Thousands pack commemorate 1963 march

Fifty years to the day after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, a large crowd streamed onto the National Mall and listened as civil rights leaders urged them - sometimes defiantly - to keep fighting for equal rights and justice. 

Civil rights leader and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young urged thousands who had returned to the spot to "Pray on, stay on and fight on." 

Through on-and-off rain showers that were occasionally heavy, marchers making their way to the Mall waved banners that read, "The new Jim Crow must go" and "50 years later still fighting to vote," sang traditional protest songs and chanted, "Education is our right - education is our fight!" 

The 1963 march focused on what Young called "the triple evils of racism, war and poverty," but he said King's speech focused mostly on poverty. "He said that the Constitution was a promissory note to which all of us would fall heir, but that when men and women of color presented their check at the Bank of Justice, it came back marked 'insufficient funds.' " 

"Fifty years later," Young concluded, "we're still here trying to cash that bad check. Fifty years later,We are professional wholesale best parkingsensor,large LED Dome / Reading Lampwholesale order. we're still dealing with all kinds of problems, and so we're not here to claim any victory - we're to simply say that the struggle continues." 

Wednesday's march started about 9:10 a.m.Banners and T-shirts and chants focused on the Trayvon Martin verdict and on protecting the Voting Rights Act. Other banners focused on gun control, mass incarceration of African-Americans and equal access to education. Marchers of all ages and races walked the route together, some singing songs such as "We Shall Not Be Moved." 

Reginald Gilluno, 39, stood next to a portrait of King made of melted crayons and makeup so that people who are visually impaired could feel the power of the portrait. His mother, Oni Gilluno, 57, was 8 years old in 1963 and acknowledges that much has changed since the first march. But she believes there is still a lot of underlying racism. "A Caucasian person just doesn't get it." 

Robin McNair, a teacher at Dupont Park Adventist School in D.C., says she and fellow teachers brought 50 students to the march. "We want them to experience history and be a part of it. Fifty years from now, they will be able to look back and remember this day and say they were there." 

Alonza Lawrence, 57, a pastor at the Moore Street Missionary Baptist Church in Richmond, Va., said he drove to Washington Wednesday morning with his sister, Roberta Walker, from Richmond. "I was 7 at the time of the original march. I wanted to be part of the celebration this time. There are so many issues to protest: voting rights, racism, ageism, sexism - many of the 'isms.' The goal of this country is to become a place where all people are treated equally and have a fair chance. We have made strides,After searching around the Lights section of this forum, I've come across two main suppliers for parkingsystem. but have a long way to go. It's definitely not a level playing field." 

James Carter, 62, a retired educator from Hershey, Pa., said he left home at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday with a friend and his local pastor. "I wanted to be part of the march this time. I was too young - 12 - to go in '63.Cheap offerscellphonecases dolls from your photos." 

Carter said the dream of equal rights "has been realized for some, but there appears to be a concerted effort to diminish the dream. It's important to let them know that we won't stand for it. Dr. King wanted a complete America and we don't have that now." 

He's concerned about a recent U.S.The need for proper kaptontape inside your home is very important. Supreme Court decision invalidating a key part of the Voting Rights Act, passed a year after the original march. "The court took away clauses that allowed the (Justice Department) to address injustice," he says. "Look at North Carolina and Texas, which passed repressive laws (soon after) the Supreme Court decision. To say that everything is OK now is far from the truth." 

Wednesday's commemoration culminates a week's worth of events marking the 1963 march, which was organized by civil rights and labor groups. Wednesday's event will feature afternoon speeches by President Obama and former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. 

Farmer was there because jailers in nearby Iberville Parish had run out of space. About 500 people had rallied in Plaquemine for access to the ballot, and about half that number had been arrested,Our heavy-duty construction provides reliable operation and guarantees your thequicksilverscreen will be in service for years to come. including the national director of CORE himself. 

"The tear gas and the electric cattle prods of Plaquemine, Louisiana, like the fire hoses and dogs of Birmingham, are giving to the world a tired and ugly message of terror and brutality and hate," Farmer wrote from Donaldsonville. "Theirs is a message of pitiful hopelessness from little and unimaginative men to a world that fears for its life. It is not they to whom the world is listening today. It is to America's Negroes." 

Lolis Edward Elie, an attorney who represented CORE in its Louisiana protests, said the struggle in Plaquemine was real and that the racist oppression in the town and surrounding parish was immense. Even so, Elie said, Farmer's arrest was part of CORE's strategy, meant not only to highlight how different CORE was from its enemies, but also how different CORE was from its allies. 

But sacrificing oneself and one's own personal freedom for the larger good was CORE's modus operandi. Farmer says in his jailhouse letter that he couldn't walk around free while others who had protested in Plaquemine were confined. 

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was a gathering of hundreds of thousands of individuals, but more significantly, the march was a gathering of six important civil rights groups, three predominantly white religious organizations and organized labor. The civil rights groups had similar goals but different methods and often attracted different pools of people for its members. 

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the nation's premier civil rights organization, was arguably the most conservative, eschewing direct confrontation in favor of dispassionate courtroom battles. The National Urban League was similar in style with a greater emphasis on increasing black employment. The Negro American Labor Council shared the emphasis on employment. Its leader, A. Philip Randolph - who put together the 1963 event with deputy director Bayard Rustin - had been wanting to march on Washington for more than twenty years. But the 1941 march Randolph planned to press for anti-lynching legislation and desegregation of the military never got off the ground.

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A Visionary Modernist

This summer Tate Modern has broken new ground by giving a number of Arab, Islamic, and African artists solo exhibitions in one of Londons most prestigious contemporary art spaces. One of the most eagerly anticipated exhibitions belongs to Ibrahim El-Salahi, one of Sudans most important artists. This major retrospective places him in a global Modernist art context; the Sudanese artists vision crystallized in his ability to blend Islamic, African, and Western elements into a transnational,These personalzied promotional bestchipcard comes with free shipping. cosmopolitan whole. The show traces his personal journey across five decades of sustained creativity,The need for proper kaptontape inside your home is very important. his international studies, detention as a political prisoner, self-imposed exile to Qatar, and current life in Oxford. 

My father taught at the Islamic Institute and at a khalwa (Quranic school), which I entered at the age of two, learning to read and write. My father was a fine transcriber of the holy Quran, using a distinct Sudanese script. I used to watch him drawing on a whitewashed surface with date-palm kernels, some lines faultlessly straight, others fine, interlacing geometric forms in an Africanized arabesque style. I learned to design and paint sharafa, tablets used for transcribing verses of the Quran. I would ornament my tablets by drawing a frame of intersecting lines, making triangles filled in with contrasting colours. 

It must have been at this early stage of my life that I began to be interested in art, in aesthetic possibilities inherent in both the abstract lettering of Arabic, as drawn by Sudanese hands, and in the rhythm of African ornament, abundant everywhere around me. After that I began my formal education, where art was not on the curriculum. We had the kind of teacher who said, Drawing is a sin. But my father encouraged me in a quiet sort of way. I colored in all the black-and-white illustrations in my schoolbooks and made my own drawings too. In secondary school we did have art teachers and I got my first knowledge of the Western approach to painting there. 

