-chung; all three took up residence in the city. Tan quickly gravitated to New York's downtown scene, particularly to the world of John Cage. By combining Cage's chance processes and natural noises with plush Romantic melodies, Tan concocted a kind of crowd-pleasing avant-gardism. In March, at the Egg, he demonstrated that sensibility with a concert of "Organic Music," with the China Youth Symphony; in "Paper Concerto" and "Water Concerto," the Japanese percussionist Haruka Fujii crinkled paper and swished water in amplified bowls and other receptacles. In a further feat of packaging, Tan relates this music to shamanistic rituals of Hunan province, where he grew up. With such deft gestures of fusion, Tan has satisfied a Western craving for authentic-seeming, folklore-based music.
Many of the '78 composers have worked to reconcile avant-garde and populist values. "In the West, our situation as composers is very sad," Chen Qigang told me. "In the nineteen-fifties, we lost command of the field, not just because popular composers took over but because we ceded the terrain. We 'developed' to the point where we no longer knew anything about the art of writing melody. We had a kind of nonexistence in musical life." Nodding to his Olympics experience, he added, "Now I understand how hard it is to compose a cheery little song." No composer has embraced that challenge as eagerly as Tan Dun, whose submission to the Olympic ceremony is a radically bathetic pop ballad entitled "One World, One Dream." Conceived in league with the songwriter and producer David Foster, Tan's song has been recorded by Andrea Bocelli, the platinum-selling crossover tenor, and Zhang Liangying, another competitor from the 2005 "Super Girl" contest. "You are me and I am you," they sing together, in English. Unfortunately, they don't go on to say, "I am the walrus."
After spending several days in the monumental environs of Tiananmen Square, I was relieved to receive an invitation to brunch at the home of Hao Jiang Tian, the singer who smashed his family's record collection, and his wife, the geneticist and pianist Martha Liao. They live in a Swiss-designed building with a superior ventilation system, which keeps Beijing's acrid air at bay. Tian and Liao also invited Guo Wenjing, who, of the composers of the 1978 generation, is the one least known in the West, principally because he never studied abroad. In some ways, he is the most interesting of all, because he has achieved a substantial degree of independence within the sometimes stifling atmosphere of Chinese music. There is a whiff of danger in his work.
Guo makes an unassuming first impression. Although he is fifty-two years old, he looks like a perpetual graduate student, his squarish face set off by heavy-rimmed glasses and a serrated edge of jet-black hair. But a certain wildness in his personality quickly emerges. He comes from Chongqing, in Sichuan province. His conversation has a slightly percussive edge, accentuated with sweeping gestures and abrupt exclamations.
At the core of Guo's work is an encyclopedic sympathy for Chinese traditional music. In the nineteen-eighties, he collected folk songs in the mountains around the upper Yangtze River. His hero was Béla Bartók, who immersed himself in Eastern European folk music in the early twentieth century and adopted its irregular rhythms and harsh effects. Guo was also drawn to Dmitri Shostakovich, master of the Soviet symphony; Guo's mature works, with their martial rhythms, flashes of biting wit, and explosive climaxes, have much in common with Shostakovich's, even if the musical material is drastically different. The eternally ambiguous Shostakovich might also have been a model for Guo while he traversed treacherous political terrain; although there are "official" pieces in Guo's catalogue, such as an overture celebrating the reabsorption of Hong Kong into China, he has also set to music the poetry of Xi Chuan, a bold and enigmatic writer who had ties to the 1989 student protests.
For a time, Guo chaired the composition department at the Central Conservatory. He stepped down because, he said curtly, "I didn't like it. I'm not good at multitasking." A few nights before, I had heard a choral symphony by Tang Jianping, the conservatory's current composition chair. With the help of members of the Inner Mongolian Song and Dance Ensemble, the symphony told of the life and times of Genghis Khan. It strongly resembled the pseudo-folkloristic pieces that Soviet composers dutifully produced in honor of non-Russian nationalities. This is the kind of assignment that Guo is now generally able to avoid. He still teaches, although he is discouraged by the tendency among younger Chinese composers to copy European trends in order to establish their academic bona fides. "Say there is a young composer who writes in the style of one of Jiang Qing's revolutionary operas," he said. "Today, others would criticize him because he does not sound like Luciano Berio. But I would say, 'Look, he had the guts to do something that everyone criticizes him for. There must be something good about him.' "
In fact, Guo is carrying on, with far greater subtlety, a musical idea that dominated the revolutionary years: melding Western technique with Chinese tradition. Theatre pieces such as "Wolf Cub Village" and "Poet Li Bai" and symphonic pieces like "Chou Kong Shan" ("Sorrowful, Desolate Mountain") and "Suspended Ancient Coffins on the Cliffs in Sichuan" confront listeners with gritty, grinding sonorities, battering assaults of percussion, exuberant bashings and roarings of gongs, and, in the operas, extreme vocal techniques representing extreme psychological states. If Guo strays at times on the wrong side of the divide between ritual grandeur and monotony, he invariably has a strong impact. Some lines from "Poet Li Bai," which chronicles one of the great free spirits of Taoism, seem to sum him up: "Wild and free / Like my poetry / Would I stoop before men of power, / And deny myself a pleasant hour?"
