text:
Omaha Royals (7-9):
- Kila Ka'aihue: .306/.452/.612 with 4 homers and 12 Rbis. I don't think that Ka'aihue's performance will have a major impact on the ranking of the Royals system, but his performance has definitely been noteworthy and with each passing day I seem to become more convinced that the Royals have Travis Hafner in triple A.
- David Lough: .271/.317/.407. Lough got off to a slow start after a terrific spring where he seemed to impress every member of the Royals coaching staff. Keep in mind that just a year ago Lough was in Wilmington.
- Carlos Rosa: 8.2 ip with a 1.04 era, 5 ks, 5 bbs. Considering Rosa's peripherals, his era is probably not a reflection of how well he is pitching. Rosa will be in the pen at some point this season.
- Blake Wood: 9 ip with a 3.00 era. 5 ks and 2 bbs.
- Chris Hayes: 2 ip with a 0.00 era and a 0.50 whip. Please let Chris Hayes get a shot in the Royals bullpen. Please?
Northwest Arkansas Naturals (9-5):
- Manuel Pina: .357/.440/.595 with 2 homers and 11 rbis. Dayton Moore and J.J. Picollo both predicted Pina to be a breakout performer in 2010 on the farm and so far they he has not disappointed. Pina has always been known for his defensive skills and if he can get it together with the stick he could be a big riser in the prospect rankings. However, Pina got off to fast start a year ago in the Texas League so it is very possible that it could happen again.
- Derrick Robinson: .321/.400/.472 with 5 extra base hits, 6 steals. Robinson is one of the players in the system that could play a major impact in the breakout of the system. Always a top 20 talent due to his tools alone, if he learns how to hit he instantly becomes a top prospect, not just for the organization but for the entire league.
- Johnny Giavotella: .340/.424/.400. I expect big things from Giavotella this season in Springdale. After a slow start he has had five multi hit games in a row, I expect Giavotella to always be a high obp guy, but hopefully he can develop a little more pop with the bat and more range in the field.
- Mike Moustaksas: .500/.556/1.375 with 2 homers and 5 rbis. I've predicted a huge season for Moustakas and in his first two games he has gotten on to the right track. Moustakas and Eric Hosmer are probably the two biggest factors in the potential breakout of the Royals' system.
- Aaron Crow: 17.1 ip with a 3.12 era. His strikeout to walk has to improve but his groundball to flyball has been filthy so far this season. I'm not sure of his exact numbers but the guy is a groundball machine. Crow will probably see Kansas City in a September callup.
- Everett Teaford: 13.2 ip with a 2.63 era and 12 ks with only 2 bbs. Teaford piggybacked Crow's first start in Springdale but since then he has been moved back to the rotation. He's starting to get too old to be considered a strong prospect, but I'd like to see him get a promotion to Omaha's rotation. Personally I'd rather see the Royals callup guys like this to fill holes on the big club then journeyman pitchers.
- Edgar Osuna: 17 ip with a 0.00 era with 14 ks and 1 walk. Osuna has pitched brilliantly in Springdale thus far and could be the first starting pitcher this season to receive a promotion to triple A.
- Federico Casteneda: 9.2 ip with 0.00 era. Could be a quick riser in the pen.
- Blaine Hardy: 12 ip with 0.00 era. Could he be the first member of the Royals 2008 draft class to reach Kansas City?
- Brandon Sisk: 8 ip with a 2.25 era. Another potential quick rising reliever.
- Louis Coleman: 7.1 ip with a 2.45 era. Who gets to Kansas City from the 2009 draft class first? Coleman or Crow?
Wilmington Blue Rocks (7-8):
- Eric Hosmer: .434/.516/.604. In a notoriously bad hitter's park Hosmer's hasn't had much trouble in the first 15 games of his return trip to the Carolina League. It is early, but it appears that Hosmer's hitting woes from a year ago can probably be attributed to the vision problem. With each multi hit game it is going to be harder to keep Hosmer from Northwest Arkansas.
- Salvador Perez: .316/.341/.395. Needs to hit for a little more pop but in his first 11 games in the Carolina League he may be the biggest surprise after he struggled a year ago in Burlington.
- Michael Montgomery: 18 ip with a 0.50 era with 17 ks and just 4 walks. According to Ben Badler at Baseball America Montgomery has shot up into top 20 prospect status. It's hard to imagine that he has much left to prove in the Carolina League.
- Buddy Baumann: 10.2 ip with 0.84 era with 19 ks and 4 walks. The Royals scouting department has promised an increased emphasis on the backyard and Baumann is an example of this. Either he should be given a shot in the Wilmington rotation or he should be promoted to the Naturals pen.
Burlington Bees (5-11)
- Carlo Testa: .351/.489/.595. Testa is already 23 years old so I hope that the Royals push him along quickly if they actually believe that he is a legitimate prospect. He's hit well thus far and I'd really like to see what he could do in Wilmington.
- Joey Lewis: .235/.317/.509 with 4 home runs. Lewis has some big time power, but he has to prove that it isn't his only tool.
- Kelvin Herrera: 14 ip with a 2.57 era. I like Herrera a lot and believe that he has front line potential, but he has to show that he can stay healthy for an entire inning.
- Bryan Paukovitis: 13 ip with a 3.46 era. Could be a pleasant surprise from the 44th round of the 2006 draft.
- John Lamb: 18 ip with a 1.00 era with 23 ks, and 10 walks. hasn't pitched many innings and I'm sure he is on a strict pitch count in every start with his injury history, but he should be in Wilmington by season's end.
The system has looked very strong and it seems that every night there is an intriguing name on the mound for at least a couple of the affiliates. Sorry about the lack of posts, it's been a busy April for me and May figures to be the same way. Hopefully once summer hits I can post with more regularity.