In 1949, El-Salahi went to the School of Design at Gordon Memorial College, which he later returned to as a teacher. While in 1954, he received a government scholarship to go to London Universitys Slade School of Art. He majored in painting and did calligraphy as a subsidiary subject. Later he studied black and white photography at Columbia University, New York, a foundation for nearly two decades of pen and ink work with shades of grey in-between. 

While in London El-Salahi delved into the British Museums archive of antique Arab calligraphic manuscripts. I spent a lot of time there, studying the origin of the written letters, their structure and meaning. I even studied ancient hieroglyphics, he told Asharq Al-Awsat. 

But a period of questioning had started. At that time in Western art schools there was an insistence on realist art to which El-Salahi had to conform. On the one hand, I wanted to learn European techniques, about the Renaissance and so on. But at the same time, something in me wanted to come out.Custom qualitysteelbangle and Silicone Wristbands, El-Salahi knew that this method of teaching would not permit that.Browse our oilpaintingsforsales collection from the granitetrade.net! I was needing a kind of liberation from within, and I knew that for that to happen, I would have to return to Khartoum, to find the origin of my thoughts, my roots. I decided to open my mind fully to my heritage. Even the techniques I had learned, I felt I had to freeze, he said. 

So in 1957 he returned to Sudan. El-Salahi told Asharq Al-Awsat that he felt that he was armed with experience and ideas that I initially expected would help in my teaching and my own work. But this attitude of a conceited young artist fresh from London actually just hemmed me in. Before leaving I had shipped home the work I had done there, and I felt a riveting desire to show it. And so he did. But his own people rejected it. 

Although a lot of them came to the opening, they quickly vanished. I repeated the exhibition twice, but no-one came. The shock was a revelationI was astounded to find that the artistic tastes entrenched in the Sudanese personality offered no possibility of appreciating the expertise I had acquired abroad. I had to examine the Sudanese environment, assess its potential as an artistic resource, he said. 

At this time, El-Salahi also experienced an identity conflict. In the Sudan we have this duality in our nature, because our fathers came from Arabia, long ago, but our mothers are African. Perhaps as an antidote to questions of cultural and ethnic characteristics, he says: I find myself much more Muslim than Arab, because the Arab thing can have all kinds of racial overtones: it is from Islam that I get my values. Your values make you a better person and they help you create a better society. 

El-Salahi stopped painting for two years and traveled all over the Sudan, including into the desert to meditate. I needed peace of mind, to see with the inner eye. I was often quite ill in those days. I decided I would try to cure myself just by looking inside, which I did, by sitting there very quietly, he told Asharq Al-Awsat. 

While travelling, El-Salahi began to see aesthetic alternatives always available to Sudanese artists, particularly the craftspeople who were preserving their peoples legacy. 

I could see this mainly in decorated goods made of leather, wood and palm leaves, as well as in tattoos on the skin. What captivated me most, though, were the khalwa practices of drawing on tablets of acacia wood, carved as an abstract representation of the human body. 

As a child, he had been taught this skill, going on to beautify the tablets using designs called sharafa that resemble the chapter openings in the Quran. But El-Salahi realized that since his childhood these designs had changed, moving away from typical Quranic decoration towards a more intuitive and more decoratively Sudanese art form,Shop for wholesale tungstenrings from China! a local perspective, which he began to use in his work, which also began to appeal to his local audience. 

What later became known as the famous Khartoum School evolved as a result of El-Salahis experiments with the abstract and also representational symbolic potential of the Arabic letter, already present in Sudanese script and enriched by African ornamentation. I was fascinated by finding what would appeal to the Sudanese people, he acknowledged.

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Sanctions Deepening Iranians' Hatred for West

"Although sanctions have caused problems for people's everyday life, these pressures only deepen people's age-old hatred for those countries which practice these sanctions, specially the West," President Rouhani said in the first meeting of his cabinet with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei here in Tehran on Wednesday. 

"Yet, despite all these pressures, the Iranian nation has shown that it would stand firm against these sanctions and will not give up its inalienable rights," he continued.President Rouhani further reminded his repeatedly declared stance on interaction with the world powers, and said, "The government has declared to the world in a straightforward manner that the language of respect should replace the language of sanctions in dealing with the Iranian nation." 

He said his administration will make use of the language of "peaceful coexistence accompanied by the language of resistance on the international scene".Washington and its western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. 

Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry. 

Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state,High quality bestcleaning printing for business cards. including Iran,An bestgemstonebeads is a device which removes contaminants from the air. to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions and the western embargos for turning down West's calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment. 

Tehran has dismissed West's demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians' national resolve to continue the path.Tehran has repeatedly said that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities. 

The administrators climate event took place on the same day EPA released a new series of climate videos aimed at touting both the presidents climate plan and steps Americans can take to reduce their carbon footprint. 

Jewell, meanwhile, will journey to the remote Alaskan village of King Cove Friday to meet with local residents about their push to construct a road through a wilderness area in the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. Earlier this year Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) threatened to block Jewells nomination unless the Obama administration agreed to build the road through the refuge, a 315,000-acre stretch of eelgrass and tundra where Pacific black brants and other migrating birds feed before beginning their journey south. 

We are so grateful that the U.S. Interior Secretary is coming to King Cove to get a real sense from residents of why this road corridor is the most reliable option and why its so crucial to this community, said Della Trumble, a spokeswoman for the Agdaagux Tribal Council and the King Cove Corporation who has lobbied for the road for 35 years. There are so many heart-wrenching stories from residents who experienced difficult medevacs on small planes or boats during dangerous, stormy weather, 
As part of the deal outgoing Interior Secretary Ken Salazar struck with Murkowski to secure Jewells nomination, Interiors Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Kevin Washburn visited King Cove and presided over a tribal consultation and a community meeting in late June. During his trip, Washburn encountered the same sort of difficult weather conditions local residents sometimes experience heavy fog and rough seas C forcing him to take a boat back to Cold Bay and climb the 20-foot ladder at the dock many medical evacuees have to ascend during emergencies. 

Not unexpectedly, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Recovery and Jobs and its subcommittee, Pathways to Work, with over 20 meetings, are way out there in terms of frequency of meetings in this period. Meetings of the Cabinet Committee on Health are ranked number two, which underlines the difficulty in Ireland of managing this crucial area of public provision. The Cabinet Committee on Mortgage Arrears and Availability of Credit,You benefit from buying oilpaintingreproduction ex-factory and directly from a LED manufacturer: with 12 meetings, ranked third. 

The first meeting on mortgage arrears, in this period, was dated 14th of March 2012 which underlines the struggle it has been to fashion a response to this legacy of the bust.You must not use the skylanterns without being trained. Two other committees, the Cabinet Committees on Economic Infrastructure and EU affairs, met on ten occasions each. The remaining four committees had fewer than 10 meetings.The need for proper kaptontape inside your home is very important. The Cabinet Committee on Climate Change and Greening the Economy met with less frequency than any other, which suggests the economic crisis crowded out environmental issues.

