text:
Kitchen Gallery: White, Bright, and Clean
Here's a look at some of our favorite white kitchens from across Apartment Therapy. There's a wide range of styles, and there are some inspiring splashes of color that show how you can dress up an otherwise plain white kitchen.
1. Gallery Kitchen by Anna Irinarchos - Pops of green keep this from looking too sterile or cold. Check out the great vertical pantry too.
2. Stevie & Jason's Design Philosophy - Here's a good example of how to liven up an otherwise ordinary white rental kitchen. Spots of color on the walls and floor make the white look purposeful and clean.
3. Before and After: A $1400 IKEA Kitchen Makeover - This kitchen looks a little washed out in these photos, but we bet that in person this feels light and airy.
4. Before and After: Victoria's Kitchen - Another place where the cook decided white was better than color.
5. Giulia's Light and Airy - A lovely, traditional galley kitchen where the sun makes all that white just glow.
6. Tim Sloan's Box of Tricks - A clever white kitchen in London, with unexpected pops of red.
7. Chez Larsson - Benita's beautiful (and organized!) Swedish kitchen.
8. Phoebe's Crisp Organic - Winner of our Smallest Coolest Kitchens 2007 contest. Warm, inviting, and stunningly renovated.
9. Amelie and John's London Warehouse Conversion - A more vintage feel, with high ceilings and an old wood table.
10. Debbie and Olivier's Outside In - An unusually open kitchen with white and wood mixed.
11. Jim and Kari's Evanston Modern - Beautifully cottage-like, but still sleek and clean.
12. Eric Haeberli of We Love Jam - Eric's bright minimal space is just a backdrop for his crazy and inventive laboratory of jams, cookies, and products from around the world.
13. James and Rui's LVL Home - Just two pops of red, but what a strong impression they make in this open kitchen.
14. Shannon and Emmett's From Factory to Family - We love the vintage feel in this kitchen!
15. Lisa Marie and Stephen's Antiques Meet Mid-Century - This kitchen is warmed up with small vintage touches and a rug (and a cute dog too).
16. Lucinda and Nicholas' Transformed Tenement - Those glossy white cupboards are really set off by the dark blue tile.
17. Sherry and Miguel's Marvimon House - Wow! Does this kitchen even qualify as white? The light color lets those baroque lamps and barstools have all the attention.
18. Kelly's Craftsman Comfort - Modern and warm. A dream kitchen.
19. Shannon Lamden of Aunty Cookie - Another example of blue tile and colorful details in an otherwise white kitchen.
20. Our Kitchen/ Office Space - A dramatic transformation!
We're sure we've missed plenty of great white kitchens -- do you have any favorites to share?


text:
|Thread Tools
|Display Modes
In the Twin Cities for Wednesday's game between the Wolves and San Antonio Spurs at Target Center, Stern expressed hope that renovation plans "come to a final form in the next few weeks."
"We want to maintain the building so it doesn't fall behind," the commissioner said. "It's pretty important to make capital improvement on an ongoing basis. The fans deserve it. I get very excited about the impact that a fresh, continually busy building can have on a vital downtown."
The Timberwolves and city of Minneapolis introduced plans more than a year ago to renovate Target Center, which opened in 1991. Initial costs were projected at $155 million but now range from $100 million to $150 million. Initially scheduled to begin in May, the renovation has been delayed because of disagreements over cost responsibilities between the Timberwolves, city of Minneapolis and AEG, the company that operates Target Center.
Stern, who plans to retire Feb. 1, 2014, said the delay should not trigger concerns over the Wolves leaving Minnesota.
"The fans don't have to worry about that at all," he said.
Stern said that when the renovation is completed he will recommend to his successor, Adam Silver, Target Center as a future host for NBA All-Star Weekend. Target Center hosted the NBA All-Star Game in 1994.
"I wouldn't say this building is currently configured for that," Stern said.:shocked
Stern's retirement will end a 30-year run as the league's commissioner. Among his outgoing duties is to help Wolves owner Glen Taylor find a buyer to take over majority ownership of the team. Stern said he has been "pretty involved" in the process.
Taylor, who has owned the Wolves since 1994, stepped down as chairman of the league's Board of Governors last fall.
Stern also said the league and players union is moving toward an agreement on "full-fledged testing" for HGH, a performance-enhancing drug that is on the league's list of banned substances. Stern said he is optimistic testing will become mandatory next season.
"We're watching baseball and football to see if they get through what I think they're going to get through," Stern said. "Based on our overall dialogue with the union, we'll be in a good place to have testing for next season. It's not a commitment, not a promise. It's an expectation. Our players have said, as a group, that we want to be demonstratively free from drugs."
Go Spurs Go!
|Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
|Thread Tools
|Display Modes
Linear Mode

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Kara DioGuardi attends the American Idol Season 9 Finale, Los Angeles. 5/26/10
Ellen Degeneres attends the American Idol Season 9 Finale, Los Angeles. 5/26/10
Randy Jackson performs on 'American Idol.'
Kara DioGuardi attends BMI's 58th annual Pop Awards at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel on May 18, 2010 in Beverly Hills, California.
American Idol judges Randy Jackson, Kara DioGuardi, Ryan Seacrest, Ellen Degeneres, Simon Cowell.
American Idol judges Randy Jackson, Ellen Degeneres, Simon Cowell, Ryan Seacrest, Kara DioGuardi.
Actress Portia de Rossi and TV personality Ellen DeGeneres arrive at celebrated jewelry designer Neil Lane's debut of his new bridal collection with Kay Jewelers held at Drai's Hollywood on July 22, 2010 in Hollywood, California.
Kara DioGuardi, Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul attend the 2010 VH1 Do Something Awards held at the Hollywood Palladium on July 19, 2010 in Hollywood, California.
V personalities Kim Kardashian and Randy Jackson attend the GREY GOOSE Vodka sponsored 38th Annual Fifi Awards at NY State Armory on June 10, 2010 in New York City.
Tv personality Kara DioGuardi attends the 2010 CMT Music Awards at the Bridgestone Arena on June 9, 2010 in Nashville, Tennessee.
TV personality Randy Jackson attends the It's Y!ou Yahoo! yodel competition at Military Island, Times Square on October 13, 2009 in New York City.
Comedian Ellen DeGeneres performs on stage at Ellen's Even Bigger Really Big Show during The Comedy Festival 2008 presented by TBS at The Colosseum, Caesars Palace on November 20, 2008 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
TV host Ellen DeGeneres arrives at Stand Up For Cancer at the Kodak Theatre on September 5, 2008 in Hollywood, California.
American Idol judge Simon Cowell speaks during the taping of Idol Gives Back held at the Kodak Theatre on April 6, 2008 in Hollywood, California. Idol Gives Back will air April 9, 2008
TV Personality Ellen DeGeneres attends the 16th Annual Elton John AIDS Foundation Oscar Party at the Pacific Design Center on February 24, 2008 in West Hollywood, California.
Ellen Degeneres, former American Idol judge.
Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony arrive in Times Square to unveil Jennifer's Boy's and Girls club billboard in NYC. 6/10/10
Jennifer Lopez looks stunning as she heads to a film screening at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. 4/19/10
Jennifer Lopez attends the Los Angeles Premiere of "The Back-Up Plan". Regency Village Theatre, Westwood, CA, April 21, 2010.
Actress-singer Jennifer Lopez did a little shopping on July 22, 2010 in Thousand Oaks, California with a bodyguard. Jennifer Lopez was dressed in a casual outfit in a pair of boyfriend style jeans, grey sweater and a pair of strappy animal print high heel sandals. In recent news Lopez might be facing a lawsuit as a hotel on the island of Cyprus plans to sue her for $40 million after she cancelled a concert threatened her. Lopez's spokesperson announced last week that the singer would not play the Cyprus scheduled for July 24, 2010 show because of "sensitivity to the political realities of the region."
Jennifer Lopez performs at Samsung's 9th Annual Four Seasons of Hope Gala at Cipriani Wall Street on June 15, 2010 in New York City wearing Lanvin.
Singeractress Jennifer Lopez poses for a photo on the red carpet at the 2010 Apollo Theater Spring Benefit Concert & Awards Ceremony at The Apollo Theater on June 14, 2010 in New York City.
Singer Jennifer Lopez performs onstage during the World Music Awards 2010 at the Sporting Club on May 18, 2010 in Monte-Carlo, Monaco.
Jennifer Lopez attensd the World Music Awards 2010 at the Sporting Club on May 18, 2010 in Monte Carlo, Monaco.
Actress Jennifer Lopez attends "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" film premiere at the Mann's Village Theater on December 8, 2008 in Los Angeles, California.


text:
Most clubs can't live without group exercise, but living with it is sometimes an expensive proposition. Club operators often debate the number of classes they should offer. To figure this out, they must determine the level of group exercise payroll needed to align with their club's membership value proposition, the number of classes to offer on a weekly basis to meet or exceed the expectations of members, and where this fits with the club's ability to make a reasonable profit.
A recent Les Mills study indicates that group exercise is the key to membership retention and, therefore, profitability. More than 50 percent of the daily visits to the top club in the study were for group exercise classes. On average, between 20 percent and 30 percent of daily participation at the clubs in the study came from group exercise.
In my analysis of 50 leading clubs from Europe and the United States, group exercise participation represented on average 26 percent of daily participation, with a range of 16 percent to 48 percent. If about 20 percent to 30 percent of a club's members use the club on a daily basis, then total group exercise participation on a daily basis would represent approximately 4 percent to 10 percent of a club's overall membership base. A club with 3,000 members could then expect to generate 120 to 300 visits daily for its group exercise programs. Obviously, group exercise is an important element of the club success equation.
Based on this data, do you just go ahead and add more classes, or is there a relationship between profitability, membership size, club positioning and a predictable level of weekly classes?