text:
In support of Rivier University's mission, the Center for Faculty Excellence is under the auspices of the Office of Academic Affairs. It is dedicated to helping all faculty grow as teachers, scholars, and colleagues. Faculty development events, services, and resources enhance instructional innovation and effectiveness and support scholarly and creative activities. Faculty development programs offer variety and flexibility in approaches and strategies, giving faculty alternatives and allowing them to participate in a way that suits their disciplinary orientations. The University envisions faculty members themselves as both guides and resources for this program of enrichment. Whenever possible, campus faculty will engage with each other, providing recognition of faculty effort and promoting a campus culture in which faculty enjoy time together for reflection on teaching and scholarly work.
To achieve this mission, the Center works with the Faculty Development Subcommittee of the Faculty Senate, the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs, and the Office of Information Technology to recommend policies, procedures, and programs that support professional development of faculty, ensuring communication between faculty and administration in relation to resource policies and allocations for faculty development. The Center also provides communication and coordination across university divisions in designing, implementing, and evaluating faculty development programs and services, advocating for the resources that faculty need to achieve transformation in teaching and scholarship.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Join Now
Sign In
Business Owners
Appliance Repair
Carpet Cleaning
Heating & Cooling
House Cleaning
Interior Painting
View All Categories
Concrete Repair
Exterior Painting
Garage Doors
Gutter Cleaning
Gutter Repair
Home Builders
View All Categories
Lawn & Garden
Land Surveying
Lawn & Yard Work
Lawn Irrigation
Lawn Mower Repair
Leaf Removal
Shed Builders
Tree Service
View All Categories
Basement Waterproofing
Dog Grooming
Junk Hauling
Moving Companies
Pest Control
Pressure Washing
Septic Tanks
View All Categories
Services Near Me
Articles & Advice
Visit the Solution Center to Explore Articles
Basements & Foundations
Bathroom Remodel
Chimneys & Fireplaces
Garages & Driveways
Heating & Cooling
Home Construction
Home Exteriors
Home Interiors
Home Security
Kitchen Remodeling
Outdoor Living
Storage & Organization
Waste Management
View All Articles
Mishongnovi Metal Stair Installation
Get quotes from professionals in your area!
Zip Code
Find Pros
Angie's List
Local Reviews
Metal Fabrication & Restoration
Mishongnovi Metal Fabricators
Mishongnovi Metal Stair Installation
JDS Improvements
Super Service Award
Business Description:
Backed by over 20 years of experience, we are a general contractor, that can assist in every aspect of a home project. Customer Satisfaction is very important to us and what we pride ourselves on. We go out of our way to see the the customer is taken care of. From remodeling, to painting, to flooring and decks, we can help every step of the way. Owner ran and operated. Give us a call today!
Request a Quote
Reviews for Metal Stairs in ${city
JDS Improvements
I hate writing negative reviews, but in this case what I have to say really needs to be said. I'll never trust 5-star reviews ever again. I chose JDS Improvements based on all the many great reviews as well as my meeting with John Snyder (owner) where he displayed complete confidence that everything I needed to have done on my typed list was no big deal. However, I'd give JDS Improvements minus 5 stars for all the stress & anxiety they put me through. A promised 2 to 3 week job took 3 months with several items still not done or not done correctly. It held up the sale of my house by 2 months. After 3 tries to get things right & never did, I asked them to not return. No one ever called to ask for clarification or for any further details so I was under the impression that they were competent & understood all that was needed based on the walk-through with John & the 3 & 1/2 page typed list of instructions I gave to him. Initially I walked John through the property to go over numerous repairs & painting projects that I needed to have done on my house to get it ready for sale. John took notes & also got a copy of the 3.5 typed pages of repairs & painting work. He said no problem, they could handle every single problem in 2 or 3 weeks. I think much of the problem not only lies with John Snyder's seeming lack of communication with his workers, but also some of his workers almost total incompetence at what they did try to do. After the 1st, 2nd, & 3rd try at trying to do pretty simple repair jobs, John's many profuse apologies & expressions of shame & embarrassment were meaningless. After driving from Tucson to Sedona 3 times (3.5 hrs & 225 miles each way), & finding several items incomplete, done wrong or not done at all, I told John I was worn out, stressed out, extremely disappointed & couldn't bear to proceed any further. I asked that they not return (for the 4th time). This 3-month experience was dreadful. I asked for some sort of refund. $1,000 off on an $18,000 bill was cold comfort. However, John did not charge me for a garage utility sink replacement nor painting an indoor pond, where they did an excellent job, but these freebies were offset by the things they did not get done or did not do correctly. In a perfect world, John would have made copies of my list & given them to each worker. Then when done, John should have inspected each item to make sure they were all done before telling me all was done. But John actually did say he inspected the work himself & all items were done correctly. In all the years I've managed contractors & repair people & even done a lot of repair jobs myself I've never seen such an absolute shocking level of repeated incompetence in work and mgmt. It's like John simply grabbed anyone off the street who literally had no idea whatsoever how to follow directions or fix anything. Yes, it was that bad! Even after the 3 attempts at the simplest things, John always acknowledged the problem & shortcomings & always profusely apologized & in some cases said, "I'll fix this myself." If he did, then he is incompetent as well, but at the very least, a very poor business owner/manager. One good thing was that John always said they'd give it another shot & make it right whatever it took, which I really appreciated, but unfortunately, they just weren't up to the task for most of these pretty uncomplicated jobs. Before I drove up from Tucson, I asked & he said he checked everything himself & he assured me that everything was done correctly this time. NOT! After John called & assured me all items were done & looked great, I drove to inspect the work. I was horrified with what I saw. Instructions were not followed, many things weren't done correctly or done at all. The place was dirty & the so-called deep cleaning I asked for simply looked like a wipe-down. DONE AS REQUIRED, first attempt, good job Caulking, Reposition Microwave In Wall, Replace 2 Electrical Outlets, Clean Garage Door, Paint Pond, Garage Utility Sink Replacement, only some of the house painting. Instructions not followed, done wrong, and/or incomplete on the following: PAINTING • Edging work was perfect! • I told John to match the paint from existing paint that were in the garage for 5 colors. These instructions were also on the typed job sheets. They didn't! Luckily, John agreed to repaint all the exterior decking, house trim, deck railings, & hundreds of feet of fencing, which was a relief, but what a waste of time. They also had to repaint 9 doors - I asked that they be painted semi gloss to match with the old existing paint in the garage, but all were painted w/ flat paint, not even a good job at that. • John asked if I wanted a nicely weathered exterior spiral staircase to be painted! I said NO. They painted it anyway, then had to sand all the paint off, ruining the look. • They forgot to paint the entire front of house & half of one side. • I asked & was told that the trim would be caulked & all the nail holes filled before painting. It wasn't done. • I asked that a large picture window be caulked. They caulked the smaller stained glass window next to it. • Paint drips on flagstone floor & interior custom rockwork. • Old paint spray cans, rags & sandpaper pieces were lying around the property. WOOD STEPS REPLACEMENT • I asked that all the steps & landing boards be replaced going to a garage apartment & that they be secured with carriage bolts instead of screws. On 2 of the step treads, because those 2 steps were wedge shaped, I asked that 2" x 12" boards be used instead of 2" x 6". Upon inspection, the ONLY thing that was done was 2 wedge shaped steps were replaced with 2" x 6" instead of 2" x 12" boards that I'd asked for. After typing another list with detailed instructions of all the thing that did not get done or were done incorrectly, once again, the instructions were not followed. All the steps were replaced with the correct boards, but they were secured with screws instead of carriage bolts that I'd asked for. Instead of replacing the landing boards, only one board was replaced. How can anyone get this wrong twice! Especially when it was gone over in person twice & there were 2 sets of typed detailed instructions? This was the case with most of the tasks that needed to be done around the house. STRIP KITCHEN FLAGSTONE FLOOR & RESEAL • I asked Marco, John's foreman why it was not stripped as requested & paid for & he said, "the guy who did it said it would be too messy & difficult so he just resealed it instead." Huh? Are you kidding me? But I paid for stripping & resealing. Why did no one call me? STRIP & RESEAL CUSTOM ETCHED KITCHEN FLAGSTONE COUNTERTOP • Though it looked good it was not done with the same original sealant, which did affect the custom rock-etched design elements. What was used was clear exterior acrylic that off-gassed extremely toxic fumes throughout the house for 3 months rendering the house uninhabitable & unsellable. Being in the house for a couple hours I got a splitting headache each time. STRIP & RESEAL FLAGSTONE BATHROOM FLOOR • Same problem as above - exterior acrylic used that off-gassed toxic fumes that smelled like gasoline for 3 months. The correct sealant was NOT used & the flagstone floor no longer matched all the rest of the flagstone floors in the house. Ugh! MALIBU LIGHTS • There were several lights where the tops were loose & needed to be secured with glue. Each time John assured me these were fixed. I specifically asked because each time that they weren't getting fixed. Each visit back to the house I saw they were not fixed. However, on my 3rd trip back, one or 2 had sort of been fixed. The other 5 or 6 were untouched & still falling apart. GARAGE CABINET DOORS • I had removed doors to all the large cabinets & neatly stacked them against the garage wall inside. When they cleaned the garage floor, they left some stacked against the wall, others were stacked on shelves, & the rest were laying against the bushes outside in the weather. Very careless as they could have been ruined being outside! This happened twice after I'd restacked them. Someone does not know how to pay attention! FRENCH DOORS - BOTTOM WEATHERSTRIPS • I asked that a pair of door bottom weather-strips/sweeps be replaced that I had special ordered & paid $59 for - Ruined! They cut one 2" too short & installed it anyway - spiders, cockroaches, lizards, snakes & scorpions could just walk right in. I ordered another pair & they did those correctly. COUNTERTOP END PIECE • I gave them a countertop end piece kit to install (including kit instructions). Pieces from the kit were not used & it was done incorrectly 3 times. How could they get this wrong 3 times! HOUSE SIDING PIECES • 2 small siding pieces were supposed to be replaced (as per instruction list). Not done! Had to ask again! DEEP CLEANING, WINDOW WASHING • The absolute worst cleaning job ever! I asked for a professional deep cleaning & window washing after all work was done. All I got was what looked like a basic wipe-down with obvious dust & dirt still in many places. The sinks were filthy & looked as though they had just been rinsed out only. Some windows had been cleaned but many others weren't even touched & were filthy. They had to go back 3 times & it still wasn't clean. HAND SCRIBBLED NOTES • On the first inspection trip back to the house I saw my typed lists on the kitchen counter with notations on only some items marked as "done." But several of these "done" items were not done at all. On other inspection trip(s) back all I saw were abbreviated hand scribbled notes that really didn't cover what needed to get done. I can only guess they may have been notes that might have been taken while being dictated over the phone or something.
- Stephen P.
Related to Install Metal Stairs
Build Carport
Build Wheelchair Ramps
Install Chair Lift
Install Metal Roof
Install Porch Railings
Pool Remodeling
Prepare Building Site
Remodel Mobile Home
Related to Metal Fabrication & Restoration
Carpentry - Unfinished
Metal Fabrication & Restoration
Remodeling - Room


text:
In 1855, developer George Higgins bought a plot of land at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, across the street from the Croton Distributing Reservoir. He hired American architect Alexander J. Davis to design a new building, and the result was this 11 unit luxury residential complex with crenelated parapets (like a castle!). Completed in 1856 and advertised as the House of Mansions, the housing complex promised residents views of "the water of the Croton, like an artificial pool, or lake . . . from the upper floors."
|Fifth Avenue looking south from 42nd Street. Image [1880]: NYPL or LOC
As history blogger Daytonian in Manhattan writes, Higgins' plan did not work -- Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street was still considered too rural for most New Yorkers. (The Samuel P. "Sasparilla" Townsend residence had only recently been built at 34th and Fifth, and that's eight blocks south.) The property was bought and sold a few more times, and eventually the Rutgers Female Institute (later, Rutgers Female College) relocated here. A formal dedication ceremony was held on October 24, 1860. The school soon outgrew this location as well, and the property passed through a few more owners.
|Fifth Avenue looking north from 41st Street, [1883].
By 1884 the Pottier & Stymus Manufacturing Company had purchased the land, demolished the structures, and built a new building on the site. The New York Times called it "extensive and elegant," and described the building as having a brownstone frontage on Fifth Avenue as well as a side entrance on 42nd Street. (I think it's the building in the photo below with the wall sign that reads "American Safe Deposit Bank.")
|Fifth Avenue, looking north toward 42nd Street [1900-1910]. Image: LOC
The next ten years brought more changes and taller buildings to Fifth Avenue. In 1915 the Oceanic Investment Company announced the construction of a new building to be named after the building's primary tenant, the Astor Trust Company. The Astor Trust Company was set to move from their existing offices on Fifth Avenue and 36th Street and into this building, occupying a 21-year lease upon the building's completion in 1917.
|Astor Trust Company building, NE corner of Fifth Ave. and 42nd Street, 1917. Image: LOC
Other Sources:
The Fifth Avenue Association. Fifty Years on Fifth, 1907-1957.
Lockwood, Charles. Manhattan Moves Uptown: An Illustrated History.


text:
Pope Francis' Lenten message reveals the difference between material and spiritual poverty
A message from Father Andre Mahanna, pastor of St. Rafka Maronite Church in Lakewood:
We begin Lent, the Season of the Great Fasting.
This year, Pope Francis' Lenten message was entitled, "An Important Distinction Between Poverty and Misery."
The Holy Father talks about the Christian vision of poverty, that is
the poverty of Christ. Christian poverty is not one and the same with
world view of poverty — the lack of material goods.
Christ left the richness of heaven to come on earth, and by
sharing our poverty He enriched us with the gifts of heaven.
The Church, like Christ, is called "The Poor Church for the Poor Ones."
In fact, the Church is called to live the life of poverty and to help people
better share the gifts of God on a more equal basis through charity.
Like Christ, we are to bring hope to the brokenhearted.
The mission of the Church is to annihilate misery, which is a vice,
a burden that evil has laid on the shoulders of humanity.
With Christ, the Church teaches us to see the positive side of poverty.
In this regard, poverty is a virtue that enables Christians to store
their treasures in heaven, and to deal with earthly richness as stewards
and servers, and not as owners and masters of the world.
Christians help distribute the riches that God gave us on earth. In this way, poverty is
an evangelical virtue, and consequently it is not poverty that the world should fight,
but it is misery we should end.
The Holy Father says there are three types of misery: material,
moral and spiritual.
Material misery is an attack against the human dignity of the person. Since Christ's time
and the first Christian community, the Church with the Apostles, established the ministry
of the Diaconia, or deacons, to eliminate the peril of this material misery by teaching
the sharing of material goods, by giving to each according to his or her need,
and by serving widows and orphans.
Moral misery, on the other hand, is the misconception of the personal right
of ownership and the manipulation of material goods to create a separation among
societies on the basis of individual and national income. It is when humans
become the slaves of their own fortune — when they put what they they own
into the service of vice and of sin. For example, betting millions of dollars
on a game while millions of people are dying from hunger or lack
of medicine or housing.
This is the misery of deciding to refrain from the love of
your neighbor and to instead love money and goods, which then become
your masters. These people refuse the free gift of love that comes from God,
and they decide to stay away from Him.
It is spiritual misery when people manipulate the Church and sanction poverty, thus not allowing the Church to achieve the mission of serving the poor.