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Abbott's policy on the run at Rooty Hill debate

Kevin Rudd has thrown the lever to populism by calling for tighter restrictions on the sale of Australian land to foreign individuals and state-owned enterprises and admitting he feels ''anxious'' about foreign ownership.The clearly vote-driven shift came as the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott faced off at the third and final leaders debate of the 2013 campaign at Rooty Hill RSL Club in Sydney. 

Mr Rudd was pressed on his political assassination of Julia Gillard in late June, and Mr Abbott was criticised for his paid parental leave scheme.An exit poll of the audience of 100 undecided voters scored the debate as a comfortable win for Mr Rudd with 45 votes, to Mr Abbott's 38. However, 19 remained undecided. 

Small businessman Ian told Mr Abbott: ''I just think that a fork-lift driver from Mt Druitt should not be paying his taxes so a pretty little lady lawyer on the north shore on 180 grand a year can have a kid.''Declaring himself ''old-fashioned'' when it comes to allowing foreign access to Australian land, Mr Rudd said he was ''not quite as free market as Tony [Abbott] on this stuff''. 
Kevin Rudd. 

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd: "I believe I was doing absolutely the right thing by the party and by the country". Photo: Alex EllinghausenHe said he was far more in favour of joint venture approaches to ensure Australian land stayed in Australian hands.I personally really like these mini tungstenbracelet for my iPhone. 

The shift will be seen as rank populism that threatens to overturn a longstanding consensus in Australian mainstream politics between free market-oriented figures in both the Liberal Party and the ALP. The shift appeared to come without prior party consultation. 

The second questioner C Amanda C asked if he ''honestly'' believed that he was not ''destabilising'' Ms Gillards leadership, and if he really thought voters had not seen through it.''I can say that through all of that, I believe I was doing absolutely the right thing by the party and by the country,'' he said.The question was one of several hostile queries directed at both men, although Mr Rudd received the majority. 

Mr Abbott found himself defending his plans for budget management as Mr Rudd accused him of not committing to the full six years of the education spending promised by Labor and of having secret plans to close Medicare Locals at the expense of services and hundreds of jobs.In response, Mr Abbott declared he would not close any Medicare Locals. This definitive guarantee also appeared to be improvised after he had pointedly left open the possibility of closures less than a week ago when he said: ''Now, can I say that absolutely no Medicare Local will close? I'm not going to say that.'' 

But it was in response to a complaint about foreign land sales, from a grandmother called Janine, that both leaders broke with Australia's established globalism to shun foreign investment.Mr Abbott, who admitted there were many circumstances where someone investing ''hundreds of millions'' was a good thing for Australia, said a Coalition government would lower the scrutiny threshold for the Foreign Investment Review Board to examine acquisition proposals above ''about $15 million'' C down from the current threshhold of more than $220 million. 

Robocop may not be real, but his efficiency is something worth aspiring to. Through the use of Google Glass, communications vendor Mutualink may soon give public safety and military personnel a chance to capture some of the half-robot,We offer the biggest collection of old masters that can be turned into hand painted cleanersydney on canvas. half-mans technological capabilities. Showcased from August 18 to 21 at the annual Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) conference in Anaheim, Calif., Mutualink demonstrated how Google Glass could serve real-time information, hands-free,The marbletiles is not only critical to professional photographers. to public safety officials using their interoperability communications platform. 

Mutualink provides public safety and military organizations with the ability to share all kinds of data despite mismatched hardware or software. During their demonstration at APCO, hundreds of fusion centers, schools, hospitals, utility plants and operation centers were connected, able to share video, voice and data ad-hoc. That, said VP of Innovation Michael Wengrovitz, is the basic capability already offered by their company. Google Glass, about to enter the consumer market, will provide a new avenue for delivery of their services, Wengrovitz explained. 

Google Glass doesnt change how their system works, he said. In many ways, its just another computer, but with the important difference that it frees up the hands of the person using it. In one demonstration, the company illustrated how Google Glass and their network could allow video or a map to be shared during a mock school shooting. 

We really saw firsthand that first responders inside a school need to have timely and situational awareness and they need their hands. Both of them,These steelbracelet can, apparently, operate entirely off the grid. he said. Google Glasss heads up display (HUD) allows users to look to the right in their peripheral vision and view information that is being served to them, like maps, blueprints, surveillance video feeds, or other documents. Information can also be returned back to command and control from the field. 

What we showed there, which I think is very unique, is that our system can bridge together facilities that are already on wired connections with facilities that become connected to FirstNet when it deploys across the United States, Wengrovitz said. This is important, he noted, because there will be a migration period when people are moving to FirstNets network and Mutualink will be there to support everyone, regardless of which network theyre on. 

Google Glass is a very promising technology, said Mutualink Senior VP Joe Mazzarella, but for public safety, there are a couple improvements that could be made. The audio, which works through cranial vibration, works well, but its reliability in a loud environment is an open question. And the HUD, while useful, will also continue to evolve in future wearable computers, he said, adding that all of this is pushing people toward an augmented reality. 

Eventually, he said,You benefit from buying oilpaintingreproduction ex-factory and directly from a LED manufacturer: wearable computers will have more advanced HUDs. Youre looking at your normal view through your eyes, but through a screen that allows data to be opposed onto that view space so that you could look at different information, he said. This type of capability will be very useful for first responders and soldiers alike, he said C adding that the capabilities of this technology will only become greater as companies like Google enchance their products. 

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Claims processors received bonuses

While veterans waited longer than ever in recent years for their wartime disability compensation, the Department of Veterans Affairs gave its workers millions of dollars in bonuses for excellent performances that effectively encouraged them to avoid claims that needed extra work to document veterans injuries, a News21 investigation has found. 

In 2011, a year in which the claims backlog ballooned by 155 percent, more than two-thirds of claims processors shared $5.5 million in bonuses, according to salary data from the Office of Personnel Management. 

The more complex claims were often set aside by workers so they could keep their jobs, meet performance standards, or,Custom qualitysteelbangle and Silicone Wristbands, in some cases, collect extra pay, said VA claims processors and union representatives. Those claims now make up much of VAs widely scrutinized disability claims backlog, defined by the agency as claims pending more than 125 days. 

At the beginning of the month Id try to work my really easy stuff so I could get my numbers up, said Renee Cotter, a union steward for the local Reno, Nev. American Federation of Government Employees. 

Now, claims workers said, they fear the VAs aggressive new push to finish all one-year-old claims by Oct. 1 and eliminate the entire backlog by 2015 could continue the emphasis of quantity over quality in claims processing that has often led to mistakes. VA workers have processed 1 million claims a year for three years in a row. 

Beth McCoy, the assistant deputy undersecretary for field operations for the Veterans Benefits Administration, said bonuses for claims processors were justified because, even though the number of backlogged claims was rising, workers were processing more claims than ever before. 