When I was CEO of a health and fitness club company in Russia, I asked the same questions. Finding no concrete answer, I performed a comprehensive analysis of the business, looking at every aspect of group exercise (number of classes, class attendance, instructor payroll, instructor payment rates, etc.) and ran them against every imaginable metric in the business (membership price, membership level, dues line, revenues, EBITDA, etc.) to see if some reasonable correlation existed, especially in regards to the most profitable and successful clubs. Our benchmark for great profitability was based on clubs with an EBITDA of more than $1 million and an EBITDAR margin of 45 percent or higher. After analyzing 24 months of data from 30 clubs in Russia and additional clubs in the United States, we identified key metrics that we could use as benchmarks based on a club's market position or segment.
First, clubs could be categorized into one of six market segments. (The segments noted here are based on the U.S. market and differ slightly in Europe and Russia.)
We identified the following metrics as most closely correlated with profitability for each of the above club segments:
Members per class. This metric is similar to members per meter in the club business or revenue per available room in the hotel business. It indicates the level of availability between your members and the classes you offer. It is a form of productivity measure.
Average attendance per class. Most clubs track this number and look at it as an indication of a particular class's success.
Group exercise payroll as a percent of adult membership revenue. This represents the percent of a club's monthly dues line attributable to adult memberships that is allocated to instructor payroll. This metric is an efficiency measure.
Table 2 provides a few of the benchmark metrics for the six categories of clubs highlighted.
The above metrics are average statistical metrics that are associated with clubs capable of generating a blended net promoter score (the percentage of members who would promote your club minus the percentage who are detractors) above 25, an EBITDA of more than $1 million, and an EBITDAR margin in excess of 45 percent. In other words, if your club, based on its market segment, fits within these parameters, then you have a good balance of classes to members and instructor payroll to the membership revenue generated. Clubs that had a member per class ratio (number of classes your club offers each month divided into number of members) and an average attendance per class number that were the same performed the best. These metrics represent monthly metrics since the club business is highly seasonal, and classes should be adjusted based on a club's seasonality.
I do not profess that the metrics presented in this article will work for everyone. They are intended to provide an analytic approach to determining the basic parameters for calculating the appropriate number of complimentary or non-fee based classes to offer as part of your club's membership package.
Clubs that offer complimentary group exercise classes as part of their membership package should consider the metrics described in this article as a framework for structuring their program, while also factoring in the intangible aspects of programming, such as member interests and demands, population demographics (age of members, gender balance, cultural background), blend of classes offered (cycling, yoga, Step, Zumba, Body Pump, etc.) and the club's seasonality.
Stephen Tharrett is president of Club Industry Consulting. He is the author of four books and is a former board member and president of IHRSA. Tharrett is involved in public speaking, having served as an international keynote speaker at conventions in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, England, Ireland, Japan, Russia, Singapore, Spain and Turkey, as well as domestic conventions such as Athletic Business, CMAA, IHRSA and SIBEC. He can be reached at email@example.com.


text:
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Alfred Lord Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892 / Lincoln / England)
» Click to list general statistics » OR, select a date :
Of old sat Freedom on the heights,
The thunders breaking at her feet:
Above her shook the starry lights:
She heard the torrents meet.
read more >>
- Hits: Number of visitors who read the poem on the given date.
- Posts: Number of visitors who posted the poem to a friend (via e-mail) on the given date.
- Dates that have "0" hits may not be shown on the list.
- Dates, poems and poets that have "0" hits may not be shown on the list. Statistics are generated daily.


text:
Hands-free vibration! 12" cylinder with 2 �" diameter comes with 3 interchangeable sleeves. Precision measurement pump creates a superb vacuum seal. Powerful, removable, multi-speed stimulator and convenient latex pouch may be strategically place in any position. Easy-to-use with quick release valve. Stimulator requires 2 AA batteries, not included.
Ships Everywhere.


text:
PORTLAND, Ore. — Wesley Matthews had 24 points, including a clutch 3-pointer with less than a minute to go, and the Portland Trail Blazers snapped their longest losing streak of the season at seven games with a 92-86 win over the Boston Celtics on Sunday night.
PORTLAND, Ore. — Wesley Matthews had 24 points, including a clutch 3-pointer with less than a minute to go, and the Portland Trail Blazers snapped their longest losing streak of the season at seven games with a 92-86 win over the Boston Celtics on Sunday night.
J.J. Hickson's hook shot put the Blazers ahead 86-80, but a pair of reverse layups from Paul Pierce and Brandon Bass pulled the Celtics to 86-82 with 2:54 left.
Kevin Garnett's layup with 1:46 to go tied it, but rookie Damian Lillard answered with his own layup and added a free throw to give Portland back the lead. Matthews, hobbled at times during the game with a sore left leg, hit the step-back 3-pointer that gave the Blazers the final margin with 53.9 seconds left.
Pierce had 23 points and eight assists for the Celtics, who were playing their third game in four nights.
Boston was coming off a 113-88 victory at Phoenix on Friday night. Jeff Green scored 31 points against the Suns while Kevin Garnett was given the night off to rest, but the veteran forward was back in the starting lineup against the Blazers.
The Blazers saw the return of Matthews, who missed the last two games because of a sore left leg and elbow. But the injury was obviously still bothering him, and he limped badly coming off the court after the third period.
Guard Eric Maynor also made his debut for Portland after coming to the team in a deal with Oklahoma City at the trade deadline.
Maynor, in his fourth NBA season, missed most of last season with a knee injury and then got bypassed in the Thunder's rotation by second-year guard Reggie Jackson earlier this season. He entered the game late in the first quarter and even played in tandem at times with rookie Lillard, finishing with two points in 15 minutes.
The Celtics jumped out first and led by as many as seven points early but Portland pulled in front on Nicolas Batum's 3-pointer, which made it 18-15. Lillard's bank shot and free throw gave the Blazers a 38-27 lead midway through the second quarter.
Courtney Lee hit a 3-pointer and Garnett made a jumper to pull the Celtics to 41-39 with 1:31 left in the first half. Wesley Matthews answered with consecutive 3-pointers and the Blazers led 47-42 at the break.
Avery Bradley's fast-break dunk put the Celtics back in front 55-54 with 8:32 left in the third quarter, but the Blazers regained the lead and were ahead 71-67 going into the final period.
The game stayed close until Matthews made a 3-pointer to put Portland ahead 80-73 with 6:53 to go in the game.
LaMarcus Aldridge extended the lead with his own 3 that made it 82-74.
Jordan Crawford played 12 minutes but did not score in his second game for the Celtics. He was acquired in a deal with the Washington Wizards at the trade deadline on Thursday, so the Celtics were still working him in.
"He's a scorer, but we're going to ask him to do more than that," Boston coach Doc Rivers said.
The Celtics fell to 9-4 since losing Rajon Rondo to a season-ending knee injury.


text:
All News Releases By Date
EPA Orders Oakland Petroleum Operating, Inc. to Stop Discharging
Release Date: 10/21/2010
Contact Information: Dave Bary or Joe Hubbard at 214-665-2200 or email@example.com
(DALLAS, October 21, 2010) The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued a cease and desist administrative order to Oakland Petroleum Operating, Inc. of Tulsa, Oklahoma, for violations of the federal Clean Water Act.
A September 21, 2010, EPA inspection of the company's oil field production and brine disposal facility in Osage County, Oklahoma, found two unauthorized discharges of oil field brine and produced wastewater generated by oil production activities into Turkey Creek. The inspection also revealed that water located at the discharge points of entry into Turkey Creek was contaminated with brine discharges and salts.
Based on these findings, Oakland Petroleum Operating, Inc. has been ordered to cease all discharges of pollutants from the facility, remove all brine and contaminated soils from the flow path located between the brine tanks and injection flow line within the facility and the discharge points into Turkey Creek. The company has also been ordered to remove all residual brine within Turkey Creek and within 30 days provide written certification that these activities have been completed.
More about activities in EPA Region 6: https://www.epa.gov/region6
EPA audio file is available at https://www.epa.gov/region6/6xa/podcast/oct2010.html
Search this collection of releases | or search all news releases
View selected historical press releases from 1970 to 1998 in the EPA History website.


text:
Phone number lookup for 281-612-5725? Find the person or business that called from 2816125725. Also find an astronumerological analysis and explanation the phone number (281)-612-5725. This pages gives a detailed meaning of each number in the Calls from 281-612-5725.The phone number: +1-281-612-5725 could have called from the following cities below. People travel to other cities/countries, so the phone call could have been placed from any city or world if the phone plan is international.
2816125725 has a life path of 3. 2816125725 means: Self-expression is your substance. You are an everlasting flame, you are sparkling "champagne" ... Because of these properties, and notwithstanding your friendliness and ability to draw in, and you can without a doubt win various buddies. Every so often individuals won't appreciate you or possibly resent your approval - by and large they are pulled in to you and esteem your association. Regardless, you ought to remember that life is not made just of jokes and beguilements. Yes, there are not a lot of such huge others of jokes like individuals with life way 3, yet you should explore things and quit contributing your time and imperativeness just on the chatter and fun.
As all individuals with life way 3, You have two dazzling components - knowledge and entering mind. Use them commendably! You successfully get realizing, whatever you will be enthused about, yet added something to your "case of information", you would lean toward not to significantly research the subject, and surge quickly in the other heading. Such varying qualities makes you a man, skilled in various zones, in any case, as a less than dependable rule it is bringing some particular difficulties, when you have to settle on a choice of an occupation in which you would have the ability to pass on what requirements be. You have all that could be required of fervor and you can "contaminate" numerous people with it. In any case, you quickly lose energy to the began techniques and speedily change to something else. You got used (and you like it specifically) that everything is going in transit you require. "Regardless!" - that is your adage, and you are not extremely stressed over what's to come. In light of current circumstances, so be it, in any case you slight your obligations moreover.
On account of your energetic and awesome identity you can talk the right things about people, yet perhaps exorbitantly fundamental. You should pick the expressions more decisively. You can, unwittingly, affront even your most loved ones. Mind - is a respectability, if your jokes are lovely, and you really are improved with an uncommon diverting slant that never gives you or your loved ones any chance to be sad or depleted. You are using words skillfully and it licenses you to accept an unmistakable position in any district where there is regarded discourse. You viably win in any such endeavor. The word, formed and talked - is a sustenance for your soul. Diversions of mind you require more than bread, and you vivaciously bestow to the less instructed each one of those truths that you picked up from different sources.