text:
Use this Secure Order Form and
order online immediately if you're already familiar with our product line and know
what you want to order.
To request a copy of our catalog by U.S. Mail, please send a check or money order in the amount of $3.00 to the above address. Mention that you visited our web site on the Internet and receive a coupon good for $5.00 off your first order when you order our catalog for $3.00!


text:
Availability: In StockProduct Code: GASTROPAINTVANILLABEANFLAVOUR1
Create master brush strokes for a striking presentation on plates with these amazing new innovative edible plate paints.Drawn from inspiration of juicy berries and appreciation of simplicity of colours. Impart robust flavours with a simple stroke with great depth of flavour. Simply brush every plate for a stylish decoration to make the dish great!
Country of Origin: UK
Ingredients (Allergens in heavy type):
Glucose syrup, invert sugar syrup, sugar, water, natural vanilla flavour, Colours: curcumin; annatto; caramel 150d, Acidity regulator: citric acid, Stabiliser: locust bean gum.
This product is gluten free
Typical Nutritional Values (per 100g):
Per 100g
of which sugars
of which saturates
Packaging: Round glass jar with tinned steel screw cap lined with food approved plastic.
Storage Requirements: Store at less than 20°C. Once opened, keep at ambient temperate, use within 6 months and do not exceed the best before date. If crystallised, warm to re-dissolve. Do not refrigerate.
Instructions: Brush lightly onto the plate to create the desired artistic effect.
Volume: 150g
This product is GMO free
This product is suitable for vegetarians


text:
Fourth Child Laid To Rest After Daycare Fire
By Hasti Taghi
HOUSTON – The last of the four children killed in the daycare fire in west Houston was buried Saturday.
Mouners gathered at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church in northwest Harris County to say goodbye to 20 month old Elizabeth Kajoh.
"I pray for my little angel," Emmanuel Kajoh, Elizabeth's father said. "I know she is already in heaven and she is watching and smiling and she's calling me dada."
Her father said on the day of her funeral, the family isn't remembering the fire that killed four innocent children, but rather the love that's left behind.
"My daughter was love," Kajoh said, "my daughter was peace, she loved sharing."
Family and friends also said they will always remember the smiling little girl.
"Pretty little girl," family friend, Emmanuel Ofili said, "smiling and laughing."
"She was a lovely baby," a close friend of Elizabeth's mother, Gracious Idiku said, "ever smiling."
Elizabeth's father said he believes his baby girl's spirit will live on.
"She represented love and she came into this world to remind us that love is sharing," Kajoh said. "We've learned that and we're going to live with it."
Officials said the international search for the owner of that daycare, Jessica Tata, continues.
Copyright 2011 by Click2Houston.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


text:
Apple Watch Reviews
Apple Watch Edition Series 2 Unboxing & Review
iPhone 7 Unboxing
Apple Watch Series 2 Unboxing
Apple Watch Classic Buckle Review
Apple's most traditional Watch band gives the device a classic appearance, which may be the band's biggest drawback. Conventional watch design graces the Classic Buckle in the form of a polished stainless steel buckle and smooth, stitched leather. The leather could be thicker and higher quality, but it's not bad for the moderate price of the band. On first glance, this particular Watch band seems bland and unimaginative. For some, the blandness won't cease, but others will appreciate the band's simplicity.
The Classic Buckle shifts attention away from the Watch's band to the actual device. As evidenced by the extra metal bar separating the leather from sliding into the Watch's band mechanism (all other Watch bands harmoniously fuse into the Watch's body), Apple wants to show off the device's beauty with the Classic Buckle. The stunning details of the stainless steel Watch become more visible with the simplified band. The way the sapphire glass meets the stainless steel is more dramatic and the black cap on the Digital Crown is actually noticeable.
This Watch band is perfect for simple, toned down attire, but might be too ordinary for others. The Classic Buckle retails for $149 at the Apple Store and is available for both Watch sizes in a variety of colors.
iPad Pro 9.7 inch Smart Keyboard
Apple Watch Magnetic Charging Dock
Watch this video to learn more about the Apple Watch Magnetic Charging Dock.


text:
Should Wikipedia Force All Users To Use HTTPS?
from the politics-of-encryption dept
It would be something of an understatement to say that encryption is a hot topic at the moment. But leaving aside deeper issues like the extent to which the Internet's cryptographic systems are compromised, there is a more general question about whether Web sites should be pushing users to connect using HTTPS in the hope that this might improve their security. That might seem a no-brainer, but for the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), the organization that runs Wikipedia and related projects, it's a more complex issue.
The problem is that HTTPS access is disabled in some countries precisely to prevent users from being able to access sites securely. So when Wikimedia introduced its HTTPS-by-default policy on August 28, it made a couple of exceptions:
Some users live in areas where HTTPS is not an easy option, most times because of explicit blocking by a government. At the request of these communities, we have made an explicit exclusion for users from those affected countries. Simply put, users from China and Iran will not be required to use HTTPS for logging in, nor for viewing any Wikimedia project site.
An interesting post by Erik Möller, the WMF's Deputy Director, raises the question whether such exceptions help or hinder freedom in those countries:
In the long term, the Wikimedia movement is faced with a choice, which is inherently political: Should we indefinitely sustain security exceptions for regions that prevent the use of encryption, or should we shift to an alternative strategy?
Here are some of the considerations he mentions:
If we accommodate [China]'s or Iran's censorship practices, we are complicit in their attempts to monitor and control their citizenry. If a privileged user's credentials (e.g. Checkuser) are misused by the government through monitoring of unencrypted traffic, for example, this is an action that would not have been possible without our exemption. This could potentially expose even users not in the affected country to risks.
Möller goes on to suggest the following:
It could be argued that it's time to draw a line in the sand -- if you're prohibiting the use of encryption, you're effectively not part of the web. You're subverting basic web technologies.
That may have been a defensible position last week, when he wrote those words, but it certainly isn't now. Snowden's information about efforts by the NSA and GCHQ to undermine every form of online encryption shows how they are "subverting basic web technologies" in a profound way; it is therefore no longer possible for the West to wag a finger at countries like China that are doing the same. However, Möller also points out:
Drawing this hard line clearly has negative near term effects on the citizenry of affected countries. But the more the rest of the world comes together in saying "What you are doing is wrong. Stop it." -- the harder it will be for outlier countries to continue doing it.
There _are_ effective tools that can be used to circumvent attempts to censor and control the Internet. Perhaps it is time for WMF to ally with the organizations that develop and promote such tools, rather than looking for ways to guarantee basic site operation in hostile environments even at the expense of user privacy.
This is surely a better strategy. It would allow Wikimedia users in countries where HTTPS is blocked to access Wikipedia and related projects in a discreet way. Such circumvention tools could also be useful for many other sites that face the same problem, and so would be a force for combating censorship and control in general. Finally, if the privacy situation in the West continues to deteriorate, the software might even come in handy there, too.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+
Filed Under: challenges, filtering, https, security, wikipedia
Companies: wikimedia foundation, wikipedia


text:
Many small businesses are highly dependent on the presence of a key employee or small group of employees for the ongoing operation of the business. It may be an owner, partner or some other important person. Protecting the business against the untimely death of that person with some type of life insurance policy can be wise. In fact, some lenders may require such an arrangement. Ask yourself these questions. Your answers should help determine if you may need this type of protection.
If answering those questions raises any red flags, you may want to consider buying some life insurance on that key employee. Having the funds available to help run the company until a replacement is found or another resolution is determined would provide you with valuable piece of mind. The best policy could be relatively inexpensive term life insurance. The business would be the policy owner, beneficiary and would pay the premiums. If the person dies, the company receives the death benefits and can then decide on a future course of action. Using Life Insurance as Part of a Buy/Sell Agreement Buy/sell agreements control what happens to an ownership interest in the event of the death or disability of one of the major owners of the business. The agreements can be structured so upon the death of an owner, the business buys back his interest or the remaining owner(s) buys the interest. In most cases, buy/sell agreements include some valuation guidelines for the business. Many companies use life insurance as a means to fund these types of agreements. For instance, if the business is valued at $3 million and one owner has a one third stake in the business, the business may buy a $1 million term life policy. The proceeds could be used to buy the deceased owner's shares on his death. Another option would be for each owner to buy policies on the lives of the other owners. There are some special tax rules that apply to corporate ownership of life insurance policies. If you are considering this type of arrangement, be sure to seek qualified legal advice. As you hope for the best and plan for the worst, you can provide yourself peace of mind when managing your business. The views of this article are for general information use only. Please contact and speak with a subject expert when specific advice is needed. Find articles like this and much more in the online Arvest Biz Center.
Submitted questions will be answered by an Arvest banker and may appear on the Arvest Blog.
All Arvest banks are Equal Housing Lenders and Member FDIC.
Investment products and services are provided by Arvest Investments, Inc., doing business as Arvest Asset Management, member FINRA/SIPC, an SEC registered investment adviser and a subsidiary of Arvest Bank. Trust services are provided by Arvest Bank. Insurance products are made available through Arvest Insurance, Inc., which is registered as an insurance agency. Insurance products are marketed through Arvest Insurance, Inc., but are underwritten by insurance companies.
Securities and Insurance Products: Not Insured by FDIC or any Federal Government Agency, May Lose Value, Not a Deposit of or Guaranteed by a Bank or any Bank Affiliate.


text:
Rapids part ways with forward Caleb Folan
The Colorado Rapids announced Friday that they have released forward Caleb Folan "by mutual consent."
"This will allow us the ability to bring in other players ahead of the season, in positions where we have greater need," said Technical Director Paul Bravo, in a release.
Folan, of England, was, at 6-foot-2, 178 pounds, a big target for the Rapids, and he scored two special goals in his home debut for the club last April. But that wound up representing one-third of his production for the whole year as he battled ankle and knee injuries in 2011.
Folan had been a bit of a journeyman in England since beginning his career there with Leeds United, after coming up through that club's youth program. He has played internationally for Ireland, birthplace of his grandparents. He played for Hull City and Middlesborough in England in the year before joining the Rapids.
His departure is the latest in what appears to be a move toward a more Latin flavor for the Rapids. In the weeks since hiring Oscar Pareja as head coach, the club signed Colombian Jaime Castrillon, and now have two international slots left. They are in the process of trying out Colombian Luis Eduardo Zapata and officials have coyly said they are working toward signing an Argentine "number 10."
The roster must be set at 30, with no more than six players listed as internationals, by March 1.
The Rapids are headed to California next week for training and scrimmages against San Jose and Chivas USA.