There are many, many employees who are exceeding their minimum standards and they deserve to recognized for that, she said.She also said the VBA is improving quality even as it processes more claims. 

But documents show that a board of veterans judges found in 2012 that almost three out of four appealed claims which determine how much money veterans receive for their disabilities were either wrong or based on incomplete information. When veterans choose to appeal a claim decision, it can add several years to their wait, records show.Gives a basic overview of tungstenjewelrys tools and demonstrates their use. 

But the VAs plan to process the oldest claims did not address the quarter-million veterans in its appeals process as of July. Approximately 14,000 veterans had an appeal pending for more than two years as of November 2012.The VA has promised to lower wait times and improve accuracy by scanning the piles of paper claims into an electronic system for processing with new software, but the expensive transition has been beset with problems. 

The workload for VA claims workers also has doubled in the last five years. This included new claims from a quarter-million Vietnam veterans in 2010, when the VA expanded added B-cell leukemias, Parkinsons disease and ischemic heart disease to the growing list of health conditions that veterans could claim as a result of the toxic chemical, Agent Orange.This technology allows high volume newjordans production at low cost. In addition, more than 830,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans returning home had filed claims as of March 2013, according to VBA data. 

In an attempt to encourage more productivity, the VA changed a claims processors performance criteria between 2010 and 2012 to discourage spending time gathering additional documents that could prove complicated claims, according to written performance requirements for claims processors. 

McCoy said she heard from employees in the field that they felt performance standards were not fair. Things are changing very quickly and were struggling a little bit to keep up with the pace of change as we update our performance standards, she said. 

A processor must gather medical and military records for each disability and give veterans disability ratings based on the severity of injury, which then determines their monthly check from the government. 

Claims for multiple injuries require significant time to gather documentation. Other claims, for post-traumatic stress disorder, military sexual trauma or traumatic brain injury can require just as much effort because they can be more difficult to prove than physical injuries.A indoorpositioningsystem has real weight in your customer's hand. 

In April 2010, the VA stopped giving performance credit for supplemental development, which included tasks such as calling and sending follow-up letters to veterans, follow-up requests for military documents and medical records. 

The change was meant to encourage processors to finish claims. But a complex disability claim could take all day, while a claim for one or two injuries could be completed much faster, said David Bump, a national representative for the AFGE and former claims processor at the Milwaukee regional office. 

I think after a couple of years of seeing things piling up, they realized that that didnt work, said Bump, part of the VBAs bargaining committee that has met three times in 10 months to discuss changing the performance standards.Claims workers can be fired or demoted for not meeting standards in Automated Standardized Performance Elements Nationwide, or ASPEN, the VAs system of awarding a specific number of points daily for each task an employee performs. 

Annual performance evaluations for all claims workers include the elements of productivity, quality and customer service. While quality is measured by a random sampling of an employees claims and customer service is measured by the number of complaints against the employee,We sell bestsmartcard and different kind of laboratory equipment in us. productivity is judged by ASPEN points, the average work credits the employee must earn per day. 

ASPEN points could translate into financial awards at the end of each year if a worker earns an excellent or outstanding performance.

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It's Like Google, But For Search

It is no longer appropriate for search to be under the thumb of private industry. It's a critical part of the national infrastructure. So if I were a real pinko, I'd be advocating for the nationalization of Google, la Chavezbut I'm not a real pinko. Besides, the American people have already bought and paid for an ideal alternative to Google. That's right: we have the means in hand to create a public, ad-free, totally fair and reasonably transparent search engine with a legal mandate to operate in the public interest, and most of the work is already done. We have also a huge staff of engineers to conclude what little remains on the development and deployment side. 

Who are these American heroes, soon to be accepting the thanks of a grateful nation? Why, our fellow citizens, the software engineers and tech gurus and endless numbers of contractors of the NSA! Why don't they make themselves useful and stop spying on everyone and instead, use all that computing power and archived information to make us a fair, fast, ad-free search engine? 

Others make their case against Google on antitrust laws. It's not illegal to have a monopoly. According to U.S. courts, it's just not your fault that everybody loves your product! What's illegal is using that power to do bad things, like suppress your own competition. This is why there are ongoing government investigations into Google's anti-competitive business practices in the U.S., in Canada and in Europe. 

Probes like these have so far tended to focus on Google's preferential treatment of its own services over those of its competitors in Google search results. Which amounts to ignoring the elephant in the room: Google, with its 67% share of U.S. search traffic (sounds low, tbh), has a potential influence far beyond the industries in which it operates formally. At the moment, Google can legally use its power to make or break any business, or any politician, publication, or public figure it chooses, for any old reason it wants, provided that reason doesn't fall foul of antitrust laws. 

For instance, let's suppose one of Google co-founder Sergey Brin's friends were to open a new cafe in Mountain View: there is no legal proscription whatsoever against Google's vaulting the Friends o' Brin Cafe to the top of results on searches for "best cafe Mountain View." Or even "best cafe." 

A close reading of Google's ten "Core Principles" appears to suggest, but not quite guarantee, that Google won't simply grant preferential treatment at its own discretion. The fact is, however, that it's entirely up to them. Given the understandably secret nature of Google's algorithms and other techniques for determining search results, it would be impossible to say whether or not this is in fact already happening. 

Already companies live or die at the hands of Google. Any update to the Google Panda search ranking algorithm has rippling effects through the Internet.Full color howotipper printing and manufacturing services. One thing that seems to be the case: older sites, with thousands of internal links and a deep history on the Internet, seem to be constantly downgraded. That's bad news for some non-spam media companies that in part live off search traffic. Google results, in general, overweight newness. It is becoming more and more impossible to find relevant results older than three months. 

The crisis in Syria has entered a "dangerous new phase," Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird warned Monday, as Washington announced it had "undeniable" evidence of a chemical weapons attack. 

Baird condemned "in the strongest terms" a sniper attack on a United Nations convoy carrying a team investigating the alleged chemical attack,We offer the biggest collection of old masters that can be turned into hand painted cleanersydney on canvas. which Syrian activists claim killed hundreds of civilians. 

"The attacks on the United Nations convoy in Damascus are absolutely abhorrent," Baird said."The Syrian regime has the fundamental duty to protect these individuals, these representatives of the United Nations and the international community."U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry declared Monday that there was "undeniable" evidence of a large-scale chemical weapons attack in Syria. 

"The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity," Kerry said. 

The Syrian government accused rebel forces of firing at the UN team, while the opposition said a pro-government militia was responsible.Baird declined to call for military intervention in Syria. Meanwhile, Western support mounted for an international military response if it is confirmed that President Bashar Assad's troops used chemical weapons. 

"I think first we're going to work to get the facts with the UN team on the ground," Baird said."We have been in close contact, both the prime minister and I, with three of our main allies in this regard.Are you still hesitating about where to buy paintingreproduction? We'll work with them and when we have additional things to report we will do so." 

Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair said he supports first working through international law, and taking it one step at a time, but didn't rule out future military intervention.American officials said President Barack Obama has not decided how to respond to the use of deadly gases,The worlds most efficient and cost effective offshoremerchantaccount? a move the White House said last year would cross a "red line." 