Each number in the (281)-612-5725 phone number means what astronumerology ?
2: 2 in 2816125725 means. You are always careful as to meeting new people. Phenomenal ability to regulate people with mindfulness and validity. Basic adaptable, handle any issue gave extremes are avoided. Think before you act, concentrate on detail or plans will be vanquished. be viably involved with endeavors to be happy. Benevolence may interfere with stylish capacity. Decrease determination or get the chance to be discouraged.
You radiate vibes of emotionless outlandish nature. You value being romanced, wined, and devoured. You are amazingly energetic to get favors as an announcement of the kinship of your sweetheart. You should be ruined and know how to ruin your mate. You are private in your look of charms and particular with respect to love making. You will hold off until everything meets with your support. You can control your desire and shun sex if need be. You require new sensations and experiences. You will test.
8: 8 in 2816125725 means. You are not judgmental. Fulfillment begins from looking for after great. Music and craftsmanship redesign achievements, dismiss composing and sensation. Input hurts. Different capacities, concentrate on one to find reputation. Status not overhauled by gloating.
You search for a mate who can overhaul your reputation and you're winning limit. You will be to a great degree liberal to your sweetheart once you have accomplished a vow. Your gifts are truly an enthusiasm for your assistant. Preceding the devotion, be that as it may, you tend to be modest in your spending and dating affinities, and comparatively watchful in your sexual involvement's. You are an outlandish and patient huge other.
1: 1 in 2816125725 means. You can be quiet when you have something at the front line of your contemplations. Centrality and energy, move others, slanted to wiped out prosperity, sound judgment beats, delicateness and "nerves", make money related and private issues. Participating in new activities, massacres shyness, unexpected events may achieve sudden move to faraway place. Travel for the most part, may carry on far from home. You could persevere have unpredictability. Goal accomplished through application and mastery.
You are not particularly nostalgic, yet rather you are excited about action. You mean business. With you, what you see is the thing that you get. You have no resilience for being a bother and can't be irritated with some individual who is endeavoring to be timid, lovable, modest, and discreetly appealing. You are an ahead of time person. As to sex, its action that matters, not dull signs. Your mate's physical appeal is basic to you. You find the interest and trial of the "pursuit" vitalizing. You are enthusiastic and sexual, furthermore being significantly more brave than you appear, regardless, you don't dodge advancing these qualities. Your physical needs are your basic concern.
6: 6 in 2816125725 means. Everyone treasures you. Overwhelming pride, be cautious with a fall. Do whatever it takes not to put trust in superstitions. Need for value brings proceeding with associations. Works splendidly under course, normal agreeable individual. Avoid presumption, especially over innovative limits. Looked for after strongly, capacity and learning advantage you.
You are idealistic and nostalgic, putting your dear on a stage. You look for the most flawlessly awesome mate you can find. You are a bother, yet once devoted, you are to a great degree resolute. You are stirring, sexual, and subtly energetic. Transparently, you can be obvious, extravagant, and overcome. You are considered wistful. Exciting adoration scenes are a most cherished dream side intrigue. You can be a to a great degree liberal accomplice.
5: 5 in 2816125725 means. You are an outstandingly empowering person. Compliance withdraws as you create. Secret and extremism give impact, lose support unless yearning for money and influence coordinated. Characteristic learning and affability pass on longing to acknowledgment. Flexibility brings regards, don't get the opportunity to be tactless. Use, make, and apply innovative capacity and succeed, yet keep up a vital separation from franticness. In case you understood what people really think of you as, you would be shocked.
Your most critical need is to talk. If your date is not a respectable gathering of people, you encounter trouble relating. A man must be rationally bracing or you are not captivated sexually. You require a friend for a critical other and a sidekick for a bed mate. You despise disharmony and interference, yet you do welcome a better than average dispute periodically it seems to mix things up. You be a bother an extensive measure, for the test is more basic than the sexual speak to you. In any case, once you give your heart away, you are uncompromisingly dependable. When you don't have a nice playmate to fall asleep with, you will fall asleep with a better than average book.
7: 7 in 2816125725 means. You have awesome strategies for review people. Your grimness irritates everybody around you. Acknowledge required detachment, outside activities are worthwhile. Absence of concern harms yourself most of all. Build practices concerning genuineness. Mind with money finishes need. Plenitudes are dangerous. Reason helps you through roughest circumstances.
You are particular, searching for perfection inside yourself and your sweetheart. You respond to a dear who is your insightful proportional or unrivaled, and one who can enhance your status. You are hot and know how to accomplish the zenith of sexual prompting, since you work at it exactingly. You can be incredibly progressive sexually-that is, the time when you find the time. Your commitments and obligations eclipse everything else. You may encounter issues getting earnestly almost a mate, yet no burden gravitating toward sexually.
Other phone numbers near the area code 281
Who called 281-848-4995 reverse phone lookup
Who called 281-440-5935 reverse phone lookup
Who called 281-880-5399 reverse phone lookup
Who called 281-844-4443 reverse phone lookup
Who called 281-888-5545 reverse phone lookup
Who called 281-008-9443 reverse phone lookup
Who called 281-088-4353 reverse phone lookup
Who called 281-884-5559 reverse phone lookup
Who called 281-048-9953 reverse phone lookup
Who called 281-484-5495 reverse phone lookup
Who called 281-800-5359 reverse phone lookup
Who called 281-808-5555 reverse phone lookup
Who called 281-000-3939 reverse phone lookup
Who called 281-488-4333 reverse phone lookup
Who called 281-004-3933 reverse phone lookup
Who called 281-400-3533 reverse phone lookup
Who called 281-480-3559 reverse phone lookup
Who called 281-448-5544 reverse phone lookup
Who called 281-040-9553 reverse phone lookup
Tags: Phone lookup (281)-612-5725. Phone number search 281-612-5725 ? Reverse phone lookup (281)-612-5725. Cell Phone number lookup 281-612-5725. Reverse lookup (281)-612-5725.
Copyrights © 2016 . All Rights Reserved.


text:
TEMPE, Ariz. — Jordan Bachynski, Arizona State's big-lug-of-a-Canadian, was as good a place as any to start.
There was so much Arizona State did right, and so much UCLA did wrong, at the Wells Fargo Arena on Saturday. But where you could hang the Sun Devils' 78-60 victory was from Bachynski's 7-foot-2 frame.
It could be argued, at least Saturday, that Bachynski was as even better Canadian import to the Phoenix area than NHL hockey.
"I never heard of the guy," UCLA's Shabazz Muhammad said. "He was huge."
Literally and figuratively.
The Sun Devils found UCLA's weakness — not that it required a Where's Waldo-like search — and exploited it.
The Bruins found that living in the past, even if it was only Thursday, was a bad way to travel around the Pac-12 Conference.


text:
The Rottweiler (UK: /ˈrɒtvaɪlə/ or /ˈrɒtwaɪlə/, US: /rɒtwaɪlər/) is a breed of domestic dog, regarded as medium-to-large or large. The dogs were known in German as Rottweiler Metzgerhund, meaning Rottweil butchers' dogs, because their main use was to herd livestock and pull carts laden with butchered meat to market. This continued until the mid-19th century when railways replaced droving. Although still used to herd stock in many parts of the world, Rottweilers are now also used as search and rescue dogs, as guard dogs and police dogs.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Rottweiler", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.


text:
Oral-History:Gustave Shapiro
About Gustave Shapiro
Gustave Shapiro, an IEEE life fellow recognized in 1961 "for contributions to the development of electronic miniaturization techniques and components," graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School in the midst of the Great Depression. He worked as an electrical wireman, a Test Department troubleshooter at Air King Radio, and then joined the Signal Corps laboratory during World War II. During the war he shifted from being a technician to an engineer, though without a degree. He joined the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) after the war and stayed until he retired in 1977. He was involved with electronic miniaturization programs while at the NBS.
This interview covers Shapiro's education and career, as well as his work with the Symposium on Improved Quality Electronic Components. Shapiro remarks on the working environments of the American Federation of Labor, the Signal Corps, and the National Bureau of Standards.
About the Interview
GUSTAVE SHAPIRO: An Interview Conducted by Robert Colburn, IEEE History Center, 19 October 1999
Interview # 375 for the IEEE History Center, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
Copyright Statement
This manuscript is being made available for research purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the IEEE History Center. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of IEEE History Center.
Request for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the IEEE History Center Oral History Program, IEEE History Center at Stevens Institute of Technology, Castle Point on Hudson, Hoboken, NJ 07030 USA or firstname.lastname@example.com. It should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user.
It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:
Gus Shapiro, an oral history conducted in 1999 by Robert Colburn, IEEE History Center, Hoboken, NJ, USA.
Interview: Gus Shapiro
Interviewer: Robert Colburn
Date: 19 October 1999
Place: Ramada Inn in Rockville, Maryland
Childhood, Brooklyn Tech education, independent study
What led to your interest in components in the beginning of your career?
- Audio File
- MP3 Audio
Play (375 - shapiro - clip 1.mp3)
I was a boy inventor. We were poor and I made most of my own toys. When I went to Brooklyn Technical High School (Brooklyn Tech), only one in ten applicants were accepted. Of those that got in, one in four graduated in four years. If you flunked something there was no way of making it up without staying an extra half year. Quite a few dropped out altogether. A month before graduating, I was walking down the halls and a group of boys (it was an all boy school) were crowding in front of me looking at the list of all the graduates' standings. When I managed to get to where I could see the list, I started reading it starting at about number sixteen and kept going and until I reach one hundred. I thought, "I wasn't good," so I read on through to number 250. Still I didn't see my name, so I started reading the list all over again, this time starting a number sixty, and read it all the way to the end. My name had to be someplace, so I started again, this time at the beginning of the list. When I reached number seven, and there I was. I never thought that I was a particularly good student, because many times I worried that I might flunk a course. I hadn't realized that in that school everyone was always worried, because they marked so severely.