text:
They didn't know anything about the historic inn, but when they saw a sign out front with the phrase "Refuge from the Storm," they thought "it's perfect!"
Witt and Carosiello
Bragg and Norris
Montgomery and Mueller
Pope and Laucirica
King and Generis
Homestead on the Holston was started in July 2016 with Burkett working toward hosting events in the spring. The biggest expense was putting a caterer's kitchen in her basement. The first wedding took place at the homestead on June 10. Burkett said it went very well.
Nelms and Viers
There are a lot of things that get passed down in families, such as holiday traditions or physical traits. In my family, it's broken bones before weddings.
Kara Brittney Lewis of Jonesborough and Benjamin Earl Brinkley of Jonesborough were married in a private ceremony on March 25, 2017 at Highland Baptist Church. The Reverend Steve Pate officiated at the 4 pm ceremony.
With the help of social media, a story that took over four years to develop was resolved in a matter of hours. A mutual friend recognized the woman in the article as the mother-in-law of Sarah Jones, who coincidentally had also grown up in the Cottonwood subdivision. She "tagged" Jones in the post, who confirmed that this was her mother-in-law.
Karen Virginia Ankabrandt of Kingsport, TN and Justin Raymond Proell of Florence, SC were married on December 3, 2016 at Magnolia Manor Bed and Breakfast in Westminster, SC. The Chaplain Michael Babb officiated the 4:00 p.m. ceremony.
Brittany Renae Robinson of Kingsport, TN and Wesley Brandon Russell of Kingsport, TN were married on September 9, 2016 at Gate City United Pentecostal Church. The Rev. Danny Grizzle officiated at the 7:15 p.m. ceremony.
Sarah Kathryn Eldredge of Washington, DC (formerly of Kingsport) and Kyle James Shong of Washington, DC were married on September 24, 2016 at Chateau Selah in Blountville. The Rev. Dan Clark officiated at the 6:00 pm ceremony.


text:
Tokyo Daily Photo
A site about the scenery of daily life in Tokyo
Friday, July 11, 2008
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Monday, July 07, 2008
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Wimbledon on cell phone
As usual, Wimbledon keeps me wake up all at midnight in early July, followed by Euro 2008. By the way, I am now watching it on the screen of my cell phone. A couple years ago, cell phones with TV in Japan are not getting uncommon. Cell phones are now just more than phones. The phones enable us to browse Internet, email, get on train, do shopping by built-in credit or debit card, watch TV, take photos and more. Now, we cannot go out without cell phones!!
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
The theme day: a sign "No...": No taking a leak here!
It is very very long time no writing and updating because I was busy a little bit....
When I knew this theme, I would eagerly like to share this holy and domestic sign. If you happen to go to Japan, then you may come across and see this at other places. This red object is the miniature of Torii, the gate to main building at shrines, where Japanese domestic gods live in. The wooden red one shows the entrance to the holy place.
But why is the miniature put on the outer wall on the street?? It shows "No passing water!!" and is thought to prevent the holiness of the gate from doing such nuisance. Most people think passing water toward the sign of the gate as sinfulness. People who doing firefighter toward the outer wall of houses at night used to be more ordinary scenery on Japanese street at night than now, but now I hardly see such signs and firefighters.
By the way, it is neither my photo nor took in Tokyo.(It was took in Kyoto). But I choose this because I want to introduce this funny sign.
PS. To Hiroyuki Suzuki,
Thank you very much for permitting me to use this fantastic photo, and thank to you, I can let people know this interesting sign in Japan!!
Click here to go to his website (Japanese only)
172 city photo blogs are currently participating in this theme.
American Fork (UT), USA by Annie, Anderson (SC), USA by Lessie, Ararat, Australia by freefalling, Arradon, France by Alice, Ashton under Lyne, UK by Pennine, Aspen (CO), USA by IamMBB, Athens, Greece by Debbie, Auckland, New Zealand by Lachezar, Austin (TX), USA by LB, Avignon, France by Nathalie, Bandung, Indonesia by Harry Makertia, Barrow-in-Furness, UK by Enitharmon, Barton (VT), USA by Andree, Belgrade, Serbia by Bibi, Bellefonte (PA), USA by Barb-n-PA, Bicheno, Australia by Greg, Birmingham (AL), USA by VJ, Bogor, Indonesia by Gagah, Boston (MA), USA by Cluelessinboston, Brantford (ON), Canada by Nancy, Brighton, UK by Harvey, Brookville (OH), USA by Abraham, Bucaramanga, Colombia by Fernando, Bucharest, Romania by Malpraxis, Budapest, Hungary by agrajag, Budapest, Hungary by Zannnie and Zsolt, Canterbury, UK by Rose, Cavite, Philippines by Steven Que, Chandler (AZ), USA by Melindaduff, Château-Gontier, France by Laurent, Cheltenham, UK by Marley, Chennai, India by Ram N, Chennai, India by Shantaram, Chesapeake (VA), USA by ptowngirl, Christchurch, New Zealand by Michelle, Cincinnati, USA by Erik Laursen, Cleveland (OH), USA by iBlowfish, Coral Gables (FL), USA by Jnstropic, Corsicana (TX), USA by Lake Lady, Delta (CO), USA by Bill, Duluth (MN), USA by Sun Dog Press, Durban, South Africa by CrazyCow, East Gwillimbury, Canada by Your EG Tour Guide, Edinburgh, UK by Dido, Folkestone, UK by Piskie, Forks (WA), USA by Corinne, Fort Lauderdale (FL), USA by Gigi, Gaia, Portugal by m+p, Geneva (IL), USA by Kelly, Grenoble, France by Bleeding Orange, Gun Barrel City (TX), USA by Lake Lady, Hampton (VA), USA by ptowngirl, Haninge, Sweden by Steffe, Hanoi, Vietnam by Jérôme, Helsinki, Finland by Kaa, Hobart, Australia by Greg, Hyde, UK by Gerald, Jackson (MS), USA by Halcyon, Jefferson City (MO), USA by Chinamom2005, Jerusalem, Israel by Esther, Katonah (NY), USA by Inkster1, Knoxville (TN), USA by Knoxville Girl, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia by Edwin, Kyoto, Japan by Tadamine, Lakewood (OH), USA by mouse, Larchmont (NY), USA by Marie-Noyale, Las Vegas (NV), USA by Mo, Lisbon, Portugal by Maria João, London, UK by Ham, London, UK by Mo, Lynchburg (VA), USA by Timothy, Mainz, Germany by JB, Melbourne, Australia by John, Menton, France by Jilly, Mexico City, Mexico by Carraol, Mexico City, Mexico by Poly, Minneapolis (MN), USA by Mitch, Minneapolis (MN), USA by Greg, Misawa, Japan by misawa mama, Monroe (GA), USA by Tanya, Monrovia (CA), USA by Keith, Monte Carlo, Monaco by Jilly, Monterrey, Mexico by rafa, Mumbai, India by MumbaiiteAnu, Munich, Germany by Troy, Nashville (TN), USA by Chris, Nelson, New Zealand by Meg and Ben, New Delhi, India by Delhi Photo Diary, New Orleans (LA), USA by steve buser, New York City (NY), USA by • Eliane •, Newcastle, Australia by Julia, Newport News (VA), USA by ptowngirl, Norfolk (VA), USA by ptowngirl, Norwich, UK by Goddess888, Ocean Township (NJ), USA by Josy, Oklahoma City (OK), USA by ananda.tashie, Orlando (FL), USA by OrlFla, Palos Verdes (CA), USA by tash, Paris, France by Eric, Pasadena (CA), USA by Petrea, Pasadena (CA), USA by Can8ianben, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia by Murphy_jay, Petoskey (MI), USA by Christie, Phoenix (AZ), USA by Cheryl, Poplar Bluff (MO), USA by Tricia, Port Angeles (WA), USA by Jelvistar, Portland (ME), USA by Corey, Portsmouth (VA), USA by ptowngirl, Posadas, Argentina by Lega, Pretoria, South Africa by Sam Ruth, Quincy (MA), USA by Cluelessinboston, Ramsey, Isle of Man by babooshka, Reykjavik, Iceland by Vírgíll, Riga, Latvia by Riga Photos, Rotterdam, Netherlands by Ineke, Rouen, France by Bbsato, Saarbrücken, Germany by LadyDemeter, Saigon, Vietnam by Simon, Saint Louis (MO), USA by Strangetastes, Salem (OR), USA by jill, Salt Lake City (UT), USA by Eric, Salt Lake City (UT), USA by atc, San Antonio (TX), USA by Kramer, San Diego (CA), USA by Felicia, San Francisco (CA), USA by PFranson, Santa Fe (NM), USA by Randem, Seattle (WA), USA by Kim, Seattle (WA), USA by Chuck, Selma (AL), USA by RamblingRound, Sequim (WA), USA by Norma, Sesimbra, Portugal by Aldeia, Setúbal, Portugal by Maria Elisa, Sharon (CT), USA by Jenny, Silver Spring (MD), USA by John, Singapore, Singapore by Keropok, Sofia, Bulgaria by Antonia, Springfield (IL), USA by Aubrey, Stanwood (WA), USA by MaryBeth, Stavanger, Norway by Tanty, Stayton (OR), USA by Celine, Stockholm, Sweden by Stromsjo, Stouffville, Canada by Ken, Stratford, Canada by Barb, Subang Jaya, Malaysia by JC, Suffolk (VA), USA by ptowngirl, Sunshine Coast, Australia by bitingmidge, Sydney, Australia by Julie, Sydney, Australia by Ann, Székesfehérvár, Hungary by Teomo, Tamarindo, Costa Rica by David, Tel-Aviv, Israel by Olga, Tempe (AZ), USA by angie, Terrell (TX), USA by Jim K, Terrell (TX), USA by Bstexas, The Hague, Netherlands by Lezard, Tokyo, Japan by Tadamine, Torun, Poland by Glenn, Toulouse, France by Julia, Trujillo, Peru by Giulianna, Turin, Italy by Livio, Twin Cities (MN), USA by Slinger, Victoria, Canada by Benjamin Madison, Vienna, Austria by G_mirage2, Virginia Beach (VA), USA by ptowngirl, Wailea (HI), USA by Kuanyin, Washington (DC), USA by D.C. Confidential, Wellington, New Zealand by Jeremyb, West Paris (ME), USA by crittoria, West Sacramento (CA), USA by Barbara, Weston (FL), USA by WestonDailyPhoto, Williamsburg (VA), USA by ptowngirl, Willits (CA), USA by Elaine,