At brunch, Guo was in a sunny mood, but at one point I succeeded in annoying him. Speaking of the music of Chen Qigang, I said that its refined, free-floating timbres suggested a strong affinity between modern Chinese composition and the sound-world of Debussy and Messiaen. Guo swept his arms wide, nearly upsetting the tableware, and proclaimed, "This view shows that foreigners don't understand China. Music here has nothing to do with France. Opposite direction. Different taste." Then he smiled, his argument made. He held up two stubby fingers in the air, as if about to give a blessing. "I am anti-fashion. I look down on the trend. I want to escape the whole question of sounding like the West or sounding like the East. Non-European composers always have to have their cultural identity, their symbols. In Germany or France, they have real freedom. They absolutely have the freedom to write what they want. Of course"—his eyes lit up—"if they are so free, why do they end up sounding the same?"
If Guo Wenjing is a composer with one foot in the official world and one foot outside, Yan Jun—a thirty-five-year-old sound artist, critic, and impresario—lives an almost entirely independent existence. "It is very boring, very dangerous to life, dangerous to young people's heart and mind," Yan said of the academic and professional music worlds. "You go to school, you lose your soul. You learn how to join the official system. It's not about music." There are avant-gardists in every major city who take a similar line, although it has an extra edge coming from an artist in China. Thanks to the Internet, such musicians are less isolated than they were ten or fifteen years ago, when the concept of a Chinese avant-garde was still in its infancy. Well before I met Yan Jun, I had listened to a couple of hours of his music on his various Web sites and blogs.
Yan Jun is the genial, laid-back leader of Beijing's modestly scaled but thriving experimental-music scene. Specializing in creating electronic soundscapes from the noises and voices of the city, he releases recordings on two labels and presents music once a week at a bar called 2 Kolegas, on the grounds of a drive-in movie-theatre complex. The night I went there, the bill included Li Zenghui, a twenty-four-year-old saxophonist in a bebop getup, who delivered a breathy, growling solo; and a Japanese-Korean duo called 10, whose female lead singer alternately sang and shrieked into a microphone while sporting oversized heart-shaped sunglasses.
In his mission to cultivate a "downtown" scene comparable to New York's or Berlin's, Yan has been almost too successful. If the bar and everyone in it had been plopped down in Williamsburg, nothing would have seemed amiss. Out of a crowd of some twenty people, fewer than half were Chinese. Another night, I went to see a flock of indie-rock bands at the alternative club D-22, and found myself engulfed by moshing mobs of American college kids on their semester abroad. Yet the expatriate presence is having a dynamic effect on native musicians. The city is still cheap by Western standards, and, like Berlin after the fall of the Wall, it has become a mecca for artists in search of low rent and new audiences. The expat community includes the young American composer Eli Marshall, who leads the Beijing New Music Ensemble, and Michael Pettis, a former Wall Street investment banker, who founded D-22 in 2006.
The pride of Beijing's underground—No Beijing, Yan Jun calls it—is a twenty-two-year-old indie-rock wunderkind named Zhang Shouwang, who also goes by the name Jeffray Zhang. Pettis saw him one day in the Houhai district wearing a Velvet Underground T-shirt and struck up a conversation. Zhang turned out to be a fleet-fingered guitarist with a wide-open musical mind. Pettis gave Zhang a vintage Gibson SG electric guitar and promoted his bands and side projects, which include Carsick Cars, a locally popular group that has opened for Sonic Youth. The first night I went to D-22, Zhang performed a solo piece that featured beguiling minimalist patterns over steady drones, moving purposefully from clean, simple harmonies into duskier, more chromatic regions. In time-honored Led Zeppelin fashion, Zhang played the guitar strings with a violin bow, to which he meticulously applied rosin beforehand.
Afterward, in hesitant but idiomatic English, Zhang spoke to me about his New York-centric interests, which range from alternative rock to minimalist composers like Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and Glenn Branca. In 2006, he went to New York to participate in a recording of Branca's Symphony No. 13, for a hundred electric guitars. Recently, Zhang had been commissioned to write a piece for Marshall's Beijing New Music Ensemble. "I've never composed before, so it's going slowly," Zhang said, sipping a beer at a back table in D-22. He'd looked at an orchestration manual for clues on how to write for the instruments, but, he said, the book told him only how to pass a test. He came up with "Xizhimen Traffic Lights," a fluent, blissfully mellow study in slowly changing patterns, in the spirit of Reich.