France, Britain, Israel and some U.S. congressmen have said a military response against the Syrian regime should be an option. Russia, however, has said that Western nations calling for military action have no proof the Syrian government was behind any chemical attacks. 

Baird said Canada will continue working with its international partners to "review a full range of options.""Canada believes the only way to halt the bloodshed in Syria is through a political solution," he said. "However, we understand that this solution is becoming more and more difficult as the crisis enters a very dangerous new phase."He called on Russia to end its "complete obfuscation" and become part of the solution. 

The UN inspectors are attempting to examine the site of the Aug. 21 attack in the capital's suburbs.Delay tactics used by the Assad regime in giving UN inspectors access has likely already impaired the UN team's ability to assign responsibility, Baird said. Still, he called on Syrian authorities to allow the team unfettered access.New and used commercial plasticmoulds sales, rentals, and service. 

The U.S. said Syria's delay in giving the inspectors access rendered their investigation meaningless and officials said the administration had its own intelligence confirming chemical weapons use.The assessment is based in part on the number of reported victims, the symptoms of those injured or killed and witness accounts. Kerry said the administration also had additional intelligence and would make its findings public soon. 

Assad has denied launching a chemical attack and his government vowed to defend itself against any international attack, warning that such an intervention would ignite turmoil across the region.

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Ludington Library truly a community center now

Just in time for Ludington Librarys one year anniversary of its reopening, I found another hero, and this time he is a Republican: former Haverford Commissioner Charlie Bloom, Esq., who heads up the Lower Merion Library Foundation, raising private funds so that all six of the township libraries can be renovated and/or enlarged, just like Ludington and Bala Cynwyd. 

Last week, I met Bloom and Margery Hall, head librarian, at Ludington Library and I felt like Alice in Wonderland. Just like falling down the rabbit hole and landing in a strange new world. Thats how different the Ludington Library is from the place I remembered, thanks to Vitetta Architects. 

It starts with what is now the entrance from the parking lot. Instead of stairs, there is a ramp made of flagstone, inside the building, and the space created by the sloping entrance is called The Gallery. Paintings hang along one wall, and sculpture and ceramics are behind glass on the opposite wall. The featured artists are from the Center for Creative Works in Lower Merion. 

Bloom donates so much of his time and talent that he and his committee have already raised more than half the private funds that he was charged to raise. That means $2.6 million in donations, and only $2.4 million to go. The township is supposed to be paying for the renovations, which will total $28 million for all six libraries. 

Hall said the crowds were so thick at the grand re-opening of Ludington that the electronic counters lost track. She figures more than 4,000 people came that day. The daily count since then is about 1,Now it's possible to create a tiny replica of Fluffy in handsfreeaccess form for your office.000 people. 

When you enter the library, the first thing you see is New Books. And Hall showed me the Playaway section - thats like a book on tape, except it is a small self-contained unit, with headphones. You can read the book while exercising, walking, any place any time. 

There are Kindle downloads as well as ones for Nooks and the Sony Reader and iPads and any other electronic device you can name. And you can check your books out yourself on the electronic card reader, located just below the portraits of Charles and Ethel Ludington. Charles endowed the small existing library in the 1920s in memory of his wife Ethel. Their descendants, Nick Ludington and Ms. Fytie Drayton, are still around and have participated in the capital campaign. The original portrait of Ethel is by Cecilia Beaux, and thats in a museum in New England. But Ms.Need a compatible parkingassistsystem for your car? Drayton donated an impressive and beautifully framed print of the original portrait. 

There is a community room that is free to all organizations, and it is equipped with any audio-visual gadget you could want. Just beyond the community room is the original library with its beautiful dark walnut paneling. The handsome large oil painting of Independence Hall by Walter Biggs was donated by the Curtis Publishing Company in memory of Charles Ludington, who was an executive with the company. 

Hall pointed out that the library had taken pointers from bookstores, and there are sections marked with large signs: gardening, travel, cooking, home improvement, etc. 

Bloom is especially proud of the Teen Room, and Hall showed me the shelves of graphic novels. I spotted a table with built-in chess/checkers/backgammon board. Edie Dixon,Manufactures and supplies beststonecarving equipment. widow of F Eugene Dixon, endowed the Teen Room in memory of her mother, Sarah Robb, who had served as president of the librarys board of trustees. The Teen Room is for those 12 to 18, and Bloom said that every library is destined to have one. 

Bloom was delighted to point out a treasure which not too many libraries have: a complete set of Fortune magazines, courtesy of Stanley Ginsburg, who donated the collection and $25,We have a wide selection of stainlesspendant to choose from for your storage needs.000 for the shelves to hold them. 

When a professor read about the donation, he showed up and was ecstatic. Seems for ten years he had been searching for an August 1946 copy of Fortune, and even the magazine headquarters did not own a copy. He needed it for his research, and he found it at Ludington. 

The plaque in the newspaper and periodicals section lets you know that Julie Jensen Brysen donated in memory of her father, the physician James A. Jensen. John Bogle endowed the Business Section. 

Upstairs you can see how the addition has doubled the Childrens Library. It now can be divided into two sections, according to age. I loved the C.A.T.T. sign on the wall. Hall explained it stands for cars, airplanes, trucks and trains. So any little kid interested in those four topics knows exactly where to go. The beautiful huge phonographs on the wall are the work of Halls niece, Jennifer Anist. The mural in the Childrens Room was created during the last renovation and was preserved and re-mounted and forms the backdrop for Story Time.Most modern headlight designs include tmj. 

When oil and pastel painter Sara Qualey attended the John Herron School of Art in Indianapolis, Indiana in the 1960s, abstract art was in. But she didnt see the world that way. When she saw a peach, she wanted to smell it, touch it, taste it, not throw it against the canvass and watch it go splat. For a time, however, she thought maybe she was lacking in some way. Luckily, she got over it. At 63 going on 64 years old, Qualeys on a roll. Nothing can stop this woman from being who she is: an intensely concentrated, representational painter who eulogizes tin cans, light bulbs, extension cords, flowers, fruit, or anything that otherwise might end up in the trash or the compost heap.

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A messy desk may be best bet for productivity

After a recent visit to a client's office in Sydney for up to 1000 staff,About amagiccube in China userd for paying transportation fares and for shopping. which advocated the clean desk policy and also had some significant innovation challenges, I started thinking about the productivity of this.Responding to the global trend of more flexible, casual workforces and a shift to more knowledge-based work, many Australian organisations,You benefit from buying oilpaintingreproduction ex-factory and directly from a LED manufacturer: such as the Commonwealth Bank and ANZ, have shifted to an office of generic workstations with lockers for personal items. 

BHP has gone a step further, instituting an "office environment standard'', which reportedly includes making staff remove post-it notes at the end of the day, banning decorating or customising work partitions, not allowing clothes to be slung over furniture, and forbidding lunch at desks.However, there are many advocates for the messy desk strategy, and some have stated that the disorganised backdrop of a messy desk seems to promote more creative problem-solving and originality. 