text:
At a gallery opening in Chelsea a few years ago, Carl Andre, a balding man in his late sixties, wearing bib overalls and a blue work shirt, walked over to speak with Richard Serra. Andre rarely attends art events, and the two men, whom many art historians consider the most important sculptors of their generation, had not seen each other for a long time. "Oh, Carl," Serra said, after a moment's hesitation, "I didn't recognize you." "I'm like Cuba," Andre replied, amiably. "Nobody recognizes me."
In this country, at least, Andre's non-recognition problem has lasted for more than two decades. Although the Paula Cooper gallery shows his work regularly, he has not had a one-man exhibition at a New York museum since 1970, and his name, as a key figure in the development of minimal art, is no longer prominent in the critical discourse. The drought is easing, though, and it will come to an end in March, 2013, when a retrospective exhibition of Andre's work opens at the Dia Art Foundation museum, in Beacon, New York, and then travels to a number of as yet unnamed museums here and in Europe. For Yasmil Raymond, the curator who is organizing the show in collaboration with Dia's director, Philippe Vergne, working on it has been a strange experience. "The institutional silence around Carl almost makes me think we are mounting a retrospective of an artist who is imaginary," she told me, "because here the work is really unknown."
It is hard to think of an artist whose career has been so affected by circumstances that have nothing to do with his art. In Andre's case, the precipitating event was the death of his third wife, Ana Mendieta, a young artist who fell from the bedroom window of Andre's apartment, on the thirty-fourth floor of a high-rise on Mercer Street, in the early-morning hours of September 8, 1985. Andre was charged with murder, indicted, and eventually acquitted in a non-jury trial, but Mendieta's family and many of her friends in the art community and the feminist movement believe that he was responsible for her death. When the Guggenheim Museum put an Andre sculpture in the initial show at its SoHo branch, in 1992, the opening was picketed by five hundred angry protesters. Three years later, the Guerrilla Girls issued a poster calling Andre "the O.J. of the art world." Andre's many friends stood by him. When he was indicted the first time (there were three indictments, the first two of which were dismissed without going to trial), Frank Stella, whose early black-stripe paintings had been a decisive influence on Andre's sculpture, put up about fifty thousand dollars in cash toward the amount set for his bail, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Throughout the trial, Paula Cooper kept Andre's "Zinc-Zinc Plain (1969)" on view in her gallery. None of his previous female companions (there were quite a few) testified against him.
For several years after his acquittal, Andre spent a lot of time in Europe, where the tragedy seemed to have no effect on his reputation. European museums continued to show his work, and sales to museums and private collectors there helped to offset the almost total disappearance of his American market. When he was in New York, women crossed the street to avoid him, and wrote damning comments in the guest book at Cooper's gallery when his work was shown there. He became more and more solitary, seeing only a few close friends. His friends sometimes wondered why he stayed on in the three-room apartment on Mercer Street, after what had happened. Carl was proud and stubborn, they said, and maybe he thought that, if he moved, it would look like an admission of guilt. Except for initial confused and somewhat contradictory statements to the police, he never talked to anyone about Mendieta's death.
Wherever Andre was, he kept working. Andre has described himself as the first post-studio artist. He has never needed a studio, because the materials he works with—four-by-four timbers, bricks, one-foot-square metal plates, cut or natural stones, and other available hardware—are ordered from suppliers and assembled by Andre on the site. Andre does not carve, or model, or weld, or transform his materials. His great innovation was to assemble the elements of his simple, linear sculptures on the floor, without joining them together. Other contemporary sculptors had done away with pedestals and the vertical axis, but Andre's reorientation of his work to the horizontal plane, where it functioned not as an object but, in his words, "as a place," was more radical and more influential than anything being done by Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Dan Flavin, or the other minimalist artists in the nineteen-sixties. "Carl has the floor," as the art crowd at Max's Kansas City used to say. Richard Serra, who is four years younger than Andre, remembers a conversation he had with him soon after Andre's first flat metal-plate pieces were shown at the Dwan gallery in New York, in 1967: "I said to Carl, 'Somebody's got to get those things up off the ground,' and Carl said, 'Don't worry, somebody else will do that.' And I thought, God damn, I'm going to do it!" Soon afterward, Serra started making his freestanding lead-prop sculptures, in which four massive, upright lead plates support each other without joints, house-of-cards style. "Carl was an enormous influence on me," Serra said. "He changed the history of sculpture."
The fact that you can walk on Andre's sculptures still confuses viewers. Andre has allowed and encouraged it—with certain reservations. He doesn't want you walking on his metal plates in stiletto heels, or in cleated boots that have snow on them, or with bare feet, whose oils can be more corrosive than rock salt, but he knows that these and other harmful actions will take place. "I stop worrying about what happens to a work after it's out of my control," he said to me. Most museumgoers don't walk on his pieces. Even if they know it's allowed, walking on a certified work of art seems transgressive, or showoffy, but the knowledge that you can do it establishes a strong physical connection between spectator and art work. Andre's things have always struck me as inviting the kind of spectator involvement and empathy that early minimalism prided itself on ruling out. When he started making art, he once said, his goal was to make something impersonal and complete in itself, but he found that this was impossible, because "the essence of art is human association."
Over the years, I have come to believe that Andre was never a minimal artist. He more or less confirmed this in one of the conversations I had with him last summer, in his Mercer Street apartment. We were talking about minimalist-art theory, whose proliferation in the sixties and seventies had prompted Harold Rosenberg, The New Yorker's art critic at that time, to write, "The rule applied is: The less there is to see the more there is to say." When I asked Andre what he thought of all the critical theorizing over minimalism, he replied, cheerfully, "I thought that was nothing but bullshit."
On a cool day in May, Andre was waiting for me at the elevator on his floor—as he would be on every other visit. He led the way down a somewhat shabby corridor to his apartment at the far end, where Melissa Kretschmer, his wife, was drying her hair. An artist who moved from California to New York in 1989, Kretschmer is now forty-nine, which makes her twenty-seven years younger than Andre. She is tall and athletic-looking, with clean-cut features and short, yellow-blond hair that was damp from the shower—she had just come from the pool where she swims every day, in preparation for a marathon, open-water swim around Manhattan Island three weeks later. The apartment is cluttered but neat. File cabinets, bookshelves, a small sofa, and an even smaller desk fill half of the front room, with a sturdy Parsons table at the far end, in front of large, sliding-glass windows that offer sweeping views of downtown Manhattan. Three or four smallish, abstract collage paintings by Kretschmer hang on the walls, but there are no Andres underfoot, and nothing by other artists. We sat down at the table, and Kretschmer brought out two bottles of San Pellegrino water and a copy of "The Quincy Book," a collection of black-and-white photographs of various sites in Quincy, Massachusetts—shipyards, granite quarries, vacant lots, estuaries, a library, a school, a cemetery, the brick house where Andre grew up, and other places that he had a photographer record because they held special meaning for him. "Carl says that if anyone wants to know about him, they should start with 'The Quincy Book,' " Kretschmer explained.
At a meeting with Kretschmer a week earlier, she had told me that Andre was no longer making art. Two years ago, he was hospitalized after a fall on the street, she said, and he was having short-term-memory problems. Today, however, as I leafed through "The Quincy Book" and we talked about his childhood, Andre seemed alert and almost merry. The shoulder-length dark hair and full beard of his younger years are gone—at seventy-six, he is clean-shaven and nearly bald—but he still wears German-made, dark-blue overalls, and speaks in a voluble, rather high-pitched voice. He told a story about Konrad Fischer, his German dealer, who died in 1996. "Konrad had a tendency to call me a conceptual artist," Andre said. "I hate being called a conceptual artist, because my work is so material. There is nothing but the floor under those plates of mine, I'd say, no ideas, nothing, zero. So I brought Konrad to Quincy, and I said, 'Now do you see that I'm not a conceptual artist?' And he said, 'No, Carl, you're a landscape artist.' Which is actually true."
Andre's father, George Hans Andre, was ten years old when he came over from Sweden. A number of family members had preceded him, and found work in the manual trades in Quincy, Brockton, and other industrial towns outside Boston. George Andre avoided manual labor. Apprenticed to a designer in the Fore River Shipyard, he eventually became a master designer of freshwater plumbing for ships, a highly specialized field that was much in demand during the Second World War, when Quincy's shipyards worked round the clock. He earned enough to forbid his wife, the former Margaret Johnson, whose Scots-Irish ancestors had been in this country and Canada since the seventeenth century, from continuing to work as an office manager, which she enjoyed. "My father always said, 'I am old school and European, and my wife does not work,' " Andre said. "He had a hard time seeing other people's points of view." Carl was the youngest of their three children, and the only boy. He remembers that Carol, his older sister, "was very loving, and sort of took care of me, but Joan, the middle one, was a terror. When we had guests, my mother would bring the children down in their pajamas to say good night, and Joan would get behind me and pull down my pants."
Other evenings, their father would sip sherry and read poetry aloud to them after dinner—Shelley's "Ozymandias," Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," and other classics. "I developed a great taste for poetry from that," Andre said. Before he learned to read, he remembers being fascinated by the way poetry looked in his father's books, "by its plastic liveliness on the page compared to the dull gray clog of prose." Once in a while, his father would give him a sip of sherry, and he developed a taste for that, too. Andre's childhood in Quincy was "almost feral," he said. He was allowed to roam freely with other children in the marshy tidal flats that surrounded their neighborhood, making up their own games in that pre-television era. He had no aptitude for sports, but he did well enough in the public school to be awarded a full scholarship to Phillips Academy, in Andover, one of the best prep schools in the country.
At that point, he wanted to be a scientist, but "at Andover I got the art craze," he said, "and decided to major in art." The Addison Gallery in Andover owned a first-rate collection of American art, and the school had a studio-art program with a wonderful teacher named Patrick Morgan. Morgan and his wife, Maud, who taught art at the Andover girls' school, were artists themselves—Patrick had studied painting with Hans Hofmann in Munich before the war. On Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, when students could do what they wanted, Andre went to the studio to paint. A boy named Frank Stella, who was a class behind him at Andover, spent all his free time in the school's basement studio, too, but somehow they didn't meet. "I would be at one end, and he'd be at the other, and I don't think we ever said hello," Andre recalls. Michael Chapman, Andre's best friend at the school, found this unsurprising. "Frank was not a social person," he recalled recently. "Carl, on the other hand, was a highly visible presence. He was very, very bright, and also sort of flamboyant and outspoken, not a normal prep-school kid."
In his senior year, Andre won the Morse prize for art. He was pretty sure he wanted to be an artist, but, he said, "there was no way my parents were going to pay for art school, so I got a scholarship to Kenyon College, in Ohio, where I studied poetry with John Crowe Ransom." Introduced to modern poetry at Andover, he had made serious efforts to write in the cadences of Eliot, Auden, Cummings, and other favorites. But Ransom's lectures at Kenyon put him to sleep, and the college had only makeshift studio-art facilities, so he quit going to classes. Two months into his first semester, he was asked to leave. ("Partly I drank myself out of Kenyon," as he put it.) He moved back home to Quincy, and got a factory job. His parents were outraged. The lost scholarship! The waste! He saved his earnings, and a few months later, in 1954, he bought a plane ticket to London. "My aunt Sylvia lived there. She used to babysit for me and my sisters, and we were all madly in love with her. She was a nurse in the Second World War, in England, and she married a fighter pilot in the R.A.F., who had become a broadcaster for the BBC. They took me to Stonehenge, which was a moving experience. I was very slowly realizing my vocation as a sculptor, and Stonehenge clinched it."
Andre's memory was holding up pretty well. Once or twice, he would repeat something he had said earlier, or lose track of what he was saying, and calmly look to Kretschmer to bring him back. Now and then, when she offered an opinion, he would correct her irritably. The shoulder straps of his overalls kept slipping down. Andre is not a big man, and his shoulders are narrow and rounded. When he started wearing overalls exclusively, in the late sixties, people took it as a political statement—a declaration of working-class solidarity by a man who espoused Marxist doctrines and took a leading role in the anti-establishment Art Workers Coalition. Not true, he told me. "No, no, never. It was because of my belly. All my life, my weight has fluctuated enormously, and these were the only clothes that fit me."
In 1956, after a year of military service with an Army intelligence unit in North Carolina, Andre dropped out of another college (Northeastern) in his freshman year, and went to New York. His first stop was the dorm at Columbia University where Michael Chapman, his Andover friend, was living with Barbara Rose, the future art historian. "Michael and I were undergraduate students at Columbia," Rose recalls, "and there was no place for Carl to sleep, so we took him to the Viking Arms, a crummy rooming house on 116th Street, with toilets in the hall." Andre soon found work as an editorial assistant at Prentice Hall. He let his hair grow long, and put himself on a diet of tea, milk, and bran muffins, which, he claims, took him from two hundred and thirty-seven pounds to a hundred and thirty-seven in a year. When Prentice Hall refused to give him a vacation because he hadn't been there for a full year (he was one day short), he quit, and announced to Rose and Chapman, in his new, self-dramatizing mode, that he had retired from the middle class.