Zhang's première took place after I left Beijing, but I later heard the piece on the Web site of the BBC, which underwrote the concert. I also recently checked Yan Jun's blog to find what sounds he has lately collected, and listened to an audio portrait of Tiananmen Square during a moment of silence in honor of victims of the Sichuan earthquake. A voice is heard saying on a loudspeaker, "It is now 2:28 P.M., Beijing time. All please stand to attention facing the flag for three minutes of silence." This being Beijing, the silence was loud. Thousands of drivers leaned on their horns to create a vast, dreamily dissonant harmony, a fundamental chord of the city.
The curious thing about the Chinese enthusiasm for Western classical music is that the People's Republic, with its far-flung provinces and myriad ethnic groups, possesses a store of musical traditions that rival in intricacy the proudest products of Europe, and go back much deeper in time. Holding to core principles in the face of change, traditional Chinese music is more "classical" than anything in the West.
In many of Beijing's public spaces, you see amateurs playing native instruments, especially the dizi, or bamboo flute, and the erhu, or two-stringed fiddle. They perform mostly for their own pleasure, not for money. But it's surprisingly difficult to find professional performances in strict classical style. In concert halls, the instruments are often deposited, as a sonic spice, into Western-style arrangements, as in the "Genghis Khan" symphony I heard at the Egg. Institutionalized "Chinese orchestras" imitate the layout of Western ensembles. Music intended for intimate spaces has been fleshed out, amplified, and transformed into spectacles suitable for national television. A colleague reports that an allegedly authentic evening of Chinese music in Shanghai ended, bafflingly, with a chunk of Mahler's Second Symphony. Those who remain devoted to the ancient traditions often struggle to show their relevance in the age of "Super Girl." Some master instrumentalists teach at the conservatories but seldom play in public. Even Peking opera, which attracts sizable crowds, feels the pressure. When, earlier this year, the Ministry of Education introduced a new program to foster interest in Peking opera among the young, a poll found that more than fifty per cent opposed the initiative as a waste of resources.
The project of revitalizing Chinese tradition has fallen to younger artists like Wu Na, who, at the age of thirty, has mastered what some consider the supreme aristocrat of instruments: the guqin, or seven-stringed zither. It is more than three thousand years old, and has a repertory that reaches back to the first millennium. Philosophers and poets from Confucius to Li Bai prided themselves on learning it. In the modern era, the guqin has become somewhat esoteric, though interest is growing again. With the support of an elderly Taiwanese couple, Wu runs a guqin school at a teahouse in Zhongshan Park, in Beijing. When I stopped by, two college students were seated at their instruments, imitating their instructor's moves. Wu herself wasn't there; she was in New York, on a fellowship from the Asian Cultural Council. After I returned home, I visited her at her temporary apartment, in Chelsea. When I walked in, she was listening to a recording of Liu Shaochun, one of the players who helped to preserve guqin tradition through the tumult of the revolution. It is music of intimate address and subtle power that is able to suggest immense spaces; skittering figures and arching melodies give way to sustained, slowly decaying tones and long, meditative pauses.
"Liu Shaochun came from a wealthy family," Wu told me. "He grew up playing guqin, practicing calligraphy, writing poetry." Then the Empire fell. "In the end, he had only his guqin. But he was still very powerful. He taught the 'give up'—you can give up everything and become very free."
Despite her fastidious attention to guqin technique, Wu also loves avant-garde music and jazz. She is friends with Yan Jun and goes almost every week to 2 Kolegas. There is a vague likeness between the art of guqin and Western experimental music: the scores indicate tunings, fingerings, and articulations but fail to specify rhythms, resulting in markedly different interpretations by performers of competing schools. Wu sometimes plays in the "old times" style, as she calls it, and sometimes adopts a kind of cool, modal jazz approach; either way, she shows profound sensitivity to her instrument. She recently gave a concert at Roulette, an experimental space in downtown Manhattan, in collaboration with a vocalist and a dancer. Old and new merged in a mesmerizing whole.
When Wu Na returns to Beijing, later this summer, she hopes to develop a cross-cultural exchange that will bring traditional Chinese masters to New York and jazz and blues musicians to Beijing. She noted that audiences in Beijing have little grasp of African-American music in its classic, early-twentieth-century forms. And I realized that, while I had gone around Beijing looking for "authentic" Chinese music, she had been doing the same in New York, searching, with little success, for old-time jazz and blues.