My father earned a modest living, but there was no way he could support me through college. In Brooklyn Tech they had four or five terminal courses. The first two years everyone took the same courses. Then in the last two years there were mechanical, electrical, chemical, civil engineering and college prep courses. The latter included taking a language. I didn't expect to go to college, so I took the electrical course. I came out number one in all the Regents and math examinations, but there were other examinations that I worried about. I was seventeen when I graduated from high school. Cooper Union was the only college into which I could get admitted without large fees and a language.
I graduated in January, but the entrance exams at Cooper Union were not until September. There were strict rules in my family that children should be in bed at 8 o'clock. I was so used to going to sleep at 8 o'clock that when stayed up later I couldn't function. When I started courting my wife and wanted to see her every night, I couldn't because I'd fall asleep. During the six-month period before taking the examination at Cooper Union I decided to take a Spanish course at a local night high school. I kept falling asleep in class, so after a month I had to quit. When I took that entrance examination I did very poorly. It's amazing how much one can forget in six months. That appeared to be the end of college for me.
I was always interested in science and electricity. I remember the first book from which I learned something about electricity. I also liked to read Popular Mechanics. I used to cut out coupons to get free things. I sent a postcard to Union Carbide to obtain a little book with which one could learn elementary theory about electricity. The book used a hydraulic analogy that was easy to understand. From that hydraulic analogy I learned the difference between series and parallel connecting watts, potential and current flow.
When I was four years old we lived in tenement apartment without a living room. The rooms were small, and the dining room had a drop light which had a turn switch. My mother had a friend whose son was in his late teens; he came down one day to change that light socket to one with a pull chain. I was entranced. "If only one day I could do something like that," I thought. I was always making gadgets. My first telephone was a garden hose. Ads in Popular Mechanics advertised what they called a Svenderken's button, "Make your own microphone for 25¢." It was a carbon button that was part of every telephone transmitter in those days. When it was mounted on a flat surface the granule would vibrate when exposed to sound thereby changing their resistance. For the diaphragm I used a Ping-Pong paddle, and I used a pair of earphones for one-way communication.
My father smoked cigars, and at the United Cigar Store he was given little certificates (like Green Stamps) when he bought cigars. For a birthday present he got me a No. 1 Erector Set, which I loved. I made all kinds of toys with it. Today I have 150 lbs. of Erector Set parts that I have been picking up at yard sales. I also have the instruction books. Erector went out of business after many years, and Meccano replaced it. Meccano just has punched strips, and I wanted the Erector Set pieces for my grandchildren. My grandson is not interested, nor was my son, so here they sit. And that's worth quite a bit of money today.
I really learned useful basics in Brooklyn Tech. I started out with a pattern-making course, shop courses, and drafting courses.
I learned how to make patterns for metal sand casting, and I learned how to use a chisel to make patterns. We had a joke: "Parents send us to school to get an education, and what do they do? They teach us to chisel." There were gas and coal fired furnaces used to melt their iron. Everyone wanted to use the gas furnace because it was nice and clean and coal was dirty. Using the coal furnace required that we took three-quarters of the period coking the furnace and we get all grimy. If one tried to speed it up, all the coal would be blown out the chimney. I learned to make welded iron rail chains. If the iron was not hot enough it wouldn't melt, and if it was too hot, the iron would burn. I took sheet metal shop there where I made a sheet metal lamp. It was quite interesting to end up with a three-dimensional lamp from flat sheet metal.
In my first class the teacher took out a cigar box and said, "I want to show you what happened to an unfortunate student in this class last year. We have big metal shears. Don't ever help someone cut some metal; stand behind it or get your hands too close to the metal shear." He opened the cigar box and said, "This is what happened to a student a year ago." In the box was a fake bloody bandaged finger. We understood his meaning. I had bench lathe and engine lathe classes. Those things stood me in good stead. Years later when I was in the Signal Corps Laboratory, I had my own little shop. When I was at the National Bureau of Standards, I had my own shop with all sorts of shop equipment and three machinists working for me. We could melt alloys and do all kinds of things, thanks to my good basic background.
Do you know Lafayette Radio?
Lafayette Radio was the later name of Wholesale Radio, located at 100 Sixth Avenue. They had a mail-order catalog or you could buy parts at the counter. The first twenty pages in the catalog had some very clear radio theory that could be understood by technicians. That was my first exposure to radio and electronic theory. RCA published a 25¢ red-covered book that was a tube manual. The first pages had tutorial material from which I learned about vacuum tubes. I joined the Radio Club at Brooklyn Tech and learned how vacuum tubes worked and about super regenerator receivers.
I had a few tools. My supplies included pieces of wood from orange crates. When I would find a 5-gallon tin can I would bring it home and wash it out. Then I would get out my mother's can opener and cut the ends off, cut it open and hammer it flat. That was my sheet metal supply. I had a rickety little saw, a little hammer, a screwdriver and an ice pick. If I wanted to make something out of wood, I would take the ice pick, heat it over the stove and burn a hole in the wood. My mother would come home to find the house full of smoke. Then she'd lay it on me. I wasn't a bad kid, but I was active and got into all kinds of trouble. My parents loved me, but nevertheless I was a bit of a problem, unlike my brother who was a little goody-goody.
The movie houses had promotions to increase their patronage. Admission was only 25¢ in the evening, and they would have a promotion called "Rent Night." You kept your stub with its number when you came in. If you won you came up on the stage with your rent receipt and they gave you money to pay for one month's rent. My mother was lucky one night. I think our rent was $35 a month. She gave everyone a gift. She asked me what I wanted, and I said I wanted a radio-engineering book. Up until that time I had just been reading technicians' magazines (elementary stuff). She said, "Find out how much it costs, and I'll give you the money." I went to Manhattan to Barnes & Noble. They had a whole wall of engineering texts. I spent eight hours going through those books. I was looking for something that was written in a way that I could understand but at the same time would be rigorous. I couldn't handle college mathematics, so I had to be selective. I found a book that was perfect for me, and I read that book from cover to cover. It was the first edition of what eventually ended up being four or five editions. The author was Fredrick Terman. That was his first textbook; Terman was a great teacher. Later when I worked as a technician for an engineer in the Signal Corps, my boss was astounded by how much I knew. I knew things that he didn't know, and it was because I had worked my way through Terman's book five times. I became an engineer through self-study. I built up a library, and today I have the largest library of any private individual in the Greater Washington Area. It's much larger than the libraries found in mid-sized companies in the Washington area. I have theIRE Proceedings going back to 1925, which I bought at the estate sales of deceased engineers.
When I came to the Signal Corps in 1940 and learned about the IRE I became an associate member. Later I became a member and remained a member for many years. I was made a Fellow in 1961, though I was never a senior member.
One day I ran into a friend on the subway on my way home from work. I was reading Terman and he said, "What are you reading there, Gus?" I showed him the book. He said, "You're interested in this?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Gee. I didn't think you were interested in anything but dancing and girls." He thought that because I was always dancing. My whole life people have tried to pigeonhole me: "You're a microwave man," "You're a parts man," "You're into miniaturization," "You're into medical electronics," and so on. Now I'm an investment honcho to my friends, because I know more about investing than most so-called financial advisors. If you take one thousand people to invest and include among them financial advisors, maybe only one of them will understand a cardinal principle that I discovered. Then maybe even that one will not understand how to win. You are now trying to acquire an estate. Am I right? You're saving money for the future. How fast you are doing it is beside the point. You must live on your earnings, but there will come a day when you no longer command a salary. You are faced with a problem. People really don't understand it. Do you know to what age you will probably live?
I think the statistical average is now eighty-two.
That is an average and you could live much beyond that age. At what age could you no longer be able to earn a living salary?
Right. Will you have much Social Security? No way. Will you have much Medicare? No way. How will you get from sixty-five to eighty-two, seventeen years, in one piece? Medical costs will be high. Every once in a while you hear about someone winning a lottery. They get lots of money and think, "Oh boy, I have it made." They're not made. If you have a large lump sum of money when you are sixty-five but don't continue to save, I guarantee you that you will be a pauper before you are eighty. Do you want to know why? What does the word inflation mean to you? I've been thinking I have to talk to you about this subject. Whenever I encounter a young man like you, I get a feeling of missionary zeal. The trouble is, it goes in one ear and out the other. Still I am always hopeful. I can't get my own son straightened out, and I've been working on him for years. He's going to invest a lot of money from his inheritance; I have a really big estate. I never gambled nor bought stock. How can I have such a big estate? It's very simple. You know the stockbroker Smith Barney?
They say, "How do we make our money? We work for it." It's something like that. My peak salary for any year was when I retired in 1997 from the National Bureau of Standards. My salary was $41,000. That was just that year, and it was larger than the previous year and the year before that. Even my three highest years were nowhere near $41,000. I never earned big money. However I have acquired an estate that permits us to go on cruises three times a year. When I retired I said to my wife, "Forget cooking. We'll eat out all the time."
We have no money problems now because in our earning years we lived very carefully. We weren't stingy, but looked for value. I didn't buy anything unless it was cost effective. I bought some very expensive things, but they were cost effective. When I worked in the Signal Corps as a technician in 1941 I drew a salary of $1,620 per year. That's not a lot of money. I'm eighty-two years old. I'm no kid. When I was a kid I worked in the summertime and saved up my pennies. When we were married I had $185 in the bank. We got a furnished apartment in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and once a month we sent some money to my wife's mother. I was paid every two weeks, and out of each paycheck I gave my wife a dollar and a half and I took dollar and a half. We could do anything we pleased with it, even burn it up. That was our escape hatch. We were very careful with the rest of our money and always saved something. We always lived well under our income. We had a friend, compound interest. It worked for us, and it is still working for us.