Andre and Frank Stella, who never said hello to each other at Andover, finally met in June, 1958. Stella had just graduated from Princeton and moved into a tiny loft near the Manhattan Bridge, to devote himself to painting. By then, Andre was living in a cold-water flat on Mulberry Street with Hollis Frampton, his Andover roommate, an intellectual polymath who was in the process of becoming a photographer and filmmaker. Frampton introduced Andre to Stella, and the three of them began seeing a lot of each other. "Frank was much more advanced than I was," Andre said. Andre had just started experimenting with sculpture, carving and burning into pieces of wood he picked up on the street, but Stella had already found his direction. Inspired by Jasper Johns's American-flag paintings, he was using cheap household enamel to apply roughly brushed colored stripes on large canvases—a process that seemed "lunatic" to Andre "because my idea of art was still related to some kind of abstraction from something outside art, and these referred to nothing but art." That winter, Stella moved into a larger loft, on West Broadway, and began the series of precisely ruled, black-stripe paintings that would establish his reputation as a major artist. "Not being a painter, I didn't get them at first," Andre said. "I sort of got Frank as a person and as a mind before I got the paintings. And then one day I just suddenly saw them." What he saw was that Stella's severe, uniform stripes expressed an absolute commitment to painting. Stella asked Andre and Frampton to suggest titles for his new series, and two of Andre's stuck: "Morro Castle," after a ship that had caught fire and burned off the coast of New Jersey in 1934, and "The Marriage of Reason and Squalor," which was a title Andre had used for one of his early allegorical drawings. Leo Castelli saw the black paintings and immediately invited Stella to join his two-year-old gallery, which represented Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and other fast-rising young art stars. Even before his first show there, the Museum of Modern Art put four black Stellas in its hugely influential "Sixteen Americans" exhibition, in December, 1959. (The catalogue note on Stella was written by Andre.) Few artists have had a more auspicious début.
Andre's breakthrough, whose origins can be traced to the same time and the same place, took several years to materialize. He had scavenged a six-foot-long, four-by-four timber that he wanted to work on, but the Mulberry Street space he shared with Frampton was too small, so Stella told him to bring it over to his West Broadway studio. The deal was that Andre could work there when Stella was out. Surrounded by Stella's black paintings, Andre attacked the beam with a mallet and chisel, cutting deep, roughly similar indentations on one side, in the manner of Brancusi's "Endless Column." Frampton, a disciple of Ezra Pound, had introduced him to Pound's essay on Brancusi, and Andre had gone to see the Brancusi sculptures in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. "Brancusi was my idol," he told me. "So what I did was to take the timber and carve into it. I didn't change its shape, I just cut into it. One day, I had finished carving and set it up on end, and Frank came in. He ran his hand up and down the uncarved back of the timber, and he said, 'You know, that's sculpture, too.' "
This story, told and retold in the art literature, is one of the founding myths of minimal art. The usual interpretation is the one Andre gave in a 1966 interview with the art writer David Bourdon. "Up to a certain time," he said, "I was cutting into things. Then I realized that the thing I was cutting was the cut. Rather than cut into the material, I now use the material as the cut in space." But is this what Stella had meant? "I thought he meant that the uncarved back was sculpture, too," Andre said to me, "but once I was telling the story, and Frank started laughing, and I said, 'Frank, is the story not true?' And he said, 'Yes, but what I meant was that you had to carve on that side, too.' So my whole career is based on a misunderstanding!"
A month or so after this conversation, my wife and I invited the Andres and the Stellas (Frank's wife, Harriet McGurk, is a pediatrician) to dinner at an uptown Italian restaurant. They hadn't seen each other for years. According to Andre, Stella had said at one point that he'd "had a bellyful of Carl Andre," but the atmosphere at dinner was warm and convivial, and in the course of it I asked Stella what he'd really meant by saying "That's sculpture, too." "I was just hoping he'd stop putting wood chips on everything," Stella said, to general laughter. "But, no, I was only guessing that maybe he would work on the other side, and I just liked the piece as it was."
"You did tell me that it ought to be carved on both sides," Andre said.
"Did I say that?"
"But there were four sides. My 'That's sculpture, too' was basically saying it's complete. The idea was there."
I'm not sure where this leaves us. Put it down as one more example of what Marcel Duchamp referred to as "the delightful fantasy of history."
Nobody else paid attention to Andre's "First Ladder" (as he called his Brancusi-esque sculpture) or to the later wood pieces that Andre did in Stella's studio—pyramid-shaped structures made of notched two-by-fours that were all the same length. Castelli passed on them. Richard Bellamy, a dealer who later showed several of the leading Pop and minimal artists at his Green Gallery, let Andre store the works in his loft on East Broadway, but the winter of 1959-60 was so cold that Bellamy ended up using them for firewood. By this time, Andre had started working on the Pennsylvania Railroad to support himself and his first wife, a schoolteacher named Barbara Brown. When I asked him how he met her, he couldn't remember. "I've lost my mind," he said, not complaining, just stating a fact. "It's a combination of alcohol and something else—my Swedish grandmother had loss of memory, and my father did, too."
The idea of a railroad job came from Michael Chapman, who, before going on to become a highly successful Hollywood cinematographer, had made good money on the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad in New Jersey. Andre had followed his lead, joining the union and taking a job as a freight brakeman in the railroad yards between Jersey City and Newark. For the next four years, shunting engines and freight cars and putting trains together and breaking them down, he got what he called "my advanced degree in sculpture." The trains were made up of more or less identical elements, and a brakeman had to know about the materials he was dealing with. Andre once threw a switch too early and derailed an engine, but he readily owned up to the blunder, telling the superintendant that he had been "a damn fool," and there were no consequences. Andre was living on East Broadway by then, with an art student at Pratt Institute named Rosemarie Castoro. (His marriage to Barbara Brown had ended a year earlier.) He usually worked the 4 P.M.-to-midnight shift, and then hit the downtown New York art bars. "I was standing against a column in Dillon's Bar," Castoro remembers, "and somebody came up to me and said, 'Are you a caryatid?' I said, 'You call this the Erechtheion?' And from then on Carl and I were together. I thought he looked like Richard Burton." They were married in 1963. Andre had stopped making large wooden sculptures when he took the railroad job. He wrote concrete poetry and brief opera librettos and even briefer novels (one had twenty-five words), and he engaged in typed philosophical exchanges with Hollis Frampton—one of them would type for a while on Castoro's Royal portable, and then the other would take over and respond. "He made a lot of little sculptures, too," Castoro said. "He hadn't given that up, but it was small and private."
Pop and minimal art both emerged in the early sixties, when Abstract Expressionism, the dominant style of the forties and fifties, was running out of steam. Each of them was in some degree a reaction against the suffocating influence of Ab Ex painting, and its myth of the artist as tragic hero, but their starting points were miles apart. The Pop artists looked outward at the world around them, rather than inward to the sacred self; they painted figurative images of comic strips, commercial ads, highways, and the proliferating American popular culture of abundance and celebrity. The minimalists were more rigorous. Deeply influenced by the critical writings of Clement Greenberg, they aspired to an abstract art of extreme purity, and for Judd, Flavin, Morris, Sol LeWitt, and several others this meant an art of three-dimensional objects whose industrial (non-art) materials, repetitive elements, and conceptual rigor ruled out all traces of the artist's personal touch. Minimal art had not even been named when Andre quit his railroad job, in the spring of 1964. Soon afterward, he got a call from E. C. Goosen, who was curating a group show of the new, pared-down abstraction that October at the Hudson River Museum, in Yonkers. Goosen, a teacher and art historian, had remembered seeing one of Andre's wooden pyramids five years earlier, in Stella's studio, and he asked if he could have it for the exhibition. Since the original had been used for firewood, Andre made a new one. It was his first appearance in a public space.
Other invitations followed. Barbara Rose, who had broken up with Michael Chapman and had married Frank Stella (Andre introduced them), was becoming an influential and entrepreneurial critic in the rapidly changing art world of the nineteen-sixties. She helped to get Andre into an important group exhibition of minimalist work that she was co-curating at the Tibor de Nagy gallery, on East Seventy-second Street, in January, 1965, and to have his first one-man show there, in April. That summer, while canoeing with a friend on a New Hampshire lake, he had an epiphany. "It was late afternoon, and there was no wind, so the surface of the water was completely smooth," Andre told me. "I was wondering at the time whether my configurations should all be the same height or different heights." Looking at the lake from a few inches above its placid surface, he decided that his next work should be as level as water. This was when Andre moved beyond sculpture conceived as form (carving into timbers) or as structure (pyramids of notched two-by-fours, stacks of identical elements) into what he called "sculpture as place," where he has been ever since.
For his next show at Tibor de Nagy, the following March, he made a series of eight floor-hugging sculptures of whitish, sand-lime construction bricks—a hundred and twenty bricks to each, stacked in two layers and arranged in eight different geometrical shapes. He called them "Equivalents," borrowing Alfred Stieglitz's title for his cloud photographs without explaining the connection. My guess is that nobody tried to walk on the "Equivalents"—the bricks were not attached, and they would have been wobbly—but the idea must have occurred to viewers as they navigated the narrow spaces between the configurations. The idea came through even more strongly a month later, in Andre's contribution to "Primary Structures," at the Jewish Museum, the first large-scale, museum presentation of work that would be identified a year later as minimal art. Amid quantities of sculptures by forty-two American and British artists, Andre's "Lever," a single row of a hundred and thirty-seven bricks that started at the back wall of one gallery and ran into another, could hardly escape notice. Viewers had to step over it or detour around it to see the rest of the show.
"Primary Structures" brought bankable recognition to several of the artists involved, including Andre, who joined the Virginia Dwan gallery soon afterward. In his second show there, in December, 1967, he introduced the metal-plate sculptures that would most clearly define his notion of sculpture as place. There were three of them in the show: large rectangles, each made up of a hundred and forty-four one-foot-square plates that were less than half an inch thick—aluminum plates in one, hot-rolled steel in another, zinc in the third. Andre felt he was on to something ancient and essential, a link between sculpture and human activity that was as old as Stonehenge and the Neolithic mounds he had seen as a teen-ager in southern England. "My idea of a piece of sculpture is a road," as he wrote in 1970. "All my works have implied, to some degree or another, a spectator moving along them or around them."
Minimal art never received the degree of media attention (mostly scathing) that gave Pop art such instant notoriety, but from the outset it was taken seriously by critics, both here and abroad. In Düsseldorf, where there was a strong avant-garde art community, a young German painter named Konrad Fischer scraped together enough money to open a small gallery, and invited Andre, LeWitt, and Bruce Nauman to present solo shows there in 1967. Fischer had no money to pay for shipping art works. He sent Andre a cheap ticket on Lufthansa Airlines, and Andre made the show when he got there—a long rectangle of steel plates that exactly coincided with the gallery's floor space, so that visitors had to walk on it. Fischer became his most important dealer after that, placing his work in prominent European collections, and helping to arrange shows in European galleries and museums.
In New York, Andre, no longer penniless but far from rich (his metal-plate pieces were priced from about fifteen thousand to forty thousand dollars), was rapidly becoming one of the more visible personalities at Max's Kansas City, a sprawling restaurant and bar on lower Park Avenue whose owner, Mickey Ruskin, had made it an artist hangout by accepting art works in lieu of cash. Andy Warhol and his entourage had their regular table in the back. Andre sat at the bar, or at a front table with Robert Smithson, Lawrence Weiner, and other brainy artists of his generation. Andre and Smithson were great talkers, whose wide reading in the sciences, history, philosophy, and aesthetics gave them plenty of verbal leverage. Andre's style was polemical, decrying the national shame of the Vietnam War, denouncing Pop art for its "parasitical" embrace of bourgeois culture, not infrequently revising his opinions in mid-argument. People who didn't like him thought he was an arrogant blowhard. His drink then was red wine, ordered by the pitcher, or champagne when he felt flush. "I could drink to the point of oblivion, without passing out," he said. He could also be extremely nasty to artists he considered mediocre. "I don't want that piece of shit at my table," one artist remembers him yelling at someone. "He's not an artist, he's garbage." Drunken fights sometimes broke out among the macho artists at Max's, but Andre was never involved in them. "I couldn't fight my way out of a cookie jar," he told me. Andre was also known to be extremely generous to other artists, and amazingly successful with women. "He was very sweet and attentive and supportive," according to Lucy Lippard, one of the more perceptive art critics, who had a brief affair with him in 1971. "You got lots of notes and things." Twice during our discussions, Andre told me that he had always felt more comfortable with women than with men.