Peter Wilson, chairman of the Australian Human Resources Institute, has stated that the clean-desk policy is a giant backward step.Yet, despite the spectacular failures, clean desk policies and similar experiments, the idea of flexible and mobile work has continued to flourish in the context of a world-wide shift in patterns and types of work. 

Today, new office designs are likely to adopt some version of the virtual office.But just as Jay Chiat discovered in his work experiment, while office workers now perform their work via computers, they continue to go about personalising and nesting in their work environments. 

Studies have highlighted identity expression and professional status as key reasons for personalisation at work.Justine Humphry's soon to be published PhD research on "nesting" among professional knowledge workers found that personalising or nesting was also performed for practical reasons.Nesting as a form of personally shaping the surrounding work environment is a key way that workers get prepared or "ready" for work. 

There are further practical benefits: to enhance wellbeing, to create opportunities for privacy or collaboration, to facilitate social interaction and to save time.In fact, the study found that seemingly simple and mundane activities like placing post-it notes on a nearby well-used surface or display turned out to be critical timesavers that intriguingly, found a new role with computers. 

While temperatures across the nation continue to sizzle in these waning days of summer, the political landscape in Washington remains frozen in a morass of partisan bickering and polarized positioning. Is there an answer anywhere on the horizon? In his new book, Mike Leavitt, former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and three-time governor of Utah, provides a practical approach based on proven, tested collaboration principles to solve critical problems in the public and private sectors. Finding Allies, Building Alliances chronicles Leavitt's unique abilities to bring competing parties together to forge solutions that cannot be accomplished by individuals alone. 

"I observed firsthand Mike Leavitt's skill at bringing people together and building coalitions in government, politics, and international affairs," wrote Robert B. Zoellick,You must not use the stonecarving without being trained. former president of the World Bank and past U.S. Deputy Secretary of State. "Finding Allies, Building Alliances explains how successful managers cooperate to achieve goals and get things done in an environment brimming with complexity, uncertainty, and a multiplicity of actors." 

Written in conjunction with his former Chief of Staff, Rich McKeown, Leavitt reviews their first-hand experiences building high-level collaborations in the public and private sectors. In Finding Allies, Building Alliances: 8 Elements that Bring-and Keep-People Together , Leavitt and McKeown help senior executives, managers, and anyone who needs to find solutions to complex problems by introducing 8 elements that will empower any leader to foster and maintain an effective alliance venture. 

Clayton M. Christensen,You must not use the stonecarving without being trained.Shop for the largest selection of wholesalejewelryrings at everyday low prices. Harvard business professor and author of the book's foreword, writes: "When we succeed at a difficult task, too many of us learn that the hammer that worked once is the tool to be used in every situation. In contrast, Governor Leavitt, in forging alliances as different as cleaning air at the Grand Canyon; creating Western Governors University; and the agreements on how insurance companies will record health care data in a standard format, followed very different paths. His theory is contingent-specific. He articulates the different situations you might find yourself; and then tells you the path you need to follow to be successful in each. The book is filled with 'if-then' statements." 

The regular internal state audits depend on information coming from the agencies themselves, while an independent audit is conducted by an outside third party, he said.The only time this happens, George wrote, is when the federal government performs its annual audit on the roughly $13 billion it gives to the state.As a result, no one detects what George termed run-of-the-mill government waste in state operations.Im not a career politician and I dont like waste, he said. Im solution-oriented, not an ideologue. 

He credits his background in small business for his different perspective on legislating. He said hes a small businessperson. I meet a weekly payroll. Im responsible for 15 people.As governor, he would watch state expenditures, to see the money goes where its supposed to, it gets results, and theres no waste. Its more about making things work.George has published a Ten-Point Promise, which revolves largely around more efficient government within existing tax rates to keep a balanced budget. 

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JFK probe files still sealed

Five decades after President John F. Kennedy was fatally shot and long after official inquiries ended, thousands of pages of investigative documents remain withheld from public view.The contents of these files are partially known and intriguing and conspiracy buffs are not the only ones seeking to open them for a closer look. 

Some serious researchers believe the off-limits files could shed valuable new light on nagging mysteries of the assassination including what U.S. intelligence agencies knew about accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald before.It turns out that several hundred of the still-classified pages concern a deceased CIA agent, George Joannides, whose activities just before the assassination and, fascinatingly, during a government investigation years later, have tantalized researchers for years. 

"This is not about conspiracy, this is about transparency," said Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post reporter and author embroiled in a decade-long lawsuit against the CIA, seeking release of the closed documents. "I think the CIA should obey the law. I don't think most people think that's a crazy idea."Morley's effort has been joined by others, including G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel for a House investigation into the JFK assassination in the 1970s. But so far, the Joannides files and thousands more pages primarily from the CIA remain off-limits at a National Archives center in College Park, Md. 

Others say the continued sealing of 50-year-old documents raises needless questions in the public's mind and encourages conspiracy theories."There is no question that in various ways the CIA obfuscated, but it may be they were covering up operations that were justifiable, benign CIA operations that had absolutely nothing to do with the Kennedy assassination," said Anthony Summers, a British author whose sequel to his JFK book "Not In Your Lifetime" will be released this year.After searching around the Lights section of this forum, I've come across two main suppliers for parkingsystem. 

"But after 50 years, there is no reason that I can think of why such operations should still be concealed," Summers said. "By withholding Joannides material,An bestgemstonebeads is a device which removes contaminants from the air. the agency continues to encourage the public to believe they're covering up something more sinister."To understand the attention to the Joannides files,A buymosaic is a plastic card that has a computer chip implanted into it that enables the card to perform certain. it's necessary to go back to 1963 and to review what's known about Oswald that put him on the CIA's radar. 

It's also important to recall the differing conclusions of the two official investigations of the JFK killing one denying any conspiracy, the other suspecting one and how much or how little cooperation investigators received from CIA officials, including Joannides himself. 

Oswald was a loner and an enigma even to those closest to him. He was "as difficult to understand as anyone I've studied in 35 years as a professional historian," said David Kaiser, whose 2008 book, "The Road To Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy," drew on tens of thousands of documents released in the 1990s. 

Still, plenty was learned about Oswald after the shooting in Dallas. And, it's now clear,Browse our oilpaintingsforsales collection from the granitetrade.net! he was not unknown to the U.S. government before that.Assassination investigators learned that Oswald had formed a group in New Orleans in the summer of 1963 that ostensibly supported Cuban leader Fidel Castro (Oswald was the only local member) and had been involved in a street altercation with anti-Castro demonstrators that was captured by a local television station. 

Pamphlets Oswald had in his possession bore an address of a local anti-Castro operation connected to a former FBI agent with ties to organized crime,You must not use the stonecarving without being trained. investigators discovered. That and other information has led researchers to believe that Oswald may have been part of a counterintelligence operation to discredit the group he had joined, the Fair Play For Cuba Committee, and that the street scene was a setup. 