When I retired from the Bureau of Standards in 1977 I said to my wife, "Look, we're getting a pension." Since it wasn't a great pension, I said, "We will have to lower our standard of living." It turned out we didn't have to lower our standard of living, because our standard of living was already low. Our estate continues to grow. Two weeks ago I bought another $10,000 bill from the Treasury, which makes the fourth one that I bought this year. That's all on a government salary. I'm lucky because I have a wife who thinks as I do. She saw the Depression and remembers standing in line to get handouts of food for her family. When I was going with her she was nineteen years old and her clothes were all hand-me-downs from her cousins. We learned the hard way.
American Federation of Labor; testing assignment
- Audio File
- MP3 Audio
Play (375 - shapiro - clip 2.mp3)
During the Depression, I kept studying and studying. Every year, I had only a month or two of work through the AF of L Union B-1010. Jobs expanded for the Christmas rush and I'd get a job as an assembler or wireman. However I noticed that I never was offered a job until it was close to the end of the season. At the end of the seasons, I had pink slips. It was because the Secretary of the Union didn't like me. I didn't know that at the time. When I became a member of the Union I didn't know what unions were all about. When I attended my first meeting, the Secretary gave a report, and, stupid me, I raised my hand. The Chair recognized me and I asked an innocent question. For this I was earmarked as a troublemaker. The Secretary's attitude was, "This guy must be a Communist." I didn't find out until years later. As a matter of fact, I have always known what a false ideology Communism is.
The AF of L was a vertical union – carpenters, blacksmiths and waiters unions. The other union, the CIO, was a horizontal union and was not by trades but by industry. The two unions were competing. There was some Communist influence in the CIO. I was looking for a job along Sixth Avenue where they have many employment agencies advertising for wiremen, et cetera. I was offered a job that sounded good until I found out that the salary was high because the company employees were on strike. It was an AF of L Union shop, but the CIO had come in and signed up all the people there. They said the AF of L Union wouldn't do right by them and pulled them out. It was a union conflict. When I heard about that my first reaction was that there was no way I was going to cross the picket line since my father was a union member.
Then I found out that the lead man who pulled out all those people was the former AF of L Union Secretary who had been shafting me all those years. I said to myself, "If he's the guy who is pulling them out, I'm going to cross the picket line," and I took the job. The AF of L was scouring the pool halls to find people to work at Air King Radio in Brooklyn, which was basically a contract house. They manufactured for Sears Silvertone radios, GE radios, and others. They put some products out under their own brand name as well. My job was as a wireman.
The chief engineer was a German engineer who wore double-breasted vests that I liked very much. When I went to England years later, I found a waistcoat maker who made them to my order and I had him make me a half dozen vests. For years I couldn't wear them because I was twenty pounds heavier than I am now. I couldn't wear the suit I'm wearing now. I have suits that I've just started to wear that I have owned for twenty years. It is only in the recent years that I have taken off weight, albeit unintentionally.
This chief engineer, Werner Arbough, was coming down the line going from wireman to wireman and talking to them. I wondered why he was doing that. When he came to me he said, "Do you know anything about electronics?" I said, "Sure. I know a lot about electronics." He said, "What do you know about the superheterodyne principle?" I told him, and then he asked me one or two other questions which I answered. Then he said, "Go report to Frank Belcastro in the test department. You are going to be a tester." That was a big break. There were two kinds of testers there. One kind aligned the chassis that came off the line. The other testers were the troubleshooters; I was going to be a troubleshooter.
What year was this?
This was 1939. The people in the production lines were a rough crew. The crew was real garbage and rejects from the streets. The test department people were average good guys. I sat down in my test booth on a stool. There was a war between me and the guy that worked next to me, who was a big fat Greek guy. When it was hot he would sweat profusely and shake himself, spraying sweat. I'd tell him, "Don't sweat all over me."
On my first day there I asked him how many sets were our quote. He said, "Eight sets." I had done servicing on the side. It would take me about four hours or so to find the trouble and fix one set. I said to him, "Eight sets a day?" He said, "No. Eight sets an hour." I said, "What? My God, what did I get into?" I kept my eyes and ears open and learned a practice that I had formerly rejected. I knew men who did radio servicing but didn't know much theory (so-called screwdriver mechanics). I just sneered at them, because I would reason things out. Then I found that these troubleshooters were not reasoning things out; even though they had the ability to reason things out, they were taking shortcuts. They were being screwdriver mechanics. For example, one thing that is very difficult to fix is an intermittent – cold soldered joint. It was especially difficult because when tested it would work, but it would stop working when it was put in the cabinet. It drives you out of your mind. My second day on the job I heard the man next to me banging and clattering. I looked at him, and he was banging the hell out of a chassis. I said, "What the hell are you doing?" He looked at me so surprised. "What do you mean?" I said, "You're busting it up." He said, "That's what I want to do. It has an intermittent. I want to break the intermittent down." I said, "Yes, but in the process you're going to break three other things down." He said, "So what? It's fast to fix those, too." I learned many other practical things there.
The chief tester was a little man named Francesco Dominico Belcastro. He was smart. He had grown up in a very bad area in Brooklyn. He once told me that all of his childhood friends had ended up either dead or in Sing-Sing. His father, a tailor, had an electronic engineer friend who had taken him under his wing and taught him electronics. He took to it like a duck to water, and he was good at it. I learned a lot from him – not theory, but practical things. For example, we had a run of receivers that were oscillating and none of the troubleshooters or testers could fix them. He said, "Put them aside and I'll sit down and find out the trouble." He sat down for two days and found the trouble. These were very cheap sets, and the chassis were a piece of metal bent up in the form of a U. He said, "Give me a piece of hookup wire about six inches long." He soldered one end of hookup wire to one leg of the chassis about an inch from the edge, and he soldered the other edge of the hook-up wire to the other leg. He said, "Okay, now it won't oscillate." Sure enough, it didn't oscillate.
I asked him, "What kind of witchcraft is this? Do you mean to say all you have to do is put that wire there and it doesn't oscillate? Why?" He told me why, and I learned something new. He said, "The chassis is a ground plane, and everything is in equal potential on the ground play. Right?" I answered, "Yes," but he said, "Wrong." He explained that there is impedance from one point on this chassis to another, and no point on a chassis is at the same potential as the next point. We were grounding circuits at different places on the chassis, thereby creating eddy currents in the chassis, which were causing feedback. Soldering the wire to the two legs of the chassis changed the path of the eddy currents and stopped the oscillation. He went on to explain the rest of it and I asked him, "How did you learn what to do with that?" He said, "I tried all kinds of cockeyed things that made no sense, and finally found one cockeyed thing that worked. I took a thin screwdriver that had a long shank and I held at one end of the screwdriver the end of one of the legs. Then I pressed the screwdriver against the other leg and slid it along. I changed to spots I was connecting until I finally I found that if I had a conducting path from a particular point on one leg to the other leg the oscillations stopped." I learned that a troubleshooter must expect the unexpected and sometimes throw reasoning out the window. Usually even after a fault has been corrected there is no way to reason out what has really been corrected. That is what made a good engineer out of me. Those two years at Air King under Frank Belcastro were marvelous training.
Miscellaneous employment
When the Selective Service came along, we knew a war was coming. One day Frank Belcastro announced that he was leaving. He was taking a job at the Signal Corps Laboratories in Red Bank, New Jersey. He said to me, "Gus, why don't you go on out there? They're hiring." I was going out with my wife-to-be then, but I had no hopes of ever marrying her because I couldn't foresee that I would ever have any money. I encouraged her to date other guys, because I didn't want to tie her up year after year. Then we would have to either break up or marry and live in misery. I didn't want to feel that I spoiled her life. I hoped that she would meet someone else that would be able to take better care of her.
That plan was spoiled, because one night when I was out with some friends on the subway to Manhattan she came into the car with her date just before the doors closed. I wasn't dating any other girls, but I was telling her I was dating other girls. My friends knew she was my girlfriend and always saw her with me, and here she came in with another guy. They couldn't understand this. Ruth was very embarrassed. The next night when I saw her I asked, "Did you have a nice night last night?" She said, "No, I didn't feel very good when I saw you, so I told him I didn't feel good and he took me home." She said to me, "I don't care if you are going to date other girls. I am not going to date any other guys." That's when I confessed to her that I wasn't dating other girls. And that's when, after a year, we began to go steady. However I still had no hopes of ever being able to marry her.
I had every kind of job. I was a Fuller Brush Man, sold vacuum cleaners, and spent one Christmas in Bamberger's department store running electric trains in the toy department while dressed like an engineer. I had a ball doing that. I would have paid them to do that, but they paid me.
I also worked for awhile as a demonstrator in a five, ten and dollar chain. The company that hired me had a five-in-one kitchen gadget. It was a round dish divided into quarters. In one quarter there was a fine grater, but it wasn't the kind that would cut the hand. Another quarter had a slicer. The edge had a lip on it so it could be placed on a pot of boiling water. Food could be put on top and steamed and so forth. It cost 25¢. It didn't take long to find out that it was really a lousy gadget. I had to gaff it. For example, I had to file a sharp edge on the slicer. Otherwise it wouldn't slice very well. It was a safety grater, so when I demonstrated slicing beets or potatoes I had to be careful not to cut myself while I was talking. If I accidentally sliced a piece off the end of my thumb, which was bound to happen sooner or later, it started bleeding. When that happened with twenty-five people in front of me while I was demonstrating the safety grater, I'd grab a beet and start grating it so that the blood would mix with the beet and they wouldn't know my finger was cut. Then I would hold the skin flap shut, and when the thing settled down I would put some Nu Skin over it.
I used a bucket of cold water to soak my beets and carrots in so that they would absorb a lot of water that would make them hard and would grate fast. When people went home and to their rubbery carrots and tried to slice or grate them it didn't work. The gadget wasn't as good as it looked. I dressed like a French chef, with a hat and chef's white coat.
I've had a mustache since I was seventeen years old. There's a story behind that too. My wife has never seen me without a mustache, so one day about twenty years ago I said to her, "You've never seen me without a mustache. Why don't I shave and you can see what I look like." She said, "No, don't do it." I said, "Why not?" She said, "Then you won't look dangerous." That's why I'm still courting her.