On a day when the center of Beijing was overrun by Olympic hullabaloo—in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace, President Hu Jintao was lighting the Olympic torch, to the accompaniment of Hollywoodish fanfares—I went for a walk in the august sprawl of the Temple of Heaven complex, and saw a sign pointing to the "Divine Music Administration." No such place existed in my guidebook, but I followed the arrows nonetheless. After going around in circles for a while, I came upon a series of buildings where court musicians of the Ming dynasty once rehearsed. The buildings had recently been renovated, most of the rooms filled with exhibitions on Chinese musical history. One could bang replicas of ancient bronze bells and strum on a guqin. A young attendant was standing by. When I asked a question, she proceeded to play the guqin with expert grace. She seemed grateful for the attention; in the past hour, I had been the museum's only visitor.
Then I heard music—not recorded music but the real thing, a slow, grand, forbiddingly austere procession of sonorities. It emanated from behind the closed doors of a hall in the center of the complex. I cracked open the door, but an attendant shooed me away. "Not allowed," she said. I walked over to the box office and asked if a public performance was scheduled; the man behind the counter shook his head vigorously and said, "No music." Just when I was preparing to give up, I saw a van approaching. Twenty or so well-dressed Chinese tourists piled out. Guessing that they were headed into the hall, I slipped into their midst, and made it through the doors.
A half-hour performance ensued, with a full complement of Chinese instruments, and players dressed in vividly colored courtly garb. It was a sound at once rigid and brilliant, precise in attack and vibrant in delivery. It was the most remarkable musical experience of my trip. At the time, I didn't quite know what I was hearing, but I later surmised that I had witnessed a re-creation of zhonghe shaoyue, the music that resounded at the temple while the emperor made sacrifices to Heaven. Confucius, in the Analects, calls it yayue—"elegant music"—and laments that the people are discarding it in favor of vernacular tunes. Now it is a ghost in a phantom museum.
I walked for another hour in the temple park, thrilled to have had an aural glimpse of what I took to be the true music of China. A little later, I heard a wistful melody coming from an unseen bamboo flute, and went in search of its source, hoping for another revelation. After making my way through a maze of pine trees, I found a man of great age and haunted visage, playing the theme from "The Godfather." ♦


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Children of Our Fields November 1, 2012Posted by ToYourHealth in Public Health.
Tags: Child labour, Farmworker, Gratitude, Migrant health, Public health
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Of the three to five million U.S. migrant and legal immigrant workers, about 600,000 of them are children. It's difficult to ascertain an accurate count, because they are under-reported.
Most industries allow minors to work from the age of 16, but for agriculture the minimum age drops to 12. The migrant field worker families often have several children whom each year they uproot from their homes and schools to travel sometimes many states away, to work in endless fields 10-14 hours per day from the age of 12. Sometimes as young as 7 because there is no childcare. And they do this because they feel they have no other choice.
From today's Latin American Herald Times,
North Carolina's regional coordinator of Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs, Emily Drakage's, mission is to document the amount of child labor in the agricultural sector, educate the public and local leaders about the conditions in which the children work and seek support from other organizations to get these minors out of the fields.
"It's a very tough problem. There are cultural and linguistic barriers, economic interests, immigration, educational and health problems, but someone has to speak for these workers who have no voice and are unaware of their rights," Drakage said.
Farm workers earn an average of just $7,000 a year and must pay part of their salary to their employer to cover transport and housing costs. Children earn $1,000 a year.
Usual migrant housing is filthy, rusted and cramped. Poverty levels are extremely high. Little to no access to health care is common. Health insurance is unheard of. One hundred thousand children are injured by sharp blades and other farm machinery each year.
Farmworkers are among the highest risk groups for:
- Poverty–among 97% of migrant workers
- Lack of basic education, literacy and language skills, job training
- Poor health: respiratory and dermatological illnesses, dehydration, heat stroke and heat illness, chronic muscular and skeletal pain, direct exposure to sanitation chemicals and pesticides, infectious disease, chronic disease, work-related injuries, depression and substance abuse, lack of sanitation
- Death
- Sexual abuse
- Gang activity
- Marginalization
- Slave wages and wage fraud
- Failure to thrive under provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act and child labor laws
In 1960, Edward R. Murrow's "Harvest of Shame" aired the day after Thanksgiving. Fifty years later, CBS News revisits the very topic and details again the deplorable working conditions of the migrant family.
Feeling grateful this month as you prepare the bounty for your Thanksgiving table? In a nation where 2/3 of adults and 1/3 of children are overweight or obese from making poor choices about food, one-fifth of our farm workforce is children. These workers drive the agricultural sector and provide fresh food the millions of the rest of us enjoy everyday.
Related Reading:
Itinerant LIfe Weighs on Farmworkers' Children (www.nytimes.com)
NOW With Bill Moyers (www.pbs.org)
Shame On Obama Administration For Sacrificing Children to Keep Agribusiness Happy (www.citizen.org)
United Farm Workers (www.ufw.org)


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