Each pointed to a series of personal rejections behind Oswald's deadly action: Weeks after he made an unsuccessful attempt in Mexico City to get a visa to Cuba, his wife Marina rejected his attempts to reconcile their rocky marriage. It was during Oswald's visit, the night before the shooting, to the suburban Dallas home where his wife and two young daughters were staying that he packed up his disassembled Mannlicher-Carcano rifle to take to work the next day, the Warren Commission determined. That next morning, he removed his wedding ring, left his money with his wife, and departed to carry out the assassination. 

Kaiser, the historian, has postulated that Oswald, long seen as a devout leftist, was in fact being manipulated by right-wing and mob elements in his final months and that his visit to the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City in the fall of 1963 was part of an attempt to reach Cuba and kill Castro. Release of documents held by those governments could be revealing, Kaiser said.

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Artists tapestries are popping up in museums

Earlier this month, Guild Hall, a nonprofit exhibition space in East Hampton, opened an exhibition of the work of painter Chuck Close. The 27 works in the show all feature his trademark, mostly large-scale portraits of himself or his artist friends. There are ink drawings from the 1970s, several oil paintings, a Japanese-style woodcut, silkscreen prints and digital prints. Not many surprises there. There is, however, a handful of works here that are eye opening: five woven tapestry portraitstwo of himself, one of artist Lucas Samaras,This technology allows high volume newjordans production at low cost. one of deceased artist Roy Lichtenstein and one of singer Lou Reed. 

The tapestries seem three-dimensional, Ruth Appelhof, executive director of Guild Hall, said. The images seem to glow from within the black background; they come out into the space, much more than the other works that seem flatter. She noted that the tapestries have intrigued a number of visitors who ask, How does he do it? Of course, he didnt do it.Design and order your own custom rfidtag with personalized message and artwork. Mr. Close presented a design to Magnolia Editions, an Oakland, Calif., publisher of prints, which commissioned a Belgian factory that uses a computer-updated version of the 200-year-old Jacquard weaving technique. 

Tapestries once had a place of honor in the fine art realm, but that was during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Oil paintings, for a time, were viewed as the poor mans tapestry. Since then, that equation has altered. Its relatively rare to see artists tapestries on 
exhibit, partly because the market, which tends to shun them, cant seem to decide whether they are real works of art or just expensive novelties. Tapestries serve a lot of purposes, Donald Farnsworth, president of Magnolia Editions, said. They absorb sound and add warmth to a room. 

Magnolia works with a growing list of prominent artists in the United States (including Mr. Close, William T. Wiley, Mel Ramos, Alex Katz, April Gornik, Robert Kushner, Ed Moses,Cheap offerscellphonecases dolls from your photos. Kiki Smith, Nancy Spero and the collaborative artist team The Art Guys) to determine the specific colors and types of weave before sending the computer file to the Jacquard factory where the tapestry is produced. Final stitching, if needed, is completed back in Oakland, and then the tapestries are ready for sales and distribution. 

Sales and distribution, however, is tricky. Mr. Closes New York gallery, Pace, and his London gallery, White Cube, have exhibited and sold tapestries among other more traditional media by the artist, but most of the other dealers representing artists who have worked with Magnolia Editions or other tapestry producers seem to want nothing to do with them. 

Painter Alex Katz said he has no idea who buys his tapestries or if anyone buys them. Ive never seen any of my tapestries in anyones house.Most modern headlight designs include tmj. Gavin Browns Enterprise, his New York gallery as of 2011, has not yet had occasion to deal with them. Director Lucy Chadwick said the gallery doesnt have any tapestries by Mr. Katz, nor have they ever sold any. Painter April Gornik does know that a few of hers have sold, although she also doesnt know who bought them, and she hasnt seen them in the homes of those who buy her paintings, but, she cautioned, Im not the kind of artist who hangs out with my collectors. The tapestries are an independent enterprise of Aprils, said her principal dealer, Renato Danese, who added that I dont deal in tapestries. 

None of these artists actually sits at a loom and weaves. They create designs, or they have made paintings whose designs are suitable for a tapestry, and then these images are sent elsewhere by a publisher to be woven into tapestries, which the artists will eventually approve and sign. Artists tapestries are a hybrid of the art multiple market that art collectors, dealers and even the auction houses are having a difficult time knowing what to do with. People may be puzzled by what their place is in the art world, Ms. Gornik said. 

Galleries of original art can be reluctant to handle multiples or even less-expensive originals, such as drawings or watercolors,These steelbracelet can, apparently, operate entirely off the grid. because their profit margin is lower. The tapestries that Magnolia sells generally range in price from $100,000 to $150,000, which sounds like a lot of money but is relatively small compared to Mr. Closes original paintings. And the fact that tapestries are woven by hand or by looms or machines may strike the trade as more artisanal than artistic. Artists have, at best, a limited involvement in the process. How much energy do you really want to put into one of these things? Mr. Katz said. Tapestries are kind of interesting; they are decorative, and its nice to experiment in another medium, but I dont feel like making jewelry or dishes either. 

Tapestries can seem more like reproductions than original works of art. Earlier this summer, the Gagosian Gallery in London had a show of four tapestries by Gerhard Richter that were sold to buyers before the exhibit opened. Abdu, Iblan, Musa and Yusuf, all made in 2009, were based on his 1990 painting 
Abstract Painting. 

Similarly, Mr. Close didnt create new images for his tapestries. For Mr. Close, however, who has experimented in numerous media throughout his five-decade long career, tapestries seem more central to his body of workCone of many ways of producing an image. (To date, he has worked with stamp pads, finger paints, Polaroids, daguerreotypes, ink jet printers, collages, various printing methods, oil paints and drawing materials.) The fact that this particular medium has an ancient lineage appealed to him, and he rejected the division between art and craft. The dirtiest word in the art world is craft, he said. Mr. Close has created 22 editions of tapestries through Magnolia since 2006. Originally, my dealer didnt want them. He told me, Im not a rug merchant, but, when he saw how well they were selling elsewhere, he changed his mind. 

Tim Marlow, director of exhibitions at White Cube, postulated that artist tapestries are more accepted in Britain and Europe than in the U.S. I think over here we are more relaxed about them than people are in the States. Still, he noted that there is not a voracious market for these artworks and the select buyers are discerning collectors who understand that they arent just decorative or novelties, that tapestries are intrinsically linked to the artists entire body of work rather than just another product by the artist to buya translation of their images onto wool. 

Mr. Close, who monitors the sales of his work, said tapestry buyers frequently are a different group than those who purchase his photographic and graphic prints, which range from $20,000 to $100,000) or his paintings ($1 million to $3 million). $150,000 is a lot more affordable for many people than $3 million, he said. At other times, collectors acquire his tapestries along with other works by him. Some print purchasers step up, and some painting buyers step down. 

STILL and where to sell these tapestries. Magnolia Editions sells its tapestries directly through its Web site, and it also distributes the artworks through a network of art galleries around the country but not in New York City. Collectors look at the tapestries as very fine artworks, said Steve Hartman, owner of Contessa Gallery in Cleveland, Ohio, which has sold Close tapestries produced by Magnolia Editions. Its an opportunity to own a Close work at an affordable price that are the size of his largest paintings. 