Andre was still married to Rosemarie Castoro, who had become a recognized painter. They had moved from Brooklyn to a small apartment on Spring Street in Manhattan, and at night, when she'd finished doing freelance layouts for a printer, she would go to meet Andre at Max's. "If I didn't do that," she said, "he would stay out all night. Lots of attractive women there." I asked her what women saw in Andre. "Good-looking man," she said, laughing. "Richard Burton! And he had a Google memory. He was my dear, the love of my life, but, you know, things happen. There were too many women." They separated in the late sixties, and divorced in 1970, but for years afterward they frequently met at a restaurant, to play chess. When I went to see Castoro, in the Spring Street loft they once shared (she still lives and works there), she showed me the chess board that Carl had made, by sewing together dark and light squares of leather—a mini-Andre, unsigned. The pieces are doorknobs that he altered or screwed together. Rosemarie usually won.
In 1970, when Andre was only thirty-five, the Guggenheim Museum gave him a full-dress retrospective. Selections of his work since 1964 in wood, bricks, acrylic blocks, metal plates, and typed word-poems were shown in the spiral galleries, while on the ground floor, visible from any point in the museum, was his recently completed "37 Pieces of Work." A thirty-six-foot square of metal plates in six materials—aluminum, steel, copper, zinc, lead, magnesium—it was Andre's largest sculpture so far, and what he called his "erotic relationship with materials" came through in the subtle play of colors, surface textures, tonalities, mass, weight, and reflected light across the checkerboard of twelve hundred and ninety-six interacting elements. The sensuous aura of the piece filled the famous atrium, and challenged the prevailing view of minimal art as an arid, cerebral enterprise bereft of craftsmanship or skill. Reviewing the show in the Times, Peter Schjeldahl wrote that, except for a few early pieces, "each object . . . presents itself to the viewer with an aggressive air of completeness and finality, as if each were the only, or anyway the last, work of art in the world." Andre told me that Thomas Messer, the Guggenheim's longtime director, had been against doing the show. "There have always been people who heartily detest my work, and think it's fakery," Andre said, and apparently Messer was one of them. Diane Waldman, the museum's chief curator, had pushed him into it. "Messer told me it was probably a good thing," Andre said, "because my work would now receive the ridicule it deserved." The reviews were mostly positive, however, and Andre's career moved to another level.
For the next few years, he showed with John Weber, who had taken over many of the Dwan gallery's artists when Virginia Dwan closed her gallery, in 1971. Andre became involved romantically with Weber's bright and highly competent young gallery assistant, Angela Westwater. She left the gallery in 1972 to become the managing editor of Artforum, but their relationship continued, off and on, for about seven years, and in 1975, when she opened a New York gallery in partnership with Andre's European dealers Konrad Fischer and Gian Enzo Sperone, Andre came along. "I really sold a lot of his work," Westwater remembers. In 1972, Weber had sold three Andres to the Tate, including "First Ladder" and "Equivalents VIII," one of his 1966 brick pieces, which had to be remade with ordinary firebricks because the sand-lime originals, unsold, had been returned to the brick factory and could no longer be replaced. "Equivalents VIII" drew no comment when it appeared in two Tate exhibitions, but in 1976, on a slow-news day, the London Sunday Times ran a story on the Tate's having spent tax-supported funds for a hundred and twenty ordinary bricks ("THE TATE DROPS A COSTLY BRICK") and an uproar ensued. More than seven hundred news stories weighed in on the issue, along with countless radio and television talkers, most of them deriding the museum and the artist. "That piece was like a lightning conductor for a whole set of attitudes in Britain," according to Nicholas Serota, the Tate's current director, "and for a long period afterward the Tate was rather less ambitious in its acquisitions." Andre declined to be interviewed about it on the BBC by his uncle, the one who had taken him to Stonehenge twenty years earlier. "The temptation to make a fool of myself would have been enormous," he said.
Reviewing Andre's 1970 Guggenheim show in Artforum, Roberta Smith had raised the question of where he could go from there. "He cannot change too much without undermining the power of his original statement," she wrote. It was a legitimate concern, which Andre has managed successfully to ignore. He avoided the trap of repeating himself by finding new materials to use, and new ways of using his old materials. "The periodic table of elements is for me what the color spectrum is for a painter," he announced in 1980. "My ambition as an artist is to be the 'Turner of matter.' " In addition to the six metals in "37 Pieces of Work," he has worked in silver, nickel, and tin ("my favorite metal to use"), and in marble, steel pipe, sheet brass, graphite, Belgian blue limestone, gas-beton block, aluminum ingots, and Icelandic basalt. He has experimented, in very small units, with bismuth, indium, and metal cadmium (which is highly poisonous), and on two occasions he has used 18k. gold—in 1966, for a two-inch-square wafer purchased by the collector Vera List, and in 1995 for sixty one-centimetre gold squares wrapped in a Glarner Tüechli bandanna, as a present for Melissa Kretschmer. His sculptures took new shapes and conformations—corner pieces, coiling ribbons of silver and lead, stacks of aluminum ingots. Andre has also returned, again and again, to wood, "the mother of matter," as he once described it, which, "like all women hacked and ravaged by men . . . renews herself by giving, gives herself by renewing." Some of his later, totemic groupings of Western red-cedar timbers stand three feet high, and are more like barriers than like roads, but their orientation is not vertical; they drive downward, into the earth, and their tactile presence—the pungent aroma, the rough, splintery surfaces, the mass and weight and feel of the familiar wood—affects many viewers (this one included) at a very deep level. No sculpture duplicates another, although the differences can be hard to see. With a few exceptions—such as his massive, 1977 "Stone Field" of glacial boulders, on a public site in Hartford, Connecticut—Andre has stuck to working with materials he can assemble himself, with his own hands.
As one of the most successful and respected American artists of the nineteen-seventies and eighties, Andre travelled widely, making new work and showing it at leading galleries and museums. He gave many interviews, served on art panels and juries, coined aphorisms ("Art is what we do. Culture is what is done to us"; "Capitalism must be holy because religion is a business"), and gave money or tactical aid to artists whose needs were more pressing than his own. Although he bought no country houses or cars or art treasures, he enjoyed good food in expensive restaurants, where he insisted on picking up the check and treating his friends to excellent champagne. The market for minimal art fell off in the late seventies and eighties, but Andre's reputation did not. His place in art history seemed secure; his life and his work flowed together in a single stream.
In the fall of 1979, Andre met a thirty-year-old artist named Ana Mendieta, who was having her first one-person show at the A.I.R. gallery, in New York. Their love affair, which began soon afterward, was more intense and far more turbulent than anything Andre had experienced. Mendieta came from a wealthy and distinguished family in Cuba. In 1960, when she was eleven, her father fell out of favor with the Castro regime, and the following year Ana and her older sister were sent for safekeeping to the United States. The loneliness and misery of foster homes in the Midwest made Ana a rebel. She discovered art in high school, majored in it at the University of Iowa, stayed on for a graduate degree, and developed an original and somewhat morbid style of art-making which combined elements of performance art and earth art; she used her tiny but voluptuous body (she was four feet ten inches tall) in direct and visceral encounters with raw nature. Clearly talented, she had a compelling and vivid personality—volatile, enchanting, insecure, hot-tempered, and fiercely ambitious. Andre's friends liked her, but the relationship made them uneasy. Andre had his own doubts about it. Paula Cooper, who replaced Angela Westwater as his dealer in 1978, remembers him saying to her once, very sadly, "It'll never work—a New England puritan and a Latina."
Andre admired Mendieta's work and introduced her to art-world insiders who could advance her already burgeoning career. She won a Guggenheim grant in 1980, and three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1983 she was awarded a Prix de Rome. They travelled together in Europe. He rented an apartment for them in Rome, but his busy schedule kept them apart a lot. Increasingly, when they were together, they fought. Both of them drank too much, and when Mendieta got drunk her anger would spill over in public. Lawrence Weiner remembers her screaming, "Maricón! Maricón! Maricón!" at him on the street, and Andre saying, "Shut up! Shut up!" They separated for several months in 1984, and then, to their friends' amazement, they reconciled and got married in Rome, in January, 1985. It didn't work. By early summer, Mendieta was telling her sister and others that she was collecting evidence of Andre's liaison with a woman in Berlin, as grounds for a divorce. That September, she fell to her death, after a night of heavy drinking with Andre in the Mercer Street apartment.
Twenty-six years later, the tragedy still evokes bitterly opposing reactions. Mendieta's friends and allies—many of whom were active in the feminist movement in the eighties—have never doubted that he killed her, and they cite the arguments offered at the trial, such as Ana's extreme fear of heights, which would have kept her away from the bedroom's high, sliding-glass windows, and her excitement over the many new art projects she was developing, which ruled against suicide. Jack S. Hoffinger, the head of Andre's defense team, had stunned the judge, Alvin Schlesinger, and the courtroom by announcing that Andre wished to waive his right to a jury trial. Most states allow this, but defense lawyers rarely recommend it; they believe a jury of twelve people is more subject to doubts, and therefore less likely to convict, than a single presiding magistrate. Andre's aloof and self-isolating courtroom manner—immersing himself in books or magazines at every pause or recess, showing no hint of emotion—had not endeared him to anyone, however, and Andre and Hoffinger had decided to take their chances with the judge. Schlesinger's verdict, delivered on February 11, 1988, proved them right. The evidence, he said, was not sufficient to satisfy him beyond a reasonable doubt that Andre was guilty. Andre left the courtroom a free man, saying, "Justice has been served."
Most of Andre's friends agree that no one will ever know what happened between Carl and Ana. Angela Westwater, who says she was abused verbally but never physically by Andre, is convinced that it must have been "a total accident." The evidence to convict him was not there, but the shadow did not lift. A year later, at a dinner at P.S.1, the Queens art center, Konrad Fischer came in late, leading a clearly reluctant Andre, who turned and fled when several women rose to their feet, shouting, "Murderer! Get out!" Lucy Lippard, the feminist art critic, took a lot of flak from her friends because she refused to convict Andre before he went on trial. She had dinner with him before the trial, and said, " 'I don't want to know what happened that night, but do you know?' He said, 'No.' And I said, 'Well, you'd better remember.' "
I didn't think that Andre would talk to me about this. I even suspected that the recurrent references, in our conversations, to his loss of memory might be a way of deflecting the question in advance. Melissa Kretschmer told me she had never asked him about it; she trusts him completely, and tries to shield him from what she calls "the haters." In my last meeting with Andre, I asked if it was true, as many people believe, that he had been too drunk on the night in question to remember what happened. To my surprise, he began to speak about it, slowly and quietly, in a way that seemed more focussed than usual. "I was asleep," he said. "I was in bed, when I heard cries of 'No, no, no.' It had been quite balmy, like eighty degrees, and the temperature went down to about sixty all of a sudden. What Ana did was to get up and start closing the windows, because cold air was blowing in. Ana had to climb up—she was, you know, barely five feet. To close those windows you had to do it from the middle, so they wouldn't jam. And in trying to close those windows she just lost her balance." At the trial, a doorman testified that he had heard, a few seconds before the body landed on the roof of a Mercer Street deli, a woman's voice, high up, screaming "No, no, no." Andre's referring to the cries was striking, and I brought him back to it. "Something had awakened me," he said. "Maybe it was the fact that Ana wasn't there, next to me in the bed. I expected to see her there, so I was caught half awake and half asleep." And the cries? I asked. "That was Ana."
The longer I live, the more unreliable and even quixotic my own memory seems to me. Andre's late-summer revelation is probably not going to change anyone's thinking. He appears to have made peace with his own memories, at any rate, and this may explain how he has managed, for so long, to live with the shadow of Ana Mendieta's terrible death. "It will be with me for the rest of my life," he said. "But it's something I don't dwell on." He also said that Melissa Kretschmer had "saved my life." Kretschmer told me that until a few years ago, when his health began to break down, they would usually watch a movie over dinner at home and then Andre would stay up most of the night, drinking. It would be going too far to say that he has been in a prison of his own making for twenty-six years, but his willed solitude is like a second skin. "To myself, I am invisible," he told me. "I've always been hiding out. It's my delusion. But I've been very lucky. Things have befallen me, and I haven't succumbed."
He has also continued to work, as an artist, at a very high level. Nicholas Serota told me he thought some pieces Andre had done since 1985 are "as good as anything he's ever made, and as good as anyone else is making. He's become deeper in some respects." Top-quality Andres are increasingly in demand. The French collector François Pinault is said to have paid more than six million dollars for "37th Piece of Work," when it came on the market privately, in 2006, and since then it has been resold—presumably for a lot more—to a collection in the Middle East. (This is the piece, slightly retitled, that dominated Andre's Guggenheim show in 1970.) More recent works have brought up to two and a half million dollars at Paula Cooper's, and some of the buyers are American. The Dia retrospective will be about equally divided between early and later work. Philippe Vergne does not anticipate angry protesters at the opening, although the possibility cannot be ruled out. "Carl broke something, and he was ostracized, and it's part of the story," Vergne said to me. "But the work is there. We are a museum, not a court of law, and he is one of the most important artists of our time."
Toward the end of our last conversation, Andre brought up what he called his genetic heritage. "I've never had relatives working in a trade where there was no product," he said. "They added to the world, and I always thought I was adding to the stock of images in the world. If it was already in the world, I wasn't interested. I feel I've done the work I was destined to do." ♦