Back to the kitchen gadget demonstration. There were two highlights to the demonstration. I wore a short-sleeved chef's coat and gave a health and diet lecture. I would grate carrots and then grab a fistful of the grated carrot and squeeze it so that the carrot juice would run down my hairy arm. It was disgusting but effective. It got their attention. I'd say, "Carotene. It'll do this, that and the other thing for you." Then there was the sliced cabbage. I had a great big carving knife, and it was long so that it looked like a saber, a wooden board in front of me. I'd say, "You know how a housewife cuts cabbage? She starts to slice and slice. Then it's too slow, so she starts to chop." I used to love to do this in the wintertime on a Saturday when I'd have a crowd of fifty women who were wearing their fur coats. As I'd lift it up I'd twist the blade so that I was throwing cabbage all over the women in the crowd, including the ones in the back. I got the point across.
I could tell you stories. One day the mother of one of my friends was right in front. She wanted to buy it, but I kept ignoring her because I didn't want her to buy it. I'd serve other people and then stop and say, "There's more I want to share with you, so don't go away ladies and gentlemen," and I'd start another lecture with some little difference. She waited through three of those lectures, and finally she said, "I want one of those. Here's my quarter. You give it to me," so I gave it to her. She was mad. What could I do? Later on when she discovered it was a lousy gadget she said, "What a faker you are." I said, "Didn't it occur to you there must have been some reason why I didn't let you buy it?"
The men who did the bookings were mulatto, but to avoid being discriminated against they claimed they were Indian. They ran out of stores to book me in, so they said, "Look, we can get an eight-week run in the Midwest in the Kresge chain." It was either that job or no job, so I went to the Kresge chain for eight weeks. It was quite an experience, but I was lonely. I had to stay in a hotel downtown. When Sundays came around I'd walk around in the deserted streets, absolutely miserable. At the end of those eight weeks when I got off the bus at 42nd Street I got down on my hands and knees and kissed the ground. I never wanted to go out of town again.
Signal Corps, Transducer Corporation of America
- Audio File
- MP3 Audio
Play (375 - shapiro - clip 3.mp3)
Frank Belcastro tried to talk me into going to work for the Signal Corps. Getting a job there would mean the possibility of becoming upwardly mobile, so I went to the Signal Corps. Mind you, I did not have a college education. I worked at the Signal Corps during the week and came home on weekends. My grandmother was eighty-four years old. Once a month on a Sunday I would go to see her. She was living with an aunt of mine and was crazy about Ruth. On Saturday nights I would meet Ruth after work. We'd stay out late, so Ruth didn't get much sleep on those Saturday nights. We were engaged, and we'd go together to see my grandmother. We would eat some cookies and drink a glass of wine to be hospitable, but then Ruth would fall asleep. My grandmother would look at her and say to me, "Oh, the poor girl. She must work so hard." That has been our big joke ever since, "That poor girl, she works so hard." She was already half asleep when we got there, and the wine finished her off. We've had a lot of inside jokes like that in our life. My grandmother died shortly after I joined the Signal Corps Lab.
Another of my jobs before working at the Signal Corps was working at the company that manufactured electronic parts: plugs, switches, sockets and various types of electrical hardware. I was a shipping clerk there. After I ate lunch I would get very sleepy and I would stretch out on a pile of cardboard cartons to nap. The head shipping clerk would wake me up after a little while to go back to work. I learned routing in that job. At the Signal Corps I was assigned to the procurement section because I had once worked as a shipping clerk and knew something about commerce. When I heard that my assignment was in procurement, I flipped. I went to the branch chief and said, "Look, I didn't come to the Signal Corps to work in procurement. I came to the Signal Corps to work in the laboratory. If I have to work in procurement, I'm going to have to leave." I didn't want to do that, because I didn't want the boss to think that I would be difficult to supervise. However he was sympathetic and assigned me to an engineer named Aldo Scandura to be his technician.
Aldo and I had something in common. We both liked to ballroom dance. He was a graduate of City College and a sharp cookie and I learned a lot from him. He learned that I knew very much electronic theory. We were short on engineers, so he began to give me engineering assignments. I started to go to attend Montgomery Junior College at night and took courses in "descriptive geometry." This was possible because after I got married I became used to going to bed later, so I could go to school at night without falling asleep.
After a couple years I had accumulated some college credits and had two years of engineering experience. I had also worked in some other places in the industry such as Transducer Corporation of America. They manufactured a dynamic microphone called a bullet microphone, and I did a lot of testing there. It was not just technician work. I had to know something. In civil service you qualify for a rating on the basis of your experience. Although I had a technician's grade, Aldo assigned a Ph.D. to me named Julia Herrick. She was a biophysicist from the Mayo Clinic. She was a fish out of water, but a smart woman. She had a lot of mathematics, and that's why they assigned her to me. She was able to supplement what I didn't know. I started to work on cavity resonators (what did I know about cavity resonators?) I had the feel, but not the mathematics. Between the two of us, we managed to figure things out.
Dr. Herrick came from a Minneapolis banking family. There were three children, two sons and she was the daughter. When the father died, he left control of the bank to her because he trusted her common sense more than that of his sons. She was a smart gal in her late forties I would say, and prematurely gray. She was an extremely good looking and appealing woman and it was very easy to get along with her. She had the common touch. We once had a Thanksgiving party at our house and played charades. When it was her turn to act out something, she took a long-stemmed flower in her hand and stretched out on the floor facing the ceiling with her eyes closed. She was enacting "Massa in the cold, cold ground." She was a regular person. She decided she was not going to go back to biophysics and began to study engineering. She joined the IRE and became the first editor for the Medical Electronics Professional Transactions.
Here she was a Ph.D. and I was just a technician. I was due for a promotion and was going to be promoted to the highest technician's grade. My boss and my boss's boss got together and decided to move me over into the engineering series. If it hadn't been during the war, I would not have had such an opportunity and would have remained a technician.
I'm going to tell you a little story. Have you heard of Somerset Maugham.
Did you ever read the short story about the Verger?
I've watched it over and over again. I have a recording. Do you know what a verger is?
The guy who makes the financial arrangements for a church.
He's the sexton.
Okay. Well, it's about the verger of a church. The parishioners were very wealthy and this verger was an illiterate man. One day the pastor called him in and said, "I hate to tell you this, but I'm going to have to terminate you. It's not becoming for you, an illiterate man, to be the verger of this church with all of these wealthy parishioners." He let the verger go, and the verger was at loose ends for awhile. Then he began a little business that prospered and grew. After some years he became a multimillionaire. One day one of his attorneys came in with a document for him to sign. It was a new attorney. When he put an X on the signature line the attorney said, "Put your signature on it." He said, "That's my signature." He said, "Do you mean to say that you cannot write your own name?" He said, "No, I cannot." The lawyer said, "You have had so much success. Just think if you had an education where you would be today." Then the verger said, "Yes. Today I'd be a verger." I think that is a classic. It was the same thing with me, and I rose.
National Bureau of Standards, DOD Advisory Group on Electronic Equipment
The IRE had a spring meeting and used the Hotel Commodore, Grand Central Palace and a few other places for the exhibits. I always went in to see the exhibits. Since I lived in Asbury Park at the time, I commuted. I came home the first night and there was a letter waiting for me from the National Bureau of Standards. It was a letter from Alex Orden. His letter said they had a new electronic miniaturization program and that they had heard I had some skills in that area. The letter went on to ask if I would be interested in a job, and if so they'd like me to come down for an interview. I had never heard of this guy, but I knew that there was a Bureau of Standards Exhibit, at the IRE meeting in New York.
Does the name Cledo Brunetti mean anything to you? He was once my boss, and there was an award in his name, the Cledo Brunetti Award. He was the world's biggest charlatan, but he knew how to promote himself. Five years previously, he had died. He gave IEEE a sum of money for an awards program in his name, so now he has immortality. Yet the guy had accomplished nothing. I know, because I worked for him. He was a fake, but a genius at promoting himself.
Back to the letter. I went up to the exhibit, and there was a burly guy there with a big, sour looking frown on his face. I showed him the letter and I said, "Could you tell me who this man is?" He said, "Yeah. He's Dr. [Robert D.] Huntoon's administrative assistant." I said, "Do you know anything about this?" He said, "No." I said, "Is there any way I can get in touch with Dr. Huntoon?" and he said, "Well, Dr. Huntoon is down in the Hotel Commodore at a session there." I asked what he looked like and he told me, but I had to drag the information out of him. He wasn't at all cooperative. I started to walk down Lexington Avenue toward 42nd Street. Halfway there I stopped and I thought, "If this guy is an example of the people that work for the Bureau of Standards, why do I want to go to Washington?" Then I said to myself, "Well, I'll go check it out anyway." I went down there and found Dr. Huntoon. I handed him the letter, and it was the first he'd seen of it.
He said, "Look, to tell you the truth I don't know much about this. I know that we have a new contract in from the Bureau of Aeronautics. I don't know what the contract is, because Alex Orden has been handling it, but why don't you come down to Washington and we'll look into this." I made an appointment with him and went down to Washington. I brought down some samples of some miniature things that I had done and Alex Orden and I talked. My Signal Corps section chief Aldo Scandura and I shared a furnished apartment with three other guys up until I got married. We were concerned with radar and I had some ideas for miniaturizing radar IF amplifiers. Scandura said, "Okay, go ahead." I said, "Well, what shall I charge my time to?" He said, "Charge it to this number." I said, "But that's the number of such-and-such project." He said, "Forget about it. We're bootlegging it. Don't write any reports. Don't write anything in your project book." It was a record book for patents because I had many patents. I had two engineers working for me. I don't know how word got to Washington about my abilities. I have a sneaking suspicion though. The head of our branch, Major Kucera, had a civilian assistant who made frequent trips to Washington. He was the liaison man with the Pentagon and he knew what I was doing. Only he and my boss knew. He may have said something to someone, but how this information got from the Pentagon over to the National Bureau of Standards up on Connecticut and Van Ness Street is beyond me. Years later I was thinking about this. By that time Alex Orden, the only one who could answer that question, was long since gone and I had no way of finding him. I've always been unhappy about this, because I would like to know how they knew what I was doing.