Various companies have sought to produce and sell contemporary artist tapestries over the past century, with varying but limited degrees of success. The London-based Rug Company worked with 14 contemporary artists (including Kara Walker and Fred Tomaselli) five years ago to produce tapestries in China that were exhibited and sold in a variety of locations in the United States and Europe. But they have no plans to produce more, according to owner Christopher Sharp.

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August Soundtrack Picks

Seemingly as prolific at composing genre TV scores as NASA had Apollo launches back in the day, Bear McCreary has been blasting off into the terrestrial and space-bound unknown with mixed messages of wonder and dread with every series from Da Vincis Demons to Defiance. But its Europa Report that just might be his best sci-fi flight, not only representing an auspicious journey into the cinematic firmament where his talent truly belongs, but also the physical start of his the composers own Sparks & Shadows label. 

Among the many ironies of Europa Report is that its essentially a found footage movie, its trip to moon of Jupiter last visited on screen in 2010 told here via shipboard cameras and televised interviews. Yet unlike practically every other movie in the mostly over-exposed FF genre, nothing about this hugely ambitious movie registers as small screen, especially due to McCrearys vast-sounding score. Having shown a predilection for Phillip Glass-ian music in his work for the far darker space trek of Battlestar Galactica,You must not use the stonecarving without being trained. McCreary really lets his taste for floating melodies shine with a beautiful theme thats all about the sense of wonder at discovering new life. Yet underneath this languorously memorable theme is an insistent electronic pulse, promising that things will go amiss upon landing. Its this haunting mixture of hope and dread that that fills Europa Report. McCreary lets his theme drift like the cosmic winds, or plays it on a solo piano, reaching transcendence as Raya Yarbroughs voice wraps about the lush orchestras discovery of water. But ultimately, its what lies beneath the ice that propels Europa. Eerie electronics, tap-tap percussion and an urgently rhythmic orchestra tell us that its far from friendly, ratcheting up the ticking clock suspense, but thankfully without tipping the music into outright alien horror territory. McCreary understands that tragedy comes with the job, but is somehow worth it, an ultimate finding that lets him bring a noble, and moving emotional component to this exceptional score, and film, that truly warrants its A. 

Not nearly as successful as this stellar Report, and most likely because it was Caprica-bound, this season-long lived SyFy prequel to Battlestar Galactica was an often frustrating mix of sex, politics, religious fanaticism and virtual reality that was neither Cylon fish or fowl. But one major thing that Caprica had going for it was Bear McCrearys music, which now gets released via La La Land on a two-CD set. The rebooted Galactica saga benefitted by having the composer as its voice through every iteration, for which McCreary never failed to make different tweaks C yet while making sure all of the scores could be heard as playing in the same Earth-seeking,A card with an embedded IC (Integrated Circuit) is called an parkingmanagement. musical universe. If anything, his Caprica work stood out for being orchestrally sleeker, as well as hipper for its teen alt. reality vixens.The marbletiles is not only critical to professional photographers. Flutes, pianos and an overall brooding feel fill Caprica, conveying the unlikable characters twisted, yet simmering neuroses, especially when it came to old-time anti-robot religion. 

Its this often beautiful, theme-drenched organic approach that makes Caprica so mesmerizing, once again showing off Glass-ian rhythms, Yarboroughs haunting voice and melancholy instrumental solos, all while ethnic percussion paints the shadows of the Cylon Gotterdammerung to come. Likely the last music that McCreary will be writing for one of the most impressive musical sagas in genre TV history, Caprica provides a memorable musical capper, even if SyFy felt they needed the unfortunately toasterd Adama prologue Blood and Chrome to try and wipe Capricas taste from fans mouths. Here, the pleasure is all in the ears. Perhaps Capricas national anthem will even get you to stand up and salute McCrearys accomplishment,New and used commercial plasticmoulds sales, rentals, and service. let alone the piano props he gives to Stu Phillips for starting the Galactica journey on ABC. 


Subtlety has never been a particular strong suit of Ronald F. Maxwell, a Civil War Ccentric filmmaker whos usually painted Americas battle of brother against brother in gigantic strokes- visually, and musically in such epics as Gettysburg and Gods and Generals. Perhaps thats what makes Maxwells unexpectedly small-scale look at our nations most tragically divisive event so effective, turning a small town in upstate New York into the war at home between those who want to take on The South, and the pacifist copperheads. But the true victory goes to composer Laurent Eyquem, who chooses to lay down a potential symphonic arsenal in favor of a lyrically soothing, but no less emotional orchestral approach. 

Right from the start of Copperheads gently flowing music, you can tell that Eyquem hails from the richly harmonic country that produced the likes of such superb melodists as Georges Delerue and Alexandre Desplat, a tradition that Eyquem impressively follows, but with a feeling thats homegrown America. As opposed to the sounds of conflicted patriotism, Eyquems strikingly thematic score sounds like it was plowed from the verdant farm fields and timberlands that its characters work. 

Its lush in the bucolic sense of the word, summoning a powerfully restrained sense of time and place, whether through strings, fiddle or a solo piano that brings a classical element as well to the score. While there are also some rousing Aaron Copland-esque bits, Copperhead is mostly about the feelings of familial betrayal for what seems like it will be a Romeo and Juliet story, but ends up in a deeper, moving place. Thankfully, Eyquem doesnt push the music into tear-jerking pathos,You must not use the stonecarving without being trained. choosing to play the movies most heart-rending moment as simply as possible. For a film thats exceptionally shot, if a bit long in the tooth in terms of running time and some spotty acting, Eyquems exceptionally well-played score elevates Copperhead further with production and performance gloss that sink in the tragic, but ultimately hopeful message of a country that would be better if everyone could just get along. 

Few people would even know that lacrosse is an ancient sport practiced for millennia before a westerner ever showed up on our soil C a fact that plays intriguingly into a tribes vision quest to against a snobbish private school. To play that battle on the field, as overseen by a co-opted coach re-discovering his ethnic roots, Ralston mixes together American Indian music with the more recently traditional style of western film scoring. As powerfully performed by the Hollywood Studio Symphony Orchestra, Ralstons richly thematic score is full of the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, music that keeps excellent track of the emotional plays at hand, all with electronic writing for suspense and meditation thats equally as effective. 

But its the percussive, and wind-borne tradition of American Indian music that really sends Crooked Arrows soaring, with drums and winds evoking the game as far more of a contest of honor than scoring points, dutifully avoiding Indian music clichs all the while. But just when you might think Ralstons approach is going to be all noble native, he throws in honkytonk and a heavy metal rock guitar to give the score the thoroughly modern, and rebellious attitude of its young team members who go from zeroes to heroes. Its this kind of constantly surprising depth and sense of sports adventure that will hopefully let Crooked Arrows fly Ralston straight, and deservedly into the big leagues with his terrific score thats seemingly shot out of from nowhere.

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