text:
|Phaidon International
US-NJ, R&D Program Manager 452431245053-MZ
|R&D Program Manager for global leader in Medical Technology
Location: New Jersey
Salary: $120,000-$150,000 + bonus + industry leading benefits
One of the global leaders in Medical Technology providing solutions to a variety of therapeutic areas including oncology, infectious disease, biosurgery, drug delivery systems, and diabetes. This company has been highly-rated for their cohesive work environment that allows employees to grow internally within the company while striving to reach the company's global goals.
The Program Manager will be a crucial growth hire that will takeover a team responsible for leading large, and complex product development efforts.
Job Specifications:
Please visit our website at www.phaidoninternational.com


text:
Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey
195 Little Albany Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08903-2681
It is well known that smoking can increase your risk of serious illnesses including heart disease, cancer, stroke, and lung disease. In fact, smoking can significantly shorten your lifespan and make those around you ill from secondhand smoke. Even with all these motivating factors, like most other addictions, smoking can be extremely challenging to give up for good. There are many programs and tools that have been developed to help people quit, including nicotine replacement, medications, cognitive behavioral therapy, medical hypnosis, and a variety of support systems. Some cessation programs use technology to enhance user access. However, studies on the effectiveness of technology-based programs have shown inconsistent results.
The National Cancer Center in South Korea investigated the effectiveness of computer-based smoking cessation programs by reviewing several past studies. The review published in Archives of Internal Medicine found that these programs were modestly effective in helping participants quit.
The systematic review collected data from 22 randomized trials with a total of 29,549 smokers. A total of 16,050 people in the intervention group participated in computer-based programs (including web-based applications) and 13,499 people were followed in control groups (with no access to computer-based programs). At 6-12 months, the participants using the computer-based programs were almost twice (1.7 times) as likely to remain smoke-free as those in the control groups.
In 10 of the trials, supplemental tools like counseling, nicotine replacements, and medication were provided to both the control and intervention groups. The researchers found that there was no significant difference in the abstinence rates between computer-based groups that used these supplemental tools and the computer-based groups that did not.
This review was based on randomized control trials, the results of which are generally considered to be highly reliable. However, many of the studies were compromised by high drop-out rates (not unusual for this type of study). In the end, though, computer-based programs do appear to be effective tools for smoking cessation, at least within the first year. These programs can provide support, information, and assistance at times that are convenient to the user while providing a degree of anonymity, which may be important to some smokers. The availability of technology on portable devices can also make the assistance immediately available at moments of weakness.
In most cases, multiple concurrent approaches are necessary for long-term smoking cessation. Nicotine replacements may help decrease withdrawal reactions, support groups can provide tips from others that have struggled with their addiction, and cognitive behavioral therapy can address the thoughts and actions that inevitable lead to relapses. If you smoke, now is the best time to quit. If you have tried to quit before, try again. It is the rare smoker who succeeds on his first try.
American Lung Association
Quit Smoking
Myung SK, McDonnell DD, Kazinets G, Seo HG, Moskowitz JM. Effects of Web- and computer-based smoking cessation programs: meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.Arch Intern Med. 2009 May 25;169(10):929-37.
Last reviewed July 2009 by Richard Glickman-Simon, MD Last Updated: 7/28/2009