They decided hire me at mid-level, a P-3. The highest level was P-5. There were a lot of academic snobs at the National Bureau of Standards. When I came to Washington I decided to enroll at George Washington University and take night courses there as long as it took to get a degree. I knew I had a glass ceiling over my head. I knew I would do well there, but I could go only so far without that piece of paper. When I accepted the job at the Bureau of Standards they told me they were going to send me a letter of intent. Four months went by and I had still not received it.
My old chief, Major Kucera, had become a liaison officer out at San Diego Naval Electronics Lab. Before the war we had civilian heads of branches. When the war started we got military heads, and the civilian heads became their civilian assistants. As a matter of fact, back in 1943 there was even talk that everyone was going to be militarized and the technicians were going to be sergeants and so on. However nothing ever came of that. A lot of us were unhappy at that prospect: "I'm going to have to salute so-and-so? I don't like his guts." The RDF branch was deactivated and we were all scattered. Aldo and I and a few other of his people went to Camp Coles, which was one of the satellite laboratories of the Fort Monmouth Laboratories. I was assigned to work under an engineer who was very inept but was a nice guy. He was embarrassed that I was his subordinate and I tried not to rub his face in it. At the Bureau of Standards we hired engineering students, who were juniors as summer employees. Many years later one of the students who I had hired unseen knocked on my office door. I hadn't even seen him before. He came in and said, "My father told me to give you his greetings." His father was the engineer I had worked under for six months at the Camp Coles Laboratory.
Another funny thing happened. Another summer student came in to see me. I knew his last name but didn't find it familiar. One day he came in and said, "Ada sends you her regards." I said, "Who is Ada?" He said, "Our cousin Ada." It turned out that we had a mutual first cousin. When I was an infant his mother had given me my first toy. It's a small world. The beginnings and the ends come together. This makes life interesting.
I forgot to mention something. After I was interviewed by Dr. Huntoon he sent me to Personnel to give them some history and fill out some forms. While I was in there, a very attractive young lady came in and said to the head of Personnel, "I heard that there is a Mr. Shapiro here from the Signal Corps with some miniaturized items. Dr. Brunetti would like to talk to him." I had heard Dr. Brunetti give a talk about the proximity fuze. I was just finishing, so she escorted me to Dr. Brunetti's office. He was very friendly. He was a gnome. Wizened, he was a very ugly man but very animated. I showed him the samples I had brought with me. He rang a bell and his assistant came in and he said, "Alice, bring me that new Dick Tracy radio." She walked out this swinging door, and the door swung out. Then when the door swung back and out again she was back in the room. She was very efficient and had a military bearing about her. At the Signal Corps we had a secretary named Winnie. We used to pamper her to death in order to persuade her to do our typing. If she didn't feel like it, she didn't do anything. When I got back from my trip I said to her, "Winnie, you're a jerk. I saw a real secretary in Washington."
Months went by, and I had heard nothing from the National Bureau of Standards. Finally I said, "This is for the birds." I called the head of Personnel at NBS and said, "Look, if you don't get a letter of intent to me in the mail right away, I'm going to resign from here next week and go to work at the Naval Electronics Laboratories near San Diego," who want me to work there. Sure enough, the next week the letter of intent arrived. When I came to work at the National Bureau of Standards, I was put in to work with Cledo Brunetti rather than Dr. Huntoon. That puzzled me. I was sent to represent the Bureau of Standards on the DOD AGREE Committee. I don't remember how often we met, but I met a number of people who became charter members of the professional group on component parts.
Did AGREE stand for something?
Yes. I think it stood for Advisory Group on Electronic Equipment. While I was on that our big concern was components, standards, mil (military) standards. We didn't write the standards, but we set up the requirements. There were groups in the DOD that were standards writing groups. These were all industry people and there were also some military people from some of the military labs. It was representing NBS.
Components symposium, IEEE
- Audio File
- MP3 Audio
Play (375 - shapiro - clip 4.mp3)
There is something that occurred halfway between my becoming a member of AGREE and the formation of the professional group. I want you to notice who the sponsors were of the components symposium: RMA, which is now EIA, IRE, AIE and AIEE. "With active participation by agencies of the U.S. government, Department of Defense and the National Bureau of Standards." To the best of my knowledge, the Bureau of Standards was represented by me and Cledo Brunetti, my boss. We didn't act together, but we were both involved. I don't recall anyone else from the Bureau of Standards being involved, but it wasn't much of an involvement. Really what they were looking for were names. It was a bit of name dropping. Cledo Brunetti didn't do a damn thing anyway. I didn't either. Never claimed I did.
The man who was in charge of the Symposium's yearly publication was an employee of the Sprague Electric Company who was working in EIA. Sprague also supported Leon Podolsky financially.
The Symposium was put together by a number of people from the various sponsoring organizations. Because so many government people were involved, the Department of Interior's auditorium was made available for that event. It was a very big auditorium and the Symposium was very successful. That very first meeting was called Symposium on Improved Quality Electronic Components. Its emphasis seemed to be on reliability rather than development or anything of that sort. It was a three-day event that was held May 9-11, 1950. After this meeting people became enthusiastic about the idea of having an annual Symposium. There was no symposium in 1951. The next ones were in 1952, 1953, 1954 and 1955.
The first Symposium was of a different nature that those that were to follow. Money was important thing in the running of these things. Most of the people involved were volunteered by their organizations. There were printing costs for the Proceedings and for the mailings that went out. The professional group on component parts absorbed some of the costs because they went out as part of the newsletters and Proceedings. As far as salaried people were concerned, the Symposium editor put together the whole ball of wax. He may have been paid from the earnings of the Symposium. I don't know. I'm just guessing.
The Symposium was a milk cow. The sponsors, the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) which later became the IEEE, and RMA which later became RETMA then EIA were certainly happy to get the money. If there had been no other reason to continue to have an annual Symposium, the money it earned would have been reason enough. However the Symposium was useful.
I had most of the Proceedings of the Electronic Component Symposium, starting with 1950. I didn't have the Proceedings from 1952 or 1953. They're missing. In 1954 there was an individual, Alex E. Javitz, who was a tower of strength not just in the early component symposiums but also to me as Transactions editor because of his vast knowledge and contacts in the materials field. His bread and butter came from being an editor of Electrical Manufacturing for many, many years. He was chairman of the Proceedings publication committee for the 1954 Symposium edition. Charles Devey from the Naval Research Laboratory didn't hang around much longer after the first symposium. Others listed as being part of that symposium are strange names to me, so they couldn't have played much of a role in the early days of the Component Symposium even though they were on the Proceedings publication committee. Javitz was the sort of guy who may be chairman of a committee but didn't worry about whether the other guys were producing or not. He just went ahead and did the job. That's my guess as to what happened here.
Let's talk about IEEE.
Larry Cumming was on the Symposium Steering Committee for the IEEE, but I know he did not play a vital role. He answered the roll call. So much for the participation of IEEE, and so much for the Institute of Radio Engineers. Larry Cumming is dead now, and I don't say bad things about the dead, but Larry Cumming was no self-starting organizer. He was a very pedestrian individual. Larry Cumming was the staff secretary of the IRE Standards Committee for a long time, and they were a very sad committee. He was finally relieved of that position when they hired Sava Sher who then built up the Standards Committee. That was at the expense of other committees because Sava Sher was an empire builder. Since Larry Cumming was the first IRE representative on the Symposium Committee, it is clear that there was very little early input from the IEEE. There was certainly no input from the component parts professional group, though a lot of the members and officers there participated in committees.
It's interesting that we have K. Gillman Reid listed here as representing ACF Electronics. He was my former division chief at the Bureau of Standards. He left the NBS and went on to ACF Electronics with Tinker Toy. Ralph Bachelor was a consultant. I didn't know Ralph very well. W.R. Clark was with Leeds & Northrup. I didn't know much about him, but knew he was a sound man. P.H. Cousins was a Radio Electronic Sales & Manufacturers Association representative. Their various names were the Radio Manufacturers Association (RMA), then the Radio and Television Manufacturers Association (RTMA), then Radio Electronics Television Manufacturers Association, then Electronic Industry Association. My former assistant at the EIA told me a few weeks ago that either they have changed the name again or are going to change the name again. This is indicative of the character of the EIA, because it has changed so much over the years.
Virgil M. Graham represented the Radio Electronics Television Manufacturers Association, which of course is now the EIA. He came from industry, from the Sylvania Corporation. I won't go into anymore detail about him because he was never involved in the Symposium and I'm not sure about how much influence he had. I knew Virgil Graham because I served as a government representative on a lot of the EIA standardizing committees, and all those things were under Virgil Graham.
One of the real workers on the Symposium Committee of 1954 was Alfred Rogers from the Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories. All of the component developments that were funded by the Signal Corps went through Al's office. He had a very strong hand on what direction component developments in industry went. He had a great influence on the other members of the professional group on component parts because he was right in the middle of the component industry. The Signal Corps was giving development contracts to industry and therefore he had a great deal of knowledge about what was going on in the industry.
Ernst Weber was also on the 1954 Symposium Steering Committee. I believe that at the time he was head of the Electrical Engineering Department at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. I think maybe later on he became president of Brooklyn Poly, but I'm not sure. Brooklyn Poly has a new name now. Ernst Weber was a very busy guy. You'll have to double-check this, but I think Ernst Weber was a member of the AIEE and the IRE at the time that they merged. I think he was the first president of the IEEE. This has nothing to do with a professional group, but there were people like Don Fink who had joint membership in both organizations. There were quite a few high level people in both organizations who pulled the two together into one organization. That was no small feat, especially since those two organizations were competing with one another. If they hadn't been pulled into one organization the two organizations would have grown apart and feuds would have developed, so it's a good thing that they merged into one organization. They merged in 1963.
Then there was A. M. Zarem from the Stanford Research Institute. I don't know who he is, but I have known some people in Stanford Research Institute. What I've known about those people, including one of the directors and one of the associate directors. Cledo Brunetti went there after he left the Bureau of Standards one step ahead of the sheriff. He left the Bureau of Standards and went to Stanford Research Foundation, but didn't last very long there. He ended up at General Mills after that. I don't remember where he went from there.
Back to the committee people, there was Paul S. Darnell from Bell Telephone Laboratories. He was a giant. I don't have to say anything more, because there's lots about him in the record that I think you know very well. I can't add anything to that. He was a great asset.
There was the Darnell Report.
- Audio File
- MP3 Audio
Play (375 - shapiro - clip 5.mp3)
Yes, lots of things. He was good. Then there was W. D. George with the National Bureau of Standards. I doubt that he did very much on the program committee. I knew John Griemsmann from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn only by reputation, which was good. J. N. Hall from the Bureau of Ships was very hardworking. He was head of the component section of the Bureau of Ships. Keith Harding, also from the Bureau of Ships, was a very sound engineer. I respected Lou Kahn of Aerovox Incorporated very much. I can't comment on G. T. Kohman of Bell Telephone Laboratories. I didn't know him very well. Vincent Kublin of the Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories was one of the stalwarts up at the Signal Corps Labs. He was one of the real producers and a reliable guy. I think that Jesse Marsten of the International Resistance Company, IRC, was the president or chief engineer of that company. I understand that he is highly respected in the industry. I think H. L. Owen from the Signal Corps Engineering Laboratory was a true man, but I'm not sure because the only Owens that I knew in the Signal Corps Engineering Laboratory may have been a different man.
Leon Podolski was the best asset that the IEEE ever had – not just in the Components Professional Group, but in anything having to do with standards. There is an awful lot about him in the records. Leon Podolski is the man who convinced me that international standards were very, very important and vital to the United States. He was so convincing that I decided that what I was doing at the NBS was important, but that of equal or even greater importance to the United States was the IEC. I had a large section at the National Bureau of Standards and began to delegate more and more authority to my lab chiefs. I oversaw the whole section but freed myself from the nitty-gritty work. In the last few years I spent 80 percent of my time on international and IEEE standards activities.
There was a subcommittee of the Standards Committee for which I was the chairman or secretary. You see, there was only one person in the committee, and that was me. The Life Member Fund Committee had money they wanted to use to benefit IEEE. I think it was Leon Podolski – though I'm just guessing here – who persuaded the Life Member Fund Committee to give the IEEE committee $10,000 a year to increase IEEE member participation in IEC activities. The idea was also that in the process of doing so, the goal of international adoption of IEEE standards would be promoted. This was important, but still it was not PHP or the Professional Group on Component Parts. I mention this because I think Leon Podolski should get recognition. A number of people should get more recognition. Leon Podolski, Alex Javitz and a few other people never got as much recognition as they deserved. I have been given enough recognition. Everybody knew who I was and what I was doing. As a matter of fact, there were many times I was perfectly satisfied to work in the background as a king maker when I felt that I was putting the right man in the right place. That was enough for me. Sometimes it sounds like I'm blowing my own horn, but really I'm not.
I don't think J. Gilmann Reid gave very much to the committee. W. G. Tuller had a tremendous reputation. He worked for Melpar Incorporated. It was a terrible tragedy when he died on an overseas trip. The plane went down and all the passengers stood out on the wing. When the rescue boats came all the passengers were there except Tuller. No one ever knew what happened to him. He was a rising star in Melpar.
What was Melpar?
Melpar was an electronics company stationed in Virginia near the Pentagon. I think they handled military contracts exclusively. There were into an awful lot of things. All the electronic engineers in the Washington area back in those days knew of Melpar. I don't know whether Melpar merged with another company or they changed their name.
Floyd E. Wenger was a stalwart. He was on our committee for many years. He worked in the Wright Air Development Center at Wright Patterson Air Force Base and was in components. He was a rotund little guy; when he spoke he usually made a lot of sense. He was a steady member of the Administrative Committee. The finance officer for that committee meeting was Art Zdobysz. He had retired from the Bureau of Aeronautics and was apparently a paid consultant. Cousins was probably paid for his role by the Radio Electronic Television Manufacturers Association.
Would you tell me a little bit about how that Symposium grew? Once it had gotten started and on its feet, how did it develop and move?
It was on the calendar and every year it happened, so people would put it on their calendars and make arrangements to be there. There was a new chairman every year, including for the Technical Program Committee. I don't know how the membership of the steering committee was put together each year, but it kept changing. The technical programs also kept changing of course, and that was a healthy thing. A lot of new papers were submitted. The various chapters packaged bids to try to get the program for their city. There are a limited number of chapters, and a preferred location was the place where they had the WESCON Symposium. Those people had to be there. It began to rotate between east and west to accommodate attendees on both coasts. A lot of the people on the west coast didn't come to events on the east coast and vice versa, so adjustments were made. I thought that the EIA did most of the leading, but I'm not sure of that. I parted company with the IEEE and Bureau of Standards in 1977. That's almost twenty-two years ago, and a lot has happened since then. I'm drawing a complete blank for that whole lapse of time except for a couple of times when they got in touch with me. One time was to be sure I would attend and bring my family because I was going to be presented a plaque. Another time was when I was nominated for a Fellow of the IEEE, it was called Parts, Hybrids, and Packaging. I had heard through the grapevine about two years earlier that I had been nominated. I don't know which professional group nominated me, but nothing came of it. I knew at the time that I couldn't make Fellow, although a lot happened in that two-year period that made me a strong candidate.
- 1 About Gustave Shapiro
- 2 About the Interview
- 3 Copyright Statement
- 4 Interview


text:
The Jerry Sessions situation remains unsettled.
The superintendent's status remains a prime topic for the Hood River County School District School Board, which decided Wednesday to target the teaching license of former high school principal Ben Kolb.
Meanwhile, the board received a positive progress report from high school co-principals Martha Capovilla and Steve Fisk, who stepped into the shared job when Kolb resigned.
The board will seek suspension of Kolb's Oregon license after Kolb quit Sept. 23 on two days' notice to take a job in California. The board instructed Sessions to write a letter to the state Teacher Standards and Practices Commission, the state teacher and administrator licensing body, asking it suspend Kolb's license through the end of the school year, which Sessions said is as long as the district would be able to do. The commission will inform Kolb by letter, and Kolb can then request a hearing to tell his side of the story.
"Basically he walked out of his job," board member Anne Saxby said. Sessions had asked Kolb to stay two more weeks, then reduced it to one week, but Kolb cleaned out his desk on Sept. 23 and left.
"Even with (two weeks) we were terribly lenient," Saxby said. "The reality is he left us in a lurch. That sends a message if we just said, 'and so it goes.' These are important jobs. You can't just walk out on them."
Parent Michael Fifer told the board that its action is a good example for kids.
"It lets them know that adults will be held accountable and in the future they will be, too. I think it's important we show them that," Fifer said.
As district officials hoped, Kolb wrote a letter this week to the high school students and staff, Sessions said. The letter will be distributed to the student body via the student publication The Talon.
Sessions said that in the letter Kolb gave the background of his search for a position in California and how the job with Tamalpais Union School District, in Marin County, came about late in the summer. Sessions said Kolb averred that the timing of his departure was bad but that "he wished them the best and left them in good hands with Steve (Fisk) and Martha (Capovilla.)"
"It helps," Sessions said of the letter. "When you depart quickly like that you need to put some closure on it. It helps the kids know it has nothing to do with them."
Fisk and Capovilla gave credit to students and staff for helping the smooth transition following Kolb's abrupt departure.
"So far, it's a good thing," Capovilla said of the co-principalship. Capovilla retained her student activities duties, and added budgetary duties, while Fisk continues in student management, and added facilities responsibility. Special Education teacher Brett Emmons has been appointed to serve as Dean of Students, and is contributing well, Fisk said.
They stressed that parents can approach either Fisk or Capovilla on any matter, and that the administrative team works for consensus with each other and with staff.
"We both continually talk about what's going to be best for our students and staff," Fisk said.
In the Sessions disciplinary matter, the board decided in its Wednesday meeting at Hood River Middle School to instruct its attorney, Jeff Baker, to meet with Sessions' attorney "to go over the matters discussed in executive session" Wednesday. Baker would only elaborate that his meeting with Jim Browne, Sessions' counsel, will be "to resolve remaining issues with the school board."
(By law, executive session discussions cannot be reported upon.) Sessions declined comment Friday morning.
Board chairwoman Jan Veldhuisen Virk opened the meeting Wednesday with a statement from the board relating to Sessions' Sept. 25 resignation. The board accepted the resignation, due to take effect June 30, 2003, after it was revealed that Sessions had made an unauthorized payment of $49,000 to former high school athletic director Glenn Elliott, and then failed to inform the board about it.
In her statement, Virk said the resignation followed the board's decision that it lacked confidence in Sessions' leadership.
"This lack of confidence began from Mr. Sessions' decision to make substantial payments to former athletic director Glenn Elliot. The board did not authorize these payments and was not aware they were made until after the fact. In addition, Mr. Sessions did not tell the Board of the payments until individual board members questioned him," Veldhuisen Virk wrote.
"The entire board believed that these actions severely damaged the relationship of trust between it and Mr. Sessions, and a majority of the board felt that the relationship could not be repaired." (The full text is on page A4.)
Veldhuisen Virk said, "In continuation of the remainder of the year, the Board accepts the additional responsibilities it will face. We acknowledge and accept that we must led the district. We are confident that we can continue to provide our children with a quality education.
She added that in executive session Wednesday the board would "consider options in the face of these developments."
Comments are subject to moderator review and may not appear immediately on the site. A user's first several comments must be manually approved by a moderator.
Please read our commenting policy before posting.
Use the comment form below to begin a discussion about this content.
Information from the News and our advertisers (Want to add your business to this to this feed?)